§ 1. On the Required Vocation

— Since, especially today, orders are not received without some intention and hope of priesthood, we must be solicitous about vocation to the sacerdotal state alone. Concerning this, these few things are noted.

1. By the will by which Christ instituted in His Church the perpetual Sacrifice and the perpetual dispensation of the sacraments, several of which can be conferred only by sacred ministers, by the same will He also willed to adorn the Church with an abundance of priests who would offer that Sacrifice and dispense these sacraments. And it pertains to divine Providence efficaciously to provide that the Church not lack necessary ministers.

Therefore it cannot be doubted that many are called to the priesthood, insofar as they receive efficacious graces for embracing and exercising that state holily.

But while the evangelical counsels of themselves are proposed to all, on the contrary it is certain that the sacerdotal state is not proposed to all, since priests pertain to the hierarchy which God Himself willed to be distinct from the people. Besides this, while a religious, as such, pursues his own proper sanctity, the sacerdotal state is referred not so much to the private good of someone as to the common good of the Christian republic. No one becomes a priest for himself.

2. Nor does someone become a priest by his own will alone.

On the contrary, in Sacred Scripture and in the Council of Trent the action of God calling and of the ecclesiastical Superior is placed directly. "Nor does anyone take honor to himself, but he who is called by God, as Aaron was" (Epistle to the Hebrews 5:4). "Impose hands hastily on no one." Thus the Apostle admonishes his disciple in 1 Timothy 5:22. And the Council of Trent, after in sess. 23, cap. 4, it had recalled that not all can aspire to the hierarchy, in can. 7 strikes with anathema him who says that "those who are neither duly ordained nor sent by ecclesiastical and canonical power, but come from elsewhere, are legitimate ministers of the word and of the sacraments." Again, however, it is within the power, at least of the Supreme Pontiff⁽¹⁾, that because of the necessity of the Church he can command a faithful man to ascend to the sacerdotal state. Therefore:

3. To the question, who are called to the sacerdotal state, we judge that this must briefly be answered thus:

a) by the will of God consequent upon the external assumption itself, all those who have been duly assumed by the Church, to whom the selection of priests has been committed, are called. Therefore the Catechism of the Council of Trent, on the cited place of the Epistle to the Hebrews, says: "They are said to be called by God who are called by the legitimate ministers of the Church." And in the letter of July 2, 1912, the Cardinal Secretary of State reported that the judgment of the Commission of Cardinals had been approved by the Supreme Pontiff, by which the work of Canon Lahitton, La vocation sacerdotale, is said to be worthy of distinguished praise in that part in which it establishes "1. That no one ever has any right to ordination antecedently to the free election of the bishop."

b) But if you ask who are called by the antecedent will of divine good pleasure, that is, who please God when they aspire to that state, in vain and without valid argument will you demand some special instinct or quasi-internal speech of God calling; but it is lawful for any suitable person to seek this state with a sincere intention of executing the obligations of the same state. Nor in this matter is it lawful or expedient for the confessor himself to assume other parts than those of a prudent counselor, lest the one ordained, with danger of unhappy and sometimes scandalous inconstancy, seem to himself to have undertaken grave obligations by another's command. But with St. Th., 2, 2, q. 189, art. 1, ad 3, and St. Alph., l. 6, n. 802, in order that someone be suitable, besides gifts of talent and suitable knowledge, we require the present sanctity of life itself. For sacred orders are received by those who do not have well-chastened morals with too much detriment to themselves and danger to the Church, and too much against its mind, for these men to be able of themselves to ascend to the priesthood without grave guilt (cf. what was written above, n. 34). But we understand sincere intention as conceived by spontaneous will. For those who seek spiritual offices from a human intention, and those who receive the same unwillingly, moved by necessity or by the authority or consideration of parents, can be judged equally fragile and dangerous to the Church. But by these notes of suitability and right intention true vocation is composed.

To the point, the work of Lahitton mentioned above was also praised by the Commission, with the Pontiff approving, insofar as it establishes: "2. That the condition which must be attended to on the part of the one to be ordained, which is called sacerdotal vocation, consists by no means, at least necessarily and by ordinary law, in some internal aspiration of the subject or invitation of the Holy Spirit for entering the priesthood; 3. but, on the contrary, nothing more is required in the one to be ordained, so that he may be duly called by the bishop, than a right intention together with suitability, placed in those gifts of grace and nature, and proved by that probity of life and sufficiency of doctrine, which make a founded hope that he will rightly be able to undertake the duties of the priesthood and holily to observe its obligations." Cf. Periodica, VI, 262, and our little work: De vocatione religiosa et sacerdotali.

⁽¹⁾ The Code, c. 973, §2, denies that a cleric of inferior grade can be compelled by the bishop to receive superior orders. Concerning the prior law, cf. Gasparri, De sacra ordinatione, I, 638, 639.