Summer is the season of changes, and in many dioceses there’s a frantic rush to finalise transfers before September. Summer camps, parish festivals and holiday getaways become the perfect backdrop for some good old-fashioned gossip.
Fractured communities and lost shepherds
The atmosphere within our ecclesial communities is deeply frayed. Pope Leo XIV — a man of Providence, given to the Church to restore unity — tirelessly calls everyone to walk together: not a sterile uniformity, but a unity that embraces diversity as a gift, not a threat.
Yet more and more often, priests and seminarians find themselves in polarised communities where hospitality is filtered through the lens of prejudice. The labels we’ve handed to the laity — traditionalist, modernist, open-minded, rigid, conservative, progressive — have become rigid grids of judgement, unable to recognise the only thing that really matters: Christ present in His minister.
A priest is not his past, his personality, or his style. A priest is a man sent, and he brings Christ — not himself. But that’s a hard pill to swallow in a Church where many no longer believe in God. Everything is measured by human standards. And we need to face it: many of the baptised — and even the ordained — no longer believe in God.
Shyness is mistaken for coldness, firmness for arrogance, few words for spiritual emptiness. And the greatest tragedy? Bishops no longer teach the faithful to see through the eyes of faith — they prefer instead to accuse their priests, in public and in private, feeding the flames of suspicion.
The Grand Inquisitor: when the Church fears freedom
This climate of ecclesial cowardice was prophetically captured by Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor, when the old prelate of Seville reproaches Jesus for having left the people with an unbearable gift: freedom. “We have corrected Your work,” says the Inquisitor. “You promised bread from Heaven — but we will give them earthly bread. You asked for freedom — we will offer safety.”
“In the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say: Make us your slaves, but feed us.”
This is the terrifying image of a Church obsessed with maintaining approval: preferring applause over truth, compromise over martyrdom, neutrality over prophecy. But in doing so, it defends no one — least of all Christ. This is not about malice. It’s about cowardice. That’s the real root of the problem.
Mikhail Bulgakov expresses it masterfully in The Master and Margarita, when he paints Pontius Pilate not as cruel, but weak and frightened. Pilate doesn’t want to condemn Jesus — he knows He’s innocent. But he’s afraid: of the crowd’s judgement, of the high priests’ backlash, of Caesar’s suspicion. So he washes his hands. Bulgakov is unflinching: “Cowardice is the worst of all vices.”
The risk of episcopal cowardice
Today’s bishops are not necessarily malicious. But many are cowards. They don’t have the courage to defend their priests. They stay silent on liturgical abuses, skim over doctrinal issues, never raise their voice against those who mock the Church — yet are quick to strike at the very priests who serve her daily with quiet fidelity.
They talk endlessly about synodality, but govern their dioceses like solitary monarchs, refusing to share even basic decisions with their clergy.
Take, for example, the way parish priests are appointed. In an age of buzzwords like synodality and co-responsibility, appointments are made based not on real pastoral discernment, but simply on who is willing to say “yes”. Hours of meetings, consultations, and pastoral planning all dissolve with a surprise phone call: the priest is summoned and offered a new post.
But that offer has nothing to do with his gifts or the community’s needs — only with his availability after a brief audience. If he accepts, the plan goes ahead. If he declines, the whole puzzle is reshuffled. So it happens that a priest originally slated for a parish in the south of the diocese ends up in the north — not because he’s needed there, but to “make the numbers work”.
And who ends up paying the price? Always the same: the obedient priests, those who say yes without protest. But is this really how to govern a diocese? What’s the point, then, of all those years of seminary, of programmes for young clergy, of pastoral meetings, vicariate sessions, team-building days, if decisions are ultimately reduced to a game of clerical Tetris? This method disillusions priests, drains communities, and sows division.
A prophetic Church, not a populist one
As long as we in the Church keep throwing around labels like traditionalist or progressive, we will remain trapped in a worldly language that was never ours to begin with. We sowed it — and now we’re shocked that the laity use it to judge us. And while the “fake boomer liturgists” — like Andrea Grillo — shout insults at anyone who doesn’t fit into their twisted schemes, the pastors remain silent. And the flock gets lost.
Perhaps it’s finally time to make a choice: do we want to defend the Truth or keep chasing a fragile social prestige?
Because it’s easy to preach simplicity, to call for the Church to be stripped of gold and ornaments, to warn against clerical privilege. But when it comes to grabbing the front seats, demanding the final say, exercising decision-making power — heaven help anyone who dares question authority.
So what will the Church be? Prophetic or populist? Will she protect the saints, or leave space for co-ops and NGOs that empty the tabernacles and turn churches into soup kitchens?
Either we return to speaking the truth — even when it hurts — or there will be no unity, no future. Christ did not found His Church to please the world, but to save it.
d.L.S.
Silere non possum