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PAGE 5-May 1,1975
The Priest’s Identity
BY'REV. PAUL F. PALMER, S. J.
We hear much of an identity crisis among
priests. Some diagnose the problem as
psychological or sociological. For others the
problem is regarded as more theological than
cultural. Most reports stress the loneliness of
the priest and emphasize obligatory celibacy as
the contributing factor to the priest’s
loneliness.
Loneliness in the sense of living alone or
unmarried has never been easy for a priest. It is
perhaps more difficult today because many
priests are not wholly convinced that they are
needed. “A policeman’s lot is not a happy
one,” but policemen stay on the job, whether
they are liked or disliked, because they feel that
they are needed.
Celibacy becomes a problem when a priest,
often without conscious search, finds that there
is someone who claims to need him desperately
and who can fulfill his need to be needed.
In the past an unquestioned theology of the
uniqueness of the priest, of his essentially
different consecration from that of the
baptized Christian supported the priest in his
aloneness and assuaged much of his loneliness.
He was convinced that he was “chosen from
among men” in a very special way by
ordination, and that he alone could “act on
behalf of men in relation to God,” that he
alone could “offer gifts and sacrifices for sins”
(Heb. 5:1).
To celebrate the Eucharist and to forgive sins
in the sacrament of Penance was taught by the
Council of Trent to be the specific function of
the priest, and many priests felt that they
fulfilled their strictly priestly ministry when
they said Mass and heard confessions.
This does not mean that priests of the past
were less involved in the caritative ministry or
the corporal works of mercy than priests today.
There is scarcely a Catholic hospital, orphanage,
home for the aged or other institution for the
sick, the hungry, the naked and the poor that is
not the beneficiary of a priest’s wider ministry.
And yet the priest of yesterday did not look
upon himself as a social worker, a gerontologist
nor, despite his hours of counselling in the
confessional, did he see himself as a
psychologist or a professional counsellor. He
was useful and even wanted in all of these
ministries, but he felt that he was needed only
in his strictly cultic ministry of offering the
Eucharist and preparing his people for their
worthy participation.
This self-image of the priest as the liturgist of
the sacraments and the mystagogue who leads
his people in the celebration of the sacred
mysteries was reflected in the reverential awe in
which he was held by most of his people. Men
tipped their hats to him as they did to the
Church in which he ministered; women
regarded him as untouchable as the chalice he
carried to the altar.
The priest of the past may have been
uncomfortable in the niche in which the people
enshrined him; and he must have been tempted
often to divest himself of his priestly garments
and clerical attire and mingle more freely with
his people. But for him there was no identity
crisis.
Younger priests who have been trained after
Vatican II are less sure of their identity and
their essential ministry. They can quote the
directive of the Council that “their primary
duty is the proclamation of the Gospel to all”
(On the Ministry of Priests, No. 4), and
conclude that they are not so much priests as
they are prophets, ministers of the Word, rather
than ministers of the sacraments.
They can cite Vatican II to the effect that
“the priest has the poor and the lowly
entrusted to him in a special way” (No. 6); and
many conclude that their essential ministry
must be that of a super-social worker, who is
skilled in guidance, counselling, teaching the
retarded, helping the handicapped and in
meeting the multiple needs of the inner city.
Unquestionably, all these ministries must be
the concern of the priest, but the new priest
soon finds out that others have been prepared
to do these jobs better than he, and he may
begin to question whether he is really needed in
these ministries. An increasing number have
decided that they are not needed. Much as they
are liked or wanted, they leave the priesthood
and readily find someone who does need them.
But most remain, strengthened by their
experience and ready to admit that their
multiple ministry must be directed to the
Eucharist as the “source and summit of the
whole work of the preaching of the Gospel”
(No. 4), as the “summit towards which the
activity of the Church is directed. . . the
fountain from which all her power flows” (“On
the Liturgy,” No. 10).
According to Vatican II, the priest must be
above all a leader and shepherd of his people.
He must “gather God’s family together as a
brotherhood of living unity and lead it through
Christ and in the Spirit to God the Father”
(“On the Ministry of Priests,” No. 6). As a
leader, he must orchestrate all the gifts and
talents possessed by his people, he must
facilitate or make it easy for the people to
exercise their own ministry of service to the
community.
But if the priest’s ministry is to have
meaning, if he is to be truly needed by his
people, he must lead them to the Father in the
celebration of the Eucharist, where he alone
presides as liturgist of the Word and the
sacrament. “For the goal of apostolic works is
that all who are made sons of God by faith and
Baptism should come together to praise God in
the midst of His Church, to take part in her
sacrifice, and to eat the Lord’s Supper” (“On
the Liturgy,” No. 10).
New Testament Background
comfort and special privilege. Jesus belonged to
no elitist group, He enjoyed no special privilege.
His was a life of hardship, toil, rejection,
suffering, persecution, and eventual torture and
execution. Surely He must have known times of
real joy, and so will His disciple, but the call to
special discipleship is addressed to men of
courage.
Another New Testament role which would
one day be incorporated into that of the priest
was that of apostle. Apostleship adds a further
dimension to that of discipleship. The disciple
is called to be with Christ in a particularly
intimate way; the apostle is sent to bring Christ
to others.
In the New Testament the man who is
portrayed most dramatically in this role is
certainly Paul, so much so that he is known in
Christian tradition as “The Apostle.” In this
capacity he considered himself primarily a
servant of Jesus Christ, carrying out the mission
entrusted to him with extraordinary zeal and
industry. First and foremost a servant of Christ,
he made himself “a servant of all in order to
win many over” (1 Cor 9:19). His was a
complex, active ministry; he was constantly on
the move, traveling, forming communities,
preaching, instructing, working at a trade to
support himself, writing when occasion
demanded it, in and out of jail, suffering,
praying, and through it all rejoicing in the Good
News which he carried “even to the ends of the
earth” (Acts 1:8).
We still have our missionary priests,
patterned after the great Apostle, but the priest
as we know him today is not quite so mobile.
His New Testament antecedent would have
been the overseer-elder whom we mentioned
earlier. These men stayed in one community,
governing its affairs, solving its problems,
teaching, keeping order. As they are pictured in
the later Pastorals (1-2 Tim; Titus), they are
rather hourgeois: above reproach, temperate,
sensible, dignified, hospitable, good teachers,
gentle and not quarrelsome. They would have
furnished the pattern for the later residential
clergy.
Strange as it may seem, the priest as a cultic
minister, one who presides over the Eucharist,
was a long time in emerging. This is the role
which comes most readily to mind when we
think of a priest today. Eucharistic sacrifice and
priesthood are correlative terms. And herein, it
would seem, lies the answer. Apparently it took
the early Church some time to interpret the
Eucharist as a sacrifice. Until it did, it felt no
need for a priesthood as such. It is practically
impossible to learn from the New Testament
just who did preside at the Eucharist meal in
the first century. Someone surely did, for the
Eucharist was an intimate part of Christian life,
but there is no evidence that the function was
tied in with any “order.” Other early Christian
writings suggest that it was the role of the
charismatic “prophets,” and these same
writings indicate that the privilege gradually
passed to the overseer-elder group.
At any rate, by the beginning of the second
century, lines of distinction became more
clearly drawn. We find one overseer (bishop) in
charge of a local church, assisted by a
presbyterate (priests) and deacons. Then with
the growth of the Church in numbers, the
powers of the bishop were shared with his
priests. At this point a clear image emerges. The
priest now incorporates in himself all of those
rich realities which we can discern in the
Church of the New Testament. He is disciple,
apostle, overseer, elder, minister to the faithful,
cultic officer presiding over the Eucharistic
sacrifice - almost too much for one man to
realize in his own person. But this is the
glorious challenge of a call to the priesthood.
k
“STRANGE AS IT SEEMS, the
priest as a cultic minister, one who
presides over the Eucharist, was a long
time in emerging. This is the role which
comes most readily to mind when we
think of a priest today. Eucharistic
sacrifice and priesthood are correlative
terms.” A priest elevates the chalice,
symbolic of his role as minister. (NC
Photo by Paul Tucker)
t
discipleship. Jesus called and still calls all
people to be His disciples; this is the Christian
vocation, and it is a challenge.
But the Gospels present Him as calling a
certain number to be with him in a very special
way, and this presents a special challenge. It is a
call to leave everything and follow Jesus, to be
singlemindedly attached to Him, with a
dedication that puts all other relationships,
even the most sacred, in a secondary position.
As He put it with typical Semitic brusqueness:
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his
own father and mother and wife and children
and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own
life, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk. 14:26).
(Obviously Jesus was not abolishing the Fourth
Commandment; “hate” means “love the less.”)
Furthermore, this call implies not an on and
off commitment, but a permanent dedication:
“No one who puts his hand to the plow and
looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Lk
9:26). And if Jesus said: “A disciple is not
above his teacher” (Mt 10:24), then the call to
special discipleship is a challenge to be
Christlike in every sense of the term.
It is not a call to join an elite, to live a life of
BY REV. JOHN J. CASTELOT, S. S.
The Catholic priesthood, as we know it
today, is the result of a long and complex
historical development. Like everything else in
the Church, it has its roots in the New
Testament, but only its roots. To look for the
full tree would be illusory. The fact is that
there are no Christian priests mentioned in the
Gospels or the apostolic writings.
In some translations we find references to
priests and bishops, true; but this is misleading.
The Greek words so rendered actually mean
something quite different: they refer to elders
(presbyteroi) and overseers (episkopoi) in the
early communities, groups of men who
administered the affairs of the local churches.
Furthermore, the two terms were used
interchangeably to denote the same group,
without any clear distinction between the
two. What would later emerge as priests and
bishops in all likelihood evolved from these
groups, but in the New Testament we are only
at the beginning of the process.
Today’s priesthood is amazingly rich and
diverse, including in itself many relationships
and functions that were originally quite
distinct. Perhaps the most basic is that of
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“THERE IS SCARCELY A blustery day at St. Ann’s Home and the
CATHOLIC HOSPITAL, orphanage, Heritage, Rochester, N.Y., Bishop
home for the aged or other institution Joseph L. Hogan gives Paolini Sante a
for the sick, the hungry, the naked and hand with his overcoat. (NC Photo by
the poor that is not the beneficiary of a Susan McKinney)
priest’s wider ministry.” During a
Know
Your Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1975 by N.C. News Service)
S *
Building Bridges
BY REV. CARL J. PFEIFER, S.J.
To be a priest probably means something
slightly different to every priest. In fact being a
priest probably has a somewhat different
meaning to every priest at different times in his
life.
There was a time when I thought of the
priesthood primarily in terms of offering Mass
and administering the other sacraments. I saw
myself acting as a priest primarily within the
context of the Church’s worship. Actually the
most satisfying pastoral work I’ve ever done has
been in the confessional.
I still believe in my priestly role within the
worshipping community. I especially see the
tremendous opportunity and challenge facing
me as a priest to preach in such a way as to help
people make sense out of their lives in the light
of God’s Word. But I do not limit my view of
priestly work solely to the Church’s liturgy.
Today the image, bridge-builder, best sums
up what the priesthood means to me. In fact, a
long tradition has designated the priest as just
that, “pontifex,” or “bridge-builder.”
In today’s Church, at least as I experience
and understand it, the bridge-builder image
suggests to me what being a priest basically
means. We live in a changing, pluralistic Church,
within an even more rapidly changing and
increasingly complex world. Many good
Catholics are understandably confused. Many
feel they can no longer make sense either out of
the Church or of their own lives. Just as
understandably some Catholics - people of
equally good will and intelligence - find
themselves on opposite sides of very serious
issues. There is deep felt polarization on every
level of the Church.
Within such a Church the priest has the
extremely demanding and delicate task of
building bridges. He is called upon to help
people build bridges between themselves and
God as well as between themselves. As I see it,
his ministry today is primarily to be a
reconciler, a source of unity.
To help people build meaningful bridges
between themselves and God, the priest needs
to know both God and people. His knowledge
of both must be rooted in his own personal
experience. People are yearning for insight into
God’s role in their lives. They search for ways
of finding God and being in touch with Him.
Book knowledge is not enough. They want a
priest who speaks from personal experience of
God and His ways. They expect their priest to
be someone who not only knows all about God,
but knows Him personally, face to face.
But then the priest, the builder of bridges
between God and man, must just as truly know
people. Again, not just book learning, but
through intimately sharing the joys, sorrows,
frustrations, pain, excitement, and pleasure of
being human. As a priest I feel that so much of
my training and work has tended to shield me
from the day-to-day experiences of the average
Catholic, of the average human being living in
the “world.”
That is the first bridge I think people expect
a priest to help them construct -- a meaningful
bridge between themselves and God that helps
make sense out of life, one that helps them
meet life’s challenges.
The second bridge I feel I must help people
build is the multi-faceted one between
themselves and others. We are called - all of us
who say we are Christians - to work for unity
and harmony within the community of faith.
However, because of his position, in many
parishes the priest bears the chief responsibility
of struggling to bring people together, to help
them realize that they can be one in Christ even
when legitimately differing.
For me, then, the image that best expresses
what I see to be the role of today’s priest in the
Church is that of a builder of bridges -- between
God and people, and between people
themselves.
What I feel I, and other priests, most need in
today’s Church to build these bridges
effectively is not education, eloquence or
management skills - though all of these are
vitally important - but what Solomon prayed
for when God set him up as King to unify His
people.
The Scriptures recall that Solomon prayed
first of all for “an understanding heart” (1
Kings 3:9). Or, as one translation has it, “a
heart with skill to listen.” That is what I pray
for as a priest preoccupied with building bridges
of unity.
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