Address of His Excellency the Most Reverend Mauro Piacenza, Secretary
of the Congregation for the Clergy, on the occasion of the inauguration of the
Study Day promoted by the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Roma
Most Reverend Dean (Rev. Diego Contreras)
Reverend and Esteemed Contributors and
Professors
Dear Priests, male and female Religious,
Dear brothers,
I am very pleased to be invited
to preside at this First Session of your Study Day bearing the title
“Communication in the Mission of the Priest”, inaugurated especially during
this Year for Priests, which the Holy Father Benedict XVI hopes will “encourage
priests in this striving for spiritual perfection on which, above all, the
effectiveness of their ministry depends”[1]
The
effectiveness of the ministry, guaranteed, in its essential aspects by Divine
Grace, described, as Thomism reminds us, as ex opera operato, is also
entrusted mysteriously and at the same time strikingly to the freedom of each
individual Priest and along the course of a progressive essential conformation
to Christ, the One High Priest, beginning in the Sacrament of Order and
continuing throughout the period of our earthly existence.
Every
Priest is par excellence, in this sense, a “man of communication”: of
the communication with God and of God’s communication with the brethren
entrusted to him in the solicitude of the ministry.
In
inaugurating this study day I intend to underline, following the course of the
interventions that are foreseen, three aspects of the communication of the
priest which I hold to be essential.
1. The Priest, Man of Communication
As the Letter to the Hebrews
reminds us, “Every high priest is taken from among men and made their
representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (Hb. 5:
1-2).
The priest is a man related
totally to God in the only “relativism” in which one could possibly take pride.
He is a man made up of the divine Mercy in the precise function of representing
Christ himself: he is an alter Christus, as the best ecclesial tradition
teaches. In that sense, regardless of his personal abilities as a communicator,
he is established in the representative-communication of Christ himself: the
Priest and the Priesthood are not self-sufficient or independent of Christ and,
were this to happen, may God forbid, he would lose his proper missionary
strength, reducing himself to a mere human reality, unable as a consequence to
“communicate” and to represent the Master.
The same exercise of the three
priestly munera is eminently an
act of communication. I refer here not only to the munus docendi, which achieves this in a direct and
immediate manner in preaching and catechesis, but also to the munus sanctificandi, in that extraordinary form of heavenly
communication that is the Divine Liturgy, which adheres to his own precise
rules of communication that are never to be subject to personal manipulation or
adjustment, and to the munus
regendi through which priests are
called to communicate the solicitude of Christ the Head, the Good Shepherd, who
pastures his flock by means of his ministers, thereby to lead it to the Father.
The
comprehension, and the re-comprehension where necessary, of the substantial
ontological-representative nature of the ministerial Priest, distinct from the
baptismal priesthood, constitutes today a real priority for the Clergy both
during initial and ongoing formation.
The
Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches in this regard: “This sacrament configures the recipient to
Christ by a special grace of the Holy Spirit, so that he may serve as Christ's
instrument for his Church. By ordination one is enabled to act as a
representative of Christ, Head of the Church, in his triple office of priest,
prophet, and king” (n.1581).
The
first and most effective condition so that each Priest can consciously assume
the responsibility of “communication” which he puts in place is determined by
the comprehension of his own authentic and deep identity, sacramentally and
definitively determined, which can never be lost and which is, for this reason,
objectively the “communication” of the Divine. The Holy Father, casting light
on the essential nucleus of the spirituality of John Mary Vianney, in whose 150th
anniversary we celebrate the Year for Priests, identified it as the “complete identification
with his own ministry”. It is exactly this identification that is the
irreplaceable condition of every effective “communication”.
2. The Priest,
“Communicator” of the Church and in the Church.
The second
suggestion, which appears of some urgency for me to give for your
consideration, concerns the undeserved and the not rarely embarrassing
proliferation of “priest-stars”, found in many means of communication,
especially the television, without any permission of their Ordinary and without
any real possibility of control on the part of the legitimate ecclesiastical
authority.
If on the one hand it would be
desirable, in all honesty, to have in such fields a timely reflection on the
service of “oversight” of Ordinaries – epi-scopé (one does not
have in mind a suffocating policed regime, but a sense of responsibility and of
pastoral charity for all, believers and non-believers alike), on the other hand
the frequency, perhaps even in the majority of cases, with which certain
priests, and even religious, distance themselves, even sometimes seriously,
from the common doctrine, and not only in the sphere of morality but also de
fide. It is the sign of the confusion of their own conscious identity which
causes, quite often, disorientation amongst the lay faithful and the common
listener, who find themselves faced with a sometimes jarring contrast of the
“official doctrine of the Church” and that which is “communicated” (I would add
“poorly”!) by the reigning “priest-star”.
We know full well how the world, in
the johannine sense of the word, and not a few Media amply fulfil this role,
has always sought to distort the Truth, to confuse and, above all, to obscure
the powerful unity of Catholic doctrine, both understood in its own right as a
complete system of understanding which has its proper supernatural origin in
God himself, and with respect to the real unity of the ecclesial Body which, as
we know well, is the rich seed of effective witness, as the priestly prayer
teaches: “ut unum sint”.
It
is more important now than ever to avoid the proliferation of that which I have
no fear in naming as a communications “Wild-West”, in which some priests
portray themselves as speaking in the name of the Church and, representing it
in fact, at least by virtue of their sacramental ordination, they cause
division and confusion, truly damaging the unity and effectiveness of the
ecclesial and evangelical communication. If one considers the extent to which
such media contributions can reach, by virtue to the means utilised (sometimes
to millions of people), the responsibility borne becomes truly incalculable.
The very clear words of the Lord come to mind: “whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven” (Mt. 5: 19).
Your
very useful Faculty, the first of its kind, which is so well integrated into the
round of academic disciplines at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross,
also includes the following within its scope: to clarify the epistemological
state of Communication, considered within the category of “institutional”, also
identifying and forming the ‘agents’ who will be officially enabled for such a task.
Probably
a part of the Church, and of the episcopal Body within her called to ‘oversee’,
must yet fully take on board the important significance, even on the
anthropological level, that the so-called “media revolution” has had in recent
decades, and will continue to have, and which, after the French and Industrial
revolutions, is the most important of modernity.
3. Communication as a means.
The
last observation I would like to offer you, before giving the floor to Prof.
Philip Goyert, concerns the meaning and the correct theological ‘positioning’
of communication.
It
is not by chance that a certain semantic elision has been created between the
terms “communion” (Communio) and “communication”, seeking to identify
real or presumed “Trinitarian roots” of human communication. If it clear that man
is always the agent, or at least one of the agents, of communication, and that
man has been created in the imagine of the Triune God, and is called to grow in
his likeness, nevertheless the identification of the abovementioned terms does
not appear strictly justified.
Communio belongs to the order of ends and it is
absolutely necessary to respect its nature, especially and above all within
theological discourse. Communication, on the other hand, belongs to the order
of means and may quite legitimately be called a means, perhaps even one of the
most effective, to reach, or more exactly to welcome, Communio.
I hold that reflection upon,
and appreciation of, the “instrumental” nature and the “finalisation” of
communication to Communion is an indispensable premise for any theological
thinking which seeks to give a truly edifying contribution, and which allows,
even to the communication of Priests, a real finalisation which, in the last
analysis, would simply respond to the question: “Is what I am communicating of
the Church? Does it favour communion? Do I communicate to my listener, that is
to say do I place him in communion with two thousand years of Christian
History?”.
Of extraordinary effectiveness
for the communication of the Priest, and I conclude with this, is that which
was recalled in the Encyclical Caritas in
Veritate of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI: “Charity in truth places
man before the astonishing experience of gift. Gratuitousness is present in our
lives in many different forms, which often go unrecognized because of a purely
consumerist and utilitarian view of life.
The human being is made for
gift, which expresses and makes present his transcendent dimension. Sometimes
modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life
and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in
upon himself, and it is a consequence — to express it in faith terms — of original
sin. The Church's wisdom has always pointed to the presence of original sin
in social conditions and in the structure of society: “Ignorance of the fact
that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in
the areas of education, politics, social action and morals” (CCC n.407)” (CV
n.34).
Clearly it can be a cause of
great error even in the field of communication, and of “Communication in the
mission of the Priest”, and so I wish all of you from my heart a fruitful
labour.
[1] Benedict XVI, Allocution to the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation for the Clergy, 16th March 2009.