While Garry Wills is acerbic and astute as ever in this examination of the roots of the Catholic priesthood, don’t expect an epic takedown of the Roman Catholic priesthood from “Why Priests?” But as with all Wills’ books, and there is some interesting material along the way, in the end, his analysis falls short, and his wish for a future Church without priests falls flat.
Wills attacks the priesthood by hammering away at what he
takes as its main pillar: the priesthood of Jesus in the line of Melchizedek.
Ol’ Mel, who gets all of 3 verses in Genesis, was the King of Salem and priest
of the Most High God. The patriarch/warlord Abraham gave a tenth of his war
booty in return for feeding his men. The priest-king appears suddenly at a
moment of crisis to bless Abraham, then disappears abruptly. But how about the
connection to Jesus? That comes through the New Testament book of Hebrews, once
ascribed to St. Paul, which links
Christ, in a line of tortured reasoning
brilliantly untangled by Wills, with the Old Testament priest-king. For chapter
after chapter, Wills batters away at the foundations of the story, first by
examining the Genesis account, and then closely analyzing the logic of Hebrews.
By the end, he had made his point. Hebrews is a well-meaning mess. But it does
something that Wills claims no other New Testament text does: it turns Jesus,
who was often at odds with priests and did not hold any priestly office,
explicitly into a priest, officiating at the sacrifice of his own body at
the Last Supper and on the Cross. It is
this connection – the priest-king Jesus who presides, in effect, at the
greatest originating symbol of Christianity -- that the Church uses to claim
Christ’s desire to perpetuate his own priesthood through the calling of
Catholics to be priests.
Wills follows up his attack with couple of chapters on the
history of the sacraments. Not surprisingly, he sees little association between
the gospels and the sacramental system. This point, that the seven Catholic
sacraments bear only a vague relationship with the earthly activities of
Christ, has been raised by others. Why, for instance, is healing not a
sacrament, when Jesus spends so much time perform medical miracles? Yet
marriage, hardly a Christian innovation (not to mention that it was not
integrated into the Church for centuries) makes the Super Seven? Wills suggests
that baptism and confirmation were not originally separate sacraments, and that
splitting them is a Church innovation, invented after child baptism became
the norm. Maybe, but a precedent for
separate baptisms of water and spirit are found in the book of Acts, which
shows newly-baptized Christians needing the laying on of hands to bring about
the gifts of the spirit. But Wills’s boldest attack is on the Last Supper
itself, the meal on which is based the most exalted part of the Mass, and which
the Church commemorates when bread and wine are changed to the body and blood
of Christ. Wills’ makes a very weak argument that the Last Supper was nothing
more than an eschatological meal – the last one enjoyed by Jesus, to be sure –
but in continuity with countless other such meals in Jesus’s lifetime. But the
heightened language of the meal, and its unusual evocation of Christ’s
impending betrayal and death, and the offering of body ahd blood (not likely a
feature of Christ’s typical meals) make this seem unlikely. By the 50s, Paul
was writing about the shared memorial meal whose symbols and language are
easily recognizable to Christians today, whatever eschatological overlay might
also have been present.
Two sections of the book gave me a great deal of food for
thought. One deals with the way that bread/wine become body/blood. Wills
describes the complex philosophical constructs that Thomas Aquinas went to to
explain the miracle of the Eucharist. By separating the “breadness” (substance)
of the bread from its appearance/taste/smell (accidents ) he seemingly solved a
complicated question: why don’t the bread and wind don’t change in appearance
during the Mass, as they become the body and blood of Christ? But by doing so,
Aquinas introduces new issues that had to be dealt with. What if the wine was
poisoned? Can it be discarded? (No, it is still the Blood of Christ.) What if a
fly lands in the cup? (The fly had to be removed, washed and burned, with its
ashes placed in the tabernacle). A certain amount of the fussiness of today’s
priests can be laid at the feet of Aquinas’s solution to the mystery of
transubstantiation.
The other section of value detailed salvation theology, and is
one of the most readable on the subject. Wills presents compelling evidence
that the story of Jesus as a substitute sacrifice for humanity has troubled
even (literally) sainted Catholic theologians. 11th century Anselm
say Jesus was paying an honor-debt owed by mankind to God for having sinned in
the Garden. Aquinas thinks this is rather potty. Meanwhile, Augustine focuses
on the Incarnation as the miracle of greatest worth, placing the death and
sacrifice of Jesus as somewhat secondary. The story of how each of these
intellectual giants wrestled with matters as seemingly simple as the meaning
and even the number of sacraments should make ordinary Catholics breathe more
easily. Even our biggest guns didn’t agree, and the Church was left with the
task of weaving together the contrasting threads of their sometimes contrary
opinions.
Wills looks to early Church documents to make the case for a sacrifice-free (and hence priestless) Christianity. He turns to the Didache (which contains a description of an early Christian celebration) and the descriptions of worship by Justin Martyr. Wills argues that the meals they describe were not Masses, in which a sacrifice was offered, but thanksgiving (Eucharistic) liturgies. But even here, Wills describes an unfolding need for leaders. A “stander-before” (proestos) led the gathering in prayer and thanksgiving. “Diacones” (deacons) organized the distribution of food to the needy. Overseers (“espiscopos,” anglicized as “bishop”) organized and led communities. Though Jesus may not have anticipated a church structure, his followers quickly (within the first 100 years of the Church) -- perhaps led by need, perhaps by the Spirit -- organized themselves hierarchically. Whether the current church structure can claim direct succession from these structures is a good question. Whether today’s Church requires its complex and stratified priesthood is another. But if a refusal to evolve the priesthood can be laid as a charge against the Church, surely the urge to self-organize can’t be.
Ultimately, Wills’ arguments falls short. Hoping to topple
the temple, he merely knocks over the rickety outhouse. If asked, I doubt that
many Catholic priests would claim the legitimacy of their priesthood on the
person of Melchizedek and the logic of Hebrews. The arguments are too esoteric.
As noted, Wills’ desire to use the early Church as a model for today’s worship
is naïve, and at odds with the Church’s rapidly evolving governance in the
earliest centuries. And trying to model ourselves on Jesus’s own actions may
not do us any good either. Jesus did not act as a priest, performing liturgies
and sacrifices, unless you count the sacrifice of Calvary as him sacrificing
himself. He preached, healed, fed and critiqued. He appointed emissaries
(apostles), not bishops.
By knocking out what must be the its least sound biblical supports, Wills has done little damage to the idea of priesthood. There are plenty of scriptural and utilitarian reasons to accept some sort of priesthood, if not the current model we now enjoy. Though Christ did not serve as a priest in the Jerusalem Temple, his priesthood could easily be derived from his total dedication to his mission and to God, to the point of giving up family, marriage, and fortune. He lived and preached a life of self-sacrifice, which could be argued is the highest form of sacrifice. And even if the current seven sacraments can’t all comfortably be traced back to Jesus, the idea that sacraments are invalid if Jesus didn’t specifically originate them seems to go too far the other way. I would argue that the lack of sacramental provenance gives us the opportunity to become more creative with the sacraments, freeing us to re-invent them to address today’s needs. Recall that the Church already took a step in this direction when it rechristened Last Rites as the Sacrament of the Sick.
Strangely, Wills go nowhere near the reason that many modern
Catholics find the priesthood appalling: its arrogance, divisiveness and
irrelevance to contemporary needs. The priest abuse crisis gets nary a mention.
Priestly celibacy is not discussed. Arrogant bishops who run their dioceses
like petty despots don’t rate a word. Conservative Catholics who long for
priests to be the sexless autocrats of old don’t rate a mention. There is no
doubt that the less blinkered of us are open to look at scripture and church
tradition more honestly. Indeed, the sensum fidei, the gathered voice of the Church
as a whole shows willingness to open priesthood to women and the married. But are
the faithful (or even the unfaithful) calling for a Church without priests? Here
Wills seems a voice crying in the wilderness of his own pessimism. We want our
priests to act with integrity, to have a clue about what our lives are like, to
be wise and inspiring. We want to be led by well-balanced, intelligent men and
women who can lead their flocks into an imitation of Christ. But no priests? No
thanks.
Could the Church exist (and thrive) with a priesthood based
on different premises and with a different set of disciplines -- say, optional
celibacy, the power of congregations to select their own priests, the diffusion
of sacramental powers among the faithful, and a bottom up governance model?
Perhaps. But Wills does not paint a picture of what such a Church might look
like, and what objections it would raise among the conservative faithful. Wills
whiffs on his promise of a better, priestless Catholicism. That’s disappointing
from a writer and thinker of such usual clarity and vigor.
As the church has changed in the past, so can it change in
the future. While Wills may pine improperly for the purity of the nascent
church, he has to be commended for bringing up the question.
But for a useful guide to the future leadership of the Church,
we will need to look elsewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment