In days long gone, Roman Catholic priests regularly made deathbed house calls, even in the middle of the night with little notice, to pray over the dying and anoint them with holy oils.
The candlelight ritual, popularly known as last rites, continues in hospitals, nursing homes, hospice houses and private homes. But it happens less frequently because priests ”” the only ones who can perform the service ”” are in short supply.
Although fewer Catholics are seeking what’s officially known as the sacrament of anointing of the sick, those who do want it could be at risk of reaching their final hours without the prayer-whispering presence of a Roman-collared priest unless they plan ahead.
Within the Sacrament of the Sick, we distinguish between Unction and Extreme Unction. The one is the anointing of the sick with prayers for recovery; the other is the anointing of the dying and the commendation of the soul into the hands of God (Last Rites). I’m available 24/7 for either, and have administered both to Roman Catholics as well as Anglicans.
I knew a woman who died about eight years ago. She lived in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. and was a devout and very active member of a Catholic parish there. She got cancer, and when she was in the hospital for her last week on earth her husband called the church for last rites. No one came. Her husband took it hard. His last visit to a Catholic church was for her funeral.
This has been long going on. RC priests are responsible for huge parishes and it’s gotten so bad in some areas that a priest has to serve more than one parish at a time. My last RC pastor did not do sick calls or any visits besides last rites (extreme unction) for the dying.
Sometimes he misjudged and didn’t get there in time, which drew heavy criticism. But when you have several thousand souls in your care and you’re the only priest, you have to have a workable policy that’s fair to all. Lay chaplaincy helps a lot but only the priest can do the last rites. It’s the final action of the Church in a person’s life and they really should ensure that it’s available.
I believe Deacons (at least transitional) in the Roman Catholic church can also administer unction, as they can “hatch, match, and dispatch.”
Will Jesus welcome them/us any less if the prayers are not said?
My sister took her Book of Common Prayer to the hospital and read the “Ministration at the Time of Death” for our dad at his bedside a few hours before he died. This will be part of our family story for generations to come. Who needs a priest? Just do it.
“Already Left” and “Chazaq” have it right, it seems to me. The sacrament of Last Rites is quite often a sacrament for the living who remain rather than the person who is approaching death, and may not recognize the occurrence of the rite.
In the meantime, Christ welcomes us into His Kingdom whenever we are ready to be there, rite or not. I betray my pietist, anabaptist heritage here, but I ask you to accept it as my understanding, as a guest on this fine website.
I don’t think, of course, that my Catholic friend was not welcomed by the Lord because she did not receive extreme unction. But it was important to her, and to her family. In the current situation in which there simply are not enough priests to reach all of the dying, it’s a problem for which there is no easy solution.
A Roman Catholic sacrament is valid only if administered by a Roman Catholic priest, right?
I think that the Romans recognize lay baptism when conducted under exigent circumstances…although I am loathe to characterize baptism as an “RC sacrament”.
No. 9,
I know RC deacons can do weddings and baptisms, and I am pretty sure they can do do unction. I had a friend of mine when I was doing Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) that was a RC transitional deacon. I know he did a baptism while we were working together. He told me deacons can “hatch, match, and dispatch” as necessary.
I believe RCs recognize lay baptism in emergencies, and RC deacons routinely perform baptisms in the U.S.
As a Catholic priest may I clarify Archer’s questions above? A deacon in the RC Church can baptise or conduct a wedding ceremony or take a funeral. He cannot give the anointing of the sick (canon 1003 of the Code of Canon Law), probably because this implies absolution. All this is irrespective of whether it is a transitional or a vocational deacon.
On the broader point, it is heart-breaking when a priest does not or cannot respond to a call. As someone who has served as a hospital chaplain (in a previous appointment) and who took occasional call-outs in the middle of the night, I would like to point out, however, that families sometimes leave it until their loved one is on the point of expiry, rather than when she/he was still conscious and could participate. There are few things more moving than a Christian man or woman affirming their faith in the face of death. And, as has been pointed out above, while this takes a sacramental form in anointing, any Christian can pray with the dying, and be part of the ministry of encouragement.
Finally, the Catholic Church is trying to move away from the connotation of last rites and back to the richer conception of anointing of the sick. I would recommend it for anyone undergoing a surgical procedure, and I have had dramatic evidence of its releasing effect for a person in severe depression.
Last Rites are /very/ important because only a priest who has faculties from his bishop can grant absolution for sins and grant the Apostolic Pardon to the dying Catholic. From Wiki:
[blockquote][A] person who is properly disposed by being in the state of grace- i.e., the person has committed no known and unconfessed mortal sins- who receives the Apostolic Pardon [b]gains the complete pardon of all temporal punishment due to sin that has already been forgiven by the reception of absolution and the doing of penance, i.e., a plenary indulgence[/b]. The Apostolic Pardon does not forgive sins by the act of absolution; [b]it deals only with the punishment (purgation) due for those sins that have already been sacramentally forgiven[/b].[/blockquote]
Of course, for those who think Purgatory is just a bunch of hooey, Last Rites may look like just a ceremony for the living, but for the orthodox Catholic who takes his/her faith seriously, it is very very important.
In the Orthodox Church the problem is somewhat different. While there is a shortage of priests it is in no way as critical as it is in the RCC. And I can not imagine a single priest being in charge of more than a few hundred families, and then only in very large and rare parishes. Large parishes are just not normal in Orthodoxy. A Greek priest once explained that in his Diocese the unwritten rule was that when you hit 400 it was time to start a new parish.
Our main problem is that there are probably only around 2 million Orthodox Christians in the US. Many live hours from the nearest parish. And as is the case in the RCC, only a priest can administer Holy Unction. Of course we aren’t as tight about the whole “dying in a state of mortal sin” as Catholics tend to be. Our approach to sin is a bit different and less legal. Still, it’s a source of concern for those distantly removed from a priest.
As a nurse I have had to wake up priests in the middle of the night to come annoint someone. I have had a priest ask “Is he conscious?” The answer was “barely”, and obviously the family should have asked sooner. But I told the priest it might matter to the patient and it certainly mattered to the family. When he still grumbled, I said to him “I know you think you have a very hard job, but some of the rest of us think our jobs aren’t that easy either.” He came.
Yes, we Catholics do believe it can make a difference. And it does matter that it is a priest. Now if a person were truly repentent and in faith and wanted to receive absolution, and couldn’t through no fault of his own….I feel certain that God would make up the difference. But the way God gave us is through these other human beings who stand in persona Christi.
Susan Peterson
[blockquote]Now if a person were truly repentent and in faith and wanted to receive absolution, and couldn’t through no fault of his own….I feel certain that God would make up the difference.[/blockquote]
Susan, this was also my understanding of what the Church taught regarding circumstances such as this (Baptism of desire, act of perfect repentance etc).. Still, you are right to emphasize that the ORDINARY means should be pursued whenever possible. Thank you for your hard and often thankless work as a nurse (my father was a nurse for 30 years!)
14. Close. Yes, only a priest can give apostolic pardon. But, that pardon is not essential to the sacrament. Still, the sacrament itself, the anointing, includes a form of absolution and so can only be performed by a priest or bishop. The deaconate is an assisting function but does not share in the priestly character of the episcopate as priests do. In other words, a deacon is a cleric without priestly character.
#18, thank you for the correction, Father.
So “only a priest can give absolution.” Can’t I tell Jesus my sins? Won’t he then forgive (same as abolution?)? No where in the Bible does it say that a man stand in for Jesus. My relationship is with my Lord – no middle man.
Dear 20.
John 20:21-23
[21] He [Jesus] said therefore to them [the Apostles] again: Peace be to you. As the Father hath sent me, I also send you. [22] When he had said this, he breathed on them; and he said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost. [23] Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.
Martin Luther recognized this as a Gospel warrant for the Sacrament of Penance (although later Lutherans did not count Penance as a sacrament for some reason). But it is certainly in the Bible. It of course makes clear Jesus earlier saying to the Apostles that “what you bind on earth is bound in heaven, what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.” Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Christianity is just “me and my Lord”. That’s a concoction of late 19th century, early 20th century American Christianity.
Steve Cavanaugh,
John 20:21-23 is an admonition to all the disciples, not just the apostles (at least one of whom was not even present). It is part of our Lord’s teaching about the priesthood of all believers.
There is no “sacrament of penance” in the Bible. St Jerome made one of his few serious errors of translation in the 4th century when he mistranslated Gr. metanoia as “do penance” instead of its true meaning of “repent”. This error carried through into medieval times, but it is not a concept that Christ or his Apostles would have recognised, and nor should we.
This is presumably a reference to Matthew 16:19. But it doesn’t have anything to do with a sacrament of penance or priestly power. Jesus says to Peter that he has this power because (and only because) of his true confession in verse 16. But 4 verses later in verse 23, Jesus refers to Peter as “Satan” and tells him to get out of his sight – that in turn is because of Peter’s false confession in verse 22.
This is consistent with what we see in John 20:21-23, that this is a power given to all who believe, not restricted to Peter.
MichaelA,
Sorry, I don’t see how you get that the apostles (agreed, Thomas was not present on Easter night, as the text clearly says) do not have any special place within the Church, when they are to sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes, i.e., the whole of Israel. The saying of the Lord about binding and loosing is addressed not only to Peter, but later in Matthew the same is said to all the Apostles. This binding and loosing is a mirror of the authority of the rabbis, who had that authority within Israel. The Lord alludes to this, not only when he speaks of their occupying the chair of Moses, but also when he speaks of their tying up burdens without any attempt to lighten them. This is consistent with the idea throughout the New Testament that the Church is the New Israel.
The priesthood of all believers is seen in this: that as a kingly priesthood, believers have access to the Christian sacrifice. In the Old Testament, only the priests could eat of the sacrifices in the Temple, whereas all Christians are able to eat of the Eucharist, the one Sacrifice of Christ made in the midst of the Church throughout the world, as predicted by the prophet Malachi.
Steve Cavanaugh,
Protestants do believe that the Apostles have a very special place in the church, my apologies if my earlier post gave a different impression. The Apostles are the ultimate authority, those charged by God to deliver his teachings to the church. However, their ministry was not passed on to anyone else, i.e. they were unique:
[blockquote] “Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.” [Ephesians 2:19-20] [/blockquote]
and
[blockquote] “In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to people in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets.” [Ephesians 3:4-5] [/blockquote]
and
[blockquote] “I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.” [2 Peter 3:2] [/blockquote]
So I do agree that there are some promises and grants of authority which are unique to the Apostles in scripture. Only they could exercise these ministries.
My point was rather that the power to remit and retain sins is one given to all believers in John 20. I agree with your point about priesthood of all believers and that this is one of the foundations of teaching on the Eucharist, i.e. as to why all believers are entitled to share in it.
But I don’t see the view I have espoused above on John 20 as being inconsistent with this. In the Old Testament, the priests were those who mediated God’s forgiveness to the rest of the people in a particular way, just as Christians do today. They were the ones that the people came to, to express their contrition, their repentance, to be taught the doctrine of God, and to receive assurance of God’s redemption.
But (in case this is your concern) let me emphasise that this does not cut across the fact that Christ himself mediates God’s forgiveness in a much greater and different sense to any human being, as he is the unique High Priest who entered the Holy of Holies with his own blood in the one ultimate act of redemption [Hebrews 9:12]
Also, I very much agree with your point that the Apostles teach us that the church is the New Israel.