The Image of a Priest as Seen by E. Drewermann: From Official to Shaman

Abstract

In Catholic theology there exists a rhetoric emphasizing the necessity to re-actualize the image of the Church with the help of socio-humanitarian sciences, which can be viewed as manifesting a change in social logics. This change implies that institutional structures are becoming irrelevant, which causes a crisis within the group, representing the institutional logic in the Church — i.e. priesthood. “Crisis of the priesthood” constitutes a turning point, where new logics and models, influenced by a broader change, appear. The article deals with the problem of the transformation of a religious leader image in Catholic thought, illustrated by E. Drewermann’s conception. As an alternative to the traditional view, the author proposes a model based on psychoanalytic theory, M. Eliade’s phenomenology of religion and, to a degree, on J.-P. Sartre’s existentialism. Psychoanalytic theory is represented by the tripartite model of human psyche; Eliade’s phenomenology contributes the concept of religious experience, and J.-P. Sartre’s “Childhood of a Leader” illustrates the conflict between the “official” and the “personal”. The three components of the author’s model are interconnected: the archetypal images of the unconscious are linked with religious experience, religious experience legitimizes the shaman seen as a normative model of priesthood, and its absence delegitimizes the catholic priest, whose authority in the “catholic form of religiosity”, as E. Drewermann sees it, is derived from his official status. The model of priesthood thus reinterpreted easily fits into the global tendencies, which are demonstrated, in particular, by F. Gauthier: the change from the “institutional” to the “individual”.

Keywords

• catholic theology
• psychology
• psychoanalysis
• church office
• religious experience
• priesthood