On Whose Hands Really Matter

I don't think he meant it personally, but the Pope this week declared me invalid. It's a hard thing coming from someone who has never met me, but I've certainly been called worse. In a new statement released Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI gave ecumenism a real boost by declaring the Roman Catholic Church the only real church, alone possessing the means to salvation, and that the clergy of those non-Catholic churches -- however nice and helpful they may be -- are ultimately firing blanks because they lack apostolic succession.

I mean no disrespect, but I think the Pope could benefit from a fresh reading of the book of Acts, in which protocols -- the "right" ways of doing things -- and boundaries and ideas about the "only true church" were quite regularly ripped apart in the face of evidence demonstrating that God's Spirit quite gleefully and regularly ignored them. I rather thought the Gospel message itself was an assault on such limiting thinking about who "qualifies," who is "acceptable," and who are Christ's mother and brothers (see Matthew 12:46-48).

But that's his business. As to non-Catholic churches being absent the power of salvation, I can only say that's not been my experience. And as to my personal lack of apostolic authority, it is true that Peter did not lay his hands on me through the ordination of his direct successors. But all this talk has made me think again of those under whose hands I was ordained -- "lay" people like Albert McAllister and Tom Brittain and Royce Farnsworth and Jack Fulwiler and Dutch Schultz and others; clergy mentors like Jim Oglesby and Larry Keefauver and Earl Bissex and my Dad -- and I can say theirs felt heavy enough.

As far as I'm concerned, Peter's hands would have been just fine that precious ordination day -- if, that is, those other, and frankly preferable, ones had not been available.