VATICAN (CNS): Increasing vocations to the priesthood, improving the way laypeople and priests work together and ensuring that service, not power, motivates the request for ordination are all possible outcomes of a major symposium being planned by the Vatican from 17 to 19 February 2022.
“A theological symposium does not claim to offer practical solutions to all the pastoral and missionary problems of the Church, but it can help us deepen the foundation of the Church’s mission,” Marc Cardinal Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and the chief organiser of the symposium, said at a news conference April 12.
The symposium, Toward a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood, will seek to encourage an understanding of ministerial priesthood that is rooted in the priesthood conferred on all believers at baptism, getting away from the idea of ordained ministry as belonging to “ecclesiastical power,” the cardinal said.
Cardinal Oullet said that the three-day gathering is aimed specifically at bishops and delegations of theologians and vocations personnel from every country, although it will be open to other theologians and people interested in the topic.
The relationship between baptism and ordained ministry needs greater emphasis today, but reviewing the foundations of a theology of priesthood also “involves ecumenical questions not to be ignored, as well as the cultural movements that question the place of women in the Church,” the cardinal said
‘The baptismal life is the fundamental human vocation and all must exercise the priesthood received at baptism. Ministry is at the service of this’
The relationship between baptism and ordained ministry needs greater emphasis today, but reviewing the foundations of a theology of priesthood also “involves ecumenical questions not to be ignored, as well as the cultural movements that question the place of women in the Church,” the cardinal said.
The recent synods of bishops on the family, on young people and on the Church in the Amazon all show the urgency of questions surrounding priesthood and relationships among people with different vocations in the church, the cardinal said.
Michelina Tenace, a professor of theology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, is helping organise the symposium and told reporters that going back to baptism and the priesthood of all believers “isn’t just a fashion, it’s the basis for all Christian life.”
She pointed out that the clerical abuse scandal made the questions of priestly identity, vocational discernment and formation more urgent.
Father Vincent Siret, rector of the Pontifical French Seminary in Rome, said a deeper reflection on priesthood—both the priesthood of all the baptised and ministerial priesthood—is essential for those engaged in training men for the priesthood.
“The baptismal life is the fundamental human vocation and all must exercise the priesthood received at baptism. Ministry is at the service of this,” Father Siret said.
“Reflecting on the fundamental theology of the priesthood will also make it possible to return to the justifications for priestly celibacy and the way it is lived,” he said.
While Cardinal Ouellet, Father Siret and Tenace all mentioned the importance of celibacy in the Latin rite, none of them mentioned the traditions of the Eastern Catholic Churches that continue to have both married and celibate clergy.
