The priesthood (of Latin sacerdotum), indicates the dignity and the functions of the priest in various religions.

Christianity

Principles

Jesus-Christ is that which the Father has oint the Holy Spirit and which It constituted Prêtre, Prophète, and King. Entire God's people take part in these three sank of Christ and it carries the Responsabilité S for mission and service which result from this.

While entering God's people by the Faith and the Baptism, one receives share with the single Vocation of these People: with its sacerdotal vocation : Christ Lord, large priest taken among the men made of the new people a kingdom, priests for her God and Father. Baptized, indeed, by the regeneration and the oiling of the Holy Spirit, are devoted to be a spiritual residence and a holy priesthood.

Two types of priesthoods

In the Catholic religion , the Constitution Lumen Gentium (chapter II) distinguishes two types of priesthoods:

• ministerial priesthood, that of the Priest S,
• the common priesthood of the Faithful S (Laic S).

Ministerial priesthood and the common priesthood of the Fidèle S take part of the single priesthood of Christ.

In the Catholicism, the access to ministerial priesthood is obtained by the Sacrement of sacerdotal ordination.

By the episcopal dedication is conferred the plenitude of the Sacrement of the order, that the liturgical habit of the Église indicates under the name of supreme priesthood of the crowned ministry.

The priesthood of the Fidèle S is described as follows:

“the Faithful S, built-in to the Church by the Baptism, are made suited, thanks to their character, to celebrate the Culte Christian Religion. And after being regenerated to become children of God, they are held to publicly profess the Foi which they received from God by the Church, to which the Sacrement of Confirmation more narrowly links them thanks to the Holy Ghost which enriches them by a particular force. Thus they are more strictly obliged to spread the Foi and to defend it by the Parole and works, like true Témoin S of the Christ”.