Priestly Identity Crisis (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
In our conflict-ridden world, priests are called upon to be<br> servants of God and God's people. Those who have power and<br> position have their own vision of society, of structures and their<br> purposes. Those who are powerless have totally viewpoints on these<br> matters. Priests have to be on the side of the weak and accompany<br> them with empathy. Jesus provides the best example for this. Priests<br> have to make the Eucharistic culture their own, to bring about that<br> which Jesus intended. This will involve self-sacrifice, and bringing to<br> the centre those who are in the periphery.<br>
Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal, 2019
This article considers the concepts of priesthood and sacrifice in the Judeo-Christian tradition as a manifestation of the call of humanity to enter into the dynamic of giving and receiving for which we are created as those who bear the image and likeness of the biblical God. From this perspective we can better appreciate the enduring significance of the ordained priesthood and the sacrificial dimension of the eucharistic liturgy in Christianity. What is more, it helps us avoid the trap of thinking about the male-only priesthood and the distinction between laity and ordained through the distorted lens of a neo-Marxist power paradigm, restoring our sense of the dignity of every holy state of Christian life.
Sacerdotal Character at the Second Vatican Council
The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, 2003
T HE TEACHING OF THE Second Vatican Council on the sacramentality of the episcopate, together with its insistence that all three munera of teaching, sanctifying, and ruling are imparted by episcopal ordination, seems to lead naturally to the idea that the character imparted by the sacrament is the locus of the munera of teaching and ruling in the same way as it has always been thought to be the seat of the power of sanctifying. Moreover, certain conciliar passages seem practically to suggest this. So, Lumen gentium 21 b, just after stating that all three munera are conferred by consecration, adds the following: it is very clear that by the imposition of hands and the words of consecration the grace of the Holy Spirit is conferred in such a way and a sacred character is imprinted in such a way that, in an outstanding and visible way, bishops discharge the functions of Christ himself as Teacher, Pastor and Priest, and act in his person [perspicuum est manuum impositione et verbis consecrationis gratiam Spiritus Sancti ita conferri et sacrum characterem ita imprimi, ut Episcopi eminenti ac adspectabili modo, ipsius Christi Magistri, Pastoris et Pontificis partes sustineant et in Eius persona agant]. Presbyterorum ordinis 2c also says: the priesthood of presbyters is conferred by that special sacrament in which presbyters, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are signed with a special character and thus configured to Christ the Priest, in such a way that they can act in the person of Christ the Head [Sacerdotium Presbyterorum ... peculiari ... illo Sacramento confertur, quo Presbyteri, unctione Spiritus Sancti, speciali 539 540 SACERDOTAL CHARACTER AT VATICAN II charactere signantur et sic Christo Sacerdoti configurantur, ita ut in persona Christi Capitis agere valeant]. Acting the person of Christ the Head, moreover, is a matter of instructing, sanctifying, and ruling the Church his body-all three-as is dear from the first part of Presbyterorum ordinis le. It is not surprising, therefore, to certain scholars, among them the most asserting that the character is, or is the locus of, all three munera, and without making any distinctions. Thus Jean Galot comments on the passage from Presbyterorum ordinis: "The character provides the foundation for the empowerment to speak in the name of Christ, to proclaim the Word of God, and to expound with authority the gospel message .... Note that the power conferred by the character is not just cultic and sacramentaL" If the character has the past been understood to be limited in that way, that is a mistake that we need not repeat, according to Galot. 1 For Ghislain Lafont, the council "expands the meaning of the [character]: it cannot be reduced to an instrumental power over the Eucharist." The character makes the bishop pastor, and "confirms and consecrates a Christian's charism of presiding over a particular Church." It "habituates" him generaHy and across the board "to act responsibly the name with the authority of Christ ... in the acts of his ministry." 2 And Sara Buder has this to say apropos of Lumen gentium 21: According to the Council ... the sacrament itself confers a new share in Christ's threefold office of priest, prophet (or teacher), and pastor. The character imposed by episcopal ordination is explicitly linked to the sacramental role of bishops, who "take the part of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd and priest, and act as his representatives" or "in eius persona. " 3
This essay starts from the perspective of seeing ordained priesthood as an integral part of the church understood as communio and the ordained priest as an integral part of a network of mutually interdependent relationships, both personal and ministerial. Because my basic outlook is spirituality and not theology oriented, I will not deal with the rather complex relationship between the “ecclesial dimension” (repraesentatio ecclesiae) and the “Christological dimension” (repraesentatio Christi capitis) of the ordained priesthood. Instead, I will simply look for the expressions of the “ecclesial dimension” which are characterized by a growth in mutual personal and ministerial relationships, both to God and to the other, within the ecclesial communio.
Eucharistic Self-consciousness and the Mission of the Church
2019
What does it mean to be Church?2 The question is, prima facie, easy to answer. Yet, many indices of monstrous misconceptions abound, indices of a crisis of ecclesiology in an era of strange religiosity. Is the Church a building, an arena or auditorium where magic and miracle do not appear to be different? Is the Church just any group of people who call themselves Christians praying? Is it an NGO run along ideological lines? Are her ministers prophets in the sense of fortune-tellers of diviners in African traditional religions? In the proliferation of "healing" and "deliverance" ministries, have we not become a Church where sacramentals have replaced sacraments, where water and oil manufactured and blessed by this particular priest are believed to be more efficacious than the water and oil of baptism? In the fashionable and extravagant religiosity of our time, is the Church not a "fellowship" without breaking of bread, parishes where attendance at prayer meetings is larger than Mass attendance? What, in the consciousness of contemporary Catholics in Nigeria, is the value of the sacrifice of thanksgiving that the eucharist is when, in our liturgies, right after communion, the priest and the assembly are invited to go to the back of the Church and dance to the altar for "special thanksgiving"? Does this "special thanksgiving-a practice which saw the light of day during the structural adjustment programme of the Babangida era-not suggest that there is a contradiction between what is taught in eucharistic doctrine and what is practiced in the liturgy? Is there any "special thanksgiving" greater than the eucharistic sacrifice, what Catholic theology calls the Church's greatest act of thanksgiving? Are we a healthy Church because of multiplication of religious communities whose members are dressed in exotic habits of many colours? Is our Church rightly described as vibrant simply because of enthusiastic but disfigured liturgies, liturgies disfigured by fundraising and entertainment, where dance and donation appear to be the two things that matter? The questions raised here underscore the compelling need for a renewed understanding of what it means to be Church. Attending to that need is the modest objective of this essay. In our quest for answers, it is right to assume that it is no longer news that the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council is described as an ecclesiology of communion. Despite divisions in the Church, and despite interpretations of the Council that are sometimes contradictory, at other times acrimonious, there is, at least, a wide consensus, if not unanimity 1 1
Can one change a traditional hierarchical institution 1 radically and, nevertheless, sustain its identity, i.e. retain a substantial amount of people who continue to identify themselves with it? Obviously, this depends on how radical this change is. Let us say, "very radical", i.e. it implies questioning the very existing principles of identity of this institution, redrawing and weakening its symbolic boundaries. What can keep, in this case, such an institution from dissociation? Or, rather, what can keep people to continue considering themselves as its members? To propose an attempt to answer this question, this paper considers the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church case. The latter is studied not only in its own right but rather as a "traditional hierarchical institution". One of the points of the paper is that certain patterns, observable in the case examined, can be generalized on a wider set of phenomena. Post-Vatican II modernization of the Catholic Church and the response of the laity. Since the 60s the Catholic Church undergoes radical change. Although it is not true that before the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, it was an immutable institution, the amount of transformation last decades deserves to be called "revolutionary" (Tischner 1998: 7). These processes embrace all spheres of the church life: dogmatic teaching, power Relationships, and liturgical practice. This systematic nature of change is worth noting. However, the most interesting fact is that this change is intended to be not only a one-way process initiated from above but also a reciprocal process involving the active participation of the laity in making decisions. This process is a serious challenge to the traditional mechanisms of identity formation and maintenance on the level of an average believer. What were these mechanisms and what is the reaction of the average believer to their transformation? First, the likeliness of shared beliefs was one of the main demands of "good Catholics". The uniformity of faith was particularly emphasized since the Trident Council in the 16 th century as a response to and under the influence of the Reformation. After this Council, the first all-Catholic Catechism was published and, formally, remained in force till the beginning of the 90s of the 20 th centuries. Before, as in the Orthodox Church up to now, the catechisms were issued by parishes, dioceses, and even particular theologians as a recommended reading. This, certainly, does not imply that the desired uniformity has been ever achieved. If this were the only criterion of the identity of a Catholic, Catholicism would be rather a