Last month, Pope Leo XIV issued an apostolic letter entitled “A Fidelity that Generates the Future” to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of two unheralded decrees of the Second Vatican Council, Presbyterorum Ordinis, which deals with the life and ministry of priests, and Optatam Totius, which is concerned with their education and training. I think it is fair to say that neither of these decrees has had a significant influence on the life of the Catholic Church. The theologian Yves Congar, who was asked to work on the later drafts of Presbyterorum Ordinis, lamented during the council, “I am afraid that [the decree] will be more pious and verbose, not sufficiently theological or ontological.” And in 1975, ten years after the council concluded, he commented, “The [council] Fathers seemed to have forgotten priests. There was certainly a text, very mediocre, a clumsy message, drawn up in haste in the final period of the council. I protested: priests do not need a lecture, only for someone to tell them who they are, what is their mission in the world of today.”
Leo should be warmly commended, then, for trying to find good fruit in these conciliar decrees, and to sketch more fully what Congar desired: a clear statement on the identity and mission of the priest today.
The pope highlights several crucial themes found in the decrees: Ordained ministry is a gratuitous gift from God; fidelity to one’s vocation is strengthened by staying close to the Master; living a faithful life is “a journey of daily conversion”; and spiritual formation is a life-long process. Priests are called “to follow Christ every day,” and to develop a “rich and solid spiritual life,” placing all their trust in the Lord.
The pope also puts a strong accent on priestly fraternity and communion even while stating, wisely, that such fraternity “can never be established by the standardization of individuals and the charisms or talents that the Lord has granted to each one.” Leo’s comment reminded me of Tocqueville’s remark in Democracy in America: Besides the legitimate passion for equality among persons, there exists a “depraved” notion as well, which seeks to drag all men down to the same level. By accenting uniqueness, Leo sagely proscribes this warped notion of fraternity.
The apostolic letter is rich in its analyses. I offer here some related, theological points.
There is much in Leo’s letter on the priest as a man of service (the word appears frequently), but little on the priest as teacher. Generous service, of course, is at the heart of ordained ministry. Yet Presbyterorum Ordinis also insists that priests must be “strenuous assertors of the truth, lest the faithful be carried about by every wind of doctrine.” And the dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (which is central to any reflection on priesthood), underscores the priest’s teaching role when it states that the “ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, forms and rules [efformat ac regit] the priestly people.” Of course, the primary way priests mold God’s people is by teaching the truth of the gospel. The critical role of the priest as teacher would be a welcome addition to this document.
Given our times, it comes as no surprise that Leo strikes an egalitarian note, insisting that the service of priests takes place “within the equal dignity and fraternity of all the baptized.” Of course, with all the Christian faithful, priests are, first and foremost, disciples of Jesus Christ, called to live their baptismal vocation. But just here, it might have been beneficial to note, with Vatican II, that while all the faithful participate in the priesthood of Jesus, the ministerial priesthood differs from the baptismal “in essence and not only in degree.” This phrase, originally used by Pius XII in 1954, is decisive since it makes clear that while his ministry is always oriented toward the faithful, the priest at the altar, offering the one sacrifice, stands uniquely in the person of Jesus Christ. Asserting this singular status is not priestly “domination” nor clerical “exaltation” over others—stances that Leo rightly denounces. Such uniqueness is, rather, a crucial and defining element of priestly identity.
Leo also refers to the sentence in Presbyterorum Ordinis that reads, “Therefore, on account of this communion in the same priesthood and ministry, bishops should regard priests as their brothers and friends.” As an American, Leo is no doubt aware of the incisive 2022 National Study of Catholic Priests that revealed a yawning chasm between priests and bishops in the United States, largely because of the draconian implementation of the Dallas Charter. Although this letter was not the place to address it, one hopes the pope has directed the American bishops to attend to two tasks: to root out actual abuse wherever it occurs and to ensure that just processes exist for priests who have been accused on the basis of little or no evidence. Ensuring that accused priests are treated justly, with due process, will stimulate the priestly vocations that Leo, at the conclusion of his letter, so vigorously encourages.
One of the wisest counsels of Optatam Totius is this: “No difficulty of the priestly life is to be concealed from seminarians.” When I was teaching, I often referred to this conciliar passage before discussing the Dallas Charter and its Essential Norms. It was and remains my conviction that seminarians need to understand the obstacles presented by the Charter’s implementation—not for the sake of inculcating fear—but so they can make an informed and free decision to continue toward the priesthood. I never wanted a man to tell me, years after ordination, that he was ignorant of the severe penalties meted out to a priest merely accused of abuse.
Leo’s apostolic letter offers solid teaching and wise reflection on many topics. I hope at some point he issues a full-bodied, deeply theological encyclical on the priesthood. Such a document, encompassing the entire history and tradition of the Church, would greatly benefit this currently embattled office.
