Baptized Christians “participate in their own way in the priestly, prophetic and kingly office of Christ (Code of Canon Law, c. 204),” and before identifying any distinction that exists within the people of God, the Second Vatican Fathers assert the centrality of the baptism Christians share. All baptized persons are formed in the likeness of Christ, and by participating in the Eucharist such persons are brought into communion with Jesus and with one another. Within this unity, the “various members and functions have their part to play (Lumen gentium, 7),” but all, as baptized Christians, are called to holiness (Lumen gentium, 11).

Paragraph nine of Lumen gentium speaks of the people of God as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people.” This is language borrowed from I Peter (2:9), the author of whom is himself seeking continuity between the Christian understanding of the faithful and the Jewish one (for the Jewish people, as well, perceive God to be making his people into “a kingdom of priests, a holy nation [Exodus 19:5-6]“). To Bishop Emile-Joseph De Smedt, a participant in the Second Vatican Council, just as the whole Jewish people were commissioned by God, Jesus uses the community of those gathered around him to be an instrument for the redemption of all, and he sends forth such people into the world.

Participation in the priestly office of Jesus is not confined to members of the ministerial priesthood. Whether ordained or lay, each “in their own way participates in the one priesthood of Jesus (Lumen gentium, 10).” The Church’s theology presents the former (members of the ministerial priesthood) as acting in the person of Jesus, as making present the Eucharistic sacrifice and as offering it to God, and presents the latter (baptized Christians) as joining in the offering of the Eucharist “not indeed in the same way, but each in the way which is proper to himself (Lumen gentium, 11)” or herself.

Given that the Church actually teaches that all baptized Christians participate in the priesthood of Jesus, what benefit can be found in such a teaching? The key, I believe, is Paragraph 34 of Lumen gentium: A baptized Christian’s works, prayers, apostolic endeavours, married and family life, daily occupations, moments of physical and mental relaxation, and even hardships of life can become “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” With the Lord’s own Body, such sacrifices are “most fittingly offered in the celebration of the Eucharist” Consider the words of the new translation of the Missal: “Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.”

To the Catholic person, the Eucharist holds a unique place. In this sacrament, we believe that Christ himself is mediated (Sacrosanctum concilium, 47). Reflection at the Second Vatican Council surrounded encouraging in the Christian people as receptive a disposition as possible (Sacrosanctum concilium, 59).  Catholics were not to be seen as “strange and silent spectators” at the celebration of the Eucharist (Sacrosanctum concilium, 48), and in my experience, when the Church’s vision has been communicated and accepted — communicated and accepted that baptized Christians participate in the priesthood of Jesus — this self-understanding has been one of those ways in which active participation, or true receptivity at the Eucharist, can occur.

My experience has been that when individuals are helped to discern the ways in which their works, prayers, apostolic endeavours, married and family life, daily occupations, moments of physical and mental relaxation and even physical hardships can operate as “spiritual sacrifices,” then not only is the Mass approached with a more appropriate disposition, but the events of one’s life are consciously tied to life’s Giver.

Against the statement of she who claimed that “when everyone is a priest, then no one is a priest,” I think the best response is that according to the Church’s theology of baptism, all baptized Christians participate in the priestly office of Jesus. Rather than grudgingly accepting that this is, in fact, what the Church teaches, perhaps persons should see the implications of such a teaching, and open themselves to ways in which they can experience the transformation it brings.

K.

Comments can be made at Vox Nova where this post first appeared. I also write at my blog Musings.

You’ll just have to settle for the content you receive elsewhere.  :)

I will keep blogging  where I have been for the last 13 months — over at Musings — and that will be it.

K.

Graham Greene

Of the various works of novelist Graham Greene, one of my more preferred is his A Burnt-Out Case. Published in 1960, A Burnt-Out Case follows Querry, a world famous architect who arrives anonymously at a leper colony in the Congo. Having lost meaning or interest in experiencing pleasure in life, Querry explains his arrival by saying that “the boat goes no further.” The colony is overseen by a Catholic religious community, and also includes Colin, a doctor and atheist, who diagnoses Querry to be the mental equivalent of a burnt-out case. A Burnt-Out Case follows Querry and the possibility of his being cured.

In one scene Querry and Colin sit on the steps of the hospital opposite a  church with open sides. They hear the Superior inside preaching to his congregation:

And I tell you truth I was ashamed when this man he said to me, “You Klistians are all big thieves —you steal this, you steal that, you steal all the time. Oh, I know you don’t steal money. You don’t creep into Thomas Olo’s hut and take his new radio-set, but you are thieves all the same. Worse thieves than that. You see a man who lives with one wife and doesn’t beat her and looks after her when she gets a bad pain from medicines at the hospital, and you say that’s Klistian love. You go to the courthouse and you hear a good judge, who say to the piccin that stole sugar from the white man’s cupboard, ‘You’re a very sorry piccin. I not punish you, and you, you will not come here again. No more sugar palaver,’ and you say that’s Klistian mercy. But you are a mighty big thief when you say that — for you steal this man’s love and that man’s mercy. Why do you not say when you see man with knife in his back bleeding and dying, ‘There’s Klistian anger’? Why not say when Henry Okapa got a new bicycle and someone came and tore his brake, ‘There’s Klistian envy’? You are like a man who steals only the good fruit and leaves the bad fruit rotting on the tree.”

All right. You tell me I’m number one thief, but I say you make a big mistake. Any man may defend himself before his judge. All of you in this church, you are my judges now and this is my defense.

You pray to Yezu, but Yezu is not just a holy man. Yezu is God and Yezu made the world. When you make a song you are in the song, when you bake bread you are in the bread, when you make a baby you are in the baby, and because Yezu made you, he is in you. When you love it is Yezu who loves, when you are merciful It is Yezu who is merciful. But when you hate or envy it is not Yezu, for everything Yezu made is good. Bad things are not there — they are nothing. Hate means no love. Envy means no justice. They are just empty spaces, where Yezu ought to be.

Now I tell you that when a man loves, he must be a Klistian. When a man is merciful he must be a Klistian. In this village do you think you are the only Klistians — you who come to church? There is a doctor who lives near the well beyond Marie Akimbu’s house and he prays to Nzambe and he makes bad medicine. He worships a false God, but once when a person was ill and his father and mother were in the hospital he took no money; he gave bad medicine but he took no money: he made a big God palaver with Nzambe for the piccin but he took no money. I tell you then he was a Klistian, a better Klistian than the man who broke Henry Okapa’s bicycle. He not believe in Yezu, but he a Klistian. I am not a thief who steal away his charity and give it to Yezu. I give back to Yezu only what Yezu made. Yezu made love, he made mercy. Everybody in the world has something that Yezu made. Everybody in the world is that much a Klistian. So how can I be a thief. There is no man so wicked the he never once in his life show in his heart something that God made…

With the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46) in mind, and according to the same set of homilies referenced in the previous post “Ratzinger’s Neglected Child,” Ratzinger writes: “In this parable, the Judge does not ask what kind of theory a person has held about God and the world. He is not asking about a confession of dogma, solely about love. That is enough, and it saves a man. Whoever loves is a Christian.

However great the temptation may be for theologians to quibble about this statement, to provide it with ifs and buts, notwithstanding: we may and should accept it in all its sublimity and simplicity, quite unconditionally — just as the Lord posited it. That does not mean, of course, that we should overlook the fact that these words represent a not inconsiderable proposition and make no small demand on someone…”

Are Christians thieves? Perhaps with both Greene and Ratzinger, we can see how a person might learn to respond “No.”

K.

Karl Rahner & Joseph Ratzinger

An early Christian like Justin the Martyr (who died in the year 165) is often seen as laying the first foundations for a theology which, later, will become the backbone for a theology of religions. Justin believed that there were various kinds of religious knowledge (possessed by those he would have seen as pagan, possessed by those Jewish and those Christian), and that each kind of religious knowledge had (what he called) the Logos as its unique source. Justin believed that Jesus was this Logos, and Justin believed that although kinds of religious knowledge varied, each, even if in varying degrees, had some relation to Jesus. In Christ’s Incarnation God offers, to quote Karl Rahner, his “last Word,” but that is not to say that Christ, who is the source of all religious knowledge, has not been previously experienced in varying degrees.

Something that can be understood as so inclusive, throughout Christian history, eventually became a minority view. More rigid interpretations of an axiom such as extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the Church no salvation; hereafter EENS) took shape, and upon entering into four Magisterial texts (between the years of 1208 and 1442), critical engagement with the axiom lessened, and more pessimistic evaluations of those outside the visible boundaries of the Church were hardened.

I have a theory (a theory for which I am not willing to stretch my neck too far) about Joseph Ratzinger (the current Pope Benedict) and how he has engaged with this old axiom through his career.  My theory borrows an image from educational psychology. In educational psychology, there can be certain popularity types that are attached to children. For example, persons in a class might find themselves popular, average, controversial, neglected or rejected, and those neglected constitute the greatest challenge insofar as such students fail to receive acknowledgement, whether positive or negative, from their peers. I think this old axiom is Ratzinger’s neglected child.

Ratzinger, and here I rely on a number of 1964 homilies preached from the Cathedral of Münster (a series of homilies which now constitute What it Means to Be a Christian [Ignatius Press: 2006]), acknowledges the work of fellow theologians (he might have in mind Karl Rahner and/or Hans Küng, for example) and the concern of such theologians as to how persons, although unaware, might find themselves “in some way” as belonging to the Church, and thus being saved. In such reflection, EENS enjoys credibility, insofar as whether accepted or rejected, the axiom is acknowledged as worthy of one’s engagement.  Such reflection, to Ratzinger, focuses on something “not our problem at all.” With or without human theories, God is able to save those outside the Church’s boundaries, and he does not require us “to help him with our cogitations.”

Ratzinger asserts that everything Christians believe about God, and know about humans “prevents [them] from accepting that beyond the limits of the Church there is no more salvation.” We Christians, he notes, are “no longer ready and able” to think of our neighbours, “decent and respectable [people], and in many ways better than we,” as being “damned simply because [they are] not Catholic.” Any Christian who looks “on the loss of salvation for others as the condition, as it were, on which he serves Christ, will in the end only be able to turn away grumbling.”

The question is not how God saves those outside, but what “special thing [is] in Christianity that justifies us to be and live as Christians?” One commentator, Tracey Rowland, has suggested that if Ratzinger saw that “special thing” in Christianity as identifiable with extensions of material benefit, then now as Pope he would have the Vatican running its own Live Aid concerts. Lest critics think Ratzinger is being too easy on people, it is important to know that he recognizes in the expectation of the Judge in the Parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25), a “not inconsiderable proposition [which] makes no small demand on someone.” Enter faith.

Ratzinger seeks not to nuance our old axiom EENS back into believability, nor even, I think, acknowledge the axiom as worthy of criticism. He wants to stress the importance of finding oneself inside the Christian community, even if God will save those outside its visible boundaries.

K.