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"The specific leadership task of the priest is to foster not just
any kind of community but one which embodies Gospel values at both
the local and the global levels." Donal Dorr, Do We Still Need
Priests, Doctrine and Life, April 2007
In full agreement with this, I find myself asking the following
supplementary question: What was the definitive priestly act of
Jesus? Was it his institution of the Eucharist on the night before
his crucifixion, or his passion and death the following day on
Calvary?
So inextricably connected are these events that the question may
seem naive, but it seems to me to go to the heart of our current
need to discern the specific Christian priestly role today. As Donal
Dorr pointed out, the generally accepted solution is that the priest
celebrates Mass and grants absolution. However, neither of these
roles need involve their actors in the endurance of suffering on
behalf of others - the very heart of the mystery of the Eucharist
itself. That is not to say that Catholic priests do not often lead
heroic lives, but that we have not, sadly, been taught to see
personal sacrifice as the distinctive and necessary characteristic
of Catholic priesthood.
We need to make a key distinction here, to separate in our minds the
first Eucharist - a symbolic, ritual event - and the crucifixion,
the actual endurance of pain on behalf of others - a decidedly real,
non-ritual, event. It was the latter alone that gave meaning to the
former. Remembering Jesus' devastating verdict on those who affected
to be religious - that in winning a naive admiration they had
received their due reward - we need to be especially mindful that if
the church existed solely for ritual and symbolic purposes it would
exist in vain. So, the actual bearing of pain on behalf of others is
the essential core of Christian priesthood: if that does not happen
our priestly ritual would essentially be an empty facade, and not
Christian at all.
Especially we need to remember this because the essence of Jesus'
priesthood was his integrity - the fact that, unlike the pagan
priest, he was also the real victim of the sacrifice that he had
ritually celebrated. So how have we come to elevate the performance
of ritual and sacrament - what might be called virtual or symbolic
ministry - above what is actually more important: actual ministry,
the taking of pain on behalf of others?
In stressing the priest's obligation to provide Christian
leadership, in stressing also that Christian leadership is something
quite different from control, and in emphasising the need for
prophetic witness, Donal Dorr is taking us towards a reintegration
of symbolic and actual ministry. It is useful here to reflect upon
the historical origins of their separation. The following paragraphs
are taken from a standard history of our church:
"The clergy at first were not sharply differentiated from the laity
in their lifestyle: The clergy married, raised families, and earned
their livelihood at some trade or profession. But as the practice
grew of paying them for their clerical work, they withdrew more and
more from secular pursuits, until by the fourth century such
withdrawal was deemed obligatory.
"An important factor in this change was the increasing stress laid
on the cultic and ritualistic aspects of the ministry. At first the
Christian presbyter or elder avoided any resemblance to the pagan or
Jewish priests and, in fact, even deliberately refused to he called
a priest. He saw his primary function as the ministry of the Word.
The ritualistic features of his sacramental ministry were kept in a
low key. Even as late as the fifth century, John Chrysostom still
stressed preaching as the main task of the Christian minister. But
the image of the Christian presbyter gradually took on a sacral
character.
"This sacralization of the clergy was brought about by various
developments - theological, liturgical, and legal. The Old Testament
priesthood, for instance, was seen as the type and model for the New
Testament priesthood. The more elaborate liturgy of the post-Constantinian
era, with its features borrowed from paganism, enhanced the image of
the minister as a sacred personage. The ministry of the Word
diminished in importance when infant baptism became the rule rather
than the exception, for infants could not be preached to. Imperial
legislation established the clergy as an independent corporation
with its own rights and immunities."
[From T. Bokenkotter 'A Concise History of the Catholic Church',
2004,Pages 53-54]
It is clear from this that the earliest dis-integration of ritual
ministry from actual ministry accompanied the growing 'success' of
the church in the third and fourth centuries, culminating in
Christian clergy replacing the pagan religious establishments. The
priest who sought to follow and to witness to Christ in an era when
this could be deeply dangerous was still likely to become the real
victim of the ritual he celebrated. The person who found high
position in the post-Constantinian church, on the other hand, had
often no similar test of his integrity to pass. In fact, the role
now usually guaranteed creature comforts and social status. Nothing
else was needed to elevate ritual ministry - the public and
theatrical aspect of Christianity - above actual ministry, and to
separate the two.
After Constantine, Church leaders quickly became powerful enough to
be victimisers themselves - and this deeply disordered situation
persisted into the modern era.
Reform movements in the church were often a reaction to this dis-integration
of actual and symbolic ministry - as was the Reformation in its
emphasis upon the priesthood of all believers. So was Vatican II in
its attempts to involve laity. Now today we are attempting to
identify the specifically priestly ministry at the very time we are
also attempting to discern what 'involving the laity' might mean.
These problems are inseparable.
For the fact is that lay people already often are involved in actual
self-sacrificial as distinct from ritual priestly ministry. I am not
simply referring here to the heroic service that many individuals
may give in charitable work or activism on issues of justice. I
refer to the many critical service occupations that are poorly paid,
such as nursing, counselling, teaching, youth ministry and caring
for the disabled and the elderly. I refer also to the mundane fact
that marriage, parenting and other family obligations, and even
close friendships, often involve personal sacrifice to a marked
degree. Why do we still suppose that the ordained priest is the
model of Christian priesthood when his role does not necessarily
involve self-sacrifice on behalf of others, and may in fact insulate
the priest from any such obligation?
The reason is, I believe, that with the Constantinian shift
something else was in danger of being lost in our understanding of
the Calvary event: that Jesus's integrity required that he accept
the very opposite of the elevated social position of the priest of
the ancient world, that he accept the social position of the slave.
Here again, reform movements such as those of Saints Benedict and
Francis of Assisi sought to re-identify Christian ministry with
powerlessness, poverty and humility. However, secular clergy tended
on the whole to continue to occupy socially elevated positions from
which to critique the faults of the people, and this was especially
true of those appointed as shepherds.
"I think we need more involvement of the laity," insisted one
secular priest recently when asked by a colleague what he thought
needed to happen to reinvigorate the church in his own troubled
Irish diocese. "Nonsense!" was the emphatic reply. For the latter
'the church' must remain essentially a clerical entity whose
clerical proprietors simply mustn't relinquish the very thing that
Jesus did relinquish to become the archetypal Christian priest: the
status that goes with exclusivity. The argument appears to be that
if 'vocations to the priesthood' are to be encouraged at all, young
men must continue to be offered an elevated status as an
indispensable incentive
But if the 'the church' and priesthood have essentially to do with
humility, self-sacrifice and service, it is indeed 'nonsense' to
talk of 'lay involvement in the church' as though it wasn't already
a reality. There is a dire need instead for the actual living
priesthood of the laity to be formally acknowledged by the clerical
church, and for the wisdom that must obviously accompany that living
priesthood to be released into the clerical church through
structures that allow us to address one another for the first time
as equals and collaborators. We need to think not of 'involving the
laity' but of involving the clergy in the church of service that
many of the laity already embody, and to convene the whole church
for the first time in many centuries on that understanding.
So of course we still need priests, because all of us are called to
the essence of Christian priesthood: actual service of others.
Whether we need any longer an ordained elite to celebrate the
Eucharist is an entirely different question, because elitism has
always been dangerous to Christian priesthood, properly understood.
That we should still be tied to an elitist and ritualistic
conceptualisation of priesthood in order to continue to celebrate
the sacred ritual of the Eucharist, and to receive the body of
Christ, is one of the great ironies of the history of our church.
And as we fail this test of grasping fully what Christian priesthood
actually means, our younger generations are walking away from our
schools, many never to realise that in rejecting (or suffering
exclusion from) membership of an historically limited version of
priesthood they have not walked away from the essence of Christian
priesthood. Male and female, if they retain their Christian
idealism, and their spirit of service, they will bring to the
secular world the very priesthood it needs for its restoration.
It is time to tell them this, as a matter of real urgency.
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