I Could Agree with This

but the inquiry might not lead to the desired conclusions. His premises would not align with the Natural Law.

Pro-LGBT German Cardinal Reinhard Marx has called for changes to ‘the theology of Holy Orders’ and said the Church should be subjected to a ‘social-scientific examination.'#CatholicX #CatholicChurch #Catholic #Germanyhttps://t.co/wPss6wUivs

— LifeSiteNews (@LifeSite) May 8, 2024

Should Be a Good Discussion

Tonight! https://t.co/YcwKFYZKNG

— Sheptytsky Institute (@Sheptytsky) September 14, 2021

"Offering"

After 19 years of experience I can tell you, offering Mass never gets old. pic.twitter.com/BlHL0uQ8FD

— Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, OP (@FrAquinasOP) June 9, 2021

Eastern Christian Book: Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII

Eastern Christian Book: Stupid Ideas about Married Clergy Part MMCCXVII

It is the shortest essay in my new book, Married Priests in the Catholic Church, "Reflections on Two Vocations in Two Lungs of the One Church," but David Meinzen's essay is one of the most singular and important ever written on this topic, for he demolishes the idea that a married priest, to avoid being "divided," must always put the parish first. Meinzen shows--drawing on his long experience as son of a married Lutheran pastor (Missouri Synod), and then a married Orthodox, and finally and currently a married Eastern Catholic priest--that any man in holy orders who neglects his family to serve his parish is unworthy of both vocations, and does damage to the one he is serving precisely insofar as he is neglecting the other. Put differently, to neglect his family is to serve the broader church badly for there is no real division between the domestic and wider Church: they are all the one body of Christ, and following impeccable Pauline logic, when one part of the body suffers, every part and everybody suffers. The logic Meinzen uses is very similar to what I used more recently in talking about the Christian case for self-care. 

Meinzen goes beyond this to make a positive case: a strong clerical family by that very fact builds up the entire body of Christ, making it stronger as well. In other words, a man living up to his sacramental vocation to marriage, and working to strengthen and protect that marriage and family, is going to be in a stronger position to work to strengthen and protect his equally sacramental vocation to priesthood. Any idea of competition between the two is the grossest of theological mistakes which must be abandoned.

This is the order of charity; now some Latin apologists may still argue the duty to a parishioner who is not a family member is still greater than the duty to one's family. They may even used the flaw analogy of a priest being married to the Church (in a literal sense).

 

 

Suffused with Latin Theology of the Presbyterate

As one would expect...

This Good Shepherd Sunday is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations. Beautiful prayer for the holiness of the clergy composed by Benedict XVI. Holy priests inspire priestly vocations! pic.twitter.com/lWb9MUBLot

— Father V (@father_rmv) April 25, 2021

A Presentation of Pure Thomistic Theology of the Presbyterate, No Doubt

Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P. will be speaking at a Vocations Symposium co-sponsored by the Thomistic Institute Angelicum titled "Toward a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood" taking place at the Vatican next spring (2022).

Learn more and register here: https://t.co/Fqij79eYD0

— Thomistic Institute (@ThomisticInst) April 14, 2021

A Controversial Book for Latins

New arrival today from @undpress! Article in “Married Priests in the Catholic Church.” pic.twitter.com/EHlXLrznQQ

— Fr Alexander Laschuk (@byzkanonist) April 7, 2021

A Latin Archbishop Chats with an Eastern Catholic Presbyter and His Wife

Really great content from @archbsmith talking with an eastern catholic priest and his wife about “priesthood, marriage, and sacrificial worship.” https://t.co/xxKgNE3nrw

— Fr Alexander Laschuk (@byzkanonist) October 28, 2020

A Latin Essay on the Presbyterate

Crisis: What You Can Do to Help Our Priests by Fr. Peter M. Stravinskas

The priesthood of Jesus Christ, in which every Christian priest shares, is the source of holiness in the Church and the impetus for all evangelization. Through the ministry of the priest, Christ’s lay faithful are nourished with the Word of Life and the Bread of Life; their sanctification makes possible the sanctification of the world.

and

The reverence and respect of the Catholic faithful for their clergy is directed, then, not toward the man himself but toward Christ who is the Priest of the new eternal covenant and toward the priesthood any man derives from Him and shares with Him.

Latin notions of the presbyterate (and its conflation with the priesthood of Christ) and sacrifice, and some clericalism probably are sufficient to explain the resistance to the "priesthood of the faithful" as being "Protestant."

Fallen Failsafes and a Revolutionary Modern Priesthood by Clare McGrath-Merkle

My sincerest thanks to The Regensburg Forum and Dr. Matthew Gaetano for publishing my latest article on the priesthood. https://t.co/U1mKHIWmo9

— Clare McGrath-Merkle, OCDS, DPhil (@Onceandfuturepr) August 23, 2020

Regensburg Forum

Yelle penned an important monograph on the history of the theological debates surrounding the core error underlying Bérulle’s spiritual theology of priesthood: the notion of the holiness of Christ, in which Christ’s human nature is considered to have been made holy by the grace of union with the Word—a mistaken understanding of the communication of idioms. In line with Chalcedon, the properties of Christ’s human nature remained unimpaired, since the hypostatic union changed nothing. If His human nature had been made holy by the grace of union, it would have necessarily changed. Christ, rather, needed habitual grace for His human nature to be raised to the supernatural order.

This error in the understanding of the humanity of Christ (a central meditation for Bérulle’s Oratorians) served as the basis for the holiness and sacerdotal power of Bérulle’s priest. Just as the grace of union made Christ holy and a mediator of religion for Bérulle, so, too, the priest, through the grace of union with Christ, was made mediator of redemption and capable of sacrifice. In this schema, the priest became a mediator in the order of being, a distinction reserved to Christ alone.

Decades after Yelle’s critique, Jacques Maritain best explicated this error and the ongoing influence of some of Bérulle’s key philosophical ideals in his article on the French School, only translated into English in 1997, in a collection of his works. In it, Maritain questioned how it was possible that a great number of churchmen still remained under the French School’s influence despite holding different doctrinal positions. Maritain wrote that the spirituality of French School priests “must consist above all in losing their own subsistence in order to live solely in the Person of Christ, who never ceases to draw them into the unity of the divine Person” (427).

Maritain insisted that Bérulle was seriously mistaken in taking the step from affirming the perfection to which a priest is called, to affirming a perfection of his state of life, making the priest the source of all sanctity in the Church. He quoted Dupuy’s important work on Bérulle and the priesthood, “He [the priest] cannot be defined as a superchristian. For he is not just that. But it is urgent that he be at least that” (190). Dupuy continued, “The priest is united to Christ more than as an instrument, he is conjoined to Him, he is not only in His hand, he is in a sense His hand itself; he is a member of Christ” (195). The basis of the superiority of Bérulle’s sacerdotal state was, as Maritain noted, “the sacerdotal anointing emanates from that of Jesus, who (and this is the thesis dearest to Bérulle) is a priest because of and as a direct consequence of the hypostatic union…” (Maritain, 428).

Maritain believed churchmen were more or less formed by this school in seminary, and were unable to perceive the effects of a vague theology that had escaped rigorous intellectual systemization and therefore any kind of critical review. The result, he noted, was the production of an ideology rather than a theology that continued in his day to have an immense influence.

Vestiges of this vague theology continue today. Impossible to treat fully in this article-length discussion, we can at least explore a few of its major errors.

An essay worth pondering; are there any connections with current Latin opinons regarding the presbyterate and the presbyter acting in persona Christi?

 

Latin Theology of the Presbyterate

Who Is the Priest We Want?
by @JohnCavadini of @McGrathND https://t.co/KzNAOSStNV

— Church Life Journal (@ChurchLifeND) August 21, 2020

X-Ray of the Priest in a Field Hospital

A Latin Perspective

First Things: Go to the Altar by Jane Stannus

The cassocked one answered seriously, “A priest is one who primarily offers sacrifice.”

I'll have to see if there are any dogmatic statements by Latin churches before Trent. From the Concil of Trent, Session XXIII:

CHAPTER I.
On the institution of the Priesthood of the New Law.
Sacrifice and priesthood are, by the ordinance of God, in such wise conjoined, as that both have existed in every law. Whereas, therefore, in the New Testament, the Catholic Church has received, from the institution of Christ, the holy visible sacrifice of the Eucharist; it must needs also be confessed, that there is, in that Church, a new, visible, and external priesthood, into which the old has been translated. And the sacred Scriptures show, and the tradition of the Catholic Church has always taught, that this priesthood was instituted by the same Lord our Saviour, and that to the apostles, and their successors in the priesthood, was the power delivered of consecrating, offering, and administering His Body and Blood, as also of forgiving and of retaining sins. 

 Only now do I understand the implications of what my friend said many years ago, regarding the confusion that arises from having the same word translate  ἱερεύς and  πρεσβύτερος.


1 Peter 2:9 in Greek and Latin (Nova Vulgata).
Priest: sacerdos. Priesthood: sacerdotium.



It is standard for the same word to be used for both Greek terms in English and in Latin.
I don't know when the Latin sacerdos first began to be used to translate for the Greek hiereus and prebyteros. Is this true of all of the languages (especially European) in use in the patriarchate of Rome? It is the case that the English word priest is derived from the Latin presbyter, a borrowing by Jerome from presbyteros. Somewhere along the line, ecclesiastical Latin came to prefer sacerdos over Jerome's presbyter? Even though this goes against its normative translation of Holy Scripture?

wiktionary

wikipedia

From Google:

Origin

And a related blog post by "Hadley Rectory": The Etymology of English "Priest" 

So for these languages (and French, but not necessarily the other Romance languages?) that the word used to translated presybter/presbyteros (and referring to that Holy Order) was also used to translate hiereus, rather than the word for hiereus being used to translate presbyteros as in Latin.

Denzinger (in Latin)

Let us continue with the First Things essay:

“Yes, He offered Himself for us on Calvary nearly two thousand years ago. However, in order for us to come into contact with the merits of His sacrifice, the priest renews it in an unbloody way each day.”

Merit. What Christ merited in His sacrifice are the benefits which are given to us by God. A Tridentine view, derived from Aquinas? (How dominant was this opinion about Christ's merits among the schoolmen?) Does merit imply some sort of exchange or return? Not necessarily but it does entail God giving something on condition of some requirement being satisfied. Can Latin "merit" be harmonized with the soteriology of the early Church? In a somewhat roundabout way, a way that needlessly complicates our understanding of the Divine Agape.

Writing for Rorate Caeli on March 24, Father Richard Cipolla suggested that Catholics’ greatest anxiety at this time of locked churches isn’t missing Mass per se, but rather missing an opportunity to receive Communion, overlooking, he fears, the true nature and importance of the Mass itself. This time of waiting and deprivation offers an excellent opportunity to consider the enormous significance of each Mass—with or without communion of the faithful.

Why is the Mass so important? Well, quite simply, the Mass is the sum and substance of our religion. It is the jewel that blazes at the very heart of Christianity, the unbloody renewal of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, carried out continuously in every time and place until the end of the world. It is the heart of our Christian lives, for to be a Christian, as one of the greatest missionaries of the 20^th century said, is to be one “who offers himself as a victim on the altar with Our Lord.”

To assist at Mass is not merely to attend a commemoration or a memorial of an event that happened long ago. The holy sacrifice is an action that happens now, in the present. The priest, acting in persona Christi, approaches the altar—not a table, for this event is not reducible to a meal—to perform the sacrifice, accomplished in consecrating the bread and wine. When the priest pronounces the words of consecration, Saint Gregory Nazianzus tells us, he “sunders with unbloody cut the Body and the Blood of the Lord, using his voice as a sword.” The faithful assisting at Mass unite their hearts to the priest and unite their lives and sufferings to the Victim, that all may be offered to God together.

Renewal? Is that the same as "repeated"? I think Latins in general prefer a word like "re-presented." It is clear that she does not mean repeated from the second and third paragraph. As for "offering it up," how far does this go back in popular Latin piety?

Can the Mass be properly and efficaciously accomplished in the absence of the faithful? A group of progressives recently argued on blog Pray Tell that it cannot. Questioning the theological basis for Mass without a congregation, they claim that the Second Vatican Council changed the liturgy into a communal and public action of the baptized, which the priest can’t accomplish without them.

But they’re wrong. Vatican II said nothing about private Masses. Rather, we ought to look to Session 22 of the Council of Trent. As we consider the locked doors of our churches in this time of crisis, we can take comfort from one fact: Christ is both priest and sacrifice, and therefore a valid Mass is always efficacious, meaning that it always accomplishes the ends for which it is offered. Its efficacy is not determined by the presence of the faithful; the sacrifice of the Mass, Ott tells us, is the sacrifice of the Church, and in that sense is never “private.” Nor are the faithful needed to offer the sacrifice since it is Christ Himself who offers it through His priest. 

The efficacy of the Mass was so beautifully explained to me by the priest who kindly permitted me to publish the story about the construction worker that it’s worth reproducing his words here:
“The holy Mass,” he said, “is the supreme act of religion that renders to God what is due to Him: adoration, thanksgiving, and propitiation for sin, after which we can then present to Him our petitions.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ perpetuates this supreme act Himself throughout the ages, through the ministry of His priests upon our holy altars. He abases Himself in perfect adoration before the Godhead, acknowledging our utter dependence upon Him. The most perfect praise of the excellence of God above all wells up from His Sacred Heart.

“He offers nothing less than His own Sacred Body and Precious Blood, united to His Soul and Divinity, as the perfect gift of thanksgiving in the Eucharist… by which we render to God fitting and perfect gratitude for all of His goodness and mercy towards us.

“He likewise perpetuates the offering of His Sacred Body and Precious Blood in propitiation for sin. In and through the same sacrifice, Jesus presents our petitions (for we utterly depend on Him for all things)…

Has the act of sacrifice been separated from the Sacrament and its reception by the faithful, so that without the latter, it doesn't matter as it is the former that is more important?

The question is, in sacrifice do we "give" anything to God in thanksgiving, other than the thanksgiving?

Does Orthodox Wiki Reflect the Standard Orthodox View?

Globally? In the English-speaking world?

The OrthodoxWiki entry on Consecration of a bishop:

The consecration of a bishop is the process during which a candidate for the episcopate receives the fullness of the grace of the priesthood through the Sacred Mystery of ordination by the laying of hands (in the Greek: χειροτονία, Cheirotonia) in succession from the Holy Apostles. The office of bishop is the highest clerical rank in the Orthodox Church. While some bishops may receive titles such as Patriarch, Metropolitan, or Archbishop, all bishops are equal and the titles are administrative ranks and marks of dignity and honor. At his consecration, a bishop receives grace not only to perform the Sacred Mysteries but also to bestow the grace of ordination on others.

Is this view the result of Western influence? Or can it be found within the Byzantine tradition itself? How far back does it go?


In the entry for "Presbyter" it is written:

The word 'presbyter' is, in the Bible, a synonym for bishop (Gr: επίσκοπος - episkopos), referring to a leader in local Church congregations. However, since at least the second century, it has been understood as distinct from bishop and synonymous with priest. Its literal meaning in Greek (Gr: πρεσβύτερος - presbyteros) is "elder." 

And later in the article:

The earliest organization of the Christian churches in Palestine was similar to that of Jewish synagogues, who were governed by a council of elders (presbyteroi). In Acts 11:30 and 15:22, we see this collegiate system of government in Jerusalem, and in Acts 14:23, the Apostle Paul ordains elders in the churches he founded. Initially, these presbyters were apparently identical with the overseers (episkopoi, i.e., bishops), as such passages as Acts 20:17 and Titus 1:5,7 indicate, and the terms were interchangeable. 

Shortly after the New Testament period, with the death of the Apostles, there was a differentiation in the usage of the synonymous terms, giving rise to the appearance of two distinct offices, bishop and presbyter. The bishop was understood mainly as the president of the council of presbyters, and so the bishop came to be distinguished both in honor and in prerogative from the presbyters, who were seen as deriving their authority by means of delegation from the bishop. The distinction between presbyter and bishop is made fairly soon after the Apostolic period, as is seen in the 2nd century writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, who uses the terms consistently and clearly to refer to two different offices (along with deacon).

Is this the standard Orthodox understanding of the history of the presbyterate and of the New Testament on the relation between the presbyters and the episkopoi? Unfortunately no sources are given for these points in the article. Are there any historical sources that explain the separation of the two orders and the justification for the presbyterate deriving the power to exercise their office from the bishop?

A Defense That Actually Highlights the Problem

CWR: The shepherds we need—or the shepherds I want? by Fr. Charles Fox
Bishops are vital to the Church’s life and mission, they face incredibly difficult pastoral situations every day, and they deserve to be treated with justice and mercy, just like anyone else.

Just one difficulty with applying this secular approach to criticism of the bishops is that the bishops did not choose their positions of authority. They were chosen. “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you” (Jn 15:16), Our Lord told His first bishops at the Last Supper.

But isn’t it true that ambition helped propel some of our bishops down the path towards the episcopacy? In all probability, yes. But this admission does not change the more fundamental truth that the Church, in the person of the Pope, chooses priests to become bishops. And so it is unjust to think of public criticism as “part of the package” of the life they have chosen for themselves. 
Criticism will always come to every leader, but the critic, especially one who purports to be a devout Catholic, has his own moral responsibility to make sure that both the substance and the form of his criticism are appropriately just and merciful.

The problem? Latin bishops are selected by the bishop of Rome, usually with the assistance of the papal nuncio to the country in question, who solicits suggestions from bishops and others of that country. Do any of the people who are involved in this election process have sufficient personal knowledge of the candidates that if one of the candidates were accused of sexual misconduct, they could state that they believe he is innocent, even if the allegations are "credible"?  And we must also consider that transferring bishops from one see to another happens regularly in the patriarchate of Rome, and outsiders are often installed in the see of a diocese. Let us be clear, the naming of bishops by Rome is not a practice that dates back to Sts. Peter and Paul. (And of course the bishop of Rome should not be naming or even "confirming" non-Latin bishops. He should only acknowledge and perhaps congratulate non-Latin bishops upon their election and consecration/installation.)

What should be happening instead? The local Church should choosing its bishop, whether the naming of candidates be by a select few, the presbyteral synod, or with the involvement of the Christian people as well. At the very least they should be able to affirm or reject candidates based on personal familiarity with the character of the candidate? Should the election of one candidate from the many be by lot? Or by voting? These details do not matter at the moment, as we are nowhere near to restoring this ancient custom to the Latin churches. But we should be making some sort of movement to that custom where possible. If it is not possible because the scale of the local Church is too large, then that needs to be changed. If it is not possible because the people are not sufficiently catechized and cannot judge accurately the character of their presbyters and prominent laymen, then maybe the juridical status of the local Church should be abolished and replaced with a mission territory.

This is not to say that any of the other patriarchates or national churches or what have you are completely free of this problem. But is there any jurisdiction which is as centralized as the patriarchate of Rome in this regard?

A Confusion Regarding the Christian Priesthood

What Catholic clergy and laity have in common: a Gospel mission

There are also important distinctions in the priesthood of all baptized Christians and those who are priests and bishops by virtue of sacramental ordination. The hierarchical priesthood is not simply “more of the same priesthood that the baptized have,” he added. “It’s not a super priesthood somehow completing, displacing or superseding the common priesthood.”

At the same time, there is a “priesthood which marks the whole Church as a priestly people.” This does not imply “that there is an ‘inner Church’ of ‘super Christians’ and that that is the hierarchy,” because that falls into the error of clericalism.

“if baptism confers a priesthood, it means it confers a participation in the sacrifice of Christ which, made present in the Eucharist, makes the Church,” Cavadini said.

“The exercise of this priesthood, then is ordered towards communion, and evangelization, if it is truly an exercise of the baptismal priesthood, is intended to bring people to the encounter with the Risen Lord, which is the incorporation into the eucharistic body, through configuration to Christ’s sacrifice.”

McGrath Center

On the Priesthood

“Recent Challenges of the Ordained Ministry in the Church”

Prof. Dr. Christoph Ohly told the symposium that it was a “gift” for priests to be able to conform their lives to Christ in such a way.

“The gift of the priest’s conformation to Christ consequently becomes his mission, in his style of life, his personal attitudes, his life of prayer as well as in the duties assigned to him.”

In her comments to the symposium, Dr. Marianne Schlosser also noted that the priesthood is not a functional role but a vocation of “personal identification with Christ, the Good Shepherd.”

A celibate life seems to follow as part of this vocation, she added, because it was “Christ’s own way of life, who gave his life for humanity, even unto death.”

“Celibacy is a telling witness of the faithful person’s hope for eternal life. By renouncing marriage and the founding of a family, celibacy wants to foster a generous love for the entire (family of Christ) as well as a personal bond with the Lord,” she added.

But all Christians are personally identified with Christ; why shouldn't they be called to celibacy as well?

Considering Seminary?

via Byz, TX

From 2013

Most of the time, serving the people is not about hearing confessions and serving the Holy Mysteries. It is about keeping the roof from leaking and the people from killing each other. If you can actually get your parishioners to like each other, you will have done a mighty act.

Many priests like to think about implementing ‘ministries’ and ‘parish activities’ and ‘more services’ without first getting to know the people and what they need to grow. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to parish life, so get that delusion out of your head right now. People are different, both as individuals and as communities.

If you must change them before you can love them, then you are not cut out for parish life. You have to love them first, and be willing to love them even if they refuse to change, because most of them will not change and will fight any kind of change tooth-and-nail. You must love them as they are, warts and all. Love is the only thing that really changes people.

Should it incumbent on the priest to be the intermediary between people? Does he play this role in the old world? Perhaps it is part of his calling to reconcile people if there is the possibility to do so -- the Beatitudes. But this is incumbent upon every Christian in that community, as a part of fraternal charity. It is also incumbent upon them to pass and enforce those rules that make communal life possible. In so far as the parish is an instantiation of the local community, if not wholly identical to it in its members, then the priest may be a spiritual father but politically he is no different from any other (male) member of that community, who also share responsibilities and authority, even, with respect to that community.

For Latin bishops and priests, they must be very clear as to what the precepts of the Natural Law, as distinguished to opinions they may have regarding political life, whether those are truly theological opinions, or opinions taken from liberalism.

Theology of Presbyterate/Episcopate

MASCULINITY AND THE LITURGY by Fr. Thomas Loya

If the priest acts in persona Christi, how does he strengthen the "mystical understanding of his husbandhood and fatherhood"? Do presbyters participate in Christ's role as Bridegroom/Husband for the Church as the Mystical Bride? Not directly but as intermediaries or representatives of Christ who teach and lead, subordinate to Christ and the Holy Spirit. But in what way is Christ analogous to the human husband? Who would claim that Christ and the Church share some sort of egalitarian or even a complementarian relationship?