There were two welcomed definitions of the word ‘Threshold’.
The first: – ‘Boundary beyond which a radically different state of affairs exists.’
This well defines the thin line as I had always seen it, and as I had still been seeing it when I began to read through documents and articles relevant to the permanent diaconate in preparation for my written response.
That retrospective usefulness, however, in no way becomes a reason for discarding it when viewing my altered landscape. There is still “a radically different state of affairs” awaiting a person who travels from the laity, across the whole broad expanse of the central field to take up residence as an ordained member of the Church’s hierarchy. There are ways in which that is how it should always be; it is, after all, a major decision, a major move and a major commitment; but with the essential proviso that the difference should not seem so great for the one who has made the journey.
The first uncertain steps should only be made in response to a belief (a similar but relevant and persistent “feeling” perhaps?) in the possibility that they are made in response to a calling, and the lengthy traverse of this potentially unnerving but divinely fruitful space can only be completed by those whose vocation is strengthened and confirmed with every step. For those who are not responding to a genuine vocation to the diaconate or the priesthood (and, rightly, whether or not they are is not discerned by the individual alone) the journey should never reach its completion, whereas for those truly called, partial emptiness (the receptacle for that which is sought but not yet attained) becomes fullness, internal growth becomes an external overflowing, hesitancy and doubt become certainty by the end of the journey. The radical difference is softened into the feel of a well-fitting cloak shouldered as a natural (and spiritual) consequence of following the right path.
It is among the majority of those who never approach the threshold that the ‘radically different state of affairs’ is seen to exist, either – as in past times – as some superior and holy state, or as an outdated and irrelevant anachronism to which they may themselves still cling while being unable to admit to having lost much of their own faith in it. Today, in the minds of many both within and outside the Church, the clergy is no longer seen as a group of people set apart in the way previously seen through the eyes and minds of their grandparents. They are now frequently seen as having been removed too far from the ordinary people and the world in which they live; this in the sense that they have left the common man too far behind in crossing the threshold into their own esoteric world.
It must, however, be accepted that much damage has also been done by the heightened awareness of clerical abuse resulting from the publicity of recent years. It is not the publicity itself which is the root cause, nor is it the investigations; it is correctly attributed to the fact that abusive and potentially abusive men have trained for and been accepted for ordination, and to the subsequent unjust and immoral failure of other ordained men in positions of influence and authority to deal adequately and rapidly with revealed facts and suspicions when they came to light. It is this last shameful reality which has done most harm to the image of the hierarchy, and, by instant automatic association, however unwarranted, to the image of its individual members and of the Church itself.
I believe the need to overcome the damage done to the Church by these atrocities is one of a series of reasons for the widening of the threshold between clergy and laity. Not, as would presently appear to be the result, to distance them from each other, but to make it possible for them to approach each other once again in ways more in keeping with Christ’s will for His Church, and in closer harmony with The Spirit’s ongoing leading and specific promptings.
The widening of the central plain is neither a drastic and permanent separation of two apparently divorced camps, nor the clearing and preparation of a future battlefield. I believe it is the creation of level ground onto which both clergy and laity must move and mingle in a joint effort to arrive at the fellowship on which the wounds of our diverging recent past and strained present can be healed. It is here that our collective future can regain a secure foothold on the bedrock that lies beneath the Church.
Without an ability to trust each other and work side by side toward the same ends, we have little hope of steadying the Ship in which we all sail, and no chance of discerning the only right course towards our intended future.
