Ordering Contemporary Ministries
Believe, me brothers and sisters:
If what I am for you frightens me,
What I am with you reassures me.
For you I am the bishop;
With you I am a Christian.
Bishop, this is the title of an office one has accepted;
Christian that is the name of the grace one receives.
Dangerous title! Salutary name!
Augustine of Hippo – Sermon 340
Recalling some strands in our history
While the Christian community, like any community, needs to order its life, Jesus did not leave an exact blue-print for the future. To assert otherwise is to state a lie. Thus the Roman Catholic Church's recognition of the validity of Eastern Orthodox Orders and Eucharist implicitly acknowledges that different cultures and histories have shaped the development of Church order. Given that the Church has seen this development of ministry as 'divinely guided', might not our own contemporary wrestling with rapidly changing circumstances be likewise 'divinely guided'? For the purposes of this reflection, the following five inter-related historical strands seem pertinent.
1. Our familiar distinction between clergy and laity is unknown both in the Christian Scriptures and during the first few centuries of the early Church. The letter to the Galatians is blunt: As many of you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek,, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:27-28). Both ordained and non-ordained ministries are crucial for a vibrant Church order; both are credible to the extent that they are like a waiter who is attentive but not intrusive: living expressions of diakonia, a word that every Christian Scriptures author used to characterise Jesus' ministry. The credibility of ministry is compromised whenever artificial distinctions are allowed to take precedence over the fundamental equality of all who are baptised in Christ (for example, between sacred and secular, between the `holy ordained' and the `unholy lay', between charism and institution). Even so, embracing the fundamental equality of all members of the Church in Christ need not blur distinctions between ordained and lay, let alone dismiss or devalue the role of the ordained in the Catholic faith community. At the same time, it is a matter of regret that this word diakonia, which originally referred to actions, to verbs like exhorting, comforting and showing mercy, gradually became a noun, a fixed state in life, the diaconate.
2. During the first two centuries, the term `holy order' was not used. In Jesus' day, there were three well-defined orders: senators, decurions, and knights, each of them emphasising control rather than diakonia/service. It is hardly surprising that the early Church avoided using the term `order'. However, in the third century, Tertullian introduced the term to the Church's language, speaking of a three-fold order of episkopos, presbyteros, and diakonos (bishop, priest, and deacon). Gradually, imperceptibly, this framework moved the emphasis from the baptismal origin of our life together towards highlighting the powers that distinguished (and sanctified) those in `holy orders' from those who were not ordained. By the twelfth century, priesthood was understood primarily as the power to consecrate the Eucharist and to forgive sin.
For nearly a thousand years, until the Second Vatican Council, the Church paid scant attention to the baptismal origins of its common life. If for a millennium the priesthood was seen as the central even the sole focus of ministry in the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council boldly reclaimed an earlier tradition when it proposed that the most fundamental ordering of the Church happens in baptism, where all are called by the Lord to share in the mission and ministry of Jesus (LG 9).
Yet this raised a new question: how are the various ministries related to each other? One response to that question has been to identify the ordained with the inner life of the Church, and the non-ordained with the world. This approach does preserve a truth that we forget at our peril, namely, that Christians seek the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairsby ordering them according to the plan of God. (LG 31). Nevertheless, such a clear distinction - locating the ordained in the Church and the non-ordained in the world - can both over-simplify and reinforce unbreachable boundaries between the Church ad-intra and the Church ad-extra. A strictly secular locus for laity also ignores the fact that ever-increasing numbers of committed well-prepared lay people are engaged in the ministries of the Church gathered. In fact, Lumen Gentium speaks of all the faithful, playing their part in carrying out the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church' and in the world' (LG 4).
3. If through baptism, we participate in the triune life of God (LG 4), then we understand ministry to the extent that we look to the life of the Trinity. God is fundamentally relational, a loving communion of diverse persons that reaches out, drawing us into the divine life. Retrieving the relational language of the triune God offers a fruitful avenue for understanding the complexities of how contemporary ministers might relate. For instance, Greek Orthodox theologian, John Zizioulas recalls how the Western wing of the Church emphasises Jesus' historical institution of the Church (a static reality that has little room for development); the Eastern wing of the Church on the other hand emphasises the Church's constitution by the Spirit (an on-going dynamism that continues today).
Irenaeus brought both sources together with his image of the Word and Spirit as the two hands of God at work among us. This image of the two hands of God counters the error of assigning the ordained alone to the liturgical life of the Church and the non-ordained to discipleship in the secular world. The image of an inherently relational Trinity collapses artificial divisions between the Church as institution and the charisms with which the Spirit enlivens individual believers. It highlights the anomaly of speaking of `my ministry' conceived as independent of the faith community. The relational language of Trinity collapses all false dichotomies, including the often-heard distinction between what certain ministers can and cannot do. Robert Kinast rightly observes: The Church's essential structure is not clergy/laity but ministry/community. This is not to ignore the bind in which many local communities find themselves, given the dwindling and ageing clergy who alone can preside at Eucharist, anoint the sick and offer absolution. (I am not addressing the criteria for priestly ordination, but rather attempt to offer some possible ways forward within the constraints and realities of present Church discipline.)
4. Richard Gaillardetz may offer a way beyond the present conundrum by naming three new relationships that baptism establishes: a new vertical relationship with God, a new horizontal relationship with all the baptised and a new outward relationship with the world. In other words, baptism, in establishing these three relationships, fundamentally orders the life of the faith community. Yet, while baptism determines that we are essentially related, John Collins reminds us that not all Christians are ministers. Rather, each baptised person is called to discipleship and Gospel-shaped living, whether as an architect, dancer, carpenter, pilot, or priest. Beyond such daily Christian living. Some of the baptised sense a further call to serve the Church in a particular way. In fact, there are always two calls to discern: an inner call which is heard in the depths of one's heart as an attraction or a desire to serve the faith community in a particular way, and an outer call through which the Church recognises and affirms this desire as God's call...
Distinguishing discipleship from ministry and drawing on the relational character of the Trinity, ministry may be understood as 'ecclesial repositioning', as the process of entering into new relationships of service within the Church gathered and/or the Church scattered. None of the various `ecclesial repositioning' occurs for the sake of personal piety alone; for all Christians baptism is the origin of the quest for holiness. `Ecclesial repositioning' rather addresses various ways God calls an individual to serve the faith community.
A bishop - and by his/her ministry- a priest are `ecclesially repositioned' to serve the faith community through anamnesis, keeping alive the memory of and inserting the community's life into the dynamic of the Paschal Mystery, of the Good Friday dying, Holy Saturday waiting, Easter rising, Pentecost life-giving.
Here can be located `the difference in essence and not only in degree' of the bishop/priest, acting as s/he does in persona ecclesiae within the community of the baptised who together seek to act always in persona Christi, within both Church and world. Furthermore, the homily which connects the congregation's life to the Paschal Mystery is an integral part of anamnesis, the remembering at the heart of the Church's identity which the bishop/priest is primarily ordained to serve and to nurture. The Eucharist, unlike a Liturgy of the Word with communion, is the action of the gathered Church, drawing in all aspects of its life (both gathered and scattered) into the dynamic of the Paschal Mystery.
5. Until 1970, there were seven orders, originally seven ways of serving the life of the Church: four minor orders (porter, exorcist, lector, and acolyte) and three major orders (sub deacon, deacon, and priest). These had become merely a series of steps for those on the pathway to priesthood. In 1972, Paul VI suppressed the minor orders of porter and exorcist, retaining lector and acolyte as instituted ministries for men who were not going to be priests. This raised an intriguing question: why does the Spirit refrain from sharing the charism of lector and acolyte among women? Paul VI also reformed the major orders, suppressing sub diaconate, restoring deaconate as a permanent order, and adding the episcopate as the sacrament of the fullness of the priesthood, rather than as an honoured appointment of jurisdiction. At the same time, the pope invited bishops’ conferences to establish new instituted lay ministries according to local need. To date, none has been approved. Maybe the full-time roles of pastoral director, pastoral associate, and school principal, among others, could be such orders. Lacking formal Church recognition or ordering, these and other crucial ministries within Church life risk being understood in a merely functional way, as a job or a series of tasks that anyone can do with appropriate training. Instead, these ministries are `icons', glimpses into the deeper realities of God's love on the loose among us.
The Church's essential structure is not clergy/laity
but ministry/community.
How does a bishop/priestminister within community?
History tells me that all true leaders have at least a modicum of courage. This courage takes personal risks in numbers of ways, depending on the context.
Perhaps the most vivid way I have seen of describing this is in the story of the Hebrew people, who were journeying out of slavery in Egypt, and on the way were tempted, when the going became tough, to return to the relative predictability of the slave relationship. Finally, they arrived at the point where they could see the promised land of their hopes and dreams on the other side of a river. The call of their God was for their leaders to take hold of the symbol of the presence of God travelling with them and then for the leaders to step into the river ahead of the people. That is, I believe the paradigm of true leadership the leaders take the personal risks of daring to name and lead towards new visions of the world. This is the style of leadership that I am attracted too. This does not mean we get it ‘right’ but it does mean there is an overarching vision which impassions us to not give up or return to the land of the sub-cultures, of power person(s) or being subsumed in the land of the ‘permssion givers.’ This is the environment in which we can explore with a collective family of equals striving to make the promise of the land to come, at least in part, something of our experience ‘now’.
Some further thoughts on my understanding of leadership.
A leader who offers power to the people is obviously a more creative leader than one who assumes power over people. If, in the leadership, there is a genuine transfer of power to the people from the beginning of the relationship, then the leader is truly enlarging life and community. If there is anything in this form of leadership to be critiqued, it is that it vests in the leader a certain status, which separates the leader from others. This person has the capacity to achieve something 'for' others. This style calls for a reflection at some depth on whether the 'others' affirmed the truth and appropriateness of the power that was transferred to them and could work on from it into their future. People who are relatively privileged sometimes offer power 'to' others. Those who honestly acknowledge their privileges and simply offer something from that standingplace can sometimes do much good in the handing over of gifts from the privilege of formation and a certain understanding of systems and institutions. To do this openly is, in my view, a more responsible form of leadership than speaking of living in solidarity with others when you cannot possibly enter their life because of significant power differences in your life history.
I believe that being a bishop-leader is to assume the responsibility of taking people beyond where they believed they could go. It is to say that a good leader tries to perceive the truth and has the courage to tell us what he or she believes to be true.
I believe also, that leaders sometimes have ways of saying what people want to hear. Sometimes this takes the form of the gathering up of scattered and inarticulate ideas into a clearer purpose or plan. Sometimes it takes the form of naming things that people do not consciously want to hear or do not know they want to hear, as though the leader has tapped into deeper longings or concerns than those that are obvious. This may take the form of picking up a grieving, guilt or pain that is lying unrecognised.
Creative leaders, I think, begin with this skill but go on to articulate possibilities that are healing, recreating and liberating for those concerned. This movement is not ever easy. Why? Because it always confronts attitudes of personal ‘power’ rather than collective permission giving.
Moreover, within the church Catholic structure, I will not move from the fact, that exercised well, the dynamic of ‘due-process’ and ‘Synods of equals”, remains the greatest safeguard to giving to the Community of Disciples the due protection it needs to discern a way forward - long before it decides. This also, expands a possible deterrent to the leadership of ‘the one’ to a stronger basis of shared responsibility and leadership of the many. It becomes less and less about personalities and increasingly about ‘being soft on the person and hard on the dilemma!’
It is in this sense that they 'do the will' of the people, even though that vision for the future may never have been articulated by the people who respond to the leadership. In this case, the people still have a deep sense of being identified by someone whom they assume therefore identifies with them, of 'being spoken for' and recognised as significant, but they are carried forward into a creative rather than destructive possibility.
Is leadership earned, recognised, won or imposed?
If it is imposed, it is not true leadership in my view. This sort of leadership collapses as soon as the individual declines in power and inspires a grudging following at best. Leadership that is won can be good leadership if the winning has to do with persuading of others that something good is being genuinely offered. To win leadership in a power contest is to create an ongoing pattern of winners and losers, not a good basis for community, although obviously there is a sense of this when truth or love defeat lies and hate. That is more like leadership that has been earned or recognised. Leadership that has this basis is leadership that is offered to people rather than seized or demanded in terms of office or status.