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OFFICE IN THE CHURCH

INTRODUCTION

In this section, when we speak of office we mean ordained, sacramental office. Office in
this sense is one thing, but it has a three-fold structure – episcopate, presbyterate and
diaconate. We speak of Sacramentum Ordinis (Sacrament of Order) which has three
grades. Not sacrament of diaconate, priesthood, episcopate.

In our first sections, we will speak of office in general. We will speak about:
 The Nature of Office in the Church
 The Theology of office in the Church
 The Development of Office
 The Meaning of Ordination to Office

In our next four sections we will speak about the three-fold structure of office in the
Church.
 About the episcopate in the Church (sacramentality and collegiality)
 About the Presbyterate
 About the Diaconate
 About the Papacy (primacy and infallibility)

I. THE NATURE OF OFFICE IN THE CHURCH

A. Basic premise: All Christians are fundamentally equal participants in the Church’s
Mission. LG #32: all share a true equality with regard to the dignity and to the
activity common to all the faithful for the building up of the body of Christ.

B. In the document made by US bishops on Church Office entitled “As one who
Serves” (p.19) “…all those made one by baptism into Christ thereby share in his
ministry. Ministry then is the vocation, privilege and responsibility of all
members of the Church.”

The equality of all members takes precedence over all later distinctions and
persists in them. In this case the whole people of God as a whole enjoy a basic
collegiality, a common servanthood.

C. In this fundamental unity of mission and ministry, there exist different kinds of
ministries, gifts and charisms. The People of the Church, responding to these,
minister to eachother and to the world. (1 Cor 12:4-7)

D. While the Church is a charismatic community, and so a manifestation of the

Divine, we must always remember that the Church is also a fully human reality.
The gifts of the Spirit are incarnated in human talents, capabilities, frailties,
limitations, imperfections. The Church is a charismatic, divinely gifted
community but it is a fully human society as well, obeying human societal laws.
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E. From this it follows that someone has to be a leader of the charismatic

community. Someone has to order this community, to inspire the emergence
and development of the charisms, to relate them to one another, to test them for
authenticity. Such leadership is also a charism, and those who possess these
charisms are called by the Church to the leadership, guidance and administration
of the Church – such persons are called, in other words, to serve the Church by
being endowed with office.

1. Thomas Aquinas: “So that this beauty of the Church might not be lacking,
God placed order in it.” (ST III< Supplementum, questione 34, a.1)
2. “…individual charisms must serve the whole. They are integrated,
delimited, corrected by the special charism of office.” Church office
promotes unity among the charisms, not by combining them in one person,
but by helping those who have them to function harmoniously together.
Ordination is commissioning of a person for this ministry, and the grace it
brings is not primarily for personal sanctification, but for the work of
sanctifying the world and society.” (K. Lehmann, “Root of priestly
office”, Theology Digest 1970, pp.234-235.)

F. This Office is Charismatic, Public and Permanent

1. It is Charismatic because it is a gift of the Spirit. Not anyone can hold
office in the Church. It is a vocation.
2. It is Public because the office bearer acts in the name of the Church and in
the name of Christ. It is such a delicate and important area after the
Church has discerned the genuineness of the charism and endorsed it. For
its realization, this charism needs ordination (commissioning and
consecration). “Holy Mother Church asks you to ordain this man our
brother…”
3. It is Permanent because because through ordination, the office bearer takes
on the function of imaging Christ as the Head of the Church. Thus office
is a sacrament. Once the Church has discerned that the Spirit has gifted
one with the charism of office and has ordained that person to office, it
can never change its mind or withdraw its approval. At ordination the
office holder is claimed by Christ, and formed into His image as Head.
This is what we mean by “character”. (Baptism and Confirmation also
confer character because they form a man into the image of Christ for the
world; matrimony offers a “quasi character” because the love between
husband and wife (until death) is the image of Christ’s love for the world.
G. The Office Bearer in the Church, then, as a result of his ordination, symbolizes in
his person the person of Christ in his role as Head of the Church. What the church
is for the world (the presence/Body/Sacrament of Christ) the office bearer is for
the Church. He is “an other Christ” for “other Christs”.
1. It is not primarily the office bearer’s functions (“Power”) that reveal the
nature of office (the deacon can preach, the priest can say Mass, the
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bishop can confirm). Such functions can change and some can become
separate ministries performed by others.
2. Lehmann points out: “Vatican II describes the priest not by the powers he
possesses but by the mission he received from Christ.” (p.233)
3. The office bearer is a living symbol of Christ giving his life for the
Church, and at the same time, he is a challenge for the faithful to give their
lives to one another and for the world.
4. Thus he is publicly commissioned to preach and teach authoritatively, and
so order (guard and deepen the common faith), to order worship (and to
preside), to order the community (to administer, make decisions, counsel,
etc.)
H. In summary, let us quote the 1971 Synod of Bishops’ document on “Ministerial
Priesthood” #7

Therefore, ardently desiring to strengthen the witness of faith, we fraternally urge all the faithful
to strive to contemplate the Lord Jesus living in His Church and to realize that He wishes to
work in a special way through His ministers; they will thus be convinced that the Christian
community cannot fulfill its complete mission without the ministerial priesthood.

II. Theology of Office in the Church: Office of ministry

A. It is significant to note what name the NT Church gave to its office-bearers.
1. ARCHE (avrch), for instance, means primacy, precedence, rule.
a. The Septuagint uses the word in a secular context (eg. For
Egyptian court officials.)
b. LXX also uses it in religious contexts (e.g., high priests and
levites)
c. It appears in the NT for Jewish and Gentile authorities.
d. It is even used for Christ Himself, in Col 1:18 – “he is the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead”
e. But the term is never used for an office bearer in the Church.
2. Another word for a ruler or an authority is ARCHON (a;rcwn-ruler,
prince).
a. Used for demonic powers
b. Used for Roman and Jewish officials
c. Used of Christ in Rev 1:5 – “ruler of the kings of the earth”
d. But it too is never used to designate an office bearer in the
Church.
3. TIMEN (timh,n) means value, price, esteem, honor, and is used to
describe the dignity of office. But it is used in the NT only once (Heb.
5:4), where it describes the honor of a high priestly office. “And one does
not take the honor upon himself, but he is called by God just as Aaron
was.”
4. TELOS is a word that means end, conclusion, goal, reminder, and is used
in secular Greek to describe the total power of office. But it does not occur
in the NT at all.
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5. LEITURGON (leitourgo.n) designated a cultic leader, and it is used once,

in Rom. 15:16 in a metaphorical sense, comparing the preaching of the
Gospel to priestly service.
B. Why, asks Hans Kung, does the NT avoid using these terms? “Clearly because
despite the variety of areas they cover, they have one common factor: all express
a relationship of rulers and ruled. And it is precisely this which makes them
usable.” (The Church, p. 389).
C. The word chosen to express office in the Church was never before used in the
Bible to express office; was never to describe office at all.
1. It was a word that carried no meanings of authority, officialdom, rule,
dignity or power.
2. And a word that caught very much what Jesus meant by authority. “and
now Jesus practiced authority as Son of God”
3. The word that designates office in the Church in the NT is the word
DIAKONIA, meaning Ministry or Service.
D. What did this DIAKONIA mean in the context of those times?
1. Waiting at table, serving food, pouring wine.
2. In secular Greek, it never lost its sense of abasement, of inferiority; for a
free Greek, to become Servant was an unthinkable humiliation.
3. For a Jew, it was deemed respectable to serve those higher than yourself,
especially a great master, or even God; in later Judaism however, service,
especially service at table, was never rendered to the authority.
4. For Jesus, however, there was a reversal. Every disciple had to be the
“servant of all”. The greatest was to be the least. Cf. Lk 22:26-27 – “the
greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one
who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who
serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who
serves.”
5. We find this saying in various contexts, at least 5 times in the synoptic
gospels. This shows how central it is in Jesus’ teaching, and how
important it was in the early Church. Cf. Mk 9:33-35; Mk 10:35-45; Mt
23:2-12; Mt 20:20-28)
6. In John’s Gospel in place of the Institution of the Eucharist at the Last
Supper, John has Jesus serving the disciples (washing their feet) Cf. 13:1-
17
E. Office in the Church then is to be seen not as dignity but service. It is being
chosen not for honor, but for service. Vatican II recognized this in the
introductory section of Chapter III of LG:
For the nurturing and constant growth of the People of God, Christ the Lord instituted in
his Church a variety of ministries, which work for the good of the whole body. For those
ministers, who are endowed with sacred power, serve their brethren, so that all who are of
the People of God, and therefore enjoy a true Christian dignity, working toward a common
goal freely and in an orderly way, may arrive at salvation.
F. This fact – that office in the church is essentially not a dignity and domination but
service – must be remembered when we reflect on the office of bishops, priests
and deacons in the Church. They have the charism of office and leadership but
they exercise it as servants. (“Servant Leader” used in PCP 2 and NLPF)
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G. At the ordination of a Priest, the bishop concludes his instruction with the
following words – they could stand for office in general: “Always remember the
example of the Good Shepherd who came to serve rather than be served, to seek
out and save what had gone astray.”
H. We could develop this idea of office as ministry by developing some images of
the office bearer: Shepherd, Father …Spouse of the Church (?!)
1. In this image we have recourse to the total indissoluble bond between
husband and wife as a sign of the total indissoluble bond between Christ
and the Church.
2. We also recall that the office bearer images, “sacraments” (used as verb
here) Christ as head of the Church.
3. Christ is called in the NT (Synoptics, Ephesians, Revelation) several times
as the Spouse/Bridegroom of the Church. This draws on the long tradition
in the OT where Israel is called the Spouse of Yahweh. (Hosea, Jeremiah,
Ezekiel, Song of Songs)
4. The office holder as representative of Christ the Head can also be said to
represent Christ as Spouse of the Church. He can be said to have the
Church as his Spouse. (Allegorical meaning of the Bishop’s Ring)
5. What is really illuminating is to read Eph. 5:21-33 where Christ is
described as Spouse of the Church, and then to substitute “office
holder/priest-Church” for “husband-wife”
21 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of
which he is the Savior.
24 Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be, in everything, to their
husbands.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
26 in order to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the word,
27 so as to present the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the
kind-- yes, so that she may be holy and without blemish.
28 In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their own bodies. He who loves
his wife loves himself.
29 For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ
does for the church,
30 because we are members of his body.
31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
will become one flesh."
32 This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church.
33 Each of you, however, should love his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her husband.

III. The Development of Office in the Church

INTRODUCTION

1. The usual understanding of the origin of the threefold office in the Church is that
Jesus instituted it in a very explicit sense while he was on earth. (If not in SS it
was in the tradition handed on orally by the Apostles)
 The Diaconate was instituted at the washing of the feet during the last
Supper.
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 The mandate “Do this in memory of me” was the institution of the
Priesthood. (Trent says this DS 1740); TCC 512
 The descent of the Holy Spirit made the Apostles Bishops.

2. LG 18-20 are also written more or less with this common understanding. Read.
3. But such an understanding does not always correspond to historical evidence. As
one Protestant scholar asked Raymond Brown, “Where were the exegetes when
LG 18 was written?” Brown himself says that many statements in Vatican II
documents are “biblically naïve” (Priest and Bishop, p. 15 #8), and Karl Rahner,
in his commentary on LG 18-20, is subtle but critical. Not to mention others.
4. Raymond Brown speaks of a divine origin of Office in the Church, but only in a
qualified sense. He says that to speak of the historical Jesus as instituting office as
we now know it (in its three-fold structure) is only true “to the same real but
nuanced extent as the statement that the historical Jesus instituted the Church”
(p.19). (Cf. also Schillebeeckx, “Catholic understanding…”, TS 1969 p. 568-569)
5. If we read the NT carefully, we find a diversity of forms of office, and so the
question of one particular kind or style was still open for development. If things
had developed differently in the first years of the Church, we may have had a
different structural set-up in the Church.
 This does not mean that we may now abandon the present form of government
completely; but it does not give us room to none within it – more collegiality;
less priests/ more bishops; abolishment of diaconate? (Rahner) Cf.
Schillebeeckx, “Catholic understanding…”, pp. 569-570, says we can even
change as long as “Apostolic ordering” remains the same.
6. Fullenbach says: The Church order that we find in the NT is not a uniform one.
The NT writings present different Christian communities with quite different
settings and backgrounds. Each community seemingly had to find its way, its
organization in spite of the preachers’ common background and common
message. Church order in the NT is marked by development which did not come
to an end with the apostolic times. This means that the ministerial structure of the
early Church cannot be established decisively on the basis of scripture alone.
7. The development of the present form of office in the Church is quite a
complicated one. One reason is the nature of our sources. They must reflect the
reality of the times.
8. Recommended Readings:
 R. Brown. Priest and Bishop
 Idem., “Unity and Diversity in NT Ecclesiology” in New Testament Essays.
 M. Bourke, “Reflections on Church order in the NT” in CBQ 1968, 493-511
(A reflection on Kung)
 Terwilliger and Holmes, ed., To be a Priest.
 American Catholic Catechist, “Ordination”
 Schmaus, Ch. 14
 J. Morgat, “Priestly Character and ministry”, TD 1969, pp. 227-232
9. Three Thesis on the Development of Office:
10.
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