By Fr. John A. Perricone
Crisis Magazine
July 12, 2025
Clownishness reached new depths several months ago in the Philippines. Not the Bozo kind, the Catholic kind. Cardinal Antonio Tagle took to the stage, donning a chorus line outfit, microphone in hand, bobbing and swaying as he crooned John Lennon's "Imagine."
For those fortunate to have escaped the cultural junk-littered demi-monde of the '60s and early '70s, this song was a paean to the consolations of atheism. His Eminence held the Filipino Catholic crowd in thrall as they, too, swayed to this spectral reinvention of Catholicism. Yes, this was in the Philippines, where Roman Catholics reach 78.8 percent of the population.
Disturbing as this should be to grounded Catholics, it should not be considered heretical. Heresy is far too respectable to descend to such redoubts of vaudeville religion. Heresy takes the Faith in great earnest, enough to understand its central dogmas and to calculate fatal substitutes. Heresy is a serious business, and it requires serious thinking.
No, what we have in Cardinal Tagle's nightclub gig is making the Faith nothing more than a joke. More menacing, it is an embalming of religion, making it a shadow of itself.
For Catholicism's approved cognoscenti, this approach has become their preferred line of attack for tweaking of the Old Faith. Its ground plan is to infantilize religion to such a degree that it becomes no more demanding than a sandbox exercise. Trying to critique it is rather like attempting to nail down raindrops. Its purpose: that all feel well, all be smiling, no one be unwelcome, and bonhomie fill the room.
Aborning here is no-fault Catholicism, where no one is banned from the reception of the "bread," God loves everybody, and "love is love."
Nightmare? Yes, to most Credal Catholics. But isn't that the aim of most parishes today? In these religious deserts, nothing bespeaks the majesty of God. Every detail is self-referential, viz., the saccharine music along with the swagger of the priest as he descends the middle aisle glad-handing and waving to his fans.
But there is more. The platoons of "ministers" settling in their roles like vendors at a state fair. Not to be overlooked is the modernist design of the new churches which remind one of laundromats. Their sterility would embarrass even Bauhaus and Le Corbusier.
For this comedic enterprise, no detail is neglected. Even the vestments of the priest advertise the message of the banal, the pedestrian, the ordinary, the fatuous. This clowning reaches its peak in the reception of Holy Communion (an expression quite unknown to a deprogrammed laity), where all take a casual stride to the minister to take the bread and drink the cup in a display of good feeling and nonthreatening "connecting."
But beware, vice makes a furtive entrance in the priest as clown. Where the heretic priest might raise the defenses of alert Catholics, the priest of oozing affections is nonthreatening, leaving most Catholics disarmed. Then what enters the soul is religion as a no-threat zone, easily falling victim to the joking priest with his cloying winks and "have a good day" send-off. Along with his studied casualness at the altar, all of this conspires to be a totalizing reconfiguration of Catholicism. Who cannot love the priest as Mr. Rogers and the makeover of God that he peddles?
The priest as clown shrinks the souls of Catholics by making them content with merely the trivial and meretricious. Then the fatal switch. No longer God demanding obedience but a stroking god, bidding all to be themselves. Belloc's ominous warning chills the soul:
We sit by and watch the barbarian, we tolerate him. In the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence. His cosmic inversion of our old certitudes, and fixed creeds refreshes us: we laugh.
But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond; and on these faces, there is no smile.
A similar Taglian performance was conducted by the good Cardinal Cupich at a stadium Mass several weeks ago hailing Chicago's native son as pope. He repeated, like a metronome, the all too familiar, "Jesus loves you just the way you are." Spliced into that incantation was the obligatory "all are welcome," especially those who break the law as illegal immigrants. Add to that the swinging mariachi band and you have the big-top feel of a Barnum and Bailey circus.
Witness here the victory of Man over God. The Secular over the Sacred. The Clown over the Consecrated Priest. The Entertainer over Alter Christus.
St. Paul describes priests as the "dispensatores mysteriorum Dei" (1 Corinthians 4:1), an exalted title of transcendent proportions. This sacerdotal status embodies the whole man, body and soul. It would be a truncated Catholicism that sees the indelible mark of Holy Orders as merely interior. This would be a denial of the metaphysical unity of the human person. This unity most surely manifests itself in a kind of resonance, where the soul manifests its highest purposes in the body.
This is why symbols bear such weight in the life of man: they radiate the interior mystery of the human person. So obvious is this truth that the most common man adheres to it reflexively and without question, objecting to its absence. Evidence is ubiquitous: the wedding ring, the policeman's uniform, the salute to a superior, the erect walk of The Old Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, or a nation's flag.
Abandoning any of them would cause protest, if not a riot-and for good reason. The symbol embodies a truth that lies deep in the soul of man. Setting it aside is eclipsing the truth itself, and man finds himself capsized.
The compelling power of symbols is just as critical to the life of the priest, if not more. He bears in his soul the indelible mark of Holy Orders which demands notice by the world. The priest represents the power of the thrice-Holy God, making the symbols of his soaring Office all the more necessary, all the more communicative.
It is first conveyed in his manner: grave, purposeful, composed, and strong. The word "grave" is not to be understood as forlorn; it is to be understood in its Latin derivative: gravitas. It is that quality reflected in seriousness without being ponderous, steadiness without artifice. It communicates joy without frivolity and approachability without an ounce of sentimentality. The priest should bear himself with assurance, never haughtiness; confidence, never swagger; high purpose without pomposity.
All these traits breathe through his dress, as it would with any man. As with any office, this is something quite consequential. When exercising his sacerdotal office at Holy Mass, or in the administration of any of the sacraments, his raiment must bespeak the supernatural wonders he dispenses. It should cause arresting amazement in Catholics. They must look and behold Heaven breaking through.
His vesture must appear as rich and sumptuous as the Divine Mysteries he summons to earth. In C.S. Lewis' words, "the priest at Mass should wear vestments that are heavy, or, at least, look heavy"—heavy with the glories of Paradise. His vestments must act as a tocsin bidding Catholics to come and partake of the riches of the Incarnate Word. Catholics should be left dazed.
Even when he is not administering the surging graces of the Holy Mass or the Sacraments, he is still a priest. Whether he walks the environs of his parish or the streets of New York City, he must always be announcing the glories of the Savior who longs for the souls of men.
Nothing accomplishes this announcement more pointedly than the Roman cassock. Yes, many priests decide to wear the black suit, rabat, and white cuffs on the avenues of the world. But our world has changed. Indeed, it has crumbled. It pleads for a dramatic message. Only the priest can supply it.
It is ever more necessary for him to bestride the byways of this fallen world in dress that conspicuously differs from the ordinary and pedestrian life of its citizens. Whether that be a Dominican habit or a Roman cassock, it shouts a divine mission far better than words. The Roman cassock makes him different so men might not fear being different.
The cassock creates a firestorm in the denizens of our wizened culture and a cooling breeze in the hearts of Catholics. For secularized man, the Roman cassock is an irruption of the Supernatural in their desiccated world. It might disturb, it may seem odd, but it always creates a cyclonic appearance and demands a response. The cassock, to borrow the words of Franz Kafka (in speaking of the purpose of the novel), is like "an axe against the frozen sea within us."
For the Catholic, it is like an oasis, where he finds relief from the fetid air of his secular world. It also acts as the strong voice of a Supernatural dominion that he might have forgotten. Forgotten at the hands of men who deliberately set out to make him forget.
The priest set forth here stands as diametric opposite to the priest as clown. That kind of priest considers himself no longer an icon of the sacred but a man like any other. The clown priest does not believe he brings to men the marvels of the Supernatural but only a firmer foundation in the world in which men sink. He does not see himself as the transformative invitation to Calvary but merely a facilitator helping folks be more themselves. He does not see himself as the thunderous voice of the Lion of Judah but simply the pathetic assurance to men that God loves them just the way they are.
An Anglican priest once bemoaned his fate, representing a false religion, when he remarked, "When St. Paul arrived in cities, there were riots. When I arrive in a city, they call for tea." This is the fate of the priest as clown.
Do not fret, dear Catholic. Despite Cardinal Tagle's disco dance, the priest as clown is a dying breed, just as the inanities of the Bergoglio pontificate have become an embarrassing memory. Robust Catholic genius is creating podcasts, publishing houses, and new organizations of laymen that are setting the stage for a bright and rich Catholic renaissance. We are already seeing the fruits of their labors in the appearance of priests pulsating with the fires of Heaven and the splendors of the Supernatural.
Oh, how the architects of the priest as clown are shrieking now.
Catholics still may have to suffer the burlesque of the priest as clown.
But not for long.