1 DOM ADRIEN GRÉA Founder of the Canons Regular of the Immaculate Conception THE CHURCH AND ITS DIVINE CONSTITUTION PREFACE BY LOUIS BOUYER, From The Oratory 1965 CASTERMAN Translation and reproduction rights reserved for all countries. Anastatic reproduction authorized Casterman, November 9, 1978 Imprimerie Thérien Frères (1960) Limitée Montreal 1979
2 Imprimi potest Louis DE PERETTI sup. gen. of the C.R.I.C. Rome, September 8, 1964, on the feast of St. Adrian. Nihil obstat A. Faux, can. libr. cens. Imprimatur Tornaci, die 4 novembris 1964 J. Thomas, vic. gen.
3 PREFACE The book of Dom GRÉA on The Church and Her Divine Constitution is one of those books which escape their time and are apt to be much better understood a few generations away. Their handicap is always that they nonetheless bear visible traces of the moment when they were written. This is how the reader of Dom GRÉA, today, has to get over the eloquence sometimes a little too easily incantatory in which were wrapped references not always precise enough. But these weaknesses, which have been palliated by the notes of the present edition, should not conceal the profound merits of the synthesis proposed by this exceptional book. It can be said that it reappears at its time, after years of meditation on the doctrine of the mystical body, consecrated already by the encyclical Mystici Corporis, and that the De Ecclesia scheme of the council brings to their maturity. All that sense of the organic and quasi-personal character of the Church, which has been developing for two or three generations, finds its most perfect fulfillment in a theory of the Church of magnificent fullness. But at the same time, perhaps the most striking peculiarity of Dom GRÉA is that he in no way develops these aspects in opposition to the institutional, and more precisely the hierarchical aspects. On the contrary, it is the idea of hierarchy, of sacred order, that dominates his synthesis. His merit is to give such a profound and living notion of it that it immediately appears that hierarchy, properly understood, far from compressing the living elements of the Church, is what gives them, along with their external coherence, their intimate and supernatural continuity. How hierarchy is what allows the Church, the Body of Christ, to be a permanent epiphany of Christ, can only be better grasped by following Dom GRÉA. A second striking feature of its construction is the notion in some sort of liturgy that it tends to give of the Church. That it is first and foremost a society of worship, founded on the truth of Christ, which it spreads throughout the universe in such a way as to bring the universe to as-
4 associate with the Mediator's great act of religion, this is again what Dom GRÉA will help us to re-understand. Too many fallacious extensions of the notion of Church, and especially of mystical body, have led us to a certain vagueness on this point which the ample and luminous expositions of this book should help to dispel. Even so, it should be noted that they will achieve this by a way which is itself singularly interesting for us. I mean to say that another eminently notable character of the thought of Dom GRÉA is the vision he makes for himself and sets before us of the episcopate. He does not see it primarily as a mere administrative junction, a regulating authority. For him, the body of bishops is, at the core of all its activities, doctoral and pontifical. Its pastoral function is not defined outside of this double function of transmitting the Gospel truth and realizing the perpetually active presence of the mystery that is its heart. It is to the effective communication of this truth, to the entry into the sharing of this living reality of the total Christ that all his authority is ordered. Here, we see, holds all the secret of Dom GRÉA to vivify at the same time the notion of hierarchy and to give back to the Church the fullness of its sacred character. Another merit, which is not lesser, of his work, is the place it makes for the local Church. It is remarkable that this staunch ultramontane nonetheless has a thoroughly Ignatian notion of the episcopate. When he thinks of the Church, he never thinks of a vast, obscure administration hovering over us, rather like those indefinite and vaguely fearsome social entities that hover over Kafka's characters. He always thinks of the assembly of living people, gathered in the common hearing of the word of God, the common realization of the divine praise, through the Eucharistic celebration. Outside of this necessarily local incarnation of the Church, its spiritual reality evaporates.
5 However, the catholicity of the Church does not escape him in any way- quite the contrary. For him, that local Church gathered around its Pontiff to celebrate the Father is but the prefiguration of the great "panegyria" of which the epistle to the Hebrews speaks: the great festive assembly that will gather in one unanimous chorus the redeemed multitudes, around the throne of God and the Lamb. And the communion of all the present Churches among themselves and with the Apostolic Church, which is their natural source and the basis of their union, is what links these Churches to the Una Sancta of eternity. But this communion itself, with all that it implies of extensions towards the apostolic past and towards the eschatological future, it is the role of the Roman See to update it perpetually. Here, Dom GRÉA, to show this meaning and effectiveness of the papal function to make always actual this transcendence of the Church which, for lack of the vicar of Christ and his role, would drown in dismembered local organisms. A last positive feature that must be noted in the work of Dom GRÉA is the art and depth with which he knew how to use the juridical sources to build his theory of the Church. He develops so well an organic notion of the Church without ever injuring himself in its institutional aspects only because he has such a knowledge of these aspects that he always discerns their deep meaning. Just reread his beautiful analyses of the notion of the communion of bishops or of the episcopal title and you will be convinced at once. It is necessary to insist on the importance and the actuality of this element in his work. The weakness or the nilness of canonical studies and especially of those which deal with ecclesiastical institutions, in France, at the present time, is one of the most serious deficiencies of Catholic thought. It does not simply follow, as one might think, an often incoherent administration, but a whole ecclesiastical thought too devoid of truly traditional bases and too easily misunderstanding the true nature of the Church, for lack of having understood the meaning of its organs.
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For all these reasons, for its splendidly scriptural, patristic, liturgical atmosphere, and yet everywhere illuminated by the main lines of Thomistic thought, I think that the book of Dom GRÉA is far from having yet traversed all the career that should be his. May this edition bring him not only many readers, but many disciples. The holding of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, with the elaboration of the decrees in view on the Church and ecumenism, makes the thought of this ∗ precursor more current than ever. LOUIS BOUYER of the Oratory
∗ A reading of the Constitution De Ecclesia, promulgated on November 21, 1964, by the Council Fathers, abundantly proves the legitimacy of this view. It is practically the entire conciliar text that should be quoted at the bottom of the page throughout this work. We will be excused for contenting ourselves with this global reminder.
7 WARNING for this edition
The sons of Dom GRÉA, responding to the desire of many bishops and theologians, are pleased to present this new edition of their Father's theological work. This book The Church and its Divine Constitution, which has been called "all gold," had, for many years, been completely out of print; the last war stopped the first work of re-publication.
The original text has been preserved; we have only taken the liberty of reducing the rather prolix titles of the chapters and of adding subtitles at the beginning of the paragraphs. These subheadings, brief and generally taken from the text itself, will facilitate the reading and study of the densest pages.
Our work consisted mainly in reviewing one by one the 1300 quotations or references of the book and in translating them. We will be forgiven for leaving a dozen more or less doubtful ones (they are indicated by an asterisk). For the biblical quotations, we give the sacred text each time and, if necessary, we warn the reader of the author's freedom of interpretation. For the other quotations, we refer, where possible, to the Patrologies of Migne. Wherever necessary, we have updated the bibliography. Gaps and errors in the references have been corrected, thanks especially to the RR. PP. Dominicans of Saulchoir and Benedictines of En Calcat, who have very kindly placed their library at our disposal. May they find here, as well as all those who have encouraged or helped this republication, the expression of our deep gratitude.
Gaston FONTAINE, C. R. 1. C.
Montreal, P. Q. Canada.
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ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
For biblical quotations, we adopt the acronyms of La Sainte Bible, known as the Jerusalem Bible, Cerf, Paris, 1956, one-volume ed. pp. xivxv.
AAS Acta Apostolicae Sedis, Roma, Typographia Vaticana, since 1909. AGUIRRE Jos. Saenz De AGUIRRE, Notitia conciliorum Hispaniae atque Novi Orbis.... Salmanticae, 1686; continued by CATALINI, Romae, 1753-1755, 6 vols. ASS Acta Santae Sedis, Romae, 1865-1908. BA Collection " Bibliothèque augustinienne ", Desclée de Brouwer. CL Collectio Lacensis, vol. 7, Acta et decreta sacrosancti oecumenici concilii Vaticani, Fribourg en Br., 1890. DACL Dictionnaire d'Archéologie chrétienne et de Liturgie, by Fernand CABROL - Henri LECLERCQ, continued by Henri MARROU, Letouzey et Ané, Paris, 1907 to 1953. DDC Dictionnaire de Droit canonique, by R. NAz, Letouzey et Ané, Paris, since 1935. Denz. Henri DENZINGER and Karl RAHNER, S. J., Enchiridion symbolorum, ed. 28, Herder, 1952, 716 pp + appen ten (6) + index (72). DHGE Dictionary of Ecclesiastical History and Geography, by A. BAUDRILLART - A. VOGT - U. ROUZIÈS, continued by R. AUBERT and E. VAN CAUWENBERGH, Letouzey et Ané, Paris, since 1912. DTC Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, by A. VACANT E. MANGENOT, continued by E. Amann, Letouzey et Ané, Paris, from 1903 to 1950. Dum La Foi catholique, doctrinal texts of the Magisterium of the Church, translated and presented by Gervais DUMEIGE, S. J., L'Orante, Paris, 1961, 572 pp. EHSES S. MERKLE - St. EHSES, Concilii Tridentini Dia-.
9 rorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum, Ed. Societas Goerresiana, Herder, Freiburg in Br. since 1901, 13 volumes issued. EL Collection " Liturgical Studies " published jointly by the Cerf Editions, Paris, and the Abbaye du Mont-César, Louvain. EP Collection " Les Enseignements pontificaux ", Desclée et Cie. HARDOUIN J. HARDOUIN, S. J., Acta conciliorum et epistolae decretales ac constitutiones Summorum Pontificum, Paris, 1715, 12 volumes. HÉFÉLÉ HÉFÉLÉ - Henri LECLERCQ, Histoire des Conciles, Letouzey et Ané, Paris, 1906-1921; continued from 1930 to 1938, by P. RICHARD, Charles De CLERCQ, A. MICHEL. LABBE Ph. LABBE - G. COSSART, S. J., Sacrosancta Concilia, Paris, 1671-1672, 18 volumes. LO Collection Lex orandi, éd. du Cerf, Paris. MANSI J. D. MANSI, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, Ed. Florence-Venice, 17571798, 31 volumes. PG J. P. MIGNE, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series graeca, Paris-Montrouge, 1857-1866, 161 volumes. PL J. P. MIGNE, Patrologiae cursus completus. Series latina, Paris-Montrouge, 1844-1864, 221 volumes. RJ Collection La Somme Théologique, ed. of the Revue des Jeunes, Desclée et Cie. SC Collection Sources chrétiennes, ed. du Cerf, Paris. US Collection Unam Sanctam, ed. du Cerf, Paris. Vulg. Vulgate.
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PART ONE
Overview on the mystery of the Church
11 CHAPTER I
Place of the Church in the divine plan
"The Holy Catholic Church is the beginning" and the reason "of all things"1. Her sacred name fills history; from the origin of the world, the first centuries were a preparation for her; until the end of things, those that follow will be filled by her passage: she passes through them, giving every event alone its providential meaning. But it is not limited by them, like all human things, and does not stop here below. Beyond the centuries, eternity awaits it to consume it in its rest. It carries there all the hopes of the human race which rest in it. An inviolable ark, the guardian of this sacred deposit, it floats on the waves of ages and events, sometimes agitated and lifted to the skies by the great waters of the flood, but carried ever higher and closer to heaven by their effort. It alone will reach eternity, and nothing that is born in time is saved and lives for eternity outside of it. This is the great object that we propose for our meditations. Let us approach with reverence and question this wonder which has no equal among created things.
What the Church is
1 St. EPIPHANUS (c. 403), Countering the Heretics, 1, 1, 5; PG 41, 181. HERMAS (c. 90?), The Shepherd, 8, 1 - "The aged woman from whom you obtained the little book, who do you think she is?... - 'The Church,' he said. I said: And why is she so old? - Because, he said, she was created before all (the rest). That is why she is old; it is for her that the world was formed. Robert JOLY (SC, 53) pp. 95-97. Cf. Jean DANIÉLOU, S. J., Théologie du Judéo-Christianisme, Desclée & Co, Tournai, 1958 (col. Bibliothèque de Théologie), t. 1, pp. 318-326. - HENRI DE LUBAC, S. J., Meditation on the Church3, Aubier, Paris, 1954 (col. Theology, 27), pp. 51-52.
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What is the church? What place does it occupy in God's purposes and among his other works? Is it only a society useful to the souls of men and responsive to the needs of their nature? Is it, in a distinguished position, only one of the thousand blessings which God has poured out upon the world? Or is there a deeper mystery in the sacred name of Church? Yes, there is, and this mystery of the Church is the very mystery of Christ. The Church is Christ himself; the Church is "the fullness", the fulfillment of Christ, "his body" and his real and mystical development: it is the total and completed Christ (Eph 1:22-23). Thus the Church occupies the very place of Christ among the works of God; Christ and the Church are the same work of God. But what is the place of Christ and the Church in the divine work? Jesus Christ says of himself that he is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end of things (Rev. 22:13). Elsewhere, Holy Scripture tells us that everything was made in him and through him, that all things have their reason for being in him, that is, their starting point and their destiny (Col. 1:16-18). In order to understand the rest of this truth, let us enter into the contemplation of this great spectacle of God working outside himself and coming out of his eternal secret to make his works spring forth in time. Now, God came out of his eternity three times to appear in time by his works: his three exits were the creation of the angel, the creation of man, the Incarnation.
Creation of the angel and man
In the beginning God created the angels, and, distributing them according to the harmonious scale of their diverse natures in degrees innumerable as their essences, he raised them to grace, proportioning the supernatural gift to the diverse and total capacity of each one of them; he called them to glory according to the same hierarchical proportion, and at the same time he made for them as a lower paradise and a beautiful garden
13 of the corporeal nature2: the stars answered his call, "and shone" for his angels at the same time as "for himself" (cf. Ba 3:34-35). The angel's sin disturbed this initial harmony. God remedied this sin by going out a second time from the sanctuary of his eternity and his intimate life to appear outside and manifest himself in his works. He created man: man, a creature both spiritual and corporeal; man, whom God blessed with this double blessing "Be fruitful, multiply" (Gen. 1:28). Man, then, who can grow in his intelligence and in his will, who can enlarge the vessel in which God pours out grace, grow by the increase of merits in the supernatural order and by the habits of the life of grace, man can ascend in this order to the various degrees which the fall of the angels has left vacant in the hierarchy of glory3, and, though of an inferior nature, he has for his elevation the power
2 St. THOMAS OF AQUIN (1222-1274), Summa Theologica, Prima, q. 108, "If we were perfectly acquainted with the offices of the angels, we would know very well that each angel has his own office and therefore his own peculiar order in the world ,; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, O. P., Le gouvernement divin (RJ), t. 1, p. 161. ID, ibid, q. 62, a. 6: "The gifts of grace and the perfection of beatitude have been attributed to the angels according to their degree of natural perfection. Two reasons can be given for this: first, a reason taken from God who, according to the order (of his wisdom, has established various degrees in the angelic nature. Now, just as the angelic nature was produced by God with a view to grace and beatitude, so it seems that the various degrees of the angelic nature were ordered to various degrees of grace and glory... It seems equally natural that God, having given to certain angels a higher nature, should designate to them greater gifts of grace and a more perfect beatitude. The second reason is drawn from the angel himself. The angel, in fact, is not composed of various natures, one of which, by its inclination, would come to oppose or delay the movement of the other: this is the case of man... It is therefore reasonable to think that the angels, who have a more perfect nature, have also turned to God with greater force and effectiveness... It seems, therefore, that the angels, who have received a more perfect nature, have also obtained more grace and glory"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, O. P., Les anges (RJ), pp. 284-287. - ID, ibid., q. 61, a. 4:, "There is therefore an order between them, and the spiritual preside over the corporeal"; ibid., p. 257. - Cf. Paul BENOIST D'AZY, O. S. B., Les Anges, in Initiation théologique, Cerf, Paris, 1952, t. 2, pp. 261-278. 3 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 23, a. 6, ad 1: "God indeed does not allow some to fall without raising others.... Thus, in place of the fallen angels he has
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sance of successive and progressing activity4. At the same time, man's nature is susceptible of number: it will multiply as much as it enters into God's purposes (cf. Acts 17:26), and a single human nature will suffice to make up for a multitude of fallen angelic forms. Thus God has been able to repair the evil of the angel's sin; but at the same time he has made an admirable progress in all his work. The union of spirit and matter elevates the corporeal substance to life; and God, bringing together in man as in a summary of the world5 the one and other nature6, brings nearer to himself by his grace, which he communicates to him, the whole of creation, what is highest and what is lowest, in this abridgment which contains it
subrogated of men"; trans. A.-D. SERTILLANGES, O. P., God (RJ) t. 3, pp. 198199. - St. AUGUSTIN (354-430), Enchiridion, 9, 29; 111, 40, 246: "(Men) having all perished under sins and torments... a portion would be raised up, which would fill the gaps made in the angelic society by the fall of the demons. For the saints have been promised that in the resurrection they will be equal to the angels of God (Lk 20:36). Thus the heavenly Jerusalem, which is both our mother and the city of God, will not suffer damage in the number of its inhabitants"; trans. J. RIVIÈRE, General expositions of the faith (BA, 9), p. 157. 4 St. THOMAS, Prima Secundae, q. 5, a. 7 The angel, being by nature superior to man, has, according to the designs of divine wisdom, acquired the supreme good by a single movement, by a single meritorious operation... Men acquire this same good only by a great number of successive movements or operations, which are called merits"; trans. F. LACHAT, ed. Vivès, Paris, 1856, p. 309. - ID, Prima, q. 108, a. 8: "By means of grace, men can merit such a glory as to place them on a par with the angels in one or other of their orders. Ch.-V. HERIS, The Divine Government (RJ), P. 198. - ID, Prima, q. 62, a. 5, ad 1 - "Man is not, like the angel, destined according to nature to acquire his ultimate perfection immediately. That is why a longer period of time is given to him to merit beatitude"; trans. Ch.- V. HERIS, L'anges (RJ), p. 282. 5 Among the Fathers, theologians, and philosophers, man is often called "parvus mundus," "minor mundus," "microcosmos," "because in a certain way all the creatures of the world are found in him": St. Thomas, Prima, q. 91, a. 1. 6 IV Lateran Council (1215), Profession of Faith Firmiter, Den., 428, Dum., 242: "(God) who... created from nothing the one and the other creature, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angels and the earthly world; then the human creature who holds both, composed as he is of spirit and body." Text taken up at the 1st Vatican Council (1870), Constitution Dei Filius, cap. 1, CL 7, 250, Den., 1783, Dun., 253.
15 all together. And as he made in the beginning for the angel, spirit separated from matter, an inanimate paradise of corporeal natures separated from spirit, so he makes for ,man, living spirit animating a body, and body animated by spirit, the animated and living paradise of organic nature; and it is for man that he brings down life to lower degrees in plants and animals.
Third "outing" of God
But this man, whom God has created in such great dignity and who contains within himself the whole human race, falls in his turn into sin. God comes out of himself a third time through the mystery of the Incarnation. This will be the accomplishment and the end of all his works. The Incarnation is the greatest thing God can do to show himself in time: it is his most perfect manifestation. His works up to that point spoke of him; he appears himself. By this he gives his work its final fulfillment after having, by the creation of man, bridged, as it were, the incomprehensible space which separates matter from spirit, he bridges by his Incarnation the infinite abyss which separates God from the creature7. Having gathered all his work in man, he takes him whole, body and spirit, and unites him personally with his divinity. Thus, at the same time, sin receives its reparation and remedy, but also God's work receives its supreme fulfillment. This is indeed the supreme manifestation of God. And, in order to understand it well, let us consider that God, in his works, manifests his attributes, and that in this manifestation there is like a progress and a hierarchy, an established and followed order. What first appears in the works of God is his puis-
7 St. AUGUSTIN, Letter 137, to Bishop Volusian, 11; PL 33, 520: "As the union of soul and body in one person constitutes man, so the union of God and man in one person constitutes Christ. In the human person there is union and mixture of body and soul, in the divine person there is mixture and union of God and man"; trans. PERONNE, Œuvres complètes de saint Augustin, Vivès, Paris, 1870, t. 5, p. 166.
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sance (cf. Rom. 1:20): the grossest men are struck by it, the most barbarous peoples recognize and fear it, and one impious man said of this feeling that fear had brought forth the gods8. But this power of God is shown to be limited in its effects: God does not do all that he can do, and he subjects his power, if we may so speak, to the decrees of his wisdom, which limit it to number, weight and measure (cf. Wis. 11:21). Finally, wisdom, which thus commands power, obeys goodness. Goodness is what is deepest in God: "God is love" (1 Jn 4:8, 16), it determines all the designs of wisdom, and wisdom, in its turn, determines the works of power; and so goodness moves both. Now, goodness appears in every creation of God9: to give being is to give that which is good; being is essentially good, and, when God communicates it, it is really goodness which is of itself diffusive and spreading. But this goodness is not exhausted for bringing God's work out of nothing: it is to do more to remove it from sin10; it requires a greater effort, and the goodness appears greater in it. Twice sin has intervened in the work of God, who foresaw it, who permitted it, and who makes it serve the manifestation and glorification of his goodness: it was the sin of the angel and the sin of man. Now, God only permits evil to bring about a greater good11.
8 STACE, Thebaid, 3, 661. 9 PSEUDO-DENYS THE AREOPAGITUS (late fifth century), The Divine Names, 5, 1; PG 3, 815. 10 Roman Missal, Ordinary of the Mass: "God, who in a, admirable way created human nature in its nobility, and restored it in a still more admirable way... translator: Bernard BOTTE, O. S. Bernard BOTTE, O. S. B., L'Ordinaire de la Messe, CerfMont-César, 1953 (EL, 2), p. 69. - St. Leo, Sermon 15 on the Passion of the Lord, 1; PL 54, 365: "The second birth of men is more admirable than their first creation; for the restoration by God, in the last times, of what had perished is a greater thing than the creation, in the beginning, of what was not"; trans. René DOLLE, in LEON THE GREAT, Sermons, (SC, 74), p. 94. See also in the Missal the oration that follows the first reading, at the Easter vigil. 11 St. AUGUSTIN, Enchiridion, 3, 11; PL 40, 236: "The Almighty God... since he is sovereignly good, would never allow any may exist in his works if he were not powerful and good enough to bring good out of evil himself"; loc. cit., p. 119.
17 However, after the angel's trial, God's goodness is still shown only in the degree of justice; justice is goodness, but goodness limited and measured to the proportions and dispositions of beings12: faithful anges are rewarded, prevaricators are punished and preserved all together by this same justice. But when man had sinned, there was a sinner capable of penitence and mercy13, and God was then able to manifest his hitherto hidden secret (cf. Eph. 3:9), and that which is deepest, that which is infinite in his goodness, namely mercy. Mercy truly touches the infinite: for on the one hand it reaches out to destroy sin, which is an infinite evil14; and, on the other hand, it does not stop at the narrow proportions of what is due to beings in virtue of some pre-existing merit in them, seen and weighed exactly by justice; but, as St. Thomas says, it exceeds every proportion of the creature15.
12 PSEUDO-DENYS, loc. cit, 8, 7; PG 3, 895. - St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 21, a. 1, ad 3: "God accomplishes justice when he gives to each what is due to him according to what his nature and condition entail"; trans. SERTILLANGES, loc. cil. fold. 125126. 13 St. THOMAS teaches, with all the theologians, that the sin of the angel is irremediable: Tertia, q. 4, a. 1, ad 3: "Although the angelic nature, in some of its representatives, is guilty of sin, yet this sin is without remedy"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, O. P., Le Verbe incarné (RJ), t. 1, p. 169. The reason for this is in the very nature of the angel: Prima, q. 64, a. 2: "The cause of this obstinacy must be taken, for the damned, not from the gravity of their fault, but from the condition of their state. What death is for men," writes Damascene, "the fall is for angels. The angel immutably apprehends the object by his intelligence... The angel's will adheres to its object in a fixed and immutable way. If, therefore, we consider the angel before his adhesion, he can freely fix himself on this object or its opposite (except if it is a question of objects naturally willed); but after the adhesion, he fixes himself immutably on the object of his choice. Hence it is said that the free will of the angel is capable of moving towards opposite objects before the election, but not after. Thus the good angels, always adhering to justice, are confirmed in goodness; the bad angels, by sinning, are obstinate in sin"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, Les anges (RJ), fold. 358-360. 14 St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2: "The sin committed against God involves a certain infinity because of the infinite majesty which it offends"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, Le Verbe incarné (RJ), t. 1, p. 25. 15 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 21, a. 4: "The work of divine justice always presupposes a work of mercy and is supported by it. For to the creature nothing is due,
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So this goodness of God, hitherto contained within the too narrow limits of justice, finally meeting its object in a sinner capable of forgiveness, overflowed (cf. Si 18:11). The last secret of God was revealed to the outside world; and as the goodness shining in mercy is the supreme attribute of God as he shows himself in his works (Ps 145:9), God reserved for mercy the supreme manifestation of himself, which is the Incarnation. This divine masterpiece is thus at once both the greatest of all his works by the dignity of the hypostatic union (cf. Eph 1:1820), and the deepest manifestation of his attributes by the declaration of mercy, which is the last secret of goodness.
Supreme work of God and of infinite dignity16, msupreme manifestation of God in the revelation of mercy which is itself infinite, by these two sides the mystery of Christ crowns and completes all the divine purposes17, coas he is also the first view of God in his works, the first decree on which all others depend, the principle of all works and the primary type to which they relate. Now, these two aspects are indissolubly united; it was necessary that the progress of the divine plan, foreseen and predestined from the beginning, should be linked: the progress of the ever greater and more perfect works culminating in the Incarnation and the progress of the ever more pro-
if not because of something that pre-exists in it or that is first considered in it... When it is a question of what is due to some creature, God, in his superabundant goodness, dispenses goods more than the proportion of the thing requires; for to preserve the order of justice, it would be necessary less than the divine goodness confers, it which exceeds all measure of the created"; trans. A.-D. SERTILLANGES, O. P., God (RJ), t. 3, pp. 136-137.
16 Saint THOMAS, Prima, q. 25, a. 6, ad 4: "The humanity of Christ, from the fact that it is united to God; the created beatitude, from the fact that it is an enjoyment of God, and the Blessed Virgin, according as she is Mother of God, have in some way an infinite dignity, borrowed from the infinite good which is God himself, and, in this respect, nothing can be made better than them, as nothing can be better than God"; ibid. , p. 260. 17 St. ATHANASUS (285-373), First Discourse Against the Arians, 59; PG 26, 135: "The advent of the Word brings to perfection the work of the Father."
19 foundations of the divine attributes culminating in mercy were to march head-on, serve each other as their raison d'être, and receive the same crowning18. This is why the great mystery of God incarnate was not drawn from the bowels of power or wisdom, but from the bowels of mercy: "The work of the merciful tenderness of our God, who will bring us the visit of the rising sun from above" (Le 1.78). It was mercy's task to draw God down into the creature, not only by operation, but by personal presence. Nothingness heard the call of God in creation, and his word resounded to it. But sin brought God Himself to the aid of the sinner, and thus mercy determined the Incarnation and revealed itself in the Incarnation. So, in this new work in which God reveals what is deepest in him and uncovers the abysses of his tenderness and goodness, he is as if transported by love and does everything with excess. He no longer keeps the weight, the number and the measure of wisdom: he carries everything to the extreme, and his excesses he lavishes. This mystery being an absolutely and infinitely perfect work is necessarily unique in itself. God, even in his inferior works, never repeats himself, because he orders all his works and does not make two to the same degree. But it is even more repugnant that what is perfect and infinite in dignity should be multiple: God cannot therefore incarnate or immolate himself more than once, and "by a single oblation he consummates for all eternity all sanctification" (cf. Heb 10:14) and the mystery of God. And yet he finds in the depths of his secrets the divine art of multiplying what remains one, of propagating through the centuries and the world the Incarnation, the sacrifice and the Redemption, of lavishing them and throwing them without measure on all the paths of humanity,
18 The union, in our opinion inseparable, of these two theological views on the mission of the Son of God is perhaps the natural conciliation of the two systems which share the Thomistic School touching the motive of the Incarnation, at least in their main outlines. - Cf. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, Le motif de l'Incarnation, Auxerre, 1939; Humbert BOUËSSÉ, O. P., Le Sauveur du monde, t. 1, La place du Christ dans le plan de Dieu, Chambéry-Leysse, 1951.
20
to carry them every day and every hour to the hearts of all men. Thus the Incarnation and Redemption spread through the channels of the sacraments, through the Eucharist, through baptism and penance; and this incarnate God, Christ Jesus, spreads and lives in all who do not refuse the heavenly gift, extends and multiplies without dividing, always one and always gathering the many into himself19. Now, it is this divine propagation of Christ that develops him and gives him that fulfillment and "fullness" (Eph 1:23) which is the very mystery of the Church20. And as there was a hierarchy and order followed of mankind proceeding from Adam and spreading out from him through the succession of human families, so there is a hierarchy of the Church proceeding from Christ and, in this spreading out from Christ, extending and reaching to the ends of the new humanity which is his mystical body and of the new creation which depends on him.
19 PSEUDO-MAXIMS OF TURIN, Sermon 38, (13, on St. Matthew), 3; PL 17, 650. 20 St. JUSTIN († ca. 165), Dialogue with Tryphon, 53, 5; PG 6, 622 "The Word of God speaks as to his daughter, the Church, which is constituted by his name and participates in his name"; trans. HAMMAN, in La philosophie passe au Christ, ed. of Paris, 1958 (col. Ichtus, 3), p. 231. - St. IRENEUS († ca. 202), Countering Heretics, 1. 3, c. 24, n. 1; PG 7, 966. "The Church in fact was entrusted with this gift of God faith, just as (God entrusted) breath to the shaped flesh, so that all the members might receive Life from it; and in this (gift) was contained the intimacy of union with Christ (commutatio Christi)"; trans. SAGNARD (SC, 34), pp. 399-401.
21 CHAPTER II
Nature and excellence of order in the Church
Order in the work of God
Order is the reduction of number to unity21.
Now, every work of God, by an absolute and metaphysical necessity, bears the character of it in itself. This great God, who is sovereign wisdom, sees, indeed, by this wisdom and creates by his Word, which is the natural fruit of it, all his works22, that is to say, their diversity and multitude, innumerable to the human mind, belongs to him in a single view which is his Word23 and proceeds from him through that one word which is born of him in eternity and goes out from him in time to manifest itself in various degrees through his works. The unity of his Word thus embraces all things24, and it is in this that his wisdom presides over all his works and reveals itself in them. It makes that higher unity of the one idea which contains them reign in them, and this wisdom shows itself truly sovereign in them, because there will never be anything that it does not embrace in all things existing or possible25.
21 We caution the reader that we use the words order and hierarchy interchangeably to mean any plurality brought to unity and contained within unity. Theology often gives the word hierarchy a more restricted meaning. 22 St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 3, a. 8: "The divine Word, which is the eternal concept of God, is also the ideal exemplar of every creature"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, Le Verbe Incarné (RJ), t. 1, p. 158. - Cf. St. ANSELMUS OF CANTORBERY (1033-1109), Monologion, 30-31; PL 158, 183-185. 23 ID, Prima, q. 34, a. 1, ad 3: "It is by knowing himself and the Son and the Holy Spirit and all the other objects included in his science, that the era conceives his Word: so that in the Word, it is the whole Trinity that 'is said', and even every creature"; trans. H.-F. DONDAINE, O. P., La Trinité (RJ), t. 2, p. 4 1. 24 ID., Prima, q. 34, a. 3, ad 4: "God, in knowing himself, knows every creature: hence in God there is but one Word; ibid., p. 52. 25 ID., Prima, q. 34, a. 3: "God knows himself and all things in one act; his one Word, therefore, expresses not only the Father, but also the creatures. Moreover, while in the case of God the divine thought is pure knowledge, in the case of creatures it is knowledge and cause; hence the Word of God is
22
It follows from this that all the works of God are essentially, by the necessity of his thought which conceives them in unity and of the being which he gives them in conformity with this type, brought back to unity and constituted in order. Each one has its place in a universal plan, and the partial hierarchies concur in a supreme unity, outside of which nothing can be conceived, because God himself conceives nothing that does not depend on it. And it is for this reason that theology teaches us that there is only one universe and that it is repugnant that there should be several, that is, that there should be several sets of things independent of one another26. Besides, the lower intelligences themselves, in the ray of wisdom and activity which they have received from God, undergo the law of order, and they cannot act without ordering the effects of their action. But between the order which God imposes on things and that which, in imitation of God, the created agents can institute, there is this great difference that the latter, having only a causality limited to accidents, cannot directly reach the substance. The order they establish is therefore an accidental and after-the-fact order, because they only dispose of the accidents in things that presuppose substance, but cannot dispose of the substance of being itself. God alone, who gives being to things, founds every order that comes from him in the depths and bowels of his works, so that this order is in their very being. Let us stop to consider this great truth.
The order in the creation of angels
pure expression of the mystery of the Father, but he is expression and cause of creatures"; ibid., pp. 49-50. 26 ID, Prima, q. 47, a. 3: "The very order that reigns in things, as God made them, proves the unity of the world. For the world is qualified as one by a unity of order, according as some of its parts relate to others. Now all the beings which come from God have relation to each other and to God... That is why only those who could admit a plurality of worlds, who did not assign to this world an ordering wisdom, but chance"; trans. A.-D. SERTILLANGES, La création (RJ), pp. 119-120; see the translator's clarification of the unity of the world, ibid., pp. 267-273.
23 We see it first appear in the creation of the angels. In the beginning God creates spirit and matter27, and he creates the various species of spiritual natures; but at the same time he establishes order in this first work of his wisdom. This order is founded in the essences themselves and in the difference of their degrees: the corporeal nature is subordinate to the spiritual28, the spiritual one belongs to God29. The spiritual nature itself is distributed in various degrees: each angel is a distinct species from the other angelic essences30, and as the essences differ from each other in degree of being, they are all mutually superior or inferior and form a harmonious scale of unbroken degrees. Thus their hierarchy is not established after the fact, but rests so much on the being of things that it cannot be altered without variation in the essences themselves31; and co as the essences are immutable, the angelic hierarchy could not be disturbed by sin
27 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), Profession of Faith Firmiter; First Vatican Council (1870), Constitution Dei Filius, cap. 1; see above, cap. 01, note 6. 28 St. GREGOIRE THE GREAT (590-604), Dialogues, 1. 4, c. 6; PL 77, 239: "In this visible world nothing can be established except through the agency of the invisible creature." - St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 110, a. 1: a All corporeal beings are dominated by angels"; trans. REGINALD-OMEZ, O. P., The Divine Government
(RJ), vol. 2, p. 12; see the translator's clarification, ibid. at pp. 261-262 and 279-281. 29 St. AUGUSTIN, The Trinity, 1. 3, c. 4, n. 9; PL 42, 873: "All bodies are (hierarchically governed) by a living one, and the living one without reason by a living intelligent one, and the living intelligent one that deserts and sins by a living intelligent one that is faithful and just, and this one by God himself"; trans. MELLET-CAMELOT (BA, 15), p. 289. - Cf. Literal Commentary on Genesis, 1. 8, c. 23; PL 34, 390. 30 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 50, a. 4: "Even if they had matter, the angels could not be many in one kind"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, Les anges (RJ), p. 32. - ID, Summa contra Gentiles, 1. 2, c. 93, 11.:3: "The reason for the multiplication of individuals in a single species in corruptible realities is the conservation of the specific nature which, not being able .to perpetuate itself in a single individual, perpetuates itself in several; this is why, moreover, in incorruptible bodies, there is only one individual per species"; trans. CORVEZ-MOREAU, Lethielleux, Paris, 1954, t. 2, p. 391. 31 ID., Prima, q. 108, a. 7: "The rank diversifies, in the angels, according to the differences of grace and nature... And these differences will always remain in the angels: for, on the one hand, one could not take away their difference of nature without destroying them..."; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, The Divine Government (RJ), t. 1, P. 193.
24
Than in the order of glory, but not in that of nature32.
Order in the creation of men
When God creates mankind, he makes a multitude of beings enclosed in one nature. Order will no longer be able to be established among them by the diversity of essences, but God founds it in the communication of this single nature. He creates all humanity in one man (Wis 10:1), and by the great mystery of marriage he founds the patriarchal order of the universal family which will be humanity, of the great families which will be the peoples and of the inferior families which will everywhere bear the same hierarchical imprint: Adam, the unique and immortal head; under him, his sons, who receive from him human nature and transmit it in their turn; great branches which subdivide to form the whole of humanity. In this plan, grace follows the design of nature, and this hierarchy was to be all penetrated and ennobled by it, as it was to be its channel. And just as the angelic hierarchy embraced the order of grace with that of nature33, so the hierarchy of man, in God's first design, included also the order of sanctification, and Adam was to transmit grace with nature, that is, nature in the state of supernatural justice in which it had been constituted from its creation, vessel and vehicle of grace. Moreover, it was fitting that man should be sanctified by means appropriate to his nature: as a corporeal being, he was to receive grace by sensible operations34. Everything was very pure and holy in the beginning
32 ID., Prima, q. 109, a. 1: a If we consider the angelic orders in relation to the perfection of glory, the demons do not and never belong to these orders... If finally we consider in the demons what belongs to their nature, from this point of view they still belong to the angelic orders, for... they have not lost their natural gifts"; ibid., pp. 203-204. 33 ID, Prima, q. 108, a. 4: "From this point of view (of the end), the angelic orders are distinguished, in a completed way, according to the gifts of grace, and as to what disposes them to it, according to the natural gifts. The gifts of grace indeed have been assigned to the angels in proportion to their natural gifts; ibid., pp. 165-166. 34 ID, Tertia, q. 61, a. 1: "It is proper to it (human nature) to move through the corporeal and sensible to the spiritual and intelligible. Now it belongs to the divine
25 in these laws; and as the sensible food of the fruit of the tree of life was perhaps a sacrament intended to sustain both the life of nature and the supernatural life, so, in their original integrity and holiness, the august laws of fatherhood were to convey both35. And it does not matter here that this primordial order of mankind was disturbed by sin, for it was clearly expressed and enclosed, all from the beginning in God's blessing given to man before sin: "Be fruitful, multiply" (Gen. 1:28). Thus humanity is hierarchical in the conditions of its being. And here again God does not make in his work an order after the fact, but the order which he establishes there holds so much to the bottom of the things, that every man, by that which he receives the being, receives there at the same time his rank, and that he cannot change it without ceasing to be determinately the same man.
Hierarchical principles
The angelic hierarchy and the human hierarchy are thus both well rooted in the depths of things; and yet the principle seems different. The angelic hierarchy rests on the specific difference of the beings which compose it; and the human hierarchy, in the specific unity of men, is founded on their very resemblance and on the transmission of this unique nature which is common to them. The human hierarchy appears at first sight more perfect. Posterior in God's purposes, it is like an advancement of his work; it ends in a closer unity, and it seems
Providence to provide for each being according to the mode of his condition. Divine wisdom therefore acts harmoniously in conferring on man the helps of salvation under corporeal and sensible signs which are called the sacraments"; trans. A.-M. ROUGUET, O. P., Les sacrements (RJ), p. 52. 35 Saint ANSELM, The virginal conception and original sin, c. 10; PL 158, 444 1: "God gave Adam this grace: creating him without the intervention either of the reproductive nature or of the created will, he made him both reasonable and just. Thus, as it is clear that the reasonable nature was also created just, this proves that those who would have been begotten by the human nature before sin, would necessarily have received both justice and the faculty of reasoning."
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approach more closely the type of order that is in God himself, where number proceeds only from the communication of substance. However, these two principles of the order established by God in things are not so far apart and incompatible that they do not complement each other. The angelic hierarchy, which rests on the first, that is to say, on the diversity of natures, takes something from the second, that is to say, from the law of communication, and this in two ways. In the first place, the superior angels; if they do not communicate being to the inferiors, at least they give them the perfection of being, by the illumination they pour upon them36; and, secondly, the angels receive a further perfection from their very subordination by the beauty of the harmony which ennobles each part of the whole, as the inferior parts of a building receive from the superiors that beauty which belongs to the parts only by the whole design: the angels, like all the works of God, are good in themselves, and are very good in the total order which embraces them, as it is said in the book of Genesis that God judged each of his works to be good in itself and very good in their universality (Gen. 1. 10-31)37.
36 PSEUDO-DENYS, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, c. 5, n. 4; PG 3, 503: "There is nothing improper if the fundamental Principle of all harmony, whether invisible or visible, first allows the rays which reveal the divine operations to penetrate to those beings which have attained the maximum conformity with God, and if it is through the agency of these, intelligences more diaphanous and better disposed by nature to receive and transmit light, that he dispenses his illuminations to the inferior beings, manifesting himself to them in proportion to their aptitudes"; trans. Maurice DE GANDILLAC, in Œuvres complètes du Pseudo-Denys L'Aréopagite, Aubier, Paris, 1943, p. 296. - Cf. René ROQUES, L'univers dionysien, Aubier, Paris, 1954 (col. Théologie, 29), pp. 135-167. - ID, La Hiérarchie céleste, c. 8, n. 2; PG 3, 239: "According to this universally valid law which was instituted in a divine way by the divine Principle of every order, it is, in fact, through the intermediary of the beings of the first rank that the beings of the second rank have a share in the thearchic illuminations"; trans. Maurice DE GANDILLAC, (SC, 58), p. 123. - Cf. Saint THOMAS, Prima, q. 106. 37 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 47, a. 2, ad 1: "To be sure it belongs to an excellent agent to produce an excellent effect, if we understand it of the totality of this effect; but it is not necessary that he should make every part of the whole excellent absolutely; it is sufficient that it should be excellent in relation to the whole.... Thus God has made the whole universe excellent, as far as the creature is concerned; but not each particular creature; of these, one is better than the other. Also of the creatures taken apart it is said in Genesis, "God saw that the light was good," and so of the
27 In turn, the human hierarchy admits of some inequality in the beings it embraces. Created nature cannot give being and life by its own powers, it is the minister of this communication only by a divine blessing and privilege superadded38; all fatherhood takes its name from God himself (cf. Eph 3:15), and thereby carries with its title as a divine reflection which belongs only to fathers among men, is not conferred on sons, and gives fathers a real superiority over sons, even though between them the nature is the same. This is enough to exclude perfect equality in this hierarchy. It is moreover manifest that God, above all created hierarchies and at an infinite distance from their imperfection, carries within himself, and to a surpassing degree, the double sovereignty which constitutes them. He is above all essences, and he is above all causes; first and infinite essence, of which all particular essences are in various degrees like (the always imperfect reflections; first and finite cause, on which all second causes depend and receive their fruitfulness and their limited virtue.
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy
But it is time to raise ourselves, from these weakened types and remnants of order, to contemplate in God himself the perfect type of the hierarchy, of which they are the imprint impressed upon his work. In God there is hierarchy, for there is unity and number: a unity so perfect that number is a mystery; a number very truly distinct in the unity of substance, with an equality so perfect that it is this very unity, which is another aspect of this mystery. It is the eternal society of the Father and the Son by the communication which goes from the Father to the Son and which brings back and gives the Son to the Father, and, in this society, the substantial procession of the Holy Spirit which
but of all of them together it is said: "God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good"; trans. A.-D. SERTILLANGES, La création (RJ), pp. 115-116. 38 St. ANSELM, The Virginal Conception.... c. 10; PL 158, 443: "As Adam did not make himself man, so he did not make in himself I power of reproduction; but God, who had made him man, made in him this power that from him men might be begotten."
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consumes. Now, behold, this divine and ineffable hierarchy is brought forth outside in the mystery of the Church. The Son in the Incarnation, sent by his Father, came to seek humanity in order to unite and associate with it. This divine society was thus extended to man, and this mysterious extension became the Church. The Church is humanity embraced, assumed by the Son into the society of the Father and the Son, entering through the Son into participation in that society, and all transformed, penetrated and surrounded by it: "our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 Jn 1.3). The Church, therefore, not only bears within her the traces of order like every work of God; but the realities of the divine hierarchy itself, that is, divine paternity and divine sonship, the name of the Father and the name of the Son, come to her and rest in her. The Father, opening his bosom, extends the mystery of his paternity to the Church, and embraces in his incarnate Son all his elect; and on her part the Church, associated with this Son, receives for all her members the title of sonship extended in them and the right to the divine inheritance "children and therefore heirs" (Rom. 8:17). God will henceforth call them his sons, and they will call him their Father; and behold the masterpiece of the Father's love, that we are called the children of God" and that we are truly so (1 Jn 3:1). Thus what constitutes the mystery of the Church is truly an extension and communication of the divine society and the relationships within it. "God gives his Son to the world" (Jn. 3:16), that is to say, he extends out of himself and into humanity the mystery of the generation which is in him and his name of Father; and the Church, on her part, to whom the Son is given, is associated in him and with him, by the mystery of her union and adoption, with the name of Son and with the privileges which belong to the Son and which this name brings to her with all its rights. Thus, as the prophets had sung (Is. 9:6; 7:14), "Immanuel" is given to us, and God is with us by this admirable communication. And, since human speech cannot reach this mystery of the Church, the Son of God himself wished to teach it to us solemnly. At the hour of the Last Supper and at the approach of his Passion, surrounded by his apostles, principal members of this Church,
29 and in whom he calls all the others, "Holy Father," he says, "keep in your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are... I do not pray for them alone, but for those who will believe in me because of their word" (Jn 17:11, 20). (Jn 17:11, 20); and it is indeed my Church that I call in them to that excellent unity which is ours, that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us. I have given them the glory that you have given me, so that "in this communication" they may be one, as we are one: I in them and you in me, so that they may be perfectly one, and the world may know that you have sent me", extending by this mission my eternal generation in this mystery that gives me to the world, "and that I have loved them as you have loved me" (Jn 17:21-23). "You loved me, Father, before the creation of the world" (Jn 17:24), and in this love springs from our union the eternal flame of our Holy Spirit, whose presence seals and consummates it; it is necessary "that this love with which you loved me be in them, and I in them" (Jn 17:26), in order to be the worthy object of it and to return it to you in them, and that all that I have be theirs, since I myself am in them. Therefore, our Holy Spirit must also come to them, since the mystery of your love and of my heart extends to them, since you love me in them and I return this love to you in them. You will see this Spirit in them, and I will also send him; and, as we are one principle of this Holy Spirit, we will send him to them in one and the same mission, and this mission will be a continuation of the mission by which you send me to them and make me in them. He is truly in them, for he says: "No one knows the Father except the Son"; and "no one knows the Son except the Father" (Mt. 11:27); and now he says of the Father: "You will know him" (Jn. 14:7); and of the Son: "You will know him" (Jn. 14:7). 7); and of the Son, "You believe that I came forth from God" (Jn. 16:27); and again, "You will see me because I live, and you will live; and in that day you will understand that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you" (Jn. 14:19-20). Finally, he concludes all this discourse and consummates this ineffable teaching by announcing to the Church that he is associated with the very communication of divine beatitude: "I tell you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete" (Jn 15:11). The preaching of the apostles in turn spreads this
30
proclaims and spreads this mystery and joy there: 'We proclaim to you,' they say, 'what we have seen and heard, so that you also', members of the Church, who believe by our word in him who sent us, 'may have fellowship with us, and that our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ; all this we write to you so that our joy may be complete' (1 Jn 1.3-4). The Church receives these divine testimonies and celebrates the heavenly doctrine through the mouths of the Fathers. They confess and salute the divine mystery of the Church associated with the eternal and inviolable hierarchy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us quote only St. Cyprian, so important by the authority of his antiquity and martyrdom: "The Lord," he writes, "says again: 'My Father and I are one'; and he writes of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: 'The three are one'. The means of believing that the unity, derived from this divine solidarity, bound up with the heavenly "sacraments" can be broken up in the Church..."39 He still calls this mystery of the order that unites the Church "the unity of God," the inviolable unity that cannot be split40. "The great sacrifice," he says, "truly worthy of God, is our peace," that is, in the language of antiquity, our ecclesiastical communion, which unites and orders all the members of the Church "and the redeemed people united from the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit"41. Such is the venerable mystery of which, in our turn, we try in this treatise to stammer something. Even though it is ineffable, and human reasoning cannot reach it or fully explain it, emboldened by this title of son which belongs to us in it, we shall try to stammer out, in the infancy of our new gift, something of the greatness to which that title invites us.
39 Saint CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (t 258), On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 6; PL 4, 504; trans. Pierre DE LABRIOLLE (US, 9), 1942, p. 15. 40 ID., ibid. 8; PL 4, 505: "Who, then, is scurrilous and perfidious enough, so forcible in his fury of discord, as to imagine that one can tear apart and to dare to tear apart himself the unity of God, the garment of the Lord, the Church of Christ"; loc. cit., p. 17. 41 ID, The Lord's Prayer, 23; PL 4, 536 ("de unitate Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti plebs adunata"); in A. HAMMAN, O.F.M., Prières des premiers chrétiens, Fayard, Paris, 1952, p. 400; reprinted in ID, Le Pater expliqué par les Pères, Éd. Franciscaines, Paris, 1952, p. 44.
31 Excellence of this hierarchy
Already we know how excellent this hierarchy of ours is, founded on the divine order itself, and how much it outweighs every other order that appears in things to distribute and regulate them. To this excellence respond both its absolute perfection and its inviolable immutability. The human organizations of societies, works of the creature, founded, as we have said above, on the shifting sands of accidents, have no more stability than this ever-changing soil. Bearing the marks of an inevitable imperfection, they can never satisfy the infinite aspirations of the human heart, and the day that proclaims them definitive receives a humiliating denial from the following day. Such is human law, always inconstant, always imperfect. The order that God gives to his works, the effect of his absolute wisdom and power, rooted in the substance of things and regulated in exact proportion to their nature and the conditions of their being, possesses, on the contrary, that stability which man cannot give to his undertakings, and that perfection which does not call for, awaits and cannot receive from the future any of that progress ceaselessly dreamed of by humanity in its works, and whose disappointing and ever-reborn desire accuses their irremediable infirmity. This is the divine right called natural right, and which lasts in things as long as they are what God made them. But above this order, the work of God, we revere in the Church the communication and ineffable extension of the divine order itself. As God the Father, the origin and principle of the Son, sent the Son, so the Son sends his hierarchs (cf. Jn. 20:21); he who receives them receives Christ; and he who receives Christ receives the Father (cf. Mt. 10:40; Leviticus 9:48); and as the Father is the head of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 11:3), so Christ is the head of the Church (Eph. 5:23; Col. 1:18). The hierarchy of the Church descends from the throne of divine glory with its mysterious relationships and its august laws. Here everything is holy, everything is divine, everything is unchangeable for higher reasons. Here the established order of God does not depend only on the nature of
32
his work, but on the eternal mysteries which are in himself, and he keeps the inviolable stability of divine things. Also the majesty of this order elevates it even above the order which God has placed in his other works and which holds to their being, the work of God, while this one holds to the being of God himself and to those sacred and ineffable laws which are the mystery of God42. Such is the divine law of the Church and the Church hierarchy. More noble than the divine right written in nature, to what height does it not dominate all constitutions, the works of earthly legislators, and all human rights!43 What thoughts must be formed of it? By what language can it be declared?
42 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA (ca. 150 - before 215), Stromata, 1. 7, c. 17; PG 9, 551: "The summit of the Church's perfection, as the foundation of her construction, consists in unity: it is through it that she surpasses everything in the world, that she has nothing equal to or similar to herself"; text quoted by LEON XIII, Encyclical Satis cognitum (1896), in The Church (EP), n. 549. 43 Undoubtedly the hierarchical powers which are in the Church can, in the virtue they have received from above, establish laws and secondary law; but this secondary law is embraced by the whole divine state on which it depends and of which it is only the application and continuation; it cannot alter or lower the character of the hierarchy.
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CHAPTER III
The Church's relationship with angelic and human societies
Intimate coordination of divine works
If it is the wisdom of God to stamp the seal of unity on all his works and to give to each one, together with the being, the order of their various parts, the same law is imposed on the whole of all his designs: they are coordinated with each other in a supreme and unique design which embraces them all. In space there is only one universe, and in time there is only one sequence and one progress of things. Therefore, the primordial creation of angels and bodies, the creation of man and the organic world, the Incarnation and the Church, are not three separate works in the mind of God and independent in their existence, but these works are linked and subordinated to each other. Everything was planned by God in Christ and in the final design of the Incarnation; everything ends there. The angelic creation, the human creation, serve the development of this final plan of the Church. Little by little, all the works of God come to bow and submit to Christ; and he himself, gathering in himself the homage of all that God has drawn from the treasures of his wisdom and goodness, submits in his person everything to God (cf. 1 Cor. 15:28). This will be the eternal consummation of things in Christ and in the Church. We must therefore contemplate the relationship of the Church to the angelic hierarchy and to the humanity that came out of Adam, or, if we wish, consider what covenant and what dependence bind the angel and Adam to Christ. We have already seen, as if in passing, that the law of progress links together the various works of God: that the creation of man is a progress of the divine work after that of the angel; that the Incarnation crowns and consummates it, and that sin intervened twice, as a cry of distress from the creature, to which God responded by these advances.
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But there are close and persistent relations between these works of God which must be known.
Relations of the Church with the angelic society
And first, what are the Church's relationships with angelic society? The Church receives from the angel, and the angel receives from the Church great benefits. The angels were not the subject of the Incarnation: "He did not take charge of the angels" (Heb 2:16) and "he did not make the world to come subject to angels", of which Christ is the head (Heb 2:5). They are, with regard to the Incarnation, constituted in a permanent service: "Are not all spirits entrusted with a ministry, sent to serve those who are to inherit salvation? (Heb 1.14). St. Paul tells us that they are all this, and that they are only this, bringing back, as if to their principal and supreme end, the angelic natures to the service of the children of men who have become the children of God and the heirs of his kingdom (Rom. 8:17), that is, to the service of the Church44. This service began for them in the person of its head Jesus Christ. The Gospel shows them assisting him in the desert in the voluntary necessities of his temporal life and the weaknesses of his body (MI 4:11; Me 1:13) in the Garden of Olives, in the anguish of his agony and the sorrows of his soul (Le 22:43) and he himself tells his apostles that they will see the angels ascending and descending over the Son of Man (Jn 1:51). They announced his coming (Le 2.9-14) and preached his Resurrection (Mt 28.5-7; Jn 20.12-13). The Church, in its turn, received their assistance; it heard them declare the Resurrection and confirm its hopes on the day of the Ascension (Acts 1.10-11). Since then, they have not ceased to fight for her. And as this Church, "the body and fullness of Christ" (Eph 1:23), is
44 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 57, a. 5, ad 1: "This mystery (of the Incarnation) is the general principle to which all their offices are ordered"; trans. C.-V. HERIS, The Angels (RJ), p. 167.
35 a hierarchy and embraces by an uninterrupted sequence all the members who compose it, so the ministry of the angels, which looks to the universal Church, is further distributed to the particular Churches and descends to each of the faithful; and there are the angels of the Churches45 (Rev. 2 and 3), and the guardian angels of each faithful. On the other hand, the hierarchy of the angels in the order of glory, to which they were all originally called and which is their end and the consummation of the purpose of their creation, receives a twofold benefit from the Church. Firstly, it is constantly repaired by the elect, who, increasing in varying degrees of merit, go to fill the gaps left by the sin of the rebellious angels; and the Church thus gradually erases in heaven the traces of evil. But it is not enough that this hierarchy of glory, which is the final goal of God's plans, should thus regain its integrity: it receives in the Church a further inestimable honor and progress through the mystery of the Incarnation. Jesus, the Son of God, is its head, and he raises it to an incomparable dignity by the glory of the hypostatic union. Mary, the Mother of God, bears a title and greatness whose mystery depends solely on the Incarnation. At all levels, new glories spring from martyrdom and penance. The angelic hierarchy repaired by the elect takes part in this increase of dignity which comes to it from Christ and from the mystery of the Church, into which it enters in its turn to bind together with redeemed men more than one people of the children of God46.
45 Cf. Jean COLSON, L'évêque dans les communautés primitives, Cerf, Paris, 1951 (US, 21), pp. 81-90; ID, Le ministère apostolique dans l'épiscopat et l'Église universelle, Cerf, Paris, 1962 (US, 39), pp. 153-154. 46 St. AUGUSTIN, Sermon on Ps 36, Part 3, n. 4; PL 36. 385: "He himself is the head of the whole city Jerusalem: adding up all the faithful from the beginning to the end, and joining to them the legions and urinates of the angels, there will be but one city under one king." - Cf. ID, The City of God, 1. 12, c. 1; PL 41, 349: "There is no impropriety or inconsistency in speaking of a society common to angels and men"; trans. G. GOMBES (BA, 35), p. 149.
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Also, from the beginning, according to a very authoritative opinion47 this consummation of the angelic hierarchy in the Church by the mystery of the Incarnation and by the Church itself, which is the sequel to it, was shown to the angel as his last end in the purposes of God, and such was the test of his fidelity. The service which these spirits owe to Christ and to the humanity redeemed in him has been proposed to them; "they have seen" (1 Tim. 3:16) this "Firstborn" introduced by his Father into the world of his works48, and they have heard this command of the Divine Majesty: "Let all the angels of God worship him" (Heb. 1:6). The proud angels who did not want this submission were broken in their rebellion, and they will still serve in spite of themselves for the glory of the Church through the trials of the saints. But the faithful angels received from this revelation a clarity that could not be found in the other works of God, where mercy, which is the masterpiece and the key to everything else, did not yet appear. They knew then, says St. Paul, "the unsearchable riches of Christ, the dispensation and economy of the Mystery hidden from ages in God, the Creator of all things" in this purpose; "and through the Church was revealed to the principalities and powers in heaven the infinite wisdom in resource, unfolded by God in that eternal purpose which he conceived in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Eph. 3:8-11). And indeed, as we have said above, it is in the mystery of the Church that God has manifested both, by mercy and by the Incarnation, what is supreme in his attributes, and what is supreme in his works, and has revealed all the treasures hidden from the beginning in his bosom.
Such are, as far as we can glimpse, the relations of the angelic world and the Church. These relations belong to eternity, and, begun from the trials of this world, they are consummated in glory.
47 Cf. Ami du clergé (9 July 1925), pp. 437-444; H. DE LUBAC, S.J., Supernatural, Aubier, Paris, 1946 (col. Theology, 1), pp. 231-260. 48 This "introduction" of Christ into the world was the whole order of the preceding works and their vicissitudes foreseen and permitted by God: the creation of the angel, the sin of the angel, the creation of man, the sin of man.
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The Church's relationship to human society Here below the Church encounters the humanity of Adam. What is this humanity in the present time? And in what state does it appear to us? We have seen it originally created in a state of supernatural holiness and immortality; it was to emerge from Adam keeping its unity under this universal father who was not to die; and in this unity would have been formed, like so many branches, the peoples and families, under the patriarchs sons of Adam. This humanity is fallen from this state by Adam's sin and is no longer clothed in holiness and grace. Bent in sin and death, it is nevertheless preserved for a time. The word "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen. 1:28) is not revoked; and in virtue of this word, the human multitudes given to Adam before his fall will be born of him in the course of the ages, no longer holy and righteous with supernatural justice and endowed with immortality, but, like him, defiled and destined to death. God, however, has hidden the remedy in this very death and has promised a Redeemer who will raise in his person the punishment of death to the dignity and merit of reparation, and who, taking all men who died in Adam, will cause them to be born again in him by the resurrection, so that, all having sinned and having died as a result of sin in Adam, all are justified and resurrected by justification in Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 15:21-22). Humanity is thus preserved in this purpose; it lives for a time only for Christ and the Church, in whom it is reborn for eternity. Thus, the old humanity has only a temporary existence in itself; it will be transformed little by little from Adam into Christ, and, from its old order, transferred into the Church. It is indeed this humanity of Adam, constituted before his fall in the word "be fruitful, multiply", and created, as it were, in advance, when everything in this nature was just and pure. God would not have spoken this word to Adam, a sinner: it is not fitting for him to create man in this state; and if the word that brings him into being has not been revoked in spite of sin, sin infects him against the original design that this word bore in itself. God who did not create
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Adam a sinner preserved life for him in his sin to bring him to salvation; and the same God who called the human generations into existence before that sin which befalls them all, let them grow and multiply in that miserable state for the same purpose of mercy and to bring them to the grace of Jesus Christ49. Now, what is the constitution of humanity thus preserved on earth? Death has struck the universal head Adam and dissolved the bundle. The branches of the peoples, which in short represent the great families descended from a common ancestor, according to the very meaning of the name of nation, that is to say, a multitude of the same race, have suffered the same injuries, and have not at their head the secular ancestor from whom they came. In the early days, it is true, the longevity of the patriarchs maintained for a few centuries under their monarchy the multitudes which formed their posterity. But little by little human life became shorter; the particular families, too weak to sustain themselves in isolation at the death of the common ancestor, because they now comprised too few members, felt the need to remain united; and as all the children, continuing in common the person of the father in his posterity, gathered his inheritance, the inheritance of sovereignty belonged to them all; The scepter fell from the patriarchal throne and belonged to the nation; and above the family was formed the bond of the State, which gradually took on all its strength and stability, as the conditions of life of the human race became what they have been since the Flood and what they will be from now on until the end. From then on, humanity, as it proceeds from Adam, shows itself to us in the state, in the family and in the individual. The State is the superior unity of the human hierarchy, no longer in its integrity and embracing in a single bundle all men, but broken up into as many fragments as there are peoples, into as many sovereignties as there are princes, and exposed ceaselessly to new-
49 Roman Missal, Bridal Blessing during Mass: " ... God, who give to this union established from the beginning the only blessing which neither the punishment of original sin nor the condemnation of the flood abolished." Translated from Rituale parvum, Mame, 1962, p. 142.
39 veal splits and new destructions, through the violence of wars or internal revolutions. Empires, which are these debris of human unity, are born and die, and nations merge to form new aggregations; and as to the very form of government, though originally an imitation of paternal power was maintained by the blessing of the elders and sacred dynasties, as at bottom radical sovereignty resides in the multitude since patriarchal authority has descended into the grave, nothing is more fickle, variable, and multiple. Below the state appears the family, constituted by the sacred bond of marriage and paternal authority, but now destined to dissolve one day, because death will break this bond and overthrow this authority. Finally, we meet the individual himself, who is born of the family and into the state, but has a short and fragile life and which death will come to break. Thus, in every degree, humanity from Adam presents the ravages of death. Death has split the sovereignty and the higher hierarchy which is the state, it reaches the family, and it strikes the individual50. But, we have said, this humanity, in these miserable and precarious conditions, has its raison d'être only in the Church, and it is preserved only for the Church. The state protects the family; the family houses the cradle of man, and man is born only to be regenerated in the Church51. Thus mankind is constituted vis-à-vis the Church in conditions of dependence and recognition. The individual is saved by her; the family must serve and assist her in the education of man and in the community of the domestic home; the State must
50 In reality, this division of humanity into multiple groups is not necessarily an effect of sin, but rather a necessity of human nature itself: realizing itself in a multitude of individuals and particular groups that will grow with new generations and with the centuries, it must know within itself larger units, national and international. 51 Roman Missal, Exsultet of the Easter Vigil "What is the use of being born, if we had not had the happiness of being redeemed:" trans. J. FEDER, S. J., Daily Missal of the Faithful, Mame, Tours, 196114, p. 507.
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serve it by preserving through justice the order of families and individuals, and by seconding, in its measure, the reign of truth and holiness, the freedom of the action of Jesus Christ, the freedom of expansion and the life of his mystical body, which is this very Church52. This dependence is now the most glorious privilege of mankind and its only consolation in its great disaster. It has existed since sin only in the design of regeneration. Adam, in humanity, brings to Jesus Christ the material of his mystical body: the Church gathers this material and little by little transfigures it and assimilates it (2 Cor. 5:17); and, when this work is completed, all the order of the old man will cease; it will be entirely absorbed into the new (cf. Is. 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1): the State and the family will no longer exist; we will no longer know anyone according to the flesh, that is, according to the first birth, and death will be destroyed in the end along with the old humanity in which it dominated (cf. 1 Cor. 15:26). In the meantime, the Church, which receives the service of the old humanity, consecrates and sanctifies it for this purpose and brings the blessings that come from Christ upon this order of things, which must one day disappear. It thus sanctifies the authority of the State; it sanctifies kings and directs towards eternal ends the authority which they exercise in time. In this way, it spreads like a ray of the splendors of Jesus Christ over the old Adam, over the society that comes from him and over the sovereign power that represents him. The family in its turn also receives its consecration, and the marriage which constitutes it is raised to the dignity of a sacrament in Christ and the Church. By this the whole government of the family, constituted in time according to this word: "in the resurrection neither wife nor
52 Roman Pontifical, 1. 6, Benediction and Coronation of a King: "You must preserve intact to the end the Christian religion and the Catholic faith, which you have professed from the cradle; you must also defend them with all your might against all their adversaries.... You will not trample on the freedom of the Church" (monition of the metropolitan). - "I promise then before God and his angels to do and keep law, justice and peace to the Church of God and to the people subject to me, to the best of my knowledge and ability, taking into account the proper respect due to the mercy of God, as well as the best advice of my faithful that I can find..." (King's profession).
41 husband" (Matt. 22:30), looks to eternity; and, consequently, the man who is born of the family thus sanctified, though he brings in birth the state of sin, is called "holy" by St. Paul the Apostle (1 Cor. 7:14), because the holiness of the family destines and prepares him for redemption. These, then, are the relationships that bind Adam's humanity to the Church, that is to say, the State, the family and the individual. They boil down to these two main points: the Church sanctifies the family and the State; the State and the family render to the Church the services which are proper to them and which are their supreme end in the designs of God. These two orders coexist here below without being confused: the Church is not the State; the prince is not the priest; and the subordination which theology shows us in the place occupied in the divine plan by the one and the other society is not a confusion. Both sovereignty comes from God, the one in Adam, the other in Jesus Christ.
Consumption in unity
Thus we have considered and the links which unite the angelic world to the Church, and those which connect to it the humanity of Adam, and all that depends and proceeds from him. But there is between these two orders of relationships this great difference that the first ones go on developing unceasingly to finally shine in eternity, and that the second ones are destined to end with time. The old man will be gradually absorbed and destroyed in all, "so that what is mortal may be absorbed by life" (2 Cor. 5:4). Christ in his mystical body devours, so to speak, that mortality; he takes the infirm elements, feeds on them, so to speak, assimilates them, and forms his members into a new and immortal life which he communicates to them. But, whether we consider the angel or man, the Church appears to us as the final consummation to which everything must tend and end. And thus is confirmed what we said at the beginning of this discourse, that being with Christ one and the same, his body and fullness, she is with Christ the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the primordial and last view of God in all his works, and the unity which brings them together and.
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Makes them all infinitely worthy of his eternal indulgences.
43 SECOND PART
General principles of the Church hierarchy
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CHAPTER IV
General idea of the hierarchy
As we undertake to describe the order of the Church and the admirable arrangement of the divine work in it, let us lift up our eyes to the divine hierarchy and contemplate the society of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.
God is the head of Christ
The Father begets the Son in his bosom (Ps 109:3; Jn 1:18); the Father sends his Son into the world (Jn 10:36); the birth is eternal, and the mission is declared in time53. But in generation and mission we revere the same original relationships, the same persons, the same society of the Father and the Son, a society eternal and declared in time, a society whose ineffable life dwells in the bosom of God, and which has appeared in the world ( 1 Jn 1.2). For the mission is not established in any other order than birth. It belongs to the Father to send the Son, and the society of the Father and the Son, without disturbing its eternal relations, is revealed in the mission. Thus our Pontiff, clothed by his Father with his priestly character, is sent and sacred in time by the very one who begets him from all eternity (Jn 7:29)54. Now, this first and ineffable hierarchy of Father and Son appearing in the mission of Christ is the origin and type of all that follows in the work of the Church.
53 St. Leo the Great, (440-441), 5th Sermon for Christmas, 3 (Sermon 25); PL 54, 210: "The brilliance that emanates from light is not subsequent to light, and there is never true light without brilliance; it is as essential for it to shine as it is to exist. Now the manifestation of this radiance is called the mission of Christ, when he appeared in the world". René DOLLE (SC, 22), p. 119. - St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 43, a. 2, ad 3: "Mission includes in its concept the eternal procession and adds to it a temporal effect"; trans. H.-F. DONDAINE, La Trinité (RJ), vol. 2, p. 273. 54 St. AUGUSTIN, La Trinité, 1. 4, c. 20, n. 29; PL 42, 908: "As the Father begat, the Son is begotten, so the Father has sent, the Son is sent... As for the Son to be born is to be of the Father, so for the Son to be sent is to be known in his origin by the Father"; trans. MELLET-CAMELOT, loc. cit. p. 413.
45 The Father sends the Son; in turn, the Son sends the apostles and constitutes in them the college and the episcopal order, that is, truly the universal Church, which subsists in this college as its principal part. He sends them on a mission similar to the one he received: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn 20:21). In sending them, he is in them, as his Father is in him: "He who receives you receives me; and he who receives me receives my Father who sent me" (Mt 10:40). (Mt 10:40; cf. Jn 13:20).
Christ is the head of the Church
Thus, flowing from the first hierarchy of God and his Christ appears a second hierarchy. As God is the head of Christ (1 Cor. 2:3), Christ is the head of the Church (Eph. 5:23). But that is not all; and already in these words to the apostles: "He who receives you receives me", we see the third hierarchy, that of the apostle or bishop and of the men who receive him and over whom his mission is exercised in a special way. Just as Christ is the head of the Church, the bishop is the head of his people, of his particular Church. This will be the whole order of our study: below the mystery of the divine society of God and his Son, declared in the mission of the Son, two hierarchies: that of Jesus Christ and the universal Church, which is also that of Jesus Christ and the college of bishops; that of the bishop and his particular Church. This latter hierarchy flows from and depends on the former. The one and the other, by a mysterious identification, rise up, penetrating each other and reaching to the bosom of God: for he who receives the bishop, receives Christ; and he who receives Christ, receives, in Christ, the Father of Christ who sent him.
Outline of the treatise
This whole treatise will thus have its natural division: God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the universal Church, the bishop is the head of his particular Church; two great subjects of study: the universal Church, the particular Church, which will make the division of this work; and, at the
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above, as the type and source which regulates all lower movements, that eternal society of the Father and the Son from which the Church proceeds, in which it has its form and exemplar, with which it is associated, and to which it continually ascends as to its center, its beatitude, and its consummation. The great martyr St. Ignatius saw the mystery of these hierarchies descending from the throne of God, and he celebrates it on every page. "Where the bishop appears, let there be the community, just as where Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church55." "I commend you for being so deeply united to him (your bishop), as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ to the Father, so that all things may be in agreement in unity56." "Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, (is) the mind of the Father, as also the bishops, established to the ends (of the earth), are in the mind of Jesus Christ. Therefore it is fitting to walk in agreement with the thought of your bishop, which moreover you do57." The Fathers fed the Christian people with this doctrine. The latter, being born and living from the mystery of the hierarchy, drew all its supernatural life from it, receiving through these sacred channels the preaching of the word and the communication of the divine gift. Also the divine conditions of the hierarchy were familiar to him, the violation of this necessary order abhorred him, and, during the schism which followed the abduction of Pope Liberus (355), he was heard in Rome acclaiming these immutable principles in the amphitheater: "One God, one Christ, one bishop58," that is, one
55 St. IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE († ca. 110), Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8; PG 5, 713; trans. CAMELOT in IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE - POLYCARPUS OF SMYRNE, Letters, Cerf, Paris, 19512 (SC, 10), p. 163. 56 ID, Letter to the Ephesians, 5; PG 5, 648-649; loc. cit, p. 73. 57 ID, ibid., 3; PG 5, 648; loc. cit., pp. 71-73. 58 THEODORET OF CYR († c. 466), Ecclesiastical History, 1. 2, c. 14; PG 82, 1039-1042; on this episode, cf. HEFEL 1, 908-915. - Cf. St. CORNEILLE I (251-253), Letter 6, to Cyprian of Carthage, 2; PL 3, 722; Den, 44. - ID, Letter to Fabius of Antioch, in EUSEB OF CAESAREA († 339), Ecclesiastical History, 1. 6, c. 43, n. 11; PG 20, 622; Den., 45: "Did not this avenger of the Gospel (Novatian) know, then, that there must be only one bishop in a Catholic Church?" transl. Gustave BARDY (SC, 41), p. 156.
47 God head of Christ, one Christ head of the Catholic Church and of the universal episcopate, one bishop head of his people59; that is, still one divinity and one divine life in the eternal hierarchy, springing from the Father and embracing in him his Son; one communion of the universal Church, springing from Jesus Christ and embracing in him his one Church; one sacred communication in the particular Church, springing from the bishop and embracing all his flock.
59 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 23; PL 4, 517: "There is only one God, one Savior, one Church, one faith, one people united in a solid physical unity by the cement of concord"; trans. DE LABRIOLLE. p. 45.
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CHAPTER V
God is the head of Christ
The mystery of the divine society
God in his unity is not alone: he has his council, which is his Word and his only Son (cf. Is 9:6). He communicates to this Son, who is in his bosom, his divinity and all his attributes. He gives him his wisdom and his power; he makes him share his throne, and associates him with his majesty. This is indeed an indissoluble, eternal and sacred society in God. The Father never ceases to communicate to the Son, and the Son never ceases to receive from the Father. There are indeed two persons and two titles: the principle, which does not depend in any way on the one it begets; the one who is begotten, and who depends entirely on his principle, receiving everything from it with a fullness and a perfection so absolute that he is equal to it in all things (Jn 16.15). There is number, and for this number to be perfect, a third person springs up within this incomprehensible and ineffable society of the Father and the Son to be its fruit and consummation. The Father and the Son render to each other an eternal love; and in this love is the origin of this third person, who belongs to both of them, proceeds from both of them, is the witness and the sacred seal of their eternal covenant. This is the eternal society of the Father and the Son sealed by the Holy Spirit, where all relationships are inviolable and cannot be interchanged. These relationships are not disturbed when God manifests Himself externally by His works, and they remain unchanged when revealing themselves in time. God operates according to the laws of his intimate life; and in every operation of God, the divine persons operate in their proper order and according to the unchangeable law of their eternal origin. According to this order, the Father has in his Son his eternal confidant and cooperator: as the Son is associated with the Father in the mystery of the divine life (Jn. 5:26), there is no secret that the Father does not reveal to him (Jn. 5:20), nor any work that he does without him (Jn. 5:19).
49 He was the Father's counselor in the creation of angels and men; he was with him playing in the design of the universe (Prov 8.30-31), and all the Father's works "were done by him, and nothing that was done was done without him" (Jn 1.3) and without the Spirit who is Spirit of the Father and the Son.
The Incarnation of the Son
But, as we announced above, it was not enough for God that the mystery of the divine society which is in him should be thus declared by the operations of the divine persons in his first works: in the end, coming out of the sanctuary of eternity which it inhabits, this society itself descended into time, and came down to the creature. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:14), that is, God the Father, extending his divine generation into man, united this Word, which was born of him, to human nature, and this incarnate Word is the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim. 2:5). Thus the humanity of Jesus Christ united to the Word is truly, in virtue of this union, associated with all the rights and the title of the Son of God. It enters, by the very right of the eternal generation of the one who clothed it, into the secret and the communications of the power, the majesty and the throne. Does it not seem that all glory and honor is thus given to the divine work, and that the hypostatic union is fully sufficient to consummate it? Has not God's plan reached its conclusion? And can anything still be missing? It seems that this plan and this purpose will come to an end here, and that there will be nothing more beyond that. This humanity which Jesus Christ has put on is, in its turn, all innocence and holiness. God prepared for him a very pure origin in the womb of the Virgin Mary; and, even though he took on human nature after the fault of Adam, being born of a Virgin by the operation of the Holy Spirit, he did not contract its defilements60. If d therefore the
60 St. Leo, 4th Sermon for Christmas (Sermon 24), 3; PL 205-206: "He chose for himself a mother of his creatures who, without losing her virginal integrity, intervened
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Christ receives in this humanity for himself alone the title and prerogatives of the Son of God, as he owes nothing to death, he can introduce it at once into the glory of his Father. Once again, everything will end there, and God's plan has now reached its final term and its final consummation. But it is not yet so; and, by the very fact that Christ's humanity is taken from ours and belongs to us, he announces another continuation of this great work. The great marvel and the secret hidden from the beginning is that the mystery of the divine filiation given to the creature must be also the mystery of mercy, which must repair the ruins of sin, extend and embrace all sinners.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, does not have this august title for himself alone; but, the only Son by birth, he has the power to give, and indeed he gives to all who receive him the power to be made children of God (Jn 1:12) in him by an adoption of a higher order and efficacy which consists in making them all one and partakers of himself (1 Jn 3:1)61.
alone to procure the substance of his body: thus the contamination of the human seed was stopped, the new man possessed in all purity the truth of human nature. The ground of our human nature, cursed in the first prevaricator, produced by this unique childbirth of the blessed Virgin a blessed offspring free from the vice of his race; trans. DOLLE, loc. cit. at 103-105. - ID, 2nd Sermon for Christmas (Sermon 22), 2, PL 54, 195: "Such was the birth that befitted the future Savior of mankind, the one who would possess the whole nature of man, ignoring the defilements of the flesh; ibid. at 79. 61 Adoption among men is only a legal fiction, and the adopted son has not in any degree derived his origin from the one who adopts him; he is not its true son. But divine adoption, based on the second birth and on our union with the only Son, Jesus Christ, is a mysterious reality (1 Jn 3.1). - Cf. St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 23, a. 1: "Divine adoption is superior to human adoption, for God, in adopting a man, makes him capable, by the gift of grace, of perceiving the heavenly inheritance; whereas man does not create aptitude, but supposes it in the one he adopts"; trans. Ch.-V. HÉRIS, Le Verbe incarné (RJ), t. 3, p. 209. - ID, ibid., ad 2: "By the act of adoption is communicated to men a similitude of natural filiation. Hence this saying of the Epistle to the Romans (8.29): 'Those whom he distinguished beforehand to be conformed to the image of his Son'; loc. cit., p. 210.
51 The mystery of salvation
It is here that new mysteries are discovered and sacrifice and death come into play. Death has no claim on the innocent Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:23) and yet it is through his death that he wants to enter into his glory (Lk. 24:26). He does not claim to enter into his glory alone, but carries with him many (Heb 2:10). It is not appropriate for him to assert the right that belongs to him in his personal holiness; and, as these multitudes once contracted sin, he is going to sanctify himself for them (Jn 17:19) by a baptism with which he washes them in himself. It is this baptism of his blood that he desires and wants to accomplish (Lk 12:50). If he does not pass through death, he will remain alone: a grain of wheat, he must die in order to multiply (Jn 12.24-25). Therefore, from his very birth, he has devoted himself to it in advance. When he entered the world," says the apostle, "he vowed it (Heb 10:5, 7; Ps 39:8) and the angels worshipped him in this mystery (he was revealed to them (Heb 1:6). He will come at the appointed hour; or rather, He does not cease to accomplish from hour to hour from His birth to His consummation on the cross the action of His sacrifice. Finally, everything is consummated (Jn 19:28) by his death. Since he had no debt to pay for himself, because he alone owes nothing to death, being alone without sin62, he alone pays the debt of all (Heb 2.9). Astonished death cannot hold him; he comes out of it by his resurrection, which is a new birth. He is reborn from the tomb, and his Father, says the apostle, proclaiming this new birth, says to him at that hour of resurrection, "You are my Son, I myself today have begotten you (Acts 13:33). This life which he takes in the resurrection is for all men all men redeemed in him will receive from him the benefit of this second birth and will rise through him into the holiness of this life.
62 St. Leo, Sermon for Christmas (Sermon 21), 1; PL 54, 191: "The Almighty Lord did not measure himself against this savage adversary in the brightness of his majesty, but in the humility of our condition, opposing him with the same form, the same nature as ours, mortal as it is, but free from all sin... This extraordinary birth owes nothing to the concupiscence of the flesh, the law of sin has in no way defiled it"; trans. DOLLE, loc. cit. at 69-71.
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This is the mystery hidden in the baptism of the faithful, and which will be declared in their future glory (Rom. 6:3-5)63. Thus Jesus Christ has two births in time64: by the first, being born of the Virgin, he takes on our nature; and by the second, being born from the grave and from death to a new life, he gives us and communicates to us the riches of that life, causes us all to be born again in him, and becomes our head. By the first he is all innocence and holiness; by the second he is source of purity and sanctifier, and the head of the new humanity. However, the mystery of these two births is closely linked; Jesus Christ does not enter into his glory by virtue of the holiness of his first birth, but by virtue of the second (Heb 9:12; Lk 24:26). He took on human nature in Mary only to redeem it on the cross and raise it from the grave. He came for this purpose: "For this reason I have come to this hour" (Jn. 12:27), and this is why it was necessary that his mother should be of our race; for, even though his birth from a virgin clothed him with a humanity free from defilement, if he were to remain a stranger to us, why should he take this flesh and blood from among Adam's descendants, rather than bringing them pure and holy from nothing by a creative act of divine power? Moreover, in taking Adam's nature and fallen humanity into himself, he announced his plan to save it. This humanity in its mass bore the curse of sin; he could not love it and choose it except with a view to repairing it; and it was not worthy of him to draw from this source the human nature which he assumed, if he did not have this purpose. It is for this reason, then, that from the time of his first birth he has in view the second and pronounces the vow of his sacrifice (Heb 10.5-9).
63 St. Leo, 6th Sermon for Christmas (Sermon 26), 2; PL 54, 213: "Every believer, from whatever part of the world he may be, who is regenerated in Christ, breaks with the past which he held from his origin and becomes a new man by a second birth; henceforth he no longer counts in his father's descendants according to the flesh, he belongs to the race of the Savior, who became a son of man so that we might be sons of God"; trans. DOLLE, loc. cit. at 127. 64 Roman Breviary, Matins hymn in Eastertide: "Thou who wast once born of the Virgin, behold, thou art now born of the grave."
53 He begins the fulfillment of it from then on, and it will not be a single hour of his life here below without doing the deed. And so, although we belong to him by virtue of his death and resurrection, we are already in him from the beginning, because his sacrifice in which is his death and the mystery of our redemption has already begun. This is why St. Leo can truly say of the birth of Jesus Christ from the Virgin Mary, that we begin with him, even though our birth in him is properly attached to his resurrection65. Such, then, is the order of the mystery: behold, by this divine economy, Jesus Christ introduces into this society of the Father and the Son, not only the humanity which he bears in his person, but, in it and through it, the social and universal humanity of his chosen ones66. The whole Church is in him, and he bears it all in the bosom of his Father (Jn 17:24). Henceforth the Father, looking upon the Son in the secret of that society into which the Son has entered, sees in him the whole Church which is united to him. He also extends to her, with this paternal gaze, the eternal love with which he loves his only Son, embracing her in this same love, because he embraces her with the same view and she is made one with this Son, according to what our Lord says in Saint John: "You have loved me with an eternal love and before the creation of the world... Let the love with which you have loved me be in them", for "I myself am in them" (Jn 17:24,26). "The Father loves you," he says again (in 17.27 and it is the love of which he said, "Let the world know that you have loved them as you have loved me" (Jn 17.23, Vulg.); that is to say, that eternal love which is in God and with which the Father loves the Son was hitherto enclosed in the bosom of God; but when that bosom had been opened in the mission and incarnation of the Son and the Son had come out of it to pour himself into
65 St. Leo, 6th Sermon for Christmas (Sermon 26), 2; PL 54, 213: "In adoring the birth of the nativity of our Savior, we celebrate our own origins: Christ, indeed, is the beginning of the Christian people, and the anniversary of the head is also the anniversary of the body"; trans. DOLLE, loc. cit. at 127. 66 St. IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE, Letter to the Philadelphians, 9; PG 5, 704-705 The high priest... is the door of the Father, through which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the prophets and the apostles and the Church enter"; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit., p. 15 1.
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humanity and to incorporate himself into his Church, it was necessary that this love should also come out of this bosom of God to follow the Son into humanity and to extend itself to the Church. And so the Son in his turn, poured out, so to speak, into this Church, gives back to his Father the cry of filial love; and so, in this society of the Father and the Son which embraces the Church, the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from both of them, extends to the Church. The Father loves his Son in the Church, and the Son in the Church loves the Father and gives back to his Father the cry of filial love. Jesus Christ says of his Father: "The Father loves you" (Jn 16:27); the apostle says of the Church: "The proof that you are sons is that God has sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, who cries out" unceasingly: "Abba, Father" (Gal 4:6). And so the mission of the Holy Spirit follows the mission of the Son of God in humanity, just as his eternal procession follows the birth of that Son in eternity. Wherever the Son is, there is the Spirit of the Son. As the Spirit of the Son, he is the Spirit of adoption in those whom the Son has united to himself (Rom. 8:15); and as the Son has come to humanity in the Church, so the Holy Spirit must reach that humanity and penetrate the Church. And this is again the order of the divine relations and as a consequence of the necessities of the hierarchy which is in God. Here, then, is the first outpouring of the divine hierarchical order: "God is the head of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:3); and we can already foresee a second outpouring in the same order: "Christ the head of the Church" (Eph. 5:23). But, before going any further, we must stop our thoughts on the singular character of this mission of the Word in humanity, namely the title and the priestly anointing.
The title and the priestly anointing
God the Father, begetting his Son out of eternity in that other birth which he gives him by bringing him forth from the blessed Virgin Mary, and principally by bringing him forth from death by his resurrection, does not only "make" him to be "Lord" and Son of God, but "Christ" (Acts 2:36) and Pontiff, i.e., sends him into the state of a priest. This quality will be so connected with
55 the whole order of the Incarnation, that it will not be able to be separated from it, that is, God wanting to glorify in his Christ the human nature which he had created in the beginning, and this human nature being fallen' it will be necessary to purify it first of all by a sacrifice which atones for sin. Death will intervene, because it is the fulfillment of the order of justice and the punishment decreed against sin (Rom. 6:23). The victim will be the man himself: it will not be a stranger to us; and as, in the perfection of his priesthood, our priest does not need to look outside himself for what he has to offer, this victim will also belong to him and will be his own flesh (cf. Heb 4-10). Thus, in the order of his functions, he must clothe himself with it in order to immolate it, and, after having immolated it, glorify it in the divine splendors. Moreover, as we have said, it is not even fitting for him to put on this fallen nature except for the purpose of its reparation and considering it in advance for this purpose. From the moment of his birth, therefore, he has taken on the marks of sacrifice and the character of a victim; his immolation has already begun and he is going to consummate it on the cross. Immediately the multitude of the elect is given to him and belongs to him (Is 2:8). This entire multitude dies with him, goes down with him to the tomb, is reborn with him in his resurrection, and is carried with him into the splendors of glory (Eph 2:5-6)67. Also his mystical fruitfulness is attached to his immolation and the act of his priesthood (Heb 5.9-10). These are the sacred nuptials which, on the cross, give him his bride and the multitude of his children. He is indeed a new Adam, and the figure is fulfilled (Rom. 5:14). But there is a striking difference: the old Adam had received his blessing: "be fruitful, multiply" (Gen. 1:28) in the order of fatherhood, and all human races were to come forth from him according to the laws of that order; whereas the new Adam, Jesus Christ, receives the nations for his inheritance and the elect for his immortal posterity in
67 St. Leo, 6th Sermon For Christmas (Sermon 26), 2; PL 54, 213: "If each one is called in his turn, if all the sons of the Church are distributed in the succession of times, yet the whole body of the faithful who have come out of the baptismal font, crucified with Christ in his passion, risen in his resurrection, placed in his ascension to the right hand of the Father, are born today with him"; trans. DOLLE, loc. cit. at 127.
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the order of priesthood and sacrifice; and the propagation of the new life, which will bring forth in him the sons of God, will be accomplished in virtue of the priesthood and according to the hierarchical laws by which the priestly operation will be communicated and distributed. And as there is an order of paternity proceeding from Adam, so there is an order of priesthood, following the mission and the priesthood that the Father gave to his Son Jesus Christ, and which the latter transmits in his turn, according to this word: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn 20:21). What wonders in this order! The old humanity of Adam, according to the order of paternity, always goes on scattering its branches further and further away from the unity of its origin. By an opposite order, the new humanity does not so much leave Jesus Christ as enter into him, unite with him to live from him, become one with him. The new life which is the fruit and fruitfulness of his priestly operation is his own life, to which he calls men, and the new birth which he gives them makes them participants in it and incorporates them into himself, to make them in him the sons of his own Father (Heb 3.14). Thus unity, far from being divided and lost in the multitudes, embraces the multitudes and brings them back to itself. And as Jesus Christ, who comes from the Father, enters into him and remains in him, so the Church, which proceeds from Jesus Christ, enters into Jesus Christ and remains in Jesus Christ. It is always the divine word: "That they may all be one: as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us" (Jn 17.21).
* * *
Here, then, as far as we can stammer something of it, is this first hierarchy of God and Christ: God is the head (read Christ. In the whole development of the priestly mystery of Christ, the Father retains this title of head and remains the principle. First, indeed, he is the head of Christ in the very origin of his priesthood, and he confers upon him the title and the anointing: he makes him "a priest for ever" (Ps 109:4).
57 Second, in the very act of sacrifice, he remains the head and the principle. If the Son offers the victim, he does so by the authority (reads Father and in the union of the same will of Father and Son, communicated from Father to Son. The Son gives himself up to death (Eph. 5:2); but in the same action and before the Son, not in the order of time, but in the order of mystery, and as head and principle, the Father gave up his Son (Rom. 8:32). The Son does indeed have another will, submissive and obedient to death (Phil. 2:8), in which he is a victim; but the priestly authority comes to him from the Father, from whom he has come forth in eternity by his origin and in time by his mission. Finally, in the third place, God is the head of Christ in his glorification, which is the fruit and the end of the sacrifice. It is he who gives Jesus Christ his glory, and Jesus Christ gives this glory to his Church (Jn 17:22). He makes him sit on his throne, and Jesus Christ in turn associates his Church with it (Rev. 3:21; Lev. 22:29). He hands over the judgment to him (Jn 5:22), and Jesus Christ calls the Church to judge with him (Mt 19:28). It is always the same order, and the aftermath we will see in the Church will bring us back to it again and again.
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CHAPTER VI
Jesus Christ is the head of the Church
Jesus Christ, we have said, carries in himself his whole Church. Therefore, after having considered him as coming from his Father and united to his Father, who is his head, in that first and supreme hierarchy, of which it is said, God is the head of Christ, we must consider him as head in his turn, as head of the Church which proceeds from him and dwells in him. It is a continuation of the same mysteries: Jesus Christ, head of the Church, has his completion or his fullness (Eph. 1:23) in the Church, from which he will not be separated; and similarly the Church cannot be considered outside of its union with him, because it receives from him all that it is and all its substance. Thus Jesus Christ, having received everything from the Father, who is his head, in his turn gives everything to the Church; and this continuation is very true: "God is the head of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:3), "Christ is the head of the Church" (Eph. 5:23).
The Episcopal College
But this Church is not a shapeless multitude: the divine works carry with them a continuous order; and, so that it may be so in this excellent work among all, Jesus Christ causes his Church to proceed from himself, and unites it in this very procession through the episcopal college. Thus the bishops associated with Jesus Christ and his cooperators are the principal members on whom the others depend, and their college is truly the whole Church, because it contains the whole multitude of the faithful in its virtue and fruitfulness68. Also Jesus Christ, on the eve of his passion, at the time of offering his sacrifice and ensuring its perpetuity, praying for the whole Church,
68 BOSSUET, Letter 4 to a damsel of Metz, n. 37, Œuvres complètes, ed. Gauthier, 1828, vol. 46, p. 28: "The mystery of the unity of the Church is in the bishops, as leaders of the faithful people; and therefore the episcopal order encloses in itself with fullness the spirit of fruitfulness of the Church."
59 seems to pray only for this college (Jn 17:16-19); the apostles alone surround him at this hour, but in them his purpose embraces all the rest. In them, in fact, he reaches the whole body of the Church, both by the preaching of the word and by the efficacy of the sacraments and by pastoral authority: for it is in them that he establishes for all the teaching of doctrine, it is in them that he deposits the sanctifying power of the sacraments for the vivification of the whole Church, it is in them that pastoral government is established. Being therefore himself the substantial word of the Father, Jesus Christ received from him the truth and the word which he gives to the world and which the Church receives in her faith, but it is through the apostles that he transmits it: "Father," he says, "the words which you gave me I gave them" in my turn, "and they kept your word" (Jn 17.8.6); and immediately he adds: "I do not pray for them alone, but also for those who, thanks to their word, will believe in me. (Jn 17:20). It is therefore the task of the apostles to form the faith of the Church. In a similar order, it will be up to them to give birth to it in the blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ himself baptized her in that blood, but he placed in the apostles the word of reconciliation: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them...", he said to them (Mt 28:19). It will be up to them to feed it with his sacrificial flesh; Jesus Christ offered it first, but he said to them: "Do it in memory of me" (1 Cor. 11:24). (1 Cor. 11:24; Le 22:19). It will be up to them to animate it with his Spirit and to vivify it by the grace of the sacraments. It will be up to them to govern it with authority: "He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me" (Le 10:16). Finally, to put it all in a nutshell, Jesus Christ associated them with his Church and communicated to them his entire mission: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn 20.21); "whoever welcomes you welcomes me" (Mt 10.40)69. By the continuation of this doctrine, then, it is quite evident that
69 PIERRE AURIOL, O. F. M. († 1322): "Christ received from the Father the perfection ,lu priesthood, when he was sent by him; he then gave the perfection of the priesthood, that is, the episcopal power to his apostles, when he sent them, as he himself had been sent by the Father."
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the Church depends on them, that she is enclosed in them, that she may be considered in them as in the original and fruitful virtue which contains her, and that the episcopal college is thus, in a true sense, the whole Church which it represents. Here, then, is the Church united to Jesus Christ its head, and the order that is in this union.
The bridegroom and the bride
But, in this mysterious and indissoluble union, what name will it be appropriate to bestow upon it? Or rather, what name given by the Holy Spirit will express its strength? This name is that of the bride (Rev. 21:9; 19:7): the Church is truly the bride, and she has all the characteristics of one. There are three characteristics of the bride: she is united to the bridegroom in substance, she is the mother of the bridegroom's children, she shares his authority over the children and even over the servants. Thus the Church is united to Jesus Christ in the unity of his flesh and spirit and in the possession of all his goods (Eph 5:29-30). The Church, through the episcopate, is mother and begets the children of God. Finally, the Church is queen in the authority of this same episcopate; she exercises and shares over the family of God, which is her fruitfulness, the authority of Jesus Christ, who is her spouse, and all those who are of God obey his voice (Jn 8:47). The very servants, that is, all God's works and all creatures, belong to him in their own way, must serve him and are subordinate to him in their end. This is the mystery that this hierarchy of the universal Church, of which Jesus Christ is the head, offers to our thoughts. We are not speaking at this time of the vicar whom he has given himself and whose institution makes him visible for ever here below. We shall see elsewhere that this vicar is only the pure manifestation of the one he represents, the instrument and the organ which he uses unceasingly to speak and act outside. As for now, it is sufficient, in order to understand the mystery of the hierarchy properly, to recognize the unique authority of its head Jesus Christ, since also this vicar has no authority distinct from that and exercises this very authority, without dividing it, as we shall say in its place.
61 From the Church to the Father through Christ
But, before going any further, it is important to recall the doctrine which we have already stated, namely, that this hierarchy of Christ and the Church relates and goes back, by a sort of mysterious identification, to the first hierarchy of God, the head of Christ. It has in this its type, and the society of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ penetrates the Church and makes itself present in it70. Jesus Christ is the head of the Church because he brings to it the operation of his Father and gives it what he has received from his Father. The Father remains the first author of the gift; he is in Christ, "reconciling the world" (2 Cor. 5:19): "Whoever welcomes me," says Jesus Christ, "does not welcome me, but the One who sent me" (Mk. 9:36). Thus, next to the Head, the first principle appears, which is the Father, and, on the side of the Church, what do we see, if not the Son insofar as he is given and living in her? What gift is received by her for all her members, if not the quality of children of God (Jn. 1:12-13), the association with the only Son of God or rather this only Son Jesus Christ given, poured out and, dare we say it, mysteriously begotten in the multitudes who receive him and to whom he is given so that they are reborn of God by a new birth as "members" and "fullness" of this only Son (1 Cor. 6:15; Eph. 1:23)? Thus, on the one hand, the principle, i.e. the Father, and, on the other hand, the Son, assuming in his unity the whole body of the Church. So, let us repeat, the society of the Father and the Son is there, and the august relations which flow from this society are kept there. Also the Holy Spirit cannot be absent from it, and, in this mystery of the Church united to its Head, he is given to the Church, he lives in the Church, he breathes and speaks in her (Jn 14.16; Mt 10.20). And his presence in her is a mysterious necessity of the hierarchy, based on the eternal necessities of the divine life and society that is in God. And, as he unites the Son to the Father, so he unites the Church to her head: the Church, in whom is the
70 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 7; PL 4, 505: "This garment (the tunic of Jesus) represented the unity which came from above, that is, from heaven and the Father"; trans. DE LABRIOLLE, loc. cit, P. 15.
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name of the Son, to his head, in whom is the operation and authority of the Father.
63 CHAPTER VII
The bishop is the head of the particular church
The episcopal college is the chief part of the Church, because through it the fruitfulness of the priesthood of Jesus produces all the other members of his mystical body. Now, the episcopate is one; it is not possessed in parts, it dwells wholly in each bishop71. As a result of the mystery of this indivisible integrity, the episcopate can be considered in a particular bishop. The fruitfulness of the episcopate, the priestly operation of Jesus Christ producing the Church, communicated to the episcopate, are all in this bishop. This one appropriates, so to speak, the virtue which produces the Church72, and, making it radiate on restricted elements, he exercises it on a limited flock to which his action extends and which exists distinctly and without merging as his share of the inheritance. This bishop thus becomes the head of what is called his Church, giving the part, that is to say the particular Church, the mysterious name of the whole. Thus the bishop, a member of the college of the universal Church under the one head Jesus Christ, by a continuation and development of what he receives in this capacity, still takes the quality of head of a hierarchy and of a particular Church.
This is the third and last of our hierarchies, and, as we have said, God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of the Church
71 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 5; PL 4, 501: "This unity we must hold fast to, we bishops especially, who preside in the Church, in order to prove that the episcopate is also one and indivisible.... The episcopate is one, and each bishop has his share in it, without division at all"; trans. DE LABRIOLLE, loc. cit., P. 11 (slightly edited, after p. 52, note 7). - Cf. Odon CASEL, O. S. B., Eine missverstandene Stelle Cyprians, in Revue bénédictine, 30 (1913) 413-420. - Jean COLSON, L'évêque, lien d'unité et de charité chez saint Cyprien de Carthage, éd. S.O.S., Paris, 1961, 120 p. 72 Just as forms multiply through matter, so the Church multiplies in the particular Churches through the elements of the Christian peoples, who are like the matter of the particular Churches and who receive their form from the episcopate.
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or episcopate, we say again thirdly: the bishop is the head of the particular Church.
The mystery of the particular Church
But, let us first declare, in this particular Church we revere the whole mystery and dignity of the Church, the bride of Jesus Christ. The mystery is not degraded by being communicated: this hierarchy is not unworthy of the higher hierarchy, that is, of the universal Church of Jesus Christ from which it derives, which surrounds it and contains it in its bosom. Therefore, the name Church belongs to it in all truth. She possesses, without diminution or degradation, all the goods and all the mystery of the universal Church. In this unique mystery, she is, in and through the universal Church, the ever unique spouse of Jesus Christ; as such, she receives all his goods, his faith, his baptism, his sacraments, his body and blood, his spirit; he extends his authority and his tender solicitude over her, and he is her shepherd, the ever unique shepherd of the universal Church and of the particular flocks. The particular Church, constituted by the episcopate of its bishop, therefore receives well through him all that belongs to the universal Church and all that constitutes it73. What we say here must be understood of the gift made to the Church, that is, of all that constitutes the new creature, and of all its riches, but not of the stable and indefectible possession of these gifts and riches; this stability assured to the universal Church is not assured to each of the particular Churches. The universal Church cannot perish; each particular Church can fail and perish. None of them is necessary as a particular Church. The Roman Church alone is infallible and imperishable, not by virtue of her status as a particular Church, but by a special privilege and because her immutable integrity concerns the state of the universal Church. Again, this bishop, in whom the whole episcopate is, brings to it
73 SYMEMON OF THESSALONIC (1430), On Holy Ordinations, 1; PG 155, 363: "It is through the bishop (that comes) every order, every mystery, every sacrament."
65 all the action of Jesus Christ, makes her the bride of Jesus Christ; she possesses through him the word of Jesus Christ, his sacrifice, his body and blood, his spirit, his sacraments; she is governed by him, and in the bishop Jesus Christ is her pastor. In a word, it is truly Church: it has all the substance of the Church in one and the same mystery with the universal Church74 and as the episcopate is whole in each bishop, so the universal Church is whole in each of the Churches75. Let us beware, then, of regarding the particular Churches as mere circumscriptions established only for the good police of government, as accidental divisions which are nothing in substance and whose constitution might be changed at the pleasure of a legislator. In the order of the ancient Adam, and of the cities which proceed from him, the families rest on a divine sacrament. In a more august order, in the humanity of the new Adam, the families which are the Churches also have a substantial mystery constituting them, but everything in them is in unity, and this divine sacrament which constitutes the particular Church is none other than the great sacrament of Jesus Christ and of the universal Church, and it is for this reason that, according to the doctrine of St. Cyprian, "it is consistent with the heavenly mysteries," immutable, and "founded on divine stability."76. But it would not be so if we did not find in this hierarchy of the bishop and his Church the relationships which constitute the higher hierarchies. The bishop is the head; he holds the place of the principle. In the bishop is Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ the Father who sends him. The Church that receives the bishop receives Jesus Christ, and, in receiving Jesus Christ, receives
74 St. PIERRE DAMIEN, (1007-1072), Opuscule "Dominus vobiscum," 6; PL 145, 236: "Whatever is suitable for the whole is also found in some way suitable for each part." 75 ID., ibid., 5-6; PL 145, 235: "The Church of Christ is assembled by the bond of such great charity that she is one in the plurality (of Churches) and mysteriously all-embracing in each of them.... May the holy Church be one in all and whole in each... May the holy Church be one in plurality and whole in its parts." The text is quoted more fully in Paul BROUTIN S. J., Mysterium Ecclesiæ, Orante, Paris, 1945, p. 156. 76 St. Cyprian, De l'unité de l'Église catholique, 6; PL 4, 504; see above, p. 17, note 19.
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his Father, for he himself said, "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes Him who sent me" (Mt 10.40). Thus the bishop does indeed hold in her the place of Jesus Christ united to his bride77; she herself is that bride of Jesus Christ called Church and enclosing in her the whole mystery of the universal Church. But this is not enough, and, by the same sequel, the bishop holds in her the place of the Father and the Church receives through him the title of divine sonship78. " It is through the bishop, says St. Polycarp, that God adopts his sons."79 Thus, it is always the same order of divine life; the head and that which proceeds from him, the bishop and the Church; On the side of the head appears the principle of life, that is, the Father, author of the divine gift and giver of his Son, and, on the side of the Church, the mass of the children of God, that is, the only Son given by the Father, begotten of the Father and poured into them without ceasing to be unique, as we said above when we dealt with the universal Church. The Holy Spirit is inseparable from the mystery of these relations of the Father
77 St. IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE, Letter to the Ephesians, 6; PG 5, 649: "It is clear that we must look upon the bishop as the Lord himself"; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit, p. 75. - ID, Letter to the Trallians, 3; PG 5, 667: "Let all revere... the bishop, who is the image of the Father; ibid., p. 113. - Cf. St. THOMAS, Supplementum, q. 40, a. 7: "The bishops are the spouses of the Church, in the place of Christ." - St. PACIAN OF BARCELONA, († before 392) Letter 3, to Sympronianus, 7; PL 13, 1068: "We bishops,...because we have received the name of apostles, because we are marked with the name of Christ... For whether we baptize, whether we compel penance, whether we grant pardon to the penitent, we do all these things, but it is Christ who acts." Cf. Jean COLSON, L'évêque dans les communautés primitives, Cerf, Paris, 1951 (US, 21), pp. 91-108; Gustave BARDY, La théologie de l'Église, de saint Clément de Rome à saint Irénée, Cerf, Paris, 1945 (US, 13), pp. 44-49. 78 St. IGNACE of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians, 3; PG 5, 664-665: "To you it is fitting.... for the sake of the power of God the Father, to accord him (your bishop) all veneration; for I know that your holy presbyters...as sensible people in God, submit to him, not to him, but to the Father of Jesus Christ, to the bishop of all."; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit. at 97. SYMEON OF THESSALONIC, On Holy Ordinations, 1; PG 155, 363: "The bishop has the power to illuminate, and in this he imitates the Father of lights, whose power he possesses in abundance." 79 This quotation appears neither in the Letter of St. Polycarp, nor in the Fragmenta Polycarpiana, nor in the Conversio sancti Polycarpi: X. FUNK, Patres apostolici, Tubingæ, 1901, vol. 2, pp. 288-336 (*).
67 and of the Son wherever they appear: the breath of the Father and the Son, as it is in the universal Church, fills it and animates it, so it comes to the particular Church. He is the soul of her hierarchy, the seal of her communion. He seals in her the union of the bishop and his people, of the bridegroom and the bride, that is to say, still and always the union of Jesus Christ and his Church, and, going back higher, to the divine depths where the sacred origins of these mysteries are hidden, the union of the Father and the Son. It is from these eternal depths, where the Father gives to the Son and the Son receives from the Father, that Jesus Christ came to humanity to form the universal Church of which he is the head, to which he gives in turn and which receives from him. And, in the same way, it is from within this superior hierarchy of the universal Church, where Jesus Christ gives to the college of bishops, in whom the whole Church is, and where the bishops receive from him, that the bishop, in his turn, has come out to form the particular Church of which he will be the head, to which he will give and which will receive from him. Thus these hierarchies proceed from one another: the particular Church proceeds from the universal Church; the universal Church, in which all the particular Churches subsist, proceeds from the divine society of God and of his Christ. But, under another aspect of the same mystery, this order, in which what is inferior seems to come out of what is superior, is also the order in which what is superior calls to itself, assumes in itself what is inferior, in order to embrace and contain it in itself. The divine society of God and of his Christ embraces in Jesus Christ the universal Church, takes it into itself, contains it, envelops it and makes it live with its life. In the same way, this society which is between Jesus Christ and the universal Church assumes in itself in the episcopate the particular Churches, embraces them and communicates its life to them. This is what is expressed in the words of the Apostle St. John: May you, the faithful of the particular flocks, have society with us, who are the episcopate80, in whom the universal Church subsists, and may
80 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Magnesians, 1; PG 5, 664: "I sing to the Churches, I wish them union... with Jesus and the Father, in whom we shall stand...; and we
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our society into which you are entering, and which is the communion of the universal Church, be raised to the society of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ (1 Jn 1.3). In this way, what he said about this union is always fulfilled, to the very ends of the mystical body of Jesus Christ: "I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly one" (Jn 17:23). Let us conclude with a final view of these sacred truths.
The Church in the Bishop
By this admirable mystery of processions and assumptions in unity, which is the bottom of the hierarchies, as there is a circumincession of the Father and his Son (Jn 14.10), so there is a circumincession of Jesus Christ and the universal Church (Jn 14. 20): "You are in me and I am in you"; which makes even the Vicar of Jesus Christ say, because he holds the place of the head: "Where Peter is, there is the Church"81. Finally, there is a circumincession of the bishop and the particular Church, which makes St. Cyprian say, "You must understand that the bishop is in the Church and the Church in the bishop."82 How sublime is this mystery! The Son is in the Father as in his principle; the Father is in the Son as in his consubstantial splendor. The Church is also in Christ as in his principle, and Christ is in the Church as in his fullness. Finally, the particular Church is also in her bishop as in her principle, and the bishop is in his Church as in his fullness, his splendor, the radiance of his priesthood and his fruitfulness. That is why the Catholic Church does not do a vain thing in preserving for bishops the titles of Churches overthrown by the infidels and destroyed seemingly without return. Reduced to no more
will reach God; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit., p. 95. 81 St. AMBROSIUS, Commentary on Psalm 140, 30; PL 14, 1082. 82 Saint CYPRIAN, Letter 66, 8; PL 4, 406; Cf. Saint CYPRIAN, Corresponce, trans. BAYARD, Paris, 1925 (col. Guillaume Budé), vol. 2, p. 226 (Letter 69). - St. IGNACE likewise says, Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8, PG 5, 713: "Where the bishop appears, there let the community be, just as where Christ Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church"; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit, P. 163.
69 count at present neither clergy nor faithful, they still live and subsist in their bishops; the bishop bears in the virtue of his episcopate and title multitudes and a hierarchy, as one sees a whole family subsisting with its rights and hopes in a single heir. The torch of a particular Church is not extinguished as long as the episcopal chair remains and is occupied. However, before we depart from this subject, we must consider the particular Church, not only in this state which we have just indicated and where all its forces are as if gathered in their germ in the person of the bishop, but we must also see this flower of the hierarchy in its full bloom. The bishop will have around him his people, the fruitfulness of his unique priesthood. His faithful have received his baptism, which is the baptism of Jesus Christ, and they are seated at his mystical table83. And yet something would still be lacking in the beauty and fullness of this mystery of the particular Church if the bishop did not have cooperators in it forming the crown of his see, if he always acted alone and if he could only communicate the fruit of his priesthood without communicating the priestly operation itself.
The cooperators of the bishop
It is fitting that his hierarchy should more perfectly imitate the higher hierarchies; and as the bishops are the cooperators of Jesus Christ, the sunthronos, the consessus, the senate and "presbytery" of the universal Church84, seated with Jesus Christ to shepherd and govern her; as Jesus Christ himself is the eternal Council of his Father, operates in his virtue, and shares his throne, it is fitting that the bishop should extend his operation in persons who are made by-
83 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8, PG 5, 713: "It is not permitted apart from the bishop either to baptize or to make the agape"; ibid. 84 These expressions are all found as early as the first century in the writings of St. IGNACE; e.g. Letter to the Philadelphians, 2; PG 5, 701: "Taking refuge... in the apostles as in the presbyterate of the Church"; ibid., p. 145. - Cf. Bernard BOTTE, O. S. B., Presbyterium, in Etudes sur le sacrement de l'Ordre, Cerf, Paris, 1957 (LO, 22), pp. 98-107.
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ticipantes85. His Church is a bride: it must also have the fruitfulness of a mother and a share in the authority of the bridegroom; it must have principal members in whom it will receive these prerogatives, as the universal Church receives in the bishops and possesses through the body of bishops, partakers of the priesthood of Jesus Christ, to be a fruitful mother and a queen whose authority is sacred. The bishop will thus give the last perfection to the particular Church by forming in it a crown of cooperators86. By a final outflow of the priestly mission, there will be an order of priests, inferior in all things to the episcopate: these share in its virtue, but they cannot transmit it; for as well there is no longer any hierarchy below the hierarchy of the particular Church of which the bishop is the head, and the priests who assist him will be the college of his see, without ever being heads in the proper and hierarchical sense of the word. They are the senate of the particular Church, and there they compose that assembly which antiquity called the presbytery87. It must be known, then, that the priestly anointing does not end with the episcopate, and that a final flow of this anointing forms an order inferior in all things to the episcopate, the support and cooperator of the episcopate. By this, according to Thomassin's remark, the priesthood admits
85 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Magnesians, 2; PG 5, 664: "He is subject to the bishop as to the grace of God, and to the presbyterate as to the law of Jesus Christ"; ibid., p. 97. - ID, ibid.,6; PG 5, 667 "Take heart to do all things in divine concord, under the presidency of the bishop, who holds the place of God, the presbyters, who hold the place of the senate of the apostles.... Unite yourselves to the bishop and the presbyters in image and lesson of incorruptibility"; ibid., p.99.- ID., ibid., 13; PG 5, 673: "Be subject to the bishop and to one another, just as Christ according to the flesh was subject to the Father, and the apostles to Christ and the Father and the Spirit"; ibid., p. 107. - ID, Letter to the Trallians, 2; PG 5, 676: "It is necessary... to do nothing without the bishop, but to submit also to the presbyterate, as to the apostles of Jesus Christ"; ibid., p. 113. - ID, ibidem, 3; PG 5, 677: "Let all revere... the bishop, who is the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and as the assembly of the apostles"; ibidem. 86 ID., Letter to the Magnesians, 13, PG 5, 673: "The precious spiritual crown of your presbyterate"; ibid., p. 107. 87 ID., Letter to the Ephesians, 4, 20; Letter to the Magnesians, 2, 13; Letter to the Trallians, 2,7,13; Letter to the Philadelphians, 4, 7; Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8, 12; PG 5, 647, 662, 664, 674, 676, 685, 700, 713, 717; Tr. CAMELOT, loc. cit, pp. 73, 91, 97, 107, 113, 117, 123, 145, 147, 163.
71 as three degrees: Jesus Christ, head and first in the priesthood, prôtos archiéreus; the bishops, hierarchs under this first head, archiéreis; the priests, simply called hiéreis, consecrated, but not consecrators, who participate in the priesthood and do not communicate it, who receive the priesthood, but cannot be heads of a new hierarchy88. It is to the priesthood of these that the bishop turns to complete the purpose of his particular Church; he attaches them to it, he appropriates them to give it its full form. We could stop here89; but it is fitting to say a few more words about an order of persons who, not receiving the priesthood itself, are its arms and auxiliaries, and upon whom flows, because of this function, something of the superabundance of grace and unction which fills the priestly hierarchy. These are the ministers properly so called, originally constituted in the principal order of the diaconate. The deacons are the helpers of the bishop; they have a ministry of preparation and assistance to the bishop; but it is not to their order properly that it belongs to act and operate in the mysteries. From the fact that they are the helpers of the bishop, it also follows that they are the helpers of the priests, because the priests have, in a lower degree, one and the same priesthood with the bishop, and the bishop gives to the priests all his goods, except what belongs to him as to the head of the hierarchy. Deacons are like angels in the Church90: at times they appear at the altar guardians and witnesses of the mysteries; at other times they carry far and wide and cause the priestly orders to be carried out; they mingle with the people to support them, prepare them, examine them, and bring them to the bishop
88 THOMASSIN, Discipline of the Church, Part 1, 1. 1, c. 1, n. 14, ed. Guérin, Bar-le-Duc, 1864, p. 5. - Cf. P.-M. GY, O. P., Remarks on the ancient vocabulary of the Christian priesthood, in Études sur le sacrement de l'Ordre, Cerf, Paris, 1957 (LO, 22), pp. 142-144. 89 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Philadelphians, 4; PG 5, 700: "There is but one altar, as one bishop with the presbyterate and deacons"; loc. cit., pp. 143145. 90 ORIGEN (185-253), Commentary on St. Matthew (anonymous Latin transl.), (77), n. 10: "The seven deacons are the archangels of God, and it is to their mysteries that the seven deacons mentioned in the book of Acts were ordained."
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or to the priest, and for this reason the deacon is called "the eye and hand of the bishop."91. The Church, from the earliest times, detached from the diaconate various parts of her august functions: she drew from this single and principal order the multiple and distinct orders of the inferior ministers. These orders all have a divine origin in the diaconate, which contains them, and the Church has received from God the power to bring them out of it and to establish their division92. She has used this power variously according to place and time, for this division is of ecclesiastical right. Also, while the orders of the priesthood, that is, the episcopate and the priesthood, and the order of the diaconate, are universal and unchangeable, and inviolably preserve all that is proper to them, the orders of the inferior ministers, their titles, their attributions, differ from East to West.
When we make the proper life of the particular Church the subject of a special study, we shall have occasion to recognize how the deacons and other ministers attached to it and appropriate to it contribute to its ornament and vigor.
91 Apostolic Constitutions (Syrian compilation, ca. 380), 1. 2, c. 44; PG 1, 703. 92 St. THOMAS, Supplementum, q. 37, a. 2, ad 2: "In the primitive Church... all the lower ministries were entrusted to the deacons, as is evident from the statement of Dionysius... All these powers, named in the article, existed no less, but they were implicitly contained in that of the deacon. Throughout the ages, divine worship has grown, and what the Church implicitly possessed in one order, it has distributed in several. In this sense the Master of the Sentences could say that the Church created other orders"; trans. M.-J. GERAULD, O. P., The Order (RJ), p. 77; see translator's notes, ibid., pp. 175-177.
73 CHAPTER VIII
Integrity and indivisible unity of the Church
Mystery of unity in Christ
We have just set forth the mystery of hierarchies in their most general notion. The Church of Jesus Christ has appeared to us in the magnificence of the gifts given to her. Through her head, Jesus Christ, she belongs to the eternal society of God and of his Christ, and through her members, the bishops, she forms below her the particular hierarchies of which these bishops are the heads. A center of unity in this new world, she is herself a mystery of unity93, which still calls for our meditations. The Church is so much one that the plurality of Churches and of the faithful which is in her cannot alter the mystery of her unity94. The ancient Adam, multiplying according to the division of families, saw as many distinct societies being formed under his paternal and supreme authority. The city which represents him, that is to say, the State or the nation, is itself only the meeting or the sum of families and individuals. But the Church, proceeding from Jesus Christ, as Jesus Christ proceeds from his Father, the Church, calling all men to herself and assuming them into her unity, as Jesus Christ himself calls and assumes them into himself, the Church makes all men but one whole with this Jesus Christ, whose body and fullness she is, so that Jesus
93 St. Peter Damian, Op. "Dominus vobiscum" 6; PL 145, 235 "Individuæ unitatis arcanum". 94 ID, ibid., 5; PL 145, 235: "Although the Church appears to be multiple because of the great number of peoples, yet she is one and simple." - 6, ibid; "If, because of the visible situation of the Church, it seems divided into parts, yet the mystery of the hidden unity (unitatis intimae sacramentum) cannot in any way lose its integrity." - 13; PL 145, 242: "Let attention be paid to the sacrament of the unity of the Church; in it unity does not exclude the many, nor does the many violate unity." - 14, ibid: "What wonder is there in saying of the Church that she is believed to be both multiple in unity and one in multitude?"
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Christ in turn carries them in himself in the eternal unity of God and his Son. It is Jesus Christ, then, who in the Church is the principle and bond of unity; indivisible, he is given wholly to the whole Church, and the Church gives him wholly to each of its parts95. And so Jesus Christ is whole in each of the parts of the Church, and the Church is whole in her whole and whole in each of her parts96. And this is the mystery of her indivisible integrity, which St. Peter Damian expressed with the sentence, "She is whole in the whole and whole in each part"97. Therefore, the particular Church is in substance all that the universal Church is, that is, Jesus Christ communicated to men. She possesses this gift in its entirety: the sacrifice, the priesthood, the regeneration, the riches of the universal Church, are without division her own riches; and thus the mystery of the universal Church, that is, the gift of God par excellence, Jesus Christ given to men, is found as reduced and appropriated and as multiplied without division in each of the particular Churches. The victim of the world is offered at each altar, without ceasing to be unique; it is universal, and it belongs to each assembly of the faithful, to each member of the faithful, as a good that cannot be shared. And so, as we have said above, the name Church communicates itself with the very thing it signifies; there is only one Church, and there are multitudes of Churches;
95 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Magnesians, 7; PG 5, 667: "All of you, come together as in one temple of God, as around one altar, in the one Jesus Christ"; loc. cit., P. 101. - ID, ibid., 10: "Be transformed into a new leaven, which is Jesus Christ. Let him be the salt of your life"; loc. cit., p. 105. - Cf. St. IRENEUS, loc. cit., 1. 3, c. 24, n. 1; see above, p. 8, note 20. 96 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 5; PL 4, 501 There is only one Church, which by its ever-increasing fruitfulness embraces an ever-increasing multitude"; loc. cit., p. 11. - ID., ibid., 7: "He who received it (the tunic of Christ)... obtained it all, once and for all, integrally, in its solid context so as never to be separated from it again... The people of Christ cannot be divided: so the tunic of Christ, which is made up entirely of one piece and without a seam, remains undivided in the hands of those who possess it. One, of one piece, of one fabric, it represents the concord so coherent of our people, to us who have put on Christ. By the symbol, by the sign of this garment, Jesus represented the unity of the Church"; loc.cit., p. 15-17. 97 St. Peter Damian, Op. "Dominus vobiscum", 5; PL 145, 235; see above, p. 50, note 5.
75 and this name, like the mystery which it expresses, belongs to each of them, without ceasing to be the unique and incommunicable name of the one bride of Jesus Christ. Let us not, therefore, consider this great and unique Church as being only the sum and result of the particular Churches. In God's view, it precedes them, and the particular Churches exist only through the universal Church. They are in substance only the appropriation made in the aftermath to a particular people of the divine gift which was first given to the whole of new humanity in the universal Church98. This is why the episcopate appears in the universal Church before the bishop is head of a particular Church. The bond which unites him to it subsists only through the appropriation to him of a previous mystery. This bond derives all its virtue from this universal foundation from which it proceeds and which it cannot alter. Before belonging to a particular Church, they belong first and foremost to the universal Church, each in his own hierarchical rank. We cannot repeat too often, therefore, that the universal Church exists prior to the particular Churches; it does not depend on the latter, but the latter proceed from the former, borrow from it all that they have and never cease to belong to it. Thus the Church is one and indivisible, and by this inviolable and essential indivisibility which admits of fecundity and multiplication without undergoing alteration, she joins to the mystery of her maternity the privilege of virginity. She is mother and virgin at the same time, because her fecundity imitates the divine fecundity; and, as God brings forth his Son in himself without tearing his substance, he has likewise given his Church to multiply in herself the divine generations of his children, the particular Churches and the families of his elect, without rupture or division and without her most perfect integrity, simplicity and uni-
98 ID., ibid., 10; PL 145, 239: "We must see in each of the faithful as a little Church: for once the mystery of the sacrament of unity is safeguarded, one man receives all the sacraments of the redemption of men, which have been given by God to the universal Church."
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tee receive no harm99. How can these ineffable things be explained? All earthly propagation is done by the division of matter; but the divine propagation which is in Christ is done by assumption into unity. The body of Christ, filled with the Spirit and the divinity, which is given to all in order to make them all live with his life and to make each one his members and his substance, does not divide itself. But this divine food, unlike earthly food and while the latter is assimilated to the one who takes it, assumes the one who feeds on it to his own unity, assimilates it and unites it to himself with a profound and incomprehensible effectiveness (cf. 1 Cor. 10:17)100. These are operations of that new life, the communication of the same divine substance "which penetrates and is not penetrated," says Leporius, "which gives itself and does not divide, which is at once whole everywhere and spread everywhere, which spreads itself without alteration, which knows how to unite human nature in Christ and the Church so well that it receives no increase, and so much to spread itself in it that it suffers no decrease"101. This mystery of the unity of the Church in the multiplicity of its members, bringing them all together in the unity of Jesus Christ so that they may be consummated by him in the unity he has with his Father, the unity of which he said, "I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly one" (Jn 17:23), this mystery of unity is called communion
99 ID., ibid: "Where the unity of faith no more receives in each one the fact of being alone than it admits the division of diversity into many." 100 ID., loc. cit., 8; PL 145, 238: "So great is the unity of the Church in Christ that there is everywhere on the whole face of the earth but one bread of Christ's body and one chalice of his blood. As the divinity of the Word of God is one, filling the whole world, so, although his body is consecrated in many places and on many days, there are not many bodies of Christ, but one. And as this bread and wine are truly transformed into the body of Christ, so all who receive it worthily in the Church, without doubt, are the one body of Christ: he himself testifies to this when he says, He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him." 101 LEPORIUS (ca. 420), Retractation, 4; PL 31, 1224, quoted as St. Augustine by St. LEON in his Letter 165, to the Emperor Leo, 5; PL 54, 1182. - Cf. PSEUDO-AUGUSTIN, The Book of the Manual (an anonymous twelfth-century compilation), 1; see Œuvres complètes de saint Augustin, ed. Vivès, 1870, vol. 22, p. 644.
77 ecclesiastical and belongs to the communion of saints, which makes an article of our apostolic symbol102.
By the Holy Spirit
But we would not hear in all its fullness the sacrament of this communion, that is, this admirable unity of the Church and of Jesus Christ extended in it, if we were not led by this very unity to the contemplation of the mystery which consumes it and completes its divine economy. This unity of the Church, a continuation and participation of the inviolable unity of the Father and the Son, "coherent with the heavenly mysteries" of the divine society, is, like this eternal society and through it, sealed and consummated by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Let us stop and discover, as far as our weakness will allow, something of the laws and, as it were, the divine necessities of these new wonders. The Spirit proceeds from the mutual love of the Father and the Son: he is the substantial fruit of this love. Now, this Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father by his origin (Jn. 1:18), coming out of this sanctuary by his mission (Jn. 8:42), came to the Church, united himself to her and lives in her (Eph. 5:25-30). The Father will therefore love with the same love, as he embraces with one glance, his Son and the Church of which this Son is the head: "You have loved them," says our Lord, "as you have loved me" (Jn 17:23, according to a variant). Now, "you have loved me" from all eternity and "before the creation of the world" (Jn 17:24); it is this eternal love that will be in them: "may the love with which you have loved me be in them", for "I am in them" (Jn 17:26), so that I may be the worthy object of this love and may love you in turn in them;
102 St. Peter Damian, loc. cit., 10; PL 145, 239 - "If we are all one in Christ, we possess, each of us, all our good in himself.... Thus what belongs to all belongs to each; and what some receive personally is also the common good of all in the integrity of faith and charity.... This necessary communion of Christ's faithful was deemed so certain by our holy Fathers that they inscribed it in the symbol of the Catholic faith and ordered it to be repeated in the rudiments of our Christian faith. "Immediately after saying, 'I believe in the Holy Spirit, in the holy Church,' we immediately add, 'in the communion of saints'; so when we bear witness to our faith in God, we also affirm, accordingly, the communion of the Church, which is one in him."
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it will indeed be necessary for the Church, all alive through the Son, to take on the person of the Son to love the Father. And thus this immense and eternal love, which goes from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father, by an ineffable extension, embraces the Church itself103. By this the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from this love in the mystery of his eternal origin, proceeds outside, so to speak, comes to the Church and penetrates her by a mission which is a continuation of the mission of the Son, as his eternal origin is a continuation of the eternal generation of the Son104. The Father and the Son, the Father of Christ and Christ, therefore send their Spirit to the Church. The Father sends him as the author of the Son and giving the Son to be with himself one principle of the Holy Spirit. God the Father," says Saint Paul, "because you are sons, has sent into your hearts the Spirit of his Son" (Gal. 4:6); and the Son, receiving from the Father to be with the Father the principle of the Holy Spirit, also sends him; he sends him with the Father by the same mission: "This," he says, "is the Spirit whom I will send to you from the Father" (John 15:26). The mission of the Holy Spirit is a continuation of the mission of the Son, and it depends absolutely on it, so much so that it is a property of the mission of the Son to give or to send the Holy Spirit, as it is a property of the Word, in his eternal birth, to be with the Father the eternal source of this same Spirit. Here, then, the Holy Spirit comes to the Church: he covers her, he penetrates her, he operates in her, he illuminates her, and, springing back, as it were, to his source, he causes the tender and powerful cries of filial love to rise from the Church to God: "Abba! Father!" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6), under
103 St. AUGUSTIN, Sermon 34, c. 2, n. 3; PL 38, 210: "Since we have such great grounds for confidence, let us therefore love God with the help of God; yes, since the Holy Spirit is God, let us love God with the help of God. As I have said, "God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. It is therefore a legitimate consequence, since the Holy Spirit is God and we can only love God through the Holy Spirit, we love God with God's help"; trans. PERONNE, Œuvres complètes de saint Augustin, ed. Vivès, 1971, t. 16, p. 167. 104 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 43, a. 5, ad 3: "The mission of the Son is distinct from that of the Holy Spirit, just as the generation of the one is distinct from the procession of the other ... One mission does not go without the other, since one Person is not separated from the other"; trans. H.-F. DONDAINE, loc. cit., pp. 286-287.
79 the form of the groans of prayer in the present life (Rom 8:26), or by the transports of eternal thanksgiving in the glory of heaven. Thus the Holy Spirit lives in the Church: he works in her with omnipotent efficiency the wonders of his intimate activity; he informs and animates all her organs (1 Cor. 12:3-11). But if he comes to the Church and lives in her, it is because the Son himself is in this Church loved by the Father and loving the Father; it is because he draws upon this Church, which is his extension and fullness, the love of the Father, and animates it with his own love; it is because the mystery of the love of the Father and the Son embraces it and contains it in an ineffable solidarity. The Holy Spirit is therefore in the Church what he is in the eternal secret of God, and he keeps in the mission his personal property, that is to say, he is the "seal", the "pledge", the "witness" of the divine society of the Father and the Son, a society to which the Church is admitted and participates in Christ its head (Eph. 1:13-14; 4:30; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Jn. 15:26; 1 Cor. 2:10). Also the active presence of the Spirit in the Church is the divine argument of the presence of the living Son in her by the mysterious communication he makes to her of himself (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:16). Therefore the operations of the Spirit in the Church have no other object than those of the Son, and he does not come there by his mission, as some heretics105 have claimed, to do a new and different work from the work of Christ. Both Christ and the Spirit work in the Church the wonders of His unique life, keeping in this almighty vivification their relations and properties. The Spirit works in the Church the very life of Christ, and not another life than that of Christ. Christ teaches the Church all truth (Jn. 5:15), but the Spirit in turn teaches all things (Jn. 14:26), taking from Christ and proclaiming what he has heard (Jn. 16:13-15); suggesting to the Church all that Christ himself has said (Jn. 14:26). Christ is the active source of all grace and sanctification (Jn 1:14-17; 1 Cor 1:30); but it is by his Spirit that he operates
105 Montan, Manes, Muhammad, etc.
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in the sacraments and that he communicates that grace and holiness (Jn 20:22-23) which is union with himself and participation of himself. He works this holiness by giving himself, and the Spirit works it with him, given and sent by him; or rather Christ gives himself in the operation of the Holy Spirit106, under the seal, testimony and pledge of the Holy Spirit; for the Spirit, says St. Basil is the mark and "character of the Son"107. Christ is in the Church the source of authority, and the bishops derive their power from him, but it is also "the Spirit who has set them to rule the Church of God" (Acts 20:28). Thus the Spirit seals and consummates by his intimate and substantial cooperation every divine operation of Christ, and it is his personal property to be as the seal of the Son, or rather to be the seal of both the Son and the Father, depending without inequality on the Son and the Father, and to belong to his principle without being able to be separated from it either (t in power or in operation108. The Father therefore gives the Son, in his mission, to send the Holy Spirit, as he gives him, in his eternal birth, to be with himself the principle and source of this same Spirit. But what we say here of the gift of the Holy Spirit sent and
106 St. ATHANASUS, Discourse against the Arians, 1. 3, n. 25; PG 26, 375: The Word is in the Father, and the Spirit which comes from the Word is given to us; having received it, we also have the Spirit of the Word which is in the Father, and it is apparent that we ourselves have become one through the Spirit in the Word and through the Word in the Father." 107 St. BASIL (330-379), Countering Eunomius, 5; PG 29, 723 and 726: "How can the creature rise to the likeness of God, except by partaking of a divine character? This divine character has nothing human about it, but it is a living and truly existing image of an image, and it truly produces this image in all things so that they become images of God. Image of God, Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, as he himself says. Image of the Son, the Spirit... He sanctifies by the Spirit... The Spirit is therefore not a creature, but the "character" of God's holiness and the source of sanctification for all. - Cf. D. PETAU, S. J. (1583-1632), De la Trinité, 1. 7, c. 7, ed. Vivès, Paris, 1865, vol. 3, pp. 314-319, especially 316-317. 108 St. BASIL, loc. cit., PG 29, 727 and 730: "The Spirit perfects all that has been done by God through the Son... There is absolutely only one and the same operation of God through the Son in the Spirit, and the Trinity does not bear separation."
81 given by Christ to his Church must be understood to include the whole succession of our hierarchies. As the Son, receiving from the Father to be with the Father the only principle of the Holy Spirit, being then sent by the Father, receives, in his very mission, to be with the Father the author of the mission of the Holy Spirit, so this same Jesus Christ in his turn gives to the bishops to be with him and through him associated with the divine authority by which he sends and gives the Holy Spirit. He communicates to them from himself and from his Father the power to give the Holy Spirit themselves, that is to say, being in them, he sends him in them and through them to the Church. Associated with the mission and life-giving operation of Christ, they are in him the source and author of the gift of the Holy Spirit, not in so far as he eternally subsists, but in so far as he is sent and given to the new humanity109.
And, by the very order of hierarchies, this power descends from the universal Church to the particular Churches, in whom the same mysteries are fulfilled. The bishop, head of a particular Church, in whom is Christ and in whom is the Father of Christ, by the divine power which flows upon him from Christ, and in the virtue of his mission, which is an extension of that of Christ, gives to his people the Holy Spirit through the sacraments and through the mystery of his communion; and thus the Holy Spirit comes down to the particular Church. He is produced there in his mission by the Father and the Son, and by the ministry of the bishop, receiving from the Father and the Son the power to give it, and he is present there to be the seal and bond of its unity, "its peace"110 and the strength of its communion. This is indeed the continuation of the intimate and inviolable laws of our hierarchies. As in all these hierarchies is reproduced the type of the "society of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ" (cf. 1 Jn 1.3), so also we venerate in them the presence of the Holy Spirit, the seal and consummator of this divine society. This aspect of the mystery of our hierarchies further brings out da-
109 Jesus Christ had said, "Receive the Holy Spirit" (Jn 20:22). In turn, the bishop says, "Receive the Holy Spirit," in the ordination of bishops and deacons, and he gives the Holy Spirit by the imposition of his hands in confirmation. 110 The mystical word for "peace" means, in the language of antiquity, ecclesiastical communion itself.
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vantage the profound unity that is between them. As we have already recognized, the inferiors subsist in the superiors, and they ascend to their center and origin, which is the very society of the Father and of his Christ, because this ineffable society penetrates and embraces them in itself. But in its turn and by the laws of the same mystery, the one Spirit who lives and breathes in the one society of the Father and the Son, poured into all the hierarchies, brings them back to this one society. He penetrates them in order to unify them in this supreme unity in which they are conceived and outside of which they cannot subsist. He is therefore indeed, by his unceasing operation, the soul of ecclesiastical communion in all its degrees111." Thus, in the mystery of this communion, the Church appears to us first of all all gathered in the Son; and she also appears to us, as a consequence of her union with the Son, all penetrated and animated by the Spirit of the Son112, at once one in the Son and one in the Spirit of the Son, and, to say it all in one word, assumed most truly to the society of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit and partaker of the whole Most Holy Trinity113.
111 St. FULGENCE OF RUSPE (467-532), A Monime, 1. 2, n. 11; PL 65, 190: This grace by which the Church is the body of Christ, we ask that all the members of charity...may persevere in the unity of the body. We ask that this may be in the gift of the Spirit, who is the one Spirit of the Father and the Son." 112 HUGUES OF SAINT VICTOR (c. 1100-1141), On the Sacraments of the Christian Law 1. 2, p. 2, c. 2; PL 176, 416: "The holy Church is the body of Christ, quickened by his one Spirit... all are one body because of the one Spirit... When you have become a Christian, you have become a member of Christ, a member of the body of Christ, a partaker of the Spirit of Christ." 113 BOSSUET (1627-1704), Letter 4 to a damsel of Metz, n. 7, Œuvres complètes, ed. Gauthier, 1828, vol. 46, p. 18. "In the unity of the Church appears the Trinity in unity: the Father, as the principle in which one is joined; the Son, as the middle in which one is joined; the Holy Spirit, as the knot through which one is joined; and all is one. Amen to God, so be it". - Cf. YVES CONGAR, O. P, Le Saint Esprit et le Corps apostolique, réalisateurs de l'oeuvre du Christ, in Esquisses du mystère de l'Église, Cerf, Paris, 1953, (US, 8), pp. 129-179. Anschaire VONIER, O. S. B., L'Esprit et l'Épouse, Cerf, Paris, 1947 (US, 16).
83 CHAPTER IX
Triple power vested in the hierarchy
Before going further and making each of the hierarchies whose existence we have indicated in broad strokes in the unique mystery of Christ and the Church the object of particular contemplation and further study, we must still stop to consider what is the proper and essential object of the power which constitutes these hierarchies, or, if you will, what is the vital action spread in them and which animates them. We shall see that in its essence the power which is in the Church is a doctrinal power, a sanctifying power and a governing power. Secondly, we shall consider this power in the subjects who are made its depositories; we shall recognize in them powers and acts which correspond harmoniously; and, as the works of God are without repentance (Rom. 11:29), we shall deal with the stability of these superimposed powers, which constitute for each of the hierarchical degrees what is today called order and jurisdiction in its various extensions. These important preliminaries deserve our full attention; we shall gather from them great and mysterious teachings.
Powers of Christ
The hierarchy is the repository of a power received from God and which is distributed within it to be exercised by its various members. This is its essence and the first notion that one must form of it. This power, being the active principle which brings into play all its organs, thus spreads from the center to all the parts, as if by so many channels, to bring movement and life to them. Now, what, as to its object, is the nature of this power which God has placed in the Church, or, if you will, what are the ceaseless activities which constitute this power and the life of this great body in every degree?
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Let us raise our thoughts to the very source, and enter once more into the contemplation of the mystery of Jesus Christ, coming forth from the bosom of his Father and bearing in himself all the life of his Church. God is the head of Christ" (1 Cor. 11:3), that is, Christ "is of God" (Jn. 8:42) and receives from God (Jn. 16:15). Now, what does he receive, and what do we see first in this procession and in this gift that is given to him? Eternal Word of his Father, he is his word and his truth. To be of him is to receive from him; to be of him his word is to receive from him his word. In this word he receives every word that comes from God, because all particular truths are contained in the one truth, which is himself. And that is why he says to his Father, speaking of his Church: "The words you gave me I gave them" (Jn 17:8), as of many words; and again: "They kept your word" (Jn 17:6), as of one. This is the first aspect of his gift to his Church. But we must go further. God is the head of Christ, that is, Christ receives from God. Can the Word of God be only an expression without reality of the one who produces it from the depth of his substance? He is that very substance, "God of God"114, all being, all life, all holiness, all divinity. Christ receives from God and gives to his Church. He gives her in himself the being, the life, the participation of God. "As the Father has life, so he has given it to the Son (Jn. 5:26); and Christ in turn says: "I have come that they may have life... and I give them eternal life" (Jn. 10:10, 28). He gives them "to become children of God" (Jn 1:12), to be made "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet 1:4). Finally, there is a third aspect to the relationship between God and Christ. God is the head of Christ, that is, God owns his Christ, because his Christ proceeds from him and Christ belongs to God (1 Cor. 3:23). He belongs to him by the unequal right given to his Father
114 Symbol of Nicea.
85 his eternal birth, and he belongs to him also by his birth in time in his humanity, which is the work of God. And so this possession is at once the authority without inequality which befits the principle in the divine mysteries, an authority which is the very property of the Father; and the prerogative of imparting to the Son in the unity of power and majesty that very power and majesty; and we see in it also the sovereign dominion which he has over the new creature, which is his workmanship, that is, his right to the humble and absolute obedience of the new man, who receives all from him in Jesus Christ and is wholly subject to him (1 Cor. 15:27-28). Thus, indivisibly and in the inviolable unity of a single mission, God, the head of Christ, his Son, is for Christ the source of truth, the source of substance and life, and he possesses him by sharing with him all his goods. Now this Christ, who comes forth from the Father, comes to the Church, and he brings to her all that he has received and all that he is in this threefold aspect.
Communication of the Magisterium
What appears first is that he brings him the word (Jn 8.26). He comes to teach (Mt 7:29). He brings to the Church the divine testimony, he "tells" the things of God (Jn 1.18), he comes "to bear witness to the truth" (Jn 18.37). In the next part of the mystery, he will associate the Church itself with his teaching ministry and will communicate it to it in the episcopal college. "The words which you have given me", he says, "I have given them to them" (Jn 17:8); they will pass them on: for, he says again, "I pray for those who will believe in me through their word" (Jn 17:20). (Jn 17:20); and to this same college he also says "Go and make disciples of all nations" (IM 28:19). Thus, in the Church of which Jesus Christ is the head, the magisterium or doctrinal power is first shown. This power belongs to Jesus Christ, who received it from his Father, and he communicates it to the bishops and the hierarchy. But just as Jesus Christ teaches only what he has heard from his Father (Jn 8:28), so, in turn, the Church and the college of bishops teach only what they have heard from Jesus Christ (Mt
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28.20). By this the infallibility of the divine testimony, the privilege of the Church's magisterium, will be in her in perpetuity: for Jesus Christ will not cease to speak in her midst (Matt. 28:20), and the episcopate will not cease to receive the testimony of Jesus Christ and to be indivisibly united to him in the teaching of the same divine word. But how can we say that Jesus Christ will speak in the Church? He has returned to the secret of his father's bosom, and his voice no longer rings in the ears of men. He has provided for this, we shall see in its place, by the institution of a vicar who is his permanent organ, the guardian and infallible preacher of his word, and "around whom"115 all the bishops assemble, uniting with him and receiving from him to form with him and through him a single magisterium of the universal Church. The bishops will then go out from this college to their particular Churches to carry the word which they have received; and thus the magisterium of Christ, always manifested in his vicar, will be communicated by degrees to the last hierarchies.
Communication of Ministry
But, as we have said above, Jesus Christ is not only a doctor. Bearing in himself all the treasures of the Godhead which he has from his Father, he gives to all who have received the first gift of his word and who believe in him the gift of being made children of God (Jn 1:12) and of participating in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). Thus the work of sanctification follows the preaching of the truth; and the Church, which first believes in him, that is, receives the word, seeing the return of her faith, enters into this divine communication of the new life which is the eternal life and of the new being which is a mysterious participation of the divine being. And not only does Jesus Christ operate in his Church this ineffable work, but he also associates her herself to this very operation,
115 St. IGNACE calls the apostles "those who were around Peter," Letter to the Smyrniotes, 3; PG 5, 709; loc. cit., p. 157. This expression (peri) signifies among the Greeks the court of the ruler and the dependence of his entourage.
87 he gives to him to operate with him the salvation of his members. This power, distinct from the magisterium, is called the ministerium116. It is here primarily that the priestly character of the mission of Jesus Christ appears in himself and in the order of hierarchs whom he associates with this mission. In order to understand this, let us consider that the whole of humanity is in sin and death, and that it cannot be raised to holiness without the intervention of the atonement, that is to say, the oblation of the sacrifice (Heb 9:22). It was on the cross and in his death that Jesus Christ took his whole Church into himself, justifying it all together and incorporating it to make it live with his life (Jn 12:32). He said of his immolation: "For their sake I consecrate myself" (Jn 17:19); that is to say, he himself, in his capacity as head of the new humanity which he has taken on, and in the name of the whole Church which is in him, obtains for that Church grace and sanctification by the merit of the sacrifice. Jesus Christ, who appeared as a teacher on earth, thus appears there in the continuation of the mystery as sanctifier. And as he has entrusted the Church with the deposit of doctrine, he will also entrust her with the deposit of sanctifying power in the sacraments which he institutes in her, and which are the signs and channels through which his unique sacrifice is communicated and spreads its virtue among humanity. Let us stop to consider the economy of this order of wonders. The center of all the sacraments is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ perpetuated in the holy Eucharist117: the Eucharist is the sacrament par excellence, and it bears its name par excellence in the language
116 Many theologians call it the "sacerdotium". In the encyclical Mediator Dei (1947), Pius XII mentions, after jurisdiction and magisterium, "the priestly power (sacerdotalis potestas), in virtue of which they (the apostles and those after them who received the imposition of hands from their successors) represent their people before God in the same way that they represent before their people the person of Jesus Christ"; trans. In The Liturgy (EP), n. 533. - For the nomenclature of hierarchical powers, cf. H. DE LUBAC, loc. cit, p. 123. 117 St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 65, a. 3: "This conclusion follows from the internal connection of the sacramental organism, all the other sacraments being ordered to this one (the Eucharist) as to their end"; transl. A.-M. ROGUET, loc. cit, p. 193.
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of the Christian people; everything relates to it118. If the Church has baptism which purifies her and incorporates her into Jesus Christ immolated, baptism gives her to live from the Eucharist119. Feeding from the Eucharist is the proper act and exercise of the rights of baptism. Baptism creates a permanent state and is like habitual communion. The baptized person, says St. Augustine, has already become through baptism a partaker of that which is offered, one and the same with the victim and that very thing which is offered120, as being offered
with the victim, as being with the victim one and the same flesh and blood. Also the fruits of baptism and eucharistic communion are mutually common to them, as befits a habit and
118 ID, Tertia, q. 73, a. 4, ad 2: "That which is common to all the sacraments is attributed to this one by antonomasia, because of its excellence"; trans. A.-M. ROGUET, L'Eucharistie, t. 1 (RJ), p. 30; see the translator's notes, ibid., pp. 337362. - Cf A.- M. ROGUET, in Initiation théologique, Cerf, Paris, 1954, t. 4, pp. 548-550. - St. JOHN MARRO, Patriarch of Antioch, Exposition de la liturgie de saint Jacques, 2, in SIMON ASSEMANI, Codex liturgicus, 1. 4, p. 2, ed. Welter, 1902, t. 5: "If we are asked why under the simple word 'sacrament' (mysterium) we designate the sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord, when baptism, confirmation, order, penance, marriage concluded according to Christian law, and anointing joined with prayer over the sick are also and in all truth called sacraments, we shall answer this: certainly, all these rites are really sacraments; but the holy Fathers called the Eucharist "the sacrament of sacraments," because it is superior to the others. Therefore, when we hear of the "sacrament" without more, we understand this "sacrament of sacraments". 119 St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 65, a. 3: "The sacrament of baptism has for its end the reception of the Eucharist"; loc. cit., p. 193. - Baptismal Ritual, oration of the imposition of salt: "Do not allow him to remain hungry any longer without being able to satisfy himself with heavenly food"; trans. of Rituale parvum, Mame, 1962, pp. 20-21. 120 St. AUGUSTIN, Countering Two Letters of the Pelagians (Letter to Pope Boniface): "No one should in any way hesitate to admit that every member of the faithful participates in the Body and Blood of the Lord, when, by baptism, he becomes a member of the Body of Christ; and he should not be judged a stranger to the communion of this bread and cup, even if he leaves this world before he eats this bread and drinks this cup, he who is established in the unity of the Body of Christ"; trans. A.-M. ROGUET, L'Eucharistie, t. 1 (RJ), p. 25. This text, quoted by the interpolator of St. Benedict (673-735), Commentary on the 1st to the Corinthians (10.17), was taken up by St. Thomas, Tertia, q. 73, a. 3.
89 his act. Resurrection, the effect of baptism (Rom 6:4-5), is, in its own way, the effect of participation in the Eucharist (Jn 6:55). Baptism looks at this participation, it relates to it. The Christian is washed in the blood of Jesus Christ only in order to be in him and to live from him (Jn 6.5758); and what is his acquired right at baptism and the very virtue of baptism is accomplished and exercised by the holy Eucharist; and already in baptism, by the relation he takes to this immolated flesh, he acquires as it were a habit and a permanent state of union with Jesus Christ121. Here, then, in the Church is the new creature born in Baptism to live by the Eucharist. But we are not separating here from baptism the distinct sacrament of confirmation, which completes the work of baptism and contributes, in a manner of perfection and consummation, to the unique work of forming the new man122. Other sacraments will then come to strengthen him in his struggles, to heal his wounds, to raise his failings, to restore in their integrity the supernatural life, that is to say, the habits of the new man created in him by baptism and the perfection of baptism. This is the magnificent treasure which the Church has come to possess. But this is not enough; and, as we have announced, the Church not only receives this treasure in each of her members, but she is made the dispenser of it to them (1 Cor. 4:1); not only does she receive, but she also gives; not only does she possess, but she also transmits. If, therefore, the Eucharist is hers to receive, it must also be hers to give with all the goods that flow from the divine sacrifice. Not only is she rich with the gift of God, but by her hands
121 St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 73, a. 3: "The reality of this sacrament (res sacramenti) is the unity of the mystical body, without which there can be no salvation... Therefore, because children are baptized, they are ordained by the Church to the Eucharist... and... by her intention they desire the Eucharist and receive its reality"; trans. A.-M. ROGUET, loc. cit., p. 24. 122 ID., ibid., q. 72, a. 6: "Confirmation is to baptism what growth is to generation." - a. 11: "This sacrament of confirmation is in some way the final perfection of baptism". - Cf. Th. CAMELOT, O. P., La Théologie de la confirmation à la lumière des controverses récentes, in La Maison-Dieu, n. 54 (1958) 79-91.
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God and Christ enrich the poor, that is, all the children of men (cf. Ps. 110:9)123. Therefore, while by baptism she is made a partaker of the victim and is called to feed on the Eucharist, by another sacrament, which is that of order, she offers the victim, celebrates the sacrifice, and dispenses the heavenly food124. Thus the sacrifice, or the Eucharist which perpetuates it, is indeed truly the center of the whole sacramental economy. Baptism and order relate to it both: by baptism the Church receives the divine gift contained in it, as the good she is to possess; and by order this same good will be forever transmitted and communicated by her hands. The other sacraments belong in their own way to this general economy; all their virtue comes from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, of which they are like fruits, outflows and various applications. Also, as these dependencies of the sacrifice follow the laws of the principal mystery, baptism disposes one to receive them and the order authorizes one to give them125; for it is fitting that the relations which look to the principal object, that is, the holy Eucharist, in which is the very sacrifice of Jesus Christ, should be preserved inviolable in all that looks to the mysterious derivations which flow from it. Penance remits all the sins committed after Baptism, revives them, revives the life of the new man and repairs all the habits of the divine life in him. Extreme unction completes the work of penance and brings the
123 St. THOMAS, Supplementum, q. 34, a. 1: "In order that this harmony might not be lacking in the Church, he established an order in it: some would dispense the sacraments to others, in this imitating God in their own way, collaborating in some way with God"; trans. M.-J. GERLAUD, loc. cit., P. 10. 124 ID., ibid., q. 37, a. 2: "The sacrament of order has for its end the sacrament of the Eucharist, the sacrament of sacraments"; loc. cit., p. 73. 125 ID, Tertia, q. 63, a. 6: "The sacrament which relates to divine worship in order to provide it with ministers is the order which deputes certain men to transmit to others the sacraments. Finally, the sacrament which relates to divine worship in order to provide it with subjects is baptism, because it gives a man the power to receive the other sacraments of the Church: hence it is called the gateway to all the sacraments"; trans. A.-M. ROGUET, Les Sacrements (R.J), p. 127.
91 dying Christian help for his last struggles. Marriage sanctifies the family. Beyond the sacraments and their definite number, the power given to the Church in the ministerium goes so far as to create beside them, by her own institution, and as so many dependencies of their divine institution, various purifications, blessings, and consecrations, all of which belong in sum to the great work of the sanctification of men. All these goods, that is to say, the sacraments and sacramentals, as theology speaks of them, form the unique and immense treasure of the Church. In the virtue of baptism, her sons participate in them, and in the power of the order, her ministers are their dispensers. Such, then, is the magnificent power given to the Church in its fullness, so that she may live and make the children of God live in her with the life of God; and already we see all the hierarchical distribution. Jesus Christ, the Supreme Pontiff, gives the bishops the fullness of this sanctifying power. It belongs to the bishop to baptize, it belongs to the bishop to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. It belongs to him to give birth to the new creature through baptism and to perfect it through confirmation; it belongs to him to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice and to nourish his people with it. He puts away sin in penance126. And if, in the sacrament of marriage, the spouses communicate grace to themselves, they do so only in the virtue of the baptism they have received from him. Jesus Christ thus works all sanctification in the Church through the bishop. In turn the episcopate associates the lower order of priests with his
126 Roman Pontifical, consecration of a bishop: "The bishop is to judge, explain (Scripture), consecrate, ordain, offer (the Eucharist), baptize, and confirm." - Cf. Canons Regular (Premonstratensians) of Mondaye, L'Évêque d'après les prières d'ordination, in L'Épiscopat et l'Église universelle, Cerf, Paris, 1962 (US, 39), pp. 739-780, especially 762-766. - SYMEON OF THESSALONIC, On Holy Ordinations, 1; PG 155, 363: "By virtue of his ordination, the bishop is able to baptize, to consecrate the holy perfume, and to put perfection into everything that has to do with ministry, perfection, and illumination_, finally, to give all this by the grace of Christ. Indeed, all church actions are perfected by him, as by the source of light."
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sanctifying operation. These, with equal efficacy, because the very operation of Jesus Christ flows indivisibly through all the channels of the hierarchy, but with lesser dignity, baptize, celebrate the holy Eucharist, remit sins127. They receive from Jesus Christ through the episcopate the power to do all these mystical works: they do them while retaining their rank as simple priests, participants in the priesthood whose fullness is in the episcopate and which flows in them from the episcopate128; for by the institution of Jesus Christ, the episcopate was not enclosed in the priesthood, but the priesthood was instituted and enclosed in the episcopate129. They therefore do these actions as associated with the episcopate, receiving from the episcopate, inferior to the episcopate, while the bishop performs all these same acts, which are common to him with the priests, in the virtue of a higher title than that of the priests, in the virtue of his chief priesthood, in his very capacity as bishop, as head and prince of the priests, who are his helpers, and as the source of the priesthood130. Also, if in the very actions which are common to him with them, the bishop retains the prerogative of his rank and dignity as head, it belongs to him alone to make priests and ministers, because he alone is the head and source of the power which rests in them and which they only receive without being able to give it in their turn. Moreover, everything comes back to the bishop, not only as the originator, but as the consumer, and the giver of perfection; and, even in the work of the regeneration of the new man, after baptism, which the priest can give, it is reserved to him to ache-
127 Roman Pontifical, ordination of a priest: "The priest is to offer (the Eucharist), bless, preside, preach, and baptize." 128 TERTULLIAN, Treaty on Baptism, 17; PL 1, 1326-1327: "To give it, the power belongs in the first place to the first priest, that is, to the bishop; after him to the priest and the deacon, but never without the permission of the bishop"; trans. R. F. REFOULÉ, (SC, 35), pp. 89-90. 129 Cf. YVES CONGAR, O. P., Facts, Problems, and Reflections about the Power of Order and the Relationship between the Presbyterate and the Episcopate, in La Maison-Dieu, 14 (1948) 107-128. 130 Cf. Olivier ROUSSEAU, O. S. B., La Doctrine du ministère épiscopal et ses vicissitudes dans l'Église d'Occident, in L'Épiscopat et l'Église universelle, pp. 280-285.
93 worm and consume the work of the new creation by the seal of confirmation131.
Communication of the commandment
Through the word, the new humanity is called to life; through the sacraments, it receives it; and thus, through the magisterium and the ministerium, the new man is formed and animated. The divine communication is completed in him; Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the Word of God and the substance of God, has given himself entirely to the new creature, and she is associated with him in the depths of her being. But to whom will it belong from now on? What authority will extend its scepter over it? To whom will her obedience be directed in this new life with which she is completely filled and whose expansion will fill the world? Is it not clear that she belongs to the one who gives her being and that Jesus Christ is her king? He himself belongs to his Father, because he is born of him without inequality in eternity, and because he is born of him in his humanity in time. As we have said above, he who is equal to the Father and who belongs to the Father in the equality of divine majesty and sovereignty still belongs to him in the inferiority and in the total and absolute obedience of the humanity he has assumed. As the Son of God, Christ belongs to God, who is his head; as the head of the Church, the Church, which is his work, must belong to him. Ask," said his Father, "and I will give you the nations for your inheritance" (Psalm 2:8). He made this request on the cross, and the nations were given to him at the very hour of his sacrifice. He takes them over little by little when they hear his word and receive the new life; and, because they are to
131 We are speaking here of the ordinary administration of the sacraments. In his mercy, God has permitted that the ordinary ministers may be supplemented by so-called extraordinary ministers who represent them by the divine will. Thus any human creature can give baptism, and priests, with the approval of the Church or an apostolic privilege, can confirm. - For the new powers of parish priests in this regard, cf. Decree Spiritus Sancti munera (Sept. 14, 1946), A.A.S., 1946, pp. 348-358; translation and commentary by Lambert BEAUDUIN O.S. B., in La Maison-Dieu, no. 9 (1947) 96-100.
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him, he exercises his authority over them. But just as he associates the Church in the body of the episcopate and in the priestly hierarchy with the preaching of the word and the sanctification of man by giving her a share in the magisterium and in the ministerium, so must he, in the further course of the mystery, give her a share also in his empire. Mother of his children who are born of him and through her, she must share, in maternal solicitude, the labors of his government. And so the bishops, as associated in everything with Jesus Christ, govern with him and under him the universal Church. But, as we have said above in speaking of their magisterium, their head, Jesus Christ, has made himself visible at their head through a vicar who fully represents him. This vicar does not cease to exercise in his name the full and supreme authority of the head. Jesus Christ said to him: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep" (Jn. 21:15-17); and through him the college of bishops always sees its only head, always knows where the source of authority is and where this divine head Jesus Christ, made perpetually visible in his body, is shown. This vicar, in the fullness of the power of the one whose place he holds here below, is with him a single and universal monarch of the new holy city, exercising in it an independent, sovereign and absolute power by its very essence and by the prerogative (the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. The Church is a perfect society - nothing must be missing from the fullness of its life. The authority which is in her must therefore satisfy all the social necessities of the new people132. It is fully sufficient for this, and no earthly power is called upon to come within the Church to make up for the absences or failures of the power which is proper to it133.
132 The opposite error is expressed in the 19th proposition of the Syllabus (1864), Den., 1719: "The Church is not a true and perfect society fully free; she has no constant rights of her own conferred on her by her divine founder; but it is for the civil power to define the rights of the Church as well as the limits within which she may exercise them."; transl. in The Church, (EP), n. 264. 133 Syllabus, proposition 44, Den., 1744: "Civil authority may interfere in things which concern religion, morals, and the direction of souls"; loc. rit., n.
95 This power, then, includes in the first place legislative power. It belongs to the authority of Jesus Christ, exercised by his vicar, to prescribe for the whole Church, by form of permanent law, whatever that authority deems useful for the good of the people. The bishops are associated with this unique authority and, together with the vicar of Jesus Christ, make canons, that is, laws, which are binding on the universe. As for the forms of this legislation, it can, like all sovereign legislation, be expressed by the solemn declarations of the legislator or be established in custom by his tacit will. In the second connection, the authority of Jesus Christ and the Church includes judicial power. The Pope, in his absolutely independent sovereignty, and the bishops, in their inferior rank of associates and cooperators, render sentences which bind souls. Finally, executive power is also given to him, and all must submit to his orders and suffer the sanction of his judgments134. We need not insist in showing that this power of the imperium, at once legislative, judicial, and executive, descends from the universal Church to the particular Church through the presiding bishop, and rests in the latter, appropriating and reducing itself to the proportions of a particular people. The bishop, in fact, brings to his particular Church the whole operation of Jesus Christ: he gives it his word by his magistery; he animates it by the sacraments; he is the father of its life. By a necessary sequel, his Church belongs to him as the universal Church belongs to Jesus Christ; or, to put it better, it is through him that this particular Church enters the universal Church and belongs to Jesus Christ. This empire given to the Church by Jesus Christ, we have said, is entirely independent of everything outside it: no earthly principality has the right to impose laws or dictate orders to it; no earthly principality has the right to hinder the ac-
282; cf. also propositions 25 and 41, Den., 1725 and 1741; loc. cit., nn. 270 and 281. 134 Syllabus, proposition 24, Den., 1724: "The Church has no right to use force"; loc. cit., n. 269.
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tion of its sovereignty135. It is, therefore, by a manifest and heretical usurpation that the emperors of Byzantium, the kings of England, the German princes, and the Protestant republics claim to interfere in ecclesiastical government, to make or impose laws, to institute or depose pastors, to regulate divine worship, and to give orders to the bride of Jesus Christ. It is by no less manifest usurpation that Catholic princes have pretended to submit to their tribunal the decisions of Jesus Christ speaking through his vicar, and of bishops teaching and judging with him136. Princes can do nothing in these matters except by a free and sovereign concession of the Church herself. As we have said, the State and the family represent the old Adam: they are the debris of the old humanity preserved on earth until the end of the world to await and receive the benefit of regeneration. Who would dare to claim that this Adam, bent over in death and constantly failing, has any right over Jesus Christ and extends his broken scepter over him? Can one maintain that the city which proceeds from Adam presides over the city which proceeds from Jesus Christ? But it is not enough to establish the independence of the ecclesiastical society and of the authority which is in it with regard to the powers which are not itself. The latter owe the Church more than not to oppress it. It has been claimed, it is true, that the two powers should live here below isolated and unrelated to each other, ignoring each other.
135 I Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, cap. 3, CL, t. 7, col. 385; Den., 1829; Dum. , 474: "We condemn and reprobate the opinions of those who say that this communication of the supreme head with the pastors and flocks can legitimately be prevented, or who subject it to the civil power, claiming that what is decided by the Apostolic See or by its authority for the government of the Church has no force or value unless the placet of the civil power confirms it." Cf. The Church (EP), n. 365. 136 Syllabus, proposition 20, Den., 1720: "The ecclesiastical power must not exercise its authority without the authorization and consent of the civil power." - Loc. cit., n. 265. - Cf. propositions 28, 29, 41, 49, 50, 51, 54. - Cf. the French Organic Articles of the Convention (April 4, 1802), tit. 1, art. 1-4, in CONSTANT, L'Église de France sous le consulat et l'empire, Gabalda, Paris, 1928, p. 349.
97 This separation was, it was said, the supreme and ideal order, and the Church could claim nothing from the state beyond the freedom it allowed her when she professed not to know it137. But it is not so, and this great social error misunderstands the whole order of God's works and the relations of his various works. Jesus Christ, indeed, has not only received from his Father the empire over the new creature which he brings into being in him and which is his workmanship and fruitfulness, but the whole created universe is given to him and belongs to him (Ps. 2:8; 1 Cor. 15:26-28), and the Church, which is associated with him in everything, receives with him a power which goes far beyond the limits of the family of the children of God of whom she is the mother. The authority of a father of a family does not only extend to his children, who are his posterity, but embraces with them the servants whose assistance his sons receive and whom he nourishes with the abundance of his riches. Now the works of God which are not the Church are the servants of the Church, and the empire of the Church extends to them according to their nature and special aptitude. It is not enough, therefore, to proclaim the Church independent of the State; but it must be recognized that, in her sovereign prerogative, she calls to her aid, and has the right to do so, the State itself and the civil society which is not her and which is not confused with her138. As we have said above, the old Adam, in the State and in the family which proceeds from it, must serve the new. Man is born into the family and is kept by the state. But he is born to be regenerated in the Church. The State and the family constantly bring to the Church the ele-
.
137 Syllabus, proposition 55, Den., 1755: "The Church must be separated from the State and the State from the Church"; loc. cit., n. 286. - Cf. propositions 77-80, Den., 1777-1780; loc. cit., 290. The Constitution, which the Second Vatican Council is about to promulgate, will undoubtedly present the problems of the relations of Church and State in a different light. 138 BONIFACE VIII, Bull Unam sanctam (1302); DIGARD, Les Registres de Boniface VIII, BOCCARD, Paris, 1921, vol. 3, col. 889-840; Den., 469, Dum, 422-423 "Both are in the power of the Church, the spiritual sword and the material sword. But this one must be wielded for the Church, that one by the Church. This one by the hand of the priest, this one by the hand of kings and knights, at the consent and pleasure of the priest... Therefore we declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff."
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ments of which it makes its own substance, the human creatures it incorporates and of which it makes the children of God. As a result of this order of relations, the state and the family must assist the Church, assist the Church in her pilgrimage here below139. As a stranger on earth, she honors her servants who inhabit it, that is, princes and peoples, by receiving from them a hospitality which it is fitting to make magnificent. The prophet Isaiah had sung of this service rendered by humanity to the Church: "I will wave my hand to the nations and set up my standard for the peoples. They will bring you your sons in their cloaks, they will take your daughters on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their princesses your nurses. They will bow down to you with their faces to the ground and lick the dust from your feet" (Is 49:2-23). The Christian princes and peoples have always listened with faithful and loving respect to the voice of the bride of Jesus Christ, and they have understood the greatness of a submission that ennobles them and elevates their earthly and laborious existence to the ends of eternity. They understood that this submission was for them, even in time, the main guarantee of peace and happiness, and its rejection a source of evils. The lessons of experience have not failed them: history is full of the benefits they received from their docility to the Church, and of the calamities which overwhelmed them when they thought they were becoming freer by shaking off the yoke of God and of his Christ. Let us add one more word. This subordination which results from the divine plan and from the place occupied by the Church and the State is not a confusion. The Church is not the State, and the State is not the Church; and although Christ in her has a right to the service of all creatures and all owe him obedience in proportion to and according to the nature of that service, each of the works of God retains in its rank the fullness of the Church and the State.
139 St. Leo, Letter 156, to Emperor Leo, 3; PL 54, 1130: "You must notice without hesitation that royal power has been conferred upon you not only to govern the world, but especially to help the Church." Cf. Vladimir SOLOVIEV, La Russie et l'Église universelle, 1889, pp. 315-317, quoted in Paul BROUTIN, S. J. Mysterium Ecclesiae, éd. de l'Orante, Paris, 1945, pp. 303-304.
99 tude of his life and liberty in the order in which they must be exercised140. The Church has as its chief weapon the sword of the word and commands faith: "The weapons of our combat are not carnal, but they have, for the cause of God, the power to overthrow strongholds. We destroy sophistry and every haughty power that stands against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to bring it to obedience to Christ. And we are ready to chastise every disobedience" (2 Cor. 10:4-6). The old Adam, that is, the state, the family, the individual, puts social and individual forces at the service of the Church and in its defense, and the sword held by the arm of flesh is ennobled by serving justice and truth in the Church. The remnants of the old Adam may shrink from these services, which are their highest end in the divine plan, and rebel against the divine authority declared by the Church. The individual who refuses to listen to the voice of this queen is smitten of God for his punishment or correction; he is cut off by God himself from the hopes of eternal life (IM 8:17; Mk 16:16). Ananias is struck down by lightning at the voice of St. Peter (Acts 5:1-5); others are handed over to Satan by apostolic power (1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Tim. 1:20), or providentially harmed in body or property, and mercy still appears in the example of punishment or in the conversion of rebels. When, in its turn, the State refuses its faith and obedience, it withdraws from the providential order, and thus falls under the sanctions which accompany this order and which punish its disruption. It is not our purpose to show here in history the fulfillment of this necessary law and to bring up from the bottom
140 LEON XIII, Encyclical Immortale Dei (November 1, 1885), ASS, vol. 18 1985), 166 "God has therefore divided the government of the human race between two powers the ecclesiastical power and the civil power; the one prepossessed to divine things, the other to human things. Each of them is sovereign in its own way; each is enclosed within perfectly defined limits, drawn up in conformity with its nature and its special purpose. There is therefore a kind of circumscribed sphere within which each one exercises its action jure proprio; trad. t'Église (EP), g. 1, n. 471. - Cf. ID, Letter Officio sanctissimo (Dec. 22, 1187) to the Bishops of Bavaria, ibid., n. 487. - ID, Encyclical Sapientiae christianae (10 January 1890), ibid, n. 516.
100 societies in revolt against the Church, and by turns given over to the spirit of sedition which tears them apart, or enslaved under a brutal yoke, going ceaselessly from licentiousness to tyranny, the testimony of their pains or agony.
Unity of hierarchical power
We have sketched in broad strokes the three elements which constitute ecclesiastical power, namely: the teaching power or magisterium, the sanctifying power or ministerium, and the authority (tu government or imperium. These three elements are not three powers distinct in their origin and independent in their essence from one another. As we said at the beginning, by a single mission from his Father, Jesus Christ is teacher, sanctifier and king. This single mission is communicated, without division, to the Church in the episcopal college, and through each of the bishops, it forms the particular hierarchies. There is not, therefore, an order of teachers, an order of sanctifiers, or an order of spiritual princes separately constituted, and whose functions have been brought together by chance, by arbitrary disposition, or at most by simple convenience, by a sort of accumulation on the heads of the same men; but there is between these three elements a logical connection and an essential link. To understand this, let us remember the fundamental principle of the whole hierarchy, namely that authority belongs to the one who gives it. In the old order, God is the master of things, because he created them; in the new order, God possesses his Christ, because Christ comes from him; Christ possesses his Church, because she proceeds from him; the episcopate is associated with Christ in authority only because it belongs to him, with Christ, to bring him to life; and even in the hierarchy of the particular Church, the bishop is the prince of his people, because he is, in his degree, the father of the life of the faithful. Thus the imperium, that is, that magnificent sovereignty which we described last, that royal crown which the Father placed on the forehead of his Christ and which Jesus Christ lays on the
101 forehead of his Church, has its reason and its right in the fruitfulness of the vivifying operation by which Jesus Christ and the Church give themselves subjects by giving to God sons of adoption. Now, this vivifying operation, which logically precedes the empire, that is, the authority of government, which logically not only gives rise to the empire by creating subjects for it, but also gives it its title and its true origin, consists of the two elements of the magistery and the ministry. The magistery begins, the ministry completes the production of the new creature. Through himself and his hierarchs, Christ, who is to sanctify man, first calls him by the preaching of doctrine (Matt. 28:19; Rom. 10:13-15). He calls the new creature, no longer from the abyss of nothingness, but from the darkness of unfaithfulness, and he "invites him to the wonderful light" of his word (1 Pet. 2:9). And when the old man has responded to this call and received this word, the same Christ, in these same hierarchs, gives him new life by the sacramental operation and makes him live of his substance. Immediately, the one who was a stranger to him according to the order of this new life belongs to him henceforth in this order; he possesses him and extends his scepter over him. There is, therefore, between these three powers of the magisterium, the ministry, and the empire a logical connection which does not permit their separation. The magistery appears first; the ministry follows it, and the empire or authority of government is the consequence of both141. Thus, even before the peoples belong to the Church in the order of government and are of her jurisdiction, she already has towards them the mission and authority of the magisterium (Mt 28:18-20), she must evangelize them all, she has the right to do so: they all form her audience. They will then enter the fold (Jn. 10:16), and live there by the life-giving operations of the ministry, and thus come under her dominion, becoming henceforth the tender object of her solicitude. And this is true in every degree of the hierarchy.
141 St. Jerome, Commentary on St. Matthew, 28; PL 26, 227: "Remarkable sequence: he commands his apostles first to instruct all the people, then to purify them by the sacrament of faith, and finally, after instructing and baptizing them, to prescribe to them all that they should observe"; trans. BARFILLE, t. 10, P. 113.
102 The bishop of a particular Church, before he is the pastor of the faithful, is first of all the doctor of the infidels; and those who are not yet subject to his pastoral rod, not having yet entered the fold by sacramental regeneration, already belong to him by the title of his magisterium as to their doctor and the one who is to instruct them. And so, besides the faithful, he has at the beginning, like the divine Master, other sheep who have not yet entered the fold. He will seek them out by preaching; after they have heard his voice, he will open the gates to them by regeneration and form them into his one flock142.
* * *
The essence of the power entrusted to the hierarchy, the vital operation which is exercised and transmitted in it, is a single and indivisible power enclosed in the single and indivisible mission of Jesus Christ and transmitted through him without division. This power contains in itself three elements: the magisterium or power to teach, the ministry or sacramental action, and the empire or authority of government. These three elements are intimately linked, and there is a logical order between them: the magisterium appears first, the ministry comes next, the authority of government results from the two preceding ones.
142 This is how Dom Gréa pointed out, eighty years ago, the missionary vocation of the Church, of the episcopate and of the priesthood, a vocation somewhat forgotten at that time and which the light of the Holy Spirit has happily made us rediscover in our days.
103 CHAPTER X
The subjects of hierarchical power
The power entrusted to the hierarchy consists of three elements: the ma- gisterium, the ministerium, and the imperium, which form its subject matter to the full extent. But, if we consider this power in the subjects who exercise it and are made its depositaries, it appears to us in a new aspect. It is composed of powers and acts which correspond to each other, which call and presuppose each other. This is what, in the language of theology, is generally called order and jurisdiction. We undertake here to describe these powers and acts, sometimes employing, for greater precision and convenience, and without excluding the received terms, other expressions consecrated by antiquity and authorized by the usage of the councils and Fathers.
Power of Order
The first foundation, the naked power of hierarchical power is order. Order, freed from all that is not it, is the unamissible foundation of hierarchical power in all its degrees. It contains as if in germ and can receive, as its normal and legitimate blossoming, all the various actualities and activities that respond to its virtue determined in each degree. We say that this virtue is determined by the hierarchical degrees. The order is, in fact, diverse according to each of these degrees: the order of the bishop is the naked power of all that the episcopate is and can be; the order of the priest contains all the priesthood in its virtue;
104 the order of the deacon, all the diaconate143. Thus the order is essentially distinct in each degree the order of the priest does not contain the act of the bishop, and the order of the deacon does not contain the act of the priest. But, as in the hierarchy the higher degrees eminently contain the lower, the order of the priest contains all the powers that constitute the ministers, and the order of the bishop contains in its very simple fullness the sum of all the lower orders144. By this principle, and although the orders remain distinct, the inferior ones rise to subsist with greater dignity in the very simple and absolutely indivisible unity of the higher orders145. It is, indeed, a general law of essences that the higher forms contain the lower ones by imparting to them their own nobility, and that the lower forms subsist with a higher dignity in the higher ones. The hierarchy is subject to this magnificent law of divine works. Therefore, when the bishop or priest performs some function of the simple ministry, they perform it with all the greatness that their priesthood gives to their action; and the divine head of the pontiffs, Jesus Christ himself, did not disdain to perform the actions of the inferior ministers, raising them all by the sublimity of his pontificate146. He appeared in the midst of the synagogue, performing the office of lector (Lk 4:16ff.); he performed the office of exorcist (Mt 4:24; 8:16) and catechist (Mk 6. 2); he was in the midst of his disciples as one who serves (Lk 22.27), and, as a priest in the fullness of the priesthood he received from his Father (Ps 109.4; cf. Heb 5.1-10), he wished to sanctify in his person the
143 St. THOMAS, Supplementum, q. 35, a. 5, ad 2: "Orders are degrees established between different beings, the angel and man for example" trans. M.J. GERLAUD, O. P., in L'Ordre, (RJ), p. 41. 144 St. HILAIRE: "In the bishop there are all the orders, because he is the first priest, that is, the head of priests." (*) 145 St. THOMAS, Supplementum, q. 35, a. 5: "In the early Church, priests were ordained who had not received minor orders. They could, however, exercise all its functions: for every inferior power is included in a power which is superior to it"; ibid., pp. 39-40. 146 Jesus performed the office of the doorkeeper in driving the sellers from the Temple (Jn 2:15).
105 functions of ministers. In exercising them, he elevated them by the dignity of his sovereign priesthood and descended to them without lowering or degrading it. As a result of these principles, which embrace the whole hierarchy and are therefore appropriate to the bare power of the order which is its primary basis, when the minister is promoted from a lower order to a higher one, what he already possesses enters and merges into what he receives and participates, by an increase in dignity, in the nobility and excellence of the new degree to which he is raised. But if the order remains distinct in its essence according to the various degrees of the hierarchy, it remains by this very essence absolutely indivisible in each of them. Hence the power of the order in each degree can neither be diminished nor increased: it remains immutable. The bishop, the priest, the minister are today, as far as the power of order is concerned, what they have been from all antiquity. On the other hand, since this power cannot be divided, it remains equal to itself in every degree in all the subjects who receive it; and thus the bishops are all equal in the order of the episcopate, the priests are equal in the order of the priesthood, the deacons in the order of the diaconate. We will confine ourselves to this brief account, for it is not our purpose to examine here which of the operations of hierarchical ministers receive radical validity from the naked order, even though the subject, reduced to this simple power and stripped of all legitimate actuality of his ministry, operates outside the legitimate conditions. Theologians have treated these questions amply.
Hierarchical Communion
The first fulfillment of the radical power of order the first actuality that is added to it, is the hierarchical communion147 of the m minister in his respective degree.
147 We use the term communion in the sense given to it by its relation to the hierarchy, a sense distinct from and constantly admitted by the Councils and the Fathers.
106 This term, commonly used from the highest antiquity, signifies the legitimacy of the order received and the introduction of the one clothed with it into the legitimate hierarchy, and consequently into the service of the universal Church. By the communion of his order, or hierarchical communion, the cleric, bishop, priest or minister, is received as such by the universal Church. He is a bishop, a priest, a minister of the Catholic Church; he can be employed by her in any place; everywhere he can perform, with her consent, the functions commensurate with the order conferred upon him, and licitly and legitimately perform the very acts which the naked order can only render valid in their substance. Communion, like order, is distinguished according to its various degrees: one is the communion of the bishop, another the communion of the priest, another that of the deacon. The deposed bishop can be reduced, to use the style of the ancient councils, to the communion of the priest, to the communion of the minister, or to the communion of the laity, depending on whether, in reducing him to the naked power of the episcopate by the subtraction of the communion of the order of the bishop, he is left with the actuality of one of the lower degrees, or whether he is stripped of all hierarchical actuality, that is to say, of any rank in the legitimate hierarchy. Thus the term lay communion, which refers to the simple faithful, has its specific meaning in this sacred scale: it expresses, with regard to the latter, their actual state as members of the Church; and with regard to the radical powers, the bare effects of baptism and confirmation, this lay communion corresponds to what the actuality or communion of the higher hierarchical degrees is with regard to the simple power of the order. Thus, by the communion of their order, priests and ministers are priests and ministers of the Catholic Church; they will everywhere be received in their rank, and may, as the case may be, be employed by the Church and exercise their functions.
According to this sense, deprivation of communion is deposition: the deposed cleric loses, it is said, the communion of his order to descend to the communion of a lower order. In another sense, the term communion expresses the relationship of the faithful to the life of the mystical body of Jesus Christ, and the deprivation of communion then becomes excommunication.
107 But the communion of the bishop, in making him a bishop of the Catholic Church, has that peculiarity which associates him with the episcopal college and gives him, as a member of that college and in the solidarity of the whole body of bishops, a share in the solicitude ci in the government of the universal Church, in union with its head Jsus Christ and in absolute dependence on that head and on the vicar who represents him.
Title
Hierarchical communion does not exhaust all the fruitfulness enclosed in the power of the order. It brings the cleric, according to his degree, into the hierarchy of the universal Church. But, as we have already recognized above148, the life, mysteries, and riches of the universal Church are, by an intimate and mystical communication, appropriate to each particular Church. As the very sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the treasure of the universal Church, is with all its fruits the wealth of the particular Church, so the priesthood of the universal Church also belongs to it and thereby becomes its own priesthood. As a result of these principles, the bishop, the priest, the minister, enjoying the communion of their orders in the universal Church, can still be appropriated and attached, each in his degree, to a particular Church, and become the bishop, the priest, the minister of this Church. This appropriation of the cleric to a particular Church is what we shall call his title149.
148 See supra, chapter 4. 149 The Code of Canon Law lists the titles of benefice, patrimony, and pension, most often replaced by the titles of diocese or mission, and, for religious, the titles of poverty, common table, or congregation (can. 979, 981, 982). Dom Gréa already pointed out the evolution of the concept of title. Originally it meant the spiritual office for which a bishop or cleric was ordained; now the word title means the absence of a definite spiritual office, and is restricted to the guarantee or assurance of sustenance: "truly secure for the entire life of the ordained and truly sufficient to provide for his lawful subsistence," can.
108 The title, the last actuality of the powers of order, is thus properly the assignment of the bishop, priest, or minister, to a definite Church, to which they bring the benefits of the hierarchical power of which they are the depositories. Priests and deacons become, by their title, the priests and ministers of that Church. The title of the bishop has that peculiarity that it contains and expresses the quality which belongs to him of being the unique head of the particular Church, of which the priests form the college. Thus the communion
and the title of the bishop express all that he is in the new order: by his communion, a member of the hierarchical college of the universal Church under the head Jesus Christ, and, by his title, the head and hierarch of a particular flock. The title, we have said, is the last actuality that springs from the powers of order to constitute the hierarchical persons. These persons take their place by the communion in the universal Church, and by the title in the particular Church150; and coas the succession of hierarchies stops at the particular Church, there is nothing further beyond it. Communion and title suffice to establish the whole edifice of hierarchies. Communion concerns the universal Church and constitutes its economy; the title concerns the particular Church and constitutes its economy. Communion tells of the bond which attaches each subject to the universal Church, and the title tells of the bond which attaches it to the particular Church-
979. - Cf. BRIDE, art. Title, in DTC, col. 1146-1151; R. NAZ, art. Title of ordination, in DDC, vol. 7 (1963), col. 1278-1288. 150 The title has sometimes been understood under the name of communion, because in fact the title and the communion are substantially one and the same thing, i.e., the actuality of the Order, depending on whether this actuality pertains to the Catholic Church in general or is attached singularly to the particular Church. The title is only a communion appropriate to a particular flock. But, in order to avoid any equivocation, the communion which pertains to the cleric in the universal Church was more precisely designated by the name of Peregrine communion, when it was to be contrasted with the communion which pertains to the particular Church, i.e., by the same title. The name of peregrine given to communion is self-explanatory: it belongs to those who are foreign to the particular Church without ceasing to belong to the Catholic Church. At the Council of Riez (439), Armentarius, deposed from his see, without being absolutely deposed from the episcopate, was reduced to Peregrine communion: can. 3; LABBE 3, 1287, HEFEL 2, 428.
109 culinary. The communion, however, is prior to the title just as the universal Church precedes the particular Churches; also the communion can dispense with the title and subsist without it because it does not depend on it. The bishop, the priest, the minister can absolutely not belong to any particular Church, without ceasing to belong in their degree to the universal Church and to be received by her in that degree and as legitimate members of her priesthood or ministry. The title, on the contrary, presupposes communion and rests upon it. It is merely the appropriation to a particular flock of the hierarchical power already constituted in the relationships that communion establishes with regard to the universal Church. The bishop, the priest, the deacon cannot be the ministers of a particular Church if they are not already legitimate ministers of the Catholic Church, recognized and received by it. Thus the title in the particular Church subsists only through the communion which looks to the universal Church, as the particular Church itself subsists only through the latter. But, if the communion and the title are only the actuality of the powers enclosed in the naked order, distinct in so far as this actuality generally looks to the universal Church or determinately to a particular Church, what we have said of the order, of its distinction by degree, of its indivisibility and essential immutability in each degree, will have to be said, by a manifest consequence, of the communion and the title. Communion and title, like the order, remain distinct in each degree; each degree remains, in its living actuality, whole and indivisible, and, consequently, equal to itself in all those who possess it. Thus, in the universal Church, the bishops are all equally bishops; they are all equally bishops in their particular Churches151; and, in the latter, the priests who comprise them
.
151 St. LEON, Letter 14, to Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica, 11; PL 54, 676: "Although the dignity is common to them, yet they do not have the same rank... and though the election is the same for all, yet there is only one who is head of all." - St. Jerome, Letter 146, to the priest Evangelus, 1; PL 22, 1194: "Wherever a bishop is, in Rome, in Gubbio, in Constantinople, in Reggio, in Alexandria, in Tunis, he has the same value, he exercises the same priesthood" trans. (retouched) BAREILLE, t. 2, p. 372.
110 feels the college, the deacons who form the ministry, are all equally priests or ministers. Nor can anything be detached from it or destroyed; nothing can be added to it. Time and positive law cannot affect it. The bishops of today are as much bishops as the apostles and,bishops of apostolic times152; priests and deacons have lost nothing of what belongs to them and constitutes them. Nor will the most distant future be able to give in this a denial of the past, and the centuries will pass helplessly to modify the immutable essences of each of the degrees of the hierarchy.
Delegated Jurisdiction
But how can this equality of ministers and this immutability of hierarchical ministries be reconciled with the variable and manifold necessities of a great government such as that of the universal Church, with the requirements of administration which touch upon the most delicate and mobile interests such as are found in the particular Churches? In fact, is it not evident that among the bishops, some can do more and some can do less? And among the functions of the particular colleges, what an innumerable variety of attributions according to time and place? How can we explain so many diversities that appear in the places and so many changes recounted by history? It is here that all the magnificence of the divine work is declared
152 St. Jerome, Letter 41, to Marcella, 3; PL 22, 476: "With us, the bishops hold the place of the apostles"; trans. LABOURT, in Saint JÉRÔME, Lettres, Paris, 1951 (col. Guillaume Budé), t. 2, p. 88. - Letter 146, to the priest Evangelus, 1; PL 22, 1194: "All (the bishops) are the successors of the apostles". - St. PACIAN OF BARCELONA, Letter 1, 6; PL 13, 1057: "If, then, in one place (the text of Mt. 18:18) the bonds and power of the sacrament are given and undone, it is because either everything has been deduced for us from the form and power of the apostles, or else it has not been disjoined from the decrees. I laid the foundation," he (the apostle) says, "and another builds on it" (I Cor. 3:10). So we build on what the apostles' teaching has founded. And that is why the bishops are called apostles. - Cf. A.-M. JAVIERRE, The Theme of the Succession of the Apostles, in Early Christian Literature, in The Episcopate and the Universal Church, p. 199.
111 in the Church. It is of her essence and dignity that the design of the hierarchies remains above all human revolutions, and they cannot undergo any change. But, without shaking the immutable constitution of these hierarchies, which participates, says St. Cyprian, in the stability of the divine mysteries153, the government of the Church will have, in order to regulate and distribute its action, all the liberty, immense in its extent and, so to speak, without limits, which the necessities of time and place and the needs of the human multitudes over which it will be exercised from age to age will demand. There is indeed in the resources and powers of this government an element which is always and as it were indefinitely variable, and which allows it, for the benefit of the world and of particular peoples, to extend, as it were, without limits or to restrict at will the activity of each of the hierarchical persons and the manifestations of the powers of which they are the depositaries. This variable element is the exercise of hierarchical power, which we shall call the exercise of jurisdiction. Now, in the first place, this exercise of jurisdiction may be communicated by delegation. By this, a person of a lesser degree will use the powers of one of a higher degree. A simple priest may appear clothed in the government of all or part of the episcopal power, exercise an authority superior to that of his title as priest of a particular Church. The head of the universal Church may communicate rays of his fullness by permanent delegations and raise bishops from among their brethren, making them greater than their brethren inasmuch as they share in his principate, without touching the essential equality of bishops inasmuch as they are bishops. He will also be able, by means of delegations and special commissions, everywhere and for all kinds of matters, to give himself agents and representatives with more or less extensive power. On the other hand, the exercise of hierarchical power can be bound in whole or in part by the superior. Thus the Supreme Pontiff, by reservations and exceptions, will be able to restrict the scope of self
153 See above, chap. 2.
112 episcopal rity. The very exercise of all hierarchical action, insofar as it is expressed by what we have called above the communion and the title, can be bound by the banned more or less completely. The interdict, which is not always a penalty and may be a simple effect of the superior's prudence, may reach the title without touching the communion, bind the cleric as belonging to a particular hierarchy and with respect to that hierarchy without touching his action as a member of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Thus the so-called in partibus or titular bishop of a Church presently in the power of the infidels is deprived by the Supreme Pontiff of all exercise of the power attached to his see with respect to his Church, which is his title, without being deprived of that very title; and he continues, however, to enjoy the exercise of all episcopal prerogative in the Catholic Church. At other times, the exercise of hierarchical actuality is bound in both hierarchies, without either the title or the communion being affected in their substance and taken away from the subject. The bishop, the priest, the minister, forbidden as a result of a judgment or even because of an incapacity incurred through no fault of their own154, are not cut off from the order of bishops, the order of priests, or that of ministers; nor are they stripped of their title; but the exercise of all the powers enclosed in the communion of their order and in their title is bound up in them. Thus all these more or less extensive restrictions are only bonds which deprive the members of the hierarchical body of their movements, without affecting them in their life or constitution, without cutting them off from the body or destroying them themselves. Rather, since only really existing actualities can be bound, these restrictions, by binding in whole or in part the exercise of the powers of hierarchical persons, contain a solemn affirmation of the indivisible and immutable persistence of these powers in their essence and substance. What we say here is true of the particular Church as well as of
154 Such is the incapacity which results from an illness seriously affecting the mental state of the subject.
113 the Universal Church. The ancient presbytery has sometimes seen its powers and those of its members extended, sometimes bound or restricted. Among these, some have lost, others have retained exclusively the exercise of functions originally common to all; some have even seen their action extended by communications from the episcopal power. Hence this innumerable variety of dignities and offices, this even greater variety in the attributions of these dignities and offices; hence these local diversities in the service of the Churches, these successive changes which have modified their appearance. Each century has seen these peaceful revolutions take place. The extensions of the power of hierarchical persons, the effect of the delegations of the superior, as well as the restrictions of this same power, the effect of his power, which bound him in whole or in part, were frequently permanently attached to the titles themselves and to the offices, being transmitted with them, thus reaching into all its depths the hierarchical body, penetrating, so to speak, all its economy, and almost merging with it in the eyes of the inattentive observer. Besides these modifications of the exercise of power at all levels, inscribed in law or born and sustained by custom, superiors have always used the faculty of extending by personal and transitory delegations or of restricting by express and temporary acts the action of ecclesiastical persons. As we can see, the freedom with which institutions can move, diversifying the attributions of persons without shaking the essential immutability of hierarchies, is immense. Let us say again that the field in which this freedom develops, that is, the objects it embraces, is no less vast. The exercise of jurisdiction, i.e. everything that can be delegated restricted, includes, in fact, in the first place, the exercise of all the powers of the magisterium; it includes in the second place the exercise of the powers of the ministerium, for some of these powers in so far as the acts they perform are valid, for all in so far as they are legitimate: distinction established by theology. Finally it includes, as its widest field and as the special object of delegations and restrictions, all that belongs to the imperium or power of government.
114 This mobile and so considerable an element in the life of the Catholic Church in all degrees of the hierarchy has enabled her through all ages, like a fighting army, to move about the field of her struggles, always facing attacks, always richly and abundantly supplied with expedient weapons, and providing, without ever failing, for all the necessities of defense.
Unity of hierarchical power
Order, communion and title do not form three independent and juxtaposed hierarchies. Act and power correspond to each other, call to each other, and unite in the life of the hierarchical body. There is but one hierarchy of the Church, begun by the bare power of the order, completed in its proper act by hierarchical communion in the universal Church, and appropriated by the title to the particular Church. Therefore, the ordination that brings one into the hierarchy confers in the fullness of its effects the order, the communion and the title. Ordination, even illegitimate, always confers the order and its naked powers. Legitimate ordination always confers communion, because it places the one who receives it in the hierarchy of the universal Church. The title may, it is true, not be conferred at the time of legitimate ordination, and the latter may at present give only the hierarchical communion in the universal Church. But, in this case, if the title is received by the subject in the sequel, or even if the title, after having been lost, is recovered by him, it does not fail, at whatever time it is conferred, to rest on the communion and on the order and to go up through it to the ordination, like a late fruit, but already contained in germ in the branches and root. It can even be conferred before ordination and in view of it. In this case, it awaits its perfection and solidity from the subsequent ordination, on which it depends in advance. It remains precarious until then, and will be annihilated of itself if the ordination is lacking. Thus the bishop-elect can receive the institution, that is, the collation of his title, before his episcopal consecration; the priest, the minister, can likewise receive the institution of the title before the collation of the order and in view of it. They will later be ordained for this
115 title already received in advance; and, if the ordination fails, the title will lapse. Positive law has determined the time limits which it tolerates and the term which the title cannot exceed without perishing or receiving from ordination its essential strength and foundation155. The title received in advance is therefore not yet stable, and it really awaits from future ordination its confirmation and solidity. But is it even until ordination a true and perfect title, or must we until then classify the powers which accompany it among the mere delegations or communications of exercise of which we have spoken above?156 One might with some appearance hold the latter view: the incumbent would be no more until ordination than an administrator of a special nature, to whom the Church entrusts his interests in view of the right which the institution gives him at ordination itself and of the rights which ordination will confer on him in all their solidity. But the reason for this, we believe, must be sought further up. Divine operations are full of these mysterious anticipations: the work of the Redemption spreads its benefits at once over all the ages that follow it and over all those that precede it. It was extended in advance to the humanity of the Old Testament, and the sacrifice, which was not yet consummated, was already opening upon the elect, in order to purify and sanctify them, the treasure of graces which are its effects. Master of the centuries, Christ does not bow under their yoke nor obey their slow succession, but embraces them all in the fullness of his power and eternity. He was yesterday, as he is today, and for ever and ever (Heb 13:8); he works the salvation of men throughout the ages and spreads the benefits of his priesthood even before this priesthood appears in time and declares itself at the altar of the cross. This priesthood is eternal and possesses all time (Ps 109.4; Heb 5.6; 7.21). Communicated to the hierarchy, it retains the imprint of its origin, and, by a mysterious analogy, it is not so much subject to
155 The Code of Canon Law, can. 333, obliges the elect to receive episcopal consecration within three months of receiving the Apostolic Bull. 156 See above.
116 laws of the time that it cannot in advance authorize, in a certain degree, the chosen ones of the priesthood; and, as Christ, predestined to his priestly mission, already exercised its salutary prerogatives in advance, so the ministers, destined and called by the canonical institution to take their place in the ranks of its hierarchy, already exercise in a certain measure the powers attached to their title. The title, in this case, is like an anticipated radiation of the ordination in view of which it is conferred, on which it depends in advance, the lack of which renders it null and void, and which serves in advance as its cause and reason for being. Thus the dawn precedes the appearance of the sun, on which it depends. As we have explained, hierarchical communion and title are thus, each in its own way, the actuality and the fulfillment of legitimate ordination, and depend on it. Illegitimate ordination, on the other hand, as it remains among schismatics, confers only naked order. But this naked power awaits and calls for its act; and, if some day hierarchical communion is added to it by the introduction of the subject into the legitimate hierarchy, it will receive its natural crowning. Perhaps these notions are to be used to understand the expression, so common among the ancients, of illegitimate ordinations annulled, when the title or even the hierarchical communion were alone withdrawn or refused to the subject. The ordination was really annulled, not in the totality of its effects, but in those of its effects which could be destroyed; not in so far as the ordination is the collation of the naked order, but in so far as it is at the same time the collation of the hierarchical communion or legitimate degree in the universal Church and the collation of the title in the particular Church.
Perpetuity of hierarchical power
God's gifts are without repentance (Rom 11:29). His Son's mission is for eternity. His priesthood is confirmed by oath, says St. Paul, and thereby attached to the immutability of divine things (Heb 7.20). In its turn, the hierarchy is not instituted for a time; it suffers no other failures than those of the human and mortal elements
117 it associates with, and other vicissitudes than those imposed upon it by the necessities of its pilgrimage here below. Because of this essential stability which belongs to it, the substance of hierarchical power, that is, the very power of order, can never be destroyed. The order is an absolutely indelible character which persists in the cleric deprived of title and communion, degraded, cut off from the hierarchy, and even into the eternal rigors of damnation157. The hierarchical communion is not, like the order, absolutely unamissible. The cleric may deserve to lose it, and by a just judgment of the Church he may be cut off from its hierarchy. As we have already indicated, this judgment can remove the communion of the higher degrees while leaving that of the lower degrees intact. The bishop may be reduced to the communion of the priest or minister, the priest to that of the lower orders, and all clerics to lay communion. But nevertheless hierarchical communion, which is not inamissible, is given and received in perpetuity by its very nature, and it is only by the rigor of a judgment and against its institution, disturbed by the unworthiness and fault of the subject, that it can be lost. Finally, the title itself is always conferred without limit of time, though it may be withdrawn, like hierarchical communion, by the sentence of the judge, and even, absolutely, the subject may be released from it by the higher authority, as is seen in cases of demission or resignation; in these cases, in fact, the cleric, who cannot take away his title from himself nor break the bond which unites him to his Church, loses this title only by the intervention of the authority of the superior, who alone can break this bond. Such, then, is the stability of our hierarchy. It admits as three degrees: the character of the order is absolutely inamissible; the hierarchical communion in the universal Church persists so long as the subject is not declared unworthy of it; the title in the particular Church is
157 St. THOMAS, Tertia, q. 63, a. 5: "The priestly power (of Christ) is to character what full and perfect being is to participated being. Now, the priesthood of Christ is eternal according to the word of Psalm 109: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." It follows that every sanctification effected by his priesthood is perpetual, from the moment that the consecrated thing subsists"; trans. A.-M. ROGUET, Les Sacrements, (RJ), 1951, p. 121.
118 itself constituted without term or limit of duration, and it perseveres so long as the sentence of the judge or the disposition of the superior does not cause it to cease. Let us add to these three immutable elements, and endowed, each in due proportion, with the perpetuity which befits them, the mobile element of the exercise of jurisdiction, and we shall have in these four terms: the order, the hierarchical communion, the title, the exercise of jurisdiction, all the powers and activities of the hierarchical body. It is also all that is more ordinarily enclosed today under the two terms of the order and the jurisdiction, distinguishing in the latter various degrees or species, according as it is habitual, actual, ordinary, delegated, restricted. The studious reader will know how to establish the exact correspondence of these various terms and apply them to the various activities of the hierarchy as we have described them.
The one and only perpetual priesthood of Jesus Christ
Before crowning this study, it is fitting to go back in thought to him who is the principle and source of all authority and priestly action in the Church, to her supreme Pontiff, .Jesus Christ, in whom are gathered together as in their origin all the various powers which we have just distinguished. But in him these distinctions cease and disappear: all is one, and there is no longer any reason to make them, except in so far as they concern us. His pontificate, in fact, because of its perfection, cannot admit in itself the separation of power and act. Order and jurisdiction cannot be separated; everything in it is simple and actual, everything in it is eternal and without fail. But, nevertheless, it is in this pontificate that all the powers of order and all the actualities of jurisdiction are essentially contained, and it is from it that these powers and these actualities descend to the lower degrees. And it is because in him act and power, order and jurisdiction, cannot be separated, that he has not caused two essentially distinct and separately instituted hierarchies to arise from himself, one of order and the other of jurisdiction, separated by their nature and re
119 uniting accidentally or by pure convenience in the same subjects the powers that belong to them, but mie one hierarchy begun by order and completed by Jurisdiction. For he does not himself have two pontificates, a pontificate of naked order and a pontificate of jurisdiction, head by the one of the hierarchy of order, and, by the other, head of the hierarchy of jurisdiction; but he has one and only one eternal pontificate, perfect and self-sufficient. These separations accuse too much of imperfection, and are found only in the human and inferior elements which he associates with his work.
He has therefore instituted a single priestly hierarchy, the design of which begins with order and ends with jurisdiction, or, to use ancient terms, ends with hierarchical communion and title, and in which these two elements of order and jurisdiction suit and answer each other, as power calls its act and as the act suits its power and gives it its perfection. He himself remains at the summit of this unique hierarchy; his pontificate is its head. Below this pontificate is the episcopate; below it is the priesthood; and finally the ministry, that is, the diaconate with the lower orders, is also included. He is the first of the priestly order, in whom order and jurisdiction, act and power, are indivisibly and eternally united; but in the bishop, on the contrary, in the priest, in the minister, the distinction appears with the failings of the creature, the act may be lacking and the power remain naked. Thus the Supreme Pontiff, Jesus Christ, is indivisibly the unique head of the hierarchy, whether we consider it in the order which is its first element, or whether we consider it in the hierarchical communion or jurisdiction which is its completion. And it is because of the indivisible unity of these two elements in Jesus Christ that they are linked throughout and that they do not give rise to two naturally independent hierarchies, but that they concur in forming a single hierarchy begun by order and made alive and perfect by jurisdiction. But it is not enough to know that order and jurisdiction come together in the unity of the pontificate of Jesus Christ. Jurisdiction
120 itself, which is the completion of our one hierarchy, can be seen in the twofold aspect of hierarchical communion which looks to the universal Church or of title which looks to the particular Church. These two aspects are still going to merge and be lost in one in the Supreme Pontiff, Jesus Christ. It is in him, in fact, that the mysterious identification of the particular Church and the universal Church of which we spoke above158 is accomplished. He himself is the reason for their unity, the center where it is consummated. He is the head and bridegroom of the universal Church, and he is also the bridegroom of the particular Church in one and the same sacrament: "I have betrothed you to one bridegroom," says the apostle to the particular Church of Corinth, "as a pure virgin to Christ (2 Cor 11:2). He is, in fact, indivisibly for the particular Church all that he is for the universal Church, working the same wonders in them, exercising the same rights; his pontificate, which first concerns the universal Church, immediately reaches all the particular Churches by the same and very simple activity, penetrates into all the parts and subjects them all to his powers. And as the authority of this pontificate is exercised and manifested here, through the organ of a vicar, so the authority of this vicar, which is that of Jesus Christ himself, extending over the whole Catholic Church, immediately reaches, as an ordinary power, each of the particular Churches and each of the faithful who compose them. This is what the First Vatican Council159 defined, and we find the profound reason for it in the sacred unity of the universal Church and the particular Churches in which Jesus Christ has his bride all-
158 See above chapter 8. 159 First Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, c. 3, CL, t. 7, col. 484-485; Den., 1827 and 1831, Dum. , 472 and 476: "Consequently, we teach and declare that the Roman Church possesses over all others, by the Lord's disposition, a primacy of ordinary power, and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, truly episcopal, is immediate.... If, therefore, anyone says... that his power is not ordinary or immediate over each and every Church as well as over each and every pastor and faithful, let him be anathema." Cf. The Church (EP), nn. 363 and 367.
121 unique days: we find it in the mystery of the bridegroom and bride in Jesus Christ, bridegroom of the one Church, that is, of the Catholic Church, and of all the Churches, without tearing apart the great sacrament of unity. So those who fought against this doctrine as if it were a secondary weight of discipline or an accidental institution unrelated to the foundations of the hierarchy, by demeaning it in this way, were attacking, without realizing it, what is most divine in the Church, and were ignoring the very character of Jesus Christ, the spouse in all the Churches of his one bride: they were ignoring him in the person of the vicar through whom he manifests himself unceasingly to this bride. What a joy it is for the Christian soul to see all the magnificence of the hierarchy gathered and united in Jesus Christ as in their summit! In him, in fact, we first saw that all order and jurisdiction subsist without division or imperfection; and in him we now see that all power over the universal Church and over the particular Church is gathered together; we see that in him all the communion of the universal Church and all the titles of the particular Churches subsist indivisibly. Finally, let us consider that in him is also founded all the perpetuity and stability of the priesthood in the various hierarchical degrees. Order, as we have seen, is inamissible; communion and title have their own particular stability in their degree. But this permanence of the hierarchy, which in different proportions covers the various powers within it, derives entirely from the eternal sacrament of our Supreme Pontiff. God established him by oath and made him an eternal priest. St. Paul reveals to us the mystery of this oath. God swears by himself, he says, and thus attaches to the stability of the divine mysteries the priesthood of his Christ (Heb 7.21). This priesthood, in fact, looks at the consummation of the divine purposes and a tabernacle that will not be transferred (Heb 7:16). This was not the case with the priesthood of the old law, which was to pass away (Heb 7:18) and of which it is said that the priests were established without the firmness
122 of the divine oath (Heb 7:19). Now in the priesthood of Jesus Christ, who is the head, is confirmed the priesthood of all who will participate in him. It is the same priesthood that will flow upon them, and they are included in the promise and oath to him.
Jesus Christ, the sun of the priesthood, spreads his rays over all the degrees of the hierarchy; these, like secondary stars, receive his light and borrow from him the brightness which they spread, a brightness which can never fail, because he will never be extinguished and will never cease to shine in the distance. However, the infirmity of the created element brings here its failures in the lower degrees: these secondary stars can deviate from the path where the sun of the hierarchy attracts them and illuminates them; they can partially evade its action; and this is why the stability of the hierarchical degrees, absolute in its very substance and in the power of the order, receives proportional restrictions in the various actualities of the jurisdiction. The hierarchical communion can be lacking in the order, which is its naked power. The title can fade and be lost in the simple communion of the universal Church. But these restrictions, which are proportionate to the necessities of the Church's condition here below, do not change the sacred and mysterious nature of this stability, which is founded and rooted in the very priesthood of Jesus Christ. It is not, therefore, by a mere institution of police and for secondary reasons of good government that the powers of the hierarchy in the universal Church and the titles in the particular Churches are given in perpetuity; but this perpetuity depends in its degree and order on the very mystery of the eternity of the priesthood of Jesus Christ: it is founded on the very stability (of this priesthood, it derives from it, and it is in these depths that it has its roots and finds its true reasons for being; so great and august, even in its last manifestations, is the mystery of our hierarchy established in its entirety in Jesus Christ, and which is but the very mystery of Jesus Christ spreading itself with admirable order and declaring itself with infinite magnificence in all the parts of his mystical body.
123 CHAPTER XI
Modes of hierarchical operations
Everything is divine in our hierarchies. The divine life was in the bosom of the Father, and it has appeared to us (1 Jn 1:2). We have seen it manifested in the magisterium of doctrine, in the ministry that sanctifies, in the authority that governs. We have seen it produce in all the channels of the hierarchy the powers that are proper to it, order and jurisdiction. Thus everything is ready: these channels, in which life circulates, are overabundant and ready to pour it out, and it is going to declare itself by the admirable operations that we will study in the one and the other hierarchy, in the universal Church and in the particular Church. But, as our hierarchies imitate the divine society, so also their operations imitate the divine operation: this truth, which demands our full attention, must be made clear.
Modes of divine operations
God operates through his Word, who is his Christ. He communicates to him every operation that comes from him. He shows him, says the Gospel, the works that he does, and the Son does them similarly (Jn. 5:19-20); and the Holy Spirit, who is the knot of the eternal union of the Father and the Son, is associated with them in all their works by that very quality which is the property of his person. It is not a cooperation between them analogous to that which we see among men, where the action may be divided among several, where each of the associates brings and puts in common his share, and where the total action results from the concurrence of each of the partial forces, perfect by this concurrence, imperfect if one of the associates comes to be wanting. The divine persons operate in the manner in which they are; and as their power, which is their very essence, is indivisible, their operation cannot be divided. The operation is first of all wholly of the Father, who communicates it without division to the Son; and it is also wholly of the Holy Spirit. The
124 Father is the first principle of it with respect to the Son, who receives it from him. But since the Son can only operate in so far as he receives it from the Father, neither can the Father operate without communicating to the Son the totality of the operation, so that the persons cannot be separated, nor can the order between them be interchanged, nor can the action be made to divide between them and belong to them in distinct parts. Therefore the Lateran Council defined that the world, the work of God, was created by the divine persons as by one principle160. The operation is one among them as the essence. It is this necessary unity that is the background of what is called the circumcision of the divine persons. Proceeding one from the other, they are present to each other, not by mere collection and in the manner in which several created units are assembled, but inasmuch as the one who proceeds cannot subsist separated from its principle, or be absent from the one on whom it depends by its origin, as also the principle cannot cease to bear it in itself, as eternally producing it of itself and communicating to it all that it is and all that it does; for the operation follows the laws of essence and the order of the relations of the persons. The divine operations, therefore, always remain invariably similar to themselves, as belonging without inequality or division to the three divine persons; and yet, by an economy whose reasons are impenetrable to us, they are declared to us in three different ways in the Scriptures. In the first place, the Father is often named alone as the author of the action. "In the beginning, it says, God created" (Gen. 1:1). But we know that in the Father, as in their principle, dwell the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that in the operation of the Father is contained the operation of the Son and the Holy Spirit; for "the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he does" (Jn. 5:20), so that he may do the same, doing all things through him and through his Holy Spirit. The number that is in God cannot be destroyed, but here the unity of the principle is properly mon-
160 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), cap. 1, Firmiter, LABBE, vol. 11, Col. 142; MANSI, vol. 22, col. 981; Den., 428, Dum., 242: "Without beginning, always, and without end, the Father begets, the Son is born, and the Holy Spirit proceeds. They are consubstantial, similarly equal, equally omnipotent, equally eternal. One principle of all things..."
125 trée. Secondly, the Father and the Son appear to us as acting in plurality with the third person who is the Holy Spirit: "Let us make man" (Gen. 1:26); a little further down "Behold, the man has become like one of us" and at the Tower of Babel: "Come on! Let's go down! And there let us confound their language" (Gen. 11:7)161. This is like the "council of the Godhead"162 which the Father holds with his Son in the Holy Spirit; the operation is no less part and parcel of the Father, but the divine number and society are here specially manifested. Finally, in the third place, the Son appears alone. He shows himself thus in the Gospel: "Yet," he says, "I am not alone, but I and he who sent me" (Jn. 8:16). (Jn 8.16); and again: "He who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone" (Jn 8.29); and again: "I am not alone: the Father is with me" (Jn 16.32), and therefore "he who has seen me has seen the Father", because "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (Jn 14.9-10). (Jn 14:12), I do not do them of myself, but the Father who dwells in me does the works" (Jn 14:10). The Father, i.e. the principle, keeps his property. The society of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit is not interrupted, but the mystery of the Son receiving from the Father and bearing in himself the image of the Father and all his action is more particularly declared.
Thus these three different ways of expressing the divine action are appropriate to signify, sometimes the principal virtue of the Father, sometimes the full communication of it to the Son, sometimes the very society of the Father and of his Son in the Holy Spirit in so far as it carries number and plurality in God.
161 In reality, it is, in these three texts of Genesis, the plural of majesty, the use of which is found in the protocol of the Persian kings. - Cf. The Jerusalem Bible, p. 9, note h. Cf. J. LEBRETON, S.J., Histoire du dogme de la Trinité, des origines au concile de Nicée, Beauchesne, Paris, 19287, t. 1, pp. 552-558. 162 Council of Trent, Discourse of the Bishop of Bitonto at the opening session, in EHSES, Concilium Tridentinense, vol. 4, doc. 364, p. 523.
126
"In his image and likeness"
Our hierarchies are formed on the type of this society of the Father and the Son; they are its image and reproduce it by a vivid and faithful likeness. There is in them a head who is the principle: Jesus Christ or his vicar in the universal Church, the bishop in the particular Church; there is a mystical communication from Jesus Christ to the bishops, from the bishop to his presbytery; there is a circumincession of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church of which the episcopal college is the principal part, of the bishop and his Church expressed and contained in the priestly college. Thus the operations of the hierarchies imitate in their turn the divine operations, and we see in them a faithful correspondence between the three modes of action which we have just considered in God and his Christ. But, before following these beautiful and profound analogies, which make ecclesiastical government a faithful imitation of divine government, we must first recognize the unique difference which the essential weakness of the created element brings to these things. The communication which is in God is natural to him, and it carries with it the equality between the principle and the person who proceeds from the principle. By virtue of the same divine nature, the Father is Father, and the Son is Son163 and the Father has nothing more than the Son, because his title expresses nothing that is above the divine nature common to the Father and the Son. But here below the communication is the effect of a superior gift of the divine power, it is an added privilege; and, just as in the old order of things the father among men is superior to the they and the son is not equal to his father, so in the new order, he who gives is superior to he who receives, and he (receives from him is not equal to he who gives.
163 St. THOMAS, Prima, q. 42, a. 6, ad 3: "The same essence, in the Father, is his fatherhood, and in the Son is his sonship"; trans. H.-F. DONDAINE, La Trinité, (RJ), t. 2, p. 265.
127 Thus Christ, the Son of God, is equal to his Father, but this equality is the property and as it were the privilege of their eternal society; this privilege is unique and absolutely incommunicable, and our hierarchies, amidst so many splendors which descend upon them from that society in which is their exemplar and consummation, cannot claim it. In this they must keep the mark and character of the creature and show by this side that they have nothing of their own, that all their existence and greatness is borrowed and received from the mercy of God alone, and that in raising them up and communicating Himself to them, He enriches them by a free gift of His pure goodness. Thus, in divine society, Christ who receives from the Father is the equal of the Father; but in the Church, the episcopate which receives from Christ or from his vicar is not the equal of Christ or of the vicar of Christ, and the priestly college is even less the equal of the bishop in the particular Church. But this necessary inequality, which is the consequence of the imperfection of the created element, does not destroy the mystery of hierarchical communications; the order is not less followed, and the divine analogies are not less expressed.
Action of the leader
Thus, in the universal Church, in the likeness of the divine operation, in the first place the head often appears alone: it is the Pope, vicar of Jesus Christ, who decides and regulates everything by himself; and thus the main action is clearly declared. But the episcopate, in its very obedience, cooperates indivisibly with its head with this kind of authority which comes from him. It is not that the head needs to wait for this cooperation, as if his action were imperfect by itself; but this cooperation cannot fail, and it is none other than the influx of life and action which, from the head, penetrates the whole body.
Action of the Episcopal College
In the second place, the episcopal college, when it pleases God and the head of the Church, for reasons which are the secret of Providence
128 divine, appears united to its head. This is the council, in which the hierarchy of the universal Church, that is, on the one hand Jesus Christ through his vicar, and on the other the episcopate, coming together, imitate the council of the divine persons as declared in some of the works of God; But here again the relations of the hierarchical persons are not reversed; the action is always entirely the action of the vicar of Jesus Christ, who is the head, and it is communicated, without being divided, to the college of bishops, who are the members. This college remains in the order in which it was established; it does not usurp the principal function, nor does it appear to contribute in half its share to the work that is being done. Some Gallicans have, it is true, claimed this: they wondered what action remained to the bishops, if the authority of the Pope was always by itself sovereign and sufficient. Would it not be appropriate at least that the Pope could do nothing in the Council without the bishops, just as the bishops could do nothing without the Pope; and thus there would be a kind of concurrence of two partial elements in the common and total work. For again, they said, why bring together the college of bishops, if the Pope alone can do all that he can with this college? But these doctors had a low idea of the hierarchy and of the relations of the hierarchical persons; they did not understand the mystery of the head and the Church, of Jesus Christ and the episcopate, and the mystery of the communication between them. They were looking for the type and the reason of the ecclesiastical society in human associations, where everything is purely collective and where partial forces compose the total power. All these notions, unworthy of our society, which has its type in the very society of the Father and of his Son Jesus Christ, must be erased. As the Father gives the Son to operate with him, and as the operation remains entirely the Father's operation even though he communicates it to his Son, so the vicar of Jesus Christ, head of the Church and of the episcopate, gives the episcopate to act with him and through him, even though the action remains whole and indivisible and is always his own action in the main. The true greatness of the episcopate, then, is not to share with its head and to divide the authority which is indivisible, but it consists in receiving from him and exercising with him this same and unique authority. We know this: there is mystery in this, and the reasonings
129 taken from human analogies cannot reach it; human governments and the police of states offer nothing like it; but we must rise higher and seek in the august Trinity the reason and type of the whole life of the Church. The Father, in giving the Son all that he is, is not diminished. The power which he gives to the Son is not weakened in himself; and yet the Son possesses it and exercises it fully and very truly. In the same way, in the Council, the bishops act truly and effectively, and yet the action of their leader is not diminished or limited by their action. His power, on the contrary, declares itself above all in this way, and it is shown to be so great in their regard that it overflows, so to speak, and spreads over them, acting in them and through them. The power of Jesus Christ given to the Church, without ceasing to belong primarily and entirely to himself, will be manifested in this way at the last judgment: for he will seat his apostles and his chosen ones on twelve seats to judge Israel, the world and the angels themselves (Mt 19:28; 1 Cor 6:2-3). Will we find here the place for these mediocre reasonings? Will Jesus Christ, to whom the Father has given all judgment (Jn. 5:22) and who gives judgment to his Church, be stripped of his authority by communicating it to her? Or will he see this authority shared to such an extent that he will be able to do nothing except with the particular authority of the elect? Or will the elect not truly judge, according to the promise made to them, because their judgment will add nothing to that of Jesus Christ, sufficient in itself? Do we not see, on the contrary, that the Church, associated with Jesus Christ without shadow or vicissitude in that great day, will have with him and through him the same power as well as the same will, in the same view of truth and justice. So it is already here below, through the obscurities and discussions that arise among the assembled men. In the council the Church unites with her head, and she has with this head only one power, only one judgment, as she has with him only one same view of truth and justice; she follows her head and acts with him, and this mystery of their union and consent in love and light, always necessarily unchangeable and guaranteed by the insti
130 tution divine, though sometimes veiled for a time in these great assemblies by the dust that rises from humanity and by the clouds of discussion, clears at the end and shines forth with a brilliance that bears in itself the testimony of God. Moreover, as the whole life of the Church is marked by the same divine type, examples and analogies of these effective cooperations in an action that cannot be divided are to be found everywhere. When, according to the ancient discipline, the bishop offers the Sacrifice at the altar, assisted by the crown of his presbytery, and all his priests concelebrate with him, the bishop, who is the principal priest, consecrates effectively: the word he pronounces suffices for the mystery; and yet all the priests very truly consecrate with him, and the words they pronounce have their full effect without detracting in any way from the plenitude of the action of the bishop, their head. In the Council there is likewise between the Vicar of Jesus Christ and the bishops a mystical concelebration in the declaration of truth and the divinely infallible definition of dogma; for the same Jesus who is given to men in the divine Eucharist, being the word and truth of God, is also given to them through the teaching of the faith. Such is the mystery of the council, where the head of the episcopate and the college of bishops appear, assembled and operating in their union.
Action of the bishop
Finally, in the third place, the episcopate, always united to its head and carrying within itself the virtue of this head and the power that comes from him, sometimes appears alone outside; and yet it is not alone, for this head is with it and invisibly supports it. This takes place first of all in the college itself. Through hierarchical circumincession, the head of the college always lives and acts in it, even though he is not visibly present. This principle gives rise to a famous ecclesiastical rule: that in the absence of the head the college continues to act on the impulse already received from him. It thus makes up for this external absence, because it carries within it his virtue always inwardly present; and it covers up its defect, acting in this virtue, limiting its action, however, to the de
131 out so that he does not overstep the bounds, and regulating it on the directions already received, on the presumptions drawn from the acts done, and on the necessities of government. This does not go so far as to make the college equal to its chief and to substitute him, even for a time, in the strictness of the terms. The college does not, strictly speaking, succeed its chief, nor does it take his place in his absence, but it always retains the lower rank which is appropriate to it, and, even when acting for him, it is in reality only exercising outside and under special conditions the power which comes to it from the chief, which never belongs to him in the main and which always bears in the college the character of communication and dependence. This devolution, which takes place in the college in the absence of the head, does not, however, take place in the universal Church, because the vicar of Jesus Christ cannot be absent from his government for a single day, and because, during the very vacancy of the Holy See, as we shall see, the Roman Church maintains its prerogative; hence it follows that the body of bishops always sees where the principal authority is and never has to replace it. This is hardly the case in times of schism and when these painful crises must be brought to an end. St. Bernard appealed to the testimony of the college of bishops for this purpose, and the Council of Constance, solemnly convoked by Pope Gregory XII, continued to sit after his abdication and that of the antipope John XXIII, and took the measures which were to end the great schism by an incontestable canonical election. But the application of this rule has its ordinary place in the parts of the episcopal college and in the partial circumscriptions of the Church. There, the one who, by a communication of St. Peter's authority, holds the place of the head, that is, the patriarch or the metropolitan, may be absent, and the whole college may appear to be assembled without him. The way of devolution is then opened, and the bishops, by order of session, are called to preside over the assembly of their bre
132 res164. But it is not only when assembled in council that the bishops can act in the virtue of their leader invisibly present to their action. This is also true of each of the members of the episcopate, and thus we see the scattered bishops acting in the holy communion which unites them to him. "Jesus Christ," says St. Ignatius, "our inseparable life, is the mind of the Father, as also the bishops, established to the ends of the earth, are in the mind of Jesus Christ."165 For the episcopate is one in all the members of the college, and entire in each of the bishops; and it is not degraded when it is considered in a particular bishop. And this is not to be understood only of the power which the bishops exercise over the flock assigned to them by their title; for otherwise this mystery of the episcopate, appearing alone outside and bearing within it the virtue of its head from whom it is never separated, would not look clearly enough upon the universal Church. But the bishops, in virtue of that deep and mysterious union which is their very order and the essence of the episcopate, also act, when it is appropriate for them to do so, beyond even these narrow limits and as associated with the government and movement of the universal Church. Thus it was that in the beginning the apostles acted; long after them the apostolic men and the first bishops established Churches or even came, in virtue of this universal communion of the episcopate, to the aid of the peoples in their pressing necessities, as St. Eusebius of Samosate was seen to travel through the East and to ordain pastors to the Churches oppressed in the Arian persecution166. It is clear, moreover, from the very principles we have set forth, that this more extensive power, which hardly reveals itself except in extraordinary circumstances, is basically emanated from and wholly dependent upon the head of the bishops. We do not hesitate to affirm that in this the apostles themselves,
164 This point of discipline, known to Dom Gréa, was modified by canon 284, which then grants the presidency, continuously, to the most senior suffragan of preaching. 165 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Ephesians, 3; PG 5, 648; loc. cit, p. 71. 166 See further, ch. 21, note 8.
133 subject to St. Peter, had over the Church, to extend and govern it, no authority which was not subordinate to him as to their head and to him who held in their regard the place of Jesus Christ. The bishops, their successors, acted like them and in the same inferiority and dependence on their leader, a dependence made even more striking because their vocation was less illustrious and they no longer had the extraordinary gifts given to the apostles. Later on, the Pontiffs wisely reserved for themselves the work of the missions and the foundation of the Churches; and so the occasions when the bishops thus appear to act alone in the service of the universal Church and with a kind of authority over it are no longer usually encountered.
In the particular Church
It remains for us to find, in the government of the particular Church, the threefold analogy we have just contemplated between the divine government and that of the universal Church. We will do this briefly. The bishop, head of the particular Church, has in his presbytery the crown and the cooperators of his priesthood. And just as at the altar sometimes he alone offers the august Sacrifice, sometimes he is surrounded by the priests concelebrating with him, and sometimes the priests appear there alone and offer in his absence, but that always it is true that "this Eucharist alone is regarded as legitimate, which is done under the presidency of the bishop or of one whom he shall have entrusted with it"167 of likewise, in every ecclesiastical action, all power and authority radiate from his pontificate to his priests, through whom and in whom he does not cease to act. In the first place, he often appears alone and his authority is sufficient. Secondly, and when it is appropriate, he assembles his presbytery and associates it with his acts. In the third place, by the effect of hierarchical circumincession, the presbytery covers and makes up for his defect, or acts in his absence, by his virtue, which is always interiorly present. This is done in two ma-
.
167 S. St. IGNACE, Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8; PG 5, 713; loc. cit., p. 163.
134 ners: namely, by the college in the first place, when the presbytery substitutes for the absent or deceased bishop and administers his see; and also by the priests dispersed in the places to which the bishop sends them, and especially in the lesser churches, which have not the honor of an episcopal see, and where they act unceasingly in the absence of the bishop on whom these churches depend, to whose see they belong as to the principal church, and whose diocese they form.
135 THIRD PART
The Universal Church
136 Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and eternal Pontiff according to the order of Melchisedec, from whom all names and priestly powers flow, is forever the one head of the universal Church. It is from him that she takes her life; he forms her from the elements of ancient humanity, regenerated in him. At his call, the Church does not emerge from nothing, like the first creation, but "from the darkness and shadow of death" (Le 1:79), and comes to the "wonderful light" (2 Pet 2:9) of his word. He is the only teacher of her faith, the true teacher of the truthfulness of God. He not only teaches her all truth, but he washes her in his blood, he makes her live with his own substance, he animates her with his Spirit; he makes the inexhaustible and life-giving streams of his blood and the merits of his sacrifice flow over her through the centuries by the sacraments he has instituted, as by so many rivers with which he waters this new land and this new garden of delights. Finally, to him alone belongs this Church, which becomes his substance, "flesh of his flesh, bone of his bones" (Gen. 2:23), and his true bride, all power and authority. He is her king, her lawgiver and her judge. He has given her, as we have already seen, a share in all his prerogatives as his beloved wife. He has made her the mother of his children; he has associated her with his government and has clothed her with his majesty, crowning her as a queen and calling her to share his throne. It is for this reason that he formed the episcopal college, in which the universal Church shares in the operations and authority of its head, and which is itself truly called the universal Church, because, as its principal and excellent part, it gathers together in itself as in its fruitful principle and hierarchically contains the whole multitude of the faithful. Jesus Christ is a teacher; the college of bishops is a teacher with him. Jesus Christ is pontiff; the bishops are with him. Jesus Christ is king, legislator and judge: the bishops reign with him, make laws and canons with him, judge with him. In this part, in which we propose to study more thoroughly the essential constitution and life of the universal Church, we must first treat of the action of this august head, and then we shall deal with
137 the episcopate, as it contributes to the formation and life of the universal Church. This will be our natural division.
138 FIRST SECTION
HE HEAD OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND HIS GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER XII
The Vicar of Jesus Christ
Institution of a Vicar
We need not dwell much on the prerogatives of Jesus Christ, head of the universal Church, because they are manifest. As the principle of his life, there is nothing in it that he does not operate and depend on him. His doctrinal authority is without other limits than those which he himself has placed on the revelation of the mysteries, respecting the weakness of the human element and reserving for the vision of glory what the present state could not bear. His priestly and sanctifying power is as boundless as the merit of his sacrifice, and there is no sacrament or priestly action which does not depend absolutely on his pontificate. Finally, his authority is that of the Son of God and of the Son of Man to whom God has given all judgment. Without speaking here of the power he has over all peoples, over all creatures and over the elements themselves to make them serve his ends, we can see that the particular authority he has in the Church, as her head and her spouse, by the right of the Redemption and as a result of the new birth he has given her, is a sovereign power which comes to him from above, and not from below; that he has this power from himself, and not from the consent and delegation of his subjects, and that, consequently, this power derives from itself the legitimacy of all the laws and decrees which it lays down. But what we have principally to study is the institution which this sovereign and universal hierarch has thought fit to choose, and which he has created to exercise his government in perpetuity in this beautiful empire which he has given himself at the price of his blood.
139 It was not in God's purposes that he should remain visible among men to the end of the ages. He was to return on the day of his Ascension into that glory of the Father which mortal eyes cannot behold. Seated at his right hand, he will not cease, it is true, to animate invisibly the whole body of his Church by the communications of his grace and the assistance of his Spirit, and he thus leaves it his invisible presence in his sacraments and the perpetuity of his sacrifice. But this is not enough, and it is still necessary to govern it, to speak to it unceasingly and to appear at its head by some unmistakable mark, to assure it for ever of his guidance. Jesus Christ, therefore, remaining her firm and unshakeable support and promising her assistance to the end of the ages, set up in her midst the manifest and effective sign of his presence. Thereby, invisible in the bosom of the Father, he will visibly preside over all the movements of this great body and will visibly submit it to his action. Jesus Christ has accomplished this marvel by the institution of a vicar, his organ and representative, through whom the government of the universal Church is forever exercised in his own name and in his own virtue. He has taken this vicar from the body of the episcopate. He is a bishop, who, in this capacity, is no more than any other bishop: for bishops are equal. The episcopate suffers no inferiority in any of its members, and the bishop of Rome is no more a bishop than the bishop of an obscure city168. But, vicar of Jesus Christ, this bishop exercises a power which is not contained in the essential powers of the episcopate, but which is above the episcopate by its nature and title; for this power is the very power of Jesus Christ, the head, principle and sovereign of the episcopate. It is, in fact, of the essence of the vicar that he should make but one
168 Cf. St. Jerome, Letter 146, quoted above, ch. 10, n. 10. - St. Cyprian, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 4; PL 4, 500: "The other apostles were also what Peter was; they enjoyed equal participation in honor and power"; loc. cit. at 9. See in this edition of LABRIOLLE note 5, p. 52, for the comparison of this text with that of St. LEON, quoted above, ch. 10, note 9.
140 hierarchical person with the one he represents, that he exercises all the authority without dividing it and without forming below him a distinct degree. The vicar of Jesus Christ, in the government of the Church, has in that Church, by his institution, one and the same authority with Jesus Christ, or rather all the one authority of Jesus Christ, without it being divided or given with measure. This is so much in the property of the term vicar, that, even in a lower degree, we see every day the bishop of a particular Church giving himself a vicar who represents him with the fullness of his ordinary authority. This vicar of the bishop is taken from among the priests, but exercises a power which is not contained in the powers of the priesthood, since this power is the very authority which the bishop has over the priests in his capacity as chief priest. Thus this vicar and his bishop are but one hierarchical person, and he does not form a distinct degree in the jurisdiction and hierarchy of the particular Church. But if this is the proper meaning of the name of vicar, and if the idea that one has of it is that the vicar perfectly represents the one who chooses him to hold his place, what will not be the singular dignity of the vicar of Jesus Christ! Let us say in a word that he has all the authority of Jesus Christ over the Church and the episcopate, without it being divided or diminished, that is to say that he is with Jesus Christ and through him, in the fullness of the term, the head of the universal Church and the head of the bishops. "He is," says the Council of Florence, "the true vicar of Christ," and, therefore, "the head of the whole Church"169. He is not an intermediate and secondary head, placed between Jesus Christ and the episcopate. The episcopate would be lowered if there were any hierarchical degree between Jesus Christ and himself. Still less is he a bishop deriving his prerogative and rank from the delegation or institution of the whole episcopal college, and exercising alone, for the
169 Second Council of Florence (1439), Decree for the Greeks, LABBE, 13, 515; MANSI, 31 A, 1031; Den., 694, Dum., 432: "We define... that this Roman Pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter, the head of the apostles and the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole Church."
141 public good, the sovereign power radically common to all his brethren; but it is with Jesus Christ, above the episcopate, the same head of the episcopate; the same head, the same doctor, the same pontiff, the same legislator of the universal Church; or rather, it is Jesus Christ, this unique head, made visible, speaking and acting in the Church by the organ he has given himself; for he declares himself through his vicar, he speaks through him, he acts and governs through him. It is not, however, that he appears in this vicar in order to make new revelations through him or to institute a new order of things and new sacraments; for that is not what is at stake. But he makes him his representative to teach his doctrine and maintain its faithful tradition170 and to exercise without interruption the government according to the order established by himself. Thus understood in all its force, the institution of this vicar is the principal institution from which the whole formation of the Church will flow, since it must depend on it in perpetuity. It is the first foundation of the building. Our Lord also announces this great plan from the very beginning of his public life. He calls Simon and says to him: "Your name shall be called Cephas, which means Peter" (Jn. 1:42). The effect follows this first word; and, after having received the confession of his faith, which will be the principal faith, he will institute what he has promised: "I say to you, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not stand against it" (Mt. 16:18). Let us stop to consider the mystery of these words. Jesus Christ, by declaring in the Gospel his will and by inscribing in it the letters patent of his vicar, gives him at once a name and a prerogative which are appropriate only to the Lord himself. "The stone is Christ" (1 Cor. 10:4). He himself is "the corner stone" (Is. 28:16; Ps. 117:22; 1 Pet. 2:6), the only foundation; and the name of Peter which he communicates to his vicar is incommunicable to any one occupying a degree of the hierarchy lower than his own princi-
170 First Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, c. 4; CL, 486; Den., 1836, Dum. , 481: "For the Holy Spirit was not promised to Peter's successors that they might make known, under his revelation, a new doctrine, but that with his assistance they might holily guard and faithfully expound the revelation handed down by the apostles, that is, the deposit of faith"; cf. The Church (EP), n. 369.
142 pity. Let St. Leo declare it: 'He unites it to himself with an indivisible unity, and wants it to be named what it is itself'171. "Thou art Peter," he said to him, "and this is what is to be understood: that being myself the inviolable stone, myself the cornerstone, myself the foundation out of which no other can be laid (Eph. 2:14. 20), I say to you, you too are a stone, because you are united to me in the solidarity of the same strength, and the prerogatives which are and remain my property are common to you with 1 a the communication I make to you of them"172. Elsewhere again in the Gospel, the one shepherd, he makes him the universal shepherd and undivided shepherd of the one flock (Jn. 21:15-17). It is always the same unity of power that is shown to us173. Thus Jesus Christ and St. Peter, by the institution of his incomparable dignity, appear to us indivisibly united as one foundation of the universal Church, as one head of that body, as one shepherd of that flock; and in the very terms of the divine institution, says St. Leo, "we learn, by the mystery of the appellations bestowed on Peter, how close is his union with Christ himself174. "For," says again, St. Cyril of Alexandria, "Christ has given to Peter, and has given to no other, but to him alone most fully, the fullness of what is and remains
171 St. Leo, Letter 10, to the bishops of the province of Vienna, 1; PL 54, 629. 172 ID., Sermon 4, for the anniversary of his consecration (in natali suo), 2; PL 54, 150. 173 PIE VI, Brief Super soliditale (November 28, 1786), Bullarii Romani continuatio, t. 6, pars 2, Prat, 1848, p. 1751: "Certainly the Church is the one flock of Christ, whose one supreme shepherd, Christ himself reigning in heaven, has left one supreme visible vicar on earth, and in the voice of this one the sheep hear the voice of Christ." - St. Leo, loc. cit: "Peter commands in his own right all those whom Christ himself commands. This is a great and admirable participation in his power which divine goodness has given him." 174 St. Leo, Sermon 3, for the anniversary of his consecration, 3; PL 54, 146: "For if he is placed above the others, if he is called Peter, if he is proclaimed a foundation stone, if he is appointed a doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven, a judge of what is to be bound and loosed, the decision of his judgments being ratified in heaven, - he is thus prepossessed so that we may know what union (societas) with Christ reveals the mystery of his appellations."
143 to himself."175 St. Peter, then, is with Jesus Christ, and in the person of Jesus Christ whom he represents, the true head of the Church, and one head with him: "Christ is the head of the Church," says the apostle (Eph 5. 23); and he is said to be the successor of Peter: "He is the head of the whole Church"176. St. Peter is the head of the Church and one head with Jesus Christ; these two aspects of the same truth are worthy of our stopping to consider them.
In the one principal of the head
First, St. Peter is the head of the Church. His prerogative is the principal, that is, he is in the Church the source and principle, and all the other hierarchs receive from him all that they are, while he himself receives nothing from the others177. "Thou art the stone upon which I will build my Church" (Matt. 16:18). What more energetic expression than that of foundation stone? The proper thing for a foundation is to impart firmness to the whole building and to every stone of the building, so that there is none that derives its firmness from elsewhere, and that which alone is fundamental receives its stability from no other.
175 SUAREZ, De la primauté du Souverain Pontife, c. 17, n. 5, in Opera omnia, ed. Vivès, 1859, vol. 24, p. 288: "St. Thomas reports (Opuscule 1 against the errors of the Greeks, c. 32) that the same Cyril (of Alexandria) says, in his book Thesaurus: "As Christ received from his Father the fullness of power, so he gave it in fullness to his successors." And again, "To no one but Peter did he give the fullness of his goods, to him alone." Even if they are no longer found in the Thesaurus now, these testimonies cannot be doubted, on the one hand because of the authority of St. Thomas, on the other hand since we know that several books of the Thesaurus have disappeared." 176 Second Council of Florence (1439), Decree for the Greeks, LABBE 13, 515; MANSI 31 A, 1031; Den., 694, Dum. 177 St. Leo, Sermon 4 for the anniversary of his consecration, 2; PL 54, 149-150: "Through him, as from the source of all charisms, he was inundated with such abundant outpourings that, while he received many things for himself alone, nothing was granted to anyone without his participation.... If (divine condescension) wanted the other princes (of the Church) to have common privileges with him, it never gave but through him what it did not refuse to the others ". Text quoted by Leo XIII, Encyclical Salis cognitum (June 29, 1896), in The Church (EP), ri. 602.
144 Again, this is what the Lord says elsewhere, "I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. You therefore... strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22:32). The firmness of the body is built on that of the head178; the grace given to Peter is not a private grace and stopping at his person; his infallible firmness in the faith is such that he will have to communicate it, and that, communicated by him, it will become the firmness of the whole body. This is always the character of the principate, source, principle, origin, as it appears to us in the hierarchy where everything comes from above, where God gives to Christ, where Christ in his turn gives to the Church, where the bishop himself communicates to his people, and where the authority and the divine gift descend unceasingly from the summits and never ascend from the inferior degrees to the superior ones.
Tradition confirms this notion of the principate in St. Peter: "If the See of Peter is shaken, say the bishops of the Gauls, the whole episcopate falters," for he is the origin of the episcopate179. The words head, foundation, source, and origin, are constantly used. Everywhere St. Peter appears as chiefly receiving and communicating what he receives to his brethren, the apostles or bishops, who have nothing but through him180. But, if constantly St. Peter is thus the head of the universal Church, we must in the second place consider that he has this quality in
178 St. Leo, ibid., 3; PL 54, 151-152: "In Peter, faith of all of all is defended, and the help of divine grace is established in such a way that the firmness which, through Christ, is given to Peter, is conferred by Peter on the apostles." 179 St. AVIT OF VIENNA († 518), Letter 31, to Faustus and Symmachus, Roman senators; PL 59, 248: "We were in the greatest anxiety and fear about the Roman Church, since in our opinion our stability would falter if the top were attacked; and even without the malice of many, a single criminal action would have hit us, if it succeeded in shaking the stability of the head. " 180 St. Leo, Sermon 83, for the Feast of St. Peter the Apostle, 2; PL 54, 430: "It is said to the most blessed Peter, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose will be loosed in heaven." He gave to the other apostles the right of this same power, but it was not in vain that was given to one what was communicated to all. - Cf. Sermon 4, 2; PL 54, 150.
145 his union with Jesus Christ whom he represents. He is one head with him, or rather he is head only in the person of Jesus Christ whom he supports here below. This doctrine on the nature of the principate of the Vicar of Jesus Christ is not a pure theological system, but is the very tradition and teaching of the Holy See and of the universal Church. "The one and only Church," says Pope Boniface VIII in the decretal Unam sanctam, "has one head, not two heads like a monster, namely Christ and the vicar of Christ, Peter and his successor, but, according to the word of the Lord, the sheep of Christ are the sheep of Peter, without distinction or division"181. The body cannot, in fact, have, in the true sense of the word, two heads. The center of life or the head of an animated body is one; now this center and principle of life in the body of the Church is Jesus Christ himself. If St. Peter is not considered properly as his organ and vicar, being nothing but in this capacity and in so far as he represents him, the name of head cannot be appropriate to him in the strength and property of its meaning. But if, on the contrary, his authority is not distinguished from that of Jesus Christ, who does not see that there is no power on earth which can limit it? Thus the Gallicans, who wanted to attribute to the bishops and councils the right to set limits to him, were led to deny him the quality of head in the proper and natural sense of this term. He is, they say, head of the Church in a certain way, quodam modo182, but not in the full and simple reality. But, on the other hand, if his authority, whatever it may be, is above the episcopate, without being that of Jesus Christ himself, who does not see, say the Greeks, that the episcopate is singularly lowered, no longer reporting immediately to Jesus Christ himself? Also logic will lead the Gallicans, following the Greeks, to the episcopal system, which, considering the Church as deprived of the government
181 BONIFACE VIII, Bull Unam Sanctam (1302), DIGARD, loc., cit., Col. 889; Den., 468, Dum., 422. 182 BOSSUET, Defense of the Declaration (1682), ed. Chevalier, Luxemburg, 1730. - Cf. A.- G. MARTIMORT, Le Gallicanisme de Bossuet, Cerf, Paris, 1953 (US, 24), pp. 527-605. - Cf. YVES CONGAR, O. P., art. Episcopalism, in Catholicism, vol. 4, col. 331-335.
146 visible of its now absent head Jesus Christ, reduces it to seeking its supreme support in the whole episcopal college and to covering, as it were, the defect caused by the absence of the now invisible head, by the powers of that college. The supreme authority belongs, according to these false doctors, to the body of bishops. Thus, in the particular Churches whose see is vacant, the college of priests makes up for the absence of the bishop, his head, who has been taken away by death. Basically, the episcopal system amounts to this and brings the universal Church back to this state of infirmity. In this system, the authority as it is left to the successor of Peter is either emanated in its substance from the college of bishops, or at least - for there are degrees in the error, and one seeks to avoid going to the ultimate consequences - subordinated to this college. This amounts to giving the body of bishops radically and habitually all the power183, and to reduce the prerogative of St. Peter
to being no more than a police institution, intended to facilitate the proper exercise of government; for as well, and it is agreed, the multitude cannot exercise the supreme power without confusion, and it is necessary to maintain a certain order in the episcopal college, basically the only true sovereign, both for the ordinary expedition of affairs and to keep a kind of unity to it. Having reached the point where logic leads the episcopal system, what insult does this system not do to the immortal head of the universal Church, Jesus Christ, and to this entire Church? Jesus Christ is not dead; his throne is not vacant; he cannot therefore be considered as failing in the government of his people, and he does not abandon his scepter to the whole body (of his Church. He does not
183 RICHER, Opuscule on Ecclesiastical and Political Power, c. 1, Paris, 1611: "The School of Paris, endowed with this infallible support, in accordance with the spirit of all the ancient doctors of the Church, has always and constantly taught that Christ, founding his Church, gave the keys, that is, jurisdiction, first, more immediately, and in a more essential manner to the Church than to Peter ... Consequently, the entire jurisdiction of the Church belongs to the Roman Pontiff and to the other bishops in an instrumental, ministerial way and only for execution. - Cf. A.-G. MARTIMORT, loc. cit., pp. 16-56 (The ancient sentiment of the Faculty of Theology or the "Maxims of the School of Paris"). Cf. Synod of Pistoia (1794), Den., 1503, Dum., 438.
147 ceases to be the head of this Church, to animate and govern it; and, while in the glory of the Father, it is fitting that he should always appear to be its master and guide. The dead bishop cannot exercise his power, nor even have a vicar. This is not so with Jesus Christ; he is still alive and can and does give himself a vicar. Since the body of the Church is visible, its head must be visible. He has promised his presence until the end; this presence must be declared. He therefore chooses a vicar and shows himself through him. By this institution, the prince of shepherds clearly affirms that his power is not dead and does not fail, that it is always alive and active. And this vicar, his pure organ, clearly designated by him in the Gospel under the names and prerogatives which are appropriate only to himself, is hailed in this capacity, that is, as another himself, by the tradition of all the centuries and by the voice of the peoples. Why, in fact, should we not invoke, in conclusion, the humble and popular testimony of the simple and obscure souls who form the multitudes? The voice of baptism speaks in them, and the systems invented by men do not alter on their lips the sincerity of the divine testimony. For them, the vicar of Jesus Christ is the manifestation of God. The Pope," said a little Italian shepherd boy to Bishop De Ségur, "is Christ on earth. The definition of this humble child is enough, for it contains the whole theology of the government of the Church.
Error of the episcopal system
St. Peter, therefore, is the vicar of Jesus Christ in the full force of the term, that is, he forms with him but one head of the hierarchy and of the Church. This is why our Lord, instituting below himself the order of the episcopate, did not institute a special pontifical order with which St. Peter and his successors should be clothed. There is undoubtedly an order of the supreme pontificate superior to the episcopal order, but this order is the very order of Jesus Christ and belongs to him alone. It is he alone who, by his ordination as an eternal
148 nelle, is the sacred and permanent source of the episcopate. His vicar is drawn from among the bishops, and he exercises the authority of this one pontiff, the head of the bishops, an authority which is not comprehended or enclosed in the powers of the episcopate, but rather in the supreme order of Jesus Christ, the head of the episcopate, just as the vicar of the bishop, drawn from among the priests, exercises over them the authority of their head, who is the bishop. It is therefore in vain that the episcopal system seeks to make itself a weapon against the prerogative of St. Peter and his episcopate. "He is," they say, "only a pure bishop, the first, if you will, among his brethren184;
but all his power is radically contained in the order of the episcopate, and he has nothing at bottom above that common good which belongs to the whole college, though it is not administered by all. All power is therefore, in substance, enclosed in the episcopate, since that of St. Peter itself is contained in it. It was undoubtedly necessary to have an order and a police force in the exercise of this sovereign power of the episcopate, and this is why Saint Peter was the first to be established. But this institution does not go beyond this necessary regulation and does not raise it any higher. If, therefore, he is called head of the Church, it is in a peculiar and improper sense, quodam modo: for, if he were the head of the bishops in the same sense and as truly as the bishop is the head of his priests, it would be fitting that there should be in the divine institution of the hierarchy an order of pontificate superior to that of the bishops, and with which he would be clothed, as the bishop himself is elevated above the priests by his ordination." But it is in this properly that the very essence and excellence of the principate of Saint Peter is declared, a principate which is only the vicariate of the supreme Pontiff, Jesus Christ.
184 St. Peter, considered as a bishop, is indeed the first of the bishops in one degree of the episcopate; but he is still, above the bishops, the head of the bishops and of the episcopate, as the vicar of Jesus Christ. He is at the same time the first of the bishops among his colleagues and the first member of their college; and he is, above this college, the prince of the bishops, the head and the principle of all pontifical dignity in the person of Jesus Christ, whom he represents. His status as the first bishop has been abused to obscure what he is as head of the bishops. It is important to make this distinction, to which we will return in chapter 22.
149 Yes, certainly, as we have already said, at the top of the hierarchy there is a pontifical order incomparably higher above that of the bishops than the order of the bishops is above the priesthood. But this pontificate is that of Jesus Christ, and the honor of the episcopate consists principally in the fact that it is immediately subordinate to this eternal pontificate of the Son of God. The bishops must have no other head; and Jesus Christ, respecting, so to speak, in this the greatness of the episcopal order, or rather, divine spouse of the Church by his supreme and universal priesthood, and wishing to belong to her and to govern her immediately, did not wish to place between the college of bishops and himself an intermediate priesthood; but, remaining alone and immediately the head and spouse, he was pleased to manifest himself to this college through a vicar, who, being his pure organ, is one with himself, and cannot be considered separately from himself. And if the mystery of this institution shows the greatness of the episcopate, it also reveals the sublimity of the prerogative of Saint Peter. It is more incomparable for St. Peter to be the vicar of Jesus Christ and to have nothing but in him and through him, than to form in the hierarchy a particular degree below him. If St. Peter, by virtue of his priestly order, were more than a bishop, he would occupy a distinct degree in the hierarchy which would be properly assigned to him. He would be, by this degree, superior to the bishops and inferior to Jesus Christ. He would thus lower the episcopate and distance it as much from this first Pontiff; and at the same time he would also lower his own authority, which would no longer be that of Jesus Christ himself, but a power of a lower degree. As the Vicar of Jesus Christ, he will have nothing of his own, but all his power will be merged with that of Jesus Christ himself. It will be the power of Jesus Christ alone exercised and manifested in him. This is the essence of his prerogative. It is in this that it will appear all divine and that it will raise him above all the powers that are named on earth and above all the degrees of the hierarchies.
150 CHAPTER XIII
Authority of the vicar of Jesus Christ
Double function
Jesus Christ, through the institution of his vicar, provides for the future and safety of his Church, a stranger and traveler on this earth. He wants to be her visible guide and to walk at her head. This vicar, therefore, is not charged with establishing a new doctrine by new revelations, with creating a new state of affairs, or with instituting (the new sacraments; this is not his function185. He represents Jesus Christ at the head of the Church, whose constitution is perfect. This essential constitution, that is, the very creation of the Church, was Jesus Christ's own work, which he himself had to complete and of which he said to his Father, "I have finished the work you gave me to do" (Jn 17:4). There is nothing more to be added to it, but from now on it is necessary to maintain this work, to ensure the life of the Church and to preside over the play of its organs. For this two things are necessary: it is necessary to govern it; it is necessary to perpetuate the teaching of the truth in it. The 1st Vatican Council brings the supreme function of the vicar of Jesus Christ186 to these two objects. Peter represents Jesus Christ in this dual aspect.
Governing authority
He is first of all the vicar of Jesus Christ in the government of the Church and exercises in it his sovereign authority. Jesus Christ gives him the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He binds and loosens on earth; all his decisions are ratified in heaven (Mt 16:19). Later, the power to bind and loose is also given to the apostles (Mt 18:18). But, says Bossuet, "the sequel does not reverse
185 I Vatican Council (1870), Constitution Pastor aeternus, c. 4, CL, 486, Den., 1836, Dum., 481; see above, p. 128, note 3. 186 Ibid. , c. 3, CL 484-485, Den., 1829, Dum., 474 ... that they may be taught and governed in the way of salvation"; cf. The Church (EP), n. 365.
151 not the beginning, and the first does not lose its place. This first word, "the out what thou shalt bind," spoken to one, has already put under its power every one to whom it shall be said, "Whatsoever thou shalt remit." The promises of Jesus Christ, as well as his (Ions, are without repentance. What is once given indefinitely and universally is irrevocable"187. The Lord, the only shepherd of the one flock, still says to him, "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep" (Jn. 21:15-17); the lambs, which are the faithful, and the mothers, which are the churches. They are always my lambs and my sheep: I do not alienate them by entrusting them to you; I do not leave my name of shepherd by communicating it to you; I am the only shepherd, because there will be only one flock (Jn 10:16). I make you a shepherd with me and in me, one shepherd with me. Also all antiquity recognized in the Sovereign Pontiff the first and sovereign power. The whole sum of government, summa rerum, is entrusted to him188. A universal legislator, he binds the whole Church by his constitutions; "his edicts are peremptory," says Tertullian189. A supreme and unappealable judge, he renders sentences that no power can shake, "and no one can subject to further examination the cause which he has ended by his judgment"190.
187 BOSSUET, Discourse on the Unity of the Church, First Point, Complete Works, ed. Gauthier, 1828, vol. 6, p. 90. 188 ORIGEN, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 1. 5, 11. 10; PG 14,1053: "To Peter was entrusted the sum of all things for the shepherding of the sheep." - St. GAELASUS I (494-496), Letter 4, to Faustus (Commonitorium); PL 59, 30: "According to the canons, it is to the Holy See that the sum of all right is due." 189 TERTULLIAN, Treaty of Modesty, 1; PL 2, 981: "I learn that an edict is brought to the knowledge of the faithful, and, my faith, a peremptory edict. The Supreme Pontiff, in other words the bishop of bishops, decrees..."; trans. Pierre DE LABRIOLLE, Tertullian, De paenitentia, De pudicitia, Paris, 1906 (col. Hemmer and Lejay), p. 54. 190 ZOZIME (417-418), Letter 12, to Aurelian and the Bishops of Africa, 5; PL 20, 651. - St. GAELASUS I, Letter 13, to the bishops of Dardania; PL 59, 66: "The See of the blessed Apostle Peter has the right to judge, and no one is permitted to judge from his judgment: for the canons have willed that he should be appealed to from any part of the world, while no one may appeal from his decision." - First Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, c. 3, CL, 485, Den., 1830, Dum.,
152 But this is not enough; this authority, (it is universal like that of Christ, since it is not distinguished from it, is also, like that of Christ, immediate, and it properly and singularly reaches, in virtue of its essence and as an ordinary power, each of the Churches or assemblies of the faithful, each of the faithful. This is what the First Vatican Council defined191 and and it is undoubtedly in order to prevent the opposite error that our Lord, instead of (saying to St. Peter: "Feed my flock", as a whole and as a block, said to him: "Feed my lambs, feed my sheep" (Jn 21. 15-17), i.e., both the whole flock, since he excepts no one, and each of the flock's flock, since it is by them that he designates him192. It would be too long to follow through the course of history all the manifestations of the sovereign power of the vicar of Jesus Christ, especially since this study forms the whole fabric of ecclesiastical history. The authors who have collected from century to century the monuments of his supreme jurisdiction are in all hands.
Doctrinal authority
The doctrinal authority of the Supreme Pontiff is no less than his authority in government. Our Lord warns him of the efforts of the devil against the faith of the Church, enclosed in that of the col-
475: "The judgment of the Apostolic See, to which no authority is superior, is not to be questioned by anyone, and no one has the right to judge its decisions"; cf. The Church (EP) n. 366. 191 First Vatican Council, ibid., CL, 484, Den., 1827, Dum., 472: "We teach and declare... that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, truly episcopal, is immediate. Pastors of every rank and rit and the faithful, each separately or all together, are bound to the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience." Cf. The Church (EP), 11. 363. 192 PSEUDO-EUSBE OF EMESE, Homily on the Vigil of the Feast of the Holy Apostles, in Bibliotheca maxima Patrum, t. 6, pp. 618-622: "He entrusts to him first his lambs, then his sheep: that is, he establishes him not only as shepherd, but as shepherd of shepherds. So Peter shepherds the lambs, and he shepherds the sheep, the sons and the mothers; he rules the faithful and he rules the prelates. He is therefore the shepherd of all, for apart from the lambs and the sheep there is nothing in the Church. - Text quoted by LEON XIII, Encyclical Salis cognitum, in The Church (EP), 11. 605 (under the name of St. BRUNO, bishop of Signea, Commentary on John 3, 21, 55).
153 episcopal college which is to form her; and wishing to secure in this bride whom he has given himself the sacred deposit of his word and the integrity of his faith, he says to his vicar: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has claimed you to sift you," you, the college of my bishops, "like wheat," that is, to agitate you with the uncertainty of questions; "but I have prayed for you" singularly, "that your faith may not fail. You therefore... strengthen your brethren" (Le 22:31-32)193. Thus St. Peter is strengthened in the faith by divine assistance; he is forever the infallible teacher, and the Church is infallible only because it is confirmed by him; That is to say, the Church, formed by the college of bishops, the Church, to whom Jesus Christ gave his word, so that the deposit of this word would not perish in her, diminished by forgetfulness, obscured by doubts or altered by the words and interpretations of men, needs to be constantly confirmed and sustained. And who, then, can fulfill this office, if not the vicar of Jesus Christ? And it is because he speaks in his name and represents him in the midst of the world that infallibility is due to him as a necessary prerogative and an inevitable consequence of his title. Thus the College of Bishops will also be infallible, but with an infallibility of a different order from that of St. Peter. The infallibility of the vicar of Jesus Christ is essentially the principal infallibility, it is the origin and foundation of infallibility in the Church. It is proper to the head in the hierarchy to communicate and extend the gift that is in him. The infallibility of the bishops flows upon them from that of their head, who strengthens them with his own firmness194. The infallibility of the vicar of Jesus Christ being the principal infallibility, has consequently two other qualities, namely, of being proper and singular to him. It is proper to him, because it does not come to him from his membership in the college of the episcopate; the infallibility of the college of bishops is to
193 Cf. Leo XIII, Encyclical Salis cognitum, loc. cit., n. 610. 194 St. Leo, Sermon 4, for the anniversary of his consecration, 3; PL 54, 151152: "He prayed especially for the faith of Peter.... Therefore, it is in Peter that the faith of all is strengthened, and the help of divine grace is ordered in such a way that the strengthening given to Peter by Christ, Peter himself grants to the apostles. - Cf. Leo XIII, loc. cit, ibid., n. 589.
154 contrary a communicated infallibility, and comes to him from his union in the same magisterium with him who is his head in Jesus Christ. The infallibility of the vicar of Jesus Christ is a singular privilege, in that it is attached to his hierarchical person, who is unique. As the Vicar of Jesus Christ, he alone holds his place and speaks for him. The infallibility of the bishops, on the contrary, is a common good which belongs to the whole college, and which this college receives in the communion of its head195. Thus the infallibility of St. Peter is indeed, according to the very terms of the Gospel, an infallibility that confirms, and that of the bishops a confirmed infallibility. Both, however, are the effect of divine assistance, an assistance which makes the faith of Peter the principal faith, and his mouth the organ of Jesus Christ, an assistance which confirms the college of bishops in the truth through St. Peter and maintains it in the unity of the same faith. For as well, by the very fact that St. Peter confirms effectively effectively the faith of his brethren, it is necessary that effectively this faith be confirmed and unshaken. And so the word of Jesus Christ, "I have prayed that your faith may not fail... strengthen your brethren," has its full effect and in St. Peter confirming his brethren, and in all the bishops confirmed by him, to form in him and in them the one magisterium of the universal Church. The Church has therefore rightly rejected those doctrines which, in this common magisterium, made the infallibility of the Vicar of Jesus Christ depend on the adherence of the episcopate, as if the roles were reversed and that, contrary to the Gospel, he had to be confirmed by his brothers. It also rejected those who made him infallible as the organ of the Church, os Ecclesiae, because of the equivocation of the expres-
195 We understand under these two words of own and singular, taken from ecclesiastical antiquity, what has been intended to be expressed by the new and less exact terms of personal and separate infallibility. The term personal may make equivocation and be understood of the private person, while infallibility is read property of the hierarchical person; the term separate seems to suppose that the head may be separate from the members, while it should be expressed simply that he does not depend on the members and possesses infallibility singularly by himself, and without expecting it from their concurrence.
155 sion. St. Peter is indeed the organ of the Church, and he speaks for her auctoritatively, inasmuch as his faith contains and forms the faith of the Church, in the way that the ancient Adam spoke and acted for all mankind in his fall, and the new Adam speaks and acts for the new all mankind which he carries within him196. But he is not the organ of the Church and does not speak for it as a delegate who receives authority for his word from his constituents; in other words, he is not the ministerial organ of the Church.
Unity of hierarchical person
Thus all that we have said of the dignity of St. Peter shows us that he represents Jesus Christ so perfectly, that he makes so closely with the divine head of the Church one and the same hierarchical person, that tradition has been able, without hesitation, to speak of the one and the other as one and to say of St. Peter what seems to be appropriate only to Jesus Christ. In this it is the faithful echo of Holy Scripture, and it continues and develops "this mystery of the appellations given to St. Peter by Jesus Christ," says St. Leo, "to declare the close solidarity which unites them197; for 'he gave to Peter,' says St. Cyril again, 'and gave to him alone all the fullness of what belongs to himself198. Therefore tradition, through the word of the councils and the Fathers, calls him on every page the head of the Catholic Church199, the bishop of the Catholic Church200, the head of the bishops201, the source and origin
196 It is in this sense that the texts of the Fathers, where St. Peter is said to represent the universal Church, must be understood. Cf. St. AUGUSTIN, Sermon on St. John, 124, 5: PL 35, 1973: "This Church, in its generality, was personified in the apostle Peter, because of the primacy of dignity, with which he was clothed"; trans. PERONNE, vol. 10, p. 445. - J. PERRONNE, S. J., Praelectiones theologicae, De Romano Pontifice: "In receiving the keys, Peter represented the Church, as a father represents his children, a spring his rivers, a root his stems" (*). 197 St. Leo, Sermon 3 for the anniversary.... 3; PL 54, 146; see chap. 12, note 7. 198 St. CYRILIA OF ALEXANDRIA; see chap. 12, note 8. 199 St. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS, Homily 80 to the People (*). 200 Council of Chalcedon (451), HARDOUIN, 2, 15: "Leo, bishop of the Church.
156 of the episcopate202; and, to abbreviate, just as because of the mystery of hierarchical circumincession, where Christ is, there is the Church, so it has been said, "where Peter is, there is the Church"203.
Catholic." 201 St. Jerome, Contrary Jovinian (*). - TERTULLIAN, Treaty of Modesty, 1; PL 2, 1032-1033: "The Supreme Pontiff, who is the bishop of bishops." 202 See below, chapter 21, note 1. 203 St. AMBROISE, Commentary on Ps. 40, 30; PL 14, 1082; see above, p. 53.
157
CHAPTER XIV
Perpetuity of the vicar of Jesus Christ
Question of Law
If the institution of St. Peter is such that through him, and through him alone, Jesus Christ, the head of the Church, is made visible, that through him and in him alone the Church communicates with her head and receives from her head the truth and ecclesiastical communion, the authority of the magisterium and that of pastoral government, it is manifest that such an institution must endure as long as the Church, since the Church cannot be for a moment deprived of the communication of life which comes to her from her head204. If, then, the Church cannot for one day do without the manifested presence and outward and visible government of her divine Spouse, provision had to be made for the succession of St. Peter. Now, if this apostle, like most of his brothers, had died without an heir of his own and distinctly designated, his prerogative would have died with him. He had to be a bishop of a separate see, so that a bishop would be his successor distinctly, properly, and to the exclusion of all others. Bishops who have no see have successors only in the common mass, and their episcopacy returns to the whole body of the episcopate; but the bishop who has a see is the ring of a chain, because he is the head of a particular Church, and this quality, belonging to one only, cannot be merged in that common treasure of which it is said that each bishop is jointly and severally a part205. St. Peter will thus be, in God's purposes, the bishop of a particular Church. He will have heirs who, in perpetuity, will represent him
204 Cf. Leo XIII, Enc. Satis cognitum, loc. cit., n. 593. 205 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 5; PL 4, 501: "The episcopate is one, and every bishop has his share in it, without division at all"; see above, chap. 7, note 1.
158 will distinctly be to the exclusion of the other bishops. By this his prerogative will be forever transmissible and his person in a sense immortal.
The see of Rome (a matter of convenience)
God, in his designs, had from the origin of the world predestined the place where this pulpit of St. Peter and this Church of his episcopate were to keep the deposit of the sovereign government of souls. When his finger drew the contours of the continents and dug in the middle of the ancient world the vast basin of the inland sea which was to be the center of commerce and of the relations of all peoples, he had thrown into it, like an advanced promontory, the Italian peninsula. On these shores, in the center of the Mediterranean, were laid the foundations of the city of Rome, whose mysterious destiny was still hidden. Holding, by its geographical situation, the middle of the ancient world, it was still situated on the western side of Italy, and seemed to look at and call to itself those American continents which have become a new world today, and towards which the Strait of Kadesh opens. This mysterious situation of the city of Rome was still only a distant preparation. The providential movements by which the great empires succeeded one another, mixing in their revolutions the various peoples and civilizations, brought little by little the center of human affairs from the East to the West, until the moment when Rome, victorious over Europe, Asia and Africa, appeared on earth as the queen of the universe. The whole history of antiquity ended there; and, through this providential direction of human affairs, the divine purpose received its final and immediate preparation206. It was then that everything was ready in this city for the Christian religion to make it the capital of its peaceful empire. It was there that the Gospel had to be preached, in order to spread more easily
206 Cf. H. MAROT, O. S. B., in L'Épiscopat et l'Église universelle, Cerf, 1 Paris, 1962 (US, 39), pp. 568-574.
159 among all the nations already gathered in the government of a single state207. It was there that the victory of Christ was to be decisive, because it was there that all the idols of the peoples, all the sects of the philosophers, and all the currents of human error had come together. It was therefore to this Rome, dominator of the world and mistress of errors, that the apostle St. Peter208 came, it was there that he established his seat.
The Seats of Peter
Previously, had the leader of the apostles sat in Jerusalem and Antioch as a particular bishop of those churches? It is certain that from the earliest times St. James was established bishop of Jerusalem209, and it is for this reason that this Church, first-
207 St. LEON, Sermon 82, for the Feast of the Apostles, 2; PL 54, 423: "In order that the effects of this ineradicable grace might be spread throughout the world, divine Providence prepared the Roman Empire... And indeed it was perfectly suited to the order of the divine work that all the kingdoms should be assembled into one empire, and that a general preaching should quickly reach the peoples gathered together by the government of a single City. This great City, unaware of the author of its promotion, as it dominated almost all the nations, it was at the service of the errors of all the nations..." Cf. Pius XII, Allocution to the Newlyweds (January 17, 1940), in The Church (EP), n. 966. 208 St. Leo, ibid., 3 and 4; PL 54, 424: "As the twelve apostles... received the world to teach it the Gospel, and divided the earth among themselves, so blessed Peter, the prince of the apostolic college, is placed at the top of the Roman Empire, so that the light of truth, which was revealed for the salvation of all, might, with greater efficacy, spread from the head throughout the whole world body. Then what nation would not be in this City? And what people could ignore what Rome had taught? It was there that the opinions of the philosophers were to be hammered out, the vanities of earthly wisdom broken, the worship of demons confounded, the impiety of all sacrifices destroyed, even where the most careful superstition had gathered all that had hitherto been established by a variety of false religions. It was to this City, then, that you were not afraid to come, O blessed Apostle Peter..." Cf. Pius XII, Radio Message to the Universe (May 13, 1942), in The Church (EP), n. 999. 209 James, the "brother of the Lord" (Matt. 13:55), plays a leading role in the early Christian community in Jerusalem from the beginning of apostolic times (Acts 12:17; 15:13-21; 21:18-26; 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19; 2:9, 12). He governed the Church after the departure of Peter in the summer of 58 (Acts 12.17) until his martyrdom, around the year 62. - Cf. N. KULOMZIN in The Primacy of Peter in the Orthodox Church,
160 born among all the others, the first type of the particular Churches, was sometimes called the "mother of Churches"210. St. Peter, living in Jerusalem, exercised his supreme office there, but was not its own bishop. There is more difficulty about Antioch. St. Peter certainly resided in that city (Gal. 2:11-14), governing from there the nascent and already far-flung Church. And this residence of seven years211 is famous in the Church, which makes it the annual commemoration212. But what was its true character? Was St. Peter properly the bishop of Antioch213? Did he erect this see for himself, so much so that he made it by the episcopal title, which is of itself definitive, and by an institution which in essence is perpetual, the seat of the sovereign pontificate? And did he then have to dispossess this same Church of Antioch of its prerogative in order to transfer it to the Roman Church at the same time as he transferred himself to it?
Neuchâtel, Paris, 1960 (col. Bibliothèque orthodoxe), pp. 83-89. - Jean COLSON, L'Évêque dans les communautés primitives, Cerf, Paris, (US, 21), pp. 21-26; ID, Les Fonctions ecclésiales aux deux premiers siècles, Desclée de Brouwer, 1956 (col. Textes et Études théologiques), pp. 113-124. 210 JUSTIN I, Roman emperor (518-527), Letter to Pope Hormisdas; PL 63, 503: "Nevertheless, it is to her (the Church of Jerusalem) that all give their favor, as to the mother of the Christian name." - I Council of Constantinople (381), First Conciliar Letter, LAB 2, 965, MANSI 3, 587: "(The Church of Jerusalem) which is the mother of all others." - The expression is frequent in the Eastern liturgies, e.g., "For the glorious Zion, mother of all the churches." - "For the holy Zion, mother of all the churches," in RERAUDOT, Liturgiarum Orientalium Collectio, Frankfurt, 1847, vol. 2, pp. 94 and 128. 211 Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. DUCHESNE, Paris, 1886, vol. 1, p. 118. St. LEON, Sermon 3, for the anniversary....: "It was he (Peter) who founded the see of Antioch, which he occupied for seven years, though he had to leave it afterwards"; quoted by PIE IX, Encyclical Quartus supra (Jan. 6, 1873) to the Armenians; in L'Église (EP) B. 400. - St. GREGOIRE, Letter 40, to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria; PL 77, 899 (see below, p. 171). - Today no historical value is given to this tradition: cf. Angelo PENNA, Saint Peter, Alsatia, Paris, 1948, p. 247. 212 This feast of February 22 in honor of the See of St. Peter at Antioch has become simply "the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle" again, since the new Code of Rubrics (July 25, 1960). - Cf. PIERRE JOUNEL, in La Maison-Dieu, n. 63 bis (1961) 66. 213 Cf. A. PENNA, loc. cit, pp. 285-287.
161 We see great difficulties with this first hypothesis. On the one hand, the translations of bishops, always odious, do not seem to have been encouraged by so illustrious an example. The Church regards them as serious breaches of its discipline and admits them only by dispensation. Everywhere in antiquity they were rejected. But Rome especially rejected them with jealous care, and we know of the disturbances excited by the translation of Formosa, regarded as a fact without precedent until then214. St. Peter, according to tradition215, knew by revelation of his future and definitive establishment in Rome, and this divine guidance seemed to forbid him to accept an episcopal title which could only be provisional in its intention. But there is more, and St. Leo, always so exact, teaches that, from the beginning, and in the very division which had been made of the world to be evangelized among the apostles, St. Peter had taken for his personal share and for his destination the capital of the Roman empire-
214 Formosa (c. 816-896), bishop of Porto, was sent in 866 by Pope St. Nicholas I (858-867) as a missionary to Bulgaria. King Boris "sent word to Rome that he greatly desired Formosa as archbishop of Bulgaria. He was refused outright, because of the old rule that forbade the transfer of a bishop from one see to another. Formosa had to return to Porto towards the end of 867"; P. VIARD, art. FORMOSIS, in Catholicism, vol. 4 (1956), col. 1452. Cf. HÉFÉLÉ 4, 435-443. A few years later, Formosius became pope (891-896). 215 We read in ancient Greek Acts in which the traditions of the Churches founded by St. Peter and his disciples are carefully collected: "The Lord appeared to him at night in a dream: 'Arise, Peter,' he said, 'take hold of the West; for it needs you, who carry forward the torch of light; and I will be with you'"; BOLLANDIST, Acta Sanctorum, De SS. Petro et Paulo, c. 2, vol. 27, p. 277. - St. Leo seems to allude to this tradition when he shows us St. Peter warned in advance of the success of his labors in Rome, and of the end of his career: Sermon 82, for the feast of the apostles, B. 5; PL 54, 425: "Not doubting the success of your enterprise and not unaware of the duration of your life, you carried the torch of the Cross of Christ to the Citadel of Rome where, in the divine decrees, the honor of power and the glory of martyrdom had preceded you." For St. GREGOIRE, St. Peter sat in Antioch only "on his way" (to Rome): Letter 40, to Eulogius; PL 77, 899. - SAINT INNOCENT I (402-417) teaches that the Church of Antioch, though the first See or residence of the first apostle, had to yield to that of Rome, because it had "only in passing" what was -received and consummated" in the Church of Rome; Letter 24, to Alexander of Antioch, 1; PL 20, 548.
162 main216. By this he reduces all the previous sojourns which St. Peter made in various places, in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Asia, to being only the glorious stages of an apostolic journey whose end was fixed beforehand in his mind before God, and publicly before the college of his brethren and the nascent Church. Committed in advance and already engaged, so to speak, to the Church of Rome, could he enter into the commitments of a titular bishop with other churches? Was the precarious nature of these transitory stays compatible with bonds that were lasting and perpetual in nature? On the other hand, we find it no less difficult to admit that the erection of the Holy See was not essentially irrevocable itself and did not appear at first with this character. St. Peter, it seems to us, did not have to strip the Church of Antioch of its prerogative once conferred in order to give it to that of Rome; just as his successors, whatever the revolutions of the world may be, will never strip this see in favor of another Church. Do the popes even have this power? And if they do not have it, at least according to the most constant doctrine, to say nothing more, is it appropriate to give to St. Peter a power which they have not inherited? The Church of Antioch was celebrated no doubt as "founded"217 by St. Peter and him before the institution of his patriarchate; but no text has ever alluded to his forfeiture of the sovereign pontificate, attached first by institution to his see, and then taken away from that see by an express revocation of the former provision. In a second hypothesis, St. Peter, bishop of Antioch, would have established there only the episcopate and the patriarchate of the East, reserving for Rome, where the divine voice already called him, the honor of the sovereign pontificate. In this system, which at first sight seems more convenient, not to mention the unfavorable presumptions against the episcopal transfer of St. Peter, which remain in full force, a greater difficulty presents itself to the mind. Can it be that the true seat of the episcopate
216 St. Leo, Sermon 82, 3; PL 54, 424; cf. above, note 5. 217 ID., ibid., PL 54, 425: "Thou hadst already founded Churches in Antioch, where the dignity of the Christian name first sprang up."
163 of St. Peter was not at the same time the seat of the sovereign pontificate? Could these two qualities even be separated? And let no one allege the example of popes retaining, along with the sovereign pontificate, the title of an episcopal see: St. Leo IX (10491054) was thus able to keep the see of Toul while occupying that of Rome, a simple bishop in Toul, while he was Supreme Pontiff in Rome218. For, in the case of this cumulation, the Supreme Pontiff retains, together with the see and succession of St. Peter, the distinct inheritance of another ancestor and another episcopate, an inheritance which is not that of St. Peter and does not merge with it. But we are talking about the episcopal see of St. Peter himself. Does not this see indivisibly carry with it, by the very nature of things and the force of the divine institution, the sovereign pontificate? Finally, in a third hypothesis, Saint Peter would have founded the see of Antioch, but would not have occupied it in the strict sense of the term. He was traveling throughout the East, exercising the apostolic mission without attaching it by a permanent title to any place, and he had not yet taken the title and the responsibility of any particular flock. He reserved for the Roman Church the honor of being his only spouse, the Church of his episcopate and, consequently, of his sovereign pontificate. This honor was to belong to her, not by translation, but by first institution. Without deciding absolutely the question, which has been little studied up to now, and which we refer to the examination of the learned, we incline to believe that it was so. The texts of antiquity which can be opposed to this system do not seem to us to be peremptory. According to the most considerable ones, St. Peter "founded"219 the see of Antioch rather than is said to have occupied and then abandoned it. In accordance with the old language, St. Peter's residence and his apostolic labors at Antioch were easily expressed as episcopate; consequently, his labors exercised in behalf of this people were not distinguished from the episcopate of this Church, nor were they obliged to so exact a precision. We
218 Cf. HEFEL 4, 1002. 219 St. Leo, Sermon 82, esp. n. 5; PL 54, 422-428; cf. ID, Letter 119, to Maximus, bishop of Antioch, 2; PL 54, 1042.
164 know that in the early days the term episcopate was susceptible of a broad meaning and signified the government of souls, without necessarily carrying with it the idea of the strictly understood episcopal title. St. Peter, moreover, Sovereign Pontiff, had and exercised in all the Churches, without taking the particular titles, the immediate authority, that is, the episcopate proper, as defined by the first Vatican Council220. He exercised this immediate authority in Jerusalem, as the book of Acts shows, ordaining there, at the head of the other apostles, the deacons of that Church, and condemning there Ananias and Sapphira, without prejudice to the episcopacy of St. James (Acts 6:6; 5:1-10). Also an ancient text speaks in the same terms of St. Peter's residence at Antioch and his residence at Jerusalem, and does not distinguish the nature of these two residences221. As for the terms sedere, praesidere, sedem or cathedram tenere, occupare, these terms can very naturally be understood as referring to mere residence. Nowadays it is common to speak of the translation of the Holy See to Avignon, without this expression, which is much less accurate, meaning that the Holy See ceased to be the see of Rome and became the see of Avignon. Why require a more rigorous exactitude in the so rare and so short monuments of the high antiquity? On the other hand, we know that St. Peter himself ordained St. Evodius titular bishop of Antioch, during his stay in that city222. Finally, it is the custom of the ancients to place at the head of the diptychs of the Churches the apostles or apostolic men who founded them
220 See above, chap. 9, note 17. 221 Martyrology of the Church of St. Gudite, in Brussels, in BOLLANDIST, Acta Sanctorum, to Feb. 22, t. 6, p. 287: "After the ascension of Christ, Peter occupied the priestly chair in the Eastern countries (Jerusalem) for four years; then he came to Antioch and, after driving out Simon the Magician, established his pontifical chair there, which he held for seven years. At the end of this period, in order to triumph over Simon the Magician, he came to Rome, and there he ruled the Roman Church with dignity for 25 years, 7 months, 8 days." 222 Roman Martyrology, at May 6: "Antioch, St. Evodius: as Blessed Ignatius wrote to the Antiochians, the first bishop of that city, ordained by St. Peter the Apostle, he ended his life with a glorious martyrdom. - For the pseudoletter of St. Ignatius of Antioch to his diocesans, cf. FUNK, Patres Apostolici, Tubingue, 1901, vol. 2, p. 169.
165 by their preaching, even though they were not actual titular bishops223. There are several ex examples of this, some of which are illustrious. The see of Antioch is indeed, in this sense, the see of St. Peter, as the see of Rome is called the see of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, of St. Paul jointly with St. Peter, although St. Paul did not occupy it and was not its titular bishop, as we shall soon say, since the title is not shared, but because St. Paul evangelized the Romans and worked, by his apostolate, for the establishment of that august mistress of the Churches. The see of Antioch, in this system which seems to us the most probable, is said to be the see of Saint Peter in the broad sense in which that of Rome is attributed to Saint Paul. The precedence of the patriarchal see of Alexandria over that of Antioch, inexplicable if the see of Antioch is properly the see of St. Peter, does not offer any difficulty, as soon as these two sees have both for first holders two disciples of the prince of the apostles. Whatever one's opinion may be on this particular point, it is a great spectacle that of Saint Peter slowly making his way through the preparatory work and the conquests of his apostolate towards the last and most noble of these conquests. He thus advances in the midst of the peoples he converts on his triumphal road, to this Rome, capital of the world, whose eternal empire he will make by giving it to Jesus Christ his Master, where he will establish the immortal throne of his sovereign pontificate. Bossuet says: "He first established the Church of Jerusalem for the Jews, to whom the kingdom of God was first to be announced, in order to honor the faith of their fathers, to whom God had made the promises. The same Saint Peter having established it, leaves Jerusalem to
223 Eusebius, quoting St. Irenaeus, makes St. John sit at the head of the Church of Ephesus, without thinking of contradicting himself, after having said above that St. Timothy was the first bishop of that city: "It is reported that Timothy first obtained the episcopate of the Church of Ephesus." - "But the Church of Ephesus, founded by Paul and where John remained until the times of Trajan..."; Ecclesiastical History, 1. 3, c. 4, 5 and (20) c. 23, 4; PG 20, 219 and 258; trans. G. BARDY, (SC, 31), pp. 101 and 126. - For the text of St. Irenaeus, see IRENEUS OF LYON, Contre les hérésies, book 3, ed. F. SAGNARD, O. P., (SC, 34), p. 115 (1. 3, c. 3, n. 4).
166 go to Rome, in order to honor the predestination of God, who preferred the Gentiles to the Jews, in the grace of his Gospel, and he established Rome, which was the head of the Gentiles, the head of the Christian Church... so that this same city, under whose empire so many peoples and so many different monarchies were united, would be the seat of the spiritual empire that would unite all peoples, from the east to the west, under the obedience of Jesus Christ, and that it would be the servant of Jesus Christ. . and the mother of all his children by her faithful servitude; for, together with the truth of the Gospel, St. Peter brought to this Church the prerogative of her apostolate, that is, the proclamation of the faith and the authority of discipline."224. After all these glorious labors, then, St. Peter established his seat and his sovereign pontificate in Rome.
Unity of Ruler
However, the enemies of his prerogative sought to abuse against it the help that St. Peter received from his brother in the apostolate, St. Paul. They have claimed that the two apostles were founders, in equal measure, of the Church of Rome, and that they were both simultaneously its titular bishops, both its hierarchical heads. Thus the see of Rome is no longer the sole see of St. Peter, and its prerogatives, coming from its double origin, are not simply that principate which our Lord gave to St. Peter and which he could not share. But the Church of Rome was established when St. Paul came to it to be its eternal ornament by his doctrine and martyrdom; he did not
224 BOSSUET, Letter 4 to a damsel of Metz, n. 38, loc. cit., p. 29. On St. Peter's stay in Rome, see among others: M. VILLAIN-JPH DE BACIOCCHI, La vocation de l'Église, Pion, Paris, 1954 (col. Credo), pp. 177-179; J. CARCOPINO, Etudes d'histoire chrétienne: les fouilles de Saint-Pierre, Albin Michel, Paris, 1953, pp. 95-270; J. CARCOPINO - H.I. MARROU, Les fouilles du Vatican, in DACL, art. Vatican, vol. 15 (1953), col. 3291-3346; Oscar CULLMANN, Saint Peter, disciple, apostle, martyr, Delachaux et Niestlé, 1952 (Biblioth. théologique), pp. 61137; PIE XII, Allocution of September 7, 1955, in L'Église (EP), vol. 2, n. 1409.
167 founded the see. Desiring to visit this Church "whose faith was published throughout the world" (Rom. 1:8), as the chief faith in which all the churches were to participate, he announces in his epistle to the Romans the purpose of coming to edify them and himself before passing beyond them. He even notes that God has not called him to be the permanent shepherd of a flock, but to sow the Gospel throughout the world: "Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the Gospel" (1 Cor. 1:17); and for this reason he no longer finds a place for himself in the regions he has already traveled through and where the churches are established (cf. Rom. 15:20-23). Thus the Church of Rome will not owe him its existence, since it is already established. He will not occupy its pulpit, since that pulpit is not vacant. But he will sanctify it by his presence, by his works, by his captivity, by his confession, by his tomb. It is God's plan that the most important of preachers should bring to the main pulpit all the authority given to him by the Holy Spirit, and that no other Church than the Roman Church should be proud to have inherited his glory. It was also the prerogative of St. Paul's apostolate, in serving in so conspicuous a manner the universal Church, to belong, by the bond of the more special and final employment of the labors of his life and by the sacred bond of martyrdom, to no other particular Church than to the Church queen and mistress of all others225. Thus St. Peter has a successor in the bishop of Rome. This bishop is not only the head of this particular Church, but he
225 The doctrine of the "two heads" was supported by Mark Antony de Dominis, Richer; Barcos and some others. The Roman Pontiffs repeatedly condemned it. Innocent X noted it as heresy: Decree of 1647, in MIRBT, Quellen zur Geschichte des Papsttums, Tubingen, 1934, pp. 381-382, Den. In the same way, the following proposition is explained: "St. Peter and St. Paul are the two princes of the Church, who are one"; or again, "They are the two coryphae of the Catholic Church and its supreme leaders joined together by an eminent unity"; or again, "they are the twofold summit of the universal Church, who have gathered it into one most divine being"; or again, "they are the two supreme pastors and presidents of the Church, who constitute one single head". This proposition thus explained, which establishes an equality of every kind between St. Peter and St. Paul, without subordination or submission of St. Paul to St. Peter, in the supreme power and government of the universal Church, the Supreme Pontiff has judged and declared it heretical."
168 finds in this particular Church the inheritance of the first shepherd who occupied it, that is, the perpetual office of being the vicar of Jesus Christ. St. Peter thus has successors in whom he lives again and again.
169 CHAPTER XV
The Church of Rome
The Roman presbytery
If the Church of Rome keeps in trust the prerogative of the vicar of Jesus Christ, as we have established, it is because there is between the bishop and his Church a mysterious and indissoluble community. The particular Church is the body and fullness of its bishop, just as the universal Church is the body and fullness of Christ (Eph 1:23). By this the bishop communicates to his Church his honor and his rights. He ennobles her and raises her up as much as he himself is raised up in the midst of his brothers by the prerogatives he has received. In turn, the Church gives to the bishop who is sent to her, with the title of succession, everything that is inseparable. We shall have to treat more fully of these relations of the bishop to his Church in the fourth part of this work226. Let us content ourselves with saying here that these relations boil down to three heads: first, the counsel and assistance which the bishop finds in his presbytery; second, the charge which devolves upon this senate to substitute for the deceased or absent bishop; and finally, the ordinary mission of designating to the superior the person of the pontiff who is to occupy the vacant see. The presbytery of the Roman Church is, as can be seen, singularly elevated in these three functions by the dignity of the sovereign pontificate. If this presbytery assists its bishop in his government, it has a share in the government of the world; if it replaces him during the vacancy of the see, it upholds before the whole world the weight of the prerogatives of St. Peter; finally, if it chooses the one who will be the bishop of Rome, it designates the person of the head of the universal Church to the investiture of the supreme jurisdiction, which comes immediately from God himself. It would be interesting to follow through the centuries, alongside the ac-
226 See below, chapter 29.
170 tion of the Sovereign Pontiff, the history of the Roman presbytery. We would see it from age to age always similar to itself in substance, "poor and venerable senate of Christ"227, in the early centuries becoming that imposing and royal council which today is called the Sacred College of Cardinals. Let us simply say that in the course of time, and with certain oscillations in discipline, the prerogatives radically common to the whole Roman presbytery were finally exercised only by the principal members acting in the name of the whole Roman Church. These principal members, to whom the name of cardinals has been reserved, are : the ancient dignitaries or hebdomadarians of the Lateran Church, bishops of the suburbicarian sees, formerly seven in number, later reduced to six, cardinal-bishops and first members of the Sacred College by the bond which originally united them to the Cathedral Church of Rome, and which continues to attach them singularly to the Roman Church as the first dignitaries of that Church; the cardinal-priests of the fifty presbyteral titles, and the fourteen cardinal-deacons of the fourteen deaconries. The cardinal-bishops, though titulars of episcopal Churches other than that of Rome, formed part of the clergy of the Roman Church as weekly or cardinals of the Lateran Basilica; they may be regarded as representing by this origin the particular college of that basilica, the first in dignity and the cathedral of the Roman Church228. The other patriarchal basilicas also had
227 St. Pius I (between 140-150), Letter 1, to Just, Bishop of Vienna, MANSI 1, 678: "The poor senate of Christ established in Rome greets you." Cf. A. MOLIEN, art. Cardinal, in SDC, vol. 2 (1937), col. 1310-1339; G. MARSOT and A. BRIDE, art. Cardinal in Catholicism, t. 2 (1950), col. 535-542. 228 St. PIERRE DAMIEN, Letter 1, to the cardinal-bishops; PL 144, 255: "The Lateran Church, placed under the vocable of the Savior, who is unquestionably the head of all the elect, is thus the mother and as it were the point and summit of all the Churches throughout the world. It has seven cardinal-bishops, to whom alone, after the Pope, it is permitted to have access to its altar and to celebrate there the mysteries of divine worship." - JOHN DIACRE, Book on the Lateran Church, 8; PL 78, 1385, quotes an Old Roman Ritual: "She has seven cardinal-bishops, who are called 'collateral bishops,' because they perform the functions of pontiff there each week in turn."
171 their weekly cardinals whose institution has disappeared229. The number of priestly titles has varied with the centuries: there were even once several cardinals in the same title, this name not yet being exclusively reserved for the first titular priest of each of the basilicas or partial colleges that belong to the one Roman Church230.
Finally, the cardinal-deacons were originally seven in number, a mystical number and original to their order, prepossessed to seven regions or districts of Rome. Today these seven regions have given way to fourteen diaconates, oratories or diaconal basilicas. Because of the bond that ties the Roman presbytery to the sovereign pontificate, at the time when the cardinals, leaving the care of local or inferior ministries to the rest of the clergy of Rome, reserved exclusively for themselves the care that concerns the universal Church and the charge of assisting the Sovereign Pontiff in the exercise of his supreme authority, they were attributed precedence of honor over all the bishops of the world, considering them only in the unity that they have with the vicar of Jesus Christ.
Assists the Supreme Pontiff
The assistance which the Roman presbytery owes to the Roman Pontiff in the exercise of his authority is, as we have said, its primary function. This assistance, which extends to the government of all the Churches, appears from the highest antiquity. It was especially manifested in the holding of the Roman councils, at which the members of
229 Pierre MALLÉ, Book to Alexander III, XI, 31; 4. PL 78, 1059: "The seven cardinal priests, who must celebrate Mass every week at the sacred altar of Blessed Peter, are those of St. Mary of Transterevere, St. Chrysogonus... ; the cardinals of St. Paul's are those of Saints Nerea and Achilles, of St. Sixtus...; the cardinals of St. Mary Major are those of the Holy Apostles, of St. Cyriacus...; the cardinals of St. Lawrence-beyond-the-Walls are those of St. Praxedo, of St. Peter-the-Links. 230 At the Council held by Pope St. Symmachus in 499, subscribed two cardinal priests of St. Ludens, three of the title of St. Sabina, two of St. Susanna, two of St. Anastasia, three of the Holy Apostles, three of St. Martin of the title of Equitius, etc.... LABBE 4, 1313; MANSI 8, 231.
172 this presbytery take part as assessors of the Supreme Pontiff, and of which they often formed the greater part. Later the assembly of cardinals or consistory was held under the presidency of the Pope several times a week, and heard the affairs of the whole world. Pope Sixtus V (1585-1590), in order to facilitate its expedition, divided the Sacred College into Commissions or Congregations, to each of which were attached as consultors theologians and canonists231. The consistory now meets only for considerable matters. The Congregations are, or permanent, such as those of the Council, of Rites, of Propaganda, or special and temporary, that is, created extraordinarily for the examination of a single matter.
Supplied the Sovereign Pontiff
In the second place, not only does the presbytery assist the pontiff, but in virtue of this very assistance it is called upon to deputize him in case of his absence, that is, when he cannot provide either by himself or by his legates or vicars for the duty of his office. Thus the Roman presbytery administered the Holy See during the captivity of Pope St. Martin (653-655)232. This power which the presbytery exercises in the absence of the pontiff extends to the vacancy of the see and finds even its most ordinary application there. Indeed, the vacancy of a see is, in truth, only a temporary absence of the pontiff. The authority of the bishop reappears in his successors, and St. Peter lives again and speaks in the heir to his chair. In this case, the authority of the Roman presbytery is that of the apostolic pulpit, but reduced to keeping a purely conserva-
231 Cf. R. NAZ, art. Roman Congregations, in SDC, vol. 4 (1949), col. 206-225; A. BRIDE, id, in Catholicism, vol. 3 (1952), col. 21-28. 232 St. MARTIN I (649-653), Letter 15, to Theodore; PL 87, 201; see below, note 14. Cf. BARONIUS, Ecclesiastical Annals, an. 652, n. 11, t. 11, p. 439. - HEFELE 3, 455-460.
173 toire. This is because the presbytery never, strictly speaking, succeeds to the jurisdiction of the bishop; but, because of its title of helper, assistant, and cooperator of the bishop, it supplements him during that absence which death causes and until it reappears in his successor, acting in the name of the authority of his see without innovating anything233, and only keeping all things in order, i.e., acting under a presumption based on the acts of authority already performed and the absolute necessities of government. From the beginning, the Roman presbytery, during the vacancy of the See, was consulted by the various Churches of the world and made decisions, confining itself to the circle of action we have just indicated. It was necessary, according to St. Cyprian234, to report to the college of Roman priests and deacons all the affairs of the provinces, and this college, in the vacancy of the Holy See, asserts that it has the charge of watching over the whole body of the universal Church235. It is his duty to guard the whole flock in place of the shepherd, for the Roman Church exercises sovereign solicitude over all who call upon the name of the Lord236. We have a vivid example of this in the letters of the Roman clergy-
233 Modern law has well preserved this principle: cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 438, § 3 and can. 436: "During the vacancy of the Holy See, no innovation." 234 St. CYPRIAN, Letter 29, to the priests and deacons of Rome; PL 4, 302: "Our mutual friendship and reason itself demand of us, dearest brethren, that there be nothing which we do not bring to your knowledge of what is done here"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit., vol. 1, p. 88 (Letter 35). ת St. Cyprian, during the vacancy of the Holy See, addresses all his letters "to the priests and deacons residing in Rome , Letters 14, 22, 29; PL 24, 262, 282, 302; Cf. BAYARD, pp. 53, 64, 88 (Letters 20, 27, 35). 235 ID., Letter 30, 1 and 4; PL 4, 303 and 307 To Pope Cyprian, the priests and deacons living in Rome, greetings... It is fitting that we all watch over the whole body of the Church, whose members are scattered in the various provinces"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit. at 89, 92 (Letter 36). 236 ID, Letter 2, 3 (from the clergy of Rome); PL 4, 228: "The brethren who are in irons greet you, as well as the priests and the whole Church, which itself watches over all those who call upon the name of the Lord with the greatest care"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit. at 21 (Letter 8).
174 hand to the bishop and the Church of Carthage concerning the penitents237. Again, mention is made in these letters of the replies sent by the clergy of Rome to the Churches of Sicily, and, while replying to the bishop of Carthage, the Roman presbytery is careful to warn him that the Roman Church cannot give definitive decisions or innovate anything, because the See has become vacant by the martyrdom of St. Fabian and that this pontiff has not yet received a successor238. In later times, the administration of the vacant See in Rome was pretty much entirely handed over, on behalf of the entire clergy, into the hands of the heads of orders, i.e., the archpriest, the archdeacon, and the primicier239. Then the authority of the Sacred College, the vacant see, while retaining the substance of the discipline, underwent in the exercise of other modifications which it is not our purpose to describe here.
Elects the Supreme Pontiff
237 ID., Letters 2, 30, 31; PL 4, 224-228, 303-307, 307-315; Cf. BAYARD, loc. cit., pp. 19-21, 89-92, 71-77 (Letters 8, 36, 30). 238 ID., Letter 31, 5 and 7; PL 4, 312 and 314-315; "You will have before you a copy of the letter which we also sent to Sicily. For us, however, the necessity is more imperative to postpone the thing, since, since the death of Fabianus, of very illustrious memory, the difficulties of circumstances have prevented us from having a bishop, who directs all these affairs and who can deal with the lapsi with authority and wisdom... We thought that nothing new should be done until a bishop was elected. We thought it proper to hold, with regard to the lapsi a middle course of action: while waiting for God to give us a bishop, to leave in abeyance the causes of those who can wait"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit., pp. 74-77 (Letter 30). 239 Diurnal, c. 2, tit. 1; PL 105, 27: "(The Holy See being vacant), Such an archpriest, Such an archdeacon, Such a primicier of notaries, holding the place of the Holy See." - During the vacancy that preceded the accession of Pope John IV (12431254), the Roman Church sent instructions to the Irish bishops on the celebration of Easter. The letter bears the suscriptions of the archpriest Hilary, the archdeacon, the future John IV himself, already elected, but not yet consecrated, and the primitivist: "To the most dear and holy Tomianus..., Hilary, archpriest, and holding the place of the Holy Apostolic See". Cf. Benedict, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 2, c. 19; PL 95, 113. - Pope St. Martin I already wrote: "In the absence of the (Roman) Pontiff, the archdeacon, the archpriest, and the primate (of notaries) are the representatives of the Pontiff"; Letter 15, to Theodore; PL 87, 201; cf. HEFEL 3, 460.
175 As for the election of the Roman Pontiff, it belongs so exclusively to the Roman Church, that no power, no assembly, no council, not even an ecumenical one, could substitute for it. The chosen one of the Roman Church alone is the heir of Saint Peter, because the Roman Church alone is the seat of Saint Peter, in whom reside his succession and all his prerogatives. The elect of any other assembly has no claim to it, because he is a stranger to it and receives nothing from it240. The forms of election underwent for the Roman Church modifications analogous to those which, in the course of the ages, the right of election underwent within the other churches. In the early days, the whole Roman Church assembled for the election, and the people themselves took part in it by their prayers and acclamations. Later, the election was made by the principal clergy and acclaimed by the rest of the clergy. Finally, the Sacred College of Cardinals, in whom reside, as in its principal part, all the rights of the Roman Church, exercised exclusively this so formidable office, as it also reserved to itself the exercise of the other prerogatives of the Roman presbytery. A similar movement of discipline in the other Churches had, moreover, gradually brought the election back into the hands of the principal clerics, that is to say, the canons or principal holders of the Cathedral Church, with whom, as we shall see later, the ancient cardinals of the titles of the episcopal cities were often confused. From the end of the thirteenth century, a special discipline, which was developed little by little by apostolic decrees, regulated in the Roman Church the holding of conclaves and the form of suffrages. According to this discipline, election is by suffrage, acclamation, compromise or accession. As for the passive election, the Roman Church is mistress souve-
240 In the election of Martin V (1417) a number of bishops designated by the Council of Constance competed; but the consent of the cardinals intervened, and it was this consent which made the election strong and legitimate. Cf. BARONIUS, loc. cit., an. 1417, n. 2, vol. 27, p. 460.
176 raine of his choice. For, although by common law priests and deacons, and, since Innocent III, subdeacons, are alone eligible to the episcopate, the sovereignty of the Roman Church carries with the designation of the subject the dispensation from canonical disabilities. Therefore, there is no need to distinguish here, as in other canonical elections, between the election proper and the postulancy. The Sacred College can elect a bishop who is already attached to another see; and, even though antiquity blamed the election of Pope Formosus, (which, it was said, was the first time he had appeared on the see of St. Peter, a derogation from the prohibitive rule of translations, this election was not invalid. The Sacred College, for the same reason, can elect a cleric still in minor orders and even a simple faithful241. But we must not, from this sovereign power of the Sacred College of Cardinals in election, conclude that this College properly confers jurisdiction on the pontiff, in the manner of the superior who institutes the inferior. Every mission in the Church comes from above; God has sent his Christ; Christ sends the bishops, the bishop sends the ministers of the particular Church. This is the basis of what is called institution in canon law. The bishop, as we shall see, institutes his priests; the Supreme Pontiff, taking the place of Jesus Christ, institutes the bishops. God alone can institute the Supreme Pontiff; Jesus Christ alone can invest his vicar with his formidable authority. The proper function of election in the Church is only the designation and presentation of the person to the superior; it does not in itself confer any authority on the one elected: all authority comes from the superior who
241 Ceremonial of the Holy Roman Church, sectio 2, cap. 1, Venetiis, 1582, 6: "Moreover, if the one elected to the Roman Pontificate was not clothed in Holy Orders, as was the case with the monk Peter of Morone" (who became Celestine V). - The Constitution of St. Pius X, Vacante Sede Apostolica (1914), cap. 7, n. 90, and the Constitution of Pius XII, Vacantis Apostolicae Sedis (1945), tit. 2, cap. 7, n. 107, likewise say, "If the one elected is not yet a priest or a bishop, he is to be ordained and consecrated by the dean of the college of cardinals." Cf. A. MOLIEN, art. Conclave, in SDC, vol. 3 (1942), col. 1319-1342; M. NOIROT, art. Conclave, in Catholicism, t. 2 (1950), col. 14481451.
177 gives the institution. Election does not even absolutely bind this one, at least in its essence, and that is why positive law can remove it in the lower degrees. The Roman Church is the only one that cannot be stripped of the right to elect, and the only one also whose election cannot be broken, because it alone has no superior here below. But this election does not change its character; it remains what it is in essence, a simple designation of the subject, and it cannot give the latter the mission and the institution. It is here that the divine action itself intervenes directly and necessarily. The chosen one of the Roman Church is invisibly instituted by God himself, at the moment when he consents to the election. And let it not be said that this divine institution is in some way forced and coerced, because God has not established any external sign of the free and sovereign acceptance that he makes of the chosen one. Always free to reject him and always master of the final decision, as befits the supreme power, master of life and death, master of minds and hearts, he has in his almighty Providence certain means of conducting things as he pleases, and he does not need to declare himself afterwards in order to ensure his independence and sovereignty, as do the superiors among men. It is here that the divine knot is hidden, so to speak, which links the entire hierarchy at its summit to the authority and action of God himself, and which unites the earthly and visible leadership of the Church to this heavenly and invisible government. In the future, authority will spread throughout the body of the Church through the visible channels of the hierarchy; but at the top, this authority must come from the invisible depths of God. This is the great and principal mystery of the hierarchical life of the Church. In order that authority may be divine in it, it is necessary that beyond all the communications of it in the various parts, and into which it ceaselessly and everywhere passes through the hands of men, there should be a single and supreme point into which God himself immediately introduces it, and from which it pours forth as from a
178 inexhaustible and incorruptible source to the very ends. It is at this single point that heaven and earth, the visible and the invisible, God and humanity, meet and unite242. Now, this united point on which all the visible missions and institutions of the hierarchy will depend is certainly the invisible mission and institution of the Supreme Pontiff, vicar of Jesus Christ and head of the hierarchy. It is enough, in fact, that this head should receive directly from God what he is going to communicate below him, so that everywhere thereafter authority is divine in its essence. But if he were not himself divinely instituted, the whole hierarchy would be thrown into a sort of vicious circle; the channels, reduced to borrowing from one another what they no longer receive from this source, would dry up, and one would no longer know where to look to find the first origin of ecclesiastical power, and, consequently, to ensure the legitimacy of all particular communications and derivations. This is the confusion to which the Greeks and the partisans of the national Churches have been reduced, because they wanted to make the institution of supreme authority in the Church depend on an ecclesiastical establishment and on human law. Freed from this darkness and in the full light of truth, the Catholic Church rests on the clearly declared divine mission. This mission comes invisibly, but authentically, to the vicar of Jesus Christ, the head of the hierarchy, and then descends visibly through all the degrees to the most distant members of the body of pastors and ministers. Thus, in the election of the Supreme Pontiff, a divine and mysterious work is accomplished. The election is visible, the mission which follows it, invisible. Men appear in the election, but God alone carries out the institution. The illustrious successor of St. Francis de Sales establishes this important doctrine: "Do not be deceived," he says, "power in the Holy Church comes from above and has no other source. It is not the princes of the Sacred College who communicate
242 Roman Missal, Exsultet: "Night when heaven unites with earth, and God unites with man."
179 to the chosen one the fullness of authority; Jesus Christ alone confers it on his vicar." The chosen pontiff learns from the mouths of his brethren the designs of God for him, and, as soon as he accepts them, he is invested by a divine operation with immediate, episcopal and ordinary jurisdiction over the whole Church. Thus, on the day of the Incarnation, the divine omnipotence waited for the consent of the Immaculate Virgin to bow down to her and give her the honor of divine motherhood, at the very moment when, instructed by the angel of the mystery that was about to be accomplished, she pronounced these words: Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum. The chosen one, too, pronounces this mysterious fiat; without delay the cardinals bow before his pontifical dignity "243, because'they do not see in him their creature, but the man whom God himself has named with a new name (Is 62. 2), as St. Peter once did (Jn. 1:42), and because they recognize that the authority of the Pontiff does not emanate from them, but that, coming immediately from God, it extends unreservedly over those very people who have elected him as well as over the whole Church and every human creature.
243 Bishop D'HÉBRON, vicar apostolic of Geneva, Letter to his clergy, on the election of Leo XIII.
180 CHAPTER XVI
Communication of the principate of St. Peter
.
From the will of the see of Peter
St. Peter, vicar of Jesus Christ, is the unique head and universal monarch of the Catholic Church. He is above the episcopate, because he holds the place and exercises the power of the prince of bishops. All the bishops bow under his pastoral and sovereign scepter; but, in the fullness of their priesthood and in the sublimity of their order, they recognize no other authority above them than his, which is that of Jesus Christ himself. It follows that, in themselves, they are all equal under this unique sovereignty. The vicar of Jesus Christ alone can therefore establish distinctions and order in their college, because, being alone in possession of an authority superior to theirs, he can raise some of the members of this college above the others, by communicating to them, in the measure that it pleases him to determine, some part of his principate. From the beginning, he has used this power, and has thus given the constitution of the universal Church all its perfection. It is easy to see, in fact, that the government of this immense empire of souls cannot be usefully exercised, if all the pastors of the whole world form only a confused multitude under their unique head. It is greatly to be desired that this head should distribute his action through intermediaries who are his helpers and lieutenants, called by himself, not to the fullness of power, but to a share in solicitude."244. Thus the vicar of Jesus Christ causes rays of his primacy to fall on some of his brethren, and raises them above the other bishops, only in so far as they are like images of him-
244 St. Leo, Letter 14, to Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica, 1; PL 54, 671: "We have entrusted Our offices to Your Charity that You may be called, not to the fullness of Our power, but to a share in Our solicitude.
181 same and others himself and that they represent Him in the measure of superior power which He imparts to them. The episcopate is distributed, by this wise arrangement, into regions and provinces under the local chiefs who are assigned to it; everything is wisely ordered there, and the great number makes no confusion. Moreover, it is fitting for the mystery of the Church that each of its parts should reproduce, as if in small and abbreviated form, the economy and the figure of the whole body. Let us allow St. Leo to speak: "All the apostles are equal," he says, "and it was given to St. Peter alone to preside over all the others. It is the form of Peter, (forma Petri), which is thus imprinted on the whole Church." Now, continues this holy doctor, "it is from this 'first form of the universal Church' that the distinction of the bishops is derived; and, by a wise and great regulation, it has been established that all shall not be confusedly abandoned to all, but that, on the contrary, in every province a distinct bishop shall have the first authority, and that similarly, in the larger cities, others shall receive a more extensive solicitude, so that being as the bond of the world, they may bring together all the care of the universal Church towards the one chair of Peter, and that no member of this great body may ever in any way be separated from its head."245. Such is the substance and foundation of the institution of great sees and metropolises. The bishops who occupy them receive all that they are above their brethren, not from the episcopate, but from St. Peter himself. The bishop of Jerusalem, the successor of an apostle, had in ancient times no superior jurisdiction in the midst of his brethren: he reported to a metropolitan; and St. James had left in his see only the honor of the episcopate, so that it might be well ascertained that all primacy comes from another origin and is a radiance of the principate of St. Peter. The patriarchs and metropolitans are therefore only his organs, and make present his primacy in the regions entrusted to them, ministers of Peter to the extent that he himself deems appropriate to determine. This doctrine, moreover, has been expressly declared by the pope
245 ID, ibid., 2; PL 54, 676. - Cf. PIE IX, Letter Reversurus (July 12, 1867) to the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, in The Church (EP), n. 307.
182 Benedict VI: "It was the successors of St. Peter who established, according to the necessities of places, archbishops or heads of bishops to hold their place in the Churches, because they could not govern all the Churches by themselves."246 And Pope Pius VI strongly establishes the same doctrine by writing to the German archbishops, electors of the Empire, "Tell me, I pray you, who, as metropolitans, are elevated above other bishops, yes, tell me from where do these distinctions in the episcopate come? Could it be from divine right? But the order of the episcopate is unique and the same for all bishops. Could it be from a universal council? But there were bishops assigned to other bishops long before anyone thought of holding one. Could it be provincial councils? But they could not have met if there had not already been provinces with metropolitans at their head. Could it be by mutual agreement? But no bishop had the right to belittle a divinely instituted authority by subjecting it to a metropolitan. Only the supreme authority of Peter and his successors, therefore, was capable of giving bishops power over other bishops"247. And let no one object here to the difficulty of finding in every erection of a principal see a positive act of the authority of the Supreme Pontiff. St. Peter established the patriarchal sees, as all antiquity proclaims; and it was enough, in later times, for the patriarchs to consent to the establishment of inferior metropolitans. But there is more: a general ecclesiastical law was sufficient for this establishment in the whole Church; and in virtue of this law, from the earliest times, apostolic men were able everywhere to ordain principal sees without the institution changing its character. For it is manifest that such a law has force only by the authority ci, the sovereign will of the head of the Church, so that in founding these sees in virtue of this primitive law, the apostles themselves, if we must go back to them, and, after them, their first disciples, gave to St. Peter representatives who became, on the sole basis of
246 BENEDICT VI (972-974), Letter 1, to Frederick, bishop of Salzburg; PL 135, 1081. 247 PIE VI (1755-1799), Response to the metropolitans of Mainz, Trier, Cologne, and Salzburg, concerning the apostolic nuncios, ed. altera, Romae, 1790, cap. 9, sect. 1, c. 8, pp. 302-303.
183 this capacity, superior to their brethren. This general law permitted the attribution of a local primacy to certain Churches; later, by analogy with the first and most ancient establishments, it was desired to extend this privilege to all the capital cities of the civil provinces; but the Church more than once declared that she was not bound to follow the political arrangements of the States, and that it was necessary either to keep to the first and ancient establishments or to receive from herself the institution of the new metropolises248. It is true that one can, without great inconvenience, dispute the existence of this common law from the very time of the apostles, at least in its general application. All antiquity, in fact, declares to us that St. Peter by himself and expressly established the three principal sees of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. Then we find the great sees of Asia, Pontus and Thrace249. Perhaps there were no other major sieges at first. In this hypothesis, and to give beginning to this small number, the positive and special institution of St. Peter is sufficient, and it is not necessary to have recourse to a universal law to explain it.
248 St. INNOCENT I - (401-417), Letter 24, to Alexander, bishop of Antioch, 2; PL 20, 548-549, LABBE, 2, 1269 : "You ask me whether, according to the division of the provinces established by the emperor, just as there are two metropolises, two metropolitan bishops must also be appointed; but know that the Church must not suffer from the variations which necessity introduces into temporal government, that ecclesiastical honors and departments are independent of those which the emperor deems fit to establish for his interests. It is necessary, therefore, that the number of metropolitan bishops remain in accordance with the ancient description of the provinces"; cf. Pius VI, Letter Quod aliquantum, to the French episcopate (March 10, 1791), in The Church (EP), B. 78. - Cf. Council of Chalcedon (451), session 4, LABBE 4, 544, MANSI 7, 90: "No imperial rescript shall be valid against the rules, let the rules of the Fathers be followed." 249 Cf. Archimandrite Orestes Kerame, The Apostolic Chairs and the Role of Patriarchates in the Church, in The Episcopate and the Universal Church, pp. 261-278; Cyrille VOGEL, Unity of the Church and Plurality of Historical Forms of Ecclesiastical Organization, from the Third to the Fifth Century, ibidem, pp. 591-636.
184 However, from the time of Pope St. Victor I (189-199)250 and during the lifetime of the immediate followers of the apostles, we see the metropolises everywhere in possession of their local primacy. We think, therefore, that this institution of the higher sees, regarded as a law of the universal Church, begun by the positive institution made by St. Peter of the first of these sees, and which was to be common to the whole Church, is part of the deposit of apostolic traditions. Time has only developed it, either by the express disposition of the bishops of the first great sees, determining little by little the inferior circumscriptions, or, later, by the tacitly agreed application of a similar form to all the provinces. It is this universally received and practiced apostolic law that St. Leo celebrates in the text we quoted above251 and
which he calls "a great regulation." It is in the application of it that he recognizes the "form of Peter" impressed upon all the provinces252. There are indeed all the characters of apostolic laws and institutions there. It is a universal discipline and so ancient that no beginning can be assigned to it in the course of the history of the Church, and no pontiff or Council is named who established it. The ancients always speak of it as the ancient rule of the Fathers, without any particular designation. It is, says the Council of Antioch, "the canon in force from the beginning"253.
250 See the provincial councils convened at the invitation of this Pontiff in the matter of the feast of Easter: LABBE 1, 595 ff., MANSI 1, 723 ff.; cf. HEFLE 1, 133-151. 251 St. Leo, Letter 14, 11; PL 54, 676; see above, note 2. 252 ID., Sermon 4, for the anniversary of his consecration, 3; PL 54, 151: "The right of power, of his power (to Peter) passed also to the other apostles, and the constitution of this decree went to all the heads of the Church; but it was not in vain that to one was entrusted what was communicated to all. Indeed this is entrusted personally to Peter, because the form of Peter is set above all other heads of the Church." 253 Council of Antioch (341), can. 9, LABBE 2, 566, MANSI 2, 1311: "The bishops of each province should know that the bishop placed at the head of the metropolis is also entrusted with the care of the entire province.... Consequently, it was settled that he would also occupy the first rank for honors, and that the other bishops (in accordance with the ancient canon carried by our fathers and still in force) could do nothing without him... trans. HEFEL 1, 717.
185 It is this ancient and general establishment which the Council of Nicaea, after the Apostolic Canons254 and the monuments of early tradition255, proclaims and prescribes to be kept inviolable256. But, it is necessary to note with Pope St. Boniface, this Council, in making by its famous canon 6 a conciliar law of this ancient institution of principal sees, does not allow itself to regulate anything with regard to the Holy Apostolic See and its primacy over the universe. It is because this primacy, being of divine right, could not be the object of a conciliar law. The government and the whole state of the Church rests on this see," said this great Pope. The ordinances of the Council of Nicaea attest no other thing, so much so that this Council did not dare to undertake to establish anything about it, seeing well that it could confer nothing upon it which was below its rights, for it knew that the word of God had given it everything."257 Also the Council's canon is silent with regard to the papal prerogative; or, if one wishes to read it as it was read at the Council of Chalcedon, it confines itself to a simple statement: "The Roman Church has always had primacy," and reserves the imperative style of the legislator
254 Apostolic Canons (fourth-century Egyptian compilation), can. 9, LABBE 1, 31, MANSI 1, 35: "The bishops of every country must know who is first among them and regard him as their head; and do nothing of difficulty or great importance without his consent." - Cf. HEFEL 1, 1203-1221. 255 Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381), can. 12, LABBE 1, 1498, MANSI 2, 565: "That the bishops are to be prepossessed in the government of the Church, according to the decision of the metropolitan and of the neighboring bishops, after, however, they are sufficiently convinced of their orthodoxy and good morals"; trans. HEFELE 1, 1005. On this Council of Laodicea, cf. E. AMANN, art. Laodicea
(Council of), in DTC, vol. 8 (1925), col. 2611-2615. 256 Council of Nicaea (325), can. 6, LABBE 2, 31, MANSI 2, 670-671: "Let the ancient custom in use in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis be maintained, that is, let the bishop of Alexandria retain jurisdiction over all (these provinces), for there is the same relationship as for the bishop of Rome. The Churches of Antioch and the other eparchies (provinces) must likewise be preserved in their ancient rights"; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 1, 554. 257 St. BONIFACE I (418-422), Letter 14, to the bishop of Thessalonica, 1; PL 20, 777, LABBE 4, 1705,
186 for the rest of the canon, which is of ecclesiastical law258. Perhaps it is this difference in style that has caused this statement, which was not in fact disputed at Chalcedon, to disappear from most copies as not belonging to the law or the canon proper. This distinction between the divine institution of the Sovereign Pontificate and the ecclesiastical institution of the other great sees is necessary at the beginning of this treatise, and it is beautiful to see the Holy Spirit, according to the doctrine of this ancient Pope, declare it by the voice of the first ecumenical council in the very decree in which this council formulates the apostolic constitution of the churches.
Patriarchates
The two principal institutions intended, as we have just announced, to distribute in the various parts of the Church the action of the head of the bishops and to establish an order in the episcopal college, are those of the patriarchs and the metropolitans. The highest local representation of St. Peter in the world is the patriarchate. St. Peter instituted the patriarchs and communicated to them from his fullness a part of his authority over the Churches of their circumscription, thereby making them others himself, because they represent him, having over the bishops no higher jurisdiction than they have from him. The patriarchal sees established by Saint Peter himself were three in number: those of Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. St. Peter had reserved the West for himself and, without prejudice to his sovereignty over the universal Church, he had attached to his See, without giving them a particular patriarch below himself, the regions of Latin and barbarian Europe, Latin Africa and the Greek peninsula later called Illyria. He had established the two other seats at the head of the East and the Libyan continent.
258 Council of Chalcedon (451), act. 16, LAB 4, 812, MANSI 7, 443 "Of the 318 holy Fathers, canon 6: That the Roman Church has always had primacy."
187 Saint Gregory explains the order and nature of this great and mysterious institution. He lays the principle of it in the sovereign principate of Peter, for, "though there are many apostles, yet there is only the seat of the Prince of the apostles, who, because of his principality, prevails over all by his authority." The establishment of the patriarchs is therefore only an outflow: it is the same authority distributed by himself. "It is, he says, the seat of the same one in three places; it is he who raised above the others the seat of Rome where he rests; it is he who glorified the seat of Alexandria where he sent the evangelist, his disciple; it is he who established the seat of Antioch, from which he was to depart after seven years. It is, therefore, but the same see and the see of the same apostle"259. Moreover, a positive institution of the Prince of the Apostles was necessary; for, says St. Leo, "St. Peter founded many other Churches by himself or by his disciples," and this historical fact of their apostolic origin gives them no special right; "but he distinguished three of them" by a special designation in order to raise them to this degree of power. These sees, we cannot too often repeat, in the spirit and essence of their institution, are therefore only the organs through which St. Peter communicates with the more distant Churches, and through which the affairs of these Churches come to him260. Thus this institution does not derive its origin and strength from the episcopate, and these patriarchs do not represent the bishops of a region, receiving their authority in any degree from the college of their brethren; but it comes to them from the principate of St. Peter, and they are, in relation to the bishops of their circumscription, the representatives of St. Peter, his organs and ministers261.
259 St. Gregory the Great, Letter 40, to Eulogius, patriarch of Alexandria; PL 77, 899. - Cf. The Episcopate and the Universal Church, pp. 277-278. - HINCMAR OF REIMS: "The seats of the (apostolic) Churches, i.e., of Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch... though separated by distance, are but one see of the great (apostle) Peter, chief of the apostles," in Opera, vol. 2, ed. Migne, p. 431. 260 St. Leo, Letter 14, to Anastasius of Thessalonica, 2; PL 54, 676. 261 Second Council of Lyons (1274), LAB 11, 966, MANSI 24, 71: "The fullness of power resides in this (Roman Church), which invites other Churches to share its solicitude: this same Roman Church has honored many of these Churches with various privileges, and especially the patriarchal Churches."
188 The geographical location of the patriarchal sees testifies highly, moreover, to the nature of this establishment. They were not placed in the center of the regions over which the bishops who occupy them preside, as the pulpit of the Prince of the Apostles is placed in Rome in the center of the world, but they were established at the extreme frontier of these regions and on the shores of the Mediterranean, as in the most suitable places to facilitate the exchange of communications which they must in turn receive from the Supreme Pontiff or transmit to him on behalf of the Churches, asking for and constantly receiving his decisions, orders, and directions. Also, from the earliest times, the Churches of Thrace, Asia Minor and Pontus, which had no advantage in passing through Antioch to come to Rome, communicated directly with the Sovereign See through the three principal metropolitans, later called the exarchs of Ephesus, Heraclea and Caesarea. In time, the number of patriarchs was increased by those of Jerusalem262 and Constantinople. The order of their precedence was even reversed; and Constantinople, after several centuries of fruitless attempts, legitimately received from Innocent III and the Lateran Council the first rank hitherto held by Alexandria263. In modern times, there was a patriarchal title of the Indies. The bishop of Aquileia, a mere metropolitan, also received the honor of this name, an honor communicated to the see of Grado and later transferred to Venice. But he did not have all the prerogatives, and he is ranked among the minor patriarchs and of more recent institution264. The reconciliation of the heretics and schismatics of the East contributed to a corresponding increase in the number of patriarchates; for to facilitate and maintain the union, the Holy See consented to let this
262 The bishop of Jerusalem had, from the beginning, a rank of honor without jurisdiction; see below, chapter 22. 263 Fourth Lateran Council (1215), can. 5: "Renewing the ancient privileges of the patriarchal sees, we decide that after the Roman Church, which is the mother and mistress of all the faithful, the Church of Constantinople shall hold the first place, the Church of Alexandria the second, the Church of Antioch the third, and the Church of Jerusalem the fourth"; trans. HEFELE 5, 1333. 264 Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Aquileia in DACL, vol. 1 (1907), col. 2654-2656; P. RICHARD, art. Aquileia (Patriarchate of), in DHGE, vol. 3 (1924), col. 1112-1142.
189 dignity to the heads of the reconciled churches. Sometimes this was done without increasing the number of ancient names, but by the admission of several bishops to bear the same title for peoples of different language and rite. Thus there were patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem of Latin language, at the same time as patriarchs (the Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem of Greek language, that a patriarch of Alexandria of Coptic language and that a patriarch of Antioch of the Maronite ritual. Then a patriarch of the Ethiopians or Abyssinians, a patriarch of the Armenians, a patriarch of the Chaldeans and finally a patriarch of the Syrians were also received into the bosom of the Church. Much could be said about the diverse origins of these last patriarchates. We will have occasion to return to some of them when we deal with the great patriarchal legations which gave birth to these dignities and to the primates of the West.
Metropolises
The patriarchal seats do not exhaust all the communications that St. Peter made of his principate. The great regions over which the patriarchs preside are divided into ecclesiastical provinces, over which the bishops of the metropolitan cities preside. The metropolitans, in a lower degree, hold in their turn and with a more limited authority the place of St. Peter in the midst of their brothers. The name of chief is appropriate to them in this portion of the episcopal college. In this capacity they convoke and preside over the assembly of the bishops; nothing considerable is done in the province without their authority; they visit the churches in their district, and they give
190 even institution to the bishops265. These prerogatives, however, were more or less extended according to the times, and they were generally restricted in the end by the Pontiffs, modern law and common practice266. In them the hierarchical order that exists within the episcopate is completed. The episcopate of each province is thus like a reproduction and image of the episcopate of the universal Church. We see the mystery of the head and the members, St. Peter in the person of the metropolitan presiding over the college of bishops in a portion of that college. This is indeed always what St. Leo calls "the form of Peter prepossessed to the episcopate," the type and source of the ecclesiastical order in all its degrees267. We cannot, in fact, repeat it too often; any superiority given to a bishop over his brethren can only come from St. Peter, who alone is superior to the bishops. St. James, bishop of Jerusalem and one of the apostolic college, left, as we have already said, in his see only episcopal authority; and wherever metropolises have risen, they have received from the see of St. Peter a communication of the prerogatives of which he is the source and repository by divine right268.
Presbyterian of patriarchies and metropolises
What we have said of the prerogatives of the presbytery of the Roman Church, and of the communication of honor and power which comes to it from its bishop, the vicar of Jesus Christ, is true in its degree, and all things considered, of the presbytery of the principal Churches where St. Peter presides with the patriarchs or metropolitans. The presbytery of the patriarchal Churches presides with the patriarch over the region of which he is the head by the assistance he gives him. As the Roman presbytery assists the Pope, supplements him in case of vacancy of the
265 Apostolic Canons, can.9 266 Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381), can. 12; Council of Antioch (341), can. 9; see above, notes 10-12. 266 Powers of metropolitans are now fixed by the Code of Canon Law, can. 274. 267 St. Leo, Letter 14, to Anastasius, 2; see above, note 1. 268 BENEDICT VI, loc. cit., above, note 3.
191 seat and designates him by his election, so the presbytery of the patriarchal Churches is also the council of the patriarch, the guardian of his seat during the vacancy, and the ordinary rightful elector of him who is to occupy it269. Still, as to this latter power, there is this great difference that the election made by the Roman Church, being sovereign, cannot be broken, and that its elector is immediately and absolutely instituted by God himself, while the elector of the patriarchal Church receives his power and institution from the Roman Pontiff, who is not bound by the election, because he cannot be bound by its inferiors, and who always has the right to substitute or suspend it. By all the assistance they render to the patriarch, the clerics of his Church are raised above the presbyters of the other Churches by the dignity of the see of which they compose the senate and the prerogatives of the Pontiff whose crown they form. The archdeacons and officers of these great sees also have important functions in the councils in which the patriarchs preside, and the assistance of the presbytery extends to the great affairs which fall within the jurisdiction of the latter. Finally, as the cardinals of the Roman Church receive a singular lustre from the sublimity of the see of St. Peter, so the clergy of the great patriarchal Churches have also received from Eastern law honorary prerogatives; and the Greeks, who complain so much about the precedence of the cardinals, themselves accord rank above the bishops to the exocatacoeles or deacons of the patriarch of Constantinople270. In virtue of the same principles which make the Roman presbytery singularly great, and which apply in their degree to the great Churches, the clergy of the metropolitan Churches are themselves associated with the prerogatives of the metropolitan. We see him in the history of the Churches assisting him in the convocation and holding of councils271; we voit
269 The Code of Canon Law, can. 429, § 3 and 5, provides further clarification on this subject. 270 G. CODINUS CUROPALATA, De Officiis et offlicialibus Magnae Ecclesiae et Aulae Constantinopolitanae, ed. J. GRETSERI, S.J., Paris, 1625, 1. 1, c. 2 and 4. - Cf. Dom Adrien GRÉA, Essai sur les archidiacres, 1851, in Bibliothèque de l'École des Charles, 3e série, t. 2. 271 Council of Ravenna (998), LABBE 9, 770, MANSI 19, 221: "Soussignèrent les prêtres-cardinaux de l'Église de Ravenne". - Council of Cologne (1310), LABBE
192 archdeacons and officers of the metropolitan presbyteries fulfill important functions in the province272. When the metropolitan see is vacant, the presbytery retains its jurisdiction and rights; and, even now that the metropolitan jurisdiction is much diminished, the chapter of the metropolis, the vacant see, still exercises
11, 1517, MANSI 25, 230: "By the consent of the chapter and our prelates"; cf. HEFLE 6, 611. - Council of Narbonne (1374), LABBE 11, 2498, MANSI 26, 594: "We... archbishop of Narbonne... bishops present... with our venerable chapter of Narbonne". - Council of Seville (1512): "We... archbishop of the holy Church of Seville... with the advice and counsel... of the dean and chapter of our holy Church, we order... to celebrate a provincial council"; in AGUIRRE, Concilia Hispaniae, t. 5, p. 361. - Cf. Council of Cologne (1549), LABBE 14, 627, MANSI 32, 1357. - Council of Trier (1549), LABBE 14, 606, MANSI 32, 1439. Cardinal Julius, archbishop of Florence, retained in Rome, charged the archdeacon and canons of his church to convene and hold the council of the province, in 1517. This same chapter intervened in the Council of 1573... Already St. Avit involved his Church of Vienna in the convocation of the Council of Epaone (517), Letter 80, to Bishop Quintianus; PL 59, 282: Therefore, the Church of Vienna begs you through me to please..." The modern Greeks testified to a similar usage: Council of Constantinople (1642), LABBE 15, 1714, MANSI 34, 1630: "Attended also the most illustrious clerics of the great Church of Christ, which is with us." 272 In 1243, the chapter of Canterbury, in the vacancy of the see, issued a sentence of excommunication against the bishop of Lincoln; LABBE 11, 601. In 1271, during a vacancy in the metropolis of Rheims, the chapter of that church caused the meeting of the provincial council convened at St. Quentin by Milon, bishop of Soissons, to be adjourned; ibid, 922. - In 1290, the chapter of Tours allowed the Church of Angers to elect a pastor, then examined and confirmed the election, and instructed the bishops of the province to meet at Angers to consecrate the elected one. - The official of the metropolitan chapter of Cassel, in Ireland, overturns the election of a bishop made against the canons, and approves the one made afterwards: THOMASSIN, Discipline of the Church, p. 1, 1. 3, c. 10, n. 10, vol. 2, p. 518. The Fourth Council of Toledo (633), cap. 4, recognizes the archdeacon of the metropolis as promoter; LABBE 5, 1705, MANSI 10, 617. - Similar declarations are given in the Council of Soissons and in that of Friuli. One could multiply similar examples. Commonly, the presbytery of the metropolis attends the council as assessor of the metropolitan and as a result of the link which unites it to the principal see, as the priests of the Roman Church attend the Roman councils, and nowadays the cardinals attend the general councils presided over by the Supreme Pontiff. Similarly, we see the Church of Paris addressing its decree to Wenilon, archbishop (the Sens, "and to all his clergy"; Gallia christiana, vol. 7, instrumenta, col. 12.
193 some right over the province. For it is for him, in this case, by his proper right of substitution for the metropolitan his head, and not for the comprovincial bishops by their right of devolution, to remedy the negligence of the chapters of the province when the seats of the suffragan are themselves vacant and these chapters fail to appoint capitular vicars273. Perhaps some other application of these prerogatives, whose practical importance must have faded by the natural course of things with the diminution of metropolitan authority, could be found.
273 The Code of Canon Law, can. 434 § 4, grants this right not to the metropolitan chapter, but to the most senior suffragan bishop.
194 CHAPTER XVII
The great patriarchal delegations
The patriarchal sees and the metropolises form in its essential elements the hierarchy of the Churches. However, from early on, the patriarchs were led to create in the vast circumscriptions that were under their sees intermediate offices between them and the metropolitans. Originally, these were mere delegations. In the West, antiquity shows us the Roman Pontiff giving to some bishop invested with his confidence the mission of representing him in a vast region, itself composed of several provinces and including several metropolises; these regions were generally called dioceses. These delegations were not attached to the see of the bishop to whom they were given: they died with the bishop who had been given the mandate, without leaving any rights in that see, and were revived in his successor only as long as the Supreme Pontiff deemed it appropriate to entrust him with a similar mandate. Always revocable, these delegations, without forming a hierarchical degree properly so called, were at first only a provision made by the superior and a means employed by him to exercise his authority over his distant subjects more usefully and more easily. On the other hand, these mandates were limited to certain more ordinary matters and were susceptible of a greater or lesser extension according to the terms of the commission, without the canons or the stable laws of the Church having regulated anything in this regard. Thus, by its character, and even though these powers were renewed in a see by repeated mandates with the succession of the prelates who occupied it, this institution was absolutely distinct from that of patriarchates or metropolises, which are true ecclesiastical titles, whose nature is to be stable and whose prerogatives are in essence part of ecclesiastical law.
Historically, the best known, in the antiquity of these legations by virtue of which the Pontiffs gave themselves vicars in the great regions of the West, is that of the diocese of Illyria
195 granted to the metropolitan bishops of Thessalonica274. The instructions given successively to these legates or vicars by the popes St. Damasus (366-384), St. Leo the Great (440-461), and St. Gelasius (492-496), instruct us perfectly as to the nature and extent of the functions they exercised. They represented the Sovereign Pontiff in the institution of bishops; they decided in his name and by his authority, the smallest matters, and imparted to him the knowledge of the most considerable275. They could also assemble in council all the bishops of the region entrusted to them by their mandate276. Finally, this mandate, as we have already said, was absolutely personal. With each commission, it received a new institution and was born anew277.
274 Cf. Cyrille VOGEL, loc. cit., p. 632. 275 St. Leo, Letter 5, to the metropolitan bishops of Illyria, 4 and 6; PL 54, 616: "Let all matters which usually happen between colleagues in the episcopate (consacerdotes), be reserved for the consideration of the one to whom We have entrusted the care of replacing Us... Let him make known to Us by a report what should be referred to Us... If, however, serious cases or appeals arise, We have ordered that they be sent to Us necessarily with a report from Our delegate."-ID, Letter 6, to Anastasius, 4-5; PL 54, 618-619: "Let no bishop be consecrated for these Churches without your being consulted.... We want the metropolitans to be consecrated by you... If any important matter arises... send Us a report to consult Us". 276 ID., Letter 5; PL 54,616: "Let all those who have been summoned come to the council and not refuse to attend the assembly where they know that the things of God are to be dealt with." - ID, Letter 14, to Anastasius of Thessalonica, 10; PL 54, 674: "If for any major reason it is reasonable and necessary to convoke an assembly of the brethren, let it suffice that two bishops from each province, sent and chosen by their metropolitan, come to your fraternity." 277 ID, Letter 5, 2; PL 54,615: "For this reason We have entrusted the care of replacing Us to Anastasius, Our brother and colleague in the episcopate, following the example of those whose memory is venerable to Us. - ID, Letter 6, 2; PL 54, 617: "Having known through Our son, the priest Nicholas, the request of your Charity, that We, in Our turn, give you authority in Illyria, for the care of the holy rules, as it was given to your predecessors, We acquiesce in your request; by Our exhortation We desire absolutely that neither indifference nor negligence occur in the government of the Churches established in Illyria, Churches which We, in Our turn, entrust to your Charity, following the example of Sirice, of blessed memory. .. " - ID, Letter 14, 1: PL 54, 668: "As my predecessors did to yours, so I, following the example of the ancients, have delegated your Charity to represent my government."
196 Similar legations took place for the Gauls in the person of the bishop of Arles, until the revocation which Pope St. Leo pronounced because of the abuse that had been made of it278, then in the person of the bishop of Vienne or Sens; afterwards these functions were entrusted to bishops chosen without distinction of see, such as St. Syagrius, bishop of Autun, under St. Gregory the Great, St. Boniface, archbishop of Germania, and the various apocrists under the last Merovingians and the first successors of Charlemagne. In Spain, a similar mission was entrusted to the bishop of Toledo, Braga or Seville279. The diocese of Africa had only one metropolitan, that of Carthage. The episcopal colleges of the various provinces all reported equally to this see, so that if these colleges assembled in private, lacking the presence of a true head and representing in their midst the superiority of St. Peter, they had no other president than the most senior of the bishops by virtue of the common right of devolution. The affairs of this diocese were therefore sufficiently centralized by the authority of the single metropolitan, and the Pontiffs did not feel the need to establish there a patriarchal vicar or particular legate280.
278 St. Leo, Letter 10, to the bishops of the province of Vienne, PL 54, 628-636. Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Vienne en Dauphiné, in DACL, vol. 15 (1953), col. 30653066; HÉFÉLÉ 2, 424-428; W. WÖLKER, Die Gründung des Primats von Arles und seine Aufhebung durch Leo I, in Zeitschr. f. Kirchengesch., 46 (1927) 155-369; E. GRIFFE, La Gaule chrétienne, à l'époque romaine, des origines chrétiennes à la fin du IVe siècle, Paris, Picard, 1947; O CULLMANN, loc. cit., pp. 61-137. 279 St. HORMISDAS (514-523), Letter 26, to Sallustius; PL 63, 426, LABBE 4, 1469: "We entrust to you Our representation for the provinces of Beatia and Lusitania (Portugal), without touching the privileges which antiquity has established for metropolitan bishops. ...; We thus increase your dignity by making you share in this ministry, that is, in Ours, and by relieving Our functions by the remedy of the same administration. - ID, Letter 24, to John, bishop of Tarragona; PL 63, 423, LABBE 4, 1466: "We entrust to you the representation of the Holy See... 280 THOMASSIN, Ecclesiastical Discipleship, p. 1, 1. 1, c. 41, vol. 1, p. 220, is mistaken, in our opinion, in making the African primates, the first or oldest bishops, deans or protothrones of the provinces, true metropolitans: it is contrary to the great apostolic institution that there should be metropolitans without metropolitan Churches, i.e., with no fixed and determinate sees. The bishop of Carthage
197 If we carefully consider the history of these legations, we see that after having been entrusted in the early days to the bishops of certain sees, such as those of Thessalonica or Arles, they were afterwards, especially in Gaul and Spain, given to bishops of very diverse sees; which shows that personal merit outweighed the advantage of place in the choice of the Pontiffs. This was the second era of these apostolic commissions. However, little by little time altered the first institution. Sometimes the stability, or at least a more frequent return of the legations of the Sovereign Pontiff to the same sees, or even the simple memory of these ancient legations, insensibly gave rise to a quasi-patriarchal dignity which was called primacy. The primates, though of a somewhat inferior rank, were in Europe all the more easily assimilated to the patriarchs281, since the patriarchate of the West, being united to the sovereign pontificate, was confused, in the eyes of the peoples, with this sovereign pontificate itself, and since, practically speaking, these primates could look upon themselves as the first degree below the supreme chair, elevated above the metropolitans282. What had been uncertain and variable in the legations, the origin of the primates, did not fail to give rise to a very large number of pretensions to this dignity: competitions were numerous; and the absence of a definite right, leaving the metropolitans in their independence from most of these primates, reduced them more often than not to a purely honorary title283. This was not the case, however, with the primates who were subsequently instituted directly or authentically recognized by the Ponti-
Sovereigns.
never had the honor of the patriarchate, moreover, and he was ranked among the simple metropolitans until the times of St. Leo IX and St. Gregory VII and until the entire destruction of the Church of Africa. 281 The title of patriarch was even borne by some of them, notably by that of Bourges, patriarch, that is, primate, of Aquitaine. 282 St. Gregory VII (1073-1085) equates primates with patriarchs, Letter 35 (1. 6); PL 148; 540: "Patriarchs or primates who hold only one 'form,' even if their names are different." 283 Hincmar extends the name and quality of primate to all metropolitans who do not themselves report to a particular primate and are immediately subject to the Supreme Pontiff.
198 fes in this capacity, such as the Primate of Canterbury in England, that of Ireland, in Gaul those of Lyon and Bourges. The prerogatives of these, going back to a certain institution of the Holy See, were imposed on the respect and obedience of all284. In the East, similar facts occurred, and the extent of the patriarchates imposed on the prelates of these great sees the same necessities of government. The patriarchs therefore had, in regions remote from their immediate action, delegates ad universalia, called in Greek catholikoi. Thus the affairs of upper Asia came under the jurisdiction of a catholicos of Seleucia, vicar of the patriarch of Antioch. The patriarch of Alexandria had a vicar in Ethiopia, and the Armenian churches were subject to a catholicos who presided over their whole nation, and who, by his origin, seems to be connected with the Church of Caesarea. Finally, the less important nations of the Caucasian countries also had, in imitation of the Armenians, catholicoi whose authority seems to have scarcely exceeded that of simple metropolitans. While in the West the legations of the Sovereign Pontiff gave rise to primatia, in the East, and from quite early on, the catholicoi were assimilated to patriarchs; today they are confused under the same name, and this dignity was the origin of the patriarchs of several Eastern rites. The patriarch of the Chaldeans represents the ancient catholicos of Seleucia. The patriarchs of the Maronites recently given the title of Antioch were formerly the catholicoi of that nation; the patriarch of the Armenians has the same origin. The Jacobite Syrians obtained, after their conversion, the maintenance of their catholicos or patriarch; finally the Abyssinians have for their patriarch the successor of the vicar of the patriarch of Alexandria, if, however, the latter catholicos is not to be regarded as having been in
284 The primacy of Bourges over Aquitaine had been recognized by popes St. Nicholas I (858-867), Eugene III (1145-1153), and Alexander III (1159-1181); that of Narbonne was established by Pope Urban II (1088-1099) over the metropolis of Aix; that of Lyons was solemnly established or confirmed by Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-1085) over the provinces of Sens, Tours and Rouen: St. Gregory VII, Letters 34 and 35 (1. 6); PL 148, 538-540. It is not our purpose to study in detail the vicissitudes of these jurisdictions, which were often contested and gradually dismembered or abolished by later decisions of the Pontiffs. In this regard, one may consult THOMASSIN, Ecclesiastical Discipline, p. 1, c. 31 ff.
199 antiquity a simple metropolitan having below him only suffragan bishops. It can be seen that the origin of primatia in the West is very close to that of the patriarchates of secondary institution in the East. However, the prerogatives of the latter are more extensive and their title seems to give them a more honorable rank285.
285 This judgment of the author is confirmed by the Code of Canon Law, can. 271, which proclaims that the titles of patriarchs and primates are now only honorary "unless, for some, a particular right stipulates otherwise."
200 SECOND SECTION
The Episcopal College UNITED WITH THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST
CHAPTER XVIII
The General or Ecumenical Councils
Double power of the episcopate
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church, conforming to the divine type of the society of God and of his Christ, of God, the head of Christ, is formed of a head who is Jesus Christ, and, under this head, of the priestly body, the college of bishops, proceeding from him and in whom is mystically enclosed the whole assembly of the faithful. In the first section of this part we have completed the study of this hierarchy in the person of its head; we have learned to know the vicar in whom he makes himself visible; then we have seen this head represented in the various parts of the Church by the institution of patriarchs and metropolitans, and imprinting on these parts the form and analogies of universal government. It remains for us to consider the college of bishops, and, in this college, the body of which Jesus Christ is the head, and the bride of whom he is the bridegroom and to whom he communicates his goods, his power and his majesty. We must not yet consider the bishops as the heads of their particular Churches, which will be the subject of the next book, where we shall study the hierarchy of these Churches, but only in so far as associated with each other in the solidarity of the episcopate, they form the college and senate or "presbytery of the universal 286 Church. What they are in this capacity which looks to the universal Church, precedes in them, by the nature of things, what they are as heads of the hierarchies proper to them: for, as we have said
286 St. IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE so calls the apostolic college: Letter to the Philadelphians, 5; PG 5, 701; ed. CAMELOT, P. 145.
201 above287, the universal Church precedes, in the view of God and in the order of his works, the particular Church, which is only the appropriation of the mystery of the whole to each of the parts. The bishops, therefore, before any other conception of their pontificate, have a universal power, which by its nature extends over the whole Church. This power is the very communion of the episcopal order, and it is distinct from their title, by which they are established as proper bishops of a particular people. In recalling these notions, we do not hesitate to affirm, as we established in the second part of this work, that this power, being by its essence anterior to the title, is independent of it, and belongs equally to all the bishops who have the communion of their order, that is to say, to all the Catholic bishops, whatever their see, and even if they do not at present have the title of any particular Church. This universal power of the episcopate, distinct from the power which each bishop possesses over his particular flock, this power in virtue of which they are all equally the teachers and pastors of the whole Catholic Church288, has its most solemn manifestation when they sit in the ecumenical council. There appears in all its truth and simplicity the mystery of the hierarchy; Jesus Christ present in his vicar and communicating to his Church, contained in the episcopal college, a mysterious outflow of his sovereign authority289. At the general council, the bishops define with the Supreme Pontiff, make laws with him, judge with him, and then declares to the world all that their head is and all that they are with him and in him. The council, then, is indeed the most vivid manifestation of the constitution of the Church and of the mystery of the head and the members which is
287 See above, chapter 5. 288 See above, chapter 10. 289 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 4; PL 4, 500: "The beginning has its starting point in unity." - "The primacy is given to Peter, and one Church, one pulpit (us) is shown. All are shepherds, but it is pointed out to us that there is only one flock which all the apostles feed in unanimous agreement"; trans. St. Cyril of Jerusalem calls the apostles "leaders of the whole world, judges of the universe". (*)
202 in it. Let us pause to consider this great fact of the Church's life290.
Conditions of the Ecumenical Council
The ecumenical council is really the mystery of the head and the members. The head communicates to the members all action, and the members, receiving it from him, unite and associate with him to act in his virtue which becomes their virtue, teaching with him in the same magisterium the one doctrine of truth, commanding with him in the same authority, making laws and passing sentences with him. From this notion of the ecumenical council, drawn from the depths of the mystery of the hierarchy and from the very sources of the Church's life, there naturally follow the four conditions which it must meet in order to express its essence fully. These conditions concern the action of the leader and the cooperation of the body of the episcopate. With regard to the action of the head, the Supreme Pontiff must convoke the assembly; secondly, he must preside over it by himself or by his legates; thirdly, he must confirm its decisions. These are the first three conditions required by the nature of the ecumenical council291. Since everything must come from the head, his action cannot absolutely be substituted. And if, by impossibility, the entire episcopal college were to assemble without him, this assembly would not be a council and its decisions would have no value, because it would have separated itself from the very source of authority. It would then be nothing more than a confused and unconnected multitude, and would be stripped of the divine institution which makes it a single college through the presence and operation of the Council.
290 See above, chapter 11. 291 Code of Canon Law, can. 222, § 1: "There can be no ecumenical council except by convocation of the Roman Pontiff. § It belongs to this same Roman Pontiff to preside over the ecumenical council by himself or by others, to establish and designate the matters to be dealt with there, to transfer, suspend or dissolve the council, and to confirm its decrees." - Cf. A. MOLIEN, art. Concils in SDC, vol. 3 (1942), col. 12681318.
203 incessant ration of his leader. Thus the action of the leader is absolutely the principal action, i.e., it is absolutely necessary that the acts of the council become his own acts in order to have their value, by a kind of interior influx of his own and principal power292. This is what the Supreme Pontiff expresses excellently, sometimes by the confirmation given separately to the conciliar decrees, and sometimes by that solemn form which contains the confirmation in the decrees themselves, and which the Supreme Pontiff employs when he presides in person and renders the decrees in his own name: "sacro approbante Concilio". This last form highlights the authority of the head and the cooperation of the members. - It is most suitable for expressing both and energetically signifies their mutual relationship; as also the mystery of the life of the Church, the mystery which is the soul of the council, is never more solemnly manifested than when the Pope sits personally at the head of the assembled episcopate.
Cooperation of the whole episcopate
The fourth condition that the ecumenical council requires looks at the cooperation of the body of the episcopate. The whole episcopate must be called to it, and if all the bishops do not come to it, all of them at least can take part, and they have the right to do so by divine institution, that is, by what is divinely instituted in the episcopal order and in the prerogatives of their college, and in virtue of the very essence of the hierarchy. We cannot, therefore, in any way share the opinion of those who refuse to include untitled bishops, and even titular bishops of Churches occupied by infidels, among the bishops admitted to the council by the divine constitution of the Church and as
292 St. NICOLAS I (858-867), Letter 12, to Photius; PL 119, 788, LABBE 8, 285: "(The Holy See of the Roman Church) by whose authority and sanction all synods and holy councils are established and receive consistency." - ID, Letter 45, to Emperor Michael; PL 119, 858, LABBE 8, 291: "What is there that has been decided definitively and approved perfectly that the See of Blessed Peter has not approved, as you Yourself know... as, on the contrary, what this one See has condemned remains alone until now condemned."
204 called of God himself to take session there293. Only those, according to those who hold this doctrine,' can sit there by divine right who are at present exercising jurisdiction over a particular flock, so that the right to sit in the council depends on this very jurisdiction. We cannot accept that this is so. First of all, this opinion is opposed by the ancient tradition and constant practice of the Church. At the first council, held by the apostles at Jerusalem, which was to give the form and serve as an example to all the others, St. James alone was the holder of a particular Church; all the other apostles were bishops without title. The right of the untitled bishops is thus declared in their persons and recorded by the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts (Acts 15:6-21). And as for the bishops called in partibus or simply titular, their state seems even more favorable, since, in the very sense of this opinion, they occupy an episcopal chair. How can it be maintained, indeed, that a bishop, violently expelled from his see, loses, by the very fact of the persecution, his quality of member of the senate of the universal Church? But if the expelled bishop retains this status, is it not obvious that his successors will have no lesser right than he has, since they will be all that he is himself, receiving at the same time from him the double inheritance of his title and of his exile? It is certain that the exercise of the jurisdiction attached to their title and preserved by them in its substance, made most often impossible by the tyranny of the infidels, is moreover at present forbidden to them by the Sovereign Pontiff, who has reserved to himself the work of the missions in
293 The author's opinion was not followed by the editors of the Code of Canon Law, who, in canon 223, §1, do not recognize the power of the bishops in partibus to sit "of right" in the council. The Code expresses discipline, and generally does not resolve questions of principle. The author's opinion remains very suggestive about the foundations of the law: he thinks that titular bishops, by virtue of their dignity, have the right to sit and deliberate in the council, unless there is a special restriction. This restriction was pronounced in canon 223, §1, with, however, the faculty of inviting them and thus restoring to them the deliberative power, canon 223, § 2.
205 the infidel lands294. But this reservation can only be understood in the strict sense and does not concern the conciliar action. It is true that it was intended to soften the opinion we are fighting against, by restoring the right of session to those bishops who have offices or mandates as administrators or apostolic vicars; but the disadvantage is great of making an ordinary right of this importance depend on a purely delegated power, and of taking the first and most august of the divine rights of a bishop out of a mere commission and a purely human and ecclesiastical constitution. But, if we go to the bottom of the matter, we shall see that this opinion, at least such is our opinion, reverses the true notion of the universal Church and its essential relations. The universal Church is not, in fact, simply the confederation of the particular Churches and the result of their aggregation, but it precedes them in the divine plan and communicates to them what they are, far from receiving from them what it is itself. Jesus Christ, sending the first bishops into the world, said to them: "Go and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19). He thus makes them teachers of the universal Church even before they have begun to form particular flocks; and it is in virtue of this word received indivisibly, before the establishment of the various Churches, by the episcopal college [as a whole and without distinction of particular bishops, that this college, in the course of all the centuries, will teach the faith in the ecumenical councils. The universal Church was already founded in them before they established any particular Church, and they are the teachers of the whole world by divine institution before they have yet attempted to set up any separate episcopal pulpits of their own. Moreover, the bishops, in the council, make so little claim to the titles of their particular sees, that they all have there the same right of suffrage in the perfect equality which befits them as members of the same college of the universal Church; and the sentence of the patriarchs of Alexandria or Antioch, confounded with those of their brethren, does
294 Code of Canon Law, can. 348 § 1: "Titular bishops may not exercise any power in their diocese, of which they may not take possession."
206 weighs no more in the decision than that of the bishop of an obscure see or an unimportant city. It is true that attempts have been made to undermine this principle of the equality of the bishops sitting in the council and forming the college of the universal Church. In the past, at the Council of Chalcedon, the bishops of Egypt, frightened by the memory of the recent tyranny and violence of Dioscorus, claimed to subordinate their suffrage to that of the patriarch of Alexandria, and demanded the right to abstain until the election of the one whose power they feared, and whose leadership they wanted to await. But this claim was unanimously rejected without finding a single defender295. In our own day a sort of ill-defined preponderance was claimed for the bishops of the great cities or nations, for those who, it was said, in more immediate contact with the movement of ideas and the demands of modern societies, knew better the needs of the minds and the necessities of the times. The number of flocks entrusted to the care of the pastors was also compared, as if the bishops had sat as representatives or agents of the multitudes. It is that, in fact, the opinion we are fighting against, which makes the right of the bishops to sit depend on their actual jurisdiction over a distinct flock, offers a danger on this side. Basically, if the bishop sits in the council only because he is presently in charge of a particular people, it will be logical to give greater au-
295 Council of Chalcedon (451), session 4, LAB 4, 511-514, MANsi 7, 54; "Hierax, the reverend bishop of Egypt, and the other reverend bishops of Egypt said through the same Hierax: "... You all know... that we await in all things the judgment of our blessed archbishop; we ask your clemency to await the judgment of our president, for we will follow him in everything. For the most holy Fathers ... have given us this rule that all Egypt must follow the archbishop of Alexandria, the great city, that no suffragan bishop should do anything without him." Eusebius, the reverend bishop of Dorylaea, says: "They lie." - Florent, the reverend bishop of Sardis, says: "Let them prove their saying!" - All the reverend bishops cried out, "Clearly reject the doctrine of Eutyches..." - Cf. HEFEL 2, 703-704, which reports this intervention of Acacia, bishop of Ariarathia: "It is not fitting to give him who is to occupy the bishopric of Alexandria more authority than the whole council."
207 tority to the shepherd of a more numerous flock. The number that is below will authorize prelates instead of the pure mission that comes from above, and the hierarchy will be wounded in its very essence. However, if we affirm the absolute equality of the bishops in the Council and their right of suffrage prior to the particular jurisdiction of their see and independent of it, we do not intend to dispute that the bishop of an illustrious see among the others will be able to be a more important witness in the Council to the tradition whose deposit his chair guards with greater splendor. His testimony will carry more weight in the discussion of the dogmas that are being attacked or obscured and that must be defined. In the same way, the pastor of a numerous people, or, if you like, the one whose solicitude extends to a society more deeply worried and troubled by the agitations of the times, will bring a more vivid expression of these necessities of souls to the assembly which must bring the remedy. But, until then, these bishops who seem more authorized appear only as witnesses; until then they limit themselves to bringing and proposing the elements of the judgment. But to confuse in this august tribunal the discussion with the sentence, the ability of the witnesses with the authority of the judges, is to reverse all notions. The bishops, unequal in the value of their testimony, are equal in their authority as judges of faith and discipline. So when it comes to definitions and decrees, these bishops, who, so to speak, have come down from their seats to appear as witnesses and to propose their sentiments, immediately go back up and become judges again. Immediately the essential equality of the episcopal order reappears, and, as we have already said above, all are equally called and all contribute equally to forming the sentence, deploying that authority which is absolutely the same in all and which suffers no distinction among those who are clothed with it. Historical notes
Such, then, are the four conditions which the ecumenical council must meet in order to express fully, both on the part of the head and on the part of the members, the notion which one must form of it.
208 The council, we have said, must be convoked, presided over, and confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff, and the whole episcopate must be called to it. However, these four conditions are not equally indispensable. Of the three conditions which concern the action of the head, that is to say, of the vicar of Jesus Christ, namely, the convocation, the presidency and the confirmation of the decrees by his sovereign authority, the last one has the characteristic of being able to substitute for the other two. The mystery of the episcopate united to its head can thus be verified afterwards, when this head, confirming the decisions of the assembly of bishops, gives them, by his principal authority, the character of hierarchical acts of the head and the members. But since, on the other hand, the mystery of the episcopate united to its head is independent of the number of bishops who assemble, this confirmation is the only condition that is absolutely necessary and cannot be substituted in any way. It is properly by confirming the acts of the assembly that the Supreme Pontiff makes them conciliar acts, that is to say, a manifestation and expression of the great mystery of hierarchical life which unites the head to the members and makes the members communicate to the operation of the head. It is for him alone, as for the vicar of Jesus Christ, to associate the members of the episcopate visibly with the life-giving action of Jesus Christ on the whole body of the universal Church, to spread this action as from its source and to make it flow in them. History also shows that the conditions other than the confirmation of the decrees by the Supreme Pontiffs were not always fulfilled, and that they were sometimes made up for by this very confirmation and the acceptance of the dispersed episcopate. The Council of Constantinople, the second ecumenical council (381), can only hold its own as long as this doctrine is adhered to. It was not, in fact, convened by the Supreme Pontiff, nor was it presided over by his legates, nor were all the bishops convened. To this council, as to several others, were called only the bishops of the East296.
296 The council was convened by the emperor Theodore: SOCRATES (380 A.D. 439), Ecclesiastical History, 7, 7; PG 67, 576; SOZOMEN, Ecclesiastical History
209 In all cases, the confirmation given to the decrees by the Supreme Pontiff is constantly sufficient to express the action of the head; As for the cooperation of the members, it can be said that all ecumenical councils, whatever the number of bishops called or attending, have been assemblies of the entire episcopate, both by the nature of the episcopal order, which is wholly and jointly owned by all the members of the college and by the acceptance and consent of all the bishops of the Catholic world, implicitly, inevitably and actually united to their leader, a consent which is a tacit and mysterious, but effective and very true, cooperation in the work done by those who have assembled. Also antiquity recognized in every assembly of bishops presided over or confirmed by the Sovereign Pontiff the supreme and unappealable authority of the vicar of Jesus Christ and of the episcopate; and, if these assemblies did not all take their place in the classical series of ecumenical councils, it was because a distinction was made among these councils, of equal sovereign power, between those which were the most famous and whose decisions were of greater importance. These were called the great councils, and it is with them that the received list of general councils begins. This rank was reserved for those whose solemn definitions had marked the principal developments of Christian dogma and the most illustrious victories won over heresies. These were, in the beginning, the four Councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451), compared by the Fathers to the four Gospels because of the striking declarations of Catholic doctrine which the Holy Spirit had dictated there.
(between 439 and 450), 1429. The bishops of the Eastern Empire alone were summoned to it: THEODORET († c. 466), Ecclesiastical History, 5, 6-7; PG 82, 1208; only Eastern bishops were actually seen there. Pope Damasus, who had not been summoned, did not appear and was not represented. Cf. Hefele 2, 4-5. The pontifical approval at first concerned only the symbol and not the canons: St. Leo, Letter 106, 2, to Anatole, MANSI 6, 204; St. Gregory the Great, Letter 34, (1. 7); PL 77, 893; cf. HÉFÉLÉ 1, 62-63; 2, 42-48; Pierre-Thomas CAMELOT, O. P., Les Concils œcuméniques des IVe et Ve siècles, in Le Concile et les Conciles, CerfChevetogne, 1960, pp. 45-73.
210 tées297. Later, the eight councils were counted.298 But, again, it was not intended to diminish, by the more glorious rank given to these eight councils, the authority of less famous assemblies which, convened or presided over by the vicar of Jesus Christ, were entitled to the same respect and obedience, and whose dogmatic decisions were equally infallible and whose decrees were equally sovereign and without appeal. Such was the Council of Sardikus (347)299; such were all those Roman Councils300 which the Pope held, not as patriarch or metropolitan, but as vicar of Jesus Christ and supreme head of the Catholic Church. It was in one of these councils that St. Athanasius was restored to his seat301, and the most considerable affairs of the Christian universe were constantly dealt with there. On the most serious occasions, the episcopate of distant regions was expressly called to it; and, if this special convocation did not always take place, it was made up for by a sort of general and permanent invitation and by the admission of all the bishops present in Rome, whatever their seats or their homelands, to take session there. This right of all the bishops to sit in these councils presided over by the Supreme Pontiff was so manifest and so well established by constant practice that they commonly had their rank assigned to them by the law and custom of precedence. And this is why, at the Council of Bari (1098), presided over by Blessed Urban II, and which belongs to this class of councils, there was a difficulty about St. Anselm and the place he should oc-
297 St. GREGOIRE THE GREAT, Letter 25 (1. 1) to the patriarchs John...; PL 77, 478: "I acknowledge that I receive and venerate the four councils as the four books of the holy gospel." - Other texts in YVES CONGAR, O. P., Primacy of the First Ecumenical Councils, in The Council and the Councils, pp. 78-79. 298 Nicea (325), Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), II Constantinople (553), III Constantinople (680), Il Nicea (787), IV Constantinople (869). 299 Cf. HEFEL 1, 737-812. 300 We call the reader's attention in particular to the IV Roman Council, of 382. This Council satisfies the four requirements more completely than the First Council of Constantinople (381) convened at the same time and which alone is listed in the classic list of Ecumenical Councils. See LABBE 2, 1013, MANSI 3, 639, HEFLEl 2, 57-63. 301 Roman Council of 340; HEFELÉ 1, 699-702.
211 cuper. Precedents were lacking, and no archbishop of Canterbury had yet appeared302. Thus, in antiquity, the councils clothed with sovereign authority do not all bear the name of the great councils, nor do they all take rank in the series of ecumenical councils, and they may be divided into two classes, namely: those which take this quality, and those which, without taking the name, were really assembled or presided over by the Supreme Pontiff, not in the capacity of patriarch or metropolitan, but in the capacity of pastor, doctor, and judge of the universal Church. But this distinction between these councils does not go to the heart of the matter. Both councils could and did receive the same authority from the Supreme Pontiff, because in both the one and the other the mystery of the episcopate united to its head and receiving from him the fullness of power for the government of the universal Church appears. If they differ, then, it is only in degree of brilliance: it is because they do not all have the same majesty; it is because they do not all occupy the same rank in the history of the Church; it is because they do not all equally mark the phases of her life and the solemn hours of her battles against errors and enemy powers. When, later on, the schism of the Greeks and the Moslem invasion caused the holding of councils in the East to cease, the series begun by the eight great councils held among the Greeks was continued to the present day by the general councils convoked in the West, all of which henceforth bore the name of ecumenical303. At the same time, those less solemn assemblies, which we have included under the general name of Roman councils, began to disappear insensibly from history. These assemblies, composed until then chiefly of the Western bishops, lost the feature which formerly distinguished them particularly from the great ecumenical councils held in the East, since the general councils, assembled in the West, were almost exclusively formed of Latin bishops.
302 LABBE 10, 612, MANSI 20, 947; HEFLEY 5, 459. 303 Lateran (1123), II Lateran (1139), III Lateran (1179), IV Lateran (1215), Lyon (1245), II Lyon (1274), Vienna (1311), Constance (1414-1418), Basel (1431 ff), Ferrara-Florence (1438-1439), V Lateran (1512-1517), Trent (1545-1563), I Vatican (1869-1870) and II Vatican (1962-1965).
212 It is clear, moreover, that we do not mean here to speak of other Roman councils, particular councils of the Roman province, such as was in recent times the one convoked by Pope Benedict XIII (1740-1758), at which only the suffragans of Rome and the bishops who, by privilege, have no other metropolitan than the Supreme Pontiff were called. The latter do not enter into the economy and government of the universal Church. But the episcopal assemblies of which we speak, and which are called by the Sovereign Pontiff to deal with the affairs of the whole world, although placed somewhat below the ecumenical councils properly so called, by the solemnity and splendor which surround them, take their place with them by the authority which they receive from the Vicar of Jesus Christ304. Now, we must place in this class - first, the assemblies of bishops which the Pope held in Rome itself and which are the Roman councils proper; secondly, councils of the same nature, which the Pope, as Sovereign Pontiff, assembled in other countries, such as the Council of Bari (1098), where Saint Anselm appeared; and, thirdly, certain councils clothed with the same character of sovereignty and presided over by legates, such as the Council of Sardique (347). Finally, it seems to us that to these councils can be added certain assemblies which in themselves had no general authority, but whose decrees became afterwards, by the confirmation of the Sovereign Pontiff, definitions and laws of the universal Church. In this we are merely applying the commonly accepted principles. We know, in fact, that the confirmation of the Supreme Pontiff can substitute for the other conditions required by the ecumenicality of general councils. All the more reason does this confirmation suffice to place these assemblies in the class of sovereign councils of a secondary order. What is true of the Council of Constantinople, the second ecumenical, is also true of these, and the confirmation of the decrees by the Supreme Pontiff supplements for them
304 There is as it were a continuation and tradition of the ancient Roman councils in the solemn canonization of the saints, in which all the bishops present in Rome take part by their sentence and assistance, and which thereby takes on some character of a conciliar act of the universal Church united to its head. - Cf. BENEDICT XIV, De Beatificatione et Canonisatione, 1. 1, c. 34, n. 2, ed. Ghett, pp. 213-214.
213 to the defects of the convocation made by his authority and his presence at their head, as the acceptance of the universal Church supplements the call of the whole episcopate. This is, in our opinion, what can be said of the Second Council of Orange (529), whose decrees, confirmed by Pope Boniface 11 (530-532), were received as definitions of faith and completed the overthrow of the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies. It is said of this assembly in ancient manuscripts, "This Council of Orange was confirmed by a decree of Pope Boniface, and whoever will have other sentiments than those of this council and this decree of the Pope must know that he is opposed to the Holy Apostolic See el to the Universal Church"305. "No one, indeed," says Bossuet, "doubts that this council will not be, universally received, and, therefore, have the force of an ecumenical council."306
305 LABBE 4, 1673, MANSI 8, 719: "In the manuscript of Saint-Maur-les-Fossés... and in another similar manuscript, in the library of Sainte Marie-de-Laon, the letter (of the pope) is placed before the acts of the council itself, out of respect for the Apostolic See, and we find the following note on this short letter about the authority of this council: 'At this place the council of Orange took place, which Pope St. Boniface confirmed with his authority... Cf. HÉFÉLÉ 2, 1093. 306 BOSSUET, Défense de la Tradition et des saints Pères, 2nd part, book 5, chap. 18, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Gauthier, 1828, t. 24, p. 287.
214 CHAPTER XIX
The particular councils
The president of the council
The conciliar action of the bishops does not take place only in councils held or confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff and whose authority extends over the universal Church. But as the principate of St. Peter, reproduced and represented in each of the regions of the universe by the institution of patriarchs and metropolitans, imparts to the government of the parts of the Church, with "the form of Peter," the type and likeness of the whole body, so the mystery of the head and the members, reproduced in its circumscriptions, is also expressed there by the conciliar assemblies. And because, in the universal Church, the union of the head and the members is solemnly declared in all its fullness at the ecumenical council, so it is necessary that this mystery of life, keeping the right proportions which are appropriate to restricted colleges, be similarly shown in the holding of particular councils. But it is very important not to lose sight of the nature of the institution of the principal sees. This institution, and the whole order of the lower circumscriptions which depend upon it, originated in the authority of the vicar of Jesus Christ, and is wholly dependent upon his power; and therefore two considerable observations should be made here. The first is that the patriarch or metropolitan presides over the partial college of bishops under him only in the name and, so to speak, in the person of St. Peter, whose place he takes, and by the pure institution of the head of the pontiffs, who alone can reproduce below himself images of his sovereignty. The episcopate thus retains its essential prerogative, which is not to recognize any superiority that is not that of Jesus Christ and his vicar, or that does not emanate from and represent him. Therefore, when the metropolitan or the patriarch is absent, the particular council is deprived of its natural head. It may still assemble, however, but it will be necessary to have recourse to this celebrated law.
215 bre of the hierarchy of which we spoke in our second part, and which, in the absence of the head, calls the whole college to cover its defect by the very virtue of the secret and profound community of life which remains among them. All the bishops who make up this particular college will therefore receive in common the office of substituting for their head, and they will come to exercise it by order of devolution. The first of them, who will commonly be the most senior in ordination, will preside over the assembly. He will not, however, appear at the head of the assembly as a true leader and in the capacity of a true superior and a prince of the episcopate, but as the eldest of this assembly of brothers deprived of the presence of the father of the family. This is the effect of that great law which we have recalled and whose application we will often find. As a result of the intimate and living union between the head and the members, the whole body does not cease to act in the participation of life which, from the head, flows into it, even though the external sign of this communication, that is to say, the manifested presence of this head, is accidentally denied it for a time. We shall see in its place that, by a similar order, the presbytery of the particular Church substitutes for the absent or deceased bishop and exercises authority during the vacancy of his see. It is by application of the same law, in a higher hierarchy, that the episcopate of a particular college substitutes for the absence of its head. Examples of this are common and ancient. Africa saw them repeated again and again, as a result of its dependence on a single metropolitan, the bishop of Carthage. For, as this metropolitan had under his dependence as many as six provinces, the bishops of each of them often assembled separately in provincial councils, and not having in their midst their metropolitan, they were presided over by the first or most senior of them, called primate307 according to the custom of those regions.
307 This name, in Africa, means the first bishop and is synonymous with the titles of protothrone or dean in other provinces or countries. One should not
216 These were like councils which were always imperfect and in which the college had to substitute for its absent head in perpetuity. They called plenary council the council of all the African provinces assembled and presided over by the single metropolitan of Carthage. This plenary council was, in essence, only a perfect provincial council in the proper sense of the word; because the various provinces which met there formed only one ecclesiastical province in the rigor of the terms, coming under the same metropolis, as also all the bishops of Africa were joined together in only one college by the bond of their single metropolitan, only true head of the episcopate of these areas, whereas the assemblies held under the presidency of the primates were only fractions of this college and like dismemberments of this council. According to this doctrine, which sufficiently explains the practice of the Churches, the first bishop of a college, named dean, protothrone, or primate, according to the usage of the place, may therefore be seen to preside at the council of that college in the absence or default of its metropolitan. But it is important to notice that, in this very case, he is not the true head of it and does not appear at its head with the proper authority which belongs to that head; it must be known that there is always a profound and ineffaceable difference between the power displayed by the metropolitan and the prerogative of the first bishop in this assembly. The metropolitan alone holds the place of Peter and represents the head of the episcopal order. It is only through him, as in the person of the head, the center and principle of the unity and life of the body, that the crowning of the hierarchy is accomplished. Also the very style of the particular councils keeps the em-
in no way confuse the primates of Africa with the primates of the other western lands, heads of the great ecclesiastical circumscriptions and prepossessors of several metropolitans, of which mention has been made in chapter 16. The primate in Africa was commonly the senior bishop of ordination. In the province of Numidia alone, the rank of primate was attached to a particular see, that of Cirte or Constantine, without changing its character and without this see becoming a real metropolis. We have seen similarly, in other parts of the Christian world, the rank of dean or protothrone depending not on priestly age, in accordance with common law, but being attached by privilege to certain sees: in the province of Rome, to the see of Ostia; in that of Canterbury, to the see of London; in that of Lyons, to the see of Autun, etc.
217 preinte; and as the Pope, presiding in person at the universal council, in order to signify more solemnly the mystery of his authority descending upon the whole college and associating it with his action, makes decrees in his own name, sacro approbante Concilio, so the metropolitans, in the particular councils they preside over, also frequently make decisions in their own name, approbante Concilio, as others St. Peter; by this formula they associate their suffragans, and with their cooperation they give to the conciliar decrees the character of proper acts of the metropolitan authority308. This character remains with them, and St. Charles, the model of the metropolitans and the great legislator of the provincial councils, was seen to reserve to himself the interpretation of the decrees, as being his own decrees309. In essence, these decrees are indeed the common work of the bishops in the same capacity for each of them, but they are also the work of the metropolitan in a singular capacity which he alone possesses, as their head and the bond of their college, and which he does not share with them. Also, while the metropolitan may issue the decrees in his name, approbante Concilio, it is a style of which the first bishop, pre-
308 This or other equivalent formulas "de consilio", "de consilio et assensu...
" are very common. Here are some examples: Council of Tarragona (1244), AGUIRRE, t. 5, pp. 193-194, MANSI 23, 604. Montpellier (1258), LABBE 11, 779, MANSI 23, 989. Tarragona (1273), TEJADA Y RAMIRO, Collecion de Concilios, Madriti, 1589, t. 6, p. 54. Riez (1285), MANSI 24, 575; MARTÈNE, Thesaurus novorum anecdotum, t. 4, col. 191. Embrun (1290), LABBE 14, 1185; MANSI 24, 1063; MARTÈNE, loc. cit, col. 209. Cologne (1310), LABBE 11, 1517, MANSI 25, 230. Rouen (1581), LABBE 15, 821, MANSI 34, 617. Reims (1583), LABBE 15, 884, MANS 34, 683. Bordeaux (1583), LABBE 15, 943, MANSI 34, 803. Trani (1589), in LA LUZERNE, Dissertations sur les Droits et Devoirs respectifs des Évêques et des Prêtres dans l'Église, ed. Migne, 1844, col. 1295. Toulouse (1590), LABBE 15, 1379, MANSI 34, 1320. Avignon (1594), LABBE 15, 1436, MANSI 34, 1530. Aquilée (1596), LABBE 15, 1472, MANSI 34, 1367. Narbonne (1609), LABBE 15, 1574, MANSI 34, 1478. St. Charles Borromeo had adopted this style for holding the Councils of Milan. 309 Council of Milan (1565), LABBE 15, 246, MANSI 34, 100. - Cf. Council of Bordeaux (1624), LABBE 15, 1683, MANSI 34, 1541.
218 siding in his absence, cannot use and has never used, a power which he cannot deploy. He cannot give the decrees as emanating principally, and in a special capacity, from his particular authority. Although he presides over the assembly, he is basically only one of the members of the college, and it does not belong to him to manifest by his intervention the hierarchical influence of the head over the members. All his power comes from the bishops: he is one of them and has authority only in their name in the assembly. But, we cannot repeat too often, the power of the metropolitan comes from another source, for it emanates from the Holy Apostolic See; and the one who is clothed with it, who is the true superior of the bishops, extends over them an authority which, not coming from them, rises above them by its very nature and origin. There is, with regard to particular councils, another truth which it is important to bring out from the very nature of the ecclesiastical circumscriptions to which they belong and from the institution of the patriarchs and metropolitans who assemble them. Since this institution originally stems from St. Peter and the Holy Apostolic See, it depends entirely on the Supreme Pontiff. The particular colleges of these circumscriptions form, in their turn, a distinct body only through the establishment of their metropolis. And so, in the very essence of things, the entire constitution of the provinces and all the authority which the metropolitans and councils can exercise in them depend entirely and absolutely on the Supreme Pontiff. He can moderate or extend the attributions of both the chiefs and the colleges as he sees fit. And it is not only a question here of those pure limitations of exercise which the superior can make, as a measure of reserve, to the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical persons, without touching the substance of that jurisdiction; but it is a question here of the substance, because the institution of the metropolises depends entirely, and in its very substance, on the Vicar of Jesus Christ, who alone gave it its form and origin.
The members of the council
Particular councils exercise their authority, at least in matters of discipline, only over a limited district, and their decrees are addressed only to the churches included in that district.
219 Nevertheless the jurisdiction exercised by these councils is no less an application of the general power which belongs to the bishops as members of the college of the episcopate. It is in this capacity that they sit in these assemblies; and, although they are called and introduced into them by their title of head of one of the Churches of the province, they exercise in them those common rights of the episcopate which antedate their title and which extend beyond the limits which the title assigns to their pastoral jurisdiction. In fact, they issue decrees in common which affect all the Churches of the circumscription; and, since each of them takes part in the making of these decrees, each of them exercises episcopal authority jointly over the Churches of his colleagues, Churches which do not depend on his title and over which this title gives him no jurisdiction. Thus, it is always the same mystery of the episcopate united and cooperating with its head, a mystery which appeared to us in its fullness at the Ecumenical Council, and which is reproduced in the various parts of the episcopal college, keeping its proper proportions. The "form of Peter", that is, the form imprinted on the universal Church by its primacy, appears and is reproduced in all the parts. The titles of the particular Churches undoubtedly serve to determine the composition of these partial colleges and to designate the bishops who will form the particular councils: but it is indeed the authority of the bishop who is a member of the episcopal college, and not the authority of the bishop who is the head of a particular Church, which appears and acts in each of the members of these assemblies. The delimitation of ecclesiastical districts has restricted the composition of these councils to certain specified bishops; and, as bishops can only be determined among their brethren by their very title, it is necessary that the title of the particular Church should give access to and session in particular councils. But this designation is not so narrow or so essentially exclusive that, in ancient times, bishops from outside the circumscription were not often admitted to sit in it. The assembly of bishops commonly opened its ranks to them as to brothers and colleagues. St. Hilary of Poitiers (315-368), exiled from the Gauls, sat
220 ge in the councils of Asia310, and similar examples abound in history. And if, in later times, the right of session was understood in a stricter sense, the substance of the conciliar institution is not changed. Such is the nature of particular councils, always subordinated in the extent of their attributions and in their interior discipline to the supreme authority of the vicar of Jesus Christ, by whom alone were established and subsist all the particular divisions of the episcopal college.
Two classes of councils
This authority of the sovereign Pontiff is such that he can, when he deems it expedient, and for some special utility, form within the bosom of this college, outside the permanent circumscriptions which divide it into patriarchates and provinces, partial colleges answering to extraordinary circumscriptions accidentally drawn, and assemble these extraordinary colleges into councils. From this it follows that particular councils may be reduced to two classes, namely, ordinary and extraordinary councils. The ordinary councils are those which respond to the ordinary circumscriptions of the universal Church, that is, the circumscriptions of the patriarchates and provinces. The extraordinary councils are those which do not respond to the ordinary circumscriptions of the ecclesiastical government, but which, by special convocation, are formed of several provinces independent of each other, at the call and under the presidency of the Supreme Pontiff or of his legates. Such, for example, were those assembled in the Gauls by St. Boniface311; and such were also the councils of
310 SULPICE SEVERE, Holy History, 1. 2, n. 42; PL 20, 153: "Where he went to Seleucia, received with great honor, he had won over all minds and hearts.... Having expounded his faith according to the Acts of the Fathers of Nicaea, he gave witness to it to the Westerners. The hearts of all were so won that he was received into the knowledge and even the society of their communion, and admitted to the council." 311 I Germanic National Council (742), LABBE 6, 1533, MANSI 12, 365, HEFEL 3, 815-825. - Council of Leptinnes (743), LABBE 6, 1537, MANSI 12,
221 several provinces which St. Leo IX (1048-1054)312, and St. Gregory VII (1073-1085)313 convened in the same regions. History shows us many similar assemblies; and the so-called national councils cannot be legitimately assembled under other conditions when there is no legitimately instituted primate at the head of the bishops of a nation, endowed with true primatial jurisdiction over all the provinces of the territory.
Utility of particular councils
Of all these particular councils, the provincial councils are by far the most used and well-known. Canonical legislation recommends their assiduous and periodic holding314, and from the beginning the Church has desired their frequent convocation and universal practice
270, HEFELE 3, 825-844. - Second Germanic Council (745), LABBE 6, 1555, MANSI 12, 387, HEFELE 3, 862-863. 312 Council of Rheims (1049), LABBE 9, 1028, MANSI 19, 727, HÉFÉLÉ 4, 10111028. Mayence (1049), LABBE 9, 1046, MANSI 19, 749, HÉFÉLÉ 4, 1029-1036. Verceil (1050), LABBE 9, 1054, MANSI 19, 779, HÉFÉLÉ 4, 1056-1061. Paris (1051), LABBE 9, 1059, MANSI 19, 781, HÉFÉLÉ 4, 1061-1063. 313 Council of Châlon-sur-Saône (1073), LABBE 10, 308, MANSI 20, 391, HÉFÉLÉ 4,1283. I Poitiers (1075), LABBE 10, 346, MANSI 20, 449, HÉFÉLÉ 5, 137. Autun (1077), LABBE 10, 360, MANSI 20, 483, HÉFÉLÉ 5, 221. II Poitiers (1078), LABBE 10, 366, MANSI 20, 495, HÉFÉLÉ 5, 229-232. Würzburg (1080), LABBE 10, 385, MANSI 20, 538. Avignon (1080), LABBE 10, 391, MANSI 20, 553, HÉFÉLÉ 5, 282. Saintes (1080), LABBE 10, 397, MANSI 20, 571, HÉFÉLÉ 5, 282. 314 Council of Trent, session 24 (1563), Decree of Reformation, chap. 2; EHSES 9, 979: "The custom of holding provincial councils, if it was somewhere interrupted, will be re-established; they will be used to regulate morals, correct abuses, accommodate disputes, and decide all things permitted by the holy canons. The metropolitans themselves, or in their place, if they are legitimately prevented, the most senior bishop of the province, will not fail to assemble the provincial synod at least one year after the close of the present council, and thereafter at least every three years... All the bishops and others who, by right or by custom, must attend will be absolutely bound to be present there..."; trans. Richard, in HÉFÉLÉ 10, 567-568. The Code of Canon Law, can. 283, makes the provincial council mandatory every twenty years in all ecclesiastical provinces.
222 selle315. These assemblies, in fact, have not only the object of making laws and decrees, which is always relatively rare in a wise government, because of the stability which it is advisable to keep in legislative provisions, but also of bringing together the college of bishops in prayer and counsel, of tightening among themselves the bonds of peace and charity, and of constantly recalling, as in the cenacle, the successors of the apostles scattered throughout the world by the necessities of the Gospel. By this side, particular councils occupy a great place in the life of the Catholic Church316, and it is chiefly through them that the mystery of the assembled episcopate is continually shown to the world. Now, nothing is more venerable, nothing is more deeply rooted in the origins of the Church than this mystery of the councils. It has been very useful in all times for the members of the college of pontiffs to unite in prayer, counsel, witness to the faith and pastoral authority. The apostles themselves, ancestors and exemplars of the bishops, have left in the treasury of tradition the heritage of this conduct. The Es-
315 Apostolic Canons, C. 38, J.-B. PITRA, Juris ecclesiastici Graecorum historia et monumenta, vol. 1, p. 21: "Two councils are to be celebrated every year for the bishops to go into the dogmas of salvation in depth together and to settle the ecclesiastical controversies that arise." - This is actually canon 20 of the Council of Antioch (341). Council of Nicaea (325), can. 5, MANSI 2, 679: "It seemed good to order that in each province a council be held twice a year, composed of all the bishops of the province"; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 1, 550. Council of Chalcedon (451), can. 19, LABBE 4, 764-765, MANSI 7, 420 "The holy council decided that, in accordance with the canons of the holy Fathers, the bishops of each province should meet twice a year, wherever the metropolitan thought fit"; trans. HEFEL 2, 807. 316 TERTULLIAN, Treaty on Fasting, 13; PL 2, 1024: "In addition, in Greek countries, in certain places, councils of all the churches are held, where the more important matters are dealt with in common and the representation of the whole Christian name is solemnly celebrated." - In this text frequently referred to in the history of councils, Tertullian "does not refer to Catholic synods, but most probably to Montanist meetings: so he makes no mention of bishops."Hilaire MAROT, in The Council and the Councils, p. 25, note 7.
223 prite Saint, who animated them and continues to animate their successors, brought them back to Jerusalem after the first labors of their mission (Acts 8:14-25; 11:2; 15:2ff.), and gathered them again at the tomb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to witness to her glorious assumption317. the Catholic Church has kept these examples; and as she cannot shake the world by the frequent holding of ecumenical councils, she opens to the college of bishops the provincial assemblies, and, thus placing within the reach of all bishops these easy meetings, she invites them to be assiduous in them and to make them flourish by frequency and regularity318. Thus, it is through the provincial councils that the conciliar action of the episcopate is most ordinarily manifested in the universe, and it is for this reason that the acts of these councils, taken as a whole, are like the unceasing testimony of the episcopate and have such great authority among the monuments of Catholic tradition.
317 PSEUDO-DENYS, On Divine Names, 3, 2; PG 3, 681-684. - St. JOHN DAMASCENE, Homily 2 on the dormition of the B. Virgin Mary, 6; see trans. Pierre VOULET, S. J., S. JOHN DAMASCENE, Homilies on the Nativity and Dormition, 1961 (SC, 80), pp. 139-140. On the tradition of Mary's death in Jerusalem, see translator's introduction, pp. 26-28. 318 Cf. Fr. HOUTART, Les formes modernes de la collégialité épiscopale, in L'épiscopat et l'Église universelle, pp. 497-535. Here we see the evolution of the discipline with the creation of provincial or national Episcopal Conferences with their Commissions, Secretariats, and other official bodies.
224 CHAPTER XX
The Scattered Episcopate
The authority of the episcopate in the universal Church is essentially the common property of the entire college of bishops, and it is as members of this college that the bishops exercise it. Therefore, it is at the Council, where the college of bishops is assembled and manifests its action more clearly, that this authority is exercised with greater splendor. However, the dispersed episcopate loses nothing of what constitutes it, and, outside of councils, the college remains indivisible in the dispersion of its members, through the secret bond of priestly communion. Thus the dispersed bishops do not cease to cooperate together, in a more obscure manner, in the government of the whole Catholic Church, and to exercise in it that doctrinal magisterium and that disciplinary authority which first appeared to us in the conciliar assemblies. In this the bishops do not cease to be fully subordinate to the vicar of Jesus Christ, their head. Their teaching, subject to his, unites with it and operates with it in the diffusion and development of the revealed word; and there again this teaching retains, in its universality, that infallibility of the second order of which we have spoken above319 and which is the fruit and a communication of the principal infallibility of the head of the Church confirming his brethren in the concurrence they give him. Similarly in the order of discipline, the bishops receiving and executing the decrees which come from the Supreme Pontiff join to their obedience the action of their authority, and make all the laws which emanate from the head, even though they have by his very authority all their force, nevertheless become also, because of the mysterious co-operations of the hierarchy, the common work of the episcopal authority. We can even say that, in the general customs which are established by the consent of the episcopate, although these customs are legitimate only by the tacit acceptance which the Sou-
319 See above, chapter 13.
225 verain Pontiff, the authority of the episcopate concurs in forming the law, as in the council this authority concurs in forming the canons. The acceptance of the Supreme Pontiff is thus for these customs what the confirmation he gives to the canons of the councils is to them. This quasi-conciliar activity of the dispersed episcopate united to its head and receiving its authority and strength from him thus holds to what is deepest in the life of the Church and is exercised there ceaselessly, without attracting the special attention of canonists by its very continuity320. But it is always to this union of the head and the members, the head acting in the members and the members acting in absolute dependence on the head, that we must return. Thus the action of the dispersed episcopate has, through the mystery and essence of the hierarchy, the same nature and force as in the assembled council. Whether this mystery of unity is manifested externally or remains hidden in the most intimate secret of the Church's life, Christ in St. Peter always teaches infallibly and commands with supreme authority; Christ in St. Peter always gives the bishops the power to teach and govern with him. Thus there is always in the Church a living imitation of the society which exists between God and his Christ: the Father giving his word to his Son, and giving his Son his operation; the Son speaking the Father's word and operating with him: "The words that I speak to you I do not speak of myself: the Father who dwells in me does the works" (Jn 14. 10) In the same way Christ in his turn, through the organ of St. Peter, gives to his Church, in the body of the bishops, and to speak his word and to act in the unity of his action.
320 There are, however, some more striking examples: here we may cite the ancient form of the canonization of saints. This canonization, often begun by the initiative of a particular Church, was accomplished by the consent of the universal Church, that is, of the entire episcopate united to its head and receiving from him, with the confirmation of his sentences, authority and infallibility. Benedict XIV very well points out that the particular sentence of the bishops could only amount to simple beatification: De Beatificatione et Canonisatione, 1. 1, c. 10, n. 6 and 7, ed. Ghett, Prati, 1839, t. 1, p. 61.
226 CHAPTER XXI
The extraordinary action of the episcopate
In what it consists
The power of the episcopate in the government of the universal Church is exercised in an ordinary way by the councils and by the less conspicuous assistance which the scattered bishops, always united in the dependence and under the impulse of their head, lend to each other unceasingly for the maintenance of faith and discipline. But this power of the episcopate has also had extraordinary manifestations in history which it is important to bring back to the same subordination and to submit to the same essential laws of the hierarchy. We wish to speak here, first, of the authority displayed by the apostles, their disciples, and the bishops of the early days, their successors, to proclaim the Gospel everywhere and to establish the Church, and secondly, of the extraordinary actions by which, in later times, bishops were seen not to hesitate to remedy the pressing needs of the Christian people and to raise up, by the use of a quasi-apostolic power, Churches placed in extreme peril by the infidels and heretics. These facts have been abused to extend the authority of the bishops too far and to give them a kind of primitive and independent sovereignty. It is therefore necessary to overturn this foundation of error. We shall do this simply by recalling the doctrine set forth in our second part, principally in chapter 8, where we treated of the relations of essential dependence which unite the particular Churches to the universal Church, and by bringing these facts back to the laws already known of the hierarchy, laws which everywhere and always establish the complete subordination of the bishops to their head. First of all, it is good to remember that the universal Church, preceding in everything the particular Churches, possesses before them and always keeps sovereignly the mission of preaching the Gospel everywhere and of saving souls. It follows from this that the hierarchy of the universal Church, which is not
227 stripped of its immediate authority over souls even by the establishment of particular Churches, remains alone in charge of the salvation of men when these are lacking, and deploys its powers to secure this benefit for them. This hierarchy is that of the Pope and the bishops. It is the Pope who has the sovereign and principal action. But the bishops themselves, insofar as they are associated with him as ministers of the universal Church, are called to take part in it. They then appear to be invested with a power which is not limited to their particular flocks and which is exercised in places where there are not yet particular Churches founded and titular bishops established, and in those places where the local hierarchies, having been established, are affected in their existence or struck by impotence. This extraordinary power of the episcopate is always and by its very essence absolutely subordinate to Jesus Christ and to his Vicar, since the bishops are nothing in the universal Church outside this dependence which is their very order. If we call these manifestations of the universal power of the episcopate under its head, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, extraordinary, contrary to what happens in councils where the exercise of this power is ordinary, it is because the necessity which gives rise to them is not an ordinary and regular state of things. The establishment and full activity of particular Churches is, in fact, the normal and usual state of the holy Catholic Church. She lives by their existence and rejoices in their health; she suffers from their weakness and is harmed when they perish; for the particular Churches are not an accidental institution which can ever be replaced in a lasting way by the apostolate or the work of missions. The apostolate has no other object than to establish these Churches; and when they are formed, it ceases and gives way to their ordinary government. But if the defect of the particular Churches calls for the immediate action of the universal Church, and can give opening to this extraordinary action of the episcopate, it is manifestly on two occasions: First, when the particular Churches are not yet founded, and this is properly the apostolate; Secondly, when the particular Churches are as it were ren
228 versed by persecution, heresy, or some grave obstacle which entirely annihilates and suppresses the action of their pastors; and this is the rarer case of the extraordinary intervention of the episcopate coming to their rescue. We modestly propose here our feeling; and, while respecting that of the authors who seek to explain these facts of history by other means, we think that the power of the episcopate, a power flowing over him from his head and acting in this dependence, is sufficient to give the reason fully. We think that below the sovereign authority of Jesus Christ, fully entrusted to his vicar, there has never been in the Catholic Church any other hierarchical power than that of the episcopate, which was that of the apostles; and we do not think it useful to recognize, even to these, a particular sovereignty placed outside of the holy hierarchy, as we are going to explain.
Foundation of the Churches
First, as regards the very establishment of the Churches, the apostles in the beginning, and after them their first disciples, acted in virtue of this general mission: 'Go and make disciples of all nations' (Matt. 28:19); this is manifest, since the Gospel gives them no other. Now, this mission constantly concerns the episcopate. Indeed, it was given to the episcopal college, since its effectiveness was to last until the end of the world, in accordance with what follows in the sacred text: "And I am with you always, to the end of the world" (Mt 28:20). This is the doctrine of St. Augustine, and it has never been contradicted. But this mission was given before any territory was delimited and before any bishop had any particular power over a particular people. It preceded the foundation of the Churches which were later to be assigned to each member of the college; and thus the bishops received in the person of the apostles a truly and primitively general mission to proclaim the Gospel to the unbelieving nations. Now these words contained the precept at the same time as they
229 conferred the power; and, as it was in virtue of this first mission that the apostles went out to sow the Gospel in the world and found the first Churches, it seems well that in this they acted truly as bishops, and in virtue of the powers conferred on the episcopate, and which consequently cannot be confined to their persons alone, the powers contained in this very mission and expressed by it. But, if they did not leave the rank and limits of the episcopate by virtue of the apostolic mission, far from exercising in this a kind of sovereign power, from being answerable to no superior here below and from having to give an account of their labors only to God himself, they were, by this very fact and as bishops, fully and perfectly constituted in all the dependence of St. Peter, the vicar of Jesus Christ, a dependence which is the very essence of the episcopate. They therefore always remained entirely subject to St. Peter, their leader, who held the place of Jesus Christ in the midst of the nascent Church: they owed him an account of their labors; they owed him obedience, and received his direction and approval, "lest they run for nothing," says St. Paul (Gal 2:2). And if they had greater freedom outside, it was because St. Peter, their brother as well as their leader, let them do so for the good of the world.
And let it not be objected here that they had all been chosen and instituted by our Lord himself, as if their dependence on him were to be diminished; for this changes nothing in the substance of things. The source of their authority, which is Jesus Christ, having been henceforth and for ever indivisibly placed here below in the vicar whom he gave himself, this authority, which originally flowed from Jesus Christ, did not cease to flow by this very fact habitually and continually upon them, as upon the other bishops whom they ordained, from the vicar of Jesus Christ; and this is why this vicar, in his unity with the one whom he represents, is called "the origin of the apostolate."321.
321 PSEUDO-CYPRIAN (anonymous African bishop), Against the Players of Dice, (De aleatoribus) ed. HARTEL, CSEL 3, 93. - St. INNOCENT I (402-417), Letter 2, to Victrix, 2; PL 20, 470: "By whom (the holy apostle Peter) began and the apostolate .
230 This is so true that St. Peter was able, from the beginning, to institute a new apostle in place of the traitor Judas (Acts 1:15-26); he was able to institute him alone and by his full power, says St. John Chrysostom, even though, out of sheer condescension, he called upon the congregation to take part in appointing his person322; and this apostle, established by St. Peter, will in no way be inferior in authority to those whom Jesus Christ himself has established. For as well, to return to a comparison we have already proposed, even in the ranks of the lower hierarchies there is no difference between the cleric instituted by the bishop or the one instituted by the bishop's vicar: the institution of the one and the other is equal, and subjects them equally to the bishop and to the bishop's vicar, as to a single and indivisible power. And yet, if we propose this comparison for the second time, we feel that the terms are not fully equivalent and that all the advantage remains here with the vicar of Jesus Christ. The institution of the episcopal vicar is in fact always precarious; it is purely accidental, so to speak; the particular Church
and the episcopate in Christ". - St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 4; PL 3,499-500: "He established, however, only one pulpit, and he organized by the authority of his word the origin, the modality of unity." - "The beginning has its starting point in unity"; trans. DE LABRIOLLE, P. 9. ID, Letter 45, to Pope Cornelius, 14; PL 3, 818-819: "They dare to sail to the chair of Peter and the principal Church, from which the unity of the priesthood has come forth." - St. OPTAT OF MILÈVE (between 365 and 385), On the Donatist Schism, 1. 7, c. 3; PL 11, 1087: "Only (Peter) received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which he was to communicate to the others." - St. INNOCENT I, Letter 29, to the Council of Carthage, 1; PL 20, 583: "You know what is due to the Apostolic See, whence comes the episcopate itself and all the authority of this name of bishop. - ID, Letter 30, to the Council of Meleve (416), 2; PL 20, 590: "Whenever a question of faith is agitated, I think that all Our brothers and colleagues in the episcopate, should refer only to Peter, as the author of their name and dignity as bishops." These two texts of Pope Innocent are also found in the Works of St. Augustine, tr. PERON, vol. 5, pp. 535 and 541. 322 St. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS, Homily 3 on Acts; PG 60, 34-36: "See how Peter did everything by unanimous consent; he imposed nothing by his authority or supreme power... He allowed the assembly to decide... What is this? Could not Peter himself choose alone? Certainly he could..., but he did not. - Cf. Pius VI, Decree Super soliditate (November 28, 1786), in The Church (EP), n. 29.
231 is not founded on it; it has nothing necessary; a purely human institution, it always depends on the will of men. Only the vicar of Jesus Christ possesses his title by the divine institution, which is eternal and without repentance; and this institution is still the chief institution in the Church, the foundation on which the whole edifice rests and on which it continually rises "to the heavens"323; it is permanent, co like the Church itself which it must support, and therefore it is par excellence the ordinary institution; therefore the Supreme Pontiff, though truly and purely a vicar and the vicar of Jesus Christ, is, in all fullness and in every way of understanding, "the Ordinary"324 of the Universal Church. Moreover, the apostles who were subject to St. Peter, who held in their eyes the place of Jesus Christ, were not exposed to the peril of withdrawing from this dependence. For as they were confirmed in grace and holiness by a personal privilege, they were also singularly confirmed in his communion, which is inseparable from holiness and essentially carries with it this dependence.
323 First Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, Preamble, CL 7, 482, Den., 1821, Dum., 466: "Placing blessed Peter above the other apostles, he established in his person the enduring principle and the visible foundation of this twofold unity. On his solidity the eternal temple would be built, and on the firmness of this faith would rise the Church whose greatness must touch heaven"; Cf. The Church (EP), n. 356. - Cf. St. Leo, Sermon 4, for the anniversary of his consecration, 2, quoted by the Apostolic Constitution Pastor aeternus (July 18, 1870), in The Church, (EP), n. 356. The same idea is taken up by Pius IX in his Allocution to an International Catholic Deputation (March 7, 1873), ibid. n. 421. 324 St. ALBERT THE GREAT (1206-1280), Summa Theologica, p. 2, tract. 23, q. 141, membr., 3, ed. Borgnet, Vivès, 1895, vol. 33, p. 484: "The Pope is the Ordinary of all men, because he holds the place of God on earth." I Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, c. 3, CL 7, 484, Den. 1827, Dum. 472: "We teach and declare that the Roman Church possesses over all others, by the Lord's disposition, a primacy of ordinary power"; cf. The Church (EP), n. 363. - Cf. Fourth Lateran Council (1215), c. 5, LABBE 11, 153, MANSI 22, 991, Den., 436: "After the Roman Church, which, by disposition of the Lord, possesses over all others a primacy of ordinary power." - PIE VI (1775-1799), Reply to the Metropolitans on the Subject of the Apostolic Nuncios, p. 188: "The truth drawn from the sources of dogma... is that this primacy of divine origin... has in it the stable, perpetual, absolute power in all things to pasture, direct, and govern both peoples and the pastors of peoples."
232 And, if we wish to investigate why they acted with more empire than do the bishops their successors, although it is sufficient to know, as we have said above, that they had the consent of their chief for this, several manifest and considerable reasons may be given. In the first place, it was necessary that the power of the apostles be exercised to this extent in the early days of the Church, because of the needs of the Gospel. In the second place, no restrictions had been placed on it until then; the land was to be conquered. The apostles had all the rights of the first occupants, and at the same time they needed all the freedom to found the religion there. In the lands they and their first followers were traveling through, there was as yet no established Church, no particular jurisdiction, and the jurisdiction of the universal Church was exercised solely through their ministry. They acted, not as particular pastors, but only as ministers of the universal Church. In the third place, this freedom was without danger, and they used it with all security, because it was guaranteed against deviations and abuses by divine assistance and the personal gifts of holiness and inspiration which were given to them. Finally, it can be said that this great latitude and full exercise of power had the added advantage of honoring in the Church before the people and in the eyes of the centuries to come their singular vocation and the special graces which Jesus Christ had attached to it. It was, however, the very powers of the episcopate which, raised up by these singular gifts, declared themselves with such splendor and fullness. And this is why the apostles, who could not transmit personal gifts, were able to communicate these powers to the first bishops, their disciples, to the apostolic men named in Scripture, St. Mark, St. Titus, St. Timothy, and so many others afterwards, and to send them to preach to the unfaithful nations. The first successors of the apostles inherited this mission. Many others besides these," says Eusebius, "were famous at that time, holding the first rank in the succession of the apostles. Magnificent disciples of such men, they edi
233 fia on the foundations of the churches which the apostles had begun to establish in every place; they increased the preaching more and more and sowed the saving seeds of the kingdom of heaven throughout the whole extent of the inhabited earth. Indeed, many of the disciples of that time, struck in their souls by the Divine Word with a deep love for philosophy, first fulfilled the Savior's advice by distributing their goods to the needy; then, leaving their countries, they carried out the work of evangelists, with the ambition of preaching the word of faith to those who had not yet heard it and of transmitting the books of the divine Gospels. They only laid the foundations of the faith in a few foreign places, then established other pastors there and entrusted them with the care of cultivating those they had just introduced (into the Church). Afterwards, they left again for other countries and nations with the grace and help of God, because the many and marvelous powers of the divine Spirit were still working through them at that time... It is impossible for us to enumerate (and cite) by name all those who then, from the time of the first succession of the apostles, became pastors or evangelists in the churches of the world325." Thus with the episcopate passed on the mission of spreading the Gospel and founding the churches. This was a common fact in the cradle of religion: and, although the establishment of the Churches throughout the universe gradually rendered the occasions for it rarer, the episcopate did not cease to make use of this freedom for a long time to come. Thus, exiled bishops were seen taking advantage of their exile to preach the Gospel to the barbarians. It is true, however, that from the earliest times, in addition to these undertakings of apostolic men based on the common power of the episcopate, a power emanating in its essence from St. Peter and subject entirely to his sovereignty, there appeared in the foundation of the Churches the express delegations conferred by the Sovereign Pontiff. Saint Peter and the first popes sent true legates
325 EUSEBUS OF CAESAREA, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 3, c. 37; PG 20, 291-294; trans. BARDY (SC, 31), pp. 151-152.
234 among the unfaithful nations. St. Peter delegated the first bishops of Spain; St. Clement or St. Peter himself gave an express mission to the first bishops of Gaul326. But these explicit delegations, however frequent they may be supposed to be, do not suffice to explain naturally and without forcing anything all the facts of the story. Many apostolic men were unable to have recourse to them, and we must return for them to the simple episcopal power. Later on, examples of this became increasingly rare. As the foundation of particular Churches, following the evangelical conquest, applied this power to these particular flocks, it thereby restricted the field of this more general activity which concerns the peoples to be conquered and which must cease with the establishment of local hierarchies. There is nothing, moreover, in this explanation of the primitive facts which can disturb the order; for in this as in all the rest, episcopal power is, by essence, entirely subordinate, in its exercise as in its source, to the head of the Church, the only center and principle, the only sovereign and independent regulator of all legitimate power in the Church. In the fullness of his sovereignty, he was able in the early days to allow this power all this latitude,
326 St. INNOCENT I, Letter 25, to Decentius of Gubbio (March 416), 2; PL 20, 552: "Who indeed does not know or notice that what was given by Peter, the chief of the apostles, to the Roman Church and kept to this day, must be respected by all? Especially when it is clear that in all Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa, Sicily, and the adjacent islands, no one founded Churches except those whom the venerable apostle Peter or his successors established as bishops (sacerdotes)." - St. ANSELMUS OF LUCAS (1036-1086), Contra Guibert, 2; PL 149, 456: "The most blessed apostle, the first Pontiff of the Church, sent the first pontiffs first to the patriarchal sees of the East, then to the cities of the West." - St. ZOZIME (417-418), Letter 1, to the bishops of Gaul, 1; PL 20, 645: "From this see (Rome) the sovereign bishop Trophimus was sent to this city of Arles; and from this source all Gaul received the rivers of faith." - We read in old manuscripts from Arles: "The apostle Peter sent some disciples to Gaul to preach to the people the faith in the Trinity; he appointed these disciples for each city. Thus, Trophimus, Paul, Martial, Austremoine, Gratian, Saturninus, Valerius and several others who were chosen by the blessed apostle to accompany them"; in FAILLON, Monuments inédits sur l'apostolat de sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence..., Migne, 1848, t. 2, col. 375-376. - No value is given today to these legends.
235 as he was able to restrict it afterwards and bind it at will. The first bishops, in succeeding to the apostolic power to extend religion and preach the Gospel, therefore remained entirely subject to it in this ministry; and, so that no uncertainty might obscure this dependence, it was put in its full light by the restrictions which in time the Sovereign Pontiffs placed on the exercise of episcopal preaching in the work of the missions, withdrawing from themselves and universally reserving to themselves the charge of preaching the Gospel to the infidels. Little by little, in fact, examples of bishops preaching to the infidels by the simple authority of the episcopate and as ministers of the universal Church became rarer, as it became easier to receive express powers and directions from the head of the Church. Little by little, the preachers of the Gospel were commonly, under the titles of nuncios, legates, vicars, or apostolic missionaries, clothed with the quality of envoys of the Sovereign Pontiff, a quality which had already appeared from the time of St. Peter, until at last the Holy See reserved to itself in ordinary times all the work of the missions, for the very good of the apostolate, and in order to make the action of the missionaries more effective and better ordered327. By this reservation, which has long been the constant and general law of the apostolate among the infidels, the vicar of Jesus Christ has henceforth generally bound in its exercise the power of the bishops for the propagation of the Gospel, though this power remains, in its substance, the usual property of the episcopal college; And the effect of this reservation can only be suspended by the express will of the Supreme Pontiff, or, in the impossibility of consulting him, by extraordinary circumstances and necessities which would carry with them the certain presumption of his consent. And as for the right which belongs to him to bind at his will the exercise of all the powers of the members of the hierarchy without injuring it in its essence and without touching the very substance of its powers, we shall confine ourselves to recalling the doctrine which we have set forth in our
327 Code of Canon Law, can. 1350 § 2: "In all other territories, the universal care of missions near non-Catholics is reserved solely to the Holy See."
236 part two.
Cases of necessity
But it is not only in the establishment of the Church that the properly apostolic and universal power of the bishops, a power always subordinate in its substance and exercise to the vicar of Jesus Christ, has declared itself. There is a second order of these manifestations which is even rarer and more extraordinary. In the very midst of Christian peoples, we have sometimes seen, in times of urgent need, bishops, always dependent in this as in all things on the Supreme Pontiff and acting in the virtue of his communion, that is to say, receiving from him all their power, use this power for the salvation of the people. As a result of calamities beyond the reach of the law, and of violence which could not be remedied by common means, the action of local pastors may have been entirely lacking; we thus find ourselves brought back to the conditions in which the apostolate was exercised for the establishment of the Churches and when local ministries had not yet been constituted. For, as we have already said, it is conceivable that in the absence of particular pastors, the universal powers of the hierarchy remain alone, and that the universal Church, through the general powers of its hierarchy and episcopate, takes the place, so to speak, of the particular Churches, and comes immediately to the aid of souls. Thus, in the fourth century, St. Eusebius of Samosata was seen going through the Eastern Churches devastated by the Arians and ordaining orthodox pastors to them, without having any special jurisdiction over them328. These are truly extraordinary actions, like the cir-
328 THERODORET OF CYR, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 4, c. 12; PG 82, 1147: "Having learned that many churches lacked pastors, dressed as a soldier and with his head covered with a helmet (tiara), he set out to travel through Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, ordaining priests and deacons and giving the other ecclesiastical orders there. When he found bishops of orthodox doctrine, he established them as pontiffs at the head of the Churches which lacked a leader"; trans. (retouched) by P. BROUTIN, 1oc. cit., P. 148. - Cf. also ibid., 1. 4, c. 4; PG 12, 1202-1206, especially col. 1203.
237 constances which have been the occasion. Also these manifestations of the universal power of the episcopate, exercised in places where local hierarchies had been established and had not entirely perished, were always very rare. Most often, in these extreme cases, the Supreme Pontiffs have been able to provide for the needs of the people themselves by sending legates or apostolic administrators; and as, in the fullness of their principal and sovereign power, they have reserved to themselves the work of the missions, so they have applied themselves to helping the languishing Churches by this same authority which is always immediate. If, then, history shows us bishops fulfilling of their own accord this office of "physician"329 to the failing Churches, it tells us at the same time of the imperative conjunctures which dictated this conduct to them. It was necessary, in order to render it legitimate, that the very existence of religion should be involved, that the ministry of individual pastors should be entirely annihilated or rendered impotent, and that no possible recourse to the Holy See could be hoped for. In such extreme cases, the apostolic power which appeared at the beginning to establish the Gospel would reappear as if to establish it anew: for it is equivalent to giving a new birth to the Churches to preserve them from total ruin and to be their savior. But, outside of these conditions, and as long as the legitimate hierarchy of the particular Churches stands, there would be manifest abuse and usurpation in the act of a bishop carrying the sickle into his brother's harvest, and overturning the boundaries of local jurisdictions laid down by the Fathers. Thus, in the first place, this universal power of the episcopate, though usual in its substance, is extraordinary in its exercise over the particular Churches, and does not take place when the order of these Churches is not destroyed. In the second place, it is still necessary, in order for the exercise of it to be legitimate, that recourse to the Sovereign Pontiff should be impossible, and that there should be no doubt as to the value of the presumption by
329 Roman Breviary, on December 16, feast of St. Eusebius of Verceil, 6th lesson of matins (before the 1960 reform).
238 which the episcopate, strengthened by the tacit consent of its head made certain by necessity, relies on his authority always present and acting in him. But, it must be admitted, these conditions were not always verified with their necessary rigor in the various facts reported by the history of the first centuries; and one is not obliged to justify them all on this basis. There were abuses and usurpations in this. If the conduct of St. Eusebius which we have quoted above has been praised without restriction, who could excuse the interference of the bishops of Alexandria in the affairs of Constantinople and the East330, or
the action of St. Epiphanius celebrating an ordination in Constantinople331? The Holy See, which in these circumstances sometimes used condescension in the judgment of persons, has always upheld the principles and reproved these enterprises. Little by little these excesses have become rarer and rarer, and they have been more severely repressed as circumstances have made them less excusable. Today, no more indulgence can be given to them. The Church, in fact, thanks be to God, is now sufficiently well established in the world, and the relations which unite the members to the head are so secure that there is no longer any occasion for this extraordinary action of the episcopate. The voice of the vicar of Jesus Christ is heard to the ends of the earth (Ps 18:5). All can ask him, all the Churches can have recourse to him in their needs. Also, as he has reserved for himself the work of the missions, he has unquestionably and very rightly, for a long time, entirely re
330 St. INNOCENT I, (402-417), Letter 5, to Theophilus of Alexandria; PL 20, 493495: "We write to you once more the same thing as each time you have written to Us again: nothing can be done to make Us leave the communion of John (Chrysostom), unless a proper judgment be made of all that has been accomplished by rape, without reason." - Cf. BARONIUS, Ecclesiastical Annals, an. 403, n. 1, 33, t. 6, pp. 380-390; an. 404, n. 79, vol. 6, pp. 419-420. 331 BARONIUS, Ecclesiastical Annals an. 402, n. 7, vol. 6, p. 354: "There others add that someone was ordained a deacon by Epiphanius, which it was not permitted to do in any other diocese than his own."
239 served the charge of providing for the extraordinary necessities of the particular Churches and the defect of the local pastors and hierarchs. He bears, with vigilant charity, the burden of the tongues and weaknesses of all the suffering members of the body of which he is the head. "What sick person is there whose infirmity he does not feel with tender compassion? What scandals are there that do not kindle his zeal? (cf. 2 Cor. 11:29). He alone suffices to strengthen all his brethren; and if the future reserves for the Church. trials which reduce her to the difficulties of the first centuries, if the perils of the last times should go to that excess, this same voice of St. Peter will still be heard in that extremity, and, when it calls the bishops to the last battles, it will untie, if necessary, from among the powers of the episcopate those which must be untied for the salvation of the peoples.
Constitutive gifts of the apostolate
It follows from all this exposition that the episcopate has inherited in all its fullness the ordinary and transmissible jurisdiction given to the apostles in the universal Church, a jurisdiction essentially and fully dependent on the vicar of Jesus Christ, and that, in the strictness and fullness of terms, the bishops are the successors of the apostles. We do not pretend to deny, however, that the apostles received special gifts from Jesus Christ which are not included in the treasury of the episcopate332. Modern theologians distinguish in them the apostolate proper from the episcopate which they were to transmit333.
332 PIE VI (1775-1799), Response to the Metropolitans, on the subject of the Apostolic Nuncios, c. 9, sect. 1, n. 5, p. 300: "As it is of Catholic faith that the apostles, (even though they enjoyed an extraordinary power given to their persons which disappeared along with their persons) were subject to Peter, who was established by Christ as the only head of the apostles. ...; it is also of Catholic faith that all bishops who are removed by the extraordinary power of the Roman pontiff are subject to the fullness of the power of that pontiff, ordinary power in Peter and equally ordinary power in his successors." 333 SUAREZ, The Sovereign Pontiff, sect. 1-4, a. 13, n. 9, Opera omnia, ed. Vivès, 1858, t. 24, p. 270. - BELLARMIN, The Roman Pontiff, 1. 1, c. 9, un. 11-12; 1. 4, c. 23-25, in De controversiis christianae fidei, Milan, 1721, t. 1, col. 534-535, 545,
240 We readily admit this distinction; but, in our opinion, the privilege of the apostles and the incommunicable gift given to them did not include the ordinary mission of preaching the Gospel and establishing the Churches, since they communicated this mission to the first bishops, their disciples, but rather the admirable prerogatives with which they were honored by the divine operation, and which were necessary in them for the founding of the Church. First of all, the apostles were confirmed in grace; they had the gift of miracles, inspiration and personal infallibility through a special assistance of the Holy Spirit. These illustrious gifts were of great help to them in establishing religion; but they do not have the character of a hierarchical institution. The authority conferred on the Church by her divine Spouse does not, in fact, carry with it in her ministers personal holiness, the gift of miracles, nor inspiration, but extends to these gifts themselves. It is for the Church to declare with authority the inspiration of the sacred authors and to fix the canon of the Scriptures; it is for her to assign the miraculous character to extraordinary facts and to discern the works of divine power from prestiges and illusions; it is for her alone to recognize and affirm the holiness of the servants of God and to canonize the saints. This is the ordinary and truly hierarchical power of which she is the depositary, and this power extends, we dare say, even to the writings and miracles of the apostles themselves. Moreover, to these extraordinary marks of holiness and divine assistance, the apostles also added the task of promulgating on behalf of God the truths revealed by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the very one of which Jesus Christ had said: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot carry them by hand-
.
553, 868, 871. - ZACCARIA, Antifebronus, dissert. 3, c. 2, ed. Sarlit, Paris, 1859, pp. 382-416. - GERDIL, Confutazione di due libelli diretti contro il breve Super Soliditate, 3 a parte, § 3, Opere, Napoli, 1855, t. 4, p. 432. - Cf. Charles JOURNET, L'Église du Verbe Incarné2, Desclée de Brouwer, 1955, t. 1, pp. 492-502.
241 holding. When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will lead you into all truth...for he will take of my goodness to share with you" (Jn 16:12-14). This is certainly a singular and magnificent privilege, which they alone possessed, for they alone were the first witnesses of the word of God and the source from which the river of tradition was to flow down through all the centuries. Hence the immense moral authority with which they were clothed in the supernatural order and in relation to the nascent Church. This moral authority extended to their disciples whom they had raised to the episcopate and made their equals in the hierarchical order. They remained their directors by a kind of august paternity and by the assistance of the Holy Spirit whom the whole Church revered in them, and the disciples could not refuse to obey the oracles of their divinely inspired mouth. This, in our opinion, is the apostolate as distinct from the episcopate in the person of the apostles, that is to say, the set of privileges and incommunicable gifts which they had received and which they were not to transmit to their successors, the bishops. But, we repeat, we do not include in these gifts the very mission of proclaiming the Gospel and founding Churches; for they had to transmit this mission. They communicated it during their lifetime to their disciples who were to be their successors, and it rests, in our opinion, henceforth in that treasure of the episcopate which will be preserved in its integrity until the end of time. In virtue of this mission, as the first bishops, in all the fullness of this title and in all the submission it carries with it to the vicar of Jesus Christ, the apostles exercised their ministry without any other territorial limits than those they had imposed on themselves when St. Peter distributed the world to them, and of which the apostle St. Paul speaks when he declares that there is no longer any place for his apostolate in the places where Christ was proclaimed (Rom. 15:23). Thus the gifts received by the apostles in their mission are broken down into two elements: on the one hand, the power that they were to transmit to their disciples, who became their brothers in the episcopate; on the other hand, the personal privileges that were to end with
242 their lives. Some modern theologians have perhaps given too much extension to these latter privileges. They have made the apostolate a sovereign power exercising itself with a kind of independence over the universal Church, as extensive, in some respects, as that of the vicar of Jesus Christ, and, like him, divinely instituted with its characters of fullness and sovereignty334. The apostles, according to this sentiment, sent by the Son of God, like St. Peter, were not subject to him by the very origin and essence of their mission, but only by a positive disposition of the Savior and for the sake of unity. Suarez also asks whether those who survived St. Peter owed obedience to his successors, who were now simple heads of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and stripped of the halo of personal privileges which remained with them. He resolves the question in the affirmative335; but in his eyes it is raised by the very nature of the apostolate as he conceives it. It was, in this system, it is easily seen, of the last importance to distinguish so extensive a power from the episcopate itself. It was necessary to resist the abuse which, on this basis, the adversaries of the Holy See and the disrupters of the hierarchy were going to make of the title of successors of the apostles, constantly given to the bishops by tradition. Mark Antony de Dominis, starting, as from a conceded point, from
334 BELLARMIN, 1oc. cit., 1. 1, c. 9, n. 44; vol. 1, col. 534-535: "The supreme ecclesiastical power was given not only to Peter, but also to the other apostles... But it was given to Peter as to the ordinary shepherd, to be perpetually transmitted; and to the others as to legates, without successors. For it was necessary in these beginnings of the Church... that supreme power and freedom should be left to the first preachers and founders of the churches." - SUAREZ, loc. cit., sect. 1, n. 4 (De fide, disput. 10), Opera omnia, vol. 12, p. 282: "The other apostles, except Peter, were not given this ordinary and transferable jurisdiction to their successors..., but a quasi-delegated jurisdiction by special privilege, because of the then necessity of propagating the faith and founding the Church throughout the whole world." 335 SUAREZ, loc. cit., sect. 1, n. 28, Opera omnia, vol. 12, p. 291: "It seems, however, from what has just been said, that they are inferior as to jurisdiction, and therefore subject to the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff, although they are superior in other and excellent gifts."
243 the universal sovereignty of the apostles, gave to the episcopate the chief authority in the Church, and to each bishop a universal and sovereign power, a monstrous error which was condemned by the Sorbonne336. The great discussions which took place, at the time of the Council of Trent, on the origin of episcopal power, further committed the cause of the apostles to be separated from that of the bishops. In order to establish the dependence of origin which links all the power of these to the vicar of Jesus Christ, their mission was distinguished from that of the apostles, and it was agreed, too easily in our opinion, that the latter, emanating directly from Jesus Christ, did not proceed in any way from Saint Peter. We think, on the contrary, that all the power of the apostles actually depended on St. Peter, that it usually flowed from him and in its exercise, by the very fact that it had its source in Jesus Christ, the vicar, in our eyes, not being to be distinguished from the one whom he fully represents in all that concerns the economy and distribution of power337. Moreover, the distinction drawn between the origin of these two missions found no solid foundation in the example of the apostles; for it was necessary, besides this particular power of the apostolate, to grant them also the episcopate, and to agree that they had received it from our Lord no less immediately than the apostolate itself. But if this apostolic power was declared to be sovereign in its extent, and of divine origin like the hierarchy itself, distinct, however, from it, instituted collaterally, and not intended to be confused with it, its nature remained more obscure, and the
336 MARC-ANTOINE DE DOMINIS (1560-1624), La République ecclésiastique 1. 2, c. 1, nu. 13 and 15, in DUPLESSIS D'ARGENTRÉ, Collection des jugements sur les nouvelles erreurs, Paris, 1736, t. 3, p. 20: "The bishops are called successors of the apostles, because in their office which was common to all the apostles all succeeded all, en bloc. - The bishops succeed one another in universal power, not only all together, but also each one in particular." - Cf. PIE VI, Decree Super soliditate (Nov. 28, 1786), in L'Église (EP), un. 48-49; YVES CONGAR, art. Dominis, in Catholicism, vol. 3 (1952), col. 1005-1006. 337 St. Leo, Sermon 4, for the anniversary of his consecration, 2; PL 54,: "It is a great and admirable communion of his power that divine goodness has given to this man." - ID, Sermon 6, id, 4; PL 54, 155: "He obtains an inexhaustible communion with the High Priest... from the stone which is Christ, he himself becomes Peter."
244 same theologians have varied in their notion of it. The great Bellarmine makes it a simple delegation, independent of any power of order, conferred on the apostles before their episcopacy, and similar in its essence to the delegated powers of the legates of the Holy See and the apostolic vicars338. Others, on the contrary, make it a truly ordinary power, which was not to be extinguished absolutely in the Church, and which was really perpetuated by being concentrated in the Sovereign Pontiff, the only distinct successor of an apostle, and, in this capacity, the only heir of the entire apostolic college. In our opinion, these systems have several serious drawbacks. According to the first, the entire hierarchy, the episcopate with its most sublime gifts, would have been, in the nascent Church, subjected to the sovereignty of lay envoys placed outside of any pontifical or priestly consecration: For it would have been as simple disciples and before any institution of their priesthood that the apostles, although they were later given the episcopal character, would have received, in order to exercise it afterwards with such great empire, the magisterium of doctrine and the authority of spiritual government, and that they would have founded the Churches. As for the second system, it multiplies the entities in the hierarchy without utility, contrary to the axiom of philosophy, by supposing in the Sovereign Pontiffs a power which has no useful application. For all their acts in the government of the Church derive their force from their title of vicars of Jesus Christ; they need no other quality, and it is not appropriate to add some element foreign to the very sovereignty of Jesus Christ which they exercise, as if something were lacking in its force; for this sovereignty is sufficient to explain the whole extent of their unbounded power. Moreover, in order to establish in fact the existence of this other distinct authority which one wants to attribute to the Popes, it would be necessary, which one will never do, to find in history a circumstance, even if it were unique, where
338 BELLARMIN, loc. cit., 1. 1, c. 11; vol. 1, col. 545: "The apostles had the highest and most extensive power, as apostles or legates; Peter, on the other hand, had it as an ordinary pastor."
245 the Popes, exercising sovereign jurisdiction over the universal Church, would have acted distinctly, not merely as heads of that Church and vicars of Jesus Christ, but as heirs of the apostolic college. To the disadvantages of these systems, if one wishes to go to the bottom of things, are added other difficulties which are no lesser. First of all, it is necessary to find in the Gospel this power of the apostles, distinct from the episcopate, instituted by our Lord in their persons. All the texts which refer to their mission apply to the episcopate and refer to the bishops, their successors. It is to the bishops, in their persons, that Jesus Christ said: "Go and make disciples of all nations... and I am with you always, to the end of the age" (IM 28:19-20). To the bishops he said, after he had first given the power to bind and loose to St. Peter: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mi 18:18). And so the bishops are in them subordinate to St. Peter in this ministry; for "the sequel does not reverse the beginning," says Bossuet, and the word first spoken to St. Peter has placed them under his guidance339. Finally it is of the bishops that it is said in, their persons to St. Peter: "Establish thy brethren" (Lk 22:32). and they are all placed in them under the chief authority of his magisterium and confirmed by him in the faith. Tradition understands things in the same way. The Fathers, though they celebrate over and over again the admirable privileges of the apostles, do not distinguish, in matters of jurisdiction properly so called, between an apostolic power and an episcopal power; and Cardinal Gerdil agrees, while claiming to find the thing itself in the monuments of history340. For us, we think that the real distinction between the strictly understood apostolic privilege and the episcopal power of the apostles must rest on another foundation. In our view, apostolic privilege includes the personal gifts
339 BOSSUET, Discourse on the Unity of the Church; see above. 340 GERDIL, loc. cit., vol. 4, p. 432.
246 nels, which we have mentioned above, with all their consequences and the immense authority which these gifts brought with them in the eyes of the nascent Church, and we bring back to the episcopate all that is properly of jurisdiction. Moreover, we do not intend, by this doctrine, to make the bishops sovereign in the universal Church because they are the successors of the apostles, but on the contrary to bring back all the authority of the apostles to its rightful subordination with regard to their head, Saint Peter, because they are the ancestors of the bishops. They are even just that, says St. Gregory the Great: "Paul, Andrew, John, what are they but what the bishops are, heads of each of the particular Churches...341" Therefore they have no power except in full and complete dependence on the vicar of Jesus Christ. And first of all, they are subject to him in their very mission and by the origin of their power. The mission itself is not an act once done and perpetuated only in its effects, but it is a permanent relationship, an unrepentant communication of power flowing from a divine and inexhaustible source. The creation of inferior beings itself is perpetuated by the conservative act of God, and the creature depends at every moment on the divine power which does not cease, by conserving it, to communicate to it all the being which it first received. The same is true of those communications of a higher order by which Jesus Christ gives to his apostles and bishops the power he has received from his Father. Remaining himself inviolably united to this Father from whom he eternally receives all his substance and divinity, he perpetuates by a permanent act what he has communicated to the
341 St. GREGOIRE, Letter 18, (1.5), to John, bishop of Constantinople; PL 77, 740. In this passage in which he deals with the apostolate, St. Gregory seems to extend this assimilation of apostolate and episcopacy to St. Peter himself considered an apostle, first apostle, first member of the universal Church, and not as vicar of the head, one head with him, one foundation of the edifice with him, thereby only superior to all the apostles, as he considers elsewhere. Cf. ID, Letter 40 (1.7), to Euloge, bishop of Alexandria; PL 77, 899; trans. in The Episcopate and the Universal Church, pp. 277-278.
247 beginning, and his hierarchs do not cease to receive from him in all the following what he first gave them342. This same Jesus Christ, then, having in the beginning sent and instituted the apostles, does not cease to impart to them the whole substance of their mission. But as henceforth, since his glorious Ascension, he will be made present here below in the person of his vicar, it is in this vicar that is henceforth placed and made visible the source from which will flow habitually and indivisibly upon the apostles the mission and all the authority which they originally received from the mouth of the Son of God. They are not lowered by this, any more than the bishops their successors will be after them; for it is all the same to receive what they have from Jesus Christ speaking on earth in his own humanity, or speaking through the organ of the vicar whom he has instituted to represent him. Thus is verified in the hierarchy that magnificent law of divine society where all order is established on the procession of persons and on the relations of origin. Similarly, in the work of Jesus Christ here on earth, all dependence rests and is founded on the mission which is like a continuation and imitation of the divine processions. The bishops depend on Jesus Christ and on the vicar of Jesus Christ, because they proceed indivisibly and as from one source from Jesus Christ and his vicar: and the apostles themselves will not depend on St. Peter by the fact of a mere economy of convenience or usefulness, but by the very necessities of the origin of their power, which comes to them continually from this head and in the communion of this head, because it comes from Jesus Christ made vi-
342 St. THOMAS, On the 2nd Book of Sentences, dist. 44, q. 2, a. 3: "Superior and inferior powers may exist in two ways: either the inferior power comes entirely from the superior power, and then all the power of the inferior is founded on the power of the superior. ...; so it is with the power of God towards every created power; ... so it is also with the power of the Pope towards every spiritual power in the Church; for it is by the Pope himself that the various degrees of dignities are established and ordained in the Church." - St. BONAVENTURE, Why do the Friars Minor preach?, in Opera omnia, ed. Vivès, Paris, 1868, vol. 14, p. 543: "It is from himself (the Roman Pontiff) that all authority dwells in all inferiors in the universal Church, according as it is fitting to make each one partake of it, just as in heaven it is from Christ Jesus himself, the source of all good, that all the glory of the saints flows."
248 sible in this head, presiding in him alone over the government of the new people, and pouring forth from this one summit all the diverse powers which are necessary for their life and increase. Thus, throughout their ministry, the apostles appear to be subject to St. Peter, and St. Peter acts as their head. St. Paul, at the beginning of his apostolate, is ordained a bishop by the disciples of the apostles in the communion of St. Peter (Acts 13:2-3)343; he begins on this foundation to evangelize the peoples. But he must come to Jerusalem to give an account to St. Peter himself of what he has undertaken; he needs his approval for the past and for the future, "that he may not labor in vain" and build off the foundation (Gal. 1:18; 2:2). St. Peter confirms him in his mission and gives him the special charge of evangelizing the Gentiles (Gal. 2:7-10)344. We cannot doubt that in their apostolic assemblies the other apostles held the same conduct as St. Paul, as also the division of the world among them did not take place without the authority of the prince of their college345. St. Peter exercises his supreme jurisdiction without hesitation over all
343 Catholic exegetes are less and less inclined to see in this laying on of hands the episcopal ordination of the two missionaries: "The laying on of hands of the prophets and teachers was intended to confer upon them the office of preaching the faith to the Gentiles. God's blessing was called upon their mission, and hands were laid upon them to fulfill this office worthily... Paul did not have to be ordained a bishop because he was an apostle and by the call of Jesus Christ. As for Barnabas, he had the same powers as those who, it is said, ordained him bishop, since he was a prophet like them; Paul, moreover, also." JACQUIER, Les Actes des Apôtres, Gabalda, 1926 (col. Études bibliques), p. 381 344 In reality, it is not from Peter that Paul receives the "special charge of evangelizing the Gentiles"; it is by the Lord's will and assistance that Paul is the apostle of the uncircumcised (Acts 9:15; 22:14-15; 26:17-18; Rom 1:1-15; Gal 2:8). Peter here merely acknowledges the legitimacy of this apostleship and the mission Paul has received from Christ. 345 GERSON (1363-1429), Ecclesiastical Power and the Origin of Law and Legislation, recital 9, in Opera omnia, ed. Ellies du Pin, 1706, t.2, pars Ia, col. 238: "As the number of the faithful grew, there was made, in order to suppress division and to give an example to posterity, a limitation of this power, as to usage; this was done through the agency of Peter, the sovereign Pontiff, and with the consent of the whole primitive Church, that is, of the general council."
249 the Church and over his brothers themselves. His judicial power appears in the condemnation of the memory of the only prevaricating apostle, Judas (Acts 1:15-22). In turn, his successors would not for a moment doubt their sovereign power, when they overturned the regulations established in Asia by the authority of the apostle St. John concerning the Paschal feast346. It is in vain that this authority will be alleged to them, it will not stop them, and they will always regard themselves as depositaries of a power to which that of the apostles, like that of all the bishops, is equally subject. Moreover, as we have already said, the extraordinary gifts given to the apostles, far from removing them from this supreme authority of the hierarchy, were themselves within the scope of the power entrusted to the Church and principally to its head. It is the ordinary and permanent authority of this head who decides and judges these extraordinary gifts, who judges the inspiration of the sacred authors and establishes the canon of the Scriptures, who canonizes the saints, and rules and authorizes the worship of the apostles; and thus, from this point of view again, the apostolate, instead of appearing to us as independent of the hierarchy, comes under the authority of which the hierarchy is the depositary in its most excellent gifts. After this, we will not argue about certain more striking manifestations of the power of the apostles. They founded the Churches; they even governed them at times, either by the divine ascendancy which the Holy Spirit gave them over the bishops, their disciples, who were established by them in the most illustrious cities, or, if we wish to see a true jurisdiction, by virtue of a delegation from their leader, Saint Peter. We cannot, indeed, deny to the latter the right to extend as much as he
346 St. VICTOR I (189-199), Letter 1, to Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, 1; PG 5, 1485, LABBE 1, 592: "The holy Fathers and our predecessors have already established that the feast of Easter is to be celebrated on Sunday, and we solemnly order you to celebrate it on Sunday; for it is not permissible for the limbs to be separated from the head, nor for the head to be separated from the members." - Cf. ID, Letters 3 and 4; PG 5, 1488-1490, LABBE, 1, 594. - For the councils concerning the feast of Easter, see LABBE 1, 596-602 and HEFELÉ 1, 133-151. - The Asians invoked, in this controversy, the authority of the apostle St. John: cf. St. IRENEUS, Letter to Florin; PG 7, 1231; EUSEBUS OF CAESAREA, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 5, c. 24, B. 3; ed. BARDY (SC, 41), p. 68.
250 will, by his mandates and simple consent, the circle of powers dependent on him; and in this we will not contradict the opinion of Bellarmine, who makes the superior power of the apostles a delegated power, on condition, however, that this delegation be indivisibly attached to St. Peter as to Jesus Christ himself, so as not to derogate in any way from their just subordination to their head, instead of attaching it to Jesus Christ alone, with a sort of exclusion of his vicar, by a special institution independent of that of the sovereign pontificate of St. Peter. We set forth here our sentiment with the reserve which is appropriate to us, and we retain for the great theologians from whom we differ in some respects all the respect which is due to them. It seems to us that our feeling better brings out the greatness and beauty of the work of the Church, this divine masterpiece. She appears to us as proceeding from the mouth and heart of the Son of God with her pure constitution, and this constitution is sufficient for her from the very first days. She needs no help from outside the powers of her hierarchy, and no other authority than the hierarchy itself ever exercises its empire in her. Moreover, whatever the doctrines of these great theologians on the nature of apostolic power, they do not go so far as to call into question the theory of the constitution of the Church as we have set out in this treatise, based on the principate of the vicar of Jesus Christ and the episcopate; For the apostolic power, which they suppose to be distinct from the episcopate, does not enter into this constitution, has nothing permanent about it, and is no more a part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy than the mission of the prophets under the old law was a part of the hierarchy of the synagogue. The reader, therefore, even if he did not share our feeling on this particular point, would not have to reject for that reason the whole doctrine which we propose to him in these pages.
251 CHAPTER XXII
Equality and rank of bishops in the episcopal college
All that we have said so far of the episcopate associated with so head Jesus Christ, makes us see it established in such eminent dignity in the universal Church347, that no higher one can conceive of it except that of its head. Below this head and above the whole body of the divine work, the bishops receive from Jesus Christ the fullness of the priesthood. He himself possesses the fullness "from which all receive" (Jn 1:16) what is appropriate for them; it belongs to him as to the source, it is the principal and sovereign fullness. But he gives to the bishops a secondary and dependent fullness of participation, ready in its turn to spread below in the diversity of the lower ministries. Now, who says fullness says that to which nothing can be added, and it is impossible to imagine a more abundant communication of the priesthood. The episcopate, therefore, cannot be enlarged; and since, on the other hand, this fullness received from Jesus Christ and depending on him alone constitutes its essence, nothing can be detached from it either, because then it would no longer exist. Hence the episcopate is one and simple; it subsists equal in all the bishops, whole in each one as a united and indivisible property348. Hence the bishops, inasmuch as they are members of their College, are all essentially and necessarily equal among themselves as to the substance and substance of their authority349.
347 We continue in this chapter, as we have done em all this part, to consider the bishops as ministers of the universal Church; we shall speak in Part IV of the limited jurisdiction which they exercise over their particular flocks. 348 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 5; PL 4, 501: " ... In order to prove that the episcopate is also one and indivisible ... The episcopate is one, and each bishop has his share in it, without division at all"; trans. DE LABRIOLLE, p. He (see above, p. 48, note 1). 349 ID, ibidem, 4: PL 4, 500: "In any case, the other apostles were also what Peter was; they enjoyed equal participation in honor and power"; loc.
252 This is what makes St. Jerome say that the bishop of Gubbio is no less than the bishop of Rome350, inasmuch as they are both bishops. For in this place he speaks only of the episcopate being equal in all, and does not regard the bishop of Rome as head of the universal Church as he does elsewhere351; in this latter quality it is necessary to recognize in him another title which he alone possesses and which he does not impart to his brethren. He is the vicar of Jesus Christ, head of the episcopate, alone greater than the episcopate; and with regard to the bishops who have the fullness of participation, he represents the person of him in whom the principal, sovereign and independent fullness resides. Thus under him alone are all the others; and therefore the councils, as we have explained above, under the Roman Pontiff or his local representative, the bishops all have equal authority and suffrage of equal weight. However, this perfect equality of the bishops does not exclude order and is not disturbed by the rank they keep among themselves and the rules which have fixed it. Among these brothers there are elders and an order of primogeniture. There are elders to whom precedence is given, without altering the indivisible unity of the episcopate. This order of primacy of honor which exists among the bishops rests on a triple foundation. In the first place, the Supreme Pontiff, as a result of the radiance which reflects on his person and on his see from his quality as vicar of Jesus Christ and head of the universal Church, is, as bishop, the first of the bishops. Saint Peter is everywhere named first in the Gospel (Mt
cit., p. 9 - St. GEALASE I (492-496), Letter 14; PL 59, 90: "The twelve apostles were certainly sustained with equal merit and equal dignity." 350 St. Jerome, Letter 146, to the priest Evangelus, 1; PL 22,1194: see above, chap. 10, note 9. 351 ID., Against Jovinian, 1. 1, n. 26; PL 23, 247; Letter 15, to Pope Damasus, 1 and 2; PL 22, 355: "Therefore, I have decided to consult the chair of Peter and the faith which an apostolic mouth has praised.... For me, who have no other primacy than that of Christ, it is to your Beatitude, that is, to the chair of Peter, that I associate myself through communion"; trans. J. LABOURT, Letters, vol. 1, p. 46.
253 10.2; 17.1; 26.37; Me 3.16; 9.2; 14.33; Le 6.14; 8.51; 9.28, 32; 22.8; Jn 20.3; 21. 2) and it is no doubt partly to express this prerogative of his episcopacy and that of his successors that the Second Council of Lyons distinctly proclaimed not only the principate but also the primacy of the Sovereign Pontiff352: the principate, because he is the head of the bishops above the episcopate; the primacy, because he is the first of the bishops in the episcopate353. By application of the same principle, the patriarchs and metropolitans, who participate in a lower degree in the principate of St. Peter, also have a prerogative of honor among the other bishops and obtain the first ranks among their brethren. To this cause of distinction is added a second; the Church, by a positive institution, has wanted to honor certain more illustrious sees. In the universal Church, from the beginning, the bishop of Jerusalem, a mere suffragan of the metropolitan of Caesarea, who himself was under the authority of the patriarch of Antioch, was placed in the fourth rank of the episcopal college, immediately after the patriarch of Antioch and before his own metropolitan. Thus, the bishop of Jerusalem, in the provincial council, was convened and presided over by the bishop of Caesarea, as appeared under Pope St. Victor on the occasion of the Easter controversy354. The bishop of Caesarea, the head of the council, then sat above the bishop of Jerusalem, because he appeared there, not as bishop, but as
352 Second Council of Lyons (1274), Profession of Faith of Michael Palaeologus, LABBE 11, 966, MANSI 24, 71, Den., 466, Dum., 421: "The holy Roman Church also possesses the sovereign and entire primacy and principate over the whole Catholic Church." 353 We do not wish to deny, however, that these two terms were more often than not in later times taken interchangeably to express the principate itself and the whole sovereignty of St. Peter. 354 8. Councils of Palestine (ca. 198), LABBE 1, 596, MANSI 1, 709. - Cf. EUSEBUS OF CAESAREA, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 5, c. 23; PG 20, 491: " ... Those (councils) which were then assembled in Palestine and over which presided Theophilus, bishop of Caesarea, and Narcissus, bishop of Jerusalem"; trans. G. BARDY, (SC, 41), p. 66.
254 depositary of the authority of St. Peter entrusted to each metropolitan in his province. But at the general council, under the presidency of the Roman Pontiff, he returned with all the other metropolitans and the patriarchs themselves to the bosom of the episcopal college, and all of them received there the rank which tradition and ecclesiastical rule assigned to them. The bishop of Jerusalem, who was not a metropolitan, was then seen to sit before all the metropolitans as the fourth bishop of the world, and far ahead of the bishop of Caesarea, to whom his see belonged. This appeared at the Council of Nicaea355 and was recognized
by a famous canon of that assembly356. It is useful to recall this fact of ecclesiastical history in order to show that these seemingly subtle distinctions between the principate and the primacy in the Pope and, to a lesser degree, in the patriarchs and metropolitans, were known and applied from the earliest antiquity. Moreover, in the various ecclesiastical circumscriptions, similar positive institutions also elevated certain bishops above their colleagues, in the East under the name of protothrones, and in the West under the name of deans. Thus the archbishop of Tyre was protothrone of the diocese of Antioch357. In the West, the bishop of Ostia is first bishop or dean of the province of Rome358; the bishop of Autun, of the province of Lyon359;
355 Council of Nicaea (325), LABBE 2,51, MANSI 2,693. 356 Idem, can. 7, LABBE 2,31, MANSI 2,671: "Since custom and ancient tradition hold that the bishop of Aelia (i.e., Jerusalem) should be honored, let him obtain precedence of honor, without prejudice, however, to the dignity which belongs to the metropolis"; trans. HEFELÉ, 1, 569 (read the commentary on this canon, ibidem, 569576). 357 Cf. LABBE 8, 978, 998, 1005... - GUILLAUME DE TYR, Geste d'outre-mer, 1. 14, c. 12; PL 201, 590: "It is certain that among the thirteen archbishops who, since apostolic times, were subject to the see of Antioch, the one of Tyre obtained the first place to such an extent that he was called in the East protothrone." - Cf. LEQUIEN, L'Orient chrétien, Paris, 1740, t. 2, col. 801-802. 358 Cf. LABBE 10, 388. 359 LE COINTE, Annales ecclésiastiques des France, an. 685, B. 2: "The Church of Autun must pass after that of Lyon."
255 bishop of London was dean of the province of Canterbury360. Ein Africa, the bishop of Cirta was in perpetuity first bishop or primate of Numidia. Finally, in the third place, wherever particular causes for honoring bishops are lacking, that is, wherever neither the honor due to the representatives of the principate of St. Peter nor the privilege of the see or the person can be alleged, the bishops take among themselves the rank which naturally befits equal members of a college, that is, the rank of seniority. It is even, it may be said, the common law of the episcopate361. These provisions are not to be accused of thoroughness and uselessness. They are not intended to foster man's tendency to revel in vain distinctions. But the members of the Church should be aware of each other and honor each other. Everything is ordered and must be so in this admirable body, where equality is never confusion. Also, since the right of devolution makes the exercise of certain powers pass to the college of bishops of the province, in the cases provided for by the canons, to be exercised by order of session, it is necessary that this order be determined by precise common rules or by authentic privileges. According to these venerable laws, the order which is kept among the bishops rests on these three causes of honor: the principate of St. Peter communicated to the patriarchs and metropolitans, the privilege of illustrious sees, and the seniority of ordination which is the common right of the episcopate.
360 GERVAIS OF CANTORBERY, Chronicle, an. 1188, ed. Stubbs, London, 1879: "The bishop of London sits on the right hand of the primate, for among the suffragan bishops of the Church of Canterbury the dean prevails in dignity." 361 The Code of Canon Law, can. 106 § 3 sanctions this right.
256 CHAPTER XXIII
Institution of Bishops
Dependence of the Apostolic See
Having set forth the constitution of the universal Church and shown what the sovereignty of the head and the dependence of the members are in it, it remains for us to explain the doctrine concerning the transmission of the episcopate. Here we do not encounter any difficulty, and what we have said so far is sufficient to make it clear to us that the episcopate has no other source than Jesus Christ and the vicar of Jesus Christ, in the indivisible unity of the same principate. Indeed, since our hierarchy imitates the divine society of God and of his Son, Christ Jesus, it cannot, like this august type, admit in itself any other order of persons than that of the procession, that is, of the mission given and received. If, therefore, the episcopate is dependent on Saint Peter, this dependence is sufficient to show that it proceeds from Saint Peter and that the bishops receive their mission from him. This doctrine will become even clearer if we reflect that the dependence in the episcopate is only the mission itself, insofar as it is received continually and habitually by the bishops. The mission, as we have already said, is not an act once performed which has no existence except in its effects, but it constitutes a permanent relationship outside of which the powers conferred by it no longer exist. It is a spring that cannot cease to flow without the earth drying up, a sun that cannot withdraw its rays without darkness invading space. This is, moreover, the application of a general law of the works of God, for creatures persist in the being they have received from him only by the conservative act which is the very creation itself continued. Or rather, it is here an imitation of the august laws of life which is in God himself in him, the birth of the Son is eternal and constitutes him in a dependence of origin which has neither beginning nor end, and which does not
257 can neither be suspended nor destroyed. In like manner, and by a faithful resemblance of this type impressed in the hierarchy, the powers of pastors, received by them at the beginning in the legitimate mission, cannot subsist outside of that mission continually and habitually operating in them. Their origin, therefore, makes them entirely dependent, and their powers are thus unceasingly linked to the one who conferred them, so that he alone can always retain them, suspend them, moderate their action or destroy them, as being the principle that is always at work in them; and in this way dependence and the relation of origin are certainly one and the same thing. Thus, to depend on Saint Peter is clearly to hold from him the origin of the mission of the episcopate; and by the very nature of the episcopate, which is this dependence, the bishops must be sent and instituted by him and by him alone. It is not, therefore, by an arbitrary provision, but by the very necessity of the divine order of the Church that St. Peter alone can make a bishop, and that there is no legitimate or possible episcopate outside of this unique origin. This is what a Greek author quoted under the name of St. Gregory of Nyssa declares with these beautiful words: "It is Peter's to give himself colleagues in the apostolate and to raise them to this high dignity, and we know that this belongs to no other except Jesus Christ alone, for this power exceeds all dignity and all sovereignty; and of all mortals Peter alone has obtained it, because he alone has been constituted by Jesus a ruler and prince instead of himself, and he alone holds the place of Christ with respect to the rest of men"362. Analogous texts make like the fabric of the tradition, and this author is here merely an echo of all the Fathers.
Let us listen to these ancient doctors Saint Innocent I "From the apostolic see derive the episcopate and
362 MAXIME PLANUDES, Eloges of Saints Peter and Paul; PG 147, 1071
258 all his authority."363 " Peter is the author of the name and dignity of the bishops."364 St. Leo "All that Jesus Christ gave to the bishop mitres, he gave to them by Peter! 365; "From him, as from the head, his gifts are poured out upon the whole body."366 Tertullian "The Lord gave the keys," i.e., jurisdiction, "to Peter, and through him to the Church"367. St. Optatus of Milaeus "St. Peter alone received the keys in order to communicate them to the other pastors."368 St. Gregory of Nyssa "Jesus Christ gave through Peter to the bishops the keys of the heavenly goods. "369 Still others "The Lord has given the charge of feeding his sheep to you first," successor of Peter, "and then through you to all the Churches spread throughout the universe"370. "This see transmits its rights to the whole Church."371 We could multiply these quotes. It was by the effect of this universally received doctrine that the bishops, receiving from Peter their institution and all their jurisdiction, were said, in that unity which they had with him, to "occupy the place
363 St. INNOCENT I (402-447), Letter 29, to the Council of Carthage (417), 1; see above, p. 214, note 1. 364 ID., Letter 30, to the Council of Milaeus (417), 2; ibidem. 365 St. Leo, Sermon 4, for his birthday, 2; PL 54, 150. 366 ID., Letter 10, to the bishops of the province of Vienna, 1; PL 54, 629 "The Lord willed that the mystery of this office should be attached to the office of all the apostles while placing it principally in the most blessed Peter, the sovereign of all the apostles; and he willed that from him, as from a head, his gifts should be poured out into the whole body." - Cf. GRÉGOIRE XVI. Encyclical Commissum divinitus (May 17, 1835), in The Church (EP), n. 176. 367 TERTULLIAN (ca. 213), Scorpio, Against the Gnostics, 10; PL 2, 142 "For if you think that Heaven is still closed, remember that in this text the Lord has left his keys to Peter and, through him, to the Church." - Cf. Pius VI, Decree Super soliditate (Nov. 28, 1786), in The Church (EP), n. 24. 368 St. OPTATUS OF MILENEUS (between 365-385), On the Donatist Schism, l. 7, n. 3; see above, chap. 21, note 1. 369 St. GREGOIRE OF NYSSE (335-394), On Mortification; PG 46, 311. 370 ST. EUROPEAN OF LARISSA (531), Letter to Pope Boniface, 11, LAB 4, 1692. 371 JOHN OF RAVENNA, Letter to Pope Gregory, in St. GRÉGOIRE LE GRAND, Book 3, Letter 57; PL 77, 654.
259 of Peter"372, "succeed Peter"373, "be the vicars of Peter"374, because, says a Concile of Rheims, "their power is only the authority divinely conferred on the bishops by Blessed Peter"375. And we may note in passing that, if the power to institute bishops belongs to St. Peter, it is to him also that the power to judge and depose them necessarily belongs. These two powers respond to each other; it is clearly up to the one who gives the mission to withdraw or rather to withhold this gift; to withdraw is here properly to withhold or to cease to give; and, as the mission constitutes a permanent communication of power and life which goes from the head to the members, it is sufficient for the head to cease to pour out this gift of life on the members for the latter to be struck down by impotence and death; And, in fact, it is so much the responsibility of the vicar of Jesus Christ, the source of the episcopate, to depose a bishop, that he merely withdraws from one of his brethren and leaves him inert and lifeless in the hierarchy. These notions are so obvious in their relation to the foundations of the hierarchical order that they cannot be denied or obscured without destroying these foundations or, by undermining them, rendering the whole divine economy of the Church uncertain. Also the history of all the centuries, in a language different according to the times, but always clear enough for whoever applies himself to hear it, agrees with theology to proclaim these notions and to put them in all their light. Catholic authors have, in our opinion, too easily granted that the discipline of the first centuries of the Church in the institution of the
372 St. Ephraim the Syrian (306-373), Eloge de saint Basile le Grand, in Opera omnia, Rome, 1743, graece et latine, vol. 2, p. 295 "Basil occupying the place of Peter and possessing his authority and liberty, rebuked Valens, who had been unfaithful to his promise." 373 GAUDENS OF BRESCIA († after 406), Sermon 16, on the day of his consecration; PL 20, 958 "(Ambrose), as successor of the apostle Peter, will himself be the mouthpiece of all the bishops (sacerdotum) present." 374 PIERRE DE BLOIS († 1200), Letter 148, to Savaric, bishop of Bath (England); PL 207, 437. - Council of Paris (829), LABBE 7, 1661, MANSI 14, 598. 375 Council of Reims (900), LABBE 9, 481, MANSI 18A, 181.
260 bishops was not so favorable to the power of the Sovereign Pontiff as that of modern times, as if this grave matter belonged entirely to human or properly ecclesiastical legislation. But the immutable principles of the hierarchy are here engaged, and it is necessary to show that they have always been clearly taught and maintained by a public and universal tradition, and that they have formed the basis of the discipline of all ages, equally unanimous in proclaiming them.
Fundamental form of the institution
The Pope alone institutes bishops. This right belongs to him sovereignly, exclusively and necessarily, by the very constitution of the Church and the nature of the hierarchy. He exercises it today in most cases directly and immediately by the bulls or letters of institution which he gives to the bishops. This form, no doubt, has not always been followed, but the source of episcopal power has not been displaced by its adoption, and the substance of things has not changed. What, then, was the form of the episcopal institution from the earliest centuries, and by what manifest and authentic channels did ecclesiastical power descend from the divine source placed in St. Peter to all parts of the Catholic Church? In the beginning, the Supreme Pontiff, as we have seen in this treatise, "imprinted the form of Peter" on all parts of the universal Church, and distributing it into great regions and provinces by the institution of his representatives, the patriarchs and metropolitans, at the same time as he conferred on them the prerogative of being like others himself in their circumscriptions, he gave them the power to institute in his name their brethren in the episcopate. According to this order, patriarchs institute metropolitans, metropolitans institute suffragans, to the Pope alone it belongs to institute
261 the patriarchs376. Nothing could be simpler at first glance than this distribution of the hierarchical mission. The Pope alone is immediately instituted of God, as we have said above. This institution is invisible and immediate. Authority descends to him from the very throne of God, and is then transmitted to the extremities of the body of the Church through the visible channels which he has instituted in the fullness of his sovereignty. But, in practice, we must distinguish in this visible transmission several different modes applied according to circumstances. The most natural mode, the one which appears first, is ordination. "The metropolitans," says a Greek canonist, "have the right to ordain bishops, and they themselves are ordained by the patriarchs to whom their sees are subject."377 As we have seen, ordination, when it is legitimate and produces all its effects, does not confer the bare character of the sacred order alone, but adds to it, as its natural effects and the final acts of this inamissible power, the communion of the order in the universal Church and even the title of a particular Church. The collation of communion and that of title, however, can be separated from ordination and properly form the matter of the institution. But they alone give ordination its legitimacy and usefulness. It is, therefore, in the communion and the title that the mission consists primarily. This is what it is important to receive by a
376 Council of Nicaea (325), can. 4, LAB 2, 40, MANSI 2, 670, HEFEL 1, 539540 "The bishop is to be chosen by all those (bishops) of the eparchy (province); if urgent necessity or the length of the way precludes this, at least three (bishops) are to meet and proceed to the cheirotony (coronation), provided with the written permission of those absent. The confirmation of what has been done falls by right in each eparchy to the metropolitan." - Can. 6, HEFEL 1, 553 "It is quite evident that if anyone has become a bishop without the approval of the metropolitan, the council orders him to renounce his episcopate." St. INNOCENT I, Letter 24, to Alexander, bishop of Antioch; PL 20, 547 "Since, therefore, by virtue of his full authority, the bishop of Antioch ordains the metropolitans, it is not permitted for other bishops to make ordinations without his knowledge and consent"; trans. HEFELÉ 1, 559-560. 377 BARLAAM OF SEMINARA (1290-1350), Countering the Latins; PG 151, 1267.
262 authentic transmission of the vicar of Jesus Christ. And here we believe we must make a remark in passing. The ordination of bishops has this peculiarity that the minister who confers it is not of a higher order than the one who receives it. The bishop ordains priests because the episcopate is the source of the priesthood. Jesus Christ, whose supreme pontificate is the only source of the episcopate, having returned to the splendors of his eternity, wants to be replaced in the ordination of the bishop by the episcopate itself, insofar as this ordination confers the episcopal order; and the bishop receives the character of this order from bishops who are his equals in this. There is here, in the divine liturgy, as it were, a mysterious application of the principle which we have explained in our second part, in virtue of which the members substitute for the absent head by his power and in his virtue, which is communicated to them. But Jesus Christ, who, so to speak, is absent here below as regards order, is not absent as regards jurisdiction. He is present in his vicar; and in the ordination itself, for it to be legitimate, this vicar appears, who, no longer as a simple bishop, but as the vicar of Christ and head of the episcopate, gives in his person or in that of his representative the legitimacy of the ordination and the authentic mission to the consecrated one. The liturgical laws have expressed these mysteries by calling several bishops to celebrate episcopal ordinations378; and, even though one bishop is fully sufficient for this, because the episcopate is wholly possessed by each of the bishops, it is fitting that the college should be shown in this action as the secondary minister to whom it belongs to substitute for the one principal minister in whom is the source of the episcopate, the head of the episcopal order, Jesus Christ absent379.
378 Roman Pontifical, Consecration of a bishop. - Cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 954 "The consecrating bishop is to call upon two other bishops to assist him in the consecration, unless one has been dispensed from this obligation by the Apostolic See." 379 It seems established that antiquity made an exception to this rule out of respect for the person of the Supreme Pontiff, who, as vicar of Jesus Christ and representing him in this capacity with singular privilege, was accustomed to confer the episcopal order alone and without the aid of other bishops. - FERRAND, deacon of Carthage
263 But, however, if the episcopal order is thus conferred by the college, the metropolitan alone in the ordination confers on the new bishop the fullness of the effects of the ordination itself, that is, jurisdiction and mission. And this is why, in the text we quoted above and in the common language of antiquity, even though patriarchs and metropolitans are not alone in ordaining their suffragans, only patriarchs and metropolitans are spoken of insofar as it concerns the right to confer in ordination the legitimate mission "Metropolitans have the right to ordain bishops, and they themselves must be ordained by the patriarchs to whom their sees are subject"380. This is certainly the most natural and simple mode of transmission of episcopal power. In the ordination accomplished by the Pope, the patriarch or metropolitan, the visible head of the episcopate, by himself or his representatives, giving the ordination its legitimacy, adds to the episcopal character, which is the effect of naked ordination, all the effects of that legitimacy, that is, communion and the episcopal title, or in other words, mission and jurisdiction.
Other form of the institution
But it is clear that in practice this mode is not applicable in all cases. How could it be required that bishops distant from the principal sees should travel great distances to receive the imposition of hands from their hierarchical head, or that the latter should make the same journeys to confer it upon them?
(480-547), Canonical Abstract, n. 6; PL 67, 949 "Let not one bishop consecrate a bishop, except the Roman Church." - Ordo Romanus 35 (early tenth century), nn. 6566, in ANDRIEU, Les Ordines Romani du haut moyen-âge, Louvain 1956, vol. 4, p. 44 "The pope (domnus apostolicus) blesses him, alone and by himself, by laying his hand on his head. For a bishop cannot be blessed by less than three other bishops, one who gives the blessing and the other two who lay their hands on the head of the one being blessed." 380 BARLAAM, see above, note 16.
264 As we have said, the institution itself may be separated from the ordination. It could be, therefore, that, delaying the latter until the day when the head of the episcopate could himself pronounce, the institution was awaited from the latter which, in turn, would make the ordination legitimate. But in most cases these communications could not have been easily established between distant places, and always they would have involved lengthy delays and dangers. It should be noted that the bishops of the lower sees are more or less out of the question here. The metropolitans could always easily celebrate or authorize their ordination and institute them in the very act of their consecration. Similarly, the metropolitans whose sees were placed in the vicinity of the patriarchs were commonly ordained by them. The elect of Ravenna had to go to Rome to receive the imposition of hands381; the elect of Tyre came to the patriarch of Antioch. But, for the metropolitans further away from these centers and for the patriarchs themselves, the nature of things and necessity gave opening to another practice. We must also recognize here a new application of the law of substitution, so often recalled in this treatise. In the absence of the chief, the college will intervene. The college of bishops of the province, that is to say, the most neighboring bishops, would therefore assemble around the vacant metropolitan see, and the most senior of them, assisted by his brothers, would ordain the bishop of that principal see and they would give themselves a head in his person in dependence on the patriarch. The suffragan bishops of the patriarch, by an application of the same discipline, ordained the latter, remaining always subject in this action to the supreme authority of the Sovereign Pontiff382. In this way, the ministry of these great Churches, whose prolonged vacancy had disadvantages for the Christian people which were all the more serious because they were the center of the affai-
381 ANASTASUS THE BIBLIOTHECAIR (817?-897), History of the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, n. 82 (on St. Leo II); PL 128, 847 "On the death of the archbishop (of Ravenna), let the chosen one come to be consecrated in Rome, according to the ancient custom." 382 Council of Nicea (325), can. 4; see above, note 15.
265 res ecclesiastics of a larger territory. But there was in this ordination of the metropolitan by the suffragans a crippled and lapsed side. By its very nature, the action of the members substituting for their chief retains a character of subordination; they act by provision, by virtue of a presumption they presume the accession of the authority of their chief always favorable to a reasonable act and made necessary by the circumstances. But they cannot remove this act from his judgment, which must, by accepting it, make it solid and definitive. They are always subject to him; but it is especially when they act in his place and pretend to substitute for him that their action demands his approval by a more imperious necessity. It is necessary that in accepting this act he should make it his own by his ratification; it is necessary that, by his authentic consent, he should confirm it and give it solidity383. Now, how was this confirmation administered? How was this essential prerogative of the chief exercised? Here we must recall the meaning of a term in the canonical language of antiquity. We have set forth in our second part that from apostolic times, and for many centuries afterwards, what is now called jurisdiction as opposed to the order properly so called and the naked character conferred by the sacrament, was called by the name of communion. This is that hierarchical communion which is distinct in every degree, and which is never to be confused with that other communion which is widely understood to be only the portion of life which the faithful receive through their incorporation into the mystical body of Jesus Christ. Thus, to give hierarchical communion or to refuse this communion is indeed, for the superior, to confer or refuse jurisdiction; to withdraw this communion is indeed to depose the inferior and to withdraw his share of jurisdiction. The hierarchical communion, a perfect synonym for the jurisdiction of the moderns, is such, in fact, that it is given by the head and received by the members. It is, in truth, the very life of the whole body
.
383 ID, Letter to the Church of Alexandria, LAB 2, 251.
266 of the Church which proceeds from the center and spreads to the ends384. The vicar of Jesus Christ is that visible center from which episcopal communion and with it the power of the pastors385 immediately flow. The word for peace had this mystical meaning and signified the communion that puts order into all parts. St. Peter, was represented, in ancient monuments, presiding over this mystery of unity and life under this symbol of peace. He received from Christ a book in which was inscribed the word of pax or tex, and one read indifferently in the inscriptions that explained this image "Christ gives peace", "Christ gives the law". Thus, for the Pope to communicate with a bishop is to give him authority and mission; but for a bishop to communicate with the Pope is to receive from him that same authority and mission. There are here, in the term to communicate, two very clear and manifestly opposite relative meanings; and in the same communion of the
384 St. Celestine I (422-432), Letter 11, to St. Cyril of Alexandria, 3-4; PL 50, 463 "Let him (Nestorius) know that he cannot have Our communion if, in opposition to the apostolic doctrine, he persists in the way of his wickedness... Within ten days after that of his trial, let him reject, by a written profession, his false doctrines...; if he does not do so, immediately your Holiness will notify his Church so that it may know in every way that he must be rejected from Our body." 385 St. Felix III (483-492), Letter 13, to Flavian, Bishop of Constantinople; PL 58, 972, LAB 4, 1809 "Who is regularly destined for the Apostolic See, through which, thanks to Christ, the dignity of all bishops (sacerdotum) is established." - ID, Letter 12, to the emperor Zeno; PL 58, 969, LAB 4, 1087 "He (Euphemius of Constantinople) who claims to be promoted to the episcopate, desires the support (of the Apostolic See) from which, according to Christ's desire, abundantly flows the full grace of all pontiffs." - St. NICOLAS I (858-867), Letter to all the faithful and bishops of the East, in ALLATIUS, The Perpetual Consent of the Church of the West and East, Cologne, 1648, col. 544 "The authority of the Apostolic See shines with supreme brilliance when its opponents themselves, in spite of themselves, are obliged to have recourse to it; for they are very near to knowing that whatever they do (for example, about the deposition of St. Ignatius (of Constantinople) and the promotion of Photius) is of no value unless it is confirmed by the Roman Pontiff." - AETHENIAN V (885-891), Letter 1, to Emperor Basil; PL 129, 789 "The institution of all the bishops (sacerdotium) who are in the world received its origin from Peter, prince of the churches."
267 Pope and episcopate, the Pope gives and the bishops receive386. Also the Popes have no stronger terms for rejecting a bishop than to denounce him that they are cutting him off from their communion and thereby from the whole body of the episcopate387; this is sufficient and says enough. The bishops of the great sees, after having urged this communion, tremble at losing it, because their whole dignity depends on it, so much so that the term communion given or refused is really and fully the equivalent of the collation or withdrawal of jurisdiction. After this, it is clear that the communion of the bishops among themselves in the equality of their priesthood was no more than a continuation of that communion given by the head and received by the members. All together they recognized each other as brothers and colleagues, because they all drew the substance of their authority from the same source; and in this way, after these two meanings of the communion given by the superior, signifying the collation of jurisdiction, and of the communion received by the inferior, signifying this jurisdiction as emanating from the source and subordinate to its head, there was as it were a third use of the word communion between the brethren and equals, to signify the community and the unity of life which the unity of the source from which they all drew equally placed and maintained among them. We need not insist on these various meanings of the word communion commonly admitted in antiquity they follow from the very nature of hierarchical communion and that of all relative terms; and as these express, according to the persons to whom they are applied, opposite notions, it is necessary that the same communion, in spreading itself throughout the body of the Church, should be another thing in the head with respect to the members, another thing in the members with respect to the head, another thing in the mem-
386 St. BONIFACE I (418-422), Letter 15, to Rufus and the bishops of Macedonia..., 6; PL 20, 783 "No one can doubt that Flavian received the grace of communion; he would have been forever deprived of it if the written proofs had not come from here." 387 St. Leo I (440-461), Letter 50, to the people of Constantinople, 1; PL 54, 843 "For whosoever shall have dared to seize the episcopate (sacerdotium), while your bishop Flavian is well and still alive, shall never have Our communion, nor can he be counted among the bishops."
268 bres among themselves a superiority in the one who gives it, a dependence in those who receive it, an equality among them in the common bond which binds them to the same head. It is therefore in vain that the enemies of hierarchy have equivocated on a term so clear in itself and so clearly understood in antiquity. They have tried to reduce it to the third meaning that it offers between equals. They have claimed that it was never intended to do anything but maintain that fraternal society which exists between bishops, and that the letters of the bishops of the great sees addressed to the Sovereign Pontiff asking for his communion and their confirmation as one and the same thing, that the letters of the popes admitting these bishops to their communion, had no other object than to accomplish by this commerce a duty of politeness, an expression of Christian charity388. But to be admitted to the communion of the Pope, for a bishop, is certainly to be received by him into the episcopate, so much so that, if he refuses this communion, he will not be a bishop and he can never be counted as such in the Catholic Church. The texts abound389. It is therefore in equivalent terms to receive from St. Peter in his very communion the episcopal authority, which is inseparable from it and is merged in it; it is in equivalent terms to receive from him the mission or institution, so that
388 FEBRONIUS, (Nicholas of Hontheim, 1701-1790), New defense against Fr. Zaccaria, disc. 8, c. 1, § 2 (De l'état de l'Église), vol. 4, p. 195. - cf. PIERRE DE MARCA (1662), La bonne entente du sacerdoce et de l'empire, 1. 6, c. B. 2, Paris, 1704, col. 858. 389 Council of Chalcedon (451), act. 10, LAB 4, 673, MANSI 7, 258 "The most holy Leo, archbishop of Rome, receiving him (Maximus) into his communion, judged that he governed the Church of Antioch." - In their letter to Pope Denys I, the bishops of the Council of Antioch (268) present "Domnus, (man) adorned with all the qualities befitting a bishop; and we will point him out to you so that you may write to him and receive from him letters of communion (koinônika grammata)"; in EUSEBUS of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 7, c. 30, B. 17; PG 20, 718-719; trans. G. BARDY (SC, 41) p. 219. - St. JULES I (337-352), Letter to the Antiochians, 13; PL 8, 896. - SOCRATES, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 2, c. 15; PG 67, 211. - St. Damasus I (336-384), Letter 6, to Acholius, bishop of Thessalonica; PL 13, 370. - Lateran Council (649), sec. 2; LABBE 6, 109, MANSI 10, 899. - See above, note 26.
269 Pope Boniface He declares that the communion of the Holy See may be more truly called the communication of power390. This is the communion of the superior that strengthens and confirms the inferior by conferring legitimate authority. In an improper and different sense, the communion of the inferiors can sometimes strengthen the superiors, inasmuch as, by their declaration, which is an affirmation of dependence, they make his authority manifest and certain with regard to schismatics and adversaries. It is in this sense that St. Cyprian was able to say, at the time of the Novatian schism, that the bishops had, as it were, strengthened the legitimate Pope with respect to this usurper by their communion391, i.e., by holding themselves united to him as to their head, by attaching themselves to his pulpit alone as true, and by receiving ecclesiastical and episcopal fellowship from him. This is, if you like, the oldest known example of the Catholic episcopate authentically distinguishing its head from those who usurp the title. This is what we saw repeated in all times of schism, with Innocent II (1130-1143) at the time of St. Bernard, and later at the Council of Constance (1414-1418). But this is no other thing, and the bishops have never claimed to establish their head other than by their obedience and recognition of his rights; never have they claimed to confirm him in the sense that this confirmation carries with it the collation of jurisdiction, as if the course of the canonical mission could be reversed and the streams should flow back to the source392.
390 BONIFACE II, to the Third Council of Rome (531), Letter to the Bishops of Thessalonica, LAB 4, 1706 "I learn that some bishops, in defiance of the apostolic law, are trying some novelty..., while they ARE striving to separate themselves from the communion, and to put it better, from the power of the Apostolic See." 391 St. CYPRIAN, Letter 10, 8, to Antonianus; PL 3, 770-773 "Cornelius was elected bishop by the judgment of God and His Christ... the place of Peter and the episcopal see being vacant. This see being occupied and its occupation supported by the will of God and the agreement of us all, it is inevitable that whoever would be elected bishop should be outside the Church"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit., vol. 2, pp. 135-136 (Letter 55). 392 ID., Letter 42, to Pope Cornelius, 1-2; PL 3, 726-727 "Having received your letter and that of our colleagues, and hearing on their return from Rome those good people, very dear to our hearts, our colleagues Pompeius and Stephanus, who confirmed to us all
270 The Supreme Pontiff, who is properly the head of the universal Church and the source of all jurisdiction, is therefore, according to the language of antiquity, the head of the ecclesiastical communion393. These two expressions are absolutely synonymous, and we now call jurisdiction what was once precisely designated as episcopal communion. This very precise meaning was received everywhere; all understood it, and no obscurity was found in it. This episcopal communion was perfectly distinguished from that other, broader communion which is not jurisdiction. Thus Pope Felix III, while granting to Euphemius of Constantinople the communion which made him a member of the Catholic Church, distinctly denied him the properly hierarchical and episcopal communion, which, being the communication of jurisdiction, could alone make him a legitimate bishop394.
the news to the great joy of all of us, and provided proofs of it, we did what the truth and sanctity of divine tradition and ecclesiastical discipline demanded, and sent you our letter... It was your letter which we had read, and your episcopal ordination which we had notified and made known to all"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit., vol. 2, pp. 112-113 (Letter 45). 393 St. HORMISDAS (514-523), Rule of Faith (Letter to the Bishops of the East), LAB 4, 1444, Den, n. 172 "We follow in all things the Apostolic See and preach all its rules of faith. I hope to deserve to remain united with you in that one communion which the Apostolic See preaches, in which rests, whole and true, the solidity of the Christian religion. I profess that those who are separated from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is to say, those who do not obey the Apostolic See, are not to be named during the holy mysteries." - Cf. HADRIAN II (867872), Formula of Faith, LAB 8, 909 and 1003. - I Vatican Council (1870), Constitution Pastor aeternus, eh. 4, Den., 1833, Dum., 478, The Church (EP), n. 368. 394 THEOPHANY, Chronography, an. 483; PG 108, 327 "In that year Felix received the synodal letters of Euphemius and shared his communion with him as with a member (of the Catholic Church); however, he did not recognize the bishop who had not removed from the ecclesiastical diptychs (tabulis) the name Fravitas, who had succeeded Acace (of Constantinople) in the episcopate." Cf. HÉFÉLÉ 2, 937-939. - NICEPHORUS CALLIST, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 16, c. 19; 147, 154 "The pope received his letters and welcomed Euphemius as an orthodox, but he did not admit him to the episcopal communion." On the contrary, with regard to Anthimus of Trebizond, "the pope of Rome, of holy memory... did not permit him to bear the name either of bishop or of Catholic" Council of Constantinople (536), act. 4, LABBE 5, 90, MANSI 8, 968, HEFEL 2, 1144.
271 These things being well understood, there is no difficulty in understanding that the head of the episcopate ratified all that had been done in anticipation and provisionally in the ordination of patriarchs and metropolitans, by the mere fact of communicating with them or admitting them to his communion. In this economy, the metropolitan ordained by his suffragans was sufficiently instituted and confirmed in his mission when the patriarch admitted him to his communion and thereby accepted what had been done in his name. The patriarch, in turn, was similarly instituted and confirmed by the Supreme Pontiff by the mere fact of the communion given and received. This was not, however, strictly speaking a new institution, as if nothing had yet been done. The most senior bishop, assisted by his brothers, had acted in ordination only in the name of his head, by anticipation and by presumption of his judgment, in accordance with a constant, legitimate and universal discipline. Thus the head of the episcopate, the Pope, communicating with the patriarchs, the patriarch communicating with the newly established metropolitans, did not institute anew, but, by an authentic acceptance, confirmed what had been done, and thereby declared that he ratified it as done in his name. Also all antiquity shows us employed as absolutely synonymous and indifferent the terms communion or confirmation granted by the Pope to the new patriarchs395. And since the bishops were sufficiently authorized by the prevailing discipline to do so by provision in the ordination of metropolitans or patriarchs, this authorization contained in the
395 Thus Pope St. Leo is said, in one and the same session of the Council of Chalcedon (451), sometimes to confirm, sometimes to receive into his communion Maximus of Antioch, and thereby to give him, by his judgment, the see of that city act. 10, LABBE 4, 682, MANSI 7, 270 "The holy and most blessed pope, who confirmed
the episcopate of the holy and venerable bishop of the Church of Antioch." ID, LAB 4, 673, MANSI 7, 258 "The most holy bishop of Antioch, whom the most blessed bishop (Leo) received in his own communion... The most holy Leo, archbishop of Rome, receiving him in his communion, decided that he was the head of the Church of Antioch."
272 right and in universal tradition, and which arose from the necessities of the Churches, gave to their action such serious value that it committed to a certain extent the head of the episcopate as made in his name. This was the effect of that sort of obligation of law called negotio- rum gestio by the jurisconsults, and which, resting on a reasonable presumption, has the effects of an explicit mandate. He did not believe, therefore, that he could derogate from it or refuse episcopal communion or confirmation when everything had been regular and canonical in the ordination. Thus St. Leo declares that he must necessarily grant the grace of confirmation to the bishop Proterius of Alexandria, because he is worthy396; thus St. Simplicus cannot, he says, refuse to embrace in the communion of the Apostolic See the episcopacy of Calendion, the new bishop of Antioch, and to admit him by the grace of Christ into the college of the episcopate397. But the Pope, however, remained so much in control that he could even cover the defects of the subject or his ordination by the confirmation he gave him and by his genuine acceptance. St. Leo did this with regard to Anatolius of Constantinople398; he reminds him of this several times in his letters. There are many examples of this, and that of Photius becoming legitimate patriarch by authority
396 St. Leo (440-461), Letter 127, to Julian, bishop of Caesarea, 1; PL 54, 10711072 "To whom (Proterius) it is necessary that I should give the grace to which he is entitled, for the sincerity of his faith, so that he may not lose in any way the honor of his Church." 397 St. SIMPLICE (468-483), Letter 16, to Acacia of Constantinople; PL 58, 55, LAB 4, 1035 "I have united in the bosom of the Apostolic See, as I had to do, the priesthood of Calendion, Our brother and colleague in the episcopate, and by the grace of Christ our God, We count in Our communion, united to Our (episcopal) college, the bishop of such a great city. " - ID, Letter 14, to the emperor Zeno; 58, 52, LAB 4, 1034 "Therefore We cannot condemn what You decide holy and religiously in the love of peace, lest our hesitation leave the situation of the Church of Antioch uncertain." 398 St. Leo, Letter 112, to the empress Pulcheria, 1; PL 54, 1023 "Concerning the bishop of Constantinople, who was ordained by opponents of the faith.... I agreed to have a better opinion... (learning that) the defects of his ordination weigh upon him." - Cf. ID., Letter 3, to the emperor Marcian, 1; PL 54, 1021. - ID, Letter 135, to Anatole; PL 54, 1096-1098.
273 of Pope John VIII is famous399. Moreover, it is necessary here to recognize that nothing was more in accordance with the practice of antiquity or more ordinary than these institutions, provisional in a certain respect, conferred by a hasty ordination and destined to be confirmed in the future by the superior. The discipline of the Eastern Churches, recorded in the Arabic Canons400, went very far in this direction, for it shows us the metropolitans themselves provisionally instituting their suffragans by ordaining them personally, and, by imitation of what was done in the great sees, reserving to themselves the right to confirm them a few months afterwards in their jurisdiction401. In the West, this same general discipline for the metropolitan sees was maintained for a long time, and Innocent III, reserving to the Holy See the examination of the persons elected to the metropolises and to the
399 JOHN VIII (872-882), Letter 243, to Emperor Basil; PL 126, 853-855, LAB 9, 131-132 "You ask the Apostolic See to dilate, so to speak, its merciful bowels, in order to admit into the dignity of the supreme priesthood and into the society of the ecclesiastical college the most worthy Photius, with the patriarchal dignity and to make him a part of our communion. You expect from this, for the Church of God, troubled for so long, the end of its divisions and scandals. We have taken Your Serenity's requests into consideration, and the patriarch Ignatius, of pious memory, having died, we declare, in view of the circumstances, to pardon Photius for his usurpation, without the assent of Our See, of the office which had been forbidden to him... We therefore absolve the aforesaid patriarch, as well as all the censured bishops, from all the bonds of the ecclesiastical sentence brought against them, and decide that this same Photius may again occupy the see of the holy Church of Constantinople and be the shepherd of the Lord's flock. We do this in virtue of that power which, according to the faith of the Church spread throughout the earth, has been given to Us by Christ our God in the person of the head of the apostles;" trans. (retouched) from HEFLEY 4, 571-572. 400 This is a collection of 80 canons erroneously attributed to the Council of Nicaea (325) since the 16th c., when John Baptist Roman, S.J., discovered them in an Arabic manuscript; cf. HEFELÉ 1, 511-520. In reality, the Council carried only 20 canons (ibid., 503-511). 401 This is at least the sense that canon 71, LAB 2, 314 appears to have "When an archbishop has ordained a bishop, he must send a bishop with him to introduce him into his city and church and to seat him from the first day in his pulpit; and after three months' residence in his city, the archbishop must visit him, greet him, and present him to the archpope, that is, to the archpriest and archdeacon; they will examine him on the episcopal state, and, if they recognize that he knows all this perfectly, he will be confirmed in the episcopate. "
274 sees immediately dependent on the Roman Pontiff, further orders that "in very distant places, that is, in all territories beyond Italy, the elect, because of the necessities and usefulness of the Churches, shall temporarily administer them temporally and spiritually, and shall receive episcopal consecration according to the ancient custom"402.
Modes of Communication
But, if metropolitans and patriarchs are to receive confirmation or episcopal communion from the head of the Church in this way, we must know the forms which this necessary trade by which the bishops of the great sees are attached to the center of authority took from high antiquity and which it took in later times. We do not hesitate to affirm that, in the earliest times, the communion extended from near and far, the relations and daily commerce of the Churches through the exchange of letters formed, the transmission of letters, apostolic constitutions and orders emanating from the Holy See, could at the very least suffice to render authentic the confirmation of the bishops of the great sees, that is to say, the acknowledgement and acceptance of them by the Sovereign Pontiff403. These relationships were regarded as so significant in
402 INNOCENT III (1198-1216) in the Decretals of Gregory IX, 1. 1, tit. 6, c. 44, Lyon, 1624, t. 2, col. 185 "Those who immediately report to the Roman Pontiff to obtain the perfect confirmation of their office, let them present themselves personally before him, if it is possible, or let them send capable persons, who will have been able to make a careful examination of the elections and of those elected; in this way, by the care of this same council, they will obtain the fullness of their office, if nothing appears to them to be opposed to the canons in force. However, for those who live far away, that is to say, those who reside outside Italy, if they have been elected in concord, let them administer their Churches in the spiritual and temporal spheres, without, however, alienating anything from the ecclesiastical goods. Let them receive the grace of blessing or consecration as they were accustomed to do until now." 403 St. BONIFACE I (418-422), Letter to Rufus and the Bishops of Macedonia, 6; PL 20, 783 "Because We have had no knowledge of (the ordination of Nectarios), We consider it to have no force (firmitatem)."
275 In this respect the pagan emperors themselves, in the rare intervals of fairness in their government towards the Christians, had recourse to it in order to recognize the legitimate bishops of the great sees. Paul of Samosata had been deposed from the see of Antioch; his successor Domnus had received letters of communion from Pope St. Denys and the other bishops after him (koinônica grammata); but the deposed bishop refused to leave the church house. The emperor Aurelian very rightly judged that the house should be handed over "to those with whom the bishops of Christian doctrine in Italy and in the city of Rome corresponded," that is, the bishops who formed his council, who were more immediately united to him and who more obviously were held in his communion404. Therefore, in doubtful cases, the Supreme Pontiff believed that he was holding things sufficiently in abeyance by abstaining from these ordinary relations, so proper were they considered to be in expressing his acceptance tacitly and to take the place of all other solemnity405. Very often, in the early centuries and in the midst of persecution, it was necessary to stick to this practice. However, the bishops of the great sees felt obliged to have recourse to their leader themselves, to make themselves known to him, to enter explicitly into his communion, and to solicit the sending of his letters406. They hastened to obtain from him a trade so necessary and of which
404 EUSEB, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 7, c. 30, n. 19; ed. BARDY (SC, 41), p. 219. - On the significance of this intervention by Aurelian, cf. G. BARDY, Paul of Samosata2, Leuven, 1929, pp. 358-363. 405 St. SIMPLICE (468-483), Letter 17, to Acacia of Constantinople; PL 58, 56, LABBE 4, 1037 "Immediately I stopped and even revoked my sentence concerning his confirmation"; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 2, 920. - St. GELIAS I (492-496), Letter 14 (Treatise De damnatione nominum Petri et Acacii); PL 59, 85, LABBE 4, 1216. - St. Felix III (483-492), Letter 14, to Thalasius; PL 58, 974, LAB 4, 1029. - St. HADRIAN I (772-795), Letter 57, to Tarasius; PL 96, 1233, LAB 7, 126. 406 St. AMBROSIUS, Letter 56, to Theophilus, 4-7; PL 16, 1171-1172 "However, only Flavian, above the law, as he thinks himself to be, is not coming, while all of us are meeting.... We decide that we must surely refer to our holy brother, the bishop (sacerdotem) of Rome, so that we too, having received the text of your decrees, when we hear that what the Roman Church will undoubtedly have approved has been done, may reap the fruit of this judgment with joy."
276 they knew all the price407. If the violence of persecution interrupted for a time all relations, they remained in expectation, still invisibly united to him. Finally, if the difficulties lasted until the end and if death came to surprise them in this waiting, this death itself put the seal on what their state had still been precarious by the lack of an express recognition it made definitive their election and the imperfect institution they had received in their ordination and it inscribed their names forever in the diptychs of the churches. For his part, the Supreme Pontiff knew and accepted the needs of those times, as well as the common discipline which remedied them, and the invisible bond of charity made up for the steps made impossible by the tyrants. The sacred laws of the hierarchy, however, remained in full force; and it was a duty from which this impossibility alone could dispense, for the chosen ones of the great sees, to have recourse from the earliest days of their episcopate and on the day after their ordination to the Apostolic See408, to relate to it what had taken place and to ask it for letters of communion or confirmation. "Our ancestors," says St. Gelasius, "used to address the See where Peter, the prince of the apostles, sat, and hand over to his judgment the com-
.
407 St. Jerome, Letter 16, to Pope Damasus, 2; PL 22, 359 "Melèce, Vital and Paulinus claim to be attached to you"; trans. LABOURT, t. 1, p. 50. - SOZOMEN, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 8, c. 3; PG 67, 1519 "He (John Chrysostom) himself asked Theophilus to do him a favor by reconciling the bishop of Rome with Flavian. When he saw fit, Acacia, bishop of Beroea, and Isidore were chosen for this matter... These brought to Rome..." Cf. THEODORET OF CYR, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 5, c. 23; PG 82, 1247-1250. 408 St. SIMPLICE (468-483), Letter 16, to Acacia of Constantinople; PL 58, 55, LABBE 4, 1035 "The beginning of the episcopate (of Calendion) at Antioch, for the reason that it was known later, though it could not have escaped Us completely, yet he himself as well as his own council made it known. Just as We did not desire this, so We were complacent about the excuse created by need, for that which is not voluntary cannot be called fault." - St. HORMISDAS (514-523), Letter 71, to Epiphanius; PL 63, 493, LAB 4, 1533 "Dearest Brother, it would have been proper for you to have sent legates to the Apostolic See from the very beginning of your pontificate, so as to follow exactly the form of the ancient custom."
277 mencement of their episcopacy, asking for the solidity and firmness that was to give it its strength."409 "They so asked for formed or authentic letters that confirmed their episcopacy."410 In their turn, the Popes, in their letters, were "firming up, they said, these foundations"411; they were granting "the grace of communion, of which the chosen one would have been forever deprived without apostolic letters"412. They "approved", "confirmed" the election, "gave it its strength"413; this is the constant language held by the Pontiffs in the letters by which they answer the new bishops of the great sees and receive them into their communion, that is, by which they bring them into that communication of the divine mission which, from the see of St. Peter, extends to the whole episcopate. This was the first state of discipline. Later, this solemn confirmation which was expressed in the formed or authentic letters emanating from the head of the bishops was expressed by a sacred symbol, and made visible to the eyes of the people by the tradition and the sending of the pallium414.
409 St. GAIL I (492-496), Letter 14; PL 59, 89, LAB 4, 1216. 410 Saint BONIFACE, I (418-422), Letter 15, to Rufus and the bishops of Macedonia, 6 PL 20, 783 "Prince Theodosius, of very sweet memory, judged that the ordination of Nectarios had no force because it was not known to Us; he sent courtiers from his entourage with bishops, urging that a letter of recommendation (formatam) be sent to him from the See of Rome, according to the canons, which would confirm his episcopate. " 411 St. Leo I, (440-461), Letter 9, to Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria; PL 54, 624 "We have desired to firm further the beginnings (of your episcopate)." 412 St. BONIFACE I (418-422), loc. cit, see above, note 25. 413 Council of Chalcedon (451), act. 10, LABBE 4, 682, MANsi 7, 270 "Let the holy and most blessed Pope... confirm the episcopacy of the holy and venerable Maximus, bishop of Antioch." - FELIX III (483-492), Letter 12, to the emperor Zeno; see above, note 24. - St. MARTIN I (649-653), Letter 9, to Pantaleon; PL 87, 172; MANSI 10, 822 "Thus, when they have given a profession of sincere penitence or orthodox faith to the one We have recently chosen for this there (Our legate Stephen), he will confirm them in their order"; Cf. HEFEL 3, 452-453. - St. Leo IX (1048-1054), Letter 101, to Peter, Patriarch of Antioch, PL 143, 771 "My humility elevated to the summit of the apostolic throne, willingly approve, felicitate and confirm the episcopal elevation of your most holy fraternity"; cf. HEFEL 4, 1089-1090. 414 Fourth Council of Constantinople (870), act. 10, reg. 17, LABBE 8, 1136-1137, MANSI 16, 170-171 "The great and holy council decides that in the ancient and
278 The pallium, the badge of the Supreme Pontiff and which, as Innocent III says, excellently represents in him the figure of the Good Shepherd415, was granted by the Pope to the patriarchs and metropolitans as a sign of their superior jurisdiction deriving from the prince of the apostles and making him present in their persons in the midst of their brethren. The patriarchs, in their turn, conferred the pallium on the metropolitans dependent on their see416, and the elected officials of the great Churches
henceforth had to implore the collation of this sacred sign intended to make it visible and popular, when seeking confirmation or canonical institution. Here, then, is the whole discipline of ancient times, and it is easy to summarize it in a few words. On the one hand, the canonical institution flows from the Pope over all the bishops through the intermediate degrees, established by him, of patriarchs and metropolitans. On the other hand, ordination is the regular and ordinary sign of it. Finally, in the third place, when the distance of the places does not permit the chosen ones of the great sees to be easily ordained by their immediate head, this head is substituted in the ordination by the comprovincial bishops, and the institution, which accompanies the or-
new Rome as in the sees of Antioch and Jerusalem the ancient custom must in all things be preserved, namely, that the heads of all the metropolitan sees, promoted by themselves and receiving either by the imposition of hands or by the sending of the pallium, the confirmation of their episcopal dignity, enjoy the authority." Cf. M. JUGIE, art. Fourth Council of Constantinople, in DTC, vol. 3, col. 1284-1296. 415 INNOCENT III (1198-1216), The Holy Sacrament of the Altar, 1. 1, c. 63; PL 217, 798 "The pin is of gold; the bottom is pointed, the rounded top contains a precious stone, for truly the Good Shepherd suffered here below for the sake of the sheep's care." - For the pallium, cf. P. BATIFFOL, Le costume liturgique romain, in Études de liturgie et d'archéologie chrétienne, Gabalda, 1919, pp. 57-71; L. DUCHESNE, Origines du culte chrétien5, De Boccard, 1920, pp. 404-410; P. SALMON, Study on the Insignia of the Pontiff in the Roman Rite, Rome, Officium libri catholici, 1955, pp. 21-23, 27, 36. 416 IV Lateran Council (1215), Cap. 5, LAB 11, 153, MANSI 22, 991 "When the heads of these Churches (Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem) have received from the Roman Pontiff the pallium, the insignia of the fullness of the pontifical office, after having taken the oath of fidelity and obedience to him, they will be permitted to confer the pallium themselves on the bishops placed under their jurisdiction, after having received for themselves their canonical profession and for the Church of Rome their promise of obedience." trans. (retouched) from HEFLEY 5, 1333.
279 dination, is given in his name by provision, and receives from him in the sequel its strength and perfection by confirmation. And as to this very confirmation, it has been given in three ways; in cases of necessity, by any act of ecclesiastical life and by any communication from the head and members; out of extreme necessity, by the sending of authentic and solemn letters; finally, in more modern times, by the collation of the pallium.
Institution immediate
But this discipline, useful in the early days of the Church, was gradually to give way to a more perfect state. The provisional institution given to the bishops of the great sees was never more than a remedy brought about by the necessities of the Churches417. Therefore, wherever possible, recourse was had to the direct and definitive institution of the superior; and this is why the metropolitans closer to the see -of their patriarch were to be ordained by him, without recourse to the most senior comprovincial assisted by his colleagues. The patriarchs, it was said, moreover, had the right of ordination over all the sees of their dependence418, and it was because of this very right that the ordination made far from them received its force from their letters of confirmation. But today, for a long time already, the relations between all the members of the Church are sufficiently assured that one can wait without inconvenience and receive directly from the superior the canonical institution. Ordination can therefore never again precede his sentence, and the last traces of the provisional jurisdiction granted to the elected have disappeared with the decretal of Innocent III which we quoted above. But that is not all. The very right of patriarchs and metropolitans to give legitimate ordination with all its effects, that is to say, to institute bishops in their dependency, was never in the end anything but a pure concession of the Apostolic Holy See. The dignity
417 INNOCENT III, in the Decretals of GREGOIRE IX; see above, note 41. 418 BARLAAM OF SEMINARA, loc. cit.; see above, note 16.
280 of patriarchs and metropolitans is of purely ecclesiastical institution, however ancient it may be supposed to be. They have received everything from St. Peter and his successors. The Pope, who established them, can always extend or restrict the authority he has conferred on them, as he sees fit and according to the times. Also, by having them represent him at the head of the various territorial circumscriptions, the Pope could not divest himself of his essential prerogative. If, therefore, they were able to institute bishops, they never did so except in the name of St. Peter and by communication of his sovereign authority, "since he alone, among all mortals, the vicar of Jesus Christ, can give himself colleagues in the apostolic college"419. The vicaire of Jesus Christ, in communicating this power,did not alienate it. Therefore, from the earliest times and whenever they deemed it appropriate, the Pontiffs themselves immediately instituted bishops throughout the Catholic world. Pope Constantine, traveling in the East, "ordained on his way to and from twelve bishops in various places"420. Pope St. Martin charged the bishop of Philadelphia as his vicar, "and by the apostolic authority which God had conferred upon him through St. Peter, prince of the apostles," to establish bishops in all the cities dependent on the sees of Jerusalem and Antioch421. Moreover, wherever it was conveniently possible, recourse was had to the greater guarantees offered in the institution of bishops by the prerogative of St. Peter exercised by himself or by his more immediate representatives. In the East, there was a natural tendency in discipline to leave the metropolitans and turn directly to the patriarchs. Pope Innocent I warned the patriarch of Antioch that he himself should ordain and institute the bishops subject to the metropolitans who were under his see, or at least demand that no ordination should take place without his letters and approval, and he thus brought back all
419 MAXIME PLANUDES, loc. cit.; see above, note 1. 420 ANASTASUS THE LIBRARIAN, History of the Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, n. 90 (on Constantine I, 708-715); PL 128, 950. 421 St. MARTIN I (649-653), Letter 5, to John, bishop of Philadelphia; PL 87, 155, LAB 6, 20.
281 ordinations to the immediate authority of the patriarch422. The Council of Nicaea established or maintained a similar rule in Egypt and in the see of Alexandria423. In the West, the Popes enjoined their vicars of Thessalonica or primates of Illyricum not to allow any bishop to be ordained by the metropolitan, without their first approving the election themselves and authorizing the ordination in the name of the Apostolic See, and, while still leaving the right of ordination to the metropolitans, made the exercise of this right subject to the sentence of their legate424. Let us never forget that everything here is pure economics. The Pontiffs, who can always moderate the institution of the great sees and metropolises "through which must flow towards them, as to its center, all ecclesiastical administration," have been able, when they have judged it useful, to reserve immediately the institution of all bishops. In concordat countries where ecclesiastical elections no longer take place and where the Christian princes, by concession of the Holy See, present to the Pontiff the persons destined to occupy the episcopal sees, this reservation has been imposed on the Popes by a sort of
422 St. INNOCENT I (402-417), Letter 24, to Alexander, bishop of Antioch, 1; PL 20, 548 "Therefore, dearest brother, We have decided this, just as by your personal power you ordain metropolitans, so also do not allow bishops to be created without your permission or knowledge. For these, you will carefully follow the following rule those who are far away, determine by letters that they be ordained by those who hitherto ordained them at will; for those who are near, if you see fit, establish that they are to receive the imposition of your Grace's hands." 423 Council of Nicaea (325), can. 6, LABBE 2, 31, 41, 46, MANSI 2, 670, 671 "It is very evident that if anyone becomes a bishop without the assent of his metropolitan, the great council does not permit him to remain a bishop"; trans. HEFEL 1, 561. 424 St. Leo I (440-461), Letter to Anastasius, Bishop of Thessalonica, 6; PL 54, 673 "For the person to be consecrated a bishop and for the consent of the clergy and the people, let the metropolitan bishop refer the matter to Thy Brotherhood. Let him teach you all that you wish to know in the province, so that Your authority may also confirm the consecration which must be made according to the canons. For just as We do not want any accusation to attack the just elections, so We do not allow them to be made without your knowledge." One can see on this subject the other similar letters addressed to the bishops of Thessalonica by the popes St. Sirice (384-389), St. Damasus I (366-384) and St. Boniface I (418-422).
282 necessity. It is to them, in fact, that the royal presentations are addressed; it is to them alone that the suitability and merit of the subjects must be judged. How could the metropolitans intervene in the institution, when they had nothing to judge or even to know the reasons for it? How could they pass sentence when the examination of the case was no longer theirs? It is conceivable, moreover, that the Holy See, in suspending canonical elections, could not wisely abandon to the metropolitans the care of filling episcopal sees upon royal presentation. For, on the one hand, it would have been to remove, without replacing it, the guarantee given by election to the exercise of the right to institute which had hitherto been left to the metropolitan; on the other hand, it would have been to imprudently impose on unarmed subjects the task of judging independently the acts of their prince, and often the obligation to resist him; it would have been to expose them to the twofold danger of attracting persecution upon themselves or of timidly yielding to the fear of public or private evils. In this, history justifies the conduct of the Pontiffs; indeed, whenever the princes, abusing against the Church the privileges they had received from it, sought to corrupt the episcopate by the introduction of subjects unworthy or incapable of supporting its rights, and to impose upon it bishops whom the Holy See could not accept, they were seen to attempt the enterprise of bringing the canonical institution back into the more docile hands of the metropolitans425. But these pretensions, covered with the false pretext of re-establishing the old discipline, are refuted by their absurdity even under the concordat regime. They are contrary to the whole economy of the concordats. The nomination of a subject, addressed to the Pope and to the Pope alone, in accordance with these treaties, entails the necessity of the Pope's judgment; the answer must come from him to whom the request is made. Honor to the Pontiffs Innocent XI, Pius VII and Pius IX, who, leaving for a time churches without pastors rather than
425 Such was Napoleon's tyrannical enterprise at Fontainebleau, where he held Pius VII captive (June 20, 1812-January 22, 1814). - Cf. Articles of 25 January 1813, art. 4, in CONSTANT, L'Église de France sous le Consulat et l'Empire, Paris, 1928, pp. 320-321; cf. G. WAGNER, art. Concordat de 1813, in Catholicisme, vol. 2 (1950), col. 1469-1470.
283 betray the bride of Jesus Christ, have put to nought the tyrannical demands of princes, have triumphed over force by their constancy, and have secured the freedom of the Church in the choice of her first pastors! Such, then, is the general law of episcopal institutions today. The Pope institutes all bishops directly by Bull or Brief and confers the pallium directly on the metropolitans. The archbishop of Salzburg, in Germany, left out of the concordats, is about alone, today, in instituting his suffragans426. In the East, the Bull Reversurus, leaving to the patriarchs the appointment of candidates, reserved the judgment of the persons proposed and the canonical institution to the Holy See427. It does not enter into the object of this work to set forth at length the motives which have led the Sovereign Pontiffs, for the good of the universal Church, to reserve for themselves the direct and immediate institution of bishops. It is sufficient for us to have established that in this they have not introduced a new principle into the government of the Church, that the right to institute belongs essentially to them, that they have always been masters of regulating the form and exercise of this right at their own discretion, that the substance of the discipline has not changed, and finally that always, and this is the substance of this discipline, all episcopal jurisdiction has descended to the extremities of the Church from the one See of Saint Peter. But the attentive reader will not have much difficulty in realizing the usefulness or rather the necessity of the accidental change of discipline. Is it not obvious that in the presence of modern societies which are highly centralized, that in the face of the enemies of religion, whose action itself receives from this centralization a force unknown in previous ages, the Holy See, placed at the top of the world, receiving
426 The Code of Canon Law, can. 332 § 1, provides that the candidate for the episcopate may be "elected, presented, or designated by any civil government," the canonical institution being given necessarily by the Roman Pontiff. "The president of the French Republic still has the right to appoint to the bishoprics of Metz and Strasbourg, where the Concordat of 1801 is still applicable." The presentation of candidates by the state still survives in Portugal, in Spain (Concordat of August 27, 1953), in the Principality of Monaco. A. DUMAS, art. Bishop (Modes of appointment), in Catholicism, vol. 4, (1956), col. 813. 427 PIE IX, Bull Reversurus (July 12, 1867) to the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople; excerpts from this are found in The Church (EP), nu. 307-310.
284 from all points of the earth the lights brought to him by the necessities of peoples, the dangers of souls, and the diseases of the human race, supported by the prayers of the whole Catholic Church, assisted from above, in accordance with the promise of Jesus Christ, by divine wisdom and omnipotence, can alone and better than any other here below give the Churches in peril worthy pastors and form the college of bishops of true successors of the apostles, unanimous in doctrine and firm in charity? Is it not obvious that in the absence of ecclesiastical elections, which have lost their character and usefulness and which have gradually disappeared, the authority of local metropolitans no longer offers sufficient guarantees against arbitrariness or pressure from outside? This would perhaps be the place to speak of these elections, an accessory of the canonical institution, which, although they give the elected official a certain right to this institution, do not enter into the institution itself and have never been able to take its place. We shall have occasion to treat this subject more thoroughly when we describe, in the following section, the state and history of the particular Church. Suffice it to say here that the election of the subject by the body or college of the vacant Church has never been more than a preliminary accessory of the institution, admitted and regulated by ecclesiastical law. The vacating Church asks the superior for the mission or the canonical institution for its chosen one; it can never confer them on him. The only right it gives to the one elected is to be presented in his name to the superior, that is, to the Pope or his local representative. The election can always, absolutely speaking, be suppressed or substituted by the supreme authority; and, if positive law obliges inferior collaborators to respect it, the Supreme Pontiff, from whom all episcopal jurisdiction emanates, is not obliged to take into account anything other than that which the usefulness of the Church, equity and his conscience may inspire in him. He can always annul, suspend or suppress it. Moreover, even in the lower ranks, it has not always taken place -. whenever it has not been possible, as it happened at the very foundation of the Churches for the first bishop of a see to be established, or when circumstances rendered it perilous, the patriarchs and metropolitans did not hesitate to ordain bishops without recourse to it.
285 Election, therefore, does not hold to the substance of things, and this is why the Pontiffs were able at their own discretion to suspend or suppress it even by general measure and by a lasting establishment. In this respect it may be likened, though it belongs more intimately to the normal development of the life of particular Churches, to the rights of patronage and presentation which, according to time and place, the Church has thought it necessary to concede to certain persons or communities, and which she can always revoke when they cease to be useful to the good of religion, or even constitute a danger to the flock of Jesus Christ428.
Universal Jurisdiction of the Holy See
In concluding this study, let us call the reader's attention to an important point and make a final remark. If it belongs to the Sovereign Pontiff, as the sole and universal source of all jurisdiction in the Catholic Church, to confer the episcopate and to give to his brethren the stable title of spiritual power, it belongs to him, all the more so, to exercise his own jurisdiction in the whole world by mandates whose limits he himself lays down. Thus, on the one hand, he can send legates, appoint vicars and apostolic administrators, and communicate this or that part of his jurisdiction to the priests and ministers he designates; and, on the other hand, he can, in virtue of his sovereign disposition, always revocable at his own discretion, and independently of all collation of ecclesiastical titles, authorize the administration of all the sacraments by his own delegates in the whole world. Clerics foreign to the Churches, clerics without a title of ordination attaching them to any particular Church, such as are today the members of the great Apostolic Orders, may thus receive
428 Such was the right of patronage formerly conceded in India. to the rulers of Portugal, and which the interest of the evangelization of these lands has necessitated the abolition in the regions now removed from the authority of these rulers.
286 of the Sovereign Pontiff a mission which depends entirely on him. We need not insist on this point. What we have said above of the delegations by which, without touching the order of the hierarchy, ecclesiastical power may be exercised on the one hand as to the whole extent of the magisterium and the imperium, and on the other, as to the legitimacy given to the functions of the ministerium, has its place here, and the Sovereign Pontiff, whose power extends to the whole world, can everywhere act at his pleasure through agents who are only his pure organs.
287 PART FOUR
The Particular Church
288 CHAPTER XXIV
Constitution of the particular church
The divine head of the universal Church, Jesus Christ, communicating his priesthood to the bishops, formed in them the universal Church. They are its doctors, pontiffs and pastors. But their action is not confined to this higher sphere; it descends from the universal Church to the particular Church. As we said in our second part, the powers of the episcopate, without undergoing any division or alteration, become, by a mysterious appropriation, the treasure of each of the bishops. Each of the bishops thus exercises these powers over a limited number of men, and, in his ministry, brings to this flock, which belongs to him singularly, the pure operation of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. Therefore, each bishop has his own family and his own inheritance which is properly and singularly assigned to him; and, after having considered the bishop in the senate of his brethren, seated around the visible throne of Jesus Christ, which is the seat of St. Peter, we must consider him seated on a throne himself, presiding over his people and surrounded by the senate of his Church. We will not repeat here all that we have already said about the excellence of the particular Church, about its simplicity, about the unity of the hierarchy which makes the particular Church one with the universal Church, and about those divine realities which descend into it from the heights of the mystery of life hidden in God, which penetrate it, elevate it, and, by an ineffable identification, assimilate it to the higher hierarchies; We will not repeat how she is thus transported, by degrees that fade away, in the fullness of light, to the bosom of the society of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, as we have said in dealing with these things, came out of the sanctuary of this eternal society to his Catholic Church, his only bride, and formed her from the college of bishops. The bishop, in his turn, comes out of this assembly of the universal Church where the episcopate receives its first notion. He opens the sacred circle of
289 this higher hierarchy, and he comes to his people, of whom he must form himself a Church and a bride. But, in descending to the particular Church, the mystery of the hierarchy does not degenerate; for this Church and bride of the bishop will still be the Church and bride of Jesus Christ, indivisibly united to Jesus Christ in her bishop, proceeding solely from Jesus Christ, and seeing only Jesus Christ in the bishop who calls her, raises her to life, and presides over her government. It is to the study of the particular Church that we dedicate these pages.
Greatness of the particular Church
It is a sight worthy of God that of a particular Church in all its strength and beauty. United in the same mystery with the universal Church, she is with the latter and in it her masterpiece, the object of his indulgences and the prize of the passion of his Son, Jesus Christ. For this divine Savior suffered to give Himself an immaculate Church, clothed with eternal youth (Eph. 5:25-27), and this unique Church spread throughout the earth appears with all the mystery of her holiness in each of her parts. It is the King's bride, both betrothed on Calvary and crowned by him in heaven. For the same love that shed his blood on the cross to redeem her at that price gives her in heaven the splendors of divine glory. She therefore advances from Calvary, where she was born, to heaven, where she is to be consummated, strengthened in the short journey of the present time by the gifts given to her, and glorious in the hopes given to her. Her Spouse does not abandon her during the trial, and he makes himself present to her in the person of her bishop. What an admirable order! The bishop and the crown of his priests, and beyond that the whole faithful multitude. In this order, truth and holiness are communicated to all parts; lights and graces descend from the bishop and spread through the ministry of the priests, by their consecrated hands and the word of their mouths, through the whole body of the faithful.
290 These are subject in peace to the authority of the bishop and the priests, an authority which is one and which keeps the people in unity: for there is in the Church only one bishop and one pulpit, and the priests exercise no power which does not come from this source and depend on it. How different this sweet and august spectacle is from that of worldly cities, constantly agitated by the inconstancy of human things, and whose uncertain constitutions vary with the whims of revolutions! It is not, however, that human frailty does not appear with the passing of the centuries even in the life of the Churches, and that it does not reach here below the still imperfect elements of which the new humanity must form itself little by little by purifying them and assimilating them. Undoubtedly, the divine constitution of the particular Churches, like every work of God, is in itself above all vicissitudes and cannot be disturbed by any essential alteration. But each of these Churches, taken in isolation, may fail in the course of the ages as a just punishment for the infidelity of the people. The torch that illuminates them passes to other climes; churches are born in regions that were previously dark, while others die out and disappear. However, these Churches do not really die, but they have given their chosen people to the Church of heaven; the number predestined by God has been fulfilled, and, still alive in them, they are going to be lost and merge their brightness in the eternal splendors of the Church of heaven. These Churches which seem to perish here below are ripe ears gathered by the harvester; they are vines which have given all their fruit; and yet, bearing here below in the eyes of men a character of mortality, they leave them memories and regrets. They also leave them terrible lessons in the manifest causes of their earthly decline; and the ruins of altars and sacred edifices, in the destruction of all true civilization, are the sad monuments which unceasingly repeat these lessons to human generations. But, superior to the ravages of time, the universal Church, alone immortal, survives all these local decadences, and, triumphing over earthly frailties, she continually repairs her losses by the introduction into her bosom of new peoples who, from darkness, come to her light.
291 Thus she seems in the course of the centuries to flee continually from city to city, never finding secure rest; for she has no permanent city here below: she must always feel herself a stranger in this world, and she derives this profit from the war made on the saints by the infernal beast and the victories won over them (Rev. 13:7), to keep herself ever more detached from the earth. But when states and peoples tire of giving her hospitality; when they withdraw from her, not only robbing her of the worldly support of wealth and power, but dragging souls into infidelity and extinguishing the torch of the churches; While they believe her, in her flight, weakened by spoliations and apostasies, she has only shaken off the dust of her feet against the cities from which she is fleeing, leaving even the sacred stones of her temples; she becomes a stranger to them for their misfortune, and she immediately finds new asylums for her royal and almighty poverty among docile peoples whom she enriches with light and sanctity Thus the failures of the particular Churches are, in the end, only the unceasing fulfillment of the providential law which makes the life of the Church a pilgrimage here below; and God, who permits them, makes them fit in with his designs. Until the end of the world, the Church will appear to be both always queen and always wandering on earth, and this word of the Savior will be fulfilled on her: "If they chase you in this city, flee to that city;... I tell you the truth, you will not complete the tour of the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes" (Mt 10.23).
Two degrees of divine right
It is necessary here to notice: what we say of the decadence and destruction to which the particular Churches are subject, cannot derogate from the divine right on which they rest. We have, in fact, sufficiently established elsewhere that the constitution of the particular Church is based on the mystery of the hierarchy, and consequently belongs to the divine and immutable right which is in it. It is by this divine right of the hierarchy that the Church rests on the foundation of the episcopate; it is by this divine right that the bishop is the
292 head of his Church, and it is on this divine right that the essential relationships of the bishop, the priests, the ministers, the faithful are established. Positive law cannot suppress this order; this order is willed by God and has been established by him; it is substantial and has to do with the very depths of the mystery. Also, as we have said elsewhere, the state of the missions, where this order does not yet exist, can never be a perfect and definitive state; it must serve as a preparation and introduction to the sacred regime of the Churches; until then, religion is not entirely established; and this is why the Sovereign Pontiffs have nothing so much at heart as to introduce the hierarchy into the recently evangelized regions. When they make these solemn creations, they believe they are greatly honoring their reign; the universal Church celebrates with holy transports the establishment of new episcopal sees and the birth of new Churches, as that of so many daughters, the fruit of her eternal fecundity. And if it is objected to the divine right of the hierarchy of the particular Church that Churches can fail and perish, we shall reply that it is the same for each of them as it is for human families in another order. These have received from God a form of divine right in marriage and paternal authority; and this constitution remains, even when particular families violate it or perish. And these dissolutions of particular families cannot prejudice the divine right on which they all rest, and which alone can constitute them. The constitution of the universal Church and that of the particular Churches are therefore equally of divine right; and yet there is between them this difference that the universal Church cannot perish and that the particular Churches are subject to failure. There are thus like two degrees in the application of divine right to the new humanity; and the reason for this is manifest. Indeed, not only the essence, but the very existence of the universal Church is of divine right, while the essence and form of the particular Churches alone, but not their individual existence, belong to this right. The universal Church cannot cease to exist, because the divine decree unites in it existence and essence, inasmuch as this Church
293 being unique, it would have no application if it were to fail. The particular Churches will be born with time and pass away with it; but they can only be born and subsist in accordance with the type which the divine right has predetermined for them. Moreover, this necessary distinction has been shown in the very institution of the hierarchy. Jesus Christ has properly established only the universal Church, and, remaining its only head, he has given it both form and existence by instituting his vicar in the person of Peter, and the college of bishops in that of the apostles. In this institution of the universal Church was enclosed and implied that of all the particular Churches, not however in themselves, but in their origin and type, and Jesus Christ did not wish to establish any of them in particular; he entrusted to the apostles after him the task of bringing them out of the source where he had enclosed them all. And because he wished to follow this order in his work, he was content, at least in our opinion, to institute bishops who contained in their character all the lower degrees, and he did not himself ordain priests of the second order or ministers whose offices more properly concern the particular Churches; but he left to the apostles the task of bringing out after him, in establishing these, the sacred orders of the diaconate and of the priesthood. Thus the particular Churches do depend in their institution on the universal Church and participate in her divine origin, but they were not immediately and singularly established like her by our Lord himself. One can find some analogy, if one wishes, to this sequence of things in the order of the old Adam. God, in consecrating the marriage of our first parents, certainly instituted in it all those who were to follow until the end of time; and Jesus Christ, in instituting the universal Church, enclosed in it all the institutions of the particular Churches. But there is this great difference, that the marriages which were to be celebrated among men, though they had their type in that of Adam, were not to depend on it in their actual existence; while on the contrary the particular Churches depend entirely on the universal Church, not only in that they proceed from its virtue, but
294 in that they are only an interior application, so to speak, of that virtue which cannot flow outward; in that they can only subsist as long as they remain in her; in that they live from her own substance and exist only through her own existence which is communicated to them. As soon as they withdraw from this center, they must die. Hence those vicissitudes which reach the parts of the universal Church without reaching it itself. As a living body gradually expels from its organism the exhausted elements and renews itself with new ones, so the Church, which is the body of Christ, keeps its purity "by separating what is debased from what is noble and holy," remains in its integrity by rejecting from its bosom the dead parts, and constantly repairs its apparent losses by incorporating new peoples.
Indefinability of the (particular) Church of Rome
But if, among all the Churches, none is assured by the common law to remain in its integrity until the end of the world, there is one, however, which, derogating from this law, possesses by a singular privilege this assurance and to which the promise of it has been made. This Church is the holy Roman Church. As the guardian of the chair of St. Peter, she must preserve the heritage of the Vicar of Jesus Christ as a sacred deposit for which she is responsible to the whole world until the end of the centuries. The destiny of this holy Church is thus closely linked to that of the universal Church; she participates in the promises made to the latter, and in its indefectible perpetuity. It is even through her medium that the promises made to the universal Church have their fulfillment; and the firmness of Peter, that is, the unshakeable stability of the Roman Church which is the chair of Peter, is her own firmness429.
429 PIE IX, Encyclical Inter multiplices (March 21, 1853): " ... This pulpit of the blessed Prince of the Apostles, knowing full well that religion itself can never fall or falter as long as this pulpit founded on the Stone, from which the gates of hell never triumph, and in which is whole and perfect "the solidity of the Christian religion" (John of Constant); in
295 Indeed, this body of the universal Church needs an unchanging center around which all the rest gravitate and from which all the parts borrow a single life. While all the particular peoples who enter this body may one day leave it and cease to belong to it by their infidelity, while the particular Churches may be born and die, there must be an immutable point, a principle of life and identity, in this body whose elements are mobile and derive by their first origin from the inconstancy of human things. The Roman Church is the necessary center: it is from her that all the others receive, with her communion, the communion of the universal Church; it is through the Roman Church that they belong to the universal Church, and this is why we can say in all truth that the universal Church subsists in the Roman Church. By this singular and admirable privilege, the Roman Church becomes in all things similar to the universal Church. It is, like the latter, endowed with eternal youth; decadence cannot bring it down; the Holy Spirit guards it with jealous care; the chair of St. Peter makes
The Church (EP), n. 217. - ID., Encyclical Amantissimus (April 8, 1862): "In fact this chair of Peter has always been recognized and proclaimed as the only one, the first by the gifts received, shining through all the earth in the first rank, root and mother of the one priesthood (s. Cyprian), which is for the other Churches, not only the head, but the mother and mistress (Pelagius 11), the center of religion, the source of the integrity and perfect stability of Christianity (John of Constant)"; ibid., n. 236. - PIE XII, Allocution of June 2, 1944: "The Roman Catholic Mother Church, which has remained faithful to the constitution received from her divine Founder, and which today still remains, unshakeable, on the solidity of the stone on which the will of Him has built it, possesses in the primacy of Peter and the legitimate successors, the assurance, guaranteed by the divine promises, of preserving and transmitting in its integrity and purity, through centuries and millennia, until the end of time, the whole sum of truth and grace contained in the redemptive mission of Christ." ibid. , n. 1124. - ID, Allocution of January 30, 1949: "If ever one day... - We say this by pure hypothesis - material Rome were to collapse; if ever this Vatican Basilica, symbol of the one, invincible and victorious Catholic Church, were to bury under its ruins its historical treasures and the sacred tombs it contains, even then the Church would not be brought down or cracked; Christ's promise to Peter would always remain true, the Papacy would always endure, as would also the one and indestructible Church founded on the Pope then living"; ibid. , n. 1248. Cf. Charles JOURNET, L'Église du Verbe Incarné2, Desclée de Brouwer, 1955, t. l, pp. 555-558.
296 radiate upon her the vigor of faith and holiness; and if at times, in the course of the centuries, human infirmity seems to ascend to her, this Church, which alone vivifies, heals, and reforms all the churches of the world, purifies and reforms herself. She thus gives the world striking proof of God's omnipotent assistance in her; for she presents the unique fact, contrary to all the laws of history and of human affairs, a true miracle in the moral order, of an institution which finds in itself the strength to recover, which rises up when it seems to be sinking, which takes back by an intimate energy the vigor of its first origin and revives all the principles of its primitive constitution. But, if this be so, it is manifest that the Roman Church, justly called the mother and mistress of all the others, will offer to our eyes, in the whole course of this study, the principal type of the particular Churches, and that we shall have to seek in it the principles and constitutive laws which govern all the others.
297 CHAPTER XXV
The bishop, head of the particular church
The bishop is the head of the particular Church. The name head, in the ecclesiastical language, means not only the organ in which command sits, but the one from whom life in the whole body flows; the particular Church exists through its bishop, proceeds from him, receives from him all its constitution, rests on him as the building rests on its foundation430. Now, the one foundation is Christ (1 Cor. 3:11). It is therefore in the one virtue of Jesus Christ present in him that the bishop is the foundation of his Church. Jesus Christ works through him. The bishop is himself the Christ given to this Church in order to give it birth and life to the divine life. The mission of the bishop and his priesthood are in fact only a continuation and a communication of the mission and priesthood of Jesus Christ, and we find in him all the properties of that august and first pontificate. We know that the priesthood of Jesus Christ contains in its unity three principal elements: the teaching of the truth, the communication of holiness through the sacraments, and finally the authority of government. We know that these three aspects of the power given by God Himself to His sacred Priest with an eternal anointing are intimately connected with each other, that the magisterium and the ministerium unite to produce the new humanity or the Church, and that the authority of government over that Church is the natural consequence of the priestly fruitfulness which has given it life. We need only recall here these important notions which we set forth in our second part431.
430 St. CYPRIAN, Letter 27, to the lapsi, 1; PL 4, 298; "From this (Mt. 16. 18-19) follows, through the series of times and successions, the election of bishops and the organization of the Church: the Church rests on the bishops and all its conduct obeys the direction of these same leaders"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit. in vol. 1, p. 84 (Letter 33). 431 See above chapter 9.
298 The bishop, coming to his people, brings them the priesthood of Jesus Christ in this threefold and indivisible power.
Doctor of the faith
He begins by being her doctor, bringing her the Word of God432. Faith is the first foundation he lays. His preaching precedes all his other priestly functions; even before the men to whom the bishop is sent have received baptism and become the members of the new society, they already belong to him as to the one who is to instruct them; they are not yet his sheep and he is not yet their shepherd, but he is already their teacher. He will continue to exercise this ministry in the future, and when they have entered the fold, he will not cease to feed them with the Word of God. The Church lives by faith: it is by faith that she receives the Son of God, who is the Word of his Father; the faith of the bishop, who first received the word of life for her, will form the faith of his Church by transmitting this word to her. The faith of the bishop, then, is a teaching faith, and the faith of his people a taught faith433. The Lord spoke of this fruitful and communicating faith when he said, "I do not pray for them (for the apostles and bishops, their successors) alone, but for those also who through their word will believe in me." (Jn 17:20). "Their faith, the merit of which I consider in praying for them, is not a faith that stops in them; it extends and communicates itself to the rest of the people, and therefore my prayer cannot stop with them, but extends still to all the posterity of their priesthood."
Sanctifier
432 Cf. C. SPICQ, O. P., L'Évêque docteur, d'après les Épîtres pastorales, in L'Évêque et son clergé, Desclée de Brouwer 1945 (Cahiers de La Pierre-qui-vire, 8), pp. 113-121. - H. E. Bishop ELCHINGER, Episcopacy and Proclamation of the Word, in The Episcopate and the Universal Church (US, 39), pp. 360-382. 433 Cf. A.-G. MARTIMORT, De l'évêque, Cerf, Paris, 1946 (col. La Clarté-Dieu, 19), pp. 29-34.
299 But the mission of the bishop does not end with the ministry of preaching. After doctrine, the realities of new life must be given. The Church is not a mere school where man receives the truth; but in it he is reborn to holiness, he is animated by the Holy Spirit, and he receives the divine food of this new life. He must be incorporated into Jesus Christ, becoming in Jesus Christ the adopted son of God and the member of his natural Son, in order to live by his Spirit. We already know that these mysterious and effective influences of Jesus Christ in his members are the result of his perpetually effective sacrifice in the sacraments; we know the order and the relations that the sacraments keep between them. The Eucharist is the center of them, because it is the very sacrifice of Jesus Christ always present. Baptism creates in man, by regenerating him, the aptitude for this heavenly food. Confirmation completes and consummates the work of Baptism. Penance repairs this work throughout the Christian life, and Extreme Unction supports it in the final assaults by which the enemy seeks to overthrow it at the hour of death. The bishop is the chief minister of the sacraments in his Church434. He baptizes; he marks the baptized with the seal of the Holy Spirit. He celebrates the Holy Eucharist, which is the center of the entire sacramental economy. It is indeed at the altar that he appears principally as the head of his people. It is at the altar that he operates in the midst of this people the mystery of life; he is the dispenser of it, and all receive from him the divine food: for "this Eucharist alone is legitimate and solid" in its
434 Cf. Paul BROUTIN, S. J., loc. cit, pp. 161-162: "Clothed with the fullness of the priesthood, the bishop is the natural steward of the sacramental economy." he same author quotes St. CYPRIAN, Letter 73, 11, 2: "It is we who, by the grace of God, give the water of salvation to the thirsty people of God; it is we who determine the flow of the fountain of life." - Fr. A. LIÉGÉ, O. P., Le Mystère de l'Église, in Initiation théologique, Cerf, Paris, 1954, t. 4, p. 346: "They are the choir of the sacrificial and sanctifying liturgy in the peregrinating Church." - Cf. A.G. MARTIMORT, loc. cit., pp. 34-44.
300 fruits, "which is done under the presidency of the bishop or of one whom he shall have charged with it"435. At the altar the bishop is the center of ecclesiastical communion, of which eucharistic communion is the substantial substance; for the faithful are in that one only by the habitual right they have to it (cf. 1 Cor. 10:17)436. Also the Apostolic Constitutions, like the Roman Pontifical, setting forth the sublime attributions of the bishop, teach that he is to offer and consecrate437: this is indeed, in the midst of his people, his first and most august office. We shall then see him, as a charitable physician, healing sick souls with "the word of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:19)438. We will see him, a merciful shepherd, go to seek out the lost sheep, bring them back to the fold and open the doors they had closed to themselves by their unfaithfulness. As minister of the altar and priest, he will continually open the fountains of life and holiness which flow from the altar and from the sacrifice of the slain Lamb, and will spread holiness and blessing everywhere. That is why again the bishop's prayer has such great force
435 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8; PG 5, 713; trans. CAMELOT, (SC, 10), p. 163. 436 ID., Letter to the Philadelphians, 4; PG 5, 700: "Take care, then, that you partake of only one eucharist; for there is but one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one chalice to unite us to his blood, one altar, as one bishop with the presbyterate and deacons, my fellow servants"; ibid., pp. 144-145. 437 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 8, c. 5; PG 1, 1074; FUNK, Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, vol. 1, Paderborn, 1905, p. 476: "Almighty Lord, through your Christ, make him a partaker of your Holy Spirit, so that he may have power... ; that he may please thee in meekness and purity of heart, constantly, that he may offer to thee, without fault or reproach, the pure and unbloody sacrifice, which, through Christ, thou hast established the mystery of the new covenant, in sweet odor, through thy holy Son, Jesus Christ, our God and Savior." - Roman Pontifical, Consecration of a Bishop: "The bishop is to judge, explain (Scripture), consecrate, ordain, offer (the Eucharist), baptize, and confirm." 438 St. Paul does not consider here the sacrament of penance; he speaks of the preaching of the Gospel by which the apostles proclaim "in the first place the divine redemption wrought by Christ, for the reconciliation of all redeemed mankind." B.-M. ALLO, O. P., Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Gabalda, Paris, 1937 (col. Études bibliques), p. 171.
301 and such great dignity that it contains in the mystery of unity, concludes and consecrates the prayer of his people. The Church, which through him receives the gifts of God, through him addresses her supplications to God, through him raises to heaven praise and blessing, through him gives thanks. This is the mystery of liturgical prayer, of that public prayer which is the daily and perpetual act of the Church. This is the unceasing colloquy of the bridegroom and the bride of which the holy books speak. Liturgical prayer, and every assembly in which it takes place, is thus like a continuation of the celebration of the Eucharistic mysteries, which is the bond of the new people and the principal action that unites Christians. It is, according to the ancient language, the synaxis or communion of the morning, evening and sacred vigils. Also these assemblies have a singularly venerable character and are greatly recommended by the Fathers. St. Paul exhorts the faithful not to "desert them" (Heb 10:25). The Doctors and the Councils have the same language, and this point of tradition deserves our full attention. Individual prayer is undoubtedly a great thing: it is the duty of man and of the Christian. Associated prayer is even more commendable, and it is the merit of all pious associations open to the faithful. But, says St. Ignatius of Antioch, "if the prayer of two or three gathered together" and that of any aggregation of the faithful formed by their simple will and the attraction of their piety, "has such force, how much more that of the bishop and of the whole Church"439, that is, of the supplicating act of the hierarchical body and of the bride of Jesus Christ? St. Cyprian gives the same teaching: "The great sacrifice offered to God," he says, "is the peace of our assemblies and the people united to their bishop"440.
439 Saint IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE, Letter to the Ephesians, 5; PG 5, 713; trans. CAMELOT, p. 73. 440 Saint CYPRIAN, The Lord's Prayer, 23; PL 4, 536; see above, chap. 2, note 21.
302 This great sacrifice of liturgical prayer is a perpetual sacrifice, and this union of the bishop and the people in which it is offered does not suffer interruption. For, if the assembly cannot always take place by the material union of the members of the Church around the episcopal pulpit, if many cannot go there each day, the invisible bond of ecclesiastical communion continues to bring the members of the Church together in the liturgical prayer in which they take part wherever they may be. This is the origin and substance of the canonical Hours. The priests retain the prerogative of their order, as we shall see in its place; but, whether they preside with the bishop, whether they substitute for his presence at the head of the assembly, or whether they celebrate the sacred prayer alone, they remain united to him. All the clerics offer the tribute to God in his communion, and, wherever they perform this duty, they do so in the name of the people and represent them in this action. The faithful have a share in it by their very title of Christians and members of the Church; they have a right to unite themselves expressly to it, and they are invited to do so actively, either by the holy psalmodies, or, as St. Cyprian already taught441 and as is still practiced by the illiterate in monasteries, by the repeated Sunday prayer in the canonical Hours, or by some faithful and affectionate adherence of the soul442.
441 After setting forth the Sunday prayer as the principal and usual form of Christian prayer, St. Cyprian designates, for its recitation by the faithful people, the hours of tierce, sexte, noue, dawn or Lauds, Vespers, and the night watches: The Lord's Prayer, 34-36; PL 4, 541-543. The Didachè also speaks of the Sunday prayer recited "three times a day" by the early Christians, probably at the traditional hours of Jewish prayer, at the 3rd, 6th, and 9th hours: 8, 3; HEMMER-LEJAY, Les Pères Apostoliques, Picard, 1907, pp. 1617; cf. Jean-Paul AUDET, O. P., La Didachè, Instructions des Apôtres, Gabalda, Paris, 1958 (col. Études bibliques), pp. 235 and 371. See also, for the times of Jewish prayer at that time, the Manual of Discipline of Qumran, 10, 1: "At the beginning of the dominion of the light, with its circuit, and on its withdrawal to the stay assigned to it"; trans. CARMIGNAC, in Les Textes de Qumran, Letouzey, Paris, 1961, t. 1, p. 66. 442 Dom Gréa, eighty years ago, thus affirmed the right of the faithful to participate in the liturgical office of canonical praise. It is indeed not the prayer of the clergy, but the prayer of the Church, priesthood and laity, "we, your servants, and with us
303 What object more worthy of the piety of Christians than this incessant oblation of ecclesiastical prayer in which they are called to take an ever more active part! It is like the sacred breath of the Church and the mysterious movement of her life; and this is why the bishop, on whom, as head, depend all the impulses which afterwards spread to the members, presides over this prayer, in the secret of ecclesiastical communion. As the center of this communion, he gathers into a single bundle "the vows and supplications of all; through him the tribulations of the peoples, the perils of the nations, the groans of the captives, the forsaken of the orphans and of those who are without asylum, the weaknesses and tongues of the sick and desperate, the failings of the aged, the holy desires of the young men, the vows of the virgins, the tears of the widows"443, receive a voice and ascend to heaven. It gathers the adoration, praise and thanksgiving of all. The Church is a choir, says St. Ignatius; the bishop presides over its concerts, which, like the concerts of the heavens, are silent neither by day nor by night. Or rather, according to the same doctor, the Church is a divine harp: the priests, and through them the faithful, unite with the bishop as the strings of the lyre unite with the wood of the instrument that gathers them, and, in this union of souls and voices, on this lyre of the Church, the Holy Spirit sings Jesus Christ444.
your holy people," as the anamnesis of the Mass says. "Prayer of the mystical body of Christ addressed to God, in the name and for the benefit of all Christians" (PIE XII, Encyclical Mediator Dei, 1947; in The Church (EP), n. 605). This obviously raises the problem of the structure and language of this Office, whose present state bears heavily the weight of its monastic origins. The liturgical reform, inaugurated by Pius XII and carried out by the Second Vatican Council, will hopefully give us an Office that truly responds to the needs and possibilities of our parish elites and consecrated lay communities. The solutions proposed here by St. Cyprian and Christian antiquity obviously cannot satisfy these needs and the legitimate aspirations of our contemporaries. 443 JOHN OF FECAMP, Oration before Mass, inserted in the Roman Missal, on Wednesday, under the name of St. Ambrose. Cf. J.A. JUNGMANN, S. J., Missarum solemnia, vol. 2, pp. 21-22, note 20. 444 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Ephesians, 4; PG 5, 648: "Your justly reputed presbyterate, worthy of God, is tuned to the bishop as the strings to the zither; so, in the harmony of your feelings and the harmony of your charity, you sing Jesus Christ. Let each of you, too, become a choir, so that
304 Thus the bishop always appears as the center of the Church's unity, the center from which life and holiness radiate into it; and a similar sequence shows him to be a sacrificer at the altar, a minister of the sacraments, all of which depend in their own way on the principal sacrament of the altar, and the leader of the prayers of the faithful people, which themselves relate to and unite with the sacrifice. The bishop presides over this mystery; he is the sanctifier of his people.
Pastor
As Jesus Christ, in giving life to his Church, acquired it for himself, and possesses over it, on that account, the most legitimate and august sovereignty, so, making the bishop the minister and cooperator of his priesthood and associating him with its life-giving action, he still gives him a share in its authority and in all its rights. The bishop, therefore, has the empire over his church; and, as Jesus Christ preserves the universal Church principally by the care he takes to govern it and by the assistance he gives to his vicar to govern it in his name, it is also by exercising over his people his spiritual empire that the bishop continually gives them his most useful care and provides for their salvation and their progress. This empire of the bishop includes the power to make laws and establish stable regulations; it includes in the second place the power to judge and maintain peace and good order by sentences which terminate disputes or strike down the guilty; finally, it contains again the power to execute his decisions and apply punishments, even to the point of cutting off from the Church the prevaricators and rebels445. This threefold power makes the bishop's government tutelary and
in the harmony of your agreement, taking the tone of God in unity, you sing with one voice through Jesus Christ a hymn to the Father"; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit. at 73. 445 Code of Canon Law, can. 335 § 1: "Bishops have the right and duty to govern their diocese spiritually and temporally, with legislative, judicial and coercive power, to be exercised according to the rules of the holy canons. - Cf. H.E. Bishop E. GUERRY, L'Évêque, Fayard, Paris, 1954 (col. Ecclesia), pp. 200-220.
305 formidable all together. The health and life of his subjects, and not temporal life, but eternal life, depend on his exercise of it. What fear should not the authority of the prince and the judge placed in his hands inspire in Christians! What obedience they should have! But this fear is tempered by love; this obedience is filial. For all this great power rests on the blessing of regeneration and on the gift of new life. It is the fatherly power of God himself over the adopted sons he has given himself in Jesus Christ, the only and firstborn. The bishop bears the venerable image of this; for, says St. Ignatius, "he whom the master of the house sends to administer his house, we must receive him as the same one who sent him."446. In the exercise of this authority, the bishop will come into more immediate contact with the variable element of human things. He will have to support and direct his people in the midst of ever-changing perils and diverse circumstances. Each century and each country brings to Jesus Christ, along with the human generations he came to save, the changing demands of their weaknesses and their progress, of the good and the evil that is in them, of their civilization or their barbarism. Each century has its times of peace and its times of persecution; the social environment into which man is thrown by birth and to which the Church comes to seek him for regeneration is an atmosphere formed of multiple and contrary elements, slowly prepared by human revolutions, and which never ceases to modify itself from age to age. Unhealthy influences and healthy currents pass through it in turn. The Church, which breathes only heaven, must pass through this uncertain atmosphere in her pilgrimage. The Christian is not of the world and he is in the world. To guide him through so many obstacles and perils, what delicate art, what prudence, what strength, what continuity is not needed in the authority of the pontiff charged with this care! "The art of the arts is the government of souls"447. The bishop, while maintaining an unwavering fidelity-
446 Saint IGNACE, Letter to the Ephesians, 6; PG 5, 648; trans. CAMELOT, 10C. Cit. p. 75. 447 St. GREGOIRE THE GREAT (590-604), The Pastoral, lst part, ch. 1; PL 77, 14; trans. J. BOUTET, Le Pastoral de saint Grégoire le Grand, Desclée de Brouwer, 1928 (col. Pax, 29), p. 5.
306 lable to immutable principles, will have, in this government, to observe times and circumstances and to make allowance for the inconstancy of human things448. But this government of the Church, though it may seem closer to the vicissitudes of this world, is no less sacred in its origin and essence, and the authority of the bishop is always that august paternity which his pontificate gives him. The faithful receive (from him) the divine life and the nourishment of that life, and they belong to him on that account. The altar and the throne of the bishop are linked in the same mystery; the bishop sits on the throne only because he ascends to the altar, and, on this throne of his royalty, he has as his subjects those to whom he gives eternal life at the altar. We must therefore be careful not to compare the authority of the bishop with that of political magistrates. The latter is all of positive right established by the legislator and arbitrarily adapted according to his prudence to the variable demands of social convenience; it can be limited in its duration, measured in its extent, shared among several. But the authority of the bishop has deeper roots; it is founded, no longer only in the positive and arbitrary law (the legislator, but in the nature of things, or rather in the divine sacrament of the hierarchy. It is inalienable like that of the father in the family; he alone possesses it, and, even if he can delegate its exercise, he cannot share its substance. It is not given to him for a definite period of time, and the sacred bond which it establishes between him and his Church can only be broken by death or by a sovereign act of the head of the bishops, as we have seen in his place: for it is to the head of the bishops, and to him alone, that it pertains to make legal
448 ID., ibid., Part 3, prologue; PL 77, 49: "The discourse of those who teach, therefore, must be adapted to the capacity of the hearers: so that it may be in proportion to the dispositions of each, and yet never depart from the principle of common edification. What are, indeed, if I may say so, the attentive minds of the listeners, if not the taut network of strings in a zither? Strings that the artist, by touching them, makes vibrate differently, so as not to inflict on himself a discordant song? From then on, the strings make a harmonious sound, because they are touched, with the same bow no doubt, but not according to an identical rhythm. Thus each doctor, in order to edify all men with the one virtue of charity, must approach the hearts of the hearers with the same doctrine, but not with one and the same language"; ibid., pp. 101-102.
307 time and effect the renunciation which a bishop makes of his title, or to take away by his sentence from an unworthy one the government of his people. The essence of the episcopate is thus of a higher order than the creations of positive law; it is immutable: this law cannot reach it. And if, in the course of the ages, the canons and the pontifical constitutions have at times broadened its scope and at times restricted its attributions, these laws have reached only the pure exercise of episcopal jurisdiction, without touching the substance of things. Venerable antiquity knew this sacred character of the authority of the bishops, and tradition, by never separating it from the power they received to teach, baptize, and sacrifice, distinguishes it absolutely from those purely administrative authorities established by the prudence of the legislator for the policing of societies, and which suppose no necessary prior relationship between those who are invested with it and those over whom they exercise it.
308 CHAPTER XXVI
The order of priests
Cooperators of the bishop
Will the bishop be able to provide for the spiritual needs of a large people alone? It is manifest that he will not be able to. Will it be necessary, then, to multiply the bishops in the same Church? The sacrament of unity does not permit this. The Church cannot be split up and belong to many; the Bridegroom of the one bride is one: the body has only one head, and the members do not borrow life from various sources449. There will be no discordant voices in the assembly of the faithful: "I am for Paul - I for Apollos" (1 Cor. 3:4); and the whole tradition testifies to its abhorrence of schism and to the firmness of our fathers in maintaining the unity of the episcopal chair. The mystery of the hierarchy is too much committed to it: "One God, one Christ, one bishop," cried the Roman people, to whom they wanted to give two pontiffs450. Thus the bishop will remain alone, and yet he will not be able in his solitude to suffice for the needs of the multitude. From where will the help come to him? Where will be the remedy? The mystery of the hierarchy carries within it this remedy and brings to the bishop this necessary help. God said of the ancient Adam It is not good for man to be alone. I must make him a helper to match" (Gen. 2:18); and this helper of the father of ancient humanity was his wife and mother
449 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 8; PL 4, 505: "Does not God make heard in his Gospel this warning, this teaching a There shall be but one flock and one shepherd" (Jn 10.16)? Does anyone think, after that, that in one place there can be either many shepherds or several flocks? DE LABRIOLLE, P. 17. ID, Letter 40, to the people, 5; PL 4, 336: "There is only one God, one Christ, one Church, one pulpit which the word of the Lord has established on Peter as its foundation. Another altar cannot be erected, another priesthood cannot be instituted, apart from this one altar, this one priesthood"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit., vol. 2, pp. 107-108 (Letter 43). 450 THEODORET, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 2, c. 14; see supra, chap. 4, note 6, page 53.
309 of his posterity. In the new humanity, the Church which is the wife of the Bishop is to become his helper and receive from him the character of mother of his spiritual sons. He associates her with the operations of his priesthood and with his paternal authority in her most excellent part and in her principal members, the priests of the second order. In them, as in its noblest portion, the Church will become his helper similar to himself. In them he will form a crown of cooperators and establish that venerable college which we call the presbytery451. Thus the bishop who bears within himself the type of Jesus Christ and the type of the Father of Jesus Christ gives a living image of himself. As the episcopate is the rejoicing of Jesus Christ, reproducing the image and operations of its head, so the presbytery receives and extends the action of the bishop. As Jesus Christ is the living image of his Father and does the works of his Father, so the presbytery is the image of the bishop and does his works; again, this is a similar cooperator. possesses in substance the same priesthood with the bishop, and is with him one in this unity of the priesthood, as the episcopate is one with Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ says of himself, "The Father and I are one" (Jn 10:30).
Under his complete dependence
In this unity, everything naturally seems common between the bishop and the priests. The priest, like the bishop, proclaims the word of God, offers the sacrifice, administers the sacraments; he has authority over the
451 St. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, c. 3, n. 3; PL 24, 61: "And we also have our senate in the Church, the assembly of priests." - ORIGEN, Against Celsus, 1.3, c. 30; PG 11, 958: "So compare the senate of Christ's Church with the senate of every city and you will find these senators of the Church, worthy governors of the city of God." - Council of Trent, Session 24 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 12, EHSES 9, 984: "(Only clerics of twenty-five years of age may be ordained priests, and even then not all of them indiscriminately), but those only who are worthy and who enjoy such integrity of morals that they may rightly be called the senate of the Church."
310 faithful people: it is indeed the same priesthood, and the object is not different452. But the priesthood of the priest, by this very fact that it is not another priesthood than that of the bishop, is a communicated priesthood which comes from the episcopate, was instituted and rests in the episcopate, and which places the priest in an essential and necessary dependence on the bishop. The priest, therefore, will do the works of the bishop, but he will do them as an assistant, cooperator, and organ of the bishop453; his hands were anointed like those of the bishop, but the head of the bishop alone received the anointing first, and this anointing, which from this consecrated head descends to the hands and makes the hands of the priest like those of the bishop454, initiating them into the same holy works, makes the priest like his own member and an extension of himself. Receiving from him all his power, the priest assists him if he is present, he supplements him if he is absent; and, even though the efficacy of the power of order renders valid certain acts of the priest performed outside this dependence, they cannot be legitimate and benefit the faithful people if the authority of the bishop does not accompany and support them. Priests will therefore be able to preach, but in the name of the bishop who
452 PSEUDO-JEROME, Commentary on 1 Tim 3; PL 30, 880: "The second degree, what shall I say? there is almost only one." - St. ISIDORE OF SEVILLE (530636), Origins (Etymologiae), 1. 7, c. 12, n. 21; PL 82, 292: "Therefore presbyters also are called priests (sacerdotes), because they give the sacred things, just as the bishops do." 453 Roman Pontifical, ordination of a priest: "At the time when you established supreme pontiffs to rule the peoples, you chose for them, as companions and collaborators, men of lower rank and lesser dignity (sequentis ordinis viros et secundae dignitatis); trans. (retouched) of FEDER, Daily Missal of the Faithful, p. 1635. - Cf. Bernard BOTTE, O. S. B., Secundi meriti munus, in Les Questions liturgiques paroissiales, 21 (1936), 8488. 454 Id., consecration of a bishop: a May your head receive, by the blessing of heaven, the anointing and consecration into the order of pontiffs.... May your hands be anointed with the holy oil and the chrism that sanctifies." - Id., ordination of a priest Deign, Lord, to consecrate and sanctify these hands by this anointing and our blessing"; ibid., pp. 1639 and 1636. - Cf. Roger BERAUDY, P. S. S., The Effects of the Order in Consecratory Prefaces, in La Tradition sacerdotale, pp. 99-102.
311 sends them455; they will be able to baptize, but their baptism gives But in this mystery the term similar does not say enough; there is not only, indeed, between the bishop and the priests a pure similarity, which may be all external and of pure accident, but there is between them substantial communication of the same priesthood. The presbytery bears the character of resemblance, because it of the sons to the bishop456, and they must be presented to him so that, imprinting on them the seal of the
455 S. Pius X, Encyclical Pieni l'animo (July 28, 1906) to the bishops of Italy "The ministry of preaching belongs to you entirely in your own right and constitutes a principal part of the pastoral office; apart from you, whoever exercises it, does so in your name and place, and therefore it is always you who answer before God for the manner in which the bread of the divine Word is distributed to the faithful": in the Church (EP), n. 684. - Benedict XV, Encyclical Humani generis (June 15, 1917): "Although preaching is for them (the bishops) the object of a personal duty, it is necessary for them to have recourse to others to replace them in a ministry which they cannot, either always or on every occasion, satisfy by themselves. For this reason, those who, apart from the bishops, exercise this ministry, undoubtedly fulfill an episcopal office. This first law is therefore established, that no one should take upon himself the office of preacher; he who desires it must receive the legitimate mission, and only the bishop can grant it... Do not let anyone enter the sheepfold without your command and feed the sheep of Christ as he pleases. And let no one in your dioceses have any more power to preach unless you have first called and approved him"; ibid., nn. 774-777. - Code of Canon Law, canon 1328: "No one is permitted to exercise the ministry of preaching without having received a mission to do so from the legitimate superior, whether this faculty is given in isolation, or whether an office is conferred which, according to law, includes the office of preaching"; trans. A.-G. MARTIMORT, loc. cit., p. 27. Letter from the Secretariat of State to Bishop Duperray (April 13, 1954): "In the Church, as is well known, the office of preaching belongs properly to the bishop, and no priest can of himself assign this function to himself: he must have received the legitimate mission of it, and only the bishop can give it to him. This traditional truth, which it is perhaps not useless to remind the clergy, both secular and regular, has not only a disciplinary significance. For it is through this essential reference to the bishop that preaching truly becomes an act of the Church, the act by which the Bride of Christ continues to dispense, through the voice of her priests, the inexhaustible riches of evangelical doctrine."
In the Church (EP), n. 1362. 456 A special delegation of the bishop is always necessary for adult baptism: Code of Canon Law, can. 744. The General Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (April 16, 1962) advantageously recalls the responsibility of the bishop in the preparation of catechumens and the progressive celebration of the sacrament of Baptism: A.A.S., May 30, 1962, pp. 310-315; cf. La Maison-Dieu 71 (1962), 7-13.
312 Holy Spirit, he gives them the perfection and consummation of the new man. At the altar itself, the priests concelebrate with the bishop as his assistants called by him to cooperate in the same mystery; and when they celebrate alone, according to the language of antiquity, "they substitute for him in this action"457. The Fathers are not accustomed to regard the priesthood separately from the episcopate and as an independent institution458, and the foundation of this essential dependence is the very order of hierarchical communications which from the bishop go to the priest, a sacred order which cannot be interfered with, suppressed or suspended. Also what we have said above about hierarchical subordinations which are always and essentially confused with original dependencies has its place here. In God himself, the order of the processions establishes without inequality the order and dependence of persons, and throughout the rest of the Church the same law is verified, with this difference, however, that the condition of created essences imprints in them the character of inequality as a proper and inevitable mark of their weakness. The bishop depends on Jesus Christ, but he is not his equal; the priests depend on the bishop, but are not his equals; And if we wish to know where this inequality comes from in the created hierarchies, unlike the hierarchy of the divine persons, without going into a long discourse, we shall say that in God the two terms of the relationship which makes for dependence, namely the one who gives and the one who receives, belong to each other by the absolute necessity of the divine essence where everything is eternal and suffers nothing of imperfection; whereas, among men, gifts depend originally on an arbitrary decree and a contingent choice; he who gives first possesses, and
457 St. GEALASE I (492-496), Letter 9, to the bishops of Lucania (Southern Italy), 6; PL 59, 50: "Let the priests, in the absence of some bishop... presume permission to substitute for him in prayer or in the Eucharistic celebration (actionis sacrae)." 458 Council of Aix-la-Chapelle (836), chap. 2, 2nd division, can. 5; LABBE 7, 1711, MANSI 14, 680-681: "In the consecration (confectione) of the divine Body and Blood, they (the priests) are the associates of the bishops... Without doubt we know that they are the cooperators of our office."
313 remains the master of his liberality, all the more elevated above the one who receives and dominating him with all the more force and right because he has obliged him by a greater benefit and has subjected him as it were by enriching him further with his own goods. According to this doctrine, since the bishop has nothing in his episcopate that he has not received from Jesus Christ, he depends entirely on this divine head and his vicar. And, as the priest has nothing that he has not received from the episcopate, he depends entirely on the bishop459. After this, we will no longer be surprised to see priests assimilated in all their functions to bishops. If the priesthood were not as an outflow of the episcopate, and the very priesthood of the episcopate extended and communicated, it would involve different functions and obligations. St. Paul speaks of both orders in the same terms, "including the priests in what he says of the bishop"460. "Between the bishop and the priest," says St. John Chrysostom, "hardly any difference appears: to priests as well as to bishops is given the office of teaching and the care of the Church; what the apostle Paul said of bishops is also appropriate to priests461. The distinction of the two orders is not found in the nature of their functions; it must be sought elsewhere, and the holy doctor discovers it for us: "To the bishops belongs the ordination of priests, and it is by this power alone that they are superior to them; they seem to have only this above them462. Saint Isidore holds the same language463, and Saint Jerô says to me in fewer words, "What can the bishop-
459 St. Celestine I (422-432), Letter 12, to the bishops of Gaul, 2; PL 50, 529: "Let the priests know that, even if they were all of the same mind, they are subject to us in their dignity." 460 St. ISIDORE, On Ecclesiastical Functions, 1. 2, c. 7, n. 3; PL 83, 787-788: "(The Apostle Paul) writing to Timothy concerning the ordination of the bishop and the deacon, does not say a word about the priests, for he embraces them under the name of bishops. The second degree is indeed closely united to the first." 461 St. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS, Homily 11 on the Epistle to Timothy, 3; PG 62, 553: "Between bishops and priests there is not much difference: for priests also have received the office of teaching, and they lead the Church; what (the apostle Paul) says of bishops is also appropriate to priests." 462 ID., ibid. 463 St. ISIDORE, loc. cit., n. 2; PL 83, 786: "(Priests) indeed lead the Church of Christ, and in the consecration of the Body and Blood they are associated with
314 that, what else can the priest do but ordination?"464 This is enough to establish both the nature of the priesthood and its entire dependence. As the priest has received all that he is in ordination, so he has received all from the bishop and is dependent on him in everything. His functions will be common to the bishop, but in each of them he will depend on him, because there is none that the priesthood does not hold from the episcopate. Thus, the words of the Doctors which we quoted earlier, and this doctrine which they proclaimed: "The priest has all that the bishop has, except the power to communicate the priesthood and to beget priests by ordination", make us hear in the last of our hierarchies, which is that of the particular Church, an echo of the mystery of the divine hierarchy and of this doctrine: the Son has all that the Father has, except being Father. The Son is one and the same with the Father, but he receives from the Father all that he is. In the Church, the bishop and the priest are one priesthood, but the priest receives from the bishop this one priesthood with all the operations that belong to it and all its consequences465. There is therefore really only one priesthood: the bishop and the priests *have the same ministry and the same duties; it is one and the same thing, and the very names of priesthood and episcopate have been commonly ascribed to priests as to bishops466. But this one thing belongs to the bishop and the priests by a different title. The bishop is the head and the priests are priests in communication
bishops; likewise in teaching the people and in the office of preaching. Only, the ordination and consecration of clerics are reserved to the supreme priest (the bishop) because of his authority." 464 St. Jerome, Letter 146, to Evangelus, 1; PL 22, 1194. On this position of St. Jerome and its influence on all theology up to and including St. Thomas, see Joseph LÉCUYER, C. S. SP., Le Sacerdoce dans le mystère du Christ, Cerf, Paris, 1957 (LO, 24), pp. 366-386. 465 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Trallians, 3; PG 5, 677: "Let all revere the deacons as Jesus Christ, as also the bishop, who is the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and as the assembly of the apostles without them one cannot speak of a Church"; trans. CAMELOT, loc. cit., p. 113. 466 Saint ISIDORE, ibid., 1. 2, c. 7, n. 3: PL 83, 787-788; see above note 13. - Cf. Pierre Gy, O. P., Ancient Vocabulary of the Priesthood in Studies on the Sacrament of Order, Cerf, Paris, 1957 (LO, 22), pp. 133-145.
315 of this one priesthood established first and foremost in the episcopate. Now, as we have already said, it is this very unity of the episcopate and the priesthood which attaches to the priesthood the character of absolute dependence. The priesthood of priests, by the very fact that there is no other priesthood in them than that of the bishops, deriving entirely from the episcopate, is entirely constituted in dependence on the episcopate. This dependence is attached to its very essence and embraces it entirely, because there is nothing in this essence that was not first included in the powers of the episcopate before belonging to the priesthood. Thus, that high dignity of the priesthood which makes it one and the same with the episcopate is also the title of its complete dependence on the episcopate. For since the difference between the bishop and the priests is not in substance, it must be entirely in relationship, and this relationship is that of the one who possesses on a principal basis with regard to those who receive everything from him and who have nothing outside of him. And let it not be objected that, in the conferring of the sacrament of Holy Orders, the divine operation which imprints the character comes immediately from God, without borrowing anything from the bishop who lays hands on the person, even though he is the minister and the episcopate gives the priesthood. As we know, intermediaries do not add anything to hierarchical communications; the degrees disappear and the operations from above remain pure as they pass through them; Jesus Christ alone makes priests through the episcopate; he is in the bishop and his Father is in him to communicate the divine gift and the priestly mission. But the divine and invisible operation of Jesus Christ does not have the effect of disturbing the order he has instituted. On the contrary, it establishes this order by its sovereign efficacy and grounds it in the depths of its indelible character; and if Jesus Christ, in the bishop, creates the priest invisibly, immediately and effectively by the imposition of his hands, he creates him in all the essential dependence of the priesthood on the episcopate, and he creates in him the very relations which ensure this dependence. It is not, moreover, in vain with regard to the priests that he belongs
316 holds to the bishop to exercise over them his ministry in ordination, even though this ministry is nothing by itself and has value only through the divine operations of which it is the sign and instrument. The episcopate thus truly assumes, with regard to the priesthood, the character of paternity. If, in the order of ancient humanity, fathers have a natural and indestructible title and authority over their sons in the family, even though God alone created these sons by his own power and the efficacy of his word spoken at the beginning: "Be fruitful, multiply" (Gen. 1. 28), so in the new humanity, the pontiffs of the hierarchy, chosen by God to spread the new gift, receive a reflection of the pontificate of Jesus Christ and the authority of the Father of Jesus Christ who sends them. And the more the divine operations of which they are the ministers are raised above the gifts given to the old humanity, the more also does the venerable paternity with which they are clothed prevail in excellence and majesty over that of the old Adam.
Attributions of the "second seat"
The priesthood is thus well constituted in entire dependence on the episcopate by the essential laws of the hierarchy; and priestly ordination, far from giving in this any advantage to priests over bishops by the reason that its sacramental efficacy comes immediately from God, solemnly subjects them to it, by attaching their priesthood, in its very origin, to their ministry and to the imposition of their hands. They become similar to them, but in this very similarity their dependence is constituted. If, therefore, the bishop, as a result of the fruitfulness of his priesthood, which brings the faithful into the life of grace, possesses authority over them and sits on the throne of his Church, the priests whom he associates with his ministry will also be associated by him with his authority. Assisting and substituting for him in the preaching of the word, the oblation of the sacrifice, and the administration of the sacraments, they will assist and substitute for him as needed in the government of his people. Around the bishop's throne will be the sunthronos, or the sitting of his presbytery. The same priestly majesty will descend from the episcopal throne to the humbler seats of the priests; but they will be able to do nothing but by him and
317 in complete dependence on his principal pulpit. This is what the ancients call the second see, assigned to the priests, as opposed to the first see, which belongs to the bishop467. In this rank assigned to him by constant tradition, the priest is never a hierarchical head in the proper sense of the word. He is never more than a member of the presbytery, and the presbytery is never more than the bishop's helper and cooperator, without being able to claim the first and principal action. This remains true even when a Church has only one priest and receives from him all the priestly offices. This priest cannot be the true head, and it is necessary to recognize in him the presbytery reduced to a single member, that is, always the second seat. The fact that there is only one priest in a parish can undoubtedly give some illusion to inattentive minds and make him be taken as the true head of this people, and the partisans of the divine right of parish priests have fallen into this error. But this unity is purely accidental; it is not connected with the constitutive principles of the Church; and while, by the sacred and immutable laws of the hierarchy, the bishop, as the true head, is necessarily unique in his Church, there is nothing in these same laws to oppose the multiplicity of priests wherever the needs of the faithful people and the honor of the service of God make it convenient. In the universal Church, the bishop is the member of the episcopal college, and this college, even if it were reduced to a single bishop, is never more than the second person, if we may so speak, of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church; the throne, in this hierarchy, belongs to Jesus Christ and to his vicar, and the episcopate forms the sunthronos or the assistance. In the particular Church the bishop becomes head in his turn, the priests compose the sunthronos, their college is but the second person in this latter hierarchy, and, even while it is reduced to one member and the absent bishop does
467 CONSTANTINE, Letter to Chrestus, in EUSEBUS OF CAESAREA, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 10, c. 5, n. 23: " ... After you have joined two men of the second see (deuterou thronou) whom you have seen fit to choose"; cf. BARDY (SC, 55) P. 110.
318 appears not, he cannot occupy the throne and ascend to the first seat.
The alleged divine right of the parish priests
It is for not having understood the very close unity of the episcopate and the priesthood, and, consequently, the essential and total dependence of the priests on the episcopate, that certain modern doctors have made the parish priests a situation unknown to antiquity and contradicted by all ancient tradition. Their system ignores the divine plan of the hierarchy as we have so often set it forth in these pages, and violates its august simplicity. Forgetting that the whole design of the particular Church is constantly brought back by the Fathers to the bishop and his priests as attached to his one and principal chair, they have pretended that the parish priests were by divine right the true heads of the lesser Churches, as the bishops are the heads of the principal Churches. "The parish priests," they say, "are the pastors of the second order, whom Jesus Christ established, like those of the first, by a direct and special institution."468 This institution, no doubt, does not equal them to the bishops; but the dependence in which it places them does not go to the bottom of things and to the very substance of the pastoral ministry entrusted to them. "In this respect, they are truly the heads of their Churches in the full force of the word, subordinate to the bishop by the order of the legislator and for the maintenance of unity, but clothed with a mission similar to his own and to the substance of which he cannot touch because
468 Cardinal de LA LUZERNE, Dissertations sur les Droits et Devoirs respectifs des Évêques et des Prêtres, 2nd dissertation, chap. 3, n. 43, Migne, 1844, t. 1, col. 181; the text quoted by La Luzerne comes from "la censure d'un mémoire pour le chapitre de Cahors," published in 1772 by the Faculty of Theology of Paris. - MAULTROT, L'Institution divine des curés et leur droit au gouvernement général de l'Église, Paris, 1778, t. 1, chap. 3, p. 286: "When it is said that the parish priests are of divine right, nothing else is meant except that the authority they exercise over the faithful they hold from God immediately and not from the bishop. If they celebrate the Holy Sacrifice, if they baptize, if they preach, they do so in virtue of a power that the Holy Spirit has given them. They are not mere vicars of the bishop, holding everything from him. It is the Holy Spirit who has established them as overseers of a certain flock. This text is quoted by LA, LUZERNE, loc. cit. col. 157. Dom Gréa was obviously inspired by this work for this entire paragraph.
319 that it does not come from him, if not by the simple designation he makes of their persons, and because it does not derive its origin from him as to its essence and extent." It was necessary to find for this new order of hierarchs ancestors in history and a title of institution in Holy Scripture. Alongside the mission of the bishops, clearly declared in the person of the apostles, it was necessary to find the mission of the parish priests. It was claimed to find this mission in the election of the seventy-two disciples469; but this claim cannot be sustained. The seventy-two disciples never exercised the office of pastors; St. Thomas noticed this already at the time when these claims first went forth470. The seventy-two disciples, chosen by our Lord for a temporary ministry, appearing as his forerunners in the places to which he himself was to go (Le 10.1), were never the object of a hierarchical and permanent establishment. Far from instituting in them the parish priests, Jesus Christ did not communicate to them any priestly order. After his Ascension, they were blended into the multitude of the first faithful, and it was there that, according to the teaching of the Fathers, the apostles went to find seven of them to make them the first deacons of the nascent Church471. Singular curates who, far from being
469 GERSON (1363-1429), De l'état des curés, Ire considération, in Opera omnia, ed. Ellies du Pin, Antwerp, 1706, vol. 2, col. 534: "The state of the curés succeeds the state of the seventy-two disciples of Christ as far as the new law is concerned; it had been figured in the old law by the Levites. And this is how the state of the pastors was instituted by Christ and by his apostles from the beginning of the foundation of the Church. This text by Gerson is quoted in La LUZERNE, loc. cit., col. 178. - MAULTROT, loc. cit., vol. 2, p. 504: "The parish priests were established on the model of the seventy-two disciples, as the bishops on the model of the apostles; they represent the seventy-two disciples, as the bishops represent the apostles; the parish priests hold the place of the seventy-two disciples, as the bishops hold the place of the apostles... It was therefore right to say, and it is exactly true, that the parish priests, not only were formed on the model of the disciples, but that the parish priests represent these disciples, that they replace them, that they have succeeded them"; text quoted in LA LUZERNE, loc. cit., col. 204. 470 Cf. Joseph LÉCUYER, C. S. SP., Les Étapes de l'enseignement thomiste sur l'Épiscopat, in Revue thomiste 57 (1957) 29-52. 471 St. EPIPHANUS, Countering Heresies, 1. 1, Hered. 20, Il. 4,; PG 41 278-279 "In addition to these (the twelve apostles), he alleges that the other seventy-two received
320 priests, are not even ministers! Thus this so-called divine right of parish priests has no historical foundation, but rests on a deeply altered notion of hierarchical relationships and the essence of the priesthood. We cannot repeat too often that priests receive all that they are from the episcopate; they are in the hierarchy of the particular Church the second person in that hierarchy, receiving and not communicating the priestly gift, associated with the bishop, cooperating with the bishop, substituting for the bishop. The bishop acts in them and through them; they are his crown, the senate of his Church, seated around his pulpit. Their title in the particular Church gives them this place, and gives them no other; and, even though the priest appears alone, the attributions of the hierarchical persons cannot be interchanged. As we shall see, a priest can, in fact, be alone at the head of a Church of little importance and govern that Church. And it is even this state of the small churches which, by multiplying in the Christian world, has given rise to the claims of the parish priests. But the single priest still represents the whole presbytery; in his person subsists, if one may so speak, this college reduced to a single member; he does not occupy a principal pulpit, he is not a true head of the Church, he is in no respect a bishop of the second order; and, if he governs a people and exercises the pastoral office, he cooperates in this with the bishop far from the place, acts in his power and supplements him in the government of his flock472.
the same office (of preachers throughout the world); of these seven were chosen to care for the widows, namely Stephen, Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicholas" (cf. Acts 6:5). 472 Let us point out here the problem of the sacramentality of the episcopate. The question did not even arise for Dom Gréa, so much did the thing seem to him to be obvious; contemporary theologians admit it more and more, especially since the Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis of PIE XII (November 30, 1947): A AS, 40 (1948) 5; cf. Bernard BOTTE, O. S. B., La Constitution apostolique Sacramentum Ordinis, in La Maison-Dieu, 16 (1948) 124-129. See among others: P.-A. LIÉGÉ, O. P., art. Bishops (The Bishop in the Priesthood), in Catholicism, 1. 4 (1956) col. 800-803; Yves CONGAR, O. P., Facts, Problems, and Reflections on the Power of Order and the Relationship between the Presbyterate and the Episcopate, in La Maison-Dieu, 14 (1948), 107-128; Joseph LÉCUYER, C. S. SP., The Priesthood in the Mystery of Christ,
321 CHAPTER XXVII
The order of deacons and the lower orders
Diaconal Ministry
In order to give the reader a complete idea of the particular Church, it is necessary that we make known to him the ministry of the deacons and inferior clerics, a ministry established in her by divine institution and from the time of the apostles473. The deacons are the ministers of the bishop. Their order is not the priesthood, but is , so to speak, collateral to it, while remaining inferior to it. They are not priests, and consequently they are not, like the bishop and the priests, the ordinary ministers of the sacraments. The deacon prepares, he assists, he lends his aid to the action of the bishop474. The deacon goes from the bishop to the people to carry his orders and warnings475; he goes from the peple to the bishop to make known
Cerf, Paris, 1957 (LO, 24), pp. 393-410. The sacramentality of the episcopate is explicitly affirmed in the Constitution De Ecclesia of the Second Vatican Council. 473 Council of Trent, session 23 (1563), can. 6 EHSES 9, 625, Den., 625, Dum., 904: "If anyone says that in the Catholic Church there is no hierarchy instituted by divine provision, and which consists of bishops, priests, and ministers, let him be anathema"; trans. A. MICHEL in HEFEL 10, 491. 474 Didascalia of the Apostles (Syrian codification of the 3rd c.), ch. 11, 44, 2-4 "Let the deacon be the bishop's ear, his mouth, his heart, and his soul, because you are two in one will, and in your unanimity the Church too will find peace"; trans. NAU, Paris, 1912, p. 101. Text reprinted in Apostolic Constitutions (Syrian compilation, ca. 380), 1. 2, c. 44; PG 1, 703. 475 St. ISIDORE, Of the Ecclesiastical Offices, 1. 2, c. 8, n. 3; PL 83, 789: "They (the deacons) are the voices of thunder. For, like a herald, they give, in a loud voice, advice to the assembly to pray, to kneel, to sing a psalm, to listen to the readings, and even they ask us, shouting, to keep our ears turned to the Lord." - Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 3, c. 19; PG 1, 802: "Let them both receive the charge of proclaiming (the Gospel), of evacuating (the church), of serving (at the altar), and of carrying out the ministry, as (Isaiah) says of the Lord, 'The righteous servant will justify multitudes' (Is. 53:11)."
322 his condition and necessities and bring his wishes and prayers476. To him is entrusted the distribution of alms, the care of the poor, the infirm, the orphans and the widows477. A bearer of the bishop's orders, he may appear clothed with his authority in the mandates entrusted to him. He may also carry the word in his name, and thus, as a reader of the Gospel, he may be its preacher478. But in all these various actions he is not comparable to
476 Didascalia of the Apostles, ch. 9, 28, 6: "(The laity) will have great confidence in the deacons, they will not be constantly annoying the chief, but they will make him say what they desire by the servants, that is, by the deacons, for no one can come nearer to the Almighty Lord any more, except through Christ. They will therefore make known to the bishop through the deacons whatever they wish to do, and then they will do it"; trans. NAU, P. 84. - Cf. Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 28; PG 1, 674675. - On the functions of the deacon, see Jean COLSON, La fonction diaconale aux origines de l'Église, Desclée de Brouwer, 1960 (col. Textes et Études théologiques); I.- H. DALMAIS, O. P., Le diacre, guide de la prière d'après la tradition liturgique, in La Maison-Dieu 61 (1960) 30-40; Vincent LECOMTE, O. P., Où en est le diaconat? Note on the diaconate in the Chaldean Church today, ibid., 66 (1961) 111-113. 477 Didascalia of the Apostles, 71-72: "The number of deacons shall be proportionate to that of the people of the Church, so that they may distinguish and assist each one. They will render to all the services they need, to the elderly who have no strength left, as well as to brothers and sisters who are sick... If our Lord did this (washing the feet of his apostles), would you deacons hesitate to do the same for the sick and infirm, you who are soldiers of truth and have the example of the Messiah? You deacons must therefore visit all the needy, and make known to the bishop those who are in need, you must be his soul and his thought..."; text quoted in COLSON, loc. cit., pp. 111-112. Cf. Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 3, c. 19, PG 1, 803. - Testament of the Lord (Syriac compilation, after 450), 1, 35: "Let him care for the sick, look after strangers, help widows, be the father of orphans, and go through all the houses of the poor to see if there is anyone in need, sickness, or misfortune"; trans. NAU, L'Octateuque de Clément, Paris, 1913, p. 49. - Cf. Adalbert HAMMAN, O. F. M., Liturgy and Social Action. Le diaconat aux premiers siècles, in La Maison-Dieu 36 (1953) 151-172, reprinted in A. HAMMAN, Liturgy and apostolate, Cerf, Paris, 1964 (col. L'esprit liturgique, 24), pp. 35-62. 478 In his Letter to the Philadelphians, 11, St. IGNACE OF ANTIOCHE mentions "Philo, the deacon of Cilicia, a man of good repute, who now assists me in the ministry of the Word of God, together with Rheos Agathopous"; trans. CAMELOT, P. 153. - Cf. Roman Pontifical, ordination of a deacon: "The deacon is to serve at the altar, to baptize and to preach." - The Code of Canon Law, can. 1342, places the deacon on the same footing as the priest in the faculty of preaching.
323 priests, alone associated with the bishop's priesthood. The priests have with the bishop the same priesthood; they ascend with him to the altar, they operate with him the mysteries, and he makes them sit with him around his principal pulpit. The deacons do not sit in the sanctuary. Like the angels, they surround the altar and do not sacrifice. Standing beside the bishop and priests, the deacon hears the mystical words, but does not pronounce them; he witnesses the mystery, but does not perform it479; he is the friend of the bridegroom, and it is fitting for him in this capacity to stand right next to the bridegroom, to hear his word and to rejoice in it; but he is not the bridegroom, that is, he is not the bishop or the priest, in whom is the bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ, working through them the ineffable mystery of his union with his bride (cf. (cf. Jn. 3:29), so it is not appropriate for him to sit in the presbytery. The bishop, who makes his priests sit with him, leaves the deacon standing among them480. Standing by the bishop's throne, standing by the altar, wearing in the floating stole that falls from his shoulder like an image the wings that figure the angelic nature, he is always ready, the visible angel of the Church, to fly among the faithful people and to bear to them, burning with zeal, the priestly orders481. Belonging to the bishop, the chief priest, the deacon also belongs
479 St. ISIDORE, On Ecclesiastical Offices, 1. 2, c. 8, n. 4; PL 83, 789: "The Levites cover the Ark of the Covenant. For not all see the altars of the mysteries, which are covered by the Levites so that those who should not see may not see." 480 Didascalia of the Apostles, ch. 12, 57, 4-6: "In your places of assembly, in the holy churches... reserve a place for the priests on the eastern side of the house; let the bishop's throne be placed in the midst of them, and let the priests sit with him... As for the deacons, let one always stand (standing) near the thanksgiving gifts..."; quoted in J. COLSON, loc. cit., P. 109. - Cf. NAU, pp. 112-113. Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 57; PG 1, 726: "Let the seat of the bishop be placed in the middle of the church; let the priests (presbyterium) sit. on either side, let the deacons stand, ready and lightly clothed." 481 St. JUSTIN, First Apology, 67; PG 6, 430: "Then takes place the distribution and sharing of the consecrated food to each one, and their share is sent to those absent through the ministry of the deacons"; trans. A. HAMMAN, La philosophie passe au Christ, ed. of Paris, 1958, (col. Ichthus, 3), p. 95.
324 inseparably, by the very essence of his order, to the priests, who have with the bishop but one priesthood. He serves in the priests and in the bishop this one and indivisible priesthood, and he renders to the priests the same duties and the same eagerness as he renders to the bishop482. The bishop, in giving to the priests all that he has and all the goods of his priesthood, gives them also his own ministers, and. in making them priests, he subordinates the deacons to them, and places the latter, in regard to them, in the same dependence as they have towards him. Thus, in the new law, the order of deacons is the Levitical order, not the priestly order. The priestly order has two degrees, the episcopate and the priesthood; and as in the old law the Levites served at the altar Aaron and his sons, the pontiff and the Mosaic priests, so the deacons also serve the bishop and the priests of the new Covenant.
Subdivision of the diaconate
We see this enough' without exercising the priesthood, deacons are elevated
482 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 3, c. 20; PG 1, 304-306: "Let the deacon be at the service of the bishop and the priests, that is, let him exercise the ministry or diakonia." - Ibid., 1. 8, c. 46; PG 1. 1154: "Having been instructed by the Lord as to the end of things, we have assigned to bishops what belongs to the pontificate, to priests what belongs to the priesthood, to deacons what is subject to the ministry of both"; cf. FUNK, Didascalia, vol. 1, p. 561. - Canons of Hippolytus (Egyptian compilation, ca. 360), can. 5: "It is not given to him to be raised to the priesthood, but to the diaconate as a servant of God. He serves the bishop and the priests in all things, not only at the time of the Liturgy, but he also serves the sick..."; transl. COQUIN, quoted in DALMAIS, loc. cit. at 32. - Cf. HIPPOLYTE OF ROME (t235), La Tradition apostolique, 9: "We shall order that the bishop alone lay hands on the deacon at the ordination, because the deacon is not ordained to the priesthood [i.e., to the priestly ministry], but to the service of the bishop, to do what the bishop orders him to do"; trans. B. BOTTE (SC, 11) p. 39; on the interpretation of this text, See J. COLSON, loc. cit., pp. 97-99. - PSEUDO-ISIDORE, Letter to Leudefranc; PL 83, 895, LABBE 6, 421: "To the deacon it is fitting to assist the priests and to serve them in all that concerns the sacraments of Christ, namely in baptism, chrism, paten and chalice; to bring the offerings and to arrange them on the altar, to adorn and dress the Lord's table, to carry the cross, to proclaim the gospel and the epistle. "
325 to an incomparable dignity in the Church. A Father of Solitude saw the diaconate under the image of a pillar of fire that ascended to heaven, and it was revealed to him that a sublime virtue was necessary for those who received this august order. And yet the functions of the deacons, which bring them nearer to the altar and the divine mysteries, also bring them down through the very diverse occupations to which they are in turn invited, as by a series of degrees, to the last and humblest services of the Church. They thus fulfill in themselves the figure of the angels, who, called to contemplate unceasingly the face of the Father, do not disdain to care for the weak children483. In the days of the apostles, they exercised all these various ministries in person. But from those early days, by a wise dispensation, the Church using in this a power given to her by God, and in order to reserve for the deacons the highest offices, opened, so to speak, the treasury of the diaconate, distributed its riches, and made dismemberments of it by instituting the lower orders. In this way it was possible to preserve for a long time in each Church a small
483 In the last twenty years or so, the problem of a renewal of the diaconate, both missionary and charitable, has been posed more and more clearly. The principle of this restoration has just been affirmed in the Constitution De Ecclesia of the Second Vatican Council. Among an already considerable bibliography, let us mention: Yves CONGAR, O. P., Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat, Cerf, Paris, 1953 (US, 23), pp. 308-313; Mgr. VAN BEKKUM, Le renouveau liturgique au service des missions, in La Maison-Dieu, 47-48 (1956) 174-175; M.-D. ÉPAGNEUL, F. M. C., Du rôle des diacres dans l'Église d'aujourd'hui, in Nouvelle Revue théologique 79 (1957) 153-168; Paul WINNINGER, Vers un renouveau du diaconat, Desclée de Brouwer, 1958 (col. Présence chrétienne), 216 pp. ; Joseph HORNEF, Reverrons-nous le diacre de l'Église primitive? Cerf, Paris, 1960 (col. Rencontres, 57), 224 pp.; Wilhem SCHAMONI, Ordonner diacres des pères de famille, Desclée de Brouwer, 1961 (col. Présence chrétienne), 158 pp.; A. KERKVOORDE, O. S. B., Where is the problem of the diaconate Liturgical Apostolate, Bruges, 1961 (col. Paroisse et Liturgie, 51), 92 pp.; Diaconia in Christo. Ueber die Erneuerung des Diakonates, Herder, Freiburg, 1962 (col. Quaestiones disputatae, 15-16), 645 pp., reviewed in A. KERKVOORDE, A travers la littérature récente sur le diaconat, in Paroisse et Liturgie, 1963, n. 1, pp. 71-84.
326 number of deacons by multiplying the other ministers484, the diaconate was not allowed to be debased in the eyes of the people, who judge the price of things by their scarcity, and the sevenfold number consecrated by the primitive institution485, and which suits the mysterious relations which the deacons have with the ministry of the angels and with those "seven spirits" which are before the throne of God (cfr Rev. 4:5)486. Thus, as the tree of the Church took on greater growth, this master branch of the diaconate, obeying the laws of a divine expansion, opened and divided itself into several branches, which were the order of the subdiaconate and the others called minor orders. But, in order to understand how this great division could be accomplished and how the diaconate could have this admirable fruitfulness and give birth to the lower orders, we must recall a doctrine which we proposed in our second part, namely that there is an essential difference between the priesthood and the ministry. The priesthood is simple and indivisible in its nature; it cannot be communicated in part, though it may be possessed in distinct capacities, i.e., in the capacity of head and in the capacity of participant,
484 SOZOMEN, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 7, c. 19; PG 67, 1475: "In Rome there have never hitherto been more than seven deacons." - St. CORNEIL I (251-253), in EUSEB, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 6, c. 43, B. 11; PG 20, 622: "In this one (the Church of Rome) there are forty-six priests, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, fifty-two exorcists, readers, and doorkeepers"; trans. BARDY (SC, 41), p. 156. On the organization of the Roman clergy, see HARNACK, Mission und Ausbreitung4, vol. 2, pp. 860-866. Cf. G. BARDY, art. Deacons (Number), in Catholicism, vol. 3 (1952), col. 729. 485 Council of Neocesarea (between 314 and 325), can. 15, LABBE 1, 1483, MANSI 2, 544: "In a city, even a very large one, there should regularly be only seven deacons. You will find proof of this in the Acts of the Apostles"; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 1, 334. - St. AMBROSIUS (339-397), Commentary on 1 Tim 3; PL 17, 497: "Henceforth there must be seven deacons". 486 St. ISIDORE, On Ecclesiastical Offices, 1. 2, c. 8, B. 4; PL 83, 789: "The apostles or the successors of the apostles decided that in all the Churches there should be seven deacons, who, on the highest degree, nearer than all the others would stand around the altar of Christ, like the columns of the altar and not without this mystery of the number seven. For they symbolize the seven angels of the Apocalypse sounding the trumpet; they are the seven golden candlesticks; they are the voices of thunder."
327 of bishop or priest; it admits of degrees, but is not dismembered in its substance. The ministry, on the other hand, of which the diaconate contains the fullness, is indefinitely susceptible of division, because the multiple functions of the ministers, all of which are related to the priesthood they are to serve, and in this respect are reduced to unity, have no necessary relationship to each other, and can, without breaking any of the conventions, belong separately to different persons. Divine wisdom, which preserves the essence of all beings, having imprinted this character of divisibility on the ecclesiastical ministry, while at first founding it in the diaconate and thus giving it a divine origin for the whole of the following period, left the Church free to distribute its different parts as she pleased. The Church, in her turn, made this division sovereignly, according to the requirements of place and time, and the lower orders thus emerged from the diaconate, divinely instituted in the diaconate, but formed and distributed into several degrees by the ecclesiastical institution. The first of these lower orders is the subdiaconate, common to all the Churches. Those which follow it have been variously admitted in the Latin Church, in the Greek Church, in the Churches of the East; and, apart from the order of lector, which belongs, like that of the subdiaconate, to all the Churches, the other ministries differ according to place in number and in attributions. The Roman Church, below the subdeacons, admits four minor orders: the orders of acolyte, exorcist, reader, and porter487.
487 The upgrading of minor orders arises as much as that of the diaconate and is quite often considered in connection with it. See in addition A. DUVAL, O. P., in Etudes sur le sacrement de l'Ordre (LO, 22), pp. 308-314 (Les ordres mineurs au Concile de Trent); article by Pierre JOUNEL, Michel DUHAMEL, A.M. ROGUET, François LOUVEL, Jean LABIGNE in La Maison-Dieu, 60 (1959) 35-135, Les acteurs de la célébration liturgique; Balthasar FISHER, Esquisse historique sur les Ordres mineurs (Historical sketch on the minor orders), ibid, 61 (1960) 58-69.
328 CHAPTER XXVIII
Sharing of clerical attributions
Internal organization
If the priests form the college of the particular Church, all called, in a common capacity and in the unity of that college, to cooperate with the bishop and to receive from him the communication of the priestly ministry, it will be necessary that, in the substance and substance of things, these priests be all equal among themselves. When we speak of members of a college, we are referring to the notion of equality among these members: for a college is an assembly of men called in the same capacity to form a body and bound together by common rights and duties. The priests of Rome, Jerusalem or Antioch will all have the same dignity in these Churches: their title of priests of these Churches, that is to say the bond which attaches them to them, is the same for all, and their ordination or their inscription in the canon does not by itself give them any advantage which is not common to them. However, this essential equality, which is the basis of the relations of the presbytery, must not lead to confusion. First of all, it does not exclude a certain order of precedence such as may exist between the brothers, like an order of primogeniture. From the earliest times, there was in the presbytery a first priest or archpriest, a second, a third priest, and this order of sitting reserved, by a natural devolution, to the first of the college the principal and often exclusive exercise of functions common to the whole body. These reservations concerned either the most important of these functions, or at least those which should properly be exercised by one or by a few. Thus the archpriests were called, by general usage, to deputize for the absent bishop in the sacred functions; and when priests multiplied in the churches, the principal of them took charge of the most considerable parts of the ecclesiastical government and formed the ordinary council of the bishop, to the exclusion more
329 or less absolute of all others. Originally, seniority of ordination was sufficient to establish this order of precedence and devolution among priests. The simplicity of the ministry in those primitive times and in the still small Churches required no other distinction between them than that of age, and St. Leo speaks out against the disrupters of this ancient arrangement488. But time brought new necessities; the Christian people had multiplied, the number of priests had increased in the same proportion. New relationships complicated the exercise of the pastoral office. The ancient simplicity of the presbytery, where everything that was not done in common was subject to the venerable law of the devolution of the priestly age, could not suffice for the needs that arose from this situation. Other distinctions and other divisions had to be made. An enlightened choice had to gradually replace the blind designation of simple seniority; new titles, offices and functions were reserved for the free choice of the bishop and took their place next to the old archpriesthood. If, to an inattentive observer, the diversity of these offices seems to alter the indivisible unity of the primitive presbytery, it will suffice to recall here the doctrine of the exercise of jurisdiction which we proposed in our second part489. The powers properly hierarchical, as we said there, are common to all the members of the college and belong equally to all in their substance; but the exercise of these powers or the exercise of jurisdiction may be in each of these members restricted and bound by reservations or extended by the delegations of the superior, and the latter, without touching the substance of the hierarchical degrees, makes among the persons of the same degree all the divisions of attributions which the needs of time and place demand. Moreover, the simple devolution of primitive times already had this effect, by giving to some, to the exclusion of others, the exercise of certain prerogatives and ecclesiastical ministries, and the choice of bishops, in the distribution of the offices and offices which
488 St. Leo, Letter 19, to Dorus, bishop of Benevento; PL 54, 709-714. 489 See above, chapter 10.
330 were erected in the aftermath, did no other. Much more natural, moreover, it must be admitted, than this multiplication of offices in the college of the presbytery, as Christian society developed and the play of ecclesiastical institutions became more complex. And in these new necessities, the college of the presbytery obeyed the common law of all assemblies, where the functions which, appropriately, must be exercised by one or by a few, are usually exclusively attributed to them. Thus, little by little, bursars, penitentiaries, provosts, deans, school principals, etc., were created in the ancient presbytery, without the successive creation of these offices and dignities altering the essential unity of the college. The natural course of things increased or decreased the attributions of these officers. The archpriest was often given, under the authority of the bishop, the pastoral care of the faithful people; the dignities and grand canonries of the cathedrals were distinguished from the lesser benefices or other priests enrolled in the canon of these churches; and the bishops, by delegations of episcopal authority attached to the offices, contributed still further to raising above their brethren those who were invested with them.
Load of souls
But this is not all, and, beside these institutions which gave the presbytery its organization and its internal police, there was from the earliest times, in the main Churches, another division of the exercise of jurisdiction which must also be set forth. In the larger Churches, the usefulness, or rather the necessity, of dividing among the priests the care of a people that was too numerous, and of assigning to each of them a distinct portion of the faithful flock, was felt from the beginning. This was what was called the titles of the priests in the same Church. The Roman Church gave the first example490, co as it
490 Liber Pontificalis, ed. DUCHESNE, 1886, vol. 1, p. 126, about Pope St. Evaristus (100-110?): "He divided among the priests the titles of the city of Rome."
331 suited the mistress of all others. The Church of Alexandria followed this discipline. Gradually, as the number of Christians increased, similar necessities gave rise elsewhere to the same establishment. At last it became a general practice in all the great Churches, and a Council of Meaux, prescribing all bishops to provide canonically "for the cardinal titles established in the cities and suburbs," speaks of it as an institution notoriously received everywhere491. At the same time, the attributions reserved for the priests in their titles insensibly assumed greater importance, and it was necessary to extend them as the multitude of ecclesiastical affairs made this division more necessary within the presbyteral college. Thus the designation of titular priests in the Roman Church is at first accompanied by no definite clue to their duties; then they seem to be applied to the urgent relief to be given to souls, "baptism and penance," no doubt in cases which did not permit waiting for the solemn epochs and the intervention of the pontiff and the whole presbytery, and the titles are then designated as "dioceses" or administrative districts formed492. Finally, among these titles, there were some that took on such great importance that it was necessary to attach several priests to them and to form in them as partial colleges that were members of the total college of the clergy of the Church. Thus we see in Rome, in the fifth century, several priests titular-
The organization of parish churches from the beginning of the nth century is unlikely. - Id., p. 164, about Pope Marcel (307-308): "He instituted twenty-five titles in Rome." 491 Council of Meaux (845), cati. 54, LABBE 7, 1836, MANSI 14, 831, HÉFÉLÉ 4, 124. The cardinal priest of Saint-Martin-des-champs was the twelfth cardinal of the Church of Paris: Pastoral de l'Église de Paris, 1. 19, c. 78-79 (National Archives manuscript). The Ordinary of the Church of Sens (1306) calls "all the cardinal priests and all the archpriests ) of the diocese to the consecration of the holy chrism (Bibliothèque nationale, manuscript 1206). The former, heads of urban parishes, belong to the presbytery of the city; the latter are the heads of the diocesan presbyteries, of which we shall speak later. 492 See R. AIGRAIN, art. Diocese (Various meanings of the word), in Catholicism, vol. 3 (1952) col. 834-837. P. DE LABRIOLLE, in Histoire de l'Église, Blond et Gay (Fliche et Martin), 1948, t. 4, pp. 577-581.
332 res or cardinals in a number of titles493 and that in Alexandria there was a second priest attached to the title of Baucale, the title of the ill-fated Arius494. Other titles, on the contrary, remained reduced to a single priest, this uneven development of the title clergy depending entirely on local circumstances. And all that we say here of the titles properly so called, established for the ordinary service of the people, must be understood also of the institution of the priests of the cemeteries, martyria or sacred places, attached to honor with divine worship the oratories of the martyrs and to receive there the faithful who visited them. These martyria are true titles in the broad sense of the word, since they also belong to the local distribution of presbyteral priests within the same Church495. The reader will easily see in this distribution, in the creation of titles and oratories and in the various developments it received in each city, according to circumstances, the origin of the modern state of things we have before our eyes everywhere, and whose deep and hierarchical roots should be found in history. The titles with a charge of souls were the origin of the parishes of the cities and their suburbs, and the titles which were provided with a greater or lesser number of priests gave rise to the collegiate churches established in these same churches. And if, later on, parishes and collegiate churches were erected in the cities without attaching them to the primitive titles and without worrying about this origin, it nevertheless remains the reason for the existence of these ins-
493 Council of Rome (499), LABBE 4, 1313, MANSI 8, 231. Cf. Ildephonse SCHUSTER, O. S. B., Liber sacramentorum, Vromant, Brussels, 1929, vol. 2, p. 12: "It seems that originally two priests were attached to each title, as in Carthage; one was the titular and the other the coadjutor. An epigraph of 521-525, in the cemetery of St. Pancras, mentions, it is true, a priest prior, a secundus, a tertius, a quartus." 494 St. EPIPHANUS, Countering Heresies, 1. 2, Hered. 68, B. 4; PG 42, 190: "To each of the Churches, which were then many, was given its priest, - today certainly they are many; for this reason Arius had received that Church which was to be filled, and another priest had been attached to it." 495 For the priestly ministry in the martyria of the Roman countryside, See I. SCHUSTER, loc. cit., 1930, vol. 6, pp. 34-40.
333 titutions and is sufficient to explain their hierarchical value496.
Saving Unity
It is good, indeed, to be reminded of this: by the creation of the titles and their development, the presbytery, keeping its unity and remaining one body around the episcopal chair, saw the exercise of the powers which belong to it usefully distributed without schism or division; and the faithful people in their turn, without ceasing to form the whole of one Church and to belong indivisibly to the bishop and the presbytery of that Church, found in this sharing the help of a pastoral activity made more vigilant, and more effectively placed within its reach. But in these divisions and their consequences, the unity of the Churches was not broken in its essence: the titles, the colleges, the oratories of the martyrs and the urban parishes themselves did not cease to belong to the same body of the particular Church and to form in substance the crown of the episcopal throne and of the pontiff who sits at its head. The Roman Church, as befits the mistress of all others, solemnly gives us this teaching. She preserves to this day the ancient designations, she has her cardinal priests distributed in the titles of the city. They are all called cardinal priests of the Holy Roman Church in common, despite the diversity of their titles. They all belong to her equally; the distinct circumscriptions assigned to them do not divide their august college. The Roman Church forms her only senate; she gathers in them and through them in one body, and, so to speak, in one great college,
496 The urban churches were only gradually and unevenly made distinct from the cathedral church in the exercise of ecclesiastical ministries. Until the seventeenth century, in the considerable cities of Otranto, Taranto, Brindisi, Cosenza, Bari, the charge of souls belonged to the one cathedral church; cf. UGHELLI, Italia sacra, Venetiis, 1721, vol. 9 col. 6, 19, 54, 186; vol. 7, col. 188, 287. In other churches, baptism could not be administered, at least in Easter time, outside the cathedral baptistery. In many others, finally, the parish priests and clerics of the urban churches were required on certain days to attend the service of the cathedral church and to unite themselves with the bishop and his College in the manner of the ancient cardinals of the titles of which they were the successors. Cf. Christian WOLF, Des curés... Bergomi, 1788, p. 333.
334 all the clerics and the partial colleges which are in every title under them. Through them, as through its principal members and secondary heads, all the clergy of the inferior benefices, all the chapters, all the parishes, and all the faithful people of Rome constitute the one and indivisible Roman Church. This is the sacred notion of the particular Church which must never be lost sight of, through all the external and accidental modifications which time brings with it. Always similar to herself in the substance of the mystery of the hierarchy, to which she belongs and of which she is the final expression, the whole particular Church clings to her bishop and the college of her priests in an intimate sense of unity, "in concord without tugging"497, and that beautiful comparison of the martyr St. Ignatius still holds true: the presbytery is always, in the agreement of all its parts, that sacred lyre on which the Holy Spirit never ceases to sing Jesus Christ498; and even though, by the distribution of functions among its members, each of the priests renders, so to speak, like so many distinct strings of this mystical lyre, a sound different and peculiar to himself, the divine melody nevertheless retains its continuity and unity through the course of the ages.
Dual distribution
What we have just stated concerning the radical equality of the members of the presbytery and the unity of their college in the diversity of employment, is equally appropriate to the deacons and to all orders of ministers. From early on, and according to need, there was a division of office among the ministers of the same degree which did not alter this essential equality and unity. The first deacon, whose importance continued to grow through the
497 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Ephesians, 20; PG 5, 661: "You come together in one faith, and in Jesus Christ ... to obey the bishop and the presbyterate, in concord without strife"; trans. CAMELOT, p. 91. 498 ID, ibidem, 4; PG 5, 647; text quoted supra, ch. 25, note 15.
335 trust of the episcopate, was soon, under the name of archdeacon, in charge of all ecclesiastical police. The most important functions of his order were almost exclusively reserved to him: he alone, or at least under his high direction, had the guidance of the inferior clerics, the supervision of the faithful people, the examination of penitents and catechumens; he presented some to baptism, others to reconciliation; he even presented clerics to ordination: "It is on the testimony of the deacon that the priest is ordained," says St. Jerome499. He was ch entrusted with the administration of the Church's temporal. The delegations of episcopal power which were attached to the office of archdeacon elevated him still higher: he became the vicar of the bishop; in this capacity he had authority over the priests themselves in the name of the bishop, the sole superior of the priestly order. These delegations took him out of the order of the diaconate, and we shall not follow him at this time beyond these limits, which he crossed and in his new increments500. Let it suffice for us to consider in him the head of the order of deacons, exercising alone, by the ordinary right of devolution, the most important of the functions of this order. In imitation of the diaconate, the lower ministries also had their heads of order or primaries, primaries of readers, primaries of notaries, etc., according to the diversity of the Churches. As we can see, the same laws were imposed on all degrees, devolution was the natural form which regulated the exercise of the same powers among persons; the archdeacons and primaries were, with regard to the ministers, what the archpriests were in the order of the priests. But the analogy does not end there, and, just as the priests have
499 St. Jerome, Letter 146, to Evangelus, 2; PL 22, 1194. The Roman Pontifical still has the archdeacon present candidates for the priesthood to the bishop. 500 Cf. Dom Adrien GRÉA, Essai sur les archidiacres; A. BRIDE, art. Archdeacon, in Catholicism, vol. 1 (1948), col. 785-786. Cf. A. AMANIEU, art. Archdeacon, in DDC, vol. 1 (1935). col. 948-1104; A. Hamilton THOMPSON, Diocesan Organization in the Middle Ages, Archdeacons and Rural Deans, in Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 29 (1943), pp. 153-194; YVES M. J. CONGAR, O. P., St. Thomas and the Archdeacons, in Thomistic Review 57 (1957) pp. 657-671.
336 were divided among the churches by the institution of titles, likewise also there was a division among them of deacons and ministers. In the Roman Church, in which all the others have their model and to which we must constantly raise our eyes, this distribution of ministers was first made by regions501, and this distribution was undoubtedly followed in other considerable churches502. The seven deacons of the Roman Church were assigned to the seven regions or urban divisions of that Church, and under them the subdeacons, acolytes, and notaries, all of whom belonged to the lower clergy, were distributed among these same regions and followed the same order. We believe it is of great importance to point out to the reader the diversity of this double division of the Church into titles for the priests and into regions for the deacons and ministers. We find, in fact, a striking proof of the maintenance of the unity of the presbytery and of the unity of the Church in the very diversity of this double division. Neither the titles, in fact, nor the regions, possess the complete elements of the ecclesiastical ministry: the titles have only the priesthood, and the regions have only the ministry of deacons and lower clerics. As a result of this arrangement, the priesthood and the ministry of the Levites belong to each other and form a complete whole only in the unity of the Church itself and in the unity of their colleges around the episcopal pulpit. The bishop, the center of this unity, also directed the deacons of the regions and the priests of the titles, and as the region contained several titles, the deacons and the regionary ministers probably lent their assistance indifferently to the priestly ministry of all the cardinal priests of their circumscription.
501 Liber Pontificalis, ed. DUCHESNE, t. 1, P. 123: "He (Pope St. Clement I, c. 90-100) established seven regions, assigned them to faithful notaries of the Church, who searched, each in his own region, with care and attention the acts of the martyrs." - Ibid., p. 148: "He (Pope St. Fabian, 236-250) entrusted the regions to the deacons, ordained seven deacons who would attend to having the acts of the martyrs written out in full and faithfully by the notaries." 502 A regional deacon of the Church of Carthage is mentioned in a Council of Africa.
337 In time, new needs gave greater development to these institutions; the titles especially, as we have said above, assumed greater importance, and a portion of the lower ministers, hitherto attached to the regions alone under, the leadership of the seven regional deacons, were distributed among the titles themselves and placed immediately under the leadership of the priests of those titles. There were thus deacons and subdeacons of the titles, distinct from the deacons and subdeacons of the regions properly so called, the latter belonging simply to the colleges of their orders in the Roman Church, the former belonging to these colleges by means of the colleges of the titles, partial colleges to which they were attached. In the same way, there were acolytes and readers in the titles; and thus some of the more important titles became ecclesiastical bodies complete in appearance and formed of numerous priests and ministers. One even saw sometimes the first priest of the title take the name of archpriest, without this archpriest of the title, a secondary dignity and relative to the partial college, being detrimental to the archpriest of the Roman Church, the only true head of order of the entire presbytery503. Besides the titles, the institution of the regions also received modifications and increases from time. In the Roman Church, the regions increased in number and gradually took as their center hospices and oratories called diaconies504. These oratories, receiving in turn priests and a particular clergy, eventually became quite similar to the titles themselves. But all these accidental changes, let us not cease to repeat, do not touch the substance of things. The Roman Church, in which all the others have their essential type and model, never ceases to form a single whole and to have at its head a single college of priests and deacons. This single college represents it as a whole in its unity, and gathers together, in this unity, all the titles and all the parts which
503 Cf. C. WOLF, 1oc. cit. an act of the title of St. Nicholas-in-Carcere. 504 After the work of Mgr. L. Duchesne, it is beyond doubt that the Roman deaconries are of late and monastic origin and have nothing to do with the ministry of the regional deacons instituted in the third or fourth century: cf. DENIS-BOULET, art. Diaconries in Catholicism, vol. 3 (1952) col. 721-723.
338 make up505. The other Churches follow the same essential laws, and what we say of the Roman Church, inasmuch as it is a particular Church, is equally appropriate to them all. The essential unity which belongs to them by their nature and by the notion which one must form of it is preserved inviolable in them, though with less vividness, through all the vicissitudes to which human things are subject, and to which the divine institutions themselves, always immutable in substance, lend themselves in accidental forms, with a sort of salutary condescension, according to the variable dispositions of the times and the necessities of the peoples.
Two "sacraments" of unity
It is a great joy to the Christian to see the divine constitution of the particular Church remain ever unchanging in substance under the varying garment of human accidents and institutions, and its essential unity maintained inviolable in the fruitful sharing of their labors and solicitudes by the ministers of the Gospel among themselves. In ancient times, and for many centuries, this blessed unity of the Bride of Jesus Christ, preserved in each Church, was clearly reminded to the faithful people by two venerable usages, singularly suited to bring their thoughts unceasingly back to this unity and to the bishop's pulpit, its center and home. We will describe them briefly here for the consolation of the reader as we conclude this exposition. The first of these ancient usages is that of concelebration in the holy mysteries. The whole presbytery of the Church assembled around the bishop on solemn days, assisted him at the altar, and offered with him the same sacrifice. The titles were represented there by their cardinal priests, or at least by the head of their partial colleges. The people of these titles were confounded in one assembly.
505 Cf. MABILLON, Introduction to the Ordines Romani, 3; PL 78, 858ff.
339 In this holy action, the bishop, the whole presbytery, and all the people appeared united around the same altar. The bishop offered the sacrifice as head and prince of the priesthood; the priests also offered it, but united with him in a common liturgy, cooperating in his sacrifice and making their action dependent on his. The people received the divine gift through the unique and indivisible ministry of their bishop and priests, and the most august mysteries of religion thus warned them of the whole order of the Church; the great sacrament of the hierarchy was revealed to them at the same time as they participated in the altar, and they thus knew the part which is theirs and the place which belongs to them in the new order and in the mystical body of Jesus Christ. This sacred teaching and celebration of the mystery of unity was considered so important by the holy Roman Church that, in cases where the concelebration of the divine liturgy was impossible, she made up for it and taught the churches to make up for it by another equally holy observance. It was, in fact, the custom to send to the priests of the cemeteries and titles which could not assemble, the fermentum, that is, the divine eulogies or the Holy Eucharist itself consecrated by the bishop and offered first at his altar, so that, mingled with the sacrifice of these priests, this divine ferment was a symbol of unity and signified the communion of all at the same altar and at the sacrifice of the bishop506. The Roman Church, mother and teacher of all the Churches, gave them all the example of concelebration, and she kept the use of it
506 St. INNOCENT I (402-417), Letter 25, to Decentius, Bishop of Gubbio, 5, 8; PL 20, 556-557: "Concerning the fermentum that on Sundays We send out in the titles, you have wanted to consult us uselessly, for all our churches are located within the city. Their priests cannot meet with Us on that day (Sunday) because of the people entrusted to them; therefore they receive, through acolytes, the fermentum which We have consecrated so that, especially on that day, they do not feel separated from Our communion." - Cf. MABILLON, loc. cit, 6; PL 78, 870. - See J. GAILLARD, O. S. B., art. Fermentum in Catholicism, vol. 4 (1956), col. 1191-1193; Bernard CAPELLE, O. S. B., Le rite de la fraction dans la Messe Romaine, in Revue bénédictine 53 (1941) 5-40; Mgr. M. ANDRIEU, Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen-Age, Louvain, 1948, t. 2, pp. 61-64; Antoine CHAVASSE, Le Sacramentaire Gélasien, Desclée, 1958 (Bibliothèque de Théologie), pp. 79-83.
340 until the thirteenth Century507. Also this discipline, deriving from this main source, was universal. Theodulphe d'Orléans attests that it was observed exactly in the Gauls and in the empire of Charlemagne508. It continues to this day in all its vigor in the East. The Churches of the West have preserved it on some solemn occasions, and it is not difficult to find vestiges and a memory of it in certain usages of modern ceremonial509. The other usage of which we wish to speak also is that of stations. The sacred assemblies to which the bishop summoned all his cler-
.
507 INNOCENT III (1198-1216), The Holy Sacrament of the Altar, 1. 4, c. 25; PL 217, 874: "The cardinal priests of Rome, were accustomed to stand all around the pontiff and concelebrate with him. This custom undoubtedly disappeared when the residence of the popes in Avignon practically transformed the office of the Roman Church and the Roman people, which until then had been presided over by the Supreme Pontiff and attended by the Sacred College, into a private office of the pontifical chapel and court. It was promptly forgotten, to the point that Durand de Mende absolutely denies its existence. - Cf. Pierre DE PUNIET, O. S. B., art. Liturgical Concelebration, in DACL, vol. 3, col. 2470-2488; I.-H. DALMAIS, O. P., art. Conceleration in Catholicism, vol. 2 (1950), col. 1435-1438; N.M. DENIS-BOULET, in A.-G. MARTIMORT, L'Église en prière. Introduction to the Liturgy, Desclée, 1961, pp. 319-322. On the much-desired restoration of concelebration, see among others: Lambert BEAUDUIN, O. S. B., La Concélébration, in La Maison-Dieu 7 (1946) 7-26; all of n. 35 of La Maison-Dieu (1953), What is concelebration? Cf. Second Vatican Council, Constitution De Sacra Liturgia, art. 57-58; Decree of the S. C. R. Ecclesiae semper (March 7, 1965), in Ritus servandus in concelebratione Missae..., Vatican Polyglot, 1965, pp. 5-9. 508 THERODULPHUS OF ORLEANS († 821), Chapters to the priests of his diocese, 46; PL 105, 206: "Let the priests who are in the vicinity of the city or in the same city... gather together for the public celebration of Masses." ID, Addition to the Capitular, PL 105, 208: "In the city where the bishop resides, all the priests... those of the city as well as those of the suburbs, clothed in liturgical vestments..., are to attend this (the bishop's) Mass with devotion afterwards..., after receiving communion and blessing, let them return, if they wish, to their titles." - Cf. Joseph-André JUNGMANN, S. J., Missarurn solemnia, Aubier, Paris, 1956 (col. Theology, 19), t. 1, pp. 243-249. 509 The Ceremonial of Bishops, 1. 2, c. 8, still prescribes the canons to surround the bishop, clothed in the priestly chasuble, when he solemnly celebrates... The Roman Missal maintains, in the consecration of the Holy Oils, at the Chrism Mass on Holy Thursday, a true concelebration of the priests.
341 ge and his people took place successively in the various basilicas and oratories that formed the titles of the Church. All these basilicas thus seemed to be one and the same cathedral of the bishop, who would set up his episcopal pulpit there successively on the appointed days. These stations were of two kinds: some related to Christian feasts, others made the supplications of the days of penance more solemn. The Roman Church also presided over this discipline, and its stations are still known to the faithful today510. But all the other churches were walking in the footsteps. We know from the homilies of St. John Chrysostom that the Church of Constantinople had solemn stations511. Evidence of this can be found in other Eastern countries512. In the West, the ancient ordinaries of the Churches have preserved for us the calendar of their stations, and they were long observed. The Church of Besançon, those of Lyon, Paris, Orleans and a great number of others keep the monuments of them in their archives and ancient texts513.
510 Cf. J.P. KIRSCH, The Origin of the Liturgical Stations of the Roman Missal, in Ephemerides liturgicae 41 (1927) 137-150; Noëlle M. DENIS-BOULET, Urban Titles and Community in Christian Rome, in La Maison-Dieu, 36 (1953) 14-32; C. MOHRMANN, Statio, in Vigiliae christianae 7 (1953) 221-245; A. CHAVASSE, loc. cit., pp. 77-86; Bishop C. CALLEWAERT, Sacris erudiri, Steenbrugge, 1940, passim. 511 St. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS (344-407), Homily on the holy martyrs; PG 50, 645-654; Homily I on the holy Maccabees: PG 50, 617-628. 512 St. GREGOIRE OF NYSSE (335-395), Eloge de saint Grégoire le Thaumaturge; PL 46, 893-958. - Council of Gangres (340?), can. 5, LABBE 2,414, MANSI 2, 1099: "If anyone teaches that the house of God is to be despised, as well as the meetings held there (sunaxis), let him be anathema"; trans. HEFELE 1, 1035. - ID, can. 20, LABBE 2, 420, MANSI 2,1102: "If anyone proudly or unjustly criticizes the synaxes of the martyrs, or the divine service celebrated there (leitourgias), or the memorials of the martyrs, let him be anathema"; trans. HEFELE 1, 1041. - St. Leo I (440-461), Letter 9, to Dioscorus, 2; PL 54, 627, urges the bishop of Alexandria to conform for the ceremonial of the stations to the Roman Church. 513 Livre des stations de l'Église de Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, manuscript n. 986. - Coutumes de l'Église Ste-Croix d'Orléans, Bibliothèque d'Orléans, manuscript no.
342 The Church of Metz had them announced by the deacon to the people on the preceding Sunday, according to a rite instituted by the Roman Church514. The holy Roman Church herself maintained them by her authority as well as by her example; and Pope St. Gregory VII reminds the Church of Poitiers of the need to be faithful to the discipline of the stations "as a universal custom in the Catholic Church515". Even today some traces of this remain in the solemn processions in which the clergy and people of all the Colleges and parishes of the same city assemble in common; some Churches have preserved other remnants of these venerable usages. The reader will no doubt be grateful to us for having placed before his eyes, in the concelebration and the custom of the stations, these two outstanding disciplinary monuments of the unity of the particular Church, and for having allowed him to breathe for a moment the perfume which exhales from these venerable rites and from the ancient religion of our fathers. The times have been able to transform little by little and to take with them these practices which are excellently suited to remind the people of the mystery of the hierarchy. But they have not been able to abolish this mystery itself, and these same peoples do not cease to draw from it, in the communion of their bishop, the divine life which, from Jesus Christ, flows through the episcopate into the whole body of the holy Church.
113. - Ordinary of St. Prothade, in DUNOD, History of the Church, City and Diocese of Besançon, 1750. 514 Ordinary of the Office for the whole year in the church of Metz, Bibliothèque nationale, manuscript n. 990: "The next feria..., there will be a feast of..., station at the church..., at the proper hour." - Cf. Ordo Romanus XI, n. 34; PL 78, 1038; M. ANDRIEU, Les Ordines Romani du Haut Moyen-Age, Louvain, 1948, t. 2, t. 2, pp. XXIII-XXIV. 515 St. GREGOIRE VII (1073-1085), Letter 54, to the canons of St. Hilaire of Poitiers; PL 148, 333.
343 CHAPTER XXIX
Hierarchical operations in the Partular Church
Action of the sole head
It is not enough to set forth the constitution of the senate of the Particular Church and the distribution of special offices which has been made over time among the members who compose it in various degrees. The bishop is on his pontifical throne; in its fullness, his priesthood is sufficient for his Church, and, like an abundant fountain, it flows out to his priests and through them as much as is needed. The deacons and ministers, standing at the foot of the throne, prepare the way for his authority, enlighten it and make it effective by their vigilant assistance. We have described this form of the Church in its essence. But we must still show how this animated body moves and manifests by the order of its operations the life which radiates in it from its head. We find here the great laws of hierarchical activity and a beautiful imitation of the order which appears in the divine operations as we have explained in our second part. In God himself, let us be allowed to recall, holy Scripture shows us the sacred type of three accidental forms imprinted on his operations, always similar to themselves in substance. Sometimes God the Father speaks alone; sometimes God speaks in the plural and as in the council of the Godhead; sometimes the Son seems to be alone, and yet he teaches us that he is not alone and that his Father is in him, doing the works himself. Similarly, in the universal Church, the Supreme Pontiff, holding the place of Jesus Christ, sometimes appears to act alone, so that it may be clearly stated that the sovereignty of which he is the depository is sufficient in itself. But in certain more solemn circumstances, the participation of the episcopate is shown to the world, and the senate of the universal Church gathers around its head. Finally, there are cases in which the episcopate,
344 always invisibly united to this head in the communication of power, appears outside to act alone, to make up for his apparent absence; as if this sun of the Papacy, being veiled with clouds, continued, invisible, to move and rule the choir of his satellites. These august properties of the hierarchical operation are reproduced in a lower degree in the particular Church. First of all, the bishop, who is the head and the principle, can act alone in the government of his Church, and his authority is sufficient to give full value to his acts. It comes from above and is self-supporting. It borrows nothing from the lower elements; it communicates from its fullness to the priests and receives nothing from them. Thus, from the beginning and in all times, the bishop has established laws, rendered judgments, governed his people. He administers the temporal as well as the spiritual aspects of the Church; and if he gives himself co-workers in his priests, it is not because his authority is insufficient in itself, but in order to make it more effective and to raise his own activity, which he exercises through them, to the level of this very authority. The priests, therefore, by receiving the communication, cannot diminish it in its source: the part they have in it does not cease to depend on the bishop in its substance, and he remains the unique and permanent principle. Thus, in the august Trinity, the Father is the sole principle of all power and of all operation communicated to the Son; and, in the Catholic Church, Jesus Christ, its divine Head, is in turn in himself and through his vicar the sole principle from which all the bishops receive their authority, and who himself borrows nothing from the bishops and receives no increase by their contribution. Let the bishop, then, alone hold the rudder of the vessel of his Church. Let his authority always be limited in its exercise by the authority, superior to his own, of the vicar of Jesus Christ or of those who represent him, and by the laws which emanate from this superior authority, but let it know no other dependence. In this natural and necessary order, the priests, like all the flock, belong to the bishop and will belong to him throughout the centuries, but they cannot make laws for him or diminish his empire, like those rebellious sons of whom the Scripture speaks and who say to their father: "Why did you give us existence and what does it matter if we owe you our lives? (Is 45:10).
345 Antiquity has handed down this doctrine to us. The Apostolic Constitutions, a monument of the discipline universally received in the early centuries, express it highly: "Apply yourself, O bishop, to show yourself pure and blameless, and let your life correspond to your dignity; for, the image of God in the midst of men, you preside over all priests, kings, magistrates, fathers and sons are equally subject to you. Therefore, ascend to the throne of your Church and speak as one who has the power to judge. For to you, O bishops, it was said, "Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven (Matt. 18:18)."516. The testimonies could be endlessly multiplied, and this power of the bishop is so constantly established in its independence and sovereignty over the particular church, that the councils are full of warnings against the misuse of it by private individuals.
Assistance of the presbyterate
But is it proper, however, that the bishop should always appear to act alone? And what will become of the dignity of priestly communications, if the order of priests never shows itself around the episcopal pulpit? The honor of the episcopate itself is committed to this; for its greatest glory is that fruitfulness by which it shines and shines in the second order, as we see the principal stars of the firmament illustrated by the crown of the satellites which they have brought forth from their center and which they illuminate with their rays. If, therefore, the bishop can act alone, he does not always do so; it is appropriate that he should still be surrounded by his presbytery, and this is the second mode of hierarchical activity applied to the particular Church. Thus the presbytery assists the bishop: it is his council, and, whenever the bishop calls it to his aid, it forms with him a single tri-
516 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 11; PG 1, 612-614.
346 bunal517. This solemn pageant of the presbytery takes place in the more important circumstances, and, according to the diversity of times and regions, it has been more or less frequently employed. The presbytery of the churches is seen assisting the bishop sometimes in judgments518, sometimes in the choice of persons called to holy orders and ecclesiastical ministries519, sometimes in the more considerable acts of temporal administration520. The bishops, at their discretion, made more or less use of this faithful and holy assistance521, and there were some in antiquity
517 Id., 1. 2, c. 28; PG 1, 674: "The priests hold their place (from the apostles) as counselors of the bishop and crown of the Church; they are indeed the consistory (synedrion) and senate of the Church." 518 Id., 1. 2, c. 47; PG 1, 707: "Let your judgments be rendered on the second day after the Sabbath;... let deacons and priests attend the tribunal". 519 St. CYPRIAN, Letter 33, to the clergy and people, 1; PL 317-318: "For the ordinations of clerics, dearest brethren, we are accustomed to consult you beforehand and to weigh with you the morals and merits of each one"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit, vol. l, pp. 95-96 (Letter 38). - ID, Letter 24, to the clergy; PL 4, 287: "Know that I have ordained reader Saturus, and subdeacon Optatus the confessor. We had already, by common consent, brought them closer to the clergy, when we twice charged Saturus with reading on Easter Day; and lately when, carefully examining the readers with the catechist priests, we placed Optatus among the readers of those who instruct the catechumens... So I did not do anything new in your absence, but simply put into practice what we had decided by common agreement"; ibid., pp. 70-71 (Letter 29). 520 Ancient Statutes of the Church (canonical compilation, probably by GENNADUS of Marseilles, † 492), pseudo- IV Council of Carthage (398), can. 32, LABBE 2, 1202-1203, MANSI 3, 954: "When a bishop gives away, sells, or exchanges a part of the fortune of the Church without the assent and signature of his clergy, this act is invalid ,; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 2, 115. - St. Leo I, (440-461), Letter 17, to the bishops of Sicily; PL 54, 705: "This is what We decide; let no bishop have the audacity to give, exchange, or sell anything of the goods of his Church, unless by chance he expects a gain from the matter; let him then choose, after discussion of the opinion with all his clergy and with their consent, what will undoubtedly be profitable to the Church." 521 The Popes themselves several times condemned heresies in the assembly of their clergy: St. SIRICE (384-389), Letter 2, to the Church of Milan, 6; PL 16, 1171, MANSI 3, 663: "The presbyterium met and declared their doctrine (of Jovinian and his followers) contrary to our doctrine, that is, to the Christian law. Therefore, following the advice of the apostle, we excommunicated them, because they proclaimed "a gospel different from that which we have received" (Gal 1:9). One sentence was carried, both by all the priests and deacons and by the whole
347 who did nothing without the advice of their clergy522. Canon law in modern times, specifying the directions which the Holy Spirit does not cease in the Church to impress upon the episcopate, has determined cases in which this council will necessarily be heard, such as promotion to the titles of ecclesiastical offices, and cases even in which, as in the alienation of Church property, the bishop will not be able to act without the assent of that senate523. But always, and however obligatory these laws may be, the authority of the decisions comes from the bishop, and the measures that are taken belong to him and derive their force and radical value from him524.
clergy, namely, that Jovinian, Auxentius..., recognized as the authors of the new heresy and blasphemy, shall be condemned and expelled from the Church in perpetuity, by divine sentence and by our judgment"; Cf. HEFEL 2, 79-80. 522 This was the practice of St. CYPRIAN: cf. Letter 5, to the priests and deacons, 4; PL 4, 234: "As for what our confreres in the priesthood, Donatus, Fortunatus, Novatus, and Gordionus, have written, I have not been able to reply to them alone, having made it a rule of mine, from the beginning of my episcopacy, not to decide anything without your advice and without the suffrage of the people, according to my own personal opinion. When by the grace of God I shall have returned to you, then in common, as the consideration we have for one another requires, we will deal with what has been done or is to be done"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit., vol. ler, p. 42 (Letter 14). - ID, Letter 13, to the clergy; PL 4, 260: "When divine mercy has permitted us to gather, may we deliberate on all species, according to the discipline of the Church"; trans. BAYARD, ibid. at 52 (Letter 19). - ID, Letter 40, to the people, 3; PL 4, 335: "It was decided... not to settle anything new in the matter of the lapsi before we could meet, pool our lights, pass a sentence that would reconcile discipline and mercy"; trans. BAYARD, loc. cit, vol. 2, p. 106 (Letter 43). Cf. Letter 17, to priests and deacons; PL 4, 269-271; BAYARD, vol. 1, p. 64 (Letter 26); Letter 28, id., 3-4; PL 4, 300-302; BAYARD, vol. 1, pp. 87-88 (Letter 34); Letter 6, PL 4, 234; BAYARD, vol. ler, p. 39 (Letter 13). 523 GREGOIRE IX (1227-1241), Decretals, 1. 3, tit. 10, c. 4 and 5, Venetiis, 1584, col. 1093-1094. The Code of Canon Law, can. 1520 § 3, gives these clarifications: "In acts of greater importance, let the local Ordinary not fail to consult the Board of Directors; however, the members of this board have only a consultative voice unless in cases specially provided for by common law or by a foundation charter their consent is required." Cf. E. JOMBART, art. Ecclesiastical Property in Catholicism, vol. 2 (1950), col. 52-55. 524 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Ephesians, 6; PG 5, 649: "Therefore, it is clear that we must regard the bishop as the Lord himself"; trans. CAMELOT, p. 75. - Apostolic Canons, can. 40, ed. PITRA, Juris ecclesiastici graecorum historia et monumenta, Roma, 1864, vol. 1, p. 21: "For the Lord's people have been entrusted to him and he will have to give an account of their souls." - Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 26; PG 1,
348 The Supreme Pontiff and the councils, in establishing these wise regulations, have not overthrown the order of the hierarchy nor diminished the authority, sacred to the bishop in his Church; but, using the superior right which belongs to them to moderate its exercise, they have traced out for it rules suitable to protect it against excesses and abuses. This is the meaning of these laws; Also, in the very cases in which the bishop must conform to the opinion of his presbytery, the latter does not really share in his sovereignty, but the bishop in this case receives from the superior authority of the universal Church rules which are imposed on him, And if the exercise of his jurisdiction appears to be limited, it is not limited in substance by the prerogative of the presbytery, but by that of the head of the bishops and by the canons of the universal Church, which derive their value from him.
Supplementation of the bishop
Finally, the third mode of hierarchical activity is in turn verified in the particular Church. The authority of the bishop is veiled for a time when, absent from his Church, he cannot communicate with it either by himself or by a vicar who represents him, or when his see becomes vacant. We have explained in our second part how the presbytery, without properly succeeding the bishop and without leaving the second rank which belongs to him in order to usurp the principal authority, preserves as if in deposit the traditions of this authority, and, as a consequence of the assistance which it owes to him and which it formerly gave him, supplements it in the necessary and conservative acts. This is the jurisdiction of the presbytery in the vacant seat, the tradition of which, we do not hesitate to affirm, goes back to the very origin
667: "Therefore let the bishop preside in your house, as one adorned with the dignity of God on account of which he presides over the clergy and commands the whole people." - St. CYPRIAN, Letter 27, to the lapsi, 1; PL 4, 298: see above, chapter 25, note 1, p. 297. - Council of Trent, session 21 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 8, EHSES 8, 703: "It is equitable that, in a diocese, the Ordinary should have special care of all things concerning the divine service and should put them in order, when necessary"; trans. MICHEL, in HÉFÉLÉ 10, 423.
349 of the Church. This discipline, in fact, has all the characteristics of apostolic institutions. It is universal. The Church of the East, from the earliest times, knew it as did that of the West. Egypt and the patriarchate of Alexandria practiced it like the diocese of Antioch. Thus we see, in Egypt, the Church of Oxyrinque, rejecting an Arian bishop, governed by its priests and deacons until the election of a legitimate bishop. The churches of Asia did the same. Africa is known to us from St. Cyprian. Everywhere the absence of the bishop or the vacancy of the see, assimilated to each other, gave way to the administration of the presbytery. St. Hilary in exile did not cease, he said, to give by his priests communion to his people, that is, to preside by them over the government of his Church525. But, above all the Churches, the Roman Church, the living rule of their discipline, has always had this practice, and its presbytery has always retained the authority of the vacant see, and with it the authority of the sovereign apostolate, which is inseparable from it. It is sufficient to refer the reader to the considerable texts which we have reported in our third part526 on the subject of the administration of the Roman Church in the vacancy of the Holy See or the absence of the Sovereign Pontiff. In the second place, this universal discipline also bears the character of a truly original and primitive institution. For no ecclesiastical law can ever be found which established it for the first time, no trace of an institution due to any Pontiff or Council. Finally, and this is its most considerable character, it holds by its roots to the mystery itself of the hierarchy; it has its deep reasons there, and it belongs to the divine likenesses which are in it. It is not, however, that the superior authority of the Sovereign Pontiff cannot suspend the action of the presbytery and provide by any other means for the salvation of the particular Churches. Immediate pastor of
525 St. HILAIRE OF POITIERS (c. 315-367), Book to the Emperor Constant, 1. 2, n. 2: "I am a bishop, and though exiled, I remain in the communion of all the Churches of Gaul and their bishops; and even now I give communion to my Church through my priests." 526 See supra, chapter 15.
350 all particular flocks, he can always rule them by himself and have himself represented at their head. Also, from time immemorial, the Popes have appointed, when they have deemed it expedient, visiting bishops or apostolic administrators charged with the government of vacant Churches527, and in this they were only exercising their ordinary, immediate, and properly episcopal jurisdiction over each of the parts of the universal Church. The vacant Churches always have over them the episcopate of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and cannot evade his action whenever it pleases him to make it directly felt to them. Only the Roman Church, which has no superior in the vacancy of its see, because this see is that of the Supreme Pontiff, cannot receive a visitor or administrator either. It always belongs to itself, and in it subsists in sovereign independence the common form of government given from the beginning to all the Churches of the world. Pope St. Martin in captivity complains that an attempt has been made to put a bishop in his place, not as if it were intended to give him a successor during his lifetime, for he does not make this accusation, but because an attempt has been made to change the traditional regime of the Roman Church by giving it an administrator. "They have done," he says, "what had never been done before, and what it is to be hoped will never be seen again; for, in the absence of the Pontiff, he must be replaced at the head of the Church by the heads of the orders, the archpriest, the archdeacon, and the primate528," that is, by the clergy represented in the persons of their principal members. These last words of St. Martin naturally lead us, after having established the substance of discipline in the government of the vacant Churches, to indicate to the reader the various phases which this discipline underwent in its accidental forms. The important ministry of substituting for the bishop was, indeed, exercised
527 St. GREGOIRE THE GREAT (590-604), Book 3, Letter 67; PL 77, 666; Book 4, Letter 32, ibid., 708; Book 5, Letter 12, ibid. , 733; book 5, Letter 13, ibid., 734; book 9, Letter 103; ibid., 1026; book 9, Letter 105, ibid., 1027. 528 St. Martin I (649-653), Letter 15, to Theodore; PL 87, 201. - Diurnal of the Roman Pontiffs, c. 2, tit. 1, 5, 6, 7; PL 105, 27 ff: "So-and-so archpriest, So-and-so archdeacon, So-and-so primicier of notaries, holding the place of the holy apostolic see."
351 first by the whole body of the presbytery, and then on its behalf by the heads of order, the archpriest, the archdeacon, and the primicier529, discipline rapped in the text quoted above. Later the whole body of principal clerics or canons took over this administration, and has retained it to the present day; but, since the Council of Trent, it has been obliged, at the end of a short time, to exercise it through a vicar or delegate, whom it cannot revoke after instituting him530. Thus, in the life of the particular Church, the presbytery performs two main functions: it assists the bishop when he is present, it supplements him when he is lacking through absence or death. Basically, these two functions have the same reason in the nature of the hierarchy and in the rank that the presbytery holds within the particular Church. It is because the order of priests is the co-operator and organ of the bishop, present at his head and communicating his power and action to him, that this college continues to act in his name and to follow the impulse received, even though he has ceased to appear on his throne, even though his initiative has been suspended for a time and he can no longer set new directions. Although the jurisdiction of the presbyter, during the vacancy of the see, embraces the whole flock, and although in this respect his voice, in demanding the obedience of all, can be said to succeed the voice of the bishop who has fallen silent, he is not in fact a true successor of the bishop, a true heir of the episcopal jurisdiction, but a guardian of it. His authority has in essence an exclusively conservative character. It is confined within the limits of acts already done, the consequences of which must be maintained, and of necessary acts, that is, acts whose omission or delay would cause notable harm and which belong thereby to the
529 GALETTI, Del primiero della S. Sede apostolica e di altri uffiziali maggiori..., p. 17. 530 Council of Trent, session 24 (1563), Decree of Reformation, can. 16: "(The chapter) shall be bound, within eight days after the death of the bishop, to appoint an official or vicar or to confirm the one who is in place"; transl. MICHEL in HÉFÉLÉ 10, 578. This is again prescribed by the Code of Canon Law, can. 432, § 1.
352 preservation of the established order. The presbytery thus acts by virtue of a legitimate presumption on behalf of the silent episcopal authority for a time. It acts as the guardian or negotiorum gestor of Roman law acts on behalf of and in the interest of the master of the thing of which it has custody, without claiming the substance of the property or ever acquiring the estate.
Bishop's Choice
To these two functions of the presbytery, namely, the assistance which it gives to the bishop and the charge of making up for his default, must be added the ordinary charge of electing and presenting to the superior, that is, to the Supreme Pontiff, the patriarch or the metropolitan, the person who is to receive from him the inheritance of the vacant see and the episcopal dignity. We have already had occasion to point out the nature of this election; we have noted that it does not constitute an absolute right for the one elected, that it does not absolutely bind the superior at least by its essence and by its mere force, and that it is basically only a representation which can always be supplanted or suppressed at the whim of the head of the episcopate531. The Roman Church alone, we have said, cannot be stripped of the right of election, because she alone has no superior here below. But, within this Church itself, election does not change its character and does not properly confer ecclesiastical power and episcopal mission. The elected bishop is presented with the petitions of the vacant Church to the head of the episcopate, who alone can confer jurisdiction and give him canonical institution. The mission descends from above, from the throne of God to Jesus Christ, from Jesus Christ to the apostles and their successors, and in no sense does it belong to the presbytery to confer any part of it on the bishop who is to become its head. The wishes of the churches, though worthy of being granted, can do nothing for jurisdiction, because the source of the power of the bishops who are sent to them is not in them.
531 See supra, chapter 23.
353 And as for the elect of the Roman Church, although the election of that Church appears sovereign here below, neither does he derive his authority from it, but he is invisibly instituted by God himself, as we have set forth in his place.
Action of the laity
The priestly college of the Church, therefore, has three principal functions: to assist the bishop, to substitute for him in the vacancy of the see, to elect by ordinary right and to present to the superior the successor to the vacant see. In these three functions, the order of priests retains its prerogative. It is the priests alone who, by the nature of their priesthood, essentially form the senate of the Church. However, from the earliest times, deacons were invited to form this venerable tribunal with them. This tribunal, in fact, naturally called for the help of its officers, just as we see in our modern judiciary, next to the judges who render judgments, an order of magistrates destined to enlighten and assist them. Then, as in these holy assemblies everything was done with a religious condescension and a sort of trusting ease, the deacons were willingly allowed to raise their voices and give their opinion, and, without discussing the substance of the consultative or deliberative nature of the votes, the whole assembly took its decisions before God, conforming to the advice of the wisest. Thus, in practice, there was hardly any distinction between the votes, and it was enough that the consent of the priests gave the resolutions their value. As a result of these same facilities, not only deacons were admitted to the councils of the churches. The clerics of the lower orders also entered them, and, even into the Middle Ages, we see capitular deliberations of the Church of Paris subscribed in the name of all by three deputies of each of the orders of priests, deacons, subdeacons, and by three children of the clerical school, representing the col
354 lège of readers532. But this is not all, and the holy condescensions of the Church went even further. The Churches are like divinely instituted families. There is in them a venerable paternity in the priesthood, and, on the side of the faithful, sons united to their clergy and joined together by a sacred bond. The fervor of the people, according to the times, makes them taste and feel more or less keenly this mystery of unity. We have seen Christians, carried away, so to speak, by an ardent love for their Churches, concentrate their most vehement affections in them, live their lives and become passionate about them. Also, from apostolic times and wherever Christians bore witness to these beautiful sentiments, the bishops did not hesitate to call the entire faithful people to know about the main events of the ecclesiastical administration. They liked to speak to them about the most important acts of their paternal government533; they proposed to them the names of those whom they intended to form the clergy and called upon their suffrage534. On their part, the people, encouraged by these marks of the confidence of their pastors, sometimes took the initiative and presented of their own accord the expression of their wishes. The episcopal and priestly authority was not shaken, and these popular manifestations could not disturb it. This authority allowed them all the more freedom as it was more assured of filial respect for its decisions. The bishops acted in the same way in the administration of the temporal and the alms which were entrusted to them. Finally, in episcopal elections, the Christian people, often
532 Pastoral of the Church of Paris (1201), 1. 2, c. 7, p. 58 (National Archives manuscript). - Charter of Gilbert, bishop of Paris (1122), in LOBINEAU, t. 3, p. 59. 533 St. CYPRIAN, Letter 11, to the people, 1; PL 4, 257: "The blessed martyrs wrote to us concerning certain lapsi, requesting the examination of their requests. When, the Lord having given us all peace, we have returned to the Church, they will be examined one by one, with your help and your approval; tr. BAYARD, vol. I,, p. 49 (Letter 17). - ID, Letter 83, to the clergy and people, 2; PL 4, 432. 534 ID, Letter 33, 1; see above, note 4.
355 consulted on the subject of the promotion of inferior clerics, was fairly admitted to have his wishes heard535. He was consulted, or he pronounced himself. Everything had to be done in an orderly and agreed manner, and if sometimes the popular character of these demonstrations made them degenerate and caused tumults, the authority of the metropolitans or the comprovincial bishops was powerful enough to remedy them. The Church's admirable and maternal indulgence of its lay sons and the ardent participation of the faithful in the life of the particular Churches have been abused against its constitution. Some have tried to find in it an argument in favor of a so-called Christian democracy in which all authority would come from below, contrary to the order of the divine mission. But in this one word: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn 20:21), Jesus Christ established the whole form of the universal Church and of the particular Churches. It remains in its strength; And what wonder if, by an equitable and holy economy, the Christians who are passionate for the salvation and order of their Church, who are linked to this Church and become its members by baptism, by the sacraments, by all the communications of the spiritual life communicating with the universal Church and with Jesus Christ in the communion of their Church, living in it and receiving through it the nourishment of their souls, were admitted to know the principal events of its life, to grieve over its sorrows, to rejoice over its progress536?
535 St. GREGOIRE (590-604), Book 6, Letter 21, to Peter, Bishop of Otranto; PL 77, 812: "Your fraternity will be about to go to these aforementioned Churches and will hasten to warn with assiduous exhortations the clergy and people of these same Churches so that, far from any passion, they will claim those whom by one and the same agreement they have chosen in advance, priests who deserve to be judged worthy of such a great ministry and who do not despise the venerable canons in any way. " - Cf. book 1, Letter l5; PL 77, 460-461; book 1, Letter 57, ibid., 517-518; book 1, Letter 58, ibid., 518; book 2, Letter 25, ibid., 561; book 2, Letter 38, ibid. , 576-577; Book 2, Letter 39, ibid., 577-578; Book 2, Letter 43, ibid., 581. 536 On the place that the laity occupy in the life of the Church and the concrete role that it is theirs to play, see among others: Yves CONGAR, O. P., Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat, Cerf, Paris, 1953 (US, 23); ID, Sacerdoce et laïcat devant leurs tâches d'évangélisation et de civilisation, Cerf, Paris, 1962, pp. 266-495; I. DE LA
356 This was the meaning of Lent and the great public observances. They all did penance together for the scandals that afflicted it; they all worked together for the healing of the sick members, for the birth of the children of God; and if the joy of the Easter feasts was so great for all, it was because there they celebrated, with the mystery of baptism, the increase of their society and the holy fecundity of their beloved mother. It was then necessary that they should take to heart her interests, which were their most sacred interests; they put all their ardor into it, and it was in this spirit that they were allowed to raise their acclamations and to designate highly those whom they believed most worthy to be made the guardians and the depositaries of it. Even today, we see something similar in monasteries and communities whose bonds have been more closely maintained; popular election is practiced there, and no one thinks of setting them up as democratic republics. But the faithful have unfortunately lost interest in the life of the particular Church; they have withdrawn from it little by little; they do not, however, cease to belong to it by a sacred bond, but they know little of its mystery. He no longer intervenes in the events of ecclesiastical life with the same brilliance, nor does he have the same ardor. But the hierarchy has not changed in character with the changing dispositions of men: it was once what it is today, that is to say, a succession of powers descending from the throne of God by successive degrees; in it, everything comes from above, and authority never originates in the subjects over whom it is exercised. It was necessary to give these brief explanations of the essential constitution of the particular Church and of the movements of its vital activity. We shall have to return to these matters and to the accidental changes which have taken place in her with the passage of time, when we treat of her history.
POTTERIE, S. J., The Origin and Primitive Meaning of the Word "Lay", in Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 89 (1958) 840-853; and the collections of pontifical documents entitled Le laïcat et Consignes aux militants, Desclée et Cie, 1956 and 1958 (EP).
357 Let us say at this point, however, that, through the movement of human things, the action of the presbytery has gradually become concentrated in a certain number of its principal members, at least for the regulation of the most ordinary ecclesiastical affairs. We have already mentioned the practice of the Roman Church in the seventh century of giving all the authority of the presbytery during the vacancy of the Holy See to three heads of order. This discipline was not, no doubt, so exclusive of the suffrage of the principal priests and deacons that they were not still called upon to deliberate in common under their presidency. In episcopal elections, especially because of their capital importance, the ecclesiastical bodies which could not disregard them kept for a long time the use of more complete assemblies. But, on these very occasions, the principal clergy took, in various forms, the most considerable part in the action: sometimes a few dignitaries or a few chosen members proposed by a first suffrage their chosen one to the successive suffrages of the various orders of the clergy537, sometimes the principal clergy reserved for themselves in
537 Council of Rome (1059), Decree on the Election of the Roman Pontiff, LABBE 9, 1103, MANSI 19, 903: "We decide and order that after the death of the pontiff of this Roman Church, first of all the cardinal-bishops deliberate in common with the utmost care on the election; that they bring in the cardinal-clerics at once, then the rest of the clergy and the people to adhere to the new election... And so let these very religious men (i.e., the cardinal-bishops) be the guides in the success of the election of the pontiff, and let the others follow them meekly..." For problems of authenticity and interpretation of this text, a version of which was falsified by the supporters of the antipope Guibert before 1097, see HEFEL 4, 11391165. - Lateran Council (769), actio 3, LABBE 6, 1722-1723, MANSI 12, 719: "On pain of excommunication, we forbid any layman to dare ever to take part, either with a gun or in any other way, in the election of the pontiff; but that this pontifical election be made by certain priests and dignitaries of the Church and by all the clergy. And before the pontiff-elect is led to the papal palace (patriarchium), all the officers, the whole army, the burghers of distinction, and the whole people of this city of Rome must hasten to greet him as the master of all. And so, according to custom, those who have made the election and likewise all those who accept it must sign. We order, in the name of God's judgment and under pain of excommunication, that the same thing be done (for episcopal elections) in the other Churches", cf. HEFEL 3, 734-735. - Id. actio 4, LABBE 6, 1724, MANSI 12, 721: "If anyone dares to oppose the priests, the
358 common choice the rest of the clergy merely approved or acclaimed. This principal share assigned to the principal clergy eventually became for them an exclusive right, a secondary right and one that rested on the radical and primitive right of the entire ancient presbytery. Thus, in time, the cardinals or first holders of the Roman Church, and those who in the other Churches have been called canons of the cathedrals, themselves principal holders of those Churches, have inherited the exercise of all the functions common to the body of the presbytery, and represent it today in all the venerable authority which belongs to it by its origin and by its place in the mystery of the hierarchy of the particular Church. What we say here of the clergy applies also to the faithful people for the part they once took in Church affairs and in episcopal elections. When civil society became entirely Christian, it was itself, while keeping its particular hierarchy, this Christian people of the Churches. The magistrates and principals of the city or honorati, having become Christians with the whole social body, quite naturally represented the lay element of the Church, and we see them gradually taking the place of the faithful people in those matters where until then they had made their wishes heard. It was as representatives of the faithful people, as representatives of the city, henceforth merged with the secular order of the Church, that they subscribed the decrees of election538.
dignitaries of the Church or to all the clergy in the election of his pontiff, according to this canonical tradition, let him be anathema." 538 Diurnal, c. 2, tit. 2; PL 105, 29: "Assembled with us, according to custom, were all the priests and dignitaries of the Church, all the clergy, the officers and all the army, the burghers of distinction, and all the whole of this people of God established in Rome..." - Id. at ibid, PL 105:31: "All the clergy, officers, soldiers, and burghers also sign." - Id., ibid., PL 105, 33: "Signature of the laity: I, N..., servant of Your Piety, for this choice which we have made of You, N..., venerable archdeacon of the Holy Apostolic See, and recognizing You as our chosen one, have undersigned." - Id. c. 2, tit. 4; PL 105, 34: "Assembled with us, according to custom, are the familiars of the clergy and the people, the dignitaries and the whole army... We make this solemn choice, we confirm with raised hands the desires of the hearts on his election
359 Then, this share made to the secular element by the condescension of hierarchical authority, always going up to the leaders of the people, ended by concentrating itself in the persons of the sovereigns and territorial lords; it thus took the various forms of ecclesiastical patronage, and this discipline subsists to some extent, at least in its spirit, even in the concordats of modern times. It is important to bring out this character of lay intervention due to the maternal condescension of the Church, in order not to see in it a democratic principle of government in primitive times and a right of temporal authority over the things of religion in modern times.
and by our votes we have sent, N..., most holy bishop, N.... venerable priest, N..., notary of the region..."
360 CHAPTER XXX
Churches without titular bishops
Imperfect churches
The bishop is the head of the particular Church, his priesthood is the unique center to which the people remain attached, and St. Cyprian rightly defined a Church: "a people attached to their bishop539." But, as the episcopate spreads its virtue in the priests of the second order, these, by the unity they have with the bishop, can support his person, represent him, and, as by an extension of the head in them, do the works of the one priesthood which he communicates to them, and exercise its authority in the measure which belongs to them or which it is convenient for him to trace to them. The college of priests, in the vacancy of the see, fully deploys this secondary and derived authority. But there is a field continually open to its activity and where, keeping a mixed character, it seems at the same time, in certain ways, to substitute for the absent bishop, at the same time that it receives from him the impulse and the sovereign direction. We are referring to parishes or churches without episcopal sees. "It is the ancient tradition," says St. Athanasius, "not to establish an episcopal see in the boroughs and in the outlying regions"540;
"in the villages or in the mediocre cities," say again the Councils of Laodicea and Sardikus: "in the lesser towns" according to St. Jerome541.
539 St. CYPRIAN, Letter 66, 8, 3; PL 4, 406: "The Church is the people united to the pontiff and the flock adhering to its shepherd"; cf. BAYARD, loc. cit., vol. 2, p. 226 (Letter 66); cf. BROUTIN, loc. cit., P. 155. 540 Saint ATHANASUS, 2nd Apology(*). 541 Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381), can. 57, LABBE 1, 1506, MANSI 2, 573: "That no bishop should be established, but mere visitors (periodeutas) in the villages and in the countryside"; trans. HEFELE 1, 1024. Council of Sardikos (343), can. 6, LABBE 2, 645, MANSI 3, 10: "It is forbidden to establish a bishop in a village or town for which a single priest suffices"; ibid., 782. - Cf.
361 The episcopal dignity is so high that it must not be debased in the eyes of the people by lavishing it everywhere542. The subjects who can bear the weight of it are also too scarce among Christians to be expected to be found in large numbers in a small area. It must not, indeed, be forgotten that the bishops have not only the care of particular Churches, but the charge of the universal Church, of which they form the senate, and this essential and primitive prerogative of their order, which makes them properly successors of the apostles, demands a vocation and graces superior to those which would suffice to govern the particular flocks. In the less important places, therefore, it was content from the beginning, and according to ancient tradition, to establish the second order of priests. But since this second order priesthood cannot stand on its own, and since its essence is to depend on the episcopate, it was necessary in these lesser churches to attach it to the pulpit of a neighbouring bishop, and to make its mission and the legitimacy of its acts descend from this bishop. He will therefore depend entirely on this bishop; for there can be no priest without a bishop, no acephalous priesthood, and the order of the priesthood has its head and its unity in the episcopate. Thus, beyond the episcopal churches and throughout the earth, churches will be formed, churches which are imperfect in themselves, since they do not have the pulpit of the episcopate in them, but which receive what they lack and become true and legal churches.
St. Jerome (347-419), Dialogue against the Luciferians, 9, PL 23, 173: "If the Holy Spirit descends into souls only at the prayer of the bishop alone, we must deplore the fate of those who live isolated in the countryside, in remote fortresses, at great distances from the cities, and who, baptized by priests or deacons, go to sleep with the last of their slumber, without having been visited by a bishop."; trans. BAREILLE, Œuvres complètes de saint Jérôme, Vivès, Paris, 1878, t. 2, p. 459. 542 Council of Sardique (343), can. 6, loc. cit: "So that the dignity of the bishop may not be debased." - St. ZACHARIA (741-752), Letter 2, to Archbishop Boniface, 1; PL 89, 918: "Remember indeed, dearest, what we are bound to observe according to the holy canons, namely, that bishops should absolutely not be ordained in villages and small towns, so that the name of bishop may not be debased."
362 gitimes by the bishop to whom they are attached, and who, from the principal seat of a neighboring Church, extends his mantle over them and sustains them by his authority and communion. These Churches, weakly begun and imperfect in themselves, which, to tell the truth, are worthy of the name of Church and are only brides of Jesus Christ because of the bishop who has not set up his pulpit and his main altar in them, and who does not bear their title, seem to be fulfilling before our eyes this prophecy of the Holy Books: "Seven women will snatch one man that day"; "We will provide for our food, they will say, and we will clothe ourselves; only let us bear your name, take away our dishonor" (Is 4. 1), and abandonment, and give us the honor of true wives. This is the very popular and necessary institution of the Churches and parishes spread throughout the Christian world beyond the radius of the episcopal cities. These Churches, in fact, cannot be confused with the titles and parishes of the cities, which are mere divisions of the Episcopal Church; they differ essentially from them in substance and in origin. They are distinct Churches, hierarchical bodies constituted separately; they are Churches with their own people and priesthood. The clergy of the titles of the episcopal city, as we have seen, was formed within the presbytery by the sharing of work and pastoral solicitude among the members of this college. But the clergy of these Churches do not belong to the presbytery of the episcopal city distributed among the titles of this city or united in a single college; but they form in each place as many distinct presbyteries, as many colleges independent of each other as there are particular Churches and flocks. This institution of churches without titular bishops, distinct from the episcopal churches543, and attached to the latter by the very necessity which renders the order of priests without force and value for government apart from their subordination to the episcopate and the action of the bishop exercised in them, has formed, by their reunion and dependen-
.
543 Council of Vaison (442), can. 1-3; LABBE 3, 1457, MANSI 6, 453, HÉFÉLÉ 2, 454-456.
363 dance around each Episcopal Church, those circumscriptions which are now called dioceses; and if these circumstances were sometimes drawn before the establishment of the Churches, they were always drawn with a view to that establishment. We have here several important observations to make to the reader.
Essential dependence of priests
In the first place, it is very important to understand that the authority of the priests, in these churches without bishops, does not make them secondary bishops or princes of the Christian people in any respect. It has been said that, in the early days, the bishop was the pastor of the episcopal city, and that the priests were the pastors of the lesser churches. If, by this way of speaking, it is intended to equate the position of the priests in the lesser churches with that of the bishop in the main church, the proposition is false. It can at most state the simple fact of the government and spiritual direction exercised by the bishop in person more usually and more immediately in the episcopal city, and more rarely in the lesser localities. It is clear, in fact, that the priests of the churches of the diocese more usually assisted the bishop in preaching and celebrating the mysteries than did the priests of the city. But in substance, both held the same rank in their respective churches. The presence of the bishop did not lower the presbytery of the city, and his absence did not cause the priests of the country to rise to the level of taking his principal authority. But always and everywhere the order of priests had to remain what it is in essence, that is, the auxiliary and cooperator of the bishop, the helper given to the head and spouse of the Church, "a helper to match him" (Gen. 2:18); never, and by no means, will priests be the heads and spouses of the churches. And it does not matter if in fact a single priest is in charge of one of these smaller flocks. The bishop is one in his Church by the necessities of the hierarchy
364 and because of the mystery of unity, as head and principle of unity; the priest, if he is alone, is so only by convenience and accident. In being alone, he does not cease to be the second person (of the Church; and, as this second person is the college of the presbytery surrounding and assisting the bishop, he still represents this college as reduced in his person to a single member. Also the divine constitution of the hierarchy, which is absolutely opposed to there being several bishops in an Episcopal Church544, is in no way opposed to there being several priests in a parish. Dioceses may contain indifferently, according to the needs of the people, Churches governed by a single priest, and others governed by a priestly college and possessing a numerous clergy545. All here is pure economy; and if, in the so-called collegiate Churches, that is, provided with a college of priests, canonical discipline has generally in modern times reserved to one the exercise of pastoral jurisdiction, if at least the principal direction of the ecclesiastical ministry must there be wisely entrusted to one, these regulations have been made by the simple devolution or useful distribution of the exercise of jurisdiction among the members of the college, and have not touched the depths of the hierarchy. Also they are neither universal nor uniform, but have varied with time and place546. It is, in our opinion, very important to maintain about the priests of the diocesan churches this essential notion, and to reduce them absolutely to second place. It must be well known that the bishop is, in truth and in the full force of the expression, the sole head of each of the Churches in his diocese, and that the priests in these Churches are
544 St. CORNEILLE (251-252), Letter to Fabian, bishop of Antioch, in EUSEB, Ecclesiastical History, 1, 6, c. 43, n. 11; PG 20, 622; Den., 45; see above, chapter 4, note 6. 545 Council of Aachen (836), ch. 2, part 2, can. 16; LABBE 7, 1714, MANSI 14, 683: "As far as possible, the bishop should place in each church a priest who will govern and direct it in an independent manner or under the supervision of an archpriest (prior presbyter)..."; trans. HEFEL 4, 96. 546 In several places in southern Italy the office of parish priest was still, at the end of the nineteenth century, held and exercised in common by several priests.
365 ses, have always been and always will be, by their necessary dependence, what they were from the beginning in the episcopal city. Antiquity never distinguished two kinds of priesthood and two orders of priests, the one merely ministers and assistants to the bishops in the episcopal churches, and the other heads of the church after the manner of the bishops themselves; and those who have wished to give to the parish priests, among the priests, a distinct hierarchical existence and a special divine institution, see their pretensions confounded by the silence of the whole tradition.
Development of diocesan churches
In the second place, we will point out to the reader that the most considerable of the diocesan Churches have undergone in their successive developments the same phases as the Episcopal Churches. Like the latter, they have had numerous presbyteries and a complete order of ministers. They had heads of order, archpriests, primaries, sometimes even local archdeacons; they had their officers, provosts, deans, cantors, ecolaters; they had their schools of readers and young clerics547. These Churches were also, like the Episcopal Churches, subdivided into titles, the origin of urban or suburban parishes under the local archpriest. Nothing is more natural than this resemblance, the effect of similar needs and circumstances. As for the smaller churches, to which the presence of a single priest was sufficient, a priest to whom a deacon548 was added in ancient times, and later at least a cleric of a lower order, the need was felt early on to link them together by a sort of collegial link. They were brought together under the authority of a rural archpriest, and brought to represent as titles of the same presbytery and
547 Saint REMI OF REIMS († 535), Letter 4, to Falcon, bishop of Tongeren (Belgium); PL 65, 969: a In this Church (of Mosomage, in the diocese of Rheims), when you have ordained deacons, consecrated priests, instituted archdeacons, established a primitivist of the illustrious school and militia of the lectors..." 548 Council of Tarragona (516), can. 7, LABBE 4, 1564, MANSI 8, 542: "When a priest and a deacon have been placed with other clerics in a rural church, they are to alternate for service every week..."; trans. HEFELE 2, 1028.
366 of the same main church549. Such was the so popular institution, more or less developed according to the times, of the archpriests and rural deaneries. The name of archpriest and that of dean became almost synonymous in practice. However, the name archpriest better marks the unity of a single presbytery according to the terms of the Council of Ravenna, enshrined in the body of law: "Let each Church or Christian population have an archpriest charged with assiduously watching over the priests who live in the lesser titles and with informing the bishop of the zeal that each of them brings to the divine service"550. The name of dean, on the contrary, does not carry so closely in its meaning the unity of the priestly body, and the priests, under the supervision of this ecclesiastical officer, may belong to as many perfect and distinct Churches without forming one presbytery. Moreover, if this discipline does not seem commonly, and especially in the East, to go back to high antiquity, it is because, in the first centuries, the institution of visitors or churchmen maintained the discipline of the dioceses and was sufficient to transmit to the priests of the lesser parishes the directions of episcopal authority551.
549 Council of Pavia (850), can. 13, LABBE 8, 66-67, MANSI 14, 935: "We want that in each plebs (archpriesthood or rural deanery) there should be an archpriest who should take care not only of the ignorant crowd, but also of those priests who dwell in the lesser titles; that he should watch over their lives with perpetual attention and that he should let his bishop know with what divine zeal each one is exercising the holy ministry." 550 GREGOIRE IX (1227-1241), Decretals, 1. 1, tit. 24, c. 4, ed. 1584, col. 320: "Let each plebs have his archpriest for the assiduous care of the people of God; let him take care not only of the ignorant crowd, but also of the priests who dwell in the lesser titles..." Cf. J. FAURE, L'Archiprêtre, des origines au droit décrétalien, Grenoble, 1911; A. BRIDE, art. Archiprest in Catholicism 1 (1948), col. 788-790. 551 Council of Antioch (341), can. 10, LABBE 2, 566, MANSI 2, 1311: "Priests of the towns and countryside, or those with the title of chorishop, even if they have received episcopal consecration, must, according to the opinion of the holy synod, know the limits of the territory entrusted to them, have care of the churches of which they have jurisdiction, but be content with this administration. They can ordain lectors, subdeacons, exorcists for them..."; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 1, 717. - H. LECLERCQ studies this text in HÉFÉLÉ 2, 1212-1215. - Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381), can. 57, LABBE 1, 1506, MANSI 2, 573: "That no bishop should be established, but rather simple visitors (periodeutas) in the villages and at the
367 A solid tradition
Does the institution of churches without bishops belong to the primitive law of the Church and the apostolic traditions? Or is it only a later creation depending entirely by its origin on positive law, i.e., on more recent pontifical canons or decrees? This question has been much discussed by the supporters and opponents of the so-called divine right of parish priests. It is conceivable that the supporters of this false opinion, attributing to parish priests a sort of second-order episcopate and assuming in them a special divine mission, needed to trace the origin of parishes to the very cradle of the Christian religion. For them, the bishops themselves were only senior priests, placed at the head of the great Churches, as the priest priests presided over the lesser ones. The origin of both was collateral; the priests of the first order succeeded the apostles, and those of the second order succeeded the seventy-two disciples. On the other hand, the opponents of this dangerous error sought to establish that the institution of priests governing churches, and of churches without titular bishops, belonged to a relatively recent period and did not go beyond the antiquity of the third or fourth century. This argument is not necessary for us to combat the error. For, as long as the order of priests in these churches is considered to be absolutely identical, as regards its rank and hierarchical powers, to what it is in the episcopal churches, there is no advantage in giving it a later origin. But there is more, and this institution has in our eyes all the characteristics of apostolic traditions. First of all, it is universal. East and West have practiced it equally. In the second place, it was not established anywhere by a positive law.
Campaign..."; ibid., 1024. - See also HÉFÉLÉ 2, 1207. - Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Choresbishops, in DACL 3, 1423-1452, reprinted in HÉFÉLÉ 2, 1197-1237, and art. Periodeute, DACL 14, 369-379; R. AIGRAIN, art. Churchmen in Catholicism 2 (1950) 1072-1075.
368 The older Councils merely maintain or recall it. "It is not permitted," says the Council of Sardique, "to ordain bishops in boroughs or small towns to which one priest suffices; for the establishment of a bishop is not necessary there, so that the name and authority of the episcopate may not be debased. "552 Shortly thereafter, the Council of Laodicea reiterates the same rule, that bishops should not be established in the towns or countryside553. The Council of Neocesarea regulates the relations of the priests of the churches in the countryside with those of the episcopal city554. The Council of Ancyra speaks of these as opposed to those, and assumes them equally established555. Finally, the Apostolic Canons, a venerable monument of the discipline received in high antiquity, prescribe to the bishop to take care of his Church and the burghs dependent on it, that is, the diocesan Churches, and they forbid him to undertake anything beyond the limits of his diocese in the burghs not subject to him556. The Fathers speak of these Churches as they do of the establish-
.
552 Council of Sardikus (343), see supra notes 3 and 4. - The Council of Nicaea (325), can. 8, LABBE 2, 33-34, MANSI 2, 671-672, speaks of ordained clerics "and in villages and in cities," i.e., distinctly in episcopal cities and in burghs without a bishop; HEFLE 1, 577. 553 See above, note 13. 554 Council of Neocesarea (between 314 and 325), can. 13, LABBE 1, 1483, MANSI 2, 541: "The priests of the country cannot offer the holy sacrifice in the church of the city (the cathedral), when the bishop or the priests of the city are present; nor can they present (distribute) the chalice and bread. If the bishop and his priests are absent, and the country priest is invited to celebrate, he may distribute (Holy Communion). HEFELÉ 1, 333. 555 Council of Ancyra (314), can. 13, LABBE 1, 1462, 1473, MANSI 2, 518, 531: "It is not permitted for choir bishops to ordain priests and deacons, nor is it permitted for priests from the cities to ordain priests in other parishes (dioceses) without the written permission of the local bishop"; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 1, 134; on the difficulties of translation and interpretation of this text, see the remarks of H. LECLERCQ, ibid., 2, 1200-1207. 556 Apostolic Canons, 35, ed. Pitra, vol. 1, p. 20. It should be remembered that these canons, which were formerly attributed to the apostles, are in reality a Syrian compilation of the end of the fourth century; most of them were borrowed from the conciliar collections of that century, especially Antioch (341), Nicaea (325), and Laodicea (between 343 and 381)... Canon 35 is taken from the Council of Antioch (341), can. 9; HEFEL 1, 717.
369 ments primitive and apostolic customs. "It is contrary to the tradition of the Fathers," says St. Athanasius, "to ordain bishops in the burghs,"557 that is, evidently, to be content, according to that same tradition" to place priests there. "It is," says St. Jerome, "the custom of the Church that the bishop should go about the least towns remote from his see, to lay hands on and call the Holy Spirit upon those who have been baptized there by priests and deacons."558. "It is our desire," says St. Leo, "that the old canons be kept and that no bishops be ordained in any kind of place or town and where there have not been any hitherto; the ministry of priests is sufficient for the lesser Churches, and it is proper to reserve the government of a bishop for the more considerable Churches and the more populous cities, lest, contrary to the prohibitions borne by the divinely inspired decrees of our Fathers, while the supreme order of the episcopate is assigned to rustic places or to obscure and remote municipalities, the honor of a dignity to which the most excellent ministries are entrusted should be debased by being lavished"559. They are everywhere the same terms: "the tradition of the ancestors", "ecclesiastical custom", "the ancient canons", without special designation, "the divinely inspired rules established by the Fathers". Such is the language of antiquity when it speaks of the general and original law and the universal and apostolic institutions of the Church. Historians, it is true, rarely spoke in early times of the lesser Churches; for, in the recital of great events, they did not often have occasion to call attention to them
557 Saint ATHANASUS, 2nd Apology. 558 St. Jerome, Dialogue against the Luciferians; see above, note 3. 559 St. Leo I (440-461), Letter 12, to the bishops of Caesarean Mauritania 10; PL 54, 645: "First of all, We want the canonical statutes to be observed, namely, that a bishop should not be consecrated in any place, in any village, and where there was none; since the population there is small and the assemblies restricted, the care of priests is sufficient. The episcopal government should preside only over numerous populations and populous cities; as the decrees of the divinely inspired holy Fathers have forbidden, let the pinnacle of priestly power not be given to small towns, estates, and obscure and isolated municipes, and let the honor of the highest degrees not be debased by their multiplicity."
370 tion of their readers. But when they mention it, they do so without astonishment and as one speaks of an establishment known to all, immemorial and popular. Thus St. Epiphanius names in passing Celiphon, priest of the village of Doris, where there was no bishop560. St. Dionysius of Alexandria speaks of priests and deacons who in every burgess proclaimed the word of God561. Historians occasionally report that all the churches of Maraeotides, from their origin, had never had bishops and reported to the see of Alexandria562. Similarly, the province of Scythia, though it contained a large number of cities, had never had more than one bishop, and, says Sozomen, "it is the ancient custom still in force that all the churches in this region are governed by him"563. Other specific examples could be found564, and they multiply as the texts become more abundant. It has been objected that the oldest are drawn from authors of the third century; but everyone knows how short and few the monuments of the second century, which touches the apostolic age, are, and it is enough that a discipline be commonly regarded in the third century as admitted everywhere and from time immemorial for this testimony to take on all the authority of the preceding age. This is a necessary principle of the criticism of ecclesiastical monuments. St. Epiphanius, explaining how the Churches were originally founded, does not hesitate to tell us that the apostles, according to circumstances, established in various places sometimes a bishop and sometimes
560 St. Epiphanius (†403), Countering Heresies, 1. 1, her. 66(*). 561 EUSEBUS, Ecclesiastical History, 1.7, c. 24, n. 6; PG 20, 695: "I summoned the priests and doctors of the brethren who are in the villages"; trans. BARDY (SC, 41) 203. 562 St. ATHANASUS, Apology against the Arians, 84; PG 25, 400; Cf. HEFEL 2, 1209. 563 SOZOMEN, Ecclesiastical History, 1.7, c. 19; PG 67, 1475; 1.6, c. 21; PG 67, 1346. 564 At the Council of Ephesus (431), part 2, session 5, mention is made of cities without bishops in the province of Europe, an ancient custom from which the Council forbids derogation; LABBE 3, 646.
371 of priests565. Whatever opinion one may have of his system, it must be agreed that he could not have used this language if one had preserved the memory of the first institution of churches without titular bishops and entrusted to priests. But on the other hand, could it be possible that an innovation of this importance would have gone so unnoticed that in no place would anyone have kept the memory of it, and that on the contrary, it would have been considered throughout the world as ancient, natural, and in keeping with the whole tradition of the Fathers? Our opponents, who, with the laudable intention of destroying the error of the false divine right of parish priests, seek to establish the recent origin of this discipline, themselves increase, by one of their principal arguments, the difficulty which we are raising here, by relying on the horror which, they say, the Christians of the first times had for any ecclesiastical assembly held outside the presidency of the bishop. But, if this feeling went so far as to confuse in the same aversion the conventicles held by schismatic or acephalous priests with any assembly presided over by priests of the second order, how can we explain that this error has suddenly given way, from one end of the Christian world to the other, How can it be explained that this error suddenly gave way, throughout the Christian world, to the peaceful establishment of Churches without bishops, without there being any allusion, either in the canons of the Councils, or in the writings of the Fathers, or in the monuments of history, to such a great change, to the causes which would have brought it about, or to the authority which would have imposed it? Could this change even have been so promptly and so uni-
565 St. EPIPHANUS, Countering Heresies, 1. 3, haer. 75, B. 5; PG 42, 510: "For the apostles could not establish everything at once. Priests and deacons were especially needed, by whom all ecclesiastical affairs could be administered. Therefore, where no one worthy of the episcopate had yet appeared, no bishop was assigned to that place. Where, on the contrary, the need required it, and there was no lack of a good number of men worthy of the episcopate, bishops were established. But when there was not a large population, no one could be found to be ordained a priest and one had to be satisfied with a single bishop. Of course, there can be no bishop without a deacon. That is why the apostle saw to it that deacons were available to the bishop for ministry. This is why, since the Church could not yet be completed in all functions, this state of vacancies remained at that time. Doubtless there is nothing that was not absolutely complete from its origin."
372 versellement forgotten that the most diligent authors of antiquity, such as a St. Epiphanius, far from mentioning it, claim to find in the very practice of the apostles the discipline which they had in their day before their eyes? It is easy, moreover, to show that the texts alleged, which, it is said, condemn all ecclesiastical assemblies in which the bishop does not preside in person, clearly refer only to schismatic assemblies. To hear them otherwise would be to impute a gross error to the first disciples of the apostles and to the Church of the early days. St. Ignatius, forbidding the faithful to assemble without the bishop, expresses himself clearly in this regard: "Let that Eucharist alone be regarded as legitimate, which is held under the presidency of the bishop or of one whom he shall have charged with it,"566 that is, of the priest authorized by the bishop. Do we not know, moreover, that from that time on, in the absence of the captive or exiled bishop, the priests gathered the people and celebrated the holy synaxes? The same was true during the vacancy of episcopal sees; and if it had not been admitted that priests could legitimately, except in the case of schismatic undertakings, substitute for the bishop or preside in his name over the faithful people, the Churches would have been dissolved at each persecution, at each infirmity, at each absence of their bishops. On the contrary, the ordinary function of the presbytery of the main Church in the place of the absent bishop made the ministry of the presiding priests perfectly intelligible to the people in the lesser Churches which did not possess an episcopal pulpit, and protected them from all danger of confusing this ministry with the prerogative of the pontiff. The first faithful, thus realizing the dependence of these priests on the episcopate, and the inferiority of their degree in the hierarchy, could not imagine the strange theories of the divine right of parish priests, such as we are fighting against here, in agreement, on the ground of doctrine, with the zealous orthodox writers, whose sentiment we do not share on the historical point of the antiquity of the institution of parishes.
566 St. IGNACE, Letter to the Smyrniotes, 8; PG 5, 713; trans. CAMELOT (SC 10), 163.
373 CHAPTER XXXI
Constitution of dioceses
Formation of dioceses
The diocese is the sum of the churches that depend on a single bishop. This is the first notion that antiquity has transmitted to us. As a continuation and consequence of this first notion, the diocese is a territorial circumscription which embraces the whole area over which the jurisdiction of a single episcopal see is exercised. How were dioceses originally formed? We do not believe that most often, at least in ancient times, these kinds of circumscriptions were drawn first, leaving and reserving to the bishop of one church the care and right to establish the other churches in that territory. Perhaps things happened in this way, in perfectly policed regions, for the bishoprics established in cities whose territory was clearly determined, cities which exercised a legally established influence on this territory, and where the ecclesiastical circumscription naturally followed the civil circumscription. But generally, and even though they did not find the framework of these territorial divisions drawn in advance, the bishops, in the apostolic freedom of the early days, using, for the establishment of the Churches, that general power of which we spoke in our third part, carried by themselves or by their disciples the torch of the faith to the populations closer to them, and which they could evangelize without abandoning the care of the very Church where their episcopal pulpit was located. Then, when this apostolate had produced its fruits, it gave way to the institution of stable and well-founded Churches, with their priests and titular ministers, whom the bishop continued to take care of. As a result of this origin, the Episcopal Churches were generally called the mothers and mother Churches of the dioceses. Thus, what we have seen in the establishment of Episcopal Churches throughout the world was duplicated in small ways in the creation of Churches without bishops and the institution of dioceses. And as,
374 in the Christian universe, the preaching of the apostles and apostolic men had preceded the ordination of titular bishops, so in every diocese a similar ministry of missionaries, exercised by the bishop or under his direction and by his envoys, preceded the institution in the lesser cities and towns, in castles and villages, of the parishes properly so called provided with titular clergy. In the absence of documents, the natural order of things alone would be sufficient to tell us that this was the case. But antiquity is not absolutely silent in this regard. The letter of St. Clement, known as ad Virgines, the text of which has fortunately been found in a Syriac version, describes, in precious detail, the order kept from apostolic times by bishops and ministers when they visited Christians and brought spiritual help to them in places which had no resident priests and ministers567. Long later, parishes were still rare in the West. Usually established in larger towns, such as Candes, in the diocese of St. Martin, or Mouzon, in that of St. Remi, they left vast territories without definite ecclesiastical titles. The bishops erected oratories there, places of station for preaching and other ecclesiastical functions, and which were sufficient for the needs of the populations of the countryside which were still few in number. These oratories gradually gave way to the first parishes of our regions, when, with the change in these conditions, they were given a permanent clergy. Then, as the populations, until then sparse in the vast possessions of the Romans or the Franks, multiplied and grouped themselves more and more, these first parishes or mother churches were dismembered in their turn. The great monastic establishments had the principal part in this progress of ecclesiastical and parochial life within our
567 Pseudo-CLEMENTS, 2nd Letter to the Virgins 1, 2, 4; PG 1, 418, 420-422, 424-426. These Pseudoclementine Letters are now known to be the work of an anonymous Palestinian, ca. 250.
375 campaigns. In the East, on the other hand, where the people, under the Empire, were in greater hurry, and where the economic conditions of the countryside were different, early on the institution of parishes had taken on a great development. The diocese of Cyr, at the time of the accession of Theodoret, contained eight hundred in its bosom568, and that of St. Basil presents us with such a flourishing situation in this respect, that he was able to erect several parishes into bishoprics569. Egypt, where the episcopal cities are very close together, offers us similar examples, and although the dioceses there are less extensive, the institution of parishes is general. Without mentioning the Churches of the Maraeotides, in the diocese of Alexandria, which we have already cited570, the lives of the Fathers often make mention of the Churches of the lesser towns and the clergy who served them571. In the course of the ages this discipline has always been maintained; the institution of diocesan churches has developed with the progress of the faith; it exists everywhere before our eyes today, and it proves so obviously necessary to the Christian life of nations that we cannot conceive of its absence or disappearance without the destruction of religion itself.
Constitution of the synod
We have sufficiently made the reader see that the Episcopal Church and the diocese are two perfectly distinct terms in the ecclesiastical language. The Episcopal Church, with its presbytery and people, its subdivisions into titles and parishes, is the very title of the bishop. The diocese contains a greater or lesser number of churches distinct from this one, all of which depend on the same bishop, but do
568 THEODORET, Letter 113, to Pope Leo; PG 83, 1315. 569 St. GREGOIRE OF NAZIANZE (330-390), Panegyric of St. Basil (Oratio 43), 59; PG 36, 571-574. 570 See above, chapter 30, note 24. 571 Life of St. Pacomius, c. 3, n. 20 in BOLLANDISTS, Acta Sanctorum, vol. 16, p. 303; Lives of the Fathers, St. Mucius, 1. 2, c. 9; PL 21, 423.
376 are not, properly speaking, his title and the first object of the sacred bond which he contracted in his ordination. This distinction is so consequential that if, by a change in the diocesan circumscriptions, one or more churches of his diocese are taken away from a bishop, his title received at ordination is not thereby changed, nor is the bond he has contracted broken; whereas a bishop cannot be taken away from his episcopal church without breaking this bond, that is, without there being a translation or deposition of the pontiff. This is why the changes brought to the limits of the dioceses by the course of the ages do not alter the identity of the episcopal titles and leave to the series of bishops of the same see its character of succession and hereditary succession. If, however, the diocesan Churches are not properly the title of the bishop, they all belong to him by a consequence and a continuation of this very title, for they depend on the principal Church and its pontifical see. This is the application of a general principle. And, to recall the most illustrious example, just as the Supreme Pontiff finds in the very see of Rome and in the inheritance of Saint Peter the sovereign authority which he exercises over all the Churches of the world, an authority forever attached to the title of Bishop of Rome, so each bishop constantly gathers from the inheritance of his predecessors, with the very title of his Church, the charge of all those which depend on it and form his diocese. From this essential distinction between the Episcopal Church and the diocese, an important consequence emerges for us. It is the basis for the distinction that must be made between the episcopal presbytery and the diocesan synod. There is only one priestly senate or presbytery in the Episcopal Church; but in the diocese there are as many distinct presbyteries as there are constituted churches. Just as the Episcopal Church is represented by its presbytery surrounding the seat of its pontiff, so the diocese is represented by the synod, a sort of diocesan council, where all the Churches subject to the same bishop come to surround him in turn in the person of their priests. Other is the assistance which the presbytery gives to the bishop, other
377 that which the synod gives him. The synod is indeed a council in the sense that several churches are assembled there, and the ceremonial, like the very name of the synod, expresses this notion. But since all these Churches have only one bishop, although they are all present in their priests, this bishop, who is the bishop of each of them, alone exercises the full and sovereign authority of legislator and judge. The priests of each of the Churches represented at the synod thus retain the essential property of their order, which is their complete dependence on the episcopate. Subjected to the bishop in their dispersion, and while his distance and absence command a wider share of initiative and responsibility, they cannot, when in his presence, receive greater authority, and they appear before him, in this image of a council, only to lend him the assistance he asks of them and to receive the laws he imposes upon them572. We leave it to the advocates of the divine right of parish priests to make synods into true deliberative councils as they make parish priests into true bishops and heads of churches by divine institution573;
it is a natural sequel to their error; but their claim falls with the sound notion of the rank which essentially befits the order of priests. It is easy to hear that the synod, where several churches are gathered, must not be confused with the presbytery of the Episcopal Church alone. This is important for the understanding of the hierarchical constitution of the churches. But, in the synod itself, the presbytery of the principal Church appears to assist the bishop at the head of the assembly; the latter consults his chapter on the work he proposes to the synod, on the laws he wants to establish574. We have seen the ceremonial of the synods express this particular situation of the cathedral presbytery. The members of this senate surrounded
572 BENEDICT XIV (1740-1758), The diocesan synod in Opera Benedicti PP. XIV, Prati, 1844, vol. 2. We cannot refer the reader too much to this immortal work. 573 See MAULTROT, Le droit des prêtres dans le synode ou le concile diocésain, 1779; cf. LA LUZERNE, Dissertations sur les Droits et Devoirs respectifs des évêques et des prêtres, Migne, 1844, 6th diss. col. 1426-1832. 574 BENEDICT XIV, loc. cit, 1. 3, c. 4, pp. 63-65.
378 raient the episcopal throne, and even in some dioceses, the cathedral chapter joined on this occasion the parish priests of the urban and suburban parishes, and made them sit with its members around the pontiff and at the head of the synod: they were the old cardinals of the titles of the city and suburbs who resumed their place in the urban presbytery and attested to its ancient unity. This ceremonial was expressive; but the special situation of the presbytery of the Episcopal Church is still affirmed by its separate intervention and advice requested separately by the bishops for the publication of statutes575. Finally, in the vacancy of the see, it is for him to convoke and preside over the synod, a right which he exercises today through his vicar capitular576. Besides, antiquity knew these distinctions. The earliest known diocesan synod is certainly the assembly of priests of the diocese of Alexandria convened in the case of Arius by St. Alexander577. The acts of this assembly show us distinctly and in the first rank the subscriptions of the priests and deacons of Alexandria, that is, of the clergy of the Episcopal Church, and then, apart from them and in a lower rank, those of the priests and deacons of the Churches of the Maraeotides, that is, of the diocesan parishes. But this distinction between the Episcopal Church and the diocese, between the assistance given to the bishop by his presbytery and that given to him by his synod, has its type and its exemplar in the pulpit of Saint Peter itself. As the episcopal chair is at the same time the center of a Church and of a diocese, this supreme chair is also together the center of the Roman Church and the center of the universal Church. But the Roman Church, represented by the Sacred College of Cardinals, is different; the universal Church, represented by the Ecumenical Council, is different. Both, however, the Sacred College and the Council, surround the chair of the Supreme Pontiff, but in a different capacity; and, in the
575 ID., ibid., 1. 13, c. 1, nn. 9-16, pp. 477-478. 576 ID, ibid., 1. 2, c. 9, p. 36. 577 To this synod of 320 were subscribed, after the bishop of Alexandria, seventeen priests and seven deacons of the Church of Alexandria, and then distinctly sixteen priests and sixteen deacons of the Churches of the Maraeotian, which shows that in each of these Churches the priest was assisted by a deacon; cf. LABBE 2, 147-150.
379 council even, the presbytery of the Roman Church retains its prerogative and appears as making with the Pope one person at the head of the assembled universal Church.
Church Hierarchy
The episcopal see gives the Church that possesses it preeminence over all the Churches in the diocese. It is in this see and through the possession of this see that the bishop receives the inheritance of his predecessors and his authority over the whole diocese. It is from this see and from the bosom of this principal Church that he presides over the government of all the others. His presbytery assists him in his government by counsel and action. The officers of this presbytery are his chief ministers, and the archdeacon of the main church, who is called the eye of the bishop in the bosom of that church, is still the eye of the bishop in overseeing the whole diocese. In the vacancy of the see, the presbytery of this first Church, the natural guardian of the episcopal chair, exercises its rights alone with regard to the presbyteries and clergy bodies, the priests and the people of all the lower Churches. This pre-eminence of the presbytery of the Episcopal Church has also been affirmed by the practice of all times. Everywhere it has had precedence. It was because of this precedence that the Council of Neocesarea forbade the priests of the country and of the diocese to celebrate at the altar of the episcopal city in the presence of the priests of the city church578, and, as can be seen from this example, antiquity practiced these rules of respect and knew these privileges which are the expression of hierarchical dispositions. It was for the same reason that, in the assembly of the priests of Alexandria, the priests of the diocesan churches subscribed only after the priests and deacons of that illustrious Church.
578 Council of Neocesarea (between 314 and 325), can. 13; see supra, chapter 30, note 16.
380 Supported by these venerable examples, one will see without astonishment even in modern times, in many Churches, as we have reported above, the canons of cathedrals, and even the titulars of suburban Churches, associated with the canons in this action as cardinal priests of the titles of the city, surround the bishop at the head of the synodal assembly, and distinguish themselves above all the diocesan clergy in this union which they have with the episcopal pulpit. Also, the authority of the priests of the Episcopal Church, supported by these memories and traditions of origin, went sometimes in the first centuries to exceed the right limits, and the Council of Ancyra believed that it was necessary to repress their excessive undertakings in the diocesan churches579. It is thus based on the most ancient tradition that the authority and pre-eminence of the chapter of the cathedral churches appear in our day, in which all the rights of the ancient presbytery are perpetuated. But we must go further, and recognize in this prerogative the last application of a principle which we have already proposed on the occasion of the august dignity which raises the presbytery of the Roman Church and the Sacred College of Cardinals above all the Churches of the world. With the hierarchy of episcopal sees, a hierarchy of Churches has been formed. These Churches, like brides, share the honor of the royal crown of their spouses, at the same time as they are associated with their solicitude and their empire. Above them all appears the Roman Church, then the patriarchal and metropolitan Churches; below them, the Episcopal Churches, and finally, in the last rank, the Churches of the dioceses which have no bishops in their midst and depend entirely on the title of a principal Church. Thus the holy Church becomes like a spiritual heaven. The primitive heaven, in which the suns and the lower stars gravitate in admirable order, was first created to be the magnificent
579 Council of Ancyra (314), Rules of the Holy Fathers, nu. 13 and 18, LAB 1, 1462, 1463.
381 kingdom of angels. There, principal stars draw into their orbit like a pompous court of secondary suns. These, in their turn, have their satellites, down to those least planets devoid of light of their own, and which shine only by the radiation of the star of which they are the crown. The future world, which is the Church, has not been subjected to the angel, but to Christ (cf. Heb 2:5). Christ needs a heaven and stars worthy of him. Let us see this spiritual heaven, all illuminated by the light and splendor of God, appear and take shape through the word of Jesus Christ and the apostles. The Churches, new stars, emerge from the darkness of the ancient ignorance of the human race. They respond: "Here we are" (Ba 3:35) to the voice of the preaching of the Gospel which calls them "into the wonderful light" (1 Pet 2:9). They take their place and arrange themselves in an orderly fashion: a single and primary sun, the Roman Church, is at the center. Jesus Christ, presiding in this Church through his vicar, clothes it with his light and makes it the source of splendor and warmth, movement and life580. The secondary stars gravitate around it in admirable order and peace. The patriarchal and metropolitan churches form harmonious centers receiving and transmitting the divine impulse. In the last row of secondary suns move the Episcopal Churches. All these stars have a light of their own through the episcopate. They are celestial torches lit from the same source of light and which now throw out their ardent flames. Beyond them, like satellites obscure by themselves, appear the Churches of the dioceses, Churches which do not have in them the torch of the episcopate, and which receive, like the last stars, the light of a main focus which is not in them.
580 St. CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 5; PL 4, 502; "So is the Church of the Lord: she spreads the rays of her light throughout the universe, but one is the light which is thus spread everywhere... There is only one source, only one origin, only one mother, rich in the successive successes of her fecundity"; trans. DE LABRIOLLE, P. 13.
382 This is the animated heaven which the holy Catholic Church presents to our contemplation in the course of the ages and through the lapse of time. This concert will not be silenced. The great sun of the Roman Church will never be extinguished. Yet the world and time will pass. But if, in this imperfect age, and in the midst of the struggles and infirmities of the present life, the heaven of the Church appears so magnificent to us, what will become of the magnificence and clarity of this same Church in the eternity of its triumph? Moreover, let us remember that the Churches of the dioceses were most often established, in the beginning, by the preaching of the priests of the Episcopal Church: that this one possessed, with regard to all the others, by fact as well as by right, the quality of Mother Church and that all the others considered themselves as her daughters.
383 CHAPTER XXXII
Monastic churches
Constitution of the Monastic Churches
The Churches, stars of the new heaven whose admirable order we have described, are the ardent hearths of supernatural life. Now, this life is developed by the ardors of charity in souls, with the double help of the precepts and the evangelical counsels. And, as the practice of the counsels gives it greater intensity, there was from the beginning within the faithful people a nucleus of Christian life which was in some way more substantial, formed by souls who, by a special and higher vocation, embracing by state the practice of the evangelical counsels, renounced from this life all possession in the things of this world and united themselves to Jesus Christ by a more perfect detachment. Religious life appeared from the very beginning of the Church. We affirm this without fear following the whole tradition, for, according to the teaching of the doctors, the Church began with it in the very person of the apostles and their first disciples (cf. Mt. 19:27)581.
581 St. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS, Homily 7 on St. Matthew: "Will you, monk, be my disciple? Do, you too, what Peter did, what James and John did."(*) - ID, Homily 69 on St. Matthew - The apostles accomplished what the monks now accomplish."(*). - St. AUGUSTIN, City of God, 1. 17, c. 4, IL, 6; PL 41, 530: "These mighty men had said to him, 'We have forsaken all and followed you' (Mt. 19:27). Here is an offering which testifies to great power! G. COMBÈS (BA, 36), p. 367. Saint BASIL, Monastic Constitutions, c. 22, n. 4; PG 31, 1407: "For Christ chose disciples to leave to men a certain form of this way of life, as was said of us before." - St. Jerome, Treaty of Illustrious Men, 11; PL 23, 658: "In the early Church, the faithful were what the monks of today strive and desire to be"; trans. BAREILLE, Œuvres complètes de saint Jérôme, t. 3, p. 288. - CASSIAN, Conferences, n. 18, eh. 5; PL 49, 1094-1095: "The cenobitic life originated at the time of the apostolic preaching. It is, in fact, this life that we see appearing in Jerusalem, in all that multitude of the faithful, of which the book of Acts gives us this picture... It was, I repeat, the whole Church which then presented this spectacle, which it is no longer possible to see today except with difficulty and in a very small number, in the houses of
384 But without first entering into the history of the developments which the religious state successively took, of the extraordinary missions which God entrusted to it, and of the various forms which it assumed, we confine ourselves at present to considering it in its relations to the life of the particular Churches. For who can fail to see that this excellent gift, this superior grace of religious life given to the Catholic Church, must spread to all its parts, and that the particular Churches, which are all, in the mystery of its unity, a bride of Jesus Christ, must also receive this precious ornament and adorn themselves with this delicate pearl of perfect charity? In the early days, Christians who embraced the religious profession, called ascetics, lived within the Churches, under the guidance of the bishops, without forming a distinct body and without having among themselves any other bond than that of the ecclesiastical government which was common to them with the rest of the faithful. Without doubt, from that time on there were religious assembled in small communities, as far as circumstances permitted. The nature of things and even certain texts from antiquity authorize us to think so. However, these attempts and these weak beginnings did not yet have the character of a public and general institution. But when peace was given to the Church, religious life, making use of the newly acquired freedom, immediately took off with the solemn constitution of monasteries. Religious, until then mixed with the rest of the Christian people, assembled among themselves and formed regular communities, sheltered by common dwellings, at the same time as others, penetrating into the deserts and impelled by the Spirit to embrace the solitary life, composed there, under the guidance of the patriarchs of solitude, vast agglomerations of hermitages and cells582. From the beginning, the bishops had to give priests and pastors to this people of the
cenobites"; trans. PICHERY (SC, 64), p. 15. - St. BERNARD (1090-1153), Apology to William of St. Thierry, 24; PL 182, 912: "(The order of monks or religious) which was the first order in the Church; moreover, it was through it that the Church began...; the apostles were its founders..." 582 Council of Ephesus (431), ch. 48, LAB 3, 1216: "This was read in the church of the monks who lived in the deserts."
385 ascetics, monks and hermits. And so, in the dioceses, alongside the common parishes, the parish of the perfects, the monastery, was established, and alongside the title of the Churches of the people of the diocese, the title of the monastery was formed, a title mentioned by the Council of Chalcedon after that of the Episcopal Church and that of the town or parish without a bishop583. The no-as monastery appears, in fact, from the beginning, as a true Church, in possession of all its essential properties. This Church has its clergy, a priest at first, and soon, according to the requirements of the monastic population, a more or less numerous college, a true presbytery, assisted by deacons and ministers584;
below this is the people of the monastery, "the crowd of the laity of the monastery," as an ancient text585 speaks, that is, the multitude of religious who form the lay element of these churches. From the point of view of hierarchy, nothing distinguishes the monastic Churches from the other Churches of the diocese; they are separated from them only by the religious profession and the particular discipline of those who compose them. They are indeed Churches in the fullest sense of the word, but they are holier Churches and more advanced in the work, common to all, of the sanctification of their members. And what we say of monasteries of men must also be understood of monasteries of women, placed like the former under the direction of priests who are their immediate pastors and who are assisted, according to the demands of their ministry, by deacons and clerics. The monasteries thus fully organized were thus under a double authority. On the one hand, the domestic authority of the masters of the
583 Council of Chalcedon (451), session 15, can. 6, LABBE 4, 757, MANSI 7, 416-417: "No one is to be ordained in an absolute manner, neither priest, nor deacon, nor cleric, unless he is assigned in particular a city church, or a village church, or a martyrium, or a convent (monastèriô)"...; trans. HÉFÉLÉ 2, 788. 584 St. JÉRÔME, Funeral Oration of St. Paule (Letter 108), 14; PL 22, 890: "Innumerable troops of monks, many of whom were honored with the orders of the priesthood and the diaconate"; trans. LABOURT, t. 5, p. 174. - St. AUGUSTIN, Letter 60, "to Pope Aurelius," Bishop of Carthage: "In the holy militia of the clergy, to which we are accustomed to admit only the most worthy and tried monks"; trans. PERONNE, vol. 4, p. 490. 585 Council of Arles (455), LABBE 4, 1024, MANSI 7, 908, HEFEL 2, 886-887.
386 monastic life and religious superiors constituted them in the state of monasteries; and on the other hand, the hierarchical authority of the ecclesiastical government constituted them in the state of churches. This latter authority, placed by its very nature above the monastic authority and responsible for approving, directing and moderating it, was constantly exercised by the priests and clergy sent by the bishop. We know from the monuments of history and the statutes of the Fathers of the Solitude how great and respected was this authority of the priests prepossessed in the Churches of the deserts of Nitria and Shetea, in the monasteries of Tabenna, and in the first monasteries of the West586. This double monastic and ecclesiastical superiority continued to be exercised distinctly in the women's monasteries, without ever being able to be confused with them. But ecclesiastical history teaches us that in men's monasteries it was not long before, for reasons of convenience easy to appreciate, priests and ministers of her Church587 were drawn from within the community itself. By a kind of right of presentation naturally attached to his office, the abbot, charged with representing the interests of the whole people of the monastic Church, and in whom this people personified itself, so to speak, ordinarily chose the subjects destined for the clerkship and presented them to the bishop588. Soon the abbots
586 Life of St. Pacomius, c. 24, in Lives of the Fathers, 1. 1; PL 73, 245: "Therefore, clerics who are in communion with the Churches of Christ should be venerated with great gentleness and purity, for this is useful to the monks." - Cf. St. BENEDICT OF ANIANA (c. 750-821), Rules of the Holy Fathers; PL 103, 447ff.; Rule of Serapion, Macarius...; PL 103, 435-442. 587 St. CYRILUS OF ALEXANDRIA († 444), Letter to the Bishops of Lybia and Pentapolis; PG 77, 366, LABBE 3, 1489. - CASSIAN, Conferences, n. 4, c. 1; PL 49, 584-585: "The merit of his purity and gentleness designated him (Abbot Daniel) to the choice of the blessed Paphnutius, who was the priest of that solitude, to raise him... to the office of deacon.... He promoted him during his lifetime to the honor of the priesthood"; trans. PICHERY (SC, 42), p. 167. - Lives of the Fathers, 1. 5, c. 15, n. 29; PL 73, 959-960. 588 St. GREGOIRE, Book 6, Letter 42, to Bishop Victor; PL 77, 830: "Urbicus abbot of the monastery of St. Hermas, situated at Panorme (=Palermo, in Sicily), has urged Us with his community that a priest be ordained in that same monastery, to celebrate holy mass (sacra missarum solemnia); and as such a request should not be kept waiting, We have hereby deemed it necessary to urge your fraternity to consecrate a member of this community,
387 were themselves generally invested with the priesthood, or at least with the order of the diaconate, and thereby became themselves the ecclesiastical heads of their communities, henceforth uniting over their heads the twofold authority of ecclesiastical jurisdiction and of monastic superiority589. Under these conditions, the abbot becomes, from the point of view of the hierarchy, a true archpriest, head of a college of priests or presbytery and of a more or less numerous Church. The monastic Church is fully in possession of itself with its particular physiognomy; its clergy is drawn from its bosom; it belongs to it by religious profession, which is the monastic birth, as the clergy of the other Churches generally belong to them by baptism and clerical education; it thus forms a more homogenous whole. Moreover, with time, the number of priests and clerics increased in the monasteries: the sanctity of the life professed there and the assiduous service which the monks rendered to God in the holy psalms demanded for them a more general initiation into the clergy, and nothing was more legitimate than the movement of discipline which was made in this direction. But, whatever may be the proportion, different according to the times, between the laity and the clerics who inhabit the monasteries, the hierarchical situation of these holy Churches remains no less in conformity with that of all the others, for they have their priests, their
chosen for this ministry and whose life, morals, and conduct will be suitable for so great a ministry." 589 The Acts of the Council of Constantinople (536) include various supplications signed by several hundred superiors of monasteries; now, most of these superiors take the quality of priests, a few that of deacons; a very few are not clothed with an ecclesiastical order: LABBE 5, 31-250, MANSI 8, 905 ff., HÉFÉ 2, 1146-1154. - In the West, the Synod of Auxerre (578), the 15th and 16th Councils of Toledo (688 and 693), the Council of Frankfurt (794), and most later Councils put abbots before priests, which indicates, Thomassin notes, that from then on abbots were generally priests; THOMASSIN, Ancienne et nouvelle Discipline de l'Église, lre partie, 1. 3, chap. 15, B. 5, vol. 2, p. 556. - The Council of Rome (826), can. 27, even orders that "only capable men should be chosen as abbots in the cœnobia, or, as they say now, in the monasteries. They are to be priests, so that they may remit sins to the brethren under their jurisdiction"; summary of HEFEL 4:52.
388 ministers and their followers. Time and the necessities of the people soon demanded new services from these churches and brought new developments to them. The priestly monks and ministers had to extend their action beyond the limits of their cloisters590; secular populations, evangelized by them, were placed under their ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and henceforth formed with the monastery one body of Church of which the monks were the clergy, and of which the Christian people were the secular element. With regard to the latter, in fact, the abbots of the great communities and the priors of the lesser monasteries were clothed with the pastoral charge and exercised all the solicitude591. History teaches us the immense spiritual labors which were undertaken by the monks founders and pastors of the Churches. Through them the barbarians were evangelized and eased into the yoke of Christian discipline; through them, from one end of Europe to the other, the Churches were established and secured for all time the conquests of evangelical preaching and the fruit of the labors of the missionaries, introducing the peoples into the divine edifice of the Catholic hierarchy and providing them with its benefits. The monasteries enter into the hierarchy of the Churches and bring with them the peoples who belong to them. Similar to all the others in their essential constitution, the monastic Churches are capable of receiving a more or less high rank in this hierarchy. Some monasteries become episcopal or metropolitan Churches; others, in a secondary rank, Churches nevertheless populous and flourishing under the
590 From the earliest days of the cenobitic life, St. Pachomius had his monks minister to a newly founded church; but this ministry was provisional, the monks not yet being generally raised to the clerkship. Lives of the Fathers, 1. 1, Life of St. Pachomius, c. 26; PL 73, 246; Life of St. Pachomius, c. 11, B. 86 in Acta Sanctorum, vol. 16, p. 328; SOCRATES, Ecclesiastical History, 1. 8, c. 17; PG 67, 1559. 591 From the ninth century onward, councils rendered a large number of canons concerning the parishes dependent on abbeys. For example, Council of Mainz (847), can. 14, LABBE 8, 46, MANSI 14, 907: "Let the monks give an account to the bishop or his vicar of their own titles where they are placed, let them be summoned and come to the synod."
389 conduct of an abbot, an archpriest in the true sense of the word and head of a college of priests, extend their action all around, and, through the priories, which are like so many lesser titles, are subdivided into parishes of a lower order. And while the monasteries of the diocese thus form distinct and complete Churches in themselves, those of the episcopal city and of the large cities, when they do not constitute the cathedral Churches, come to shelter in the focus of these Churches and take their place there among the urban and suburban titles which form their crown. Thus we see monasteries founded within the walls and on the outskirts of cities belonging to these Churches, and, without breaking the unity of these Churches, being assimilated, as far as their canonical situation is concerned, to the cardinal titles of these same Churches. It was by virtue of this assimilation that the clergy of these monasteries were united with the other bodies of the clergy of the episcopal cities in the stations and holy functions over which the bishops592 presided, and that they took part in the elections and in all the great acts of the ecclesiastical life of the cities. Such was the situation in the East of the monasteries of Constantinople; such, in the West, was the situation of the urban and suburban monasteries of Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Paris, of the monasteries of Vienne, Besançon, and the other cities of the Gauls. But, above all the churches of the world, such was the discipline that the Roman Church kept, giving to all the others the form and the example. The monasteries contained in its bosom formed and served several titles of the city, and their abbots, who sometimes took the name of abbot cardinal, belonged so closely to the Roman Church that they sat in the senate of its cardinals and took part, confused with its clergy, in all the considerable events of its inner life593.
592 Cf. Le Pastoral de l'Église de Paris, manuscript in the National Archives. 593 Synod of Rome (433), chap. 5, from Symmaquian Apocrypha, Gesta de Xysti purgatione, LABBE 3, 1268, MANSI 5, 1064: "Bishop Sixtus prayed to the priests of the city of Rome and the clergy and on the other hand to the monasteries of the servants of God, and they assembled to discuss in the basilica of St. Helena."
390 Canonical Order and Monastic Order
This hierarchical character of the monasteries, in bringing them into the great family of the Churches, leads us to speak of the famous distinction which was then made, within the hierarchy itself, between the one and the other discipline which was observed there. While in the hierarchical order, the Episcopal Churches and the titles of the cities, the rural Churches and the smallest parishes kept among themselves the rank assigned to them, from the point of view of the observances these same Churches could belong, it was said, to the monastic Order or to the canonical Order. This distinction is very important, because by showing the religious life introduced into the hierarchy, it is sufficient to establish that in the eyes of tradition this life is essentially compatible with the constitution of the titular clergy of the churches. This distinction appeared, moreover, from the very beginning, for it is conceived in germ in the formula of the Council of Laodicea, distinguishing two kinds of consecration to God, the clerical and the ascetic594, a formula of which the famous designations of Canonical Order and Monastic Order so many times proclaimed in the councils and capitularies of the century of Charlemagne are but the translation applied to the full development of these primitive elements595. It dominates the whole history of the particular Churches in the Middle Ages, and is still maintained by the holy Council of Trent when it distinguishes between monastic and purely ecclesiastical or canonical benefices596. It is true that today the latter are called secular benefices, because the canonical Order has generally embraced the secular state. But it was not so in the origin, and there is nothing to this
594 Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381), can. 30, LABBE 1, 1512, MANSI 2, 569, HEFLEY 1, 1016: "Let the people of the Church, clerics and ascetics..." 595 Capitulars, 1. 6, c. 301: "That in both men's and women's monasteries and in the presbyteries outside... they live according to the canonical rule or according to the monastic rule." 596 Council of Trent, session 14 (1551), Decree of Reformation, can. 10 and 11, EHSES 10, 389-390; session 24 (1563), Decree of Reformation, can. 17. EHSES 9, 986, EHSES 10, 579.
391 of essence. Also, if the Canonical Order and the Monastic Order are opposed to each other by the ancient distinction we recall, this distinction is not based on a necessary exclusion of religious profession in the Canonical Order, a profession which would be by nature reserved only to the Monastic Order. On the contrary, the canonical order, that is, the properly clerical state, which more especially began in the person of the apostles and their disciples, the first clergy of the nascent Church, was always invited by their example to the practice of the evangelical counsels597. It might even be argued that monks raised to the clerkship, and bearing in holy orders the previous obligations of the religious life, belong in a very true sense by ordination to the Canonical Order; for, keeping the commitments of their religious profession, they find nothing in these commitments which is not suitable for the perfection of the clerkship. We would still have to explain here how religious life originally reigned, though with less uniformity, in the clergy of the churches which did not belong to the monastic order. We would have to show how this expression of Canonical Order was
597 Roman Pontifical, tonsure: "Each one says while his hair is cut, 'The Lord! Here is my portion of the inheritance and my cup. It is you, Lord, who will give me back my inheritance"; trans. Ordinations4, C.P.L. ed., 1958, p. 6. - St. Jerome, Letter 52, to the priest Nepotian, 5; PL 22, 531: "Let the cleric, who is attached to the service of Christ's Church, first translate his name, let him first define the word, then let him strive to be as he is called. Klèros in Greek is said in Latin sors. Clerics are so called, either because they belong to the Lord's "lot" or because the Lord himself is the "lot," that is, the clerics' share of the inheritance. But he who is himself the Lord's portion, or who has the Lord as his portion, must show himself as possessing the Lord and as himself being possessed by the Lord. He who possesses the Lord and says with the Prophet: 'My portion is the Lord', must have nothing outside the Lord, for if he has anything else outside the Lord, the Lord will not be his portion". LABOURT, vol. 2, pp. 177-178. - Council of Nîmes (1096), can. 3, LABBE 10, 607, MANSI 20, 934-935: "It is necessary that those who have left the world have a greater zeal to pray for the sins of men and are more capable of absolving sins than secular priests. For these live according to the rule of the apostles and lead the common life following their examples...; therefore it seems to you that those who have left their possessions for God can more worthily baptize, give communion, impose penance and remit sins."
392 far from excluding religious profession as the modern expression of the secular clergy does, and, without making this blessed state an absolute obligation, nevertheless contained a pressing invitation to embrace it. It would be necessary to show how religious discipline, which in more modern times only the canons regular have kept without ceasing to belong to the canonical order, was encouraged, recommended and more or less closely practiced in all the Churches, even though the simple name of clerics was sufficient to designate it in the early days without any other particular qualification. This would be the justification of St. Pius V's doctrine on the state of the canons regular598, the last remnants of this primitive religion of the clergy: "the canons regular, who were called clerics in the first centuries of the Church"599, and the justification at the same time of the maxim of the ancients about the perfection of the clerical state compared to the monastic state: "monachus vix clericus," "with a monk, one has great' difficulty in making a cleric"600. But this exposition would carry us too far; we shall return to this subject in the special study we shall make of the religious state and its various developments. We propose here mainly to expose to the reader what touches the constitution of the Churches, and it was necessary to show by what side, in accordance with canon 6 of Chalcedon601, the monasteries are themselves Churches and belong to the admirable and harmonious hierarchy which embraces them all in its unity. Let us, however, make a final remark necessary for the understanding of these matters.
598 St. Pius V (1566-1572), Bull Cum ex ordine (December 19, 1570), in CHERUBINI, Bullarium Romanum (continuatio), Luxemburg, t. 2, pp. 345-346: "Therefore, as we believe, beloved sons, all of you canons regular of the Order of St. Augustine of the Lateran, which Order derives its origins from the apostles and which was reformed by the same St. Augustine... ) 599 Roman Martyrology, with supplement for the religious Orders, rubric of the Martyrology of Canons Regular, ed. Mechelen, 1846, p. 282. 600 St. Jerome, Letter 54, to the widow Furia, 5; PL 22, 552: "As if they themselves (the priests) were of a different essence from the monks, as if all that is said against the monks did not rebound on the clerics, who are the fathers of the monks"; trans. LABOURT, vol. 3, pp. 28-29. 601 See above note 3.
393 In all that we have just said of the monastic state united to the life of the particular Churches and taking its place in their hierarchy, we have heard only of the monastic order proper. The monastic order, first governed by the various rules of the East and the primitive rules of the West, then reduced in the Latin Church to the single discipline of the rule of St. Benedict, then subdivided again as to the practices of the cloister by the various observances of this single rule, has never ceased, under these various forms, to constitute, in each of the places where it was established and by each of its monasteries, true Churches in the hierarchical sense of the word, having in the monks themselves their priests and their titular ministers, in accordance with the sixth canon of Chalcedon renewed at the Council of Trent. We have not heard of religious orders properly speaking, mendicant orders or regular clerics. God raised up these great institutes in the course of time and through them gave magnificent flourishing to the religious life. But the providential mission they received is more immediately concerned with the universal Church, and they are not attached to the life of any particular Church. Their mission is essentially the apostolate; as clergy of the universal Church alone, they remain at the disposal of its head, the Supreme Pontiff, spread throughout the world and serving all the Churches without being clerics of any one of them by a restricted title or a particular bond. They are intended to give the people apostles and not pastors. The universal Church thus receives their services, and all the Churches benefit from their work. Admirable creations of the Holy Spirit in modern times, they appear in every century, raised up at the hour assigned to them to support the ever new struggles of the Bride of Jesus Christ; they mysteriously support, as was shown to Pope Innocent 111 (1198-1216)602, the Church shaken by the tremors of revolutions, the violence of heresies, and the laxities of discipline. In this glorious em-
602 See below, chapter 34, note 55.
394 ploy, they fill the pages of ecclesiastical history with their names, their benefits, the virtues of their saints, and the labors of their doctors.
395 CHAPTER XXXIII
The mission in the particular church
The bishop, source and principle
The holy notion of episcopal primacy within the particular Church shows us in the bishop the source and principle -of all the activities that are in it. He is sent to this Church. He who receives him receives Jesus Christ, and it is to receive the bishop that he receives those whom he has associated with himself by sending them in turn. It is through him, then, that the mission which comes from Jesus Christ descends to the priests and lower ministers. It is therefore to him that it belongs to communicate to them all power and all jurisdiction over his people, just as it belongs to him to lay hands on them. It is also an old maxim of law, as well as a natural consequence of the principles of the hierarchy, that the conferring of the office or benefice, by a sort of faithful imitation, follows the same course as the conferring of the sacred order itself. Just as the Supreme Pontiff is the source of all ecclesiastical power in the episcopate and in the universal Church, so, by the nature of the hierarchy, the bishops are the source and principle of the powers which appear in the government of the particular Church. In the application of these maxims, however, there is this great difference between the universal Church and the particular Church, that the action of the Supreme Pontiff, being absolutely sovereign, is bound by laws only in so far as it wishes to bind itself, but that the authority of the bishops, on the contrary, in its exercise, can be and is in fact subject to all the restrictions of the higher legislation of the universal Church. This legislation has established or authorized, in the course of the ages, various conditions to which the authority of bishops in the communication of ecclesiastical jurisdiction must submit and comply. These conditions have been sometimes the previous intervention of patrons or presenters, sometimes the concurrence of chapters and ecclesiastical bodies
396 tics. Sometimes these laws even confirmed the possession in which the chapters or other ecclesiastical persons had placed themselves of conferring the offices of the Church by a tacit communication of episcopal authority, which gradually became an acquired right which custom made irrevocable. Hence this diversity of apparent sources of jurisdiction in the same Church; but, if one goes to the bottom of things, it must be recognized that the collators, other than the bishop himself, act radically in the name of the bishop and by a power originally derived from him. Derogations from the hierarchical right cannot go as far as the very substance of this right, and, if we take things at their most substantial level, there is only one source of jurisdiction in the Church, one principle of authority, and one center to which it must always be linked. It is not our intention to set forth here all the forms followed in the conferring of ecclesiastical offices and all the derivations which have been made over time from this primordial power of the episcopate. This subject forms a considerable part of the treatises on canon law. To the right to confer ecclesiastical authority within the particular Church corresponds that of stripping the subject of it by a just judgment. Just as it belongs to the Supreme Pontiff to depose bishops, so it belongs to the bishop, in his Church, to depose inferior clerics. But it is principally in this matter that the Church, like a merciful mother, has placed limits and guarantees on the exercise of this fearful right by her laws. In ancient times she required the presence of six bishops and as the sentence of a council to depose a priest603, of three
603 GRATIAN, Decree, 2nd part, cause 15, question 7, can. 3, 4; PL 187, 985-986. - Cf. I Council of Carthage (349), can. 11, LABBE 2, 717, MANSI 3, 148, Island.
397 bishops to depose a deacon. Modern law gives the accused further guarantees in a procedure full of caution and in the constitution of an episcopal tribunal surrounded by wise precautions. It is necessary that the episcopal authority, always paternal, temper, in the very correction of the guilty, justice with mercy, seeking more the healing of a sick limb than a rigorous and exemplary punishment604. What we say here of episcopal authority as the sole source of jurisdiction within the particular Church must be understood without prejudice to another source superior to it and placed in the universal Church. We are speaking of the authority of the Supreme Pontiff, which immediately reaches every part of the whole body of the Church, and which can, at its own discretion, confer all offices and ministries in each particular Church, just as it can always and without restriction render judgments, exercise justice, and pronounce sentences in it. We will speak in its place of the manifestations of this power of the Supreme Pontiffs in the particular Churches.
Mandates and delegates
If the bishop is the source from which the titular clerics in the particular Churches derive their hierarchical existence and the amount of power attributed to them, with the stability of the title, by way of possession and habit, all the more reason can the bishop always, within the limits where his primordial right has not been restricted by the legislation of the universal Church, exercise himself and directly through the mandataries all or part of his authority. He can therefore give himself, when he pleases, vicars, or delegate such part of the ecclesiastical power as suits him. He can also, by the same reason, authorize in the Churches which depend on him the ministry of clerics foreign to these Churches.
Council of Carthage (390), can. 10, LABBE 2, 1162, MANSI 3, 872, HÉFÉLÉ 2, 78; III Council of Carthage (397), can. 8, LABBE 2, 1162, MANSI 3, 881. 604 Cf. E. JOMBART, art. Deposition, in Catholicism, vol. 3 (1952), col. 637 and the Code of Canon Law, can. 2303-2401, 1576
398 These shall receive from his delegation the power to preach there, permission to legitimately exercise the sacred ministry and administer the sacraments, and, if he sees fit, the very authority of the government as administrators deputed by him. Among the clerics who are foreign to the Churches in whose service the bishops employ them by simple delegation, we must count the vague clerics, that is, clerics ordained without a title of benefice or who have been legitimately released from the bond of this title. The vague clerics are, in the substance of the law, foreign clerics in all the Churches, since they do not belong to the canon of any of them. The Church, by her constant legislation, requires that clerics be titled to the Churches; but she can, however, appreciating the convenience of the ministry or the necessities of the apostolate, dispense with her laws and allow the existence of vague clerics. Thus, the great religious Orders which do not belong to any particular Church are very legitimately and usefully made up of vague clerics, and thereby give to the world apostles who are not attached to any Church, so that they may more freely come to the aid of all parts of the flock of Jesus Christ. In ancient times, the vague clerics, ordained by a derogation, very rare in those times, from the general discipline of the Church, kept all their freedom and went wherever the bishops wanted to receive their services and use their activity. St. Jerome tells us that, ordained by the bishop of Antioch under the condition of not belonging to that Church, he had retained his freedom with regard to the choice of his residence and the kind of holy occupation he wished to embrace605. But from early on the bishops were obliged to keep the care and charge of the vague clerics ordained by them. Thus there was formed, next to the title of the benefice, a bond properly hier-
605 St. Jerome, To Pammachius, Against John of Jerusalem, 41; PL 23, 410-411: "Have I asked you to confer the sacrament of order upon me? If you grant the priesthood in such a way as not to erase in us the character of a monk, it is a matter for your discernment..."; trans. BAREILLE, vol. 3, p. 57.
399 rarchical bond which attaches the cleric to his Church, a disciplinary bond which attaches the untitled cleric to his diocese. We say that this bond is disciplinary rather than properly hierarchical; but it is not, however, absolutely devoid of all relation to the title, which alone is essentially hierarchical, of the benefice; for clerics ordained without a Church title, even though they have not at present contracted this sacred bond in their ordination and it has constituted them in the state of vague clerics, seem destined in advance to contract it some day by the very bond which, in this ordination, has attached them to their diocese. It is, in fact, in their ranks, as in a reserve all prepared, that the bishop will always be able to choose those whom he will later call to titles and benefices; he will complete by a later collation what is lacking in the ordination they have received, and he will complete its effects by producing in them this final act of the powers contained in the sacred order. Thus the bond of the diocese which is contracted in the vague ordination is in some way a beginning of the bond of the title itself, and the title subsequently received comes to give it its complement. The Council of Trent, in renewing the sixth canon of Chalcedon and forbidding vague ordinations, proposed to bring all the clergy back to the primitive discipline which attached them to the Churches and to restore all the old order of it606. However, he still allowed the bishop to celebrate some ordi-
.
606 Council of Trent, session 23 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 16, EHSES 9, 627: "Since no one is to be ordained who is not judged by his bishop to be useful or necessary to his churches, the holy council, in accordance with the 66th canon of the Council of Chalcedon, decrees that no one in the future is to be ordained who is not attached to the church or pious place, for the necessity or usefulness of which he is chosen: he is to perform his duties there and is not to remain a vagabond without a fixed abode. If he abandons his residence without the permission of the bishop, he will be forbidden to perform his duties". MICHEL in HEFEL 10, 500-501. - Canon 17, loc. cit., 627-628: " ... The holy council decrees that in the future these functions (of deacon up to those of porter) shall be exercised only by those who are constituted in the said orders, and it exhorts in the name of the Lord the prelates of the churches, one and all, and orders them to take care to re-establish, as far as is easily possible, the use of the said functions in the cathedral, collegiate, and parish churches of their diocese..."; ibid., p. 501.
400 nations without title for the needs of his diocese, and in order to form in his bosom as it were a nucleus of clerics destined to exercise under his direction an auxiliary and apostolic ministry, at the same time as they form by their very situation for the titles of the churches a useful reserve607. As we shall see in its place, the times had not yet permitted the implementation of the decree of the Council of Trent renewing the sixth canon of Chalcedon. The bishops, in the midst of troubled societies and uncertainties about the future, and in the absence of a sufficient number of ecclesiastical titles for all the ministries, have recourse generally to vague ordinations for the recruitment of the clergy, just as they multiply the delegated and revocable ministries. But this imprescriptible decree of the holy council remains as a waiting stone of the unfinished edifice and belongs to its great design of the complete restoration of the hierarchical discipline of the churches.
607 Council of Trent, Session 21 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 2, EHSES 8, 701: "It is not fitting that those who have entered the service of God should, to the shame of their profession, be compelled to beg or forced to earn their living by sordid employment... The holy council orders that no secular cleric, even one otherwise suitable from the point of view of morals, science, and age, may in future be promoted to sacred orders, if beforehand it is not legally proven that he peacefully possesses an ecclesiastical benefice sufficient to maintain him honestly..."; trans. MICHEL, loc. cit, pp. 420-421. - Current law takes up this prescription of Trent: Code of Canon Law, can. 979-982
401 CHAPTER XXXIV
History of the particular Churches
After having briefly set forth in this treatise the constitution of the particular Churches, we must quickly follow their history in the course of the centuries. We shall have to show the reader how, under the variable forms and accidental changes brought about by time, the divine principles of the hierarchy, mysteriously guarded by divine Providence, have passed through the revolutions of human societies, and how the Holy Spirit, animating the whole body of the Church, has never ceased to inspire the Sovereign Pontiffs and the Councils with jealous care and vigilant solicitude for their integral maintenance. Until the Council of Trent, which was the last great legislative and disciplinary event in the Catholic Church, and pending the successful resumption of the work of the Vatican Council, this has been and always will be the fundamental law of the history of canon law. No doubt the Church, who wishes to condescend to the changing needs of humanity and to apply to it in all times the saving remedies of the Redemption, will know how to diversify, so to speak, to infinity the forms of her action and the interplay of her organs; but, in this very diversity, the substance of the institutions will always be respected, and the changes which will occur will stop at the surface and they will leave intact the divine and unchanging work which makes up their substance. We have set forth in our second part608 how the legitimate exercise of all the powers entrusted to the hierarchy could be indefinitely modified at the whim of the legislator or the superior without its own being shaken. The various ministers of the Church can be deprived of all or part of the present exercise of their jurisdiction by prohibitions and reservations, legitimate acts of the superior, just as they can be invested by him with mandates and delegations which extend their action and increase their power. The priesthood of the Catholic Church, while thus retaining its im-
608 See above, chapter 10.
402 muable constitution, presents to our eyes an inexhaustible variety in the distribution of its activity, always ready to bend to all social states and to all the necessities of the people. The mandates and reservations which in turn restrain or extend the action of ecclesiastical persons derive from three sources. First, the ecclesiastical superiors, that is, the bishop in his diocese and the Pope throughout the world, may at any time and by measure of simple administration delegate some part of their authority or restrict in its exercise that of their subjects without these mandates or reservations having the character of a lasting act of the legislator. In the second place, these same superiors, acting as legislators, may make reservations or give themselves proxies by stable provisions and by form of permanent law. Finally, in the third place, custom, that is, again the legislator sanctioning by tacit consent what he could establish by an express act, may be the source of these mandates and reservations having the character and stability of institutions of law. Considered from the side of the ecclesiastical persons whom the reservations reach or whom the mandates elevate, these modifications of the exercise of spiritual power are of two kinds: some are attached to the individual person at the will of the superior and for the time or object which he determines; others are attached to the title and office itself, are transmissible with the office, and more or less profoundly transform the function which belongs to it in the life of the hierarchical body. Thus the Pope can invest any ecclesiastical person with a specific apostolic mandate and give himself legates or mandataries whose mission begins and ends by an express act of his will, just as he can also annex in perpetuity and by form of institution the powers of a legate or a jurisdiction emanating from the Holy See to an episcopal see, to an abbey or to some other ecclesiastical dignity. He can suspend temporarily the exercise of the jurisdiction of a bishop, just as he can by a permanent law place reservations on that jurisdiction. Likewise the bishop may give himself vicars and officers re
403 vocables at his pleasure, vest delegates and visitors with his authority, whose commission is personal and transitory, as also he may attach or allow to be attached by custom, in the manner of a permanent institution, a communication of episcopal powers to an ecclesiastical title or office; And so it was that the archdeacons, invested with the confidence of the bishops, saw with time the quality of episcopal vicar attached to their title and transmitted with it. The resources which the somewhat infinite diversity of mandates and reservations places at the disposal of the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops have enabled them to draw from the very simple unity of the hierarchical orders, without detracting from this unity, the innumerable variety of offices and functions which the course of the ages has seen arise, grow, and at times die out and disappear with the causes which made them useful or necessary. We shall not insist further on these general outlines; but before beginning this rapid history of the particular Church, we must make one last observation. The changes in the appearance of the institutions and the revolutions that we will be recounting cannot be stopped at such precise dates, nor can they be confined to such definite periods that many particular facts are not an exception to the general overviews that we will be offering the reader. These glimpses are absolutely accurate only in their generality; for it is in the nature of things that such movements in law and its practical applications begin with a few exceptional manifestations in certain places, before extending to the whole of Christendom, just as the previous states of discipline leave here and there monuments and witnesses which local customs maintain, and which deposit the ancient conditions of life of the ecclesiastical body.
Until the barbarian invasions
In early times, the particular Church offers the spectacle of greater simplicity. It is in the nature of things that the relations of persons and the necessities of government multiply and become more complicated with the course of ages and the development of institutions.
404 But what a beautiful spectacle a Church of the first centuries presents to us, in the bonds of the holy hierarchy which tighten all its parts and of the charity which animates it! At its head appear the bishop and the priests; below them, the people of the faithful; beyond them, the various orders of catechumens. The Church is gradually taking shape in the manner of the stars. The catechumens, coming ever closer, through the progress of their conversion, to the nucleus of the faithful people, become illuminated and warmed by the light of this focus and end up being absorbed in it, making it itself more vast and intense. All the supernatural life radiates and moves in a fruitful movement within the Church under the action of the priesthood which is in her. All its members are united with this priesthood and with each other by the communication of this life. They drink from the same source of the refreshing waves of truth, and their bishop is their only preacher. They receive from him, from his hand or through the ministry of his priests, the baptism and nourishment of life. They bow down under his pastoral government, and receive from him directions, advice and correction. On Sunday we see all this Church assembled around the same altar. The priests of his presbytery surround this altar, and the mystery of the priestly hierarchy is declared by the principal action of the bishop and the assistance of the priestly senate who celebrate with him. The deacons go from the altar to the people, and the faithful multitude fills the spaces of the basilica with its ranks609. This is the spectacle of which St. John celebrates the sacred type in his Revelation - a papal throne (Rev. 4:2), twenty-four elders with-
609 Didascalia of the Apostles, 12 (Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 57) PG 1, 726, 738; trans. NAU, La Didascalie des douze apôtres2, Lethielleux, 1912, pp. 112-113. Cf. Pierre BATIFFOL, Leçons sur la messe2, Gabalda, Paris, 1919, pp. 30-64; Henri CHIRAT, L'Assemblée chrétienne à l'âge apostolique, Cerf; Paris, 1949, (LO, 10), pp. 46-125, 171-201; Joseph JUNGMANN, S. J., Missarum solemnia, Aubier; Paris, 1956 (col. Theology, 19), vol. 1, pp. 32-72; ID., La Liturgie des premiers siècles, Cerf, Paris, 1962 (LO, 33), pp. 51-118; N.M. DENIS-BOULET, Euchariste ou la messe dans ses variétés, son histoire et ses origines, Letouzey, Paris, 1953, pp. 347406; ID. in MARTIMORT, L'Église en prière, Desclée et CIO, 1961, pp. 257279.
405 sis around (Rev 4.4), an altar set up in the middle (Rev 5.6), the voice of the martyrs resounding under this altar (Rev 6.9), seven burning torches, which are the seven spirits or deacons ready to descend wherever they are sent (Rev 4. 5; 5.6); finally, under the eyes of this pontiff and senate, the multitude and the people of the elect singing their song on golden harps (Rev 4.6; 14.2; 15.2-3). The Churches of the earth, described in this magnificent painting of the Church of heaven, form perfect communities from apostolic times, with a sacred bond that has all its strength. There is a community of spiritual goods: the preaching of the word of God and the sacraments are the treasure of this community (Acts 2:42); there is also a community of temporal goods: the offerings are put in common; at the beginning, the funds themselves were sold and the price was deposited at the feet of the presbytery (Acts 2:44-45) Finally, unity of government in the bishop's chair and the authority of the priests united to his. All the consequences of community life and all the aspects of this life are then developed within the Church. All the forces and all the religious activities of souls contribute to sustaining it and maintaining its vigor. First of all, it is the great and unique association of prayer in the holy liturgy. The faithful know no other public devotion than that of the holy synaxes, the liturgy, the holy psalmody and the sacred vigils. Also the prayer of the Church is not distinguished from popular religion, and St. Cyprian tells us how all the faithful conspired, at the sacred hours of third, sext and none, to form that mighty acclamation which rises from the Church to heaven610. The people were summoned to the vigils and psalmodies611, there
610 St. CYPRIAN (t 258), On the Lord's Prayer, 34-36; PL 4, 541-543; see supra, chapter 25, note 11. 611 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 59; PG 1, 743: "Gather together every day, morning and evening, to sing the psalms and to pray, in the houses of the Lord... Especially on the Sabbath and on the day of the Lord's resurrection, that is, on Sunday, run diligently to church to honor God, who created everything. through Jesus"; Didascalia of the Apostles, 13, ed. NAU, p. 116. - Saint BASIL (330-379),
406 was assiduous. There he heard the Holy Scriptures read, the Acts of the martyrs, the expositions of the doctors612, or, eagerly around the pulpit of his bishop, he received through his magisterium all the teaching of religion613. The Church was also the great and only charitable association. Its treasury, constantly replenished by the offerings of the faithful, was continually depleted by the great works it undertook. The faithful knew that a special grace accompanied their alms when they passed through the treasury of the Church and the hand of the bishop; that they became like a sacrifice mystically united to the Eucharistic oblation, and that they took on a sacred character when they were brought to the altar or poured into the altar treasury614. The bishop alone had the responsibility for the holy administration of
Letter 207, to the clerics of Neocesarea, 3; PG 32, 763: "During the night among us the people rise to go to the house of prayer, and in sorrow, in affliction, and in uninterrupted tears, they confess to God; at last they rise at the end of the prayers and pass on to psalmody. Then divided into two choirs, the faithful sing the psalms, answering each other... Thus, after having spent the night in the variety of a psalmody interspersed with prayers, as soon as the day begins to dawn, all together, as if with one mouth and one heart, raise to the Lord the psalm of confession (Ps. 50), and each one appropriates the words of repentance. If you flee from us because of this, you will flee from the Egyptians; you will flee from the inhabitants of the two Lybia, from the Thebans, from the inhabitants of Palestine, from the Arabs, from the Phoenicians, from the Syrians, and from those who dwell on the banks of the Euphrates, in a word from all those among whom vigils, prayers, and psalmody in common are honored"; trans. Y. COURTONNE, Saint Basil. Lettres, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1961, volume 2, p. 186. - Cf. THOMASSIN. Ecclesiastical Discipline, Part I, 1. 2, c. 72, vol. 2, pp. 191ff. 612 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 57; PG 1, 726-727: "In the middle, let the reader, standing in some high place, read the books of Moses and Joshua, son of Navah, the books of Judges and Kings, likewise the Paralipomena and what was written about the return of the people, especially the books of Job and Solomon." Third Council of Carthage (397), can. 47, LABBE 2, 1177, MANSI 3, 924: "It is permitted to read also the passions of the martyrs, when their birthdays are celebrated." 613 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 2, c. 57; PG 1, 730: "The priests shall teach the people, that is, each in turn, not all together; and, last of all, the bishop, similar to the captain of a ship." 614 ID., 1. 2, c. 27; PG 1, 671: "You must therefore, brethren, bring your gifts and offerings to the bishop, as to the pontiff (archierei), or by yourselves or through the deacons"; Didascalia of the Apostles, 9; NAU, p. 83.
407 these riches615. Out of this ever-moving and ever-inexhaustible fund, the Church fed the poor, and, at their head, the very ministers of the altar, who, in voluntary poverty, lived from the altar; she supported the sacred virgins and widows; she took in the orphans, exercised hospitality, and provided with holy profusion to increase the splendor of divine worship616. That if this was so from the time of persecution, this charitable life of the churches took on a far greater expansion when peace and freedom were given to them. It was then that everywhere magnificent basilicas were erected, hospices "comparable to vil-
615 Apostolic Canons, can. 39, LAB 1, 34; ed. Pitra, vol. 1, p. 21: "Let the bishop take care of all the goods of the Church and spend them, as in the presence of God." ID, can. 40, LAB 1, 34; ed. Pitra, vol. 1, p. 22: "We order that the bishop have under his authority the goods of the Church." - These texts repeat can. 24 and 25 of the Council of Antioch (341): "The goods belonging to the Church are to be kept with great care and a scrupulous conscience, and also with the thought that God sees and judges everything. They are to be administered under the supervision and authority of the bishop... It is just and pleasing to God and to men that the bishop should dispose of his own goods as he pleases..." (can. 24). - It is just and pleasing to God and to men that the bishop should dispose of his own goods as he sees fit..." (can. 24). "The bishop has the right to dispose of the goods of the Church in order to spend them for the benefit of the needy, with discernment and the fear of God" (can. 25); trans. HEFELE 1, 721-722. - Cf. THOMASSIN, Ecclesiastical Discipline, Part 3, 1. 2, chaps. 1-10, vol. 6, pp. 509-548. 616 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 3, c. 3; PG 1, 766: "Bishop, remember also the poor, stretch out a helping hand to them; and give them what they need, as the dispenser of God. Distribute in due time the help needed by everyone, by widows, by orphans, by those who lack all human help, and by those who are struggling in some misfortune." - Didascalia of the Apostles, 14: "Take care of them (widows), therefore, O bishop, and remember also the poor, take them by the hand and feed them. Even if some of them are not widows or widowers, if they need help and are in distress because of their poverty or illness or because of the raising of children, you must take care of them all and take care of them all; so those who give... will hand over (their alms) to you, so that you may distribute them well to those who need them... In every way' take care of the poor"; trans. NAU, p. 122. Council of Antioch (341), can. 25, LABBE 2, 574, MANSI 2, 1319 (continuation of the text quoted in note 8): "He can use it for himself according to his needs, for those close to him, or for the brothers who receive hospitality in his home and who must never lack the necessities of life, according to the words of the divine Apostle: 'Having food and clothing, we must be satisfied' (1 Tm 6.8)"; trans. HEFELÉ 1.722.
408 the617", monasteries for ascetics and virgins. The Church then had possessions, "not that she would not have preferred," says St. John Chrysostom, "to the earthly embarrassments caused by these possessions, the simple daily alms of the people,"618, but as a wise precaution and to secure the future against the slackening of charity and the necessities of the times. These daily alms, however, were still so abundant that St. Ambrose declares to his people that they would more than suffice for all the needs and requirements of charity in the great Church of Milan, even though the funds belonging to it would be violently usurped by the fiscus619. These alms were at first the tithes; after they had pooled the price of all their goods and thus shown the world the perfect life of community, the faithful, in later times, kept something of this primitive community for a share of these goods and pooled in the treasury of the Church the tenth of their income620. To the tithes, secondly, the firstfruits621 must be joined.
617 St. GRÉGOIRE OF NAZIANZE (330-390), Funeral Prayer of St. Basil (oration 43), 63; PG 36, 578-579. 618 Saint JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS (344-407), Homily 85 on Saint Matthew, 3-4; PG 58, 761-762. - POSSIDIUS, Life of St. Augustine, 23; PL 32, 53: "He addressed the faithful and told them that he preferred to live on the offerings of the people of God, than to have to bear the care and administration of these goods, and that he was ready to renounce these goods, so that all the servants and ministers of God might live in the manner indicated in the Old Testament (Deut 18. 1), that is, that those who served at the altar should live from the altar. But the laity were never willing to accept these goods"; trans. PERONNE, loc. cit, 1, pp. 15-16. 619 St. AMBROSIUS (330-397), Letter 21, to the emperor Valentine, 33; PL 16, 1060. 620 Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 7, c. 29; PG 1, 1019: "Thou shalt give all thy tithe to the orphan and the widow, to the poor and to the stranger." - ID, 1. 8, C. 30; PG 1, 1126: "Let all tithes be offered to feed all clerics, virgins, widows, and all who suffer from poverty." 621 ID., 1. 7, c. 29; PG 1, 1019-1020: "Thou shalt give to the priests all the firstfruits from the winepress, from the threshing floor, from the flocks of oxen and lambs... You shall give to the priests all the firstfruits of hot bread, wine from the barrel, oil, honey, fruit, works, and the firstfruits of all other foods." - ID, 1. 8, c. 30; PG 1, 1126: "Let all the firstfruits be brought to the bishop, the priests, and the deacons, for their food." - Didascalia of the Apostles, 9: "Give him your firstfruits, your tithes, your offerings, and your gifts; he must take them
409 In the third place, the public fasts opened up new sources for the alms of the people, for they owed to charity all that they cut out of pleasure622. Besides these alms regulated by Christian laws or morals, how many others spontaneously offered by the generosity of the faithful! And since all these gifts flowed into a single treasure; since the Church was the sole common dispenser of them; since the people knew that by passing through her hands their charities took on a sacred character and became a sacrifice pleasing to God, we cannot form an exact idea of the immense resources which the Church had at her disposal at all times. But if we add to this income from offerings that of the propertyfunds given by gift or will to the bishops or acquired from the Church's own money, we shall find it still more difficult to estimate the beneficent power of the Christian Churches623. It was necessary, within the principal of them, to create special bursars or administrators624.
feed and also distribute to the indigent, to each according to his need"; trans. NAU, p. 88. 622 St. Leo I (440-461), Sermon 2, for the December fast (Sermon 13); PL 54, 172 "Let us complete our fast with works of mercy to the poor. Let us give to virtue what we take away from voluptuousness. Let the poor be nourished by the privations of him who fasts." - ID, Sermon 4, for the September fast (Sermon 89), 5; PL 54, 446: "What you take away from your uses by religious moderation, turn it into food for the poor and a meal for the weak." - Cf. Alexandre GUILLAUME, Jeûne et charité dans l'Église latine, des origines au XII, siècle, en particulier chez saint Léon le Grand, ed. S.O.S., Paris, 1954, pp. 50-134. 623 St. JOHN CHRYSOSTOMUS, Homily 21 on 1 Cor, 7; PG 61, 179-180: "If you review the abundance of her goods, think also of the flock of the enrolled poor, the multitude of the sick.... Certainly the Church must necessarily spend for the communities of widows, the choirs of virgins, the hospitality of strangers, the sufferings of travelers, the misfortunes of captives, the needs of the sick and maimed, and all other such occasions." 624 The Church of Alexandria had a general bursar assisted by inferior bursars: cf. LE QUIEN, Oriens christianus, Paris, 1740, t. 2, col. 417. - The bursars of the Eastern Churches are very often spoken of in ancient texts and in councils: Council of Chalcedon (451), sess. 15, can. 16, LABBE 4, 768, MANSI 7, 367, HÉFÉLÉ 2, 812-815; Second Council of Seville (619), can. 9, LABBE 5, 1666
410 The blessings of the churches knew no bounds. That of Alexandria equipped fleets and sent convoys of wheat to distant churches afflicted by famine625. Other Churches repaired the walls of the cities, and from their superfluity embellished them with fountains and useful constructions626. Moreover, admirably, nothing was more popular than the great riches of the Churches. It was indeed the wealth of all; it was spent for all, and no one could be jealous of it. St. Augustine tells us that the people murmured when the bishop refused to increase them, and that over-eager desires627 had to be resisted at times. It is interesting to follow community life within the particular Church in yet another aspect. Religious communities have within them, in the paternal power which governs them, a tribunal which represses disorders and corrects morals. This tribunal corresponds to what is usually called the chapter of coulpes: the guilty party accuses himself in the presence of his brothers, so that the whole body may be associated by charity with the satisfaction accomplished for the fault and with the healing of one of its members. The Church had its great chapter of coulpes in public penance.
1667, MANSI 10, 560; HÉFÉLÉ 3, 257; Third Council of Toledo (589), can. 18, LABBE 5, 1013, MANSI 9, 997, HÉFÉLÉ 3, 227; Fourth Council of Toledo (633), chap. 48, LABBE 5, 1717, MANSI 10, 631, HÉFÉLÉ 3, 273. 625 St. GRÉGOIRE (590-604), book 7, Letter 40, to Euloge; PL 77, 898-900; book 8, Letter 29, to Euloge; ibid. , 930-931; book 9, Letter 78, to Euloge; ibid., 1011; book 13, Letter 42, to Euloge; ibid, 1291-1292. 626 ID., book 7, Letter 6; Life of St. Peter Chrysologus, PL 52, 17. 627 St. AUGUSTIN (354-430), Sermon 355 (I on the life and morals of his clerics), 3 and 4; PL 39, 1570-1571: "This priest (Januarius), our companion, who lived with us, lived at the expense of the Church, and professed the common life, made a will... But he, you say, instituted the Church as his heir! I don't want this inheritance... I beg you, let none of you blame me for not wanting the Church to accept this heritage... What shall I do in the midst of those who (say): no one makes a donation to the Church of Hippo; that is why those who die do not make her their heir. It is because, in his goodness... Bishop Augustine gives everything and does not want to receive anything"; trans. PERONNE, vol. 19, pp. 232233.
411 This great institution, impracticable and inexplicable outside of a Christian society strongly bound by charity and all the acts of religious life, made the whole Church concur in the healing of its sick members. If one member suffers," said St. Paul, "all the members suffer with it" (1 Cor. 12:26). (1 Cor. 12:26), and the writings of the Fathers, when they deal with this subject, are full of similar expressions. Thus a Church of the first centuries was an association of prayer, a charitable association, a fervent community with its own court and its own exercises of mercy. It is therefore conceivable that, by a sort of necessity founded in the nature of things, the paternal condescensions of the priestly authority, appealing to the confidence of the faithful people and taking support in this very confidence, willingly initiated them into all the vital interests of their Church and invited them to manifest their feelings and wishes. Hence the popular character of ordinations and ecclesiastical elections. The bishops, always the final authority in the choice of the ministers of the altar, and the only ones responsible before God for this choice and for the imposition of their hands, consulted the people and even urged them to express their feelings. The Roman Pontifical preserves the vestiges of this usage in a famous formula628. "Speak," says an ancient ritual; "we cannot hear you if you remain silent." (*) St. Cyprian expounds to his people in his letters the special reasons for his choices629. Sometimes even the people took the initiative,
628 Roman Pontifical, Ordination of a Priest: "It was not without reason, then, that our fathers decided to consult the people themselves about the choice of the ministers of the altar"; trans. Ordinations4, C.P.L., 1958, p. 31. 629 St. CYPRIAN (t 258), Letter 24, see supra, chap. 29, note 4. Letter 35, to his clergy and people; PL 4, 325: "Learn, then, that we have been warned and instructed by divine goodness to enroll among the priests of Carthage the priest Numidicus, and to admit him to sit with us among the clerics, in the splendid radiance of his confession, and the glory which his courage and faith have given him"; trans. BAYARD, volume 2, p. 101 (Letter 40). - Letter 33, to his clergy and people, 2; PL 4, 230: "Know therefore, beloved brothers, that he (Aurelius) was ordained by me and by those of my colleagues who were present. I know that you welcome
412 and so it was that he of Hippo claimed the ordination of St. Pinian630. But episcopal elections were especially the object of ardent protests631. All these things which astonish us today had their reason in the strength of the spirit of community which united all the faithful of the Church and filled them with ardor for the interests of a body of which they felt themselves to be the members, and which were the dearest interests of each of them. Moreover, the bond which united the people to their clergy in each Church was made even closer by the origin of the latter. Trained in the lower orders in the school of the Church and in the house of the bishop, exercising their first ministries under the eyes of the faithful632, the clerics rose successively, supported by their suffrages, to the higher orders. They were almost always drawn from the very bosom of the Church they served, and, if they came from outside, they found a kind of natu-
willingly a new one of this kind and that you wish as many clerics of this quality as possible to be ordained in our Church"; ibid., vol. I, p. 97 (Letter 38). 630 St. AUGUSTIN, Letter 126, to Albina, 1; PL 33, 472: "After the first clamor of the people, I declared to them that I would not ordain Pinian in spite of him, a promise which committed my faith, and I added that if in spite of this they wanted Pinian for a priest, they would no longer have me as their bishop. Then leaving the crowd, I returned to my seat. My answer, which they did not expect, caused hesitation and confusion in their ranks; but like a flame excited by the wind, the multitude redoubled their vehemence and ardor, believing that they could either wrest from me the violation of my promise, or that, if I kept it, they could have Pinian ordained by another bishop"; trans. PERONNE, vol. 5, p. 105. 631 St. AUGUSTIN, Letter 173, to Donatus, 2; PL 33, 754: "How many there are who receive it (the episcopate) in spite of themselves. They are taken, they are locked up, they are kept, they are made to endure many things against their will, until they have resolved to undertake "this holy work"; ibid., p. 499. 632 Thus, the future Pope Sergius II (844-847) had been entrusted in his twelfth year to the Schola cantorum; he had been ordained an acolyte by Pope St. Leo III (795-816), a subdeacon by his relative, Eugene IV (816-817), a priest of the title of St. Sylvester by Paschal I (817-824); under Gregory IV (827-844), he had received the dignity of archpriest. Cf. LABBE 7, 1791-1792. Saint PAULIN OF NOLE, 15th Poem, on Saint Felix, verses 104-112; PL 61, 470-471. - Saint SIRICE (384-389), Letter 1, 13; PL 13, 1142. - On monastic and episcopal schools, see Henri LECLERCQ, art. Schools, in DACL, col. 1824-1837.
413 ralization within that Church in the desires of the people who called them there or in the suffrages that welcomed them there. Thus, in each Church, the people and the clergy were never strangers to each other, and the bond of the title of ordination which attached the cleric to his Church had all its energy; It gave the priestly and Levitical ministry a very local character, so that the minister did not appear to the people as a cleric of the Catholic Church accidentally present in one place, but as the cleric of his Church, indivisibly attached by the full effect of ordination both to the Catholic Church and to that Church itself. It is not that these two qualities, that is, the communion of the order which makes the minister of the Catholic Church and the title which attaches this minister to the service of a particular Church, could not be absolutely separated or that the true relations which these two qualities maintain between them were ignored. But translations were severely forbidden by the canons633 and even more by the public mores of the nascent Church. And, as for what was later called resignation of benefice, that is, the act by which a cleric, at his own desire, is detached from the service of his Church and loses his title without receiving a new one, it was almost unknown; as also deposition had then the ordinary and constant effect of never depriving one of the priestly title or employment without the subject being at the same time deposed from the priesthood itself. The rare examples known to us of what later was the simple deposition of the benefice, that is to say, the loss of the title separated from the deposition of the order, having the effect of destroying the bond of the title and reducing the cleric to the state of a vague cleric while leaving him his quality and the communion of his order in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, appear to be abnormal facts; and the councils which ordain them sometimes find themselves obliged to specify carefully all the consequences, as is done in the case of an unprecedented measure
633 Council of Nicaea (325), can. 15, LABBE 2, 35, MANSI 2, 675, HEFEL 1, 597601; Council of Sardikus (343), can. 18, LABBE 2,642, MANSI 3,29, HEFEL 1, 797; Council of Chalcedon (451), can. 20, LABBE 4, 765, MANSI 7, 420, HEFEL 2,807-808.
414 known or well established, as seen in the case of Armentarius, a bishop deposed from his see without being deposed from the episcopate634. This state of morals and institutions, in which the clerkship assumed such a local character that the clergyman, constantly and in common usage, could not cease to be the clergyman of a certain place without losing the clerkship itself, made, so to speak, each Church a sacred municiple whose head and magistrates belonged to it singularly and by an indissoluble and perpetual bond in fact like the priesthood itself. It is also noteworthy that the enemies of the Catholic Church, in these remote times, never attacked the clergy separately and in opposition to the Christian people in the manner of a great corporation spread throughout the world and having its own particular spirit and separate interests, so much so that in each Church, between the people and their clergy, there existed those close ties which made them a single whole, a single moral unity, living the same life and having the same interests administered by some for the benefit of all; or rather the Churches, the families of the new humanity, rested, by a constitution always respected, in the shelter of the priestly paternity, and the sacred bonds which tightened all the members were inviolably maintained with a jealous care. This state of the particular Church and its public mores may be followed in these developments, while the institutions and relations in them kept in their entirety the same simplicity, until the time of the invasions.
From the fifth to the eleventh century
To the time of the invasions and the centuries that follow them until beyond the year one thousand belongs the complete victory of the Christian faith. Under the weight of the invasion and the terrors that accompany it, the last remnants of philosophical and literate paganism fade and disappear. The old society runs to seek a shelter in the shade of the episcopate. The city merges with the Church, and, as a result, the secular element becomes personified in the magistrates and honorati of the municipe at
634 Council of Riez (439), can. 3, LABBE 2, 1287, HEFEL 2, 428.
415 bosom of the Church itself, at the same time as the bishop, as a result of social necessities, becomes the chief magistrate of the city. In this interpenetration of the two elements of the Church and the city a first tutelary and essentially beneficent form of the temporal power of the Church is born. The bishops are everywhere the fathers of the people, and the latter place their goods and their freedom under their guard. The Roman Church, above all others, gives them the example of these charitable solicitudes635, and the temporal power of the Popes begins with St. Leo arresting Attila and Genseric636, and is gradually developed as the necessities of the peoples demand it more. St. Gregory the Great fills his correspondence with the solicitude caused by the perils of the times and with the orders he gives for the safety of Rome and the other cities of Italy637. Pepin and Charlemagne only consecrate, in the end, rights based on benefits. To this period also responds in our West the complete evangelization of the countryside and the establishment in all places of rural parishes638. The primitive oratories and the places of station of the priests and ministers who traversed them give way to stable titles, at the same time as these same campaigns are covered with growing populations fixed to the ground. But we cannot separate this ecclesiastical organization of the countryside from the great work of that time.
635 THOMASSIN, Ecclesiastical Discipline, 1. 1, c. 27, nu. 5-8, vol. 1, pp. 147149; c. 29, nu. 1-7, ibid., pp. 159-162. 636 Cf. P. DE LABRIOLLE, in Histoire de l'Église (Fliche et Martin) Blond et Gay, Paris, 1948, t. 4, pp. 392-393. 637 St. GRÉGOIRE (590-604), book 4, Letter 31, to the emperor Maurice; PL 77, 765-768; book 6, Letter 35, to the subdeacon Anthème; ibid. , 825-826; book 7, Letter 23, to Fortunatus and Anthemus; ibid., 876-877; book 8, Letter 1, to Bishop Peter; ibid., 903-904; book 12, Letter 20, to Mauritius, general of the army; ibid. , 1230-1231; book 1, Letter 5, to Theoctista, sister of the emperor; ibid., 448; book 11, Letter 51, to all the bishops of Sicily; ibid. , 1170. 638 Cf. P. DE LABRIOLLE, loc. cit., pp. 577-582; IMBART DE LA TOUR, Les Paroisses rurales du IVe au IXe siècle, Paris, 1900; A. NETZER, La situation des curés ruraux du Vee au VIIIe siècle, in Mélanges Lot, Paris, 1925, pp. 575-602.
416 This great work was, along with the conversion of the barbarians, the formation of modern civilized nations. And here three main objects call for our attention. And first it was necessary to sustain the first shock of the invasion and to preserve from destruction the treasures of intellectual and industrial culture which were the heritage of the ancient society. The Church covered this distraught society with her mantle, and, extending her hand, she stopped the flood of barbaric violence ready to destroy everything. This first part of the task to be accomplished was mainly the work of the episcopate. Following the example of the Sovereign Pontiff, of St. Leo stopping the Huns and the Vandals, and saving the population of Rome by opening to it the inviolable asylum of the basilicas, the bishops courageously undertook the defense of social interests639. It was then necessary to enlighten this barbaric society with the Christian faith, and first to bend the kings and chiefs of the peoples under the yoke of the Christian faith and morals. The bishops undoubtedly worked at this with eagerness; but it was appropriate that an authority superior to their own and more respected by these barbarian rulers should take the lead in this apostolate; it was a work of general scope, and one over which a power placed by its nature above all dependencies and all particular limits could alone preside as a whole. It was necessary, in fact, to give a Christian direction to the activity of these converted princes; it was necessary to make their diverse tendencies converge to this same end; it was necessary to create for them the Christian and civilizing policy, and, raising them above the coarse ambitions of barbarism, to open to them new horizons and to make them enter the way of a higher and constantly followed social action. In the aftermath of the invasion, the Pontiffs, by their letters and envoys, began to impress these fruitful movements, to order these confused elements, and to direct insensibly and with an ever-increasing ascendancy the activity of the barbarian princes.
639 Thus Saint Aignan, bishop of Tours, who played a leading role in the resistance of the city to the army of Attila: cf. P. DE LABRIOLLE, loc. cit., p. 392.
417 In France, Pope Anastasius II strengthens the work of St. Remi by his letters to King Clovis640, and his successors continue to exercise as if a spiritual tutelage over the kings of the Franks. St. Gregory the Great acts similarly toward the nations of the Goths641 and the Lombards642, and does not cease to direct their political leaders in Christian ways, at the same time as he sends apostles to the Anglo-Saxons643 and extends through them into the northern lands the beneficent work of the Church. The Pontiffs continue throughout this period this useful and sovereign patronage. They support and encourage the action of the bishops; they make these violent and inconstant princes respect it; they receive their envoys, they honor them with their letters and favors, and they excite them to receive, with the religion of Christ, Roman culture and civilization, and to extend both by their authority within and by their arms without, turning to this useful end the warlike instincts and violent passions of these rough clients. Finally, in the third place, it was necessary that the action of the Church penetrate to its last elements the barbarian society. It was necessary to make it Christian, and, at the same time, to attach it to the ground, to inspire it with the taste of the peaceful arts, to replace the pillage and a wandering life by the manor and the agricultural property, unique source of the beneficent richnesses to humanity.
640 Saint ANASTASUS II (492-498), Letter to Clovis, LAB 4, 1282. This letter is a 17th century forgery," G. BARDY, art. Anastasius II, in Catholicism, vol. 1 (1948), col. 510. 641 St. GREGOIRE, Book 9, Letter 122, to Recaredes, king of the Visigoths; PL 77, 1052-1056. 642 ID., Book 4, Letter 4, to Queen Theodelinde; PL 77, 671; Book 4, Letter 38, to Queen Theodelinde; ibid. , 712-713; book 9, Letter 42, to King Agiluphe; ibid., 975; book 9, Letter 43, to Queen Theodelinde; ibid., 975-976. 643 ID., Book 6, Letter 61, to the brothers leaving for England; PL 77, 836; Book 6, Letter 62, to Bishops Pelagius and Serenus; ibid. , 836-837; Book 6, Letter 3, to Bishops Theodoric and Theodebert; ibid., 841-842; Book 6, Letter 59, to Brunichild, Queen of the Franks; ibid. , 842-843; book 11, Letter 55, to Virgil, bishop of Arles; ibid., 1172-1173; Letter 58, to various bishops of Gaul; ibid. , 1176-1179; Letter 61, to Clotaire, king of the Franks; ibid., 1180-1181; Letter 62, to Brunichild, queen of the Franks; ibid., 1181-1182.
418 This third part of the task at hand was primarily the work of the monastic order. The Celtic monasteries of St. Columban644 and the monasteries formed under the rule of St. Benedict645 intended to reu gradually under the same discipline and in the same spirit the whole monastic Order, undertook this immense apostolic and social work with rapid and admirable success. The too narrow framework of this study does not allow us to enter into the details of the facts646. Everywhere, throughout Europe, we see great monasteries founded in the center of the deserted countryside, attracting into their bosom the sons of the barbarians, and, around their enclosure, populations to whom they share the land, who cultivate it and soon form flourishing towns. Colonies escape from the cloister to bring the same benefits to smaller settlements which are founded in the whole country. The monasteries gave these people all the resources of the spiritual life. They open schools and parishes for them, and in the entirely barbaric regions, where the Roman city is no longer found with its ancient episcopate, they give the barbarians bishoprics and cathedrals. Within a few generations these rude peoples receive from the monastic schools a national clergy and from their blood, bishops like St. Wilfrid (634-709)647, scholars co like St. Bede (672-735)648; and the problem of the native clergy, which must everywhere succeed the missionary apostolate, is solved in these remote ages without
644 H. LECLERCQ, art. Luxeuil, in DACL, t. 9, col. 2725-2744; R. AIGRAIN, art. Colomban, in Catholicism, t. 2 (1950), col. 1317-1321. 645 Cf. Dom G. MARIÉ, art. Benedict of Nursia, in Catholicism, t. 1 (1948), col. 1446-1452; Dom Ph. SCHMITZ, History of the Order of St. Benedict, Maredsous, 1942, vol. 1. 646 Cf. MONTALEMBERT, Les Moines d'Occident, Paris, 1860, 7 vols.; Dom C. BUTLER, Le Monachisme bénédictin, Paris, 1924; Dom U. BERLIÈRE, L'Ordre monastique, des origines au XIIe siècle, Paris-Maredsous, 1921. 647 Bishop of York, one of the "types of the Benedictine apostle": René AIGRAIN, in Histoire de l'Église (Fliche et Martin), Blond et Gay, 1947, vol. 5, p. 517. 648 Cf. G. HOCQUARD, art. Bède, in Catholicism, t. 1(1948), col. 1368-1378. Ph. SCHMITZ, loc. cit. in vol. 2, pp. 97 sq, 346 sq.
419 effort by the monastic order. In the purely social order the benefits of the monasteries are no less striking. These great establishments possess and develop all the industrial resources of the time. They revive the arts which are the ornament of human life; but mainly they teach these warriors the great art of agriculture. A useful emulation is established between the barbarian princes and the monks; the royal villas and the rustic residences of the powerful leudes are the emulators of the monasteries, and become like these considerable centers of populations living of the ground and fixed to the ground. Thus, at this time, the action of the Church is exercised principally by the bishops in the ancient cities, and by the monks in the countryside and in the midst of the new populations, while above them the Holy See gives the general impulse, prints the first directions of a Christian policy of the princes, and begins to form from these generous, but rough and coarse elements, the great political and social unity of Christendom. At this time, the bishops and their clergy on the one hand, the abbots and their monks on the other, form well in their development what has been called the Canonical Order and the Monastic Order. In the cities, the clergy generally adopted community life, and this was the period of its universal development. In the countryside, parishes, as we have said above, were established everywhere. But as, in most places, the labors of the monks attracted the populations and formed the inhabited centers, the monasteries, by themselves or by their priories or celles, give, in the greater part of Christendom, pastors and clerics to these parishes. However a slow evolution continues within the particular Church itself and in the intimate play and of the principal organs. The exercise of the functions common to clerics of the same order has been divided among them with ever greater precision, and the slow and constant movement of human things has gradually concentrated in a few members of the priestly body certain definite attributions.
420 At this time the archdeacon reserved for himself all the attributions of the diaconate in so far as the ministry of that order looks to the bishop, and, having already become the bishop's sole deacon or minister, he tended ever more to cross the limits of the diaconate itself by becoming his vicar among the priests, or rather, above the priests, and the repository of his authority. The archpriests, the primaries, the provosts, are distinguished from their brothers by the ever greater importance of their functions and the episcopal mandates which are attached to them. On the other hand, the titles of the cities were more clearly defined in the unity of the urban presbytery and tended to become fully constituted parishes, assimilated in fact, in the independence of their life, to the diocesan churches. Concelebration and stations still maintain the ancient unity of the ecclesiastical city, but the first and most important of these two famous rites will soon weaken and disappear. Moreover, while the ecclesiastical ministries are concentrated in certain members of each order of the clergy, the share of action left to the people has already concentrated itself in the magistrates and honorati, to pass imperceptibly into the hands of the great Roman and barbarian landowners and to prepare the ascendancy of the feudal princes and lords. However, the intimate life of the Churches has lost none of its fertile activity, and the great public calamities, which have made the Churches the first and strongest of social institutions, have given its action a new strength. Perhaps the same eagerness of popular demonstrations is no longer found in the ecclesiastical assemblies, but a constant order reigns there. The authority of the episcopate presides over them with ever greater respect, and the people, through the progress of faith and Christian morals, are making their obedience more and more filial and respectful. The Church, moreover, is at this time the sole protector of the multitudes; all interests, but especially those of the small and weak, are kept under her guardianship, and her immense benefactions still increase and strengthen her authority.
421 Moreover, by the force of things and social necessities, the Church, which has thus become the guardian of the peoples and the preserver of the necessary arts, has had to transport little by little the principal source of its wealth into the territorial property which it has caused to be cleared and cultivated by colonists who have come from all quarters under its protection, and who are constantly increasing its value. In this respect, the churches of the cities imitate the monastic establishments and become themselves powerful territorial owners. By this side, the ecclesiastical establishments, that is to say the episcopal churches and the monasteries, enter little by little into the new political hierarchy of the great landed lords, and will soon take their place with these in the feudal edifice in preparation. The common life, that is to say the unity of the ecclesiastical patrimony, is nevertheless maintained in each Church. The goods form a single mass administered sovereignly by the bishop or by the abbot649. If some part is accidentally detached from it and entrusted as a precarious or benefice, in the primitive sense of this word, to some layman or even to some ecclesiastic, it is only by way of administration650, and the idea of a general division of Church property among the clerics or of monastery property among the monks was not of that time and had not yet occurred in either minds or actions. Also the barbaric invaders of ecclesiastical goods hardly attacked anything but bishoprics and abbeys. They usurp their titles under the garb of war and do not seek others, because the bishops and abbots are still the only administrators and the
649 JOHN DIACRE (later Pope St. JOHN I, 523-526), Life of St. Gregory the Great, 1. 2, n. 24; PL 75, 96-97. - Capitularies of CHARLEMAGNE, 1. 5, n. 123; 1. 7, n. 368; cf. THOMASSIN, loc. cit, 3rd part, 1. 2, eh. 8, ed. Guerin. 1866, t. 2, p. 535. 650 Council of Agde (506), can. 7, LABBE 4, 1384, MANSI 8, 325, HÉFÉLÉ 2, 984: "We permit property of small value or which is less useful to the Church to be left in enjoyment to strangers or clerics, reserving, however, the right of the Church (as proprietor)." - First Council of Orleans (511), can. 23, LABBE 4, 1408, MANSI 8, 355, HÉFÉLÉ 2, 1013. - Council of Rheims (624-625), can. 1, LABBE 5, 1689, MANSI 10, 594, HÉFÉLÉ 3, 261.
422 only holders and representatives of the ecclesiastical domain.
Feudal regime (11th-13th century)
After the year one thousand, the Church, which in the purity of its discipline and the fervor of the first Christians crossed the ancient Roman society, which in the following era welcomed the barbarian society and made itself the educator by its benefits, is in contact with the feudal society. It is then that the great notion of Christianity appears in all its brightness. The Church leads from its heights this immense social body composed of the nations and kingdoms of Europe. But at the same time all the parts of the feudal body meet the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The latter, through landed property, penetrates this body at the same time as the order of relations created by feudalism penetrates it in its turn. There are, in this compenetration of the spiritual and the temporal, of the one and the other society, advantages that cannot be disputed. Religion elevates and sanctifies more and more all the political institutions of the State, the province and the city. It mingles with the feudal contract, it puts a brake on the excesses of force; it makes the moral idea of right prevail everywhere, and, above right itself, the ideas of mercy and humanity. It crowns kings and reminds them that they are the protectors of the weak; it intervenes in all oaths; it arms the knights. Everywhere earthly power receives from her a rule which moderates its excesses, at the same time as a superior and divine radiance, which, more than strength and material weapons, assures it respect. But this state of affairs also has its dangers, and, if the hierarchy of temporal powers becomes ennobled by contact with the Church, the Church, in this very contact, can find abasements, and it can, if the links which unite it to the whole feudal establishment become too close, participate to a certain extent in the very caducity of this establishment, which, like all human things, must know in its day decadence and ruin. In the eleventh century, at the beginning of that glorious period which was the true
423 Middle Ages, the form of the Churches did not undergo any alteration; and, in the great renewal of Christian morals and life to which the Roman Church, renewed itself by St. Leo IX (10481054) and St. Gregory VII (1073-1085), gave the impetus, they appear to us, as in their earliest days, strongly constituted in the union of the faithful with their clergy and in the power of an active religious life which tightens all the bonds. The ecclesiastical assemblies offer the most magnificent spectacle of this life of the particular Churches. The immense cathedrals, on the day of the solemnities, cannot contain the multitudes. The bishop presides; all the clergy is there; the princes appear at the head of the people. All these people take part in the action, they raise their voices in the holy liturgy; they know why they are there; they understand the meaning of these assemblies. When they return to their homes, they bring the very life of the Church into them; in the course of their laborious days, they hear the movement of this life. The ringing bells warn him of the hours of canonical prayer; he knows that it is being done for him; he listens, so to speak, and he feels the vital pulsations of the body of which he is a member, of the Church to which he belongs. In the depths of the countryside, the knights and the ploughmen also gather around the altar and under the priestly blessing. The duties of the lord and the liberties of his vassals are consecrated by religion. The Church stands next to the castle, protected by its high towers and covering in turn with its protection, more powerful than the forces of the earth, the thatched cottages that surround it. To the bottom of the valleys stand humble and graceful oratories, dependencies of some abbey, where the shepherds assemble under the blessing of a monk. At all levels of the social scale, it is the same religious life: the kings have their breviary and mingle at night with the choir of the clerics, and the workers' guilds know no stronger or sweeter bond than the holy solemnities of ecclesiastical prayers. At that time, however, certain changes were gradually taking place in the discipline of the particular churches. The reader will forgive us if we pause to set them forth with
424 some extent, on account of the more considerable consequences which these movements of the law had in subsequent ages. And in the first place, the division and distinction of powers and duties among the clerics of the same order became more marked every day. The unity of the presbytery lost something of its ancient splendor. The titles of the towns tended to loosen the ancient bonds of this unity, and, if the use of the stations preserved the memory of it, they became no less parishes externally assimilated, in the independence of their life, to the other churches of the diocese. The Cathedral Church gathered ever more exclusively into its bosom all the rights of the ancient presbytery, and these rights were concentrated in its principal clerics, to the exclusion of the rest of its clergy, just as also the name of canons, formerly common to all, was reserved to a few651. In Rome, however, the primitive and sacred type of the unity of the particular Church was shown to all eyes in the very constitution of its senate, formed of the cardinal clerics of each of the ancient titles; and the pre-eminence of the cathedral Church of Lateran, within this college, was indicated only by the more august representation which it had there by the seven cardinal bishops, its weekly priests. It is not that at a certain moment of this discipline, which was being formed every day with various fluctuations and which did not yet have its fixed state, the right of first suffrage in the election of the Sovereign Pontiff, given to these seven cardinal bishops652, would not have seemed, within the Roman Church itself, to give the advantage to the Cathedral Church and to establish its prerogative. But one saw at the same time, in other Churches, the titular priests associated with the principal canons of the Cathedral Church recalling in humble proportions, by their presence in its senate, the holy customs of the Roman Church, mother and mistress of all others.
651 It was at this time that the name canons, formerly common to all clerics, began to become a title of honor among the clergy. 652 NICOLAS II (1058-1061), Decree on the Election of the Roman Pontiff; PL 143, 1315.
425 Let us cite the example of the Church of Besançon, visited by St. Leo IX (1048-1054), home of Pope Callistus II (1119-1124), and in close relationship with the reforming Roman Pontiffs of that great age653. In this Church, to the canons of the double cathedral were united the heads of the ecclesiastical and monastic colleges of the city and the pastors of the urban parishes. They obviously represented, within the senate of the Church, the cardinal priests. These customs continued until modern times, and, as the meaning of them had been lost, these ancient cardinals were given the quality of canons-born of the cathedral, to explain their sitting in its senate654. It was, if we may push this comparison further, in this Church as in the Roman Church, the presence in the ecclesiastical senate, reduced to its principal members, of two elements: on the one hand, the principal clerics of the cathedral church, and, on the other hand, the heads of the city titles; in Rome, the seven cardinal bishops, first priests of the cathedral, then the cardinal priests and deacons, heads of the city titles; in Besançon, the canons or first clerics of the two united cathedrals, then the six or seven titulars of the city churches. Basically, the elements which compose the ecclesiastical senate remain the same, but between them the proportion is reversed. In the Roman Church, the representatives of the titles of the city form the immense majority of the college; in that of Besançon, which we presented as example, this majority belongs to the members of the chapter of the cathedral and the titulars appear only in very small number. It is probable that, in other Churches, one would also find, at the origin of the modern right of the chapters, traces of an analogous state of affairs and remains of the representation of the urban titles. And it is easy to understand how little by little the numerically more considerable part having absorbed the lesser part, to
653 The Church of Besançon had two cathedrals united in one body for the government and for the election of the bishop. 654 The abbots of the monasteries of the city and the head of a collegiate church were canons; the titles of parish priests were united with the chapter, and, after having belonged in this capacity to two canons, they remained under the patronage of the chapter. Cf. DUNOD, Histoire de l'Église de Besançon, vol. 2, pp. 127, 135 et seq.
426 Rome the presbytery seems to have been concentrated exclusively in the incumbents of the urban churches, while in other places it is represented by the principal clerics of the cathedral church. We make this remark in passing, which seems to us to explain how, starting from a common point of departure, the discipline which gradually reserved all the authority of the presbytery to its principal members affected a different form in the Roman Church and in the other churches. The reader will easily see that this difference, produced by the insensible movement of institutions, is purely accidental and does not touch the substance of things. But not only do the ecclesiastical colleges concentrate in their principal members and reserve to them all the action; within these colleges thus reduced, the division of functions becomes always narrower and more exclusive. It was at this time that the various offices, some concerning the service of the faithful and the care of souls, others the general administration of the diocese by episcopal delegations, such as the archdeaconry, others finally the interior discipline of the canonical college or the liturgical services, took on their full consistency. This was the time when the offices of provost, chamberlain, cantor, nurse, schoolmaster, etc., were established in each church and took the form of perpetual offices. Most often, custom determined the attributions and drew the demarcations. It gave stability and, as we say today, security of tenure to what was very often originally a simple commission of the superior. It is here especially that we encounter the influence of feudal mores. It is enough, in fact, to have handled the texts of that time to have seen, on the one hand, what a great role custom played in the functioning of all institutions, and, on the other hand, with what promptitude and ease it was formed. To recall but one example, we would perhaps be inclined to be astonished to see the suffrage of all orders of the clergy reduced in a few years, without raising any complaint, to the suffrage of a small number of its members.
427 But, at the same time, we see in the political order the right of suffrage of the great Germanic assemblies reserved without dispute, and by the insensible slope of custom, first to the princes, and then, among these, to the seven electors. We would easily find similar facts in feudal France. There was undoubtedly something singularly liberal and peaceful in this current of morals and institutions and in this right which was formed without the express intervention of the sovereign, by the only ascendancy of the practices admitted in the social body and by the contribution of all. But there was also, it must be recognized, in this power of custom, exercised within spiritual society itself, a danger for the unity and integrity of ecclesiastical discipline. We shall see this only too well in the centuries that followed.
Beneficial regime (14th-15th century)
In the thirteenth century, Christian society seemed to be at its peak, and, in the admirable blossoming of a civilization inspired by the powerful breath of the Christian idea, the whole of Europe was ready to cover the world with the immense expansion of the beneficent forces it carried within. The Crusades were a first effort. The apostolate of the religious orders appeared at the same time. Everywhere new paths are opening up which light and life will travel for the salvation of the human race. But, between these hopes and their fulfillment, the Church will encounter new and painful trials. The thirteenth century ends at the moment when the great idea of Christian politics receives a first failure in the revolt of Philip the Fair. The voice of the vicar of Jesus Christ was soon weakened by a long exile and a painful schism. More and more the politics of the princes frees itself from the maternal directions of the Church. At the same time, as a necessary consequence, a long period of cruel wars began for Europe. The voice of the Church, striving to calm these bloody tumults and to
428 turn the arms of the Christians against the once more invading Moslem barbarism, was no longer listened to, and Christian Europe seemed to be headed for dark destinies. But the backlash of this crisis of Christianity was felt within the ecclesiastical body itself by the weakening of papal authority and by the calamities caused by the wars. It must also be recognized that a considerable and rather rapid revolution had taken place within the particular Churches under the double action of feudal mores and custom. We want to speak about the beneficiary discipline. In the preceding centuries, the goods of the churches and monasteries had formed common masses administered by bishops and abbots. But, at that time and from the course of the seventeenth century, a pervasive custom, by fixing the distributions or prebends, managed to divide among all the clerics the patrimony of the Church until then undivided. And as feudal society had made numerous borrowings from ecclesiastical society, the latter, in its turn, carried along by the current of morals and institutions of the time, borrowed from feudal society the form and idea of the benefit. As the knight receives in the division of feudal land the just remuneration of military service, so the cleric finds in the division of ecclesiastical land the remuneration of the spiritual militia. As the fief represents the right of the knight to live off his lord's property, so the land of ecclesiastical benefice represents the right of the cleric to sit at the table or mense of the Church655. God forbid that we should condemn what the Church has not condemned, and confuse the abuses of this regime with the regime itself! These abuses have been the object of the tears and remedial labors of the saints. But these have always taught that the common life was preferable to this particular ownership of ecclesiastical property, and the Church, even as she accepts the common state
655 Cf. G. MOLLAT, art. Ecclesiastical benefices in DHGE, vol. 7 (1934), col. 1238-1270; ID., art. Bénéfices, in DDC, vol. 2 (1937), col. 407-449: Le régime de droit commun, des origines à 1448; E. MAGNIN, ibidem, col. 670-706: Régime de droit commun d'après le Code.
429 of the benefices, has not ceased to recommend the common and apostolic life of clerics as a better state. It is a purely accidental institution in the course of its history; relatively recent, the work of one century, it can be abolished by the following centuries; It is, moreover, a less perfect institution, and it is permissible to ask God, as a sovereignly desirable revolution, for a return to the primitive and holier discipline of the apostolic ages, to that regime which contained all the clerics in common life and which handed over to the bishop all the paternal solicitude of the ecclesiastical family in filial dependence of all its members. "The manner of possessing the goods of the Church in community," says Thomassin, "is the primitive and original nature of all the benefices; the benefices divided as they are at present came only from the divisions which the clerics and then the monk-owners made of them"656. The organization of the benefices was rapidly completed, and it had as its first effect the destruction of the last remnants of the church communities of canons. The clergy of the great Churches dispersed; the clerical discipline, with its common refectories and dormitories, left traces only in the buildings that attested its ancient regularity. The canonical order was the first to be affected. The chapters, until then in community, became secularized, and the secular canons, until then living in community, shared the goods of their churches and made an independent life for themselves. But the monastic order in turn underwent the same revolution. The goods attributed to some particular service, such as hospitality or nursing, became the monastic benefits of the hotelkeeper and the nurse; the priories generally had the same fate; then, with time, places of monks were created in the abbeys, imitation of the prebends of canons. Monasteries of women, undergoing these decadences of the common life, without ceasing to make profession of the rule of Saint Benedict, highly took the name of chapters of canonesses.
656 THOMASSIN, loc. cit., Part I, 1. 3, c. 21, n. 1, vol. 2, p. 587.
430 Thus the vigor of religious sanctity, of the common life so strongly established in the preceding centuries, of evangelical poverty, of apostolic life, instead of rising by sustained progress and generous aspirations, seemed to wane in all the old ecclesiastical bodies. At the same time that the title and function of the church became a benefit, this very function was reduced by custom to narrow limits. In earlier centuries, all priests exercised the entire priesthood, all deacons performed the ministry. But in the era of the narrow division in which we have arrived, a distinction is made between clerics with and without charge of souls. In each priestly college, the charge of souls is no longer the employment of a small number of people. The rest of the clerics confine themselves to the chanting of the office and no longer have much contact with the people, not exercising any ministry that brings them closer to them. The order of the diaconate and the lower orders, blended into the mass of clerics without charge of souls, are reduced to the sole functions of the liturgy, where they are easily replaced and appear to have no actual use or serious utility, and, to find the faded evidence of the importance of this sacred institution, it is necessary to search for it in a forgotten history and go back to past centuries. But the episcopal authority itself encountered in this new order of things, and in these narrow divisions of attributions, hindrances which diminished it. In the past, the presbytery formed a single moral unit, the deacons and the ministers assisted it, and the bishop gave the impetus to both, distributed to each his share of activity and maintained the unity of priestly action. But custom and benefices have fragmented the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the unity of government in each Church is deeply affected. In the past, the action of the presbytery, closely united to the bishop and receiving from him all his directions, was confused with the action of the bishop himself. Today the chapters have transformed by usage into a right
431 distinct and as independent all the share which the trust of the bishops had given them in the government. Instead of being merely the helpers and co-operators of the episcopate, acting only in the virtue handed down to them by the bishop, the chapters isolate themselves in the share of power assigned to them. Jurisdictions divide and oppose each other: the jurisdiction of the bishop meets that of the chapter, and, instead of merging as in the past into one great current flowing from the episcopal pulpit to reach all the people, they divide and use each other as limits. But with this division and the establishment of these limits, begin the eternal disputes of the bishops and their chapters about these limits themselves, and, while the ancient presbytery was always peacefully confused, in its action at the head of the Christian people, with the bishop whose pulpit it surrounded, the pages of modern law will be filled with these sad debates. But this is not all, and within the chapters themselves, custom and beneficent institution have made other divisions. The various officers of the Church have transformed into an acquired jurisdiction the commissions and mandates with which episcopal authority once honored them. In this regard, the history of the archdeacons can provide vivid evidence657. But the archdeacons are not alone in sharing the shreds of power of which they were ministers. There are few ecclesiastical dignitaries who do not hold a part of it. Moreover, in this general fragmentation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, custom, essentially local, threw its diversities everywhere. The only uniformity in this movement is the direction in which it is accomplished. The strangest disparities and pretensions occur in various places, while in others imposing remains of the ancient unity of ecclesiastical government remain. It sometimes seems, in this movement of human things, that the chief dignitaries of the Church, by appropriating to themselves detached portions of the jurisdiction, accomplish in its bosom a revolution
657 Dom Adrien GRÉA, Historical essay on the archdeacons.
432 similar to that which, in the political order, had been accomplished while the great officers of the crown had appropriated the remnants of royal authority. The kings, in the political order, gradually reclaimed this authority, and henceforth entrusted it to commissioned and always revocable ministers. Did not feudal customs, following the creation of ecclesiastical benefices, have a similar effect on spiritual society? Also, the bishops, no longer finding in the principal officers of their churches ministers of their authority, but ordinary people who had shared it, had to give themselves new helpers, and, by the creation of vicars general and officials, mandataries who were always revocable, they brought back to their true center the superior direction of ecclesiastical affairs and regained or maintained their episcopal and sovereign authority. But if episcopal authority was affected and weakened by the fragmentation of jurisdictions which accompanied the institution of the benefice, the action of the entire ecclesiastical body on the people was itself weakened even more. The first effect of this revolution on the people was to detach them from the hierarchical and titular clergy, who, as a whole, became more and more alien to them. The old unity of religious life, which in each Church founded the priesthood and the people in a single whole, was diminished and as it were interrupted. The faithful, by an ever more marked tendency, isolated themselves in some way from this great life of the spiritual family, which had once flourished. The titular clergy in charge of souls was often replaced by vicars or delegates, and so in each diocese, alongside the titular clergy, a vague clergy was formed, receiving from the bishop or the parish priest, by way of commission, a lowered jurisdiction. Soon, ordination and institution were frequently separated from each other. One obtained the benefice, then received the required order; or, having received the order without any title, one later acquired the benefice. Soon, introduced into the ecclesiastical language
433 than new terms like the things they expressed. The benefits were resigned, permuted, accumulated. It would once have been a strange thing for a cleric to abandon the service of his Church; it was an odious thing for a cleric to pass from one Church to another; but above all it would have been an impossible monster for a cleric to be enrolled in the canon of two distant Churches. In order for all these things to be done routinely, for a cleric to be able to pass indifferently from a canonry of Lincoln to a canonry of Toledo; for him to be able, even with a legitimate dispensation, to occupy at the same time these two canonries, a profound change had to have taken place in the customs of the churches; It was necessary, which was only too true, that the clerics had become almost strangers to their people, and that the people in each Church were no longer interested in their titular clergy. But the ecclesiastical state, made independent of the spiritual interests of each particular people, did it not become a vast career open everywhere by the possibility of all these successive mutations? It was even a temporal career, because of the difference in benefits. There were rich and poor among the benefices, and, losing sight of the ancient stability of the clerics who, receiving the necessities of life from a single fund, lived in a more or less uniform state, one came to admit easily the passage from an unprofitable benefit to a more advantageous one; clerics left one Church to pass to another; and temporal advantages in the possession of ecclesiastical property were proposed as a goal, secondary no doubt, and a legitimate reward for the scientific successes of doctors and the various labors of clerics in the ecclesiastical courts or the service of prelates658. At the same time, the glitter of considerable benefits tempted the ambition of families, and one saw the illustrious houses, which had hitherto confused their sons with the sons of the poor in the service of
658 The exile of the Pontiffs to Avignon and the great schism which followed it, by obliging the Popes, deprived, at least to a great extent, of the revenues of the Roman Church, to create new resources for their officers, compelled them to have recourse to the benefices of the other churches. It was at this time that cardinals began to possess bishoprics in various parts of Christendom.
434 God, gradually reserved for them exclusively the rich canonries and the places of monks in the powerful abbeys. Thus began, without the support of any text and based solely on custom, always sovereign in matters of benefits, the institution of chapters and noble abbeys. But if the riches of the Church are in her hands an immense benefit for the world as long as she administers them by herself and as her common treasure, are they not a cause of weakening for the priestly action as soon as they become the individual riches of the priest? If the priesthood is a career for the one who embraces it, his authority, all spiritual, is diminished. Doesn't the progress of the institution of benefits seem in some measure to inflict this abasement on him? Fatherhood cannot be a career, and there is no advancement in it. If the priest, in his ministry, while seeking the salvation of men, at the same time pursues a human career, however honorable that career may be, he is no longer to the same degree the father of souls, but he becomes in a higher order a justly rewarded administrator. The peoples may still esteem and respect him, but they will no longer see in him exclusively the man of God, who belongs to them and to whom they belong by an inviolable pact and by the supernatural, substantial and profound relations of the whole new life and the divine and social mystery of regenerated man659. The consequences of this new state of affairs soon declare themselves externally by significant symptoms. Thus, as the venerable bonds which in every Church united the people to their priesthood are loosened, and as, in this loosening of the ancient unity of the particular Church and this diminution of its intimate activity, the faithful become more and more disinterested in that which touches its public life, we see all participation of the people in ecclesiastical elections disappear in a short space of time; we see public penance cease altogether, and become impracticable and irrelevant, while the spirit of commu-
659 Cf. JOHN XXIII, Allocutions to the Synod of Rome (25-27 January 1960), in La Documentation Catholique, 57 (1960) 259-282
435 nity has died out within each Church and that the people have in a sense disintegrated. But of all the effects of this revolution, the one which was undoubtedly most directly felt by the multitudes, and which the spirit of evil abused most in the heretical uprisings which it produced at that time, was the attack upon the ancient administration of the ecclesiastical patrimony. In the past, as we have said, the good of the Church was the good of the whole Christian corporation. The bishop, like a father of the family, distributed the revenues. It was, in the full force of the term, the patrimony of Christ and the poor660; the clerics were fed from it under this glorious title; the basilicas and buildings of the Church were built or repaired from it, because they are properly the houses of Christ and the poor. But, by the organization of the benefices, ecclesiastical property has come closer in form to feudal property; and, as the lay benefices form the prerogative of the secular militia, the ecclesiastical benefices are, in the eyes of all, the property of the clergy, and lose, in the appreciation of the vulgar, their ancient character of the common patrimony of all. We know that the substance of things has not changed, and the benefactors are severely warned, by the canons of the Church and the sentence of theologians, of their obligation to consecrate all their superfluous goods to the poor. They are, they are constantly told, only the administrators of the property of the poor, and the patrimony of the latter has not changed in character or master for having been distributed among a great number of farmers661. But, it must be agreed, the legitimate use of these goods to
660 Rule of Aachen (816), can. 116, MANSI 14, 229-230; HEFLEE 4, 12, summarizes it as follows, "The revenues of the Church are to be employed according to the intentions of the donors and for the good of the poor." - VI Council of Toledo (638), can. 15, LABBE 5, 1747, MANSI 10, 668; HÉFÉLÉ 3, 281 gives this summary: "One cannot take away from a Church what the king or others have given it." 661 Council of Trent, session 24 (1563), Decree of Reformation, can. 14, EHSES 9, 985: "The holy council...therefore orders the bishops no longer to permit the lifting of such rights, unless they are employed for pious purposes"; trans. MICHEL, in HEFEL 10, 577.
436 service of the poor, instead of the public guarantee which its constitution as a single mass gave it, now has no other guarantor than the individual conscience; and when the clergyman gives alms, he appears in the eyes of the people individually charitable and beneficent. But they themselves have lost sight of the ancient domain that belongs to them. Henceforth, the jealousy of the multitudes can be aroused with regard to ecclesiastical wealth. And, when the secular princes seize them by violence, the usurpation will seem less odious and will not affect to the same extent the populations who are now unaccustomed to consider them as their own patrimony. Also, at this time when the Church seems compromised in the eyes of the world by the ties that bind it, in the various degrees of its hierarchy, to the earthly and feudal domain, the divine Spirit who gives rise to the great mendicant Orders inspires them with poverty as the great remedy for the evils of these times. St. Dominic and St. Francis, those illustrious evangelical poor, are shown to Innocent III (1198-1216) supporting the shaken edifice of the Lateran Church662; and by these magnificent creations, God shows the world that he does not abandon his Church and that he defends her from the very perils that arise from her triumphs and from the temporal brilliance that the greatness of her benefits has earned her. It is time, in fact, to consider and admire the magnificent efflorescence of the new works that God is bringing forth in his Church to maintain and develop the religious life of the peoples in all its aspects. As the activity of this life slows down within the particular Churches, the Spirit of God revives it and remedies its secret languor. In the order of prayer, the people take a lesser part in the great liturgical life. The choirs of the Churches close for them, and the ancient colleges of their clerics, which have become chapters of canons, are now known to them only as powerful lords
662 Cf. MANDONNET, Saint Dominique, Paris, 1937, t. 1, pp. 158-159. Cf. Y. CONGAR, O. P., art. Innocent III, in Catholicism, vol. 5 (1963) col. 1652: "The vision of the two saints supporting the cracked walls of the Lateran may be legendary, but it expresses historical reality well (Cf. H. GRUNDMANN, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter..., Berlin, 1935)."
437 feudalists, became increasingly isolated in the ever more opaque enclosure that separated them from the multitude. In the parishes and the lesser churches, the liturgical office, it is true, will continue until the threshold of modern times; for the parish priests and their clerics or church familiars owe daily public prayer to their people. But the private recitation of the breviary, after the disclosure of printed books, will soon take the place of this great duty, preserving its precious remains; and this popular liturgy of the lesser Churches, these public psalmodies rising at all hours throughout the world from the most rustic and obscure places, will leave no other monument than the solemn notice of the bishop to the parish priests in the discourse which the Pontifical puts upon his lips at the opening of the synod663. But, at this hour when public prayer is weakening, the rosary, from one end of the world to the other, becomes like a popular psalter, and, following the confraternities of the rosary, other pious associations, innumerable and fragrant flowers, will cover the land of the Churches and will penetrate into all parishes. One will even see associations of penance replacing the holy rigors of the public penance of the Churches. If, through the creation of benefices and the distribution of its patrimony among the clergy, the Church has seen its character as treasurer of the poor obscured in the college of its ministers; if it is no longer, in the eyes of the people, the great and unique charitable association of the faithful among themselves, the Spirit of charity gives rise to the first charitable associations in the confraternities of the Holy Spirit and Saint Lazarus, which will soon multiply under various titles with holy emulation. If the schools of the Churches, like fading torches, have lost their lustre; if the traditions kept in their bosom tend to fade, since the presbytery has been transformed and can be composed of strangers called from all parts, the great Universities
663 Roman Pontifical, Ordo of the Synod: "Every night rise for the Night Hours, sing your office at the appointed times.... Let every priest have with him a cleric or schoolboy, who shall sing with him the psalms, read the epistle and the lessons."
438 arise in Europe and give to the teaching of theology and all the sciences a splendor which it had not yet had. Finally, if the ordinary ministry has lost its vigor and effectiveness on the people; if the bonds which united the ancient presbytery and the people, by loosening in each Church, have weakened its influence; if the pastors themselves have become benefactors too often supplanted by the lowered ministry of commissioned vicars; if the charge of souls, placed in less powerful hands, has lost its beneficent virtue for the healing of souls, the Creator Spirit raises up the great apostolic Orders. The Friars Preachers and the Friars Minor come to the rescue of the weakened churches. A preaching and a ministry detached from all the limits of local jurisdictions and depending only on the Sovereign Pontiff, spread throughout the world. The Roman Church, to which these great bodies are attached, thus comes to the aid of all the others; and the apostolate, which appeared at the beginning to bring the Churches into being and which preceded them in the order of time, appears again on earth to help and enliven them. Soon, in this order of things, new creations will oppose greater evils; and when the decadence on the one hand and the revolts on the other, following the great schism and the appearance of Protestantism, which, prepared by the heresies of John Huss and Wiclef, is going to detach part of Europe from Catholic unity, call for new help from God, the illustrious Society of Jesus appears, aroused by His Spirit. On a new type already shown to the world by the Order of Theatines, the Congregations of regular clerics will be born, and a new form of the apostolate will be given to the world. Thus the Spirit of God, who animates the whole body of the Church, manifests itself in new works and raises up the languishing parts with powerful remedies. The apostolate travels throughout the world and circulates new forces in the whole body of the Church. It raises up souls and rejuvenates the life of the Churches. Thus a whole range of new creations appear at once in the Church and respond to needs hitherto unknown and to the demands of a situation which had not yet arisen.
439 While in every diocese episcopal authority is being raised up by the new institution of officials and vicars general, throughout the world pious confraternities, Charitable associations, the renewal of doctrine by the Universities, and, above all these creations, that of the great religious Orders, appear at the same time in the history of the Church. Powerful and effective remedies for languor and decadence, they descend from the treasures of God at the hour of need, and they do not wait. As we know, there have been chagrined minds that have risen up against all these salutary institutions. The Jansenists blamed the pious brotherhoods. But the religious Orders especially were attacked from the beginning by Guillaume de Saint-Amour and his followers664, and later by these same Jansenists665. Justified by their benefits, by the attachment of the people, more gloriously still by the outrages of heretics and impious people, they found, even in the ranks of Catholics, opponents who reproached them as an invasion the ministry they exercised and the mission they held from the Sovereign Pontiff. Guillaume de Saint-Amour already maintained that there was abuse in any spiritual help administered to souls by others than the parish priests and immediate pastors666; without pity for souls, he refused them those extraordinary remedies which they demand and which they go to seek far away in their great needs. But, let there be no mistake about it, the peoples need religious,
664 Mainly in the famous pamphlet by the canon of Beauvais, Dangers of the New Times. Cf. St. THOMAS, Opuscule 19, Against the Enemies of the Worship of God and Religion, preface, ed. Vivès, 1889, vol. 29, p. 2: "The old tyrants made every effort to expel them, that is to say, to expel the saints from the midst of the world ... But now this is what some perverse men are trying to do by councils full of deceit, especially with regard to religious..."; trans. FOURNET, in Opuscules de saint Thomas, Vivès, Paris, 1857, t. 2, p. 522. This opuscule bears n. 1. in the edition of MANDONNET, Lethielleux, 1927. 665 PIE VI, Bull Auctorem fidei (Aug. 28, 1794), 80-84, MANSI 38, 1277-1278; Bullarium Romanum, Prati, 1849, t. 6, pars 3 a, pp. 2722-2724; Den., 1580-1584. 666 St. THOMAS, Against the enemies of the worship of God and of religion, ch. 4, ed. Vivès, t. 29, p. 19: "They apply themselves to keep them away from preaching and hearing confessions, so that they may do no fruit among the people, exhorting to virtue and extirpating vice"; loc. cit., t. 3, pp. 567-568.
440 and, if the beneficiary regime and the suppression of the common life have drawn the ordinary clergy of the Churches further away from a similar life, they will go and seek them in the Apostolic Orders. True pastors, far from being jealous of them, must rejoice because the lost sheep is found, what was weak is strengthened, wounds are bound and healed, what was dead comes to life (cf. Ezek. 34:16)667. The opponents of the Religious Orders and of all the great modern creations of the Holy Spirit in the Church reproach them with their recent origin: 'They were not known,' they say, 'in venerable antiquity'; blind and impotent spirits, who want to stop the course of the river which rejoices the city of God (cf. Ps. 45:5), who want to forbid the Holy Spirit to be henceforth creative in the Holy Church, who want to reduce the Bride of Jesus Christ to sterility. We must, in fact, make a final reflection here. All these great works are not only remedies for the evils caused in the Church by the course of the centuries, but they attest to the magnificent expansion of her ever more glorious life. It is a law of Divine Providence that it only allows evil to be an occasion for good, and the divine remedies are the progress of its work. The Church, in her passage here below, is at the same time delivered to the action of time and to that of God. Time brings her languor and decadence; God gives her strength and revival. But it is due to God's majesty that his strengthening action always outweighs the debilitating action of time. When God cures the ills of his Church, he must make it grow, each remedy must be a triumph, and he must respond to decadence with progress. Let us therefore greet the great Catholic institutions in all their salutary development. The apostles again will travel the world; the Churches, illuminated by the brilliance of these new stars, will leap with gladness before the face of God who sends them these powerful auxiliaries and who, through them, resurrects in them the dead or failing souls.
667 Roman Breviary, Hymn of Pentecost, Veni Creator Spiritus.
441 Modern Times
We are touching modern times; at the dawn of these new times and at the very hour when they are opened by the great disaster of Protestant defection, the Spirit of God, who never ceases to sustain the Church and to renew the face of the earth, is going to arouse in the Christian universe an admirable movement of reform of discipline and morals. Men of God, like so many luminous torches, came to console and revive the faith of the people. Saint Philip of Neri, Saint Ignatius, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Vincent de Paul, M. Olier and so many others, appeared from all sides. The new religious orders were bursting with apostolic zeal; the old orders were being renewed by heroic reforms. Finally, the whole Church, animated by the same movements of the Holy Spirit and ready to undertake, under the divine impulse, the immense work of renewing morals and discipline, gathered at Trent and traced in this memorable council the plan of the reconstitutions of the future. We will not undertake the considerable task, so well accomplished by others, of describing the work of this assembly and the efforts successfully attempted by the great men of that time to make the spirit of its decrees penetrate everywhere. We are anxious to determine this rapid account of the history of the institutions and life of the particular Churches. We will limit ourselves to noting that the Holy Council, in its disciplinary work, had two main objectives: to remedy abuses and to prepare for the future. But in order to accomplish this twofold purpose, the Council affirmed above all the sovereign and independent primacy of St. Peter, obscured by the theories of the great schism, and it endeavored to restore the holy freedom of the episcopate, that freedom which has never had a higher guarantee or more solid support than the chair of St. Peter. In all his decrees he will not cease to emphasize the independence and sovereignty of the bishops at the head of their Churches. He will break, as far as it is possible, the thousand fetters placed by the centuries and the cou
442 local customs to their paternal and beneficent authority, and he will affirm on every page his desire to see the episcopal pulpit gather into itself, as in the earliest days, all the forces of the Church and once again become the center of all its vital impulses668. The authority of the Pope reaffirmed and that of the bishops supported by these immortal decrees would work together effectively to remedy the evils of the past. The Church had suffered all the consequences of the beneficiary regime; it was everywhere constituted under this regime. It was necessary first of all to oppose the abuses which it made possible. The holy council accomplished this part of its task by condemning the accumulation of benefices and other disorders which had occurred in the past669, but above all by establishing the contest670 and the institution of seminaries671. It was necessary, in the presence of the beneficiary organization and the rights of patronage extended everywhere, to assure the Church, by some new institution, of ministers worthy of their sacred functions and of the confidence of the people. We are no longer in the days when the cleric grew up in the bosom of
668 Council of Trent, Session 6 (1546), Decree of Reformation, can. 2-4, EHSES 5, 803-804, HEFEL 10, 164-165. - Session 7 (1547), Decree of Reformation, can. 5-8, 13-15, EHSES 5, 997-999, HEFEL 10, 233-236. - Session 13 (1551), Decree of Reformation, can. 3-6, EHSES 10, 285-286; cf. RICHTER, Canones et Decreta Concilii Tridentini, Lipsiae, 1853, pp. 70ff. - Session 14 (1551), Decree of Reformation, preamble and can. 4, 12-13, HEFEL 10, 384-387 and 390. - Session 21 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 4-8, EHSES 8, 703-704, HÉFÉLÉ 10, 422-424. - Session 22 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 5, 8-10, EHSES 8, 966-967, HÉFÉLÉ 10, 463-464. - Session 23 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 1, 4-6, EHSES 9, 623-625, HÉFÉLÉ 10, 494-497. - Session 25 (1563), Decree EHSES 8, 966-967, HEFEL 10, 463-464. - Session 23 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 1, 4-6, EHSES 9, 623-625, HEFEl 10, 494-497. Session 25 (1563), Decree (of reformation) on regulars and nuns, can. 3, 9-10, EHSES 9, 1080-1082, HÉFÉLÉ 10, 601-602, 605. 669 Council of Trent, session 7 (1547), Decree of Reformation, can. 2 and 4, EHSES 5, 997, HEFELÉ 10, 233. - Session 24 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 17, EHSES 9, 986, HÉFÉLÉ 10, 579. 670 Council of Trent, session 24 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 18, EHSES 9, 986, HÉFÉLÉ 10, 579-582. 671 Council of Trent, session 23 (1562), Decree of Reformation, can. 18, EHSES 9, 628, HEFEL 10, 501-582.
443 his Church under the direction of his bishop and under the eyes of the people, rising successively from the lower ministries to the higher orders under this double guarantee. The new situation calls for precautions of another kind. Through the contest, the unworthy and the incapable will be removed from the pastoral office. Through the seminaries, an ecclesiastical militia will be prepared by a wise recruitment and kept in reserve at the disposal of the bishops, for the service of the Churches, and the schools of the cathedral Churches, flames extinguished by the calamities of the times, will be revived under this new form. But what were the views of the holy Council of Trent for the future of the Church? What were the great plans it formulated? What were the yearnings and desires that the Spirit of all holiness was forming in the hearts of the saints, of St. Charles Borromeo, in whom the soul of the Council was incarnated, so to speak, in the hearts of the other great servants of God? It seems to us that, in a heavenly vision, these great men saw the eternal beauties and the divine plan of the Jerusalem of the Churches. It appeared to them free from the transient constructions and ruins that the centuries have made in their course. They saw it in all the simplicity of the time of its foundation. They welcomed this shining vision of the past and the future, always ancient and always new, and the Fathers of the Council decreed its complete restoration by two solemn prescriptions. On the one hand, they order that within each Church the whole hierarchy of ecclesiastical ministries be restored as soon as possible in its integrity and activity: deacons and inferior ministers will therein resume their ancient and serious importance and all the order of their useful functions672. By a second and still more considerable decree, reviving in its vigor the sixth canon of the Council of Chalcedon, they generally abolish vague ordinations673. Clerics will no longer be able to receive the sacred order without the office which
672 Council of Trent, ibid., can. 17, EHSES 9, 627-628, HEFEL 10, 501. 673 Council of Trent, ibid., can. 16, EHSES 9, 627, HEFELÉ 10, 500-501.
444 corresponds to him and without being bound by this office in the ordination itself to the service of a particular Church. The bishop may well still, it is true, have around him, by way of exception, some ecclesiastics detached from the service of the Churches, ordained without the particular bond of title and destined to serve under his direction the peoples entrusted to him. This will be, at the disposal of each bishop, like a restricted apostolic body, detached from the service of the particular Churches and attached to the diocese alone. These clerics ordained under the condition of this general service will be placed at the disposal of the bishop, and, instead of the bond which the inscription in the canon of a Church entails, they will find in their ordination this obligation to work for the work of God under his orders. These two great prescriptions of the Council of Trent, in which a theologian of the Council, Gentian Hervet, saw the whole restoration of the discipline and hierarchical life of the Churches, passed almost unnoticed at first and hardly received any practical application. They were probably not destined by Divine Providence to enter immediately into the order of things. It is even doubtful that they were practically compatible with all the requirements created by the beneficiary regime and the rights of the collaborating employers. However, like all the work of the Council of Trent, they remain as the waiting stones of an unfinished edifice. Today, the movement of human affairs and the needs of the times have introduced a practice far removed from the application of these rules. Vague ordinations have prevailed almost universally, and the episcopate alone has not been affected by them. The ecclesiastical titles themselves are few in number; the clerics are for the most part simply subject to the bishop without any particular bond, and held at his free and full disposal; and as in the days of its first conquests, the Church, on a poorly established soil, keeps all the freedom of its movements and waits for the hour' of reconstructions. Since the Council of Trent, new revolutions have shaken the world. Old Europe, deeply shaken, has seen in a large part of its territory the state of the Churches violently
445 overthrown. New Churches, freed from the bonds of the past, have arisen in the new world and in the Protestant lands. Within the Catholic nations themselves, after the destruction and ruin, the hierarchy has taken new birth at the voice of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and the Churches have received from him a new institution. We cannot doubt that, in the midst of the anguish of the present hour, and at the cost of its sorrows, God is preparing great benefits for the world. In the very ruins, the divine Architect is preparing the reconstructions of the future. For the freed and rejuvenated Churches, this will undoubtedly be the accomplishment of the work of the Council of Trent: episcopal authority fully consolidated in its paternal sovereignty; the hierarchy of priests and Levites restored in its powerful integrity; the ancient bond which unites the cleric to his Church in the very mystery of his consecration re-established, and at the same time, the renewal of the ancient society of the faithful people, closely united to the body of his priesthood. May we be permitted, following St. Charles Borromeo and the other great servants of God674, in the profound sentiment of the Church's intimate wishes and the divine groanings of the Spirit within her, manifested by the aspirations of so many priestly souls toward the common life, to call again with our wishes for a final and blessed restoration. The priesthood, under the regime of the common life, converted and formed peoples to the Christian life; under the regime of clerical ownership, it has seen its action weakened, the heritage of Christ diminished by defections and the diminution of the Christian faith and spirit, and it has been powerless to halt the slow weakening of religion within modern societies. Everywhere the pastors of the flock complain of the inefficiency of their efforts to defend it against the ceaseless work of ungodliness and to keep it under their leadership. But they find-
674 St. Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) desired to bring all the canons of his cathedral to the common life; having been unable to realize this design, he founded the Oblates, clerics dedicated to the common life. St. Gaetan (1480-1547) and other servants of God also set out to restore the apostolic life among the clergy; but their efforts resulted in the establishment of various religious congregations and did not bring it into the ranks of the titular clergy of the churches.
446 will find the ancient strength and fruitfulness of their ministry in a generous return to the ancient apostolic community and to that filial abandonment under the leadership of the bishops which made their unity and invincible power675. Let the patrimony of the Church, then, once again become the common treasure of which the bishop has the paternal administration. May clerics everywhere, without constraint and under the sweet impulses of the apostolic spirit, unite in the glorious poverty of that common life which was that of their ancestors and which put the world in their hands676. This spectacle is already generously offered to us by the priesthood of mission countries. But the whole world is itself today only a vast mission field; and, in the face of the revolution, which is the social antichrist, can it be otherwise renewed than by an immense expansion of the apostolic spirit among the clergy?
675 Council of Rome (1063), can. 4, LABBE 9, 1176, MANSI 19, 1025: "We prescribe that the clerics of the orders enumerated above (priests, deacons, subdeacons)... have, as is fitting for truly pious clerics, a common refectory and dormitory, situated near the churches for which they have been ordained; likewise that they place in common all that belongs to them from these churches. We ask them to strive with all their strength for the apostolic life. HEFELE 4, 1167. This canon is simply a reprise of canon 4 of the Council of Rome (1059). - JOHN XXIII quotes it in his Apostolic Letter to the Abbot Primate of the Order of Canons Regular of St. Augustine (May 25, 1959); see Les Echos de Saint-Maurice, July 1959, pp. 22 and 25. It would take too long to recall here all the documents which attest to the doctrinal tradition and desires of the Church concerning the apostolic life of clerics; several authors have made special treatises of them. Let us content ourselves with quoting here the great Pius IX: "We see that the ancient laws of the Church not only approved, but ordered that priests, deacons and subdeacons should live together, putting in common all that came to them from the ministry of the Churches; and they were recommended to strive with all their might to reproduce the apostolic life, which is the common life. We can therefore only praise and recommend all those who unite to lead this kind of ecclesiastical life" (Brief of March 17, 1866). 676 What will be in the future the precise form of the holy renewals and progress of ecclesiastical life? We offer here our desires and conjectures supported by the monuments of tradition; but we do so only timidly. "The thoughts of men are timid and uncertain," says Sacred Scripture; "who has entered the counsel of God" and known his secrets? This great God has the habit of revealing his designs to us only by their accomplishment. But there is one thing we cannot doubt: that he is preparing for his Church, through the trials of the present hour, new triumphs and magnificent progress.
447 The Churches will blossom again at the breath of this spirit. Their own priesthood will again impart to them all the social impulses of religion and charity; it will again make them active societies endowed with powerful vitality. They will again become the great treasurers of God, dispensers of spiritual graces by the authority he communicates to their hierarchy, and dispensers of alms and temporal assistance by the trust and faith of the people. Ecclesiastical assemblies will once again become the great and solemn manifestations of the religion of the multitudes, and they will raise to God the great voice of the people in the liturgy restored to its ancient popularity. It must be recognized, in fact, that this life of the particular Churches is the normal state of religion within humanity. It is the order of things divinely instituted in the hierarchy. The Churches must be the perpetual and habitual home of the supernatural life of men; it is to found them and make them flourish that all Christian forces must conspire, and the apostolate of missionaries and religious has no higher end. Nothing, in fact, can take the place of the Churches or substitute for their life in various aspects. In the order of prayer, no particular devotion, however holy and authorized, will ever have the all-divine value of the liturgy and will never be destined to take its proper place in the Christian religion. In the order of the divine ministry, no matter how necessary help missionaries bring to souls, they cannot abolish the state of ordinary pastors, and missions cannot take the place of churches. The role of the missions in the life of the Catholic Church is immense, but it is subordinated to the constitution of the hierarchy, which they must serve in every way. Wherever Churches do not yet exist, the missions must prepare them, strive for their establishment and bring them to fruition; wherever they exist on the ground, the apostolate must contribute and work to make them flourish. This is its principal end; it must sanctify souls, and, to make this work lasting, sanctify the Churches, which are the families of the
448 souls, divinely instituted in the episcopate and the ordinary priesthood. No human organization, no pious association aroused by the Christian spirit, however holy and useful it may be, can ever take the place of the divine and immortal order of the Churches, that is to say, of the divine mystery of the hierarchy descending from the throne of God through Jesus Christ to the universal Church and through the episcopate to the particular Church, a stable mystery, a sacred society indissolubly "bound up with the mysteries of God Himself"677. The Holy Spirit, who raises up in their providential hour the great religious works, destines them to support outside the great body of the hierarchy and to assist here below the Churches in their laborious life, never to rise on the ruins of their eternal order.
677 Saint CYPRIAN, On the Unity of the Catholic Church, 6; PL 4, 504.
449 CHAPTER XXXV
The religious state
We cannot in this treatise so often name the religious state without pausing to consider more fully the nature of this state, the place it occupies in the Church, and the great institutions which were its successive developments in the course of the ages.
In studying these admirable creations of the Holy Spirit, we shall have to extend our views beyond the limits of the particular Church, and speak of the Apostolic Orders; but the particular Churches do not cease to receive the service of these powerful auxiliaries; they are continually in contact with these institutes, and it is necessary to understand well what is their nature and the function which belongs to them.
Nature of the religious state
And first, what is the religious state? The religious state is an outward profession of Christian perfection. Substantially, it is not of another nature than Christianity, but it is its perfection. It does not exceed the commitments of baptism, but it is the total and perfect accomplishment of them. The religious state is therefore properly a state of perfection and of Christian holiness. But what is holiness in the church? It is the commerce of perfect charity established between God and man by the mystery of the Redemption; it is the perfection of love in the perfection of sacrifice. Sacrifice and death intervene, and the holiness of the Church is the fruit of this. God loved man to the point of death. He gave himself up to death for man. In this he loved first (cf. 1 Jn 4:9-10; Rom 5:8). It was like a provocation of infinite love, and this love went to the end, for to die is the final consummation of love (Jn 13:1). The Church in turn responds to this provocation of love by
450 "a death response." She in turn loves to the point of death, and all the holiness that is love is consummated in death. It is therefore necessary that the Church make this response of death in all her saints. She does it first in the martyrs. Then she makes it by an unbloody martyrdom in the holy confessors. For only those reach holiness who separate themselves by a spiritual death from the world and from every earthly and perishable object. Now, since all Christians are called to holiness, baptism, in which the whole Church is immersed, contains the commitment to this death for all the faithful, and, through a mystical burial, it contains the mystery of it (cf. Rom. 6:1-14). Religious profession, which is only a state of perfection of Christianity, does not go beyond this commitment, because in love there is nothing beyond death; it does not go beyond the divine vocation of the baptized to the death of the old man, and, through this death, to the life of the new humanity, which is the life of Jesus Christ in each of its members; but it is the perfect fulfillment of this vocation, and it commits man to this fulfillment from the present life. Holiness, then, is in a certain sense identical with the religious state; for the essence of the latter is to be an outward profession of holiness, and the Church, which is all holiness, is in this sense entirely called to this state, and will one day attain it entirely (cf. Rev. 21:2). The religious state, in fact, is the profession of perfect chastity. It is through obedience, perfect, exclusive and definitive adherence to the will of God in everything and everywhere. It is, through poverty, the total renunciation of the goods of this world and of private property. Now, in heaven, all the elect are in a supereminent way consumed in this state. Entering into the participation of the virginal wedding of the Lamb, they enjoy eternal purity, and the very state of marriage, so honorable here below, no longer takes place there: "in the resurrection, they take neither wife nor husband, but are like angels in heaven" (Mt 23:30). In heaven, the chosen ones no longer have any property in the goods of this world destined to perish by fire. They have everything in common, and their treasure, which is the wealth of God, belongs to them all without sharing. In heaven, the elect no longer have any other will than the will of God, perceived in the clear vision of his heart and embraced with the full
451 and total adherence of consummate charity. So they are all fused into one, having "one heart and one soul" (Acts 4:32), in this adherence to that one will. Religious life is, in the present time, a beginning and an anticipation for some of that state common to all the elect in eternity. The Fathers show us religious seeking in the future life the exemplar of their present life678. By chastity they enter into the eternal wedding; by detachment and holy poverty they place their portion in God, they are his heirs and already enter in some way by a blessed exchange into the possession of the inheritance. They stop their will in him by obedience; and finally the stability of their profession imitates, as far as it is permitted to man here below, and begins the immutable rest in the possession of the sovereign good. But as the divine things, in the present infirmity, are administered to men under signs and veils, the religious state remains in this condition of the Church here below; there are as it were shadows in its lights, and that is why the union of the wills with that of God in religious obedience, which is the principal foundation of this state, is accomplished by a submission to this will signified externally, and this divine will is made known, as in a sacrament, by the sensible elements of the rules and the orders of the superiors. The religious state, an imperfect anticipation of the consummated state of the elect, rests, therefore, on this common ground of Christianity; for the
678 St. AMBROSIUS (339-397), On Virginity, l. 1, c. 31 n. 11; PL 16, 202: "How could the human mind comprehend a virtue which is outside the laws of nature? In what terms could nature express what is above it? It is in heaven that virginity has gone to seek the model that it imitates on earth. It is not without reason that she asked heaven for her rule of life, since it was in heaven that she found a spouse. Virginity rises higher than the heavens, than the atmosphere, than the angels and the stars; it goes to find the Word of God in the very bosom of the Father and aspires to him with all its heart... Finally, and I am not saying this on my own, "those who have kept their virginity will be like the angels of God in heaven" (IM 22:30). Let no one be surprised to hear souls who are the spouses of the Lord of angels compared to angels. Who would dare to deny that this kind of life comes from heaven ... "
452 baptism goes so far since it contains the mystery of our sanctification, and the Church arrives at holiness in all her members only by raising them up to that point. What, in fact, are the divine laws of Baptism into which the whole Church has entered? Holy Scripture shows it to be a perfect death, a burial, a new and heavenly life (Rom. 6:3-13). However, God, having regard to the conditions of the Church here below, to the necessities of the present state, to the weakness of men, by a divine condescension, has not imposed the religious life, during the present life, on all the baptized faithful, reserving for the future life the completion of this work. They can therefore stay short of it, provided they do not give up the idea of advancing towards this term and reaching it one day. For, at least at the hour of death, all will have to embrace perfect obedience and perfect renunciation of the goods of this world. At death, when they will receive the fruit of their baptism, and in order to reach the revelation of the children of God which will be made there, they will no longer have to distinguish themselves from religious in the perfection of sacrifices and separations; And, if there are still some too deep traces of these temporary attachments, if the soul has contracted some stain from contact with earthly goods, the sufferings of Purgatory will be there to complete the purifying work of death, and to present them worthy and finished for the blessed profession of eternal holiness in the bosom of God. Thus, already in the present life, the religious state strives to bring those whom God has chosen by a choice of predilection for that blessed anticipation679 closer to future holiness. But can there be, even as early as this life, no Christian holiness or perfection outside of this state? Certainly there can be no holiness properly so called or perfection outside of the perfect renunciations which are the object of this excellent profession.
679 St. BERNARD (1090-1153), Apology to William, c. 10, n. 24; PL 182, 912: "No order, more than the order of monks and religious, is similar to the orders of angels, none is nearer to that where Jerusalem our mother will be in heaven, both because of the honor of chastity and because of the ardor of charity."
453 But something else is the external profession of these renunciations which constitutes the religious state, something else is this renunciation itself. This renunciation can take place in the depths of the soul outside the external profession which is the public commitment made in front of the Church. Or, if we wish to understand this comparison, just as theology distinguishes, with regard to the Catholic Church itself, between the body of this Church formed by those who belong to it by external profession and the soul of the Church embracing all those who are united to it in faith and charity, so this most excellent part of the Church, this blessed group which practices perfect renunciation out of love, which generously embraces the evangelical counsels and which forms in itself the state of Christian perfection, also has as it were a body and a soul. The public state of religion is like the body, and the saints who are not religious by external profession belong, as it were, to the soul of this state of renunciation and perfection. For, according to the divine requirements of holiness and of this blessed spiritual death, they fulfill the word of the Apostle; they possess as if they did not possess; they buy without possessing; they are in the state of marriage as if they were not in it; they use this world as if they did not use it, by the interior disposition of their souls (1 Cor. 7:2931). And so they are poor in riches, they are bound to the will of God in the apparent independence of their state, and, being free, they make themselves the slaves of Christ. They are not divided between God and the world like imperfect seculars, and they belong invisibly to the state of perfect renunciation of which they make no external profession. Let us say it even and push our comparison further: just as bad Christians, unfaithful to their baptism, belong to the body of the Church without belonging to its soul, so, alas! some religious are imperfect in a public state of perfection; but as bad Christians will be rejected at the last judgment and will see the hidden elect of the Gentiles occupy the places they have forsaken, so will these religious see obscure seculars placed before them in glory, because here below these will have preceded them
454 in the ways of perfection and holiness680.
His place in the Church
If the religious state is but the outward profession of the perfect renunciation which is the essence of Christian holiness, it holds by its very roots to the note of holiness of the Church.
It is by this state that the Church publicly professes the holiness to which she wishes to raise all her members. It is fitting, in fact, for this immaculate Bride of Jesus Christ to make this profession from the present life in those of her members who are like her superior part by the excellence of their virtue or by the dignity of their vocation; and this is why the episcopate, like the religious state, is called a state of perfection and obliges especially to holiness, that is, to the perfection of charity681. The religious state, thus considered in the relations it has to the very holiness of the Church, is not, therefore, in her a mere accessory and like a luxury ornament which the Bride of Jesus Christ can do without. But this state is the Church itself in its most excellent part; it is the Church beginning in its noblest elements what will one day be fully accomplished for the whole multitude of her children in the glory of heaven, where they will be "one heart and one soul" in the one divine will, where all possession of perishable goods will have passed away with the figure of this world, where all will have only one treasure in the inexhaustible riches of the divinity. Thus, far from being a mere superfluous accident, the religious state is, on the contrary, what is most substantial and complete in the substance of the Church682.
680 This truth was repeatedly reminded to the Desert Fathers in heavenly visions. 681 St. THOMAS, Secunda Secundae, q. 184, a. 5; Opuscule 18, on the perfection of the spiritual life, ch. 18. 682 JOHN XXIII, Address to the Cistercian monks of Monte Cistello (Oct. 20, 1960): "The contemplative life! ...It constitutes one of the fundamental structures of the holy Church"; in The Institutes of Perfect Life (EP), 1962, n. 1207. - Id. letter.
455 To attack it in doctrine or by violence, then, is not to take hold of a few branches that are useless to the life of the tree planted by Jesus Christ; It is not, as some have dared to say, to strengthen the trunk and the main branches by sending back to them a sap that has gone astray, but it is to attack the Church itself and to attack her at the heart; it is to want to forbid her the public and ordinary ways of holiness, which is the most excellent of her essential notes. Thus conceived, the religious state is so much of the essence of the Church that it naturally "began with her, or rather began with him"683. This is the common teaching of the Doctors and the Popes. The apostles were the first religious684; the first faithful, in their school, rose to this holy and perfect state of poverty and renunciation by envy, according to the measure of grace made to each. The nascent Church of Jerusalem offered for some time to the world the example of perfect detachment from earthly riches, without, however, making it obligatory on each of its members (Acts 4:32, 3437). From those early days, the religious state, that perfect conformity to the very person of Jesus Christ in his mortal life, reproduced by the apostles as by so many faithful and vivid images of the divine Model, spread throughout the world with the Churches that were springing up on all sides. The Holy Spirit, who is the soul of the universal Church, aroused in all its parts the aspirations and sacred commitments to the perfect life, without yet forming a distinct religious state in the world. It was in each Church like the mysterious one that maintained the vigor of charity; it was the center and the substantial nucleus of these budding stars in the new heaven of the Catholic Church. From then on, in fact, religious life appeared in the clergy and in the people to support and elevate both to holiness. The laity who embraced it, as we have said in a
to the Abbot General of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (October 20, 1960), "The contemplative life... belongs to the essential structure of the Mystical Body of Christ"; ibid., n. 1213. 683 St. BERNARD, loc. cit.
684 Id., ibid.: "(Our Order) of which the apostles were the founders".
456 previous chapter, were called ascets, and, without separating themselves from the rest of the people, formed in the Churches "the noblest part of the flock of Christ"685. The clerics, on their part, endeavored with holy emulation to practise the apostolic life, of which the first bishops, disciples of the apostles, had given them the example. The words of St. Peter, head of the apostolic college: "We have left everything" (Mt. 19:27), kept ringing in the ears of the pontiffs and the ministers of the hierarchy as the type and the perfect summary of the ecclesiastical life. They were making progress in this way, more or less. Many reached the summit; and if, because of human weakness, the perfection of religious detachment was not imposed on all, it was sufficiently proposed to them, and the invitation was more pressing in the higher degrees of the clerical hierarchy. The demands of an external profession of the evangelical counsels were in fact naturally, from then on, more rigorous the higher one went in the ecclesiastical order. Detachment from the goods of this world, with the rights which this detachment gave to the alms of the faithful, increased with rank; obedience was more extensive, and all individual activity more completely bound up with the service of God; finally perfect chastity, advised to all, was rigorously imposed on bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons686, and on this point the weakening of discipline in the East never went so far as to reach the episcopate, so much so that there is a secret and natural proportion and as it were a necessary relation between the priestly hierarchy and the profession of the evangelical counsels.
685 St. CYPRIAN (+ 258), On the Conduct of Virgins, c. 3; Cf. Pius XI, Apostolic Constitution Umbratilem remotamque vitam (July 8, 1924), in Institutes of Perfect Life (EP), n. 423. 686 Saint SIRICE (384-389), Letter 1, c. 7-8; PL 13, 1138-1142. Saint INNOCENT I (402-417), Letter 2, to Victrice, bishop of Rouen; PL 20, 469-481. - SAINT LEON (440-461), Letter 14, to Anastasius, bishop of Thessalonica, 1; PL 54, 672. - ID, Letter 167, to Rusticus, bishop of Narbonne, 3; PL 54, 1204. - St. EPIPHANUS (t 403), Countering Heresies, 59, 4; PG 41, 1022-1026. - Cf. G. BARDY art. Celibacy (of the clergy), in Catholicism, t. 2 (1950), col. 757 760.
457 Every Church, therefore, kept within its bosom, from the origin of the Christian religion, and as the most substantial part of the community of the disciples of Jesus Christ, persons consecrated to God under one or other title of ascetics or clerics, which was declared by an ancient Council in the words, "the church people, clerics or ascetics"687. This ancient expression contains the seed of the famous distinction that was soon to be made in the fully developed religious state between the Canonical Order and the Monastic Order. The religion of the ascetics became the Monastic Order, and the religion of the clerics, became the Canonical Order. It is appropriate to follow in history the developments of both of these great primitive branches of the religious state.
Development of monasticism
We have set forth in the thirty-second chapter how, on the one hand, the full liberty given to the Christian life, and, on the other, the natural development of the apostolic seed deposited in the nascent Church brought forth from the primitive state of the ascetics the vigorous and distinct branch of the monastic Order. It is indeed natural that the single stem of a young plant, containing within it the fibers and branches of the whole tree, too weak at first to support itself distinctly, when it finally reaches its full development, these fibers, until then contained in the unity of the trunk, separate into as many powerful branches. Obeying this law, the monastic Order, until then confused in the bosom of the Christian people, took its rise and appeared as a distinct institute. This institute, as we have said above, had as many Churches living under its discipline as there were monasteries, excellent Churches which soon had their hierarchy drawn from their bosom. Then, by a providential return and admirable vicissitudes, as the monks had first been part of the Churches common to all the people before forming themselves into distinct Churches,
687 Council of Laodicea (between 343 and 381), can. 30, LABBE 1, 1501, MANSI 2, 570, HEFELE 1, 1015-1016.
458 in their turn the monastic Churches were opened to the peoples; the clergy of the monasteries gave the Christian populations apostles and pastors; and the monastic Churches, sheltering the peoples under the guidance of priestly and pontifical monks, were to them episcopal Churches and parishes. Under this first form and through the monastic institute destined to perpetuate itself until the end of time, religious life spread throughout the whole of Christendom, taking shape and constituting itself in the state of numerous and flourishing particular churches. The lay monk is the faithful of the Church of his monastery; the priest or minister monk is its cleric, and, in accordance with the canon of Chalcedon, he is attached to it by the title of his ordination, as are in each of the other Churches the clerics of those Churches. He is its chanon, if we may so speak, and belongs to it by the bond of canonical title. The clerical monks thus form the presbytery and the body of ministers of their monastery, that is, of a true Church, hierarchically constituted and taking its place and rank in the great harmony of the particular Churches. As for monastic discipline itself, it consists of a set of observances deposited, in substance, from the time of the apostles in the treasury of tradition. These are the holy laws of abstinence, fasting and work of the hands; for we do not wish to include in them especially the sacred vigils and the holy psalmody, since in this the monasteries have nothing which is not common to them with all the other Churches. Moreover, the observances properly monastic themselves are not so exclusively reserved to them that the common Church does not retain something of them through the institution of Lent and the apostolic fasts; and, as these common observances of the Christian people were in the bosom of the Churches gradually specified and reduced to narrower formulas, so the great traditions of primitive asceticism were reduced to fixed and clearly determined rules by the great men raised up from God to be the legislators of the monastic Order688.
688 Nor is poverty and community of goods so exclusively the privilege of monasteries that other churches do not have some participation in it
459 St. Pacomus (292-345) first received, by naked special revelation689, this mission for the whole state of the cenobites and the government of the monasteries, where the precision of the rules is more necessary than it is in the bosom of the deserts and the state of the hermits or anchorites. The great St. Anthony (250-356) tells us that this mission was first offered to another solitary who did not correspond690. The rule of St. Pacomus, too little known today, contains, in surprising detail for those early times, the whole body of observances which form the basis of the later rules, and he may rightly be regarded as the first patriarch of the cenobitic institutes691.
Soon the rule of St. Basil (330-370) appeared, common to both country and city monasteries, and which, as was said in his day, brought monastic life back to the latter692. In the West, the rules borrowed from the East and transported to Lerins, to Saint Victor, to Agaune, to Condat693, as well as the Celtic rules and the institutions of Saint Columban, gradually gave way to the admirable monastic constitution of Saint Benedict694. This great saint was raised up from God to give the old monastic tradition its definitive formula; he did not pretend to create from scratch new and unknown rules, but to collect and renew the ancient doctrine of the Fathers; and the Roman Martyrology
by the pooling of offerings and tithes, i.e., of a quantity of the goods of the faithful; there is here also apostolic tradition and a determination of ecclesiastical law. 689 Life of St. Pacomius, c. 1, n. 7, in Acta Sanctorum des Bollandistes, to May 16, vol. 16, p. 298. Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Monasticism, DACL, t. 11, col. 1812. 690 Id., c. 10, n. 77, ibid., t. 16, p. 325. 691 The Rule of St. Pachomius was published in the works of St. Jerome, who translated it into Latin: PL 23, 62 ff. cf. H. LECLERCQ, loc cit., col. 1813-1817. 692 Cf. H. LECLERCQ, loc cit, col. 1817-1821. 693 Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Lerins, DACL, t. 8, col. 2597-2613; F. CABROL, art. Cassian, ibid., t. 2, col. 2348-2357; H. LECLERCQ, art. JURA (Les Pères du), ibid., t. 8, col. 430-438; ID., art. Colomban, ibid., t. 3, col. 2725-2744. 694 Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Monasticism, ibid., t. 11, col. 1874-1908.
460 consecrates his mission by giving him the quality of "reformer and restorer of monastic discipline" (at 21 March). But this restoration was like the crowning of the work begun and continued by the preceding centuries, and the rule of St. Benedict is henceforth the common treasure where the deposit of the whole ancient monastic tradition rests, and where the monks will go until the end of time to seek its substance without ever exhausting its riches695.
Monastic Confederations
The great abbeys, as we have already said, had below them less considerable communities which formed like members of the same body by the unity of government and the unity of origin of the religious who populated them. All formed at the school of the abbey and attached to the abbey by the stability of their vows, they were sent to these residences without ceasing to belong to the same family and to form the same community. With time, these secondary establishments or priories multiplied, became established far away, and took on greater importance. The great abbeys all had such establishments; but that of Cluny696, with more brilliance than any other, spread its offspring throughout the Catholic world. Some of these secondary houses even became abbeys, while retaining something of their primitive dependence. These beginnings of central organization were the prelude to a considerable institution which was to assure the monastic institute in modern times the preservation of its life and vigor. We are speaking of the great monastic confederations or congregations. This new idea was born and appears to us in its full bloom-
695 La Règle de saint Benoît (Latin text and trans.), Maredsous, 1933 (col. Pax); Dom BUTLER, Le monachisme bénédictin, De Gigord, Paris, 1924. 696 Cf. Dom GAZEAU, art. Cluny, in Catholicisme, vol. 2 (1950), col. 12681271; G. DE VALOUS, Le monachisme clunisien, des origines au XVe siècle, Ligugé, 1935, 3 vols. (col. Archives de la France monastique).
461 sement with the Order of Cîteaux697. We no longer see only priories, that is, simple detachments of the monastic legion placed in residences more or less distant from the abbey to which the religious who compose them do not cease to belong by the close bond of profession, but the priories fade away, the abbeys multiply, and these abbeys themselves form a vast association among themselves. They confederated under the presidency of a principal abbey, in order to maintain by the union of all forces the exact observance of the rules. They even subordinate themselves to each other by the laws of filiation, the last imitation of the ancient dependence of priories. The abbots assemble in a general chapter, whose authority Is imposed on all698. The head of the Confederation continues the action of this chapter over the whole body, and a hierarchy of visitors starting from the center maintains vigilance even in the most remote parts. However, under this new organization699, the monastic Institute retains its ancient and essential property: it does not cease to contain as many canonically constituted Churches as monasteries, and this is why we express by the word Confederation the bond of the monastic Congregations. Each monastery, on entering it, preserves its members in the bond which unites them; it keeps its government, it belongs to itself. The religious who make up the monastery belong to it first, and belong to the whole Order only by means of the monastery which contains them and carries them with it in this great association.
697 Cf. Dom Marie-Bruno BRARD, art. Cistercians, in Catholicism, vol. 2 (1950), col. 1143-1151; J. B. MAHN, L'ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, des origines au milieu du XIIIe siècle, De Boccard, Paris, 1945. 698 It is the glory of the Order of Cîteaux to have been in this the model that other Orders were not slow to imitate. In the statutes of several of them, mention is made of the Order of Cîteaux as the first and original type from which the holding of general chapters is derived; Privileges of the Order of Cîteaux, Paris, 1713, p. 2. 699 This organization was deemed so useful that it was adopted by all the reformers of the monastic Orders. The Fourth Council of LATRAN (1215), can. 12, made it an obligation of the general chapters to be held between the abbots and the heads of houses, and required that two abbots of Cîteaux be called to teach the order to be held there; LABBE 11, 163, MANSI 22,999, HEFELE 5,1342-1043.
462 The very language of these times expresses the hierarchical nature of the monasteries and preserves for them the name of churches. The great Cistercian constitution, called the Charter of Charity, and Exorde of Cîteaux speak on every page of the Churches of Cîteaux, Clairvaux, and the others to refer to the abbeys700.
Moreover, the very form of the transmission of power in the head of the Order indicates enough the federal nature of the association. The abbot of Cîteaux, for example, is not elected by the whole Order over which he presides, but because he is particular abbot of Cîteaux before being head of the Order, he is elected by the particular college of his abbey, as, below him, the heads of the principal branches, the abbots of Morimond, of La Ferté, of Clairvaux, of Pontigny, have a similar origin and are elected by their particular chapters, thus entering into the common law of all the abbeys; And it is sufficiently clear from this that the abbeys exist by themselves and prior to the link which unites them, as is appropriate for the members of a Confederation. Thus the great monastic Orders do not destroy the local character of the monasteries, and, while bringing them the help and strength of the society which they maintain among themselves, they allow, as in the past, religious life to take the form of particular Churches and to penetrate the ranks of the Churches, participating in the hierarchical element which constitutes them. But, before going any further, we must go back to follow the history of the Canonical Order701.
700 Charter of Charity (under Stephen, abbot of Citeaux, 1133), c. 2, un. 4, 8; c. 3, nu. 12 and 17; c. 4, n. 20; c. 5, n. 29; PL 166, 1372, 1380-1384. - Grand Exordium of the Order of Citeaux, distinctio Ia, c. 15 and 21; PL185, 1010 and 1016-1017. 701 On the origins and development of the canonical Order, cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Chanons, DACL, t. 3, col. 223-248; T. TORQUEBIAU, art. Chanoines, DDC, t. 3, col. 471-486; and especially Ch. DEREINE, art. Chanoines, DHGE, t. 12, col. 353-405; ID, Vie commune, règle de saint Augustin et chanoines réguliers au XIe siècle, in Revue d'Histoire ecclésiastique, 41 (1946) 365-406; Charles GIROUD, c. R., L'Ordre des chanoines réguliers de saint Augustin et ses diverses formes de régime interne, Martigny, 1961; Hubert VISSERS, Vie canoniale, 1958, 448 pp.; M.-H. VICAIRE, O. P., L'imitation des apôtres, Moines, chanoines et mendiants, IVe-XIIIe Siècles, Cerf, Paris, 1963 (col. Tradition et spiritualité), pp. 39-66.
463 The Canonical Order in the first ten centuries
If, from the earliest days of the religious freedom given to the Church, the institute of ascetics separated itself from the rest of the people to take on a distinct existence and form the monastic Order, within the clergy a similar division between the religious and the secular element did not take place at first; and this is why the Canonical Order, which is the clergy itself, developed while preserving for a long time in its bosom the ill-defined union of the religious life and a less perfect life. The reason for this is easy to understand: the Church strongly urged her clerics to embrace the apostolic life; demanding more of the higher orders, she wanted to see them all in the practice of the evangelical counsels and in complete detachment from the goods of the earth, because there is between the priesthood and this detachment a secret and profound alliance. Already, under the shadows of the old law, the Levites had to live on the offerings of the people, because they had, says Holy Scripture, no other possession (Num. 18:20; Deut. 10:9; 18:1-2); under the new law, if the priest lives on the altar, it is fitting that he should have renounced all other earthly sharing. This renunciation was therefore the object of the Church's general invitation to all, and if she did not make it a strict law, it was out of consideration for the weakness of some. "The clerics," says an ancient Father, Julian Pomere, "placed in the rank of the poor by their own will or even by their humble birth" and the providential dispositions fully accepted, "embracing the perfection of this virtue, receive the necessities of life or in their own houses or in the congregation where they live in common." (This was the time when the first communities opened.) "They receive them, not from the desire to possess, but from the sheer necessity of human infirmity." "The bishop" himself, administrator and as holder of the property of the Church, who seems in this capacity to be engaged by state in temporal interests and possession, "the bishop, who has left to his family or distributed to the poor or given to the Church all his goods, and who for love of poverty, has put himself to
464 number of the poor, administers the offerings of the faithful without avarice; he feeds the poor from the fund with which he himself lives as a willing poor person."702 "As for those who are so weak," the same author continues, expounding the ancient doctrinal and disciplinary tradition, "that they cannot give up their possessions, let them at least relieve the Church of its burdens, serving it at their own expense, and let them be suffered on this condition"703; gratis serviant, as another text says. Still, although this tolerance was general, several churches rose higher and imposed complete detachment on their ministers. St. Eusebius, bishop of Verceil from 345 to 371, brought all the clergy of his Church to the perfect life, recruiting them exclusively from among the monks or ascetics, "so that in the same men may be contemplated the monastic renunciation and the zeal of the Levites"704. St. Augustine demanded of his clerics a commitment to poverty and religious life in his community705. St. Basil trained his clergy
702 JULIAN POMERE (+ after 498), The Contemplative Life, 1. 2, c. 11; PL 59,454. 703 26. ID, ibid., 1. 2, c. 12; PL 59, 455. 704 St. AMBROSIUS (339-397), Sermon 56, for the feast of St. Eusebius, 4; PL 17, 744: "For, to omit the rest, is it not quite admirable that in this holy Church he made monks of those whom he made clerics, and united together the exercise of priestly functions and the observances of religious austerity,. . so that when you see the beds of this monastery, you think of the Institutions of the East, and, when you consider the devotion of these clerics, you have the joy of contemplating the order of angels"; trans. Paul BENOÎT, La vie des clercs dans les siècles passés, Bonne Presse, Paris, 1915, p. 276. Cf. St. AMBROSIUS, Letter 63, to the clergy of Verceil, 66, 71, 82; PL 16, 1207-1211; Pseudo-MAXIMS OF TURIN, Sermon 22; PL 57, 890. 705 POSSIDIUS, Life of St. Augustine, 11; PL 32, 42: "Clerics were first taken from among those who served God with St. Augustine and under his guidance, in the monastery which he had founded, for the Church of Hippo" - c. 25: "The clerics lived always with him in the same house and at the same table, fed and clothed at common expense"; trans. PERONNE, loc. cit, vol. 1, pp. 8 and 17. St. AUGUSTIN, Sermon 355, On the Life and Conduct of Clerics, 1-2; PL 39, 1159-1160: "All of you, or almost all of you, know that we live in this house which is called 'the episcopal house,' striving as far as we can to imitate the saints of whom the book of the Acts of the Apostles speaks in these words: no one called his own what was his, but everything was common to them (Acts 4:32).... This is how we live: no one in our company is allowed to possess anything of his own"; trans. PERONNE, loc. cit., vol. 19, pp. 230-231. La Vie Spirituelle, January 1949, pp. 88-96, gave a translation
465 under his monastic rule706. Saint Marti surrounded himself with his followers707.
Everywhere, moreover, monks were frequently seen being raised to the episcopate or clerkship in the various churches708. The common life, of which there are already some beginnings from the very time of the persecutions, opened its asylums of perfection to clerics and monks alike. Religious life developed with admirable increases, and embraced, with a more or less exclusive bond according to the place, the clergy of each Church. In the eighth century, the rule of St. Chrodegand was imposed on all as the general type of common life of the clergy, at the same time as it outlined for them a minimum of religious life709. This rule, in fact, tolerates some property in the clerics to whom it is addressed, without forbidding them a more perfect renunciation. There are, in this imperfectly defined state of affairs, like certain transactions between the perfection of religious and the claims of less perfect clerics who must be kept under the same regime of community. Whatever these accommodations may be, it was at least at this time that common life became a universal practice, suffering no exception except in the small churches, where the presence of a single priest assisted by his cleric was sufficient for the needs of the people, and gave
two sermons 355 and 356 on the poverty and common life of the clerics of Hippo. 706 Cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Monasticism, in DACL, t. 11, col. 1817-1821. 707 Sulpice SÉVÈRE (c. 360-420), Life of St. Martin (bishop of Tours, from 372397), 10; cf. H. LECLERCQ, art. Tours, in DACL, vol. 15, col. 2600. 708 Cf. U. BERLIÈRE, L'exercice du ministère paroissial par les monoines dans le haut Moyen-Age in Revue bénédictine, 39 (1927) 231-233. 709 Saint Chrodegand was bishop of Metz from 742 to 766. On his Rule, cf. Ch. DEREINE, art. Chanoines, DHGE, t. 12, col. 364-365; H. LECLERCQ, art. Chanoines, DACL, t. 3, col. 240-245; HÉFÉLÉ 4, 20-25 (summary of the 34 chapters); François PETIT, La spiritualité des Prémontrés, Vrin, Paris, 1947, pp. 13-14; Hubert VISSERS, loc. cit., pp. 123-129. - This rule is the substance of the one adopted by the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle (816); cf. LABBE 7, 1313-1406, MANSI 14, 315-332; PL 89, 1057-1098; Carlo DE CLERCQ, La législation religieuse franque, Antwerp, 1958, t. 2, pp. 6-12.
466 throughout the Church a kind of imposing uniformity and regularity to the order of the clergy. It was then that the names of Canonical Order and Monastic Order embraced all the regular communities and all those consecrated to the service of God. This was, as we have already noted, a new translation or rather a magnificent development of the ancient formula of the Council of Laodicea: sacred persons are either clerics or ascetics. The canonical Order thus opposed to the monastic Order and embracing all the clergy was thus, as we can see, far from excluding religious life from its definition and the meaning of its name, as the expression secular clergy opposed to regular clergy does today. And, as the Canonical Order embraced the whole service of the Churches, it is manifest that this service does not belong by its essence or by a kind of preference and by an original and primordial right, as some have claimed, to clerics exclusively secular by profession710. But, on the contrary, the religious life was from the beginning proposed to all clerics placed in the hierarchy and inscribed in the canon of the Churches as the state to which the vow of the Church called them by pressing invitations; and this is indeed the place of the words of a modern canonist: "Secularization among clerics is not obligatory, but permitted"711.
710 PIE VI, Apostolic Constitution Auctorem fidei (August 28, 1794), Den., 1580: "The first rule claims in a general way and without distinction "that the religious or monastic state is, by its nature, incompatible with the care of souls and the labors of the pastoral life, and that therefore one should not take a place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy without thereby denying the principles of the monastic life. - We consider it false, pernicious, injurious to the holy Fathers of the Church and the prelates who united the observance of the regular life with the offices of the clergy, contrary to the ancient and proven venerable usage of the Church and to the decisions of the Supreme Pontiffs..."; trans. in Institutes of Perfect Life (EP), n. 74. - St. Pius X, Brief Salutare maxime (February 11, 1913), ibid., nn. 330-334. - Pius XII, Apostolic Constitution Sedes Sapientiae (May 31, 1956), ibid., n. 946. - JOHN XXIII Allocution to the Provincial Superiors of Italy (15 November 1960), ibid., n. 1216. 711 BOUIX, De iure regulari, quoted by DANZAS, Studies on the Primitive Times of the Order of St. Dominic, Oudin, Poitiers, t. 1, p. 106. See the clarifications given by PIE XII, on the state of perfection and the priesthood, in his Allocution to the 1st Congress of the States of Perfection (December 8, 1950), in Les instituts de vie
467 Thus, under the general name of Canonical Order, in the eighth century, we saw both religious life flourishing and a less perfect state being sustained under the empire of the common life generally imposed on all. Certain communities of clerics undoubtedly demanded of their members absolute poverty in this common life; others, on the contrary, allowed them a certain ownership of patrimonial goods, or even certain concessions of ecclesiastical goods by way of benefit or precariousness, a term borrowed from the civil and political law of the time. We believe, however, that the properly secular element held a greater place in the canonical order of that time than in the clergy of the first centuries of the Church. This difference in proportion between the two states within the clergy was not, in our opinion, due to a diminution of sanctity in the sacred ministers; but the admission of the monastic Order to the clerkship opened up a vast field and flourishing asylums for souls called to both the religious state and the Levitical and priestly ministry. Now, the clerical monks were true religious clerics attached to the service of the Churches and committed to the hierarchy; and, in order to judge fairly the proportion really kept between the secular state and the religious state in the service of the Churches, it is necessary to take into account the monastic clergy and that multitude of episcopal, collegiate and parish Churches which they served at that time and where they exercised such a fertile ministry. But, whatever the number of perfect religious in the canonical Order, the Church maintained in that Order a kind of union between their state and a less perfect state; she made an effort to safeguard this union, and, in order to bring the imperfect as far as possible to perfection, she imposed on all the common life.
The great reform of the eleventh century
But the hour came when this state of affairs was reached by profound
parfect, n. 746; cf. JOHN XXIII, Encyclical Sacerdotii nostri (July 31, 1959), ibid, n. 1181-1182.
468 decadences. The imperfect element, by the natural inclination of humanity, inclined to the most deplorable laxities. The wars which had devastated Europe during the ninth and tenth centuries, and, above all, the weakening of the authority of the Holy See, as a result of the sad state into which God had allowed the Roman Church itself to fall in the last years of that painful period, encouraged disorder. As the tyranny of the princes invaded and corrupted the great episcopal sees by simony, all the bonds of discipline were loosened, and the hierarchy found itself without strength. Then the clergy of the countryside, deprived of the help of the common life, were generally abandoned to disorder, and soon evil invaded the great Churches through the connivance or negligence of the first pastors. But, like the pool of the Gospel, which, stirred up by the angel at marked times, resumed the virtue of healing the infirm (cf. Jn 5:4)712, so the Church, the mysterious pool destined to heal mankind of its great diseases, appears to us in history as receiving, too, at providential times, new movements of the Holy Spirit; and, when its virtue seems exhausted, it is suddenly renewed by the holiness and works of the great servants of God. We saw this in the eleventh century. Suddenly, God raises up the great pontiffs St. Leo IX (1048-1054) and St. Gregory VII (1073-1085), and the reformation begins713. It is from the bosom of the monastic Order that the reformers come forth. The Monastic Order comes, so to speak, to the rescue of the Canonical Order, and is God's chosen instrument to raise it from its ruins. They are two brothers who help each other (cf. Pr 18.19). The plan of the great pontiffs we have named was to ra-
712 It is known that this verse is held to be inauthentic by the majority of exegetes, Catholics included; cf. LAGRANGE, o. p., Évangile selon saint Jean, Gabalda, Paris, 1925, pp. 134-136. 713 Cf. Ch. DEREINE, loc. Cit. col. 375-404; Augustin FLICHE La Réforme grégorienne et la Reconquête chrétienne, (Histoire de l'Église, t. 9), Bloud et Gay, Paris, 1950, pp. 391-461.
469 lead the whole canonical Order to the perfection of its state, that is, to the common life and even to the religious life714. There were admirable resurrections everywhere, but it was not possible to effectively impose the religious state on all the clergy; it was soon necessary to reckon with the necessities and diversity of vocations and to undergo the conditions which antiquity had known and accepted. It was then that the separation between the religious element and the element subject to a less perfect discipline was definitively made within the canonical Order. The secular element was still obliged to live in common; but it was soon to abandon it generally, and it became the stem of the modern secular clergy which illustrates itself in the midst of our societies by its works and its truly ecclesiastical virtues, and which, in the course of the following centuries, had its regulators and its particular masters, its saints and its models. The religious element took a new rise with greater freedom under the name of Canonical Regular Order, a name which, in the form of a pleonasm and a reduplication, recalls its origin, its essence and its traditions. The canons regular, in fact, represent then in the world in all its vigor the primitive and apostolic state of the clergy, and still the apostolic diplomas and the texts of the doctors show them as the successors of the apostles and apostolic men and the heirs of their kind of life within the Churches715.
714 See the text quoted above, chapter 34, p. 444. The Pontiff prescribes common life for all clerics in holy orders, and he strongly exhorts them to perfect poverty in religious life. -Council of Nimes (1096), LABBE 10, 605609, MANSI 20, 933-936, HÉFÉLÉ 5, 447-452. - Saint Gregory VII, in his letters inscribed in the Decretals, authorizes a bishop to oblige by censure the clerics of all his churches to live in common: "We order that after having carefully verified... the goods of your churches, you deign to specify the definitive number of clerics who live in each one, and to establish that they put their goods in common, eat in the same house, sleep and rest under the same roof... May you be permitted to force them, without appeal, to this observance, by the suspension of their office and benefice or even by a more serious penalty"; Decretals of GREGOIRE IX, Lyon, 1624, 2nd part, l. 3, c. 9, col. 994. 715 URBAN II (1088-1099), "the first, introduced into the papal bulls a formula which recalled the apostolic origins of common life and the welcome it
470 In the independence which had now been acquired for it, the institute of canons regular must, by force of circumstances, have found itself singularly close to the monastic Order, raised everywhere to the clerical rank. They are clerics by essence, St. Thomas tells us, while the monks became so by accident716. But, in reality, both the Canonical Regular Order and the Monastic Order present to us in their establishments canonically constituted churches served by titular clergy professing the religious life. The very observances of the one and the other naturally tend to come closer together and even to merge. The cause of this lies not only in the similarity of the jobs, but also in the historical origins of the clerical discipline. As we have said, St. Benedict, whose rule became the unique charter of the monastic Order, did nothing but formulate and specify the ancient and primitive tradition of the ascetic life. Now, at the cradle of the Church, this tradition had been common, by the very nature of things, to clerics and to religious laymen. The latter, or ascetics, who were the seed from which the monastic Order sprang, far from having a separate discipline, took their model from the clerics, disciples of the apostles, and from their pastors, in whom they saw the apostolic discipline blossoming again. The clerics made themselves "the form of the flock" (1 Pet. 5:3) by the perfection of their way of life, and the ascetics or primitive monks aspired to come closer than the rest of the faithful to these examples of apostolic life which they
received from the principal Fathers of the Church (cf. PL 151, 338-339)": Ch. DEREINE, loc. cit., col. 378. Cf. Fr. PETIT, loc. cit., pp. 209-212. 716 Saint THOMAS, Secunda secundae, q. 189, a. 8: "The religion of monks and that of canons regular both relate to the works of the contemplative life; and among these works the principal ones are the celebration of the holy mysteries, to which the Order of canons regular, who are essentially religious clerics (quibus per se competit ut sint clerici religiosi), is directly ordered. The religion of monks on the contrary does not necessarily involve clericality (ad religionem monachorum non per se competit ut sint clerici)." Cf. Dom MORIN, o. s. b., L'idéal monastique et la vie chrétienne des premiers siècles, Maredsous, 1944, pp. 134-135; A. M. HENRY, 0. P., Moines and Canons in La Vie spirituelle, 80 (1949) 60-61.
471 were proposed; they had no other masters or superiors than bishops and clerics. Thus the first rudiments of monastic life flowed from the clergy into the lay Order, and when the religious of that Order separated to form the first monasteries, they carried with them these teachings, which, as they developed, became the monastic rules. The monastic observances, therefore, in substance and by their origin, belong to the clerics as well as to the monks, or rather the clerics first taught them to the monks as to their dearest flock. It is therefore by a common possession, and not by a borrowing from a foreign source, that the canonical Order found itself from antiquity and in the course of time using observances similar to those of the monastic Order. It would be easy, moreover, to show by the monuments of history in the lives of the ecclesiastical saints of the primitive Church all the substance of the monastic observances, the fasts, the abstinences, the laborious poverty and the sacred vigils. The lives of the holy bishops of the East and West, St. Athanasius, St. John Chrysostom, Theodoret, St. Ambrose, St. Eusebius of Verceil, St. Germain of Auxerre, St. Augustine, and so many others, provide us with numerous proofs. Later, in the transactions that the common life imposed on all brought about between the religious life of the clerics and a less perfect state, St. Chrodegand conforms to the rule of St. Benedict for all clerical discipline717. Finally, at the time when these transactions ceased and religious life took its rise with greater freedom in the canonical Order by the definitive separation which was made in it of the secular and the religious element, the regular canonical Order found itself naturally and by unbroken tradition governed by a set of observances similar to those of the monastic Order, and it took the formula of these traditional observances from the very text of St. Benedict who had long ago given them their der-
.
717 Cf. LECLERCQ, art. Chanons, DACL, t. 3, col. 241.
472 nary under the secular and universal sanction of the Roman Church. There was then no complaint about this, so far was the thing from appearing a novelty; it was indeed, on the contrary, the discipline received from previous ages, and all recognized it as a public and constant fact. Moreover, if the institute of the canons regular seems to be close to the monastic Order in its observances, the latter, in taking on the government of the churches and in allowing itself to be initiated into the clerical profession, had found in the canonical Order the type of the hierarchy of the great churches and of the lesser titles, and it had imitated it in the institution of the great monasteries or abbeys and of the priories or lesser monasteries, and the points of resemblance of the two Orders can be found in both these aspects. As the great foundations of the Canons Regular radiated from the more important centers into the rustic parishes and the lesser communities, the Canonical Order in turn had its abbeys and priories, with the difference, however, that the name of abbot, borrowed from the language of the Monastic Institute, was never universally received there. And when, in the fourteenth century, Benedict XII, in his great Bull of Reformation, mentions the heads of communities of Canons Regular, he enumerates in this capacity bishops, archdeacons, archpriests, provosts, and thus recalls the various titles of the heads of Churches and ecclesiastical superiors who, at all degrees of the hierarchy, maintained their clergy in the regular life. Moreover, the very time when the regular canonical Order took on a distinct existence within the clergy was the time when the monastic Order constituted within itself the great associations of monasteries of which we have spoken above, and of which the Order of Cîteaux gave the first example. The canonical Order was not slow to have recourse, for the maintenance of regular discipline, to the powerful means offered by this new institution. The Order of Premonstratensians718, in the canonical institute, walked hand in hand with the Order of Citeaux, the support of the monastic state.
718 See Fr. PETIT, loc. cit., passim; A. ERENS, art. Premonstratensians, in DTC, vol. 13, col. 2-31.
473
Canonical congregations multiplied; Benedict XII attempted to bind all the canons regular throughout the universe by vast aggregations formed on the same type and having their heads and general chapters719. In the following centuries, all the reformers aroused from God to raise up this ancient religion of the clergy and to sustain it had recourse to the same means and established, under various titles, reformed confederations or Congregations720. We shall say only a word, in concluding this part of our study, of the phases which the discipline of the clergy undergoes in the Eastern Church. From early on, the religious life of the clergy was merged with the monastic life. In the patriarchal dioceses of Alexandria and Antioch, the Churches, after having given clerics to the monasteries in the early days, willingly borrowed their ministers and bishops from the monastic order. The institute of Saint Basil was both canonical and monastic. Soon that part of the Eastern clergy which did not embrace the religious life sank, by a final secularization, to the point of losing celibacy; the monastic Order alone retained the integrity and dignity of the clerical life, and the episcopate was henceforth recruited exclusively from its ranks. Let us also answer in a few words a difficulty which may arise in the mind of the reader concerning the origins of the religious state. Did those whom we have presented as the primitive religious of the nascent Church, ascetics or clerics, take the three vows of religion from those early days? And, if they did not satisfy this condition, how could they be true religious? But did the apostles and their first disciples, the apostolic men, pronounce them themselves? This difficulty will be easily solved if we consider the practice and tradition of the Church in matters of religious profession. Religious profession may be of two kinds, explicit or ta-
719 BENEDICT XII, Bull Ad decorem (May 15, 1339), in CHERUBINI, Bullarium Romanum, vol. 1, pp. 237-253; cf. H. VISSERS, loc. cit., pp. 184-189. 720 Cf. Ch. GIROUD, loc. cit, pp. 132-218.
474 quotes. The explicit profession, with its solemnities, began early in the monasteries; but the tacit or implicit profession is the first and by far the oldest. This consists in the simple fact of embracing the practice of the vows and the discipline of the religious institute, a fact accomplished under such conditions that, on the one hand, the interior intention which forms the commitment of the religious, and, on the other, the acceptance of it by the institute, are sufficiently manifested by circumstances to leave no doubt in the eyes of the ecclesiastical body. In the early days, tacit profession was the only one in use. The nascent Church reserved all the splendor of solemn initiations for the conferring of baptism and order. Since the religious life is but the perfect completion of the Christian life in ascetics or monks and of the clerical life in religious clerics, and since it is thus linked to the sanctity of baptism and ordination, whose pressing and mysterious demands it fulfills perfectly, it does not have an absolute need for a public initiation and a special consecration. Thus the discipline which, from the beginning, made tacit profession sufficient, has a kind of doctrinal foundation in the very essence of the religious state. It was, moreover, the same with the holy engagements of virgins and widows721; and the solemn consecration conferred upon them, which in its nature and forms was akin to ordinations as a kind of ecclesiastical sacrament or sacramental, was absolutely distinct from the religious vow and profession722.
721 PIE XII, Apostolic Constitution Sponsa Christi (Nov. 21, 1950), in Institutes of Perfect Life (EP), n. 706: "This voluntary and mystical alienation of virgins into the hands of Christ and their donation to the Church was accomplished in the first centuries of Christianity spontaneously and rather by deeds than by words..." 722 St. Leo, Letter 167, to Rusticus of Narbonne, 15; PL 54, 1208 "Young girls who... have taken the commitment and the habit of virginity betray if afterwards they decide to marry, even though they had not received the consecration (of virgins); whereas they would not be frustrated with the benefits of it, if they remained in their commitment." - Cf. Council of Agde (506), can. 19, LAB 4, 1386,
475 Moreover, tacit profession was so much the basis of discipline in this matter, that the first forms of explicit profession, by being added to it, took, so to speak, its imprint, and remained far from the precision that is sought in it today. St. Benedict makes the monk promise "stability and conversion of morals"723, without mentioning the three vows, which remain implicitly contained in this general declaration, and the explicit profession, as this great patriarch established it, still holds for a great part, it is clearly seen, of the tacit commitments of the first discipline724. In the Order of the clergy this was maintained even more than in the Order properly monastic, because the published fact of ordination and enrollment in the canon of a Church contained an always sufficient declaration of the commitments contracted by the cleric and of his entrance into the ecclesiastical community725.
Also the canonical Order knew later than the monastic Order and practiced with less uniformity than the latter the special solemnities of the explicit profession. Everyone knows, moreover, that the vow of chastity of the subdeacon has not ceased to be implicitly contained in the ordination itself. Finally, it is good to recall that tacit profession, that imposing vestige of early antiquity, has been preserved to this day by canon law alongside the special formulas of explicit profession. It remained in force in several ancient institutes until the pontifical decree of 19 March 1857. This decree, establishing the successive double profession of simple vows and solemn vows-
MANSI 8, 328, HEFELE 2, 990. - ANASTASUS THE BIBLIOTHECAIRE, Lives of the Roman Pontiffs, on St. Leo, n. 67; PL 128, 302. 723 St. BENEDICT, Rule, c. 58; 66. 805. 724 In the Gospel, the solemn words of St. Peter, speaking in the name of the whole apostolic college, "We have left all and followed thee" (Mt. 19. 27), contain a more explicit declaration of the religious life than does the formula of Benedictine profession. 725 The tonsure ceremony itself has the form of a religious profession and could easily take its place.
476 nels, required express profession for solemn vows and absolutely abolished tacit profession at least for the latter49726.
New religious orders
It is a great spectacle that of the successive and providential development of the apostolic seeds of religious life deposited at the beginning in the soil of the Church. The tree has grown, and its growth has given rise to the magnificent blossoming of the two ancient and primitive Orders, the monastic Order and the canonical Order. Intertwining their branches over Europe, they abolished idolatry, converted the barbarians, established everywhere, with the sacred hierarchy of the Churches, bishoprics, monasteries and parishes, and founded Christian morals and true civilization by the double efficacy of the priestly ministry and the examples of sanctity. Until the thirteenth century, the Church knew no other religious institutes than these great Orders. But at that time, and with the approach of modern times, God came to the aid of his Church with new and magnificent creations. New battles had to be fought in the perils of a more advanced civilization which aspired to a dangerous independence. The movement of the spirits embraced all nations, without taking into account their limits: it was necessary, alongside the localized ministry of the monks and canons who were pastors of the Churches, to have a new militia which could travel the world and direct this movement, a legitimate effect, in its origin, of the progress of Christian unity, but which could easily go astray. It was also necessary to resume the apostolic work of converting the infidels. At the same time that the universities were being opened and the first efforts of rationalism were being made, the immense
726 PIE IX, Decree of m19 March 1857, on religious porfession, in BIZARRI, Collectanae in usum Secretariae S. C. Episcoporum et Regularium, Romae, 1885, p. 857. - Cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 572 § 1, n. 5: "For the validity of every religious profession, it is required... that it be express."
477 lands of Asia and Africa were offered to the enterprises and investigations of Europe727. Soon America must reveal itself to the old world. It was then that the great families of the religious Orders proper, of St. Dominic and St. Francis, appeared. Through these institutes, the religious state received a new mission and form. It was no longer called only to support the particular Churches and to carry out local works in the monastic and canonical Orders, but to serve the universal Church by an essentially and properly apostolic ministry. And since this apostolate concerns the whole Church, it had to be by its very nature essentially and properly dependent on the Sovereign Pontiff, directed by him, and nowhere limited by the boundaries of particular circumscriptions and jurisdictions. Other religious Orders appeared after the Orders of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis. They are classed under the common name of fraters, and they have a common physiognomy. They are the Carmelites, the Augustinians, the Minims. The Middle Ages ended in the midst of their immense works. Finally, in the sixteenth century, this apostolate of religious received a new form in the great family of the clerics regular. Among these, the most glorious place belongs unquestionably to the Society of Jesus, raised up by the Spirit of God to support the Church in its struggles against Protestantism and modern rationalism, at the same time as to extend ever more widely the work of the missions among the infidels. This illustrious Society, through its apostles, its doctors, and its saints, never ceased to be the vanguard of the Church militant, and it deserved this distinguished honor and privilege of being ever more violently attacked and persecuted by the enemies of Jesus Christ and his Church. Praised by the Holy Spirit from her cradle in the holy
727 Nothing is more admirable and perhaps less known than the immense development of the Dominican and Franciscan missions, extending from Greenland to China in the North, and from Syria to Abyssinia in the South.
478 Council of Trent728, it co continues to give the Church doctors, apostles and martyrs. To the regular clerics must still be assimilated in their kind of life and special vocation the clerics living in community and the great families of St. Alphonsus of Ligori and St. Paul of the Cross, then, coming closer to the secular clergy under the discipline of the holy vows, the priests of the Mission, and finally the many modern Congregations of Oblates and Missionaries.
Two classes of religious families
If we consider the place assigned by the nature of their missions to these various religious families in the plan of the Church, they will appear to us divided into two great classes. On the one hand, the monastic and canonical orders, the monks and canons regular, belong to and are linked to the particular Churches. The monasteries of the monks are themselves true Churches; their clerics are titular of these Churches, and in this capacity are expressly included in the rule of the sixth canon of Chalcedon; the abbot is the ordinary pastor of these Churches, and nothing is lacking in their canonical constitution. The religious, fratres or secular clerics, on the contrary, are not bound to any particular Church. They are vague clerics, ordained in that capacity by legitimate derogation from the sixth canon of Chalcedon recalled above. Destined and reserved for the apostolic ministry, they serve the Churches of their monastery or residence as guests and not as titular clerics or benefactors of these Churches. They serve God there and remain more or less closely attached, not by the title of ordination or benefice, but by the simple disciplinary deputation of the rule and constitutions or the disposition of superiors.
728 Council of Trent, session 25 (1563), Decree (of reformation) on regulars and nuns, can. 16; HEFEL 10, 607. See the main documents on the Society of Jesus in The Institutes of Perfect Life (EP).
479 It is true that in some Orders this deputation, attaching under the name of filiation the religious to a definite monastery, superficially imitates the title of ordination; but this filiation, which in other Orders concerns only the province, which has its source in religious profession and not in ordination, depends entirely on the constitutions of the institute, and, whatever its affinities and resemblances to the bond of title, it is at bottom, in our opinion, only a pure regulation of discipline or of interior administration. Thus monks and canons regular are part of the titular clergy of the Churches; religious fraterns or clerics regular are, on the contrary, by institution, titulars of no Church, and form the properly apostolic clergy of the universal Church. From this profound difference between the hierarchical situation of the monastic and canonical Orders on the one hand, and of the religious Orders properly so called on the other, flow several consequences in the form, government and works of these great Institutes. First of all, a religious Order properly so called is a centralized body constituted under a General who is its true superior and sole ordinary. The individual religious belongs primarily to his Order, and, by means of the Order, that is to say, by virtue of the rules of government adopted therein and the disposition of the superiors, he belongs secondarily to such province or house to which the Order deputes him. A monastic congregation, on the contrary, is a Confederation of several monastic Churches or monasteries729, each having their complete existence and their particular ordinary, a Confederation placed under the leadership of a President called General in an improper and restricted sense, and of an assembly or chapter of all the Ordinaries. The monk or canon regular belongs first to his monastery or Church, and through that monastery to the Congregation or Confederation into which his monastery has entered.
729 The Charter of Charity or Constitution of the Order of Cîteaux is called "Agreement concluded between the monastery of Cîteaux and all the other monasteries which have come from it," which expresses well the idea of a confederation of monasteries; PL 166, 1378; cf. J.-M. CANIVEZ, art. Cîteaux, in DDC, t. 3, col. 745-795.
480 Note in the second place that the bond of a central power essentially constitutes the religious Orders, while the monastic Order subsisted for long centuries with no other authority than the local authority of the abbots, and the canonical Order with no other authority than the equally local authority of the bishops. The link formed between the monasteries by the Congregations which were established later, bringing to each of them the help and assistance of this useful aggregation, remains secondary and accidental in the monastic institute. Thus St. Benedict and the other monastic legislators only wrote rules without organizing anything above the monasteries. The founders of religious orders, on the other hand, sometimes adopting earlier rules, have mainly constituted a central authority and a general government. This profound difference which separates the monastic and canonical Orders from the religious Orders explains the difference which appears in the mode of election of the General of these various Institutes. In the religious Orders, the General, the only ordinary of the Order, is elected by the representatives of the whole Order. In monastic orders, on the other hand, as we have already noted, the General, president of the Confederation of Ordinaries or abbots, and who is one of them, is most often elected by the chapter of the particular monastery to which this presidency belongs in virtue of the constitutions; in the case of the Carthusian monks, for example, by the chapter of the Grande Chartreuse; In Cîteaux, for example, by the chapter of the house of Cîteaux; and if, in more modern Congregations, the president of the Confederation has been elected by the general assembly of the abbots or general chapter, it is because, in these new Congregations, this presidency is no longer attached to the title of a particular abbey and is no longer anything more than a delegation made by the abbots to one of them. It is also perhaps that the character of monastic government and the nature of abbatial power have been somewhat lost, and that the forms of religious orders proper have been brought closer. Moreover, the practical consequences which flow from these theoretical differences between monastic or canonical Orders and religious Orders are not limited to the government and interior life of these Institutes; but they reach the role which they fulfill
481 in the very life of the Church and their relations with its general government.
Monastic Churches may be erected into Episcopal Churches, retaining as their cathedral chapter the monastery's own college. In countries evangelized by monks, this was frequently done, and monasteries or monastic Churches became metropolitan or cathedral Churches de plano and without passing into other hands, as already having their ordinary clergy in the monks who inhabited them. In countries evangelized by religious, the houses and churches of these religious can only become hierarchical centers, bishoprics and parishes, by the introduction of an element other than these religious themselves, because these, by institution, are not the clerics and pastors of any particular Church, but members of a body which is uniquely apostolic and belongs solely to the service of the universal Church. It is true that a religious can be diverted by exception from the proper end of his Institute, from an apostle to a titular pastor, and attached to the service of a Church, but the religious Order itself cannot, without changing its nature and mission, enter into the bonds of particular and local hierarchies. This is not an inferiority for religious Orders. On the contrary, it is important to the nature and greatness of the services they render that they keep their apostolic character in its integrity. Like St. Paul and called like him to sow the Gospel and not to be the ordinary ministers of the Churches (cf. Rom 15:19-20), they are apostles and not pastors. They will cover the unbelieving regions with their flourishing missions, they will sow the seed of the Gospel; others, however, will come afterwards to form the Churches which they will have prepared by their labors and their blood, and the work will always remain incomplete if it does not receive this necessary complement. For the missions must everywhere take their place in the hierarchy of the Churches, and cannot take their place, however glorious they may appear to us through the fruits of zeal and the very blood of the martyrs. And in Christian countries, where the Churches are established on the
482 soil, where the territorial circumscriptions of local jurisdictions are drawn and leave no portion of the flock of Jesus Christ without a shepherd, religious Orders still bring to the rescue of souls the precious renewals of the apostolate. They must not be attached to any place in order to spread the seed of the word everywhere. Their ministry must be independent of the narrow and stable limits of the Churches, in order to go in turn to all places and to the aid of all Christians. If pastors must remain bound to their flocks, it is fitting that apostles should be free to go wherever the needs of souls call them. The apostles are not, moreover, rivals for the pastors, who must substitute themselves for their authority; this is not the end which the Church proposes for them, nor is it what she expects of their work; but, as precious auxiliaries of the hierarchy, they have to support it and make its action fruitful. Pastors, therefore, should not regard the apostolic ministry of religious orders as an attack on their own ministry. This apostolate is in no way odious, but it places at the service of the people extraordinary help from which the pastors cannot be the source; and the latter can always call upon this help for the good of the souls entrusted to them. Thus the properly apostolic religious Orders, those clerics who, by institution, are not pastors but apostles, revive before our eyes and will revive until the end of the Church's time the forces which appeared at its cradle. And as, alongside the bishops and presbyteries established in the nascent Churches, there appeared then the universal action of the apostles and apostolic men who travelled the world, so, alongside the ministry of ordinary pastors, the modern apostolate of religious Institutes does not cease to resurrect souls in order to return at once the renewed flock to these same pastors, whose perpetual solicitude must preserve its life and health.
Secular clergy, titular clergy
What we have just said about monastic orders and
483 of Apostolic Orders leads us to call the reader's attention to a distinction which it is greatly important to draw between the various Orders of ecclesiastical persons. Canonists are accustomed to distinguish between the secular clergy and the regular clergy. This distinction, which is practical and known to all, is based principally on the difference in the state and kind of life of the persons. But there is another distinction which is more deeply rooted in the very constitution of the Church and which is based on the relationship of persons to its hierarchy, namely, the distinction between the clergy attached by title to the particular Churches and the untitled clergy destined for the universal service of the Church. In the first class, along with the secular benefices, are the monks and canons regular; the second class contains, along with the religious orders properly so called, the various congregations of secular priests which, in recent times, have been raised up by the Spirit of God and destined for the apostolate, and the vague clergy who serve the Church without being bound by title to any place. Perhaps we have become too accustomed to confusing these two orders of distinction; One has, we say, become too accustomed to considering the secular clergy as the only ones originally and by nature entrusted with the titular ministry of the Churches, and to considering the apostolate as the only ministry reserved to the religious state, so much so that religious no longer seem to be able to be titular clerics of any Church without an exception or derogation from the natural order of things, just as secular clerics could only exceptionally be assimilated to religious in the apostolate. But, as we have sufficiently shown, it is fitting that religious profession, belonging by its very essence to the whole Church and being only the perfection of Christianity, should penetrate into all parts of the body of Christendom; through the two Orders, canonical and monastic, this excellent profession, from apostolic times, without any derogation from the principles of the hierarchy, has been intimately associated with the life of the particular churches. On the other hand, there is also nothing to oppose the apostolic vocation in the state of the secular clergy; thus the expression secular clergy is not synonymous with titular or ordinary clergy of the Churches,
484 since religious may have the latter quality; and the expression regular clergy is not equivalent to that of apostolic or auxiliary clergy, since secular clerics may not be attached to any particular Church by the bond of title, and in this situation serve the Church and exercise the apostolate. In our opinion, there would be danger in confusing these two orders of distinction: there would be danger in confusing the notion of secular clergy with that of titular clergy, the notion of regular clergy with that of apostolic clergy, so much so that the ordinary ministry of the Churches would carry with it secularity, and the forces of religious life would be exclusively reserved to the apostolic and auxiliary ministry. The history of apostolic times and of the finest Christian ages, the testimony of all the centuries which preceded the appearance of the apostolic religious Orders and during which the ministry of religious, monks and canons, was exclusively reserved to the Churches of which they were the holders, would protest against this confusion730. But, if it were to prevail absolutely in mind and in fact, the result would be a sum of relative inferiority for the titular clergy and the body of pastors compared with the apostolic and auxiliary clergy. For the greatest amount of virtue and holiness will always be found, by force of circumstance, on the side of the public profession of the evangelical counsels. The people themselves would make this discernment too easily, and, abandoning wherever they had the choice to do so the ministry of pastors in order to attach themselves to apostolic institutes, they would allow the sacred bond which attaches them to their Churches to weaken more and more. The life of the particular Churches and of the parishes which are these Churches or the members of these Churches, the life of the divinely instituted hierarchy, would become weaker and weaker; the apostolic ministry of religious of ecclesiastical institution, instead of supporting it,
730 We recall in this connection the teaching of Pope Urban II at the Council of Nîmes (1096), supra note 37; see also note 33. Cf. Yves BOSSIERE, Secular Clergy, Canonical Clergy, and Diocesan Clergy in Supplement to Spiritual Life, August 15, 1947, pp. 147-172; François PETIT, How a regular clergy was formed in the Latin Church in La Vie Spirituelle, January 1949, pp. 9-22; P. HENRY, Moines et chanoines, ibid., pp. 50-69.
485 would contribute to its weakening; by serving the particular interests of souls, it would prejudice the public interests of the whole body; there would be as it were a deplorable opposition between these two orders of interests; and, contrary even to the divine constitution of the Church, while the work of the missions must either prepare the way for the Churches, or support and renew them; while it is in order that the missions precede the Churches in order to found them, and that they then come to assist them extraordinarily in their spiritual needs, we would see, on the contrary, in the weakening of the latter, a permanent state of more or less flourishing missions succeeding their activity. The whole religious life would gradually leave the Churches to be concentrated in a new order of things, and the apostolic ministry, mobile and transient by nature and the auxiliary of the hierarchy, would be everywhere, at least as regards the preponderant efficacy of its directions, substituted for the continuous action and ordinary powers of the pastors who form the very body of this hierarchy.
Historical Progression
Apostolic Orders, those great creations of the Holy Spirit within the religious state, did not appear in the world without their providential preparation, and they were connected with the institutions of previous ages by an insensible transition. The holy founders themselves, chosen by God by a special vocation to give them birth, did not, in most cases, know the designs of which they were the instruments until after their accomplishment. The Spirit of God, who guided them in the development of these admirable works, so that it would be clear that he alone was the author, and so that all the glory would go to him, revealed to them only little by little what they needed to know about the plan of the edifice; and this divine architect communicated his secret to his predestined workers only as and when the advancement of the construction required it. Thus divine Providence, on the one hand, was gradually preparing the ground on which these magnificent monuments were to be raised to the glory of God, and, on the other hand, it was raising in due course the men who were to undertake and direct the work.
486 Moreover, this was the case in all the various phases through which the religious state passed and in the successive developments which it received from the centuries. Already, within the monastic Order, the advent of the Congregations between abbeys which appeared with the Order of Cîteaux had been prepared by the numerous filiations of the priories dependent on Cluny and the other monasteries. It was the growing importance of these priories and the relative autonomy that this importance and the distance of the places began to give them that opened the way to the confederation of the abbeys in a common Institute. This fruitful innovation, of which the Order of Cîteaux was the first type, was immediately imitated, and the canonical Order had its great Congregation of Prémontré.
A century later, when St. Dominic appeared, at the time when the religious Orders properly so called were to be born by him and his brother St. Francis, this great man did not seem to conceive at first any other design than the establishment of a Congregation of Canons Regular. The first papal diploma given to his Order does not suggest otherwise, and St. Dominic even gave the title of abbot to one of his first disciples731. But the necessities of the apostolate carried the nascent Institute into new directions. There was a Master General, provincial priors, and the religious all belonged to a single body of which the Master General was the true head. It is not that this newness was at first entirely obvious. There was an insensitive transition between the bond of title which attached the monk or the canon regular to his Church and the bond of simple religious filiation which attached the Brother Preacher to his convent. At first it was easy to mistake one for the other, and the preaching friars of Besançon considered themselves as one of the collegiate chapters of the city, and wanted, as such, to take part in the election of the archbishop with the collegiate churches and abbeys, members of this Church.
731 HONORIUS III, Bull of 22 December 1216, in CHERUBINI Bullarium Romanum, vol. 1, p. 64. Cf. P. MANDONNET, S. Dominique, L'idée, l'homme et l'œuvre, Paris, 1937, 2 vols.
487 But a great step was taken in the direction of the new institutions. The master general is no longer, like the abbot of Cîteaux, the prelate of a particular college or church, president of a confederation of abbeys, each of which has its own autonomy and perfect government, head himself of one of these abbeys, but he is exclusively and purely the head of the whole Order. The prior provincials, in their turn, are not the prelates of any particular monastery; and thus the Order is governed by a hierarchy of administrators who have a completely new character and who can no longer be considered as heads of churches. The provinces themselves were preceded and prepared by the circaries of the Premonstratensians732 intended to facilitate the visits of the abbots, but they are in the new Orders a permanent and essential element of government. What we say of the Friars Preachers applies equally to the Friars Minor and to the other religious Orders. Little by little, in the new Societies, all the offices conferred at first without term become temporary; the religious themselves, being dedicated to the apostolate, if they still find in the bond of filiation of the convents a kind of stability and a determined shelter, go by order of the superiors to seek far away and outside the limits of these convents the objects of their laborious ministry. With the regular clerics who appeared in the sixteenth century, the bonds of local stability weakened even more, and the filiation, as we see in the Society of Jesus, passed from the house to the province or even to the whole Order, at the same time as the supreme power was ever more closely centralized. Thus, more and more, the apostolate in the religious state is moving away from the sedentary life of the monastic Institutes, and these great bodies newly raised up by God are showing themselves to us in all the freedom of their movements and in the full expansion of the special form which his Spirit is imparting to them for the service of the universal Church. We shall see elsewhere how the Sovereign Pontiff, in sub
.
732 Cf. R. VAN WAEFELGHEM, Les premiers Statuts de l'Ordre Prémontré, in Analectes de l'Ordre de Prémontré, IX, Louvain, 1913.
488 milking the authority of the local bishops and himself communicating to them the spiritual jurisdiction, only entered into the providential design of these great creations and consecrated the essential form that befits them. Attached to the universal Church, these bodies can only depend on its head. It would be absurd for the Superiors General of the Friars Preachers, the Friars Minor or the Society of Jesus to look to another source for the sovereignty they exercise over the provinces and subjects of their institutes throughout the world. Let us conclude this study with a final observation. It must be recognized that the profound differences we have pointed out between the religious orders and the monastic and canonical orders have sometimes been obscured in modern times by the new constitutions and reforms of the latter. In order to fight more successfully against the invasions of the commendation, the monastic orders, in more than one country, made the power of the abbots temporary. At the same time, the election of abbots had to be taken away from the abbeys themselves and transferred to the general chapter. The very stability of the religious was affected and the bond which bound him to his ministry weakened, at the same time as the bond of spiritual paternity which united the abbot to his monks was also loosened by the vicissitudes of a government whose personnel could successively belong to all the monasteries of the Congregation. The monastic family thus lost its ancient stability and came closer to the conditions of life of the religious orders proper. In France, an organization of this kind subjected all the monasteries of the Congregations of Saint-Maur and Saint-Vannes to the government of temporary priors named by the general chapters and taking the place of abbots whose dignity seemed to have been definitively usurped by the commendatories. The canons regular suffered similar conditions in
489 their modern Congregations733.
Under this new physiognomy, one could lose sight of the essential differences which separate the Monastic Order and the Canonical Order from the Religious Orders properly so called734. But the nature of things claims against this confusion. It will always be true that, in accordance with the sixth canon of Chalcedon, the clerics of monasteries of monks must belong by their ordination to the churches of those monasteries. It will always be true that canons regular, clerics by the essence of their profession, cannot conceive of themselves in the full notion of their Institute without their enrollment in the canon of a Church, that is, without the hierarchical bond which the name canon properly expresses. It will always be true that the ordination of religious fraterns or clerics regular, on the contrary, does not bind them to any Church and does not make them holders of any Church. It will always be true that the religious filiation which subsists in these Orders and which attaches the religious to a particular house or province is due solely to the rules of government of the Institute and not to the laws of the hierarchy, as also it depends in its origin on the
733 In these various modern Congregations, the bond of filiation which attaches the religious to his monastery was suppressed or transferred to the whole Society. 734 Those concerned themselves did not always defend themselves against this confusion. Thus, pious authors who are canons regular see in St. Augustine the founder of a religious Order, a colony of which was sent to St. John Lateran to found the Congregation of that name. They do not see the anachronism of such an establishment. St. Augustine subjected his clerics to religious and cenobitic profession, but they remained bound to their Church of Hippo by the title of their ordination; they belonged to that Church, not to a Congregation which could dispose of them in the manner of religious Orders and send them away. The idea of such an order of things is not of this century, and the life of St. Augustine gives us striking proof of it. St. Pinian made a commitment to the people of Hippo that he would receive the priesthood only in the service of that Church and within the clergy who formed the community of St. Augustine (cf. Life of St. Augustine, 1. 6, eh. 9, n. 5; PL 32, 401; Complete Works, vol. 1, pp. 298-299). But this commitment would have been pointless if, the day after the ordination, the head of this community could have sent the new priest away. We know, it is true, that the Churches of Africa called clerics of St. Augustine to occupy their episcopal sees, and that they carried there the teachings and discipline of their master, but this is something else entirely.
490 profession which makes the religious and not of ordination which makes the cleric and sacred minister.
Works of Mercy
We could limit ourselves to these rapid considerations on the religious state and the various forms it has taken in the course of the ages in the published service of the Church and of souls. But, in addition to the spiritual ministries which the various religious Institutes have so laboriously and usefully performed, there is another order of services which they have rendered and which we must not pass over entirely in silence. We are referring to the works of mercy which the Church has accomplished through them for the relief of humanity. Nothing is more recommended in the Gospel than the exercise of charity towards one's neighbor, and all Christians have received the divine commandment from the mouth of the Lord. But above the works of individual charity, as we have already said, there appeared from the earliest times the great ministry of charity of the Churches. All the faithful, associated by the very bond of ecclesiastical communion, conspired to form this union of all the beneficent forces of the Christian people. The Churches were powerful charitable societies, the only ones known at the time: for, in the admirable energy of the life which animated them, they more than satisfied all the generous aspirations of souls and all their pious desires for association for good. Thus charity became a public ministry in the world, and it assumed a hierarchical character within each Church. The priesthood was in charge of it; the clergy, as spiritual leaders and magistrates of the holy city, were in charge of the works of public charity. At their head were the bishops, established, by their very dignity, fathers of the poor735. The deacres had been
to them.
735 Didascalia of the Apostles, ch. 19, n. 3: "It is necessary, therefore, that all the faithful serve carefully and help with their goods, through the bishops, those who
491 given from the beginning by the apostles for chief ministers in this order of solicitudes (Ac 6:1-6), and the priestly and Levitical hierarchy thus appeared to be entirely clothed in the magnificent character of dispensers of the alms of the Christian people736. These, passing through her hands, took on a sacred character; they were placed, as it were, on the altar, and they poured out from the altar upon human misfortunes. But this noble prerogative of the clergy was not exclusive, and he called upon the assistance of all holy souls. To the clerics, and under their direction, were first of all joined in this great ministry the virgins and widows consecrated to God and enrolled in the canon of the Churches after the clergy, those widows who were to have, says the apostle, "washed the feet of the servants of God" (1 Tim 5. 10), to merit the honor of ecclesiastical consecration, and then, in a lower rank and without any sacred title, ascetics and pious laymen who devoted themselves to the service of the poor and the sick under the same authority. The public exercise of charity was so united to the whole order of the Churches, and so inseparably attached to the hierarchy, that the bishop's dwelling was, says St. Isidore, by a sort of right inherent in his office, "the common asylum and domicile of the poor"737, and the ecclesiastical houses seemed as much intended for these as for the habitation of the clerics. This explains to us how, in time, part of the bishoprics and other ecclesiastical buildings were distinctly assigned to this service. Thus, we saw vast hospices being built next to the cathedral basilicas, as a dependency of the bishops' houses. Then, the various districts of the cities also had
give testimony"; trans. NAU, loc. cit. at 148. - Cf. Apostolic Constitutions, 1. 5, c. 1; PG 1, 830. - St. JUSTIN, Ist Apology, 67; PG 6, 430: "What is collected (from the gifts of the faithful) is given into the hands of the president, and he assists the orphans, the widows, the sick, the needy, the prisoners, the foreign guests, in a word, he assists all who are in need"; trans. HAMMAN, in La philosophie passe au Christ, ed. de Paris, 1958 (col. Ichtus, 3),p. 95. See other texts cited in chapter 34, notes 6-16,pp. 404-416. 736 See above, chapter 27, note 5, p. 322. 737 St. ISIDORE, On Ecclesiastical Offices, 1. 2, c. 5, n. 18, 19; PL 83, 786.
492 their charitable houses established in titles or regions, directed and served by the clergy of those circumscriptions. The Roman Church offered the type and model of this useful organization. She assigned her seven regional deacons, ancestors of the cardinal deacons, who, clothed with such a dazzling dignity, were both associated by the successor of St. Peter with the government of the universal Church and called by him to the service of the poor. The tender solicitude of the Supreme Pontiffs, of St. Gregory the Great and of so many others for this ministry is well known; they regarded it, and have never ceased to regard it, as a considerable part of the episcopal office. After having instituted the regions of the deacons, they gradually centralized their service around the basilicas, the deaconries, and they multiplied the charitable establishments within the Eternal City. The other Churches followed these noble examples. There were vast buildings erected to house all human miseries and called, according to their special destinations, hospitals (nosocomia), houses of hospitality (xenodochia) and orphanages (orphanotrophia)738. The charity of the bishops received the infirm there, exercised hospitality, and fed the orphans. These establishments were sometimes of a magnificence and magnitude that made them compare to cities739. Soon, with the development of parish institutions in the countryside, hospital houses of lesser importance spread throughout the territory of Christendom, remaining as many inseparable dependencies of ecclesiastical titles and of the parishes themselves. If one considers carefully this first state of public works of Christian charity, the link which united this ministry to the hierarchy of the Churches and the use which the devotion of women consecrated to God and of pious laymen found in it, one will realize
738 See, among other things, the charter for the foundation of the children's hospice adjoining the cathedral of Milan, and of the buildings intended for the accommodation of the clerics who served it "so that they would always be ready to go, unless prevented, to the night service in church"; MURATORI, t. 3, col. 587. 739 St. GREGOIRE OF NAZIANZE, Funeral Oration (n. 43) of St. Basil, 63; PG 36,
493 will easily give an account of the conditions which governed all hospital service during the first centuries of the Church and up to the appearance of the religious Orders. And first of all, it is easy to hear how the clerics who, little by little, were specially attached to the hospices, belonging to the canonical Order, generally formed there Congregations or colleges of canons regular hospitaler. The virgins consecrated to God in these houses became in their turn canons of hospitality; finally, in a lower degree, the lay elements of this service gave rise to the Societies of Brothers and Sisters, lay servants of the poor, most often bound to this employment by the commitments of religious profession. Thus, while the oldest hospices in the cities and the most considerable ones usually had colleges of canons and canonesses who celebrated divine service with dignity while caring for the poor and the sick, the smallest establishments, especially in the towns and in the countryside, were almost exclusively served by Brothers and Sisters belonging to this order of persons who were both lay people and religious by profession, and who themselves dated back to the earliest times. The hospitable institution of the Churches, thus conceived in its origins, went through the same phases and received the same developments as the great canonical and monastic Institutes as we have described them above. The analogy is as striking as it is natural. Just as the great abbeys had their priories, the illustrious and considerable houses of hospitality also had, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, branches in less important houses subject to their dependence. They sent to these houses canons and canonesses, brothers and sisters, who never ceased to belong to the same religious Society. Soon these filiations multiplied, and these beginnings of central organization gave rise to vast corporations; and thus were prepared and finally given to the Christian world the great Hospitaller Orders at the time when the great religious Orders were being born.
494 These Hospitaller Orders were naturally attached almost all to the older institutions of the Canons and the Hospitaller Brothers; and as, at that time, charitable services responding to special needs were distinguished from one another by their object, these new Societies were seen to apply themselves, in the vast field of charity, to some determined destination, from military service, for the protection of pilgrims, the guarding of holy places, or the defense of Christian frontiers, to the care of certain contagious diseases, leprosy and the infection known as the fire of Saint Anthony. Thus a hospice was the cradle, the center, and consequently the head of the Order of these great Societies, and the simple hospitable filiation, taking on these immense developments, gave rise to those powerful corporations which covered Europe with their commanderies740 and divided it into regions called tongues or nations. The Hospitaller Order of Canons and Canonsesses of the Holy Spirit came from the filiations of the Hospice of the Holy Spirit in Rome; the Order of Canons of St. Anthony, from a hospice in the Viennese region. The Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which has become so famous, the first and most illustrious of the chivalric orders, came from a humble hospice established by the Crusaders in Jerusalem. The same was true of the Teutonic Order and the Order of Saint Lazarus. And if the Order of the Temple and the other Orders of knights which were attached to the Cistercian Institute by a bond of filiation and dependence seem to have another origin and took from the beginning their special and exclusively military form, they prepared the way for the great families of the Third Orders, which at first appeared with the character of pious militias, and which in their turn devoted themselves in large proportion to works of mercy. However, the new spectacle of the great religious Orders which filled the world with the brilliance of their services weakened little by little in the bosom of the charitable Institutes the memory and the notion of the ancient hospitable filiation to replace it with the absolutely
740 The term commander was borrowed by the Military Orders from the Hospitaller Institute: it meant at first the head or administrator of a hospice.
495 centralized of these large corporations. There was then born in a form analogous to that of the mendicant Orders and formed in their school the Order of the Merci, preceded in this way by that of the Trinitarians for the redemption of captives. Then, in its turn, the institution of regular clerics also had its charitable congregations in the clerics who ministered to the infirm, the Somasques and the clerics of the pious schools. Thus we come to modern times, and we touch upon that admirable expansion of innumerable Institutes of men and women, formed into so many bodies independent in their existence from the local hierarchy of the Churches, and embracing, in the vast network of their good works, the whole world. Through them, Christian education and the relief of all misfortunes takes on the character and form of those central organizations of which the religious Orders have shown us the first type for the service of the universal Church.
In the image of the one Saint
We have attempted, within the limits of this short treatise, to show the place which the various religious Institutes occupy in the external life of the Church and the public ministries which they exercise in it. But we can consider them under another aspect, and, penetrating into their intimate life, discover wonders of another order. The various forms of religious life which these great families of the elect take on are mysteriously destined to reproduce in them, and through them in the Church, the diverse traits of the unique and divine model of holiness. In this profound design of divine Providence, each of these Institutes, in addition to the external mission which it fulfills here below among men, a mission which can be linked to the special, accidental and variable needs of times and places, and which can also pass or be modified with the vicissitudes of human societies, receives a higher and more sublime mission, a mission which concerns Jesus Christ himself more directly and the ever more perfect fulfillment of his likeness and of his life in the Church. This order of mission is not destined to pass with the centuries,
496 and by this side the religious Orders all receive a character of perpetuity which no human institution can share with them. They are all destined to await with the Church the final consummation of the divine work here below, and the spirit which sustains them within revives them when they seem to bend under the action of time, by the intervention of the Saints and the reforms which rejuvenate their vigor. In this great and profound work of holiness, each of the religious Institutes fulfills a particular and mysterious destiny; each one brings its distinct trait; and all together they contribute to reproducing in the Church the perfect image of Jesus Christ, the exemplar of all perfection. Thus the Order of St. Dominic honors his zeal and his doctrine; the Order of St. Francis celebrates his poverty; the Carmelites share his prayer, the Minims his fasting, the Carthusians his retreat in the desert; the Society of Jesus glorifies his public life and raises his name like a standard; the Passionists, by their austerities, carry everywhere the mystery of his sufferings. We could multiply these applications without ever exhausting them, for there is nothing exclusive about them, and all religious families enjoy in common all the riches of Jesus Christ. And if each one of them seems led by the Holy Spirit to choose from this treasure the jewel of a distinct virtue or mystery as its special ornament, they all possess in common these indivisible riches; for could Christ divide himself? Alas! we speak the language of men; woe to us! for our lips are defiled, and we would need the words of angels to describe worthily these hidden mysteries of the divine work, what is most intimate in the holiness of the Church, the delights of this closed garden of the Spouse. How can we paint this divine vegetation, these powerful trees, these fragrant flowers, these salutary fruits that the Holy Spirit never ceases to produce? But how can we tell of the visits and the stay of the Bridegroom who plays among the lilies and the roses? We are not worthy to penetrate inside this closed garden; let us approach the doors and the sacred barriers, let us glimpse these marvels, let us gather the perfumes which spread to us from the middle of the divine delights. Let us glorify the author of these goods. This is how he glorifies himself, from the
497 trials of this world, his beloved Church, and that he delights in her as in his beloved Bride. She appears to us, in these splendors, clothed in immortal youth, and new families, the fruits of her inexhaustible fecundity, do not cease to come forth from her womb to rejoice heaven at the same time as they cover the earth with priceless blessings.
498 CHAPTER XXXVI
Competence of the Universal Church and the Particular Churches Related
We are nearing the end of our work. We have studied the life of the particular Churches, we have contemplated their holy economy, and now a final view of the mystery of their hierarchy brings us back to the authority of the successor of Peter, of him in whom all of them rest as on one unshakable foundation, and in whom they are all the one Church of Jesus Christ. This is their true greatness and their most noble prerogative. They belong in their multitude to the mystery of unity, all of them concur and merge in this great unity of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church in its turn lives and subsists in each of them741. This mysterious compenetration of the universal Church and the particular Churches is revealed externally and has its vivid and special manifestation in the immediate jurisdiction which the vicar of Jesus Christ, head of the universal Church, possesses in each of the particular Churches and which he exercises over them. Let us briefly explain this last aspect of the hierarchical activities of the mystical body of Jesus Christ.
Sovereign authority of the Supreme Pontiff
The particular Church belongs to its bishop, and that bishop is its bridegroom in a very true sense. But these mystical nuptials must be understood in a higher mystery. They are the wedding of Christ himself, whose covenant the bishop brings to his Church. The universal Church is not shared by the particular Churches, but lives with all her mysteries in each of them. She is one, and in her all and each of the Churches are the one bride of Jesus Christ.
741 See supra, chapters 8 and 10.
499 For this reason the lower hierarchies do not form as necessary intermediaries who can stop and break the impulses that come from above. All the Churches are brought together and consummated in the higher unity of the universal Church, and they all belong to Jesus Christ by a very simple and immediate bond. The immediate authority of the Supreme Pontiff in all the particular Churches is established on the deep foundation of this doctrine. Jesus Christ, who possesses them all without intermediary, has established him in his place to represent him on earth, and in him he shows himself to be the head of these Churches, as he is the head of the universal Church in the same mystery of unity. This immediate authority of the Supreme Pontiff as Vicar of Jesus Christ over the particular Churches, defined by the First Vatican Council, is properly episcopal742; for there is no part of episcopal authority which does not essentially belong to him and which he cannot always exercise. The preaching of doctrine, the administration of the sacraments, the pastoral government, the collation of ecclesiastical power, judgments, all these functions which form the field of episcopal power, are also, without any possible restriction, the object of the power of the Supreme Pontiff in every Church. But if this authority is properly episcopal in its object, it has, with respect to the episcopate, a character of sovereignty and excellence by which it prevails over it. It is indeed the episcopate, but in its source and in its head. And as the bishop himself, in the functions of the priesthood, acts with a higher dignity than the priests, though with equal efficacy, so also the Supreme Pontiff, exercising this episcopal power in the Churches, does so in all the majesty and sovereignty of his principate. Therefore all his acts have a character of independence and sub-
.
742 First Vatican Council, Constitution Pastor aeternus, 3, CL 7, col. 484, Den., 1827, Dum., 472: "Accordingly, We teach and declare that the Roman Church possesses over all others, by the Lord's disposition, a primacy of ordinary power, and that this power of jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff is truly episcopal and immediate."
500 veracity to which the bishops themselves in their churches cannot lay claim. Rules may be laid down for them by virtue of a higher right, and limits placed on their jurisdiction, their acts may be invalidated, their judgments may be appealed against; but the acts of the Supreme Pontiff, even in the immediate government of particular Churches, are answerable to no superior here below, and they carry with them the essential legitimacy which belongs to the acts of the first sovereign. And if at times it pleases him, exercising this jurisdiction in the Churches by means of delegates, to draw boundaries for them and to impose narrow conditions on them, his will alone can determine the limits which they must not exceed. Moreover, it is not only because of its excellence that the authority of the Supreme Pontiff prevails over that of the bishops, but also because it precedes it in the order of the mystery of the hierarchy. Before belonging to their bishops, Christians belong to Jesus Christ and to his vicar; before belonging to the particular Churches, they belong to the universal Church. The universal Church precedes the particular Churches everywhere, in the sight of God and the fulfillment of his plan; and when the latter were formed, they could not prejudice the previous relationships which had already attached the faithful to Jesus Christ and to his Vicar, nor the primordial bond which had subjected them to him in advance. In this way the Supreme Pontiff is truly and by the very essence of his authority the Ordinary of the whole world, and he can always and at all times exercise, either by himself or by his representatives, the jurisdiction which belongs to him on this account.
Application of this authority
In application, the exercise of the immediate jurisdiction of the Supreme Pontiff over all parts of the universal Church and in all the particular Churches may be reduced, in its manifestations, to three principal heads. As we have taught in our second part, the particular Church, proceeding from the universal Church, bears within itself all the divine relations of the latter. The sacred name of Church, which belongs to it the
501 connects her to Christ in an indivisible sacrament. The Supreme Pontiff may either exercise in passing an act of episcopal authority, or he may reserve to himself by a lasting provision this or that part of the episcopal powers, or finally, by an equally lasting provision, he may reserve to himself the whole of them over particular places or persons, that is to say, he may establish what is properly called exemption. In the first place, the Pope can always, and whenever he deems it appropriate, assign himself the collation of an ecclesiastical office or bring before his tribunal the judgment of a cause. He may exercise all episcopal functions everywhere, such as the dedication of churches and the administration of all sacraments. He may also depute apostolic commissioners for all kinds of matters. Finally, he can give to parishes, churches and dioceses apostolic administrators who derive their jurisdiction from himself as his delegates. In the second place, the Supreme Pontiff can, not only by a transitory act, but by a legislative measure which enters into the body of law, reserve for himself all those cases which he deems appropriate to determine. Thus, in modern times, the Pope has reserved to himself the first dignity of the Cathedral Churches in the matter of the conferral of benefices, and in the matter of judgments, he has reserved to himself certain causes, independently of the right of appeal, which can always be exercised. Similar apostolic reservations are found in all other branches of ecclesiastical administration. Finally, in the third place, by means of exemptions, the Supreme Pontiff withdraws from the authority of the bishops, in order to submit them exclusively to his own, churches or individuals. Exemptions occupy a very considerable place in ecclesiastical institutions, and we will briefly make a few observations about them which seem to us to be important for a good knowledge of their nature and their usefulness.
Exemptions of churches and persons
Exemptions may be divided into two classes. The one reach principally to particular churches or territories; they
502 touch the hierarchy of the Churches, penetrate into its bosom, and thereby assume a local and territorial character like that hierarchy itself. The others regard as their obi and first and principal orders or classes of persons constituted outside the hierarchy of the churches. The exemptions of the first class are the oldest in the history of the Church. Their first application was in favor of the monasteries, and here we do not mean the simple apostolic privileges, a tutelary legislation which placed the holy liberty of the religious under the guardianship of the Holy See and protected them against secular invasions and the possible enterprises of the bishops themselves on their property or on the integrity of the observance. These privileges prepared the way for the exemptions properly so called which appeared later. These immediately attached the monastery to the Holy See, so much so that the Supreme Pontiff became its sole bishop, and jurisdiction was exercised in his name and by communication of his authority. It is easy to understand the great suitability of these exemptions for the great monastic institutions. Already the Church of Africa had felt the need to attach immediately to the metropolitan see of Carthage the monasteries of that region which were recruited from the whole of Africa, and which, by their importance, sometimes seemed to eclipse the neighboring episcopal Church, especially in those regions where the episcopal sees had multiplied with a kind of excess743. In the East, a similar discipline subjected the great monasteries to the immediate authority of the patriarchs744. Similar causes explain the exemptions of the great monasteries of the West. Did it agree that powerful abbeys whose colonies and priories extended far and wide
743 Council of Carthage (525), LABBE 4,1629, MANSI 8, 649 ff, HEFELÉ, 2, 1072-1074. 744 Constitutions of St. GERMAIN OF CONSTANTINOPLE, in THOMASSIN, loc. cit., 1st part, 1. 3, c. 26-28, vol. 3, pp. 24-38.
503 of dioceses, that institutions which, by this providential development, assumed universal importance and interested the whole Church, should come under the jurisdiction of a neighboring episcopal see and of a mediocre city? The bishop himself would have been, in his own diocese, further obscured by the abbot of one of these great monasteries, if that abbot had been his diocesan. Was the abbot of Cluny, for example, to remain under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Mâçon? And could this illustrious abbey be part of this diocese without obliterating the cathedral church itself? We can therefore easily understand the reasons for the exemption of the great abbeys: we can understand how even several of them called nullius abbeys received from the Holy See an episcopal jurisdiction over the lands of their dependence, which thus became like monastic dioceses. It is not for us to judge the appropriateness of each of the exemptions which were subsequently granted. But it is conceivable that by multiplying these privileges and extending them to establishments of lesser importance, the Pontiffs, who owe their administration to God alone, may have sometimes exceeded in some respect by the effect of human weakness, or at least that their acts may have met with different appreciations on the part of the saints. Saint Bernard speaks out against the exemptions of the monasteries. He sees in them an inversion of the hierarchy without always sufficient motives.745 This personal feeling of St. Bernard's can be better understood on his part, if we consider the great differences which separated the condition of the Cistercian abbeys from that of the great abbeys established earlier. These, as we have said, with their numerous and distant priories, could not be properly considered as purely diocesan establishments. In the Order of Cîteaux, on the contrary, all the foundations became abbeys, and the abbatial jurisdiction, always contained within the enclosure of the monastery, had a strictly local character, which
745 Saint BERNARD, De la considération, 1. 3, c. 4; 182, 766 ff.
504 attached naturally and without inconvenience to the pulpit of the diocesan bishop. The Order of Cîteaux was thus content at first with the apostolic favor that guaranteed the freedom of its observance without going beyond that. It had been from its origin placed under the protection of the Holy See, and, if it had no exemption properly so called, it enjoyed extensive privileges which were sufficient in the early days to safeguard the full freedom of its government and discipline746; and, in order to better ensure this necessary freedom, the precaution was still taken not to establish any Cîteaux monastery without having obtained from the diocesan bishop the commitment to respect and maintain in its integrity the Charter of Charity747. However, this distancing from exemptions that St. Bernard had inspired in his Order did not persist there for long, and the Cistercian Institute was not long in entering in its turn, like all other religious families, into the way of exemptions, which gradually became the common state of the monasteries. It would not be impossible to find with some reason a general cause for this movement of discipline in the more complete cessation of regular life within the cathedral churches, and, consequently, in a kind of more absolute secularization of the episcopate and of the institutions which surround and support its authority. As long as the chapters maintained the common life, they frequently called monks or religious to the episcopate by their suffrages, and one even saw churches taking as a praiseworthy obligation the commitment not to elect others748. The cathedral churches and the abbeys lived in a holy brotherhood, and there were great affinities between them which were increasingly erased by the introduction of the beneficiary regime and the cessation
746 Letter of PASCAL II (1099-1118), in Exordium cisterciense, c. 14; PL 166, 1507. 747 Charter of Charity; PL 166, 1377-1378: "Abbot Stephen (second abbot of Citeaux) and his brethren established that new abbeys would absolutely not be founded in the diocese of any bishop until he himself had ratified an agreement between the monastery of Citeaux and all the other monasteries that had sprung from it, this in order to avoid any discussion between the pontiff and the monks." 748 Thus the Church of Belley: Letter of INNOCENT II (December 4, 1142), in Gallia christiana, vol. 15, col. 612. - The Church of Canterbury also prided itself on never having been governed by anything but religious of profession.
505 tion of common life within the chapters749. Perhaps this fact was not without influence on the general extension of exemption to the monastic order. Moreover, the monasteries were not the only exempt churches. There were illustrious episcopal Churches detached from their metropolises and attached immediately to the Holy See, sanctuaries and exempt secular Churches. But all these exemptions, like those of the monasteries, belong to the first class of exemptions which we have indicated, and have the effect of modifying, within the very body of the hierarchy of the Churches, the order of their relations. The appearance of the great religious Orders in the thirteenth century and of the regular clerics in the sixteenth gave a new character to the exemption and gave rise to what we call the second class of these privileges. These great religious bodies, destined to exercise the apostolic ministry throughout the world, created outside all territorial limits, could clearly depend only on the one head of the apostolate in the world, who is the vicar of Jesus Christ. The very unity of the Church requires that these universal preachers receive their mission from him, for a bishop could not without disorder confer it on them in the diocese of one of his brothers. If, then, the exemptions of monasteries and of certain illustrious Churches are due to reasons of convenience, those of religious Orders are founded in the very nature of things and have to do with the essence of their vocation750. But what admirable creations of the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the Roman Pontiff are these legions of preachers and missionaries, who, carrying the word everywhere as his envoys, exercise everywhere also on his part the merciful mission of resurrecting souls through the ministry of reconciliation! From one end of the world to the other, they rush to the call of the pastors
749 An allusion to this sentiment is found in the Letter of St. BERNARD to Henry, Archbishop of Sens. The holy doctor combats the ground of exemption drawn from the secular state of the bishoprics: "You condemn the secular life ... but ..."; Treaty on the morals and office of bishops, c. 9, n. 35; PL 182, 832. 750 Cf. FOGLIASSO, art. Exemptions, SDC, t. 5, col. 637-665.
506 and lend them the extraordinary help of a universal apostolate by its nature and by the mission they hold from the Sovereign Pontiff. And if the vicar of Jesus Christ exercises in this way through them some part of his supreme episcopate, he does so only to help and relieve his brothers and sons, the bishops and pastors of each flock. We confine ourselves to this rapid exposition without entering into the details of canonical questions.
Conclusion
Our purpose throughout this treatise has been to show the reader the whole divine plan of the Church, the harmony of all its parts and the beauty of the new Jerusalem. May we have accomplished our task and helped to increase in some their love for this holy city, their mother and the bride of the Lamb! We have reached the end of this study. We have successively contemplated the universal Church in its head, the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and its members the bishops; then the particular Church in its bishop and the ministry of its priests. At the end, the Sovereign Pontiff appeared to us again, bishop above bishops, immediately exercising in all parts his authority and paternal solicitude; and, after having begun this entire treatise with the consideration of his august principate, we end it at his feet by considering him in his benefits. Every view of this divine work begins with him in the beauty of the universal Church of which he is the head, and ends with him in the intimate activity of the particular Churches, which he supports by his apostolate and gathers, so to speak, into his paternal bosom. Vicar of Jesus Christ, inseparable from Jesus Christ, one shepherd, one head with Jesus Christ, he is with Jesus Christ the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega of the mystery of the Church. We have spoken feebly of all the beauties of the hierarchy which begin and end in him; and, as we lay down our pen, we can only humbly submit all this writing one, last time to his paternal and supreme authority.
507 TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I............................................................................................. 11 PLACE OF THE CHURCH IN THE DIVINE PLAN................................................ 11 What the Church Is ............................................................................... 11 Creation of Angel and Man .................................... .................. 12 God's Third "Outing" ............................................................. 15 CHAPTER II ........................................................................................... 21 NATURE AND EXCELLENCY OF ORDER IN THE CHURCH ............................ 21 Order in the Work of God .... ........................................................ 21 The order in the creation of angels ................................................... 22 The order in the creation of men................................................ 24 Hierarchical principles .................................................................... 25 Ecclesial Hierarchy ........................................................................ 27 Excellence of this hierarchy........................................................... 31 CHAPTER III ......................................................................................... 33 RELATIONSHIPS OF THE CHURCH WITH ANGELIC AND HUMAN SOCIETY.... 33 Intimate Coordination of Divine Works ........................................... 33 The Church's Relationship with Angelic Society ................................. 34 Relations of the Church with human society ................................... 37 Consumption in unity ............................................................... 41 CHAPTER IV................. ......................................................................... 44 GENERAL IDEA OF HIERARCHY ........................................................ 44 God is the head of Christ .................................................................. 44 Christ is the head of the Church ......................................................... 45 Treatise outline .................................................. .................................. 45 CHAPTER V ........................................................................................... 48 GOD IS THE HEAD OF CHRIST ................................................................. 48 The Mystery of Divine Society.......................................................... 48 The Incarnation of the Son...................................................................... ... 49 The mystery of salvation............................................................................ 51 The title and priestly anointing......................................................... 54 CHAPTER VI.......................................................................................... 58 JESUS CHRIST IS THE HEAD OF THE CHURCH ................................................. 58
508 The Episcopal College.......................................................................... 58 The Bridegroom and the Bride ............................................................................ 60 From the Church to the Father through Christ ...................................................... 61 CHAPTER VII ........................................................................................ 63 THE BISHOP IS THE HEAD OF THE PARTICULAR CHURCH ................................ 63 The Mystery of the Particular Church.................................................... 64 The Church in the Bishop ...... ................................................................. 68 The Cooperators of the Bishop ............................................................ 69 CHAPTER VIII............................................... ........................................ 73 INTEGRITY AND INDIVISIBLE UNITY OF THE CHURCH........................................ 73 Mystery of Unity in Christ........................................................... 73 By the Holy Spirit............................................................................... 77 CHAPTER IX.......................................................................................... 83 TRIPLE POWER CONFERRED TO THE HIERARCHY.......................................... 83 Powers of Christ ............................................................................ 83 Communication of the Magisterium. ........................................................... 85 Communication of the ministry ............................................................ 86 Communication of the command .............. .................................... 93 Unity of Hierarchical Power ........................................................ 100 CHAPTER X ......................................................................................... 103 THE SUBJECTS OF HIERARCHICAL POWER............................................... 103 Order power ............................................................................... 103 Hierarchical Communion................................................................ 105 Title................................................................................................. 107 Delegated Jurisdiction. ....................................................................... 110 Unity of Hierarchical Authority ........................................................ 114 Perpetuity of Hierarchical Authority. ............................................... 116 The one and only perpetual priesthood of Jesus Christ ............................ 118 CHAPTER XI........................................................................................ 123MODES OF HIERARCHICAL OPERATIONS............................................ 123 Mods of Divine Operations ......................................................... 123 "In His image and likeness" ............................................. 126 Action of the Leader.................................................................................. 127 Action of the College of Bishops............................................................. 127 Action of the Bishop ........................................................................... 130
509 In the Particular Church................................................................ 133 CHAPTER XII ...................................................................................... 138 THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST ............................................................... 138 Instituting a Vicar .................................................................... 138 In the sole principal of the chief ...................................................... 143 Episcopal system error ........................................................... 147 CHAPTER XIII..................................................................................... 150 AUTHORITY OF THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST .............................................. 150 Dual function. .............................................................................. 150 Governing Authority ............................................................... 150 Doctrinal Authority .......................................................................... 152 Hierarchical Personhood ...................................................... 155 CHAPTER XIV........... .......................................................................... 157 PERPETUITY OF THE VICAR OF JESUS CHRIST ........................................... 157 A question of law............................................................................. 157 The See of Rome (a matter of convenience) ................................... 158 The Seats of Peter .............................. .......................................... 159 Leader's Unit ................................................................................... 166 CHAPTER XV ...................................................................................... 169 THE CHURCH OF ROME ............................................................................... 169 The Roman Presbytery ........................... ........................................... 169 Assists the Roman Pontiff ............................................................ 171 Supposes the Roman Pontiff............................ ............................... 172 Elects the Supreme Pontiff ................................................................. 174 CHAPTER XVI...................................................... ............................... 180 COMMUNICATION FROM THE PRINCIPAL OF SAINT PETER ............................... 180 By the will of the See of Peter............................................... 180 Patriarchates ...................................................................................... 186 Metropolises ..................................................................................... . 189 Presbyteria of Patriarchates and Metropolises ............................. 190 CHAPTER XVII ................................................................................... 194 THE GREATER PATRIARCAL DELEGATIONS ........................................ 194 CHAPTER XVIII.................................................................................. 200
510 THE GENERAL OR ECUMENICAL CONCILES....................................... 200 Double Power of the Episcopate......................................................... 200 Conditions of the Ecumenical Council................................................. 202 Cooperation of the entire episcopate ...................................................... 203 Historical notes ... .................................................................. 207 CHAPTER XIX..................................................................................... 214 THE PARTICULAR COUNCILS................................................................ 214 The president of the council ................................................................... 214 The members of the council .......................... ........................................ 218 Two classes of councils ................................................................. 220 Utility of particular councils....................................................... 221 CHAPTER XX ...................................................................................... 224 THE DISPERSE EPISCOPAT.................................................... ...................... 224 CHAPTER XXI..................................................................................... 226 THE EXTRAORDINARY ACTION OF THE EPISCOPAT........................................ 226 What it consists of........................................................................ 226 Church Foundations ..................................................................... 228 Cases of Need .............................................................................. 236 Constituent Gifts of the Apostolate ....................................................... 239 CHAPTER XXII ................................................................................... 251 EQUALITY AND RANK OF BISHOPS IN THE EPISCOPAL COLLEGE............ 251 CHAPTER XXIII.. ................................................................................ 256 INSTITUTION OF BISHOPS ................................................................... 256 Dependence of the Apostolic See................................................... 256 Fundamental Form of the Institution................................................ 260 Other Form of the Institution........................ ...................................... 263 Modes of Communication................................................................ 274 Immediate Institution....................................................................... 279 Universal Jurisdiction of the Holy See............................................. 285 CHAPTER XXIV .................................................................... .............. 288 CONSTITUTION OF THE PARTICULAR CHURCH .......................................... 288 Greatness of the particular Church.................................................... 289 Two degrees of divine right .............................................................. 291 Indefinability of the (particular) Church of Rome............................ 294
511 CHAPTER XXV ................................................................................... 297 THE BISHOP, HEAD OF THE PARTICULAR CHURCH ........................................ 297 Tutor of the Faith ............................................................................. 298 Sanctifier .................................................................................. 298 Pastor .... ........................................................................................ 304 CHAPTER XXVI .................................................................................. 308 THE ORDER OF PRIESTS .......................................................................... 308 Cooperators of the Bishop ................................................................ 308 Under his complete dependence.................. ......................................... 309 Attributions of the "second see" ................................................. 316 The so-called divine right of the parish priests .................................. .................. 318 CHAPTER XXVII ................................................................................ 321 THE ORDER OF DIACES AND THE LOWER ORDERS............................... 321 Diaconal Ministry .......................................................................... 321 Subdivision of the Diaconate .................................................................. 324 CHAPTER XXVIII. .............................................................................. 328 SHARING OF CLERICAL ATTRIBUTIONS ........................................... 328 Internal Organization......................... .......................................... 328 Load of souls................................................................................. 330 Saving unity ...................................................................... 333 Double distribution........................................................................... 334 Two "sacraments" of unity.................................................... .... 338 CHAPTER XXIX .................................................................................. 343 HIERARCHICAL OPERATIONS IN THE PARTIAL CHURCH......... 343 Action of the One Leader. ......................................................................... 343 Assistance of the presbyterate............................................................. 345 Supplication of the bishop..... ............................................................... 348 Bishop's Choice ............................................................................ 352 Action of the Laity ............................................................................... 353 CHAPTER XXX ................................................................................... 360 CHURCHES WITHOUT TITULAR BISHOPS............................. ........................ 360 Imperfect churches .......................................................................... 360 Essential dependence on priests................................................. 363 Development of diocesan churches.......................................... 365 A strong tradition......................................................................... 367
512 CHAPTER XXXI .................................................................................. 373 CONSTITUTION OF DIOCES............................................................... 373 Formation of Dioceses................................................................... 373 Constitution of Synod.................................................................... 375 Church Hierarchy. ................................................................... 379 CHAPTER XXXII ................................................................................ 383 MONASTIC CHURCHES......................................................................... 383 Constitution of the Monastic Churches ............................................. 383 Canonical and Monastic Order ........................... ................ 390 CHAPTER XXXIII............................................................................... 395 THE MISSION IN THE PARTICULAR CHURCH ........................................... 395 The Bishop, Source and Principle............................................................ 395 Mandates and Delegates ................................................................. 397 CHAPTER XXXIV. .............................................................................. 401 HISTORY OF PARTICULAR CHURCHES ................................................ 401 Until the Barbarian Invasions .......... ............................................... 403 From the fifth to the eleventh century .......................................................................... 414 Feudal regime (eleventh-thirteenth century) ................ ...................................... 422 Beneficial regime (14th-15th century) ............................................ 427 Modern times....................................................................... ....... 441 CHAPTER XXXV................................................................................. 449 THE RELIGIOUS STATE ................................................................................ 449 Nature of the religious state................................................................. 449 His place in the Church...................................................................... 454 Development of monasticism. ..................................................... 457 Monastic Confederations ........................................................... 460 The Canonical Order in the First Ten Centuries. ........................... 463 The Great Reform of the Eleventh Century...................................................... 467 New Religious Orders ........................................................ ...... 476 Two classes of religious families ............................................... 478 Secular clergy, titular clergy ...................................................... 482 Historical progress .................................................................... 485 Works of mercy ................................................................... 490 In the image of the one Saint.............................................................. 495 CHAPTER XXXVI ............................................................................... 498
513 COMPENETRATION OF THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND PARTICULAR CHURCHES ..................................................................................... 498 Sovereign Authority of the Supreme Pontiff....................................... 498 Application of this authority ........................................................... 500 Exemption of Churches and Persons.......................................... 501 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 506 TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................... 507
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