What's the justification for the priesthood?

Great Debates
1

First, an apology for possible redundancy (and repetitiveness). I feel sure this has been done before, but after a few searches, I’m turning up only passing remarks, no whole threads devoted to the subject.

What’s the scriptural (and/or extra-scriptural) justification for having priests administer the sacraments and perform the other functions they perform? Why is it that most Protestants have pastors or ministers (usually), or even just a leader appointed informally by the congregation, but Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans have ordained priests?

I’m interested primarily in the sacramental function of priests, and where this class came from historically - both in the early Christian era and in the pre-Christian Jewish eras. What’s the difference between a Jewish priest and a Christian priest (besides the obvious differing theologies)? What is the justification for transferring the Jewish priesthood system over into Christianity (if indeed this is what happened), and what’s the justification for not doing so? What is the relevance of “the priesthood of all believers”?

What problems would a Catholic have with a non-priest performing the sacraments? What problems would a Protestant have with the position that it’s necessary to ordain priests to perform the sacraments (and preach, etc.)?

Finally, what are the differences between and among Roman Catholic priests and Anglican/Orthodox priests? Do the non-Romans regard the role and powers of priests differently than the Roman Catholics do?

2

First off, I wish I could answer the rest of your questions, but I’m not much of a researcher, and Catholic school is many years behind me. So I’ll just stick to the quoted part.

I have absolutely no problem with a non-priest performing the sacraments, but only under extreme circumstances. For instance, if someone is dying, you are permitted AFAIK to administer Last Rites, Baptism, Confession, and the Holy Eucharist, but the Church would prefer, if possible, to have a Priest do that.

The danger is that if any Tom, Dick, or Harry can do it anytime, anywhere, they will be seen as representatives of the Catholic Church, and nobody in the Church wants to see a Jim Jones type making Catholics look like schmucks. Ordination is the Catholic way of separating the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. A large number of people never make it through the seminary (like my father, for instance. Thank God :)), so the process is supposed to determine your own personal devotion. That’s what makes a Priest special, his passing of his own trials into the priesthood.

That, of course, is my own recollection, and not the official views of the Church. If I’m contradicted, then please disregard.

3

For most Christian groups that have a priesthood, and a hierarchy, like the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Episcopalian churches, they claim justification through a principal called “apostolic succession”. These churches claim that Jesus picked the apostles to lead his church after he died, and these apostles picked successors and so on from there. For these religions, the priesthood has a kind of spiritual quality. Becoming a priest means that you take on part of the leadership of the church, and that you have Divine blessings to do so…that, theoretically, at least, you can trace your ordination back to Jesus and the apostles.

As for a lot of Protestant groups, remember that Protestantism was created in response to the corruption and excesses within the Catholic Church. Protestants see a different method of early church leadership. Most Protestant groups say that, in the beginning, there wasn’t a hierarchy…Jesus didn’t say, “You people lead my church and the rest of you, listen to them.” Early Christianity was a kind of brotherhood where everyone was responsible to everyone else, and that it didn’t become hierarchical until the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the official religion, when the Romans introduced pagan concepts, like a professional priesthood to it. So, most Protestant churches are either governed democratically, with every member of the church having some say in the running of the church, or by a group of members, called alternatively elders, deacons, presbyters, etc., who are picked due to their piety or wisdom. Most Protestant churches also have a pastor, who’s hired by the congregation, and who’s job is to run the day to day affairs of the church, and lead services. However, he or she is not, as he or she is in the episcopal (episcopal here referring to having bishops ordained by apostolic succession…the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Churches, and Episcopal Church are all episcopal churces) churches considered to have any special blessing from G-d.

Neither of these have anything to do with the Jewish priesthood, which is a hereditary office. Jewish priests used to, when the temple still stood, offer animal sacrifices to G-d, for celebration and the forgiveness of sins. Now that there’s no temple, the priesthood has lost most of its purpose, and while there are still some rituals that are only performed by and some prayers only said by priests, and while priests have certain restrictions non-priests don’t, the office of the priesthood has lost almost all of its meaning today.

As a side note, back when the Temple stood, every year, the high priest would sacrifice an animal and pray that the sins that year of the entire Jewish people be forgiven. Because of this, Christian theology has given Jesus the title of “high priest”, and also “lamb of G-d”, because of the Christian belief that Jesus sacrificed himself to take away the sins of the world.

4

I guess another way to phrase the question could be Why don’t Protestants accept the need for apostolic succession / Why do episcopal churches continue to practice apostolic succession?

How would a Catholic apologist respond to this? “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock…”?

Thanks, all.

5

Yes, that would probably be the verse he would use. That’s a lot of the Catholic basis for the apostolic succession, and the institution of the Papacy. Catholics see Peter as the first pope. Groups that accept apostolic succession might also point out that in “The Acts of the Apostles”, the various churches established had leaders that everyone listened to, that were close to Jesus. For historical reasons, I think it developed as Christianity was becoming more and more legitimized, first as an attempt to maintain some sort of religious orthodoxy (if you have a hierarchical system, it’s easier to make sure everybody agrees and notice dissidents), and later, when Christianity became the official religion of Rome, the old Imperial religious hierarchy got transplanted onto the Christian churches.

As to why most Protestant groups don’t accept apostolic succession, from a biblical standpoint, they might point out that the early churches elected their leaders and lived in common, and that at various points, the Apostle Paul argued with people like Peter, sometimes winning those arguments. That, they might say, shows that Peter’s rule was far from absolute. They also might focus on the importance in the bible of having a personal direct relationship with Jesus, for all Christians, and rely on a statement of Paul’s referring to the “Priesthood of believers”…that all Christians are equal partners in their faith. Historically, the Protestant movement came out of the Rennaisance Catholic Church, which was remarkably corrupt, and often, more concerned with material gain than spiritual salvation. For the early Protestants, priests and bishops, instead of being divinely touched human beings sent to lead the church, were corrupt, evil people dictating arcane laws to Christians and finding excuses to take their money and control them, rather than
teaching them G-d’s love and the salvation that comes through faith in Christ.

6

masonite, I think the reason that you couldn’t find any threads on this is that a good answer would require about two semesters at the graduate level. (Although a pretty neat summary of several issues is presented by (Father) Raymond E. Brown in his Priest and Bishop Biblical Reflections.)

As you seem to have discerned, the principle issue regarding ordination revolves about the sacraments. (It should be noted, however, that priests are not the only ministers of the sacraments: marriage is administered by the couple professing their vows to one another; anyone may baptize–although for educational and inspirational purposes, the church prefers that it be administered by an ordained minister in a public setting.)

The earliest sacraments were the Eucharist and Baptism. As early as the Didache (dated uncertainly between 50 and 130, but with a fair amount of evidence indicating a date prior to 100) there were references to bishops and deacons and to celebrating Baptism and the Eucharist. The letter of Clement to the Corinthians (from some time before 100) also refers to the tradition of appointing Bishops and Deacons, attributing the tradition to Jesus. He also makes reference to the bishops offering sacrificial gifts worthily.

Neither of these texts mentions an office that we would specifically perceive to be that of “priest” and the references to the Eucharist have nothing so concrete as a declaration such as the church issued at Nicaea, so I am not claiming irrefutable proof of a link from priest to sacrament. However, it does suggest a very early development of the concepts that eventually were organized into the role of priest as the office of one who conducts the liturgical services. In fact, Ignatius of Antioch (who died in 115) in his letter to the Smyrnaeans explicitly holds that only the bishop or one designated by him was to preside at the Eucharistic service.

Before the end of the Second century, the theology had adopted the concept of refering to the Eucharistic service as a sacrifice. Since those who offered sacrifice were priests, the name was applied to those celebrants. Again, this development is considered by some to have been a straying from the message of Jesus. I note it only to indicate that it was not some late development imposed in the fourth century.

7

Well, I’m not going to go into your other question, which was well answered already, but this one is quite simple. Normally, Sacraments should be conducted by a Priest of the Roman Catholic Church. However, if needed for some dire situation and no priest is available, anyone can perfom them, assuming they are member sof the church. It was implied that, in essence, I (or anyone else) could, at need, stand in for the human touch of a priest. I believe this applies mostly toward the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Blessing of the Sick.

However, Catholics are not encouraged to go out and start preaching on their own. The Church puts a lot of time, money, and effort into educating new priests precisely fso they know what and why Catholicism teaches. Its very complex, but deliciously religous.

8

Just to further clarify the issue (for Catholics, anyway):

The preferred minister of Baptism is the bishop, priest, or deacon. Can. 861-2 states that “When an ordinary minister is absent or impeded, a catechist or another person designated for this function…confers baptism licitly.” Read: no priest, it’s an emergency, go ahead and baptize.

You have to be really careful with the other sacraments. For example, Can. 900-1 states that only an ordained priest can consecrate the Eucharist. A layperson might be permitted to administer the sacrament, but I as a lay Catholic have no authority to perform the rites of transubstantiation. The same applies to the sacraments of Reconciliation (Can. 965), Anointing of the Sick (Can. 1003) and Holy Orders (Can. 1012, which further specifies that only a Bishop may do this). Marriage can be performed only by a priest or deacon (Can. 1108).

As is being discussed in the “apostolic succession” thread in GD, this is viewed by Catholics as a matter of conferral of authority. The reason only priests can perform the above acts goes way back to when Christ gave the apostle Peter the “keys to the kingdom”…um…somewhere in Matthew’s gospel, the specific passage escaping me right now. This is viewed as Christ conferring his powers to Peter and the other apostles…who in turn, conferred them on their successors, who conferred them on theirs–ad infinitum, to the present day. Hence, unless and until a layperson has Christ’s succession passed onto him, he can’t perform the sacraments (again, Baptism being the exception) because those divine powers haven’t been granted to him.

(In retrospect, I’m betting that this is going to look really ****ed up to a non-Catholic/Episcopalean. If anybody wants a further analysis…eh, I’ll let Polycarp do it. :smiley: )

9

However, in the event of a Nuclear Apocolypse, or your being stranded with five hundred other strong young people on another planet due to your Spaceship breaking down, the Church would probably forgive you for “fudging” a little on the rules.

Such is life.

10

No, it wouldn’t.

I should clarify that the canons I listed above aren’t just rules; they’re also statements of fact. For lack of a better explanation, the laity simply don’t have the power to perform the sacraments. Sure, they could walk through the form (i.e., I can stand behind an altar with some wafers and invoke the Eucharistic prayer), but the supernatural power needs to be conferred either by Christ directly or one of his successors.

Say, in your spaceship example: let’s say everyone on board were male. Being trapped far from home, one of the crew decides that they should propogate and become pregnant. Absent a miracle or some really neat science, it won’t happen no matter how much he wants to “fudge.”

Same here. Although dire circumstances might create a strong desire for a layperson to perform the sacraments, we don’t have the supernatural power to do so. Seriously, the correct answer is “suck it up and hope for the best.”

11

Res and of course Tom~: Nice job on explaining the issues.

As noted, the key aspects of who can do what revolve on the Sacraments. The teaching authority is also involved. But to make clear what’s being said, let me start with an analogy.

Army Colonel walks on base, enters a building, notes Airman Doors posting here, and orders him to sign off. Airman Doors ignores him. Who’s right?

The answer is, Airman Doors, assuming that he is not in the wrong for being logged on here due to orders of the day here from his own lawful superior. (My assumption is, he’s manning a desk that requires someone on duty in case of emergency, and at his leisure while on duty to entertain himself pending such an emergency.)

And the colonel is out of line – because as an Army man he has no delegated authority to give orders to an Air Force N.C.O.

In ecclesiology, the delegated authority of Christ to particular human beings is referred to by the term “faculties.” As a committed Christian layman, Tom~ or I have the right and the duty to report the truth of our faith’s teachings accurately to anyone interested, here on the board and in real life, and by word and deed to witness to Christ in our lives.

But we have not been given the faculties to perform six of the seven sacraments, nor to teach authoritatively in our churches. Scholarly laymen can be given such faculties; university professors and “religious” (friars, teaching brothers and sisters, etc.) are specifically designated to teach with the authority of the church behind them, and will often preach at a Sunday service at the request of the pastor or bishop.

Such faculties are derived from the authority Jesus gives the apostles after the Resurrection – see the end of Matthew and John’s gospels as good starting points to explain this. There is documented extrabiblical evidence for this having been handed down (as well as Paul’s commissioning of Titus as Bishop of Crete, strongly implied in the letter to him and IIRC mentioned explicitly elsewhere). Most notably, St. Irenaeus notes that his authority as bishop was given him by my namesake, who in turn was set aside by “the apostles” and consecrated bishop by St. John the Beloved Disciple. And I can trace my confirmation back from the bishop who equipped me with the Holy Spirit in that ceremony for the work of a Christian layman, to the presiding bishop who ordained him, back through presiding bishops of the Episcopal Church, Archbishops of Canterbury, and so on, to St. Theodore of Tarsus, an early Archbishop of Canterbury, whose authority can be traced back to Irenaeus, Polycarp, John, and Jesus.

One can, of course, set up hypothetical situations galore. A series of natural disasters could, for example, kill off every bishop. (In point of fact, the three bishops of the Lutheran Church of Finland, which did preserve the apostolic succession, all died within a few months of each other at the end of WWI; Anglican bishops were called in to consecrate ordained pastors as bishops to restore the succession.)

But the idea is that to perform certain sacraments and to preach authoritatively one must be set apart to do those jobs, ideally with training in doing them properly.

Airman Doors has no more right in his own person to fly over and bomb Baghdad than do I or december or TubaDiva. But in compliance with legal orders he would not only have the right but the duty to do so – presumably after appropriate training – as an A.F. N.C.O. in position to do so.

It’s in that context that “only a bishop may ordain, only a priest or bishop may consecrate the elements of the Eucharist” and so on. My bishop could license me to preach, perform baptisms, and so on as a layman if he so choose, being convinced of my sincerity and ability to do so. By doing this, he would be equipping me with the faculties to licitly do these jobs in Christ’s name. Until he does, I may not in good conscience do them.

12

(Sorry for the delay in responding.)
The bolded part is new to me. What Imperial religious hierarchy? - I guess I should dust off my Roman history books - and is it the official Catholic position that this is what happened?

I have heard Protestants talk a lot about the priesthood of all believers, and how that concept totally invalidates the Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican priesthood system. What’s the rebuttal?

Never let it be said that I ask questions with easy, obvious answers!

Yes. This is what my OP was getting at. The fourth century would be when the Roman Empire was Christianized, the period during which Protestants say the early church became corrupted and strayed from its roots? So the sacrifice/priest concept came in well before Christianity became the state religion of Rome. Can you expand on the development of the concept of eucharist-as-sacrifice? It seems natural enough - “My Blood shed for you” evokes the literal sacrifice of the Crucifixion. How is it that the “development” did not occur at the Last Supper? (Of course at the Last Supper, the apostles must have been mystified by Christ’s words. It wouldn’t have become clearer until after the Crucifixion.)

I need to find that thread.
Ah yes, the famous “On this rock I build my church” passage that Protestants never seem to talk about. Actually my grandfather had a refutation involving the different Greek words for “rock”, but I never quite followed it. But the passage goes on and says lots of things that don’t seem to make much sense if you’re not Catholic.

Perhaps getting off-topic here, but what sense does this make, if not special powers of some sort being invested in Simon/Peter? The Catholic argument seems obvious to me. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the Protestant counterargument. But as I said, I really need to find that apostolic succession thread.

But your bishop could not authorize you to consecrate the elements of the Eucharist as a layman. That would require your ordination as a priest. So why is it all right for a properly authorized layman to perform other sacraments, even Baptism (one of the two instituted by Jesus), but to consecrate the elements, you have to be a priest?

I believe the Catholic Church does acknolwledge that Protestant Holy Communion is an instrument of grace, although perhaps of an inferior sort to what you get when you eat bread properly consecrated by an ordained Roman Catholic priest. Looking at it from another angle, to a Catholic it might seem completely invalid - a non-Catholic, un-ordained, completely outside the succession as they understand it, saying prayers over wafers and pretending it’s Holy Eucharist (as in our hypothetical stranded-on-Altair 4 situation). Could somebody set me straight on this?

I hope this is not too all-over-the-map. I feel like I am merely picking your excellent brains here, and not adding much myself. Hope nobody minds too much.

13

I’m bumping this, with Buckner’s permission. When I posted on 10/18 above, although the post went through, the thread did not move to the top of Page 1 – instead it stayed buried down with the other threads of 10/14.

Even if there are no more responses, I didn’t want any posters in this thread to think I ignored their messages. Thanks, all.

Oh, and - I could not find a GD thread on apostolic succession specifically. The search resulted in a lot of good reading, though.

14

The counterargument goes like this:

This occurs two verses before the “rock” verse. Protestants say that Jesus’s response refers, not to Peter, but to Peter’s confession in v.16. That is, the rock on which Christ will build hid church is the statement “You are the Christ”.

Not sure how “official” this is, just what I remember from church.

15

Petros is the translation of Cephas, the nickname of Simon Bar-Jonah, while petra is the word for rock used in the passage. At the risk of invoking a Sylvester Stallone image, I’d suggest that Peter’s nickname was “Rocky” and Jesus was indulging in a pun.

However, although the Roman Catholic Church builds the concept of the Papacy in part on this passage, it is not the grounds for the Apostolic Succession – which derives from the Apostles’ (together) being endowed by the Holy Spirit and commissioned to preach the Gospel, baptize, forgive sins in Jesus’s name, and so forth:

Of the two Gospel Sacraments and the other five Sacraments of the Church, the only one a layman may perform is Baptism, and that licitly only under unusual circumstances. I may hear your confession and declare God’s forgiveness of sins to you, but I cannot absolve you in Christ’s name – I don’t have the faculty to do so. I can pray over your for healing, but I’m not one of the elders > presbyterioi > priests of the church who can anoint you with oil for your healing. It’s not just the Eucharist.

On the other hand, my wife, licensed as a lay eucharistic minister, is quite capable of taking communion from a valid bishop-or-priest-celebrated eucharistic service, to you while you’re sick. But she doesn’t have the faculty of celebrating the Eucharist.

And, of course, it’s important to note that, with the Eastern Orthodox, “we know where truth can be found, but we do not claim to know where it is not found.” These are rules binding the church as believing in the apostolic succession, not expecting to bind God, who can work through a Baptist layman or even a Samaritan if He so chooses. We follow the rules because we know that God’s grace is surely transmitted by actions within the rules; we don’t presume to suggest that that’s the only way He works.

16

Well, the RCC does not put boundaries on where God can extend grace.

There are different aspects of this question. For one thing, the RCC, along with the Orthodox, the Anglican communion, some Lutherans, and a few other groups believe in the genuine presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. Many other groups believe that the action is purely symbolic. Obviously, if the Eucharist is only symbolic we are talking about understandings that are so radically different as to avoid the “better than/not as good as” argument simply by being on a wholly different plane.

Among those groups who do believe in the Divine Presence, the RCC has had any number of disagreements over the years as to whether their celebrations of the Eucharist were valid, depending on whether their claim to Apostolic Succession was valid (when viewed from the Vatican). From the 1960s through the 1990s, theologians of each of these groups mets with RCC theologians to work toward an understanding (and possible agreement) regarding recognizing each others’ claims for validity. While the work continues, various declarations by Cardinal Ratzinger (in which he instructed Catholics not to get ahead of church teachings in their desire for ecumunical communion) have chilled the process. The decision of the Anglican communion to ordain women to the priesthood resulted in a serious breakdown in those efforts, as JP II is wholly (if unreasonably, IMNSHO) convinced that women cannot be called to Orders. And now that women have been elevated to the episcopacy, we will probably have to wait for a complete turnover in the Curia before serious dialogues are re-opened.