Ireland Lecture Fall 2024 | The Royal Priesthood and the Ordained Priesthood: Understanding Our Roles

Recently, there has been a rediscovery of the “royal” priesthood of all believers, as we are all called through our baptism to be priests in the High Priest, Jesus Christ. Some are even going so far as to think that the more familiar notion of the “ordained” priesthood was merely an invention that came about later in the church and was not established by Jesus Christ.

This lecture argues that the ordained priesthood has an essential role and is necessary for any notion of a “royal” priesthood of the baptized.

Dr. Matthew Levering is the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary, and Co-Director of the Chicago Theological Initiative. He is the author or co-author of over 35 books, including Scripture and Metaphysics, Participatory Biblical Exegesis, Biblical Natural Law, Proofs of God, Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?, The Abuse of Conscience, and Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology. He is currently at work on a multi-volume dogmatics, whose first five volumes have appeared (most recently Engaging the Doctrine of Israel). He is the editor or co-editor of over twenty books including such works as The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology, and The Reception of Vatican II. He is the translator of Gilles Emery, O.P.’’s The Trinity. He co-edits two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. He is the past president (2021-22) of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and served as its founding Chair of the Board from 2007-2016. He has been a member of Evangelicals and Catholics Together since 2004. With Thomas Joseph White, O.P., he co-edits the Thomistic Ressourcement series for Catholic University of America Press. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the St. Paul Center, and he edits the Renewal within Tradition series for Emmaus Academic Press.