“New theology of the priesthood” or theological anticlericalism

Abstract

After the Second Vatican Council, priesthood came to be one of the key themes in Catholic theology of the latter half of the 20th century. This article attempts to scrutinise the specifi c rhetoric that was generated around the topic of priesthood and became wide-spread in various spheres of theological studies. With Hans Kueng’s ideas as an example, the author of this article reconstructs, fi rstly, the main theses of the “new theology of priesthood” and, secondly, the argumentation underlying them. The conclusion is that with the crisis of priesthood in the background, not only there appears the criticism of the “traditional” priest, there develops a positive theological programme which aims, on the one hand, at the return to the tradition and Christian roots and, on the other hand, aims at the compatibility with the facts of life of the present-day world. At the same time, the rhetoric in question contains as its important part trenchant criticism of not solely the traditional theology of ecclesiastical ministry, but also of established practices of pastoral service and of parish life. This criticism is aimed at the accelerated renewal of the Catholic church life and the overcoming of the crisis of the traditional religious institutes. Conservative authors regard these attempts as “theologians’ subversions” and as the work aimed at aggravating the crisis. Following the analysis carried out in the article, this phenomenon in Catholic theology is termed “theological anticlericalism”.

Keywords

• priest
• Catholic theology
• Hans Küng
• clericalization
• anticlericalism
• Second Vatican Council
• ecclesiology