The Second Vatican Council asserted matter-of-factly that “it is clear that, by means of the imposition of hands and the words of consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is so conferred, and the sacred character so impressed, that bishops in an eminent and visible way sustain the roles of Christ Himself as Teacher, Shepherd and High Priest…. Therefore it pertains to the bishops to admit newly elected members into the Episcopal body by means of the sacrament of Orders.”¹ Yet, however clear these statements may have been in 1964, the state of the question just 50 years earlier was anything but certain. The early 20th century saw “many theologians teach that the episcopate is not an order strictly speaking, but only a certain complement to the priesthood,”² and multiple schools of thought concerning the matter and form of ordination (six competing theories for priestly orders, in particular)³ could claim saints and authorities in their favor.

Influence of Florence

The Council of Florence (1439), whose brief declarations concerning the sacraments normally provide a reliable touchstone, must bear some share of blame for this confusion, since its doctrine as stated in the Decree for the Armenians diverges markedly from the modern understanding of Holy Orders: “The sixth sacrament is that of order, the matter of which is that through whose transmission the order is conferred: just as the priesthood is transmitted through the offering of the chalice with wine and of the paten with bread,” and so on through the lesser orders.⁴ Florence taught, in other words, that the proximate matter of each ordination was the traditio instrumentorum, the “handing over” of the instruments proper to the power conferred, such as those required for offering the sacrifice of the Mass or proclaiming the Gospel.

Even had Florence’s doctrine on this point been irreformable (which this particular document was not), one still could not say precisely what the Decree for the Armenians intended to assert. Yet, whether meant as important accessory signs or even superadded conditions of validity, the instruments handed over to various grades of orders obviously were not considered universally essential matter. The Council had, after all, just effected reunion with Greek Christians whose ordinations included no traditio instrumentorum.⁵ “And nonetheless the Holy See never declared their ordinations invalid,” either at the time of reunion or subsequently.⁶ Considering that the imposition of hands was the exclusive matter of even Latin ordination rites until the 10th century,⁷ and is the only matter mentioned in Scripture (Acts 6:6; 13:3; 14:23; 1 Timothy 4:14; 5:22; 2 Timothy 1:6), it was no surprise that a century later the Council of Trent described presbyters, without reference to instruments, as “rightly ordained by the imposition of the hands of the priesthood.”⁸

Papal Imposition

Nonetheless, theologians remained divided for centuries over whether the matter of Holy Orders consisted of imposition of hands, traditio instrumentorum, or some combination of the two—until, that is, Pius XII removed all doubt by declaring “that the matter, and the only matter, of the Sacred Orders of the Diaconate, the Priesthood, and the Episcopacy is the imposition of hands.”⁹ More specifically, within the Roman Rite for deacons and priests, “the matter is the laying of the Bishop’s hands on the individual candidates that is done in silence before the consecratory prayer,” and for bishops “the laying of hands on the head of the Bishop-elect by the consecrating Bishops, or at least by the principal consecrator, that is done in silence.”¹⁰

The hands of a bishop, either considered in themselves as remote matter or in application as proximate matter, leave little room for defect and doubt. When the bishop’s hands did not make physical contact with the ordinand, it was speculated that “imposition of the hands in the true and proper sense can also be had without physical contact.”¹¹ This follows somewhat logically once one knows that the physical contact required by the Roman tradition was not direct, but mediate—the bishop wore his liturgical gloves (chirothecae) while imposing hands. Consequently, opinion and discipline also upheld validity when the ordinand’s head was covered in a cap or wig.¹² Speculation became unnecessary when Pius XII ruled authoritatively that “a moral contact [tactus moralis] also suffices to perform the sacrament validly.”¹³ Moral contact is described as “a mere extension of the hand over the head without touching it,”¹⁴ and although authors do not discuss the greatest distance at which extended hands effectively signify contact with candidates, the magisterial affirmation of moral contact does remove scruples about mere accidental failure to touch an ordinand.

Matter of Degree

The matter of Holy Orders is the same regardless of the grade of Order and has been discussed thus far in largely undifferentiated fashion. Yet because diaconal, presbyteral, and episcopal ordinations confer the sacrament in distinct degrees,¹⁵ a separate sacramental form is required to determine the sign value of imposition of hands for each degree. Within the longer prayers prescribed for use in the current Roman Rite, those words identified as “required for the validity of the act” are as follows:

For deacons: Emitte in eos, Domine, quaesumus, Spiritum Sanctum, quo in opus ministerii fideliter exsequendi munere septiformis tuae gratiae roborentur. (“Send forth the Holy Spirit upon them, O Lord, we pray, that they may be strengthened by the gift of your sevenfold grace to carry out faithfully the work of the ministry.”)

For priests: Da, quaesumus, omnipotens Pater, in hos famulos tuos presbyterii dignitatem; innova in visceribus eorum Spiritum sanctitatis; acceptum a te, Deus, secundi meriti munus obtineant, censuramque morum exemplo suae conversationis insinuent. (“Grant, we pray, almighty Father, to these your servants the dignity of the Priesthood; renew deep within them the Spirit of holiness; may they hold the office second in order, received from you, O God, and by the example of their manner of life may they inspire right conduct.”)

For bishops: Et nunc effunde super hunc electum eam virtutem, quae a te est, Spiritum principalem, quem dedisti dilecto Filio tuo Iesu Christo, quem ipse donavit sanctis Apostolis, qui constituerunt Ecclesiam per singula loca ut sanctuarium tuum, in gloriam et laudem indeficientem nominis tui. (“Now pour forth upon this chosen one the power that is from you, the governing Spirit, whom you gave to your beloved Son Jesus Christ and whom he gave to the holy Apostles, who established the Church in each place as your sanctuary, to the glory and unfailing praise of your name.”)¹⁶

A Range of Formulae

The current Roman forms for ordaining priests and deacons differ in only trivial detail from those used prior to Vatican II, but Paul VI chose to fully replace the traditional Roman form of episcopal ordination with that of the ancient document known as the Apostolic Tradition, a form still employed in the Coptic and West Syriac traditions.¹⁷ Similar to the diverse forms of Confirmation, the lack of substantial verbal overlap between variant forms of ordination makes it difficult to abstract an essential minimum sufficient for validity. Indeed, this difficulty once led some to speculate that “whatsoever words have an invocation of the Holy Spirit, at least implicit, suffice,”¹⁸ for what a form lacked in explicit signification would be complementarily expressed and clarified through the other ceremonies of the rite.

It would be irresponsible to press that theory too far in the face of a formula directly “required for the validity of the act.” However, it also seems natural to assume that this requirement can, as with other sacraments, accommodate a range of accidental alterations without vitiating its substance. Thus, if “the form, and the only form, is the words which determine the application of this matter, which univocally signify the sacramental effects—namely the power of Order and the grace of the Holy Spirit,”¹⁹ any departure from the prescribed words should be judged by the extent to which the words uttered still signify the Holy Spirit’s grace and the power of the specific order the bishop intended to confer.

_{^{Image Source: AB/Lawrence Lew, O.P., on Flickr.com}}

1. Lumen Gentium, 21.
2. Dominic M. Prummer, O.P., Manuale Theologiae Moralis, vol. 3 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1915), 413.
3. Felix M. Capello, SJ., Tractatus Canonico-Moralis de Sacramentis, 5th ed., vol. 4 (Rome: Marietti, 1947), 113-119.
4. Decree for the Armenians.
5. The Armenians remain the only non-Latin Catholics to include such a rite in their sacramental ordinations. See Eduardo F. Regatillo, SJ., Ius Sacramentarium, vol. 2 (Santander: Sal Terrae, 1946), 20.
6. Regatillo, 16.
7. Capello, 127.
8. Council of Trent, Sess. XIV, De extrema unctione ch. 3. Sess. XXIII, ch. 3 also rests its case upon 2 Timothy 1:6, the gift “that you have through the imposition of my hands.”
9. Sacramentum Ordinis, 4. Without resolving debates about how handing over of instruments may also have been necessary, Pius XII continues that “in order to remove all controversy and to preclude doubts of conscience, We do by Our Apostolic Authority declare, and if there was ever a lawful disposition to the contrary We now decree, that at least in the future the traditio instrumentorum is not necessary for the validity of the Sacred Orders of the Diaconate, the Priesthood, and the Episcopacy.”
10. Apostolic Constitution Pontificalis Romani. Prior to standardization by another apostolic constitution of Pius XII, Episcopali Consecrationi, the Roman Rite did not clearly require assisting bishops to recite the form together with the principal consecrator at episcopal consecrations. Ordination of a Bishop, of Priests, and of Deacons, 47 carries into the present the discipline that “All the ordaining Bishops join in the [essential form], with hands joined, but in a low voice, so that the principal ordaining Bishop’s voice is heard clearly.” The relative recency of that requirement may account for why Paul VI refers to “at least” the principal consecrator as supplying the matter, since a minister who did not determine his act through the form could not be applying effective matter.
11. Capello, 145; Regatillo, 20.
12. Capello, 153, refers to “coma adscititia” (foreign, assumed, or superadded hair) while Regatillo, 23, cites a decision of the Holy Office (January 22, 1890) allowing imposition of hands on “coma fictitia.”
13. Sacramentum Ordinis, 6.
14. Nicholas Halligan, OP., The Administration of the Sacraments (Staten Island: Alba House, 1963), 372.
15. Lumen Gentium, 28; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1536, 1554.
16. Apostolic Constitution Pontificalis Romani.
17. Pontificalis Romani.
18. Regatillo, 20, 24; cf. Capello, 143.
19. Sacramentum Ordinis, 4.