Synod 2020. Liverpool. Number 5.

Here is another response to the presentation of the Archdiocese on Synod 2020 just recently. It is written by another priest of the Archdiocese and gives another view of what was offered to us.

Dietrich Bonoffer, author and Lutheran pastor arrested and killed by the nazis for an assassination plot against Hitler wrote his famous work T"he Cost Of Discipleship". He argues that Hitler and the Nazis were able to come to power because both the Lutherans and Catholics were administering sacraments without any expectation of practise or commitment to Jesus hence his title the cost of discipleship.

I can’t deny I was disappointed at the Synod presentation which over emphasised two of the four constitutions of the Second Vatican Council; the two which are often used to justify a royal or common priesthood over and above the ministerial priesthood. Ministerial priesthood was presented as clericalism and antithetical to both the common priesthood and progress. The concept of equality is Marxist egalitarianism and can be rightly argued as being antithetical to the Vatican II argument that the Church is Hierarchal and it is not an upside down pyramid -because the Pope is the successor to Peter and therefore is not just another Christian but divinely appointed  by Christ whilst he was on earth. 

There is no arguing with this and we cannot democratically argue our way into unravelling divine revelation which would have explained this if we had had a presentation on both the first two constitutions on the liturgy -  Sacrosanctum Concilium and Dei Verbum.

Coming back to Bonoffer’s work  - it is the task of Christians under obedience to both the Word of God and his divinely revealed Church that we can recognise evil when it imbeds itself into society. Our task is to challenge evil and not to go along with it. Worship and ministry without sacrifice cannot do this and no matter how unpalatable a truth this might be, a  priesthood according to Christ’s plan which is male and celibate cannot be dismissed by a culture that is now so seeped in Marxist ideology and equality arguments that those who resist must be dismantled.

Ministerial priesthood is being attacked not just because of the abuse problems but because it doesn’t fit into this egalitarian model. It is a threat and therefore according to Marxism must be deconstructed. I’m not saying that those who are arguing for a strengthening of our understanding of the priesthood the faithful are Marxist but the equality argument does have its roots in egalitarianism. The celebrated speech of Callicles in Plato’s Gorgias contains some important truths: “it is to frighten the most powerful, the most capable of overpowering them and preventing them from winning, that the masses reject superiority calling it bad and unjust and insisting that injustice consists essentially in the desire to rise above the others." To want to be a priest or to be a member of the intellectual commercial artistic or sporting elite of one's country or church is not a bad thing - to want to be a member of the elite or presbyterate so as to serve others effectively as possible is an act of magnanimity and sacrifice and without both you are forcing a false equality onto people and the Church and forcing eagles to scratch around the barn yard pretending to be a chickens so as not to offend anybody.