Beyond “Viri Probati”
TEAMS OF ELDERS: Moving Beyond “Viri Probati”, by Bishop Fritz Lobinger. Claretian Publications, 2007. 94pp.
Reviewed by Michael Shackleton
Fritz Lobinger, the retired bishop of Aliwal North diocese in the Eastern Cape, has presented again his case for the Church to find a new way of tackling head-on the harmful shortage of priests in so many parishes.
He does not suggest that the whole Church should launch out on this new way at once, but that a pilot scheme be initiated in one diocese or more. If this turns out well, the Church may be tempted to try it in more dioceses and, possibly, adopt it as satisfactorily workable.
He scorns the popular concept of priestly ordination for viri probati, men of proven faith and leadership. He argues that this concept is shallow and has never been analysed critically. It cannot be the first step towards new vocations because it neglects the more important concept of community building. Without a community of strong faith and cohesion, new priests will hardly make a difference, especially because they will automatically perpetuate the undesirable divide between clergy and laity.
Teams of elders, on the contrary, based on the earliest days of Christianity, will not be clerics, although they will be sacramentally ordained priests. Their ministry will be localised to one parish or community under the guidance of celibate animator priests whose function will be similar to that of an overseeing bishop. They will not be replacement priests who come from outside, but men from the local community who are known and respected and who will work voluntarily as a team without remuneration, not as individuals, to build up their community into a truly Christian fellowship.
Bishop Lobinger presents a clear and rationally argued case, competently anticipating possible problems and objections. He concedes that the venture could take years to prove itself.
He lays out a sample application to ask the Holy See for permission to go ahead with such a scheme. His reasoning has merit and the pilot scheme could easily be put into probationary practice in some parts of South Africa and other lands with an equivalent pastoral problem, not to mention in the Church as a whole.
http://www.scross.co.za/?s=teams+of+elders&submit.x=0&submit.y=0
Homegrown clergy: The case for a new kind of priesthood
There are teams of others who conduct funerals wearing liturgical garb, signifying that what these leaders do is the liturgy of the church, not a private prayer. Similarly there are trained catechism teachers, youth leaders, and leaders of gospel-sharing groups. The priest of this parish has helped each of the nine communities in his care to become a “self-ministering” community.
As the bishop of the diocese, I would visit Mmusong once a year, listening to the community and solemnly blessing its leaders. Each time I went home with the same painful question in my heart: “Why can I give only a blessing to those leaders? Why can I not ordain some of them? When will the day come when I can ordain the proven leaders of our communities?”
I know that if the church continues to admit only celibate, university-trained candidates to ordination, there will be no hope of ever overcoming the scarcity of sacraments. I equally know that the early church indeed did ordain local leaders who were married, had received brief local training, were chosen by the local community, and had proven their worthiness over some time.
I am not alone. There are hundreds of bishops who feel that renewing this ancient tradition is the only solution to the shortage of priests. There are hundreds of other bishops, however, who feel that ordaining local leaders would be dangerous. They fear it might solve one problem by creating bigger ones.
The ordination of married candidates would unavoidably raise questions: Why could some priests be married while others had to remain celibate? Why did some have to go through university education while others could be trained on weekends? Are we not creating two classes of priests? Others fear a kind of clericalization of the laity, whereby one pious person could forever dominate a congregation.
It is indeed a complicated question whether the shortage of priests could be solved by ordaining proven local leaders. The question will not become easier if we keep silent about it. If discussed by many, it will become more apparent that certain proposals will not work while others will.
“The Lord’s Day and the Lord’s Supper belong together” must remain our key principle. In about half of all Catholic communities in the world, these two things-the Lord’s day and the Lord’s Supper, which intrinsically belong together-have in fact become separated.
Thousands of communities meet on Sunday not for the Eucharist but for a service of the Word. We cannot allow this situation to continue. If the faithful and the priests become used to this wound in our faith life, they will give up looking for solutions. We vehemently oppose other distortions of our faith; therefore we must reject this one as well.
There are signs of hope. The communities that have no resident priest have proven that they usually possess all charisms that would be needed for the ordination of local leaders. Without the shortage of priests, most of these charisms would have remained undetected. Now that they are apparent, it is time to follow the example of the early church (Acts 14:23). Paul writes to Titus that he “should appoint elders in every town” (1:5).
The last few decades have also been a chance to learn a few practical lessons. One of them is that we should not place key responsibilities on only one person in the community. If we consider ordaining proven local leaders in the communities, then we should ordain not just one but always a team of them.
Another lesson we have learned is to choose the right term for such a team of ordained local leaders. They would be a distinct kind of priest and should be called by a distinct name, such as the original term used in the New Testament: elder. We should not speak of “auxiliary priests” or of “part-time priests” or of “community priests.” Although the latter term is beautiful in itself, it would tempt people to compare those ordained elders with the traditional, seminary-educated priests, and such comparisons would be harmful.
If proven local leaders are ordained as elders, they should not be regarded as a primitive imitation of the present priests or a second class of priests. They should not even try to be similar to the existing priests. The principle should be “as distinct as possible,” not “as similar as possible,” so as to avoid comparisons. Just as lay leaders are highly respected today, the ordained elders of tomorrow would be highly respected-provided they are clearly distinct.
This means that we would have two different forms of priesthood. Both receive the same sacrament of Holy Orders. Theologically speaking both are priests, but in daily life we would always use two different terms: priests and elders.
The two kinds would exercise two different roles. The elders would lead the community and administer the sacraments in their own community, while the priests would be the spiritual guides of elders in several self-ministering communities. The priests would thus serve the whole diocese, while the elders would serve only the community where they were ordained. Elders would not be transferred.
Priests are trained in a seminary, make the promise of celibacy, complete the full theological studies, and are employed by the diocese. Elders would be trained through weekend courses, support themselves by a secular profession, and be married. Priests live in a rectory; elders would live in their own homes. Priests can be recognized by their distinct dress; elders would dress like anybody else. Priests are addressed as “Father”; elders would be addressed as anybody else.
Both kinds of priests need each other. This is why they would not endanger each other. There is no need to fear that the priests would give up their priesthood if elders were ordained, because the priests would be needed for the continued formation of the elders.
Several times in our recent past the idea of ordaining local leaders was opposed because it was feared that a change of the priesthood somewhere would create chaos everywhere. Because the creation of two distinct kinds of priests would leave the present priests as they are, dioceses that are not ready to ordain teams of elders need not fear that they would be negatively affected if a neighboring diocese took this step.
This danger certainly would exist if priests and elders fulfilled the same role, but they would have different roles. There is no need to fear chaos. The change could be confined to a particular diocese.
As already mentioned, more than half the Catholic Church’s communities have no resident priest. This is especially the case in Asia, Africa, and Latin America but also to some extent in Europe and North America.
A great number of these “self-ministering” communities are ready or almost ready for the introduction of teams of ordained elders. They already have teams of trained leaders, and they have priests who are used to continually training these leaders.
Ordaining proven local leaders could thus be the starting point for a solution. Because the majority of proven local leaders are women, it is unavoidable that the question of their inclusion among ordained elders will arise, though present church law does not permit it.
Many dioceses may be far from ready to introduce the ordination of elders. If some dioceses could take this step, though, it would be a powerful sign of hope. Other dioceses and parishes could then see how they should develop, in the hope that we can all overcome the present shortage of priests.
http://www.uscatholic.org/ordainelders
This is indeed new ground. The concept of the ‘elder’ rests on the understanding that the parable of the Prodigal Son is about a universal spriritual journey – from a perceived need to prove oneself to the world to the realisation that ‘the world’ is in a mess because everyone else is doing the same. Repentance is essentially a realisation that this early-life journey was futile – because our value rests not in what other humans ( ‘the world’) may think of us but in the love that gave us life to begin with – the love of Abba. This is the ‘coming home’ experience that marks the transition into ‘elderhood’.
How much homiletic tedium we must endure because there is no apparent understanding of this journey by the homilist! Or any understanding that careerism and rivalry in the church are also driven by ‘worldliness’, now also known as ‘status anxiety’ – uncertainty about our own value.
If it’s OK for our bishops to look for priests from abroad, why couldn’t one of them offer a swap to Bishop Lobinger – so that ‘teams of elders’ might get a trial here?
We have two forms of priesthood in the Church, that of the faithful and the ordained priesthood. The main difference between the two resides in the sacrament of Holy Orders and the ministry that derives from it. The sacrament and the ministry are the gifts of vocation given by God.
Once ordained a priest is a priest. The notion of him being something other than a priest, (an elder) is unintelligible. Since the good bishop’s whole proposal rests on this unintelligibility, the theory runs out of steam.
Those of us who have observed the African situation first hand can identify with the MMusong situation. In the 1970’s a Spiritan priest described to me how a he saw a group of strangers approach his house one day. They were Anglicans, but since they were no longer being visited by a pastor the requested him to minister to them in future. At the time Europeans talked a lot about the lack of vocations to the priesthood in that country. Now I hear stories of priests from that country working in South Africa.
Mmusong has obviously a strong faith community of 700 from among the whole local population. That could be for a number of reasons. The priest ministering to them is one of them. Faith of course is the key reason. They are truly grateful at being allowed to stand in His presence and minister to Him. On the other hand as we see in Ireland, having two+ local masses each weekend plus mass on most weekdays does not prevent decline in faith practice for two thirds of the baptised. The 700 in Mmusong and the minority of the locally baptised Irish know transcendence. Others who have heard the word are undisturbed by His repeated “knock on the door.”
Experience from the Soviet Union shows that the faith can continue in communities for generations on a diet of prayer without the ministry of an ordained priest. It demonstrates that seeking to change the nature of the ordained priesthood in order to promote sheer institutional maintenance is not justified.
Seems very sensible. There is no reason why an Elder could not be a woman. An elder would be very valuable as they would have many years of local knowledge. They would be very much in tune with the people and experts on their won community. They would be the best person to advise the seminary trained priest what would or would not be well accepted in the community.