Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony

Extreme Unction is a true Sacrament of the New Law, instituted by Christ and promulgated by St. James, who teaches its matter (anointing with oil), form (the prayer of faith), minister (the priest), and effect (forgiveness of sins and, conditionally, restoration of bodily health). Against the Protestant Reformers, who denied its sacramental character or held it a temporary charismatic gift now extinct, the Church's teaching is proved from the Epistle of James and confirmed by an unbroken line of Patristic witnesses from Origen onward.

The remote matter of Extreme Unction is olive oil blessed by a bishop; the proximate matter is the anointing of the organs of sense, of which a single unction now suffices; the form is a prayer for pardon, of which the essential element is not any particular wording but a genuine petition for the sick. Extreme Unction is not strictly necessary as a means of salvation, since its graces can be supplied extraordinarily, but the weight of theological opinion and the language of Trent indicate that neglecting it is at least gravely sinful.

Extreme Unction confers grace, comforts the sick, and blots out both the remains of sin and, in exceptional cases, sin itself, while conditionally restoring bodily health when this serves the soul's salvation; Fr. Kern's influential thesis holds its primary object to be the soul's perfect readiness for immediate entry into glory. The Sacrament can be validly administered only by bishops or priests — never by deacons or laymen — and a single priest suffices for validity, though the Oriental tradition of several priests jointly officiating is also examined.

To receive Extreme Unction validly one must be baptized, dangerously ill (not merely in danger of death from external causes), and morally responsible, since the Sacrament presupposes a life not entirely free from sin. It cannot be repeated during the same illness, though it may be received again in a fresh danger of death, and the historic pastoral abuse of delaying it until the patient could no longer even sin venially is firmly repudiated as contrary to the mind of Trent.

Against Luther and the Protestant Reformers, who denied a sacramental Christian priesthood, Trent teaches that Order is truly and properly a Sacrament instituted by Christ. Scripture shows the imposition of hands as the external sign conferring a permanent grace — not a mere charismatic gift — as demonstrated from the ordination of the seven deacons, of Paul and Barnabas, and of Timothy, and this teaching is confirmed by an unbroken Patristic tradition from Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom through Jerome and Augustine.

Against theories that locate the matter of Holy Orders in the delivery of the instruments (chalice, paten, book of Gospels) or in both rites conjointly, the great majority of theologians hold that the imposition of hands alone is the essential matter, as attested by Scripture, the Fathers, and the unbroken practice of the Greek Church; the corresponding form is sought in the prayer accompanying that imposition. The chapter closes with two appendices: Cardinal Van Rossum's demonstration that the Decretum pro Armenis was never an ex-cathedra ruling, and a note on why the three impositions used in the Latin rite of priestly ordination are not jointly essential to validity.

Holy Orders increases sanctifying grace and confers a claim to the actual graces needed for the sacerdotal office, but its primary effect is the indelible sacramental character, which bars repetition and return to the lay state and which underlies the historically contested question of the validity of heretical ordinations. The character imprinted is a genuinely new quality distinct from that of Baptism and Confirmation, and the higher powers attached to each rank of Orders, while normally accompanying the character, are conceptually distinct from it.

Of the eight orders recognized in the Church, only the three hierarchical orders — episcopate, priesthood, diaconate — are of divine institution; the five lower orders are of ecclesiastical origin. The episcopate is, by divine institution, an order distinct from and superior to the priesthood, its superiority resting chiefly on the exclusive power to confirm and ordain, and episcopal consecration is itself a true Sacrament, as shown from St. Paul's ordination of Timothy and confirmed by Ignatius of Antioch, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Augustine, and the Council of Trent.

The priesthood is a distinct order, divinely instituted and superior to the diaconate through the power of consecration and absolution, and ordination to the priesthood is a true Sacrament, as the Church's teaching on Holy Orders would otherwise lack any certain referent. The diaconate, instituted in the choosing of the seven in Acts VI, is the lowest of the three hierarchical orders and, though somewhat less firmly established than the other two, is likewise sacramental, as shown from the ancient ordination formularies of both East and West, which uniformly invoke the Holy Ghost upon the candidate.

Although the Church has never dogmatically decided the question, the common opinion among theologians, resting on solid historical grounds, holds that neither the subdiaconate nor the four minor orders (porter, lector, exorcist, acolyte) are Sacraments, since none of them existed in the Apostolic age and their ordination rites lack both the imposition of hands and the invocation of the Holy Ghost. The tonsure, finally, is not an order at all but merely the ceremony of admission to the clerical state.

The bishop is the ordinary minister of all orders, and of the three major orders exclusively; ordination normally requires the candidate's own bishop and, for episcopal consecration, the assistance of two additional bishops, though this latter requirement touches licitness rather than validity. An ordinary priest can, with papal dispensation, confer the subdiaconate and minor orders, but the question whether a priest could ever validly confer the diaconate or priesthood itself remains historically disputed and theologically unsettled.

To receive Holy Orders validly a person must be of the male sex and baptized; the ancient institute of deaconesses, though real, never conferred a sacerdotal order, as the pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions and St. Epiphanius attest. Infants can in principle be validly, though illicitly, ordained, as Benedict XIV affirmed in 1745. An appendix examines the disputed medieval question of whether the blessing of deaconesses was ever reckoned among the minor or major orders.

In the Latin Church, sacred orders constitute a diriment impediment to marriage binding bishops, priests, deacons, and subdeacons; though this precise canonical impediment dates only from the twelfth century, clerical celibacy itself is a much older ecclesiastical, not divine, precept, already widely though not universally observed in the first three centuries, as shown by the intervention of St. Paphnutius at Nicaea and by extensive Patristic testimony. The concluding section defends the fittingness of celibacy for its intrinsic superiority to marriage and its practical advantages for the Church, the clergy, and the faithful.

Against the ancient sects that condemned marriage as immoral and the Protestant Reformers who denied its sacramental character, Trent teaches that Christian marriage is truly one of the seven Sacraments, as St. Paul indicates in Ephesians V by calling it 'a great mystery' and a symbol of Christ's union with the Church. A second thesis, now settled beyond dispute by repeated papal teaching, holds that among baptized persons the contract and the Sacrament are absolutely inseparable: every legitimate marriage between Christians is eo ipso a Sacrament, and there can be no true marriage contract between them that is not also sacramental.

Rejecting theories that locate the Sacrament's matter or form in the priestly blessing or in the bodies of the spouses, the correct account holds that both matter and form lie in the words or signs of mutual consent itself, the traditio (surrender) constituting the matter and the acceptatio (acceptance) constituting the form. Matrimony's effects include an increase of sanctifying grace, a special sacramental grace strengthening the couple against the trials of married life and the threefold concupiscence, and a permanent 'quasi-character' — the marriage bond itself — from which flow the two properties of unity and indissolubility.

Polyandry is contrary to the natural law itself and can never constitute a true marriage, while polygamy, though tolerated under a special divine dispensation among the Patriarchs, is forbidden under the New Law by positive divine precept and was abolished by Christ's restoration of the original, Edenic monogamy. A third thesis establishes that the surviving spouse remains free under divine law to remarry after the death of the other partner, against the rigorism of Tertullian's Montanist period and various strands of Eastern discipline that discouraged, without forbidding, second and third marriages.

Marriage between baptized persons is intrinsically indissoluble even before consummation, so that no cause — not even adultery — permits either spouse to remarry while the other lives, a teaching defended at length against the Protestant reading of the Matthean exception clauses. Once such a marriage has also been consummated, it becomes extrinsically indissoluble as well: no earthly power, not even the Church, can dissolve it, because it alone perfectly symbolizes the union of Christ with His Church.

Although no marriage can be dissolved by the parties themselves or by any purely human authority, an unconsummated marriage between Christians can be dissolved either by papal dispensation or by the solemn religious profession of either spouse, and a marriage between unbaptized persons can be dissolved under the Pauline privilege when one party converts to the faith and the other refuses to convert or to live peaceably. Detailed conditions surrounding the required interpellation of the unconverted spouse, and the Holy See's practice of dispensing from it in cases of physical or moral impossibility, are examined at length.

Since contract and Sacrament are identical and both matter and form lie in the mutual consent, the spouses themselves are the ministers of the Sacrament of Matrimony, the priest being merely the Church's official witness and the minister of its accompanying solemnities and blessings, not of the Sacrament itself. To receive Matrimony validly the parties must be baptized, of different sex, free from diriment impediments, and intend to do what the Church does; and though no individual is bound under natural or divine law to marry, since virginity is also praised in Scripture, the human race as a whole was given the vocation to increase and multiply.

Against Luther, who admitted only the impediments listed in Leviticus, Trent teaches that the Church has always possessed and rightly exercised the power to establish diriment impediments to marriage, a claim documented from the fourth century onward. Because the validity of the Sacrament depends entirely on the validity of the underlying contract, the Church can invalidate marriages without altering the Sacrament's matter or form, and she likewise holds a twofold power of dispensing from impediments and of judging matrimonial causes, subject to certain limits — some impediments, resting on the natural or positive divine law, lie beyond the reach even of papal dispensation.

Against Antonio de Dominis, Launoy, and the Jansenist court theologians who claimed the Church's authority over marriage derives from the State, Pius VI and Trent affirm that this authority comes directly from Christ and independently of any secular grant, as history confirms since no historical moment can be identified at which the State conferred such power. It follows as doctrina certa that all matrimonial causes among Christians belong exclusively to the Church, though the State retains genuine, if narrower, competence over the marriages of the unbaptized and over the purely civil consequences of Christian marriage — a distinction that also explains the Church's condemnation of civil marriage as a substitute for the Sacrament.