ABSTRACT
Monseigneur E. Robert Arthur, the tall, baldish Canon lawyer who was one of Cardinal O’Boyle’s closest advisers, put his fingers in the stiff, white collar around his neck and said, “As long as I’m wearing this collar, people will listen to what I say, but without it in two weeks I’m just another guy.”†
The idea that clergy are different from the rest of the population is strongly held in Western religion. A clergyman is a different kind of person, “a member of the third sex.”1 Religions affirm this difference by requiring celibacy, or at least a different kind of sexual morality from that of the laity; by ordaining instead of invariably requiring graduation of their trainees; by suggesting that poverty may be a blessing and worldly goods a temptation; by asking them to be prophets; and by affirming that the ministry is basically different from all other callings in that those in it are there because they have heard a divine call. “The medical doctor may have greater status, the attor-
ney may be more feared, but the clergyman is expected to be more wholly other. His motivations are expected to be more noble, his calling more sacred, his thoughts more pure, his life more dedicated, his sacrifices more generous.”2
