MORE REASONS FOR WRITING THE RECTOR: Part the Second

Editor's Note: Today's post continues driving a stake through Tony the Blunderer's monstrous distortion of official Catholic doctrine in his mistranslation of Pius's teaching on the matter of holy orders.

...in scholarly matters, the truth must always be told. Alice Kober

Say you're in Tony the Blunderer's shoes. You don't know Latin well. You've got to deliver for Dannie, who's in hot water with the rector and eight other priests (and maybe even more). You don't have the instincts or the training of a real researcher.  So you don't look up other independent translations of Sacramentum Ordinis. You're already in a quandary because the version you happened consult doesn't suit your purposes. So, arrogantly, you dismiss it as wrong. Then, because you're really challenged when it comes to Latin (truth be told, you're really awful) -- and there's a lot at stake for your embattled master -- you invent an impossible reading. Why, you even add words that have no foundation in the text. 

At this point, you're cruisin' for a bruisin'. That is to say, a disaster's just waiting to come down on your pointy, pin-sized head. But...

...if you're a prudent person, if you've graduated with an advanced degree from a real institution of higher learning, then you might, perhaps, ask yourself, Just in case I'm dead wrong, is there anything in the official papal teaching that might keep me from making a big mistake about the matter of holy orders?

To be sure, the Blunderer would never be so self-aware. He always thinks he's right, even though he's wrong so often. But you, on the other hand, are not a blundering pinhead. You're not carrying "One-Hand Dan's" water for him, either (unless, of course, you're a CLOD, a "close loyalist of Dannie"). What if you were honestly searching for the truth and not trying to confirm a prejudice? What if...in spite of very limited Latin or not having immediate access to professional, independent translations...what if you had some formal training in construing the meaning of legal prose when in doubt? [Ed. Note: Naturally, anyone who knows Latin would have no doubt about the meaning of the text in Sacramentum Ordinis, paragraph 4.]

Then, by George, you'd ask yourself, Can I construe the papal constitution in pari materia or by applying noscitur a sociis or by the rule reddendo singula singulis, or by some other appropriate canon of statutory construction? In other words, is there anything in the constitution's words, its sentence structure, or its expository configuration that might give clueless-me a clue?

You'd only have to glance at the adjacent clause -- the one about the form of sacred orders -- to get your answer. Let's look at the two clauses. Don't worry: you don't have to know any Latin. We just want you physically to look at the words. We'll color-code certain ones to show the clauses are almost mirror images of each other.  Ready? Remember, just look at the colored words and their endings. Ignore the words in black. We only want you to notice the parallelism.

O.K. Here we go:

materiam         eamque  unam  esse manuum impositionem;

formam   vero itemque  unam  esse verba      applicationem huius materiae determinantia

Do you see the rigid syntactic parallelism? Of course you do!  You're not the Blunderer, are you? You see it even if you're a CLOD. You've got sense, and you're looking for the truth!

Now, let's recall how the Blunderer "translated" the top line:

The matter*....is one and the same, and that indeed is** the imposition of hands. [Blunderer's emphasis.] 

If the Blunderer's reading were right, then in keeping with the compelling parallel structure of the original, one might make the following (ghastly) translation of the second clause:

Moreover,*** the form is likewise one and the same, and that indeed is the words determining the application of this matter.

Admittedly this is absolute nonsense on every level -- idiomatic, textual, theological, and doctrinal. For one thing, it would be an absurdity as well as an impiety to say that the form is one and the same, when in paragraph 5 of Sacramentum Ordinis, Pius formally teaches three differently worded forms: one for the ordination of deacons, a second for priests, and a third for bishops.

But, as we said, you're certainly not the Blunderer. You see that "one and the same" is impossible. (Most of you understood that after reading last week's post.) In addition, you've been to school, so you know you need find out how your betters translated the text. You're a little leery about Deferrari (click here for his text, in paragraph 4), so you get hold of a copy of The Church Teaches (TAN Books, p. 333) and find the following:

the matter of the holy orders of diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate, is the imposition of hands and that alone; and the form (likewise the only form) is the words determining the application of this matter.****

Then you wisely decide to toss out what you first stupidly wrote. You know you have to revise thoroughly your whole line of thought. So you put your thinking cap on and ask yourself, What did Roman academics teaching in the fifties think about Pius's 1947 constitution?  Since you graduated from a real university, it doesn't take you long to find a slim volume written in 1953 by the well-known Jesuit theologian Heinrich Lennerz, De Sacramento Ordinis ("On the Sacrament of Order"), printed by the Gregorian Pontifical University. 

Because you're looking for the truth, you study the whole book rather than sink to tendentious cherry picking. When you get to the dogmatic portion, you come across this thesis (p. 125), which offers yet another confirmation of how wrong you were:

Sola impositio manuum cum invocatione Spiritus sancti est et semper erat ritus essentialis ordinationis sacramentalis ("the imposition of hands alone with the invocation of the Holy Ghost is and always was the essential rite of sacramental ordination").

Fascinated by the liturgical implications, you read on and find an illuminating discussion about (1) the matter and form in the ceremonies described in the Pontificale Romanum and (2) the period when these rites were received by the Church. You open up your copy of the Roman Pontifical, an official liturgical book of the Church, and find in the rubrics that the bishop must lay both hands on the head of each candidate for the priesthood. (See the illustration at the top for the Latin and en-face English texts.)  You then read Fr. Lennerz's note on the Pontifical's rite of priestly ordination (p. 127):

Impositio manuum unius episcopi, ritus antiquissimus, semper et ubique... ("imposition of the hands of one bishop, a very ancient rite, always and everywhere...)*****

Both hands...very ancient rite...always and everywhere...Hmmmm.  So... it dawns on you: priestly ordination with one hand is a DEFECT. Defects should be cured, shouldn't they? Could it be that, maybe, just maybe, one hand may not be sufficient???

...TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK, when we explore whether there was really no one who ever doubted "the validity of an ordination conferred with one hand." We'll also add some pertinent observations about expert opinion.

But while you're waiting, email the rector. (CLODDIES, too, please.) Tell him what you've been reading on Pistrina. Butter up that bloated, unbridled, defensive ego by praising him for signing the 9/21/90 ad-cautelam letter to "One-Hand Dan." Let him know that he and the other eight priests were right the first time --  and it's O.K. to retract a retraction. Tell him that Tony didn't solve anything. (So what if Dannie makes Tony quit the Pesthouse. The rector surely doesn't need a "teacher" who altered papal doctrine. What kind of an example can that be to the quaking wannabes and completers?) 

Entreat the rector to say goodbye to Dannie and ordain the Rev. Mr. Nkamuke at the Pesthouse in the swampland with his very own two hands. Let him know that if he does, Pistrina will supply the ordination certificate in correct Latin.

* Here you should  mentally insert the long qualifying phrase "of the Sacred Orders of the Diaconate, Priesthood, and Episcopacy," which in the Latin precedes the Pope's definitions of the matter and form of the sacrament.

** The underscored phrase is unwarranted by the original, unless "and that" refers to eamque. But eamque must be taken with unam. Moreover, there's only one word for "is" in the original, yet here Tony "translates " it twice. In addition, there is no word in the original that corresponds to "indeed": a pure fiction.

***There are a number of appropriate translations for the particle vero.


****Here's the 1954 Canon Law Digest translation: [We declare that] "the matter, and the only matter, of the Sacred Orders of the Diaconate, the Priesthood, and the Episcopacy is the imposition of hands; and that the form, and the only form, is the words which determine the application of this matter."

As an aside: Think of the effort the Vatican bureaucracy invested to make sure that the Pope's teaching could be reduced to a clean categorical proposition: The matter for the sacrament of order is the imposition of hands alone. But then the goofy, untrained Blunderer confounds everything by the addition of unwarranted words and a twisted sense.  The result is, perhaps, something like this: The matter for the sacrament of order, viz. the imposition of hands, is one and the same. Who knows what theological censure could be applied to Tone the Bonehead's perverse reworking of clear papal doctrine? No censure will ever be levied, because Tony is so insignificant that he doesn't even count as a heterodox teacher. He's just plain, addlebrained wrong.


*****Like Pius's constitution, Lennerz's discussion distinguishes the plural hands for bishops' and priests' ordinations and the singular hand for deacons' orders.