The eucharistic prayer offers a theologically rich indication of the ordained minister’s engagement of the priesthood of the faithful. While it is true that the priest recites the words of institution in the first person and recites the anaphora by himself, aside from the words of institution, the anaphora is in the first person plural. Thus the priest is speaking it in the name of the rest of the assembly. Hervé Legrand’s analysis of the liturgical vocabulary of the first millennium shows in the Roman sacramentaries the subject of the verb “celebrate” is always the “we” of the assembly, never the “I” of the priest. The liturgical “we” made Lombard say that a priest cut off from the Church could not validly celebrate Mass since he could not say offerimus quasi ex persona Ecclesiae in the anamnesis.

This liturgical “we” is further emphasized in the dialogue between priest and people in the liturgy. For example, in the exchange, “The Lord be with you,” and the response, “And with your spirit,” there is a reciprocal recognition of the Lord’s presence in both the assembly and in the minister. St. John Chrysostom commented that the eucharistic prayer is a common prayer because the priest does not give thanks (which is to say that he does not celebrate the Eucharist, the “thanksgiving”) alone but only with the people. He does not begin the eucharistic prayer without first gathering the faithful and assuring their agreement to enter into this action through the dialogue: “Lift up your hearts.” “We lift them up to the Lord.” “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” “It is right to give him thanks and praise.” In our own time, the General Instruction of the Roman Missal states that the dialogue between the celebrant and the faithful gathered together and the acclamations “are not simply outward signs of the community’s celebration, but . . . encourage and achieve a greater communion between priest and people.”

Susan K. Wood, “Liturgical Ecclesiology”, in A Church with Open Doors: Catholic Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium, Richard R. Gaillardetz and Edward P. Hahnenberg, eds. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015): Loc 3430-3447.

A theology of the liturgical assembly provides a theology for how the various orders in the church interrelate with one another. A theology of the assembly is not simply a theology of the laity since the liturgical assembly includes all those present at liturgy – bishop, presbyters, deacons, and lay faithful. In other words, the liturgical assembly is not simply those folks who sit in the nave of the church. It is not the people vis-à-vis the priest celebrant, but rather the entire people of God gathered by word and sacrament in liturgical prayer, inclusive of the ordained presider. Nevertheless, the assembly provides insight into the interrelationship between the laity and the ordained clergy. Since this liturgical assembly is the subject or agent of the liturgical action, the lay members of the assembly are not simply passive observers of liturgical actions performed by the ordained but active participants along with the presider.

Susan K. Wood, “Liturgical Ecclesiology”, in A Church with Open Doors: Catholic Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium, Richard R. Gaillardetz and Edward P. Hahnenberg, eds. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015): Loc 3381-3387.

When we conceive of the teaching ministry of the church as governance we will naturally look to our teachers to “police” the faith, and we will imagine the appropriate response to such teaching less as understanding and more as obedience. Whereas early Christian thought presented revelation as a divine pedagogy aimed at the transformation of humankind, the reduction of teaching to governance has reduced the richness of the Christian faith to a “digital genre,” as Juan Luis Segundo put it. This “digital” presentation of the Christian story purges dogma of its imaginative character within an eschatological horizon and renders it strictly informational – a collection of truths subject to mere intellectual assent.

Richard A. Gaillardetz, “Power and Authority in the Church: Emerging Issues”, in A Church with Open Doors: Catholic Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium, Richard R. Gaillardetz and Edward P. Hahnenberg, eds. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015): Loc 2230-2235.

Apostolicity is much more than a slavish conformity to the distant past, as if we could exempt ourselves from history. The term “apostolicity” is most often associated simply with the continuity between the ancient church and that of the present day, in much the way that “apostolic succession” is often understood as an almost literal continuity between the ministry of the apostles and that of today’s bishops. Apostolicity goes way beyond this kind of faithfulness, as Ormond Rush has reminded us. “Genuine continuity demands ongoing reinterpretation,” he writes, and he points out that this can be seen as early as in the New Testament itself, where we find “a process of reception and traditioning within the apostolic era that shows creative and innovative adaptation of the Gospel as the early church expanded into new cultures.” Indeed, Rush calls to his aid here no less an authority than Yves Congar, whose eschatological interpretation of apostolicity supports his position. In Congar’s words, “Apostolicity is the mark that for the church is both a gift of grace and a task. It makes the church fill the space between the Alpha and the Omega by ensuring that there is a continuity between the two and a substantial identity between the end and the beginning.” As Rush comments, “a static traditioning of the faith endangers the continuity of the church.”

Paul Lakeland, “Ecclesiology and the Use of Demography: Three Models of Apostolicity”, in A Church with Open Doors: Catholic Ecclesiology for the Third Millennium, Richard R. Gaillardetz and Edward P. Hahnenberg, eds. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2015): Loc 742-753.