Month: February 2024

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Dear __________:  I read the article you sent, as well as a couple of others on the same event (the funeral for Cecilia Gentili at St Patrick’s Basilica, NY). The problem I have with these articles is that they are too easy. The one article you sent by a professor of biblical studies contains insults, and it ends with a “finger wagging” (“Desecrating the cathedral is not the only thing they should be ashamed of”). What conservative Catholic reader of that particular journal needs to be persuaded that what happened at the Basilica in New York was a bad thing? But no one I’ve encountered so far has regarded this event as an opportunity. Allow me to explain. The writing style of a number of these articles is very much like the typical conservative political pundit. Whenever I drive to the US and listen to talk radio, I’m always struck by how polarized American society is. Those on the political left utterly demonize those on the right, but an hour or so later the left are thoroughly demonized by the right on another station. That kind of polarization characterizes many of the conservative Catholic journals as of late, especially with regard to this funeral at St. Patrick’s. 

An effective pastoral approach is very different and requires more than the intellectual virtues to be successful; those who are so busy being offended, outraged, incensed, completely miss it. A good pastor would have to be quick on his feet, for one, and he’d have to see this as an opportunity, a tremendous opportunity. The Basilica was filled with adults who have the spiritual maturity level of children; they are a broken and messed up lot, and they are all together in one place, with a priest at the front. What an opportunity to proclaim Christ and him crucified and risen, and what that means for each one of us. It would require tremendous patience, like an experienced grade school teacher would have in dealing with an out of control class of grade two kids, but many of those writing on this issue can be compared to the university professor who finds himself in front of that grade two class–they’re at a loss. And tone is everything. Anger will ruin it, finger wagging would tune everyone out. One would have to have the ability to speak to them in a way that would connect with them, appeal to their reason which, despite appearances, they have not entirely lost. It’s not about affirming their lifestyle choices, but affirming them (the person), seeing them a certain way, very much like visiting a seriously ill mental health patient–you first have to see them from God’s point of view, that is, see in them a genuine goodness and be able to mirror that goodness to them. But not everyone, certainly not every pastor, is capable of seizing the moment in this way. The default position of many conservative writers is to counter with a moralizing outrage and not to regard this as an opportunity, that is, an opportunity to proclaim Christ, the crucified and risen one who loves each one of us as if there is only one of us.

Proclaiming Christ is not the same thing as moralizing—those who reduce the gospel to personal morality miss the mark as much as those who reduce the gospel to social justice. The gospel is the good news of the resurrection, that Christ has destroyed death and restored life. These people in the Basilica are searching for that which is going to bring them rest; the problem is they think they’re going to find it in the perfect orgasm. The response of a good pastor is not to confront them with a giant “No”, but to appeal to them and get them to hear you when you tell them that behind their “yes” is a much larger and better “YES”, that what they are searching for will never be found in an intimate sexual relationship, no matter what kind it is. Cecilia Gentili was a seeker, but one with a tank full of octane and no steering wheel. She was devoted to a cause, devoted to justice, however deficient and misinformed she might have been. What was she searching for? It should be obvious. What these people are searching for but are oblivious to is right there on the first page of Augustine’s Confessions: “O Lord, You created us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” There is no doubt that each person in that Church feels the emptiness of their lifestyle choices. We can respond by showing them the door and wagging our finger, or we can think of a way to proclaim Christ. But conservative Catholicism seems to have embraced a model characteristic of American politics, and many are stuck in a “culture warrior” mentality, and with that mentality, we cannot for the life of us proclaim Christ in a way that will win anyone over. There’s no doubt the Basilica was not treated as a sacred space, but you need faith to do that, and these people don’t have that faith, which is why it was so important to take advantage of the opportunity to proclaim Christ with zeal, wit, and a profound reverence for these broken people. There’s no need to convince the rest of us that this was a bad thing that happened, but what is the point of outrage? These articles are for the most part a matter of preaching to the choir. What do they accomplish in the end? Do they help us to know how to better respond to something like that in the future?  Hardly. Often it is just some academic flexing his intellectual muscles.

Fulton Sheen believes that the reason Paul did not have much success when he preached the Areopagus sermon is that he did not preach Christ crucified. The power is in the cross, not clever zingers and pointing out logical inconsistencies and ironies. The latter approach just keeps the world divided, but the cross changes hearts and lives. 

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Also published at Where Peter is: https://wherepeteris.com/the-myth-of-the-ontological-superiority-of-the-priest/

The priest is not an angel sent from heaven. He is a man, a member of the Church, a Christian. Remaining man and Christian, he begins to speak to you the word of God. This word is not his own. No, he comes to you because God has told him to proclaim God’s word. Perhaps he has not entirely understood it himself. Perhaps he adulterates it. Perhaps he falters and stammers. How else could he speak God’s Word, ordinary man that he is? But must not some one of us say something about God, about eternal life, about the majesty of grace in our sanctified being; must not some one of us speak of sin, the judgement and mercy of God?  
Karl Rahner

Anyone familiar with Pope Francis is aware that a recurring theme of his papacy is his challenge of clericalism in its varied forms—I.e., seminarians purchasing cassocks, lace, and birettas, even well before the day of ordination, the pastor as “little monster”, the dictatorial and know-it-all posture, treating the parish as his own little kingdom, the sanctuary as stage, little sense of the priestly and consecrated role of the laity, the elite clerical boys club, etc. I often wonder whether the necessary conditions are there for some clergy in particular to understand just what it is he is talking about. Some do, but there are more than a few who have no clue. 

It would be interesting indeed to study the rise of this particular phenomenon in the Latin West, to attempt to account for the factors that gave rise to it and that make it such a difficult disease to eradicate. But one idea that I do believe might very well be a factor in the institutionalization of clericalism is the notion that the priest is ontologically superior to the faithful. 

I am going to argue that the notion of priest as ontologically superior to the rest of the faithful is a myth. The word “ontological” refers to that branch of philosophy that studies being not insofar as it is physical, or psychological, or logical, etc., but being insofar as it exists. The principles of this science are essence and existence. An animal, such as a dog or a horse, is ontologically superior to a rosebush or a watermelon. The reason is that animals have superior faculties that plants lack. A human being is ontologically superior to a brute animal; for the human person is capable of an activity that transcends sense perception, namely intellectual activity. Moreover, an angel is ontologically superior to a human being, and of course God is ontologically perfect (His nature is to exist). 

Now, the argument for the ontological superiority of the priest is grounded in the principle that agere sequitur esse, that is, action follows upon being. Activity is the realization of a potentiality or power, and we only come to understand the nature of a thing through its activity, for a being acts according to its nature: plants grow and reproduce; animals enjoy the specific powers of external and internal sensation which plants lack; human beings possess all of these but they are able to think and choose freely. At ordination, a person is given the power to transubstantiate, that is, to change ordinary bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood, an act that is outside the natural capacity of a human being as such. Hence, it is argued that the priest is ontologically different from–and superior to, since it is a superior action–those who are not priests.

But this is not quite right. For it is Christ who transubstantiates, for the priest is acting in persona Christi, and for the same reason it is Christ who forgives sins, just as it is Christ, not the charismatic healer, who heals: “Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you. Get up and make your bed.” He got up at once (Acts 9, 34; cf. Ps 44, 4-9). The priest remains ontologically a human being, of the same nature as every other human being. He is ordained to a specific end, marked for that end, but he is not ontologically different, much less superior. Acting in persona Christi does not render him ontologically superior to the faithful; for he depends entirely on Christ’s action. But an ontologically superior creature does not depend on any being in order to exercise his essentially superior faculty, like sense perception, imagination, or intelligence as in the case of man. As St. Thomas points out: “…the nature of an instrument as such is to be moved by another, but not to move itself” (ST, III, q. 63, a. 5, ad 2.). The priest depends on Christ as an instrument depends on the agent in order to carry out what it was recruited to carry out. In section 1551 of the Catechism, we read: 

This priesthood is ministerial. “That office . . . which the Lord committed to the pastors of his people, is in the strict sense of the term a service.” It is entirely related to Christ and to men. It depends entirely on Christ and on his unique priesthood; it has been instituted for the good of men and the communion of the Church. The sacrament of Holy Orders communicates a “sacred power” which is none other than that of Christ.

The language around the discussion of priesthood is instrumental and functional, and higher or lower function does not necessarily amount to ontological difference. In other words, although ontological difference implies an essentially different function, it does not follow that an essentially different function implies ontological difference (all a is b, but it does not follow that all b is a). For example, a human being can carry a heavy load and walk a number of miles down a long and winding road that requires familiarity with the terrain and an ability to reason by inference. However, he can also recruit a donkey to carry that same load for him and walk the same number of miles in the same direction, under the necessary guidance of his intelligence. The donkey does not thereby become ontologically superior to his fellow donkeys–he’s still a jackass. One could say that its actions are ennobled, for they require a faculty the animal lacks, namely the ability to inference, but properly speaking, its acts on the whole are the acts of the human being that owns, recruits, governs, and employs the donkey as an instrument. 

The charismatic healer does not know whether or how a miraculous healing has taken place, nor is she aware that she is the agent of such healing–because she isn’t the agent, but the instrument through whom Christ, the agent, heals. She simply believes that her prayer is being heard, but she cannot account for the healing. Similarly, the priest cannot in any way account for what we believe is happening on the altar (the changing of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of Christ’s body and blood). He is not even aware that it has happened, because he is not the agent of the change; rather, he believes, like everyone else, that what he is distributing is in fact Christ’s body and blood. The artist knows precisely how to paint or sculpt; and she is aware of what is happening through her hands, for the work is unfolding through her own agency. But transubstantiation does not occur through the agency of the priest as such, but through the agency of Christ, just as my sins are forgiven not through the agency of the priest as such, but through Christ, whose visible instrument the priest is. The priest is no greater, ontologically speaking, than any other human being. That his unworthy hands are used by Christ is a sign of Christ’s humility, not the cleric’s supposed ontological superiority. 

It is Christ who is ontologically superior, because Christ is both human and divine, in one hypostasis, that is, one Person, the Person of God the Son. Jesus is not a human person, although he has a human nature; he is not two persons, but One, the Person of the Son. The ministerial priest is an instrument, Christ’s instrument, who in very specific situations acts not in his own person, but in the person of Christ (in persona Christi). Christ is both priest and victim in the Mass; not the ministerial priest. In other words, it is Christ who offers himself (Priest), and it is Christ who is offered (Victim). What takes place in the Mass is happening by virtue of the agency of Christ and through the instrumentality of the ministerial priest (CCC sec. 1548). 

The sacramental character conferred in Baptism and Confirmation does not “ontologically” change the baptized or the confirmand, rendering him or her ontologically superior to the unbaptized. The baptized are indeed changed, elevated, made children of God, because parent and child have the same nature, and a baptized child is filled with divine grace, which is a sharing in the divine nature. But, as Father Pieter Fransen writes: “grace sets our deepest humanity free, precisely because it restores our most authentic humanity to us and by this means humanizes us to an eminent degree” (Divine Grace and Man, 173). Later scholasticism began to give the sacramental character an ontological status, but no counsel has ever affirmed that theology. He writes:  

There is no common doctrine of the character in theology. The most restrictive definition makes it simply the impossibility of re-ordination, while the tendency to enhance it has produced a sort of complex metaphysical superstructure, due, as we think, to a very jejune theology of grace….The tendency in question has promoted a mythic theology of the priesthood which places it on a higher level of being than the rest of the faithful, a metaphysical clericalism which is responsible for barring the way to many reforms at the present time….The character is a “signum quoddam spiritale et indelebile; unde ea iterari non possunt” [a certain spiritual and indelible sign; hence they cannot be repeated] (DS 1609; cf. 1313; D 852, 695). But the scope of Trent’s definition is different from that of Florence, though the enunciation is the same. Trent was concerned above all with defending the reality of the ministry against certain reformers who wished to suppress the distinction between the community and the minister. But it would be an abuse of the text and a disregard of the intentions of the Council to take this definition as a dogmatic crystallization of scholastic speculation. (Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. S.v. Orders and Ordination, p. 1146-1147).

The word Aquinas employs within this discussion is “deputed” (deputamur), which means to appoint, to delegate, which includes the conferral of a degree of authority. It is by these sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, and Ordination) that a person is delegated, and they are given the power to carry out what they have been delegated to carry out. 

Aquinas writes: 

The sacraments of the New Law produce a character, in so far as by them we are deputed to the worship of God according to the rite of the Christian religion. …Now the worship of God consists either in receiving Divine gifts, or in bestowing them on others. And for both these purposes some power is needed; for to bestow something on others, active power is necessary; and in order to receive, we need a passive power. Consequently, a character signifies a certain spiritual power ordained unto things pertaining to the Divine worship (ST, III, q. 63. A. 2.).

This character, whether conferred in Baptism, Confirmation, or Holy Orders, is instrumental. As Aquinas writes: “… it must be observed that this spiritual power is instrumental of the virtue which is in the sacraments. For to have a sacramental character belongs to God’s ministers: and a minister is a kind of instrument, …” (ST, III, q. 63, a. 2). Those who are marked by the sacramental character (of Baptism, Confirmation, or Holy Orders) are marked as being ordained to some particular end, as “soldiers are marked with a character as being deputed to military service”. A soldier marked with a character as being deputed to military service is changed not ontologically, but accidentally. These characters are essentially participations in Christ’s Priesthood, and so the supernatural actions made possible by them arise not from the very being or nature of the baptized, confirmand, or ordained minister, but they flow from Christ Himself: Aquinas writes: 

…each of the faithful is deputed to receive, or to bestow on others, things pertaining to the worship of God. And this, properly speaking, is the purpose of the sacramental character. Now the whole rite of the Christian religion is derived from Christ’s priesthood. Consequently, it is clear that the sacramental character is specially the character of Christ, to whose character the faithful are likened by reason of the sacramental characters, which are nothing else than certain participations of Christ’s Priesthood, flowing from Christ Himself (ST, III, q. 63, a. 3).

Again, the principal agent of the instrumental power is not the official priest. If it were, he would indeed be ontologically different and thus superior: “But an instrumental power follows rather the condition of the principal agent: and consequently a character exists in the soul in an indelible manner, not from any perfection of its own, but from the perfection of Christ’s Priesthood, from which the character flows like an instrumental power” (ST, III, q. 63, a. 5, ad. 1). 

Those who hold that the priest is ontologically superior are careful to stress that the state of priesthood does not justify clericalism. The obvious question, however, is why not? Clericalism is its logical outcome, if it were true that the rite of ordination renders him ontologically superior. The notion is fraught with dangers on all sides. There is no justification for putting in the minds of young men studying for the priesthood the notion that upon their ordination they will be rendered ontologically special, especially if we do not wish to see a return of the old clericalism. The result cannot be anything but an intolerable Phariseeism so contrary to the movement of the spiritual life, which is always a movement towards a deeper recognition that “I am no better than anyone else”. To be fair, it is argued that “better” and “ontological superiority” are distinct and that the one does not imply the other–i.e., Mary is “better”, that is, holier than the angels, who are ontologically superior. But let us grant this for the sake of argument; that would mean that although a scandalously sinful priest is ontologically superior to Mary, she is superior in her very moral identity (character), for she possesses superior holiness, superior humility and charity, and a superior place in heaven. What, then, does ontological superiority mean in the end? That he is used by Christ to make present the sacrifice of the cross? But it is far from clear how this implies a superiority that is ontological as such, especially if ontologically he is a human being, but less humanized by virtue of his sinful lifestyle (i.e., a double life, a sexual predator, etc.). If it does not indicate essential superiority, nor existential superiority, nor moral and spiritual superiority, then what does it mean? The sacramental character means that he underwent the rite of ordination, an unrepeatable rite, and has become an instrument “set apart” for a specific end. The sacramental character means, as Cardinal Louis Billot pointed out, “the right to the actual graces proper to the sacrament” (Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi. S.v. Orders and Ordination, p.1147)  

The enduring nature of the sacramental character is interesting to consider. Aquinas writes: 

Although external worship does not last after this life, yet its end remains. Consequently, after this life the character remains, both in the good as adding to their glory, and in the wicked as increasing their shame: just as the character of the military service remains in the soldiers after the victory, as the boast of the conquerors, and the disgrace of the conquered (ST, III, q. 63, a. 5, ad. 3).

It is hard to conceive how something that renders a person ontologically superior can in the end be a source of shame, for the devil is not ashamed of his ontological superiority; but it would be a source of shame in that he is not at all ontologically superior to anyone, but was freely chosen by God for a highly noble service, given the actual graces and charisms to fulfill that end, of which he fell short.  

If Aquinas is correct, it would appear then that the sacramental character does not remain qua instrument; for it endures differently in the end than it does “on the way” to the end. On the way, it is an instrumental power dependent upon Christ the agent; afterwards, it endures as an identity, like the identity of a parent which can never be erased, or the identity of a soldier long after the war is over. 

In no other case does a being, ontologically determinate (human) act in the Person of some other ontologically superior being (the Person of the Son), such that it is the latter who is acting (is the agent), not the former. Appealing to agere sequitur esse to argue for superiority leaves too much out of the discussion. In that light, I believe it is safe to conclude that there is simply no reason not to jettison this rather dubious–not to mention dangerous–idea of an alleged clerical superiority. The line that should always be at the forefront of the mind of the cleric is John the Baptist’s “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3, 30).

Or, Read this version from Where Peter Is

Deacon Doug McManaman

Recently while visiting the sick I spent some time in a section of the hospital for dementia patients waiting to be transferred to a nursing home. It is one of my favorite sections to visit. On this particular day, a group of nurses were gathered around talking to one patient with a heavy British accent, while I began to chat with an older man from Iran, using my newly downloaded google translate. Suddenly, the British lady leans over, looks at me and says “Father, do you realize how much damage your Church has done over the centuries?” Why she referred to me as “Father” is uncertain–for I was not wearing any kind of clerical attire. But I said to her: “I certainly do”. She immediately replied: “Well, I’m glad to hear you agree with me on that one”. 

I was immediately reminded of the time my priest friend asked me to speak to his RCIA group on Church history. I said I would, but that I’d have to prepare, which I did, over the Christmas holidays of that year, doing my best to include the most important aspects of that history. But I did eventually ask him: “Father, are you sure you want me to do this? There’s a lot of sin in our history; there’s no hiding it. I’m afraid I might scare someone away from becoming a Catholic”. But he insisted. 

Studying Church history can make a person dizzy, because of how often we find ourselves shaking our heads at the sin and stupidity that we find therein. And of course, things have changed, but in some ways they have not–we’ve all heard the old adage: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Since ordination to the diaconate, I’ve been shaking my head more than I did prior to that, because I see more than I otherwise would have seen–bad behavior from clerics who should know better; nothing criminal, mind you, but rather profound immaturity, clerical envy and jealousy, inordinate need for control, a sense of self-importance, stubbornness, condescension, audacity, and an inability to engage in healthy conflict resolution, etc. I’ve always said to my students that Catholicism is not about us, it is about the Person of Christ. Unfortunately, not every cleric really believes this, at least not on a practical level. 

There is no doubt in my mind that things have improved tremendously since the 1950s and 60s, but I’ve been reading Med Kissinger’s While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence, which also gives us a peek here and there into the Church of the early 60s, and there is a great deal in this book that has me wondering once again what factors account for some of the behavior that drove so many people away from the Church. She writes:  

“My father, Bill Kissinger (we called him Holmer), sold advertising space to companies that manufactured tranquilizers and other so-called ethical pharmaceuticals to harried mothers of the baby boom. Business was brisk, especially in our North Shore Chicago neighborhood, where women, a great number of them Irish Catholics like my mother, were expected to fill the pews with as many children as they could bear, whether they had the stamina or not. “Something is definitely wrong when the best that the average American couple can do over a fertile period of twenty-five years is to give only two or three children to the Kingdom of God,” Monsignor John Knott of the National Catholic Welfare Conference said in his directive to the faithful. The Catholic Marriage Manual that my mother and her friends read religiously cautioned, “When parents consciously choose the small family as their way of life, they are expressing their ambition for material luxury as opposed to the spiritual pleasures which child rearing can give. It is no coincidence that the ‘spoiled little brat’—the selfish monster of popular fiction and newspaper comic strips—is usually an only child.””

Reflecting on the night her sister jumped in front of a train, Meg recalls her father’s fear that the bishop would not allow the family to have a funeral Mass for her or bury her in the family’s Catholic cemetery plot. She writes: “His best friend’s son had died by suicide the year before, and the family was heartbroken when the pastor refused to allow the boy’s body inside their church. On the night of Nancy’s wake, a nun from our school walked into the funeral parlor, pointed to my sister’s casket and croaked, “She’s going to Hell, you know.”” (When my siblings died by suicide, the church failed us. Now, it’s finally listening).

Thankfully, very few clerics think or talk like this anymore. Nonetheless, one has to wonder what it is that accounts for such audacity, such overconfident boldness that has not entirely disappeared. I know enough about investigative reasoning to know that the causes are far too complex to be reduced to a single factor, but I can think of two factors that are an integral part of the equation. The first is prosperity. Human beings are at their moral worst in times of prosperity. We see this repeatedly throughout the Old Testament, as well as in the history of any nation. When times are prosperous, we gradually become cocky, ungrateful, and we forget the limitations that constrain us, both moral and cognitive. The 1950s and 60s were a very prosperous time in the Church’s history. On the other hand, human beings, individually and collectively, are at their best in times of suffering, difficulty, and adversity. Perhaps things are somewhat better today because for the Church at least, times are not as prosperous. Difficulties, adversity, struggles, persecution, conflict, etc., cause a person to face his or her own limitations, the limits of his patience, the limits of his own knowledge and ability to acquire knowledge, his moral limitations and the delusions he’s harbored about himself over the years, his limited ability to relate to others in a way that does not put them off, etc., and so the easier life is, the less likely it is that a person will acquire the skills to be a perceptive, prudent, and compassionate pastor who relates well to the average person, especially those not so well off financially or psychologically.

The other factor is ignorance. There is not a great deal that can be done about this, because all of us suffer from deficient information. There is always so much we don’t know at each moment of our existence, and this was especially the case in the 1950s and 60s when it came to mental illness, among many other things. And so, although there isn’t much we can do about the fact that we are always information deficient, a deeper appreciation for the tentative nature of truth and the difficulties of acquiring knowledge can help us to learn to speak with less of a rhetoric of certainty and confidence. As Bertrand Russell once said: “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt”. A more updated epistemology and an appreciation for plausibility theory will go a long way to help young clerics not to fall into the same mistakes that were made decades earlier, when it was much easier to believe that one’s understanding of the world was far more comprehensive than it actually was in reality. The fact is our grasp on things is tiny and narrow, for our conclusions are formed on the basis of very limited data, but everyday brings new experiences that translate into new data, which, if we are reflective enough, cause us to make revisions to the views we held onto at one time. When we become more explicitly aware of how often this happens, it is much easier to see that there is a significant difference between speaking in a spirit of fearlessness, which is rooted in perfect love and humility (1 Jn, 4, 18), and audacity rooted in a condescending spirit made possible by an inordinately comfortable existence with very little opposition.

It should also be said that there is a glorious thread running through our history, and that is the history of the lives of the saints. But these are who they are in part by virtue of great suffering. When we immerse ourselves in this history, our head indeed spins, but with exhilaration and inspiration. In short, ours is a fully inclusive Church in that it contains saints and sinners, and everything else in between.