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Ministry |
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“Minister” comes from the Latin word for servant, and denotes a person acting under the authority or as an agent of another, for example, a minister of state. Accordingly, “minister of religion” is a generic expression that includes any official, clerical or lay, who performs some service for a religious body. One accepted usage in the Church reserves minister as the term for the appropriate person for administering the sacraments: for example, when we say that the ordinary minister of Confirmation is the bishop. In this sense of the term, anyone who confers a sacrament, including the layperson who may baptize in case of necessity, is its minister. In the past, the designation was sometimes extended to include those who assist the bishop and priests in discharging their offices, so that those who served in the sanctuary were likewise known as ministers. While the Church also designates priests as her ministers or ministers of the Gospel, common parlance in English-speaking countries still usually distinguishes between the Catholic priest and the Protestant minister. In any event, it is clear that “minister” is a broad term, applied analogically to different persons. Ministry and Vatican Council II • The Second Vatican Council put the terms “minister” and “ministry” into a specific theological context. The Council’s purpose was twofold. First, it wanted to emphasize that the Incarnation reveals the divine plan to send the eternal Son for the service of saving the human race. Christ, then, is the first minister. There is no evidence of this truth more impressive than Jesus’ words and deeds on the night before he died: “When he had washed their feet, and taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet’ ” (Jn 13:12-14). Second, the Council placed the work of the laity more clearly in the theological context of Christ’s ministry, and so refined the Church’s teaching on the apostolate of the laity, making it more clearly a full, not simply an auxiliary, part of Christ’s mission. Again, the Gospel of John establishes the basis for this claim: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). The Council wished to renew the service of the laity to the Church through a renewal of their faith in their union with Christ. To understand the Council’s teaching on ministry we must recall the theological teaching on the capital grace of Christ, by which he is constituted the head of the Church. Drawing out the implications of Pope Pius XII’s 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, which presented the Church as the Body of Christ, the Second Vatican Council sought to fathom the meaning of St. Paul’s teaching that there are a variety of gifts, but one Holy Spirit who is the divine source of these gifts. After listing some of the “manifestations of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:7) that the baptized receive, Paul states: “All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Cor 12:11). The Council’s gloss on this text, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is: “And so amid variety all will bear witness to the wonderful unity in the Body of Christ: this very diversity of graces, of ministries and of works gathers the sons of God into one” (Lumen Gentium, 32). As Christ remains one with the Father, who sent him into the world, so authentic Christian ministry is directed to promoting unity among the members of the Church. Those who undertake a ministry in the Church help to extend the grace of Christ’s headship in the world. The Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem, canonized the use of the term “ministry” to designate whatever a baptized person does for the good of the Church: “In the Church there is diversity of ministry but unity of mission” (2). After Vatican II, “ministry” generally replaced the earlier expression “lay apostolate” to describe the various contributions that the nonordained members of the Church make to its communio. Today it is not uncommon to hear some individuals referred to as heading the “ministry of music” or seeing to the “ministry to the sick” or serving as “extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.” In some cases, liturgical rites have been drawn up to install these ministers in their respective offices. This is especially true for the ministries of lector and acolyte. The Code of Canon Law, moreover, stipulates that laypeople who possess the required qualities can be admitted permanently to these ministries (cf. Canon 230.1). The Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, uses the expression “sacred ministers” to refer to the ordained clergy, but it also recalls the biblical teaching that they along with the nonordained faithful form the one People of God. Although the Council documents clearly maintain the distinctiveness of the ordained and hierarchical ministry that flows from the sacrament of Holy Orders, some theologians and commentators have interpreted the Council’s teaching about diversity of ministry as relativizing the distinction between ordained and nonordained ministries. In so doing, they overlook the incontrovertible teaching of the Council that the ministerial priesthood remains, as a specifically sacramental reality, at the service of the common priesthood. As Lumen Gentium expresses it, “That office . . . , which the Lord committed to the pastors of his people, is in the strict sense of the term a service” (24). Analogical Senses of “Ministry” • Some of the confusion results from a failure to understand the analogy at work when the Council teaches that the laity share in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly office of Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church helps to clarify this point by intentionally placing the discussion of ministry under the heading “The Hierarchical Constitution of the Church” (cf. CCC 874-879). This accords with the doctrine of the Church. For example, the 1983 letter Sacerdotium Ministeriale authoritatively taught that apostolic succession through sacramental ordination is an essential element for the exercise of priestly ministry and thus for the bestowal of the power to consecrate the Eucharist. Accordingly, we can say that the chief and irreplaceable participant in the ministry of Jesus Christ is the bishop, who, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch, is like the living image of God the Father (cf. CCC 1549). It is from the bishop, especially the Bishop of Rome, that all authentic ministry derives. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has taken strong exception to the work of the Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., including his books Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christ and The Church With a Human Face: A New and Expanded Theology of Ministry, for failing to acknowledge this doctrinal principle. The large numbers of lay pastoral workers or associates who have begun to assist in areas of Europe where there is a shortage of ordained priests has given a certain impetus to this theological reflection. But the Church, in the voice of Pope John Paul II, has repeatedly affirmed the “absolute necessity that the ‘new evangelization’ have priests as its initial ‘new evangelizers’ ” (apostolic exhortation I Will Give You Shepherds, Pastores Dabo Vobis, 2 [1992]). The Catechism begins its teaching on ministry so as to take account of its fundamentally hierarchical nature. By way of formulating the basic theological principle of Christian ministry, the text affirms that “Christ is himself the source of ministry in the Church” (874). As to its principal expression, the power to exercise ministry of the Church comes from a special sacrament: Holy Orders enables men to minister to the People of God so that all may attain salvation. This sacramental ministry is a collegial action, because the episcopal college and its head, the successor of St. Peter, work together for the good of the universal Church. At the same time, priestly ministry is eminently personal, because the Church’s ministers, who are called personally to their vocation, always bear personal witness to the common mission of the Church and to Jesus in whose person they act. Another misunderstanding about ministry arises when the sacred power of the priest is imagined to be the religious equivalent of the political power exercised by civil rulers. The priest, however, receives his mission and his authority from Christ; and so neither the word that priests preach nor the graces of which they are the instruments are their own. These belong to Christ, who gives his power to whom he wills. Nevertheless, there is also a power that Christ gives to every member of the Church, and that awaits the generous response of men and women who seek to promote the reign of Christ the King. In his apostolic exhortation The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People, Christifideles Laici, Pope John Paul II cites a text of Pope Pius XII, who was an effective advocate of Catholic Action: “Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church” (cited in CCC 899). The twentieth century has witnessed a renewed involvement of the Christian laity in the sanctification of the world, especially in the social and political spheres. Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, the priest-founder of the predominantly lay organization Opus Dei, provides an outstanding example of how to encourage the Christian faithful to sanctify themselves through work in the world and apostolate.
See: Apostolate; Apostolic Succession; Evangelization; Holy Orders; In Persona Christi Capitis; Laity; Priesthood of Christ; Priesthood of the Faithful; Vocation. |
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