Deacon Baptism Question

[JimR-OCDS]

Is this really the reason? Baptism also involves forgiveness of sins.

Baptism doesn’t involve confession. Deacons can not hear confession. There was talk about whether they could allow deacons to hear a death-bed confession, but I don’t think it got anywhere.

Jim

 

[MusicMan]

There is precedent in the Church for clerics of one rank to receive faculties to perform Sacraments normally reserved to a higher clerical rank. I am talking, specifically, about Confirmation. That is a faculty normally reserved to Bishops, but they can delegate such faculties to priests.

To me, it would make sense for the faculty to hear confession to be given to deacons so that if they take the viaticum to the dying, they can also hear a death-bed confession. The faculty would only be under these circumstances.

However, I don’t know if this is incongruous with the mind of the Church on the overall ministry of the Diaconate. I also worry that this would open the door for deacons to receive more faculties, altering the mission of their ministry.

 

[Brendan]

To me, it would make sense for the faculty to hear confession to be given to deacons so that if they take the viaticum to the dying, they can also hear a death-bed confession. The faculty would only be under these circumstances…

Cannot happen.

The Council of Trent has already declared that priests (and thus Bishops too) and are the only ministers of the Sacrament of Reconcilliation (and of the Sacrament of Annointing)

Session XIV - Canon VI on Penance

CANON VI.–If any one denieth, either that sacramental confession was instituted, or is necessary to salvation, of divine right; or saith, that the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the Church hath ever observed from the beginning, and doth observe, is alien from the institution and command of Christ, and is a human invention; let him be anathema.

Canon IV on Extreme Unction

CANON IV.–If any one saith, that the Presbyters of the Church, whom blessed James exhorts to be brought to anoint the sick, (James 5:14) are not the priests who have been ordained by a bishop, but the elders in each community, and that for this Cause a priest alone is not the proper minister of Extreme Unction; let him be anathema.

The CDF, (+Ratzinger) confirmed this recently and that it is to be held definitively

In canon 1003, paragraph 1 (Cf. also can. 739 paragraph 1 of the Code of Cannons of the Oriental Churches), the Code of Canon Law includes exactly the doctrine expressed by the Tridentine Council (Session XIV, can. 4: DS 1719; Cf. also the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1516), according to which only priests (bishops and presbyters) are ministers of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.

This doctrine is “definitive tenenda”. Neither deacons nor lay persons therefore may exercise such ministry and any action in this connection is a simulation of the sacrament.

Rome, from the headquarters of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, February 11, 2005, in the Memoria of the Virgin of Lourdes.

• Joseph Card. Ratzinger, Prefect
• Angelo Amato, S.D.B.
  Titular Archbishop of Sila, Secretary

www.adoremus.org/1105CDF_AnointingSick.html

 

[MusicMan]

Like I said, I wasn’t sure how such an idea fits with the mind of the Church on the ministry of deacons, only that it would make sense from a convenience factor. Just because I claim it makes sense to me doesn’t necessarily mean I want to charge the hill and fight for it.