Year of the Priest
Pope Benedict has declared this year to be the year of the priest. We are just coming to the end of the year of focus on St Paul. St Paul is someone that protestants love. They tend to preach on the epistles more and Catholics tend to focus on the gospels more. I think the year of St Paul was an attempt by the pope to acknowledge that the church can benefit from embracing St Paul more.
But now we come to the priesthood. This puts the focus on many doctrines that protestants reject. Protestants churches have pastors. The Catholic church has priests. What is the difference? Well, a priest is one who offers sacrifices to God. So the whole issue of the sacrifice of the mass comes forward. Do we still need somebody to offer that sacrifice for us? Protestants say that Jesus was the sacrifice to end all sacrifices and the priest to end all priesthood. To an extent they are right. But the sacrifice of Christ and the priesthood of Christ need to be made present to us. Protestants say that happens through faith. Again they are right. But there is more. They are given to us sacramentally. There is still faith involved but there is also physical presence. Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist and in the priesthood.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly where protestant thinking diverges. They end up in such different spots on these matters that it is hard to even discuss them. One big difference I see is the idea of holiness. As a protestant we learned that all of life is holy. But holiness has the idea of being set apart. Being separated. Being different from the ordinary. So it does not make sense to talk about everything being holy. Things must be holy relative to the ordinary. So when we are called to live holy lives they must be somehow different that the lives ordinary people in our society live. But we still have to live. We have to earn a living. We have to raise our families. Is it not possible for somebody to be even holier if they didn’t have these burdens? Scripture seems to indicate that it is. So it makes sense to have some members of the church set apart for an even greater holiness.
But it rubs protestants the wrong way. There is a thinking that if you have such a group of people then you are saying that sex is somehow bad or earning money is somehow bad. They are not. They are gifts of God that need to be put in their proper place in our lives. But the reality is that we struggle to do that. We tend to let our desire for sex or money become a problem. We confess that God is the ultimate desire of the human heart. That sex and money are lesser things but still good things when they don’t inhibit the best thing which is God Himself. But does it not make that idea more believable if you have some people who give up the good things to focus exclusively on the best thing?
Not everyone can do it because, as a community, you have to earn money and you have to raise children. But the fact that some do it and are supported and encouraged by the rest of the community is a great witness that the things of heaven are truly greater than the things of earth. When we discourage people from living such a life you send the opposite message. You buy into the notion that worldly desires must be satisfied. But that is a dangerous road. If heterosexual desires must be satisfied then why not homosexual desires? Desires for premarital sex and extramarital sex can be strong. Does that mean they need to be satisfied?
Celibate people can commit sexual sins. Sadly that does happen. But does marriage solve the problem? Just because not everyone who claims to give the witness of celibacy actually does so does not make it a false witness. The devil will always put up false teachers to diminish the work of the true teachers. People will be cynical and say they all are sneaking around and getting sexual pleasure somehow. Some people are determined to believe that regardless of the evidence. But the many that do truly live the life are awesome witnesses to any who are willing to believe.
In my experience (former protestant, emerging into some kind of historic orthodox belief), protestants see spirituality as completely intangible. Hence, the idea of sacraments, the idea that the supernatural can invade and change nature, is rather foreign. Strangely, this is allowed when talking about creation (e.g. intelligent design) but not when relating to God.
June 15th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Yes, I guess creation is an exception. The other exceptions are the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. They hold that they are all physical events with huge spiritual consequences. So they see one time physical events as being spiritually effective. But ongoing sacramental events somehow cannot be. If you want the church to do holy things then you need to have a church that is in some way holy. If you are going to go there then you need the concept of one true physical body of Christ. Something that does not split every generation or two.
June 15th, 2009 at 3:17 pm