Spring
Books Revised book on ministry is prophetic, even timelier
THEOLOGY OF
MINISTRY By Thomas F. OMeara, OP Paulist Press, 300 pages,
paperback, $21.95 |
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By PATRICK MARRIN
The remarkable achievement of Thomas OMearas
Theology of Ministry, first published in 1983, is that it became a
standard text in many seminaries and new lay ministry programs at a time when
ministry in the church was evolving and expanding so rapidly that even official
church policy adopted a wait-and-see stance until the dust had subsided.
OMearas original study served its many audiences
successfully by describing and explaining the sudden expansion of ministry
following the Second Vatican Council within a reliably orthodox and
realistically flexible framework of historical and theological analysis.
The text proved acceptable to bishops and accessible to thousands
of women and men entering training programs for full time, part-time, ordained
and non-ordained ecclesial ministry.
Now, with U.S. Catholic bishops continuing their discussion of
so-called lay ministry, a revised and expanded edition of Theology of
Ministry demonstrates again just how a theologian can serve ecclesial
leaders as they struggle to shape and direct new energies and needs in the life
of the church.
The growth of new ministries following Vatican II was, most
theologians and bishops now agree, the result of a dramatic shift in
ecclesiology by the council that acknowledged the presence of ministerial
charisms in all baptized members of the church, not just the hierarchy and
ordained clergy.
These 30 years later, the bishops are still exploring how to
institutionalize the new ministries that appeared as the global expression of
this fundamental shift. The U.S. Catholic population is projected to grow 65
percent by 2005, even as the number of diocesan clergy falls by 40 percent. The
hard demographics of change add urgency to the bishops task and sharpen
questions of who will preside, be ordained and minister in thousands of
parishes across the country as the church in the United States enters a new
millennium.
The evolution from solo parish priest to large ministry teams
forming concentric circles around church leadership is sure to continue,
OMeara writes, noting that the stress on the current generation of
pastors has earned them the title of the unsung hero[es] of the
postconciliar period.
At the same time the urgent focus in ministry is now on affirming
and configuring the only model that will accommodate the needs and aspirations
of an expanding and diverse Catholic population a model that formally
recognizes baptism as the basis for all service in the church, and finds new
forms for different charisms to function in the community as needed.
Transition forces us to distinguish essentials from historically
conditioned models of ministry. OMeara demonstrates this by building a
working definition of ministry that can be analyzed against the historical
continuum: Christian ministry is the public activity of a baptized
follower of Jesus Christ flowing from the Spirits charism and an
individual personality on behalf of a Christian community to proclaim, serve
and realize the kingdom of God.
This definition proves a useful measure for viewing church history
because it reflects both the long, dialectically rich development of ministry
in the past 2,000 years, while also illuminating the primal model
of ministry from the New Testament and patristic periods revived by Vatican
II.
The idea of historical development itself, together with Karl
Rahners insight that grace always intersects human culture as an
essential expression of Gods incarnation in the world in Jesus and the
Spirit, completes the frame of analysis. The church, whose whole mission is to
proclaim the salvific initiative of God in Christ, is relevant or irrelevant to
the extent that it adapts itself to the Spirit in each age.
Theology of Ministry is an exercise in the kind of
collegiality characteristic of Vatican II. Its longer chapters outlining church
history, exploring the trajectories of concepts like clergy, laity, charism,
women in ministry, papal primacy, bishop, priest and deacon, are obviously the
fruit of years of classroom interaction and the incorporation of the best
voices in biblical, patristic and theological research. OMeara, who
teaches at Notre Dame and is past president of the Catholic Theological Society
of America, has convened a large community of faith to reflect on ministry
during what he describes as one of the deepest upheavals in church
structure in Christian history.
In revising the book, OMeara has added an examination of
Christian vocation that inspires as much as it informs, and his chapter on
spirituality for ministers could serve as a manual for diocesan personnel
directors and the vocations and formation directors of any religious community.
It is excellent.
At a time when cultural crises and some high-level resistance to
change seem to cast long shadows over the future of ministry for many
Catholics, OMeara offers a positive vision based on the big picture and
long view of history and a simple affirmation that the Spirit is always at work
and the Kingdom of God is always at hand.
Theology of Ministry is an antidote to pessimism, a
corrective to absolutism and a solid course in ecclesiology based on the best
current scholarship, including the documents on ministry available through the
National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Even after 15 years, Theology of Ministry seems prophetic
and even timelier as the questions it addresses so clearly move toward official
reconfiguration. May every bishop, pastor and deacon have a copy at hand, and
may anyone who seeks his or her place in ministry benefit from this important
book.
Pat Marrin is editor of Celebration: An Ecumenical
Resource, NCRs sister publication.
National Catholic Reporter, February 4,
2000
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