Priesthood of the Faithful

PRIESTHOOD OF THE FAITHFUL. - It is the power to participate in the acts of Christian worship communicated to the faithful in Baptism.

I. THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE FAITHFUL IN REVELATION AND IN THE MAGISTERIUM

To the persecuted neophytes St. Peter twice recalls their priesthood: "Draw near to him (Christ), a living stone; you too, as living stones, are built up (or: build yourselves up) upon him (to be) a spiritual building, a holy priesthood (ἱεράτευμα ἅγιον), to offer spiritual victims (πνευματικὰς θυσίας) acceptable to God through the mediation of Jesus Christ... But you (who believe) are a chosen race, a royal priesthood (βασίλειον ἱεράτευμα), a holy nation, a people reserved as God's own possession" (1 Pt. 2:4-5, 9). The whole passage is metaphorical.

St. Peter interprets allegorically the greatest religious realities of Judaism: temple, priesthood, sacrifice, taking his cue from Psalm 118:22 and Is. 28:16. The stone of which the Prophets speak is Jesus Christ, who is considered as the cornerstone of the spiritual building of the Church (the new temple), into which all the baptized enter as members, having become priests of the new worship, in order to offer spiritual victims. The nature of such victims is not directly indicated by St. Peter, but from the adjective "spiritual" and from the parallel passages of St. Paul it emerges that these are oblations improperly so called, whose object is the bona animae, prayer (Hebr. 13:15), faith (Phil. 2:17); the bona corporis (Rom. 12:1); the bona fortunae (Hebr. 13:16; Phil. 4:18). If the nature of every priesthood is inferred from the nature of the victims offered, the priestly prerogative with which the simple faithful are invested is metaphorical and improper. Indeed, according to De Ambroggi, from the passive term used (ἐξάττευμα) and from the biblical context to which it alludes, it seems that St. Peter holds that the faithful constitute a passive priesthood, that is, a society governed by priests. In fact the phrase of v. 9 regale sacerdotium (ἐξάττευμα) taken from Ex. 19:6 (according to the Septuagint) is to be understood in the sense of a kingdom belonging to the priests, in which the priests have the power of government. It is therefore a hierocracy, in which the one who governs is consecrated, and the one who is governed participates in this consecration as a "holy nation." The faithful are not themselves priests, but the object of the care and government of priests. Just as the expression "you are a kingdom" does not mean "you are as many kings," but subjects of royal authority, so the expression "you are a priesthood" does not imply "you are as many priests" but subjects of priestly authority. In the same manner the passages analogous to the letter of St. Peter that are found in Is. 61:6; 62:12; Apoc. 1:5-6; 20:6 are to be interpreted (P. De Ambroggi, Il s. dei fedeli secondo la prima di Pietro, in La scuola catt., 75 [1947], pp. 52-57; cf. L. Cerfaux, Regale sacerdotium, in Revue des sciences philos. et théol., 28 [1939], pp. 5-39). It is undeniable, however, that this passivity does not mean inertia on the part of the faithful who, united to Christ the high priest and to the regularly established ministers of worship, offer the spiritual victims of which the two Princes of the Apostles speak. In the offering of spiritual victims there is discernible a certain sacrificial activity of the faithful, which accompanies the true and proper sacrifice, reserved to the hierarchical priesthood. Indeed one could affirm that at least implicitly the Eucharistic Sacrifice is included in the spiritual victims. It is well known that the Eucharist, constituting essentially the worship in spirit and truth (Io. 4:23) of the New Testament, is called a spiritual sacrifice and θυσία λογική (hostia rationalis), especially in opposition to the materiality and formalism of the sacrifices of the Old Testament. Moreover this Eucharistic orientation of the oblative activity of the faithful is not only glimpsed, but many times openly affirmed by Tradition, while leaving unprejudiced the question of the intimate nature of this "potestas offerendi." St. Justin martyr was the first to affirm an explicit connection between the passage of St. Peter and the prophecy of Malachi regarding the Mass: "We who all believe as one man in God the creator of the universe... are a priestly race (the broadening of the meaning with respect to 1 Pt. 2:9 is noteworthy), as God himself attests when he says that pure and acceptable sacrifices will be offered to him in every place among the nations (Mal. 1:10). Now God accepts sacrifices from no one except from the hands of his priests" (Dialogus cum Tryphone, ch. 116; PG 6, 745). St. Irenaeus attributes a priestly dignity to all the just (Adv. haeres., 4, 8, 3; PG 7, 995) and affirms that the whole Church offers the sacrifice of the Eucharist (ibid., 4, 17, 6; PG 7, 1024; cf. also Origen, Hom., 9, 9; PG 12, 521); Chrysostom, illustrating the special value of the Mass (Hom. 18 in 2 Cor. 3; PG 61, 527); St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, 17, 5; PL 41, 535; ibid., 20, 10; PL 41, 676; Quaest. Evang., 2, 40; PL 35, 1355) shows the actualization of this cultic power in the collective offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice: "Christ is priest, he the offerer, he the offered, of which he established a daily sign in the Sacrifice of the Church, which being the body of Christ the head, learns to offer itself through him" ("quae cum ipsius capitis corpus sit, seipsam per ipsum discit offerre": De Civ. Dei, 10, 20; PL 41, 298, cf. ibid., 10, 6; PL 41, 284).

The study of the liturgy has revealed another strand of primitive Christian teaching concerning the relations of the faithful to the Sacrifice of the Mass. All the liturgies, Eastern and Western, are permeated by the idea that the Mass is the sacrifice offered by the whole assembly of believers in the majesty of God, through Christ.

The recent teaching of the Church's magisterium is nothing but a confirmation and a clarification of the thought of the Fathers and of the liturgy. Already the Council of Trent, vindicating against the Protestants the value of so-called private Masses, had taught that the Eucharistic Sacrifice is always public, because it is offered by the Church through a legitimately deputed minister (Denz-U, 944). Pius XI in the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (8 May 1928) brings the biblical text of the "regale sacerdotium" close to the office and the obligation that all the faithful have to offer the Mass in expiation of their own and others' sins. Pius XII, who already in the encyclical Mystici corporis (29 June 1943) had used the phrase "Christifideles ipsimet immaculatum Agnum... per sacerdotis manus Aeterno Patri porrigunt," in the encyclical Mediator Dei (20 Nov. 1947) returned ex professo to the subject, bringing to it decisive clarifications, beginning his teaching with the phrase: "It must further be affirmed that the faithful also offer the divine victim, under a different aspect."

II. NATURE OF THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE FAITHFUL

A questo riguardo si presentano subito due affermazioni estreme, che sfociano in un duplice errore.

1. Error by excess

This is the error of equating, by a kind of liturgical democracy, the faithful with the priest properly so called. Tertullian, who in De Baptismo, ch. 7 (PL 1, 1206) had stated the Catholic principle, having become a Montanist was the first to formulate this error: (De exhortatione castitatis, ch. 7; PL 2, 922). The Waldensians held that virtue and not ordination was the source of priestly dignity. According to this system every virtuous layman could validly administer all the Sacraments, while an unworthy priest was to be considered deprived of all power (cf. Denz-U, 424 and F. Tocco, L'eresia nel medioevo, Florence 1884, p. 179). Luther, in his appeal to the Christian nobility of the German nation (1520), affirmed that all belong to the same estate and are truly priests, bishops, popes (An den christlichen Adel deutscher Nation, ed. Erlangen, XXI, pp. 282-83; cf. G. Miegge, Lutero, I, Torre Pellice 1946, pp. 377-85). These ideas were shared by all the "reformers" of the 16th century (cf. A. Michel, Ordre, in DThC, XI, coll. 1333-46). The Council of Trent condemned the Protestant error in ch. 4 of session XXIII (Denz-U, 960). James Spener (v.), the initiator of Lutheran pietism (v.), against the exaggerated monopoly of the pastors, made popular the idea of the "universal priesthood" of believers (cf. M. Bendiscioli, Il luteranesimo, Milan 1948, pp. 111-14). On the occasion of the controversy of Crema, which was agitated in the 18th century over the right of the faithful to Communion made with hosts specially consecrated in the Mass they have attended, the defenders of Guerrieri and above all the Jansenists developed arguments that echo Lutheran thought on the universal priesthood. This tendency triumphed in the Synod of Pistoia, which was immediately condemned by Pius VI in the constitution Auctorem Fidei of 28 Aug. 1794 (Denz-U, 1528; cf. B. Matteucci, Controversia sulla Comunione liturgica e il giansenismo italiano, in Riv. del clero ital., 18 [1937], pp. 203-208; id., Comunione liturgica, in Fides, 40 [1940], pp. 515-22; A. Mercati, Un biglietto inedito del Muratori in occasione della controversia di Crema, in Riv. della stor. della Chiesa in Italia, 2 [1948], pp. 403-11; L. Paladini, La controversia della Comunione nella Messa, in Misc. in honorem L. C. Mohlberg, I, Rome 1948, pp. 347-71). Edwin Hatch, an Anglican, in his Oxford lectures on the organization of the early Church (1880) says that at the beginning of Christianity there appears a category of persons charged with performing the liturgical functions (baptizing, consecrating the Eucharist, etc.): these constitute the clergy. But this distinction between clergy and laity was founded solely on practical necessities of good order. In fact all the faithful considered themselves priests and, when the occasion arose, could preach, baptize, celebrate the Eucharist. Only in the 19th century

IV the idea arose that the priesthood was a reserved and inalienable power. A century later St. Augustine gave a basis to this theory with the doctrine of the indelible character (E. Hatch, The organization of the early christian Church, 5th ed., London 1895; cf. J. Tixeront, L'Ordine e le ordinazioni, Italian trans., Brescia 1939, pp. 21-52; A. D'Alès, Sacerdote catholique, in DFC, IV, col. 1039). Recently some zealous supporters of the liturgical movement have echoed Hatch's ideas. J. A. Jungmann maintains that the ancient name of priest belonged in the first place to Christ and that it was only at a later time recognized as belonging to the whole community of the faithful (cf. 1 Pt. 2, 9). Only at a third stage, and after several generations, was this name also given to persons invested with the office. Therefore the community of the faithful is a priestly society that carries out the liturgy under the guidance of official ministers (Christus-Gemeinde-Priester, in K. Borgmann, Volksliturgie und Seelsorge, Colmar in Alsace n.d., pp. 25-30). E. Walter holds that the Lord's command "Do this in memory of me" refers essentially to the whole Church and that only in actu secundo does it divide into hierarchical functions. The detachment and independence of the priestly action came about slowly and only at a time when the liturgy was no longer, as in antiquity, the work of the people, but a rigid and cold formula (Weine und Laienpriestertum, das eine Priestertum der Kirche, in K. Borgmann, op. cit., pp. 31-46). P. Parsch regards the private Mass as an "undesirable phenomenon" because in it there would be a deviation from the primitive form of the Sacrifice and an abandonment of an essential principle in the liturgy, that of the active participation of the faithful. He adds that whoever opposes the private Mass is a benefactor of the Church (Messerbildung im Geiste der liturgischen Erneuerung, Klosterneuburg 1935, p. 51; id., Volksliturgie, ibid. 1940, p. 216; cf. F. Carpino, Il giubileo sacerdotale di Pio XII alla luce della sua dottrina sul s., Rome 1949, pp. 25-26). It is precisely this error that Pius XII rejected in the encyclical Mediator Dei (AAS, 39 [1947], pp. 521-95).

2. Error by defect

In reaction to the excesses mentioned above, some deny any true and proper active participation of the faithful in the Sacrifice of the Mass. This position empties the documents of tradition, of the liturgy and of the magisterium of the Church of their real content. While avoiding this crude denial, some Catholic writers perhaps minimize too much the data of Revelation and of the magisterium (thus, for example, J. van der Meersch, De cooblatione fidelium in sacrificio Missae, Bruges 1942). Others again, while remaining within the bounds of orthodoxy, waver in uncertainty (cf. S. Bordin, La partecipazione dei fedeli al Sacrificio della Messa, in Riv. liturgica, 34 [1947], pp. 182-85; 35 [1948], pp. 17-20).

3. The more probable doctrine

The two extreme positions are struck at the root by the solemn definitions of the Church, which reject any confusion between the priesthood and the laity, as well as any separation and opposition. No confusion: the priesthood and the laity are not confused, because while the layman is, in the hierarchical sense, on the farthest shore, the priest is at the point equidistant between the two extremes, between God and man. The leveling of all believers before God is a heterodox tendency, which Revelation does not tolerate. No separation, because although they remain on distinct planes, laymen and priests tend toward God; with different but convergent activities, they accomplish the sacrificial act of reconciliation.

As for the fluctuating opinions, the cause of uncertainty is eliminated by removing the variety of views on the nature of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Pius XII seems to erase it with the incisive words of the encyclical Mediator Dei: « Etiam atque etiam animadvertendum est eucharisticum sacrificium suapte natura incruentam esse divinae victimae immolationem, quae quidem mystico modo ex sacrarum specierum separatione patet, ex earumque oblatione Aeterno Patri peracta » (AAS, 39 [1947], p. 563; cf. also pp. 548-49). With this the way is opened to reach the center of the problem: a) the immolation, which results from the twofold consecration, is the exclusive work of the priest as an instrument of divine omnipotence (the principle of distinction between priests and laity); b)

the oblation, which implies an interior act of homage to God, is common to priests and laity (principle of union between priests and laity). In fact priests and laity, as intelligent beings, are deputed to Christian worship by the character. The character, even the baptismal one, is a participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 63, a. 3), which consecrates and deputes all the faithful to the divine worship to be exercised actively according to the form established by Jesus Christ (ibid., 3a, q. 63, a. 1 and 3). Since the character is different in the baptized and in the ordained, the common oblation also takes on a special nuance. By virtue of the character of Order, the priest, in the very act of immolation, offers the victim to God "ritually"; by virtue of the character of Baptism the simple faithful offers the same victim "spiritually" together with the priest. It cannot be said, however, that the oblation of the faithful, being spiritual, remains extrasacrificial, because their interior act merges with the actual internal oblation of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the soul of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, which is incarnated and becomes visible in the external rite, which is the divinely established sign for the manifestation of the interior act.

On the other hand the ritual oblation made by the priest is in some manner also that of the faithful, by reason of the character and of the solidarity of the Mystical Body: totum corpus agit in membro suo. As the whole man sees through his eye, so it is the whole Church that offers the Sacrifice through the membrum electum, which is the priest (cf. G. De Broglie, Du rôle de l'Eglise dans le Sacrifice eucharistique, in Nouvelle rev. théol., 70 [1949], pp. 449-60). Onto the ancient and robust trunk of mystical or sacramental immolation is grafted the doctrine of the oblation of the faithful; the immolation, produced by the priest alone, becomes the visible sign of the interior offering of the Head and of the members, of the Christus totus. One can therefore affirm with St. Augustine that through the external rite of the Mass "tota redempita civitas, sacrificium universale (offert et) offertur Dio per sacerdote magnum Jesum Christum" (De Civ. Dei, 10, 6; PL 41, 284). From this it appears that the faithful concur "actively" in the offering of the Mass, the true Sacrifice of the Mystical Body. This concurrence of theirs does not equate them with the hierarchical priest, but introduces them into the sphere of cultural and religious activity, which is a participation, albeit in a minimal degree, in that perfect worship which Jesus Christ, as High Priest, has always rendered to God. The faithful therefore, by the baptismal character, have become cultores Dei not in just any way, but secundum ritum religionis christianae, that is, in the Eucharistic Sacrifice. In this sense it can perhaps be said that all the baptized participate, within the limits entailed by their condition as simple members of the Mystical Body, in the priesthood of Jesus Christ (Sum. Theol., 3a, q. 63, a. 3).

III. THE FAITHFUL AS VICTIMS OF THEIR SACRIFICE

In the Mass Christ is not only priest but also victim; if the Savior made himself present in the Consecration, he did so in order to be offered to the Father together with his mystical members. It is the Christus totus who is the victim of this Sacrifice, as is evident from the whole Catholic tradition. St. Augustine, after affirming that Christ « nos ipsos voluit esse sacrificium suum » (Sermo 227; PL 38, 1101), adds that this Sacrifice is « praeclarissimum atque optimum » (De Civ. Dei, 19, 23; PL 41, 655) because the multitude of the redeemed, that is, the assembly of the Saints, is presented as a victim to God by the great High Priest, who is Christ (ibid., 10, 6; PL 41, 284). All this takes place in the eucharistic rite, where the Church learns to offer herself in the liturgical victim, which she raises up toward God. This idea was taken up by all medieval theology. Through Paschasius Radbertus, Rabanus Maurus, Guimund of Aversa, Alger of Liège, Rupert of Deutz, Peter Lombard, Innocent III, the Augustinian formulas reached the scholastics of the 13th century, among whom St. Albert the Great stood out, calling Jesus « caput hostiae », as if to indicate that there is but one victim, made up of many faithful, who have one head, Jesus Christ (cf. the individual passages in A. Piolanti, Il Corpo mistico e le sue relazioni con l'Eucaristia in s. Alberto Magno, Rome 1939, pp. 186-91). St. Thomas expresses the same concept

(Sum. Theol., 3ª, q. 83, a. 4), which was largely developed by the « French school », especially by Thomassin, Bossuet and Bourdaloue (cf. M. Lepin, Il sacrificio del Corpo mistico, Italian trans., Milan 1941, pp. 81-139). The liturgy confirms the idea that all the faithful are like so many « segmenta » of the « catholica hostia » that is offered in the Mass.

The magisterium of the Church has authentically interpreted the data of Revelation. Pius XII expresses himself thus: « The divine Redeemer does not only offer himself to the heavenly Father (in the Mass) as head of the Church, but in himself offers all his mystical members, since he carries them all, including the weakest and most infirm, in his most loving Heart » (encyclical Mystici Corporis, 28 June 1943. Cf. also Pius XI, encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor of 28 May 1928; Pius XII, encyclical Mediator Dei of 20 Nov. 1947; AAS, 39 [1947], pp. 521-93).

It is not difficult to establish theologically the nature of this « status victimae » inherent in the Christian profession. Through the baptismal character all the faithful, while receiving a mystical and analogical participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, are also constituted victims of their priesthood united to that of the eternal and supreme Priest. Indeed, in the present divine economy, one is a victim insofar as one is a priest: sacerdotium et hostia. As Christ became in the hypostatic union « victima sui sacerdotii et sacerdos suae victimae » (St. Paulinus of Nola, Ep. IX ad Severum: PL 61, 19), so all Christians become, in Baptism, victims of their priesthood united to that of Jesus: « corpus regenerati fit caro Crucifixi » (St. Leo the Great, Sermo 63 de Passione Domini: PL 54, 156), deputed to offer themselves as fragments of the one great host, which is the Lamb immolated for the sins of all.

How this immolation takes place in the Sacrifice of the Mass can be clarified analogically to the « mactatio mystica » of Jesus Christ. The real body of the Lord, present under the eucharistic species, is the symbol and the efficient cause of the Mystical Body; from this principle it follows that just as Christ in the Mass is immolated not physically in himself, but « sacramentally », insofar as he is signified and contained under the separate species of bread and wine, so the Mystical Body in the eucharistic sacrifice is not immolated physically but in signo suo (St. Albert the Great, De Sacrificio Missae, tr. 3, cap. 1, n. 3). Indeed the separate species of bread and wine are signs (indices) that directly represent the separation of Jesus' body from his blood, and indirectly signify the mystical immolation of the Church. Likewise the sacramental immolation of the true body of Jesus Christ directly signifies the interior act of will with which the Redeemer offers himself in perfect dedication to the Father, and indirectly indicates also the internal oblation with which the Church, « tota redempta civitas », in Christ and with Christ consecrates herself to God.

Antonio Piolanti