Wonderful allocution by the Holy Father about the Priesthood

Yesterday the Holy Father gave a brief allocution to the participants in a conference organized by the Congregation for the Clergy. The Vatican Information Service has given the following summary:

VATICAN CITY, 12 MAR 2010 (VIS) - At midday today, the Holy Father received participants in a theological congress promoted by the Congregation for the Clergy, and which is being held on 11 and 12 March in the Pontifical Lateran University on the theme: "Faithfulness of Christ, faithfulness of Priests".

In a time such as our own, said the Pope, "it is important clearly to bear in mind the theological specificity of ordained ministry, in order not to surrender to the temptation of reducing it to predominant cultural models. In the context of widespread secularisation which progressively tends to exclude God from the public sphere and from the shared social conscience, the priest often appears 'removed' from common sense". Yet , the Pope went on, "it is important to avoid a dangerous reductionism which, over recent decades ... has presented the priest almost as a 'social worker', with the risk of betraying the very Priesthood of Christ.

"Just as the hermeneutic of continuity is revealing itself to be ever more important for an adequate understanding of the texts of Vatican Council II", he added, "in the same way we see the need for a hermeneutic we could describe as 'of priestly continuity', one which, starting from Jesus of Nazareth, Lord and Christ, and over the two thousand years of history, greatness, sanctity, culture and piety which the Priesthood has given the world, comes down to our own day".

Benedict XVI affirmed that "it is particularly important that the call to participate in the one Priesthood of Christ in ordained Ministry should flower from the 'charism of prophecy'. There is great need for priests who speak of God to the world and who present the world to God; men not subject to ephemeral cultural fashions, but capable of authentically living the freedom that only the certainty of belonging to God can give. ... And the prophecy most necessary today is that of faithfulness" which "leads us to live our priesthood in complete adherence to Christ and the Church".

Priests, the Holy Father continued, "must be careful to distance themselves from the predominant mentality which tends to associate the value of Ministry not with its being, but with its function". Our "ontological association with God", he said "is the right framework in which to understand and reaffirm, also in our own time, the value of celibacy which in the Latin Church is a charism imposed by Holy Orders, and is held in great esteem by the Oriental Churches. ... It is an expression of the gift of the self to God and to others".

"The vocation of priests is an exalted one, and remains a great mystery. ... Our limitations and weaknesses must induce us to live and safeguard this precious gift with great faith, a gift with which Christ configured us to Himself, making us participants in His mission of salvation. Indeed, the understanding of priestly ministry is linked to faith and requires, ever more strongly, a radical continuity between formation in seminaries and permanent formation".

The Holy Father concluded by telling his audience that "the men and women of our time ask us only to be priests to the full, nothing else. The lay faithful will be able to meet their human needs in many other people, but only in the priest will they find that Word of God which must always be on his lips, the Mercy of the Father abundantly and gratuitously distributed in the Sacrament of Penance, and the bread of new life". 

The entire talk is not yet available in English translation; hopefully this will be forthcoming. In any case, one needs to wonder how the reframing of the understanding of the priesthood over the past 45 years have led to the evil and scandalous sexual abuse of young people by members of the clergy (I am not referring to those cases which are pathological -- i.e., true pedophilia, but cases of personal sinfulness and moral turpitude).
Some have implied that "putting the priest on a pedestal" contributed to a priest thinking himself above the people he serves and above the moral teaching of Christ and His Church, and thus led to the sexual abuse. I think this would be true for only the truly hard of heart. My own experience has been that any acts of deference shown by God's people to me or being "put on a pedestal" has caused me to experience a greater sense of unworthiness and a desire to try, with God's grace, to become a better priest and more faithful to the calling I have received. Coming to appreciate once again what the Church has always taught that priests are, might be the most important step in reversing the "vocation crisis" and the "new springtime" for the faith which Vatican II so hoped for.
Priests exist for the Sacraments, most especially the Holy Eucharist, and prayer, most especially the Divine Office. Anything else they do or any other ministry they have must always be referenced back to this -- as priests move away from this understanding, they betray the essence of their very being: their ontological conformity to Jesus Christ the High Priest through the Sacrament of Holy Orders.
Please pray for priests!