The Church, in its purest intentions, should be the home of welcome, a maternal womb that does not expel but generates, that does not judge but accompanies, that does not weigh men’s steps on the scales of perfection, but sustains them in their fragility. And yet, too often, it appears as a stepmother: more ready to throw stones than to heal wounds, more interested in defending an abstract image of purity than in inhabiting human weakness concretely.
It is a bitter paradox that many clerics and faithful experience on their own skin: the place that should be a home often becomes a courtroom; the communion rail, rather than the table of brothers, turns into the dock of the accused.
The judging atmosphere: not only hierarchy
We are accustomed to pointing the finger at the ecclesiastical hierarchy, attributing to priests, bishops, and cardinals the responsibility for this suffocating climate. But the truth—more uncomfortable and thus harder to admit—is that the problem also lurks, and perhaps above all, among the laity. It is often precisely they, those who sit beside us on the pews at Sunday Mass, who create a toxic environment made up of comparisons, looks of disapproval, murmurs, and merciless judgments.
We are also speaking of people who never set foot in Church yet presume to speak or write about the Church. Many of these lay people present themselves as defenders of tradition, of rites, of the magisterium. They claim an apparent orthodoxy, built out of quotations from encyclicals, rubrics, and past Councils, of calls to order and rigor. But this guise of purity risks being nothing more than a mask: often behind the curtain of a devout language hides a far more contradictory daily life, made of moral incoherence and questionable personal choices.
There are those who hurl attacks against homosexuals, while secretly living a double life, hidden from wife and children; those who condemn slander, while in fact being the first promoters of poison; and so on. Here the mechanism of psychological projection comes into play: the other becomes the mirror on which I reflect what I cannot stand in myself. Instead of recognizing my shadows, I unload them on the other, branding him as a sinner, heretic, or “gone astray.” Some have even accused the Pope of being a blasphemer—which says it all. This is an ancient phenomenon, which Freud described as a defense of the ego, and which in the religious sphere becomes even more insidious because cloaked in sacred garments.
Spiritual sadism: the pleasure of seeing another fall
This is not just a matter of superficial judgment. There is a sadistic attitude that emerges with disturbing frequency. It is the posture of one who, hidden behind the window, waits for the neighbor to fall in order to rejoice at his ruin. Ecclesial chronicles offer daily examples: just observe the way in which certain faithful—and unfortunately many priests—comment on the crises or difficulties of a brother. A priest in difficulty, a religious going through a vocational crisis, a layperson who makes a public mistake: everything becomes a spectacle to consume, fertile ground for gossip and derision. Everything is based on hearsay, on “it seems that…,” and so on. Often these are outright lies, and those keyboard warriors, once in court, turn out to be meek kittens. But all this reveals, in reality, a profound absence of faith.
There is no empathy, no care, only the expectation of another’s failure that confirms, by contrast, one’s own apparent stability: “If others fall, I seem higher.”
One could speak of a kind of spiritual voyeurism: like those who look through the keyhole not to help, but to satisfy their own morbid curiosity. And here we are not dealing with a few isolated cases: the phenomenon is widespread, transversal, and deeply undermines the credibility of the Christian community.
The clergy is not immune
It would be naïve to think this attitude is confined to the laity. The clergy itself is often both victim and perpetrator. The truth, however, forces us to recognize that the core of the problem is not found primarily in the clergy. There are also priests who spend more time discussing their confreres than praying, religious who live more on resentments than on fraternity, parish priests who turn their communities into personal fiefdoms and spend hours spreading suspicion rather than cultivating relationships.
These too are well-known psychological dynamics: envy for offices not received, bitterness for careers that never came, resentment toward superiors who did not recognize one’s talents. All this translates into a toxic climate, where the other is never a brother but a rival, never a companion on the journey but an obstacle. Some find their outlet in food—and the results are plain for all to see—others in lace and trimmings. Precisely these were those to whom Francis, even if generalizing, referred when he branded them without hesitation as “rigid.” The lack of personal fulfillment—whether on a spiritual, intellectual, or even material level—then becomes fertile ground for what Viktor Frankl would have called a noogenic neurosis, a crisis of meaning that seeks relief in destroying the other rather than in building together.
When the community becomes a courtroom
The result is that many, immersed in this judging environment, choose other paths: the priest who leaves the ministry, the layperson who distances himself, the religious who decides to form other communities apart from those of origin. The real tragedy is this: if you enter a madhouse, the patients will point to you as crazy. It is the same attitude priests and lay people often assume in ecclesial communities, quick to look down on, judge, and even slander those who decide to leave. It has happened recently even with religious communities of great value.
Faith is lacking. That is what we must admit. If we were truly in love with Jesus Christ, we would ask ourselves why people leave; we would reflect. Thus the Church ends up being not a mother but a stepmother: more eager to point the finger than to understand, more concerned with defending the form than with safeguarding the substance. It attracts even pathological cases rather than fostering an atmosphere of fraternity and understanding. And here we touch a crucial point: Christianity has never been—and should never become—a religion of judgment.
The Gospel as contradiction
It is enough to reread the Gospel: Jesus never presents Himself as an inquisitorial judge. On the contrary, toward the hypocrites—those who use religion to condemn others—He has the harshest words. “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged” (Mt 7:1) is not a simple moral counsel, but the fundamental rule of a community that wants to be a mirror of the Kingdom. Certainly, the Church is called to indicate, guide, and orient. But judging and condemning—often based on prejudice—is something else entirely, far removed from the mandate of Christ.
And yet, two thousand years later, Christianity seems to have been overturned: those who pose as defenders of the truth are often the first to wield judgment as a weapon, forgetting that truth without charity becomes a sterile ideology.
The sociological dimension of judgment
On a sociological level, this phenomenon can be read as a form of social control. Closed communities—and religious ones often are—use judgment as a tool to maintain homogeneity, repress difference, and stifle originality. It is the sectarian drift of which we are often part. Those who do not conform to the dominant model are excluded, mocked, branded as “other.” It is a mechanism as old as primitive tribes, who expelled the different to preserve internal cohesion. But Christianity, at least as Christ intended it, was born precisely to break this logic, to welcome those who were discarded, to make diversity not a threat but a wealth.
Welcome as criterion
The future of the Church—if it truly wants to be faithful to the Gospel—can only pass through a radical rediscovery of welcome. Not a naïve or permissive welcome, but one that is born of recognizing that each person is greater than his falls, greater than his flaws, that the dignity of a person is not exhausted in his errors. This means changing attitude: ceasing to look at the other with the intent to judge, but with the desire to discover him and to see him again as a brother. It means that parishes can no longer be small dens of vipers where absolutions or condemnations are decreed, but laboratories of fraternity where mercy is experienced. Clerical circles must not be the places where one vents personal repressions by projecting them onto others, but rather environments of dialogue and support.
A necessary conversion
Leo XIV, addressing altar servers, launched a heartfelt appeal: “The lack of priests in France, in the world, is a great misfortune!” This tragedy also finds root in these dynamics. Vocations are not lacking. There is a deeper tragedy that makes the Church a place not worth staying in, least of all as ordained.
At bottom, the real drama is the lack of authentic fraternity. It is judgment that corrodes relationships, extinguishes hope, and transforms the Gospel into a penal code to be wielded against enemies. The challenge is not easy, for it touches deep chords of human psychology and spirituality: envy, fear, repression, the need to assert oneself by demeaning others. But it is precisely here that the credibility of the Christian message is at stake. If the Church wants to become mother again, it must stop being stepmother. It must dismantle the invisible courts it has built within itself, give space again to silence, prayer, listening, and above all to that charity which—as Paul reminded us—is the only criterion that will never pass away.
Only then will Christians stop looking at each other with suspicion and finally be able to recognize themselves for what they are: brothers.
d.E.R. and S.D.
Silere non possum