The Sacrament Machine: Rumbles from the Production Line

Extract

Antony Archer rightly suggests (‘Dismantling the Sacrament Machine’, NB January 1975) that present Church structures impede the preaching of the Gospel, and that the laity must begin to do tasks from which they have hitherto been cut off, in particular that ‘it is urgent that the laity take preaching into their hands’. He points to the inadequacy of much present-day priestly preaching, and discusses the possibility of such a move as forbidding the clergy to preach, but concludes : ‘However, such a move as forbidding the clergy to preach, superficially attractive though it is, would only compound the present distortion. After all the priest is ordained to preach the Gospel and attempts to change the Church should be in accordance with its theology’. It is this last point that I wish to develop.

Nobody would deny that there are many lay people who have the gift and vocation of preaching the Gospel, and are able to do it better than most priests. But preaching remains an inalienable part of Christian priesthood. You can be a preacher without being a priest, but not a priest without being a preacher. If we stress the sacramental functions of the priest at the expense of his preaching role, or vice versa, we distort our picture of his office. Though individuals may be more suited to one task than to the other, priests must be trained for both, and both must be expected of them. To train a man to administer the sacraments without training him to preach is like teaching a violinist to stop the strings with his left hand, without showing him how to wield the bow in his right. The reason for the interdependence of the two roles lies deep in the nature of the Gospel itself. Christ came both to speak and to act: he both utters, and is, the Word of God. Indeed, it is hard to conceive what is meant by administering the sacraments without preaching, since all human gestures reveal something about those who make them, and so every sacramental act communicates, proclaims, preaches, though it may do so very badly. Bro. Antony has fallen into a trap when he says ‘By preaching is meant here verbal communication’, since the verbal is inseparable from other forms of communication.