- This article is about the sacrament. Holy Orders was also the title of a 1908 book by Marie Corelli.
The sacrament of Holy Orders in the
modern Catholic Church and in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox
and Anglican churches, includes three degrees:
The Eastern Orthodox Church also has two minor orders, namely subdeacon and
reader (or anagnostis). While a
person becomes a bishop, priest, or deacon through ordination, one becomes a subdeacon or reader through
tonsuring. In former times, the Roman Catholic church also had the four
minor orders of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte, which were conferred on seminarians pro
forma before they became subdeacons and then deacons. The last of these was suppressed under Pope Paul VI.
Such titles as Cardinal,
Monsignor, Archbishop, etc., are not orders to which a man is ordained; to receive one of those titles
is not an instance of the sacrament of Holy Orders.
Definition of "order"
The word ordo (order, in Latin) designated an established civil body or
corporation, and ordinatio meant legal incorporation into an ordo. The three degrees of Holy Orders represent
ordines.
Meaning of priesthood
The Catholic church sees the priesthood as both a reflection of the ancient temple priesthood of
the Jews and the person of Jesus
Christ. The liturgy of ordination recalls the Old Testament priesthood and the priesthood of Christ. In the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, "Christ is the source of all
priesthood: the priest of the old law was a prefiguration of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ"
Summa Theologica III, 22, 4c
. See Presbyterorum Ordinis for the Second Vatican Council decree on the nature of the Catholic priesthood.
Process and sequence
The arrangement given above, "bishops, priests, and deacons" is in the reverse order of ordination. Typically in the last year
of seminary training a man will be ordained to the diaconate, called by Roman
Catholics in recent times the "transitional diaconate" to distinguish men bound for priesthood from those who have entered the
"permanent diaconate" and do not intend to seek further ordination. Deacons, whether transitional or permanent, are licensed to
preach sermons, to perform baptisms, and to witness marriages, but to perform no other sacraments. They may assist at the Eucharist or the Mass, but are not the ministers of the Eucharist. Orthodox
seminarians are typically tonsured as readers before entering seminary, and may later be made subdeacons or deacons; customs vary
between seminaries and between Orthodox jurisdictions.
After at least six months or more as a transitional deacon a man will be ordained to the priesthood. Priests are able to
preach, perform baptisms, witness marriages, hear confessions and give absolutions, and celebrate the Eucharist or the Mass.
Bishops are chosen from among the priests, and are the leaders of territorial units
called dioceses. Only bishops can validly administer the sacrament of holy orders. In
Latin-rite Catholic churches, only bishops may lawfully administer the
sacrament of confirmation, but if an ordinary priest administers that sacrament illegally, it is nonetheless considered valid, so
that the person confirmed cannot be confirmed again, by a bishop or otherwise. In Eastern-rite Catholic churches, confirmation is done by parish priests via the rite of chrismation, and is
usually administered to both neonates and adults immediately after their baptism.
Recognition of other churches' orders
Roman Catholics recognize the validity of holy orders administered in Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches because
those churches have maintained the apostolic succession of
bishops, i.e., their bishops claim to be in a line of succession dating back to the Apostles, just as Catholic bishops do. Consequently, if a priest of one of those eastern churches converts to
Catholicism, he is automatically a Catholic priest. Eastern Orthodox bishops can, and normally do, grant recognition to the holy
orders of converts who were earlier ordained in the Catholic church; that is part of the policy called church economy. Anglican churches, unlike most Protestant churches, maintain the succession, their bishops being
successors of English bishops who converted to Protestantism in the 16th century. A controversy in the Catholic church over the
question of whether Anglican holy orders are valid was dogmatically settled by Pope Leo XIII in 1896, who wrote that Anglican orders lack validity
because the rite by which priests are ordained is not correctly performed. Eastern Orthodox bishops generally grant "economy"
when Anglican priests convert to Orthodoxy. Catholics do not recognize ordination of ministers in Protestant churches that do not
maintain the apostolic succession.
Marriage and holy orders
The rules discussed in this section are not considered to be among the infallible dogmas of the church, but are mutable rules
of discipline. See clerical celibacy for a more detailed
discussion.
Married men may be ordained to the diaconate as Permanent Deacons, but in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church may not be ordained to the
priesthood. In the Eastern Rites of the Catholic Church and in the
Eastern Orthodox Church married deacons may be ordained priests,
but may not become bishops. Bishops in the Eastern Rites and the Eastern Orthodox churches are drawn only from among monks, who have taken a vow of celibacy.
There are cases of permanent deacons who, left widowed by the death of a wife, have been ordained to the priesthood. There
have been some situations in which men previously married and ordained to the priesthood in the Anglican Church have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood and allowed to function much as an
Eastern Rite priest but in a Latin Rite setting.
Chastity and celibacy
There is a difference between chastity and celibacy. Celibacy is the state of not being married, so a vow
of celibacy is a promise not to enter into marriage but instead to consecrate one's life to service (in other words, "married
to God"). Chastity, a virtue expected of all Christians, is the state of sexual
purity; for a vowed celibate, or for the single person, chastity means the avoidance of sex. For the married person, chastity
means the practice of sex only with the spouse, and even carries the expectation of intercourse with the spouse
preferably at the sole scope of reproduction.
See also
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