Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/805

 EXTREME

725

EXTREME

unction. Besides the autliority of the Scholastic tradi- tion, which was based on ignorance of the facts, the only dogmatic argument for the view w-e have re- jected is to be found in the instruction of Eugene IV to the Armenians [see above, III (A)]. But in reply to this argument it is enough to remark that this decree is not a dogmatic definition but a disciplinary instruc- tion, and that, if it were a definition, those who appeal to it ought in consistency to hold the unction of the feet and loins to be essential. It is hardly necessary to add that, while denying the necessity of the unc- tions prescribed in the Roman Ritual for the validity of the sacrament, there is no intention of denying the grave obUgation of adhering strictly to the Ritual ex- cept, as the Holy Office allows, in cases of urgent neces- sity.

(3) The forms of extreme unction from the Roman Ritual and the Euchologion have been given above (I). However ancient may be either form in its substance, it is certain that many other forms substantially differ- ent from the present have been in use both in the East and the West (see Martene, " De Antiquis Eccl. Rit.", I, vii, 4; and Kern, op. cit., pp. 142-152); and the controversy among theologians as to what precise form or kind of form is necessary for the validity of the sacrament has followed pretty much the same lines as that about the proximate matter. That some form is essential, and that what is essential is contained in both the Eastern and Western forms now in use, is admitted by all. The problem is to decide not merely what words in either form may be omitted without invalidating the sacrament, but whether the words re- tained as essential must necessarily express a prayer — "the prayer of faith" spoken of by St. James. Both forms as now used are deprecatory, and for the West the Holy Office has decided what words may be omit- ted in case of necessity from the form of the Roman Ritual. That the form, whether short or long, must be a prayer-form, and that a mere indicative form, such as "I anoint thee" etc., would not be sufficient for validity, has been the opinion of most of the great Scholastics antl of many later theologians. But not a few Scholastics of eminence, and nearly all later theo- logians who have made due allowance for the facts of history, have upheld the opposite view. For the fact is that the indicative form has been widely used in the East and still more widely in the West; it is the form we meet with in the very earliest Church Orders pre- served, viz., those of the Celtic Church (see Warren, "Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church", e. g. p. 168: " I anoint thee with sanctified oil in the name of the Trinity that thou mayst be saved for ever and ever"; cf. p. 223). Among contemporary theologians Kern (op. cit., pp. 154 sq.), who is followed by Pohle (Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 3d ed., Paderborn, 1908, III, 534), suggests a compromise by holding, on the one hand, that at least a virtual prayer-form is re- quired by the text of St. James and, on the other hand, that the indicative forms that have been used are virtually deprecatory. But this seems to be only a subtle way of denying the raison d'etre of the con- troversy; one might argue on the same principle that the forms of baptism, penance, and confirmation are virtually prayer-forms. Some of the so-called indica- tive forms may be reasonably construed in this way, but in regard to others we may say, with Benedict XIV, that " we do not know how a prayer can be discov- ered in certain other forms published from very many ancient Rituals by Menard and Martene, in which there is used merely the words ' I anoint thee' without any thing else being added from which a prayer can be deduced or fashioned" (De Synod. Dicec, VIII, ii, 2). If it be insisted that prayer as such must be in some way an element in the sacrament, one may say that the prayer used in blessing the oil satisfies this require- ment. What has been said in regard to the matter is to be repeated here, viz., that the dogmatic contro-

versy about the form does not affect the disciplinary obligation of adhering strictly to the prescriptions of the Ritual, or, for cases of urgent necessity, to the decree of the Holy Office.

V. Minister. — (1) The Council of Trent has defined in accordance with the words of St. James that the proper ministers {proprios ministros) of this sacrament are the priests of the Church alone, that is bishops or priests ordained by them (Sess. XIV, cap. iii, and can. iv, De Extr. Unct.). And this has been the constant teaching of tradition, as is clear from the testimonies given above. Yet Launoi (0pp., I, 569 sq.) has main- tained that deacons can be validly delegated by the bishop to administer extreme unction, appealing in support of his view to certain cases in which they were authorized in the absence of a priest to reconcile ilying penitents and give them the Viaticum. But in none of these cases is extreme unction once mentioned or re- ferred to, and one may not gratuitously assume that the permission given extended to this sacrament, all the more so as there is not a particle of evidence from any other source to support the assumption. The Carmelite Thomas Waldensis (d. 1430) inferred from the passage of Innocent I [see above, under III (C), (2), (b)] that, in case of necessity when no priest could be got, a layman or woman might validly anoint (Doc- trinale Antiq. Fidei, II, clxiii, 3), and quite recently Boudinhon (Revue Cath. des Eglises, July, 1905, p. 401 sq.) has defended the same view and improved upon it by allowing the sick person to administer the sacrament to himself or herself. This opinion, how- ever, seems to be clearly excluded by the definition of the Council of Trent that the priest alone is the "proper" minister of extreme unction. The word proper cannot be taken as equivalent merely to ordi- nary, and can only mean " Divinely authorized ". And as to the unction of themselves or others by lay per- sons wdth the consecrated oil, it is clear that Pope Innocent, while sanctioning the pious practice, could not have supposetl it to be efficacious in the same way as the unction by a priest or bishop, to whom alone in his view the administration of the Jacoliean rite be- longed. This lay unction was merely what we call to- day a sacramental. Clericatus (Decisiones de Extr. Unct., decis. Ixxv) has held that a sick priest in case of necessity can validly administer extreme unction to himself; but he has no argument of any weight to ofTer for tfiis opinion, which is opposed to all sacramental analogy (outside the case of the Eucharist) and to a decision of the Congregation of Propaganda issued 23 March, 1844. These several singular opinions are re- jected with practical unanimity by theologians, and tiie doctrine is maintained that the priests of the Church, and they alone, can validly confer extreme unction.

(2) The use of the plural in St. James — "the priests of the Church" — does not imply that several priests are required for the valid administration of the sacra- ment. Writing, as we may suppose, to Clu-istian com- munities in each of which there was a numl)cr of priests, and where several, if it seemed well, could easily be summoned, it was natural for the Apostle to use the plural without intending to lay do\^^l as a mat- ter of necessity that several should actually be called in. The expression used is merely a popular and familiar wajf of saying: "Let the sick man call for priestly ministrations", just as one might say, "Let him call in the doctors", meaning, "Let him procure medical aid ". The plural in either case suggests at the very most the desirability, if the circumstances per- mit, of calling in more than one priest or doctor, but does not exclude, as is obvious, the services of only one, if only one is available, or if for a variety of possi- ble reasons it is better that only one should be sum- moned. As is evident from several of the witnesses quoted above (III), not only in the West but in the East the unction was often administered in the early