I’m not quite sure that massive abuse of power is inevitable in hierarchical church structures such as those in the Catholic and Episcopalian Churches, although it is clear that problems can and do occur. I seriously doubt, however, that democratization would fundamentally change this problem, and it would create a host of new ones, as you keenly note.

The main problem with democratization of any church is that it becomes less a timeless institution reminding society of an unchangable moral structure than a reflection of the prejudices of the era in which the church currently exists. In other words, it would spell the final triumph of moral relativism, an outcome far worse than any scandal.

One point I intended is that a religious institution of any size is inevitably hierarchical in substance. There are the amateurs and there are the pros, and the pros always come out on top. So to my mind it’s best to recognize reality and not try to pretend things are otherwise.

A problem with the pretence of democracy is that it means that those with pretensions to disinterested neutral expertise will end up calling the shots. So instead of hierarchical rule with someone in charge who can be held morally responsible you’ll get rule by faceless experts and bureaucrats.

As you say, such things lead to relativism, the notion of “evolving truth” and so on. On problem with that is that it means that if you are the priest, theologian or hierarch you can define moral reality as you choose. In effect, you become God. One result is that those who pursue such positions tend to be morally and spiritually disordered people whose goal in life is to redefine moral reality so their disorder becomes the new order. I saw plenty of that in the Episcopal Church as well.

The second and third paragraphs of Mr. Kalb’s comment seem contradictory. In the second paragraph, he says that the pretence of democracy leads to supposedly neutral, supposedly non-power-holding experts calling the shots, therefore their power is invisible and unaccountable. In the third paragraph he says that democratization leads to the priests defining truth and tradition as they will, as spiritual dictators. Does he perhaps mean that the neutral experts of the second paragraph and the liberated power-exercising priests of the third paragraph are the same people?

They are either the same or work together. Neutral expertise means what those in positions of expert authority say must be accepted as truth. To contest it is simply to be irrational, to have an agenda, to cling to old ways or whatever. But then one must ask who the experts are, what the source is of the propositions they present as truth, and how they come to an accommodation that satisfies the pros generally so they can all agree to get behind it. The answer I think is that the experts present religious and moral truth as pluriform, so that every disorder that accepts truth as pluriform becomes its own order, and the laity have to accept it as such on pain of being declared ignorant bigots—fundamentalists or whatever. (By “in effect, you become God” I didn’t mean general dictatorial power but only the power to define something as an equally valid understanding of divine order.)

Dear Mr. Kalb:

Organized religion was for centuries the only institution strong enough to maintain its independence of the state, and whose institutional interests coincided with its mission to teach its honest vision of the major truths about man, God, morals and the cosmos.

Today the peoples of the West are not taught by the Church, but by various agencies whose institutional interests coincide with acceptance and teaching of the PC liberal vision of the world, morals, etc.

The liberals tell us that, when the Church teaches and thus controls culture, that is theocracy, religious totalitarianism, and “subjection of man to the heteronomy of divine domination in all things;” but when the managerial elites control culture, that is “freedom,” “democracy,” and “the autonomy of mankind in all things.”

So, is it better for the managers, or the priests, to run the Churches?

But, of course, the priesthood is itself today corrupt, even in the RC Church, which is now a vast consipiracy of boy-lovers to make vice easy for each other, and cover it up.

It seems to me that at present the things of Caesar are crowding out the things of God. One aspect of the corruption of the Catholic Church in America is blurring of the lines that distinguish it from the managerial elite. Many academic theologians for example believe they have a teaching authority superior to that of the hierarchy, one that rests on expertise of a type identical to that possessed by academics generally. So religious things are sliding into the jurisdiction of a bureaucracy of knowledge that is fully integrated with the managerial state.