The Resurrection & the Priesthood: Only the Real Thing, Please

It is always funny to me when I read the results of modernist “scholarship” from the splendidly incestuous mutual admiration societies styling themselves as “Jesus Seminars” and whatnot. With­out fail, these folks (who have, like Dr. Science, a de­gree in Theology and therefore Know More Than You Do) love to speak of the people who witnessed and bore witness to the life of Jesus as though they were a pack of idiot savants.

In the modernist wonderland, Jesus was a fuddled rabbi with hopes of a better world. He was, we are assured, a profoundly inspiring person, a charis­matic leader, and a mesmerizing speaker. How inspiring, charismatic, and mesmerizing? Why, so much so that He galvanized a movement of Jews into ignoring everything He said and did, utterly forgetting His un­forgettable oratory and replacing it with reams of quotations with the precise historical value of a load of dingo kidneys. Yes, though He never walked on water or calmed a storm, the Jesus of the modernist scholar is nonetheless a miracle worker of sorts. Why, just by uttering a few sketchy epigrams about being nice, this itinerant preacher (who did not, we are as­sured, make claims of deity, multiply loaves, raise the dead, or even compose the “Our Father”) managed to transform unlettered Jewish monotheists into men who willingly blasphemed the God He preached by deifying this Nazarene cipher. So deeply inspired by the awesome figure of Jesus were they, that out of profound reverence for Him they obliterated virtually every trace of His memory and substituted in its place the ingenious fabrication called the “Gospel.”

So, it is said, there is a radical discontinuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. But, lest this disturb the faithful whose alumni donations to universities form such a vital part of the work of those who delight in being called “brilliant scholars” by The New York Times, we must here enter into what those scholars obliquely refer to as the “Easter Event.” What, pray, was that? Well, it’s far too subtle for people as ignorant as you and me to understand, but in plain bafflegab it goes something like this: The Resurrection (and the entire Gospel) is a mythic expression of the gestalt of messianic expectation alloyed with Yahwist apocalyptic, pagan fertility myth, and certain psycho­logical factors catalyzed by the Christ Event and find­ing its locus in the transsignification of the Christian community’s own self-empowering transcendence of the death of Jesus of Nazareth and exaltation of His ministry into a mode of “divine revelation.”

Translation: The real Jesus (whoever that was) is dead as a doornail and was probably eaten by wild dogs soon after the crucifixion. But since the Apostles believed in Him real hard and, like idiot savants, cre­ated the Gospel story out of whole cloth to relieve their guilt, disappointment, and religious psychosis, then we can say the Resurrection is “true” in some Pickwickian sense, so as not to disturb believing yo­kels like you and me, who fund colleges with “brilliant theologians” on their faculty.

Now, some people refer to this as “scholarship illuminating the darkness of religious ignorance.” For my part, I find it simply baffling. I mean, I can under­stand the village atheist saying boldly, “Christianity is just so much squid eyeballs!” and trampling a Bible underfoot. I can also see taking the text seriously when Paul says the Resurrection really happened and he knows 500 people who can back him up. But to say, “It’s all squid eyeballs unless you believe in your heart that it isn’t,” is just incomprehensible. It’s like saying that wishing will make the moon into green cheese. I find such statements indistinguishable from my Mom’s words to my brother when he was con­fronted with the shattering news that Santa Claus was not real. “Mike,” she said, “If you believe he’s real, then he is.” Even as a kid I thought that was either really dumb or else one of those comforting things parents say in order to keep children from bugging them too much. And I can’t help but think that mod­ernist scholars, prattling about the Easter Event while denying the historical Resurrection actually hap­pened, are also either really dumb or a collection of elitist apparatchiks who don’t want children like me to bug them too much and jeopardize their job secu­rity.

If, as I think, the latter hypothesis is the case, I can only tell them that this sheep is not comforted, nor is he fooled. For disingenuously retaining the form of the Gospel while refusing to believe a syllable of it is called, in my part of the country, BS. A little lower down the socio-economic scale and with a different dynamic, this game is practiced, not by “bril­liant scholars,” but by people like those who brought you the P.T.L. Club. But the song remains the same: Use Christian language to acquire power, money, or acclaim while spitting in the eye of Christian belief.

But of course, well-paid, highly publicized, widely acclaimed BSers are not the best people to turn to in seeking out such things as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. That’s why, despite the many accolades of brilliance outfits such as the Jesus Seminar have accumulated, I, ignoramus that I am, have not been able to bring myself to fall in drooling credulity at their feet, any more than I could prostrate myself before Jim Bakker. Chatter as modernists may, I find myself going back to the words (and violent deaths) of the people who actually saw the Risen Christ and who managed to convince others to go to their own violent deaths for that faith. They seemed to think that Easter — the empty tomb, the missing corpse, an uncanny meal with a man who can both tear physical bread and vanish without a trace — was something real, like a kiss on the lips — something worth dying for. Like any good Jew, the Apostles seemed to have little use for mental turnip ghosts like “Easter Events” and “Easter Faith.” For them, if you couldn’t see it, touch it, handle it, or eat it — like the Word made Flesh — it was either an illusion or, as Peter puts it, a “cleverly invented story.” For them, faith was a response to reality, not a holy hallucina­tion.

Now, all this was stuff I had to get quite clear in my own mind when I was on the verge of conversion to Christianity in the Evangelical fold. The question that was paramount for me (as for Paul) was not “Is this comforting?” but “Is this true, comfort or no?” In short, “Is Christ risen no matter what my feelings on the matter may be?” I concluded: “Yes He is,” a conclusion at once comforting and terrifying. Thus, I was persuaded (God, after all, being God) that I must, however pathetically, conform myself to this ulti­mate Reality rather than attempt to make it fit my agenda or bend to my wishes for pleasure, power, and a new car.

In that attempt I was greatly helped (against my own worst tendencies to self-serving delusion) by the culture of solid Evangelicalism into which I entered as a new Christian. With its hard-nosed belief in ob­jective biblical truth, Evangelical culture is what gave me a healthy contempt for the BS of both the preacher-huckster on television and the modernist scholar. The former promised health and wealth while the latter promised an “Easter Event” of some sort — if only I had enough “faith.” Evangelicalism, in crude contrast, simply repeated after Paul, “If Christ is not raised then your faith is in vain,” and said, in its blunt way, “Any faith that tries to manu­facture reality is just a con job. Faith is a response to the Real God or it’s just gas. You can’t raise Jesus by believing real hard. Rather, Christ is risen and He causes you to believe.” I still believe Evangelicals are right about that.

But since then, I have come to believe other things as well. For instance, I eventually became convinced from Scripture that the Catholic (and Ortho­dox) doctrine of the Eucharist as the literal Body and Blood of Christ is another supernatural reality which is just as real as the Resurrection. I came at last to the shocking realization that Holy Eucharist was neither a symbol nor an option (as it was in my Evangelical nondenominational church) but the very Bread of Life which I must eat in order to “have life” in me (see Jn. 6:48-58). And in so realizing, I briefly dallied with the notion that I would, from then on, “consecrate in my heart” the grape juice and crackers offered from time to time in my nondenom church’s version of the Lord’s Supper.

But dallying with this notion brought me into direct conflict with my own Evangelical demand for objective reality and truth. For the very nature of the Eucharist is that it really changes into the Body and Blood at the Consecration, just as Jesus really rose from the dead. In short, this is a miracle God performs — or not. It ain’t a thing I can wish into being by hav­ing enough positive vibes or good thoughts, any more than hallucinatory “Easter Faith” in the hearts of the Apostles could bring Jesus back from the dead. Both the Resurrection and the Consecration are external, objective facts or, as Flannery O’Connor said, “the hell with it.”

So the question became, “How does God do this miracle of Consecration and objective change in the elements of Eucharist?” Well, the one and only clue we have is the testimony of the Church that has pre­served the rite of Consecration since her inception. And that Church is emphatic in her insistence that not just any schmo is graced to perform this sacramental ac­tion, but only those schmoes whom the Holy Spirit consecrates by apostolic hands.

At this point I can hear a chorus of my old Evan­gelical friends, sympathetic to Sacraments but wary of Rome, saying, “But Mark, Scripture says (1 Pet. 2:9) you are a priest, just like the Apostles!” Yep. Scripture also says I am a king just like the Apostles (1 Cor. 4:8). But that doesn’t give me the power to write and can­onize Scripture or govern the Church. So, evidently, Paul wasn’t kidding when he also said that not every­one is granted the gifts of an Apostle (1 Cor. 12:29). The Body is one royal, priestly Body, but there are many members, many gifts. And I, at any rate, had never been given what the Apostles did give to some people. For no one had ever come to me, laid hands on me, and told me the sort of stuff Paul told Timothy and Titus. It had not been given to me to “guard the deposit of faith” or to teach, correct, rebuke, and “oversee” whole congregations as Paul’s successor and viceroy.

So, what is that “deposit of faith” which Timothy and other bishops like him were to guard? Well, the apostolic preaching of course. But, according to the unanimous testimony of the bishops themselves, it was more than that. It is Jesus Christ Himself, the Word made flesh, that they are to hand down from one generation to the next. And, according to both their word and the word of Scripture, that handing down takes place not merely in preaching but in the very literal handing over of the Body and Blood of the Lord in Eucharist. The Bread of Life, says Jesus, is not “my teaching” but “my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (Jn. 6:51). Thus, to hand over apostolically the Word who is Jesus is to hand over the Bread of Life, which is the Word made Flesh — the Eucharist.

So then the Eucharist and its Consecration are at the very heart of the apostolic duty. And, as St. Jus­tin Martyr observed, it was given by Christ, not to ev­eryone but to the Apostles alone and to those whom they chose as successors. In short, the power to con­secrate is a spiritual gift given to the Apostles alone (and to those they chose to succeed them) so that all may be built up in love. Now, a priest, as Hebrews ob­served, cannot appoint himself but must be called by God, as Jesus was, and as the Apostles whom He chose were (Heb. 5.4; Mt. 10:40). Thus, if I wanted the Eucharist, I had to go where Apostolic Succession was, not just “consecrate the Eucharist in my heart.” I needed to be related to apostolic truth and author­ity, not to my own belly button.

So it was that I found myself taking the Sacra­ment of Holy Orders seriously and recognizing (whether I liked it or not) that Communion really does involve communion and not just individualistic, atomized Me ‘n’ Jesus spirituality. To obey Jesus in receiving His sacramental Body, I am quite literally forced by the way He has set things up to receive Him in his ecclesial Body as well (and thus to learn love, willy nilly). This, after the initial jolt, has worked out for my blessing (of course!). For it has forced me to recognize my dependence, not merely on some ab­stract Providence to which I can address polite prayers, but on Fr. So-and-So (who is an annoying man whom I arrogantly regard as my intellectual inferior, yet to whom I am indebted for my very soul by the grace of God). Left to myself, my “spirituality” would be a very greasy lubricant for pride. In the hands of Christ and His actual Church of real human beings, I receive, via the men He calls to Holy Orders, concrete chances for love, gratitude, and forgiveness. I learn, in the rough and tumble of real Church life, the truth of St. John’s maxim that I cannot love God, whom I have not seen, if I can’t even bring myself to love my fellow parishioners, my priest, and Pope, whom I have seen.

Which brings me to a peculiar pass as I survey American Catholicism. Today the Gospel is being treated like a navel-gazing political fantasy just as the Jesus Seminar (and I) tried to make it a theological fantasy. I hear the priesthood discussed precisely as though it were our creation and not a grace God has handed to us and commanded us not to break or mess around with. And nowhere is this more clear than in the current struggle to redefine the Sacra­ment of Holy Orders as a civil right.

I should make it clear that the question of women’s ordination is largely a matter of indifference to me. Rome has recently spoken on the matter once again, and I defer to the Holy Father here as I do in so many other issues. If the Pope had issued an apostolic letter demanding rather than forbidding women’s or­dination, I would have acquiesced, for the simple rea­son that, in such matters, I walk in wonders beyond me and assume that God guides His Church. Thus, for my own part, I do not understand or especially care about the question of why women’s ordination is or is not legitimate any more than I fret myself over why I, a married man, may not be ordained.

But it’s not because I “care nothing for the rights of women,” but because I care nothing for “rights talk” by anyone — male or female — in the light of the Cross. It seems to me silly and shallow in the extreme to speak of Holy Orders as a “right” when the whole Gospel (including the Holy Orders part) is a gift bought with blood and sovereignly distributed by the Crucified One. It seems to me to get the entire matter off on a hopelessly wrong footing to declare, “Women are just as good as men,” when the whole screaming spectacle of Golgotha announces quite plainly that such equality is not exactly a feather in one’s cap.

So then, I repeat, I am of sheeplike opinion in the matter of women’s ordination and the nature of Holy Orders, duly obeying the Holy Father since I am a dweeb who realized a long time ago there’s a lot I don’t understand and so I need guidance. But, though I am an ignorant sheep, I have noticed one curious phenomenon that has bothered me. Namely, most of the arguments I have heard in favor of revamping Holy Orders have been articulated using the language of power rather than the language of love and grace. In short, like the Jesus Seminar and like my own fantasy of “consecrating the Eucharist in my heart,” the arguments in favor of women’s ordi­nation have had precious little to do with what Jesus said and did, and a great deal to do with recasting the Gospel as a human fiction so that we can get what we want without inconvenience to ourselves.

For example, virtually all the arguments have proceeded (in the media to which I have been exposed) as a debate about civil rights. The hierarchy (I am told by interview upon NPR interview with dis­senting Sister Blah-Di-Blah) is, in this as in a jillion other respects, “holding on to power.” Now, while all this may, for all I know, be true, it does not exactly fill me with confidence in the arguments of those reli­gious revolutionaries who would storm this supposed ecclesial Bastille. For they very clearly regard the con­flict as being a power conflict. And to resolve the is­sue, they want power, plain and simple. As they them­selves make clear, this is what they are convinced is at the heart of the matter.

Now, this is natural. Like certain television evangelists, the “brilliant scholars” of the Jesus Seminar, and the various people craving ordination as a path to power, the Apostles also fancied that power (whether in the form of control, money, or human acclaim) was what made the world go round. Indeed, we know (because they somehow acquired the humility to admit it) that they got into disputes on nu­merous occasions concerning “who was the great­est.” Yet strangely, their Master did not endorse this ideology of power. He calls His Church not merely to act naturally, but to act supernaturally. Thus, Christ was woefully out of touch with current trends in both the academy and in much of feminist theology; He seemed to actually think that the heart of the matter was to be the least and to relinquish power for the sake of others. He commanded self-sacrifice, not domination. And He established the priestly office of the Apostles with the command to share in His own act of supreme renunciation in love on Calvary. (Not, alas, that His priests have always imitated Him.)

But regardless of the failure of His priests, the fact remains that Jesus had the right as the Supreme Lover to do whatever He liked (including establish Holy Orders and choose only males), whereas we have no rights — none whatsoever — to compel Him to gift us. Thus, the language of “rights” is, for me, gratingly and grindingly deaf to the love poured out on the Cross. In the face of such self-sacrifice, the babble of NPR-style “rights talk” simply has no place whatsoever in the debate. Show me a legion of St. Thérèses, desperate for the priesthood so that they might throw their lives away for the love of Christ, and I would (until the Holy Father resolved the mat­ter in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis) have found the case for women’s ordination more compelling. But prattle about some “right” to Holy Orders and you mystify me. It makes as much sense as a Pickwickian “Easter Faith” in a Jesus whose corpse was eaten by wild dogs. It seems to me as hallucinatory as my own muddled notions about my “right” to consecrate the Body and Blood of Jesus in my heart. The very at­tempt to place the Gospel in such a realm of domination and control is a sheer contradiction to the uniquely Christian conception of a priest whose pri­mary purpose is to offer his life in union with Him who gave up all rights, all power, and His very spirit on Golgotha. I may as well claim the right to raid the Tabernacle for a midnight snack when I have a mind to — as they say, “It’s my Church too.”

It is, then, the babble of “rights talk,” the notion that the Gospel is a mere human fiction — whether theological, political, or psychological — to which I object. The Gospel, as Luther said to Melancthon, is “outside you.” It is Jesus, the Word made flesh, truly (not Pickwickianly) risen, full of grace and love (not domination and control). It is, in the profoundest sense of the words, not mine. For I did not choose Jesus; He, the Revelation of the Father, chose me in my grotesque and sinful pride. And He has set me in a family wherein my gifts are not infinite and are delim­ited by His own authority. I shall never be a priest — or a football coach, a mother, a rich man, a president, or a famous actor. But I shall have the pleasure of lov­ing them all — if only I forsake my pride and abandon the language of power and rights. It is as easy, and as hard, as receiving the Eucharist like a little child. But the Eucharist will only truly help me if it is real. And it will only be real if it is His and not a counter in a child­ish game to see who is the greatest.