Chapter V. The State of Perfection in the Priesthood

Thus far we have spoken of the Episcopate only as the state of perfection. We now come to the question whether priests are also included in it.

On this it is well to recall the language of the Fathers.

S. John Chrysostom and Theodoret both say that the injunctions of S. Paul to Bishops are equally addressed to priests. Therefore the obligations to perfection are equal, though the Episcopate may have still more constraining motives, because the pastoral office in Bishops is not by delegation, but by Divine institution. In his work on the priesthood S. John Chrysostom founds the dignity of the Episcopate chiefly on the powers of consecration and of absolution, and draws from this the obligation to perfection. His words, that the hand which consecrates the Body of our Lord ought to be purer than the solar light, contain the whole doctrine of sacerdotal perfection. All priests consecrate the Body of our Lord, and all, therefore, have this obligation.

S. Alphonsus, as we have seen, says 'that for the reception of orders simple sanctifying grace by no means is sufficient; hut beyond this, that interior perfection is required is proved by the common consent of all the holy Fathers and Doctors, who, with one voice, require that perfection.'1

But if interior spiritual perfection be a pre-requisite to the ordination of priests, then of the priesthood may strictly be said what Bellarmine says of the Episcopate: ' A. Bishop is bound to be perfect be cause he is in statu perfectionis jam adeptce — in the state of already-acquired perfection.'2 Signum perfectionis jam adeptce sacerdotium is a common saying in Rome.

Bellarmine and Suarez affirm both Bishops and priests to be in the state of perfection in exercise. The words of Bellarmine from the Gemitus Columbce have been already quoted in the last chapter.

In the scholastic period the opinion that the Episcopate is so united with the priesthood as to be only an extension of the priesthood seems im-

1 S. Alph. TheoL Moral, de Sacramentis, lib. vi. n. 37.

2 Admonitio ad Nepotem, p. 37.

plicitly to affirm that the state of the priesthood and the state of the Episcopate are essentially one and the same; but the schoolmen affirmed that the state of Bishops is the state of perfection. Would not this, therefore, apply to the state of priests?

If it be objected that the state of Bishops is the state of perfection for other reasons — first, because of the stability of the Bishop; and secondly, because, by the pastoral office, he is bound to lay down his life for the sheep, which is the supreme act of charity, and charity is perfection — it may be answered as follows:

As to stability, we must distinguish the stability of the state from the stability of the person. The stability of the state is absolute. Once a Bishop, always a Bishop; once a priest, always a priest. The priesthood, after the order of Melchisedech, impresses an indelible character. Consecration and ordination once given and received are eternal. A Bishop degraded is a degraded Bishop; a priest degraded is a degraded priest. Therefore the stability of the state is supreme: it is the pattern and exemplar of all states.

The stability of the person in th'at state is also as high and absolute as any human stability can be. If it be said that a priest may cease to be a pastor, it must be answered that a Bishop may cease to have a diocese, and a religious may be secularised. It makes no intrinsic, but only an extrinsic, difference that a priest may be released from cure of souls by a Bishop; but a Bishop can only be released, and a regular can only be secularised, by the Pope. The essence of the question is not in the process of the change or release, but in the fact of instability — that is, of departure from the state. So long as a regular is in the state of religion he is in the state of perfection; so long as a Bishop is in the state -of a pastor he is in the state of perfection; so long at least as a priest is in the state of a pastor, he is also in the state of perfection. If he lays down the pastoral office, it is the stability of the person, not of the state, that is changed; so, if a regular be dispensed from his vows, the state is not changed, but the person. The great Order of S. Dominic does not cease to be the state of perfection when a Dominican is released from his vows. The stability of the man ceases; not the stability of the Order. So the pastoral state does not cease to be the state of perfection because a priest goes out from it by laying down the cure of souls.

But to this, again, it may be answered that a Bishop without a diocese is still in the state of perfection, because in potentia lie is for ever a pastor; but the priest is a pastor only by delegation.

But the whole of the evidence in this book shows that, though Bishops are pastors in potentia by the power of government received in consecration, no Bishop is actually a pastor until he has received his flock by assignment and delegation from the successor of Peter. The Bishop then becomes verus pastor, because he exercises over his flock the power of government, received in potentia in his consecration. Nevertheless, the actual exercise of that power is as much by delegation as the pastoral office of the priest.

If it be answered, again, that the priest does not receive in potentia the power of government in ordination, two replies may be promptly made. First, a priest does receive the power of the keys in ordination, and the pastoral office consists in the exercise of the power of the keys of science and jurisdiction when faculties for its exercise are granted; and secondly, that the perfection of a pastor is not in the source from which his office comes, but in the obligation of charity even to laying down his life for the sheep, which is its supreme perfection.

To this, again, many answers will probably be made. First, that he is not bound ex justitia to lay down his life for the sheep; next, that the sheep are not his, hut the Bishop's. I hardly know whether such objections are made in gravity or in levity. But we will examine them. Parish priests are said to be hound to the pastoral office ex justitia, because they receive tithes or revenues or oblations from the faithful for the discharge of the parochial duties. Simple or unbeneficed priests, who receive no such remunerations, are not bound ex justitia, for between them and the souls of men there is neither ecclesiastical obligation nor tacit money contract. This is a strong and valuable argument to prove that a parish priest fails both in charity and in justice if he does not, when need shall arise, lay down his life for the sheep. His obligation is twofold, and as his obligation so his duty and his responsibility. But if any priest should plead, when need arise, that he is not bound to lay down his life for souls, because he has not a benefice, I should wish to hear — for I do not know — how he will escape the sentence, ' The hire ling fleeth because he is a hireling and careth not for the sheep.' It is no answer to say that he is not a hireling because he receives no money, if for that reason he exempts himself from the precept of charity.

If any man say the sheep are not his, but the

Bishop's, I must say that they are the sheep of Jesus Christ, for whom He laid down His life; and that S. John says — or rather the Holy Ghost, hy whom he wrote — ' In this we have known the charity of God, because He hath laid down His life for us; and we ought — debemus — to lay down our lives for the brethren.'3 It is not to be denied that they who have care of souls and live of the oblations of the faithful are further bound by a special, distinct, voluntary, and superadded contract to tend their flock even to the loss of life. But that special contract does not suspend or relax the law of charity. Bather it imposes again the law of charity upon the priest in a new, explicit, emphatic, official, and personal obligation.

And. here it may be asked, Is every Christian bound to lay down his life for the brethren? S. John says so. And who are we to refine it away by distinctions and technicalities? The meaning of S. John is clearly this: Whensoever the salvation of a soul is at stake, charity binds us to expose even our life if need be for our brethren. And he says this, not of Apostles, Bishops, pastors, or priests, but of all Christians in every state, men and women. And certainly this law of charity is nobly discharged by 3 1 S. John iii. 1C.

multitudes, who are the more perfect because they have no self-conscious dreams about perfection, in the midst of fever and pestilence and warfare by land, and storms by sea. If this be true of all as Christians, how emphatically true must it be of those whom our Lord has called and consecrated to represent Himself in life and in death. Theologians, as we shall -see, while they doubt this obligation for simple priests, affirm it of pastors. But surely the state of perfection includes the perfection of charity. And a Bishop even without a flock, in virtue of his consecration, is in the state of perfection.

S. Thomas, in affirming that Bishops are in the state of perfection, says, though interior perfection is required for the exercise of priesthood, that priests without cure of souls are not in the state of perfection.4 But the reason given by him for the perfection of the Episcopate is the obligation to lay down life for the sheep. The questions then thus arise, What is this obligation, and on whom does this obligation lie? We have seen that S. John lays it upon all the members of Christ.

This would seem to be the reason why the commentators on S. Thomas have explicitly treated of the question. We will take only Suarez, who, for * 2<la 2dae, quaest. 184, art. 6.

authority, and wisdom, and exactness, may well suffice.

We have already seen that he affirms broadly with both schoolmen and commentators that the state of Bishops is the state of perfection. He then goes on to discuss ' V/hether secular prelates, inferior to Bishops, and even parish priests, be in the state of perfection?' 5

We may pass over the secular prelates, and confine ourselves to the parish priests with cure of souls. He affirms ' that parish priests may be truly called veri pastor es, though they are coadjutors and subordinate to Bishops.' This he proves by showing that Bishops also are (co-operatores) fellow-workers with the Pontiff, being called by him into a part of his solicitude, not into the plenitude of his power. Parish priests are, in like manner, called into a share of the Bishop's pastoral cure. This he further con firms out of the Council of Trent in the decree of the residence of Bishops and of parish priests; and he affirms that the state of the inferior pastors is jure divino — that is, it can never cease or be abolished, because it is of Divine institution.

Then he proceeds to affirm that 'all inferior pastors have the state or office of exercising the acts 5 Suarez, De Statu Perfectionis, lib. i. cxvii. ss. 24, 25, 29.

P of the perfect life.' This he proves, both by theologians and by the Council of Trent, which requires in pastors a great perfection, enjoining them ' to feed the flock by word and by example in every kind of good works, to offer and to administer worthily the Sacrifice and the Sacraments, and to be devoted to corporal and spiritual works of mercy.' Such a state Suarez affirms to be the state perfectionis exercenda — of perfection in exercise. This he confirms still further by the Kornan Pontifical, which says that our Lord chose out the seventy disciples, that ' He might teach us both by word and deed that the ministers of His Church ought to be perfect both in word and work.'

Finally, he sums up his judgment in the following words: ' It is probable that inferior prelates, even parish priests, are, in some manner, in the state of perfection in exercise' — that is, not in the state of perfection to be acquired, but to be exercised, or in the state of those who are perfect, not of those to be perfected; above all, if with this office the sacerdotal order be conjoined. ' We have said above that by ordination the state of perfection in simple priests (i.e. without cure of souls) is begun; but now we add that when the pastoral cure is added a certain state of perfection is completed in its degree in prelates of this kind. In which state may be considered something that belongs to the perfection of the contemplative life, and something of the active life; ' the first they have in virtue of sacred orders, the second by virtue of their (prcelationis) superiority or preferment; for by reason of the ministry of conse crating and offering the Body of Christ, which they receive by sacerdotal ordination, they are bound to a higher contemplation of Divine things, and a greater purity of mind; and by reason of their superiority or preferment they are bound to 'devote themselves to labour for the salvation of their neighbour. And because by virtue of ordination, and the reception of such an office, they are dedicated in perpetuity to both these works (i.e. contemplative and active), they are not unfittingly said to be in this way in the state of perfection, though in a lower or even lowest degree of that order, as it has been explained.'

We shall not, I hope, seem to disregard the great authority of Suarez if, with the language of the patristic period, and with the theological reasons before us, we should desire to withdraw the words ' aliquo modo,' ' aliqualem statum,' ' non incongrue.' What Suarez proves with such force of reason seems neither to need nor to admit such qualifications or diminutions of statement. A priest with cure of souls is a priest and a pastor bound by all the obligations of charity. Whether he has ' benefice ' or not, whether he be parochus or no, is the mere accident of time or place. The Church had no such distinctions when, for three centuries, Bishops and priests were daily laying down their lives for the sheep. It is the spiritual relation of pastor and flock, not the law of parochial benefice, that determines the state and obligations of perfection.

If there can be found a state of perfection upon earth, it is the state of the Bishops and pastors who, in Cochin China and the Corea, are year by year con formed to the life and to the death of their Divine Master. But the state is everywhere the same, both in the lands of martyrdom and among the flocks of the old Catholic world. The Episcopate and the priest hood are universal as the Church itself, and the bonum universale Ecclesice is the end for which they were instituted by our Divine Master. They em brace the whole Church. All other states, how perfect soever they be, are particular or personal. The bonum particulare, such as the work of study, or prayer, or teaching, or tending the sick, is subordinate to the bonum universale of feeding the sheep and the lambs of the flock throughout the world. So, again, the bonum personale of penitents and of contemplatives is the legitimate aim of those who may be called to it. But the good of the Universal Church is the highest end of the highest office, and to that office our Divine Master has attached all the graces and means and helps of His Holy Spirit, so that they who serve Him in the world shall be surely sanctified. For them He said, ' I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world; but that Thou shouldest keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I also am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.'6 In this sense the priesthood of Jesus Christ is secular, because He sent it forth into the world; and it is His will that we should dwell and labour and war and suffer in the world to be the Might of the world,' and ' the salt of the earth.'

S. Augustine, writing to Valerius, says, ' Nothing in this life and at this time is more difficult, more laborious, and more perilous than the office of Bishop, or priest, or deacon; but before God nothing more blessed.'7 S. John Chrysostom prefers the continual martyrdom of a zealous pastor to that of many

6 S. John xvii. 15-18.

7 S. Aug. ad Valeriurn, Ep. xxi. torn. ii. (ed. Ben.).

who, once for all, gave their life for Jesus Christ.8 And S. Gregory the Great teaches ' that there is no such sacrifice to Almighty God as is zeal for souls.'9 S. Charles was wont to say that a pastor of souls must not only lay down his life for his flock, but must lay it down over and over again in daily sacrifice of himself.

8 Horn. xxix. in Epist. ad Romanes.

9 Horn, in Ezech. xii. s. 30.

CHAPTEE VI.