Is the Priestly Crisis a Marian Crisis?

The priestly crisis in our day does not concern celibacy alone, but the nature and image of the priesthood. It is a crisis of identity. Let us consider for a moment how, today, a merely religious and sacramental priesthood is confused with political action. 

Is the priesthood a fixed-term job with set hours, or is the priest really the passionate full-time professional?

 What is specific to the priest? What concrete means should be used so that sacramental activity may be the expression of a faith that embraces the whole of personal and social life, and not an external ritual?

It would be naive to attribute the priestly crisis to the Marian crisis, but there is no doubt that the two are contemporaneous and connected. Both stem from deeper and more general causes, such as the present mental and social structures, which have forced a revision of all theology, throwing into crisis both the presentation of the Virgin Mary and the concept of the priesthood. 

Perhaps one common element is the allergy to mediations typical of the contemporary mentality, which undermines the means in order to focus on the end. Can God be mediated?

In reality, since both Our Lady and the priest have their mediation in Christ, this allergy to mediation may have thrown them both into crisis. 

But the cause is much deeper: the inadequacy of the images of the past to give direction to the profound changes in culture, in theology, and in the life of the Church.

Marian devotion cannot be considered an adventure that solves all the problems debated about the priesthood. Nor, however, should it be considered a useless complication, or even a screen between the priest and Christ. The spiritual experience of many priests of the past and of today (think of Saint Maximilian Kolbe) assures us that Mary is not an obstacle, but a real help toward union with God and in the exercise of the priestly ministry.

The presence of Mary in the worship of the Church will help the priest to become aware of his mission and to live his spirituality better. Some priests bear witness to the correlation between growth in Marian devotion and progress in the spiritual life. And, on the other hand, the Marian crisis will be resolved if priests commit themselves to the Marian experience, as happened in so many other periods of the Church’s history.

What meaning can Mary in the worship of the Church have for the life of the priest? 

This is the question each of us asks personally. Here we presuppose an authentic Marian cult, that is, one free of counterfeits and open to the ecclesial dimensions, according to the guidelines of the Council. Such a cult is an inalienable value in the life of the Church. Although it has suffered periodic setbacks (it can indeed be compared to the waves of the sea), Mary in the worship of the Church has always withstood the test and therefore remains an irresistible phenomenon in the history of the Church. As the Council exhorts, the presence of Mary in the worship of the Church must be generously promoted and filled with meaning for Christian and priestly life. Let us see:

“This holy Council teaches this Catholic doctrine, and at the same time it recommends to all the children of the Church that they generously foster the cult of the Blessed Virgin, especially the liturgical cult, that they hold in high esteem the practices and exercises of piety toward her approved by the Magisterium over the course of the centuries, and that they faithfully observe all that was decreed in the past concerning the cult of the images of Christ, the Virgin, and the saints. It earnestly exhorts theologians and preachers of the word of God to carefully avoid both false exaggeration and excessive narrowness in considering the singular dignity of the Mother of God. Studying Sacred Scripture, the holy Fathers and Doctors, and the liturgies of the Churches under the guidance of the Magisterium, let them rightly explain the functions and privileges of the Blessed Virgin, which all have reference to Christ, the source of all truth, holiness, and piety. Let them carefully avoid, in word and deed, anything that could lead the separated brethren or any others into error regarding the authentic doctrine of the Church. And let the faithful remember that true devotion consists not in sterile and passing emotion, but is born of faith, which leads us to recognize the greatness of the Mother of God and moves us to love our mother as her children and to imitate her virtues”.

Lumen Gentium 67

A response to God’s plan

It seems to us that the first meaning of Mary in the worship of the Church is that of being a response to God’s plan. Mary in the worship of the Church is a complex phenomenon that touches the deep feelings and sensibility of man. Psychologists and philosophers claim that the mechanisms of the psyche are activated before the maternal and protective figure of Mary, the ideal of a humanity created in beauty and perfection. And perhaps this is also why, during the Council, when Our Lady was being discussed, a rather heated controversy broke out: whether or not to place Mary in the document on the Church, whether or not to proclaim a new dogma. There were even those who claimed that it would be necessary to psychoanalyze the Council Fathers to discover the deep cause of the feelings aroused before the Virgin. If nothing else, a vital point had been touched in the psychology of Christians and, therefore, of the Bishops as well. One may also cite the pages of philosophers such as Hegel and Fichte, who extol Mary as an aesthetic figure of great value in relation to the life of the spirit.

Nevertheless, the fact remains that the authentic relationship with Mary is determined primarily not by the mechanism of the psyche and human aspirations, but by Revelation. We cannot forget that Mary

“proceeds from true faith, by which we are led to recognize the preeminence of the Mother of God and are led to filial love for our Mother and to the imitation of her virtues” (Lumen Gentium 67).

By what is the presence of Mary in the worship of the Church guided? 

By true faith, because it presents Mary to us with her unique and unrepeatable mission. She was not only the creature who brought Christ into the human race, and this is already a service to the Church, a truly exceptional charism, because it made human redemption possible. It was Mary who opened herself to God with a faith so exemplary that it set the faith of the Church in motion, as a free and responsible instrument of salvation. 

God worked this election in the Virgin, thus proposing her for the recognition of the People of God. It was Christ who united her to His regenerating mission and presented her as a gift to be welcomed in paschal faith. Christ gave many gifts to humanity: 

• He gave His life.
• He gave the Spirit.
• He gave Scripture.
• He gave Mary.

The welcoming indicated in the Gospel of John is the attitude of faith: we must open ourselves to Mary, welcome her as a gift, and bring her, as Paul VI says, into the cell of personal religion, for an ever-renewing dialogue. 

Consequently, to close oneself to a personal relationship with Mary means closing oneself to the plan of salvation, ignoring the work of God and the gift of Christ. We must, however, acknowledge that we are not responsible for failing to welcome her until we come to know or discover Mary’s value. But it is one thing to be ignorant of a truth, and quite another to reject it after coming to know it. Once we know Mary’s place in the history of salvation, we cannot refuse it, because to refuse it would be to withdraw from one of the elements God has placed for the fulfillment of His plan of salvation. 

Worse still would be to nullify the biblical word that foresees the convergence of the generations of the new covenant in praise of Mary for the great things the Lord accomplished in her (Lk 1:48). The praise of Mary cannot cease throughout the centuries.

Moreover, the Church is communion, community, a society of salvation: within her, persons stand out, above all those who are at her origins and from whom the movement of faith set out. The Mother of God stands right on the bridge between the Old and the New Testament: 

• in her, Israel becomes the Church. 
• she is the person who set this new faith in motion.
• she is the first Christian.
• the Church before the Church. 

If we were cut off from contact with Mary, it would be like forgetting that the Church is communion with all the members who make it up, but above all with those who had a particular mission, a mission of origin, a mission that sets us in motion.

And, finally, to exclude the presence of Mary in the Church would be an attitude of rupture with ecclesial tradition, which gave the Mother of the Lord a special place in worship as it discovered her mission in the work of salvation.

To explore more deeply the relationship between Mary and the priesthood, see the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II, on the role of Mary in the life of the Church.

Take your studies further: explore Mariology, Marian Theology, Marian apparitions, and the Postgraduate Program in Mariology.