Three Cheers for the Paraclete by Thomas Keneally
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Ideology of the Word

Structured as a tragically satirical farce, the theme here are anything but farcical: the intellectual desert of Catholic orthodoxy, the overt and pervasive misogyny of males in the Church, clerical arrogance and ambition, the imperatives of ecclesiastical economics, and the consequences of institutional conformism. Originally published a half century ago, the book remains acutely relevant as an explanation for more recent events like the conviction and incarceration of Cardinal Pell, the head of the Catholic Church in Australia.

For most of the last two decades I have lived and worked in the Catholic colleges of the University of Oxford. As undoubtedly would have been the case with any other similar institutions, my experiences have been mixed. I have encountered as much venality, rudeness, and spite as I have altruism, personal kindness and charity. And just about in the same proportions as in the non-religious institutions with which I have been associated.

But there is something peculiarly intense about both the virtues and vices in a Catholic clerical community. It is probably inevitable that in a community devoted to words and the form of words, everything becomes symbolic. Nothing is insignificant. And nothing said or done has a half-life. Resentments, perceived slights, mistakes (intentional or otherwise) may be forgiven but they’re rarely forgotten. Such communities thrive on ‘mutual formation’ which means that the memory of events is essential to communal life.

At an institutional level this facility for memory is called ‘tradition’, a very powerful term in Catholic circles. Tradition is the final arbiter of any controversy - what others have said, the opinions of those whom we respect, and the words in which those opinions are expressed. Despite any superficial changes in the Catholic Church over recent years, it is tradition which abides as the generative principle of the institution, its sociology and the psychology of its members, particularly its clerical members, who are by definition male.

Consequently, in the Catholic Church, language itself has become an instrument of male domination - among its male members as well as by its male members over the females. This is itself an important component of tradition, arguably the keystone of the entire Church edifice. To allow this principle of language or its control by a male clerisy to be questioned would be institutionally disastrous and so hasn’t changed at all since Three Cheers for the Paraclete was published. And so it remains the intransigent source of the continuing issues within the Catholic Church.

Keneally’s book is about James, a priest who challenges the male worship of words in the Catholic Church. Set in mid-century, it could as easily be a story of 1919 or 2019. The stifling clerical culture is constant and Keneally captures its detail with great skill. But he also puts his finger exactly on the central tenet of the existence of Catholic clergy: “... the priest isn’t an individual. He’s a corporate being.” This is the existential reality of the Catholic priesthood. The priest is a product and a prisoner of protected words. But if he escapes from this ideology of words, or even if he merely neglects them, his existence, as perceived by himself, is threatened. “I call myself an institutional being,” James laments.

The import of this astute observation can’t be overstated. Most of us work for corporate entities, and our lives are dominated by corporate activities. But few of us consider ourselves as created by these corporations. Not so the Catholic priest who is taught that his very existence is a result of his ordination “as a priest forever according to the order of Melchisedech” (note the cooptation of Jewish tradition). He is made so by words; his priestly life is minutely regulated by words that remind him of his total dependence on the institution which controls the words; and his priestly duties consist largely of repeating prescribed words on a daily basis.

One of James’s seminary students captures the set of mind required for a priest: “Everything codified and as organized as a trawler master’s manual. Only God is a little more intangible than a diesel engine.” The party line is unassailable truth. One obeys; and one is expected to be obeyed in turn. As a priest “You can’t overdo conformity,” he continues. Rudeness, obfuscation, the suffering of others are all justified by the need for orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is about words not actions. And since faith is always a thing of words, the right words are everything.

So I can’t say that the men I’ve met and worked with over the last two decades are individually better or worse than others. But it is clear to me that the institution to which they have devoted their lives exploits them mercilessly in precisely the ways that Keneally describes. It is an institution which would sacrifice them without a second thought if they were to prioritise people over words but would protect those who were loyal to the words regardless of their behaviour. This is an example of an organisation in which the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

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