15. Bishop Untener's Views

An Argument Against Priestesses

Giving the appearance of orthodoxy, he maintains the usage of "in persona Christi," while evacuating it of any authentic meaning. His claim of a shift in its understanding "since the 1940's" is not substantiated since it was already well developed in the scholastic tradition. Our deepening appreciation of it has been a legitimate instance of the operation of the universal ordinary magisterium under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As such it takes upon itself a level of certitude, dare I say infallibility, especially in regards to its five citations in the Vatican II documents. Counciliar teachings do not have to be statistically verified. The bishop, trying to find any loophole for women priests, like yourself, ignored this point.

But, perhaps you are not familair with his views? Let me briefly summarize them. He caricatures, and I believe falsely, the teaching as mere "impersonation," no different from an actor pretending to be someone else in a contemporary drama.

Opposed to St. Jerome's supposedly "false translation" of the Greek (and here I will transliterate) "en prosopo Christou" (2 Corinthians 2:10) as "in persona Christi," the bishop claims it really means "in the presence of Christ" or "before (the face of) Christ." Although these renditions of the word "prosopon" have some validity, he forgot that the Vulgate remains the official ecclesiastical translation. In contrast, you will avow that the "persona" manifested is the divine Second Person of the Blessed Trinity but disavow his male-differentiated humanity. Christ's identity can never be split. Thus in summary, Bishop Untener actually removes the ontological reality of Christ's presence at the altar and you divide it.

Ecumenically, Anglo-Catholics and Orthodox churches concur with us, even if they might use different terminology. For Eastern Christians, the priest is considered "an icon of Christ." It must be remembered that icons are considered more than images. They are venerated as somehow holding God's presence in them. To say that a priest acts as Christ's icon, means that we can experience the undivided person of Christ in him. To make this identification even more complete, the constitutive element of a priest's maleness is supplemented by such accidentals as vestments and beard.

Bishop Untener may be correct in that the Mass is a drama; but, the priest is more than an actor. Every Mass is Christ's, the principal celebrant. Unless he is present in the person of the priest, this assertion becomes nonsense. He minimized the meaning of the prosopon or mask and you ignored this Greek source entirely. An actor in ancient Greek theater would hold up a prosopon or face to disquise his countenance. More than simply "impersonating" the character as in modern drama, the face he held allowed him to take unto himself a new, even if pseudo-real, identity. These transformations became so thorough, that many of the ancients considered acting to be a vocation.

In the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, AD, over the identity of Jesus, prosopon was understood as an external concrete apparition, the appearance of the "physis". The physis was a set of characteristics or properties, in other words, that which made up the nature of a thing. However, even in this context, the word prosopon was strengthened by the term "hypostasis." [This was because some feared what you have done, the dividing of Christ in two.] This last word was closely connected with the term "persona" in the West. The word person signified the firm ground from out of which an existing thing took its stand and developed. [It is the person of Christ who stands and renders sacrifice in front of our altars. The priest does not pretend to be Christ. At the Sacrifice of the Mass, he is the undivided Christ.]

The bishop writes, "In the early centuries we do not see this phrase used to describe the role of the ordained priest." Why is this? The answer is simple. The Church comes to a further understanding of herself and of her doctrinal treasury through conflict. Christ's identification with the minister in the liturgy was not at issue. For that matter, even when surrounded by pagan priestesses and heretical ones, the consensus of the Church was so sure that no defense of the male priesthood was thought necessary.

Through all the rhetoric, the bishop is essentially implying that the sexuality and/or body of the human being should not be a determining factor of worthiness for holy orders. Well, gosh gee, you have found one bishop who agrees with YOU. But one does not constitute the Magisterium. Historicaly, there is a precedent that says otherwise. Indeed, as I have said before, the Gnostics who copied many Christian rituals possessed a female priesthood. They also denied that Christ was really a human being. If he was not really a man, we are not redeemed. Do we really want to run this course? I think not.

Abusing St. Thomas' appreciation of instrumental causality, the bishop writes that "Christ makes use of the instrument of a priest in the sacraments in the same way that a physician makes use of a scalpel -- as an instrument, although in this case, an animate instrument." What he bypasses is that a man is not a scalpel and a priest is not any man. The nature of the instrument must be respected. Christ has so configured a man that through ordination he is capable of making the Lord present through his very person. This is the legitimate instrumentality of the priest at Mass.