January 1980 Print

A Defence of the Catholic Priesthood

Some thoughts on Michael Davies' book by Dr. William A. Marra

A few years ago a priest sent me some bulky documentation on the new Catholic Rite of Ordination. He begged me to share his alarm over the material or, at least, to forward it to someone who would appreciate the urgent need for widespread exposure and critical analysis. But the documentation was largely handwritten in a not too legible script and, worse, much of it was in Latin—a language which for all my love of it eludes me when it comes to exact meaning. I did, however, get the idea from the documentation that the new rite was about as successful in obscuring the true nature of the Catholic priesthood as were the "new everythings" in obscuring and distorting everything else Catholic. Why should Holy Orders escape "renewal"? Why should it fare better than Baptism, Confirmation and, above all, the Holy Eucharist?

With such thoughts as these, I filed the material away for a year. I then decided that I had an obligation to pass it on, "since I obviously was not able to exploit it properly. I believe (but such is the poverty of my memory and the nervous pace of my life, I cannot be certain) that I then sent the material to a most erudite layman who was well able to study it with depth and precision. So far as I know, however, he has done nothing with it.

And now Michael Davies' book comes along, The Order of Melchisedech. On the one hand it relieves my guilty conscience. Far better than even my erudite layman might have done, Davies has researched the sordid topic and put the matter in brilliant perspective. On the other hand, his book but confirms and strengthens the alarm voiced by the priest correspondent who had presented me with the material in the first place.

Still, the alarm—although real and pressing and fully justified—is now mercifully tempered, as Davies himself has noted in a recent Remnant letter, by Pope John Paul's emphasis on the Catholic understanding of the priesthood. We have every reason to expect that with the ambiguous and muted texts of the new Rite of Ordination as with similar passages in the documents of Vatican II, the Pope's interpretation and enforcement will be within a strictly Traditional context.

The Council of Trent certainly did not invent anything about the Sacrament of Order but it emphatically clarified and defined just what the Sacrament effects and just how the Catholic priest, ordained to be a sacrificing minister, differs from the baptized layman who partakes of the essentially different "priesthood of all believers." Vatican II, far from weakening Trent, repeated and emphasized this authentic Catholic position.

For Anglicans arid Protestants, on the other hand, the "Papist Mass" with its "unbloody sacrifice" rooted in a sacrificing priesthood, is an abomination. Could the question then be any clearer? On the one side the Catholics, with a Sacrament of Ordination, validly confected only by a Bishop whose own powers derive from an unbroken sacramental chain back to the Apostles; the priest is ordained precisely to offer in persona Christi the Holy Sacrifice. A new and undreamed of power is conferred upon him at ordination. On the other side, Cranmer and Luther and, of course, the Modernists. Their creed is equally clear:

That all the faithful are priests, and can offer spiritual sacrifices to God, and that there is no other priesthood or sacrifice instituted by Christ in the Church; and that the office of Ministers in the Church is to preach and dispense sacraments, not to offer sacrifice. (Canon E. F. Estcourt, as quoted by Davies in The Order of Melchisedech).

When, therefore, Pope Leo XIII decided against the validity of Anglican Orders, what weighed most heavily in his decision that they are "utterly null and void" was not the fact of schism in the Anglican Church, but the purposeful deletion in the Anglican Ordinal of all references to sacrificing priests. In other words, the Anglicans did not want priests in the Catholic sense. Pope Leo simply respected their wishes.

But, that was long ago. A new ferment now stirs in all the churches, not least in the Roman Church since Vatican II. The desire for unity often overrides all other considerations. A spirit of Liberalism, so carefully analyzed by Cardinal Newman and totally renounced by him, has hovered over too many Roman Catholic bodies, whether commissions, or conferences, or study groups or workshops. This spirit teaches that everyone is a Catholic or Christian or good person or anything "regardless of race, color, or creed." Why should truth matter? Why should the hunger of peoples for unity and community be frustrated by dusty formulas which no one cares about or even understands? Ours is the age of "reunion all around." We have all kinds of agreed statements on the most vexing issues. We lack only the will, the resolve to act "as the Spirit now calls us," and the bitter wounds of the past will be cleansed and will at last begin to heal. But this goal of unity will take "movement on all sides." Apparently the Protestants and Anglicans have moved (although, to tell the truth, one might need micro-radar to detect any change). Certainly, the Roman Catholic Church has moved, nay, has only begun to move—to shake off Trent and Tradition and the rigidity of the past, the better to conform to the Future. Thus far, the new spirit of Liberalism.

DAVIES SHOWS that the new Catholic Rite of Ordination has ominous similarities with the Anglican rite—not by including anything heretical but just by deleting or muting certain prayers, formulas or words. The search for unity apparently forbids too clear a reference to sacrificing priests or apostolic succession. Better to remove obstacles to unity than to insist too emphatically on Trent or Tradition. Thus Davies writes:

My complaint against the new Catholic rite of ordination is not that it is invalid but that it lends itself to the ambiguous interpretation to which, as Dr. Stockwood testifies, the Anglican rite is open. It can also be used to undermine the teaching of Apostolicae Curae. Anglican apologists will have no difficulty in pointing out that the arguments used by Pope Leo XIII against the Anglican rite can now be applied to the new Catholic rite (page xix).

A curious confirmation of Davies' prediction came to me recently when a Jesuit priest, himself a convert from Anglicanism, told me that he had just finished reading The Order of Melchisedech and that he agrees with much of it, especially with Davies' contention that the new Roman rite bears a striking resemblance to the Anglican Ordinal. But, he insisted, so far from his concluding that both rites are therefore invalid since they share the same defects condemned by Pope Leo XIII, he rather concludes that the present Roman rite has proved Pope Leo wrong!

This book will no doubt be a best-seller among those faithful to the Catholic Tradition. It is too important, too well argued, too carefully documented to miss out. But the book might just succeed in winning a much larger audience: the "moderates." Sooner or later these will have to take a stand on the crucial issues that have to badly split the ranks of orthodox Catholics. This book might be God's way of opening their eyes. No more than those rooted in Tradition do they like much of the "post-conciliar Church," with its chaos, its lack of reverence, its loss of the sense of the supernatural, and—in many cases—its just plain silliness. But all these negative features are alleged to flow from abuses "from underlings," totally foreign and hostile to the mind of the "official" Church and her God-directed will to renewal.

In a sense the moderates are right. Almost every word of Vatican II can be interpreted, has been interpreted in Poland, according to Tradition. Hence, there need have been no abrupt ruptures, no inorganic additions or mindless destructions. But in another sense the moderates are wrong. Their "official" Church, after all, although it may not like much of the post-conciliar madness, has certainly tolerated it; in some cases, of course, even encouraged it. And all these "agreed statements": do they not have quasi-official status? Are there not bishops and priests and theologians in good standing on the commissions which produce them? If, in fact, they do not reflect official Church views, why are they not denounced or at least disowned? Such are some of the questions which honest and clear-thinking persons must eventually ask themselves.

By reading this book, they may begin to find answers. They will at least know that it is not nostalgia, so stupidly urged by some as the real reason for our present discontent, which prompts the spirit of a genuine counter-reformation among so many sincere and able Catholics. Our Church in the West lies virtually in ruins, our priests are demoralized, our schools are filled with heresy, nonsense and—at the best—harmless vacuities. Our liturgy has become progressively more wordy, more worldly and more banal. The holiness of the Church seems to have disappeared. Why? Why have such rotten fruits fallen from the tree of renewal? An enemy has done this, you say? Which enemy—within or without?

A delicious by-product of this book is the glaring exposure it affords to the liberal Protestantism of Hans Küng, Catholic priest and seminary professor. Küng's blunt heresies have fooled only the willing blind. But it is good to see them briefly trotted out and contrasted with defined Church dogma. Davies shows convincingly that the Catholic religion is indeed a seamless tunic: to be accepted totally or else rejected. Küng but corroborates this in a negative way. Denying now this, now that, dogma, he ends up with a tangled ball of wool, dirty and fuzzy, and dares to call it Gospel Christianity. (It may be, incidentally, that we shall soon witness the disappearance of Küng from the Church scene. Fr. Joseph Costanzo's scholarly refutation on the one hand and Davies' more popular but no less exact indictment, on the other, may be the prologue to the long-delayed anathema richly merited by this unfortunate man.)

Had Davies' book appeared during the pontificate of Pope Paul VI, it would have depressed me beyond limits. But a different Peter now rules the Church. I have great confidence that without compromising in the least the fullness of Catholic truth and piety, the Pope will give this new rite a Polish accent. If so, the coming generation of priests may come to rejoice as they approach the altar of God. They will understand that offering the Holy Sacrifice is the source and summit of all their other priestly activities. Their sublime vocation is not primarily to build community or even to preach. It is rather to assume the robes and the role of the one High Priest and to re-enact the mystery of Golgotha—the acceptable offering the perfect Sacrifice.