For The Church and Within The Church: Priestly Representation

The Thomist 65 (2001): 613-37 FOR THE CHURCH AND WITHIN THE CHURCH: PRIESTLY REPRESENTATION LAWRENCE J. WELCH Kenrick-Glennon Seminary Saint Louis, Missouri SOME RECENT ARTICLES that have summarized the state of current research on the subject of priestly representation have come to the conclusion that the priest is capable of acting in the person of Christ the Head because he first represents the Church.1 These articles have drawn from David Coffey's 1997 essay on the common and the ordained priesthood.2 The work of Coffey has proved to be an important one for theologians interested in the theology of priestly representation. What has been lacking until now is any study of whether his central claims are well founded. Coffey's article aimed at developing a pneumatological understanding ofthe priesthood of Christ, and what Coffey calls the "priesthood of the Church" as a "distinct category," in the interest of reaching a new clarity with regard to the relation of the ordained and the common priesthood.3 In the course of his article, one of the conclusions that Coffey reaches is that there is 1 Most notably Thomas Rausch, "Priestly Identity: Priority of Representation and the Iconic Argument," Worship 73 (March 1999): 169-79; see also Paul Philibert, "Issues for a Theology of Priesthood: A Status Report," in The Theology of Priesthood, ed. Donald Goergen and Ann Garrido (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2000): 30-31. Both Rausch and Philibert draw on an earlier essay by David Coffey, "Priesdy Representation and Women's Ordination," inPriesthood: The Hard Questions, ed. Gerald P. Gleeson (Newtown, New South Wales, Australia: E.J. Dwyer, 1992): 79-99. 2 David Coffey, "The Common and the Ordained Priesthood," Theological Studies 58 Uune 1997): 209-36. 3 Ibid., 213. 613 614 LAWRENCE J. WELCH a priority of the ecclesial to the Christological in the priestly representation of Christ's Headship. To represent Christ as Head is primarily the ability to represent the totus Christus, the Head and members.4 This conclusion is undergirded, it seems to me, by two claims Coffey makes in his 1997 essay. These amount to the following: (1) Vatican II wrongly assumed the ordained priesthood could be understood directly in Christological terms and thus gave the mistaken impression that the common priesthood was understandable first in ecclesiological terms,5 and (2) if the ordained priesthood is understood immediately in terms of the Headship of Christ, then the priest appears as above the Church or apart from the Church.6 In other words, if the ordained priesthood is understood first in terms of a new configuration to Christ, then the priest is elevated to some position outside of the rest of the Church. As a consequence, the rest of the baptized, though called priestly and regarded as "members" of Christ, are effectively envisioned as "other" than Christ, that is, "simply" the Church. I will limit my criticism to these two central claims and the conclusions that Coffey deduces from them. I maintain that these claims cannot be reconciled with the council documents and the intentions of the council fathers as evidenced in the official Acta. Furthermore they are not congruent with how recent Church teaching has interpreted Vatican II. Sara Butler7 and Samuel Aquila8 have shown how crucial it is to consult the Acta in order to interpret Vatican II's teaching on the ordained priesthood and priestly representation. The Acta of a council is of prime importance in determining what a council intended to teach and why it 4 Ibid. He also comes to this conclusion in his earlier essay "Priestly Representation and Women's Ordination," 88. 5 Coffey, "The Common and the Ordained Priesthood," 211. 6 Ibid., 235. 7 SaraButler, "PriestlyIdentity: 'Sacrament' ofChristthe Head," Worship 70Uuly1996): 290-306. 8 Samuel Aquila, The Teaching ofVatican II on "In Persona Christi" and "In Nomine &clesiae"in Relation to theMinisterial Priesthoodin the Lightofthe Historical Development of the Formulae (Licentiate tessina, Pontificium Athenaeum Anselmianum, Rome, 1990). PRIESTLY REPRESENTATION 615 intended to teach what it did.9 A careful reading shows that Vatican II affirmed a Christological priority for both the common and the ordained priesthoods while strongly asserting the ecclesiological dimensions of both priesthoods...