On the vocation and mission of Catholic priests

By Mgr Olympe-Philippe Gerbet   |   18 December 2024

The venerable Bishop of Perpignan in Occitania, Mgr Olympe-Philippe Gerbet (1798–1864), is distinguished for his contribution to Catholic philosophy and theology. In his own lifetime, even before his episcopal consecration, his writings were acknowledged to be “among the most beautiful and suave pages that ever honoured religious literature” (Sainte-Beuve). As bishop, his pastoral instruction “On diverse errors of the present time” (1860) would go on to lay the foundation of Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864) and, by extension, the whole bulwark of Catholic Tradition in the Modernist crisis unleashed in the century and a half that followed.

Voice of the Family presents the following extract of Mgr Gerbet’s writings, appearing for the first time in English, from M. l’abbé Gagey’s notes on the Catechism of the Council of Trent, Vol 2, On the priesthood (1911).

The institution of the priesthood stands in a higher order than the ideas which ordinarily strike minds inclined to stop at outward effects rather than to penetrate the essence of things. In regard to men, the priest appears under the touching attributes of father of the poor, consoler of the afflicted, confidant of weary consciences. But this aureole of charity, though the necessary radiance of the priestly character, is not its constitutive type; the fundamental idea of the priesthood is ordinarily attached to that of mediation. Just as priestly sacrifices were a figure of the expiation which was the communal cry of the human race, those charged with offering them became the particular representatives of the invisible Mediator, the supreme Pontiff of creation. 

Hence the character of a minister of peace, mediation being itself none other than the peace of heaven and earth; hence the austerity that the faith of all peoples demanded of priests, because they had to resemble the great victim more closely than all other men; hence again this continence — perpetual or temporary — which antiquity expected (and in many places demanded) of them. Everywhere, even in the ages of the greatest dissolution of morals, the human conscience has recognised in perfect continence the mens divinior of holiness. If poetry is the most divine form of eloquence, then virginity which elevates man above his senses is like the sacred poetry of virtue. Social necessity withholds it from the greater part of men, but does not exclude the few: just as the general necessity of material labours does not destroy this other law of humanity which grants to a few the vocation of chanting the sublime meditations. The human race must have its elite. How the sophists pride themselves in being strangers to this respect of virginity; is there a place for pride in not sensing the beautiful as all peoples have sensed it? They think their eyes diseased if they receive any impression out of the ordinary from the sight of the lily of the fields, symbol of purity. Is this vicious discordance any different when it affects the interior sight of the soul?

When even materialist philosophy has been forced to recognise that this idea of chastity, pleasing to the Divinity, has covered the globe, how has it not seen that the moral principle of this phenomenon, which is both shocking to man’s inclinations and has no basis in reasoning, must be of a higher order? A universal sentiment which is the very root of decency, has always associated a mysterious idea of uncleanness with works of the flesh: an inexplicable sentiment unless it tells of a confused memory of this original corruption which has vitiated the very source of life for man. The traditions of antiquity also tell of a person (represented as the future Reparator of human nature) who would be born of a virgin. It is in this order of ideas that we find the reason for such a general disposition to impose purifying continence and expiatory austerities on priests, as substitutes of the Mediator. If these two things have always been drawn to one another by a sort of permanent affinity, reunited in the priesthood, it is because they are descended from this common source.

All these ideas floating in the universe were the still-imperfect elements of priestly character which Catholicism has realised, and which could only come into being after the Saviour Himself had realised externally the eternal sacrifice. The Catholic priesthood, as in primitive religion, is constituted by the relations of priests with the Mediator, relations far more sacred and more august since they have for their object not symbolic victims but the person of Christ, at once Priest and Victim.

Theology defines the priesthood in terms of its functions relative to the True Body of Christ and to His Mystical Body the Church. The diverse degrees of sanctity of the minor orders are determined by their relations, more or less direct, with the Eucharist. The high and inviolable perfection of Catholic celibacy holds principally to the same cause. The popes and councils have not ignored the fact that the conjugal state denatures the divine union of a pastor with his flock, as well as his spiritual fatherhood, by leading his duties and affections astray. The priest must be a priest in his whole being. But however strong this argument may be, the source of priestly purity is still higher. All tradition shows us that its source is in the Tabernacle; the institution of ecclesiastical celibacy, though it might have developed over time and been subject to various modifications, is universal in its principle. …

But if the priest, associated with the oblation of the Sacrifice, must raise himself above other men by an angelic virginity, so much more must he abase himself beneath them, charge himself with their miseries, carry their cross and reproduce in himself the suffering traits of the adorable Victim as well as the image of His innocence, in order to offer, with the incense of prayer, the ardent holocaust of charity. He does not ascend the altar in vain. The mystical immolation of which he is the minister demands of him the immolation of himself. All tradition has drawn these lessons from eucharistic dogma with an indescribable energy. I would swear that, at the sight of such loving faith, no honest man, whatever his errors, would have the sad courage to declare against it. Even before it had entered his heart, he would have learned at least to respect it.

Is there not something of the divine in each favour? But sometimes, where sacrifice ends, the priest disappears and man remains. Take the Jews. Among no other people of antiquity does the priesthood have deeper roots, nor anywhere else is it so surrounded with respect. Yet what are the rabbis of today who have taken the place of the priests of this people disinherited of sacrifice? The anathema that weighs on their degraded ministry is denounced by the Israelites themselves. “Their power,” they cry, “can do nothing for the salvation of our souls!” The same observation applies to Protestants. One of the human ideas they have lost along with sacrifice is the ancient idea of priesthood. The day the fire of the eternal holocaust is extinguished, the divine seal is erased from the foreheads of its ministers. Popular feeling among Protestants denies their ministers the pious respect that all peoples have attached to the priestly character. They no longer demand of them the superior virtues that Catholicism imposes on priests; and this out of a feeling of justice, because it would be iniquitous to wish an effect after destroying its cause.

This equitable indulgence often manifests itself in a very naive manner. One example among a thousand is from Anglicanism, which has conserved the pretence of priesthood better than other sects. Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, in his account of the juridical assassination of Charles I, admits that William Jaxon, Bishop of London, who accompanied the king in his final moments, acquitted himself of the task in such a dry and trivial manner as not to show the slightest elevation of feeling. The mitred historian nonetheless asserts that his confrere “did his duty like an honest man”. Suppose Fr Firmont Edgeworth had conducted himself like William Jaxon: do you suppose that any French prelate writing the history of the Revolution would tell you that facing the scaffold, its base soaked in the blood of martyrs and the heavens outstretched above it, the confessor of the son of St Louis “did his duty like an honest man”? The very idea revolts Catholic sentiment, in the eyes of which any priest who falls from the dignity of the altar is no “honest man” but a monster.