THE CATHOLIC TRADITION OF CHURCH ORDER

Within each Catholic community of the baptized, in actual practice distinctions among members rest in the position each has in relation to the sacraments. This springs from the principle that the basic community activities are the sacraments and of all the requirements involved in the valid celebration of a sacrament, the primary one is that of requisite power on the part of the person actually celebrating that sacrament. All other requirements involved in the celebration of a sacrament are predicated on the existence of a minister who has the requisite power to celebrate that sacrament. Should an empowered minister be lacking, a sacrament cannot be celebrated.

For the majority of the sacraments, the minister receives his power through the reception of one of the sacraments themselves, namely Holy Orders. This celebration has been recognized throughout the history of the Church without serious dissent as a function belonging to the office of bishop which in turn is transmitted through the reception of this sacrament. In the Catholic tradition this is the principle behind the belief in the apostolicity of the Church whereby each bishop can trace his line of ordination back to the apostles themselves who were directly empowered by Christ. Thus it is commonly held that once the chain of sacramental contact back to the apostles is broken, requisite power for the majority of the sacraments ceases to exist.

Among all the sacraments celebrated for the Catholic community of the baptized, the greatest is the Eucharist and the community member having power over the Eucharist is the priest. But priesthood is common to both bishop and presbyter so that both by ordination have equal authority over the Eucharist. But a potentially confusing situation in Church order is saved by the fact that only the bishop has authority over the sacrament of Holy Orders and in principle it is by this authority that Eucharistic ministers are provided. Thus although the presbyter has equal control over the greatest of the sacraments, nevertheless it is only through the bishop alone that the Church continues the Eucharist from generation to generation. Thus the bishop is easily distinguished as superior to the presbyter since the presbyterate depends upon the episcopate for its continuance. In turn both of these are easily distinguished as superior to the ordinary members of the Catholic community since they must depend upon the bishop and the presbyter for the Eucharist without which they would not be spiritually alive.

The primacy of control over the sacraments in Catholic Church order can be seen in a negative way in the order of deacon. Although the order of deacon was one of the three original offices in the Catholic tradition, it virtually disappeared for centuries. And the disappearance began once it was clearly decided by the Church that the deacon had no share in the priestly office. The Second Vatican Council has resurrected this office but it still remains virtually indistinguishable from lay ministry, the post-Vatican II replacement for minor orders.

Within the universal Catholic community of the baptized in contradistinction to each local community, Church order recognizes the highest position of all as the office of pope or Supreme Pontiff. Although it is the highest office in the Church it has always been the least secure. A primary reason is that the office of pope is not marked by any special sacramental control peculiar to itself. Thus the pope being essentially a bishop, enjoys no special advantage over any other bishop in the sacramental line that would clearly mark him as superior. For this reason at various times throughout the history of the Church his superiority has been questioned on these very grounds. Now when Saint Jerome asked the question "What can a bishop do that a presbyter cannot do," he answered it in the very next words of his question "except ordain?" This was sufficient in time to position a clearly established difference between presbyter and bishop. But when the same question was asked about the relationship between pope and bishop, the answer came to rest upon a power of jurisdiction.

The problem of jurisdiction has existed in the Church from its earliest days. The principle behind it was that Church order in practice existed within the call to service of a local Church or, as it was called in the very early days, a parish. In time each local parish had its bishop, its presbyters and its deacons and difficulty arose when a bishop or a presbyter attempted to administer a sacrament outside his own Church－that is within the parish of another bishop without that bishop's permission. Particularly distressing was the dispensation of the sacrament of Holy Orders outside one's jurisdiction.

Such jurisdictional questions which are so frequently mentioned in early councils came to be thematized under the categories of validity and lawfulness, categories borrowed from the Roman legal system. It could not be denied that bishops had the requisite power to ordain for that would be to destroy the intrinsic power of the very office of bishop itself. But should he ordain outside his own Church, he would be doing so unlawfully or illicity and the one ordained could be denied the lawful and licit practice of his office. Likewise it could not be denied that the presbyter had the requisite power to confect the Eucharist; but should he do so outside his own jurisdiction he could be doing it unlawfully.

But the sacramental system was not the only focus of jurisdiction. A second and very important focus concerned the question of who would preside among bishops in a given area. The bishops of apostolic or apostle-founded Churches were recognized as holding first rank and among these none shared the same prestige as the bishop of the Church at Rome with its two apostles Peter and Paul. But such prestige alone did not sustain the weight of a growing papal claim to the highest hierarchical position in the Church.

The medieval Church wedded jurisdiction and sacrament together as two sides of the same coin. While on the one hand power over the sacraments within the Catholic community of the baptized came from Holy Orders, this was not necessarily a complete power that allowed indiscriminate confecting of the sacraments. What was also necessary was a legitimate call to office in the CURA ANIMARUM. This distinction although in the same vein as the earlier one of lawfulness and liceity, was more sophisticated because in some cases it concerned validity. It did not, however, lessen sacramental power already traditionally attached to the offices of bishop and presbyter; rather it centered around powers attached to authority in the Church, namely the power of the keys. Thus the verticle line of authorization under the power of the keys started with the pope who in turn initially authorized bishops who in turn authorized presbyters.(1)

However the power of the keys still did not give the papacy a firm base in relation to other bishops largely because in Scripture the power of the keys was presented to all of the apostles as well as to Peter. Thus to position bishops in a vertical hierarchical scheme under the pope was never really established until the First Vatican Council in 1870. And that was a development well after the Reformation.

Church order as it has been described thus far has been within the Catholic community of the already baptized. But the basis of Church order rests upon the sacrament of Baptism; or to be more precise. Baptism is the sacramental base on which the whole structure of Church order rests. Now while one might get the impression from what has been expounded up to the present that Church order in the Catholic tradition is the result of ordinary sociological laws at work in an organization heavily influenced by Roman social structures in the first instance, medieval feudalism in the second and renaissance divine right of kings in the third, these laws alone could not account for the peculiarly Christian position concerning the minister of Baptism.

There is no written indication at all that there was any explicit consciousness in the early days of the Church of an unrestricted empowerment for the administration of the sacrament of Baptism. In the early Churches or parishes, Baptism was a community celebration administered by the bishop together with his presbyters and deacons and for that matter the whole community. Questions as to whether Baptism by others than community ministers would be valid first arose in the case of Baptism by heretics. What the early Church meant by heretics were basically Churches or parishes that were fully established with bishop, presbyters and deacons but because of a doctrinal or disciplinary dispute, were Churches in competition with those which held the Catholic faith and practice. The question arose that when someone from an heretical Church entered a Catholic Church, would he have to be rebaptized? After a certain amount of dispute, the Catholic Church decided that given the proper administration of the sacrament－that is, with the trinitarian formula during the washing－heretics were indeed baptized and only the anointing (the sacrament of Confirmation) was necessary for such people entering a local church. At the same time the validity of orders of such heretical churches was usually not accepted, so implicitly it had to be held that people outside the traditional ministry of bishop, presbyter and deacon could indeed baptize.

It is not surprising that as a corollary of this question concerning the validity of Baptism celebrated by heretics, the added question should eventually arise as to the validity of Baptism celebrated by non-Christians. The answer to this question was side-stepped by Augustine in his work CONTRA EPISTOLAM PAKMENIANI, Book II. Said Augustine: "This is indeed another question, whether Baptism can be given even by those who were never Christians. Nor should anything be rashly asserted on this question without the authority of a sacred council equal to such an important question."(2) By Augustine's time, then, it was not a settled question and even he did not presume to give an answer on his own authority.

After the patristic period, as we enter the period of the middle ages, the problem seemed to reach the stage where it demanded an answer. When that answer came it was a clear one from a letter of Pope Nicholas I in November of the year 866. In the letter he told a group of bishops that all else being proper, whether the person baptizing is Jew, Christian or pagan, those receiving such baptism are indeed baptized.(3) So from the period of Augustine's quoted work (398) to Pope Nicholas' reply in 866, the question had been clearly resolved. The teaching of the Church was that indeed anyone was empowered to confer the sacrament of Baptism.

Saint Thomas Aquinas writing in the thirteenth century and probably around the year 1270, stated in the third part of the SUMMA THEOLOGIAE that just as any water at all is sufficient from the point of view of the matter of the sacrament of Baptism, so any man－even a non-believer or non-baptized person－is competent and can baptize in case of necessity. He goes on to say that the one who baptizes ministers only outwardly whereas it is Christ who baptizes inwardly and he can use any man in whatever way he wishes. The unbaptized person even though he does not belong to the Church in reality or in sacrament can belong to the Church in intention and likeness of action in so far as he intends to do what the Church does and he observes the form of the Church in baptizing. In this way he works as a minister of Christ. The reason for this, of course, is the necessity of Baptism, a necessity which Aquinas though the other sacraments do not have.(4)

The clearest statement that the teaching authority of the Church itself has made, was given at the Council of Florence which met from 1438 to 1445. This was a reunion council and in it an instruction to the Armenians was formulated which contained the following teaching on Baptism. "The minister of this sacrament is the priest, whose office it is to baptize (ex officio). But in case of necessity, not only a priest or deacon but a lay man or woman, in fact even a pagan and a heretic can baptize, so long as he observes the Church's form and intends to do what the Church does."(5) With this statement the Catholic tradition of the minister of the sacrament of Baptism reached its present maturity.

It is interesting to note that in Catholic thinking just as being in traditional metaphysics is considered the perfection of perfections because it is the ground that makes all other perfections possible, so Baptism is truely the sacrament of sacraments because without it no other sacrament is possible. In fact the Catholic community of the baptized which is the locus of all the other sacraments exists only by virtue of Baptism. Thus in a Church order that is based on authority over the sacraments, the empowered minister of Baptism poses a peculiar problem because everyone is equally empowered in Baptism within the Church community. Such a situation without an adequate theology behind it could easily cause the whole Church order structure to collapse in upon itself. In a limited sense this is what happened in the reformation thought of Luther.

1)The Council of Florence gave the clearest exposition of this vertical hierarchical line.

2)Cf. Sancti Aurelii Augustini, OPERA OMNIA Vol. IX (Parisiis: Apud Gaume Fratres, Bibiopulas, 1837), p. 107.

3)Cf. ENCHIRIDION SYMBOLORUM, No. 335.

4)Cf. Q. 67 Art. 5 in Thomas Aquinas, SUMMA THEOLOGIAE, Vol.57 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1975), pp. 66-69.

5)Cf. Paul F. Palmer (ed.), SOURCES OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY VOL I: SACRAMENTS AND WORSHIP (Westminster, The Newman Press, 1963), p. 99.