Donald Cozzens gave a comprehensive lecture tonight in Pleasantville on the state of the Catholic church in America. He touched on many things. One of the points he made which is not that well known by Catholics is there are thousands of parishes in the US without priests. Because most of us are in Metropolitan areas where there are more priests per parish, we have no idea of how many parishers there are that have no priest or are sharing one priest for two, three or more parishes. In these cases there is usually a parish director who coordinates the apostolate of the church and many times it is a woman. In some ways this is good because it gives the church an opportunity to get rid of the awful clericalism which has plagued the church for so long whereby a priest feels all powerful and all holy just by virtue of ordination. In this experience we will realize that God comes to his people wherever they are and does not need magic to do it.
Another point, Cozzens made is on the feudalism in the church which persists today despite the fact that we have the most educated laity in the history of the church."Feudalism has a tough time thriving where the laity is educated", Cozzens declared.
