Reordination

REORDINATION. - A modern term denoting the practice that arose in certain periods, and only in certain circles, of repeating an Ordination held to be invalid because it was performed by heretical, schismatic, deposed, or excommunicated ministers.

This practice is linked to the theory, which has strong affinities with Donatism (v.), that held Baptism, Confirmation, and Order conferred by unworthy ministers to be invalid (v. SACRAMENTS). Although St. Augustine (v.) had demonstrated the theoretical and practical inconsistency of Donatism, bringing clearly to light the doctrine of the objective efficacy of the Sacraments (opus operatum) and the indelibility of the character (v.) in the three Sacraments mentioned, nevertheless in centuries of particular theological and moral decadence the error and the practical consequence of reordination, already in use among the Donatists, surfaced here and there.

In the East, already canon 68 of the Apostles (4th century) recognized reordination as necessary in the case of bishops, priests, or deacons ordained by heretical ministers. The patriarch John the Scholastic (565-77) attempted to impose reordination on the Monophysites. In the West, passing over the error of St. Cyprian (v.) and of Firmilian of Caesarea in Cappadocia, it should be recalled that already the Councils of Orléans (511) and of Saragossa (592) prescribed that Arian clerics who had returned to the Church be reordained. Around 669 Theodore of Canterbury reordained Ceadda, former bishop of York; the Roman Council of 769 prescribed the reordination of clerics ordained by Pope Constantine; the Council of Soissons (853) declared invalid the Ordinations performed by Ebbo during his governance of the Church of Reims; in 881 John VIII approved the reordination of Joseph of Vercelli performed by Anspert; the Ordinations of Pope Formosus were held invalid by Sergius III (904-11) and in part repeated; the Roman Council of 964, presided over by John XII, rejected as null the Ordinations of Leo VIII. In the tormented period of the simoniacal haeresis (11th century) Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida warmly maintained the invalidity of Ordinations performed by simoniacal ministers, while St. Peter Damian (v.) defended the true doctrine; in the Investiture Controversy the Roman curia wavered between Humbert's theory (supported by Cardinal Deusdedit) and the doctrine of Damian (defended by Cardinal Atto and by Anselm of Lucca). The cardinal legate Amatus several times adhered to the opinion of Cardinal Humbert; and Bonizo of Sutri (v.) attests that in northern Italy, around 1088-90, reordinations were performed; in 1091 the deacon Poppo, already ordained by the schismatic Engelbert, was reordained; in 1088 the deacon Dalbert, already ordained by the schismatic Wezilo of Mainz, was reordained by Urban II. This practice became an accredited theory in the School of Bologna, through the work of Roland Bandinelli (later Alexander III) and of Rufinus (v.), and resurfaced during the Western Schism (14th-15th century).

The reasons advanced by St. Cyprian and by the Donatists to defend their practice: that the Holy Spirit cannot be conferred by one who does not possess Him, and that unworthy ministers (heretics, schismatics, deposed, etc.), finding themselves outside the Church, do not have Grace — already refuted by St. Augustine — returned in the Middle Ages and merged with others, which emerged in moments of particular anarchy and were applied without sufficient reflection: insistence was placed above all on subordination to the Church (to the legitimately established hierarchy), and the principle was formulated that for Ordination there was necessary not only the potestas Ordinis, but also the licentia Ordinis exequendi (thus, for example, Hugh of Amiens, Roland Bandinelli, Rufinus), with too close a parallel between the power to absolve and the power to ordain; it was argued that just as a priest lacking jurisdiction absolves invalidly, so a bishop (or other minister) who has been deposed, excommunicated, schismatic, or heretical, being separated from the Church, does not possess the officium or the mandatum exequendi Ordinis, and his work is null. This doctrine, never definitively condemned, has found supporters even in recent times, who have presented it with many qualifications and with nuances corresponding to the current progress of studies (cf. C. Baisi, Il ministro straordinario degli Ordini sacramentali, Rome 1935).

This conception, which might be defined as marginal, even though accepted in practice by some popes, did not compromise their infallibility, since it was never intended to bring, in a concrete case, a definitive judgment; against it, instead, the common doctrine affirmed itself, already enunciated in the 3rd century by Pope Stephen in the celebrated rescript (nihil innovetur nisi quod traditum est) with which he rejected the theory of St. Cyprian and of the rebaptizers, and was then sanctioned by the Council of Nicaea (325), developed and masterfully illustrated by St. Augustine, and came, through St. Gregory the Great, to Rabanus Maurus (9th century), to Eugenius Vulgarius and Liutprand (10th century), to Fulbert of Chartres, to St. Peter Damian and to Bernold of Constance (11th century), to Ognibene, Gandulf of Bologna and Hugh of Pisa (12th century), until it triumphed with St. Raymond of Peñafort, Roland of Cremona, Alexander of Hales, and above all with St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, qq. 60-90 [his entire sacramental theology presupposes this doctrine] and Suppl., q. 38, a. 2). The Council of Trent defined the validity of Baptism conferred by heretics (sess. VII, de Baptismo, can. 4), but abstained from declaring valid the Ordinations conferred by heretical ministers or by ministers in any way separated from the Church, not because any doubt could subsist on this point, but in order not to place the doctrine of certain Catholic authors in opposition to a truth defined as of faith.

Antonio Piolanti