The argument for direct ordination meets its biggest challenge, I think, on grounds of tradition, which are strong. In contrast, “it works for me” is prone to counter-examples of “it doesn’t work for me,” “this other way could work for me,” and “if transitional ordination is your call, that’s great, but it isn’t mine.”
Alternatively, one could do Medieval practice of ablation of the diaconate by having the “called” to the priesthood ordained deacons for the afternoon or a day or so. But that was poor practice. On the other hand, that alone could commend it in this locale.
It’s good to maintain -under normal circumstances- decently long interstices so the ordained person comes to understand the roles of each order of ministry. For example, I served as a deacon for six months and one day. A year or two would have been better, I think. Also, the principle in all religious traditions obtains in this instance in particular, that one can’t confer what one has not received. In Tibetan Buddhism, for example, a master can’t give an empowerment into a certain tradition that he/she doesn’t have. The idea of transforming the orders of ministry into mere roles and offices is contrary to all of the received teaching of the Church from the beginning. As a side note, that’s the BIG problem I have with Carolyn Irish’s episcopal orders. She wasn’t baptized a Christian, but a Mormon (which is a polytheistic religion denying almost all Christian doctrines). That defect (lack of valid baptism) was never rectified. Therefore, her ordinations in TEC were invalid. Therefore, all the sacraments she has been said to dispense are invalid, from baptism on up the line. It’s very important to walk this path very carefully, because otherwise it’s easy to fall off.
I was one of those who felt frustrated as a transitional Deacon, an office I served for almost a year before being ordained to the priesthood. I would tell my colleagues that I felt like a priest in a deacon’s stole. 🙂
But my support for direct ordination is not based on my own personal experience (frustration, OK…impatience). Rather, it is inconsistent with all the people of God who are called and gifted for ministry. For example, someone who felt God was calling them to be an evangelist and had proven gifts for that ministry would never be told by the Church – “That is great you are called to be an evangelist and we confirm that you indeed are empowered by the Holy Spirit for that ministry but before we “authorize” you to serve as one you have to serve on the Altar Guild for 6-12 months and then you are official.” I think I have strong biblical grounds for this as well. Nowhere does St. Paul in the New Testament speak of a transitional move towards your part of Christ’s Body.
The [i]cursus honorum[/i] of Christian holy orders (so-called after the course of offices through which Roman patrician men rose through the magistracy, at least in Republican times) indisputably has the weight of medieval Christian tradition behind it. But the [i]cursus honorum[/i] can have the effect of creating a notion of “higher” and more esteemed ministries (presbyter and bishop) and a “lower” and less esteemed (all the more so for its transitional character) ministry (deacon). In the medieval Church this had the effect of creating an omnivorous presbyterate, in which a deacon was seen as little more than a “junior priest” while the bishop was a sort of “super-priest”. In fact, many commentaries on holy orders considered the three “major” orders (as distinct from the “minor” orders of ostiarius, lector, and exorcist) to be: subdeacon, deacon and priest – with the bishop literally as a “super-priest”. (Hence the designation that a bishop was “consecrated”, nor ordained.) The overall effect on the diaconate is to create the impression that the ministry functions simply as a preparatory or probationary period for ordination to the presbyterate, an effect that is heightened by the fact that we still refer to “permanent deacons” as though the permanence were an oddity and that the diaconate is by default a transitional ministry.
Given that the diaconate, presbyterate and episcopate each has its own integrity and its own particular ministry (which is not entirely reducible to “function”), it seems that direct ordination has greater theological and ecclesial integrity.
(I write this knowing that many priests write about learning the servant character of ministry by serving as deacons. But doesn’t every order of ordained ministry have some servant character, just as the whole [i]laos[/i], the baptized people of God, have a servant character insofar as we all partake of Jesus’ servant character? If this be the case, why can a priest not learn the servant character of ministry [i]by being a priest[/i]?)
Playing leapfrog over the Middle Ages is always a chancy game (though the whole liturgical movement has played at it, to much good – and perhaps some ill), but if we look back to the early patristic Church (and here I am thinking of the third century through the next three or four hundred years), there is no [i]cursus honorum[/i]. Deacons usually remained in diaconal ministry for life. Presbyters were ordained directly to the presbyterate from the lay state. Bishops were very often chosen from the diaconate (this was particularly true in Rome), without an intervening ordination to the presbyterate. Sometimes bishops were even ordained directly from the lay state, as in the case of St Ambrose of Milan, who went from being prefect to bishop when he was elected by the acclaim of the people of Milan. (The medieval Church made this fit the [i]cursum honorum[/i] by having him ordained deacon, the presbyter the next day and bishop on the day after that – though there is no contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous documentary evidence for this.)
Arguments about appropriate lengths of interstices between ordinations were going on in the seventh century, but no one questioned the fact that they were necessary. Of course lay persons should be able to be elected bishops ought to be able to be elected bishops today, and then receive all the proper ordinations, just like Saint Ambrose did. The cursus honorum is not a medieval invention. The Nine Yanas of Tibetan Buddhism isn’t a medieval European Invention. Archetypes are not medieval inventions. Just because a person ‘feels’ like a priest wearing a deacon’s stole doesn’t mean anything much except, perhaps that it’s not all about him. For any church to claim any kind of authentic descent from/within the ancient Catholic Sacred Tradition its bishops must have received all three of the appropriate ordinations. The Roman and Orthodox traditions (making up 1.4 billion Christians) will rightly consider those considering abandoning the cursus honorum even more of a joke (or EVEN more ‘null’) than they presently do.
Todd – Bravo on the brief historical commentary.
A Senior Priest – Your criticism of my feelings…I guess you missed my 🙂 after I made the comment.
Without setting aside Scripture but questioning the Tradition, which as Todd points out is Medieval in origin, how does the current model of the “ordination ladder” assist or hinder the Church’s mission today? How does it enhance or frustrate the Body of Christ being incarnated in the world healing, saving, restoring in Jesus’ name through the power of the Holy Spirit to the Glory of God the Father? I don’t even begin to have an answer, but I thought I would ask the question. 🙂
Perhaps we ought to reread the Archbishops’ Reply to _Apostolicae Curae_ and reconsider whether the Episcopal Church really intends to continue the apostolic ministry. The Pope’s argument is that the Church of England abandoned the sacrificing priesthood; the Archbishops denied that. If the Episcopal Church abandons the practice of choosing priests from among the deacons we undercut our claim to continue the apostolic ministry we have received and give credence to the charge that we have created some new ministry.
All I can say is, I feel like you are debating how many angels can sit on the head of a pin, while, TEC crumbles around us. By the by, do any of you know who Dylan Breuer is?
TomRightmyer,
With all due respect the Bishop of Rome is not the arbiter of the Apostolic Ministry, [Although I know my RC friends would strongly disagree. :)] the Scriptures are.
It is my understanding that the Apostolic Ministries have their foundation in the Scriptures – First Christians are members of Christ’s Body and have a ministry so that the Church can serve like Jesus in the world. In addition, there are others who are “called” to other orders – deacon, priest, and Bishop. What develops after this is a product of Christendom (i.e. the clerical ladder) and therefore IMHO is up for debate and change. Frankly, I have to agree with David Keller with one caveat that there are more pressing Kingdom of God missional type issues to invest energy in (let the dead bury the dead and sue each other). Is this really essential to split hairs over how people are authorized by the Church to serve as the ordained? I can’t help but see this is another form of legalism Jesus challenged in his own day with the religious establishment.
A proper understanding of the priesthood incorporates the diaconate, just as the episcopate incorporates the priesthood. The problem with the transitional diaconate today is that we are doing it wrong (and have been for some time). What we should be doing is to form the transitional deacons as deacons not as “Junior Priests.” The solution is not to do away with what we don’t understand, but to work to understand and reform it.
A lot of parish ministry is diaconal in nature (visiting the sick and shut in, leading volunteers, recruiting others for ministry, etc.) To fully understand the diaconal nature of the priesthood, we need to understand the diaconate. Priests are to be leaders in the same way that Jesus was a leader. Jesus led by serving, not by commanding. So, priests need to learn servant ministry first before they take on the task of authoritative ministry.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
The servant justification is not a good reason to maintain the transitional diaconate. All Christians are called to service, whether you make Sunday AM coffee or serve at the altar as a priest – we just serve differently. To quote St. Paul – “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.”
So given this fact, why are we forming priests as deacons and it follows why are we forming bishops as deacons and then priests? Again, we would never tell someone who wishes to serve on the Altar Guild to first serve as a Sexton, as that is where you learn the basics of washing and cleaning. If we are doing the clerical ladder climb, it is most likely because we have always done it that way (since the Middle Ages) and as we know that is not a good justification for a missional and incarnational church but a museum to dedicated to the glory of Christendom.
An argument for sequential ordination is that, in that case, a priest can always do anything a deacon can do, and a bishop can always do anything a priest can do. A priest who is ordained first as a deacon does not cease to be a deacon when they become a priest. Without sequential ordination, you could have priests who were not deacons, and bishops who were not priests.
Consider this question — could a person ordained directly as to the episcopate, without ever having been ordained a priest, celebrate a Eucharist? Why or why not?
Ross, of course a person ordained directly to the episcopate (like St Ambrose, despite the later invention of his having been sequentially ordained after his election from the lay state) can celebrate the Eucharist.
Historically, the authority to preside at the Eucharist is given particularly and specifically to bishops, [i]not to priests[/i]. Read St Ignatius of Antioch: [i]Let that celebration of the Eucharist be considered valid which is held under the bishop or anyone to whom he has committed it.[/i] (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 8). Presbyters are delegated the authority to celebrate the Eucharist by the bishop. Thus, a man ordained directly to the episcopate from the lay state or from the diaconate, by the most ancient customs of the Church, may rightly preside at the Eucharist. In the Catholic West, this has generally been muted, in part because of the history that I sketched before. But in the East, a priest still understands himself to be celebrating the Eucharist through the bishop’s delegation (and this take physical form in the priest’s placing on the altar an object – whose name I forget – that represents the delegation).
As for the argument that any minister can always do anything someone pertaining to another ministry, doesn’t that have something of the effect of diminishing the integrity of that particular ministry? Would that the absence of deacons at the Eucharist made us zealous for the call of persons to the diaconate, rather than our blithely assuming that priests can just take care of it.
Despite the importance of the [i]cursus honorum[/i] to later understandings of holy orders, there is no documentary evidence from the first few centuries of the Church for any consistent sequential ordination nor any insistence on its importance. This does not deny the possibility of such sequential ordinations, simply the necessity.
That’s being said, it is true that a catholic understanding of ministry still holds to the rightness of the [i]cursus honorum[/i]. I am not aware, however, of this having a dogmatic or doctrinal significance, and that suggests that the [i]cursus honorum[/i] might possibly be able to be reconsidered as a matter of discipline or order. Despite my own support for direct ordination (and it has nothing whatsoever to do with anything as ephemeral as the “feelings” of the ordained about their ministries), at least as far as Anglican Churches are concerned, any such significant innovation; viz., the abandonment of sequential ordination, would have to be undertaken by the Churches of the Communion as a whole, and not by individual Churches alone.
(revdons, I agree with you completely about servanthood and ministry. It seems that it should not be necessary for a presbyter to learn about servanthood by being a deacon first.)
The way we currently do it makes the permanent diaconate look like cub scouts who never got enough merit badges. That totally undermines the ministry, which is a separate and wonderful calling. Not a weigh station en route to bigger and better things.
Also: Sarah Dylan Bruer is looking to tradition [i]now[/i]?
NBS – I have never felt like a “cub scout who never got enough merit badges.” I have always been treated with respect by my Bishop, the priests in my diocese (and in others that I have visited).
As I said, the problem is not with the Transitional Diaconate per se. The problem is that too many (particularly the laity) do not understand the diaconate and we are not forming our transitional deacons as deacons.
I believe that people should be formed as good lay people first, then deacons, then priests and then bishops. We take too many unformed lay persons and ordain them as deacons. Then we take unformed deacons and ordain them priests. Do we wonder why our church is in trouble?
Before we solve the problem, we need to correctly identify the problem. When it comes to ordained ministry, I believe that the fundamental problem is that too many unformed lay people are entering the formation process for ordained ministry. Along with this is the concept of ministry as function (deacon, priest) rather than ministry as ontology. If we take a functional view of ordained ministry, then it makes no sense to have a transitional diaconate. But if we take an ontological view, then it makes all the sense in the world.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Phil, my theological support for direct ordination does not arise from a functional view of ordained ministry – a view which I do not hold.
Phil,
If a person is indeed ontologically a Priest or Bishop then why do you continue to hold the position that they must be formed as Deacons first? I could make an argument that the cursus honorum actually reinforces the functional view of ordained ministry in our day. Again reflecting on my own experience where I once existed as “a priest in a deacon’s stole” (tongue in cheek), without any sense of calling to the diaconate, I served functionally as a deacon. Frankly, I couldn’t wait for the day I could BE who I believed God had created, gifted, and empowered me to BE – a priest. On the flip side, I knew that I was not nor could BE a Bishop. – I got A’s at VTS. Plus, I don’t have the stomach for politics or power. 🙂