Extreme Unction — The Recipient

Chapter 4: The Recipient

The conditions of valid administration of Extreme Unction on the part of the recipient are three: (1) he must be baptized; (2) he must be sick of a disease which is judged dangerous; and (3) he must be morally responsible.

1. The Recipient Must Be Baptized. Baptism is “the spiritual door” to all the Sacraments. Hence no unbaptized person, how pious soever or how well prepared, can validly receive Extreme Unction. This has been the invariable teaching and practice of the Catholic Church, based on St. James’ Epistle: “Is any man sick among you” — that is, among you who are baptized Christians.¹

2. The Recipient Must Be Sick of a Disease Which Is Judged Dangerous. The Decretum pro Armenis defines: “This Sacrament must not be given except to one who is sick and judged likely to die.”² Substantially identical with this declaration is that of the Tridentine Council, that “this unction is to be applied to the sick, but to those especially who are in such danger as to seem to be about to depart this life.”³ This teaching is also based on the Epistle of St. James. When the Apostle says: “If any man is sick among you,” he plainly means so sick that he can no longer betake himself to a priest.

a) In the Latin Church Extreme Unction has always been known as the Sacrament of the departing (sacramentum exeuntium). This explains how some Catholics got the mistaken notion that once a man had this Sacrament administered to himself, his account with the world was closed — a belief which at times resulted in much delay and negligence. “In the Middle Ages,” says Oswald, “the reception of Extreme Unction was often regarded as a complete break with the world, a formal exit from the various relations of denizens of this terrestrial globe. One who had been anointed in a dangerous illness and happened to recover, was treated as if he had come back from the other world. He was not allowed to continue his conjugal relations nor to take an oath; in fact he was held to all practical intents and purposes to be dead.”⁴

In the Greek Church the faithful are regularly anointed with holy oil on Maundy Thursday as a preventive of disease. Provost Maltzew writes on this subject: “Though the sacerdotal Ordo prescribes that a priest should not administer this Sacrament to subjects who are in good health, it is an ancient custom in the Greek as well as in the Russian Church (at Moscow and Novgorod) that the bishop applies the holy oil once a year, on Holy Thursday, to the healthy.”⁵

The Greek theologian Arcudius inveighs against this custom as an abuse bred by ignorance and greed. Goar seeks to justify it by saying that the anointment administered in Holy Week is not regarded as a Sacrament, but merely as a ceremony or sacramental.

According to Sainte-Beuve⁶ the example of the Greek Church proves that Extreme Unction can be validly administered to persons in good health. This assertion drew a sharp criticism from Benedict XIV.⁷ Ralli⁸ and Mesolaras⁹ have shown that the sacramental anointment of persons not ill with any disease is widely practiced in the kingdom of Greece and the Patriarchate of Constantinople, whereas the Russian Church officially teaches that Extreme Unction can be validly administered only to those who are seriously sick.

The Catholic Church holds that no one who is not seriously ill can receive Extreme Unction, even though he be in danger of death from external causes, as a soldier going into battle or a condemned criminal ascending the scaffold. If a man is dangerously ill, however, it makes no difference, so far as the Sacrament is concerned, whether his sickness arises from an internal disease or an external lesion. Senile decay qualifies for Extreme Unction when it has advanced so far that death seems probable (“senectus est morbus”). Calvin’s jibe that the Catholic Church anoints “semi-putrid corpses” (cadavera semi-mortua) is meaningless, for it is the danger of death (periculum mortis), and not the death struggle (articulus mortis), which the Church regards as marking the proper time for the administration of the Sacrament.

We advisedly say, the Church; because unfortunately it cannot be denied that, beginning with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sacerdotal greed often caused the faithful, especially of the poorer class, to forego Extreme Unction altogether or to postpone it until it was too late.¹⁰ Repeated protests on the part of bishops and councils failed to uproot this deplorable abuse,¹¹ which was furthered by the erroneous teaching of the Scotists that led people to conclude that Extreme Unction should be postponed until the patient was no longer able to commit even a venial sin. Our schismatic critics are justified in censuring this grievous abuse; but it would be unjust to blame the Church for it. The Tridentine Council is in accord with Tradition when it says that Extreme Unction “is to be applied to the sick, especially to those who are in such danger as to seem to be about to depart this life.”¹²

b) It is forbidden to receive Extreme Unction more than once in the course of the same sickness. This brings us to the question of the repetition of the Sacrament.

The Tridentine Council says: “If the sick recover after receiving this unction, they may again be aided by the succor of this Sacrament, when they fall into another like danger of death.”¹³ Hence, though Extreme Unction is not, as regards repetition, in the same class with Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders, it differs essentially from Penance and Holy Communion, which can be received often. Only in Matrimony do we find something of the same quasi-character, as neither party to a marriage can again receive this Sacrament validly while the other lives.

There was an ancient Latin custom, also found among the Copts, of administering Extreme Unction on seven successive days, or repeating it seven times by as many different priests. Theologians do not know what to think of this. Fr. Schmid¹⁴ and Gutberlet¹⁵ hold that the seven unctions coalesced into one sacrament. The Scotists maintain that, when Extreme Unction is administered according to the present Roman rite, there are seven different partial Sacraments. Father Kern on the other hand maintains¹⁶ that each separate rite is fully sacramental and concludes from the fact that this practice is still in vogue in the Orient that, speculatively speaking at least, Extreme Unction may be repeated during the same sickness. However, this view is difficult to reconcile with the teaching of Trent.

3. The Recipient Must Be Morally Responsible. As one of the effects of Extreme Unction is the cure of the spiritual debility caused by sin,¹⁷ those only who are morally accountable and capable of committing sin (either mortal or venial) are fit to receive this Sacrament. Extreme Unction, being the complement and consummation of Penance, is evidently intended for penitents who have led a life not entirely free from sin.¹⁸

a) Upon this dogmatic basis rests the ecclesiastical practice of refusing Extreme Unction to infants who have not yet attained the use of reason and to adults who have always been insane or idiotic. Theoretically, those also who have led a stainless life are incapable of receiving the Sacrament of the dying. But such holiness is attainable only by virtue of a special grace like that granted to the Blessed Virgin Mary.¹⁹ Children who have attained the use of reason can and should receive Extreme Unction when they are dangerously ill.²⁰

b) Suarez,²¹ Atzberger,²² Kern,²³ and other theologians claim that one need not have committed a sin in order to be able to receive Extreme Unction, the real purpose of the Sacrament being to strengthen the soul for its last struggle. In order to square this theory with the present formula of administration the writers in question are compelled to interpret the latter as though it read: “Indulgeat tibi Deus culpam, si adsit, et reliquias eius, si necesse sit.” This artificial construction does not inspire confidence. Theologians generally are convinced, and their conviction is borne out by experience, that even the most saintly men and women, and the best-behaved children do not escape ordinary venial sins (peccata quotidiana),²⁴ and hence no morally responsible person is likely to receive Extreme Unction without having those peccata and reliquiae peccati which the Sacrament is calculated to blot out.

Quite a different question is this, whether Extreme Unction, like Penance, presupposes personal sins committed after Baptism, or whether it may exercise its effects upon the debility contracted before Baptism. The S. Congregation of the Propaganda has decided²⁵ that one who is baptized during a serious sickness should be given Extreme Unction immediately afterward, and hence it is safe to say that spiritual debility of whatever kind, whether due to sins committed before or after Baptism, is cured by the Sacrament of the dying.²⁶

Readings: Besides the general works on the Sacraments mentioned in Pohle-Preuss, The Sacraments, Vol. I, pp. 3 and 4, the student may consult the following:

St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, Supplementum, qu. 29 sq.; idem, Contra Gentiles, IV, 73, and the commentators, especially Suarez, Comment. in S. Theol., III, disp. 39 sqq., and Billuart, De Extrema Unctione.

Card. Bellarmine, De Extrema Unctione. — A. Victorelli, De Extrema Unctione, 1609. — N. Serarius, S.J., De Sacramento Extremae Unctionis, Mayence 1611. — J. Launoy, De Sacramento Unctionis Infirmorum, Paris 1673. — Rosignoli, Tractatus de Sacramentis Poenitentiae et Extremae Unctionis, Milan 1706. — De Gaetanis, De Suprema Unctione, 1747. — Benedict XIV, De Synodo Dioecesana, l. VIII. — Sainte-Beuve, De Sacramento Unctionis Infirmorum Extremae, in Migne, Theol. Curs. Complet., Vol. XXIV. — M. Heimbucher, Die hl. Ölung, Ratisbon 1888. — Ign. Schmitz, De Effectibus Sacramenti Extremae Unctionis, Freiburg 1893. — Boudinhon in the Revue Catholique des Eglises, 1905, pp. 385 sqq. — J. Kern, S.J., De Sacramento Extremae Unctionis, Ratisbon 1907. — W. Humphrey, S.J., The One Mediator, or Sacrifice and Sacraments, pp. 188–201, London 1890. — A. Devine, C.P., The Sacraments Explained according to the Teaching and Doctrine of the Catholic Church, pp. 383–399, 3rd ed., London 1905. — P.J. Toner, art. “Extreme Unction,” in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V, pp. 716–730. — W. McDonald, “The Sacrament of Extreme Unction,” in the Irish Theological Quarterly, Vol. II (1907), No. 7, pp. 330–345. — P.J. Hanley, Treatise on the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, New York 1907. — Th. Slater, S.J., Questions of Moral Theology, “Repetition of Extreme Unction,” pp. 368–387, New York 1915. — B.J. Otten, S.J., A Manual of the History of Dogmas, Vol. I, St. Louis 1917, pp. 52, 168, 355, 474; Vol. II (1918), pp. 387 sqq. — J.B. Bord, L’Extrême Onction, Bruges 1923. — A.J. Kilker, Extreme Unction, St. Louis 1927.

Non-Catholic works: J.H. Blunt, Sacraments and Sacramental Ordinances, London 1867; Morgan Dix, The Sacramental System, New York 1893; F. Kattenbusch, in the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. IV, pp. 251–253, New York 1909; Puller, The Anointing of the Sick in Scripture and Tradition, London 1904 (Puller’s contentions are criticized and, so far as necessary, refuted by Dr. Toner in his article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V, pp. 716–730, and by Austin Quinn in his Maynooth doctoral dissertation, Some Aspects of the Dogma of Extreme Unction, Dublin 1920).