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Matthew G HysellFTH 607: Bonaventure & AquinasProf Louis Rouleau, Ph.D. (Cand.)20 April 2008
St Thomas Aquinas’ Eucharistic Theologyand the Question of Deaf Candidates to Holy Orders
 Can a Deaf man, i.e., someone who does not speak but uses sign language, be validly ordained tothe
 sacerdotium
and preside at Mass? In other words, should hearing loss constitute a dirimentimpediment to the reception of Holy Orders because the
 sacerdos
would not be able to vocalizesacramental formulae, especially the Eucharistic ‘words of consecration’?
Sacraments in the
 Summa theologiae
 
In working out the
exitus-reditus
schema in the
Summa theologiae
, St Thomas begins with God andthe preambles of faith as well as articles of faith in the
 prima pars
, discussing the treatises “OnCreation” (qq. 44-64), “On the Work of the Six Days” (qq. 65-74), “On Man” (qq. 75-102), andfinally “On Divine Government” (qq. 103-119). The
 secunda pars
opens, tellingly, with thequestion of “Man’s Last End” (q. 1), a pivotal point in the
Summa theologiae
, which turns theattention on God’s crowning work, the human race, in its journey back to God. The
 secuna pars
issubdivided into two parts, the first part of the
 secunda pars
focusing on the natural virtues inhumanity’s return to God, and the second part on the act of faith that provides the supernaturalremedy for the human person’s ascent back to God. The final part of the
Summa theologiae
is the
tertia pars
, which attends to the person of Christ Himself, the absolute point of return to the Father.St Thomas intends to inform his readers that in the first part, God exists and creates the human raceto share in beatitude; in the second part are the natural and supernatural virtues that aid the human person in this Godward pilgrimage, and finally in the third part Christ,
the
return to the Father andthe
means
of such a return.
 
2The
terita pars
begins, appropriately, with the Incarnation (qq. 1-19). Significantly, unlikethe
 prima
and
 secunda pars
, the
tertia pars
is not divided into treatises, offering instead acontinuous seam from the Incarnation to the mysteries of Christ’s life (qq. 20-45), the PaschalMystery (qq. 46-59), and in a way that may sound strange to contemporary theological method, thesacraments immediately follow (qq. 46
 ff 
). In this way, St Thomas does not intend to grasp thesacraments under a separate ‘treatise’ but within the larger context of the Mystery of Christ, or moreaccurately, the Mystery of the Incarnate Word. The shift from the Paschal Mystery to thesacraments is not haphazard (qq. 59, 60). He says explicitly, “After considering those things thatconcern the mystery of the incarnate Word, we must consider the sacraments of the Church whichderive their efficacy from the Word incarnate Himself.”
1
Thus the Angelic Doctor provides thereason for his peculiar method which is at variance with the mainstream Scholastics.St Thomas begins his discussion in IIIa, q. 60 with the question “What is a Sacrament?” He begins by defining ‘sacrament’ as a “kind of sign” and quotes the authoritative sacramentaltheologian, St Augustine, “The visible sacrifice is the sacrament,
i.e.
, the sacred sign, of theinvisible sacrifice” (
City of God 
, ch. 10, cited in art. 1,
 sed contra
). In art. 2 he narrows hisdefinition of a sacrament as something that
effects
holiness in the human person. He reiterates thisin art. 3, “…a sacrament properly speaking is that which is ordained to signify our sanctification”(
respondeo
) but applies a more liberal boundary to
what 
is signified— 
three
things: “…the verycause of our sanctification, which is Christ’s passion; the form of our sanctification, which is graceand the virtues; and the ultimate end of our sanctification, which is eternal life. And all these aresignified by the sacrament.” Each of the sacraments, therefore, “…is a sign that is both a reminder 
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St Thomas follows a similar method in his
Summa contra Gentiles
: the materials covered in Book IV arecomparable to that of the
tertia pars
of the
Summa theologiae
; after reviewing the Mystery of the Incarnation inchapters 27-55, he moves seamlessly into the “necessity of the sacraments” in chapter 56. He says at the beginning,“Since, however (as has already been said), the death of Christ is, so to say, the universal cause of human salvation, andsince a universal cause must be applied singly to each of its effects, it was necessary to show men some remediesthrough which the benefit of Christ’s death could somehow be conjoined to them. It is of this sort, of course, that thesacraments of the Church are said to be.”
 
3of the past, i.e., the passion of Christ, and an indication of that which is effected in us by Christ’s passion, i.e., grace; and a prognostic, that is, a foretelling of future glory.” In other words, allsacraments are memorials of the Paschal Mystery, provide grace, and anticipate beatitude; StThomas expects it to be clear that as a
 sign
, sacraments signify
three
things.Article 4 heats up the discussion by focusing on the ‘sensible’ qualities of a sign. Are signsalways ‘things’? He is concerned about the Johannine Jesus’ saying to the Samaritan Woman at thewell of Jacob, “God is spirit; those who worship God worship him in spirit and truth” (Jn 4:24).The sacramental ‘elements’ are presupposed by Augustine’s words in the
 sed contra
, “The word isadded to the element and this becomes a sacrament.” St Thomas argues that the elements proper toeach sacraments (he does not yet enumerate them) correspond to their respective signification:“Now it is part of man’s nature to acquire knowledge of the intelligible from the sensible”(
respondeo
). Accordingly, the “spirit and truth” which is the prerequisite for divine worship arerelayed by human intelligence. St Thomas alludes to pseudo-Dionysius’
Celestial Hierarchy
as anauthority supporting the correspondence and communication of spiritual realities by sensible things.It is worth quoting at length:
All this accounts for the fact that the sacred institution and source of perfection established our most pioushierarchy. He modeled it on the hierarchies of heaven, and clothed these immaterial hierarchies in numerous
material figures and forms
so that, in a way
appropriate to our nature
, we might be uplifted form these mostvenerable images to interpretations and assimilations which are simple and inexpressible. For it is quiteimpossible that we humans should, in any immaterial way, rise up to imitate and contemplate the heavenlyhierarchies without the aid of those material means capable of guiding us
as our nature requires
.
2
 
Citing the Eucharist as an instance of this, pseudo-Dionysius wrote: “The reception of the mostdivine Eucharist is a
 symbol 
of our participation in Jesus. And so it goes for all gifts transcendentlyreceived by the beings of heaven, gifts which are granted to us
in a symbolic mode
.”Augustine’s statement on the conjoining of 
word 
to element anticipates art. 6, which asks“Whether Words are Required for the Signification of the Sacraments.” St Thomas’ choice of 
2
P
SEUDO
-D
IONYSIUS THE
A
REOPAGITE
,
 Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works
, trans. Colm Luibheid (NewYork, NY: Paulist Press, 1987), 146.
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