We All Have Our Agenda

In my blog entries for March 21 and 22 I mentioned that this blog, What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You had come to the notice of Father Anthony Ruff, OSB of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville and the blog he edits, Pray Tell: Worship, Wit, and Wisdom (http://www.praytellblog.com).  What I should have realized is that the positive recognition I received from Father Anthony would bring down the plague of Katholic Krazy gnats that buzz around his site looking for something with which to disagree (and be disagreeable).  I am a little naïve about the blogosphere and don’t spend a lot of time trolling around.  A friend of mine alerted me to be Father Anthony’s tip o’the hat and I have since learned to check out Pray Tell from time to time and have found it to contain excellent material that has stimulated much conversation and even more thought on my part.  But for some reason the other day I ended up on the site of The New Liturgical Movement/Novus Motus Liturgicus (http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org).  Now, to be fair, the various authors that blog on this site are not, at least for the most part, Katholic Krazies but men and women who, for the greater part, know what they are writing about.  I probably would not agree with much of what they write, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate both their work and their thoughtfulness.  Of course, they have an agenda and their agenda lines up with a significant group of the KK’s—and guarantees their readership.  The self-appointed mission of TNLM/NML is to put the toothpaste back into the tube and restore the Church to its monarchial model that we can remember from the 1950’s.   While they are not, for the most part, the Society of Saint Pius X sort of strict restorationists,  TNLM/NML follows the “Reform of the Reform” philosophy outlined by Monsignor M. Francis Manion in an article he wrote for America Magazine about twenty-two years ago.  (Unfortunately I don’t have immediate access to the article and so can’t give you the exact date of publication.)  The Reform of the Reform approach to liturgical renewal is that the Novus Ordo of Paul VI far exceeded the reforms of the Roman Rite called for by the Council and should be dialed back in favor of a Rite that would still be celebrated—for the greater part—in Latin with the priest facing away from the congregation, and without the structural changes of the 1970 Missal.  Gregory DiPippo, the managing editor of the TNLM/NML blog, recognizes the threat to this agenda posed by What Sister Never Knew and Father Never Told You’s critique of the old liturgy and why Father Anthony picked up on it.

Fr. Ruff’s reason for bringing them to the readers’ attention is, as he writes, that the original author “… shows why for so many of us there can’t be a going back to the old rite – no way, no how.”

And that is precisely my point.  We aren’t going back; we can’t go back. The Tridentine Rite, and some of those medieval rites on which it was based, have several serious theological flaws.  (By the way, so does the Novus Ordo and—in my opinion—the recently revised translation has not only failed to clear them up, but made them worse.  Notice I refrain from saying “humble opinion” as I am the first to admit there is nothing humble about my opinions.  Humility would deprive me of the pleasure I have in doing this blog.)  In the end, there will always be flaws in the Liturgy.  Our faith, or at least the doctrinal expression of our faith, is always a living reality that needs constant modulation to approach ever more closely the Truth of the Divine Mystery.  And that is one reason why we cannot ever again allow the liturgy to be frozen for four hundred years—or forty years, for that matter.   Like it not, we live in history and not yet in that timeless realm where there is no benefit in change. 

In any event, Mr. DiPippo, a graduate student studying for his Master’s Degree (more probably the License or STL) in Rome at the Augustinianum (The Pontifical Institute for Patristics which is one of Rome’s more credible faculties), goes on, by clipping quotes from Father Anthony or myself, to set up a straw man whom he can refute.  By quoting Peter Lombard (whom I agree is the “gold standard” of medieval theologians) he implies that all Scholastic theologians who followed him were orthodox in their doctrines of Eucharistic Sacrifice.  Would that there was truth to that.  We may have been saved the Reformation.  But alas and alack, to use one of my favorite archaisms, all one has to do is read medieval sermons or devotional books or even popular hymns to see that there were gross exaggerations of the Church’s authentic faith in the popular imagination.  And those exaggerations became part of the commonly accepted teaching of the Church over time.  Bad liturgy does that.  The lex orandi becomes the lex credendi which is why the reform of the liturgy is a constant task and needs to be an ongoing work. 

Mr. DiPippo  makes his error in methodology when he writes:

As a first principal, I will take it for granted that liturgical texts must be understood according to the sense in which the Church gives them to us. Furthermore, I take this to be true, even when another sense at variance with the Faith may be plausibly found within them. (http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2014/03/the-theology-of-offertory-part-3.html#.U3j92b8-aX0) 

The liturgical texts should be understood according to the sense in which the Church gives them to us.  But they often aren’t.  Unfortunately once I utter a word or commit it to paper it no longer belongs to me but to the listener or the reader. This is what permits Mr. DiPippo to put his interpretation on my text and while I may insist that is not what I meant or said or wrote, I can’t deny his understanding.  The same is true for the teachings of the Church whether Papal Encyclicals, Council Documents, or Liturgical texts.  One of my favorite Latin axioms is Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur.  (That which is received is received according to the manner of the recipient.   Or in other words, while I can tell you what I said, only you can tell me what you heard.)  No, maybe Peter Lombard or Thomas Aquinas never said that bread and wine become a secondary sacrifice in the offertory of the Mass—and depending on the rite with which they were familiar perhaps there was no ambiguity about this.  But by the time we had the Mass of Pius V for 350 years the Catholic Encyclopedia would have something to say in refutation to Mr. DiPippo’s claim that

Now obviously, the claim that the Scholastics (or anyone else) thought that there were two sacrifices in the ritual of the Mass, one of bread and wine, and another of the Body and Blood of Christ, is absurd.

So no one thought there were to two sacrifices in the Body and Blood of Christ?  Check out the pre-Vatican II edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10006a.htm ).  

The question therefore arises first: Is the sacrifice comprised in the Offertory? From the wording of the prayer this much at least is clear that bread and wine constitute the secondary sacrificial elements of the Mass, since the priest in the true  language of sacrifice, offers to God bread as an unspotted host (immaculatam hostiam) and wine as the chalice of salvation (calicem salutaris).  So much for no once claiming that there were two sacrifices in the Mass. 

Now to be fair, the article in the older Catholic Encyclopedia clearly locates the essential sacrifice of the Mass in the Consecratory Prayer, but it does above admit to the offertory rites involving offering in sacrifice to God bread and wine.  This is a clear flaw in the Tridentine Liturgy and the revised 1970 Rite does not eliminate sacrificial language but redirects the focus away from the bread and wine and places it on the Eucharist in which we proclaim the Death of the Lord until he comes again.  Does this mean that the Tridentine Liturgy is not valid?  By no means.  But it does mean, at least to those of us who value a clear focus on the Sacrificial Death of Christ on the Cross, that we have no desire to return—“no way, no how” to use Father Anthony’s words—to the old liturgy.  That may make TNLM/NML folk unhappy but be content that you can find your Summorum Pontificium and your Reform of the Reform versions of the Novus Ordo while the rest of us sing a little Gospel or have our Mass for kids with special needs or just enjoy the fruits of Vatican II and how the liturgy helps us to pray.  O—and by the way—we aren’t finished yet and the work of Liturgical renewal (and reform) is an ongoing mission. 

Of Cranmer, Eucharistic Sacrifice, Problems in the Mass, and Students Writing Papers cont.

OK—let’s move on to Thomas Cranmer’s theology of the Eucharist—in particular his ideas  of Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  As I mentioned two postings ago, I had several requests from a student who has to do a paper and wanted leads on the topic of Eucharistic Sacrifice.  In my last two postings I gave resources that deal with the Catholic understanding—and misunderstanding—of Eucharistic Sacrifice at the time of the English Reformation.  What help can we give regarding Thomas Cranmer—the Archbishop of Canterbury who moved the Church of England from a Catholic Church to a strongly Protestant Church (I can’t say Calvinist because Cranmer would obviously go much further to the left than Jean Calvin ever went in his Eucharistic theology).   
One problem we have to face is that Cranmer was not an original theologian but more a liturgical composer whose theology moved from a Lutheran position in the 1520’s and early 30’s through Calvin’s theology to a far more Zwinglian position by the time he composed his Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552 outlining the Anglican Liturgy.  Cranmer, unlike Calvin, did not leave much in the way of systematic theological works.  His ideas are found primarily in his liturgical writing.  But among his personal papers one would want to check Cranmer’s correspondence with the Strasbourg Reformer, Martin Bucer, who seems to have been the chief channel of continental Protestant thought to Cranmer.  Bucer spent three years in England—1549-1551—the definitive years of the Reformed English Liturgy.  One might also want to take a look at the writings of John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester—one of the more extreme reformers of the Church of England, and Nicholas Ridley who replaced Edmund Bonner as Bishop of London when Bonner would not abandon the old liturgy and accept the Prayer Book Liturgy in 1549.  Hooper, in particular, was the theologian among the Anglican Bishops of the reign of King Edward VI and those who went along with the reformed rites did so under his influence.  (Not all Bishops did go along, as we shall see, and those who did not were deprived of their sees and replaced by new bishops who were amenable to the Protestant ideas of Cranmer and his associates. 
As I said in an earlier posting, I won’t do people’s research for them, but I do have a bibliography on Cranmer and his Eucharistic theology and I am happy to pass that on to any who want to do further research—or who, like our student who wrote me—need to do further research, like it or not.  Let me express my regrets that not all entries have their full bibliographical detail, but again any one interested needs do his or her own research and the works are easy enough to track down. 

 

John E. Booty: The Book of Common Prayer, 1559

Frank Edward Brightman, “The English Rite”

P.N. Brooks, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of the Eucharist: An Essay on Historical Development,” 2^nd Edition (MacMillan, 1992)

C. Buchannan, “What Did Cranmer Think He Was Doing?”

W.D. Cargill Thompson, “Who Wrote ‘The Supper of the Lord’,”  Studies in the Reformation, Luther to Hooker 

Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer[1]

Church of England, ‪The First Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI: ‪And, the Ordinal of 1549 Together with The Order of the Communion, 1548 

P. Collinson, “The Reformer and the Archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian,” Journal of Religious History (6), 1971

Gregory Dix: The Shape of the Liturgy

Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580

C.W. Dugmore: The Mass and the English Reformers

A.H. Courtain: The Holy Communion 1549,” Church Quarterly Review 1963

A.H. Courtain: The Service of Holy Communion 1552-1662,” Church Quarterly Review 1962

Francis (Aidan) Gasquet and E. Bishop, Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer

B.A. Gerrish, “Sign and Reality, The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed confessions,” The Old Protestantism and the New

B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin

B. Hall, “The Colloquies between Catholics and Protestants 1539-1541,” Councils and Assemblies, ed by G.J. Cuming and D. Baker

Joseph Hooper Maude, The History of the Book of Common Prayer

C. Hopf, ‘’Bishop Hookers ‘Notes’ To the King’s Council,” Journal of Theological Studies, 44 (1943)

C. Hopf, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation

G. Jeanes, “A Reformation Treatise on the Sacraments,” Journal of Theological Studies NS  46 (1995)

M. Johnson (ed), Thomas Cranmer: Essays in Commemoration of the 500^th Anniversary of His Birth

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer

J.A. Muller, Stephen Gardiner and the Tudor Reaction

W. Page, “The First Book of Common Prayer and the Windsor Commission, Church Quarterly Review 98 (1924)

N. Pocock, “Preparations for the First Book of Edward VI,” Church Quarterly Review 35, (1892-93)

F. Proctor and W.H.Frere, The Book of Common Prayer With a Rationale for its Offices

G.E. Pruett: “Thomas Cranmer’s Progress in the doctrine of the Eucharist, 1535-1548,”  Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 45 (1976)

E.C. Ratcliff, “Liturgical Work of Archbishop Cranmer” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 7 (1976)

E.C. Ratcliff, “The English Usage of Eucharistic Consecration 1548-1662,” Theology, 60 (1957)

G. Redworth, In Defense of the Church Catholic: The Life of Stephen Gardiner

R. Rex, “The English Campaign Against Luther in the 1520’s,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 39 (1989)

C.C. Richardson, “Cranmer and the Analysis of Eucharistic Doctrine,” Journal of Theological Studies, 16 (1965)

D.G. Selwyn “A New Version of a Mid-Sixteenth Century Vernacular Tract on the Eucharist,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 39 (1988)

N.S. Tjernagel, Henry VIII and the Lutherans: A Study in Anglo-Lutheran Relations from 1521 to 1547.

           Let me particularly recommend from the above list, Dix, MacCullocuh, Duffy and Ratcliff.  But I think all the sources will agree that the work of Thomas Cranmer brings the Church of England out of the orbit of the Church Catholic into a definitively Protestant theology modified by a semi-protestant liturgical praxis.  The long term consequence of this will make it difficult to argue for historical continuity within the English Church from pre-Reformation to post-Reformation Ecclesia Anglicana.  I regret saying this as I had always held for continuity until I looked in depth into just how radical a reformer Thomas Cranmer was. 

---

[1] This is not the prayer book itself, but a book published by Oxford University Press in 2011

More on the Mass as Sacrifice --What It Means and What it doesn't Mean

14th century bas-relief depicting

Mass facing the People on the

facade of Lucca Cathedral.

OK, this posting will be a little more heavy than my usual and it may interest a more limited audience, but in the last posting, I dealt with the idea of the Mass as Sacrifice from the perspective of the prayers in the offertory of the Mass of Pius V where the bread and wine are specifically referred to as a Sacrifice.  This is theologically problematic and is one of the reasons that the offertory rite was so drastically revised in the Reform of the Liturgy following the Second Vatican Council.  The Mass is a Sacrifice in as that in the Mass we participate in the one eternal Sacrifice of Christ made on the Cross at Calvary and to which we become mystically present when “we proclaim the Death of the Lord until he comes…”  (I am using the word “mystically” here in the sense that Pius XII used it so describe the Church as the Body of Christ in Mystici Corporis. It does not mean “spiritually” or “symbolically,” nor is it meant to connote the abstraction that is often meant when we use the word “mystic.”  In some sense, mystic means “sacramental,” but it is meant to convey a reality that is more authentic—more real—than the literal or physical sense.  In other words, in the Eucharistic Celebration we are truly and fully present to the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, even more present to it than were those who stood there at the foot of the Cross.)  In no sense is Christ offered in Sacrifice again and again each day on the altars of our churches, much less do we offer God a sacrifice of bread and wine.  We do present to God’s service the gifts of bread and wine so that the Lord’s Death might be proclaimed until he comes again but this should not be considered a “sacrifice.”  Were I a theologian I might go on about how the bread and wine are symbols of our own lives which are presented on the altar so that by Christ’s Redeeming Sacrifice and the Power of the Holy Spirit called down we, by virtue of our baptism, are conformed to Christ in his death and Resurrection and so become his Body—but since I am not a theologian I don’t intend to go there.  I had planned in this posting to talk about Cranmer’s reaction to the concept of the Mass as Sacrifice, but I realize that before I go there, I need to look at the Roman Canon, the Eucharistic Prayer which, in Cranmer’s day was the only Eucharistic Prayer used in the Western Church (including the distinctly English Rites), to see how the idea of the Mass as Sacrifice is found there.  So let’s look at the Roman Canon. 
There are various phrases in the canon that make it clear that a sacrifice is being offered to God in this rite.  I will highlight the sacrificial language.  Pardon the Latin, but to demonstrate the point, we need to cite the untranslated text lest the translation add or subtract meaning. 

uti accepta habeas et benedicas  haec dona haec munera, haec sancta sacrificia illibata,

vel qui tibi offerunt hoc sacrificium laudis, pro se suisque omnibus: pro redemtione animarum suarum, pro spe salutis et incolumitatis suae:

Hanc igitur oblationem servitutis nostrae, sed et cunctae familiae tuae, quaesumus, Domine, ut placatus accipias:

Supra quae propitio ac sereno vultu respicere digneris: et accepta habere, siculti accepta habere dignatus es munera pueri tui iusti Abel, et sacrificium Patriarchae nostri Abrahae, et quod tibi obtulit summus sacerdos tuus Melchisedech, sanctum sacrificium, immaculatam hostiam.

Supplices te rogamus, omnipotens Deus: iube haec perferri per manus sancti Angeli tui in sublime altare tuum, in conspectu divinae maiestatis tuae;

But it is also clear from the prayers, that the sacrifice being offered is not bread and wine, but Christ himself, highlighting not only the sacrificial language, but the reference to the sacrifice being Christ. 

Quam oblationem tu, Deus, in omnibus, quaesumus, benedictam, adscriptam, ratam, rationabilem, acceptabilemque facere digneris: ut nobis Corpus et Sanguis fiat dilectissimi Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi.

ut quotquot ex hac altaris participatione sacrosanctum Filii tui Corpus et Sanguinem sumpserimus,

And it is clear that Christ is not being sacrificed anew but rather that are recalling his one eternal sacrifice.  I have highlighted the phrase, unde et memores, in addition to the sacrificial language because that phrase, usually translated “Calling to mind…”  or in the current translation, “we celebrate the memorial” neither of which phrase keeps the Latin syntax despite Liturgiam authenticam.   

Unde et memores, Domine, nos servi tui, sed et plebs tua sancta, eiusdem Christi, Filii Tui, Domini nostri, tam beatae passionis, necnon et ab inferis resurrectionis, sed et in caelos gloriosae ascensionis: offerimus praeclarae maiestati tuae de tuis donis ac datis hostiam puram, hostiam sanctam, hostiam immaculatam, Panem sanctam vitae aeternae et Calicem salutis perpetuae.

What may have been clear in the seventh century when the Roman Canon achieved what was more or less to be its definitive form, was no longer clear in the sixteenth century (much less the 20^th)  and the nuances of the theology of Eucharistic sacrifice were lost leading to exaggerated ideas.  In their attempts to restore the pristine faith regarding the Eucharist, reformers from Luther to Cranmer to Calvin to Zwingli universally rejected any and all sacrificial language, thus snapping the connection of the Eucharist to the Cross and reducing the Eucharist is a commemoration, not of the cross but of the Last Supper.  Fortunately the recovery of the patristic tradition has led most Protestant—or at least Anglican and Lutheran—scholars back to appreciation of the Eucharist as a sacramental participation in the Death of the Lord until he comes again.  It can also be said regarding us Catholics, that the revised Liturgy of Paul VI has done much to restore our balance in approaching the Eucharist as Sacrifice by clarifying the relationship of the Eucharistic Celebration to the paschal mystery and reducing the superstitious understanding prevalent at the time of the Reformation and, among the ignorant, still prevalent on the eve of the Council.  In regard to a clear theology of the Eucharist, the revised rites of Paul VI are greatly superior to the ambiguities found in the old Missal used until the revisions of Vatican II. 

 

Of Cranmer, Eucharistic Sacrifice, Problems in the Mass, and Students Writing Papers

I had the following two responses to my entry on Cranmer and his elimination of the idea of Sacrifice from the Eucharist, especially in reference to the secondary sacrifice of bread and wine at the Offertory.  This was a particularly inflammatory blog as Father Anthony Ruff picked up on it in his blog, Pray Tell, and it set of a bit of a firestorm as one of the bones that defenders of the “old Mass” love to pick is the changed offertory rites of the Mass of Pius V (1570) and the Mass of Paul VI or the Novus Ordo,(1970)  The liturgical revisions of Paul VI reduced the rite from an “offertory” where bread and wine were offered to God to a “Preparation of the Gifts” where the bread and wine were prepared for the Eucharistic Rite which followed.  Cranmer, because of a faulty understanding of Eucharistic Theology common in the sixteenth century among both Catholics and Reformers, would have denied that the Eucharist was a sacrifice in any sense.  Most Catholics of the time had a very exaggerated—exaggerated to the point of heresy—understanding of the “Sacrifice” of the Mass to which the reformers reacted strongly—too strongly by the standards of modern scholarship.  In other words there were serious theological problems on both sides of this debate.  Over the course of the Council of Trent and subsequent Catholic theology, especially since the time of Leo XIII and most especially with the biblical research initiated by Pius XII, a sound theology of Eucharistic Sacrifice has been recovered in the Catholic tradition.  Similarly, contemporary scriptural scholarship among those Protestant denominations that invest in scriptural scholarship (as differentiated from fundamentalist ravings) has opened an ecumenical dialogue in which all parties have come to a mutual understanding of the relationship of the Eucharistic celebration and the One Eternal Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.  Of course, just as there are those on the Protestant side who reject serious theological scholarship in favor of biblical fundamentalism, so too there are those on the Catholic side who are stuck in the exaggerated pieties and theological aberrations of ages past.  Those who argue against the “validity” of the current liturgical rites do so, in part, because of the scaled down offertory rites and the absence of a notion of the bread and wine being sacrificed. 

This  has taken me far from the two comments sent me by a student with a paper due.  And given the tardiness of my response, I probably have not been much help.  I regret that, but it has taken me awhile to get back with the information that might help. 

Here are the student’s responses/requests

No worries. That was the first suggestion that I read somewhere on how to contact a blog author. I am writing a college paper for a theology class and would like to quote part of this blog as it is brilliant research. Profs don't look highly on uncredited references. I am most intrigued by the multiple sacrifices considered before Vatican II as opposed to the ONE sacrifice understood by 1970. If you could devise a credible way for me to quote your work in my class paper, without disturbing your privacy, I would appreciate it very much! Thank you!

Thank you.Consolamini. I understand. I am trying to figure out how to cite this page for a paper I am writing for a class. Can you help me with that?

I must admit that I might over-react a bit as I am amazed at how often people contact me during my day job and want me to do their research for them.  Ordinary grad students aren’t too bad at this, Law students are outrageous—but the worst are often full professors who will contact me and ask me to research a topic for them.  Excuse me: do your own research.  I see professors abusing their teaching assistants all the time by assigning them research projects.  It makes me lose respect for many of my colleagues.  There are a lot of lazy people in academia these days.  However, while I will not do research for other people, I am willing to point out to people where they might look, at least at the beginning, for further information. 

Regarding the idea of the double sacrifice: that is the lesser sacrifice of bread and wine at the offertory and the greater Sacrifice of the Eucharist in the Canon of the Mass, you want to look first and foremost at the text of the prayers.  For the offertory rite, the idea of the bread and wine being sacrificed is found very clearly in the prayer

Suscipe, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus, hanc immaculatam hostiam, quam ego indignus famulus tuus offero tibi, Deo meo vivo et vero, pro innumerabilibus peccatis, et offensionibus, et negligentiis meis, et pro omnibus circumstantibus, sed et pro omnibus fidelibus Christianis vivis atque defunctis. ut mihi, et illis proficiat ad salutem in vitam aeternam.

The corresponding prayer for the chalice

Offerimus tibi, Domine, calicem salutaris tuam deprecantes clementiam: ut in conspectu divinae majestatis tuae, pro nostra et totius mundi salute com odore suavitatis ascendat. Amen.

Also contains this idea but it is not as vividly and explicitly expressed as it is in the bread prayer.

If you want a secondary source to confirm this interpretation, let me refer you to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia that says in its article “The Sacrifice of the Mass. 

The question therefore arises first: Is the sacrifice comprised in the Offertory? From the wording of the prayer this much at least is clear that bread and wine constitute the secondary sacrificial elements of the Mass, since the priest  in the true  language of sacrifice, offers to God bread as an unspotted host (immaculatam hostiam) and wine as the chalice of salvation (calicem salutaris).

I will pick up on this in my next posting and give you sources for Cranmer and his theology, but I am under the gun right now for time and am racing the clock to get this posted asap.

Of Aaron, Melchizedek, David, Christ and the Priesthood

Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek 

by Dieric Bouts the Elder, 1464–67

You might remember a few posts back that I had a correspondent who  wrote

Isn't an offering of bread and wine an appropriate at this point in the mass, preceding as it does the Eucharistic sacrifice, seeing as Jesus is high priest according to the order of Melchizedek? Melchizedek, after all, did offer bread and wine. By this I mean, as Melchizedek was the Old Testament figure of Christ as High Priest, and priests offer sacrifices.

I explained why a secondary sacrifice—one of bread and wine—is theologically repugnant when our faith is centered in the redemptive Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, the only sacrifice by which humankind is redeemed.  But I think we need to explore this idea of the priesthood of Melchizedek as our correspondent seems to think that Jesus shares in the priesthood of Melchizedek and does not understand how that demeans the unique role of Christ as sole redeemer of humankind and demeans his priesthood by declaring it to be a sharing in the priesthood of the ancient King of Salem who blessed Abraham rather than seeing that Christ exercises a priesthood in his own right.

Among the societies of the ancient near East, it was not rare for the King to be the chief cultic figure as well as the civil ruler.  It was not this way with the Jews, but it was common among many of the other societies.  And indeed the idea of the Kingship being joined to the priesthood came into Christian mythology as well.  For example, when we look at the preface for the Solemnity of Christ the King we see the ideas of priesthood and kingship interwoven into a single figure.
I am old enough to remember watching the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953.  I don’t remember much of the coronation service—my Dad and I watched it late into the night after the tapes had been flown across the Atlantic for broadcast here.  But my Dad, for some reason, drew my attention to the fact that the Queen laid aside her royal robes before the coronation and put on priestly vestments.  I have since researched this a bit and found that the British monarch puts aside the “robe of state”—the purple mantle with a long train—and puts on a type of alb called the colobium sidonis.  Over this is the supertunica—a type of dalmatic made of gold silk. Over this goes a cope of cloth of gold called the pallium regale.  Finally the sovereign is invested with the armilla, a stole of the same material of cloth of gold and worn over both shoulders in the fashion of a priestly stole.  The tradition of dressing the monarch in quasi-liturgical vestments finds its roots in the Byzantine ritual of the sixth century from where it spread to the Holy Roman Empire in the West and then to the various European monarchies.  Curiously, when the Reformers swept away Eucharistic vestments in England, they left the coronation vestments intact for all those Protestant centuries.
England was not the only monarchy to associate the Crown with priestly dignity.  The Kings of France at their coronation were given to drink from the chalice of the Precious Blood at the coronation Mass.  This was again because a certain priestly character was attributed to the King.  The Tsars of Russia also, at their coronations, received the Eucharist not in the manner of the laity, but as a priest.  Along with the concelebrating bishops, the newly crowned Tsar approached the Holy Table, reverenced the Eucharist sitting thereupon with a deep bow, took the piece of Eucharistic bread in his hands and self-communicated, before kissing the chalice and then drinking the precious blood.  After the Tsar had so received in the priestly fashion, the Metropolitan of Moscow added the remaining fragments of consecrated bread to the chalice from which the laity then received the intincted Eucharist on a gold spoon.
Back to ancient Israel.  King David was anxious to appropriate a cultic role to himself as other Kings in the ancient Near East did.  David had a passion for worship.  He composed many of the psalms that were sung in the temple worship.  He had a major celebration in bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, leading the procession himself in ecstatic dance.  He wanted to build a temple to hold the Ark, but God revealed to him through the prophet Nathan that it would be the task of his successor to build the temple. 
David wanted to appropriate a certain priesthood to the monarchy but how could he when was descended from Judah and God had revealed that the priests were to be taken solely from the descendants of Levi through Aaron.  David composes psalm 110 to justify his position.

Psalm 110 provides a solution.

The Lord says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”

The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.

The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”

The Lord is at your right hand;
he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead
and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.
He will drink from a brook along the way,
and so he will lift his head high.

David here is King by God’s anointing—his victories had been won by God so that he, David might rule.  But it is not only the military kingship that is given to David—but also the priesthood.  No, he is not a descendent of Levi and Aaron, but “the Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.”  Like Melchizedek David is not of the priestly line, but like Melchizedek he has been found worthy of the priesthood.

David of course, at least as far as we know, did not stand at the altar sacrificing bulls and goats.  He shows no desire to infringe on the rights and duties of the cultic priests, but he does appropriate to himself and his royal office a priestly character.
As the disciples of Jesus began, perhaps on the road to Emmaus, to interpret the scriptures from a new perspective that explained the death and Resurrection of Jesus, they came to see his death as the definitive sacrifice of Atonement by which God and humankind were fully reconciled.  The Cross was able to do what no amount of the blood of bulls and goats, or the bushels of bread and vats of wine, offered in sacrifice could do.  The Cross stands alone as the sacrifice by which all humankind is reconciled to the Father. 
But to offer himself in sacrifice, Christ had to be a priest.  And Jesus, like his ancestor David, was from the lineage of Judah.  How could this be reconciled?  Simply.  Like his Father David, Jesus was priest not by human lineage but by divine anointing.  It had been done so for Melchizedek.  It had been done so for David.  It was done so for Jesus. 
But this does not mean that Jesus, nor David for that matter, shares in Melchizedek’s priesthood.  It simply means that he has a priesthood that is exceptional, outside the normal rules, by Divine Choice. 
Jesus Christ is the incarnation of the Second Person of the Divine Trinity.  It is beneath the dignity of the Incarnation that he draw his priesthood from any human source but rather that he is priest because has been so designated by the Father.  Like Melchizedek he is a priest because God accepts his priesthood though he is not of the Aaronic line.  But it is his own priesthood, not that of Melchizedek, that he exercises in the Sacrifice of Calvary.  “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” does not mean that Christ shares in the priesthood of Melchizedek.  It means simply that like Melchizedek—and like his ancestor David—Christ is designated a priest by God outside the normal lineage. 
Next time perhaps we will speak of the “priests” of the new covenant who minister at the altars from the time of Jesus to today.  Like Christ, their priesthood is not Melchizedek’s.  Neither is it their own.  We will take a look at this in a future posting.