Can a priest ordain another priest? From the bulls of the fifteenth century to today's lies of Alessandro Minutella, self-proclaimed successor of Benedict XVI

CAN A PRIEST ORDAIN ANOTHER PRIEST? FROM THE BUBBLES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT BALE OF ALESSANDRO MINUTELLA, SELF-PROCLAIMED SUCCESSOR OF BENEDICT XVI

And here one wonders why Erasmus of Rotterdam, to write his own In praise of madness, had to entrust the word to Madness, letting her speak firsthand about herself: at least her, in literary fiction, he knew he was crazy. Minutella no: he hides the self-assurance of two doctorates so badly spent even from himself.

— Theology and canon law —

Author
Ariel S. Levi di Gualdo

PDF print format article

There is a joker who introduces himself to the world reminding in a hammering way that he is "twice theologian", «twice doctor of theology», which is quite unusual. Precisely those priests who have achieved the highest academic degrees are aware more than anyone else - and they are aware precisely because of a real and effective high theological education - that for a priest there is no rank or title that is superior to the ministerial priesthood.

For those who didn't understand the joker in question is Alessandro Minutella, incurred excommunication automatic per schism and heresy, afterwards dismissed from the clerical state - which already says a lot about what the two doctorates have taught him to do - who today is suggesting that a presbyter could ordain other presbyters without being a bishop, that is, custodian of the fullness of the apostolic priesthood, invoking in this sense unspecified "states of necessity", as the current one would be a false Church and the reigning one a false Supreme Pontiff. Said in short words: has gathered a group of self-styled seminarians into his exotic clique and is now posing the problem of how to ordain them priests in this “state of emergency”.

Let's leave aside the suggestions of the joker, because the question it raises, prey in se, she's not stupid at all, how its extender might appear instead. Indeed, it is one of the most delicate issues in all sacramental dogmatics, which has always been the most complex and delicate sphere of the entire theological-dogmatic system. The problem is that to the right question, as we'll see, gave the wrong answer, so much so that his two doctorates were not enough for him to realize it.

So let's start with the serious question: a presbyter can ordain another without being a bishop? It would be convenient to respond with a firm no, replying that only the bishop orders, of always, discussion closed. Instead, the history of the Church is much more complex than the sorcerer's apprentices who push surreal emotional devotions can imagine.. In the late Middle Ages three papal bulls actually authorized abbots — simple presbyters, not bishops — to ordain their own monks. In 1489 Innocent VIII, with bubble It explains your devotion, granted the Cistercian abbot of Cîteaux and the four abbots of the daughter houses the power to ordain subdeacons and deacons, without mention of presbyters: However, some scholars suspect that the printed copy of this bull is not faithful to the original, since a direct inspection of the Vatican Archives would not have found even mention of the diaconate in the authentic text preserved. A century earlier, In the 1400, Boniface IX had granted the same privilege to the abbot of the English monastery of Saint Osyth, nell’Essex, with bubble Sacred religion, unless revoked on 6 February 1403 with bubble Apostolic See, under the furious protests of the local bishop, that he had reason to complain about that interference in his territory, and he was right to do so. In 1427 Martin V granted a similar privilege to the Cistercian abbot of Altzella, in Saxony, with bubble Leading to you.

These privileges did not arise from the work of some lightning striker who declared the reigning pontiff invalid as well as the Sacraments and Holy Masses celebrated by priests from all over the world in communion with him, but from very concrete practical and political reasons. The great Cistercian abbeys such as Cîteaux enjoyed “exemption” by virtue of which they depended directly on the Apostolic See, not by the local bishop. Sending monks to the diocesan bishop for ordination - or worse, having him come to the abbey - created jurisdictional tensions that the Pontiffs preferred to avoid, also because the abbot would have been forced to give up his place to the bishop with all the liturgical rights of precedence. Then there was a simpler and less complex factor than one might believe: in the fifteenth century, traveling meant exposing oneself to wars, epidemic, bad roads, as well as often organized and violent banditry, capable of killing even for a meager loot. Allowing the abbot to ordain his monks at home guaranteed the continuity of liturgical life without risking human lives on the streets. And in the specific case of Boniface IX, there is a political fact that explains his generosity: he reigned at the height of the Western Schism, started in 1378 with the double contested election that pitted Urban VI against Clement VII and was destined to last until 1417, with multiple rival Popes in office at the same time. Granting extraordinary privileges to faithful monasteries was also a way to ensure their loyalty in a moment of maximum fragility of papal authority. Facts, not legends, with their reasons: Church history does indeed record moments in which a non-bishop has validly ordained priests, by written privilege and under specific circumstances; it was not a hastily closed anomaly: the Cistercian privilege was still in use at least until the early seventeenth century.

But here's the thing about the joker they did not teach to see his two doctorates: those were never bottom-up initiatives, but positive concessions from the Roman Pontiff: explicit legal acts, writings, dated and motivated towards named subjects and in named circumstances, not presumptive or inferred faculties by custom. The Abbot of Cîteaux did not wake up one morning convinced that he was in a "state of necessity" and did not take up the pontifical on his own initiative and begin to ordain his monks as presbyters: he waited for Rome to give him permission in writing. It's a difference that seems small but it's everything: the exception, when it existed, it has always descended from top to bottom, never rises from bottom to top through self-attribution of the individual. A presbyter who sinks into the complex of the new Athanasius of Alexandria, who then decides that he is in a state of need and acts motu proprio consequently it is not claiming a historically documented exception: he's doing something else, that those bubbles — with their precise reasons, today finally made explicit - they do not justify in any way.

It remains open today among theologians the most technical question on this point: on a doctrinal level, the Second Vatican Council definitively closed the question of whether the episcopate was a sacramental degree in itself or a simple jurisdictional dignity added to the priesthood. The magisterium establishes that episcopal consecration confers "the fullness of the Sacrament of Orders" (The light n. 21) and that this fullness - not a simple addition of governing power - is what enables one to transmit the Order to others. The current Code of Canon Law translates it into a positive norm: «The minister of sacred ordination is the consecrated Bishop» (can. 1012). But she remains alive, between canonists and theologians, the theory of bound power: according to this reading, the power to ordain would already be radically present in the priest from his presbyteral ordination, ma “legato”, that is, rendered inexercisable until dissolution occurs by pontifical will, exactly as already happens for Confirmation, which current law ordinarily reserves to the bishop but which any presbyter can validly administer in circumstances determined by the law itself or by delegation from the bishop. On this specific point I have changed emphasis compared to the study I did on the diaconate fifteen years ago (cf.. who), where I left the question of validity more open and disturbing. Since then I have developed the belief that I still hold today: the theory of power tied up explains better both the sacramental validity and the gravity of its undue self-attribution. On this specific point, so, there is no dogmatic definition that fundamentally excludes any future pontifical disposition: current certainty, full and non-controversial, it concerns only the impossibility that a presbyter can attribute that power to himself, not the absolute impossibility that the Supreme Pontiff, in the future, may still untie it for others.

All the functions of the bishop they can also be exercised by a presbyter not endowed with the fullness of the apostolic priesthood: how many apostolic vicars govern ecclesiastical districts in mission lands with all the prerogatives of a diocesan ordinary? Likewise the various abbots of the historic territorial abbeys with attached parishes dependent on their jurisdiction, they too do not have the episcopal character. Even the writer is not a bishop, but making use of the foreseen canonical faculties granted to a presbyter he administered the Sacrament of Confirmation to a dying man who, in addition to receiving the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, he expressed the desire to also be confirmed, exercising in that case an extraordinary faculty recognized by law very right. So if we think about it carefully, the only power that cannot currently be delegated is the sacred ordination of deacons and priests, reserved exclusively for the bishop. Even though it too was, in the past, delegated to those who did not have the episcopal character.

Who claims that the tripartite division into bishops, presbyters and deacons is a subsequent historical development and not something immediately evident in the Gospels, he's not talking nonsense, but reading the texts for what they say, even because, when we start from the Sacrament of Orders as unique but divided into three degrees, another problem arises, also the subject of legitimate theological dispute: the priesthood, established by Christ in a single solution and certainly not in three degrees, it is of divine institution, while the diaconate, created by the apostles, it is of apostolic institution. Thus the single priesthood divided into three degrees finds itself encompassing both the degree of divine institution and the degree of apostolic institution: What, this, which could be debated a lot. Referring to my study already referred to above (cf.. who), Personally, I consider the diaconal ministry to be a vocation in itself and very distinct from the priestly ministry. Especially today that the permanent diaconate, fell into disuse for a millennium during which it became just a stopover for the presbyterate, it was re-established by the Second Vatican Council.

At this point a savvy reader it could be objected that the Church is in any case moving along the edge of a belated invention. And here he is honest, before answering, voice the objection with profound intellectual honesty. Because it is a serious objection and whoever raises it has good arguments on their side. In the New Testament the terms episkopos (bishop, overseer) e the priests (senior, senior) they do not designate two distinct degrees, but the exact same figure: in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul summons the "elders" (elders, presbyteroi) of Ephesus and calls them, in the same speech, «overseers» (bishops, episcopoi) of the flock (cf.. At 20, 17.28); in the Letter to Titus the two words alternate seamlessly in the space of a few verses (cf.. Tt 1, 5.7); in the Letter to the Philippians, Paul greets "the bishops and deacons" of the community, the plural, sign that in Philippi, as elsewhere, there was not yet a single bishop at the head of the city (cf.. Fil 1, 1). But above all it is Pietro himself, designated by Christ himself as head of the College of the Apostles, to define oneself «sympresbyteros» (co-senior) - literally “compresbitero”, old like them (cf.. 1 PT 5, 1) — despite being, for unanimous Catholic doctrine, the first among the Apostles. The figure of the monarchic bishop, unique and distinct from the college of presbyters, it consolidated at the beginning of the 2nd century and found its first great witness in Ignatius of Antioch, who in his letters insists with an almost obsessive frequency on the obedience due to the bishop, just why, at the time, that authority still needed to be consolidated, it was not a peaceful fact for generations (cf.. Ignatius of Antioch, in part. Ad Smyrnaeos, Ad Magnesios).

How does Catholic theology respond to this, without pretending that the question is not legitimate? Not returning to the letter of the Gospels, but to a broader concept: that of the development of dogma under the assistance of the Holy Spirit. For Catholic doctrine, Christ did not leave his Apostles a hierarchical structure already defined in the smallest details; he entrusted them with a "germ" - the fullness of his mission - which is the Church, guided by the promised Spirit, understood and articulated over time, without betraying him. It is the same principle why the Church does not consider Revelation, ended with the death of the last Apostle, a static warehouse. The magisterium teaches that Tradition of apostolic origin "progresses" in the Church under the assistance of the Holy Spirit, not adding new truths to those already revealed once and for all, but by increasing the Church's understanding of them, century after century (God's word n. 8). In this light, the historical birth of the monarchist bishop is not an arbitrary invention imposed from outside, but the organic maturation of what was already contained, in germ, in the original apostolic mandate. One may argue that this answer, however coherent, it still remains a notable interpretative effort, a forcing, precisely, if you look at the bare letter of the New Testament, and it is reasonable to think so. But here comes the point that it is of little benefit to the excellent bi-doctor: even granting all this, even fully admitting that the tripartite division is a subsequent historical development and not an immediate fact of the Gospels, his claim does not gain a single ounce of legitimacy. Because in neither of the two readings — nor the traditional one, who sees in the episcopate the fullness he has always wanted, nor the most critical one, who sees it as a late development — the power to grant an exception has ever been in the hands of the individual presbyter. In medieval reading, that power however remained firmly in the hands of the Roman Pontiff, that he had to grant it in writing. In the most critical reading e “historicist”, that power arises from a community process, ecclesial, guided over the centuries, never from an individual self-proclamation. The most radical historical criticism of current doctrine, far from acting as an alibi for Minutella, if anything, it is the argument that most forcefully denies it: it even takes away the excuse of being able to say that the Church hides its own history.

The problem, at the bottom of, it was never theological. A presbyter excommunicated for heresy and schism can accumulate as many doctorates as he wants: what he lacks is not sacred theology, in which he lacks on levels that range between comical and crass; what he lacks is authority: the one that he first severed the day he chose to break away from communion with the Church, which is undoubtedly in a moment of crisis without historical precedent, but which precisely for this reason offers us to overcome the most fearful of tests: the great test of faith. Unfortunately, Minutella, the very possibility of passing the test was precluded, but he is twice a doctor in a state of necessity with the obsessive-compulsive complex of Athanasius of Alexandria.

But then again, we're talking about a joker who considers himself in conscience the legitimate successor of the Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, therefore madness adds madness.

And here one wonders why Erasmus of Rotterdam, to write his own In praise of madness, had to entrust the word to Madness, letting her speak firsthand about herself: at least her, in literary fiction, he knew he was crazy. Minutella no: he hides the self-assurance of two doctorates so badly spent even from himself. E, like all fragile people afflicted by a poorly concealed inferiority complex, he needs to self-attribute the culture and charisma that he doesn't have by repeating in an obsessive-compulsive way «I am twice the theologian … I am a doctor of theology twice".

From the island of Patmos, 15 September 2026

Father Ariel's latest books

book store WHO

______________________

Dear Readers, this magazine requires management costs that we have always faced only with your free offers. Those who wish to support our apostolic work can send us their contribution through the convenient and safe way PayPal by clicking below: