Freedom and structure in the Church - hypothesis - feedback welcome
Increasingly I seem to see a problem of church structures blocking the road to spiritual maturity. Let me test out a hypothesis on spiritual development. The consequences are different in Russia and in Western Europe, but the underlying pattern is the same. I tried it on our mixed-confession group of English-speaking clergy in Brussels, and they reacted positively.
Let me start with a basic three-stage model of Christian development, for both lay people and clergy outside monasteries:
1) Stage 1: An initial stage, in which the structure is largely provided by the Church, its services, its feasts and fasts, its standard patterns for home and private prayer.
2) Stage 2: After a period, there is a shift from external to internal structure: we begin to develop a structure based more directly in Christ, rooted in Him, in which we are less dependent on the outer structure. We thirst for Christ in a different way, and slowly come to know Him independently of the external structures. The process can be a messy one: we feel dissatisfied with the outer structure, may go into reaction against the Church, become less regular in our churchgoing. Western Christianity knows this as the ‘Dark Night of the Soul’.
3) Stage 3: At the end of this period we have gained sufficient spiritual freedom to return to the structures, but now as mature people, moving towards the ‘stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4.13), psychologically free and able to maintain a critical distance with the form structure where necessary. This includes being able to differ with one’s priest or bishop without walking out of the Church.
My contention is that, in both Russia and the West, until the 1950s, the overwhelming majority of lay people traditionally spent all their lives at stage 1. Today, however, in particular as a result of large-scale higher education, many lay people feel the urge to move further into stages 2 and 3.
I would argue that this is a normal psycho-spiritual development for intelligent and educated people. Stage one is a natural place, for both lay people and non-monastic clergy to be in until, perhaps, their mid-thirties. After about that age, it is time to move beyond. If one is still in stage 1 by age 50, one is heading for serious trouble.
In Russia, a major problem seems to be that most parish priests are ordained while still in stage 1, and have very great difficulty themselves in moving beyond it. What a Russian seminary teaches you, first and foremost, is to be a guardian of the structure. If a priest cannot move beyond stage one, individual members cannot do so properly, and either remain immature and unhappy, or simply quit. Tragically, some people are made bishops in this stage (no one should really be a bishop unless and until he has safety landed in stage 3). The result is spiritual stagnation for themselves and their flocks.
In Western Europe the problem is different: intelligent lay people want to move directly to stage 2, without the thorough grounding in liturgy and word that stage 1 provide. But without this engrained in one, you will not get through stage two.
In both Russia and Western Europe, there often insufficient flexibility for a priest who is ordained while still in stage 1, but is naturally moving beyond it, to make the necessary adjustments. He has to remain the guardian of the structures, even if he is losing his own belief in and dependence on them. It may be that that many priests need to move out of parish ministry for a few years into teaching or social work.
Stage 3 is the goal for all, bishops, priests and intelligent lay people. But for priests and bishops it means accepting to deal with intelligent lay people who have their own maturity, who do not go running 'batushka, batushka' for everything, who can largely structure their own spiritual lives, who are co-workers with him, rather than his servants. For most western priests this is generally not a problem, in Russia I suspect it can be a very serious one.