The Morality of the Clergy

This question is about a situation that arose in the church in the early centuries, but I cast it as a contemporary problem to see what you thought.

Let us suppose you are the member of a church for over ten years. During that time, you have the same pastor, who accepted you in membership, married you, and baptized all your children. Now all of a sudden it turns out that the church officials that ordained your pastor were guilty of gross immorality at the time, and because of that they served prison terms and were expelled from your denomination. Your pastor is devastated and so is your congregation.

The questions are as follows:

Since it turns out that your pastor was ordained by people who were grossly immoral at the time, was the ordination valid? In other words, does your pastor have to be ordained again to remove the taint?

14% said:: Yes.

82% said:: No.

2% said:: It depends on the nature of the immorality.

The historic church answered this question “no.” The ordination was valid, because the ordaining clergy performed it, not as a personal prerogative, but as a delegated power. The real ordainer is the church.

Since ordination, your pastor baptized people, received them in membership, and married them. The marriages are still legally binding. Should your church ask another ordained minister to redo those rites? If so, which ones?

65% said:: None of them need to be redone.

51% said:: None of them should be redone.

10% said:: The marriages should be redone if the couples request it.

9% said:: The baptisms should be redone if they request it.

9% said:: The people who joined should be received again if they request it.

4% said:: The people who joined should be received again.

2% said:: The baptisms should be redone.

No one said:: The marriages should be redone.

The historic church answered this question, “none of the above,” because it answered the first question was “no.” If a rite is valid, there is no need to do it again.

This question is about Donatism, an early heresy that said that the morals of the officiating clergy determined the validity of the rite. For example, if a duly authorized member of the clergy officiated over a wedding or an ordination, and did it properly, the wedding (or ordination) is invalid if it turns out the clergy did not live up to the church’s moral standards.

This seems to guard the morals of the clergy, but the reason it is a heresy is because it implies that the clergy have the power within their persons to perform church rites. This isn’t the case. The clergy are simply deputized agents of the Church (or of God) and thus their actions are valid, even if they aren’t. If it turns out that the police officer who issued you a speeding ticket was in a drug ring, the officer is out of the force, but your ticket is still valid. If you are married by a minister who later turns out to have frequented houses of the horizontal profession, the minister is relieved of their credentials, but your marriage certificate is still valid. The policemen and the minister did not possess any power to act, except what was delegated to them, so the power that issued the ticket was the police department, not the individual officer, and the power than married you was the church, not the particular minister.

Bottom line: clergy are not people with magical powers, they are only people who were delegated responsibility.

The problem with redoing the rites is that it encourages a Pharisaic holier-than-thou spirituality and it also makes people uncertain about the validity of the sacraments.