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	The Priesthood By Fr Peter Joseph Renew America February 27, 2011 http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/keane/110227 As widely reported in the media, 144 Catholic theologians from Germany, Austria and Switzerland published an open letter on February 3, 2011 in which they called on the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to change its teaching and discipline on various matters. In calling for greater inclusiveness in the Church, they suggested that women can enter the ranks of the ordained priesthood and said that the Church should not "shut out people who live in love, loyalty and mutual support as same-sex couples or remarried divorced people." The first point to make in response to the remarks by the German-speaking theologians reported above is that the Catholic Church does not "shut out" same-sex couples or the divorced and remarried from its ranks. It does however take Jesus' admonition to avoid sin seriously and calls on those in a state of objectively grave sin not to receive the Eucharist. The first reason it does this is because the Catholic Church takes Sacred Scripture seriously in that it condemns both adulterous and homosexual acts as gravely immoral. The second reason it does so is because the choice to live in an adulterous or active homosexual relationship has a public dimension and may be the occasion of scandal to others. Having said this, the Church simultaneously encourages people in such situations to continue to participate in the rest of the Church's life and to have frequent recourse to the mercy of God in the Sacrament of Penance. The program for Church reform advocated by the German-speaking theologians referred to above is expressive of a failure to discern what may be called the "marital symbolism" stamped on our human nature in God's good creation of man as 'male and female' and the implications of this real symbolism for the sacramental doctrine and life of the Catholic Church. This failure has given rise amongst so-called 'progressive' Catholics to a litany of objections to certain aspects of the Church's teaching , particularly its teaching on sexuality and marriage, as well as its doctrine on a male-only ministerial priesthood and its prohibition against the reception of the Eucharist by the divorced and remarried. It is striking that we will often be able to predict what a Catholic theologian will hold on all of these matters once we know what he or she holds on any one of them. Why is this so? Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) pointed out that objections to the Church's teaching such as those outlined above are rooted in a faulty vision of man. This faulty vision is, he said, "Closely associated with the inability to discern a spiritual message in the material world." [1] He added that men and women of today cannot understand that "their bodiliness reaches the metaphysical depths and is the basis of a symbolic metaphysics whose denial or neglect does not ennoble man but destroys him." [2] For those whose vision of man is based on such a faulty anthropology which fails to recognise in the "being" of the human person the handiwork of the Creator, there is "no difference whether the body be of the masculine or the feminine sex: the body no longer expresses being at all." [3] Consequently, the difference "between homosexuality and heterosexuality as well as that between sexual relations within or outside marriage have become unimportant." [4] Likewise divested of "every metaphysical symbolism," said Cardinal Ratzinger, is the "distinction between man and woman" which is to be "regarded as the product of reinforced role expectations." [5] The points made above regarding how we understand the real but complementary differences between men and women and their relationship to human flourishing have a profound bearing on how we should understand the meaning and mystery of the sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church believes that Christ instituted seven sacraments through which he communicates his divine life to us and binds us together in the unity of his Church. These seven sacraments are Baptism, Eucharist, Reconciliation/Penance, Confirmation, Holy Orders, Matrimony and the Anointing of the Sick. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Sacrament of Holy Orders "is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time" (n. 1536). This sacrament can only be conferred on men and it is vital to the life of the Church since it is only ordained priests who can pronounce the words of consecration in the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass whereby bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ. Given the widespread misunderstanding regarding the origin and nature of the ordained priesthood both inside the Catholic Church itself and beyond, a problem that has been exacerbated by the clerical sexual abuse scandals of recent times, I thought it would be worthwhile to produce a series of articles on the priesthood. As the first in the series I publish below an article authored by Australian theologian Fr. Peter Joseph titled The Priesthood. The article was first published by the Catholic Adult Education Centre in Sydney in 2009 as INFORM 120: Faith & Life Matters. I am grateful to the editor of Inform for giving me permission to reproduce the article here in my RenewAmerica column. It is the first time it has been published online.
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