The Priesthood Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow preface by George Cardinal Pell
All books are published thanks to the generosity of the supporters of the Catholic Truth Society
Cover image: Aloysius O’Kelly (1853-1936), Mass in a Connemara Cabin, 1883. Oil on canvas. L.14780. On loan from the people of St Patrick’s, Edinburgh and the Trustees of the Archdiocese of St Andrew’s and Edinburgh. Photo © National Gallery of Ireland. All rights reserved. First published 2022 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 42-46 Harleyford Road, London SE11 5AY. Tel: 020 7640 0042. © 2022 The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society. www.ctsbooks.org ISBN 978 1 78469 744 0
CONTRIBUTORS: Bishop Mark Davies attended the University of Durham and trained for the priesthood at Ushaw College. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Salford, and held various posts in that diocese before being consecrated as coadjutor bishop of Shrewsbury in 2009. He is currently the Eleventh Bishop of Shrewsbury. Bishop Philip Egan studied classics at Kings College London, and trained for the priesthood at Allen Hall seminary and subsequently at the Venerable English College, Rome. He holds a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. Ordained a priest for the Diocese of Shrewsbury, he is currently the Eighth Bishop of Portsmouth. Father John Hemer is a Mill Hill Missionary, who studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, from where he gained a Licence in Sacred Scripture. He has worked as a missionary in Pakistan, Kenya and Uganda, and has taught at seminaries in Uganda and in England. He is currently a full-time lecturer and member of formation staff at Allen Hall seminary in London, and is a well-known retreat giver, who has given retreats in three continents and many countries. The Reverend Doctor Andrew Pinsent holds a first-class degree in Physics and a D. Phil in high-energy physics from Merton College, Oxford. He studied for the priesthood at the Venerable English College in Rome, and holds three degrees in philosophy and theology from the Gregorian University. He is currently research director for the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. Father Richard Whinder studied history at Kings College London, and subsequently trained for the priesthood at the Venerable English College in Rome. He holds a Licence in Dogmatic Theology from the Gregorian University. A priest of the Archdiocese of Southwark, he is currently Parish Priest of Holy Ghost in Balham.
CONTENTS Preface: Cardinal George Pell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 What is a Priest?: Fr Andrew Pinsent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 “A god who makes gods” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 The Spirituality of the Priesthood: Bishop Mark Davies, Bishop of Shrewsbury . . . . . . . . . . 21 Bishop Richard Challoner – a good shepherd for difficult times: Fr Richard Whinder . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Inspiration from history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Challoner in context: Bishop Bonaventure Giffard . . . . . . . . . 40 Bishop Challoner’s early life and ministry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Challoner’s literary work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Challoner as Vicar Apostolic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Bishop Challoner’s Achievement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 A living legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 The Priest and the Liturgy: John Hemer, MHM . . . . . . 55
The physicality of the Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 The Nuptial Nature of the Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 The Mass is not First and Foremost Our Worship, but Christ’s . 67 The Divine Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 The Catholic Priest in Today’s Context: Bishop Philip Egan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Post-Modern Culture: Secular yet Ambiguous . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 The New Apostolic Age: Depth not Breadth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Some Suggestions for Priestly Lifestyle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Concluding Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5
PREFACE In 2001 I was asked to give an important address on Catholic life today and a title referring to our post-Christian situation was suggested to me . Initially I agreed, but my closest advisor objected . He was correct . I don’t do “post-Christian” . It is not an accurate word to describe Britain or the United States or Australia; not even New Zealand, where the situation is pretty grim . Bishop Egan points out that forty-eight per cent of the population of the United Kingdom are “nones”, but that still means a majority (almost) belong to some religious tradition . Since I was a student in Oxford more than fifty years ago, I have believed that England is more secular than Australia, where in the 2016 census 30 .1 per cent stated that they belonged to no religion. This figure is greater than the 22.6 per cent of Australians who described themselves as Catholics . My Anglican friends in particular disputed my conclusion, mindful of the Queen and the Established Church and of course in all these countries Sundays, Easter and Christmas are public holidays . However, I am not sure that the Church in Australia is as strong as the Church in England . Our starting point must be that as Catholics in our heavily secular and sometimes hostile societies we are here and we are here to stay . We are not going anywhere and neither do we propose to remain silent . In this preface I pay tribute to the underlying strengths of English Catholicism while acknowledging the erosion and the difficulties. I am not a bit surprised that Pope Benedict was similarly impressed . Any Church community that can muster five hundred priests to sign a manifesto supporting the New Testament teachings on marriage and Communion has still to be in the game . And this is far from the worst of times for Catholics in Britain’s post-Reformation history . 7
The Priesthood - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
This small book, The Priesthood: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, is particularly welcome, because it accurately maps the nature, and acknowledges the crucial role, of the ministerial priesthood in our prosperous, chaotic society . The Catholic Church must be sacramental and that requires priests, in every possible scenario . Unfortunately, not too many of us will manage to become “humble and holy, orthodox, creative and courageous”, but we must be led and encouraged towards these goals . We need to be provoked to meditate on and evaluate our role and our situations . We are called to practise the two great loves: the service of our people and the adoration of the One True God and of his Son . There is no priesthood without godliness . Father Andrew Pinsent has given us a provocative, somewhat shocking, definition of the priest, drawing heavily on the teaching of the French priest St John Eudes, and the established traditions which speak of human godliness . “A priest is a god who makes gods out of his neighbours, to the glory of the Father, in the person of the Son, and in the communion of the Holy Spirit .” The definition recognises the importance of the first of the two great commandments, is Christocentric and certainly compatible with Bishop Mark Davies’ insistence on the importance of adoration and Eucharistic prayer in the daily life of the priest, but it does not capture the need for humble service, and for healing; it does not capture the awareness of priests that they are vessels of clay, wounded and generally don’t feel in any way godly . I am uneasy about adding to the confusion in an age tempted to pantheism, which talks of Mother Earth and ignores the cruelty of nature . We do not need any more Pachamamas . Would Elijah approve? We are also tempted to reduce priests to being social workers or less important civil servants. Father Pinsent’s definition brilliantly jolts us towards God and should contribute to both our meditation, dialogue and “critical conversations” inside and outside the believing communities . 8
Preface
Bishop Challoner is a suitable eighteenth century model in many ways through his encouragement of popular piety and his many writings. Under the pressure of events the Church could continue to decrease, but I have no enthusiasm for German elitism. This is not compatible with the faith of the Irish working class diaspora, which once provided most of our bedrock, even in Britain. We should pray for the success of the USA Catholics as they strive to maintain popular Catholicism. In 1930, at Evelyn Waugh’s conversion, he claimed that the alternatives were Christianity or chaos. This is still the case. The secularists are wreckers of individuals and of families and the wider community. Christianity can heal many of the wounds of yesterday and today and tomorrow. It can provide meaning in our fretful void. Catholic priests will always be essential in this enterprise. Cardinal George Pell 11th January, 2022
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WHAT IS A PRIEST? Fr Andrew Pinsent INTRODUCTION
Some dear colleagues, who are also old friends, have asked me to contribute to this worthy volume on the priesthood . In particular, they have asked me to contribute a chapter that addresses the question, “What is a priest?” This question at least has to be answered, one would think, as a prerequisite for addressing any other question or issue about the priesthood . I think I understand why they have asked me to do this . The first reason is that, as a physicist, philosopher and theologian, I care a good deal about getting definitions right and have some appreciation of the difficulty of achieving this task. For example, I know that Aristotle spent at least the first six books of his Metaphysics enquiring into the nature of this discipline, showing how hard it is to define certain matters, especially those that deal with first principles. As another example, I know that the International Astronomical Union in 2005 proposed a new definition of the word “planet”, one that remains controversial in part for its exclusion of Pluto . What the astronomers were trying to do was to provide a definition that does not merely describe a class of objects, but which also captures everything that one wants to treat as a member of the class, no more and no less, and ideally in a parsimonious way, using as few words as possible . In defining any word, including “priest”, this is the objective one wants to attain . The other reason that I think I have been asked to write this chapter is that the question, “What is a priest?” is extremely difficult. One reason is that questions about the priesthood overlap with all kinds of other questions that have become controversial, such as “What is a Christian?” and “What is the 11
The Priesthood - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
goal of the Christian life?” I encountered this controversy quite early at seminary when I naively told a liberally-inclined student who was more advanced in his training that I was training to be a priest for the salvation of souls . This student gave me a peculiar look and told me that I had a very strange way of talking, or at least, I said to myself later, it was clearly strange to him . When the goal of the Christian life, namely salvation, has become a “strange” thing to talk about, it also becomes difficult to define the meaning of being priest, and this difficulty was manifested in the lack of discussion of this topic during my seven years of training . The seminary staff and teachers at the pontifical university where I trained had quite a lot to say about the priesthood, but I don’t recall them ever addressing the meaning of the priesthood directly, even though a few gave me good teaching indirectly by their example . Moreover, although one might be tempted to treat the problem of finding a definition as one more example of contemporary confusion, this problem is not specific to the period after the Second Vatican Council . My own father, who spent a fruitful two years in junior seminary in the 1950s, related to me a surprisingly similar experience . At one point during his time at the seminary, the students were discussing the question of the meaning of the priest . They did reach an agreement that a priest could not be reduced to a secular role, like a religious social worker, but they struggled to articulate a positive answer to the question, “What is a priest?” Hence the problem of defining the priest is scarcely new . This difficulty might seem strange given that so much is written about priests and the priesthood . What about the contemporary Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC)? The Catechism devotes sixty-five paragraphs to the Sacrament of Holy Orders (CCC 1536-1600) covering all kinds of topics, including the reason for this sacrament being called “Orders”, the sacrament in the economy of salvation, the three degrees of the sacrament, and the correct celebration of this sacrament and its effects . 12
What is a Priest?
One clear idea that emerges is that of the priest acting “in the person of Christ” (CCC 1548-1551) . In my judgement, however, almost everything written in these paragraphs would be better categorised as descriptions rather than a succinct definition, or else is a definition about secondary matters, such as the number of degrees of the sacrament of orders . As far as I can tell, there is nothing corresponding to a definition that expresses the principal goal or goals of the priesthood, encompassing everything one wants to encompass, no more and no less . To find a suitable form of words, it is necessary to cast a broader net in terms of source material . Faced with these challenges I prayed for inspiration and embarked on some wide-ranging searches . I eventually came across a passage by St John Eudes (1601-1680), a French priest who was the founder of both the Order of Our Lady of Charity in 1641 and Congregation of Jesus and Mary in 1643, and who may yet be declared a Doctor of the Church . He was commended by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 for his apostolic zeal in the formation of priests and, as it happens, my birthday also falls on his feast day, so I tend to notice him . I found the following description, initially on the internet but confirmed by checking a scan in Google Books of his original text, Le mémorial de la vie ecclésiastique, (1681) . On page 24, St John writes that a priest is ‘a god who makes gods (deus deos efficiens)’ .1 In writing these initially shocking words, he is citing the fourth century Church Father St Gregory Nazianzen, an actual Doctor of the Church, adding further weight to its authority . St John goes on to add a good many justifications and qualifications. He notes, for example, that all Christians are called to be gods on Earth, citing John 10:34, but priests have this privilege in particular because a holy priest is a “saviour and another Christ”, taking the Master’s place on earth, and he exercises divine power to bring God down upon the altar at the 1
Jean Eudes, Le mémorial de la vie ecclésiastique (Chez Remy le Boullenger, 1681), 24 .
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The Priesthood - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to forgive sin, and to communicate sanctifying grace, forming God in the hearts of the faithful and giving the Holy Spirit to their souls . In other words, a priest exercises divine authority and power to help nurture those who are themselves called to become adopted sons and daughters of God . On these grounds, the work of a priest can indeed be summed up by saying that he is a god who makes gods . “A GOD WHO MAKES GODS”
The phrase “a god who makes gods” has many promising characteristics as not merely a description but also a definition of a priest . First, the phrase is short and memorable, which is especially important at a time in which the culture of the Church in general is suffering from excessive and almost indigestible verbiage . As a bonus, as noted above, the phrase will probably strike most people as being somewhat shocking, adding to its power and memorability . Second, the phrase highlights the divine dimension of the priest’s being and work, and hence resists any reduction to a secular and worldly interpretation, addressing the concerns of many, past and present . Third, at least by implication, the phrase underlines a Catholic understanding of salvation . On this account, our goal is not simply to become slightly better human beings or even to be freed from sin, but to become adopted children of God in the glory of heaven, able to worship God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit . On the other hand, this phrase also has some drawbacks if it is to be treated as a self-standing definition, that is, read in isolation from the context of St John Eudes’ work . For instance, the words do not include any mention of the persons of the uncreated God, the Trinity, and, without considerable additional formation, the connotations of being described as a god can be misleading, to put it mildly . The natural sense of being described as a god highlights power and being the recipient of admiration and even wrongful worship, as nearly happened to Paul and Barnabas during their apostolic ministry (Acts 14:11-13) . 14
What is a Priest?
The Catholic supernatural sense of being a god, as inspired by the ministry of Jesus Christ, highlights rather different and counterintuitive connotations, such as humility, love, service, and sacrifice. In addition, of course, a Christian can only ever be an adopted child of God, becoming a co-heir of Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son, by God’s own gift . In his own work, St John Eudes is able to surround the core statement with qualifications and justifications to safeguard it from such dangers. Abstracted from this context, however, these words might prove to be less than ideal in practice . Consistent with what I have written above, I want to keep to a minimum the total numbers of words in any final definition, but I think St John’s compact statement needs to be expanded slightly to make a reasonably self-contained and complete definition. The first modification I propose is to include the specifically Catholic understanding of the uncreated God as the proper context for being and making “gods”. As a first iteration, I propose the following: A priest is a god who makes gods, to the glory of the Father, in the person of the Son, and in the communion of the Holy Spirit . This modified statement has the advantage of including the Trinitarian context of becoming gods, expressed in a way that parallels traditional formulations of the Trinity, as well as the statement “in the person of the Son,” which is the principal reference to the divine in contemporary descriptions of the priesthood, such as CCC 1548-1551 . A second modification I propose is to clarify the task in terms of the persons to be divinised, starting with the question of why we need priests if we have Jesus Christ himself . This challenge echoes the old Protestant accusation against the sacrifice of the Mass, namely that the sacrifice of Christ is surely sufficient for us. One response I would give comes from Rosalind Moss, a former Jew who became a Catholic and later a nun, Mother Miriam, 15
The Priesthood - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
when she found an answer to this accusation . Her answer, which I heard on one of her recordings, was in the form of a story . Imagine a mother who is making a cake when her little daughter asks if she can help . The mother could refuse because she is sufficient for making the cake, but she might instead set up a small bowl and ingredients so that her daughter can work beside her . If we take seriously the notion of becoming children of God, we should expect to love with God what God loves, and to sacrifice with God what God sacrifices, which is the heart of the Mass . The closeness of this alignment with God has a parallel with another closeness that seems specific to the work of the priest, namely the closeness of priest and people . The priest brings or restores the salvation of Jesus Christ to particular persons, especially and most frequently through the sacraments of Baptism, the Eucharist, and Confession . The Trinity does not love each person simply as a member of a genus, humanity, but as particular persons such as Mary, Peter, John and Thomas, including cases in which the person fails to respond, such as Judas . And the drama of salvation for each individual person is also personal and particular . This particularity can be seen in the fact that Jesus makes his followers into friends, and all true friends are particular . The priests of Jesus Christ extend this salvation across space, time and diverse cultures, but its application is always ultimately to particular persons, such as the freeing of particular persons from sin in the sacrament of Confession . These considerations prompt me to make a further modification to the draft definition of a priest, and it seems appropriate to make use of the term “neighbour” . Although the impact of a priest may extend far beyond his own parish in time and space, as evidenced by the fact that we can still read letters of the apostles, the persons to whom we minister as priests are typically close to us, usually as parishioners, and the operation of sacraments requires physical proximity . 16
What is a Priest?
In addition, the word “neighbour” is, of course, hallowed by Jesus Christ, in the second great command he highlights, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (e .g . Mark 12:31; Matthew 22:39) and especially his parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), which can also be interpreted, in the spiritual sense, as describing the merciful work of the priest . Communion with the Holy Spirit is also, I have argued extensively elsewhere, second-personal, implying a closeness that is expressed well by the term “neighbour” . In light of these considerations, I therefore propose a further small modification to the definition of a priest to give the following, A priest is a god who makes gods out of his neighbours, to the glory of the Father, in the person of the Son, and in the communion of the Holy Spirit . This definition remains relatively short, but does it fulfil one criterion of a good definition, namely covering everything that one wants to treat as a member of the class, no more and no less? One possible counter-example is Baptism . The opening paragraph of the Code of Canon Law on the topic of Baptism states that by Baptism persons are born again as children of God (CAN 849) . The minister of Baptism, who is ordinarily a priest, can, however, also be a deacon or “any person with the requisite intention” in cases of necessity (CAN 861§2) . Given that Baptism can therefore be conferred by anyone, and that Baptism makes gods, is the definition above too broad for defining a priest? In response, I think it is more accurate to say that emergency Baptism is a particular action of the priesthood of all believers (CCC 1546-7). On this account, the definition is not too broad .
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CONCLUSION
To conclude, I am pleased to repeat my final definition: A priest is a god who makes gods out of his neighbours, to the glory of the Father, in the person of the Son, and in the communion of the Holy Spirit . This definition captures the key elements of the priesthood and is short enough to be memorable . If someone can produce something better, with a comparable number of words, I would love to see it .
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