PRIESTHOOD
415
PRIESTHOOD
external priesthood nor any power of consecrating and
offering the Body and Blood of the Lord, as well as of
remitting and retaining sins, but merely the office and
bare ministry of preaching the Gospel, let him be
anathema." Far from being an "unjustifiable usurpa-
tion of Di^^ne powers", the priesthood forms so in-
dispensable a foundation of Christianity that its re-
moval would entail the destruction of the whole edifice.
A Christianitj- without a priesthood cannot be the
Church of Christ. This con\-iction is strengthened by
consideration of the psychological impossibility of
the Protestant assumption that from the end of the
first century onward, Christendom tolerated without
struggle or protest the unprecedented usurpation of
the priests, who without credentials or testimony
suddenly arrogated Di\'ine powers with respect to the
Eucharist, and, on the strength of a fictitious appeal to
Christ, laid on baptized sinners the grievous burden
of pubfic penance as an indispensable condition of the
forgiveness of sin.
As for the "universal priesthood", on which Prot- estantism relies in its denial of the special priesthood, it maj- be said that Catholics also belie\-e in a universal priesthood; this, however, by no means excludes a special priesthood but rather presupposes its existence, since the two are related as the general and the par- ticular, the abstract and the concrete, the figurative and the real. The ordinary Christian cannot be a priest in the strict sense, for he can offer, not a real sacrifice, but only the figurative sacrifice of prayer. For this rea.son the historical dogmatic development did not and could not follow the course it would have followed if in the primitive Church two opposing trains of thought (i. e. the universal versus the special priesthood) had contended for supremac}' until one was vanquished. The historj- of dogma attests, on the contrary, that both ideas advanced harmoniously through the centuries, and have never disappeared from the Catholic mind. As a matter of fact the pro- found and beautiful idea of the universal priesthood may be traced from Justin Martyr (Dial, cum Tryph., cxvi), Irenaeus (Adv. haer., IV, \dii, 3), and Origen ("De orat.", xx^-iii, 9; "In Levit.", hom. ix, 1), to Augu.stine (De ci\'it. Dei, XX, x) and Leo the Great (Sermo, iv, 1), and thence to St. Thomas (Summa, III, Q. Ixxxii, a. 1) and the Roman Catechism. And yet all these ^Titers recognized, along with the Sacrifice of the Mass, the special priesthood in the Church. The origin of the universal priesthood extends back, as is known, to St. Peter, who declares the faithful, in their character of Christians, "a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices", and "a chosen genera- tion, a kingly priesthood" (I Peter, ii, 5, 9). But the very text shows that the Apostle meant only a figura- tive priesthood, since the "spiritual sacrifices" signify prayer and the term "royal" (regale, paaVKaov) could have had but a metaphorical sense for the Christians. The Gnostics, Montanists, and Catharists, who, in their attacks on the special priesthood, had misapplied the metaphor, were just as illogical as the Reformers, since the two ideas, real and figurative priesthood, are quite compatible. It is clear from the foregoing that the Catholic clergy alone are entitled to the designa- tion "priest", since they alone have a true and real sacrifice to offer, the Holy Mass. Consequently, Anglicans who reject the Sacrifice of the Mass are inconsistent, when they refer to their clergj' as "priests". The preachers in Germany quite logically disclaim the title with a certain indignation.
B. The Hierarchical Posilion of the Presbyterate. — The relation of the priest to the bishop and deacon may be briefly explained bj' stating that he is, as it were, the middle term between the two, being hier- archically the subordinate of the bishop and the superior of the deacon (cf. Council of Trent, Sess. XXVI, can. vi). While the pre-eminence of the bishop over the priest consists mainly in his power of ordina-
tion, that of the priest over the deacon is based on
his power of consecrating and absolving (cf . Council of
Trent, loc. cit., cap. iv; can. i and vii). The inde-
pendence of the diaconate appears earlier and more
clearly in the oldest sources than that of the priest-
hood, chiefly because of the long-continued fluctuation
in the meaning of the titles episcopus and presbyter,
which until the middle of the second century were in-
terchangeable and synonymou.-i terms. Probably
there was a rea-
son in fact for
thisuncertainty,
since the hier-
archical distinc-
tion between
bishop and
priest seems to
have been of
gradual growth.
Epiphanius
(Adv. h a? r . ,
Ixxv, 5) offered
an explanation
of this condition
of uncertainty
by supposing
that priestswere
appoint ed in
some places
where there was
no bishop, while
in other places
where no candi-
dates for priest-
hoodwerefound,
the people were
satisfied with
ha\anga bisho]),
who, however,
could not be
without a dea-
con. Cardinal
Franzelin ("De
eccles. Christi",
2nd ed., Rome,
1907, thes. x\'i)
gives good
grounds for the
opinion that in
the Bible bish-
ops are indeed
named pres-
byter, but sim-
ple priests are
nevercalledcpis-
copi. The prob-
lem is, however,
far from being
solved, since in the primitive Church there were not yet fixed names for the different orders; the latter must rather be determined from the context according to the characteristic functions discharged. The ap- peal to the usage of the pagan Greeks, who had their iirlaKOTtoi and TTpeff^irfpoi, does not settle the ques- tion, as Ziebarth ("Das griechische Vereinswesen", Leipzig, 1896) has shown in reply to Hatch and Harnack. Any attempt at a solution must take into account the varying use in different countries (e. g. Palestine, Asia Minor). In some places the "pres- byters" may have been real bishops, in others priests in the present meaning of the term, while elsewhere they may have been mere administrative officers or worthy elders chosen to represent the local church in its external relations (see HiER.iRCHV of the E.^rly Church).
Like the ApostoHc writings, the "Didache", Hermas, Clement of Rome, and Irenieus often use the
wmmRmmm
Priest Sating Mass
IX Century Ivory, Frankfort
