\u201cThe Church belongs to Jesus Christ, and the different roles within the Christian community \u2013 clergy, laity and religious life \u2013 have equal dignity but different purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n
In particular, the clergy\u2019s leadership in the Church should always be marked with humility and service \u201cand never by a sense of entitlement,\u201d he said. \u201cBishops, priests and deacons are too often weak and sinful. They need to be held to high standards. Some deserve to be chastised.\u201d
\u201cBut men and women didn\u2019t found the Church, they don\u2019t own her, and they have no license to reinvent her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although sin and failure \u201cneed to be named,\u201d he said, \u201cwhen people deride their bishops and priests out of pride and resentment or some perverse desire for what they perceive as \u2018power,\u2019 they undermine the Church herself, and they set themselves against the God whose vessel she is.\u201d<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So feel free to kneel if you like. Feel free to wish it were the norm if you like. But don\u2019t congratulate yourself on your superior holiness or look down on your neighbor (about whom you do not know one damn thing about their interior disposition or reverence) if he or she opts to obey the Church by bowing rather than kneeling. Nobody died and made you bishop.<\/p>\n