Translation of Kerkelijk ambt.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: 'No Church Community without One More Learders' -- The Story of New Testament Communities -- Ministry in the First and Second Christian Millennia -- Continuity and Divergence between the First and Second Christian Millennia -- Tension between Actual Church Order and Alternative Practices in the Ministry -- A Brief Hermeneutical Intermezzo

Edward Schillebeeckx has already attracted world-wide attention –and a Vatican investigation– for his views on Jesus the Christ. However, he his views on Jesus the Christ. However, he has made it quite clear that the point the official position of the Roman Catholic Church lies in the question of ministry. This book shows why. Deceptively short, its contents are distilled from twenty-five years of study and writing, and are prompted by the global shortage of priests and the emergence of new alternative forms of ministry, Observing that renewals in the church usually begin with illegal deviations, Schillebeeckx traces the development of the theology and forms of ministry from New Testament to modern times. After surveying the three principal conceptions of priesthood in their historically changing contexts (the patristic, the medieval, and the modern), Schillebeeckx singles out the theological criteria that have informed the church's practice of ministry in the past and will inform it in the future. He shows conclusively, for example, that objections to separation of celibacy and ministry or to ministry of women are of a pseudo-doctrinal kind, which are, at bottom, linked to non-Christian feminine and sexual taboos. Yet his proposals for another and a better kind of pastoral church order go well beyond these two highly charged issues. What he seeks is to clarify the identity of presently non-ordained and often frustrated pastoral workers (male or female) who bear more of the burden of the community the more time goes on. It is among these grassroots leaders that forms of ministry are emerging that will give modern shape to the apostolicity of the Christian community.