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MINISTRY “Minister”
comes from the Latin word for servant, and denotes a person acting under
the authority or as an agent of another, for example, a minister of state.
Accordingly, “minister of religion” is a generic expression that
includes any official, clerical or lay, who performs some service for a
religious body. One accepted
usage in the Church reserves minister as the term for the appropriate
person for administering the sacraments: for example, when we say that the
ordinary minister of Confirmation is the bishop. In this sense of the
term, anyone who confers a sacrament, including the layperson who may
baptize in case of necessity, is its minister. In the past, the
designation was sometimes extended to include those who assist the bishop
and priests in discharging their offices, so that those who served in the
sanctuary were likewise known as ministers. While the Church also
designates priests as her ministers or ministers of the Gospel, common
parlance in English-speaking countries still usually distinguishes between
the Catholic priest and the Protestant minister. In any event, it is clear
that “minister” is a broad term, applied analogically to different
persons. Ministry and
Vatican Council II • The Second Vatican Council put the terms
“minister” and “ministry” into a specific theological context. The
Council’s purpose was twofold. First, it wanted to emphasize that the
Incarnation reveals the divine plan to send the eternal Son for the
service of saving the human race. Christ, then, is the first minister.
There is no evidence of this truth more impressive than Jesus’ words and
deeds on the night before he died: “When he had washed their feet, and
taken his garments, and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you know
what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right,
for so I am. If I then, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you
also ought to wash one another’s feet’ ” (Jn 13:12-14). Second,
the Council placed the work of the laity more clearly in the theological
context of Christ’s ministry, and so refined the Church’s teaching on
the apostolate of the laity, making it more clearly a full, not simply an
auxiliary, part of Christ’s mission. Again, the Gospel of John
establishes the basis for this claim: “I am the vine, you are the
branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much
fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5). The Council
wished to renew the service of the laity to the Church through a renewal
of their faith in their union with Christ. To understand
the Council’s teaching on ministry we must recall the theological
teaching on the capital grace of Christ, by which he is constituted the
head of the Church. Drawing out the implications of Pope Pius XII’s 1943
encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, which presented the Church as the
Body of Christ, the Second Vatican Council sought to fathom the meaning of
St. Paul’s teaching that there are a variety of gifts, but one Holy
Spirit who is the divine source of these gifts. After listing some of the
“manifestations of the Spirit” (1 Cor 12:7) that the baptized receive,
Paul states: “All these are inspired by one and the same Spirit, who
apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Cor 12:11). The
Council’s gloss on this text, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the
Church, is: “And so amid variety all will bear witness to the wonderful
unity in the Body of Christ: this very diversity of graces, of ministries
and of works gathers the sons of God into one” (Lumen Gentium, 32). As
Christ remains one with the Father, who sent him into the world, so
authentic Christian ministry is directed to promoting unity among the
members of the Church. Those who undertake a ministry in the Church help
to extend the grace of Christ’s headship in the world. The
Council’s Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam
Actuositatem, canonized the use of the term “ministry” to designate
whatever a baptized person does for the good of the Church: “In the
Church there is diversity of ministry but unity of mission” (2). After
Vatican II, “ministry” generally replaced the earlier expression
“lay apostolate” to describe the various contributions that the
nonordained members of the Church make to its communio. Today it is not
uncommon to hear some individuals referred to as heading the “ministry
of music” or seeing to the “ministry to the sick” or serving as
“extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist.” In some cases, liturgical
rites have been drawn up to install these ministers in their respective
offices. This is especially true for the ministries of lector and acolyte.
The Code of Canon Law, moreover, stipulates that laypeople who possess the
required qualities can be admitted permanently to these ministries (cf.
Canon 230.1). The
Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, uses the
expression “sacred ministers” to refer to the ordained clergy, but it
also recalls the biblical teaching that they along with the nonordained
faithful form the one People of God. Although the Council documents
clearly maintain the distinctiveness of the ordained and hierarchical
ministry that flows from the sacrament of Holy Orders, some theologians
and commentators have interpreted the Council’s teaching about diversity
of ministry as relativizing the distinction between ordained and
nonordained ministries. In so doing, they overlook the incontrovertible
teaching of the Council that the ministerial priesthood remains, as a
specifically sacramental reality, at the service of the common priesthood.
As Lumen Gentium expresses it, “That office . . . , which
the Lord committed to the pastors of his people, is in the strict sense of
the term a service” (24). Analogical
Senses of “Ministry” • Some of the confusion results from a failure
to understand the analogy at work when the Council teaches that the laity
share in the priestly, prophetical, and kingly office of Christ. The
Catechism of the Catholic Church helps to clarify this point by
intentionally placing the discussion of ministry under the heading “The
Hierarchical Constitution of the Church” (cf. CCC 874-879). This accords
with the doctrine of the Church. For example, the 1983 letter Sacerdotium
Ministeriale authoritatively taught that apostolic succession through
sacramental ordination is an essential element for the exercise of
priestly ministry and thus for the bestowal of the power to consecrate the
Eucharist. Accordingly,
we can say that the chief and irreplaceable participant in the ministry of
Jesus Christ is the bishop, who, in the words of St. Ignatius of Antioch,
is like the living image of God the Father (cf. CCC 1549). It is from the
bishop, especially the Bishop of Rome, that all authentic ministry
derives. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has taken strong
exception to the work of the Belgian theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P.,
including his books Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christ
and The Church With a Human Face: A New and Expanded Theology of Ministry,
for failing to acknowledge this doctrinal principle. The large numbers of
lay pastoral workers or associates who have begun to assist in areas of
Europe where there is a shortage of ordained priests has given a certain
impetus to this theological reflection. But the Church, in the voice of
Pope John Paul II, has repeatedly affirmed the “absolute necessity that
the ‘new evangelization’ have priests as its initial ‘new
evangelizers’ ” (apostolic exhortation I Will Give You Shepherds,
Pastores Dabo Vobis, 2 [1992]). The Catechism
begins its teaching on ministry so as to take account of its fundamentally
hierarchical nature. By way of formulating the basic theological principle
of Christian ministry, the text affirms that “Christ is himself the
source of ministry in the Church” (874). As to its principal expression,
the power to exercise ministry of the Church comes from a special
sacrament: Holy Orders enables men to minister to the People of God so
that all may attain salvation. This
sacramental ministry is a collegial action, because the episcopal college
and its head, the successor of St. Peter, work together for the good of
the universal Church. At the same time, priestly ministry is eminently
personal, because the Church’s ministers, who are called personally to
their vocation, always bear personal witness to the common mission of the
Church and to Jesus in whose person they act. Another
misunderstanding about ministry arises when the sacred power of the priest
is imagined to be the religious equivalent of the political power
exercised by civil rulers. The priest, however, receives his mission and
his authority from Christ; and so neither the word that priests preach nor
the graces of which they are the instruments are their own. These belong
to Christ, who gives his power to whom he wills. Nevertheless,
there is also a power that Christ gives to every member of the Church, and
that awaits the generous response of men and women who seek to promote the
reign of Christ the King. In his apostolic exhortation The Lay Members of
Christ’s Faithful People, Christifideles Laici, Pope John Paul II cites
a text of Pope Pius XII, who was an effective advocate of Catholic Action:
“Lay believers are in the front line of Church life; for them the Church
is the animating principle of human society. Therefore, they in particular
ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the
Church, but of being the Church, that is to say, the community of the
faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the common Head, and
of the bishops in communion with him. They are the Church” (cited in CCC
899). The twentieth century has witnessed a renewed involvement of the
Christian laity in the sanctification of the world, especially in the
social and political spheres. Blessed Josemaría Escrivá, the
priest-founder of the predominantly lay organization Opus Dei, provides an
outstanding example of how to encourage the Christian faithful to sanctify
themselves through work in the world and apostolate.
See:
Apostolate; Apostolic Succession; Evangelization; Holy Orders; In Persona
Christi Capitis; Laity; Priesthood of Christ; Priesthood of the Faithful;
Vocation. Suggested
Readings: CCC 874-879, 1546-1553. Vatican Council II, Dogmatic
Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, 30-42; Decree on the Apostolate
of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem. John Paul II, The Lay Members of
Christ’s Faithful People, Christifideles Laici. R. Malone, ed., Review
of Contemporary Perspectives on Ministry. T. O’Meara, Theology of
Ministry. Romanus
Cessario, O.P. Russell
Shaw. Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine. Copyright ©
1997, Our Sunday Visitor.
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inquiries or comment, you may contact the WEBMASTER
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