Ok, kinda stupid question I know, but it came about when I was having a rather heated debate the purpose and usefulness of priests with a Baptist friend of mine.
My local priest is wonderful and very helpful, he has been a great help since I am a newbie in the Catholic church. But, sometimes I feel I don’t know enough about why Priests are part of the church, and why we don’t just pray straight to God for redemption.
So, why do we not just pray straight to God and remove the role of the Priest all together? Its something I would like to better understand.
Thanks
Hi.
Christ explicitly indicated that he was not eliminating the priesthood, a sacrifice to God or the Commandments, but came to perfect them in His new Church:
**“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” **(
Matthew 5:17)
There was a priesthood of God in the Old Covenant, and thus, Christ chose 12 men to be the first leaders of the priesthood of the New Covenant. The sacrifice of lambs for the day of Atonement was replaced by the One Sacrifice of Christ Himself on the Cross. This single Sacrifice is re-presented at any Mass, as if we were there at Calvary at that moment (and, just as Christ did so in teaching His priests-to-be with bread and wine at the Last Supper, explaining what he literally meant about His body becoming the new sacrifice in John 6.)
After the Resurrection, Christ made a series of gestures that gave the Apostles authority in Christ’s name to hear sins (
see John 20). Since priests aren’t telepaths, sins must be spoken to them. We can pray to God for sins, but *atonement *comes from Christ alone–and that comes through not an invisible Christ, but an
alter Christi– another Christ, a priest with authority by God Himself to hear your most serious sins and grant forgiveness, without reservation or judgment (unless he feels you are not contrite, thus the very rare “retaining” of sins), as Christ did while he was here.
The priest does not do this himself, but only by the authority given by Christ to the many bishops and priests who were ordained in the Church that Christ established. Christ directed the Apostles to forgive sins told to them, so the certainty of atonement is far more than if one were to pray to God alone or to stick to traditions from the Old Covenant (which were not sufficient to forgive sins, but to show piety in preparation for the Messiah).
There are passages that suggest that we Christians are all priests, but that is partially correct. Christ wanted us to spread the Gospel to others as priests would, but the specific consecration of the Body and Blood and Soul and Divinity that is the Lamb of God, the replacement of the lambs of men, as well as the authority to forgive serious (mortal) sins, are the role of His ordained priesthood. Only the Catholic and Orthodox faiths have such ordained.
