Jesus: Head of his body, the Church
Almost 35 years ago, on Dec. 21, 1963, 1 was ordained a priest.
The ordination took place in St. Pascal Church on Irving Park
Road and Melvina because the pastor, Father T.J. Neckerman, was
able to convince the Vicar General, Bishop Cletus O’Donnell, that
he should give permission for me to come down from Canada, where
I was in seminary, and be ordained at home. The bishop who ordained
me was Bishop Raymond Hillinger, retired from Rockford and living
at St. Mary of Providence Home on Austin Avenue. Eleven months
after my first Mass on the fourth Sunday of Advent, parts of the
Mass began to be said in English.
Along with a changing liturgy, changes in the way priests live
and are perceived have marked the last 35 years. Yet the nature
of the ordained priesthood in the Church is stable and was, in
fact, much clarified in the teaching of Vatican II. The ordained
priesthood makes visible the relation between Christ and his Church,
just as baptism makes visible the relation between Christ and
his Father. By baptism we are incorporated into the life of Father,
Son and Holy Spirit as adopted sons and daughters of God; by baptism
we are, as well, incorporated into the Body of Christ, as members
of his Church. By ordination as a priest or bishop, a man is further
configured to Christ precisely as Head of the Church. The ordained
priest makes Christ’s headship visible so that the Church, head
and members, can act, can celebrate the sacraments, can enjoy
apostolic teaching and government. Without an ordained priest,
the members of Christ’s body constitute a congregation; with an
ordained priest, they form a liturgical assembly.
Like marriage, both baptism and Orders establish relationships
first and only secondarily determine actions. When Orders is spoken
of exclusively as ministry, it is reduced to functionalism and
its significance lost. Since Americans are a practical people,
we often define people in terms of what they do rather than in
terms of relationships; but this is a mistake, evidently so in
the case of marriage, but also in baptism and Holy Orders. A vocation
to the ordained priesthood is therefore more than a vocation to
ministry. Ministry is a function. It can be ecclesial lay ministry,
based upon baptism and confirmation; or it can be ordained ministry,
based upon Holy Orders. Ministry based on baptism is the only
ministerial service available to those faith communities which
decided four centuries ago that Orders is not a sacrament. For
Protestants, as for Catholics, Christ is the head of the Church
although he is now physically invisible; for Catholics, unlike
Protestants, Christ’s headship is made visible now in the sacrament
of Holy Orders.
When I think back over those who have come into my life as brother
priests, I think of classmates, especially those killed as missionaries:
one in Bolivia in South America and another in Lesotho in South
Africa. Both died forgiving those who killed them, as Christ died
forgiving those who crucified him. I think of many priests who
have spent themselves giving Christ’s life to others in the Church.
I think also of many priests, friends and confreres, who have
left active ministry. As a sacrament, ordained priesthood is a
mystery of faith. It transforms ordained priests as they are used
by Christ to make the members of his body a holy people. Some
men are destroyed by priesthood; most of those ordained find in
priesthood their way to holiness and a source of great joy.
Two aspects of ordained priesthood in the Church generate debate
and even anger today. The fact that Christ’s relationship to his
Church is spousal and therefore only men are called to make a
bridegroom visible is occasionally criticized even in the daily
papers. Several weeks ago a letter writer in the Tribune threatened
that not opening Orders to women would result in schism. But the
schism took place 400 years ago; all the choices are already historically
instantiated. Today all the arguments for the Church’s teaching
on the nature of the sacrament of Orders come from faith; all
the arguments against the teaching come from cultural values like
equality of opportunity. This is a good value, but Jesus started
a Church, not a country. He left the first disciples gathered
into an organic reality, a body, not an association or a club.
Obviously, untold thousands of women could do what a priest does
and many, if not most, could do it better than men. If priesthood
were only ministry, if it were only a function, that would settle
the question. But it’s more like marriage than like a job.
From the understanding that the ordained priest, like Christ,
is married to the Church, the western Church surrounded priesthood
with the discipline of celibacy. Already in the second century,
some priests chose celibacy in order to intercede for their people
with an undivided heart. As soon as the persecutions ceased in
the fourth century and the Church came out of the catacombs, whole
regions, like Spain and northern Africa, adopted the discipline
of celibacy for ordained priests. The rule became general in the
west before the end of the first millennium. It is a rule of the
Church, not a dispensation from the Lord; but it fits. In those
Churches which have the sacrament of Holy Orders--the Catholic
Church, both in the west and the east and the Orthodox Churches--the
bishop is always celibate. He is married only to the Church. At
no time, in no generation, has priestly celibacy been “natural”
or easy. Yet celibacy is particularly difficult and even offensive
today, in a post-Freudian culture which deems no one mature unless
he or she engages in sexual intercourse. Celibacy is resented,
even by some Catholics, because it is a kind of affront to our
contemporary understanding of what it means to be human. Perhaps
it is all the more important for that very reason.
There are those, even in the Catholic Church, who imagine that
ordained priesthood will disappear. They are wrong. Christ does
not abandon his people. A vocation to ordained priesthood is a
gift, as are vocations to other states of life in the Church;
and the gifts that shape the Church are given in each generation.
Vocations to the ordained priesthood are plentiful in many parts
of the world, and they are increasing here. Faithful Catholics
rejoice in that and encourage men to become priests; they know
that they need priests to be themselves, to be Catholic.
I thank God daily for calling me to ordained priesthood in the
Church. I pray for our priests and seminarians and for their increase
in numbers. I pray for Catholics in the Archdiocese, that a deeper
understanding of the ordained priesthood may give each of us a
more comprehensive grasp of the nature of the Church which is
our mother. This Christmas, which celebrates again the birth of
Jesus--Word made flesh, Son of God and Son of Mary, Redeemer of
the world and head of his body, the Church--think again of the
many ways the mystery of Christ is made visible. Ordained priesthood
is one of them. God bless you.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
