The Place of the Priesthood

Extract

In a paper published in New Blackfriars a few months ago, Mr Eagleton applied a number of political insights to our understanding of relationships within the Church, in an attempt to prevent the formulation and implementation of theological ideas that would be at variance with a correct understanding of our society. He is convinced that ‘our changing ideas about the priesthood aren’t only theological but are part of a general pattern of change in our whole society which for over a century has been redefining relationships, values, functions, attitudes’. He is concerned lest we block this process of development by merely changing our tone of voice, or our terminology, leaving intact and unquestioned a pattern of ecclesial relationships that is inappropriate to our contemporary understanding of political reality. Much that he says in criticism of what he describes as the ‘liberal paternalism’ of English Catholicism is both penetrating and important. But it seems to me that his analysis is defective because he has failed adequately to ask the question: what is a priest? It is certainly true to say that ‘we have in fact to make a clear division between what theology tells us about the priesthood, and the whole historical accretion which this has gathered in society’, but, if insufficient attention is paid to the data of revelation, we shall extricate the idea of the priesthood from one particular historical entanglement only to drown it in another: that of the dominant perspectives of contemporary politics.