THE ROMAN Catholic Church is the last feudal institution in the Western world, a mediaeval bastion of secrecy and privilege that cannot survive in the modern world, according to a visiting theologian. As the church is shaken to its foundations by the clergy abuse scandals - with the lid to be lifted in Asia next - bishops are vainly trying to maintain their plummeting credibility through authoritarian control, Donald Cozzens of John Carroll University, Ohio, said in Melbourne yesterday.
The first step would be to let laypeople and priests elect their bishops, as happened in the earliest days, Father Cozzens said.
In a public lecture on Tuesday night titled ''God's holy people or God's holy empire? Towards a healthier, humbler church'', Father Cozzens said the feudal system dated back 1000 years when a diocese became a bishop's fiefdom.
But in a feudal system, the loyalty was always to the sovereign (Pope) or the lord of the manor, not to the people.
Yesterday, he told The Age the abuse scandal highlighted the failure of the feudal system, because calls for transparency and accountability made no sense.
Father Cozzens said he was not optimistic about the church's short-term future because the previous and present Popes promoted men who supported the feudal view of church, where bishops led and the people's role was to ''pray, pay and obey''.
Young seminarians were being taught the same view.
The alternative view saw the church as ''God's pilgrim people''.
The Catholic Church risked losing all its educated women because they felt so oppressed, he said.
Father Cozzens said that although the abuse scandal had racked the West and some of South America, Asia would be the next area to suffer the seismic shock.SIC: TAAUS