In Catholicism, there is the concept that the priest stands in the place of Christ the High Priest on the altar and unites those gathered to the sacrifice on Mount Calvary, to the Last Supper, and to the Eucharists (Thanksgivings) celebrated by Christians throughout time and space forward and backward. It's both a sacrifice and a celebratory communal meal. At least, that's my conception of it- I don't claim to be the Pope. 
Now, there are problems that develop with people's understanding of this, in my view. For example, some say that women can not be priests because they can not stand in the place of Christ, because Jesus was a man. Of course, the male priests we have were probably in most cases not born of a Virgin, like Jesus, and aren't fully divine (Although some may think they are ) as well as fully human, like Jesus (I'll give them the human half ), and so this entire bit of logic breaks down as far as I'm concerned. In Christ there is no male or female, and a woman represents Christ as much as a man to me.
However, this thread isn't about women in the priesthood. I put in that last paragraph primarily to address the elephant in the room, so to speak, that I embrace the concept of the priest standing in the person of Christ, even though I do not embrace all the concepts it is sometimes used to justify (Theology can be correct and at the same time misapplied), so I can move on to my point (Which is going to start with me talking about me walking my dog- I'm not known for my long posts for nothing ).
Anyway, I was walking my dog this evening, and we happened to go past a Methodist congregation that was having an evening Ash Wednesday service. Now, for those who don't have their "Christian Churches in America" handbook within reach, Methodists are kind of in practice somewhere between Lutherans and Baptists on my Catholic to Baptist scale of similarity. The Methodists in theory spring from the Church of England, which is in communion with the Episcopal Church, and the Episcopal Church is very snugly next to Roman Catholicism on my imaginary chart, but in practice, in America today, they are not next to Episcopalians, they move right past Lutherans, and somewhere before Baptists, there they are.
I was a little bit surprised on this walk, though, because I could hear the minister, presumably, yelling at the top of his lungs. Yes, through the doors at the back of the church, to the sidewalk, over the music I was listening to on headphones. I couldn't hear what I he was saying, but, you know, wow.
When I was growing up, I had this conception that when you went outside the Roman Catholic Church, unless you were talking about the Eastern Orthodox or something, when you were talking about Protestants, that they were all highly conservative fire and brimstone people who didn't believe in evolution, drinking, or dancing, and condemned everyone to hell. Like a lot of childhood misconceptions- actually, all of them, because the use of the word misconception implies this- that was wrong. Not all Protestants are like that. I'd later walk into Episcopalian parishes that were more left or liberal and pro-science than I'd have imagined possible, where the priests never raised their voices, and so on and so forth, that basically reminded me of some of my favorite Catholic parishes.
I've also, on occasion, seem a mass where a priest has raised his voice in a Roman Catholic setting. It's extremely rare in my experience. I think they must teach you not to do that in seminary, but I can remember as a child we had a priest from India for a while that would talk in this soothing dry monotone for about 20 minutes, and just as you were closing your eyes would build up to some sort of shouting about hell that would jolt you out of your seat- we tried to avoid his masses. He was actually a nice guy, it was just, well, the shouting. I kind of wonder if that's why that parish stopped listing which priest would be saying which mass the next week by the mass times in the bulletin. Maybe the seminaries are different in India.
So, what's the bottom line with this and how does it relate to the priest standing in the person of Christ?
I think in the homily, and really throughout the mass, the liturgy of the Word as well as the liturgy of the Eucharist, that the priest in a symbolic way is standing in the person of Christ in the sense that he is representing God to us. This is why a screaming or yelling priest is so bad. It's not just standing in a room with someone ranting or raving, it's that this person is standing in authority as the designated representative of the bishop, in union with the Pope, who reads us the words of institution in the role of Christ in the last supper, telling us we're going straight to hell for random things.
You know, that's not the type of God I want to believe in. Is it the type of God you want to believe in? I think that it's important that priests keep in mind, and maybe this is taught in the seminaries and why so few priests actually do the fire and brimstone shouting thing in practice, that they are many people's point of contact with the divine.
God is present in a more meaningful way in the Eucharist, and God speaks through the scriptures and through his creation, including people around us. God is in us and through us. There is nothing that is not God. However, we don't always perceive all that. What we do understand is the special ordained role of the priest when someone is standing on a podium interpreting scripture and tradition at mass- that's hard to miss.
Often psychologists talk about people's view of God being colored subconsciously by their relationship with their biological fathers. That, for some people, without realizing it, they think of God as sort of a supreme all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful version of their Dad. This is part of why sometimes people with abusive fathers have a hard time with the concept of a Heavenly Father.
Now, in some cases, people may replace that abusive father with the idea of a true better Father in heaven, but oftentimes subconsciously people can't separate one from the other. This is part of why there is a push in some quarters for the use of more gender-neutral (i.e. God described as simply God or by attributes like Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer, not Father, not Mother- God, who is love) or mixed-gender metaphors (i.e. Alternately calling God Mother as well as Father, or using something like Father-Mother). I think a lot of folks assume that these type of pushes for gender-neutral language and the like are all just straight forward feminism. That's not always the case- there are pastoral reasons like the one I mentioned as well (And that's not the only one, but I'm going to get back on track here with the post and go where I need to go with it rather than fall down that rabbit hole We'll do a thread about that some other time. ).
Just like our biological fathers, or adoptive fathers or step-fathers or whomever we actually grew up with, I don't want to leave those out, may color our relationships with God in a sub-conscious way, I think so too sometimes does our relationship with priests and pastors, even if that relationship is just a matter of sitting in a pew and passively listening or occasionally wandering into a confessional.
Often, the focus is on the priest in the person of Christ in the consecration of the Eucharist. However, I think it is important also, maybe, in considering the direction of our Church in the future, to understand that, for many people, perhaps in a less literal but not necessarily a less influential way, the priest represents God in his or her other roles.
This is part of why, in my view, it is vital for priests to present God as a God of love and inclusion, because they really do symbolically stand in for God for many of their parishioners.
Of course, priests are only human, and I think we've overemphasized them as these imposing divinely created figures over the years. They had bad days. They make mistakes. They're regular, broken human beings just like the rest of us. However, I don't think that anyone from a pulpit should as a matter of course plan to every so often start yelling at hell every once in a while. That's just wrong. I can see priests losing their temper, but they should try to do better. Our seminaries should teach them to do better. And I think they largely do when it comes to the actual yelling/not yelling thing, but the way doctrine and consequences are presented is sometimes in just as strict a way, but in an even-tempered voice, and even though the voice may be even tempered, I don't think that the content always represents God.
We should always be teaching love. We should always be taught love. I think this is where some of the younger conservative rigid priests who have sometimes come out of the seminaries to replace the wonderful Spirit of Vatican II priests who sadly are largely gone now have gotten it horribly wrong. Pope Francis is turning us back around to the Spirit of Vatican II, and I wonder if the most recent priests are getting it right again because of that. What have your experiences been? What are the youngest or newest priests coming our of seminaries you've seen like these days?
So, anyway, the point is not to reinforce clericalism on my part, I think the point is understanding that is important that we have priests who understand who they represent to people and interpret everything through the lens of love and inclusivity. That they understand that when they are rigid and talk about hellfire, that it is not always for some people, at least subconsciously, that person in the pulpit who has an opinion just like their own, but at least subconsciously, on a level they may not understand, something that changes how they think of God.
I am not saying we somehow create God. However, what we do create collective is a way of viewing God. God is God, but God as an abstraction is based in part on how we represent God to each other. Let's represent God as the God we want God to be, and not as the God we fear God might be.
Hopefully this is long enough to make up for all of my posts that are basically just links to cool articles I've found.
Now, there are problems that develop with people's understanding of this, in my view. For example, some say that women can not be priests because they can not stand in the place of Christ, because Jesus was a man. Of course, the male priests we have were probably in most cases not born of a Virgin, like Jesus, and aren't fully divine (Although some may think they are
) as well as fully human, like Jesus (I'll give them the human half ), and so this entire bit of logic breaks down as far as I'm concerned. In Christ there is no male or female, and a woman represents Christ as much as a man to me. However, this thread isn't about women in the priesthood. I put in that last paragraph primarily to address the elephant in the room, so to speak, that I embrace the concept of the priest standing in the person of Christ, even though I do not embrace all the concepts it is sometimes used to justify (Theology can be correct and at the same time misapplied), so I can move on to my point (Which is going to start with me talking about me walking my dog- I'm not known for my long posts for nothing
).Anyway, I was walking my dog this evening, and we happened to go past a Methodist congregation that was having an evening Ash Wednesday service. Now, for those who don't have their "Christian Churches in America" handbook within reach, Methodists are kind of in practice somewhere between Lutherans and Baptists on my Catholic to Baptist scale of similarity. The Methodists in theory spring from the Church of England, which is in communion with the Episcopal Church, and the Episcopal Church is very snugly next to Roman Catholicism on my imaginary chart, but in practice, in America today, they are not next to Episcopalians, they move right past Lutherans, and somewhere before Baptists, there they are.
I was a little bit surprised on this walk, though, because I could hear the minister, presumably, yelling at the top of his lungs. Yes, through the doors at the back of the church, to the sidewalk, over the music I was listening to on headphones. I couldn't hear what I he was saying, but, you know, wow.
When I was growing up, I had this conception that when you went outside the Roman Catholic Church, unless you were talking about the Eastern Orthodox or something, when you were talking about Protestants, that they were all highly conservative fire and brimstone people who didn't believe in evolution, drinking, or dancing, and condemned everyone to hell. Like a lot of childhood misconceptions- actually, all of them, because the use of the word misconception implies this- that was wrong. Not all Protestants are like that. I'd later walk into Episcopalian parishes that were more left or liberal and pro-science than I'd have imagined possible, where the priests never raised their voices, and so on and so forth, that basically reminded me of some of my favorite Catholic parishes.
I've also, on occasion, seem a mass where a priest has raised his voice in a Roman Catholic setting. It's extremely rare in my experience. I think they must teach you not to do that in seminary, but I can remember as a child we had a priest from India for a while that would talk in this soothing dry monotone for about 20 minutes, and just as you were closing your eyes would build up to some sort of shouting about hell that would jolt you out of your seat- we tried to avoid his masses.
He was actually a nice guy, it was just, well, the shouting. I kind of wonder if that's why that parish stopped listing which priest would be saying which mass the next week by the mass times in the bulletin. Maybe the seminaries are different in India. So, what's the bottom line with this and how does it relate to the priest standing in the person of Christ?
I think in the homily, and really throughout the mass, the liturgy of the Word as well as the liturgy of the Eucharist, that the priest in a symbolic way is standing in the person of Christ in the sense that he is representing God to us. This is why a screaming or yelling priest is so bad. It's not just standing in a room with someone ranting or raving, it's that this person is standing in authority as the designated representative of the bishop, in union with the Pope, who reads us the words of institution in the role of Christ in the last supper, telling us we're going straight to hell for random things.
You know, that's not the type of God I want to believe in. Is it the type of God you want to believe in? I think that it's important that priests keep in mind, and maybe this is taught in the seminaries and why so few priests actually do the fire and brimstone shouting thing in practice, that they are many people's point of contact with the divine.
God is present in a more meaningful way in the Eucharist, and God speaks through the scriptures and through his creation, including people around us. God is in us and through us. There is nothing that is not God. However, we don't always perceive all that. What we do understand is the special ordained role of the priest when someone is standing on a podium interpreting scripture and tradition at mass- that's hard to miss.
Often psychologists talk about people's view of God being colored subconsciously by their relationship with their biological fathers. That, for some people, without realizing it, they think of God as sort of a supreme all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful version of their Dad. This is part of why sometimes people with abusive fathers have a hard time with the concept of a Heavenly Father.
Now, in some cases, people may replace that abusive father with the idea of a true better Father in heaven, but oftentimes subconsciously people can't separate one from the other. This is part of why there is a push in some quarters for the use of more gender-neutral (i.e. God described as simply God or by attributes like Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer, not Father, not Mother- God, who is love) or mixed-gender metaphors (i.e. Alternately calling God Mother as well as Father, or using something like Father-Mother). I think a lot of folks assume that these type of pushes for gender-neutral language and the like are all just straight forward feminism. That's not always the case- there are pastoral reasons like the one I mentioned as well (And that's not the only one, but I'm going to get back on track here with the post and go where I need to go with it rather than fall down that rabbit hole
We'll do a thread about that some other time. ).Just like our biological fathers, or adoptive fathers or step-fathers or whomever we actually grew up with, I don't want to leave those out, may color our relationships with God in a sub-conscious way, I think so too sometimes does our relationship with priests and pastors, even if that relationship is just a matter of sitting in a pew and passively listening or occasionally wandering into a confessional.
Often, the focus is on the priest in the person of Christ in the consecration of the Eucharist. However, I think it is important also, maybe, in considering the direction of our Church in the future, to understand that, for many people, perhaps in a less literal but not necessarily a less influential way, the priest represents God in his or her other roles.
This is part of why, in my view, it is vital for priests to present God as a God of love and inclusion, because they really do symbolically stand in for God for many of their parishioners.
Of course, priests are only human, and I think we've overemphasized them as these imposing divinely created figures over the years. They had bad days. They make mistakes. They're regular, broken human beings just like the rest of us. However, I don't think that anyone from a pulpit should as a matter of course plan to every so often start yelling at hell every once in a while. That's just wrong. I can see priests losing their temper, but they should try to do better. Our seminaries should teach them to do better. And I think they largely do when it comes to the actual yelling/not yelling thing, but the way doctrine and consequences are presented is sometimes in just as strict a way, but in an even-tempered voice, and even though the voice may be even tempered, I don't think that the content always represents God.
We should always be teaching love. We should always be taught love. I think this is where some of the younger conservative rigid priests who have sometimes come out of the seminaries to replace the wonderful Spirit of Vatican II priests who sadly are largely gone now have gotten it horribly wrong. Pope Francis is turning us back around to the Spirit of Vatican II, and I wonder if the most recent priests are getting it right again because of that. What have your experiences been? What are the youngest or newest priests coming our of seminaries you've seen like these days?
So, anyway, the point is not to reinforce clericalism on my part, I think the point is understanding that is important that we have priests who understand who they represent to people and interpret everything through the lens of love and inclusivity. That they understand that when they are rigid and talk about hellfire, that it is not always for some people, at least subconsciously, that person in the pulpit who has an opinion just like their own, but at least subconsciously, on a level they may not understand, something that changes how they think of God.
I am not saying we somehow create God. However, what we do create collective is a way of viewing God. God is God, but God as an abstraction is based in part on how we represent God to each other. Let's represent God as the God we want God to be, and not as the God we fear God might be.
Hopefully this is long enough to make up for all of my posts that are basically just links to cool articles I've found.
