Ep P

Rev dear Rev, is there a reason why bishops in your church and in your conference do not take a religious vow of poverty? Surely it is time to do so, given so much corruption in the world in which we live?

The sincere question from a parishioner from the nice liberal theology groups and bible study groups of the city centre from which this hails, shows that this is one of the great central problems in a society which is only now moving slowly out of centuries of a spiritual and theology movement called Jansenism. From Jansenism thence to modern preoccupations with Wokism and Ecumenism and old fashioned Liberalism, lots of modern bible study group people naturally feel that the best way out of modern problems of corruption in the world is to keep the Church free of such corruption, and money that tainted thing as Jesus describes it, seems to be the root of much of that corruption in society and also in some small way even in the churches. Remove the source of temptation and one will remove the sin - that is the logic being followed, and it seems pretty unassailable - a vow of poverty like monks and nuns embrace is thus conceived for deacons and priests but especially for the bishops at the top of the summit of ministries, since it is reasoned, it can remove the tendency to be bought and sold and paid for by large conglomerates and city bankers. Bishops are human just like other men. Thus it is all reasoned. But we probably need to explain this otherwise sincere drive among the bible groups with some potted history:

One of the chief features of the Jansenist Era, the following of the errors of a Dutch bishop with all the polarisms that resulted, was an emphasis on the purity of the sacerdotium, plus the idea that the essential ministry was the middle one, the sacerdotium or priesthood, from which the episcopate was a promotion to a religious consecration. so Jansenist bishops were "consecrated" and not just "ordained" in this schema. A religious state of life required a religious vow, and poverty was close to purity in this idealisation of the episcopate. It was thought that it would be virtuous for the religious ministers of the J-churches to be supine to States like China and others, and so the vow of poverty was expected and enjoined on the episcopate. That was Jansenism and it almost took hold of the entire Church chiefly because it sounded like a virtue. But it was dark. Only the practitioners at the frontiers of the churches, only those at the coalface could quickly realise that it was so dark - denials of certain fundamental goods and human givens resulted, plus cruelty towards children and servers.

But in the modern era, since the emergence of a reductionist vision of mankind plus a reductionist vision of empiricism, and a reductionist vision of Christianity, according to which Christianity is really just the sum total of the Third World charities that make up its Third Worldism, then Third Worldism replaced Christianity and all the spiritual aspects of the Classical Christian Faith received from Christ and the Apostles were lost, and carefully de-emphaised and then removed from much official meaningful theology dialogue. The end result was that poverty was the only virtue to survive for the broader christian family and especially for their spiritual leaders. So Poverty and its idealisation became THE modern take on Christianity. Nobody was a meaningful Christian until they belonged actively to CAFOD and the like. So it all became Povertanity or Socanity in which Third Worldism became the essence of the Gospel. Acts chapter 2 verse 42 became the only Bible verse of any meaning, and 1968 became the only meaningful year for such Christians or Third Worlders, as more and more of the older sort of Red moved into more and more parishes and dioceses in the modern free-wheeling West. The result was a heightened request for Poverty among the bible groups for their pastors and their bishops especially.

Obviously, we must affirm the sincerity of such requests, some bishops might concur with those sentiments, a vow of simplicity and poverty might well remove temptations of office, but with that whole movement, in which the only significant money is the money thrown into the CAFOD basket, came also the feeling that money itself was unworthy of the machinery of the Church, with a wholesale de-emphasis and a decline in the practice of generosity to deacons and priests and bishops to offer masses for the souls in purgatory and the like. Such ancient customs were now viewed as acts of simony, just because they involved money, whereas any canonist worth his salt might have informed such groups that simony is the taking of a bribe in order to obtain higher ecclesiastical office, it does not apply to mass stipends and generosity to a priest or deacon on the occasion of some sacrament being celebrated. With the de-emphasis on money came the walking out of many nicer older clergy who believed in purgatory and the relief of the suffering christians therein. Altogether Third Worldism spawned a whole new reductionist ecclesiology plus a whole new praxis in the churches, though calmer and quieter observers and clerics were able to spot the eventual contradictions and denials of holy custom that this new movement entailed - so much Jansenism in the heart of their systemic application of the canons on poverty. Now, don't get me wrong, there is a voluntary canon in the Codex that mentions simplicity or poverty for those in holy orders at canon 282, if they choose to embrace it freely and personally, but to embrace this canon because of a theological error and a theological heresy of the right, would obviously be a sin at this time. A wonderful question, and one which deserves a doctoral thesis for an answer. Thank you.