Holy Orders — The Recipient: Conditions of Valid Reception

Chapter 4: The Recipient

As regards the conditions required for the valid reception of Holy Orders, Dogmatic Theology is concerned solely with the fitness of the candidate; the question of his worthiness belongs to a different theological discipline.

Section 1: Conditions of Valid Reception

To receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders validly, a person must be (1) of the male sex and (2) baptized.

1. The Recipient Must Be of the Male Sex. Like the Jewish Synagogue, the Catholic Church has always maintained that men alone are qualified for the service of the altar. Our Lord called men to be His Apostles and these, in turn, selected men to succeed them. St. Paul expressly excludes the female sex from participation in liturgical and ecclesiastical functions.¹ “Let women keep silence in the churches… . For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church.”² To this principle the Church has faithfully adhered.³ If there ever was a woman who deserved the honors of the priesthood, it most assuredly was the Blessed Virgin Mary. But our Divine Lord Himself debarred her from the altar.⁴ The female priests of the Montanists and Collyridians were an abomination in the eyes of the Church. Our modern women “evangelists” excite derision rather than anger.

The Apostolic institution of deaconesses proves nothing against our thesis. “We cannot be sure,” says Father Herbert Thurston, S.J.,⁵ “that any formal recognition of deaconesses as an institution of consecrated women aiding the clergy is to be found in the New Testament.” Their duty was to guard the doors and maintain order among those of their own sex in church, to instruct them privately in the faith, to discharge those charitable offices which were performed for men by the deacons, to accompany women when visiting a bishop or deacon, and to attend female converts during the administration of Baptism, which in the early days took place by immersion. The pseudo-Apostolic Constitutions, after enumerating these functions, distinctly say: “The deaconess gives no blessing, she fulfils no function of priest or deacon… .”⁶ That the deaconesses were blessed according to a prescribed rite does not prove that they received an order. St. Epiphanius expressly says that their functions are in no wise sacerdotal.⁷ The age limit prescribed by St. Paul⁸ (sixty years) was reduced to forty by the Council of Chalcedon (451). The institute of deaconesses became extinct in the eighth century. History shows that “the Church as a whole repudiated the idea that women could in any proper sense be recipients of the Sacrament of Order.”⁹

What we have said about deaconesses applies also to abbesses. The benediction of an abbess does not make her a member of the clergy, nor does it give her ecclesiastical jurisdiction over her subjects.

Such titles as episcopa, presbyterissa, which occur in ancient documents, apply either to deaconesses¹⁰ or to the living wives of married men ordained to the episcopate or the priesthood.¹¹

2. The Recipient of Holy Orders Must Be Baptized. Baptism is an indispensable condition for the valid reception of all the Sacraments.¹² An unbaptized man cannot be ordained to the priesthood, and if the rite were performed over him before he received Baptism, he would have to be unconditionally reordained. Reordination was expressly prescribed for the followers of Paul of Samosata by the First Nicene Council (325).¹³

Can baptized infants be validly ordained? Durandus and Tournely answered this question in the negative, but the common opinion is that Holy Orders, in this respect, is on a line with Baptism and Confirmation, and can be validly administered to infants. The Supplementum to the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas, which, though not written by the Angelic Doctor, undoubtedly expresses his views, says that “children and others who lack the use of reason can receive any Sacrament that does not require as a necessary requisite an act on the part of the recipient, but by divine institution confers some spiritual power.”¹⁴

Needless to say, the ordination of infants, as practiced in ancient times, and to some extent in the Middle Ages, was an abuse, which the Church combatted and finally succeeded in abolishing. The validity of such ordinations can no longer be doubted since Benedict XIV decided, May 4, 1745, that if a bishop, having legitimate authority, should confer holy orders upon an infant, “it is the unanimous sense of theologians and canonists that such an ordination would have to be regarded as valid, though illicit.”¹⁵ The Pontiff adds that a boy thus ordained should be allowed, upon reaching manhood, to decide for himself whether he will lead a celibate life or not. In case he chooses to marry, he must abstain forever from the exercise of the functions attaching to his order.¹⁶

Appendix III: The Blessing of Deaconesses

John of Faenza (d. 1190), Peter of Poitiers (d. 1205), and a few other medieval theologians regarded the blessing bestowed upon deaconesses (and virgins who dedicated their lives to God) as a true Sacrament. Others protested against this view. Thus Huguccio (d. 1210) declared the blessing of deaconesses to be no true ordination, but merely a ceremony authorizing them to perform certain services, for instance, to read the Gospel during choir. Nevertheless some medieval canonists erroneously taught that women who were “ordained” by the imposition of hands received the Sacrament of Holy Orders.¹⁷ In view of these differences of opinion it is premature to conclude, as Morinus¹⁸ did, and as K.H. Schäfer¹⁹ does, that the blessing of deaconesses was formerly one of the minor orders, or to hold with A. Ludwig²⁰ that it was reckoned among the major orders.