Bishop Barron on Garry Wills' "Why Priests?"

I think the interpretive key to Garry wills preposterous book and the priesthood it's called why priests a failed tradition the interpretive key I think is found in the second chapter which is a memoir of Garry wills as a Catholic boyhood in the 1940s and 50s you recall the time when lay people were you know refused access to the chalice when young Catholic grade school kids worried about what happens to the host when it reaches their intestines when priests were cosseted and pampered and wore Baretta's and fiddleback vestments and manna poles when young Catholic girls pinned tissue paper to their hair so they would would keep their heads covered when priests were deferred to in all social situations they were they were seated place on the first tee at golf courses well here's the thing it's chapter I'm 53 years old I've been a priest for 27 years and the only contact I have with that world is from Bing Crosby movies and maybe John powers of novels the the world of this sort of hyper cleric alized Catholicism that Garry wills complains about has long ago even s and yet there he is still railing against it and I think what's going on in this book is largely a sustained polemic against this largely disappeared world for Garry wills priests have been a problem from the get-go he imagines Jesus exclusively as a prophet he's a prophet in the Hebrew tradition who was opposed by the Jewish establishment by the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sadducees but when these relatively ineffective opponents of Jesus really wanted to get rid of them they turned a bit like Don Corleone a turning to Luca Brasi they turned to priests whom he calls the chapter heading as killer priests listen to the here's the quote from page 80 of his book the priest killed Jesus that's what they do they kill the prophets I suppose that nothing to do Pontius Pilate with the Roman cohort with the Sanhedrin with Judas etc it was just those killer priests that did it and I think he sees the descendants of those killer priests in the mid twentieth century America in this clerical ice-t-- church but see this bizarre association priests as killers of Jesus leads Gary wolves down all sorts of weird interpretive paths at the very heart of his book is an analysis of the letter to the Hebrews which of course a key text in the New Testament a text that's found its way very deeply into the liturgical and spiritual tradition of the church the unknown author of that text call it a treatise or a sermon or an exhortation famously uses all the language of cult and temple and priesthood and sacrifice to talk about the significance of Jesus and his death on the cross so Jesus death is now construed as the definitive sacrifice to the Lord the shedding of the blood which goes beyond the shedding of the blood of animals etc Jesus lifting the old dispensation up into a higher and definitive context that's the fundamental argument of the letter to the Hebrews as I say a letter written maybe around the Year 80 in the first century coming up out of an established Christian tradition accepted by Christian theologians of great weight and importance from the beginning but Gary wills is forced to construe this as some old kind of strange and anomalous text very much here in the tradition of Martin Luther who wanted to get rid of the letter of James because letter of James ran against Luther's view on justification so just get rid of it now Garry wills wants to say get rid of the letter of the Hebrews because it's anomalous it's egregious no other part of the New Testament talks about Jesus in this priestly way of course this is patently absurd the Lord of the Hebrews brings it - very clear and explicit expression but I would argue that temple and priesthood and sacrifice language runs right through the New Testament Matthew through revelation just to give a couple of examples think of the Gospel of Luke which begins and ends in the temple that is filled with temple imagery and symbolism at the climax of Luke's Gospel we have Jesus gathering with his twelve disciples the twelve tribes of Israel and now he gives his death a perfectly sacrificial interpretation when he says this is my body given up for you this is the cup of My Blood which will be shed for you all of that of course is the language of temple sacrifice more to it as the disciples take this cup of Jesus blood and no first century Jew would have missed this they are in the role of priests because when someone came to the temple to sacrifice the person would cut the throat of the animal and then a priest would catch the blood in a bowl in a cup and so implicitly in this text Jesus is giving his death a sacrificial interpretation and the apostles are acting very much as priests look now in all four Gospels a key player is John the Baptist identified as a son of a priest someone who would have grown up around the temple and sacrifice what's he doing out in the desert but a priestly ministry giving people a sort of mikvah bath that was the bath of purification before you could enter the temple to do sacrifice he also offered the forgiveness of sins which of course is what someone received after they had sacrificed in the temple in John's Gospel moreover John the Baptist this very priestly temple figure looks at Jesus and says behold there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world again no first century Jew would have missed that's highly charged temple priesthood sacrificial language and seeing John's reading it happens right at the beginning of the gospel it provides the hermeneutical or interpretive key for all of Jesus it's how we understand who he is think - in the Gospel of John Jesus sits down for the meal just at the time when the are being sacrificed in preparation for Passover and so the Temple Association is extremely strong look now in Matthew's Gospel as Jesus dies on the cross we hear that the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom let's see what was that that was the curtain that separated the main body the temple from the Holy of Holies on the feast of Atonement Day of Atonement the feast of yom kippur the high priest having made sacrifice in the holy of holies would pass through that veil would come out to the people and then sprinkle them with the blood symbolizing the fact that the great sacrifice has now affected a reconciliation between Yahweh and his people again nobody in a Jewish context in the first century would have missed as Jesus dies on the cross shedding his blood the curtain is torn in two because he is now the definitive High Priest having made the sacrifice who now comes out and sheds his blood on all the people the point is all of these are richly densely textured sacrificial temple priesthood images the letter of the Hebrews we see how is by no means egregious or anomalous but rather it's the moment when all of this comes together and comes to explicit expression it's not the black sheep of New Testament text in fact in some ways and the tradition recognizes from the beginning it's a great summarizing and gathering text it gives a very pointed expression to what is implicitly expressed throughout the New Testament you know I might mention to the book of Revelation which closes the New Testament the whole Bible is filled with temple imagery the visionary sees in this great manifestation he sees the heavenly temple with the Ark of the Covenant a whole liturgy is unfolding and then who appears at the heart of it but the lamb standing as though slain who is that but the Lamb of God who by being slain takes away the sins of the world temple priesthood sacrifice from Matthew to Revelation gathered by the letter of the Hebrews seems to me is a much more accurate way to describe what's going on then this game that Garry wills is playing here's another theme now and again born I think of this very irrational hatred for a priesthood is his take on the real presence so Garry wills tends to see the doctrine of the real presence as this much later sort of medieval accretion having nothing to do with the early texts of Christianity nothing to do with the New Testament nothing to do with the great Church Fathers but this later addition and see once that came into play he argues priests took on enormous significance because the priest could affect through transubstantiation the real presence of Jesus well this is so much nonsense yes indeed Thomas Aquinas his doctrine of transubstantiation represents a sort of refinement of language borrowing from philosophical sources unavailable to more ancient authors but it by no means represents a betrayal of the church fathers let me give you just a couple of examples I could have chosen many many more look for example at Saint Irenaeus one of my great heroes from the second century who's writing let's say around the Year 180 or 185 he says this the bread which comes from the earth having received the invocation of God is no longer ordinary bread but the Eucharist consisting of two realities heavenly and earthly now if they ain't the real presence then you know I'm the Emperor of China origin of Alexandria writing in the third century says this that Christians rightly reverence every crumb of the consecrated bread if the consecrated bread is just some kind of vague symbol of of the mystical body why would you bother reverencing every crumb of it and then from Gary wills is here oh so he claims that Saint Agustin is the one who sums up his position best here's here's st. Agustin on this issue that bread would you see on the altar having been sanctified by the Word of God just the point Irenaeus made is the body of Christ again Thomas represents a certain refinement of these views but that it somehow is a betrayal of the patristic consensus I just think his is beyond absurd I've been holding the course of this video of this book in my hand by armadillo by Garry wills dedicates his book to our we do Bob who wrote this book called corpus mysticum the mystical body wills is I think preposterous claim is that somehow our we do luboc represents his position that real presence is is this sort of medieval hang-up and what the Eucharist is really about is that we are together the body of Christ instead what he's argument seems to me is for a richer and more complete understanding of the mystical body which includes yes Eucharistic realism and this grander sense of a mystical body I think is much closer to what he's saying and let me offer in support of that this quote from the conclusion of the book Eucharistic realism and ecclesial realism these two realisms support one another each is the guarantee of the other ecclesial realism safeguards Eucharistic realism and the latter confirms the former the same unity of the word is reflected in both mind you is very interesting they're both Irenaeus and Agustin Thomas would agree how does the real presence happen by the power of the word is precisely through the invocation of Jesus words the Council of Trent by the way confirms that when it says viver boram by the power of the words the real presence is effected that's the classical teaching the church from Irenaeus all the way through vatican ii listen to this now i'm going on with the Liuba today it's above all our faith in the real presence made explicit thanks to centuries of controversy an analysis that introduces us to faith in the ecclesial body good that's Vatican 2 what Vatican 2 picked up was exactly that yes the broader sense of mystical body is informed by and made possible by a keen sense of the real presence so I mean I think it's absurd that Gary wolves dedicates his book to Armida luboc who argues seems to me in a very different direction let me just make a couple points by way of conclusion the ministerial priesthood according to Catholic theology is deeply connected to the priesthood of Jesus and what's the priesthood of Jesus it's the coming together in the singularity of his person of the two natures divine and human priesthood is a mediating or reconciling act right that goes way back to the Old Testament in his person Jesus reconciles divinity and humanity my priesthood as a priest of the Catholic Church is a participation in that high priesthood of Jesus that's why a denial of the divinity of Jesus would indeed lead to a denial of the importance of the priesthood ah now listen to how Gary Will's ends his book is from page 259 the last page of the book let me simply say this he's summing up his belief there's one God and Jesus is one of his prophets and I'm one of his millions of followers well first of all it seems to me it makes Garry wills fundamentally identical to a Muslim who might say there's one God Allah and Jesus is one of his prophets you know but see that's quite right if Jesus is nothing more than one of God's prophets if he's not truly divine then indeed the priesthood as Catholic theology understands it even s's but but if Jesus is who he says he is who the church has claimed him to be over the centuries then the priesthood and sacrifice and real presence and Eucharist remain as indispensable as ever [Music]

Channel: Bishop Robert Barron

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Keywords: Fr. Robert Barron, Word On Fire, Garry Wills, Why Priests?, priesthood, Catholicism, Christianity, Jesus Christ, God

Id: 2wH7wONq0uY

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2013