There is a
world of difference between an official, authoritative magisterial document issued
by a college of bishops and a book such as this. It is often pointed out that
“The Faith of Millions” bears an imprimatur from a Catholic bishop. An
imprimatur usually bears a notation in these or similar words: “The imprimatur is
a declaration that a book is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication
is contained therein that the one who has granted the imprimatur agrees with
the contents, opinions or statements expressed.”
An imprimatur
is not infallible, nor does it make the book an official, authoritative
Catholic Church document. No individual bishop has the authority to issue
magisterial teaching; that may only be done through bishops acting in collegiality
with each other and the Pope. An imprimatur simply means that in the opinion
of this one particular bishop, who is not protected from error when issuing
statements as an individual, the work is free of error.
A bishop
acting and speaking as an individual can be wrong. This is the case here. Tragically,
“The Faith of Millions” contains serious error. Fortunately, it is not an
authoritative Catholic Church document; in fact, it bears no authority at all.
Let’s focus
on a passage that is often cited by Evangelicals, who mistakenly believe this
is really Catholic doctrine. I’ll underline the portions I really need to
address:
“When the
priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into
the heavens, brings Christ down from His throne, and places Him upon our
altar to be offered up again as the Victim for the sins of man…. The
priest brings Christ down from heaven, and renders Him present on our altar as
the eternal Victim for the sins of man—not once but a thousand times!
The priest speaks and lo! Christ, the eternal and omnipotent God, bows His
head in humble obedience to the priest’s command.”
This is
pretty awful stuff. And it isn’t Catholic.
First of all,
the Catholic Church has never taught that what happens at Mass is the priest’s
doing—true Catholic doctrine says that Jesus Himself does everything at Mass,
using the priest merely as an instrument. This is clearly taught in the
Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraphs 1544 and 1545 (emphasis added):
“Everything
that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ
Jesus, the one mediator between God and men. The Christian tradition
considers Melchizedek, ‘Priest of God most high,’ as the prefiguration of the
priesthood of Christ, the unique ‘high priest after the order of
Melchizedek’; ‘holy, blameless, unstained,’ ‘by a singular offering he
has perfected for all time those who are sanctified,’ that is, by the
unique sacrifice of the cross.
“The
redemptive sacrifice of Christ is unique, accomplished once for all; yet it
is made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Church. The same is
true of the one priesthood of Christ; it is made present through
the ministerial priesthood without diminishing the uniqueness of Christ’s
priesthood: ‘Only Christ is the true priest, the others being only his
ministers.’”
Jesus does
not bow in obedience to the priest—the priest lays prostrate in obedience to
Jesus on his ordination day as he becomes an instrument through whom Jesus
will act, not the priest himself. St. John Chrysostom expressed this in the
fourth century, explaining why the assembly replies to the priest’s words “The
Lord be with you” with the words “And with your spirit”:
“You don’t first partake of the offerings until he has prayed for
you the grace from the Lord, and you have answered him, ‘And with your spirit,’
reminding yourselves by this reply that he who is here does nothing of his
own power, nor are the offered gifts the work of human nature, but it is
the grace of the Spirit present and hovering over all things which prepared
this mystic sacrifice.”
The Catholic
Church does not teach that Jesus is crucified again at every Mass. It teaches
that this sacrifice which happened only one time in history is mystically
made present (there’s a big difference) so people of all generations and
places can be joined to the one sacrifice that was offered for their sins. (The
Old Testament roots of this belief are explored in my article “What the Bible
Teaches About Eucharist, Part 1”).
