Priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church

The purpose of this research is to examine the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical, religious, and cultural background and context for the emergence of the Church's priesthood and provide a survey in general terms of the evolution of the institution from the earlier period to the present day, and then to discuss ways in which complex issue fronts facing the contemporary priesthood--notably celibacy, married priests, and women's ordination--may forecast possible lines of development.

Given the well-documented fact of the institutional religious lineage of Judaism and Christianity, one might very well think that features of the Jewish priesthood was taken up by the early Christians and adapted to the purposes of their body of priests. The biblical source for this is Jesus's empowering the apostles to forgive sends and sending them to spread the gospel just as God the Father had sent the Son, as well as Paul's assumption of priestly duties in the manner of the priests of the Old Law. But that formulation overlooks the somewhat complex origins of the Christian priesthood. Indeed, as Rausch explains (16), in the earliest days of the Church, the designation priest or levite was reserved for the Jewish priesthood, a reservation that became more pronounced as the differences of custom and belief between Christian and Jewish cults became more pronounced. Bishops alone, comprising the so-called episcopate, appear initial

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amental act (Rausch 28-9). A third priesthood model, called representational, is the name given to conceptualizing ordained priests as "ecclesiastical persons . . . [and] public persons of the church" (Rausch 29). This model has been proposed since Vatican II partly to foster an interpenetration of institutional status and vocational integrity with a reaffirmation of the role of priest as sacramental celebrant. In the background of this model is a perceived need for personal holiness, which lends moral weight to ecclesiastical authority of bishops, supported by the sacramental, ministerial, and ecclesiastical agency of pastoral priests who "make Christ present to the world" (Rausch 29) in the communities they lead. These priestly modalities are not mutually exclusive, but the emergence of theologically interpretative models for priesthood since Vatican II illustrates a rethinking of the source of strength and legitimation for the priestly class of a cult, as well as practical difficulties associated with confining the definition of an ordained priest to the sacral. Rausch sees the representational model as closer to what could be called the original intent of the framers of Church ecclesiastical structure and practice. Greeley's v

Category: Philosophy - P