This is Thomism

Come see, hear, and read this year's St. Thomas Day lecture from the California campus, “Recovering the Substance of Eucharistic Doctrine,” by Dr. Joshua Hochschild @MSMU https://t.co/B0XJ7hsgoP pic.twitter.com/PpArunIWDJ

— ThomasAquinasCollege (@TACollege) March 26, 2024

The Secret History of Transubstantiation: Pulling Back The Veil On The Eucharist by Fr Christian Kappes and William Albrecht

NLM

The Bishop's Burden

A really important book about the Catholic REform! #books #CatholicHistory https://t.co/R1wytR604c

— Ulrich L. Lehner (@ulrichlehner) November 24, 2020

My book has finally been released! It's still listed as pre-order some places, but the publisher's distributor is already sending out copies (and hopefully I'll get my hands on mine soon!) You or your library can get one here: https://t.co/UMO7b1YY9E

— Dr Celeste McNamara (@c_i_mcnamara) November 20, 2020

A Latin Perspective

First Things: Go to the Altar by Jane Stannus

The cassocked one answered seriously, “A priest is one who primarily offers sacrifice.”

I'll have to see if there are any dogmatic statements by Latin churches before Trent. From the Concil of Trent, Session XXIII:

CHAPTER I.
On the institution of the Priesthood of the New Law.
Sacrifice and priesthood are, by the ordinance of God, in such wise conjoined, as that both have existed in every law. Whereas, therefore, in the New Testament, the Catholic Church has received, from the institution of Christ, the holy visible sacrifice of the Eucharist; it must needs also be confessed, that there is, in that Church, a new, visible, and external priesthood, into which the old has been translated. And the sacred Scriptures show, and the tradition of the Catholic Church has always taught, that this priesthood was instituted by the same Lord our Saviour, and that to the apostles, and their successors in the priesthood, was the power delivered of consecrating, offering, and administering His Body and Blood, as also of forgiving and of retaining sins. 

 Only now do I understand the implications of what my friend said many years ago, regarding the confusion that arises from having the same word translate  ἱερεύς and  πρεσβύτερος.


1 Peter 2:9 in Greek and Latin (Nova Vulgata).
Priest: sacerdos. Priesthood: sacerdotium.



It is standard for the same word to be used for both Greek terms in English and in Latin.
I don't know when the Latin sacerdos first began to be used to translate for the Greek hiereus and prebyteros. Is this true of all of the languages (especially European) in use in the patriarchate of Rome? It is the case that the English word priest is derived from the Latin presbyter, a borrowing by Jerome from presbyteros. Somewhere along the line, ecclesiastical Latin came to prefer sacerdos over Jerome's presbyter? Even though this goes against its normative translation of Holy Scripture?

wiktionary

wikipedia

From Google:

Origin

And a related blog post by "Hadley Rectory": The Etymology of English "Priest" 

So for these languages (and French, but not necessarily the other Romance languages?) that the word used to translated presybter/presbyteros (and referring to that Holy Order) was also used to translate hiereus, rather than the word for hiereus being used to translate presbyteros as in Latin.

Denzinger (in Latin)

Let us continue with the First Things essay:

“Yes, He offered Himself for us on Calvary nearly two thousand years ago. However, in order for us to come into contact with the merits of His sacrifice, the priest renews it in an unbloody way each day.”

Merit. What Christ merited in His sacrifice are the benefits which are given to us by God. A Tridentine view, derived from Aquinas? (How dominant was this opinion about Christ's merits among the schoolmen?) Does merit imply some sort of exchange or return? Not necessarily but it does entail God giving something on condition of some requirement being satisfied. Can Latin "merit" be harmonized with the soteriology of the early Church? In a somewhat roundabout way, a way that needlessly complicates our understanding of the Divine Agape.

Writing for Rorate Caeli on March 24, Father Richard Cipolla suggested that Catholics’ greatest anxiety at this time of locked churches isn’t missing Mass per se, but rather missing an opportunity to receive Communion, overlooking, he fears, the true nature and importance of the Mass itself. This time of waiting and deprivation offers an excellent opportunity to consider the enormous significance of each Mass—with or without communion of the faithful.

Why is the Mass so important? Well, quite simply, the Mass is the sum and substance of our religion. It is the jewel that blazes at the very heart of Christianity, the unbloody renewal of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, carried out continuously in every time and place until the end of the world. It is the heart of our Christian lives, for to be a Christian, as one of the greatest missionaries of the 20^th century said, is to be one “who offers himself as a victim on the altar with Our Lord.”

To assist at Mass is not merely to attend a commemoration or a memorial of an event that happened long ago. The holy sacrifice is an action that happens now, in the present. The priest, acting in persona Christi, approaches the altar—not a table, for this event is not reducible to a meal—to perform the sacrifice, accomplished in consecrating the bread and wine. When the priest pronounces the words of consecration, Saint Gregory Nazianzus tells us, he “sunders with unbloody cut the Body and the Blood of the Lord, using his voice as a sword.” The faithful assisting at Mass unite their hearts to the priest and unite their lives and sufferings to the Victim, that all may be offered to God together.

Renewal? Is that the same as "repeated"? I think Latins in general prefer a word like "re-presented." It is clear that she does not mean repeated from the second and third paragraph. As for "offering it up," how far does this go back in popular Latin piety?

Can the Mass be properly and efficaciously accomplished in the absence of the faithful? A group of progressives recently argued on blog Pray Tell that it cannot. Questioning the theological basis for Mass without a congregation, they claim that the Second Vatican Council changed the liturgy into a communal and public action of the baptized, which the priest can’t accomplish without them.

But they’re wrong. Vatican II said nothing about private Masses. Rather, we ought to look to Session 22 of the Council of Trent. As we consider the locked doors of our churches in this time of crisis, we can take comfort from one fact: Christ is both priest and sacrifice, and therefore a valid Mass is always efficacious, meaning that it always accomplishes the ends for which it is offered. Its efficacy is not determined by the presence of the faithful; the sacrifice of the Mass, Ott tells us, is the sacrifice of the Church, and in that sense is never “private.” Nor are the faithful needed to offer the sacrifice since it is Christ Himself who offers it through His priest. 

The efficacy of the Mass was so beautifully explained to me by the priest who kindly permitted me to publish the story about the construction worker that it’s worth reproducing his words here:
“The holy Mass,” he said, “is the supreme act of religion that renders to God what is due to Him: adoration, thanksgiving, and propitiation for sin, after which we can then present to Him our petitions.

“Our Lord Jesus Christ perpetuates this supreme act Himself throughout the ages, through the ministry of His priests upon our holy altars. He abases Himself in perfect adoration before the Godhead, acknowledging our utter dependence upon Him. The most perfect praise of the excellence of God above all wells up from His Sacred Heart.

“He offers nothing less than His own Sacred Body and Precious Blood, united to His Soul and Divinity, as the perfect gift of thanksgiving in the Eucharist… by which we render to God fitting and perfect gratitude for all of His goodness and mercy towards us.

“He likewise perpetuates the offering of His Sacred Body and Precious Blood in propitiation for sin. In and through the same sacrifice, Jesus presents our petitions (for we utterly depend on Him for all things)…

Has the act of sacrifice been separated from the Sacrament and its reception by the faithful, so that without the latter, it doesn't matter as it is the former that is more important?

The question is, in sacrifice do we "give" anything to God in thanksgiving, other than the thanksgiving?

Why No Teleconfession?

First Things: Why We Can’t Confess Over Zoom by Dominic M. Langevin, O.P.

The sacrament of penance can be described in its signification and effects as a conversation. The sacrament’s goal is to forgive serious postbaptismal sin so that we are restored to friendly and familial conversation with God and the Church. That conversation is itself brought about by a conversation. The ceremony for the sacrament of penance basically involves a discussion between two persons. The penitent confesses to the priest his sorrow for individual past sins, promises to do a satisfactory work, and asks for forgiveness. The priest-confessor assigns a satisfactory work and absolves the penitent, perfecting him in grace. Herein, the priest acts in persona Christi.

Unlike most other sacraments, an inanimate physical object is not needed. There is just a conversation. Some medieval understandings of penance placed the sacramental action exclusively in either the priest-confessor or the penitent. St. Thomas Aquinas clarified that both persons have an essential sacramental role. The Council of Trent confirmed this understanding. One could call the sacrament a “concelebration” between penitent and priest. The sacramental rite involves four specific acts: the penitent’s contrition, confession, and satisfaction, and the priest’s absolution. It is not a monologue, but a dialogue.

This salvific conversation cannot occur through electronic means because the sacrament of penance requires both joint physical presence and live, interpersonal action between the penitent and priest-confessor. The conditions for a full, natural, human conversation must exist.

Real Presence? Or Transubstantiation?

At the L.A. Religious Congress...

The Open Question of Church Polity and Governance: Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II

Theology of Orders

Sandro Magister: The Other Side of the McCarrick Case. The Vatican Supreme Court Against Trials Without Guarantees and Without Theology

Bishop Giuseppe Sciacca has written something on whether a bishop can be removed from the "clerical state": Note sulla dimissione del vescovo dallo stato clericale

From Magister's article

In the meantime, however, a prominent representative of the Vatican supreme court - very close to Benedict XVI but not devoid of criticism toward him - has raised very serious objections against the exclusion from the clerical state of the former cardinal archbishop of Washington, not for the reasons that led to this condemnation - which remain very grave, and this is a matter of sexual abuse committed over decades - but because of the dubious canonical and ecclesiological legitimacy, and in any case of the “overwhelming inadvisability,” of the reduction of a bishop to the lay state.

Raising the objections is the bishop Giuseppe Sciacca (in the photo), secretary of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, in the essay that opens the latest issue of “Jus - On Line,” the scholarly journal of legal studies of the faculty of jurisprudence of the Catholic University of Milan:

The fundamental objection from which Sciacca sets out is that the “clerical state” is strictly connected to the sacred order. While the former is typically used to indicate an essentially juridical condition, of belonging to a group, to a category, the latter is a sacrament which impresses on those who receive it an indelible, ontological character, like baptism and confirmation. So much so that even if a sacred minister were forbidden the exercise of sacramental acts, such as for example the celebration of Mass, such acts would still remain valid even if they were performed in contempt of the ban.

But that’s just it, Sciacca points out, especially for bishops “the discordance between ontological status and legal status induced by this situation is a manifest symptom of a pathology.”

In the Church, the awareness of this “pathology” has grown above all thanks to Vatican Council II, which powerfully brought to light the sacramentality of episcopal ordination - which confers the fullness of the sacrament of orders - and therefore also the theological and sacramental root of the bishop's power of jurisdiction. One indication of this heightened awareness is in the new postconciliar code of canon law, which in canon 290 prescribes that dismissal from the clerical state can be granted “to deacons only for grave reasons” and “to priests only for the gravest of reasons,” without mentioning bishops.

It is the relationship between the order of presbyterate and the order of episcopate that continues to interest me. Are there alternative explanations of the relationship between jurisdiction and sacramental power?

The Theotokos Is a Florentine Latin Traditionalist?

Who would have known?

Crisis Magazine: Our Lady of Good Success Speaks To Us Today by Jonathan B. Coe

On December 8, 1634, the archangels, Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael appeared to Mariana with the Queen of Heaven, and Gabriel was carrying a Ciborium filled with hosts. Our Lady then predicted events over two hundred years into the future for the reign of Pius IX:

His pontifical infallibility will be declared a dogma of the Faith by the same Pope chosen to proclaim the dogma of the Mystery of My Immaculate Conception. He will be imprisoned in the Vatican by the unjust usurpation of the Pontifical States through the iniquity, envy and avarice of an earthly monarchy.

Now do the original writings say this, or have there been some edits/interpolations made by the editor (who is associated with TFP)? Or is this merely a statement of fact, without implying approval of such? (And one can maintain that the appropriation of the papal states was an unjust act without sanctioning the acquisition or maintenance of dominion over those states in the first place.)

What if?

Could the split of the Protestants have been prevented if the Latins had first reconciled with the Eastern Chalcedonian Christians ealier, and instead of elevating scholastic theological opinion as dogma at Trent, written the decrees differently?

Then we wouldn't have a problem about bishops endorsing practically unconditional intercommunion with Protestants.

The Intercommunion Proposal of the German Bishops is Unbiblical by Brian Kranick

How useful for a discussion with the Orthodox?

Latin Sacramental Theology

Were there any alternative explanations by the schoolmen for the Real Presence in the Sacred Species, other than that offered by St. Thomas? Or was his the "standard" explanation?

Is it possible to formulate an explanation of the Real Presence without relying on Aristotle's metaphysics, and at the same time acknowledging that the Sacred Species is a sign (sacramentum) and a symbol, but not a symbol that refers to something else completely apart from itself? The Sacred Species conveys or signifies the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, localizes and realizes this Presence. Can the Real Presence be explained through participation? It is more than the causal presence of Christ in the natural matter or artifact of bread, nor is it the accidental conjunction of two different things.

Can the Real Presence be explained by other than an analogue to the Hypostatic Union?

It does not seem that if bread is not a substantial unity but an accidental unity that this would pose a problem for a "Aristotelian" explanation -- we would hold that the Real Presence is in all of the parts of bread which are substances.

The Hidden Christians

Sandro Magister: The "Hidden Christians" of Japan. Too Inconvenient for This Pontificate

CWR Dispatch: The Catholic Church recognizes most of the world’s ‘civil marriages’ by Edward N. Peters

Catholics should not be misled by thinking that “civil marriage” is not usually real marriage or think that any approval of “same-sex marriage” is consistent with Church teaching—because it isn’t.

(original)

More on Latin Silence During the Anaphora

CWR: Eamon Duffy’s “Reformation Divided” revises assumptions, offers deep historical insights by Michael B. Kelly

Among the very significant contributions in Reformation Divided are the three chapters devoted to Thomas More, who has suffered from much hagiographical treatment, both good and ill.

The Present Crisis in the Patriarchate of Rome

It is probably not correct to trace it as a consequence of ecclesial trends prior to and culminating in the Council of Trent, much less to intellectual trends alone, but one must also take into consideration the development of the modern nation-state (with its roots in the centralization of power by nationalist kings) and how the Church responded accordingly.

It's not just neo-scholasticism or Tridentine Roman Catholicism that is the problem, though they do have a major effect on the Church's ability to evangelize.

John O'Malley on the Council of Trent

Could a liberal Jesuit (not necessarily Fr. O'Malley) conceptualize and theologize without a Vatican I conception of the papacy (and its relation to Sacred Tradition) even though he may dissent from certain papal teachings? After all, to what does he appeal, if not some version of Sacred Tradition? Even if its his own opinion masquerading as Sacred Tradition.

A Taxonomy of Latin Catholics

Christian Order: On Doctrinal and Moral Disorders Abiding in the Church
Father John A. Hardon's 1990 Commentaries on the “Revised Draft” of the Catholic Catechism

Part 2

Was Fr. Hardon a Latin traditionalist? Perhaps not liturgically, as the author of the above recognizes. (I am not sure if Fr. Hardon had a published opinion on the EF.) But theologically, he was conservative and probably upheld some form of neo-scholasticism in addition to Thomism. As one can see, he criticizes certain points of the CCC based on the Council of Trent (accepted by Fr. Hardon as an ecumenical council) -- the same sort of mindset exhibited by Latin traditionalists which would criticize the judgment that the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, lacking an Institution Narrative, is invalid.

What should we call the position held by Fr. Hardon, Latin traditionalists, and probably many "conservative" Latin Catholics as well? Tridentine Latin Christianity?

"They like our liturgy"

... but they don't like our theology. Latin traditionalists in Sacramento regarding the Byzantine tradition -- what I heard from an Byzantine Catholic acquaintance who has talked with Latin traditionalists who visit his church.