Dist. 37, Art. 1, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/37/q/bon-sent-IV-d37-a1-q2
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### Question II. *Whether sacred order impedes marriage.*

Secondly it is asked whether sacred order impedes marriage. And that it does, it seems:

1. By the many authorities which the Master adduces in the text, and more are taken from the thirty-second distinction.

2. Likewise, in the *Decretals, On Married Clerics*, Alexander III: «If in the subdiaconate and the other higher orders they are known to have taken wives, see to it that you compel them to dismiss their wives».

3. Likewise, everyone who does not vow continence is unfit for the sacred orders; but those who have wives are of this kind: therefore etc. Proof of the major: Gregory says, and it is found in the text: «Let bishops presume to make no one a subdeacon, except one who has promised to live chastely»: therefore if someone promises continence into the bishop's hand, he vows and is bound, it is evident, etc.

4. Likewise, in the sacred orders they minister at the altar; but the altar and sacrifice of the new law are holier than [those of] the figure of the law; but the priest, when he entered the holy of holies, was bound to abstain from his spouse, as is said in Exodus: therefore much more the ministers of the altar now: therefore those who minister continually ought never to cleave to women.

**On the contrary:**
1. Virtue has no opposition to virtue, therefore neither has Sacrament to Sacrament; but what has no opposition to another does not furnish it an impediment: therefore the Sacrament of order in no way impedes marriage.

2. Likewise, opposition is a relation of equiparance: therefore if one Sacrament conflicts with and impedes the reception of the other, by equal reasoning also conversely; but marriage does not impede the reception of order, since many married men have been promoted to bishops: therefore neither does sacred order impede marriage.

3. Likewise, order is the same among us and in the Eastern Church; but among them order does not impede marriage, nor conversely: therefore neither among

nos. *If you say* that among us a vow is superadded, by reason of which it impedes; then it seems that the impediment of order does not differ from the impediment of the vow.

> **Conclusion.** Sacred order impedes the marriage to be contracted and dissolves the contracted one.

**I respond:** It must be said that without doubt, as the sacred canons say, sacred order impedes the marriage to be contracted and dissolves the one already contracted.

Nevertheless, as to the manner of speaking or of understanding, a diversity of opinions arises among the various doctors.

For some say that sacred order impedes marriage on account of the *annexed vow*, to which he who receives sacred order is bound. — But since in the reception of order there does not seem to be an emission of a vow, or if there is an emission as to the *deed*, although not as to the *word*; it does not then seem to differ from the impediment of the vow; this is false, because among the Greeks there is no vow of continence, since those priests lawfully make use of wives, and yet no one established in the sacred orders could nor can contract [marriage], as is had from the sixth Synod, which was celebrated among them, in which they subjected themselves to this statute apart from a vow of continence.

Therefore it is the opinion of others that order furnishes the impediment by reason of the *ecclesiastical statute*, which binds clerics receiving orders never to contract.

But since authorities of the canons are found which seem to sound both ways, and [since] in the reception of order there is a solemnization of a vow; therefore it must be said, and better, that although among the Greeks it impedes, this is only by reason of the statute; and thus it has impeded, as some say, from the time of the Apostles; yet among the Latins it impedes both by reason of the statute and by reason of the vow. For just as the order of monks and the habit has continence annexed through him who instituted the habit and issued the monastic rule; and therefore he who professes and receives the habit is said to emit a vow consequently: so order among the Latins, by ecclesiastical institution, has continence inseparably annexed; and therefore he who receives it binds himself spontaneously, so that that obligation proceeds from the statute equally and from the vow. — And thus it is evident that it impedes, and how it impedes.

**To the arguments:**
*To 1.* To that then which is objected, that virtue has no opposition to virtue; it must be said that this is true as to the *habit*; but nevertheless *states* are sometimes incompossible, as the conjugal and the virginal. And since diverse Sacraments regard diverse *states*—as order [regards] the state of virginal or widowed continence, marriage the state of conjugal continence—hence it is that it impedes, just as the secular and the religious state are in their own way opposed.

*To 2.* To that which is objected, that marriage does not impede order; it must be said that this is true, if the wife was a virgin and wishes to be continent; but nevertheless it is not similar: because *progress* in the virtues is from a more imperfect state to a more perfect, but there ought not to be a *return*; and since marriage places [one] in a state of imperfection, but order in a state of perfection: therefore etc.; just as it is permitted to ascend from the world to religion, not to descend.

*To 3.* To that which is objected last, the response is already evident: because the statute of the Church binds the Latins more abundantly than the Greeks, although it binds the latter in some way; and this, because the Latins willed to subject and bend themselves, but the Greeks to remain in their crudeness, and therefore to this day they have remained in their dregs. It is also evident that it impedes not only by reason of the vow, but also by reason of the ecclesiastical statute.

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