Note: the following was written before Pius XII's 1947 Sacramentum Ordinis. Under the heading “Sacramental efficacy of tradition of instruments,” we read:
But the further question now arises:
Is the imposition of hands the complete matter; or has the tradition of the
instruments been conjoined with it to constitute one composite sacramental
matter?
While it is not conceivable that the
Scriptural imposition of hands has lost its sacramental status, it can readily
be imagined that, assuming that the Church has the power, there has been
development along the line of more explicit signification and more vivid
representation of the power of the priesthood. That there have been such accretions
to the Ordinal is an incontestable fact: there we actually do find the
tradition of the instruments, with the appropriate form expressing the conferring
of the power of the priesthood. The only question is whether it is a mere
accessory ceremony, or an integral part of the sacramental matter.
We have already mentioned the famous Decree
for the Armenians, published by Eugenius IV in the Council of Florence. This
Decree teaches that “The sixth Sacrament is Order, whose matter is that thing
by the tradition of which the order is conferred.”—We do not propose to enter
int the merits of the controversy of this Decree, whether it is an infallible document,
as one side claims, or theologically erroneous, which is the opposite extreme
view. It suffices for us that it is an official document of the highest authority
of the Church, recognising the sacramental status of the tradition of the instruments.
Nor is the imposition of hands thereby deposed from its place; first, because
the Council of Florence itself, just as the Church before and since has always
done, acknowledged the validity of the Oriental rites having the imposition of
hands alone. But the case was not the same for the Armenians. They had always
preserved the imposition of hands; but they alone, of all the Oriental Rites,
had recently adopted into their rite from the Roman Church the tradition of the
instruments. (Theologians seem almost entirely to have overlooked this
significant historical fact). Hence, Eugenius IV, pre-supposing, not rejecting,
the imposition of hands, instructs the Armenians about the tradition of the
instruments, I the exact words of St Thomas Aquinas. Yet, St Thomas, although
he most emphatically attributes the impression of the character of Order to the
tradition of the instruments as the instrumental cause, does not thereby
exclude the imposition of hands from the matter of the Sacrament. On the
contrary, both in his Commentary on the Sentences (IV, D. 24, Q. ii, art. 3)
and in almost the last question of this Summa Theologica written by him
before his death, (III, Q. lxxxiv, art. 4) he attributes the grace of the
Sacrament of Order to the imposition of hands. “By the imposition of hands is
given the plenitude of grace by which they are fitted for their high offices.”
Now if St Thomas could write this, and yet teach that the matter of the Sacrament
is the tradition of the instruments, why could not Pope Eugenius copy these
words into his decree in the same sense, viz., assuming that the imposition of
hands has preceded the tradition of the instruments as the sacramental preparation
for the completion of the rite?
Reference to the Roman Pontifical must
not be omitted. In the preliminary instructions the bishop is directed to “warn
those to be ordained to touch the instruments, by which the character is
imprinted.” And in the ceremony itself the candidates are called “Ordinandi”
as far as the anointing of the hands. Then immediately follows the tradition of
the instruments with its form, and they become at once “Ordinati.”
My final conclusion, then, is that the
imposition of hands with the invocation of the Holy Ghost are certainly the
sacramental matter and form of the Episcopate, Priesthood, and Diaconate; and
that probably the tradition of the instruments with its form also belongs to
the sacramental outward sign of the Priesthood and Diaconate. Of this
Subdiaconate and the Minor Orders the tradition of the instruments and the
accompanying words alone constitute the matter and form, whether sacramental or
otherwise. (C. Cronin, “The Sacrament of Order,” in The Teaching of the
Catholic Church: A Summary of Catholic Doctrine, ed. George D. Smith, 2
vols. [New York: The MacMillan Company, 1927, 1959], 2:1058-59)
