We hear a lot about clericalism these days. Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego properly called it a "rupture within the life of the Church" in a speech he recently gave at St. Mary's University in San Antonio. At its core clericalism is the idea that members of the clergy are somehow better than everyone else, that they should get special respect and deference, and that they are entitled to a certain status that removes them from the mundane, difficult tasks that come with serving the people of God. I know clericalism is a problem, and I've been around the block enough times to have a few stories I could tell about members of the clergy who are infected with the disease. But for every one of those stories I have probably a dozen I could tell about clergy who actually do what Jesus commands today (Lk 17: 7-10)-- they do the work of God they are called to do and only after others are served do they worry about taking care of themselves. Let me just tell one of those stories about a pastor friend of mine, which I tell hoping I won't embarrass him. It is an example of what I think most priests would do, and all priests should do, in living out the Gospel message of being "unprofitable servants" doing "what we were obliged to do." Last Sunday after one of the Masses, a man came up to me and said his mother was in a hospital in Minneapolis and needed a priest to visit her. It seemed pretty important to him, so I checked around and finally got him to the pastor. It was a particularly-busy Sunday at church, including the church's big annual festival. No matter-- the pastor went off with the man and got all the information about the man's mother. Now it turned out that there seemed to be no particular reason why the mother needed a visit immediately. She'd been in the hispital for a while, and was expected to stay in the hospital for many more days. She wasn't in any immediate risk of death. In addition, the hospital she was in had a Catholic chaplain, who would be expected to call on the woman in due course. Moreover, there was no way that the pastor could drop everything and go see the woman, since he was needed at church for the next couple of hours. So it would have been very easy to do the priestly equivalent of "take two aspirin and call me in the morning." "Wait until tomorrow and I'll get there" would have made sense under the circumstances. Or "let me leave a message for the chaplain-- I'm sure he'll see your mom tomorrow" would have worked too. But the man really wanted a priest to visit his mom that very afternoon. So the pastor got out his phone, and texted another priest who he thought might be available. He was, and a few minutes later the other priest had all the information he needed to go visit the woman on Sunday afternoon. Heroic activity? No. Rocket science? Nope, just basic blocking and tackling. Just doing the work serving the people of God that priests (and all of us) are called to do. It is what most priests do every day. When we think about clericalism, we might remember stories like this. I'm not sure what to call the opposite of clericalism ("non-clericalism"?), but this is the kind of thing that epitomizes it. "We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we ere obliged to do."