102 - Why Priests?

Why Priests?
By Hans Küng
Garden City, Doubleday, 1972. 118 pp. $5.95.

Hans Küng must have written this little book in a hurry. It does not reveal the outstanding scholarship or the literary power characteristic of his major publications. Why Priests? is a polemical essay attempting to convince the reader that the church, in this case the Roman Catholic Church, is free to restructure its ministry according to the needs of the age. What emerges in the New Testament is the charismatic nature of the ministry. Later developments led to the monarchical episcopate and, later still, to the papacy. In these pages Küng bases himself on his own research published in his large ecclesiological study, The Church.

Central for Küng's ecclesiology is the church of Corinth, about which Paul gives us ample information. The freedom and pluriformity of the ministry in that church remain normative for all times. We note that other Roman Catholic ecclesiologists tend to regard the later development in the church as the influence of Scripture and the work of the Spirit and, hence, attach considerable importance to it.

103 - Why Priests?

For Küng, following the New Testament, the office in the church is charism, ministry, service, a function for the sake of others. In a few pages, Küng tries to reinterpret the Roman Catholic tradition in these terms. He would prefer to drop the word "priest" altogether. He thinks it is more nearly correct to speak of the sacraments of the New Testament by omitting any reference to the sacrificial terminology familiar in the Roman Catholic tradition. Here Küng bases himself on research that is not yet published, although be has promised us a large study on the sacraments in the near future.

The polemical nature of the small book is brought out by Küng's preference for a terminology that clearly corrects the Council of Trent. Other Roman Catholic theologians who reinterpret and modify the Tridentine teaching prefer a language that assures the continuity of the Catholic tradition. But whatever one might think of Küng's terminology and the particular angle from which he views the sacraments, an increasing number of Roman Catholic theologians consider the church free to adapt its ministry to the needs of the present, including the ordination of women, part-time ministry, commitment to ministry for a limited number of years, and the existence of free ministry with loose connections to the ecclesiastical organization.

Gregory Baum
St. Michael's College
University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada