Lay Empowerment Undermining Priesthood

A wholesome meditation for the Year of Faith is to reflect on the backlash the Catholic priesthood has received since Vatican II. The undermining of the priesthood since the Council has been the major contributing factor in the undermining of the Faith, since it is the priest who brings about the reenactment of Christ's Sacrifice in the Mass, which is the very heartbeat of the Mystical Body and the center of all Christian worship. For this reason the Mass has always been the focal point of Satan's attack.

The plan of Vatican II reformers was to define the Mass more as a community gathering which emphasized the contribution of the laity in carrying out liturgical functions, as if they collectively were the priest to draw the presence of Christ upon the people. What is fostered here is the rebellious notion that lay people can stand at parity with the priest, and that the "gathering of two or more in His name" is what constitutes the hierarchy. We see this Reformationalist notion reflected on the Catholic Answers forum which has shown itself to be "apologetic" at times. Jim Blackburn who conducts seminars for the group has a posting entitled, "Does 1 Peter 2:9 indicate that we are all priests?" He answers this by saying: "In a sense we are all priests. But this title is not what bestows the power to forgive sins... This power to forgive sins has been passed on to the apostles’ successors and to priests ordained to the ministerial priesthood through the sacrament of holy orders. Catholics recognize the difference between the priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood."

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Not so. Catholics do not recognize a "priesthood of the faithful." Blackburn here is echoing, not Tradition, but the novel teaching of Vatican II which redefined the priesthood as The People of God. It saw the whole Church as one hierarchy or priesthood but in different ranks, with the ordained ministerial priesthood being only one rank of this priesthood. “The people of God is not only an assembly of various peoples, but in itself is made up of different ranks.” (Lumen Gentium 13) What is promoted here is the fallacy that we are all priests of one hierarchy. “The common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood are nonetheless ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.” (Lumen Gentium 10) Needless to say, there is no such thing as a "common priesthood of the Faithful." This was the thinking of Martin Luther who spent his life bashing the priesthood and the Mass, even referring to the Holy Sacrifice as the "sacrilegious and abominable Mass." (Against Henry, King of England, 1522, Werke, Vol. 10, p.220) There are no unordained priests. There exists only the ordained priesthood, the successors of the Apostles, who alone have the authority to be called priests and who solely are empowered to perform the liturgical functions of the priesthood. Never in the 2000 year history of the Church has the title "priest" been conferred on anyone that was not ordained, therefore it is an error to think that we can confer this title on anyone that has not received Holy Orders. Lay priests? Since when? Vatican II reformers tried to use 1 Peter 2:9 to establish that the laity is a universal priesthood that is empowered to perform liturgy. “Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy, and to which the Christian people, ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people’ (1 Peter 2:9) have a right and obligation by reason of their baptism.” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, Article 14) Here conciliar draftsmen have put their own twist on the sacred text to enhance their own revolutionary designs. The scriptural verse about “a royal priesthood” is merely figurative to indicate the sacrificial nature of the Church since the principal function of a priest is to offer sacrifice, so in that sense we are a sacrificial or priestly people. We are called to atone and to follow the sacrificial Lamb in his sacrificial sufferings that we might reign with Christ as “a royal priesthood, a holy nation.” This verse references our call to atonement and has nothing to do with the priestly rank and its functions as the document deceptively implies. This is an insidious attack on the priesthood where the people are instigated to compete with the priests and assume their functions as if they were priests. It in fact has been the foundation of the post-conciliar revolution wherein the laity have completely overrun the priesthood through the rampant use of Eucharistic ministers, lay commissions, women lectors and the like. This is what modern day apologists hail as the "common priesthood," an invention of one who was a heretic, adulterer, and blasphemer, and who spent his life blasting the priesthood of Jesus Christ, even calling the pope a "pig" and the Church a "#." We somehow have forgotten that satan can quote scriptures too. For his perfidy, Luther was excommunicated on January 3, 1521. His teachings were later condemned at the Council of Trent that convened from 1545-1563. The Council put the dog out, so why did Vatican II let the dog back in? Part of the answer is certainly contained in Pope Paul's mega-statement of June 29, 1972, when he said that "From some fissure the smoke of satan entered into the temple of God." The pope was referring to the Council of Vatican II which was the topic of his discussion. Consider too his follow-up statement: "It is as if from some mysterious fissure, no, it is not mysterious, from some fissure the smoke of Satan entered the temple of God." The pope deliberately worded it this way to identify the fissure as something that is no mystery, namely, the Council. Let that be included in our reflection on the Year of Faith, that we may have a clearer idea of how this infernal influx at the Council was hurled against the priesthood for the purpose of destroying the Faith. And let us not forget how Vatican II was instrumental in reviving the ideas of Martin Luther, as we read in the 1980 Joint Catholic-Lutheran Commission which grew out of Vatican II: “Among the ideas of the Second Vatican Council, we can see gathered together much of what Luther asked for, such as the following: description of the Church as ‘The People of God’ (a democratic and non hierarchic idea); accent on the priesthood of all baptized.”