Annotatio CCLVIII
”Her priests have polluted the sanctuary.” — Zephaniah 3:4
Jerome applies such an exposition to this sentence:1 “The priests who serve the Eucharist, and divide the blood of the Lord to his people, act impiously in the law of Christ, thinking that the Eucharist [is made] by the imprecation of words, not by [the] life [of the priest], and that only a solemn prayer is necessary, and not the merits of the priests — of whom it is said: ‘And the priest in whom there shall be a blemish shall not approach to offer the oblation to the Lord.’” And a little after, expounding the same, he says: “The priests who give Baptism, and at the Eucharist invoke the coming of the Lord, make the oil of chrism, impose hands, instruct catechumens, constitute Levites and other priests — let them not be indignant at us thus expounding, but let them act carefully, lest they be counted of the [number of] priests who violate the holy things of the Lord.”
From these words of Jerome, the Scholastics and canonists have deduced three [errors], from the person of the opponent [that an objector might draw]: of which the first is, that the Sacrament of the Lord’s body cannot be consecrated by a wicked Priest; the second, that it is lawful for any Priest [whatever] to confect the holy chrism of confirmation, and to impose hands on those who are confirmed; the third, that it is in the power of any Priest [whatever] to confer the sacred orders. A fourth error also, besides these, Calvin the heretic gathers, in chapter eighteen of his Institution — namely, that the Eucharist is to be exhibited to the laity under both species, from that [passage] where Jerome said: “The priests divide the blood of the Lord to the peoples.”
Gratian, in the Collectanea of the decrees, Cause 1, question 1, says that Jerome, in the first proposition, wished to signify that the life and merits of the Priest are necessary — not indeed to the consecration, but to the effect of the consecration. For although an impure and unworthy priest, by the virtue of the divine word, may complete the consecration of the sacrament most perfectly, yet he does not obtain the grace and virtue of the consecration, but rather prepares for himself judgment and condemnation; and in this manner also he admonishes that it is to be understood, that the Roman Pontiff Gelasius ### ANNOTATIO CCLVIII (concluded)
“Her priests have polluted the sanctuary.” — Zephaniah 3:4
Gelasius wrote concerning this matter to Elpidius, saying: “For the invoked celestial Spirit will not come to the consecration of the mystery, if the priest who prays him to be present be proved full of criminous actions.” The divine Thomas, in the third part of the Summa of theology, question 82, article 5,2 says, in these words, that the error of certain priests is reproved, who from this cause alone — that they are Priests — think that they rightly and worthily perform the consecration of the Eucharist, even though they be unclean with the filth of sins; and according to this sense he interprets a not-dissimilar sentence of Dionysius the Areopagite, writing to Demophilus the monk, in these words: “Perfectly has he fallen from the sacerdotal order who is not illuminated; and rash indeed does such a one seem to me, laying [his] hand upon the sacred rites, and [who] dares to pronounce impure infamies (for I will not say prayers) over the divine symbols in a Christ-like manner.” Peter, bishop of Crete, in the fourth book on the Sentences, distinction 13, thinks that Jerome, in the second [and] third proposition — by “Priests who consecrate the oil of chrism, impose hands, and constitute priests and Levites” — understood Bishops; because from the sacrament of order they differ not from [simple] Priests, although in jurisdiction and dignity they are far distant.
Concerning the fourth proposition, see Annotation 268 of the sixth book.