Herald of a new reformation?
Keifer, Ralph A.
Herald of a new reformation? RALPH A. KEIFER Despite (or is it because of?) my position as member of a theological faculty, I am inclined to be skeptical about the import of theological writings....
...Thus the official attack on what is experienced as normal married sexuality constitutes an attack on people's deepest spiritual perceptions, perhaps all the more painful, damaging,and confusing because this perception normally lies at an intuitive and unreflective level...
...To the extent that the priest embodies (if only potentially) the values, hopes, and aspirations of a community, to that extent is he a "good celebrant," and to that extent is there the possibility of a liturgy with dynamic power...
...With the reforms of rite, the prevailing liturgical style is invitational...
...But reformation was not possible until there were both reformers to follow and princes to protect them frbm the church's power to persecute...
...REFORMATION, then, requires a simultaneous crisis of liturgy, authority, spirituality, and doctrine as its preconditions...
...This has everything to do with sexuality...
...The purpose of the church is not seen primarily as providing right doctrine, clear moral guidelines, or a special form of ceremony...
...With that maturity comes a widening of perspective and a deepening of commitment...
...Increasingly, those circumstances are present in contemporary Catholicism...
...It is also sound ritual anthropology...
...Where the host was once elevated to be adored, we are 1 The conception of God present deep within the world pervades the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, and is basic to the commonly used Eucharistic Prayer III...
...It happens in the inner city and in the affluent suburbs, among students and among blue-collar workers...
...This, I suggest, is precisely what is now upon us...
...This perception frequently finds itself in conflict with religion as conventionally and traditionally defined, especially church structures...
...In many ways, the book represents an expansion and refinement of an earlier article, "The Christian Community and its Office-Bearers," which appeared last year in the.Concilium series in a volume titled The Right of the Community to a Priest...
...Where it moves from mere hope into a movement, there has normally been testing...
...That redefinition of faith arises in a variety of contexts-for some it was born in the liturgical movement or the Christian Family Movement of the fifties...
...Much of it depends upon the impetus of the new spirituality, strong in some places, only beginning to be apparent in others...
...Catholic Christianity operates with a symbiosis of authority, liturgy, and doctrine, functioning at such a deep and unreflec-tive level that the symbiosis is normally not readily noticed...
...Doctrine is employed less as an abstract standard than as a plausible account of that structure of office and sacrament...
...The first half of Ministry is a careful historical and theological study of priesthood in the Catholic tradition, ending with RALPH A. KEIFER, a previous contributor, is an associate professor of liturgy in the Catholic Theological Union at Chicago...
...The tension is heightened by the dichotomy between primary liturgical ministry and liturgical style...
...Often enough, they tend to have limited appeal and limited impact...
...It is an implicit and practical denial of what theology calls the paschal mystery...
...In fact, they are intelligible against the background of the rediscovery of faith as gospel rather than religion...
...The priest's function could then be conceived as making present an absent God, and that mediatorial role could only be enhanced by stressing the priest's otherness from the congregation...
...But often enough, too, when devotees of a cause are disillusioned, the hope they found in the cause matures and lives on stronger in new contexts...
...Those who first found their hopes in a more "secular" context find that hope demanding expression in prayer, reflection, and sacramental celebration, as those who often began by being "saved" religiously find piety maturing into concerns about peace and justice, art, and politics...
...Neither the issues Schillebeeckx raises nor the data he presents are unknown to theologians or to a wider community concerned about the future of ministry...
...It is not likely to end with exoneration...
...To suppress or deny something of the fullness of being human is therefore to suppress or deny something of the divine...
...Most important, Schillebeeckx's work legitimates the possibility of "loyal opposition"-experimental local communities legitimately ordaining their own priests as they need them, without benefit of bishop...
...Catholicism is sacramental and liturgical, with its authority centered in office-bearers, enacting its deepest spiritual and religious values liturgically...
...The second half of the book is a reflection on the present situation, including exploration of the issues which must be taken into account if local communities are to go ahead and select their own eucharistic presidents...
...There is, in other words, a perceived and growing conflict between the structures of the church and what is understood as the heart of the gospel for our time-a crisis of authority and spirituality by definition...
...The possibility of reformation arises when that symbiosis of sacrament, office, spirituality, and doctrine breaks down...
...Growing tensions in the church reflect the impact of that change in the Catholic heart...
...This means that the official interpretation of the meaning of priesthood since Trent can have no permanent binding force...
...That is, the life of faith is seen as having to do with finding and living out of a cooperative zone of freedom, wholeness, hope, and meaning-rather than a matter of believing a set of doctrines, adhering to a special moral code, or practicing a particular set of devotions...
...The liturgical segregation of ordinary sexuality from the central liturgical ministry suggests strongly that matters of power and death have no relation to the sacred, either...
...At last the time may be ripe for the noble, if difficult and painful, experiment of reformation without schism.f reformation without schism...
...For rising numbers, faith has been redefined as having to do with gospel rather than as having to do with religion...
...As with his books Jesus and Christ, it will doubtless call forth a Roman investigation...
...It also requires the emergence of the practical (and intellectually defensible) alternatives to the existing ecclesiastical structures...
...It may take many critical turns before a critical mass is achieved...
...To put it at its simplest, there is a profound and enduring crisis of church authority simply because those who offer the best leadership in either prayer or politics are often not only not clergy, but are all too frequently excluded from their ranks...
...Where the old Mass cultivated a sense of the separation between God and the world, the new rite speaks of inclusion, both in word and gesture...
...No longer are the civil authorities at the beck and call of either would-be reformers or alarmed hierarchs...
...The notion that the priest "represents Christ" is not simply sound theology...
...The presence of God is not that of an alien being from elsewhere, but of a presence deep within the world, and especially within the human world...
...Certainly when reformation does come it will not be like the last one...
...This is not apt to be the case with Edward Schillebeeckx's new book, Ministry [Crossroad, $12.95, 165 pp...
...It is a thematic in the most serious religious literature of our time.' invited to "take and eat...
...As a work of theology, it simply reflects the growing attunement of better theology to new grassroots concerns-and its widening divergence from official positions...
...As such a conception of God becomes more and more implausible,1 so, too does such a conception of priesthood-and with it, the arguments as well as the liturgy which support such a conception...
...It is all too rarely a source of real nourishment for people's life in the world, as it is rarely experienced as fully celebrating that life...
...Only the brighter and tamer emotions are admitted...
...No, though the issue (the future of ministry) is of some popular appeal, the real import of the book lies in the implications of what Schillebeeckx is saying, combined with its coinciding with a profound crisis of authority and worship in the church...
...In the present situation, a book legitimating change in the ministerial structure leaves only one question-not whether reformation will come, but when...
...We are well aware that the present liturgy sounds an uncertain trumpet over issues of both power (politics, social structures, public issues, social concerns) and death (suffering, evil in the world, failure, helplessness...
...the conclusion that the tradition manifests significant discontinuities...
...for yet others, in charismatic renewal...
...Perhaps at last the issues of God's people can be settled in God's own house...
...every cause has its spirit baptism...
...This change of definition of what the life of faith is about is more or less clearly perceived, and more or less aggressively articulated, depending upon individuals and their circumstances...
...For the signs of the times do point to the possibility of a new reformation...
...But the failure of ceremonial symbols is rooted in a deeper failure of symbol...
...For in the face of the new spirituality, the exclusion of women and the married from priesthood escalates the crisis of authority into a liturgical crisis...
...Still, this is not why I see this book as having unusual importance...
...This tension between an inclusive liturgical style and an exclusive ministry is doubtless at the heart of liturgical dissatisfaction on all sides...
...A male and celibate priesthood was acceptable, perhaps even desirable, as long as God could be perceived fundamentally as an intruder into the world...
...After the Kiing case, a Roman condemnation is not going to be such a cause cetebre...
...There has been a significant shift in Catholic religious perception and spirituality, encouraged in some ways by the Second Vatican Council, but not by any means dependent upon that event...
...It is this crisis which accounts for the current Catholic obsession with sexuality-most notably, birth control, the celibacy of the clergy, and the ordination of women...
...Most notably, the locating of the essence of priesthood in a special personal power to consecrate the Eucharist is a very late development in the tradition, and rests on presuppositions contrary to the understandings of priesthood which prevailed during the first thousand years of the church's history...
...Priesthood can be relocated within the local community, and with it, there is the practical possibility not only of female and married priests, but also of the full recognition of the ministries of other Christian churches...
...It was at least honestly archaic...
...The issues are not at all unrelated...
...for others, in the struggles for civil rights and peace of the following decade...
...And where we once began with a plea for mercy, we are greeted with an acknowledgment of the Lord's presence in our midst...
...Rather, it is seen to be (or it is hoped it will become) the servant of that life of cooperation, freedom, wholeness, hope, and meaning...
...I use the term in its normal sense-a renewal of church life including significant structural change and doctrinal revision...
...Roman Catholicism has a high level of tolerance for inadequate liturgy, inept leadership, and implausible doctrine, as long as these items do not appear together as conspiring to defeat the deepest spiritual perceptions and aspirations of an age...
...Schillebeeckx has neither the media personality nor the breezy writing style which helped to make Kiing an unusually popular theologian...
...Neither theological revision nor movements for renewal necessarily end in reformation (nor does reformation necessarily end in schism): reformation can only come out of a special set of circmustances...
...People with an otherwise contemporary spirituality can mourn the passing of the Latin Mass, and rightly...
...The primary liturgical symbols are not the liturgical artifacts and gestures, but its agents, especially its ministers and above all its priests...
...Catholicism is even capable of creaking along with all three dimensions of its structure badly out of tune, as long as the conditions are not right for viable alternatives...
...There is every reason to expect that .Ministry will have an impact far beyond its readers...
...At the end of the Middle Ages, the Catholic church limped along for a century and a half with a decadent and irrelevant liturgy, a thoroughgoing crisis of authority, and a severe decline of theology...
...Often enough, this new perception is identified with the cause which was its catalyst...
...My colleagues often locate this liturgical blandness in a bland use of symbol-the failure to use real bread, robust gesture, generous art...
...The real significance is the book's function as a herald of reformation...
...For a basic intuition of faith as having to do with gospel is that God is not to be found in some other world, but in this one...
...We are all subliminally aware that the present liturgy lacks power...
...One finds it occurring in ordinary parish life and beyond the bounds of anything de-scribable as organized religion...
...It at least presented a coherent statement, and if it was not a statement of contemporary spirituality, it could at least be honored and appreciated as a hallowed inheritance from the past...
...The present rite, however, regularly inflicts an especially damaging sort of violence: it has become impossible to make an honest liturgical statement...
Vol. 108 • July 1981 • No. 13
