Holy Orders — The Minister

Chapter 3: The Minister

The bishop is the ordinary minister of all, especially the three sacramental orders, but the subdiaconate and the four minor orders can, with papal permission, be administered by an ordinary priest. We shall demonstrate this in the form of two theses.

Thesis I: The bishop is the ordinary minister of all, especially of the holy or greater, orders. This thesis embodies an article of faith.

Proof. The Decretum pro Armenis (1439) says: “The ordinary minister of this Sacrament is the bishop.”¹ The Council of Trent defines: “Bishops … ordain the ministers of the Church, and they can perform very many other functions over which those of an inferior order have no power.”²

a) As the New Testament speaks neither of the subdiaconate nor of minor orders, we must limit the Scriptural argument for our thesis to the three sacramental orders — the episcopate, the priesthood, and the diaconate.

The Bible, wherever it records an ordination to the priesthood, names either an Apostle³ or one of the disciples as minister.⁴ These, in administering the Sacrament, were guided by well-defined rules and regulations.⁵ The fact that the power of ordaining is attributed exclusively to bishops shows that it belongs to them by divine institution. Cfr. Tit. I, 5: “For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou … shouldst ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed thee.”⁶

But what does the Apostle mean when he says that Timothy was ordained cum impositione manuum presbyterii? That St. Paul himself was the consecrator appears from 2 Tim. I, 6. What are we to understand by the “presbyterium”? The term may mean either the abstract dignity of a presbyter, i.e., bishop, which Timothy received by his consecration, or the consecrating bishops.⁷ In either case we have a confirmation of the doctrine that the conferring of Holy Orders is an episcopal prerogative.

b) An argument from Tradition may be construed from the data given above.⁸

A careful distinction must be drawn between the election (electio) and the ordination (ordinatio) of higher clerics. The former may by custom or ecclesiastical sufferance be exercised by priests, nay even laymen. According to St. Jerome,⁹ the presbyters of Alexandria, from St. Mark the Evangelist to Heraclas (d. about 246) and Dionysius (d. 256), enjoyed the privilege of choosing one from their midst for the episcopal see. Another example in point is that of St. Ambrose, who was proclaimed bishop of Milan by clergy and people. In Switzerland even to-day congregations choose their own pastors, who subsequently receive the missio canonica from the bishop.

Ordination to the priesthood, on the other hand, belongs exclusively to the bishops, and they are not bound, in exercising it, to act with the consent of the people or the secular power. “If anyone saith,” declares the Council of Trent, “that … orders conferred by them [the bishops], without the consent or vocation of the people or of secular power, are invalid, … let him be anathema.”¹⁰

c) In order to be licit, ordination must be conferred by the recipient’s own bishop. The rite of episcopal consecration requires the assistance of two other bishops besides the consecrator.

α) The Tridentine Council merely confirmed an ancient rule¹¹ when it prescribed, under penalty, that “every one should be ordained by his own bishop.”¹² Under this rule no bishop may ordain the subject of another, except on the strength of a dimissorial letter. This does not, however, apply to the Pope, who, having primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church, can ordain whomever he pleases and give power to ordain to any bishop regardless of the claims of others. The juridical relation of a secular ordinand to his bishop is based upon a fourfold title — origo, domicilium, beneficium, and familiaritas. Regulars are subject to the bishop in whose diocese their convent is located. But these details belong to Canon Law rather than to Dogmatic Theology.

β) Three bishops are required for an episcopal consecration. This is an ancient custom,¹³ but being of purely ecclesiastical institution, does not affect the validity, but merely the licitness of the rite.¹⁴ “In case of urgent necessity,” the Pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions ordain that “a bishop may be ordained by one [other bishop].”¹⁵

Church history affords many examples of papal dispensation from this rule. Thus Pope Gregory the Great permitted St. Augustine of Canterbury to consecrate another bishop without assistants because he was the only bishop in England.¹⁶ It follows from this and similar cases that an episcopal consecration performed with papal dispensation by one bishop alone is undoubtedly valid.

But what if the papal dispensation be lacking? Vasquez¹⁷ holds that such a consecration would be invalid, just as Confirmation would be invalid if administered by an ordinary priest without special permission from the Pope. Benedict XIV¹⁸ takes the contrary view, which is shared by many theologians and appears to be the only tenable one. According to the rite of consecration only one of the three bishops present actually consecrates, the other two merely assist. It follows that the consecrating bishop alone administers the Sacrament, especially since he alone pronounces the prayer “Propitiare, Domine,” etc. Moreover, though Pope Gregory the Great, in his above-quoted letter to St. Augustine, expressly states that the presence of some other bishops is useful, he does not intimate that it is essential to the validity of the Sacrament. Finally, we know of several cases where the Church, in condemning an episcopal consecration performed by one bishop as illicit, expressly admitted its validity.¹⁹

Thesis II: An ordinary priest can, with papal dispensation, confer the subdiaconate and the four minor orders, but not the three major or sacramental orders. This thesis comprises two distinct propositions, each of which may be qualified as “communis.”

Proof. The expression “minister ordinarius huius sacramenti,” employed by Pope Eugene IV in his Decretum pro Armenis, implies the possibility of a minister extraordinarius. As in Confirmation, this extraordinary minister is the priest, not the deacon.

The Tridentine Council contents itself with the general statement that the episcopal power of confirming and ordaining is not shared by priests. It does not define which orders may be conferred by a priest when authorized to act as extraordinary minister.²⁰ Hence the question is open to dispute. As the prerogative of conferring the subdiaconate and minor orders is an altogether extraordinary one for a priest, its valid exercise depends on the permission of his superiors. It is contended that in former times bishops possessed the privilege of empowering ordinary priests to confer certain orders.²¹ While this may be true, there can be no doubt that to-day this privilege is reserved to the Pope.²²

a) All theologians agree that the Supreme Pontiff can authorize any priest to confer the subdiaconate and the four minor orders.

Whatever doubts may have formerly existed among theologians with regard to the subdiaconate,²³ have been dispelled by the conviction that this particular order is not a sacrament, but merely a sacramental.²⁴ The Church herself has constantly acted on this conviction. The Second Nicene Council (787) acknowledged the right of abbots to confer the lectorate upon their subjects, and long before that time Pope Gelasius (d. 496) warned priests not to confer the subdeaconship or the order of acolyte without papal permission,²⁵ thereby clearly indicating that they could validly perform these acts with pontifical authorization. Before the Tridentine Council certain Cistercian and Benedictine abbots are said to have exercised the privilege of conferring subdeaconship upon their subjects.²⁶ To-day the subdiaconate ranks among the major orders²⁷ and its administration is reserved exclusively to bishops. According to the Tridentine law, therefore, abbots may give only the tonsure and minor orders to their subjects.²⁸

b) The question whether ordinary priests can, with proper authorization, confer major orders, has been answered differently by theologians at various periods in the Church’s history.

That a priest can under no circumstances validly ordain a bishop is conceded by all. But can he be empowered to confer the priesthood? Aureolus,²⁹ Morinus,³⁰ and others answered this question in the affirmative. They based their opinion on a passage in St. Leo’s letter to Bishop Rusticus of Narbonne,³¹ in which the major orders conferred by certain “pseudo bishops” are declared under certain conditions to be valid.³² The passage in question is rather obscure. The “pseudo bishops” to whom the Pope refers were probably priests or deacons who had received episcopal consecration uncanonically,³³ though validly. Morinus attaches great importance to the fact that the priesthood was often conferred by so-called chorepiscopi, who, it is claimed, were not true bishops, but mere “country bishops” after the manner of rural deans or archpriests. But we know from the proceedings of a council held at Antioch, in 341, that at least some of these dignitaries were real bishops, resembling in rank and functions our auxiliary bishops.³⁴

Can a priest with papal dispensation validly confer the diaconate? This question is more difficult to answer. The fact that the diaconate is a true Sacrament does not prove that it cannot be administered by a priest. Confirmation is a Sacrament, and yet a priest can administer it with proper authorization from the Supreme Pontiff. With this analogy in mind Huguccio (d. 1210) argued that a priest can confer the priesthood, a deacon the diaconate and minor orders, a subdeacon the subdiaconate, etc.³⁵ The sententia communis since St. Thomas and Duns Scotus is that a priest cannot validly ordain a deacon. “Though some abbots were occasionally permitted to confer minor, not holy orders,” says the Roman Catechism, “no one doubts that this is the proper office of the bishop, for whom, and for whom alone, it is lawful to initiate [candidates] into the other orders called greater and holy.”³⁶

The most ancient documents agree in limiting the power of conferring the diaconate to bishops, and make no distinction between the ordinary and the extraordinary minister. From this fact it seems to follow that the existing practice is of divine right, in which case even the Pope could not dispense from it. Yet the matter is not entirely clear. Eugene IV seems to admit that there is a minister extraordinarius huius sacramenti, and Innocent VIII in his Bull “Exposcit”³⁷ is said to have conferred the privilege of ordaining deacons upon all abbots of the Cistercian order, who made use of it in good faith as late as 1663.³⁸ But even such an extraordinary privilege would not settle the dogmatic problem with which we are concerned, for, as Father Chr. Pesch justly observes, “one pontifical act does not make a law or dogma.”³⁹