Priestly Identity: A Study in the Theology of Priesthood
Thomas J McGovernFour Courts Press, Dublin, £19.65 (1-85182-655-6)
This is a book that makes me glad I am an Anglican. McGovern is a priest of the Opus Dei prelature and a student chaplain in Dublin and this substantial book is a model of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. It acknowledges at the outset that there is a crisis at hand, especially in Europe and North America, where defections from the priesthood run alongside a dramatic decline in vocations. The well-known former parish priest of St Francis of Assisi in West London, Oliver McTernan, is one of the most recent losses, lamenting the suppression of the reforming spirit of Vatican II. Of course McGovern’s book is a thinly veiled attack on the direction of Vatican II, if not on the actually content - which necessarily is beyond criticism. He argues that Catholicism ‘from about the time of Vatican II’ (what a coincidence) had begun to slide towards Reformation theology, especially in embracing notions of the priesthood of all believers. This in turn led to a functionalist view of priests, no longer keepers of the cult, but preachers of the word. He maintains that secularisation and agenda-specific cultural forces have lured priests into becoming Christian social workers, promoting the latest cultural issue, whether feminism or ecology.
McGovern has been inspired by the teachings of the present Pope, John Paul II, and quotes from them extensively. He responds to the Holy Father’s 1985 analysis of the clerical crisis that sees the underlying problems as anaemic spirituality, theological dissent and deficient formation, by suggesting that priestly identity needs to be clarified in three overlapping areas: theological, spiritual and pastoral.
McGovern’s last major work was Priestly Celibacy Today (1998) so it is hardly surprising that he devotes one of the first 4 chapters, dealing with theological issues, to re-affirming the centrality of celibacy. He returns to this theme at other places in the book especially as he examines the need for a unity between the spiritual life of the priest and his ministry, a unity which would prevent the dysfunctionality which has surfaced in all the current sexual scandals. It is in the three chapters on the spiritual life and five on pastoral ministry that I found the most resonances and challenges. Although in the section on Mary the ‘Mother of priests’ I found the assertion that ‘in the Eucharist we receive not only the verum corpus natum ex Maria virgine but, in a very real sense, Mary’s own flesh and blood for our nourishment’ hard to swallow.
The book is written primarily for Roman priests but at a time when lay presidency at the Eucharist is being discussed within Anglicanism, this will fuel the conservative arguments.
Church Times
