In Glasgow’s Vocations drive, Archbishop Tartaglia (Tablet October 30) refers to his sense of surprise and delight from working as a priest. His Vocations Director, Fr Ross Campbell, refers to ‘the joy and privilege’ of the priesthood, and elsewhere says ‘the Eucharist animates our ministry as priests and sustains us in our pastoral service’.
We mentioned these pious aspirations last week, and could not disagree. Especially since they were delivered by Scottish churchmen. And believe us, that’s important !
We do have a problem with them however, which a letter to the ‘Tablet’ threw into relief. This is a code expression for running round the room throwing movable objects at the walls. We are unable to find the thing as we write , in the Tablet Letters Extra section, which is found only on the internet, and where it was. This has done nothing at all for the walls.
Its burden or gist ( and so much for Roget ) is that it’s great to see a celibate priest getting on with the priesthood . It makes you appreciate the thing as a kind of triumph of the human spirit.
Correct us if we are wrong, but we do not see the Tridentine priesthood as a corporate identity becoming an entry into the Guinness Book of Triumph of the Human Spirit Records. The priesthood is not about priests. It is there to provide the Eucharist. And that’s it. As the Orangeman on a train to the Field once remarked to a quizzing foreigner unable to understand the theological complexities of an Orange Walk, ‘read your Bible !’
The computer- and how the original compilers could have used one- provides us with many free examples of concordances to the Bible. Idly looking at references to the ‘chief priests’ in one of these, and their hostility to Christ and his Message, a thought occurred to us. If for instance , at random, surreal though it may be, it were imagined that ‘lemons’ or even ’lizards’ had played any kind of part in His Death and Crucifixion, is it likely that a single lemon tree would have survived on the surface of the earth , or a lizard beneath it ? Tragically, anti-semitism proves the point.
But we still have ‘chief priests’. And we did say it was surreal. But it’s worth thinking about.
Why can’t the world get the Eucharist?