When the Big Change of Direction occurred in the Church, around Vatican Council II and the time that followed, a series of phenomena came about that led to what has been called the Springtime of the Church: a kind of synonym for what might also have been referred to as a Blissful Eden.

One of these phenomena, and maybe the most consequential, was the so-called priestly identity, or to be more precise the crisis of priestly identity.

The Clergy began to think that it was necessary, first and above all else, to give testimony. There is not too much to say about this, except perhaps to ask what they think the Clergy had been doing since the time of Pope Saint Peter (year 34 of our Era).

Secondly, as great ideas do not usually come alone, they also realized that it was necessary not to be different from the laity. Here again there is little to add to this luminous and profound intellectual childbirth other than the testimony of our astonishment and admiration (here also throughout twenty centuries the Clergy had been wasting their time).

That is how the strange monstrosity of a Clergy dedicated to profane jobs appeared in the Church. The slogan about the necessity of giving testimony and not appearing as different from the laity spread like wildfire – though it should be noted that the curious phenomenon that we are talking about in this article had much less incidence in America than in Europe, where it became a widespread sensation.

Human nature is so strange, or so comical if you want, that sometimes it is difficult to find rational explanations for its actions. The mentioned need of giving testimony is what led many of the clergy to dedicate themselves to plumbing or electrical work, for example. Inexplicably, it seems, nobody seemed to realize that the only way to give testimony, if you are a priest, is none other than being a priest.

Besides, and with all the respect that professionals of profane jobs deserve, it is well known that one makes a lot more money, and with considerably less work , in those professions than a priest does in fulfilling his pastoral duties. Priests, for example, (and we are referring here only to real ones), enjoy immensely lower salaries, and, additionally, dedicate themselves to their work twenty-four hour a day without permitting themselves any feast days or vacations.

What is really extraordinary in this case is that so few questioned the widely proclaimed need for not being different from the laity: an ideological freak with a dark origin that has nothing to do with the true desires of the Faithful, who are precisely the ones who are interested in the priest being different from them.

It was this jumble of ideas, among other things, that provoked the identity crisis and the irrevocable banishment of the distinctive clerical garb. Though, unfortunately, in reference to articles of clothing, the affair did not end with a mere substitution. It was not just about using or not using secular garments, but also about using either the most impoverished and indigent clothes possible or the most ridiculous ones. Thus, among other kinds of exhibitions, one could see the display of fifty-year-old priests dressing according to the gaudy fads of teenage adolescents. Just to give an example.

After Vatican II and during the time that followed, Pope Paul VI unsuccessfully urged priests to use some distinctive priestly garb; a practice that John Paul II followed in the beginning of his pontificate, though later he stopped, until finally the new situation was accepted as something done and definitively established.

Of course some may rightly say, regarding this matter, that what is important is not so much the dress as the mentality. It is true, indeed, because confronted with a situation as strange as the identity crisis (in which many priests naively allowed themselves to become involved), one could ask, for example, what would happen if someone would take the time to go to the jungle and try to convince the wolf, the monkey, and the elephant with the odd-enough theory that they were neither a wolf, a monkey, nor an elephant. In the supposed and ridiculous case that he would be believed, we can only imagine such unhappy animals (now without any identity) making a great effort to try to find a costume in order to appear as something. Since, in the end, and in one way or another, one needs to be something at all cost (unless he prefers to be swallowed up by the Nothing, which Michael Ende mentions in his novel The Never Ending Story).

(Translated from the book Esperando a Don Quijote, pp. 275 and ff.)