Things are not-quite-the-same with priests.

One implicit purpose of the new translations, with their deliberate recovery of a sacral vocabulary and their adoption of a more formal literary rhythm, was to discipline the tendency of priests to turn the Mass into an expression of the celebrant’s personality. The difficulties some priests have had with adjusting to the changes suggests that this tendency was, in fact, a real problem in implementing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. Prominent Catholic psychologist Paul Vitz once wrote of this as a problem of “clerical narcissism,” and while the phrase undoubtedly stings, there’s something to it—something that needs correcting.

At Mass in the cathedral church of a major American city recently, I ran headlong into the problem in a rather striking way. The celebrant in question seemed not to understand that the invitation to the penitential rite is now prescribed, and not a matter for personal chattiness. Having failed to set up the Missal properly before Mass, he nattered on about his difficulty with “new books” while searching for the Collect of the day. He belted out those parts of the Offertory that the Missal prescribes as being said “quietly.” He rearranged several phrases in Eucharistic Prayer II to his liking. And he prefaced the Prayer after Communion with another voluble commentary on the difficulty of finding the right page.

I’m sure the priest in question is not a wicked or ill-intentioned man; he doubtless imagines that he’s making the Mass more user-friendly by taking liberties with the Missal. But, objectively speaking, he’s a prime example of clerical vanity: a man who imagines that his chirpy personality is the key to what Vatican II called the people’s “full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations.” It was neither the time nor the place to challenge this essentially narcissistic assumption after Mass. But had I the opportunity, I would have told this priest, in as kind a way as I could manage, that what he deemed helpful was in fact distracting; that what he thought user-friendly was silly and offensive (as it seemed based on the notion that a congregation of adults would be amused by such shenanigans); and that what he intended as an aid to prayer was in fact an obstacle to prayer and reflection.

Bad habits built up over decades are as hard to break in liturgy as they are in any other facet of life. So it will take awhile for the nobility of the new Mass texts to elicit a similar nobility of manner from celebrants who have acquired bad habits over the years. But as Lent is an appropriate time for addressing bad habits, here’s a suggestion for all priest-celebrants: make a Lenten resolution—This Lent, I will do the red and read the black. Period.

In the Missal, rubrical instructions are in red; the words to be spoken by the celebrant are in black. Priests who simply “do the red and read the black” for the six weeks of Lent will have gone a long way toward breaking bad habits that have become default positions. They will also, I predict, garner a lot of thanks from their congregants, most of whom are quite uninterested in celebrants acting like talk-show hosts.

The point, as always, is not liturgical prissiness. The point is to celebrate the sacred liturgy so that it’s experienced as the participation in the heavenly liturgy that it is.

On the shore of this vast lake lies the Catholic Prelature of Juli. Almost 90 percent of the 450,000 people within its territory are Catholics, yet currently there are just 12 priests available to minister to them. That is scarcely an adequate number in this beautiful yet rugged, poor and underdeveloped region.

So it is that Father Clemente Ortega Obregón of the Parish of San Pedro de Juli has to minister to no fewer than 110 small villages and settlements, some at an altitude of over 13,000 feet. Altogether, his parish has 11 small churches and chapels, and where there is no church available he has to celebrate Sunday Mass in the local school. And where not even this is possible, then Holy Mass has to be celebrated in the open air.

Because of the extreme weather conditions in the region, nine of the 11 chapels are in need of renovation. At the same time Father Clemente wants to build more small chapels. In fact, he has already managed to complete two of these; now he hopes to be able to add two more each year and at the same time to renovate one of the existing chapels. The local people, most of whom are Aymara Indians, have promised to support him. “It is very important to them to have a church of their own,” Father Clemente emphasizes.

The great bulk of the work will be done by the local Catholics themselves, and they will even supply as much of the building materials as possible. But of course their financial means are very slight, and so the parish is dependent on outside support. Father Clemente has turned to Aid for the Church in Need for help, and we have promised him a contribution of $8,200 for this year (Project Code: 234-01-19).

Interested in supporting this project? Click here.

How naive could I have been? Now, many years later, I see the wisdom of the Church, and I’m grateful youngsters such as I was had no authority in the matter.

So what is the role of woman in the Church if she cannot be ordained? Indeed, women hold the highest role! Yes, you read that correctly–the highest role. This is not my opinion. It is the teaching of the Church herself, one which has been underscored by Pope John Paul II.

If you don’t believe this, consider:

Mary, Mother of God, is the highest of all saints–including all the men–and the Queen of Heaven, crowned solely for her singular and perfect role as a mother. In all her perfection, her own Son did not choose her to be a priest. She remained his mother, who raised and nurtured Him, who prayed for Him during His ministry and while He was absent from her. It was Mary who also gave comfort to the Apostles, who suffered at the foot of the cross, and whose divine agony became divine mercy, making God’s grace evident on Earth.

It was a mother–a woman–through which God made Himself present among His Creation. Remember, God could have manifested Himself in any form and under any circumstance. If He so desired, He could have come to us from the sky a mighty warrior and claimed Israel in one strike. Yet He came to us through the womb of a lowly and simple, yet perfect, woman. If this does not clearly define the power of motherhood and God’s elevation of the woman, then nothing will convince you.

And don’t forget this:

Among the saints are Doctors of the Church. These are saints who are considered the most edified among the holy, and they are named such by the Pope himself. Two of my favorites are St. Therese of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Avila. Their gender has nothing to do with their ultimate status!

Now how can anyone call the Catholic Church sexist? But, no, the young man on Facebook wouldn’t give up. His final question: “Just where does it say in Scripture that only men can be priests?” Margie Prox Sindelar, a wonderful lady on my friends list, wanted to help him out. Here’s what she had to say, reprinted with her permission. Make yourself comfortable; this is a long list that will make you think…and think…and think.

Just because women and men have different roles, does not make us unequal in dignity…. men can not bear children…. So was God sexist when he created us that way? and Yes, there are many places in Scripture that support a male only priesthood, so the church has no authority to change what God has commanded:

Gen. 3:15; Luke 1:26-55– Mary is God’s greatest creation, was the closest person to Jesus, and yet Jesus did not choose her to become a priest. God chose only men to be priests to reflect the complimentarity of the sexes. Just as the man (the royal priest) gives natural life to the woman in the marital covenant, the ministerial priest gives supernatural life in the New Covenant sacraments.

Judges 17:10; 18:19 – fatherhood and priesthood are synonymous terms. Micah says, “Stay with me, and be to me a father and a priest.” Fathers/priests give life, and mothers receive and nurture life. This reflects God our Father who gives the life of grace through the Priesthood of His Divine Son, and Mother Church who receives the life of grace and nourishes her children. In summary, women cannot be priests because women cannot be fathers.

Mark 16:9; Luke 7: 37-50; John 8:3-11 – Jesus allowed women to uniquely join in His mission, exalting them above cultural norms. His decision not to ordain women had nothing to do with culture. The Gospel writers are also clear that women participated in Jesus’ ministry and, unlike men, never betrayed Jesus. Women have always been held with the highest regard in the Church (e.g., the Church’s greatest saint and model of faith is a woman; the Church’s constant teaching on the dignity of motherhood; the Church’s understanding of humanity as being the Bride united to Christ, etc.).

Mark 14:17,20; Luke 22:14 – the language “the twelve” and “apostles” shows Jesus commissioned the Eucharistic priesthood by giving holy orders only to men.

Gen. 14:10; Heb. 5:6,10; 6:20; 7:15,17 – Jesus, the Son of God, is both priest and King after the priest-king Melchizedek. Jesus’ priesthood embodies both Kingship and Sonship.

Gen. 22:9-13 – as foreshadowed, God chose our redemption to be secured by the sacrificial love that the Son gives to the Father.

Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19 – because the priest acts in persona Christi in the offering to the Father, the priest cannot be a woman.

Mark 3:13 – Jesus selected the apostles “as He desired,” according to His will, and not according to the demands of His culture. Because Jesus acted according to His will, which was perfectly united to that of the Father, one cannot criticize Jesus’ selection of men to be His priests without criticizing God.

John 20:22 – Jesus only breathed on the male apostles, the first bishops, giving them the authority to forgive and retain sins. In fact, the male priesthood of Christianity was a distinction from the priestesses of paganism that existed during these times. A female priesthood would be a reversion to non-Christian practices. The sacred tradition of a male priesthood has existed uncompromised in the Church for 2,000 years.

1 Cor. 14:34-35 – Paul says a woman is not permitted to preach the word of God in the Church. It has always been the tradition of the Church for the priest or deacon alone (an ordained male) to read and preach the Gospel.

1 Tim. 2:12 – Paul also says that a woman is not permitted to hold teaching authority in the Church. Can you imagine how much Mary, the Mother of God, would have been able to teach Christians about Jesus her Son in the Church? Yet, she was not permitted to hold such teaching authority in the Church. (A note from Kathleen: Note that this is not referring to religious education teachers and mothers. This is referring to the teaching authority we now call the Vatican, the pope, who provides us with the infallible teachings of the Church, which is protected by Our God from error.)

Rom. 16:1-2 – while many Protestants point to this verse denounce the Church’s tradition of a male priesthood, deaconesses, like Phoebe, were helpers to the priests (for example, preparing women for naked baptism so as to prevent scandal). But these helpers were never ordained.

Luke 2:36-37 – prophetesses, like Anna, were women who consecrated themselves to religious life, but were not ordained.

Isaiah 3:12 – Isaiah complains that the priests of ancient Israel were having their authority usurped by women, and this was at the height of Israel’s covenant apostasy.

I’ll bet you never thought there was this much available in Scripture. To all Catholic women, I’d like to say:

If you are a mother, you know that your tasks are endless and can seem overwhelming. Indeed, we have a habit of using the word “mundane.” But the truth is, motherhood can seem to be too much not because it is mundane but because it is so huge! Embrace the task Our Lord has granted you. You are the moral gatekeeper of your home, and it is your most urgent task to raise the next generation in a way Moses instructed his people. That is, teach your children while you are at home and away, at work and at rest. Teach your children so they can teach their children and all the generations will know Him.

Praise Him for the lukewarm and wishy-washy Church leaders.

Bless Him for the days of half-hearted adherence to Church teaching and the post-conciliar years of the infallible self.

And I mean that from the bottom of my Church/Tradition/Magesterium respecting heart, because God in his Mercy has used these men to bring salvation to souls.

I was speaking with a convert friend recently, listening to her account of coming to the faith.  She was preparing to marry a fallen-away Catholic whose roots were tugging him back for the celebration of the Sacrament of Matrimony.  A heathen whose taste for things spiritual was rapidly becoming a fully-fledged hunger, she was willing to be married in the Church building.

“Whatever,” she thought.

To her, it was the emotion, not the place, that mattered.  A painless concession to old-school in-laws.

But would the priest allow it?

A Big Tent man, he welcomed the couple with outstretched arms.  “Come on!  Of course you can be married here!”  He intoned boisterously.

She didn’t even have to sign the paper saying she’d raise the kids Catholic.  The one my pen almost choked on when it was my turn, a rabid Protestant, to marry a Catholic. 

In she came, and the Sacrament, the outward sign of the invisible grace, became a platform, a foundation, a core for more, and the ultimate result of grace building upon grace, established on the nature of her willingness, propped up by the somewhat lackadaisical approach of the parish priest, is the reason she was eventually baptized along with their children. 

It’s why she is today a Church/Tradition/Magisterium respecting Catholic.

There was another priest in the 1970s – I don’t even know his name.  He must have had a blase attitude toward the stricter norms regarding education required for baptism, and the pesky little godparents detail, because he baptized a whole family – mom, dad, two small children – without so much as a crash course in making the sign of the cross, although perhaps there was a handout on the creation of felt banners.

And clearly, the ancient Church has her reasons for requiring the anchors of education and godparently assistance for the neophyte, because very soon thereafter, the family fell away.  And the baptisms were forgotten.

But the grace of the Sacrament was at work.

Like Tolkien’s Ring of Power, the grace built quietly with the passing of years until one day, the fullness of time came, and the grace ignited a homing beacon.  There followed a strange and unlikely sequence of events that did not involve hobbits, but resulted in one of the children, now Protestant marrying a Catholic, in the Catholic Church.  One Sacrament having attracted another in a hungry soul, the combined grace power of the two was more than the soul could resist.  Twenty-one years after the somewhat improperly imbued grace of Baptism, the soul came home to live in the Catholic Church, receiving the Easter ‘Grand Slam’ of Reconciliation, Communion, and Confirmation’ in very short order.

Then came the phone call to family.

“Oh, and by the way, I became Catholic.”

A long silence, during which the years of Protestantism marched in reverse review until the long-forgotten day of the unlikely baptism was projected on the screen of family memory.

“Well!”  the voice was indignant toward the traitor.  “Well!  I suppose I’m not too surprised since you were baptized Catholic when you were two!”

She nearly dropped the phone.

And then she laughed.

For what God but ours would create time-release grace?

Who, but our God would know how to bring good from the work of those who should perhaps know better than to pass out Sacraments with such a cavalier attitude?

And how could it be contrived, except through His omnipotent omniscience that an invisible, indelible homing device could be affixed to a soul so that despite distance and intervening years, in spite of hours of fishing at the “new religion” pond, a soul could be recalled?

“This one’s mine,” God said.  “See my mark?

And I praise Him for the unknown, and perhaps unorthodox priest who put that mark on me.  Who, more fastidious, might have insisted on proper form, a lengthly process for which my drifting parents would not have waited and my friend might not have bothered.    Our souls would have been left nameless, master-less, vulnerable, without the the latent attraction to the Faith that eventually drew us home.

God bless the lukewarm priests, and the soul-saving power of Christ which can work through them.

Even so, he appears in the Roman Canon at Mass; today’s priests are ordained to “the Order of Melchizedek,” and his appearance in Genesis forms the basis of some of our theology of the priesthood. As we begin the Year for Priests, it behooves us to reflect more deeply upon this King of Righteousness.

The first question that arises is regarding Melchizedek’s very identity: who is he? His appearance in Genesis 14 is quite minimal and set at a point very early in Abram’s faith journey, as Abram defeats several war lords in the land of Canaan. Identified in the Scripture as “King of Salem,” ancient Jewish sources see him as the leader of the entire area, a wise sage of a man whom the rest must respect. But this does not answer the question of his identity. We must look back even further.

As Abram presents Melchizedek with a tithe, Melchizedek gives him a blessing in return. Here is the hint we’ve been looking for! The last person to receive a blessing was the oldest son of Noah: Shem. Adding up the dates of Shem’s life, we learn that he was actually still alive during Abram’s time, and in fact outlived Abraham!

Blessings at this time in history were not things that could be easily exchanged, once they were given, they could not be taken back. (See Jacob’s stealing of Issac’s paternal blessing from his older brother Esau.) Blessings are tangible things, so Melchizedek/Shem must still have the one given to him by his father, Noah; and he now passes it on to his descendent Abram, the one chosen by God to be the father of many nations.

All of these identities have priestly functions, but it is taken to an even greater degree when we see what Melchizedek offers as a priest, for priests offer sacrifices and Melchizedek offers a sacrifice of bread and wine. This sets off signal flares in the eyes of a Catholic, for our priests also offer sacrifices of bread and wine, now fulfilled in Christ to be His very Body and Blood.

What becomes important for today is that the priesthood in which Catholic Priests share, and by extension that all the baptized share in as well, goes back not just to the Sacrifice in the Jerusalem Temple, but back to the very foundations of creation by God. Melchizedek is identified as “a priest forever” in Psalm 110, his priesthood continues on into the ages. The Catholic Priest, in the place of Christ the Head, also shares in this eternal priesthood, continually offering a sacrifice of bread and wine before God in Heaven.

Uniting all of this into one, we see God’s divine plan in the scope of Salvation History. That Jesus came when He did is not some type of accidental occurrence, but had been planned out from before by our Loving Father. God wants to give us the tools to return to His presence in Heaven. Let us therefore rejoice that Christ left us with the great gift of the priesthood, that He continues to choose men to serve Him in this way, so that we might all come to worship Him forever around His altar in heaven.

[Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Telegraph.]