A word against Daniel

April 13, 2007
cfpnews@catholicfreepress.org

Our God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, God the Trinity, is One; but He is not complete if we do not include both the Word and the Spirit with the Father. Likewise, one would not have a complete Vatican Council II without both the Spirit and the Word of that Council.

Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, makes a clear distinction between the universal priesthood of all Catholics, and the hierarchal or ministerial priesthood exercised by male priests, which "differ from one another in essence and not only in degree." We in the universal priesthood offer spiritual sacrifice, as well as our self-sacrifice in our pursuit of holiness, while "[t]he ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people." Notice that Lumen Gentium refers to the ministerial priest by the male pronoun ‘he’; twice.

So-called reform groups, such as Voice of the Faithful, that claim the Spirit of Vatican II, yet ignore the words of Vatican II, do a disservice to Catholics and our Church. I believe that as Catholics actually begin to read the Word of Vatican II, the steady sound of footfalls will be back into the Church, where both laity and ministry will pursue the single standard of holiness, dedication to God, and vangelization.