Mothering as a Metaphor for Ministry

Emma Percy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138546998
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317093930
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Drawing together original research which weaves together ideas from theology, philosophy, feminism and writing on mothering and child development, Emma Percy affirms and encourages aspects of good practice in ministry that are in danger of being overlooked because they are neither well-articulated nor valued. Offering a fresh look at parish ministry, this book uses a maternal metaphor to provide an integrated image of being and doing. The metaphor of mothering is used to explore the relational aspect of parish ministry which needs to value particularity and concrete contingent responsiveness. Percy suggests virtues that need to be cultivated to guard against the temptations to intrusive or domineering styles of care on the one hand or passive abnegation of responsibility on the other. Parish ministry cannot be understood in terms of tangible productivity; different ways of understanding success and evaluating priorities need to be developed. The book suggests ways of being 'good enough' clergy who can find the right balance between caring for people and communities whilst encouraging and acknowledging the maturity of others.

PART I
Exploring Ministry

Chapter 1

Ministry: Ontology and Function

Since ordained ministry is central to the Church of England’s ecclesiology it might be assumed that there is consensus over what constitutes ministry and how the ordained and the non-ordained collaborate constructively. Instead we find that these questions are underdeveloped. In this chapter I will outline how different understandings of the origin of the ordained ministry have implications for how collaborative ministry is understood. If the origin of the priesthood is located in a ‘moment of creation’¹ by Christ, for instance the calling of the Apostles or their commissioning, then ordination precedes the emergence of the Church. Theologies that take this as a starting point tend to follow an essentialist view of ordination; the ordained become distinct, set apart and even ontologically changed through the grace of God at ordination. However, this understanding can lead to problems in articulating the relationship between the ordained and the wider Church and particular issues in talking about collaborative patterns of ministry. Alternatively, the role of the ordained can be understood as emerging from the early Church in a more ‘evolutionary’ way. Thus the clergy have arisen out of the Church’s need for leadership and order. In this understanding the ordained should, ideally, serve the needs of the Church and adapt as the Church adapts over time. However, this theology must guard against a purely functional understanding of ministry, which loses sight of the sacramental nature of the role. In exploring these questions it is important to note the kinds of imagery and language used about the ordained. Often the language used is connected to an underlying theology that may no longer be apparent or appropriate.

Apostolic Succession and the Essential Difference of the Ordained

The Anglican theologian Anthony Hanson makes this comment about the Church of England’s theology of ministry.

Anglicans in the past have either leaned heavily on the theory of Apostolic Succession to supply them with a theology of the ministry, or been quite content to have no particular doctrine of the ministry at all.²

The ordination practice of the Church of England, with its emphasis on Episcopal lineage, highlights the importance of succession. The authority to minister is passed from one generation of the ordained to the next.³ These rites are shaped by the particular history of the Reformation in England and the continuity between the Roman Catholic Church and the emergent Anglican Church. One way of understanding this continuity is the theology of Apostolic Succession which posits an unbroken line from Christ’s setting apart of the Apostles to present-day ordinations. This continuity of orders became central to Anglo-Catholic understandings of ordination, particularly after Pope Leo XIII declared Anglican orders null and void in a Vatican document of 1896.⁴ However, the doctrine is about more than simply the transmission of authority. It carries with it a particular understanding of the origin and character of the ordained. Hanson’s comment that Anglicans have leaned on this theory conveys the reality that it has often been adhered to without a proper understanding of its underlying theology.

The theology of Apostolic Succession, like some more Protestant theologies of ministry, locates the origin of the ordained before the emergence of the Church, in Jesus’ calling and commissioning of the Apostles. In the Catholic tradition, Jesus’ resurrection encounter with Peter is particularly significant, as he is thrice told to feed or tend Jesus’ lambs.⁵ It is argued that as Jesus commissioned Peter and the other Apostles so, in turn, they commissioned their successors, through the laying on of hands, down to the bishops and priests of the modern Church. A Catholic theology emphasises the importance of the continuity of ordination; a more Protestant theology would look for conformity to New Testament patterns. Both would tend to favour a Christological model: the ordained successors of the Apostles are to represent Christ and tend his flock as he himself would do. The ordained ministry is thus instigated by Christ himself and Christ is the pattern and model for the ongoing practice. The ordained are to be like the Good Shepherd, tending the flock entrusted to them and the imagery of bishops and priests being shepherds continues to shape the language and metaphors used about ordained ministry.

Notwithstanding that shepherding and pastoral images have been a rich and fruitful language through the Church’s history, such language provides a model that is, on one level at least, fundamentally problematic. Shepherds are of a different species from their sheep, and clearly a superior species. This species difference is not accidental and is not simply a matter of language: it is a fundamental aspect of a theology of ministry that locates the origin of the ordained as separate and prior to the emergence of the Church. This theology of difference is spelled out clearly in some of the modern thinking about priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church and particularly in debates about the universal priesthood of all and the ministerial priesthood of the ordained. Clearly, the intention is not to argue for the superiority of clergy, but it is to maintain their essential difference.

The documents on the ministry in the Second Vatican Council used the terminology of a common priesthood of all the baptised and a ministerial priesthood. The two were to be understood as intimately connected but essentially different. The quote below is from Lumen Gentium, the document on the Church from the Second Vatican Council:

Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ.⁶

This common language of priesthood inevitably caused some confusion. Jean Galot writes:

The phrases ‘universal priesthood’ and ‘ministerial priesthood’ can give rise to a confusion: the word ‘priesthood’ can be taken to refer to a reality identical in both priesthoods with only minor differences appended. But if we consider the data available in the gospels, we realise that a profound difference exists between the two realities involved … It is true of course that Christ is the origin of both priesthoods. However, these derive from Christ along two lines essentially different: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.⁷

Galot argues that those engaged in the ministerial priesthood are also, as disciples, part of the universal priesthood. However, he also emphasises that the ministerial priesthood is something set apart, with its origins prior to the Church. There is an essential difference or, as it is sometimes expressed, an ontological distinction, that comes about through the sacramental rite of ordination.

It is important to note here the language of difference, which will surface again in this book when considering questions of gender. Debates about how difference is understood in men and women, and whether such differences are essential, highlight the difficulties that we have in discussing difference and the tendency to define one as the opposite of the other, and the privileging of one over the other. It is perhaps not surprising that the language of masculine and feminine has been used by some writers to explore the distinctions between the ‘universal’ and ‘ministerial’ priesthood. The Church, the universal priesthood, is the feminine bride of Christ, receptive to the ministry of the masculine Christ mediated through male clergy.⁸ It is also not surprising that traditionally Catholic and Protestant theologies that locate the origin of the ordained in Christ entrusting his mission to the Apostles tend to oppose the idea of women clergy. The issues of gender will be looked at in more detail later, but what we learn from that debate is that a language of distinction, however much it stresses complementarity and equality of worth, tends to privilege one subject over the other. In terms of priesthood and ministry, the privileging is of the ordained; the ministerial priesthood. The laity or universal priesthood is defined as opposite or complementary to the ordained.

Stephen Pickard argues that the tensions within the language of the ministerial priesthood and universal priesthood are inherent when a Christological model underpins the theology of ministry because they map on to the tensions in understanding the two natures of Christ:

The common priesthood from below and the representative priesthood from above correspond to the double reality of the humanity and divinity of Christ … It is hard to resist the conclusion that the two-nature problem in Christology has been transferred into the two priesthoods of the Church, the ordained and the baptised. Given the long and contested history of attempts to develop an adequate account of the two-nature doctrine, it is no surprise that a doctrine of ministry indebted to this Christology will produce unsynthesised antinomies. The problem of the relations between the body of Christ and its representative ministry; between the ministry and ministries, cannot be unravelled on the basis of a defective or incoherent two-nature doctrine of Christ.⁹

Pickard argues that this has implications for the Anglican Church’s stated desire to develop collaborative patterns of ministry between the ordained and the laity.¹⁰ If the authority of the ordained resides in their separate priesthood, it is difficult to see how that is shared or enhanced by the ministry of the laity.

It also follows that if the priesthood of the ordained is articulated in the language of Christ’s divinity, using imagery like that of the shepherd, the priesthood of all believers tends to be articulated as ‘other’ and in some sense opposite to the ordained. Thus they become the flock, which is led and which responds by participating rather than initiating. In order to develop collaborative ministry, a different pattern of relationship between the ordained and the wider Church is needed; a more integral relationship, a different understanding of clergy origins and an ecclesiological rather than Christological model for ordination.

The Ministry of the Church and the Emergence of Order

To understand the origin of the ordained from a more ‘evolutionary’ perspective is not to underplay the significance of the Apostles or the sense that the apostolic faith has been handed on from one generation to the next. Instead the aim is to acknowledge how the early Church began to develop appropriate patterns of leadership pragmatically, as well as inspirationally, as it grew and spread. The Acts of the Apostles notes the appointment of the first deacons to deal with a particular problem of order.¹¹ Although the terminology of episcopacy, presbyters and deacons is used in some New Testament epistles the pattern of Church leadership is not clearly delineated. Over the first few centuries the Church developed a threefold order of ministry using these titles, with recognisable rites of ordination, but these orders had emerged from the Church. The origins of ministry are therefore to be found in the life of the Church. They emerge with the blessing of the Apostles and early Church leaders out of the experience of the Church. This pragmatic emergent ministry can be understood as being inspired by the Holy Spirit but that does not imply that the ordained are in essence different from the wider Church. They are authorised to exercise particular functions within the Church, within specified roles. This is the understanding of clergy origins taken by the d...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I EXPLORING MINISTRY
• PART II MOTHERING: GENDER, THEORY AND PRACTICE
• PART III MOTHERING AS A METAPHOR FOR MINISTRY
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index