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Priest |
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In 1834, John Henry Newman, while still an Anglican clergyman at Oxford, preached a sermon on “The Christian Ministry” in which he asked “whether there is reason for thinking that Christ has, in matter of fact, left representatives behind him.” Newman answered the question by his subsequent conversion to Catholicism and by seeking ordination as a priest. Despite a history of opposition that begins with the authorities of pagan Rome and continues today in a variety of anticlerical initiatives, still including some by civil governments, the Catholic priesthood remains one of the most important institutions in the world. Another nineteenth-century witness to the central place it plays in the life of the Church comes from a Frenchman, St. John Marie Vianney. The holy Curé of Ars underscored the transcendent nature of the priesthood when he reminded his faithful: “Only in heaven will we know what a priest is. If we were to know this on earth, we would die, not of grief, but of love.” Origin and Nature of the Priesthood • The priesthood derives its theological meaning from the mission of the incarnate Son. Christ is the one “whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world” (Jn 10:36) for its salvation, and consecration and mission describe the reality of the priest. Within the apostolic succession, the priest appears as a coworker of the episcopal order, one in whom the function of the bishops’ ministry is exercised in a subordinate degree. However, because the priest shares in the authority by which Christ himself builds up and sanctifies and rules his Body, a special sacrament confers the priesthood. Through Holy Orders priests “by the anointing of the Holy Spirit are signed with a special character and so are configured to Christ the priest in such a way that they are able to act in the person of Christ the head”: this is how the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, Presbyterorum Ordinis, 2, describes the Christian priesthood. Scholars offer different explanations of how the apostleship of the original Twelve became adjusted to the local community in the early days of the Church. Study of the early Christian centuries reveals that priests were ordained to celebrate the sacraments, to teach as prophets as well as to proclaim the word and instruct others in sound doctrine, and to govern as shepherds. But from the beginning of the Church, the priest carried out these three distinct offices in dependence on the episcopate, which alone embodies the ongoing apostolic ministry in the Church. From the very beginning, priests were functioning in the churches the Apostles left behind. So we are not surprised to learn that the third-century Traditio Apostolica of Hippolytus already includes the ordination rite for a priest: “And when a presbyter is ordained the bishop shall lay his hand upon his head, the presbyters also touching him. And he shall pray over him according to the forementioned form” (8). There is significance in the fact that the bishop is joined by the other presbyters in the ordination. The presbyterium is one throughout the world, even though a priest is ordained for the service of a particular church within it. Some authors note that the term “presbyter” literally means “elder,” and that the New Testament does not specifically use the term “priest” for a Christian minister but only for Christians as a whole, as in Revelation 5:10: “And [thou] hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God.” But this is a semantic difficulty, not a real one. For “in virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, after the image of Christ, the supreme and eternal priest, [priests] are consecrated in order to preach the Gospel and shepherd the faithful as well as to celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament.” This text from Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 28, determines the place of the priest in the Church. The power to forgive sins also forms part of the priest’s role of sanctifying the Christian people. Catholic priests are either members of the diocesan clergy or belong to a religious institute. The distinction does not affect their priesthood, for both kinds of priests belong to the one presbyterium of the Church. Rather, the difference relates to the way a priest lives out his priestly vocation. Diocesan priests willingly accept the obligation of remaining celibate in order to participate in the mystery of Christ and his mission; moreover, they promise obedience to the local bishop, and, although they do not radically renounce the capacity to possess material goods, they are still expected to imitate the evangelical poverty of the Apostles. Religious priests, on the other hand, by their profession of vows, commit themselves to live in community, which is meant to bear corporate witness to the distinctive charism of the religious institute. The evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience are embraced under a vow or solemn promise as a means to imitating the life of Jesus himself. The older monastic orders require that their members remain in a single place so that the monastery or convent itself becomes a witness to the life of the Church, whereas the mendicant friars and most later foundations, including the Jesuits, require that their members be ready to move wherever the needs of the Church require priests. There are also priests who follow an eremetical way of life, in which they devote themselves entirely to works of intercession and penance for the good of the Church; though separated from the company of men, the hermit-priest remains fully present to the Church, especially when he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In the latter years of the twentieth century, the question of whether only males can be candidates for the sacrament of Holy Orders began to attract wide attention. Two important statements of the Magisterium, Inter Insigniores (a declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published in 1976) and Pope John Paul II’s 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, have repeated the Church’s reasons for not ordaining women. The texts also remind us that the Church is here bound by a decision made by Christ himself and in matters of faith and the sacraments cannot simply do what she wants.
See: Bishop; Celibacy, Priestly; Consecrated Life; Holy Orders; In Persona Christi Capitis; Ministry; Priesthood of Christ; Priesthood in the Old Testament; Women, Ordination of. |
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