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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
CAN LAYMEN ANOINT WITH OIL?
Q: My wife and I recently told our charismatic prayer group that we should not be anointing any person with oil when we pray with them, citing the recent Instruction on Collaboration. Is our interpretation correct? Do we need our bishop's approval to tell the prayer group to stop anointing? What Church documents state that only a priest may anoint with out?
A: I discussed this with a canon lawyer, and we agreed that your interpretation is correct. You do not need your bishop's permission to bring a particular legislative text to the attention of your prayer group; on the other hand, members of the prayer group certainly have a right to go to the diocese and ask if your interpretation of the document is correct.
Canon 1003 §1 of the Code of Canon Law states: "Every priest, and only a priest, validly administers the anointing of the sick." The fact that only priests can give the anointing of the sick was infallibly defined at the Council of Trent (Canons Concerning Extreme Unction 4).
While it is impossible for anyone but a priest to administer the sacrament of holy anointing validly, this does not in principle rule out the possibility of non-priests, including laity, administering non-sacramental anointings. In principle, it is possible for non-priests to anoint people with oil and ask God to bless or heal the person, while acknowledging that this is not a sacramental anointing and that God has not promised to use this anointing the way he has promised to use the sacrament of anointing.
However, such anointings would run a risk of confusing people: (1) They might think that this was a sacramental anointing; (2) they might start relying on this easier-to-obtain anointing rather than on the sacrament; and (3) they might start using this as a way of "getting around" the cautions and regulations the Church naturally has had to set up to protect the sacrament of holy anointing, just as it has to protect all the sacraments.
To avoid these problems, the Church might prohibit non-sacramental anointings, just as it might prohibit a near-imitation of any sacrament. Suppose people were taking catechumens and building them into a state of prayerful expectancy and then pouring water on them and saying, "May the Lord regenerate you and give you new life and forgiveness of sins and open unto you the gates of heaven, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This would be a close imitation of baptism, and grave problems would result if it were not made absolutely clear to the catechumens that this is not the sacrament of baptism, that God has not promised to use this ritual to give them any of the blessings of baptism, that they are required to go ahead and seek baptism after this, and that this cannot be used as a way of avoiding baptism or the Church's regulations concerning it. The Church might well choose to prohibit all such non-sacramental water rituals.
In our day, especially in charismatic circles, there are many people who encourage prayerful expectancy in those who seek healing and then perform a non-sacramental anointing on them. Because of the problems this widespread practice may cause, the Church now has prohibited non-sacramental anointings. The November, 1997 Instruction on Collaboration states:
"The non-ordained faithful particularly assist the sick by being with them in difficult moments, encouraging them to receive the sacraments of penance and the anointing of the sick, by helping them to have the disposition to make a good individual confession as well as to prepare them to receive the anointing of the sick. In using sacramentals, the non-ordained faithful should ensure that these are in no way regarded as sacraments whose administration is proper and exclusive to the bishop and to the priest. Since they are not priests, in no instance may the non-ordained perform anointings either with the oil of the sick or any other oil" (Instruction, "Practical Provisions," art. 9 §1).
This does not say simply that the laity cannot perform the sacrament of holy anointing. It says that they may "in no instance . . . perform anointings, either with the oil of the sick [used in the sacrament of holy anointing] or any other oil." The purpose of this is to protect the sacrament of holy anointing from being confused with these other anointings. Since there is the danger of confusion in our age (which is pretty confused, anyway), it is simpler to just prohibit non-sacramental anointings rather than run the risks of people neglecting the sacrament Christ did institute for this purpose and putting their trust in a different ritual.
Note that the document also stresses that when administering sacramentals, the laity must ensure that the sick realize that these are not sacraments. That applies, of course, to sacramentals approved by the Church. When it comes to prayer with anointing, which is not an approved sacramental, the laity are prohibited from doing it altogether. They may perform only those sacramentals that the Church has approved for them to perform.
James Akin
Q: Wouldn't Jesus have to have been sinful since he had a human nature just like ours? Sin is natural for us, so it must have been natural for him. The difference is he didn't obey his sinful nature.
A: Be careful here. One of the blunders many people make is gnosticism (which believes, among other things, that the spiritual and physical are necessarily opposed). This is not so. "Nature" is not corrupt. Corruption is corrupt. Sin is precisely what is contrary to the nature that God calls "good" in the book of Genesis. It is damage to nature, not nature itself, that constitutes sin. Thus, sin (which we all inherit in Adam) is based on a warping and a deformation of our nature. It is never natural for us. Thus Jesus, the perfect man, had a perfect human nature, one that did not include sin.
Mark P. Shea
Q: Is it really all that significant that Jesus chose only men to be apostles? Wasn't that really just a reflection of the patriarchal values of the culture he lived in-a culture in which women priests would have been inconceivable?
A: Allow me to stand your question on its head: Why do you suppose that priestesses were "inconceivable" in contemporary Jewish culture when they were common in other ancient Near Eastern cultures? Why would the people to whom God revealed himself and entrusted with his divine revelation and precepts have had less understanding than their neighbors on this point? Many other aspects of Jewish faith and practice had parallels in ancient Near Eastern cultures: temples, altars, sacrifices, ceremonial washings, ark-vessels, and so forth. Where the religious practices of that day and age were acceptable to God-either because they were grounded in natural law or at least because they were neutral cultural conventions-God allowed them to be incorporated into the religion of his people. Where the culturally accepted practices of that milieu were not allowed to take root in Judaism, we must recognize that God corrected the errors and distortions introduced by fallible human beings.
Steven D. Greydanus
Q: Is the Vatican really a country?
A: Yes. The history of the Vatican City State is colorful, controversial, and complex. The world's smallest country, at just 109 acres, it has a population of roughly one thousand, with citizenship being largely restricted to those employed by the Vatican. It operates, among other things, a mint, a post office, an astronomical observatory, and a world-class radio station, and it administers a legal system, although in criminal matters (such as the assassination attempt against the pope) Italian courts have jurisdiction. The Vatican uses the Italian lira as its currency. Certain other properties, such as the pope's summer residence, Castle Gandolfo, located outside of Rome, have extraterritorial status similar to that enjoyed by embassies. The Vatican enters into diplomatic relations with other sovereign states, but remains strictly neutral in political matters. The Vatican's territorial independence is guaranteed by Italy in accord with the Lateran Treaty signed in 1929 and revised in 1985. The famous white and yellow flag featuring the papal tiara and the crossed keys, commonly taken as the pope's flag, is actually the flag of the Vatican City State.
Edward N. Peters
Q: At my parish the wine is being consecrated in a pitcher that is on the altar. Is this permissible, or must it be poured into chalices before it is consecrated?
A: It can't all be consecrated while it is in a pitcher, for the rubrics specify that at the beginning of the liturgy of the eucharist, "the deacon (or the priest) pours wine and a little water into the chalice..." Except for the wine in the chalice, any additional wine is supposed to be consecrated in flagons or pitchers.
The document that deals with this question for dioceses in the United States is called This Holy and Living Sacrifice (HLS). It was written by the U.S. bishops and was approved by the Holy See in 1984.
The document states that before Mass, "the wine should be placed in flagons or pitchers of careful design and quality as befits the celebration of the Eucharistic mystery...The vessels should be sturdy, made of materials which are solid and nonabsorbent. Preference is always to be given to materials that do not break easily or become unusable. Before being used, vessels for the celebration must be blessed by the bishop or priest according to the Rite of Blessing of a Chalice and Paten" (HLS 40).
During Mass itself, the wine may be consecrated while it is in the flagons or pitchers. It is then poured into chalices during the fraction rite: "When the altar is prepared after the general intercessions, the wine may be brought forward in one chalice or, when the assembly is very large, one chalice and as many flagons as are necessary. Only one chalice (and the requisite number of flagons) and one large paten, ciborium, or similar vessel should be on the altar during the rites of preparation up to and including the rite of the fraction, when other empty chalices and ciboria may be brought up to the altar. At that time the consecrated bread is placed in several ciboria and the consecrated wine is poured into enough chalices for use in the Rite of Communion" (HLS 42).
Q: Our parish church is about to undergo "renovation." We've had "experts" come to the parish to "explain" to us that all the changes are mandated by a document called Environment and Art in Catholic Worship. Do we have to follow this document?
A: No, because it has no official force, at least on a national level. (It is possible that an individual bishop may declare it to be the controlling document in his own diocese.) Environment and Art in Catholic Worship was prepared for the bishops' committee on the liturgy. It passed a vote in that committee but never was submitted to the entire body of bishops for their vote, presumably because its backers knew that the majority would turn it down. It then proceeded into samizdat publication. Some versions come not just with text but with photographs purportedly showing the kinds of renovations intended by the text.
As architecturally misguided as the text may be-everything is in terms of modernist church architecture, none in classical-the photographs are worse. An especially amusing one shows a "presider's chair," seemingly fashioned out of concrete, so pretentious that a Roman emperor could have used it. Such a chair would tend to focus the congregation's attention during Mass on the priest as a man, not on the sacred action at the altar-precisely the opposite of what such "renovations" are supposed to accomplish. The sorriest thing about the photographs (and by inference the text) is that the images look so dated, inevitably identified with 1960s architecture. There is no sense of timelessness. It would be hard to imagine any of the illustrated churches seeming anything but passe to worshipers at the turn of the millennium.
Karl Keating
Q: I was reading that original sin is the deprivation of sanctifying grace, not just the lack of sanctifying grace. What is the difference?
A: To lack something is to simply not have that thing; to be deprived of something is to have suffered the loss of that thing. For example, as a human being, I naturally lack wings. I have not been deprived of wings, since wings are not part of human nature. Conversely, a bird lacks arms, but is not deprived of them, because arms are not part of avian nature. If I had been born without arms, I would have been deprived of them by a birth defect, for they are part of human nature, just as a bird born without wings would be deprived of and not merely lack wings.
When God created man, he could have created him in what is called the state of pure nature, in which he did not have the supernatural endowment of sanctifying grace. Had the human race persisted in that state, children would be born lacking sanctifying grace, but not deprived of it. Instead, God chose to create man in what is called the state of elevated nature, in which our first parents were endowed with sanctifying grace as a gift not just to them but to their posterity. Unfortunately, they lost this gift for themselves and for us, and so now we are born deprived of sanctifying grace. This has consequences. While original sin itself is the deprivation of sanctifying grace, it also carries with it a fallen and corrupt nature, which is the stain of original sin.
To give a comparison, suppose God created man in an elevated state in which we were endowed not only with the arms and legs that are proper to our nature, but also with an added gift of wings. Suppose then that Adam and Eve did something that not only cost them their own power of flight, but also caused their offspring to be born with stubby, non-functional wings. This would cause problems for human nature, and even if God later restored wings to individual believers as an act of grace, we still could suffer problems from the genetic damage that had cost us our flight in the first place.
James Akin |
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