Brief Notices

BRIEF NOTICES 1'he Concept of the Diocesan Priesthood. By J. C. FENTON. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951. Pp. 189. $3.~5. Monsignor Fenton is in an especially authoritative position to discuss the nature and work of the diocesan priesthood. For many years he has been teaching and writing on Ecclesiology, a tract the adequate development of which demands clear perception of the role of the secular priest in the life of the Church. At the same time his teaching has been directed to seminarians from very many dioceses, a circumstance bound to impress any sensitive teacher with whatever deficiencies in the evaluation and appreciation of their vocation may be more usual or more dangerous among diocesan priests and seminarians. Very distinctly, Msgr. Fenton writes to correct such deficiencies. The ten chapters fall roughly into three main sections: the nature of the diocesan vocation (chapters 1-3), the work of the diocesan priest (chapters 4-6), and his qualifications (chapters 7-10). Such is the unity of the work, however, that its intent is ultimately reducible to the single principle which the author uses as his starting-point; namely, that the full meaning of the dioces!'-n priesthood is understandable only in terms of the presbyterium, the college, the body of priests gathered immediately under the head of the local Church (the Bishop) to assist him in the communication of the Christ-life to the local family of Christ. Now in Catholic teaching only the Bishop has true and full membership in the College of Apostles. He in his own name has and exercises the threefold Christ-given powers of the Church, viz. to teach, to sanctify, to rule. " The presbyterium is immediately subject to the bishop and it has no function other than to act as the instrument of the bishop in the liturgical, doctrinal and administrative direction of the diocese" (p. ~0). This dignity of membership in a priestly body directly constructed around the bishop to aid him in the administration of the local church is the prerogative of the diocesan priest as such. From this essential concept the nature of the diocesan priest's work follows easily. What is his special work? The work of the presbyterium is not specialized at all; that is the point (and in this again it differs from religious institutes) -its work is to assist the Bishop; and the Bishop's work is the totality of the Church's work in some true sense. Hence, while the work of this or that diocesan priest may be very specialized, the corporate presbyterium is not narrowed in its work to any one aspect of the Church's activity; and it is by the work of the presbyterium that the nature 180 BRIEF NOTICES 181 of the diocesan priesthood is specified, somewhat as the special goal of an Order, and not the particular work of this or that member, specifies that Order. The diocesan priest's ministry, then, has a unique universality; for the ministry of the preabyterium has a universality derived from that of the bishop's own plentitude of function. So, as a member of the preabyterium the diocesan priest's ministry is doctrinal (for the bishop is par exceUence a teacher), missionary (for it must" build up" the body of Christ), unitive (in imitation of that Apostolic unity for which Christ prayed) and perfective of each member of the local Church. This very adequate consideration of the work of the diocesan priest (like the consideration of the nature of his vocation) is particularly impressive for the exalted yet very practical insistence on Charity as the subjective root whence all must flow. These two notions-the diocesan priest is a member of the preabyterium; the, diocesan priest has an altogether special obligation to charity within the local Church (and outside it)-are immediately ~mplementary, and Msgr. Fenton never fails boldly to draw their full implications. Very much worth while, too, is the insistent emphasis on the gravity of the diocesan priest's doctrinal obligations, and the nobility of his position as preacher and teacher of his people. The whole fruit of this work is to be found in the last Chapters delineating something of the...