If you were going to make a list of the Catholic church’s problems today, maybe the word “clericalism” would be high on your list. We toss that word around a lot, but what is it, exactly?

The Association of U.S. Catholic Priests defines it this way: “an expectation, leading to abuses of power, that ordained ministers are better than and should be over everyone else among the People of God.”

Maybe that description brings experiences you’ve had right to the front of your mind. If you’ve spent a lot of time in different Catholic environments, you’ve probably encountered clericalism at one point or another.

But in a compelling new paper in the academic journal Theological Studies, the eminent Jesuit moral theologian Fr. James Keenan argues that focusing on clericalism is missing a larger root problem. He writes that we should turn our attention to what he calls “hierarchicalism,” which he says is the “father of clericalism.” Whereas clericalism concerns the power and culture of individual priests, “hierarchicalism” is about the culture of bishops, archbishops and cardinals. This is where we should concentrate reform efforts, Fr. Keenan argues. Host Mike Jordan Laskey asked him about his paper and why he thinks this shift of thinking is so important.

Fr. Keenan also discussed Russia’s war on Ukraine from his perspective as someone who studies the Catholic social justice tradition.

Fr. Keenan has been a professor of theological ethics at Boston College for over 20 years, and he also serves as the university’s Vice Provost for Global Engagement and the director of the Jesuit Institute. He has an upcoming book called “A Brief History of Catholic Ethics” from Paulist Press.

AMDG is a production of the Jesuit Conference of Canada and the United States.