Tag: Priests

West Point Seminaries

The seminary of the New York Archdiocese, St. Joseph’s Seminary, is located in the Dunwoodie neighborhood of the City of Yonkers; hence it’s nickname, Dunwoodie.
   Established in 1896, it had once been referred to as the West Point of seminaries. West Point, being, of course, where the United States Military Academy was located.
   What would a seminary be like if it was really modeled after West Point?
   These thoughts danced through my head during a recent visit to the West Point Visitors Center with its striking exhibitions about the Military Academy’s history, contemporary status, and what in a seminary might be called its “spirituality”.
   The exhibition area proudly displayed the mission statement of the academy:

To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the Nation as an officer in the United States Army.

   Change a few words, and it could serve as a mission statement for a seminary too, since the seminary also is meant to be a place where (the church’s) “officer corps” are educated, trained, and inspired.
   The seminary graduate also is commissioned (ordained) as a leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Church and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to his Diocese, Eparchy, or Order.
   In the Military Academy, the student body is not like that of other colleges; it is referred to and treated as a “Corps of Cadets”. The cadets are educated, trained, and inspired as a collaborative group, not as elite individuals.

   This means that shared responsibility and teamwork characterize every aspect of their experience. Like the Military Academy, the seminary is not meant to be a place for individuals to pursue their personal and individual goals and advancement.
   The cadet experience includes the equivalent of military basic training and more, since their training continues over the course of four years.
   Although seminaries usually do not have physical training as such, they traditionally had some rigorous demands and discipline with a tightly scheduled day that included when to arise, meditate, pray, eat, attend class, study, recreate, speak or be silent, be indoors or outdoors, and sleep.
   The defining values of Duty, Honor, Country that are esteemed at West Point are its strength. The academy trains and tests men and women for leadership.
   The seminary’s traditional strength usually has been more quality philosophical and theological education and less its developing of “esprit de corps”.
   Training for leadership in country or church is not like running for office. It involves subordinating one’s personal desires and advancement to the common good, seeking to serve, not to be served.
   However this doesn’t mean unthinkingly conforming and blind obedience. Professional excellence involves critical thinking and honest communication as well.
   The West Point Visitors Center and nearby Museum exhibitions trace the history and development of the academy and even such things as the nature of warfare itself. They effectively explain, educate, and inspire.
   West Point is a good model for a seminary!


26 September 2021

           

“Courageous Priest Speaks The TRUTH…”

A few days ago I received an email asking my opinion of its attached video entitled “Courageous Priest Speaks The TRUTH About Joe Biden and Kamala Harris”.
I played the priest’s homily. My reaction to it was mixed. It was calm, measured, carefully developed. It was divided into two segments. The first about belief, teachings, and Christian responsibility I thought was very sound and solid. The second was a denouncement of the Catholic Joe Biden.
My opinion is, whether you sympathize with the priest’s point of view or not, that a direct and detailed criticism of one or another particular candidate is not an appropriate topic for a priest’s homily.
At college, which was a challenging time for me in my late teens, one thing I learned and learned to agree with was the “policy”, so to speak, of the educational program: “We’re here to teach you how to think, not what to think.”
That’s what I try to do. I don’t always succeed, but I try to call attention to the words of scripture, the teachings of Jesus, and the ever developing teachings of the Church and challenge my listeners or readers to consider them and make judgements that are consonant with them—but I try to avoid offering them any specific conclusions or advice.
I think this is the appropriate role of clergy—up to and including the pope! We should be teachers and preachers who try to persuade and lead people to what we believe is good and right—but we shouldn’t be making rules and imposing penalties (although this has often been attempted).
Every person is unique. No one is completely and totally identical with anyone else, even “identical twins”. This means that each of us may face a situation and the need for a decision or course of action that in some respect or other is totally different than any other before.

Of course, since we are not absolutely perfect by nature, we may get it right or we may get it wrong—and our motives may be right or our motives may be wrong.
“Politics is the art of the possible.” Idealists don’t make good politicians. The ideal is always the carrot on the stick—it draws us but we never 100% attain it. There are flaws and failings in every one of us, even when we’re striving to do the right thing.
Personally, I don’t think it’s my role to make a final judgement of anyone—it’s beyond my capabilities. However I can criticize and offer my assessment, for better or for worse of course, of the words they use or write, the effects I perceive them producing, etc.—but not a judgement of their essential worth or value, or goodness or lack thereof.
I don’t think any particular candidate for any particular office is a “saint” or a “devil”. Every candidate, every person, is a blend. We’re tempted to judge that the balance is tilted more one way than another, and that judgement may be right or wrong. Only God knows for sure.
Catholicism is a big tent and there’s room for all kinds, styles, and personalities. Catholics aren’t an army marching in step on parade, eyes left, right, or ahead as the command may be.
We’re more like a herd, wandering this way and that. We sometimes fall behind because we’re blindly grazing, sometimes race so far ahead, left, or right that we’re in danger of being separated or lost, and sometimes safely stick to the center where we’re surrounded by our own kind. There the dangers are being squeezed too much or the majority’s pulling you from the way!


25 October 2020

Pastoral Burnout

When I was assigned by the Archbishop of New York in 1959 as a Parochial Assistant to an old established large Manhattan parish, I was the “3rd assistant”. The assigned clergy staff consisted of the pastor, an elderly monsignor; the “1st assistant”, an older priest, but not yet old enough to be a pastor; the “2nd assistant”, a somewhat younger priest; and me, the junior, only one year ordained.
There also were an elderly Italian and a younger Cuban assistant priest in residence, having been engaged by the pastor.
We also had live-in lay staff: a cook, a waitress, and a maid. There was a separate staircase in the rear of the rectory that led to the servants’ quarters. The idea of a lay staffer engaged for other than housework—e.g., a secretary for processing mail, preparing baptismal certificates, attending to the parish office—was unthinkable.
The pastor delegated responsibilities to his priest assistants and clearly was in charge; however the first assistant assisted him as a sort of executive officer.
There were many Sunday Masses offered to accommodate the preferences and number of the parishioners; each priest would celebrate one, and occasionally two (utilizing a special permission or faculty to binate granted him by the archbishop)
That same Manhattan parish today has one priest assigned to its care as pastor. He speaks English and Spanish. He lives a solitary life in a rectory that once accommodated nine persons.
Priests like him often celebrate two or more Masses on weekdays and three or four on Sundays. They do their best to recruit part-time priest assistants from the dwindling pool of available clergy.
Their myriad responsibilities include fund-raising and the management of a complex and declining physical plant.

No matter how committed, holy, and dedicated they may be, most share a common affliction—and it’s not their fault. It’s commonly called “burnout”.
The term was first used in psychological circles in 1974 to describe a group of symptoms resulting from long-term, unresolved, work-related stress due to excessive work demands.
Burnout involves emotional and physical exhaustion, and may lead to headaches, sleeplessness, irritability and feelings of negativism and cynicism, reduced feelings of personal accomplishment, and depression.
Burnout is often associated with work overload in situations of downsizing, where fewer staff members are required to realize the same organizational goals. Other causes of burnout include:
– Not enough time to accomplish what needs to be done.
– Lack of communication or support from one’s manager or immediate superior.
– Lack of clarity about what one is supposed to be doing and priorities.
– Unfair treatment regarding, e.g., evaluation, promotion, compensation.
– Working too much without enough time for socializing or relaxing
– Lack of close, supportive relationships.
– Perfectionist tendencies, the need to be in control, and reluctance to delegate.
In “Network,” a 1976 satirical film about the television industry, a frustrated newscaster invites his listeners to open their windows and shout, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
A pastor may feel like that sometimes, but he’s not likely to do it—and it’s no solution.


29 September 2019

Vanishing Clergymen

Fifty-two years ago, two years after the conclusion of Vatican Council II, an article by Msgr. Ivan Illich was published in The Critic magazine. It was entitled “The Vanishing Clergyman”.
Like much of Illich’s reflections, talks, and publications, it was way ahead of its time, almost prophetic. It was also startling, controversial, and criticized by very many of its readers.
It can’t be summarized any more than a few bars of only one of its melodies can summarize a concerto. Illich’s clear, tightly-packed, and well-organized exposition is a meal no slight tasting can fully imagine.
From the moment I first read this article it was unforgettable. Re-reading it now, I marvel at how prescient it was and find new depths of insight and meaning in it.
Some have misunderstood Msgr. Illich, thinking him to be an eccentric genius, a wild man whose biased extremism was destroying the church—but, his thought and his work faithfully echoed the spirit of John XXIII in convoking the second Vatican Council and of Paul VI in reconvening it and patiently and perseveringly guiding its implementation.
A brilliant thinker and reader of the signs of the times, Msgr. Illich had little patience with head-in-the-sand reactions to them. He spared no punches in suggesting courses of action to address them from a prospective of deep faith.
Of course, he also knowingly and intentionally wanted to rattle his readers out of their lethargy and hesitation—e.g., the striking title of his essay (which did focus, in particular, on ministry)
It has taken half a century for many of the analyses, ideas, and proposals he advanced, long treated as marginal and extreme, finally to start becoming matters of serious mainstream consideration.

Here are a few excerpts of his thoughts (their selection reflects my own bias):
– the Church’s institutional bureaucracy is in need of radical structural reform;
– the relationships between sacramental ministry and full-time personnel, between ministry and celibacy, and between ministry and theological education need to be re-examined;
– the post-conciliar growth of the Vatican is leading to an ungovernable bureaucratic maze, overwhelmingly staffed by clerical specialists, members of the aristocracy of the only feudal power left in the Western world;
– in the entire Church, a clergy survives partly because priestly service at the altar is united with clerical power and privilege;
– the Church needs men deeply faithful, living a life of insecurity and risk, free from hierarchical control, working for the eventual “dis-establishment” of the Church from within;
– the era of religious congregations may be over . . . an analogous movement is at work among the clergy;
– an adult layman, ordained to the ministry, will preside over the Christian community of the future. The ministry will be an exercise of leisure rather than a job;
– the current ecclesiastical imagination is still inadequate for defining this new function—the lay priest;
– the union of the clerical state, holy orders, and celibacy in the life of the Church has confused the understanding of their individual realities; (and above all)
– the Spirit, continually re-creating the Church, can be trusted.


9 June 2019

Standing Ready and Waiting

“How do you like being retired,” is a question often asked of me, and one I find difficult to answer. For better or for worse, being retired has been hard—harder, in a way, then any work assignment I ever had before.
I always embraced whatever was asked of me as a priest and whatever assignment I received. Our spiritual formation stressed this, to accept whatever was asked of us by religious superiors as the will of God.
But, humanly speaking (how else does one speak!) the change from one day to the next, from exercising a significant role in many people’s lives and bearing multiple responsibilities to an almost total absence of responsibilities is a challenging kind of “freedom”.
It’s also wasteful. Curiously, the notion of retirement was introduced in a time in which there was a relative abundance of priests and where the priest usually served until death. By the time it began to be implemented there was a newer situation of increasing scarcity of priests in ministry.
In some ways, the legislation of our contemporary U.S. civil society is more nuanced than our canonical practice. No one can be retired involuntarily merely and solely because of chronological age; termination of employment requires adequate cause—e.g., poor performance, substantial diminished or in-capacity, violation of rules, etc. . .
Of course, the retired priest is retired in the sense that he is not given any assigned responsibility (job) by his religious superiors; however he freely may seek and negotiate his services on a voluntary basis with a local parish or religious institution.
If one’s work is only a job, retirement may be welcomed. If one’s work has become one’s life, retirement may be a kind of death.

There is a dual aspect to the vocation and life of a priest: to be a man of the Church and a man of God.
The man of the Church, the employee entrusted with and exercising important responsibilities in the ecclesiastical institution, can retire or be retired.
The man of God, the servant of the Lord bearing witness of love in the midst of the world and the community of his disciples, cannot retire or be retired.
God may use our work to achieve his purposes, but all our plans, projects, and strivings are not necessary to the great plan of his providential love and mercy.
John Milton wrote a very beautiful sonnet on his blindness. For me, it’s also a moving spiritual reflection on being retired:

When I consider how my light is spent,
E’re half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide:
“Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best. His State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.”


19 May 2019

Military and Ecclesial Service

“Serviceman”—for convenience, I’m using only masculine nouns and pronouns—usually means a person who is a member of the armed forces or someone whose work is to repair or service something. (Also, sometimes domestic workers—e.g., butlers or maids—are said to be “in service”.)
The military aspect of the definition of serviceman is an interesting metaphor for the service of a clergyman.
First, in both military and ecclesiastical service, there’s a distinct difference between the serviceman (clergyman) and the civilian (layman). The serviceman’s role is to protect and defend the entire civilian population, and, of course, the serviceman leaves civilian life when he enters military service.
Also both the military and the clergy have a hierarchical organization of authority. The military distinguishes enlisted personnel and non-commissioned and commissioned officers. Shifting the metaphor a little, this has some similarities to the ecclesiastical distinctions of laity, non-ordained ministers, and ordained clergy.
However, the analogies break down in one significant aspect, the permanency implied by ordination. “Thou art a priest forever” has implications that have some similarities with the military but which are conceptually fundamentally different.
A serviceman can have a commitment of temporary service or life service; he can be discharged, honorably or dishonorably, or retired. Some categories of retired servicemen may be reactivated in cases of national emergency.
An ordained clergyman cannot make a commitment of temporary service, only life. He never is “discharged” but dispensed from his commitment to celibacy, “reduced” to the status of layman, and forbidden, except in cases of dire emergency, from exercising the sacramental power and authority of his status as an ordained clergyman.

Interestingly, members of religious orders, unlike clergy, freely can make temporary or permanent commitments of service (vows). It is possible, even for religious personnel with solemn or permanent vows, to be entirely dispensed or freed from them.
Mercifully, the practice of dispensation, of authorization of an exception to a general rule, exists. However, it sort of begs the question if it used increasingly; it can reach the point where the very appropriateness of the general rule is called into question.
This isn’t necessarily bad. Although it could be interpreted as a growing laxity, it also could reflect development in the understanding of the matter in question.
What would ecclesiastical service be like if it had some of the practices of the military regarding its commissioned officers? For instance,
– allowing fixed, and renewable, terms of service;
– making regular formal performance evaluations (using some of performance factors of the military—e.g., job knowledge, fitness, communication skills, leadership, bearing, judgment, dedication, responsibility, loyalty, discipline, integrity, moral courage, selflessness);
– adopting a clear, stated promotion policy and procedure;
– having a separation policy providing for honorable and dishonorable discharges in addition to retirement;
– utilizing, in appropriate circumstances, a quasi-public judicial procedure like the military court-martial.
Older ecclesiology spoke of two perfect societies, church and state. There are things the state could teach the church!


5 May 2019

Melchizedek . . . Priest Forever?

What do we know about Melchizedek? The first reference to him in the Bible is in the Book of Genesis (14:18):

Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God Most High. He blessed Abram with these words:
“Blessed, be Abram by God Most High,
The creator of heaven and earth;
And, blessed be God Most High,
who delivered your foes into your hand.”
Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

The second reference is in Psalm 110:4:

The Lord has sworn and will not waver:
“You are a priest forever in the manner of Melchizedek.”

The other scriptural references are found in the Letter to the Hebrews. Its writer was trying to describe Jesus and his death in an intelligible and thought-provoking way for a Jewish Christian reader in terms of the Jewish high priest in his role of offering atonement sacrifice.
But, by Mosaic law Jesus could not have been a priest, since he was not even of the tribe of Levi much less an Aaronic priest.
That is why the writer invoked the figure of Melchizedek, explaining that Jesus, as did Melchizedek, had a greater priesthood, for Abraham himself, great ancestor of all the Hebrew tribes, received Melchizedek’s blessing and placed offerings in his hand.
Over the centuries, this image of Jesus the priest has had a perduring influence on the Church. The entire Christian people, and especially its leaders, were thought of as a priestly people, sharing in that eternal priesthood of Jesus which was “in the manner of Melchizedek.”

Gradually this notion of the leaders of the Church as priests and offerers of Christ’s sacrifice dominated entirely the earlier understanding of them as the overseers and the elders of the Christian communities.
As theology developed and evolved, especially sacramental theology, the “forever” of Psalm 100 was taken to mean not only that the Messiah, Jesus himself, was “a priest forever in the manner of Melchizedek” but also all ordained priests.
The rite of ordination became not only the laying on of hands as a sign of appointment and authorization but also the celebration of the entrance of the person into a special leadership caste with a “forever” aspect.
Sacramental theology described this forever aspect as a permanent “character,” altering the very nature of the ordained person—an ontological change. The priest became thought of as sacred and holy.
This had a lot of challenging long-term implications, even now. Just think, for example, of some questions like these:
– can a priest permanently and irrevocably be removed from office?
– are the acts of his ministry valid even though his personal behavior is sinful?
– is a bishop or religious superior obligated to his care and supervision, no matter what he does, until his death?
Meanwhile, as the concept and nature of priesthood is increasingly being examined, the Melchizedek image still lives on.
There is a traditional Latin hymn still regularly sung to celebrate a priest’s ordination, Tu es sacerdos in aeternum secundum ordinem Melchisedech—You are priest forever in the manner of Melchizedek.


28 April 2019

Elder or Offeror of Sacrifice

The English language is unusually rich—in the sense of having two or more diverse ways to speak of almost anything.
This is due primarily to its drawing from two major sources: the influence of the Latin of its Roman conquerors (and, later, of its Norman French ones) and the Germanic languages of the Anglo-Saxons—plus the lingering influence of Celtic dialects and old Scandinavian languages as well.
But, when it comes to “priest” it’s just the opposite situation. The English language uses one word to express two or more very different meanings.
The English word “priest” has tangled roots: Old English, preost—related to Dutch, priester—from Late Latin, presbyter, from the Greek presbyteros (older), meaning an old man, a senior, an elder.
But, its roots notwithstanding, usually, in English, the word “priest” means not an elder but a person whose function is to offer sacrifices, serving as an intermediary between a god or God and worshipers.
Latin has a word for such a person, not presbyter but sacerdos (one who does sacred [things]). Oddly, English doesn’t. The English language has an adjective, “sacerdotal”, but not an noun—although most Latin-rooted languages do.
Scriptural scholarship has called attention to the fact that the early leaders of the local Christian communities, after the time of the apostles, were called elders (presbyters).
As ranking of service and authority gradually developed, the elder (presbyter) was accountable to an overseer (episcopus), a kind of head elder, and assisted by helpers or ministers (the diaconus).
Once Christianity became institutionalized in the Roman Empire as the imperial state religion, it was natural enough to begin to think of its leaders as priests (in the sense of sacerdos) since pagan Rome always had a caste of official priests with such a role.

Besides, the Bible itself lent support to this understanding of local Church leaders as priests (in the sense of sacerdos). Judaism had a religious organization somewhat similar to pagan Rome with the ministerial tribe of Levi and its official Aaronic priests serving under the overall supervision of a high priest.
Other gradual changes were taking place regarding the status and authority of priests.
In pagan Rome and biblical Judaism, the priest always had a certain social status and religious authority. With the decline of the western Roman Empire and the increasing assumption of civil authority in the West by the bishop of Rome, the importance of the ecclesiastical leaders increased.
This was further augmented by the decline of overall education in the West. The majority of literate and somewhat educated people were the ecclesiastics, the clergy. Feudal Western society became stratified into nobility, clergy, and common people.
The development of sacramental theology added another dimension to the perception of the priest. He was not only a spiritual and social leader, a man of learning and superior status; but also by his ordination he was changed entirely—he had become a sacred and holy person, an alter Christus.
As language, theology, and the world around us change and evolve, what do we now mean by priest: presbyter or sacerdos? clergyman or lay? servant or superior? What shapes our understanding: what the word meant to us in childhood? after higher education? in adult life? in old age?
If it’s tricky business being clear what “priest” means nowadays, imagine how much more complicated it is to be one!


21 April 2019

Guru vs. Cleric

In Ethiopia’s ancient Orthodox Church, the traditional way for a young man to prepare to become a priest was to live among a small group of disciples with a wise, holy, and experienced priest. The lifestyle for all was poor indeed: living quarters were often tiny, individual wattle and mud huts; classrooms, the shade of large trees.
The disciple — the seminarian — lived no better, if not worse, than his neighbors. Over many years, he learned by heart the words of sacred scripture and the prayers of the liturgy. Finally, when ready, he was ordained and would serve another small village like the one in which he grew up.
Ethiopia’s younger Catholic Church follows Western ways of priestly formation. Candidates for the priesthood live and pray together in the seminary residence of their diocese or religious order. Most attend formal classes at a common philosophy-theology institute for six or seven years after completing their secondary education.
The seminary residences are modest by Western standards, but modern and comfortable by those of rural Ethiopia. A challenge for the newly-ordained Catholic priest is returning to live among the simple people he came from, after becoming used to a more affluent lifestyle during his professional education.
These two different ways of formation with their different emphases could serve as symbols for two different polarities in the life of every priest. There is a dual aspect to priesthood — the priest must be both a man of God and a man of the church.

The very vocation to priesthood has this same dual aspect — the seminarian is called both by God and by the church.
During my college days, I wrestled long and hard with whether God was calling me to be a priest and whether I was good enough for such a job.
Later, in the major seminary, the rector called me to enter the clerical state — the “civil service” of the church — and to orders, culminating in priesthood.
Fidelity to these two calls is a vital tension for the priest. To be a man of God means to be a holy, a “separated” man, not living by or succumbing to worldly values or ways. To be a churchman means to be a public officer of the church with responsibilities of leadership, teaching, and administration.
Faithfulness to the demands of the Spirit may strain the priest’s relations with the community he serves or with ecclesiastical authorities. Conversely, the priest’s solidarity with the local Christian community or ecclesiastical authority may conflict with the promptings of the Spirit.
It’s not an “either-or” but a “both-and” situation. God spare us from a priest who serves people and institutions well, but not the Lord! And, a good, holy priest may become a great saint, but he can’t neglect carrying out effectively the responsibilities of public office in the church.
A priest lives with great expectations — the church’s, the people’s, and the Lord’s.


(Published in
CNEWA World, 28:4, July 2002)

How Priests Came to Be Celibate: An Oversimplification

Once upon a time there was a man of God called Jesus. He announced to the oppressed of his land the good news of the establishment of a revolutionary new order for men and human society. He spoke of this in terms of the establishment of the reign of God in the lives of individuals and among men. He proclaimed this news in his personal style of life and behavior as well as in his conversation, and he practiced what he preached. He was so consistent that he died rather than compromise his commitment of obedience and openness to the will of God and loving service and responsiveness to his fellow men.
Jesus not only provided us with insight, vision, and truth; he not only taught us and displayed a way of life leading to full liberation, maturity, and self-realization as a son of God, but shared with us his own spirit and vitalized our human efforts so as to bring us to a new quality and intensity of life.
During his life, Jesus’ magnetic personality, attractive style of life, and clear, strong teaching won him many friends and admirers (and enemies, too). Gradually he won many disciples; he gave them much attention and concern and asked them to commit themselves to allowing God to reign in their lives and to share with others what they had received from him. In effect, he was promoting a total restructuring and renewal of the whole of human society; the implications of his teaching were gradually appreciated in later years.
In the land where Jesus lived, some of his coreligionists were prompted to live quiet and peaceful lives in community at the edge of the desert. Even though they sprang from a tradition of esteem for virility and family, some of them were inclined to seek their fulfillment and creative self-expression in a special commitment to God and community service. Perhaps their motives were partly rooted in quirks of personality, in the pressures of their troubled times, as well as in the insistent demands of the Lord himself. Who can say, whether in this or in similar situations?
In the culture of the ancient Eastern lands many traditions had been developing, particular to and distinctly of those times and places. For example, in some societies the castration of men was accepted for certain reasons, and eunuchs had special and distinctive roles. One practical task was that of harem attendant; for a man jealous of his many wives a reliable eunuch was a useful collaborator. Eunuchs often held the most prominent administrative and military positions in governments; for a king jealous of his authority and fearful for his throne, a man necessarily without dynastic ambitions was a great help. In the East the curious concept developed of some men becoming eunuchs for the sake of the service of the kingdom.
Jesus himself, of course, was no court official or eunuch; as a matter of fact he never married, although he certainly was a man who loved and was deeply loved. He spoke of an ideal of men committing themselves, as though they were eunuchs, to the service of the kingdom of God, and his life displayed this kind of generosity and strength of purpose.
The disciples of Jesus certainly esteemed a life rooted so deeply in God that it found no time or inclination to marry and raise a family. Not only had they been challenged to this ideal by the teaching and example of Jesus, but their own Jewish and Eastern traditions supported the ideal in some measure. Another influence in their attitude towards marriage and the family was a peculiar and aberrant view of sexuality. Although the Hebrew traditions were reasonable and integral in their concept of man, the Greco-Roman world and culture in which the followers of Jesus multiplied was deeply affected by a philosophy of man overly emphasizing the spiritual, at the price of a gradual disparagement of the corporeal, quality of his nature. Some idealistic men tended to contemn sexuality just as, curiously, others from similar reasons tended to distort and overindulge it.
At any rate, over the years certain distinctive life-styles began to develop among the followers of Jesus, involving a commitment to the single, celibate life. Whether out of an attitude of escapism, a psychological inability to bear with the urban society of the day, a literal acceptance of the Gospel’s counsels, or a deep hunger for uninterrupted attention to God, his designs, and his creation, some men went to the deserts and lonely places to be solitaries.
As their fame grew, they attracted attention, admirers, and followers, and for a while this pattern of solitary life grew and deeply touched the feelings of those who saw in such a style a strength and commitment to God that they were incapable of. Curiously enough, then, these hermits who put themselves on the margin of human society ended with a real social function after all!
Over the years this eremitical style gradually expanded into another: small fraternities or communities of celibates sharing some aspects of their life and work together. This development apparently became consolidated into what came to be known as the “monastic life’. But, in this style several new notions and tendencies were at play. The monastery was first a stable community, and it saw itself at the service of the Lord by the quality of its life and prayer, and at the service of men by witnessing to the possibilities of human association in the Spirit, and by providing an oasis of spiritual refreshment in an increasingly arid world.
Perhaps it was this latter awareness that led to monasteries growing closer to civilized centers; the desert is not so much the wasteland as the wasted human society without the light and life of Christ. At any rate, the monastery soon became a center of civilization, and the community of celibates saw themselves more and more with a responsibility and service to others outside.
Jesus’ original followers saw themselves not only as his disciples and spiritual heirs but as collaborators in his mission. This view sprang not only from the contagious enthusiasm for the kind of life they lived but from the Lord’s own mandate. He had commissioned them all, and particularly his twelve special disciples, to witness to his teaching by word and example and so to spread the kingdom of God among men.
One of the distinctive qualities of the life of Jesus was service. He constantly displayed a disposition to place himself at the service of others, and he held forth to his followers the ideal of total service as the greatest stature of a man. His teaching was that loving service of God and men knows no limits of quality or of quantity; he offered the example of even menial attention to others and of total self-divestment, even to the gift of his own life. In a day when the Messiah was being sought as the King, Jesus revealed him as the Suffering Servant and called on his followers to serve in the same way.
This sense of mandated service and of mission sparked and drove his followers. Not only did they place themselves at the direct service of the Word by their teaching and preaching, but the quality of their lives gave testimony to God’s reign as well. They counseled and consoled one another, prayed and suffered together, shared their possessions and waited upon one another. Loving service became the identifying mark of the early Christian community.
Although all Christians shared the one responsibility for the spreading of the kingdom, each could not do all things. Jesus himself had picked certain men to have a special share of responsibility for the common mission and a particular role of service. Gradually a variety of specialized services or ministries developed in the early Christian community. Some were outward-directed in the sense they involved an approach to Jews and Gentiles who did not know Christ; others were inward-directed and were services of administration, coordination, and organization of the Christian community itself, ranging from presiding at the Eucharist to managing its monies.
From an unconscious blending of several roles and functions—the Old Testament offerer of sacrifice, the proclaimer of God’s will to men, the disciple of Jesus, the apostolic servant, the presbyter-bishop, the presider over the Eucharist—gradually emerged the figure we know as a priest. At first he was a married man or single, and he worked at this priestcraft only sometimes or constantly. But, within a short time, as stable Christian communities flourished, the need for permanent and fully committed persons with public responsibility became felt. Soon the priests and other ministers, married or single, became a kind of class within the Church.
With the establishment of the Christian way as the state religion in the fourth century, Christian communities became legitimate, multiplied, and were a visible presence in the larger society. Their committed workers and leaders took on a certain civil status and authority. In a world whose tradition identified authority civil and sacred, priests and other ministers became public functionaries of a new, Christian society. As the affluence and influence of the Church developed, the inward-directed dimensions of ministry loomed ever more important. Also, as society at large became more Christian, the parameters of civil and ecclesiastical society blended as one, and the outward-directed, apostolic functions of ministry, became more rare. The result of all these changes was the gradual bureaucratization of the ministerial class into a kind of ecclesiastical civil service, a corps of churchmen known as the “clergy”.
A necessary concomitant of this evolution was that the role of the priest gradually merged with that of the priest-cleric; the demands of being churchman pressed upon the root vocation to be a man of God. The Church, of course, is the assemblage of servants of the Lord, but inevitably the Church needs to be served as well. Whether out of a confusion of the Kingdom with the Church, the instrument for its promotion, or whether out of the decay of classical society and the stratification of roles in the Dark Ages, the concept of the clerical priest became a familiar and comfortable one, and he gradually assumed more and more of the responsibilities that once were the prerogative of every Christian.
In spite of this institutionalization of the priest’s role, the functions of the ministry were never conceived of as separate from the person of the minister. Demands were made upon the priest to live a certain quality of life and display a certain degree of holiness appropriate to the dignity and sacredness of his calling and functions. If he held most of the Christian responsibilities in a preeminent way, then he preeminently should be a disciple of Christ. Especially, he should be celibate.
The ideal of celibacy for the priest had a variety of roots. Jesus the one Priest of the new dispensation, never married. Also, the Lord himself counseled celibacy for the sake of the kingdom, and the example of so many religious communities testified to the permanence of this ideal. Beside lesser considerations of a socio-political or economic nature, a major influence on the development of the ideal was the Old Testament concept of a ritual, priestly purity whose spirit was not entirely unrelated to the strange and distorted notions of sexuality and sexual morality that had developed in the West. Celibacy was seen above all else as continence, and continence as an abstention from a necessarily polluting and profoundly worldly desire and behavior. The Hebrew priest, the pagan priest, and preeminently the Christian priest, needed to be a man of God,a man apart, a purified man; accordingly he had to renounce or abstain from sexual behavior.
Another current of influence was the development of the religious order priests. Monasteries had their priests—were they not Christian communities, too? As time went on, because of the esteem for the dignity of the offerer of the Eucharist and the administrator of the sacraments, more and more monks became priests. Another style of priest was developing, closer to its roots as disciple and apostle, and deeply tied to another ideal of celibacy as it had developed in turn from a variety of perceptions and situations—the priest-monk.
The monastic priest paradoxically enough was a layman; that is to say, he first rooted his vocation in the general discipleship of Christ and was not a publicly commissioned leader and civil servant of the ecclesiastical community. But as the monasteries corporately became the prime institutions of the Church, as the roles of service of the monks to the outside community flourished, and as the quality of clerical priests declined, the monastic priests gradually slipped into new roles and a new consciousness. Soon they too were taking on the character of official representatives of the Church, and imperceptibly the ideals of the monastic priest were projected upon the clerical priest. Not only did he need to be continent, but he was expected to have the ideal of religious consecration as well.
From all of this, a still more complex style began to become dominant: the apostolic-clerical-celibate priest that is basically still with us today. In later centuries,. the notions. of religious life took on more apostolic and active dimensions, and common life and a seminary experience of religious community became ideals for the clergy. So, our contemporary inheritance is a blend of many diverse styles, purposes, and institutions with their necessary confusions, tensions, and contradictions. The canonical distinctions between secular and religious clergy and definition of the religious state offer little assistance to separate the tangle.
Today the celibacy of the Catholic priesthood is being widely questioned, yet often enough the questions are posed in semantically meaningless terms. To ask if the “priest” should be celibate is contradictory in itself, since celibacy is part of our very notion of “priest”; what needs to be asked is whether the blending of several institutions over the centuries—each in turn complex and highly evolved—ministry, priesthood, clergy, and religious life, into the present canonical institution of the clerical, celibate minister is necessary or necessarily wise.
The commitment to celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God in its dimension of service and witness is a great and precious gift for the whole church community. Individuals prompted by the Spirit and endowed with this charism may well be selected to preside at the Eucharist and provide other sacramental and magisterial services. But the institutionalized charism of evangelical celibacy is now coming to be more clearly seen as the distinguishing characteristic of religious life, not priesthood as such. The notion of celibacy associated historically with priesthood was more that of cultic purity. In today’s post-Freudian world, such a notion has lost much of its meaning.
In the personal development of his vocation, the religious priest first vows to live by the evangelical counsels and then later receives official ministry from the Church. Curiously, the secular priest first is tonsured and received into the clergy, and then, after several minor ministries are given him, he is asked to pledge celibacy as a condition for being ordained for the service of the diocese. The celibacy asked of him is really a defining condition for permanent entrance into the clerical state, and is more for the service of the Church than of the kingdom.
One of the richnesses of the early Church was the great variety of ministries and gifts of the Spirit so widely distributed in the Christian community. However, the increasing concentration of
Christian responsibility over the centuries in the hands of the clergy necessarily limited the development of the apostolate and produced a distorted and truncated style of Christian lay life. One of the aspects of the renewal of the Church in this century has been the rediscovery of the involvement of every one of its members in the one mission. The growing awareness of the common priesthood of all believers forces the ordained priest more and more to seek the meaning of his particular ministry in the service of the many ecclesiastical institutions to which he may be assigned as staff.
There is a considerable difference between the Lord’s own institution of a special ministry in the Church in the apostles and the much later development of a clergy. The influence of pagan notions of the sacredness of sacerdotal persons and of the authority of priests in society has very much affected the development of structures of ministry in the Church. Perhaps the real challenge today is not so much to explore the relationships between ministry and celibacy as to liberate both these institutions from the constrictions placed on them by the clerical state. What is at stake is a disestablishment of the Church as a religion, and a reestablishment of its true character and mission as an ordered movement and revolutionary ferment within the larger human society.
There is necessarily a tension in the Church between the demands of the Spirit and the maintenance of the human and institutional forms in which the Church subsists at any moment of history. Certainly this tension exists in the life of the priest. From the moment of his first inclination to priesthood he must assess the requisites of the Church and the promptings of the Spirit, and through the whole of his life this dynamic must inevitably persist. The perennial challenge to the whole Church, to the priesthood, and to the individual priest is to maintain a correct balance. There is a need to develop an ideal of priests primarily as men responsive to the Spirit, freely seeking their own fulfillment in loving service. This implies that they will gradually be given the opportunity not only to pursue the kind of ministry that they can best offer but also to choose the style of life—married or celibate for the sake of the kingdom—most suited to their individual personalities, their needs, and their vocations.

(Published in
CONCILIUM, Theology in the Age of Renewal,
8:8, October 1972.
Also published in translation in
the Dutch, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese, and Spanish editions.)