Priest or Presbyter? Tom O’Loughlin looks to the future for the Catholic Church.
We Are Church Ireland Zoom: Priest or Presbyter? Tom O’Loughlin looks to the future for the Catholic Church.
Thu, 27 October 2022, 19:30 – 21:00 IST
Tom O’Loughlin is Emeritus Professor of Historical Theology at Nottingham University, UK. He was born in Dublin and is a priest of Arundel & Brighton diocese. He fearlessly confronts the major questions facing theology in the course of Christian history. As an academic his interests are in research; but he is equally interested in communicating his insights to the general public by making good use of the internet.
Link to booking (free): https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/priest-or-presbyter-tickets-404105017987
An excellent presentation, as always, from Tom. I missed the first 20 minutes as my link would not work.
Would it be possible to have the recording shared on this site?
Here is a link to Professor Tom O’Loughlin’s talk “Priest or Presbyter?” on 27 October 2022 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YT66cUxDG8I
With thanks to Paddy Ferry!
What a fascinating, mind expanding talk by Tom. It raises so many questions, and provides so many new ways of seeing the whole issue of ministry in our Church. I always felt this notion of ‘ontological change’ was wrong, but never heard it presented so clearly before. Listen to it if you can.
If I was hearing Tom correctly there is a tension between the idea of the ‘presbyter’ as signifying responsibility, and the idea of the ‘priest’ as sacred bridge between this profane world and the realm of the divine. Vatican II accentuated this tension by speaking of the universal call to holiness while retaining the primacy of the priest – e.g. the tension and ambiguity of chapters 5 and 6 of Lumen Gentium.
The failure of the magisterium to identify the root source of the clerical sexual catastrophe in the need to protect the myth of ontological change – while at the same time confining priesthood to males – must surely make ‘synodality’ explosive. For how long can we tiptoe around the contradictions, with the many responsible women not mentioning the war, the contradiction of the moribund male priestly monopoly of canonical responsibility.
There is a hint of canonical change in the working document for the continental stage of the universal synod – but who will believe this before they see it happening?
For me, Jesus never intended to found a cultic priesthood ‘set apart’ – and this mistake lies at the root of the moral catastrophe of keeping women in the dark about the mythic nature of priestly celibacy – with mothers blindfolded against the danger of entrusting their young sons to monsters such as Sean Fortune and Eugene Greene. This is one of the great crimes and sins of history, analogous to but far worse than the sin of King David – and so far it has not even been confessed.