Donatism

[Samof94]

What is your opinion of the idea that clergy must be perfectly faultless and consecration by corrupt priests were worthless??? Donatism itself was a heretical sect around during the late Roman Empire circa 300.

[afleitch]

In Christian tradition, no human can ever be faultless by nature, so it seems a bit daft.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Has the potential to lead to chaos, since any sacrament or rite could be rendered null and void upon revelation of wrongdoing on the part of the clergyman performing it. It is for the best that this school of thought was anathematized and died out.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

     Has the potential to lead to chaos, since any sacrament or rite could be rendered null and void upon revelation of wrongdoing on the part of the clergyman performing it. It is for the best that this school of thought was anathematized and died out.

Look at the angst going on in the Catholic Church right now after the CDF ruled recently that a bunch of baptisms are null because of the verbal formula used. Then imagine if they could rule the same thing if the priest or deacon doing the baptism had ever committed a sufficiently grave sin. Complete pandemonium.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

In Christian tradition, no human can ever be faultless by nature, so it seems a bit daft.

Not until Augustine won that argument with Pelagius a bit later?

Anyway, it's difficult to know what the Donatists exactly believed because almost all of our evidence comes from their orthodox opponents, but I don't think the Donatists argued that priests were required to be faultless in order to administer the sacraments. My reading is their doctrine was that priests who had lapsed under persecution and renounced the faith had to be reordained, and if they weren't then their sacraments were invalid.

At the Council of Carthage in 411 the Donatists agreed with the orthodox party that the church contained sinners, but that if the sin was known to the church then it had to be "threshed out" through some kind of penance for a priest to continue to legitimately hold office. The source of the controversy wasn't that certain churchmen had sinned during the persecution, but that even though their sin was publicly known they had never admitted fault or atoned and were still ordaining each other.

[vitoNova]

I'm not the type to chat with a shrink or a clergyman about my problems in life, but I can definitely understand how this was a thing back in the ancient days. 

It would be kinda weird confessing your 'sins' to some dude who was taking jello-shots from a coed's belly in college like 2 years before. 

[Samof94]

In Christian tradition, no human can ever be faultless by nature, so it seems a bit daft.

Not until Augustine won that argument with Pelagius a bit later?

Anyway, it's difficult to know what the Donatists exactly believed because almost all of our evidence comes from their orthodox opponents, but I don't think the Donatists argued that priests were required to be faultless in order to administer the sacraments. My reading is their doctrine was that priests who had lapsed under persecution and renounced the faith had to be reordained, and if they weren't then their sacraments were invalid.

At the Council of Carthage in 411 the Donatists agreed with the orthodox party that the church contained sinners, but that if the sin was known to the church then it had to be "threshed out" through some kind of penance for a priest to continue to legitimately hold office. The source of the controversy wasn't that certain churchmen had sinned during the persecution, but that even though their sin was publicly known they had never admitted fault or atoned and were still ordaining each other.

That still means it would have been a bureaucratic nightmare.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I'm sympathetic considering the proliferation of pedophile priests and whatnot today, but it's clearly not workable in its purest form.

[Samof94]

I'm sympathetic considering the proliferation of pedophile priests and whatnot today, but it's clearly not workable in its purest form.

Exactly. It’d solve that problem but it’d be like using a blowtorch to deal with a pest problem.