THE COUNCIL OF TRENT
In response to the claims made by the Reformers, discussion of the sacrament of holy orders began at the Council of Trent in 1562 in its twenty-third session, with the final decree, consisting of four short chapters and eight canons, being promulgated in 1563. It is important to recognize not only the aspects of traditional teaching that this document defended and affirmed but also the areas in which it refrained from passing judgment or entering into debate. In other words, it should be seen as dealing with specific issues that had arisen and required a response, not as a complete and definitive statement of the Roman Catholic doctrine of ordination.1
The first chapter insisted that there existed in the church a new, visible, and external priesthood, into which the Old Testament priesthood had been changed. Christ instituted this priesthood and delivered to the apostles and their successors “the power of consecrating, offering, and administering his body and blood, and likewise the power of remitting and of retaining sins.” The relevant canon condemned the Reformation view that all that Christ had instituted was the office and ministry of preaching the Gospel and that therefore those who did not preach were not priests. Nevertheless, attempts were made during the prior deliberations of the Council to add to this denial some positive statement about the place of preaching in relation to the priesthood but nothing came of this. In other sessions of the Council, however, considerable emphasis was given to this aspect of the ordained ministry. In the fifth session, held in 1546, the preaching of the Gospel had been called “the principal duty of bishops,” and priests who had a pastoral charge were required at least on Sundays and feasts “to feed the people committed to them with wholesome words” either by preaching themselves or by means of others who were competent (chapter 2). A later session added the catechizing of children every Sunday and feast; and parish priests were required to preach daily during Advent and Lent, or at least on three days in the week, or whenever the bishops deemed it necessary (Session 24, chapter 4). Because of this broader vision of the priesthood, the Council also ordered the establishment of seminaries in every diocese in order that priests might be appropriately trained for their ministry (Session 23, chapter 18).
In the second chapter of the decree on the sacrament of holy orders the existence of seven orders was defended with the claim that, while only priests and deacons were explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, “from the very beginning of the church” the names of subdeacon, acolyte, exorcist, reader, and doorkeeper “are known to have been in use.” Although acknowledging that the subdiaconate was regarded as a major order “in the writings of the Fathers and of the sacred councils,” it did not pass a judgment on this matter.
This was followed in the next chapter by a defense of ordination as a sacrament instituted by Christ, and not just “a kind of rite of choosing ministers of the word of God and of the sacraments,” in the words of the third canon. It asserted that “it is very clear from the testimony of Sacred Scripture, from apostolic tradition, and from the unanimous agreement of the Fathers, that grace is conferred through holy ordination, which is effected by words and external signs.” No attempt was made, however, to resolve the question as to what exactly those essential words and actions were, given the diversity of views on the sacramental form and matter that still existed among theologians, although it might be significant that the chapter ended with the quotation of 2 Timothy 1:6-7, which mentions the imposition of hands. On the other hand, the only action specifically named in the accompanying canons is the anointing, which is said to be “required.” This was to counter the criticism of the Reformers, who had particularly attacked this ceremony as drawn from the Old Testament priesthood and not from the New Testament ministry of the word.
In the final chapter the Council asserted that “in the sacrament of orders, just as in baptism and confirmation, a character is imprinted, which can neither be blotted out nor taken away,” and therefore a person who had once been ordained a priest could never again become a layman. It did not, however, venture to define the nature of that “character.” It denied that all Christians were priests or endowed with equal spiritual power, and then went on to speak of the specific powers of bishops. But it did not attempt to resolve the still disputed question of whether or not they constituted a separate order, or whether the episcopal power of jurisdiction derived from papal appointment or directly from God. These matters had constituted the major topics of debate during the session,2 but failure to reach agreement on them meant that they left virtually no mark on the final text. It simply stated:
Besides the other ecclesiastical grades, the bishops who have succeeded the apostles belong in a special way to the hierarchical order; and placed (as the Apostle says) by the Holy Spirit to rule the Church of God (cf. Acts 20, 28), they are superior to priests, and can confer the sacrament of confirmation, can ordain the ministers for the Church, and they have the power to perform very many other functions that those of an inferior grade cannot.
It concluded by reaffirming the established mediaeval view that, provided that the ritual act had been correctly performed, an ordination was valid even if other conditions were not met: “neither the consent, call or authority, neither of the people, nor of any secular power or public authority, is necessary to the extent that without it the ordination is invalid.”
THE 1595 ROMAN PONTIFICAL
Although not immediately influential when it first appeared, Durandus’ thirteenth-century pontifical eventually became the model for the first printed pontifical of 1485, commissioned by Innocent VIII and drawn up by his master of ceremonies, Agostino Piccolomini, and John Burchard of Strasbourg.3 It reproduced its source almost word for word, apart from the insertion of more much detailed ceremonial directions, but three differences from Durandus’ archetype in the rite for bishops are worth noting:
Further versions were produced in the years that followed, with the first truly “official” pontifical being published by Clement VIII in 1595 and imposed by him on the Western church as a whole in 1596,6 at least theoretically putting an end to medieval variation. Even though this appeared after the Council of Trent, it shows no signs of influence from that quarter. In 1645 under Urban VIII a further revision of the pontifical took place, and again under Benedict XIV in 1752, and Leo XIII in 1888, with a version with minor corrections appearing under John XXIII in 1961/62.7 In no case, however, was any significant change made to the ordination rites.
POST-TRIDENTINE THEOLOGY
In the centuries after the Council of Trent, large numbers of theologians wrote about the sacrament of holy orders without, however, contributing much of lasting significance to the debate. One of the more important and influential figures was the Jesuit scholar Robert Bellarmine (1542–1621), writing only twenty years after the Council’s discussion of the subject. Two assertions in particular stand out from his work, both of them taking a firm position in what were highly controversial areas. The first was that, although there were only seven orders, the ordination of a bishop was most certainly a sacrament, because there were two grades of priesthood; the second was that, in spite of having argued that the imposition of hands was the external sign of ordination in the New Testament, he concluded that the two powers of priesthood were conferred by two separate ceremonies: the delivery of the chalice and paten conferred the power to celebrate the Eucharist and the imposition of hands conferred the power to forgive sins.8
In this period Catholic theology was more concerned with the defense of papal privileges than with developing a theology of the episcopate. Nevertheless, there were some theologians who saw the importance of understanding episcopal consecration as the means by which each bishop shared in the universal jurisdiction of bishops as a body, especially Italian theologians in the eighteenth century who were concerned to defend the status of titular bishops, which had been severely attacked by some at the Council of Trent, and this theology of episcopal collegiality continued to be maintained by some theologians into the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, however, the preoccupation of the First Vatican Council with papal infallibility in 1870 led to the eclipse of that way of thinking and to the dominance of the view that bishops receive their jurisdiction directly from the pope.9
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
It was only in the twentieth century that aspects of the theology of orders that had been controversial since medieval times received official definition in the Roman Catholic Church. In his 1943 encyclical Mystici Corporis, Pius XII rather surprisingly stated in passing that bishops did receive their jurisdiction directly from the pope, thus appearing to treat that much debated question as already resolved.10 Perhaps equally surprisingly, in his 1944 apostolic constitution Episcopalis consecrationis, he ended centuries of debate by declaring that the bishops who participated in the ordination of a bishop were themselves co-consecrators and not merely assistants to the presiding bishop. After noting that in some places the assisting bishops only joined in saying Accipe Spiritum Sanctum at the laying on of hands, following the directions in the pontifical, while in others, including Rome itself, they also said in a low voice the prayer beginning Propitiare with its following preface, he declared that:
Although only one bishop is required and suffices for the validity of an episcopal consecration when the essential rites are performed, nevertheless the two bishops who from ancient institution and according to the prescription of the Roman Pontifical are present at a consecration, being themselves consecrators and thus in future to be called co-consecrators, ought with the consecrator not only to touch the head of the elect with both hands, saying Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, but, having made at a suitable time the mental intention of conferring episcopal consecration together with the consecrating bishop, also to recite the prayer Propitiare with the whole following preface and likewise for the duration of the rest of the rite to read in a low voice everything else that the consecrator reads or sings, with the exception of the prayers prescribed for blessing of the pontifical vestments, which are put on in the rite of consecration.11
In 1947 in another apostolic constitution, Sacramentum ordinis, he decreed that the essential “matter” and “form” of the ordination of bishops, priests, and deacons in the Roman Pontifical were the imposition of hands and the central petition of the original Roman ordination prayers that expressed “the power of order and the grace of the Holy Spirit,” and that at least in future the traditio instrumentorum was not necessary for the validity of the ordination.12 It is rather astonishing that it took until this late date for this declaration to be made. The texts of a wide range of ancient Eastern ordination rites had been published by Jean Morin as early as 1655, and these had shown that the imposition of hands and prayer were the only constant elements in those rites.13 Although more recent scholarship might want to view the essentials of ordination more widely than this particular minimalist definition, it did restore focus on the epicletic and pneumatological dimensions of ordination (in recognizing an invocation of the Holy Spirit rather than an imperative formula as constituting the central words) and paved the way for the drastically simplified rites for bishops, priests, and deacons that appeared in 1968. In order to bring the Roman Pontifical into line with the statements in these two apostolic constitutions, the Sacred Congregation of Rites issued a decree in 1950 specifying a set of variations to the rubrics, which were to be inserted in future editions;14 these were later incorporated into the 1962 edition.
It was, however, historical research in the decades preceding the Second Vatican Council that made a significant contribution to the resolution of another major issue at the Council, the relationship of the episcopate to the presbyterate. While the majority of theologians in the period since the Council of Trent had inclined to the view that the episcopate did constitute a separate order, the discovery of the existence of medieval papal bulls permitting some presbyters to perform ordinations15 seemed to suggest that the power to ordain was conferred with the presbyterate and not simply on bishops, and this led to considerable consternation among theologians.16 On the other hand, the discovery that many bishops in the patristic period had passed directly from the diaconate to the episcopate without being ordained as presbyters seemed to show on the contrary that episcopal consecration itself was a sacramental act and not merely a higher degree of the presbyterate. The theological reflection on the role of the bishop and the sacrament of order in general that resulted from these historical discoveries among scholars such as Bernard Botte, Yves Congar, and Joseph Lécuyer widened the horizons of the debate with an increasing appreciation of the patristic tradition and laid the groundwork for the reappraisal of the episcopate in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.17
Progress was also made over the question of the relationship of the laity to the ordained. Because the concept of the priesthood of the faithful was such a major element in the doctrine of the Protestant churches, it had tended to be ignored in official Roman Catholic teaching during the centuries after the Council of Trent. However, the emergence of a more positive theology of the laity among Roman Catholic theologians in the middle of the twentieth century led to a reappearance of the image in papal documents. The first signs of it occur in the encyclical Mediator Dei, issued in 1947. Here, while continuing to condemn what were seen as Protestant errors in relation to priesthood, Pius XII nevertheless affirmed that the faithful do offer the eucharistic sacrifice along with the priest:
The fact, however, that the faithful participate in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, does not mean that they also are endowed with priestly power. It is very necessary that you make this quite clear to your flocks. For there are today, Venerable Brethren, those who, approximating to errors long since condemned, teach that in the New Testament by the word “priesthood” is meant only that priesthood which applies to all who have been baptized; and hold that the command by which Christ gave power to His Apostles at the Last Supper to do what He Himself had done, applies directly to the entire Christian Church, and that thence, and thence only, arises the hierarchical priesthood. Hence they assert that the people are possessed of a true priestly power, while the priest only acts in virtue of an office committed to him by the community.…
By the waters of Baptism, as by common right, Christians are made members of the Mystical Body of Christ the Priest, and by the “character” which is imprinted on their souls, they are appointed to give worship to God. Thus they participate, according to their condition, in the priesthood of Christ.…
In this most important subject it is necessary, in order to avoid giving rise to a dangerous error, that we define the exact meaning of the word “offer.” The unbloody immolation at the words of consecration, when Christ is made present upon the altar in the state of a victim, is performed by the priest and by him alone, as the representative of Christ and not as the representative of the faithful. But it is because the priest places the divine Victim upon the altar that he offers it to God the Father as an oblation for the glory of the Blessed Trinity and for the good of the whole Church. Now the faithful participate in the oblation, understood in this limited sense, after their own fashion and in a twofold manner, namely, because they not only offer the Sacrifice by the hands of the priest, but also, to a certain extent, in union with him. It is by reason of this participation, that the offering made by the people is also included in liturgical worship.18
In an allocution to the cardinals, Magnificate Dominum, on November 2,1954, the pope restated much of what he had said on this subject in Mediator Dei but attempted to define the difference between the priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood more clearly: “the ‘priesthood’ common to all the faithful, high and reserved as it is, differs not only in degree, but in essence also, from priesthood fully and properly so called, which lies in the power of offering the sacrifice of Christ Himself, since the priest fully and properly so called bears the person of Christ, the supreme High Priest.”19
THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL
The idea that the priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood differed in essence was taken up by Vatican II, which asserted that, in spite of this difference, the two priesthoods “are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.” Thus, what united them was that it was Christ’s priesthood in which they both participated; what distinguished them was not that their participation was just at two different levels or degrees of the same reality but that it was by two quite distinct modes. “The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity” (Lumen Gentium 10).20 While some theologians have reacted positively to this explanation of the relationship between the two kinds of priesthood, others have claimed that it remains ambiguous and so requires further exploration and elucidation.
The Second Vatican Council took another major step in its definition of the nature of the ordained ministry. Rather than focusing exclusively on its priestly dimension, as medieval theologians and Trent had done, the Council instead spoke of the ordained as participating in the threefold office of Christ as prophet, priest, and king, in their teaching, liturgical, and pastoral functions respectively (Lumen Gentium 21, 25–29). This way of understanding Christian ministry not only broadened the traditional concept of the purpose of ordination but also rooted it christologically, in the ministry of Jesus himself. The idea of the triplex munus of Christ had its origin in patristic thought and had been revived in some Reformation works and above all in John Calvin’s Institutes (II.15). It had first been taken over by German-speaking Roman Catholic theologians from their Lutheran counterparts in the eighteenth century and was also employed by John Henry Newman, who apparently derived it from Calvin. It was increasingly adopted by twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologians and eventually found a place in the 1943 encyclical of Pius XII, Mystici Corporis.21 The Council not only applied the concept to the ordained ministers but extended it to the laity too, as sharers in their own way in the threefold functions of Christ (Lumen Gentium 31, 34–36).22
Finally, the Council settled the centuries-old debate about the relationship between bishops and presbyters by affirming that the episcopate was indeed a distinct order from the presbyterate: “the Sacred Council teaches that by episcopal consecration the fullness of the sacrament of Orders is conferred, that fullness of power, namely, which both in the Church’s liturgical practice and in the language of the Fathers of the Church is called the high priesthood, the supreme power of the sacred ministry” (Lumen Gentium 21). As for priests, “although they do not possess the highest degree of the priesthood, and although they are dependent on the bishops in the exercise of their power, nevertheless they are united with the bishops in sacerdotal dignity” and “constitute one priesthood with their bishop although bound by a diversity of duties” (Lumen Gentium 28).23
In accordance with a recommendation in Lumen Gentium 29, Pope Paul VI issued a motu proprio in 1967, Sacrum diaconatus ordinem, that restored the possibility of following the ancient practice of ordaining to the diaconate men who would not subsequently go on to ordination as priests but remain as permanent deacons.
THE 1968 RITES OF ORDINATION
The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council in 1963 had already specified that in the revision of the ordination rites “the address given by the bishop at the beginning of each ordination or consecration may be in the mother tongue” and that “when a bishop is consecrated, the laying of hands may be done by all the bishops present,”24 but it was apparent to many that the rites were in need of much more major surgery than that. However, as Bernard Botte, who was secretary to the group charged with the revision of these rites, later observed, because the Council had wanted the people to be catechised on holy orders through the rites and prayers, the radical solution of restoring the rites to their fifth-century state by suppressing the later secondary elements had to be set aside and a different method adopted.25
Rites for deacons, priests, and bishops (this last now called an ordination once again) were produced in 1968, prefaced with a rite for admission to candidacy for ordination, replacing the previous rite of tonsure.26 All three rites shared a common structure. Set within the Eucharist, following the ministry of the word (for which a wide choice of readings was provided), their main elements comprised:
The newly ordained then fulfilled the liturgical functions of their order in the Eucharist: deacons assisted with the preparation of the eucharistic elements and with administering communion; priests concelebrated the Eucharist with their bishop; bishops did the same with the other bishops and priests who had taken part in their ordination; and if the ordination had taken place in the cathedral of a new bishop, he might be invited to preside and some priests of his diocese were to concelebrate with him and the other bishops present.
Most of the texts were revised versions of traditional ones from the former pontifical. Although those rites had inherited from Durandus a statement of the duties of deacons and priests, a parallel statement needed to be supplied in the case of bishops, and similarly while a public examination already existed for bishops, versions for deacons and priests did not. Thus, the existing forms were improved and new ones composed.28 While the traditional examination of a bishop had focused on testing doctrinal orthodoxy, the new versions in all three rites instead took the form of promises about the way the candidates would fulfill their office.
The ordination prayers for deacons and priests followed the original Roman ordination prayers with only minor changes, but that for bishops was taken from the corresponding prayer in the ancient Apostolic Tradition,29 its substitution having been proposed by Botte as preferable to the narrow cultic focus of the Roman prayer.30 It should also be remembered that he and most other scholars at the time thought that the Apostolic Tradition embodied the practices of the early church in Rome. Its adoption was defended in the apostolic constitution that accompanied the promulgation of the rites on the grounds that it was “still used, in large part, in the ordination rites of the Coptic and West Syrian liturgies” and so it would “witness to the harmony of tradition in East and West concerning the apostolic office of bishops.” In reality, however, it is the more expanded version of that prayer in the fourth-century church order Apostolic Constitutions that is used in those rites, and in the West Syrian case only for the consecration of a patriarch. Only the central section of the ordination prayer for bishops was said by all the bishops together as co-consecrators, and not the rest of the prayer, as had previously been directed by the 1944 apostolic constitution, Episcopalis consecrationis.31
The imposition of hands continued the traditional practice in which the bishop alone laid his hand on deacons, the bishop and priests did so on priests, and all the bishops present did so on a new bishop. The older practice of two deacons (rather than two bishops) holding the open gospel book over the head (and not the neck and shoulders) of a candidate for the episcopate during the ordination prayer was restored. The symbols of office given to the newly ordained were mainly the traditional ones: a deacon received the stole, dalmatic, and gospel book, a priest the stole, chasuble, and paten and chalice (but without the formula bestowing power to celebrate mass and now containing the people’s offering of bread and wine to be used in the ordination Eucharist), and a bishop the gospel book, ring, miter (this without any spoken formula), and pastoral staff, after which he was ritually seated if being ordained within his own cathedral. The anointing of the hands of priests and of the head of bishops (but not their hands) was also retained and placed after the ordination prayer in the case of bishops and after the vesting in the case of priests, with formulae making it clearer that the action was explicatory of what had already been bestowed in ordination rather than the conferral of any additional power. It had originally been intended to omit the Veni Creator Spiritus that had previously been associated with this action, as its retention in the new location could imply that the Holy Spirit had not yet been received, but an intervention by the Pope resulted in the hymn being kept in the rite for bishops and placed at the very beginning.32 On the other hand, the option of singing it or Psalm 110 during the vesting and anointing of priests was still permitted in the rite for priests.
In 1972 in a motu proprio of Pope Paul VI, Ministeria quaedam, the tonsure, minor orders, and the subdiaconate (for all of which no revised rites had been produced) were suppressed. In their place were two “ministries”—lector and acolyte—conferred not by “ordination” but by “institution.”33 The rites for both take place after the ministry of the word in the Eucharist, or during a service of the word, and consist of a bidding, a prayer, and the delivery of a symbol of the office.
THE 1990 RITES OF ORDINATION
Soon after the publication of the 1968 rites, dissatisfaction was expressed with some aspects of them, and the ordination prayer for priests in particular came in for criticism on the grounds that it focused too much on the Old Testament priesthood and not enough on the priesthood of Christ. Work even started on the preparation of a second edition in 1974, but it did not progress far because the ecclesiastical climate was not favorable to further revision at that time.34 Nevertheless, with longer experience of their use it became clear that the rites would benefit from a number of minor improvements, and so a revised version was authorized in 1990.35 The principal changes were:
Among other minor changes are the removal of explicit mention of the Veni Creator Spiritus in the rite for priests, retaining only Psalm 110 “or a similar song”; the reintroduction of a formula to be said at the giving of the miter at the ordination of a bishop; and making presidency at the ordination Eucharist in his own cathedral no longer something the new bishop may be invited to do but instead something that “it is most fitting” that he does.38 The rite of admission to candidacy for ordination in a slightly modified form is placed in an appendix to the Pontifical.
CONCLUSIONS
The new rites are unquestionably a major improvement on those in the 1962 Pontifical, especially in their simplification and clarity. Nevertheless, because there has been a strong tendency to retain historic texts and ceremonies as much as possible and only make a limited number of innovations, there remain several areas where the rites may be thought to be somewhat unbalanced or reflective of some questionable medieval understandings of ordination.
Thus, while the introductory material, rightly or wrongly, makes considerable use of the threefold nature of the ministry adopted in Lumen Gentium, this is not consistently carried through in the rites themselves. It has been argued that the rite for a bishop concentrates more on the aspect of governance than on preaching the Gospel (partly as a result of using the prayer from the Apostolic Tradition, which does not mention the latter function) and the rite for priests more on the sacerdotal dimension of the office than on its pastoral functions (partly because all the symbols of office that are given relate to the former).39
It is also to be regretted that in every case the imposition of hands is performed in silence, detached from the ordination prayer itself, even when the rite is being used for only one person, and even though in the 1962 Pontifical it had remained in the middle of the prayer in the case of deacons. The rites thus continue to portray the imposition of hands and the prayer as two distinct ritual acts, just as has also been the case in the practice of many of the Reformation churches, rather than as two aspects of the same reality as was the case in early Christian practice.
Finally, the 1990 version in particular marks a great advance in recognizing a role for the laity in the rites, and for the local church in the ordination of its bishop.40 Not only are all ordinations preferably to be celebrated on a Sunday or holyday “when a large number of people can attend,” as in the 1968 rites, but the laity are given their traditional place in assenting to the candidates and participating in the litany. Directive 7 in the new General Introduction adds the following: “While the laying on of hands is taking place the faithful should pray in silence. They take part in the prayer of ordination by listening to it and by affirming and concluding it through their final acclamation.” Unfortunately, this directive is not included in the text of the rites themselves, and in other ways ordination still appears to be viewed as largely a clerical affair. For example, the bishop’s address at the ordinations of priests and deacons continues to refer to the congregation present as “the relatives and friends” of the ordinands, rather than as members of the church actively involved in the sacramental act. Nor are they included in the exchange of the kiss at the end. Thus the rites do not bring out the full significance of the part that belongs to the Christian community in the act of ordination. What Susan Wood has said of the ordination of bishops is true mutatis mutandis of all ordinations:
Ordination is both epiclesis and human choice. It is not necessary to choose between them. The Spirit is present in both the ordaining bishops and the community. The laying on of hands by the ordaining bishops and the assent by the people represent a recognition prompted by the presence of the Spirit within the bishops and within the community to recognize the Spirit within the one who is ordained. At the same time it is a prayer for that Spirit to dwell within this person that he may govern in the Spirit. Hervé-Marie Legrand reminds us that modern writers have a tendency to restrict the action of the Spirit solely to the laying on of hands by the bishop, while, in reality, the Spirit is active at every moment in the election-ordination. This supports a theology of apostolic succession as both a succession of ministers who have received the laying on of hands and a succession of apostolic communities which have retained the apostolic faith. The key lies in the relationship between the minister and the community. These are not two separate and unrelated successions, but one succession in which the minister is in communion with the community, articulating, personifying and representing the apostolic faith of that community, and the community recognizing itself in its minister.41
1 English translations of the decree of the Council of Trent from The Church Teaches: Documents of the Church in English Translation, translated by J. F. Clarkson et al. (St. Louis: Herder, 1955), 329–32; Latin text in Heinrich Denzinger–Adolfus Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 32nd ed. (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), nos. 1763–78. A fuller commentary on the decree can be found in Kenan B. Osborne, Priesthood: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 248–79. See also A. Duval, “The Council of Trent and Holy Orders,” in The Sacrament of Holy Orders (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1962), 219–58.
2 See M. McGough, “The Immediate Source of Episcopal Jurisdiction: A Tridentine Debate,” Irish Ecclesiastical Record 86 (1956): 82–97; 87 (1957), 91–109; 88 (1957), 306–23; Seamus Ryan, “Episcopal Consecration: Trent to Vatican II,” Irish Theological Quarterly 33 (1966): 133–50, here at 136–40.
3 Explicit Pontificalis Liber magna diligentia Reverendi in Christo Patris Domini Augustini Patricii de Picolominibus, Episcopi Pientini et Ilcinensis, ac venerabilis viri Domini Iohannis Burckardi…correctus et emendatus (Rome: Stephan Planck, 1485). See also Marc Dykmans, Le Pontifical romain révisé au XVe siècle, ST 311 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1985).
4 See further Sharon L. McMillan, Episcopal Ordination and Ecclesial Consensus (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2005), 203–12, 218–20.
5 This arrangement is illustrated in woodcuts from 1520 and 1572, the latter differing from the former in that while the book touches the neck, it is held away from the head: Pontifical Services III, Illustrated from Woodcuts of the XVIth Century, with notes by F. C. Eeles, ACC 8 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1908), 36–37, figures 34 and 35.
6 Pontificale Romanum, editio princeps (1595–1596), ed. Manlio Sodi and Achille Maria Triacca (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), 40–117.
7 For details of the various editions, see Martin Klöckener, Die Liturgie der Diözesansynode, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forsuchungen 68 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1986), 324–29.
8 Robert Bellarmine, De sacramento ordinis, book 1, chaps. 2, 5, and 9; in Roberti Bellarmini Opera Omnia, vol. 5, ed. Justinus Fèvre (Paris: Ludovicum Vivès, 1870–74), 22–24, 26–28, 31–33.
9 See Ryan, “Episcopal Consecration: Trent to Vatican II,” 140–49.
10 Mystici Corporis 42, in AAS 35 (1943), 212. Seamus Ryan, “Vatican II: The Re-Discovery of the Episcopate,” Irish Theological Quarterly 33 (1966): 209, n. 3, protested that “it can scarcely be contended that Pius XII wished to propose this as formal teaching. A question debated for centuries and left open by two councils cannot be taken as solved by an apparently incidental reference to be found in the form of a relative clause in a papal encyclical.”
11 Latin text in AAS 37 (1945): 131–32.
12 Ibid., 40 (1948): 5–7.
13 Jean Morin, Commentarius de sacris Ecclesiae ordinationibus, secundum antiquos et recentiores, Latinos, Graecos, Syros et Babylonios (Paris, 1655; 2nd ed., Antwerp, 1695 = Farnborough: Gregg, 1969), new and expanded edition by Giuseppe Assemani (Rome, 1756).
14 Latin text in AAS 42 (1950): 448–55.
15 See above, p. 145.
16 For details, see Ryan, “Vatican II: The Re-Discovery of the Episcopate,” 212–16.
17 See David N. Power, Ministers of Christ and His Church (London: Chapman, 1969), 124–26.
18 Latin text in AAS 39 (1947): 521–95, here at 553–56; English translation from Mediator Dei: Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XII on the Sacred Liturgy (Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1947), secs. 82–83, 88, 92.
19 Latin text in AAS 46 (1954): 666–77, here at 669; English translation from American Ecclesiastical Review 132 (1955): 52–63, here at 55.
20 See also Presbyterorum Ordinis 2; Apostolicam Actuositatem 3.
21 AAS 35:200. For the earlier history of the triplex munus, see Peter J. Drilling, “The Priest, Prophet and King Trilogy: Elements of its Meaning in Lumen Gentium and for Today,” Église et Théologie 19 (1988): 179–206.
22 See further Osborne, Priesthood, 310–13, 317–24, 339–40; Susan K. Wood, Sacramental Orders (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), 12–19.
23 See also Presbyterorum Ordinis 2, 7. On the Council’s teaching on the episcopate, and especially its collegial character, see further Ryan, “Vatican II: The Re-Discovery of the Episcopate,” 217–42; Osborne, Priesthood, 324–33.
24 Sacrosanctum Concilium 76. Jan M. Joncas, “Recommendations Concerning Roman Rite Ordinations Leading to the Reform Mandated in Sacrosanctum Concilium 76,” Ecclesia Orans 9 (1992): 307–39, presents a detailed account of the large number of suggestions for changes to rubrics and text that had been made from the initial official consultations prior to Vatican II onward that resulted in this final meager permissive version.
25 Bernard Botte, From Silence to Participation (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1988), 134. A more detailed account of the process of revision is recorded by Annibale Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948–1975 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1990), 707–16.
26 De Ordinatione Diaconi, Presbyteri et Episcopi, Editio typica (Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1968); English translation: Ordination of Deacons, Priests and Bishops, Study Edition (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1979).
27 See the comments by McMillan, Episcopal Ordination and Ecclesial Consensus, 256-58, who also regrets the loss of the traditional separate selection-presentation unit in the ordination of a bishop (see 252-56).
28 Botte, From Silence to Participation, 136–37.
29 See above, pp. 61–62.
30 Botte, From Silence to Participation, 134–35. See also Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 713–15.
31 For the disquiet at that former practice felt by the commission preparing the rites, see Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 710.
32 Botte, From Silence to Participation, 138. See also Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 715–16, for the reasons that had been advanced for its omission.
33 Latin text in AAS 64 (1972): 529–34.
34 See Bugnini, The Reform of the Liturgy, 721-23.
35 De Ordinatione Episcopi, Presbyterorum et Diaconorum, Editio typica altera (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticano, 1990); English translation: Rites of Ordination of a Bishop, of Priests, and of Deacons (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2003). See Wood, Sacramental Orders, xii–xiv, for the process leading up to this, and for a theological commentary and critique of the rites, 28–63, 86–116, 143–65; also Puglisi 3:21–42.
36 Something that had been criticized in the 1968 rites by, among others, Mary Collins, Worship: Renewal to Practice (Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1987), 137–73. For an analysis of the extent to which the 1990 rites have overcome this, see Jan Michael Joncas, “The Public Language of Ministry Revisited: De Ordinatione Episcopi, Presbyterorum et Diaconorum 1990,” Worship 68 (1994): 386–403.
37 For a more detailed study of the changes in the prayers, see Wood, Sacramental Orders, 97–105, 154–58.
38 For a more complete listing of the changes in the rites, see Puglisi 3:30–31, n. 45.
39 See Wood, Sacramental Orders, 51–52, 56–57, 95–96, 103, 105.
40 On this latter point, see the comments of McMillan, Episcopal Ordination and Ecclesial Consensus, 267–70.
41 Wood, Sacramental Orders, 43. The reference to Legrand is to his article, “Theology and the Election of Bishops in the Early Church,” Concilium: Election and Consensus in the Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 31–42, here at 38.