ISM Reform

The papal conclave of May 2025 concluded with the election of Pope Leo XIV.  I found myself thinking of several things this week that I wanted to address.  First, do we as an ISM community care about papal elections?  I think this is a sic et non answer.  We are not united with Rome.  Rome does their thing, and we do our own thing.  I know some hang on to Rome and look to Rome for guidance and pray for recognition, validity, or legitimacy.  What I look to Rome for is overall tone.  Will the pope speak not only for Roman Catholics, or will he speak as a pastor to all God’s people?  I pray that Pope Leo fulfills his pledge to walk with us as Christians and be for us a bishop.  I pray that he can build bridges and show God’s love in our wounded world.

With every new pope, there is hope for church reform and renewal.  It is easy to see the sin in the Roman Church.  The ISM movement cannot be complacent thinking that we are reformed and renewed and thus no longer need the reforms that Rome desperately needs.  I believe that the ISM movement needs even greater reforms than the Roman Church does.  Do people have a say in their bishops and clergy in the ISM movement?  Sometimes.  Sometimes bishops pick their own successors.  Sometimes simony is involved and people are ordained for money.  I am not sure the ISM track record is as spotless as we would prefer.  We have our own history of silence and abuse.  We need God’s Holy Spirit to guide and renew our jurisdictions which includes facing our own sin.

Moreover, we may object to the Roman Church as being too clerical. Does the Roman Church have issues with clericalism?  Certainly, but the Roman Church also has far more lay people per clergy member than our ISM jurisdictions.  The Roman Church has vitality of lay leadership at the parish level and frequently at the diocesan level. There are religious orders and lay movements demonstrating how the Roman Church is not always clerical in the lived reality. 

I actually have a fear that the ISM community is far more clerical than the Roman Church ever could be.  Being a Roman Catholic priest for more than a decade revealed the challenge of being a diocesan priest.  Parishioners are often upset with decisions made by bishops and pastors.  Priests find themselves covering multiple parishes and being overworked and underappreciated all while trying to be faithful to the tradition, dealing with divided faith communities, narcissistic bishops, and dealing with the daily demands of raising money, providing relief for ungrateful people with precious few parish resources, and dealing with the loss of beloved parishioners.  Did I know some clerical Roman Catholic Priests?  Certainly, but they were the exception to the rule.  The ISM movement does not have the kind of built in tensions that larger churches experience.  ISM clergy can kind of do their own thing in a way that mainline clergy do not.  We get to pick our own ministries and administer them in our way in a way that clergy who are assigned cannot.

My largest fear of the ISM movement is something inherent to the movement itself.  We pride ourselves on having clergy in apostolic succession with valid sacraments.  This is what makes the movement distinct from say many Protestant churches.  The ISM movement takes on a variety of shapes and forms including various faith traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and so on) but we want valid orders and sacraments.  By placing our emphasis here, do we not risk creating an even more clerical culture than mainline churches?  For instance, while Holy Orders is important for the Roman Catholic Church, so too are the saints who were frequently prophets addressing needs of the day.  Do we in the ISM movement neglect the variety of gifts and ministries in the church and turn everything into clerical roles?  The early church had administrators but also prophets and evangelists, healers, teachers, and so on.  Clergy may be important, but the Body of Christ has many other needs.  I fear that by focusing on only one type, we do a disservice to the Church.

Finally, like any church, we need to question who we serve.  Are we bishops and priests for all people living in our communities?  Or are we only bishops and priests for those who are associated with us?  We cannot lose sight that our mission transcends just those who associate themselves with us.  I pray that Pope Leo XIV can be a pastor and bishop to all God’s people and not just Roman Catholics.  I pray that we can be pastors to all God’s people as well.

Peace,

Ben