\u2026the past decade\u2019s revelations of sexually abusive clergy had many causes, not the least of which was a toxic ambient culture<\/strong> to which the Church and its ordained ministers proved all too vulnerable.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Further:<\/p>\n \u2026what we find, if we look hard enough, is a changed understanding of the very nature of the priesthood<\/strong>.\u00a0When seminarians, 30 or 40 years ago, spoke of learning \u201cpriestcraft,\u201d something was, it now seems clear, deeply awry.\u00a0For the Catholic Church has never understood the ordained priesthood as essentially a matter of functions, nor has it understood ordination as a kind of licensing ceremony that authorizes a man to conduct certain kinds of ecclesiastical business.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Put another way:<\/p>\n But that was the misunderstanding of priesthood that swept through too much of the Church around the world, and the relationship between that desperately deficient theology<\/strong> and the abuse crisis should now be beyond serious dispute.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n There is no real problem:<\/strong><\/p>\n A man who has truly understood himself as an icon of the priesthood of Jesus<\/strong> Christ<\/strong> does not abuse anyone, in any way.\u00a0 A man who has taken into himself the meaning of the Lord\u2019s words, \u201cI now call you friends,\u201d does not imagine that his ordination confers membership in a caste.<\/em><\/p>\n What is at stake is nothing less that deepening a sense of the ordained priest as an icon of Christ \u2013 a human being who, through being configured to the Risen Lord in a unique way by his ordination, makes Christ present to the world in a unique way.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n So far George Weigel, voluminous biographer of Pope John Paul II.\u00a0 Read here<\/a>; emphasis added in excerpts above.<\/p>\n In stark contrast, Lutherans teach that the Lord himself is present wherever his Word and sacraments are rightly<\/strong> preached and administered.[1]<\/a> His presence is not promised to a holy priesthood but to his purely<\/strong> preached Word and sacraments.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n![](\"dot_clear.gif\"){kind=spacer}
[1]<\/a> \u201cRightly\u201d and \u201cpurely\u201d Augsburg Confession VII<\/em>. See also: \u201cThe ministry of the New Testament is not bound to places and persons, as the Levitical priesthood is, but is spread abroad through the whole world and exists wherever God gives his gifts, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers. Nor is this ministry valid because of any individual\u2019s authority but because of the Word given by Christ,\u201d from \u201cTreatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope,\u201d \u00b6 26, Book of Concord<\/em>, Tappert 324.<\/p>\n