If somebody steps on my finger, my FIRST response might be "Get OFF me, you're hurting me!" Then I might say, "You stepped on my finger!"
So being a member of Christ's Body, each Christian is, in some sense alter Christus. I would have thought that was not controversial. Jesus does not say to Saul, "Why persecutest thou my members?" but "Why persecutest thou me?"
So, and this would be the controversial part I guess, our sacramental theology is a special case of what is given to all members of the body -- bone of His bone, flesh of His flesh. And that's why the moral character of the priest does not touch the efficacy of the Sacraments. It is, we think, not what the priest himself, qua indiwiddle, brings to the Mass or Reconciliation. As I said earlier, if it were, who would dare?
It is rather, we think, because the priest, a minister (that is, someone who is less) is in a limited and very specific sense alter Christus that an effective absolution is given or an effective Mass is offered.
Not only, therefore, is there an argument from the Church's being the Body of Christ, but also there is one from the meaning of "apostle," of our being sent. Jesus says, on Easter Evening, "As the Father sent me, so I send you." (And Dawg trots off to find his Greek Testament.) ἀπέσταλκεν -- πέπμω are the words in question. This sending is a sending as agents, and as I say often the maxim is "The principle is responsible for the acts of his agent." If I make you my agent to buy a piece of land, you can seal the deal, And I must pay the price. So the quality of the priest's being 'another Christ' is that of being Christ's agent.
And again this is not so very different from our agency as lay-folk. Because we hate and yield to anger and avarice, Christ's whole body suffers. When we are generous and clement then people can see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven.
“Because we hate and yield to anger and avarice, Christ’s whole body suffers.”
It has always been this way.
I thank God for you, MD
I’m pretty much in agreement with all your points, Bro.
Biblically, it just gets into issues that get folks wound up quickly over . . . and it doesn’t seem like anything like a core set of issues to me so I tend to try and leave it alone.
Christ calls us to be broken bread and poured out wine to those around us, as He was and is. We are to be HIS hands extended. etc.
Thx.