The Sacramental Character and Liturgy

THE SACRAMENTAL CHARACTER AND LITURGY I N the first chapter of the schema on the liturgy, the Second Vatican Council has provided for an intensification of liturgical thought in the life of the Church in the decades and centuries to come.1 Part II of the first chapter approved by the Council (though not yet solemnly and definitively ) concerns the liturgical formation of the clergy and the people. The liturgy is to be counted among the major disciplines in the seminary curriculum and is to be studied theologically and historically, as well as from spiritual, pastoral, and juridical points of view. Part IV gives directions for promotion of liturgical life in the dioceses and parishes of the world. The Second Vatican Council has thus set before theologians a challenge for the future. Sacramental theologians in particular must step back from their work, view the sacraments in the context of the whole liturgy, and try to develop a theology which embraces not only the sacraments in their essential matter and form but the whole of the liturgy-the Mass, sacraments , sacramentals, and divine Office. This means finding new principles of greater universality, or new insights into the breadth of familiar principles, in order to have a truly unified theology of the liturgy. Without new principles or new insights into old principles, theology of the liturgy will remain an accidental unity composed of a theology of the sacraments, a theology of sacramentals, and a theology of the divine Office. Needed today and for the future is a theology of the Christian mysteries as the Fathers of the Church understood the term-the whole of the liturgy joining God and man in worship through Christ. '-A summary of the first chapter on the liturgy appeared in L'Osservatore Romano , December 8, 196~, " I prineipi generali della riforma liturgica approvati dal Concilio." A complete translation of this article is available in Worship, XXXVIl (1963), 153-64 under the title " The Approved Chapter One." The points mentioned in text above can be found in this issue of Worship, pp. 155, 157, 163. 885 386 CHRISTOPHER KIESLING The purpose of this article is to look at the sacramental characters in the broader context of the liturgy as a whole. Manuals of theology, lectures on theology, and even the commentators on St. Thomas' Summa Theologiae often give the impression that the sacramental characters are ordered solely to the essential rites (the matter and form) of the sacraments as causes of grace.2 This impression is created chiefly by the examples to illustrate the function of the various characters: the character of baptism enables the Christian to receive the other sacraments, the other two characters, and sacramental grace; the sacerdotal character gives the power to consecrate, to absolve from sin, and to administer the sacraments. The handling of the character of confirmation by some theologians heightens this impression that the characters are ordered to the sacraments in a strict sense as causes of grace.3 Despite what seems (to me at least) strong evidence that St. Thomas regarded the character of confirmation as ordered actively to public witness and defense of the faith, some theologians , who regard themselves as disciples of Thomas, are loath to admit that ordination of the character. Instead, they attribute the witness and defense of the faith directly to grace, special grace, which is received through the special power or character of confirmation. The reason for this approach seems • As an example of this, see Emmanuel Doronzo, 0. M. I., De sacramentis in genere (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1946), pp. !'l96-300, 313-315, where the author treats of the character as a potency and as seated in the practical intellect; significantly the author frequently cites Salamanticenses and Gonet. See also Bernard Durst, 0. S. B., "De Characteribus sacramentalibus," Xenia Thomistica, II (19!'l5), 541-81. A basis for this judgment is found in St. Thomas. He raises the objection that the sacraments of the Old Law did not confer a character on the soul; therefore, there is no need for the sacraments of the New Law to do so. He answers: "Sacramenta veteris legis non habebant in se spiritualem virtutem ad aliquem spiritualem efl'ectum...