Role of the Community in Priesthood

A topic came around in Maddies, the online "pub" I hang out in, and it got me thinking about to what extent a person can be a priest without being in a community as a priest.

My initial response, which I didn't voice in the pub mostly because I wanted to think it over more, was that a priest without a community isn't really a priest. It seems to me that there is some justification of this view. First, a priest is a servant of the ecclesia (an assembly) which, by definition, has to include more people than the priest. Second, one of the major roles of a priest is to "do" the sacraments and they all require the presence of others in order to be effected.

This focus on the functionality of being a priest seems to deny, however, that there is any ontological change involved in becoming a priest, which is not consistent with what the church teaches. This contradiction to my initial response is why I have been puzzling over the question for a while. I think the answer to the difficulty lies in how we understand the nature of the world around us. I don't think I've blogged about it before, but looking around it looks to me like there is a gap between perception and reality. This gap is what enables pollsters among others to "spin" the news, what is perceived is not limited to what has really happened, although the facts of the matter do place some limits on the extent and direction in which a set of circumstances can be spun.

Turning to priesthood now, let me suggest that in ordination God acts to form the core reality of a person in such a way as to help them point to Him/Her/It more effectively, partially by adjusting the way they are perceived by others, but also by the (rejectible) grace of knowing that God is acting through them all the time, both in ways they can recognize and in ways they may only see long after the fact. In other words, being ordained permanently changes the person by making them a publicly identified conduit for God's grace. This ties in with the functionality of being a priest, but also ties in the deep and abiding change that really occurs. This also makes sense of how a priest can stop functioning as a priest whenever one is deposed. The deposition changes how they are perceived in the same way that the immorality that probably preceded the deposition changed the way the injured one perceived the priest, but it doesn't change the reality that the deposed priest is still a priest and may, under very restricted terms, function as a priest. This is also why no re-ordination is required when a deposition is removed or lifted or whatever.

Of course all of this talk about the nature of priesthood is going on while most priests have day jobs which only occasionally require them to act as priests (even for those who work in the church).

Looking around the AC things are still as messy as they have been since the Windsor Report came out. The newest news entering into this situation is that Nigeria is moving to outlaw homosexuality and prevent homosexuals from gathering or speaking in their own defence. Sadly, in spite of the repeated calls by Lambeth Conferences, the Church of Nigeria is an outspoken proponent of these new laws.

Also the Epicopal Church's General Convention is coming up pretty soon. Four candidates for the PB's job have been announced, check ENS for more info there, and there has been still more debate about what to do about the Windsor Report, although no report has come from the committee assigned to provide information about what might reasonably be done.

Jon

ubi caritas deus ibi est