By way of his own introduction Tom McMahon writes: The following was first written back at the beginning of January while I was unaware Brian was not going to publish any commentaries until February. I used January to read and in particular to study the entirety of Fr. Peter Dresser's GOD IS BIG, to clean up the mess in my "den of thieves" in preparation for the February visit of Marilyn and John Chuchman, to play with our grandchildren despite a torn left meniscus, and to touch up the following...

Series Navigation: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

Part One looking at two styles or models of priesthood...

Part one of two as we analyze two forms of priesthood: today we look at the liturgical priest. Retracing and not yet on my February 2012 magic carpet...

Resetting the stage: As I refocus on the concept of priesthood I see in the Christian-Catholic perspective a duality, one based in the gospel accounts of Jesus, the servant of humankind, and the other centered in ancient concepts of altar liturgists who offer sacrifice, the act of a person using special power to make an object sacred or holy (sacrum facere = to make holy). Simply put the liturgical style priesthood to which I was ordained in 1954 can be traced back 18 centuries before our common era — more than 4000 years ago in the Stone Age — while the service priest is modelled after the contradictory brand new life style of the historical Jesus — 2000 years ago.

Let's review some history and ask if the models compliment or conflict? The liturgical priesthood seems to appeal to people more than the Jesus' service type. Much depends on what concept of God a person has.

Who was present to witness the original Act of Creation and to record it for us?

The biblical account of Creation [Genesis Chapter One] is a gathering of tribal verbal stories from the Prehistoric Stone Age — an unorganized period long before 4000 years ago. A story-telling base is revealed as Genesis offers two accounts of Creation which, if carefully examined, radically differ. And we are further confronted with the puzzle as to who was present to make the original accounting?

These versions had to come from human beings, thousands if not millions of years after the Creator created. Creation stories are man-made attempts to describe what today science calls the Big Bang, Adam, Eve, Noah being imaginative accounts of a relationship between Creator and human people that humans have devised. Pope Pius the 12th warned Catholics in 1940 not to take Adam and Eve as historical people; they represent symbolic humans as the story-teller imagined the experience of what life was like for the budding human race. The tribal story teller retold the story as it had been told to him, like the Irish story teller at ancient funerals did with a bit of embellishment. My brother Al, our family's eldest son and a County Judge, regaled us at holiday dinners at my widowed mother's home with San Francisco stories — our granddad being born in San Francisco in 1886. I was always amused as the years went on the stories increased in drama and numbers. Regardless of factual truth each story tells a lesson. Myth telling/stories are the way ancients educated one another ... and so too modern day people. Genesis offers the simple lesson that humans believe ONE Creator masterminded all Creation without human presence or help. We need employ our imagination as if some human was there to watch? Protohistoric records were kept when a human became conscious of self — the original "cogito ergo, sum".

The Origin of our Models of Priesthood...

Abraham meets Melchizadek. Painting by Dieric Bouts, the older at The Church of Saint Peter, Leuven, Belgium. For further information on Melchizadek click HERE or the Wikipedia logo. Click the image above for an enlarged view..

Chapter Four of Genesis moves the reader into the Protohistoric period, around 4000 b.c.e., with the naming of real people such as Abram, aka Abraham in Chapter 12. History begins! Melchizedek — Mel means honey, the rampaging warrior with a sweet tongue? — who is called a priest because he is king-leader of a nomadic tribe of perhaps 100 followers. His position makes him their liturgical front runner.

Melchizedek is introduced in Chapter 14 as offering sacrifice to GOD MOST HIGH. I quote:

Melchizedek, King of Salem [peace] brought bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High [in the next sentence referred to as Yahweh] and pronounces a blessing: "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, creator of heaven and earth [the 8th century b.c.e. story teller writes down, word for word, using the Chapter One tribal fireside telling of the Genesis myths of the Stone Age], and blessed be God Most High for handing your enemies over to you."

The sentence is loaded. It compresses two radically different concepts of God into a time capsule, The time gaps between the two concepts differ by a minimum of perhaps two thousand years or more.

This is what happens when story tellers gather as did the Jewish temple priests during the Babylonian captivity in 598 b.c.e.. They rewrote pre-historic and tribal nomadic history, producing the Pentateuch to protect the Judaic tradition (hand-me-down) from annihilation in a foreign land. They could not admit that polytheism existed among their forefathers. Yahweh, once a simple hearth god in Egypt had become the war god of the nomadic followers of Moses — a punishing vengeful deity whom Jesus will reinvent as Abba, loving father.

Coming Up! A new mini-series from Tom McMahon: "MYTHOLOGY of the GODS" Tom McMahon has also volunteered to write for us a new mini-series based largely on the above book which has been published by the National Geographic Society looking at Religious Mythology. We propose to run the series on Sundays in conjunction with John Chuchman's reflections. Part 1 this coming Sunday will look at the Gods common to the Australian Aborigines, Polynesians and the Peoples of Oceania. For those interested an inexpensive Hardcover edition available from Amazon and Fishpond HERE! What Tom is proposing is like a book club discussion with input from you, our readers, via our forum.

Now folks we have major problems here. We have mention of a priest who is a warrior king offering sacrifice with the ability to sacrum facere = to make holy and this to a monotheistic god [Our God today] who will not exist for another thousand years. Before his conversion the soon-to-be-new archetype convert to monotheism Abram becomes Abraham who chooses not to kill Isaac in Chapter 22 as he pledges to abandon polytheism and turn to the one and only God. James A Michener in The Source does a much better job with this myth: the war gods demanding the fire burning of two-year-old males so as not to have a future army.) The major problem is the Jewish elders who gathered to write the Pentateuch in the captivity of Babylon refused to admit Abraham was originally a polytheist as surely was Melchizedek. In retelling and now writing it down, the story teller was allowed to use only Yahweh as if it were Yahweh alone who was always worshipped. We are led to believe that the God of Genesis' creation story was always, and forever past, the only God. The first of the Ten Commandments forbidding other gods "before me" is a clear acceptance of polytheism before and during the time of Moses. The Moses story itself may be pure myth.

Melchizedek is a priest of polytheism (many gods). Abram is originally a polytheist.

In Exodus and Leviticus the Pentateuch goes on to tell us of the tribal priesthood of Aaron, the brother of Moses. This priest continues on in the Jerusalem Temple in the time of the historical Jesus. Temple priests make holy the peoples' offerings. Because of the temple corruption early Christian communities were fain to have priests, fearful of their power and aloofness from ordinary people. With the collapse of Roman Empire this type of ruling class priest will emerge in the office of the Roman Bishop. The Stone Age priest is back again, yet in a broken and battered form as the Roman Empire collapses.

In 1542, while reforming a confused and chaotic medieval religion, The Council of Trent will re-polish the liturgical image of the priest making the office of priesthood the center of the newly reconstructed seven sacraments The bishop possesses the fullness of priesthood and the parish priest is his co-worker. They will preside liturgically over the altar of sacrifice, only the priest deemed worthy and capable of saying mass from 1147 c.e.

As I was anointed and had episcopal hands placed on my head in 1954 I was ordained a Roman priest. Two outstanding moments were when my thumbs and first fingers were anointed and made holy to touch the sacred communion host and when I was vested with a stole and given the power to forgive sins — offenses that supposedly offended the loving Creator. These were the human signs that I was ontologically changed, now acclaimed as possessing the very power of God. The ceremony was human, carried out by humans, and those of us that went through such remained totally human. We were set aside to say Mass, to be a liturgical continuance of Melchizedek, Aaron, the Jewish Temple Priests, and those ordained by order of the Council of Trent.

Vatican Two would burst the ancient bubble and call back the model of Jesus, the servant, who priests his life for humankind. There would be compliance and conflict in the two forms of priesthood about which we will continue this exploration next week.

Tom McMahon, in San Jose, Ca. Good health to all of you in 2012. 01Jan2012

P.S. Don't miss Tom's new mini-series looking at Religious Mythology. It begins on Catholica this coming Sunday.

Series Navigation: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

IMAGE SOURCE:
The figures used in the headline and end quotes is adapted from the painting "Abraham and Melchisedek" by Dieric Bouts which is illustrated in full in the body of this commentary. The image has been sourced from Wikipedia.

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