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us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not
perish from the earth.

I
if

“Indeed it is proper that we be dedicated again, and that
every aspect of .American life be dedicated to the great task that
lies before us; that labor and capital give and receive mutual
respect for each other’s rights, the welfare of the nation standing
before either; that radio and the press, entering as they do into
the very sanctuary of the American home, be a force for whole­
some intelligent living rather than stoop to satisfy the morbidly
curious; that the motion picture industry recognize its tremend­
ous influence upon the youth of our country, and that it seek to
elevate rather than to degrade; that all of us recognize that there
is a greater God than the dollar; that it is more important to make
people better than to make cars better; and that we must expect
that America bless God, before we can expect that God bless
America. These are our duties and our mandate from above.
“Yes, our departed comrades-in-arms, you who died that we
might live, and that the world might have a new birth of freedom;
yes, Tom and Jack and Larry and Pete and Frank and Henry and
Joe, Fred and Bill and Clyde and Mike and Dick and Steve, and
every last one of you who fought and bled and died : we do solemn­
ly pledge by all that is sacred to your memory, ‘that you shall not
have died in vain.’ ”
Francis Sajipsox

Des Moines, Iowa
Theology and the Apostolate
St Gregory the Great sees in priests who are well versed in sacred
theology a most efficacious means of carrying on the apostolate of the
Church to those outside her ranks. This point cannot be emphasized
too strongly, particularly in modern times when the ever-increasing
number of educated persons creates new problems of intellectual ap­
proach for the priest who desires to manifest the treasures of divine
revelation to non-Catholics.
—Fr. Edward L. Heston, C.S.G, in The Priest of the Fathers (Milwaukee:
The Bruce Publishing Company, 1945), p. 112.

THE BISHOP AND THE DIOCESAN PRIESTHOOD
The status of a diocesan priest in the Catholic Church is that
of a member of a sacerdotal brotherhood, gathered around and
subject to the ruler and father of a local Church. As a corporate
unit this brotherhood, the presbyterium, functions only to aid the
visible head of the local Church in the performance of his di­
vinely constituted duties. Normally, and according to the con­
stitution of Christ’s kingdom on earth, the visible head and
father of the local Church is the diocesan bishop. Hence the func­
tion of the presbyterium as a fraternity and the function of the
individual diocesan priest as a member of the presbyterium must
be described in terms of the work which God has assigned to the
diocesan bishop in the Catholic Church.
The work of a bishop who is a head of a diocese is, in the last
analysis, the accomplishment of the purpose of the local Church
itself. God has not charged him with a mere part, even with the
principal part, of the task which the local Church is intended to
perform. On the contrary God has made the bishop responsible
for all of the functions which the individual local Church, the
house or family of God over which the bishop rules as head and
father, is meant to fulfil. As a result, the presbyterium, the
brotherhood of diocesan priests over which the diocesan bishop
presides, is a corporate reality brought into being to assist the
bishop in his essential work of achieving the integral purpose for
which God instituted the local Church as a unit of His kingdom
on earth.
Now the local Church differs from every other religious family
within God’s city in this world in that its purpose is precisely
that of the universal Church itself. The other individual re­
ligious brotherhoods in the Church have been brought into being
at some point in the Church’s history for the attainment and the
conservation of some particular good which the Church desires
for the attainment of its essential end. Thus the individual
religious order or congregation exists to further some particular
project or purpose of Christ’s society. The local Church, the
Catholic diocese, on the other hand, is itself the divinely insti­
tuted unit of the universal Christian society. It is the Catholic
Church in the locality of the diocese. It exists to attain, not some
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individual aspect or part of the Catholic Church’s essential pur­
pose, but that purpose as a whole, within and through the di­
ocesan cqmmunity. It is for this reason that the local Church is
said to be the Church universal in miniature.
The difference between the immediate purpose of the diocese
(and hence the immediate purpose of the bishop with his pres­
byterium) and the immediate purpose of the individual religious
order or congregation is an extremely important factor in de­
termining the distinction between the spirituality of the diocesan
priesthood and the spiritualities of the various sacerdotal religious
communities. Each one of the great religious orders and congre­
gations can be said to have its own proper and characteristic
spirituality. Thus the Benedictine spirituality is something dis­
tinct from that of the followers of St. Ignatius Loyola, or St
Francis, or St. Dominic, or St. Alphonsus Liguori. This is true, in
the last analysis, because each one of these saintly Founders
worked for the attainment of a distinct immediate purpose, for
the accomplishment of one definite kind of benefit for the Church.
The good of the Church as a whole demanded, or at least made
it expedient, that the individual ends of each one of the religious
communities should be pursued. In each case, however, the
corporate prosecution of such a particular good purpose within
the Chutch necessitated the formation of a definite religious
society distinct from the diocese and from the diocesan presby­
terium. The diocese or the local Church as such has no right to
limit its efforts or to concentrate them upon the achievement of
any one particular objective within the ambit of the Church’s
purpose. By the very fact that it is what it is, it must labor for
the attainment of the Church’s objective as a whole. Because
the local Church is the relatively autonomous and complete
society of Christ’s faithful in one city or district, because it is the
company of Our Lord’s disciples gathered around a spiritual
father whose office is of the essence of the kingdom of Christ on
earth, the work of the bishop and of his presbyterium must be
directed immediately towards the full and complete purpose of
the Church.
THE PURPOSE OF THE CHURCH

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ instituted His visible
Church and preserves it as an indefectible society for the glory

J.

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297

of God, for the perpetuation of His own redemptive work, and
for the sanctification and salvation of men through the practice
of the Christian religion. God is glorified when He is known
clearly and rightly praised by His creatures. According to the
actual decrees of divine providence, the only ultimate and com­
pletely perfective knowledge of God available to mankind is that
of the beatific vision. Only if a man finally attains to that knowl­
edge will he have reached the good to which God Himself has
ordered the human family. Only in and through this beatific
vision does man find his eternal and absolute happiness and thus
ultimately glorify God.
It was to bring man to the perfection of the beatific vision that
Our Lord performed His redemptive work. He suffered and died
in order that men might gain victory over the forces tending to
hold them apart from God and might possess God in the glory of
the beatific vision forever. The life of sanctity in this world is
that of habitual grace, the actual beginning of that supernatural
life to which the beatific vision belongs. Thus the sanctification
and salvation of men through the practice of the Christian re­
ligion is not to be considered as an end in any way distinct from
God’s glory or from the continuation of Our Lord’s redemptive
activity. It is the process in which and through which God is
glorified and Christ’s work is continued. It is the one essential
purpose and function of the visible Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church has another purpose, secondary and sub­
sidiary and, to a certain extent, incidental. Because it is the only
authonzed and infallible bearer of the divine message, it ac­
complishes the results which the message itself brings about. We
know from the teaching of the Vatican Council’s constitution
Dei Filius that the divine public revelation entrusted to and
preached by the Church is absolutely necessary for mankind
because of the fact that God has raised man to a supernatural
destiny, and also that it is truly, though not absolutely, requisite
in order that “those truths about God which are not of themselves
beyond the competence of human reason may, in the present
condition of the human race, be known by all, readily, with firm
certitude, and with no admixture of error.”1
lThe Vatican Council, const. Dei Filius. Cf. Denzinger-Bannwart, Enchiri­
dion symbolorum, π. 1786.

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Because there is and there can be no such things as a realistic
individual and social ethic apart from a correct natural knowledge
about God, and because democratic nations can never hope to
achieve even a decent government unless their electorates possess
effective and true ethical standards, the divine message and the
Church which teaches this message inerrantly are both necessary
for the preservation of civilization and world order today. Since
this natural and social good is produced by the Church by the will
of its divine Founder, it may be and should be counted as a pur­
pose of God’s kingdom on earth. Nevertheless the Church is de­
picted in an entirely false light when this secondary purpose is
presented as the only end or as the most important end of Christ’s
society.
Actually this secondary purpose of the Church is accomplished
only in and through the essential labors of God’s kingdom on
earth, through the fulfilment of its efforts for the sanctification
and salvation of man. The Church has no independent secondary
message enshrining only the teachings of metaphysic and ethics.
It teaches the one body of doctrine it is divinely commissioned
to impart, the divinely revealed message which Jesus Christ Our
Lord preached to the world from within His Church from the
beginning. As a doctrinal unit the Christian revelation is in­
trinsically supernatural. Yet it embodies certain truths of the
natural order, and these are the principles which an objectively
true philosophy and a righteous governmental theory must recog­
nize. These natural truths are necessary and, in order to hart
these natural truths readily, certainly, and accurately available
to all men in the present condition of the human race, the in­
trinsically supernatural Christian revelation and the Church
which alone is authorized to teach this revelation and divinely
empowered to teach it infallibly are also requisite.
THE WORK OF THE BISHOP AND OF HIS DIOCESE

Since the primary and essential work and purpose of the
Catholic Church is to bring about men’s sanctification and sal­
vation through the practice of the Christian religion, and since
the local Church, as a social unit, is charged with the task of
achieving that purpose by the employment of all the means that
Christ places at the disposal of His kingdom on earth, there can
be no section of the Church’s salvific activity in any way foreign

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299

to the diocesan bishop’s responsibility and competence. Our
Lord has commissioned His Church to attain its objective
through the profession and the expression of a common faith,
through the process of a common hope and prayer, and through
the exercise of divine charity. To implement and to make pos­
sible this practice of the Christian religion, God gave to His
Church the power to teach His message, the power to administer
His sacraments, and the power to command Christ’s disciples in
the name of Christ. The residential bishop, as the head and
father of the local Church, is charged by God with the duty of
working for the fulfilment of every portion of the Christian life
and is commissioned to exercise the triple power of sanctifying,
teaching, and ruling the faithful.
No one phase or aspect of the Christian life, no one section of
the work of the Church can be chosen by the diocesan bishop to
the exclusion of any other. Because it has no other basic purpose
than to assist the diocesan bishop in his paternal conduct of the
local Church, the presbyterium, the brotherhood of the diocesan
priests within a local Church, is also obliged to work in that same
local Church, for every type of good which Christ expects from
the Catholic Church as a whole. Thus we see that the universality
of its mission is one of the principal factors that sets the presby­
terium apart from any other sacerdotal brotherhood within the
Church on earth.
The individual religious community is founded to procure the
sanctification and the perfection of its own members through the
performance of one individual type of activity or of one group of
activities which lie within the competence and the field of re­
sponsibility of the Catholic Church. Thus one religious order
may be founded and may endure chiefly for the sake of the
Church’s liturgical prayer. Another may exist in order to preach
Christ’s message accurately and effectively. Still others are
directed to the accomplishment of definite spiritual and corporal
works of mercy, or for the exercise of that perfection of prayer
which we know as infused contemplation, or for the Catholic
missions. . ■
ΑΠ of these ends, however, and all of the purposes for which
both individual men and religious communities labor within the
Church of God lie within the field of the diocesan bishop’s compe­
tence and responsibility. His mission is as doctrinal as that of

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any religious congregation which exists to preach and to teach
God’s word. With an obligation that is laid upon him by the
divine constitution of the Church itself, he is bound to perform
the works of mercy and to perform and oversee missionary
activity. His presbyterium is, by its very nature, charged with
responsibility over this same all-extensive field of Christian work.
It is quite manifest that individual members of the presbyterium
are and must be placed by the bishop in charge of individual
portions of the Church’s work. The diocesan priest assigned as
a hospital chaplain is obviously meant to do a sort of work differ­
ent from that performed by fellow members of his presbyterium
who are curates or teachers. Nevertheless, all of these men liveas
members of a sacerdotal brotherhood which, as a social unit, is
devoted to the entirety of the Church’s work. They are subject
to an immediate superior who is placed over all the Christian
activity of a local Church. Although the immediate function of
the individual diocesan priest may be, and to a certain extent
must be, specialized, the work of the diocesan bishop and of lus
presbyterium is not.
This salient and central characteristic of the diocesan priest­
hood should be stressed in the theological training of a man pre­
paring himself to receive a call from a bishop to enter his presby­
terium. Insistence on this point must be a basic element in the
spirituality of the diocesan priesthood itself. It is perfectly true,
of course, that the priestly sacrament of Holy Orders gives ex­
actly the same sacramental character, and hence exactly the
same supernatural competence, to every man who receives it
validly. At the same time, however, it is one thing to exerdæ
that priestly power as a member of a diocesan bishop’s presby­
terium, as a member of a sacerdotal fraternity charged with the
entire spiritual welfare of a local Church, and it is quite another
thing to exercise this same power as a member of a religious
family charged, as a unit, with the responsibility'· of working for
some individual good within the Church of Jesus Christ. The
diocesan priest and the candidate for the diocesan priesthood
need definite and specific instruction about the orientation of
their own sacerdotal brotherhood just as truly as religious need
to be taught about the immediate purposes of their own indi­
vidual communities.

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301

THE ADMONITION TO CANDIDATES FOR THE PRIESTHOOD
IN THE PONTIFICALE ROMANUM

The essential purpose of the presbyterium as the instrument of
the diocesan bishop who is its father and ruler is brought out with
magnificent clarity in the admonition to the ordinandi placed on
the lips of the ordaining bishop in the Roman Pontifical. “Sacer­
dotem etenim oportet offerre, benedicere, praesse, praedicare, et
baptizare.” Dom Pierre de Puniet tells us that this formula is
found in tenth century Ordines Romani and that it refers his­
torically to “priests in charge of parishes, whether urban or rural,
such as were in existence everywhere at the time this formula was
drawn up."2 Dom de Puniet, however, makes another assertion
which, seen in its proper light, manifests the relation of the pres­
byterium and of its individual members to their own bishop.
In earlier days, and especially at Rome, the statement [the formula
about the duties and the prerogatives of the priest] would not have been
made in this absolute and categorical form. At the beginning all the
powers of the priesthood were subordinated to those of the episcopate,
from which they were derived. In his cathedral church, surrounded by
his presbyterium, or council of priests, the bishop not only presided but
possessed and exercised in his own person all the powers of the priest­
hood. He was not only the head of the priestly college, but he also
administered all the sacraments, even baptism. Even the preaching of
the gospel was a privilege jealously reserved to himself by the bishop.3

It would be a grievous theological mistake to consider Dom de
Puniet's description of the bishop in his cathedral as representing
merely a form which has become historically outmoded. Actually
the bishop, now as always during the Church’s lifetime, really
presides over his own diocese, and really possesses and exercises
in bis own person all the powers of the priesthood. The fact that
the members of the presbyterium and all others who have re­
ceived priestly orders are empowered to offer the sacrifice of the
Mass in no wise detracts from the plenitude of the bishop’s
sacerdotal power. The bishop is now as always the chief priest of
the diocese. When the local Church as a whole is gathered to­
gether for the eucharistie sacrifice, the bishop celebrates the Mass
’ Tie Roman Pontifical. A History and Commentary (London: Longmans,
Green and Ca, 1932), pp. 222 f.
•Ibid., p. 223.

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or appoints another to act in his place. The bishop presides over
his people and over his presbyterium. When the members of that
priestly company celebrate Mass in his diocese and for his flock,
they act as his agents and representatives. They sacrifice with
his authorization arid in his Church.
The fact that, in the early years of the Church, the bishop
ordinarily offered the holy sacrifice himself for his entire flock
has led two most distinguished and learned contemporary Angli­
can writers into very serious error. Both Dr. Trevor Gervase
Jalland4 and Dom Gregory Dix* teach that originally the pres­
byter had no liturgical function at all and that only with the
passage of time and with the growth of the individual local
Church was he permitted to offer the eucharistie sacrifice. Thus,
according to their theory, the priest’s power to say Mass would
be something granted by Church authority during patristic times.
The bishop would have used his presbyterium as his instrument
by giving its members powers which they did not possess by
divine apostolic authority.
This theory misstates the relation of the presbyterium to the
bishop and misrepresents the nature of the Christian priesthood.
The truth of the matter is that several books of the New Testa­
ment show the various local Churches to have been provided
each with its own presbyterium during the time of the great
Apostle’s ministry.* The meh who formed these priestly
brotherhoods are called sometimes επίσκοποι. and sometimes
πρεσβυτεροι."1 They had priestly, but not episcopal, powen
* Cf. The Church and the Papacy (London: Society for Promoting Christitn
Knowledge, 1944), pp. 143, 182.
* Cf. The Shape of the Liturgy (Westminster, England: Dacre ftess, 1945),
pp. 33 ff.
* Cf. Acts 14:23 where the institution of presbyters in Lystra, Iconium, and
Antioch of Pisidia is recounted. I Tim. 5:17 and Tit. 1:5 mention the prtsbyteral office and give St. Paul’s directions to his auxiliaries about the type d
man who should be chosen tar this position. Acts 20:17 speaks of the presbyters
of Ephesus. Those of the mother Church of Jersualem are mentioned it
Acts 11:30; 15:2, 4, 5, 22, 23; 21:18.
T The fact that the same men were called νρΐσβνηροι and άήσκαια
fa brought out clearly in St. Luke’s account of St. Paul’s farewell to the pa·
byterium at Ephesus in Arfa 20:17-36. In v. 17 St. Luke tells us that St. M
summoned the τ-ρατβυτίροηκ at the Church. In v. 28 St. Paul is represented
as telling these men that God has made them άησκόπους to watch over
His Church. See also TH. 1:5-7; I Tim. 3:2; 5:17,1 Pet. 5:1-2.

BISHOP AND DIOCESAN PRIESTHOOD

303

St. Paul himself kept episcopal control over these Churches
during the time of their infancy. As occasion demanded, he
sent the individual Churches certain of his disciples as dele­
gates. These delegates, men like Timothy, Titus, Tychicus, and
Artemas, possessed true episcopal power.8 They were competent
to ordain new members for the presbyterium. The members of the
priestly brotherhoods within the local Churches did not have
this power.
It would be stupid to suppose that the eucharistie sacrifice was
offered in the local Churches only when St. Paul or one of his
auxiliaries was present in the city. The presidency with which
the presbyterium was charged was something to be exercised
principally in the eucharistie gatherings themselves. Thus in the
earliest days of the Catholic Church Mass was celebrated by men
who did not have the episcopal character. The liturgical or
eucharistie function of the presbyterium is in no sense a mere
concession of ecclesiastical law. It is inherent in the very consti­
tution of the Church.
Thus we see that the work, the essential function of the Church,
for which the bishop uses the presbyterium as his instrument, is a
task requiring the activity of a priestly brotherhood divinely
commissioned to offer the sacrifice of the New Law. The fra­
ternity over which the bishop presides and which he employs to
aid him in the direction of his Church is one whose primary and
essential function is the offering of the Mass. The Mass is pre­
eminently the act of the Mystical Body. The Church of Christ is,
tn the last analysis, the group of the disciples whom God has
called to honor Him and to carry on the redemptive work of
His Son through this sacrifice.
In order to be of service to the bishop in his presbyterium the
priest must also have the power “to bless, to preside, to preach,
and to baptize." The power to bless involves a competence to
take the lead in the Church’s liturgical prayer and the capacity
to administer Extreme Unction. The power to preside carries
*ith it the right to exact obedience from the faithful. Preaching
* Both Timothy and Titus were charged with |the task of ’ordaining presbyters
aad deacons and both were ordered to complete the organizations of the
Churches to which they were accredited. Cf. Z Tim. 3:1-13; 5:17-22; Tit. 1:5-9.
lychicus was sent to replace Timothy at Ephesus (IT Tim. 4:12). Artemas
the place of Titus (Tit. 3:12).

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is the explanation of the divine teaching confided to the Church
of Christ. The power to baptize is that of acting as the ordinary
minister of solemn Baptism, and it implies the basic competence
to forgive sins in the sacrament of Penance.
All of these powers belong primarily to the bishop in his Church.
The priest exercises them by the bishop’s authorization. We can
understand the nature and the purpose of the brotherhood of the
diocesan priests in the local Church only when we realize that
this company exists only for the sake of aiding its bishop in his
administration and direction of his people through the exercise
of all these functions.
The practical corollary to this theological truth about the
position of the presbyterium with reference to the diocesan bishop
is a matter of vital and central importance in the life of every
individual secular priest and seminarian. Because, according to
the divinely established constitution of the Catholic Church, the
presbyterium does its sacerdotal and salvific work for Christ only
in so far as it is intimately united in charity with the visible head
of the local Christian community to aid him’in the task God has
given him, each diocesan brotherhood of secular priests and each
individual member of such a brotherhood must realize that
failure to cherish a spirit of loyal, whole-hearted, and charitable
obedience and reverence for the bishop necessarily involves an
absolute ruin of the spiritual life in the diocesan priesthood. In
other words there can be no charity for God and loyalty to Christ
in the soul of that secular priest who refuses to maintain and to
foster in his own soul with all sincerity the reverence and obedi*
ence he promised the head and the father of his own presbyterium
in the sacerdotal ordination by which he was admitted to this
brotherhood. The glorious purpose of the Catholic Church, the
end to which the labors of the bishop and his presbyterium are
directly consecrated, demands of the individual diocesan priest
the obedient and charitable expenditure of all his energy and of
all his talents towards the most perfect accomplishment possible
to him of the individual work to which the ruler of his own
priestly company has assigned him. The sanctity of the diocesan
priesthood requires this perfection of union with the bishop.
Tt

r λ i-

TT

·

;

r A

·

7 he Catholic University of America,

Washington, D. C.

JOSEPH CLIFFORD FeNTOX

Answers to Questions
PAULINE PRIVILEGE
Question: Since a convert may not exercise the Pauline Privi­
lege if he has, after baptism, given the unconverted former spouse
cause to depart, and since adultery committed after baptism is
a just cause for such departure; how is the priest handling the
case to find out whether the baptized party has committed
adultery?

Answer: Gasparri (De Matrimonio, n. 1152) says that if the
unconverted party gives negative answer to the first and second
questions put to him according to Can. 1121, it is necessary to
consider why he wants to depart. If he has a just cause for de­
parture the convert has no right to enter a new marriage and if
he should enter such a marriage it would be illicit and invalid.
The just cause, he continues, is to be determined according to
the rules of justice and right reason.
One of the just causes which he discusses is precisely adultery
committed by the convert after baptism. He notes, however,
that even such adultery would not deprive the convert of the
right to contract a new marriage, using the Pauline Privilege, if
the unconverted spouse has committed the same sin, or has con­
doned the adultery of the convert, or has been the cause thereof.
It would seem, then, that if the priest handling the Pauline
Privilege case is worried about the possibility that the convert
may have been guilty of adultery after baptism the ordinary way
to find out would be to ask why the unconverted party refuses to
cohabit with the convert. If it is because of the adultery of the
convert the fact will appear from his answer. If it is for some other
reason, then it will be clear that adultery is not the cause for de­
parture which would deprive the convert of the right to use the
Pauline Privilege.
It may also appear from the record that the unconverted party
is himself guilty of adultery, e.g. by having attempted a marriage
after civil divorce from the party now converted to the Church.
The record may also show that the unconverted party does not
blame the convert for an adultery actually committed, but has
departed for some other reason, e.g. general incompatibility of
tempéraments, or because the one who departed simply got tired
305