July 24, 2012      Martin Mallon   (Ireland)       Martin's previous articles

                    Priests and Change in the Church  

A relic of the Cure d’Ars, his heart, is currently visiting England where it is being venerated in various places. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Cure was conscripted for the war with Spain but for various reasons did not attend for fourteen months. He was actually a deserter and his father wanted him to turn himself in, but then his younger brother took his place. Note that he let his younger brother take his place in the army during a war. See this link  

Greg Daly’s article in The Irish Catholic, of July 12, quoted the Cure as saying “…leave a parish for 20 years without a priest and people will end up worshipping beasts…” This quote can also be found  in the third paragraph of this Letter of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI Proclaiming a Year for Priests in 2009.  

As there was no mention of priests in the New Testament the Cure’s assertion is obviously wrong. People and Christianity did very well without priests.  

The Cure has some excuse for believing his statement that: “…leave a parish for 20 years without a priest and people will end up worshipping beasts…” as apparently he was a poorly educated man from the country in France in the nineteenth century.  

However, it is difficult to understand why Pope Benedict used this quote as he should be aware that in the early church parishes/communities survived quite well without priests for more than 20 years.  

Benedict’s Letter contains more interesting quotes from the Cure:  

“O, how great is the priest!…”  

“…After God, the priest is everything!…”  

“Without the priest, the passion and death of our Lord would be of no avail. It is the priest who continues the work of redemption on earth… What use would be a house filled with gold, were there no one to open its door? The priest holds the key to the treasures of heaven: it is he who opens the door: he is the steward of the good Lord; the administrator of his goods…”  

The first two quotes are narcissistic, but the third, what a statement, the Cure believed that without priests the life and death of Jesus would be “of no avail.” We have to ask ourselves why Pope Benedict quotes this? He must believe there is some validity to the Cure’s statement. Thankfully the New Testament and Vatican II made it clear that Jesus is our only redeemer. We also have the biblical evidence that the Church survived and grew exponentially for it’s first hundred years without priests.  

To give Benedict his due he acknowledges that: “These words, welling up from the priestly heart of the holy pastor, might sound excessive” and who would not agree, wholeheartedly. However, while the Pope wrote that the Cure’s words “might sound excessive” he does not write that they are “excessive”.  

It must be made clear that this is not a polemic against priests. Most priests are good people doing Gods work and they often sacrifice much to enable the laity to receive the sacraments, not to mention the other good work they do in spreading the Good News and helping the poor as Jesus requested. However, it has been by putting priests on a pedestal, as the Cure clearly does and as happened in Ireland , that clericalism arose and the associated abuses, such as child sex abuse.  

Pope Benedict XVI, in his Letter, is also putting priests on a pedestal by using these quotes from the Cure without qualifying them properly. This was, commonly, the pre-Vatican II idea of the priest.  

Together with the evidence of the early Church , Vatican II, by asserting the importance of the sacrament of Baptism and showing how people outside the Church can be saved, has shown that priests are not essential for salvation. In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, Chapt 1, sect 7, we read:  

“Through Baptism we are formed in the likeness of Christ: ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body’ (1 Cor 12:13 ). In this sacred rite our union with Christ’s death and resurrection is symbolized and effected: ‘For we were buried with him by Baptism into death’; and if ‘we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be so in the likeness of his resurrection also’ (Rom 6:4-5).”  

The glaring question that is raised by the above is how did the Church survive and expand without priests? It would appear that house churches were common in the early Church with the head of the household, male or female, effectively carrying out the breaking of the bread. Any of the baptised could and can baptise.  

Variations of this type of church structure could be the way forward as the number of priests continues to decline. Members of the Christian community could be appointed or elected to carry out priestly functions where there is a shortage of priests.  

South African Bishop Fritz Lobinger describes one variation on this theme in his article of Feb 26, 2010 in U.S. Catholic magazine wherein he advocates following the early church in ordaining community leaders:
“the early church indeed did ordain local leaders who were married, had received brief local training, were chosen by the local community, and had proven their worthiness over some time.

I am not alone. There are hundreds of bishops who feel that renewing this ancient tradition is the only solution to the shortage of priests.”  

Regarding women leaders he wrote: “Ordaining proven local leaders could thus be the starting point for a solution. Because the majority of proven local leaders are women, it is unavoidable that the question of their inclusion among ordained elders will arise, though present church law does not permit it. “  

Discussion is called for on the way forward for our church; unfortunately the Institutional Church is apparently happy with the current structure and where it is unhappy wishes to revert to pre-Vatican II structures. The worrying aspect is that the Institutional Church does not appear to be willing to listen to ideas which require change in the present structure and has a tendency to censor or silence those who advocate variations in line with the teachings of Vatican II. There is little room for the Holy Spirit to act in the Institutional Church .