Book Review

The Priesthood of the Faithful – Key to a Living Church by Fr. Paul J. Philibert. Liturgical Press, 2005.

In the ongoing struggle among many Catholics to sort through the complexities of the past nearly four years of crisis and crimes in our Church, it is with great relief that someone is reminding us of something other than our rights and responsibilities – the very heart of our faith is precisely why we struggle and precisely why we are so able to do so. Faith, we see in this short book, is knowing, not just hoping, that everything will be all right.

Fr. Paul Philibert begins The Priesthood of the Faithful with the understanding that Christ is acting on the baptized through the Holy Spirit at all times. “Because the role of the Holy Spirit pervades the sacramental life of the Church, it is useful to think of the church in terms of an ecology of epiclesis.” He notes that the word ecology refers to an interdependence of living and nonliving in the natural environment. Epiclesis reflects a similar complex interrelationship between the human and divine. We are asked to look at a “graced sacramental action” according to three stages: symbolic matter (such as the liturgy in our sacramental lives); a graced sign (the presence of the invoked Spirit into life-giving water); and a realized mystery (one body, one Spirit in Christ effected in Eucharist). Philibert moves from here into a brief look at the “how” of our good works in our daily lives concluding that it is the Spirit’s anointing that makes each of us a graced sign. This anointing is what brings all the faithful into the “only priesthood that there is – the priesthood of Jesus Christ.”

It is Philibert’s discussion of the rediscovery of baptismal priesthood that brings the most comfort to those of us who carry the dis-ease of the past few years into our churches and out again and to those who are unable to embrace the routine of regular attendance at Mass because we just don’t feel “at home” any more. “The Mass does not belong to the ordained” is one of the most beautiful sentences to be found in this book but it doesn’t come from Philibert alone. It grew out of the work of theologian Yves Congar and others and their impact on the Vatican II document “The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.”

Congar’s touching disappointment in the opening liturgy of Vatican II speaks volumes and, in fact, this opening of the Council will strike many as antiquated, even foreign, for the enormous distance that was so fixed between the clergy and the congregation. The event comes across as a performance by the ordained, the “elect,” and all others are observers – invited to passivity. In fact, the German liturgist Jungmann noted, “A High Mass without distribution of communion…. Perhaps the idea was to make clear [what we have to leave behind] in matters liturgical!”

‘The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy” changed all of this and was the first document of Vatican II to be published. It established the principle that “in every Christian liturgy, the primary celebrant is Christ Himself.” The decades-long move toward an inclusive liturgical expression of the solidarity of Christ with His Church succeeded and, arguably, underscores the energy behind today’s reform efforts. These efforts attempt to reconcile the artificial distance between the priesthood of the ordained and what Philibert calls the “priesthood in the ordinary.”

There is much here for every Christian reader (and not enough space to cover it all!) – for those who feel somewhat battered during this time of horrific revelations and for the masses of Catholic laity, so often presumed incapable of understanding what the ordained among us have been thinking, reading and writing. Philibert provides both a bridge across what divides us one from the other and a companion for the journey.

Just before The Priesthood of the Faithful concludes with “An Open Letter to Religious,” Philibert gifts us with this reflection:

A flourishing laity are first of all people who know that they are loved and who feel important in the life of the church. We find in 1 Peter an appeal to the newly initiated to appreciate their value in the life of the church. “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

A marvelous light, indeed!

PLT

If you read this book on your own or for a book club, please send comments to pthorp.ed@votf.org.

Paul J. Philibert, O.P., S.T.D., is professor of pastoral theology at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Church and Society at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. His published works include Stewards of God’s Mysteries: Priestly Spirituality in a Changing Church (Liturgical Press, 2004).



In the Vineyard
November 3, 2005
Volume 4, Issue 15
Printer Friendly Version

Page One

VOTF Affiliate Highlights


Message from Jim Post


Letters to the Editor


Witness in Washington

Interview with VOTF Phila. member Richard Taylor, author of a forthcoming book Love in Action

Review of The Priesthood of the Faithful – Key to a Living Church by Fr. Paul J. Philibert.

Report from VOTF Board of Trustees

RCAB News


Donate

Join VOTF

Contact Us 

Archives


VOTF Home

For an overview of press coverage of VOTF, click here.
©Voice of the Faithful 2005.All Rights Reserved