WHAT IS A PRIEST? A Roman Catholic Catechism

by Quentin Quesnell

from To be a priest, pp. 29-41,
edited by Robert E. Terwilliger and Urban T. Holmes, Seabury Press, New York, 1975.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions.

Quentin Quesnell is a Roman Catholic New Testament scholar and the author of a number of books in this field. He has served as chairman of the Department of Theology at Marquette University, Milwaukee, and is presently doing research on theological methodology.

Preliminary

How can an individual theologian presume to speak for the Church today?

If it is possible for a person to be a Roman Catholic today, it is possible to state theologically what one means by being a Roman Catholic. A sound statement today would include the same elements as a sound theological statement at any time in the past. That means stating one’s understanding of what Catholic teaching is, telling the sources from which one draws this understanding, and submitting one’s work to possible correction by other theologians, to possible approval or disapproval by Church authorities, and to eventual acceptance or rejection by the community of fellow believers.

What are the sources for a theological position on the priesthood?

Scripture and Catholic tradition. Under Catholic tradition, first come all teachings recognized as defined dogmas; second, the teachings of councils, popes, the Synod of Bishops, official liturgical texts and practice; third, common beliefs, practices, and attitudes of the faithful as well as published sociological, psychological, and historical data on these; fourth, the writings of Catholic theologians based on other sources, with due allowance for reciprocity of influence.

What are the specific sources for this catechism?

a. The Second Vatican Council, especially the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, (Lumen Gentium); and the decrees on the pastoral office of bishops (Christus Dominus) on sacerdotal training (Optatam Totius), and on the ministry and life of presbyters (Presbyterorum Ordinis).

b. The report of the 1971 Synod of Bishops on the ministerial priesthood (De Sacerdotio Ministeriali).

c. The “Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church Against Certain Errors of the Present Day,” issued by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on June 24, 1973, as ratified and confirmed by Paul VI.

d. Special attention has been given also to the doctrinal statements in the series of instructions with which the Pope has introduced the reformed rites of the Eucharist and other sacraments.

1. What is priesthood?

Priesthood is the state or office of persons recognized as able to mediate between human and divine beings, especially by the offering of sacrifice.

2. What is the Christian priesthood?

The Christian priesthood is the state or office of persons recognized as able to bring themselves and others closer to God by their offering of the one perfect sacrifice of Christ.

3. What is the one perfect sacrifice of Christ?

It is Christ’s giving himself over to achieve the union of mankind with God our Father in perfect obedience and perfect love. Christ did this by accepting and fulfilling God’s plan for salvation: that he should die on the cross and be raised from the dead that all might believe, and believing find life through his name.

4. How do those who share Christian priesthood bring themselves and others closer to God by offering the one perfect sacrifice of Christ?

In three ways: in love, in word, in liturgy.

a. In love, insofar as they believe the Gospel: that Christ gave himself for them, and that through his sacrifice God makes reconciliation to himself and one to another available to all. Believing this, they find themselves committed to Christ’s love, so that as he gave himself for them, they would love and give themselves for one another.

b. In word, insofar as they offer to others the good news of salvation in Christ. As all persons come to appreciate what God has done for them, in Christ, the world is transformed in the power of Christ’s sacrifice.

c. In liturgy, insofar as they express their joy and thanks to God for his gift in Christ, especially when they do this together as a community, publicly marking important moments of life with the sign of Christ’s sacrifice.

5. Who are the persons recognized as able to do these things in the Roman Catholic Church?

All who have received the sacrament of baptism are in the state of being able to do all these things.

b. All Christians who have received the sacrament of confirmation are in a state of personal mission and responsibility to do them, according to the measure of charismatic gifts each one receives from the Spirit. This implies not only a higher fidelity to Christian sacrificial love and liturgy, but in particular a special concern and readiness for spreading the word of the Gospel.

c. All confirmed Christians who have received the sacrament of holy orders have the office and the public responsibility to foster, promote, and facilitate the doing of them, according to the needs of the Church and according to the measure and kind of hierarchical gifts each one receives from the Spirit. Obviously this also implies greater personal fidelity to the sacrificial life of love, word, and liturgy. But it consists in accepting a public responsibility for the ministry of love, word, and liturgy.

6. Is priesthood through confirmation and through orders merely a higher degree of the priesthood to which one is consecrated in baptism?

Each of these three sacraments is a share in the one priesthood of Christ because each is a special consecration to uniting self and others to God through the sacrifice of Christ. Confirmation may be considered the completion of the baptismal priestly consecration, inasmuch as the charismatic gifts of the Spirit enable the confirmed to fulfill some aspect or other of the general mission which baptism implied.

But orders confers a specific responsibility toward the community as a whole—a responsibility which one would otherwise not have. The community has a right to demand the word of God and the sacraments from one who has been ordained. Thus, by orders one is committed not just to a higher degree or state of Christian living, but to a distinct kind of service.

7. Is the priesthood of baptism, confirmation, and orders permanent?

Not all who receive these sacraments always live in a manner worthy of their priestly consecration, cooperating with God’s graces. Again, for some, external circumstances may block the exercise of their priesthood; such as interdict, excommunication, suspension. Finally, God’s entire plan for any individual life can never be certainly predicted. Nevertheless, the consecrations themselves remain a fact, known to the persons themselves and publicly recognized by the Church. They are of their nature, as permanent as the needs of the Church they are supposed to serve and as the priesthood of Christ in which they are a share. They never need repeating.

8. What do you call the priesthood which results from orders?

The ministerial priesthood or the hierarchical priesthood.

9. Why is this priesthood called ministerial?

Because it consists in personally assuming a public responsibility for the ministries of love, word, and liturgy through which the Church shares in the sacrifice of Christ, uniting the world to God through him.

10. Why is this priesthood called hierarchical?

a. Because it commits the ordained to exercising, through their ministry, a “holy leadership” (hiere arche) in promoting the Church’s sacrificial life.

b. Because this commitment is distributed hierarchically; i.e., according to a scale of ranks and orders.

11. What are the ranks and orders of the hierarchical priesthood in the Church today?

Three: bishops, presbyters, deacons.

12. What responsibilities are given to bishops?

The Church regards bishops as “priests of the first order,” standing in the top rank of the hierarchical priesthood and possessing the fullness of the priesthood. Their responsibilities, then, are all those which Christ gives to his apostles in the four Gospels. Thus they accept primary active responsibility for promoting all the ministries of the Church many ways mankind can be brought closer to God by sharing in the sacrifice of Christ.

Bishops, therefore, oversee the ministry of the word (all officially Catholic teaching and preaching is done in union with bishops); the ministry of the liturgy (they preside, personally or through delegates, over all public services, programs, and rituals performed in the Church’s name); and the ministry of charity (promoting and facilitating every kind of work of Christian love). This is a threefold office of teaching, ruling, and sanctifying.

13. What are presbyters in the Catholic Church today?

Presbyters are “priests of the second order.” Their responsibility is public and personal, but secondary. They assume a share in the ministries for which the bishop has primary responsibility. The specification of which ministries and what share has varied according to differences; of time and place, the needs of the Church, and the decision of the bishops.

Presbyters are the persons whom Catholics commonly call priests; the persons whom Catholics encounter, for instance, in their parishes, performing the same general sort of functions which Christian clergymen perform in other Churches. The name “presbyter” is the precise term for them in the Latin official Church documents.

Over several hundred years of history “presbyter” evolved into the English word “priest” (cf. French prêtre, Italian prete, German Priester). But “presbyter” does not mean “priest,” it means “elder.” In a discussion like this one about the various kinds of priests in the Church, we cannot get along with just the word “priest.” Presbyters are just one group among many who share Christ’s priesthood, and one among the three who share the ministerial priesthood.

14. What are deacons?

Deacons are ordained persons belonging to the lowest rank of the hierarchy. They share in the ministries for which the bishop has primary responsibility.

15. Why are presbyters commonly called priests, while deacons are said to be ordained for service?

Among the ministries early and regularly assigned to presbyters was that of presiding over small local congregations in the bishop’s name and in particular of presiding at the Eucharist. But the Eucharist is the public Church action most explicitly linked to the sacrifice and hence the priesthood of Christ. As the community’s service of praise and thanks for God’s gift in Christ, it has been from very early times understood as the Church’s supreme act of sharing Christ’s self-offering.

The one who leads the eucharistic service speaks Christ’s words of offering and invitation: “This is my body, given for you. This is my blood, poured out for you.” Since the presbyter was the one whom the people experienced regularly in this role, standing at the community’s altar day after day, it was quite normal that they should come to speak of the presbyter as their priest par excellence.

The ministries confined to deacons in the early Church generally concerned more the material side of Church life: providing for the poor, the sick, widows and orphans; and administering Church property. In the course of time local presbyters took over these ministries too, and for all practical purposes the office of deacons simply disappeared for well over a thousand years. The diaconate was just a brief stage one passed through on one’s way to the priesthood (presbyterate), and has been restored only since Vatican II.

16. Can you sum up these several uses of priesthood on a chart?

17. What is the sacrament of orders?

Orders is the sacrament in which persons able to act in the name of the Church publicly assign to mature fellow Christians publicly acknowledged responsibility for continuing in the Church the sacrifice of Christ through ministries of liturgy, words and love.

The grace symbolized (res sacramenti) is the sacrificial life of the Church in the power of Christ’s cross and resurrection; including the special helps needed to minister to that life successfully.

The essential sign of that grace and the assurance that it will continue (res et sacramentum) is the public assigning and accepting of the responsibility. (This essential sign is, as in many other sacraments, itself symbolized by an external word and gesture [sacramentum tantum et non res]. At present, as often in the New Testament, this is the invocation of the Spirit and the laying on of hands (Cf. 1 Timothy 4:14; 2 Timothy 1:6; Acts 13:3).

Christ left the group of his disciples a mission to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them . . . teaching them” (Matthew 28:19f.), and so gave the Church a lasting need for persons to assume the responsibilities that mission entails.

18. Why only “persons able to act in the name of the Church”?

Because all sacraments are administered by Christ through the Church.

19. Who are these persons?

They are the persons recognized as being able at the time and in the circumstances about which the question is posed. By a longstanding tradition and by present law, a bishop, together with some wider representation of the episcopate, ordains a bishop. A bishop, with the assistance if possible of some representation of the presbyterate, ordains a presbyter. A bishop or a properly delegated presbyter ordains a deacon.

20. Why say: “in order to assign a publicly acknowledged responsibility”?

As in all sacraments, the external action and words must be joined to a specific intention of doing what the Church wants done.

21. Why say: “to a mature Christian”?

To stress the fact that one should not ordain lightly. The person being ordained should have been baptized and confirmed, and should show some ability and readiness for the responsibilities in question.

22. Does “fellow Christian” mean Roman Catholic?

The one ordained must have been baptized. The one ordaining must be able to act in the name of the Church (as in #18, above). Since priesthood is permanent (#7, above), bishops continue to be recognized as able to ordain in the name of the Church even if they cease to be in union with Rome, so long as they maintain the intention of ordaining as the Church wants. Of its nature, all ordaining is for the life and health of the one Church, the one body of Christ.

23. Does “fellow Christian” mean male?

It includes male, but does not exclude female. By present canon law and a long tradition, women cannot validly receive this sacrament. But because of the considerable evidence that women were ordained deacons during several early centuries, theologians commonly hold today that the invalidity is strictly a matter of Church law, and that nothing in the nature of the sacrament prevents its being conferred on women. No official Church statement has contradicted this frequent and public teaching of respected theologians.

24. Does “fellow Christian” mean celibate?

No. In most rites of the Roman Catholic Church, most presbyters are married. In all rites, most deacons are married. Even the Latin (Western or Roman) rite does not declare the ordination of married persons invalid. But that one rite does require that those ordained promise to live in celibacy after ordination. Moreover, Church law declares any marriages contracted after ordination invalid without a dispensation from Rome.

25. Does this sacrament produce a real change in the person who receives it?

Catholic teaching is that every sacrament does what it signifies. In holy orders, the invocation of the Spirit with the laying on of hands signifies the public assigning and accepting of ministerial responsibilities for the sacrificial life of the Church. The public assigning and accepting of these signifies the continued life of the Church in the power of Christ’s sacrifice. Since the sacrament does what it signifies, ordained persons actually do receive those responsibilities and actually do receive the hierarchical gifts of the Spirit to make them effective. Thus they are consecrated to a distinct priestly role (#6, above) and this consecration is permanent (#7, above).

26. But do they receive special powers?

Granting public responsibility to fulfill publicly recognized needs implies as well the powers necessary to fulfill the responsibility. Those given such charges—to “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, ... (2 Timothy 4:2); and to “Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority” {Titus 2:15)—obviously must have the power to do these things.

Those given the responsibility to listen to the penitents’ confessions of sins and to speak words of forgiveness in the name of the Church, Christ directed, must have the power to speak those words in the Church’s name and with the full conviction that they are effective, Christ said: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven” (John 20:22). And so with the Eucharist and the other sacraments.

27. What if persons not ordained speak such words?

The report of the 1971 Synod of Bishops on the ministerial priesthood explains that “where the presence and action of the ordained ministry are missing, the Church cannot have full certainty of its fidelity and visible continuity” (Pars Prima, 4). Thus the sacramental ministration of persons not ordained, never publicly assigned or acknowledged for ministry in the Church at large (especially if these persons simply take the role upon themselves), is not recognized as valid by the Church. The 1973 “Declaration in Defense of the Catholic Doctrine on the Church Against Certain Errors of the Present Day” states this concretely in regard to the Eucharist.

This is not a matter of judging subjective intentions or dispositions, nor an attempt to shorten the arm of the Lord. Catholic theology has always held that “God is not limited to the sacraments.” He gives grace and performs wonders where he wills. But the visible Church and the seven sacraments, like the Incarnation itself, are given to believers as assurances and security that here, at least, God may be found and found acting graciously. This assurance and security are found then at least in Christ, in his sacrifice, in the Church, and in the preaching and sacraments of the Church when done by persons publicly charged to do them in the Church’s name.

The 1971 Synod of Bishops adds another reason. The ministry of those ordained by the Church “always tends to the unity of the whole Church and to calling all nations together within the Church” (Pars Prima, 6). But “every individual community of the faithful needs communion with a bishop and with the universal Church” (ibid.). Therefore, especially for its Eucharist, an individual community should have the presence of one ordained by the universal Church “in the service of unity” (ibid.).

28. Could a group of baptized persons, long and hopelessly isolated from other Christians, ordain a ministerial priesthood from among themselves?

Church law and teaching do not provide for all extraordinary circumstances. In such situations, people usually have to do the best they know how. If a group in desperation decides they should ordain, not in order to divide themselves from the rest of the Church but to help themselves remain as faithful as possible, the matter is for God to provide, not for theologians to judge (cf. #27, above). Should the isolated group ever again find contact with the rest of the Church, any remaining practical problems could be easily settled if they have maintained their desire to live in unity in the one body of Christ.

Most questions about truly extraordinary circumstances must receive similar answers; e.g., the seminary brain-teaser: What if some medieval prince-bishop, in malice or jest, once deliberately withheld his intention while supposedly ordaining another bishop? Would the sacramental ministrations of all bishops and priests dependent on at one simulated episcopal consecration be invalid down to the of time?

29. What of subdeacons, of tonsure, and the four minor orders listed by the Council of Trent?

These have all been suppressed since Vatican II. They were required by Church law, not by the nature of the sacrament.

30. What of the teaching of the Council of Florence that the outward sign of the sacrament in ordaining a presbyter was “the handing over of the chalice with wine and the paten with bread” and the words; “receive the power of offering sacrifice . . .”?

Pope Pius XII declared: “If that was at one time necessary for validity, by the will and law of the Church, everyone knows that the Church can change or abrogate what it has legislated.... Therefore, We declare by our Apostolic Authority that if it ever was differently laid down in law, at least in the future the handing over of the instruments is not necessary for the validity of Orders” (Apostolic Constitution, Sacramentum Ordinis, 30 November 1947).

31. What of “laicized” priests?

This strange term comes from the distinction in Church law between the clerical state and the lay state. The clerical state is the collection of customs, rights, and duties with which law and tradition have surrounded ordained persons. It is the legally sanctioned clerical life-style, including the domicile, clothing, recreation, prayer, political action, etc., of ordained persons (cf. esp. Canons 124-144 in the Codex luris Canonici).

Since Vatican II, many presbyters have been dispensed from the Church law of celibacy (#24, above). Those dispensed are also removed from all the obligations and privileges of the clerical state and are assigned the obligations and privileges of the lay state (Canons 211-214). This has nothing to do with the reality of their ordination or the permanence of their ministerial priesthood (Canons 948-1011).

Confusion comes from the fact that the term “lay” is also used as the opposite of “priestly.” In this sense of the word, the Council of Trent anathematized those who say “that a person who was once a priest can become a layman” (Session xxiii, 1563). The 1971 Synod of Bishops (Pars Prima, 5) and the 1973 declaration reaffirmed this as pertaining to the teaching of the faith. Thus the seven to ten thousand presbyters in the United States who have received dispensations from the law of celibacy are part of the ministerial priesthood along with the fifty-five thousand others who have not requested dispensations, even though the former belong to the lay state and the latter to the clerical state.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that current practice, summed up in a January 13,1971, decree of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is for bishops to inform dispensed priests they are forbidden any regular public exercise of the official ministry of the liturgy. This has led to the occasional popular use of such terms as “ex-priests,” “former priests,” etc.

The terminology in official Church documents was formerly “priests (presbyters) reduced to the lay state”; then “priests resigned from the active ministry.” Most recently it is “dispensed priests” or simply “married priests.”

32. What of Leo XIII’s decision against the validity of Anglican orders?

Leo XIII decided according to the principles already discussed (esp. #17-20, above). His decision is commonly understood to have been practical; i.e., not a decision about historical or dogmatic fact but about the security with which Catholics could regard Anglican administration of the sacraments (cf. #27, above). The decision was based on the factual information available to him at the time, and has to be corrected by the better and fuller information about sixteenth-century English reforms which Roman Catholics generally have become aware of since his time.

33. Must the Catholic Church insist on the image of “priest”? Is it not a pagan leftover, redolent of abuses attacked by the prophets? Would not “pastor” or “minister” or “preacher” do as well?

All language uses images, all images bring dangers of misunderstanding. “Pastor” is the Latin word for shepherd. Ordained Christians should not treat people like sheep. “Minister” is Latin for “table-waiter.” But that is not the clergy’s only function. “Preacher” describes one task—but there are other things to be done.

Nor does the Bible clearly favor one image over others. Luke 22:26f uses the table-waiting image of Jesus and his disciples, but Acts restricts it to a group of seven who are distinguished by this from the apostles and their ministry “of prayer and service of the word” (Acts 6:2-4). (Cf. Matthew 23:11; Mark 10:43.)

In the Gospels, Jesus often uses “shepherd” of himself but never of the disciples. Ephesians 4:11 is the only New Testament text that uses it of Church workers. The corresponding verb, to shepherd and feed sheep, comes up only in the scene with Peter in the late addition to John’s Gospel (21:15-17).

Priest" brings the danger of confusion with the priesthood of the Old Testament, suggesting the multiplying of sacrifices, ritualism, influencing God, closeness to God reserved for the few, etc. Yet Hebrews 7-10 was given us to show that none of those should be found in Christianity; and yet that there is a deep value in using the imagery of priesthood and of sacrifice for Jesus’ great act as well as for his Church’s sharing that act through its life of love and service, its preaching, and its liturgical prayers, especially the Eucharist.

Some New Testament Texts on this Imagery

Christ was “designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:10). “When Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure.’ Then I said: ‘Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God’” (Hebrews 10:5-7).

He came “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). He “offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27). He “loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). “He loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). He “is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

We are called to share his sacrifice and his priesthood: He has “made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (Revelation 1:58). “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4ff).

“Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13:16). “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). “He laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren”(l John 3:16). A gift given in love becomes “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God”(Philippians 4:18).

Paul is “a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God; so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable” (Romans 15:16). He is “poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial offering of your faith”(Philippians 2:16f.). And “you are a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light”(l Peter 2:9).

“Since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,... and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near.... (Hebrews 10:19-22). ”Through him let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name" (Heb 13:15).

“We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10). “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat" (Hebrews 13:10). “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

. . . Consider the practice of Israel; are not those who eat the sacrifices partners in the altar?" (l Corinthians 10:16-18). “I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said: ‘This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me’"(l Corinthians 11:23-25).

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