De Ordine. Tom. I De Institutione. Tom. II De Institutione—De Materia et Forma by Emmanuel Doronzo, O. M. I.

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BOOK REVIEWS 568 De Ordine. Tom. I De lnatitutione. Pp. 1014 with indexes. $19.00. Tom. IT De lnatitutione-De Materia et Forma. Pp. 9U with indexes. $19.00. By EMMANUEL DoaoNzo, 0. M. I. Bruce: Milwaukee, 1957 & 1959. The valuable dogmatic tracts of Fr. Doronzo are brought closer to completion with the appearance of the first two volumes of the treatise on Holy Orders. The dogmatic treatment of this sacrament is particularly welcomed, since this fundamental aspect tends to become submerged in the more prevalent moral, canonical and ascetical aspects of the priesthood. For one or another reason the orders other than the priesthood and the nature of the ·episcopacy itself are quickly passed over in the theology classroom and even by many textbooks. The author remains faithful to the general division of matter as set down in the works of St. Thomas and to the thomistic scientific method which he is convinced is the most apt instrument of systematic theology. It is indeed strange that this could have been missed by anyone familiar with the author's previously published tomes. However, Fr. Doronzo has properly and forcefully defended his procedure against certain criticisms in his Introduction (I, pp. 80-82) . The institution of the sacrament of Holy Orders extends through three articles of Volume I and four articles of Volume IT. One final article in the second comprises the entire exposition of the· matter and form of this sacrament. The presentation of non-Catholic opinions and theology is most helpful, and the explanation of Scriptural texts and the testimony of sources very satisfying to the student of these matters. As in previous volumes several important indexes are included. Volume m, the next to appear, will cover the extrinsic causes: the effects, properties, minister, subject, ceremonies of the Sacrament. The author treats the famous controversial statements of St. Jerome, but does not regard them as a denial of the divine origin of the episcopacy (IT, pp. 72 sq.). Moreover, he subscribes to the more common opinion of an immediate divine origin, as sufficiently found also in Tradition. His stricture on the position of a mediate institution ends with the significant words: " The aforesaid explanation of a few moderns seems to proceed from a certain hasty inclination, quite befitting modem morals, for new and facile ways of approaching the solution of certain historical difficulties, which the progress of positive science brings with it, and for reviewing and reforming, from the bottom up as they say, certain acquired and peaceful positions of the older theology. Such reason for acting does not seem to offer the us':lal signs of traditional and authentic theology " (p. 114). In the thorny and complicated area of the relationship of the episcopacy 564 BOOK REVIEWS to the priesthood Fr. Doronzo, after a ~00 page examination, concludes that the episcopacy as distinct from the priesthood is more probably not a sacrament at all but rather pertains to the sacrament of Orders as its extension and so can be truly if not homogeneously termed sacramental (pp. ~~8, 308) . He traced the historical development of theological thought on this point down to current writers. Analyzing the texts of St. Thomas and refuting the interpretations of certain recent Thomists, he satisfactorily exposes and defends the traditional thomist teaching on the episcopacy that with reference to the eucharistic body, it is undistinguished from the power of the priesthood, but with reference to the mystical body is a certain higher ministry or power of another and non-sacramental kind. He deplores in the thomist school the somewhat undue development of an ambiguous sacramentality regarding the episcopacy, since St. Thomas founded his whole system on the nature of the episcopacy and its relationship to the priesthood on the distinction of a sacramental and a non-sacramental order (pp. 175-176, 179-180, ~97). Moreover he holds that this position has not been substantially affected by the Constitution " Sacramentum Ordinis " of Pius XII (pp. ~38 sq.) . On the other hand, accepting the documents of history and tradition he admittedly departs from the teaching of St. Thomas and holds as more probable that the subdiaconate and the minor orders are of :merely ecclesiastical institution and in...