"The New Yorker" March 28, 2005, pp. 40-55) offers “Supreme Confidence” on “The Jurisprudence of Justice Antonin Scalia” by Margaret Talbot. Talbot plunges to the judicial heart of Justice Antonin Scalia. That heart is his so-called "originalism," which in the words of Robert Bork means "that a judge, no matter on what court he sits, may never create new constitutional rights or destroy old ones." Scalia's originalism fixes, not on "the legislative history of the statue" nor "the intent of the legislators," but on the meaning of words. That is fixed, irreformable and admits of no change. Talbot continues, "Scalia likes to say that a Constitution is about `rigidifying things,’ whereas elections introduce flexibility into the system.”
Talbot offers a perfect example of Scalia's fixedness on the word and consequent rigidity in the flag burning case. "A 'living-Constitution'judge,' he explained, is a `happy fellow who comes home at night to his wife and says, `The Constitution means exactly what I think it ought to mean!' By contrast, Scalia said, he was sometimes forced by the rigors of originalist methodology to make decisions that lead to consequences he finds repugnant. He noted that in 1989 he voted to strike down the conviction of a man who had burned the American flag, on the ground that the First Amendment protected such symbolic acts. `Scalia did not like to vote that way,' he said, slipping into the third person, as he often does during comic riffs. `He does not like sandalwearing bearded weirdos who go around burning flags. He is a very conservative fellow.' Although originalists are not supposed to care about the outcome, an originalist's wife, evidently, might sometimes consider this a crock. Scalia went on, `I came down to breakfast the next moring and my wife - she is a very convervative woman - she was scrambling eggs and humming `It's a Grand Old Flag.' That's a true story. I don't need that! A living-Constitution judge never has to suffer that way.'" Unable to attend to original meaning, Scalia must hew close to original wording, which leaves him little wiggle room to defend the self-evidence of the truths grounding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
George Kannar, a scholar at the University of Buffalo law school, writes (Talbot paraphrasing): “When judging a case, Justice Scalia will consult a dictionary if necessary to find out what a statute means, but he does not consider the legislative history of the statute, and he makes no attempt to divine the intent of the legislators. This rigorous formalism, and his emphasis on finding the plain meaning of the text, is a habit of mind... that runs `deeper than his specifically political convictions." The epistemological key is Scalia's conviction that (Talbot paraphrasing) “the meaning of those words [of the Constitution] was locked into place at the time they were written.” This is the nub of the question. And it is correct. Indeed, “the meaning... was locked into place at the time they were written.” But that meaning cannot be unlocked without entering into the intent of the lawmaker. And that intent can only be known by entering into his/her inner experience and consciousness at the historical moment of writing the law. But this is as possible as knowing another person in his/her subjectivity.
The reality is that no one can enter into the experience and consciousness of the subjectivity of another as “I” since the “I” is the inviolable and autonomous free self-determination of the person. Our knowledge of persons, as all other realities, from the outside must be objectified. But there is a way to experience, and therefore become conscious, of the subjectivity of the other. Pre-papal John Paul II suggests:
“The I – other relationship… does not exist in us as an already accomplished fact; only the potentiality for it exists. Experience shows that a certain impulse is needed to actualize this relationship. Although this impulse has been expressed in a commandment [to love one another], this does not mean that it may remain merely on the outside. It must arise from within. The commandment of love prescribes only this: that each of us must continually set ourselves the task of actually participating in the humanity of others, of experiencing the other as an I, as a person….
(I)t would be hard to deny that, since the other stands before us as a specific task, the actualization of such relationships always depends to a basic degree on the will. Experiencing another human being, one of the others, as another I always involves a discreet choice. First of all, it involves choosing this particular human being among the others… I thus in a sense choose this person in myself – in my own I – for I have no other access to another human being as an I except through my own I.”
This means that the task of adjudication would demand entering into the historical experience and consciousness of the American founding. That is, if you wish to enter into the meaning of the literal Constitution. Nothing else will do since then, if not, one is imposing one’s own meaning in the critical task of adjudication of the text for the entire nation. And I would suggest here that the Judeo-Christian faith experience of the 150 years of founding from 1620 to 1776 was precisely the experience and consciousness that triggered the founding and grounding of the dignity of the human person as a self-determining freedom that produced the greatest revolution in the history of the world set off by the smallest of provocations (see Gordon Wood on the American Revolution). I do not say religious concepts or creeds or any form of religious fundamentalism. I say the experience and consciousness of the dignity of the human person, of the self, by the act of self-transcendence that is Christian faith. Rather than being an intellectualism of religious concepts, Christian faith is an anthropological act of self-transcendence that is obedience to the revealing Person of Jesus Christ. This faith experience is the basic anthropology at the basis of the American experiment, and one would have to enter into it experientially in order to understand the meaning of the articulation of self-evident truths that constituted the civic founding of the American body politic. It is a secular society. Perhaps the only one since it is built on the freedom not of doing anything, but of serving the dignity of the person, which is an experienced truth, the truth embodied in the words that must order civic freedom, then and now.
The major antecedent to this epistemological point is the original experience of Adam as reported in Genesis 2 where the obedience to the Creator in naming the animals produced the consciousness of being alone. The first human experienced being radically different from the rest of creation precisely because of mastering self in the original act of obedience. The human person morphed form being an “object” even as a rational animal into being a “subject,” an “I,” in the image of the “We” of the Creator. The entire history of Old and New Testament faith is the mimicking of that original obedience which yielded the experience of being set apart from the rest of creation not as superior to “things” but as a “people” (Church) of God. That experience was replicated on American soil from the arrival of the pilgrims to the writing of the Constitution.
In the West since the Cartesian beginning of the Enlightenment, the person has been split into a dualism of mind and matter. This epistemological split has left us with this dualism of thought and ideas that are not “real,” while matter alone is real. “Meaning” means reduction of every thought and perception to matter and its measurement. The key to overcoming the dilemma is the recognition that there is precisely a faith experience of the person, and that this experience is an experience of the self, the “I,” not as thought or consciousness, but as Being. Only Karol Wojtyla, having done his Doctoral Thesis on the meaning of faith in St. John of the Cross applied the method of phenomenology to this experience and used the Thomistic metaphysics of esse to give an account of it. His definitive account is found in the Acting Person. But it is here, and it seems to me to be only here, that the dualism and the horns of the dilemma are overcome.
Scalia and Kennedy are both variously hoisted on these horns. Scalia says that the meaning of words (the Constitution) was locked into place at the time they were written. Words are material things (objects) that are independent of the framers (subjects) and he (Scalia) is “supremely confident” that meaning is embedded in them. It is, but how to retrieve it. Kennedy, in his turn, has hoisted the most outrageous subjective statement on his petard of the dilemma when he wrote in Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Of course, Scalia is totally right on the procedural account of being an adjudicator whose task is to interpret the wording of the document of the Constitution. And he will be true-to-reality-right in many cases by attending only to the wording of the Constitution, as we can understand it on face value. But he has not gone to the heart of the problem of meaning. Hence, he is the safest bet the country has, in the way a polyhedron is asymptotic to a circle. Like a moth, he gets close to the flame but never passes through it. But at least he knows where it is.
* * * * * * * *
As modern day example of the kind of epistemological exercise I think is involved in discovering meaning by discovering the self, I offer the example of Helen Keller’s discovery by the use of language in naming the water + the remarks of Walker Percy.
In one hand, her nurse Ann Sullivan is tapping in the Braille as the symbol of water; on the other hand is pouring water from the spout in well house in Tuscumbia Alabama in 1887:
“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly, I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her finders. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers trill, it is true, abut barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way tot he hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance.”
Walker Percy comments:
“Here in the well-house in Tuscumbia in a small space and a short time, something extremely important and mysterious had happened. Eight-year-old Helen made her breakthrough from the good responding animal which behaviorists study so successfully to the strange name-giving and sentence-uttering creature who begins by naming shoes and ships and sealing wax, and later tells jokes, curses, reads the paper, writes La sua volontade e nostra pace, or becomes a Hegel and composes an entire system of philosophy.”
The point being made is the need to enter the experience of the American founding to re-enter the meaning of the words. They can only be understood "from the inside."
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Revisiting "Justice Scalia and Yogi Bera"@ February 16 below (see "archives")
The New York Times editorial of Monday, March 21, 2005 entitled "That Scalia Charm" goes south on Scalia because of his "originalism." By "originalism" Justice Scalia means that it is the wording of the Constitution and not the ephemeral philosophic vagaries of a plurality that has not reached consensus - much less that of the nine justices of the Court - that is normative as the law of the land. They quote him: "By what conceivable warrant can nine lawyers presume to be the authoritative conscience of the nation?" As they say, he attacks "the idea of a `living Constitution,' one that evolves with modern sensibilities."
As a justice, Scalia, of course, is right. He is a technician of text and must interpret words. But the rub always comes down to the meaning of the words as they were originally intended, and that demands a re-entry into the original experience and consciousness of the nation at the moment of founding and establishment. As mentioned in the February 16 posting below, Scalia asserts that "(t)he central practical defect of non originalism is fundamental and irreparable: the impossibility of achieving any consensus on what, precisely, is to replace original meaning, once that is abandoned." The difficulty, of course, is that we did have a consensus in 1776 and 1791 which was the grounding of the meaning of the words that the Justices must interpret. Scalia's task as Justice is to interpret the Constitutional text in that light of that meaning, not impose a philosophy. Words are symbols of meaning. But if he does not re-enter the self-evidence that produced those original words, he in fact willy nilly imposes a philosophy, and therefore a meaning. As it is, by insisting that "non-originalism" - as anything beyond the text - must not be imposed on the American people, he assumes and unwittingly imposes the philosophy of legal positivism. As always, you cannot refute philosophy without philosophizing. As suggested in the 2/16 posting, John Paul II asserted that "(i)f there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which a person achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people." He concluded that "if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."
Scalia himself cannot escape confronting the epistemological question as to what was constitutive of the original American experience - which was unmistakably religious in general and Christian in particular that gave us the consciousness that became the grounding secular truth of the dignity of the human person and the rights accruing to that dignity. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be interpreted within the light of that experience and consciousness. It does not establish Christianity as the national religion. In fact, it is this Christian consciousness that gives us the meaning of the human person as a self-determining freedom that is the grounding of the civic, secular order and expressly prohibits the establishment of Christianity, or any religion, as a condition of citizenship.
Obviously, I am affirming that Christianity is the foundation of a true secularity that is the meaning of freedom as a relative autonomy (and not secularism that is the negation of the existence or revelance of God). See the 2/16 post for the development of this.
As a justice, Scalia, of course, is right. He is a technician of text and must interpret words. But the rub always comes down to the meaning of the words as they were originally intended, and that demands a re-entry into the original experience and consciousness of the nation at the moment of founding and establishment. As mentioned in the February 16 posting below, Scalia asserts that "(t)he central practical defect of non originalism is fundamental and irreparable: the impossibility of achieving any consensus on what, precisely, is to replace original meaning, once that is abandoned." The difficulty, of course, is that we did have a consensus in 1776 and 1791 which was the grounding of the meaning of the words that the Justices must interpret. Scalia's task as Justice is to interpret the Constitutional text in that light of that meaning, not impose a philosophy. Words are symbols of meaning. But if he does not re-enter the self-evidence that produced those original words, he in fact willy nilly imposes a philosophy, and therefore a meaning. As it is, by insisting that "non-originalism" - as anything beyond the text - must not be imposed on the American people, he assumes and unwittingly imposes the philosophy of legal positivism. As always, you cannot refute philosophy without philosophizing. As suggested in the 2/16 posting, John Paul II asserted that "(i)f there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which a person achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people." He concluded that "if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."
Scalia himself cannot escape confronting the epistemological question as to what was constitutive of the original American experience - which was unmistakably religious in general and Christian in particular that gave us the consciousness that became the grounding secular truth of the dignity of the human person and the rights accruing to that dignity. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights must be interpreted within the light of that experience and consciousness. It does not establish Christianity as the national religion. In fact, it is this Christian consciousness that gives us the meaning of the human person as a self-determining freedom that is the grounding of the civic, secular order and expressly prohibits the establishment of Christianity, or any religion, as a condition of citizenship.
Obviously, I am affirming that Christianity is the foundation of a true secularity that is the meaning of freedom as a relative autonomy (and not secularism that is the negation of the existence or revelance of God). See the 2/16 post for the development of this.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Palm Sunday
We need to deepen the understanding of priesthood. Priesthood means mediation. The mediation that is priesthood before Christ - pagan and Jewish - was extrinsic. It was the sacrifice and offering of something or someone outside of or extrinsic to the mediator or priest. The Office of readings of today says, "Since the law had only a shadow of the good things to come, and no real image of them, it was never able to perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices offered continually year after year. Were matters otherwise, the priests would have stopped offering them, for the worshipers, once cleansed, would have had no sin on their conscience. But through those sacrifices there came only a yearly recalling of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take sins away. Wherefore, Jesus said, `sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you have prepared for me... I have come to do your will, O God'"... By this `will,' we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Every other priest stands ministering day by day, and offering again and again those same sacrifices which can never take away sins. But Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins and took his seat forever at the right hand of God... By one offering he has forever perfected those who are being sanctified.... `Their sins and their transgressions I will remember no more'" (Hebrews 1-18).
This distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic mediation and the insight as to the difference between the pagan and Levitical priesthoods and the priesthood of Jesus Christ (in mysterious connection with Melchisedech) depends on a heightening of epistemology. That is, without getting at the self as subject and real, we are always dealing with the "known" as object. This includes the self as object. And as long as the self is object, sacrifice is always of the other as extrinsic. Priest always mediates, then, between object and object.
This makes it impossible to understand the real meaning of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and our share in it such that we become "priests of our own existence." Notice that "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take sins away," but Christ was fitted with a body that is "His," or better "Him," so that He can make a gift of Himself in the flesh. Through the medium of this "body" (which includes human soul, will and intellect), which is His very Self, Christ is able to "become sin" (2 Cor 5, 21) and obey to death thus turning the disobedience of "His" sin into the obedience that is His Trinitarian relation to the Father and the meaning of His Being, and Life (Zoe). In a word, the gift of self produces in the humanity of Christ, and therefore in us (if we freely practice it), trinitarian (eternal) Life.
St. Thomas does the metaphysical anthropology underlying this Christology by raising the question "is there only one esse in Christ?" He responds quod illud esse aeternum Filii Dei, quod est divina natura, fit esse hominis, in quantum human natura assumitur a Filio Dei in unitatem personae(the eternal esse of the Son of God, which is the divine nature, becomes the esse of the man (Jesus of Nazareth) in that human nature is assumed by the Son of God into the oneness of the Person (S. Th. 111, 17 2, ad 2). This equips us to understand that the divine Person of the Word can subdue and master the human will of the man Jesus of Nazareth (there being no human person) as His own will, and therefore mediate between Himself and the Father for us. The key is to be able to understand that the Person of the Word can subdue Himself as man and therefore be Priest of His own existence whereupon He offers Himself.
This cannot be understood if we remain in the horizon of objects. The key is to enter into the horizon of the subject whereupon self-mastery as instrinsic mediation becomes comprehensible. If we remain only in the horizon of the object, this remains impossible. St. Paul says, "But as it is, once for all at the end of thee ages, he has appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 10, 27). And again, "For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; therefore it is necessary that this one also should have something to offer. If then he were on earth, he would not even be a priest, since there are already others to offer gifts according to the Law. The worship they offer is a mere copyy and shadow of things heavenly..." (Heb. 8, 3-5). "But when Christ appeared... he entered once for all... by virtue of his own blood" (Hebrews 9, 11- 13).
Without the benefit of a phenomenology of the "I" as being, it would not be possible to penetrate to the insight of this paradigm shift from extrinsic priesthood to intrinsic, and how that affects those baptized into the priesthood of Christ to live it universally in the exercise of secular work. This anthropology of priesthood constitutes the foundation of what we have come to understand as the freedom of the lay mentality and the formation of the true meaning of secularity in the creation of a priestly people effecting a new culture on the occasion of work.
Today, Palm Sunday, the palms and the donkey are symbols of this intrinsic priesthood of self-gift and the ontological re-constitution of the human person from the ravages of sin.
Secular examples of this intrinsic priesthood - not wholly in conformity with the full truth of Christ but which exemplify the anthropology of self-gift that is its metaphysical core - come to mind from Whittaker Chambers' masterpiece "Witness." When asked by a juror before the Hiss trial "What does it mean to be a Communist?," Chambers answered:
"When I was a Communist, I had three heroes. One was a Russian. One was a Pole. One was German Jew.
"The Pole was Felix Djerjinsky. He was ascetic, highly sensitive, intelligent. He was a Coommunist. After the Russian Revolution, he became head of the Tcheka and organizer of the Red Terror. As a young man, Djerjinsky had abeen a political prisoner in the Paviak Prison in Warsaw. There he insisted on being given the task of cleaning the latrines of the other prisoners. For he held that the most developed member of any community must take upon himself the lowliest tasks as an example to those who are less developed. That is one thing that it meant to be a Communist.
"The German Jew was Eugen Levine. He was a Communist. During the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919, Levine was the organizer of the Workers and Soldiers Soviets. When the Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed, Levine was captured and courtmartialed. The court-martial told him: "`You are under sentence of death.' Levine answered: `We Communists are always under sentence of death.' That is another thing that it meant to be a Communist.
"The Russian was not a Communist. He was a pre-Communist revolutionist named Kalyaev. (I should have said Sazonov.) He was arrested for a minor part in the assasination of the Tsarist prime minister, von Plehve. He was sent into Siberian exile to one of the worst prison camps, where the potical prisoners were flogged. Kalyaev sought some way to protest this outrage to the world. The means were few, but at last he found a way. In protest against the flogging of other men, Kalyaev drenched hmiself in kerosene, set himself on fire and burned himself to death. That also is what it meant to be a Communist."
That also is what it means to be a witness."
It is also what it means to be a priest in the following of Christ.
Class @ Our Lady of Peace, New Providence, N.J.(December 9, 2004).
Preface
Daniel Cere: The Priestly Vocation and Mission: The laity rarely give much thought to their priestly identity. Martin Scorsese, director of the Last Temptation of Christ, once thought that he had a “religious” calling: “I wanted to be a priest. However, I soon realized that my real vocation, my real calling was the movies.” (Graham, 314). Scorsese places priesthood, vocation and calling on a floor with work in the movie industry—he opted for movies. Scorsese’s curious remarks about his “calling” make sense in a culture which has gutted “priest” and “vocation” of any real meaning beyond that of career.
Clericalized views of the laity try to color in “priestly” tones to lay existence by blurring the essential distinction between the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood. We are being priestly to the extent that we share in the activities proper to ministerial priesthood.
Careerist and clericalized views of the priesthood skew the message of Vatican II and its most outstanding interpreter, John Paul II.. One of the most original contributions of Vatican II was its profound emphasis on the “two” modalities of Christian priesthood: the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood. Vatican II attempted to rouse the laity to a more profound and enriched sense of their participation in the priesthood of Christ.
It also drew attention to the profound complementarity between the common and ministerial priesthood in a way that moved the common priesthood to center stage. (Rosato2) According the John Paul II, the core mission of ministerial priesthood is to maintain and develop the common priesthood. (1980: 227) The ministerial priesthood is ordered to the common priesthood: “the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1547).
The common priesthood is part of the “mystery” or ontology of the human person. (John Paul II 1979: ch.15) This priestly dimension is not just a question of tasks or functions to be performed; it defines the very nature and stance of the human person before God. John Paul II states that it “expresses in a particularly intimate but fundamental way the existential essence of faith.” The essence of faith is a primordial priestly act of sacrifice or self-giving in which the human person make a gift of himself to God—“commits his entire self to God.” “This commitment, contained in the very essence of faith, is realized most fully in the attitude which derives from sharing in the priesthood of Christ.” (John Paul II 1980: 223-25) John Paul II constantly returns to a pivotal passage in the Vatican II documents: “It follows, then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.” The Pope states that “when man gives himself to God in this way, he rediscovers himself most fully.” (John Paul II 1980: 225)
The Gift of Self to God: Priesthood expresses the fundamental human vocation—the gift of self to God. In this sense, our participation in the priesthood of Christ is the most primordial of the threefold missions of Christ—“the simplest and profoundest expression of faith.” The priestly dimension of human personhood “contains within itself the authentic Christian relationship with God.” “This attitude also expresses the vocation of the person in its existential nucleus.” It is this primordial experience of vocation “to which we must constantly return.” (John Paul II 1980: 224)
For Newman, the priestly mission is also a signal of transcendence. Priesthood is a call to “devotion,” to “worship,” to “self-sacrificing love” (Newman 1901 I: xli, xciv). Pope John Paul II also underlines the importance of this aspect of the priestly mission: “The priesthood in particular is the form of self-expression of the man for who the world’s ultimate meaning can be found only in the dimension of the transcendental: in turning towards God who, as the fullness of personal Being, in himself transcends the world.” (John Paul II 1979: 1323) The priestly mission expresses the reality that “human existence is ‘being directed towards God.’”
The Call to Sacrifice: The priestly dimension of life is embodied in the call to sacrifice. Christ “came as a Priest” insofar as he “offered a sacrifice” and “that Sacrifice was Himself—He offered Himself” (Newman’s italics; Newman 1991: 68) Newman argues that our “surrender and sacrifice of self to God” lies at the very core of Christian faith (Newman 1997: 1113, 1119). However, Newman also draws attention to the very practical ramifications of this surrender or sacrifice of self to God. Giving one’s life to God entails practical daily self-denial. The sacrificial or priestly dimension of human existence is a call to adulthood. (Newman 1997: 215-223, 1470-78)
In the “Discontents of Adulthood” David Guttmann provides an anthropological analysis of the link between adulthood and sacrifice. He argues that the mark of the transition to adulthood in most cultures is signaled by some rite that tests your willingness to risk your life, to sacrifice it, for a greater good. (Guttmann 19994) In this sense, the priestly mission of the laity is a call to adulthood. It requires men and women who have the courage to sacrifice themselves, their time, their energy, their lives, for the sake of greater goods, for the sake of greater loves. It requires a “Gethsemane” willingness to risk and venture amid the uncertainties of the future.
The Catholic apostolate in the university offers a special context for this critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. Too often university-level spiritual formation programs are either non-existent or only serve to reinforce an adolescent focus on self-growth rather than facilitate transformation to adult self-giving. An adolescent faith cannot support adult life-structures or serve young men and women as they negotiate the difficult choices that lie before them. Participation in Christ’s priestly office involves a willingness to encounter and enter into difficulties, sufferings, failures, and poverty of life.
In short, the priestly dimension of lay formation is an education in Christian realism. “New age” forms of spirituality tend to skirt around the thorny realism of Christianity. Newman condemns such views as “superficial” and “unreal.” The cross of Christ offers us a deeper and truer perspective on the world. (Newman 1997: 1239-455) Life is beautiful; but life is also difficult, broken and deadly. Entering into life, loving, marrying, pursuing an occupation, are calls to adulthood. Young adults are invited to encounter the cross—to seek Christ in the dark and difficult sides of life. (Newman 1898: 546)
The Call to Prayer and Consecration of Daily Life: Another practical expression of the priestly life of the laity is the call to holiness and devotion: “the Christian sacrifice is the life of prayer and praise.” Insofar as each lay person “offers up his own prayers…he is so far a priest for himself” (Newman 1991 “Sermons”: 68-69). Lay spirituality must overcome the fragmentation of faith and life. The priestly dimension of the laity is expressed in the call to consecrate daily life. In his sermon, “Doing God’s Glory in the Pursuits of the World” Newman writes that for the lay person the encounter with Christ “lies in his worldly business…he will see Christ revealed to his soul amid the ordinary actions of the day, as by a sort of sacrament. Thus he will take his worldly business as a gift from Him, and love it as such.” (Newman 1997: 1662). A central part of this priestly mission of the laity is to develop an authentically “lay spirituality” that penetrates, illuminates, and consecrates daily life in the light of faith. Newman highlights the importance of the lay or popular spiritual and devotional life of the Church. He argues that the Church must be attentive to this critical domain of Catholic spirituality. He also suggests that the laity have a priestly competence over their spiritual life that needs to be attended to. The “devotional sentiments” of the laity “ought to be consulted” for “the laity have a testimony to give” (Coulson: 104). Furthermore, the laity should be responsibly proactive in the exercise of their priestly mission to offer prayer, worship and praise. In a sense, “the people have a special right to interfere in questions of devotion” (Holmes 1979: 104). Our young men and women must discover the importance of their priestly identity and mission in their own personal lives and in the life of their communities. They need to study the lives of lay men and women who have actualized this priestly mission as guides, mentors and leaders in the lay spiritual journey.
* * * * * * * *
Introduction
Priesthood always means mediation. In the revelation of Jesus Christ – the meaning of man from the beginning (i.e., Adam) – mediation is the very self of Adam given in obedience to the covenant of God to subdue the earth. When the self is given, mediation is truth. When it is not given, but turns back on self, it is not mediation and therefore not priesthood. Sin, the turning back on self, is not truth, mediation or priesthood.
Man is priest in actualizing his humanity, because one becomes self by the giving of the self in actualizing the likeness (act) of the image of the Trinitarian Persons (Relations). Adam was priest in the act of obedience whereby he tilled the earth and named the animals. The male and female were priests in the act of conjugal union. The notion of ministry is spousal (sexual) – the bridegroom and the bride are ontologically “ministers” of their mutual self-donation – in view of the prototype of Christ and the Church as Bridegroom to Bride. Had there been no sin, God would still have become man in the spousal relationship of Bridegroom to Bride since it was foreordained according to Ephesians, “Even as he chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish in his sight in love. He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ as his sons…” (Eph 1, 4-5). After sin, Jesus Christ restores and heightens their priesthood oby incorporating them into Himself and living out the supreme priestly act of obeying the Father to death for us.
Hence, there are two (2) essentially different sacramental ways of being priest in Jesus Christ: 1) by Baptism, everyone is priest of his/her very existence in work and conjugal life as revealed in Genesis. To til the soil and name the animals are the occasion of subduing the self to make the gift of the self in obedience to the divine commands. Man and woman are equally and properly priests: “You, however, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people” (1 Peter 2, 9). 2) By the sacrament of Orders, men – not women – are capacitated to act in the Person of Christ the Bridegroom in His service of death for the Bride. They act in persona Christi, and therefore not in their own name (Eucharist: “This is my Body…”), and if in their own name, not with their own power (Penance: “I absolve you from your sins…”).
These two sacramental sharings in the one priesthood of Christ are irreducibly7 different and make up the heterogeneous character of the Church as a Communio of self gift (not a political institution). This is the Church as a priestly people.
Secularity
Secularity is derived from priesthood. This priestly dimension and character of the Church is the root of its secularity. Secularity means autonomy as the freedom of self-determination8 that we will see as the very anthropology of mediation and therefore priesthood. The freedom of self-determination is antecedent to freedom of choice and is its underpinnings. One can be “free” to choose this or that because one transcends being moved by cosmic causes and stimuli extrinsic and external to the self as something objective. True freedom as revealed in Jesus Christ is the mastery of the self to get possession of the self and thus be able to make the gift of the self. The truth of choice comes from being embedded in that deeper context of freedom. John Paul II proposes Christ crucified as the icon of freedom: “The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom.”9
Secularity is not secularism (an absence of God). As mentioned, it is the autonomy of the self as truly free, i.e., to determine the self. Secularity is a Christian phenomenon because Christ’s determination of Himself as God-man to obey the Father to death is the prototype and paradigm of the freedom of God Himself as man. Therefore, the Church presents the human will of Jesus of Nazareth as assumed by the very Person of the Son of the Father and which He makes His own. Therefore, the human will of Christ – being assumed into the Person of God as personal is not abolished - becomes the freedom of God while remaining consummately human. It defines the autonomy of all human activity. But this activity as truly free is Christian. Hence, priesthood is the key to the autonomy that we understand to be “secular.”
“Sweat and toil, which work necessarily involves in the present condition of the human race, present the Christian and everyone who is called to follow Christ with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that Christ came to do. This work of salvation came about through suffering and death on a Cross. By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day in the activity that he is called upon to perform…. Through toil – and never without it. On the one hand this confirms the indispensability of the Cross in the spirituality of human work; on the other hand the Cross which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work itself, from work understood in depth and in all its aspects and never apart from work.”10
The Plan of John Paul II: The Year of the Eucharist: 2004-2005
The Eucharist is not only “strength needed for this mission, but is also – in some sense – its plan. For the Eucharist is a mode of being [underline mine] which passes from Jesus into each Christian, though whose testimony it is meant to spread throughout society and culture.”11 This “mode of being” is the giving of the self that cultivates the human person and is the deeper meaning of “culture.” This segues immediately into the social doctrine of the Church, as the Pope will say, becomes the “washing of feet (Jn 13, 1-20).” This is the “bending down to wash the feet “ as “the meaning of the Eucharist unequivocally.”12
“Can we not make this Year of the Eucharist an occasion… to responding with fraternal solicitude to one of the many forms of poverty present in our world? I think for example of the tragedy of hunger which plagues hundreds of millions of human beings, the diseases which afflict developing countries, the loneliness of the elderly, the hardships faced by the unemployed, the struggles of immigrants. These are evils, which are present – albeit to a different degree – even in areas of immense wealth. We cannot delude ourselves: by our mutual love and, in particular, by our concern for those in need we will be recognized as true followers of Christ (cf. Jn 13, 35; Mt 25, 31-46). This will be the criterion by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebrations is judged.”13
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Catechism of the Catholic Church:1548 “Christ is the source of all priesthood: the priest of the old law was a figure of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ.”14
1544 The revelation of priesthood is mediation: “Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the `one mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim 2, 5).”
Mediation: The topic of mediation and the anthropology explaining it is decisive in understanding the meaning of priesthood in the Old Law and in the New Law. St. Paul works up the contrast between the Levitical priesthood that is by carnal descent and the priesthood of Christ that points beyond the Mosaic Law to its origin in the priesthood of Melchisedech. “Christ is like Melchizedek in having no human father, for no genealogy is given of Melchizedek (Heb certainly did not intend to imply that Melchizedek was unbegotten, but seizes upon this external similarity as a point of illustration). Therefore Christ, unlike priests of the line of Aaron, is priest by divine appointment and not by descent. But Abraham, the carnal ancestor of Aaron, recognized the priesthood of Melchizedek by giving him tithes and receiving his blessing; therefore the priesthood descended from Abraham had to await the greater priesthood which its ancestor had recognized. This priesthood is that of Christ.”15 This priesthood as mediation is presented by St. Paul as being intrinsic to Christ as offering or giving Himself, rather than extrinsic as between individual entities.i
In what does this Mediation “within” Jesus Christ consist? 1) “The Logos adopts the being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own I: `For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become one single Yes to the will of the Father, communion takes place between human and divine being. The `wondrous exchange,’ the `alchemy of being,’ is realized here as a liberating and reconciling communication, which becomes a communion between Creator and creature. It is in the pain of this exchange, and only here, that the fundamental change takes place in man, the change that alone can redeem him and transform the condition of the world. Here community is born, here the Church comes into being. The act whereby we participate in the Son’s obedience, which involves man’s genuine transformation, is also the only really effective contribution toward renewing and transforming society and the world as a whole.”1 2) Jesus Christ is the revelation of the meaning of man and woman. Not only who God is, but who man is and who woman is. Therefore, involved here is the question of whether women are priests by the very wiring of the anthropology. The answer is affirmative:
“In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself…”16
Therefore, the anthropology of priesthood in Christ is the anthropology of priesthood in the human person. Again, if Christ is the prototype of man, then what makes Christ a priest will make the human person a priest. If giftedness of self – actualizing the self as relation - is what makes Christ priest, then giftedness – actualizing self as a relation - is what will make man priest.17
If Christ as divine Person (Logos) had to subdue His human will to make it His own and thus obey the will of the Father to die on the Cross: the exercise of self-gift that is priesthood (mediation between self and the Father), then the human person must subdue himself, take possession of self, in order to make the gift of self to the Father – like Christ.
Born in sin, the human person is trapped in the prison of the self. Baptism is the sacrament of mystical insertion into Christ that enables the person to dynamize this subduing and this giving. It is strengthened by Confirmation, restored by Penance and perfected in the Eucharist.
Hence, Vatican II articulates the supreme expression of Christian anthropology, that is the very meaning of priesthood:
“Furthermore, the Lord Jesus, when praying to the Father `that they may all be one… even as we are one’ (Jn. 17, 21-22), has opened up new horizons closed to human reason by implying that there is a certain parallel between the union existing among the divine persons and the union of the sons of God in truth and love. It follows, then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.” 18
Let’s look at this anthropology offered by the Magisterium of the Church as explained in 1974 by pre-papal Wojtyla:
“In Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, we read that "the human being, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" (24)….
"As I said earlier, in the experience of self-determination the human person stands revealed before us as a distinctive structure of self-possession and self-governance. Neither the one nor the other, however, implies being closed in on oneself. On the contrary, both self-possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a "gift of oneself," and this a "disinterested" gift. Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift. The problematic of disinterestedness certainly deserves a separate analysis, which it is not my intention to present here. An understanding of the person in categories of gift, which the teaching of Vatican II reemphasizes, seems to reach even more deeply into those dimensions brought to light by the foregoing analysis. Such an understanding seems to disclose even more fully the personal structure of self-determination.
[Self-determination in truth is priesthood in Christ and therefore in man – every man]
Only if one can determine oneself—as I attempted to show earlier—can one also become a gift for others. The Council's statement that "the human being...cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" allows us to conclude that it is precisely when one becomes a gift for others that one most fully becomes oneself. This "law of the gift," if it may be so designated, is inscribed deep within the dynamic structure of the person. The text of Vatican II certainly draws its inspiration from revelation, in the light of which it paints this portrait of the human being as a person. One could say that this is a portrait in which the person is depicted as a being willed by God "for itself" and, at the same time, as a being turned "toward" others. This relational portrait of the person, however, necessarily presupposes the immanent (and indirectly "substantial") portrait that unfolds before us from an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination….
I have attempted, however, even in this short presentation, to stress the very real need for a confrontation of the metaphysical view of the person that we find in St. Thomas and in the traditions of Thomistic philosophy with the comprehensive experience of the human being. Such a confrontation will throw more light on the cognitive sources from which the Angelic Doctor derived his metaphysical view. The full richness of those sources will then become visible. At the same time, perhaps we will better be able to perceive points of possible convergence with contemporary thought, as well as points of irrevocable divergence from it in the interests of the truth about reality.”19
Finally, Dominum et Vivificantem #59 spells out this recovery of the “I” – Gift as the very meaning of Christian anthropology and with Novo Millennio Ineunte and the discovery of the face of Jesus Christ, the blueprint for the year 2001, the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
“As the year 2000 since the birth of Christ draws near, it is a question of ensuring that an ever greater number of people “may fully find themselves...through a sincere gift of self,” according to the expression of the Council already quoted. Through the action of the Spirit-Paraclete, may there be accomplished in our world a process of true growth in humanity, in both individual and community life. In this regard Jesus himself "when he prayed to the Father, 'that all may be one...as we are one' (Jn 17: 21-22)...implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons and the union of the children of God in truth and charity." The Council repeats this truth about man, and the Church sees in it a particularly strong and conclusive indication of her own apostolic tasks. For if man is the way of the Church, this way passes through the whole mystery of Christ, as man's divine model. Along this way the Holy Spirit, strengthening in each of us “the inner man,” enables man ever more “fully to find himself through a sincere gift of self.” These words of the Pastoral Constitution of the Council can be said to sum up the whole of Christian anthropology: that theory and practice, based on the Gospel, in which man discovers himself as belonging to Christ and discovers that in Christ he is raised to the status of a child of God, and so understands better his own dignity as man, precisely because he is the subject of God's approach and presence, the subject of the divine condescension, which contains the prospect and the very root of definitive glorification. Thus it can truly be said “the glory of God is the living man, yet man's life is the vision of God”: man, living a divine life, is the glory of God, and the Holy Spirit is the hidden dispenser of this life and this glory. The Holy Spirit—says the great Basil—“while simple in essence and manifold in his virtues...extends himself without undergoing any diminishing, is present in each subject capable of receiving him as if he were the only one, and gives grace which is sufficient for all.”20
Rev. Robert A. Connor
1 Daniel Cere, “`Rouse Yourselves’ Towards a ‘High’ Doctrine of the Laity,” Newman Rambler 2000 @ McGill University, 5-8.
2 Rosato, Philip J. (1987) “Priesthood of the Baptized and Priesthood of the Ordained” Gregorianum 68: 339-46.
3 John Paul II, Sign of Contradiction, New York: Seabury.
4 Guttmann, David, “Adulthood and Its Discontents,” Working Paper for the Council on Families, Institute for American Values.
5 Newman, John Henry, “Parochial and Plain Sermons,” Ignatius Press.
6 Newman, John Henry, “Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day,” Longmans: London.
7 Why? Lumen Gentium # 10 reads: “Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.” The essential difference consists in the spousal (sexual) difference between Bridegroom and Bride. Ontologically (not just functionally) Bridegroom (Christ) is gift as donation; Bride (Church) is gift as reception. The ontological relationality (that is more and other than “accidental”) of male and female renders them irreducible to an abstraction of sameness (univocity).
8 The Magisterium of the “freedom of self-determination” is enshrined in #24 of Gaudium et spes that reads: “man, the only earthly being that God has willed for itself, finds himself only by the sincere gift of himself.” The explanation of the phrase “the only earthly being that God has willed for itself” is explained in Love and Responsibility (Farrar Straus Giroux [1981] 27) which reads: “we must never treat a person as the means to an end. This principle has a universal validity. Nobody can use a person as a means towards an end, no human being, not even God the Creator. On the part of God, indeed, it is totally out of the question, since, by giving man an intelligent and free nature, he has thereby ordained that each man alone will decide for himself the ends of his activity, and not be a blind tool of someone else’s ends. Therefore, if God intends to direct man towards certain goals, he allows him to begin to know those goals, so that he may make them his own and strive towards them independently. In this amongst other things resides the most profound logic of revelation: God allows man to learn His supernatural ends, but the decision to strive towards an end, the choice of course, is left to man’s free will. God does not redeem man against his will.”
9 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor # 85.
10 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, #27, DSP
11 John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine #25.
12 Ibid. 28.
13 Ibid.
14 St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th. III, 22, 4c.
15 John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, Bruce Publishing. Co. (1965) 563.
16 Gaudium et spes, #22.
17 The paradigm shift consists in experiencing man in terms of Jesus Christ instead of considering Him to be an “exception” to man. Until the Second Vatican Council, Jesus Christ was considered from above, while man was considered from below. Christ was a transcendent relational Person a Subsistent Relation; man was an immanent person, an in-itself substance distinguished from the animals only by the specific difference of rationality. Ratzinger says,
“The second great misunderstanding [in mediaeval Christology] is to see Christ as the simply unique ontological exception which must be treated as such. This exception is an object of highly interesting ontological speculation, but it must remain separate in its box as an exception to the rule and must not be permitted to mix with the rest of human thought…. Scripture expresses this point by calling Christ the last Adam or `the second Adam.’ It thereby characterizes him as the true fulfillment of the idea of the human person, in which the direction of meaning of this being comes fully to light for the first time. If it is true, however, that Christ is not the ontological exception, if from his exceptional position he is, on the contrary, the fulfillment of the entire human being, then the Christological concept of person is an indication for theology of how person is to be understood as such. In fact, this concept of person, or simply the dimension that has become visible here, has always acted as a spark in intellectual history and it has propelled development, even when it had long come to a standstill in theology”17(underline mine).
18 Gaudium et Spes #24.
19 Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Person and Community, Lang (1993) 193-195.
20 John Paul II, Lord and Giver of Life, #59.
i Hebrews Chapter 7: The priesthood of Christ according to the order of Melchisedech excels the Levitical priesthood and puts an end both to that and to the law. 7:1. For this Melchisedech was king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him: 7:2. To whom also Abraham divided the tithes of all: who first indeed by interpretation is king of justice: and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace: 7:3. Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but likened unto the Son of God, continueth a priest for ever. Without father, etc. Not that he had no father, etc., but that neither his father, nor his pedigree, nor his birth, nor his death, are set down in scripture. 7:4. Now consider how great this man is, to whom also Abraham the patriarch gave tithes out of the principal things. 7:5. And indeed they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is to say, of their brethren: though they themselves also came out of the loins of Abraham. 7:6. But he, whose pedigree is not numbered among them, received tithes of Abraham and blessed him that had the promises. 7:7. And without all contradiction, that which is less is blessed by the better. 7:9. And (as it may be said) even Levi who received tithes paid tithes in Abraham: 7:10. For he was yet in the loins of his father when Melchisedech met him. 7:11. If then perfection was by the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchisedech: and not be called according to the order of Aaron? 7:12. For the priesthood being translated, it is necessary that a translation also be made of the law, 7:13. For he of whom these things are spoken is of another tribe, of which no one attended on the altar. 7:14. For it is evident that our Lord sprung out of Juda: in which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priests. 7:15. And it is yet far more evident: if according to the similitude of Melchisedech there ariseth another priest, 7:16. Who is made, not according to the law of a law of a carnal commandment, but according to the power of an indissoluble life. 7:17. For he testifieth: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. 7:18. There is indeed a setting aside of the former commandment, because of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof: 7:19. For the law brought nothing to perfection: but a bringing in of a better hope, by which we draw nigh to God. 7:20. And inasmuch as it is not without an oath (for the others indeed were made priests without an oath: 7:21. But this with an oath, by him that said unto him: The Lord hath sworn and he will not repent: Thou art a priest forever). 7:22. By so much is Jesus made a surety of a better testament. 7:23. And the others indeed were made many priests, because by reason of death they were not suffered to continue: Many priests, etc... The apostle notes this difference between the high priests of the law, and our high priest Jesus Christ; that they being removed by death, made way for their successors; whereas our Lord Jesus is a priest for ever, and hath no successor; but liveth and concurreth for ever with his ministers, the priests of the new testament, in all their functions. Also, that no one priest of the law, nor all of them together, could offer that absolute sacrifice of everlasting redemption, which our one high priest Jesus Christ has offered once, and for ever. 7:24. But this, for that he continueth for ever, hath an everlasting priesthood: 7:25. Whereby he is able also to save forever them that come to God by him; always living to make intercession for us. Make intercession... Christ, as man, continually maketh intercession for us, by representing his passion to his Father. 7:26. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens: 7:27. Who needeth not daily (as the other priests) to offer sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, in offering himself. 7:28. For the law maketh men priests, who have infirmity: but the word of the oath (which was since the law) the Son who is perfected for evermore. Hebrews Chapter 8: More of the excellence of the priesthood of Christ and of the New Testament. 8:1. Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum: We have such an high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens, 8:2. A minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not man. The holies... That is, the sanctuary. 8:3. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that he also should have some thing to offer. 8:4. If then he were on earth, he would not be a priest: seeing that there would be others to offer gifts according to the law. If then he were on earth, etc... That is, if he were not of a higher condition than the Levitical order of earthly priests, and had not another kind of sacrifice to offer, he should be excluded by them from the priesthood, and its functions, which by the law were appropriated to their tribe. 8:5. Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things. As it was answered to Moses, when he was to finish the tabernacle: See (saith he) that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shewn thee on the mount. Who serve unto, etc... The priesthood of the law and its functions were a kind of an example and shadow of what is done by Christ in his church militant and triumphant, of which the tabernacle was a pattern. 8:6. But now he hath obtained a better ministry, by how much also he is a mediator of a better testament which is established on better promises. 8:7. For if that former had been faultless, there should not indeed a place have been sought for a second. 8:8. For, finding fault with them, he saith: Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord: and I will perfect, unto the house of Israel and unto the house of Juda, a new testament: 8:9. Not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: because they continued not in my testament: and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. 8:10. For this is the testament which I will make on the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will give my laws into their mind: and in their heart will I write them. And I will be their God: and they shall be my people. 8:11. And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying: Know the Lord. For all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them. They shall not teach, etc... So great shall be light and grace of the new testament, that it shall not be necessary to inculcate to the faithful the belief and knowledge of the true God, for they shall all know him. 8:12. Because I will be merciful to their iniquities: and their sins I will remember no more. 8:13. Now in saying a new, he hath made the former old. And that which decayeth and groweth old is near its end. A new... Supply `covenant'. Hebrews Chapter 9: The sacrifices of the law were far inferior to that of Christ. 9:1. The former indeed had also justifications of divine service and a sanctuary. 9:2. For there was a tabernacle made the first, wherein were the candlesticks and the table and the setting forth of loaves, which is called the Holy. 9:3. And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies: 9:4. Having a golden censer and the ark of the testament covered about on every part with gold, in which was a golden pot that had manna and the rod of Aaron that had blossomed and the tables of the testament. 9:5. And over it were the cherubims of glory overshadowing the propitiatory: of hich it is not needful to speak now particularly. 9:6. Now these things being thus ordered, into the first tabernacle, the priests indeed always entered, accomplishing the offices of sacrifices. 9:7. But into the second, the high priest alone, once a year: not without blood, which he offereth for his own and the people's ignorance: 9:8. The Holy Ghost signifying this: That the way into the Holies was not yet made manifest, whilst the former tabernacle was yet standing. 9:9. Which is a parable of the time present: according to which gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot, as to the conscience, make him perfect that serveth, only in meats and in drinks, 9:10. And divers washings and justices of the flesh laid on them until the time of correction. Of correction... Viz., when Christ should correct and settle all things. 9:11. But Christ, being come an high Priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hand, that is, not of this creation: 9:12. Neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. Eternal redemption... By that one sacrifice of his blood, once offered on the cross, Christ our Lord paid and exhibited, once for all, the general price and ransom of all mankind: which no other priest could do. 9:13. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer, being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh: 9:14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? 9:15. And therefore he is the mediator of the new testament: that by means of his death for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament, they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance. 9:16. For where there is a testament the death of the testator must of necessity come in. 9:17. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is as yet of no strength, whilst the testator liveth. 9:18. Whereupon neither was the first indeed dedicated without blood. 9:19. For when every commandment of the law had been read by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people. 9:20. Saying: This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. 9:21. The tabernacle also and all the vessels of the ministry, in like manner, he sprinkled with blood. 9:22. And almost all things, according to the law, are cleansed with blood: and without shedding of blood there is no remission. 9:23. It is necessary therefore that the patterns of heavenly things should be cleansed with these: but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 9:24. For Jesus is not entered into the Holies made with hands, the patterns of the true: but into Heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us. 9:25. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the Holies every year with the blood of others: Offer himself often... Christ shall never more offer himself in sacrifice, in that violent, painful, and bloody manner, nor can there be any occasion for it: since by that one sacrifice upon the cross, he has furnished the full ransom, redemption, and remedy for all the sins of the world. But this hinders not that he may offer himself daily in the sacred mysteries in an unbloody manner, for the daily application of that one sacrifice of redemption to our souls. 9:26. For then he ought to have suffered often from the beginning of the world. But now once, at the end of ages, he hath appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself. 9:27. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment: 9:28. So also Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many. The second time he shall appear without sin to them that expect him unto salvation. To exhaust... That is, to empty, or draw out to the very bottom, by a plentiful and perfect redemption.
This distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic mediation and the insight as to the difference between the pagan and Levitical priesthoods and the priesthood of Jesus Christ (in mysterious connection with Melchisedech) depends on a heightening of epistemology. That is, without getting at the self as subject and real, we are always dealing with the "known" as object. This includes the self as object. And as long as the self is object, sacrifice is always of the other as extrinsic. Priest always mediates, then, between object and object.
This makes it impossible to understand the real meaning of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and our share in it such that we become "priests of our own existence." Notice that "it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take sins away," but Christ was fitted with a body that is "His," or better "Him," so that He can make a gift of Himself in the flesh. Through the medium of this "body" (which includes human soul, will and intellect), which is His very Self, Christ is able to "become sin" (2 Cor 5, 21) and obey to death thus turning the disobedience of "His" sin into the obedience that is His Trinitarian relation to the Father and the meaning of His Being, and Life (Zoe). In a word, the gift of self produces in the humanity of Christ, and therefore in us (if we freely practice it), trinitarian (eternal) Life.
St. Thomas does the metaphysical anthropology underlying this Christology by raising the question "is there only one esse in Christ?" He responds quod illud esse aeternum Filii Dei, quod est divina natura, fit esse hominis, in quantum human natura assumitur a Filio Dei in unitatem personae(the eternal esse of the Son of God, which is the divine nature, becomes the esse of the man (Jesus of Nazareth) in that human nature is assumed by the Son of God into the oneness of the Person (S. Th. 111, 17 2, ad 2). This equips us to understand that the divine Person of the Word can subdue and master the human will of the man Jesus of Nazareth (there being no human person) as His own will, and therefore mediate between Himself and the Father for us. The key is to be able to understand that the Person of the Word can subdue Himself as man and therefore be Priest of His own existence whereupon He offers Himself.
This cannot be understood if we remain in the horizon of objects. The key is to enter into the horizon of the subject whereupon self-mastery as instrinsic mediation becomes comprehensible. If we remain only in the horizon of the object, this remains impossible. St. Paul says, "But as it is, once for all at the end of thee ages, he has appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 10, 27). And again, "For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; therefore it is necessary that this one also should have something to offer. If then he were on earth, he would not even be a priest, since there are already others to offer gifts according to the Law. The worship they offer is a mere copyy and shadow of things heavenly..." (Heb. 8, 3-5). "But when Christ appeared... he entered once for all... by virtue of his own blood" (Hebrews 9, 11- 13).
Without the benefit of a phenomenology of the "I" as being, it would not be possible to penetrate to the insight of this paradigm shift from extrinsic priesthood to intrinsic, and how that affects those baptized into the priesthood of Christ to live it universally in the exercise of secular work. This anthropology of priesthood constitutes the foundation of what we have come to understand as the freedom of the lay mentality and the formation of the true meaning of secularity in the creation of a priestly people effecting a new culture on the occasion of work.
Today, Palm Sunday, the palms and the donkey are symbols of this intrinsic priesthood of self-gift and the ontological re-constitution of the human person from the ravages of sin.
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Secular examples of this intrinsic priesthood - not wholly in conformity with the full truth of Christ but which exemplify the anthropology of self-gift that is its metaphysical core - come to mind from Whittaker Chambers' masterpiece "Witness." When asked by a juror before the Hiss trial "What does it mean to be a Communist?," Chambers answered:
"When I was a Communist, I had three heroes. One was a Russian. One was a Pole. One was German Jew.
"The Pole was Felix Djerjinsky. He was ascetic, highly sensitive, intelligent. He was a Coommunist. After the Russian Revolution, he became head of the Tcheka and organizer of the Red Terror. As a young man, Djerjinsky had abeen a political prisoner in the Paviak Prison in Warsaw. There he insisted on being given the task of cleaning the latrines of the other prisoners. For he held that the most developed member of any community must take upon himself the lowliest tasks as an example to those who are less developed. That is one thing that it meant to be a Communist.
"The German Jew was Eugen Levine. He was a Communist. During the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919, Levine was the organizer of the Workers and Soldiers Soviets. When the Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed, Levine was captured and courtmartialed. The court-martial told him: "`You are under sentence of death.' Levine answered: `We Communists are always under sentence of death.' That is another thing that it meant to be a Communist.
"The Russian was not a Communist. He was a pre-Communist revolutionist named Kalyaev. (I should have said Sazonov.) He was arrested for a minor part in the assasination of the Tsarist prime minister, von Plehve. He was sent into Siberian exile to one of the worst prison camps, where the potical prisoners were flogged. Kalyaev sought some way to protest this outrage to the world. The means were few, but at last he found a way. In protest against the flogging of other men, Kalyaev drenched hmiself in kerosene, set himself on fire and burned himself to death. That also is what it meant to be a Communist."
That also is what it means to be a witness."
It is also what it means to be a priest in the following of Christ.
PRIESTHOOD: "Priestly Soul and Lay Mentality"
Class @ Our Lady of Peace, New Providence, N.J.(December 9, 2004).
Preface
Daniel Cere: The Priestly Vocation and Mission: The laity rarely give much thought to their priestly identity. Martin Scorsese, director of the Last Temptation of Christ, once thought that he had a “religious” calling: “I wanted to be a priest. However, I soon realized that my real vocation, my real calling was the movies.” (Graham, 314). Scorsese places priesthood, vocation and calling on a floor with work in the movie industry—he opted for movies. Scorsese’s curious remarks about his “calling” make sense in a culture which has gutted “priest” and “vocation” of any real meaning beyond that of career.
Clericalized views of the laity try to color in “priestly” tones to lay existence by blurring the essential distinction between the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood. We are being priestly to the extent that we share in the activities proper to ministerial priesthood.
Careerist and clericalized views of the priesthood skew the message of Vatican II and its most outstanding interpreter, John Paul II.. One of the most original contributions of Vatican II was its profound emphasis on the “two” modalities of Christian priesthood: the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood. Vatican II attempted to rouse the laity to a more profound and enriched sense of their participation in the priesthood of Christ.
It also drew attention to the profound complementarity between the common and ministerial priesthood in a way that moved the common priesthood to center stage. (Rosato2) According the John Paul II, the core mission of ministerial priesthood is to maintain and develop the common priesthood. (1980: 227) The ministerial priesthood is ordered to the common priesthood: “the ministerial priesthood is at the service of the common priesthood. It is directed at the unfolding of the baptismal grace of all Christians.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 1547).
The common priesthood is part of the “mystery” or ontology of the human person. (John Paul II 1979: ch.15) This priestly dimension is not just a question of tasks or functions to be performed; it defines the very nature and stance of the human person before God. John Paul II states that it “expresses in a particularly intimate but fundamental way the existential essence of faith.” The essence of faith is a primordial priestly act of sacrifice or self-giving in which the human person make a gift of himself to God—“commits his entire self to God.” “This commitment, contained in the very essence of faith, is realized most fully in the attitude which derives from sharing in the priesthood of Christ.” (John Paul II 1980: 223-25) John Paul II constantly returns to a pivotal passage in the Vatican II documents: “It follows, then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.” The Pope states that “when man gives himself to God in this way, he rediscovers himself most fully.” (John Paul II 1980: 225)
The Gift of Self to God: Priesthood expresses the fundamental human vocation—the gift of self to God. In this sense, our participation in the priesthood of Christ is the most primordial of the threefold missions of Christ—“the simplest and profoundest expression of faith.” The priestly dimension of human personhood “contains within itself the authentic Christian relationship with God.” “This attitude also expresses the vocation of the person in its existential nucleus.” It is this primordial experience of vocation “to which we must constantly return.” (John Paul II 1980: 224)
For Newman, the priestly mission is also a signal of transcendence. Priesthood is a call to “devotion,” to “worship,” to “self-sacrificing love” (Newman 1901 I: xli, xciv). Pope John Paul II also underlines the importance of this aspect of the priestly mission: “The priesthood in particular is the form of self-expression of the man for who the world’s ultimate meaning can be found only in the dimension of the transcendental: in turning towards God who, as the fullness of personal Being, in himself transcends the world.” (John Paul II 1979: 1323) The priestly mission expresses the reality that “human existence is ‘being directed towards God.’”
The Call to Sacrifice: The priestly dimension of life is embodied in the call to sacrifice. Christ “came as a Priest” insofar as he “offered a sacrifice” and “that Sacrifice was Himself—He offered Himself” (Newman’s italics; Newman 1991: 68) Newman argues that our “surrender and sacrifice of self to God” lies at the very core of Christian faith (Newman 1997: 1113, 1119). However, Newman also draws attention to the very practical ramifications of this surrender or sacrifice of self to God. Giving one’s life to God entails practical daily self-denial. The sacrificial or priestly dimension of human existence is a call to adulthood. (Newman 1997: 215-223, 1470-78)
In the “Discontents of Adulthood” David Guttmann provides an anthropological analysis of the link between adulthood and sacrifice. He argues that the mark of the transition to adulthood in most cultures is signaled by some rite that tests your willingness to risk your life, to sacrifice it, for a greater good. (Guttmann 19994) In this sense, the priestly mission of the laity is a call to adulthood. It requires men and women who have the courage to sacrifice themselves, their time, their energy, their lives, for the sake of greater goods, for the sake of greater loves. It requires a “Gethsemane” willingness to risk and venture amid the uncertainties of the future.
The Catholic apostolate in the university offers a special context for this critical transition from adolescence to adulthood. Too often university-level spiritual formation programs are either non-existent or only serve to reinforce an adolescent focus on self-growth rather than facilitate transformation to adult self-giving. An adolescent faith cannot support adult life-structures or serve young men and women as they negotiate the difficult choices that lie before them. Participation in Christ’s priestly office involves a willingness to encounter and enter into difficulties, sufferings, failures, and poverty of life.
In short, the priestly dimension of lay formation is an education in Christian realism. “New age” forms of spirituality tend to skirt around the thorny realism of Christianity. Newman condemns such views as “superficial” and “unreal.” The cross of Christ offers us a deeper and truer perspective on the world. (Newman 1997: 1239-455) Life is beautiful; but life is also difficult, broken and deadly. Entering into life, loving, marrying, pursuing an occupation, are calls to adulthood. Young adults are invited to encounter the cross—to seek Christ in the dark and difficult sides of life. (Newman 1898: 546)
The Call to Prayer and Consecration of Daily Life: Another practical expression of the priestly life of the laity is the call to holiness and devotion: “the Christian sacrifice is the life of prayer and praise.” Insofar as each lay person “offers up his own prayers…he is so far a priest for himself” (Newman 1991 “Sermons”: 68-69). Lay spirituality must overcome the fragmentation of faith and life. The priestly dimension of the laity is expressed in the call to consecrate daily life. In his sermon, “Doing God’s Glory in the Pursuits of the World” Newman writes that for the lay person the encounter with Christ “lies in his worldly business…he will see Christ revealed to his soul amid the ordinary actions of the day, as by a sort of sacrament. Thus he will take his worldly business as a gift from Him, and love it as such.” (Newman 1997: 1662). A central part of this priestly mission of the laity is to develop an authentically “lay spirituality” that penetrates, illuminates, and consecrates daily life in the light of faith. Newman highlights the importance of the lay or popular spiritual and devotional life of the Church. He argues that the Church must be attentive to this critical domain of Catholic spirituality. He also suggests that the laity have a priestly competence over their spiritual life that needs to be attended to. The “devotional sentiments” of the laity “ought to be consulted” for “the laity have a testimony to give” (Coulson: 104). Furthermore, the laity should be responsibly proactive in the exercise of their priestly mission to offer prayer, worship and praise. In a sense, “the people have a special right to interfere in questions of devotion” (Holmes 1979: 104). Our young men and women must discover the importance of their priestly identity and mission in their own personal lives and in the life of their communities. They need to study the lives of lay men and women who have actualized this priestly mission as guides, mentors and leaders in the lay spiritual journey.
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Introduction
Priesthood always means mediation. In the revelation of Jesus Christ – the meaning of man from the beginning (i.e., Adam) – mediation is the very self of Adam given in obedience to the covenant of God to subdue the earth. When the self is given, mediation is truth. When it is not given, but turns back on self, it is not mediation and therefore not priesthood. Sin, the turning back on self, is not truth, mediation or priesthood.
Man is priest in actualizing his humanity, because one becomes self by the giving of the self in actualizing the likeness (act) of the image of the Trinitarian Persons (Relations). Adam was priest in the act of obedience whereby he tilled the earth and named the animals. The male and female were priests in the act of conjugal union. The notion of ministry is spousal (sexual) – the bridegroom and the bride are ontologically “ministers” of their mutual self-donation – in view of the prototype of Christ and the Church as Bridegroom to Bride. Had there been no sin, God would still have become man in the spousal relationship of Bridegroom to Bride since it was foreordained according to Ephesians, “Even as he chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish in his sight in love. He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ as his sons…” (Eph 1, 4-5). After sin, Jesus Christ restores and heightens their priesthood oby incorporating them into Himself and living out the supreme priestly act of obeying the Father to death for us.
Women Priests? Yes, But Not By Holy Orders
Hence, there are two (2) essentially different sacramental ways of being priest in Jesus Christ: 1) by Baptism, everyone is priest of his/her very existence in work and conjugal life as revealed in Genesis. To til the soil and name the animals are the occasion of subduing the self to make the gift of the self in obedience to the divine commands. Man and woman are equally and properly priests: “You, however, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people” (1 Peter 2, 9). 2) By the sacrament of Orders, men – not women – are capacitated to act in the Person of Christ the Bridegroom in His service of death for the Bride. They act in persona Christi, and therefore not in their own name (Eucharist: “This is my Body…”), and if in their own name, not with their own power (Penance: “I absolve you from your sins…”).
These two sacramental sharings in the one priesthood of Christ are irreducibly7 different and make up the heterogeneous character of the Church as a Communio of self gift (not a political institution). This is the Church as a priestly people.
Secularity
Secularity is derived from priesthood. This priestly dimension and character of the Church is the root of its secularity. Secularity means autonomy as the freedom of self-determination8 that we will see as the very anthropology of mediation and therefore priesthood. The freedom of self-determination is antecedent to freedom of choice and is its underpinnings. One can be “free” to choose this or that because one transcends being moved by cosmic causes and stimuli extrinsic and external to the self as something objective. True freedom as revealed in Jesus Christ is the mastery of the self to get possession of the self and thus be able to make the gift of the self. The truth of choice comes from being embedded in that deeper context of freedom. John Paul II proposes Christ crucified as the icon of freedom: “The Crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself and calls his disciples to share in his freedom.”9
Secularity is not secularism (an absence of God). As mentioned, it is the autonomy of the self as truly free, i.e., to determine the self. Secularity is a Christian phenomenon because Christ’s determination of Himself as God-man to obey the Father to death is the prototype and paradigm of the freedom of God Himself as man. Therefore, the Church presents the human will of Jesus of Nazareth as assumed by the very Person of the Son of the Father and which He makes His own. Therefore, the human will of Christ – being assumed into the Person of God as personal is not abolished - becomes the freedom of God while remaining consummately human. It defines the autonomy of all human activity. But this activity as truly free is Christian. Hence, priesthood is the key to the autonomy that we understand to be “secular.”
Priesthood and Work: The MassThe supreme act of the priesthood of Jesus Christ is His death on the C ross. This is the prototype of self-giving. It is instantiated in the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The occasion of this self-gift for the common priesthood of the laity and the ministerial priesthood is secular work. Hence, to fulfill the prophecy of Jesus Christ crucified, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself” (Jn 12, 32), work in the secular world must become the occasion of the use of freedom and autonomy that is the giving of the self.
“Sweat and toil, which work necessarily involves in the present condition of the human race, present the Christian and everyone who is called to follow Christ with the possibility of sharing lovingly in the work that Christ came to do. This work of salvation came about through suffering and death on a Cross. By enduring the toil of work in union with Christ crucified for us, man in a way collaborates with the Son of God for the redemption of humanity. He shows himself a true disciple of Christ by carrying the cross in his turn every day in the activity that he is called upon to perform…. Through toil – and never without it. On the one hand this confirms the indispensability of the Cross in the spirituality of human work; on the other hand the Cross which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work itself, from work understood in depth and in all its aspects and never apart from work.”10
The Plan of John Paul II: The Year of the Eucharist: 2004-2005
The Eucharist is not only “strength needed for this mission, but is also – in some sense – its plan. For the Eucharist is a mode of being [underline mine] which passes from Jesus into each Christian, though whose testimony it is meant to spread throughout society and culture.”11 This “mode of being” is the giving of the self that cultivates the human person and is the deeper meaning of “culture.” This segues immediately into the social doctrine of the Church, as the Pope will say, becomes the “washing of feet (Jn 13, 1-20).” This is the “bending down to wash the feet “ as “the meaning of the Eucharist unequivocally.”12
“Can we not make this Year of the Eucharist an occasion… to responding with fraternal solicitude to one of the many forms of poverty present in our world? I think for example of the tragedy of hunger which plagues hundreds of millions of human beings, the diseases which afflict developing countries, the loneliness of the elderly, the hardships faced by the unemployed, the struggles of immigrants. These are evils, which are present – albeit to a different degree – even in areas of immense wealth. We cannot delude ourselves: by our mutual love and, in particular, by our concern for those in need we will be recognized as true followers of Christ (cf. Jn 13, 35; Mt 25, 31-46). This will be the criterion by which the authenticity of our Eucharistic celebrations is judged.”13
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Catechism of the Catholic Church:1548 “Christ is the source of all priesthood: the priest of the old law was a figure of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ.”14
1544 The revelation of priesthood is mediation: “Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the `one mediator between God and men’ (1 Tim 2, 5).”
Mediation: The topic of mediation and the anthropology explaining it is decisive in understanding the meaning of priesthood in the Old Law and in the New Law. St. Paul works up the contrast between the Levitical priesthood that is by carnal descent and the priesthood of Christ that points beyond the Mosaic Law to its origin in the priesthood of Melchisedech. “Christ is like Melchizedek in having no human father, for no genealogy is given of Melchizedek (Heb certainly did not intend to imply that Melchizedek was unbegotten, but seizes upon this external similarity as a point of illustration). Therefore Christ, unlike priests of the line of Aaron, is priest by divine appointment and not by descent. But Abraham, the carnal ancestor of Aaron, recognized the priesthood of Melchizedek by giving him tithes and receiving his blessing; therefore the priesthood descended from Abraham had to await the greater priesthood which its ancestor had recognized. This priesthood is that of Christ.”15 This priesthood as mediation is presented by St. Paul as being intrinsic to Christ as offering or giving Himself, rather than extrinsic as between individual entities.i
In what does this Mediation “within” Jesus Christ consist? 1) “The Logos adopts the being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own I: `For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’ (Jn. 6, 38). In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become one single Yes to the will of the Father, communion takes place between human and divine being. The `wondrous exchange,’ the `alchemy of being,’ is realized here as a liberating and reconciling communication, which becomes a communion between Creator and creature. It is in the pain of this exchange, and only here, that the fundamental change takes place in man, the change that alone can redeem him and transform the condition of the world. Here community is born, here the Church comes into being. The act whereby we participate in the Son’s obedience, which involves man’s genuine transformation, is also the only really effective contribution toward renewing and transforming society and the world as a whole.”1 2) Jesus Christ is the revelation of the meaning of man and woman. Not only who God is, but who man is and who woman is. Therefore, involved here is the question of whether women are priests by the very wiring of the anthropology. The answer is affirmative:
“In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself…”16
Therefore, the anthropology of priesthood in Christ is the anthropology of priesthood in the human person. Again, if Christ is the prototype of man, then what makes Christ a priest will make the human person a priest. If giftedness of self – actualizing the self as relation - is what makes Christ priest, then giftedness – actualizing self as a relation - is what will make man priest.17
If Christ as divine Person (Logos) had to subdue His human will to make it His own and thus obey the will of the Father to die on the Cross: the exercise of self-gift that is priesthood (mediation between self and the Father), then the human person must subdue himself, take possession of self, in order to make the gift of self to the Father – like Christ.
Born in sin, the human person is trapped in the prison of the self. Baptism is the sacrament of mystical insertion into Christ that enables the person to dynamize this subduing and this giving. It is strengthened by Confirmation, restored by Penance and perfected in the Eucharist.
Hence, Vatican II articulates the supreme expression of Christian anthropology, that is the very meaning of priesthood:
“Furthermore, the Lord Jesus, when praying to the Father `that they may all be one… even as we are one’ (Jn. 17, 21-22), has opened up new horizons closed to human reason by implying that there is a certain parallel between the union existing among the divine persons and the union of the sons of God in truth and love. It follows, then, that if man is the only creature on earth that God has wanted for its own sake, man can fully discover his true self only in a sincere giving of himself.” 18
Let’s look at this anthropology offered by the Magisterium of the Church as explained in 1974 by pre-papal Wojtyla:
“In Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, we read that "the human being, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" (24)….
"As I said earlier, in the experience of self-determination the human person stands revealed before us as a distinctive structure of self-possession and self-governance. Neither the one nor the other, however, implies being closed in on oneself. On the contrary, both self-possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a "gift of oneself," and this a "disinterested" gift. Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift. The problematic of disinterestedness certainly deserves a separate analysis, which it is not my intention to present here. An understanding of the person in categories of gift, which the teaching of Vatican II reemphasizes, seems to reach even more deeply into those dimensions brought to light by the foregoing analysis. Such an understanding seems to disclose even more fully the personal structure of self-determination.
[Self-determination in truth is priesthood in Christ and therefore in man – every man]
Only if one can determine oneself—as I attempted to show earlier—can one also become a gift for others. The Council's statement that "the human being...cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" allows us to conclude that it is precisely when one becomes a gift for others that one most fully becomes oneself. This "law of the gift," if it may be so designated, is inscribed deep within the dynamic structure of the person. The text of Vatican II certainly draws its inspiration from revelation, in the light of which it paints this portrait of the human being as a person. One could say that this is a portrait in which the person is depicted as a being willed by God "for itself" and, at the same time, as a being turned "toward" others. This relational portrait of the person, however, necessarily presupposes the immanent (and indirectly "substantial") portrait that unfolds before us from an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination….
I have attempted, however, even in this short presentation, to stress the very real need for a confrontation of the metaphysical view of the person that we find in St. Thomas and in the traditions of Thomistic philosophy with the comprehensive experience of the human being. Such a confrontation will throw more light on the cognitive sources from which the Angelic Doctor derived his metaphysical view. The full richness of those sources will then become visible. At the same time, perhaps we will better be able to perceive points of possible convergence with contemporary thought, as well as points of irrevocable divergence from it in the interests of the truth about reality.”19
Finally, Dominum et Vivificantem #59 spells out this recovery of the “I” – Gift as the very meaning of Christian anthropology and with Novo Millennio Ineunte and the discovery of the face of Jesus Christ, the blueprint for the year 2001, the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
“As the year 2000 since the birth of Christ draws near, it is a question of ensuring that an ever greater number of people “may fully find themselves...through a sincere gift of self,” according to the expression of the Council already quoted. Through the action of the Spirit-Paraclete, may there be accomplished in our world a process of true growth in humanity, in both individual and community life. In this regard Jesus himself "when he prayed to the Father, 'that all may be one...as we are one' (Jn 17: 21-22)...implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons and the union of the children of God in truth and charity." The Council repeats this truth about man, and the Church sees in it a particularly strong and conclusive indication of her own apostolic tasks. For if man is the way of the Church, this way passes through the whole mystery of Christ, as man's divine model. Along this way the Holy Spirit, strengthening in each of us “the inner man,” enables man ever more “fully to find himself through a sincere gift of self.” These words of the Pastoral Constitution of the Council can be said to sum up the whole of Christian anthropology: that theory and practice, based on the Gospel, in which man discovers himself as belonging to Christ and discovers that in Christ he is raised to the status of a child of God, and so understands better his own dignity as man, precisely because he is the subject of God's approach and presence, the subject of the divine condescension, which contains the prospect and the very root of definitive glorification. Thus it can truly be said “the glory of God is the living man, yet man's life is the vision of God”: man, living a divine life, is the glory of God, and the Holy Spirit is the hidden dispenser of this life and this glory. The Holy Spirit—says the great Basil—“while simple in essence and manifold in his virtues...extends himself without undergoing any diminishing, is present in each subject capable of receiving him as if he were the only one, and gives grace which is sufficient for all.”20
Rev. Robert A. Connor
1 Daniel Cere, “`Rouse Yourselves’ Towards a ‘High’ Doctrine of the Laity,” Newman Rambler 2000 @ McGill University, 5-8.
2 Rosato, Philip J. (1987) “Priesthood of the Baptized and Priesthood of the Ordained” Gregorianum 68: 339-46.
3 John Paul II, Sign of Contradiction, New York: Seabury.
4 Guttmann, David, “Adulthood and Its Discontents,” Working Paper for the Council on Families, Institute for American Values.
5 Newman, John Henry, “Parochial and Plain Sermons,” Ignatius Press.
6 Newman, John Henry, “Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day,” Longmans: London.
7 Why? Lumen Gentium # 10 reads: “Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are none the less ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.” The essential difference consists in the spousal (sexual) difference between Bridegroom and Bride. Ontologically (not just functionally) Bridegroom (Christ) is gift as donation; Bride (Church) is gift as reception. The ontological relationality (that is more and other than “accidental”) of male and female renders them irreducible to an abstraction of sameness (univocity).
8 The Magisterium of the “freedom of self-determination” is enshrined in #24 of Gaudium et spes that reads: “man, the only earthly being that God has willed for itself, finds himself only by the sincere gift of himself.” The explanation of the phrase “the only earthly being that God has willed for itself” is explained in Love and Responsibility (Farrar Straus Giroux [1981] 27) which reads: “we must never treat a person as the means to an end. This principle has a universal validity. Nobody can use a person as a means towards an end, no human being, not even God the Creator. On the part of God, indeed, it is totally out of the question, since, by giving man an intelligent and free nature, he has thereby ordained that each man alone will decide for himself the ends of his activity, and not be a blind tool of someone else’s ends. Therefore, if God intends to direct man towards certain goals, he allows him to begin to know those goals, so that he may make them his own and strive towards them independently. In this amongst other things resides the most profound logic of revelation: God allows man to learn His supernatural ends, but the decision to strive towards an end, the choice of course, is left to man’s free will. God does not redeem man against his will.”
9 John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor # 85.
10 John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, #27, DSP
11 John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine #25.
12 Ibid. 28.
13 Ibid.
14 St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th. III, 22, 4c.
15 John L. McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, Bruce Publishing. Co. (1965) 563.
16 Gaudium et spes, #22.
17 The paradigm shift consists in experiencing man in terms of Jesus Christ instead of considering Him to be an “exception” to man. Until the Second Vatican Council, Jesus Christ was considered from above, while man was considered from below. Christ was a transcendent relational Person a Subsistent Relation; man was an immanent person, an in-itself substance distinguished from the animals only by the specific difference of rationality. Ratzinger says,
“The second great misunderstanding [in mediaeval Christology] is to see Christ as the simply unique ontological exception which must be treated as such. This exception is an object of highly interesting ontological speculation, but it must remain separate in its box as an exception to the rule and must not be permitted to mix with the rest of human thought…. Scripture expresses this point by calling Christ the last Adam or `the second Adam.’ It thereby characterizes him as the true fulfillment of the idea of the human person, in which the direction of meaning of this being comes fully to light for the first time. If it is true, however, that Christ is not the ontological exception, if from his exceptional position he is, on the contrary, the fulfillment of the entire human being, then the Christological concept of person is an indication for theology of how person is to be understood as such. In fact, this concept of person, or simply the dimension that has become visible here, has always acted as a spark in intellectual history and it has propelled development, even when it had long come to a standstill in theology”17(underline mine).
18 Gaudium et Spes #24.
19 Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Person and Community, Lang (1993) 193-195.
20 John Paul II, Lord and Giver of Life, #59.
i Hebrews Chapter 7: The priesthood of Christ according to the order of Melchisedech excels the Levitical priesthood and puts an end both to that and to the law. 7:1. For this Melchisedech was king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings and blessed him: 7:2. To whom also Abraham divided the tithes of all: who first indeed by interpretation is king of justice: and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace: 7:3. Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but likened unto the Son of God, continueth a priest for ever. Without father, etc. Not that he had no father, etc., but that neither his father, nor his pedigree, nor his birth, nor his death, are set down in scripture. 7:4. Now consider how great this man is, to whom also Abraham the patriarch gave tithes out of the principal things. 7:5. And indeed they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is to say, of their brethren: though they themselves also came out of the loins of Abraham. 7:6. But he, whose pedigree is not numbered among them, received tithes of Abraham and blessed him that had the promises. 7:7. And without all contradiction, that which is less is blessed by the better. 7:9. And (as it may be said) even Levi who received tithes paid tithes in Abraham: 7:10. For he was yet in the loins of his father when Melchisedech met him. 7:11. If then perfection was by the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there that another priest should rise according to the order of Melchisedech: and not be called according to the order of Aaron? 7:12. For the priesthood being translated, it is necessary that a translation also be made of the law, 7:13. For he of whom these things are spoken is of another tribe, of which no one attended on the altar. 7:14. For it is evident that our Lord sprung out of Juda: in which tribe Moses spoke nothing concerning priests. 7:15. And it is yet far more evident: if according to the similitude of Melchisedech there ariseth another priest, 7:16. Who is made, not according to the law of a law of a carnal commandment, but according to the power of an indissoluble life. 7:17. For he testifieth: Thou art a priest for ever according to the order of Melchisedech. 7:18. There is indeed a setting aside of the former commandment, because of the weakness and unprofitableness thereof: 7:19. For the law brought nothing to perfection: but a bringing in of a better hope, by which we draw nigh to God. 7:20. And inasmuch as it is not without an oath (for the others indeed were made priests without an oath: 7:21. But this with an oath, by him that said unto him: The Lord hath sworn and he will not repent: Thou art a priest forever). 7:22. By so much is Jesus made a surety of a better testament. 7:23. And the others indeed were made many priests, because by reason of death they were not suffered to continue: Many priests, etc... The apostle notes this difference between the high priests of the law, and our high priest Jesus Christ; that they being removed by death, made way for their successors; whereas our Lord Jesus is a priest for ever, and hath no successor; but liveth and concurreth for ever with his ministers, the priests of the new testament, in all their functions. Also, that no one priest of the law, nor all of them together, could offer that absolute sacrifice of everlasting redemption, which our one high priest Jesus Christ has offered once, and for ever. 7:24. But this, for that he continueth for ever, hath an everlasting priesthood: 7:25. Whereby he is able also to save forever them that come to God by him; always living to make intercession for us. Make intercession... Christ, as man, continually maketh intercession for us, by representing his passion to his Father. 7:26. For it was fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens: 7:27. Who needeth not daily (as the other priests) to offer sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, in offering himself. 7:28. For the law maketh men priests, who have infirmity: but the word of the oath (which was since the law) the Son who is perfected for evermore. Hebrews Chapter 8: More of the excellence of the priesthood of Christ and of the New Testament. 8:1. Now of the things which we have spoken, this is the sum: We have such an high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of majesty in the heavens, 8:2. A minister of the holies and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord hath pitched, and not man. The holies... That is, the sanctuary. 8:3. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is necessary that he also should have some thing to offer. 8:4. If then he were on earth, he would not be a priest: seeing that there would be others to offer gifts according to the law. If then he were on earth, etc... That is, if he were not of a higher condition than the Levitical order of earthly priests, and had not another kind of sacrifice to offer, he should be excluded by them from the priesthood, and its functions, which by the law were appropriated to their tribe. 8:5. Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things. As it was answered to Moses, when he was to finish the tabernacle: See (saith he) that thou make all things according to the pattern which was shewn thee on the mount. Who serve unto, etc... The priesthood of the law and its functions were a kind of an example and shadow of what is done by Christ in his church militant and triumphant, of which the tabernacle was a pattern. 8:6. But now he hath obtained a better ministry, by how much also he is a mediator of a better testament which is established on better promises. 8:7. For if that former had been faultless, there should not indeed a place have been sought for a second. 8:8. For, finding fault with them, he saith: Behold the days shall come, saith the Lord: and I will perfect, unto the house of Israel and unto the house of Juda, a new testament: 8:9. Not according to the testament which I made to their fathers, on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt: because they continued not in my testament: and I regarded them not, saith the Lord. 8:10. For this is the testament which I will make on the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord: I will give my laws into their mind: and in their heart will I write them. And I will be their God: and they shall be my people. 8:11. And they shall not teach every man his neighbor and every man his brother, saying: Know the Lord. For all shall know me, from the least to the greatest of them. They shall not teach, etc... So great shall be light and grace of the new testament, that it shall not be necessary to inculcate to the faithful the belief and knowledge of the true God, for they shall all know him. 8:12. Because I will be merciful to their iniquities: and their sins I will remember no more. 8:13. Now in saying a new, he hath made the former old. And that which decayeth and groweth old is near its end. A new... Supply `covenant'. Hebrews Chapter 9: The sacrifices of the law were far inferior to that of Christ. 9:1. The former indeed had also justifications of divine service and a sanctuary. 9:2. For there was a tabernacle made the first, wherein were the candlesticks and the table and the setting forth of loaves, which is called the Holy. 9:3. And after the second veil, the tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies: 9:4. Having a golden censer and the ark of the testament covered about on every part with gold, in which was a golden pot that had manna and the rod of Aaron that had blossomed and the tables of the testament. 9:5. And over it were the cherubims of glory overshadowing the propitiatory: of hich it is not needful to speak now particularly. 9:6. Now these things being thus ordered, into the first tabernacle, the priests indeed always entered, accomplishing the offices of sacrifices. 9:7. But into the second, the high priest alone, once a year: not without blood, which he offereth for his own and the people's ignorance: 9:8. The Holy Ghost signifying this: That the way into the Holies was not yet made manifest, whilst the former tabernacle was yet standing. 9:9. Which is a parable of the time present: according to which gifts and sacrifices are offered, which cannot, as to the conscience, make him perfect that serveth, only in meats and in drinks, 9:10. And divers washings and justices of the flesh laid on them until the time of correction. Of correction... Viz., when Christ should correct and settle all things. 9:11. But Christ, being come an high Priest of the good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hand, that is, not of this creation: 9:12. Neither by the blood of goats or of calves, but by his own blood, entered once into the Holies, having obtained eternal redemption. Eternal redemption... By that one sacrifice of his blood, once offered on the cross, Christ our Lord paid and exhibited, once for all, the general price and ransom of all mankind: which no other priest could do. 9:13. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer, being sprinkled, sanctify such as are defiled, to the cleansing of the flesh: 9:14. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who by the Holy Ghost offered himself unspotted unto God, cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? 9:15. And therefore he is the mediator of the new testament: that by means of his death for the redemption of those transgressions which were under the former testament, they that are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance. 9:16. For where there is a testament the death of the testator must of necessity come in. 9:17. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is as yet of no strength, whilst the testator liveth. 9:18. Whereupon neither was the first indeed dedicated without blood. 9:19. For when every commandment of the law had been read by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people. 9:20. Saying: This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. 9:21. The tabernacle also and all the vessels of the ministry, in like manner, he sprinkled with blood. 9:22. And almost all things, according to the law, are cleansed with blood: and without shedding of blood there is no remission. 9:23. It is necessary therefore that the patterns of heavenly things should be cleansed with these: but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 9:24. For Jesus is not entered into the Holies made with hands, the patterns of the true: but into Heaven itself, that he may appear now in the presence of God for us. 9:25. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the Holies every year with the blood of others: Offer himself often... Christ shall never more offer himself in sacrifice, in that violent, painful, and bloody manner, nor can there be any occasion for it: since by that one sacrifice upon the cross, he has furnished the full ransom, redemption, and remedy for all the sins of the world. But this hinders not that he may offer himself daily in the sacred mysteries in an unbloody manner, for the daily application of that one sacrifice of redemption to our souls. 9:26. For then he ought to have suffered often from the beginning of the world. But now once, at the end of ages, he hath appeared for the destruction of sin by the sacrifice of himself. 9:27. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment: 9:28. So also Christ was offered once to exhaust the sins of many. The second time he shall appear without sin to them that expect him unto salvation. To exhaust... That is, to empty, or draw out to the very bottom, by a plentiful and perfect redemption.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Gift of Self
“And in the end You could put aside our world. You may let it crumble around us and, above all else, in us. And then it will transpire that YOU remain whole only in the SON, and He in You – whole with Him in YOUR LOVE, Father and Bridegroom.
“And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential, except for this: father, child, and love.”
“Love and Responsibility” (96-99)
“Betrothed love differs from all the aspects or forms of love analyzed hitherto. Its decisive character is the giving of one’s own person (to another). The essence of betrothed love is self-giving, the surrender of one’s `I.’ This is something different from and more than attraction, desire or even goodwill. These are all ways by which one person goes out towards another, but none of them can take him as far in his quest for the good of the other as does betrothed love. `To give oneself to another’ is something more than merely `desiring what is good for another – even if as a result of this another `I’ becomes as it were my own, as it does in friendship. Betrothed love is something different from and more than all the forms of love so far analyzed, both as it affects the individual subject, the person who loves, and as regards the interpersonal union, which it creates. When betrothed love enters into this interpersonal relationship something more than friendship results: two people give themselves each to the other….(The imaging of the divine is now understood as radical)
“But what is impossible and illegitimate in the natural order and in a physical sense, can come about in the order of love and in a moral sense. In this sense, one person can give himself or herself, can surrender entirely to another, whether to a human person or to God, and such a giving of the self creates a special form of love which we define as betrothed love [here footnote 7 on “On the Meaning of Betrothed Love – contribution to a Discussion,” which I have had translated but not published]. This fact goes to prove that the person has a dynamism of its own and that specific laws govern its existence and evolution [here go to GS #24 for the law of the person which is the “law of the gift”]….
“The fullest, the most uncompromising form of love consists precisely in self-giving, in making one’s inalienable and non-transferable `I’ someone else’s property. This is doubly paradoxical: firstly in that it is possible to step outside one’s own `I’ in this way, and secondly in that the `I’ far from being destroyed or impaired as a result is enlarged and enriched – of course in a super-physical, a moral sense….
“`Self-giving,’ in the sense in which we are discussing it, should not be identified (confused) with the sensation of self-surrender, still less with surrender in a merely physical sense. As far as surrender in the first (the psychological) sense is concerned, it is only the woman, or at any rate it is above all the woman, who feels that her role in marriage is to give herself; the man’s experience of marriage is different, since `giving oneself’ has as its psychological correlative `possession.’ However, the psychological approach is insufficient here for if we think the problem through objectively, and that means ontologically, what happens in the marital relationship is that the man simultaneously gives himself, in return for the woman’s gift of herself to him, and thus although his conscious experience of it differs from the woman’s it must none the less be a real giving of himself to another person. If it is not there is a danger that the man may treat the woman as an object, and indeed an object to be used. If marriage is to satisfy the demands of the personalistic norm it must embody reciprocal self-giving, a mutual betrothed love. The acts of surrender reciprocate each other, that of the man and that of the woman, and though they are psychologically different in kind, ontologically they combine to produce a perfect whole, an act of mutual self-surrender (emphasis mine)….
“(T)his giving of oneself… cannot… have a merely sexual significance. Giving oneself only sexually, without the full gift of the person to validate it, must lead to those forms of utilitarianism [which were analyzed and rejected previously].”The Recovery of the “I” Before Sin
The historical experience of man after sin conceals the primordial experience of man as “I” before sin as he came forth in innocence from the hands of God, revealed to be a triple “I” (Yahweh). John Paul II takes note of Christ’s invitation to cross the threshold to that original experience of what it meant to be man, male and female, “from the beginning.” He takes us across that threshold to “the beginning” by using the blend of a phenomenology of experience which stays objective as a metaphysics of being and makes the analysis and hermeneutic of the first two chapters of Genesis. The goal is to disclose the underlying anthropology and thereby disclose the non-reductive anthropology of the human “I” and its dynamic as self-gift, and what has become for him, “the law of the gift.” Therefore, the appearance of “self-gift” as a unique and radical experience in Love and Responsibility implies that Wojtyla had been glimpsing this profound pre-lapsarian experience for some time which he discloses explicitly for the first time in the first Wednesday addresses which follow:
1. The Discovery of the “I”: The meaning of the experience of solitude in the first man (prior to the re-creation as male and female): Man is not like the sensible world that he tills (subdues [works]) nor the animals that he names (naming is also subduing – working and getting dominion over):
Meaning of Man's Original Solitude (10 October 1979)
“The problem of solitude is manifested only in the context of the second account of the creation of man. The first account ignores this problem. There man is created in one act as male and female. "God created man in his own image... male and female he created them" (Gn 1:27). As we have already mentioned, the second account speaks first of the creation of the man and only afterward of the creation of the woman from the "rib" of the male. This account concentrates our attention on the fact that "man is alone." This appears as a fundamental anthropological problem, prior, in a certain sense, to the one raised by the fact that this man is male and female. This problem is prior not so much in the chronological sense, as in the existential sense. It is prior "by its very nature." The problem of man's solitude from the point of view of the theology of the body will also be revealed as such, if we succeed in making a thorough analysis of the second account of creation in Genesis 2” (emphasis mine).
“Man's subjectivity is already emphasized through this. It finds a further expression when the Lord God "formed out of the ground every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to man to see what he would call them" (Gn 2:19). In this way, therefore, the first meaning of man's original solitude is defined on the basis of a specific test or examination which man undergoes before God (and in a certain way also before himself). By means of this test, man becomes aware of his own superiority, that is, that he cannot be considered on the same footing as any other species of living beings on the earth.
As the text says, "Whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name" (Gn 2:19). "The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man [male] there was not found a helper fit for him" (Gn 2:20).
All this part of the text is unquestionably a preparation for the account of the creation of woman. However, it possesses a deep meaning even apart from this creation. Right from the first moment of his existence, created man finds himself before God as if in search of his own entity. It could be said he is in search of the definition of himself. A contemporary person would say he is in search of his own "identity." The fact that man "is alone" in the midst of the visible world and, in particular, among living beings, has a negative significance in this search, since it expresses what he "is not."
Nevertheless, the fact of not being able to identify himself essentially with the visible world of other living beings (animalia) has, at the same time, a positive aspect for this primary search. Even if this fact is not yet a complete definition, it constitutes one of its elements. If we accept the Aristotelian tradition in logic and in anthropology, it would be necessary to define this element as the "proximate genus" (genus proximum).
However, the Yahwist text enables us to discover also further elements in that admirable passage. Man finds himself alone before God mainly to express, through a first self-definition, his own self-knowledge, as the original and fundamental manifestation of mankind. Self-knowledge develops at the same rate as knowledge of the world, of all the visible creatures, of all the living beings to which man has given a name to affirm his own dissimilarity with regard to them. In this way, consciousness reveals man as the one who possesses a cognitive faculty as regards the visible world. With this knowledge which, in a certain way, brings him out of his own being, man at the same time reveals himself to himself in all the peculiarity of his being. He is not only essentially and subjectively alone. Solitude also signifies man's subjectivity, which is constituted through self-knowledge. Man is alone because he is "different" from the visible world, from the world of living beings. Analyzing the text of Genesis we are, in a way, witnesses of how man "distinguishes himself " before God-Yahweh from the whole world of living beings (animalia) with his first act of self-consciousness, and of how he reveals himself to himself. At the same time he asserts himself as a "person" in the visible world.”
Corroborating Experience: Helen Keller: “We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly, I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her finders. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers trill, it is true, abut barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way tot he hearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance.” Walker Percy comments: “Here in the well-house in Tuscumbia in a small space and a short time, something extremely important and mysterious had happened. Eight-year-old Helen made her breakthrough from the good responding animal which behaviorists study so successfully to the strange name-giving and sentence-uttering creature who begins by naming shoes and ships and sealing wax, and later tells jokes, curses, reads the paper, writes La sua volontade e nostra pace, or becomes a Hegel and composes an entire system of philosophy.”
Priesthood: The subduing of the animals, as well as the tilling of the earth gave man the experience – through his body – that he was not an object like everything else, but a subject. This subjective experience was revealed to us by Christ as priestly whereby the subject becomes mediator of his own existence. By the free subduing of self, one becomes priest of his/her own existence. That is, the offering that is made is one’s very self as gift. Josef Ratzinger’s quote on this is crucial: “Thus the Logos adopts the being of the man Jesus into his own being and speaks of it in terms of his own I: “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me” (Jn. 6, 38). In the Son’s obedience, where both wills become one single Yes to the will off the Father, communion takes place between human and divine being. The `wondrous exchange,’ the `alchemy of being,’ is realized here as a liberating and reconciling communication, which becomes a communion between Creator and creature. It is in the pain of this exchange, and only here, that that fundamental change tales place in man, the change which alone can redeem him and transform the conditions of the world. Here community is born, here the Church comes into being. The act whereby we participate in the Son’s obedience, which involves man’s genuine transformation, is also the only really effective contribution toward renewing and transforming society and the world as a whole.” As Christ subdued himself to make the radical gift of Himself to death on the Cross, so also baptism and the Mass empower us to make the radical gift. Christian marriage, seen in this light, is the priestly act of self-giving (as Christ love the Church ).
Body as “I” is not “Thing”
“Thus formed, man belongs to the visible world; he is a body among bodies. Taking up again and, in a way, reconstructing the meaning of original solitude, we apply it to man in his totality. His body, through which he participates in the visible created world, makes him at the same time conscious of being "alone." Otherwise, he would not have been able to arrive at that conviction which he reached (cf. Gn 2:20), if his body had not helped him to understand it, making the matter evident. Consciousness of solitude might have been shattered precisely because of his body itself. The man,'adam, might have reached the conclusion, on the basis of the experience of his own body, that he was substantially similar to other living beings (animalia). On the contrary, as we read, he did not arrive at this conclusion; he reached the conviction that he was "alone." The Yahwist text never speaks directly of the body. Even when it says that "The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground," it speaks of man and not of his body. Nevertheless, the narrative taken as a whole offers us a sufficient basis to perceive this man, created in the visible world, precisely as a body among bodies.” The body, then, is not an object, nor a “thing” understood in the modern sense of a machine or reducible to machinery. Notice the most recent remark of the major evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould: “The collapse of the doctrine of one gene for one protein, and one direction of causal flow from basic codes to elaborate totality, marks the failure of reductionism for the complex system that we call biology – and for two major reasons.
“First, the key to complexity is not more genes, a but more combinations and interactions generated by fewer units of code – many of these interaction (as emergent properties, to use the technical jargon) must be explained at the level of their appearance, for they cannot be predicted from the separate underlying parts alone. So organisms must be explained as organisms, and not as a summation of genes.”
This is complemented by Antony Flew, a British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.
Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.
There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.
Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"
The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.
Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."
2. The experience of being alone is positive as disclosing the uniqueness of the “I.” It is negative as “Not Good” for man to be alone.
“In this way, the second narrative could also be a preparation for understanding the Trinitarian concept of the "image of God," even if the latter appears only in the first narrative. Obviously, that is not without significance for the theology of the body. Perhaps it even constitutes the deepest theological aspect of all that can be said about man. In the mystery of creation - on the basis of the original and constituent "solitude" of his being - man was endowed with a deep unity between what is, humanly and through the body, male in him and what is, equally humanly and through the body, female in him. On all this, right from the beginning, the blessing of fertility descended, linked with human procreation (cf. Gn 1:28).
In this way, we find ourselves almost at the heart of the anthropological reality that has the name "body." The words of Genesis 2:23 speak of it directly and for the first time in the following terms: "bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." The man uttered these words, as if it were only at the sight of the woman that he was able to identify and call by name what makes them visibly similar to each other, and at the same time what manifests humanity.
In the light of the preceding analysis of all the "bodies" which man has come into contact with and which he has defined, conceptually giving them their name (animalia), the expression "flesh of my flesh" takes on precisely this meaning: the body reveals man. This concise formula already contains everything that human science could ever say about the structure of the body as organism, about its vitality, and its particular sexual physiology, etc. This first expression of the man, "flesh of my flesh," also contains a reference to what makes that body truly human. Therefore it referred to what determines man as a person, that is, as a being who, even in all his corporality, is similar to God.
We find ourselves, therefore, almost at the very core of the anthropological reality, the name of which is "body," the human body. However, as can easily be seen, this core is not only anthropological, but also essentially theological. Right from the beginning, the theology of the body is bound up with the creation of man in the image of God. It becomes, in a way, also the theology of sex, or rather the theology of masculinity and femininity, which has its starting point here in Genesis.
The words of Genesis 2:24 bear witness to the original meaning of unity, which will have in the revelation of God an ample and distant perspective. This unity through the body - "and the two will be one flesh"possesses a multiform dimension. It possesses an ethical dimension, as is confirmed by Christ's answer to the Pharisees in Matthew 19 (cf. Mk 10). It also has a sacramental dimension, a strictly theological one, as is proved by St. Paul's words to the Ephesians'`' which refer also to the tradition of the prophets (Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel). This is so because, right from the beginning, that unity which is realized through the body indicates not only the "body," but also the "incarnate" communion of persons - communio personarum - and calls for this communion.
Masculinity and femininity express the dual aspect of man's somatic constitution. "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh." Furthermore, through the same words of Genesis 2:23, they indicate the new consciousness of the sense of one's own body. It can be said that this sense consists in a mutual enrichment. Precisely this consciousness, through which humanity is formed again as the communion of persons, seems to be the layer which in the narrative of the creation of man (and in the revelation of the body contained in it) is deeper than his somatic structure as male and female. In any case, this structure is presented right from the beginning with a deep consciousness of human corporality and sexuality, and that establishes an inalienable norm for the understanding of man on the theological plane.”
3. Since the experience of solitude is bad for a being made in the image and likenss of a Three, the gift of the "I" is its achievement as Image.
(By the Communion of Persons Man Becomes the Image of God [14 November 1979)])
“In the first chapter, the narrative of the creation of man affirms directly, right from the beginning, that man was created in the image of God as male and female. The narrative of the second chapter, on the other hand, does not speak of the "image of God." But in its own way it reveals that the complete and definitive creation of "man" (subjected first to the experience of original solitude) is expressed in giving life to that communio personarum that man and woman form. In this way, the Yahwist narrative agrees with the content of the first narrative.
If, vice versa, we wish to draw also from the narrative of the Yahwist text the concept of "image of God," we can then deduce that man became the "image and likeness" of God not only through his own humanity, but also through the communion of persons which man and woman form right from the beginning. The function of the image is to reflect the one who is the model, to reproduce its own prototype. Man becomes the image of God not so much in the moment of solitude as in the moment of communion. Right "from the beginning," he is not only an image in which the solitude of a person who rules the world is reflected, but also, and essentially, an image of an inscrutable divine communion of persons.”
John Paul concludes that man images God not as an individual, but as a person who, to reflect the prototype, must be in union with another. This means further that to be man, one can never be alone. To be human is to be in relation as the Divine is a trinity of Relations. The ramifications for sexual morality as well as for political and economic reality are profound and far reaching.
The Methodology of Wojtyla Enabling This Disclosure of the “I” As Gift: The Experience of Self-Determination.
His fundamental discovery is the experience of the “I” as being. Experience is always about reality, and therefore about being. In modern thought, the “I” has been identified with consciousness, or the thought about thinking. Reflective thought, not experience, was the access. Wojtyla experiences himself as the cause of free action. His “I” is not the result of reflection on the act of thinking or willing. It is discovered as the cause of an experience of (free, not instinctual or stimulus-response mechanism) self-determination as a free act. “But as the need increases to understand the human being as a unique and unrepeatable person, especially in terms of the whole dynamism of action and inner happenings proper to the human being – in other words, as the need increases to understand the personal subjectivity of the human being – the category of lived experience takes on greater significance, and, in fact, key significance. For then the issue is not just the metaphysical objectification of the human being as an acting subject, as the agent of acts, but the revelation of the person as a subject experiencing its acts and inner happenings, and with them its own subjectivity.
Perhaps the analytical genius of Wojtyla comes to the fore precisely here. The “I” is being, not consciousness. But the experience which discloses the “I” as being is the work of consciousness. He distinguishes consciousness which mirrors thought and sensation, which is taken from the experience of the external world, from thought which abstracts and so reduces reality to categories and abstractions (universals). In its non abstractive/mirroring function, consciousness grasps the subject (not yet experienced as “I”), which has been objectified by reflective thought, and then actualized by itself. He distinguishes between the reflectiveness of the mind turning back on its own act of knowing things and the reflexiveness of consciousness which captures both the reflections of the subject in potency to self-determine, and in the act of moving itself. This capturing both states of the self as pre and post self-determination, as potency and act with respect to itself, constitutes the experience of the “I” as “I.” And he corroborates this when he remarks in Fides et Ratio #83 that “In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being, and hence with metaphysical enquiry.”
He remarks in the Acting Person: “The consequence of the reflexive turn of consciousness is that this object – just because it is from the ontological point of view the subject – while having the experience of his own ego also has the experience of himself as the subject. In this interpretation `refexiveness’ is also seen to be an essential as well as a very specific moment of consciousness. It is, however, necessary to add at once that this specific moment becomes apparent only when we observe and trace consciousness in its intrinsic, organic relation to the human being, in particular, the human being in action. We then discern clearly that it is one thing to be the subject, another to be cognized (that is, objectivized) as the subject, and a still different thing to experience one’s self as the subject of one’s own acts and experiences… This discrimination is of tremendous import for all our further analyses, which we shall have to make in our efforts to grasp the whole dynamic reality of the acting person and to account for the subjectiveness that is given us in experience.
Indubitably, Man is, first of all, the subject of his being and his acting; he is the subject insofar as he is a being of determinate nature, which leads to consequences particularly in the acting. In traditional ontology that subject of existing and acting which man is was designated by the term suppositum – ontic support – which, we may say, serves as a thoroughly objective designation free of any experiential aspects, in particular of any relation to that experience of subjectivity in which the subject is given to itself as the self, as the ego. Hence suppositum abstracts from that aspect of consciousness owing to which the concrete man – the object being the subject – has the experience of himself as the subject and thus of his subjectivity. It is this experience that allows him to designate himself by means of the pronoun I. We know I to be a personal pronoun, always designating a concrete person. However, the denotation of this personal pronoun, thus….
Hence not only am I conscious of my ego (on the ground of self-knowledge) but owing to my consciousness in its reflexive function I also experience my ego. I have the experience of myself as the concrete subject of the ego’s very subjectiveness. Consciousness is not just an aspect but also an essential dimension or an actual moment of the reality of the being that I am, since it constitutes its subjectiveness in the experiential sense.”
****** It is important to go back to see that the original recovery of the “I” as “alone” - “from the beginning” - was precisely in the experience of subduing the self (self-determination) on the occasion of work (naming the animals and tilling the garden). Then, God reveals the axiology of the person: “It is not good for man to be alone.” The re-creation of man as male and female is the occasion for them both to increase in their ontological density as “I” by the respective subduing of self to be gift to each other. The failure to subdue the self was the fact of sin that constituted the loss of the experience of imaging the Three. Man lost the experience of the “I” and forgot who he was. Go to Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos.”
John Paul II explicitly links the Magisterial GS #24 with his understanding of self-determination: Hence: The Personal Structure of Self-Determination: ….IV
“In Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, we read that "the human being, who is the only creature on earth that God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" (24)….
As I said earlier, in the experience of self-determination the human person stands revealed before us as a distinctive structure of self-possession and self-governance. Neither the one nor the other, however, implies being closed in on oneself. On the contrary, both self-possession and self-governance imply a special disposition to make a "gift of oneself," and this a "disinterested" gift. Only if one possesses oneself can one give oneself and do this in a disinterested way. And only if one governs oneself can one make a gift of oneself, and this again a disinterested gift. The problematic of disinterestedness certainly deserves a separate analysis, which it is not my intention to present here. An understanding of the person in categories of gift, which the teaching of Vatican II reemphasizes, seems to reach even more deeply into those dimensions brought to light by the foregoing analysis. Such an understanding seems to disclose even more fully the personal structure of self-determination.
Only if one can determine oneself—as I attempted to show earlier—can one also become a gift for others. The Council's statement that "the human being...cannot fully find himself or herself except through a disinterested gift of himself or herself" allows us to conclude that it is precisely when one becomes a gift for others that one most fully becomes oneself. This "law of the gift," if it may be so designated, is inscribed deep within the dynamic structure of the person. The text of Vatican II certainly draws its inspiration from revelation, in the light of which it paints this portrait of the human being as a person. One could say that this is a portrait in which the person is depicted as a being willed by God "for itself" and, at the same time, as a being turned "toward" others. This relational portrait of the person, however, necessarily presupposes the immanent (and indirectly "substantial") portrait that unfolds before us from an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination….
I have attempted, however, even in this short presentation, to stress the very real need for a confrontation of the metaphysical view of the person that we find in St. Thomas and in the traditions of Thomistic philosophy with the comprehensive experience of the human being. Such a confrontation will throw more light on the cognitive sources from which the Angelic Doctor derived his metaphysical view. The full richness of those sources will then become visible. At the same time, perhaps we will better be able to perceive points of possible convergence with contemporary thought, as well as points of irrevocable divergence from it in the interests of the truth about reality.”
—This paper was presented by then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyla at an international conference on St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and Naples, 17-24 April 1974. It can be found in the book “Person and Community: Selected Essays” by Karol Wojtyla, published as part of a series “Catholic Thought from Lublin” by Peter Lang.
Finally, Dominum et Vivificantem #59 spells out this recovery of the “I” – Gift as the very meaning of Christian anthropology and with Novo Millennio Ineunte and the discovery of the face of Jesus Christ, the blueprint for the year 2001, the 21st century and the Third Millennium.
“As the year 2000 since the birth of Christ draws near, it is a question of ensuring that an ever greater number of people “may fully find themselves...through a sincere gift of self,” according to the expression of the Council already quoted. Through the action of the Spirit-Paraclete, may there be accomplished in our world a process of true growth in humanity, in both individual and community life. In this regard Jesus himself "when he prayed to the Father, 'that all may be one...as we are one' (Jn 17: 21-22)...implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine persons and the union of the children of God in truth and charity." The Council repeats this truth about man, and the Church sees in it a particularly strong and conclusive indication of her own apostolic tasks. For if man is the way of the Church, this way passes through the whole mystery of Christ, as man's divine model. Along this way the Holy Spirit, strengthening in each of us “the inner man,” enables man ever more “fully to find himself through a sincere gift of self.” These words of the Pastoral Constitution of the Council can be said to sum up the whole of Christian anthropology: that theory and practice, based on the Gospel, in which man discovers himself as belonging to Christ and discovers that in Christ he is raised to the status of a child of God, and so understands better his own dignity as man, precisely because he is the subject of God's approach and presence, the subject of the divine condescension, which contains the prospect and the very root of definitive glorification. Thus it can truly be said “the glory of God is the living man, yet man's life is the vision of God”: man, living a divine life, is the glory of God, and the Holy Spirit is the hidden dispenser of this life and this glory. The Holy Spirit—says the great Basil—“while simple in essence and manifold in his virtues...extends himself without undergoing any diminishing, is present in each subject capable of receiving him as if he were the only one, and gives grace which is sufficient for all.”
—From the Pastoral Letter, Lord and Giver of Life, promulgated by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, on May 18, 1986
The evil of contraception and the positive use of NFP can only be understood within the context of the anthropology of GS #24. This is the reason John Paul II wants everyone to be apprised of the NFP even before marriage. He does not see the moral determinant to be nature, which cannot morally be contradicted, the large family as the secure affirmation of moral goodness. Rather, he sees the self-giving of the spouses as persons as the moral determinant.
Regarding NFP, he comments in Familiaris consortio:
“Authentic ecclesial pedagogy displays its realism and wisdom only by making a tenacious and courageous effort to create and uphold all the human conditions –psychological, moral and spiritual – indispensable for understanding and living the moral value and norm.
There is no doubt that these conditions must include persistence and patience, humility and strength of mind, filial trust in God and in His grace, and frequent recourse to prayer and to the sacraments of the Eucharist and of Reconciliation….
But the necessary conditions also include knowledge of the bodily aspect and the body’s rhythms of fertility. Accordingly, every effort must be made to render such knowledge accessible to all married people and also to young adults before marriage, through clear, timely and serious instruction and education given by married couples, doctors and experts. Knowledge must then lead to education in self-control: hence the absolute necessity for the virtue of chastity and for permanent education in it. In the Christian view, chastity by no means signifies rejection of human sexuality or lack of esteem for it; rather it signifies spiritual energy capable of defending love from the perils of selfishness and aggressiveness, and able to advance it towards it full realization.
…Yet this discipline [with regard to periodic continence] which is proper to the purity of married couples, far from harming conjugal love, rather confers on it a higher human value. It demands continual effort, yet, thanks to its beneficent influence, husband and wife fully develop their personalities, being enriched with spiritual value/ Such discipline bestows upon family life fruits of serenity and peace, and facilitates the solution of other problems; it favors attention for one’s partner, helps both parties to drive out selfishness, the enemy of true love, and deepens their sense of responsibility. By its means, parents acquire the capacity of having a deeper and more efficacious influence in the education of their offspring.”(#33). Since contraception is the precisely the failure to make the gift of self as body (where sperm and egg are withheld), and NFP is the self-determination to make the gift of self by abstaining from sexual intercourse during fertility, we are dealing with two radically distinct anthropologies, one as person-gift, the other as individual-for-self. John Paul II comments:
“Theological reflection is able to perceive and is called to study further the difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle: it is a difference which is much wider and deeper than is usually thought, one which involves in the final analysis two irreconcilable concepts of the human person and of human sexuality.”(#32)
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