Pastors Courageous
The Necessity of a Military Ministry
In early May the Emmanuel Foundation announced that this year’s recipients of its prestigious Kairos Journal Award are four “Anglican Primates who have boldly and consistently stood for historic orthodoxy” in the face of what it calls the “theological decline in the Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada.” The four bishop recipients of the award this year are Peter Jasper Akinola of Nigeria, Datuk Yong Ping Chung of South East Asia, Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda, and Gregory James Venables of the Southern Cone of South America. The presentation will be made in New York on September 8, and the attendance of at least two Touchstone editors at that event will testify to our own journal’s deep respect for these four recipients.
The announcement of the award declares that it “is given to individuals who demonstrate exemplary fidelity to the authority of Scripture and exceptional pastoral courage in their efforts to restore the prophetic voice of the Church as the moral conscience of the culture.” In addition to pastoral courage and biblical fidelity, the Kairos Journal Award also recognizes in its recipients the grace of historical discernment.
Thus, the announcement goes on, “Honorees are further chosen based on their discernment of, and response to, what the Journal calls the ‘kairos moment,’ a moment of cultural crisis demanding timely action from the Church.”
Discerning Courage
A traditional insight is revealed in this recognition that both historical discernment and fidelity to Holy Scripture are integrally related to the courage required in the pastoral ministry. It indicates, correctly, that courage is not a self-sufficient virtue.
It is not self-glorifying, nor does it revel in its own sense of power. It properly derives its worth, rather, from what it serves, which is beyond and above itself, something adhered to in fidelity and protected with discernment. For this reason the Emmanuel Foundation properly designates, along with courage, the associated qualities of fidelity and discernment.
Understanding that association, St. Ambrose warned the clergy of the late fourth century in De Officiis: “Although courage ( fortitudo) is a virtue higher than the others, it is not such as can stand alone, because it never depends solely on itself.” That is to say, it is not the arduousness of courage that renders it honorable, but the superior good to which it ministers. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in the Summa Theologica that “the reckoning of the virtue consists rather in what is good than in what is difficult” ( ratio virtutis consistit magis in bono quam in difficili).
In the case of the four bishops under consideration, the bonum or “good” that renders their courage truly valuable is the Church’s pastoral office, ministering in fidelity and discernment under the authority of Holy Scripture. This is why St. Ambrose, instructing the clergy of his own day in De Officiis, devoted so much attention to courage as a necessary requisite for the pastoral ministry.
Ambrose, born and raised during the stormy decades between the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, took it as obvious that there could be no adequate Christian pastoring without courage. Inspired by the recent examples of Athanasius and Basil, Ambrose himself consistently illustrated this virtue, perhaps most notably when he resisted the Arianism of the Empress Justina at Milan and called on the Emperor Theodosius to do public penance for the massacre at Thessaloniki.
Ourselves prompted by such models, we wonder if it is not about time to introduce more explicit lessons on courage in our modern seminary courses. We are not joking. This suggestion is not made as an exercise in frivolity.
Patrick Henry Reardon is pastor emeritus of All Saints Antiochian Orthodox Church in Chicago, Illinois, and the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Out of Step with God: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Numbers (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2019).
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