Phil Little, Ladysmith

I heard the expression “a ripple of randomness” on a CBC program. Is that what happened to me? Just a ripple of random factors: culture, family, the baby boom, Vatican II, the clerical conveyor belt, entering the seminary, not getting kicked out of the seminary, the radical challenge to a missionary in the Third World.

On May 11, 1974 in the Church of the Annunciation in Edmonton I was ordained a priest, “forever and ever according to the order of Melchisedech” which is a bit more vague than the Knights Templar. The ordaining bishop, Adam Exner, of the same religious congregation – the Oblates of Mary Immaculate – was consecrated by another Oblate bishop Henri Légaré, and so on theoretically back to St. Peter, constituting the apostolic succession although some of the documentation from the first centuries has been lost.

I grew up in a devout practising Catholic family in the mid-20th century and attended my 12 years of schooling in Catholic schools. In my elementary school years I learned the Latin responses for the traditional mass well enough that I became an altar server (junior Knights of the Altar) and for formal liturgies I could dress up with cassock and surplice and sit in the sanctuary, away from the family. Now girls in the school also had to memorize the Latin responses but they could only guard in their hearts this knowledge as they were forbidden sanctuary privileges because of their physical attributes.

Now the exclusion of the girls was not my concern, nor theirs because being excluded was part of their life long experience. Being an altar server came with benefits. Being called upon to serve at funerals or weddings included a share in the stipend offered to the clergy. Sometimes we had extras offered like a trip to Banff and a dip in the wonderful hot springs pool.

In my high school years I met priests of the Oblate congregation and the Franciscans. Finishing grade 12 in 1965 I applied for novitiate in Arnprior with the Oblates and began my “formation” years which finished with ordination as a priest on May 11, 1974. The novitiate was a pleasant year, including a few quaint traditions of isolation from the real world and minor manual labour tasks on a farm. This was followed by 3 years at university to obtain a very general B.A. degree with a double major in philosophy and history, and then almost 5 years of theology, including 1 ½ years in Peru for a “pastoral experience”.

The seminary years were not much of a challenge. Vatican II had just ended and things in the church were beginning to change. The philosophy-lite courses were taught by priests and were basically a waste of time. During this period my courses did not include sociology, psychology, anthropology or other social sciences that might have begun a preparation for responsible ministry. Subsequently the formal theology courses were equally “lite” in content, with the exception of a few scripture courses. As future missionaries, somehow the post-theology program of mission sciences was avoided with the assumption that actual training for a cross-cultural international mission was irrelevant.

The seminary was not a happy place, with ferment and discontent warning of a coming crisis. My novitiate group almost got kicked out as a group for having a late night beer party but the priests in charge didn’t know how to deal with such massive disregard for the rules. I was permitted a summer experience with an international student movement doing a “third world” encounter that was totally disproportionate in values, with “do-gooder” northern students visiting remote villages in central Mexico and living with ultra-poor campesino peasant families scratching out a living. We had our experience and they were left to continue planting corn in their milpas hoping to survive another year.

I was attracted to my “vocation” choice by good men who seemed happy in their life choice and with a commitment to be of service to others. Most were teachers but I knew some who had been sent to the missions in Peru and that seemed like the pinnacle of doing good for someone else. Throughout the seminary years we were never asked what we actually believed. We did the courses that might have included an assumption that the material was indicative of a faith option.

There is a book published in 2013 by the Westar Institute titled Why Weren’t We Told. Obviously this came long after my time in formation and perhaps those responsible for the formation of priests in the mid-20th century themselves would not have understood the questions being asked today. The traditional narratives and belief system were simply a package received to be passed on, without much reflection or questioning. Because of my international student experience I had some readings outside of the normal seminary library and that created a concern among the staff, but my own questioning spirit was not yet mature and grounded. The traditional dogmas and doctrine were assumed but never queried. I went into an authority system and came out as part of that system not challenging my own competence or readiness for the part. I had joined a cult which compared to others admittedly was “cult-lite” in comparison to other Catholic organizations and other religious movements like the “Moonies”, but nevertheless a cult with some of the power and mind control mechanisms of a cult.

I was on the clerical conveyor belt and comfortably willing to assume my place of prestige and power in the church community. I had nothing to prove, no credentials to display other than my simple “obedience” and ordination. Had I remained in Canada I would probably have been assigned to a parish in the west or worse yet to the “Indian Residential School System” which at that time was considered to be a highlight of the Oblate charisma. I was spared such an ignominious fate because I went south. For Canada or Peru my pastoral training provided nothing in terms of dealing with caring with real skills for people in their times of need or life crisis. I had no training in counselling, family life, medical situations, working with youth or adults, or relationship difficulties. Ordination only provided authority, but no skills.

Unexpectedly my years in Peru provided different questions that my “formation” was totally inadequate to answer. I experienced a radical reality in the desperate poverty of the people in the crown of misery surrounding the city of Lima. For some missionaries the old answers to questions not asked were sufficient to keep them busy and this kept the flow of mission donations flowing from the north. The old spirituality was sometimes recloaked with a new rightwing charismatic spirituality that continued to preach acceptance and subservience by the poor to their reality of oppression. “Salvation” was not liberation but an afterlife aspiration.

Good fortune came to me as I was sent to work with two good men with years of experience and an open mind to change. Through an unexpected occurrence of circumstance I accompanied another missionary to a military prison to search for poor campesino prisoners. I was out of my league and unaware of the seriousness of the situation. However my openness provided an invitation to participate in a movement called ONIS, similar to other groups throughout Latin America as clergy sought to re-evaluate their mission among the struggling poor in a situation of oppression, terror, human rights violations and the growing movements of resistance and liberation. I was unaware at that time that the intended purpose of the invasion of first world missionaries, of which I was a part, was intended to counter the grass-roots movements of struggle and liberation. Church and State were committed to control and dominance, and equally feared change that came from below.

Beginning even in the 1950s among Latin American and some European clergy there was a ferment of questioning about the role of the church and the dominant expressions of faith and religion. ONIS was a prominent exponent of this ferment with the contribution of theologians and pastors whose questioning spirit was reflected even in official church documentation, totally ignored by the church in the north. I was able to sit in meetings and at retreats with some of the recognized giants of the “Theology of Liberation” whose reflections did not start with dogmas and doctrines but with the living reality of a people not poor but constantly “being made poor” by systems of oppression at all levels including the church. My theology training began anew, and my work as a missionary was challenged and changed. The path was not smooth. I was intolerant to those committed to the old theology and restless with my inclusion in the old order. I underestimated the power of the cult but some events left the handwriting on the wall clear enough for me to understand. Because of our work in the line of the ONIS commitment we were labelled as communists by other church people who preferred the traditional pastoral approach. My short time of usefulness to the old paradigm in Latin America was over and I was about to begin a new incarnation.

The most important change in my life was marriage. This gave me grounding and relationship. Now rounding and relationship. Now with more than 40 years of marriage and family life I humbly admit that without this my life would have little purpose or meaning. My wife while also coming from the catholic tradition did not consider my clergy past as an attribute nor reason for adulation. Family meant responsibility for others, allowing their lives to mean everything in my life.

For the first time in my life I had to earn a living, to work based on competence and experience. I earned the Bachelor of Education degree and began a career teaching in high schools in Toronto, while at the same time becoming heavily involved in the union movement of both the public and the catholic school systems.

A sudden change in school funding in 1985 resulted in my transfer to the catholic school system where I worked in religious education and counselling. My personal reading and extra course work provided me with a continuation of the theological ferment that began in Peru. This process was enriched and challenged by connecting to other educators committed to an evolving theology with action in justice groups. Particularly relevant was the influence of women educators who brought me into their world of struggle and difficulties. Some recognized traits of the same old patriarchal attitudes and beliefs that could be expected in a repentant former clergy type but somehow they felt that there was something “redeemable” in me that was not in others. The patience and generosity of these women, my wife and former colleagues in education, cannot sufficiently be appreciated.

Over these years while teaching and now after more than 20 years in retirement, my personal research and questioning allows me to think and act differently, definitely coming out of the catholic root system of my youth and professional life, but also greatly influenced by religious and non-religious persons of other traditions and spiritualities. Again I must acknowledge my gratitude for these influences.

In moments of frustration I might comment on things, situations or persons committed to the old paradigm of religion and my wife will help temper my intolerance reminding me that I was once a part of that system. Out perhaps but never totally out.

I gave the easy answers to the unasked questions. The old dogmas and doctrines were unchallenged. The power of myth, the classic metaphors, the beauty of poetry was submerged to maintain the old paradigm. I was a part of the clericalism that turned the breaking and sharing of bread into an object of veneration and the property of the ordained minority. The “Resurrection of the Dead” and the “Kingdom of Heaven” were literal concrete realities rather than metaphors of powerful translation. A priest friend on Holy Thursday rejoiced in how that day was his day of celebration for the institution of the priesthood – evidence that somehow he skipped a few lessons and he underestimated the power of the institution to appropriate the message for its own justification.

I am sure that Jesus had no intention to found a new religion. He did not ever institute a royal order of clergy and if given the opportunity to speak on the matter I am sure he would disavow the current clergy structure in all Christian churches, especially the Catholic Church. A language was invented to create and justify the current institution of clericalism which differentiates between an ontological priesthood that is different than the baptismal priesthood of all believers. This autoreferential process is self-serving and is based not only on the exclusion of women (half the church) but all those not ordained (99%) of the church.

The “unbroken” line of succession from Exner and Légaré back to the apostle Peter is mythical, and perhaps has more to do with the emperor Constantine, the real founder of modern day Christianity. Even a highly respected scripture scholar such as Raymond Brown wrote “There is no serious proof that Peter was the bishop, or local ecclesiastical officer, of the Roman church”.

To elevate the status and power of the clergy the 4th Lateran Council invented the concept of “transubstantiation” which diminished the sacrament of Eucharist in the community to a wizardry slight of hand that only the chosen few could perform. Martin Luther rejected this downgrading of the priesthood of all believers. He called it the “Babylonian captivity” of the church. The early communities recognized ministries to serve the needs, and women as well as men were recognized. But none were ordained, for ordination did not exist and contrary to the dominant myth Jesus did not ordain anyone, at the Last Supper or elsewhere. One of those ministries was that of “presbyteroi” or elder. One of the Synod on Synodality documents strangely states “In Christ, women and men are clothed with the same baptismal dignity and receive equally the variety of gifts of the Spirit” but even Pope Francis, so often ahead of the game, reaffirms that the church cannot reverse its ban on the ordination of women as priests.

I did support the ordination of women, not in theory but as part of a group that sponsored and accompanied women who were ordained in the Roman Catholic tradition. I did so because it seemed to be an exercise in supporting equality in the church, but it is not the solution. That concept of clergy with its “sacral status” is a tumour on the Body of the church. This system of power grounded in its appropriation of the sacred is “clericalism” and should be renounced by those who use it and maintain their status because of it. That will not happen soon because frankly what else do they have.

I was among them and one of them. I have known good men who used “their” priesthood as a means to serving others and they were good men who gave their lives to the community. I hung up my shingle to do differently and be different. In a curious twist of fate I ended up by an act of a Protestant Tory government teaching “theology”: sacraments, scripture, world religions and history, to high school students. I did not lose the “priesthood”, but rejoined the baptismal community as an equal.

I joined a cult named for the mother of Jesus, yet I do not believe that she ever appeared anywhere to tell people to pray the rosary or how to cook Palestinian falafels. The many libraries filled with “Mariology” are only testament to how the original message of her son Yeshua from Nazareth has been transformed to serve the interests of empire and power while the people are starved of the truths and diverted into scams that offer false hope and pious feelings.

“Buy this preowned (used) car which was driven only by one old lady and never abused. It will give you great mileage and has never had any engine problems.”

“Let’s make a deal today and I can throw in a special discount and extra servicing for 6 months.”

“I can sweeten the deal, let me go speak to the manager and see what we can do for you.”

“Plastic bottle of Holy Water from the Grotto of Lourdes. We stamp each bottle ‘Authentic from Lourdes’ to certify its authenticity!” (For $10.99 on Amazon) – I kid you not!

We know that the used car salesman (salesperson now) shouldn’t be trusted. They have the lines, the pitch, the craft to make a deal.

“Why weren’t we told?” some 50 years ago? Those kinds of questions were not asked because they shouldn’t have been asked for one question would lead to another and eventually the pyramidal house of cards would collapse.

One of my heroes is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who joined the resistance to Naziism and was executed near the end of the war on April 9, 1945. Bonhoeffer differentiated “cheap grace” and “costly grace”. “Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sins and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices …grace without price, grace without cost”. Costly grace is different – it is the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great price. Costly grace “is the gospel which must be sought again and again, …it calls us to follow’ and like Bonhoeffer it is a grace that can demand the life of one who is true to the call of Jesus.

Almost 50 years ago, in 1975 a friend, Ivan Betancourt a missionary from Columbia, was assassinated in Honduras because he chose “costly grace” like Bonhoeffer in resisting evil and standing with the oppressed. I have no doubt that Ivan was not thinking about “costly grace”. Rather he was thinking about accompanying the poor in their struggle for justice and land reform. I have known others too for whom following the teachings of Jesus would demand such a terrible consequence.

I was that used car salesman ordained 50 years ago to promote the trade in cheap grace. Perhaps I never really believed but I was on the treadmill and I was comfortable enough with the process. I saw no harm in offering the old potions and creams of the dominant wizardry, “ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis…” in whichever language – assuming a power that is absurd, rooted in a culture of domination, and abusive.

I do not miss that role which I abdicated in 1980, but the process of coming out has taken much longer. Sometimes persons I barely know will ask me if I was once a priest. Ouch, does that smart? Is it still clinging to me somehow or revealed in my language or my gestures?

Once a used car salesman, always a used car salesman!