Annotation CVIII
”But he who received the one [talent], going away, dug in the earth,” etc. — Matthew 25:18
Whether bad priests are [true] priests.
The author of the Opus imperfectum, homily 53, indicates that bad priests and deacons are not ordained by God, but by men; and that, although they are held by men [to be] priests, yet as regards God they are not priests. This opinion is read in him in this manner: “To deacons and teachers, according to his providence, God seems to enjoin the ministry of the diaconate — or of the presbyterate — [upon] those who are just; but those who are found unjust, men seem to have ordained, not God. Therefore from the outcome of the matter it is known who has been ordained by God, and who by men. For he who shall have well completed his ministry, [it] appears that he had been ordained from God; but he who shall not have well completed his ministry, has been ordained from men. And in what way certain priests are ordained from men is plainly stated in the eighth book of the Canons of the Apostles. But he who has been ordained from men, as regards God is not a deacon or a priest. Therefore, among the priests indeed [and] the deacon, he is not found who loses the talents — [namely one] who is ordained by God according to [his] foreknowledge. But among the common people it happens, just as [it also happens] that one who is going to be a sinner has received from God the grace of faith. According to these [things], then, which we have said: if a presbyter or deacon is found [to be] a sinner — since, as regards the foreknowledge of God (as we have already said), he seems to have been made a presbyter or deacon not from God, but from men — he is found, like a layman, among those who received the one talent of faith. And through this, no one ordained by God sins, except [him] who received the one talent from God. And therefore the grace of faith is bestowed by God on all, but the grace of the clerical state not on all, but on the worthy: because in the former [faith] is the cause of salvation, but in the latter [is] the dispensation of the ministry.”
John, bishop of Ostuni, the interpreter and scholiast of the Constitutions of St. Clement, explaining the Apostolic canon adduced by this author (and noted by Clement in the eighth book of the Constitutions, chapter 1), admonishes readers not to slip, on the occasion of this opinion, into the error of the Hussites — who teach that bishops or presbyters bound by mortal sin are no longer bishops and priests,
[are no longer] priests. And he says that Clement’s opinion is not to be so taken, as though he wished those who are bad to lose the power which they received in ordination; but that he denies them to be bishops and priests inasmuch as the offices and functions which they discharge are not pleasing and acceptable to God — nay, their election is not even ascribed to Him, but to men: as if he should say that they are bishops as to [their] dignity, but not as regards God; because their institutions and offices, which they afterward exercise, are not approved by God. He adds also that, according to this sense, the sayings of this author are to be understood — and likewise those words which Jerome wrote in the commentaries on the epistle to the Galatians, asserting that those are ordained by men who, unworthily, by the favor of the people, despising the patience of the Lord, are ordained to the divine priesthood against [their] merit. For these, although by force of sacred ordination they have the power divinely conferred upon them, yet, by the depraved administration of [their] office, are not priests such as God requires and desires.