EXTREME
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EXTREME
effect which may be obtained independently; rather
should the theory be enlarged and modified, and the
primary and essential end of the sacrament so de-
scribed as to comprehend these effects.
This is the solution of the whole question proposed by Kern (op. cit., pp. 81 sq., 215 sq.), who, with no little learning and ability, defends the thesis that the end of extreme unction is the perfect healing of the soul with a view to its immediate entrj' into glory, un- less it should happen that the restoration of bodily health is more expedient. This view is quite in con- formity with, and may even be said to be suggested by, the teaching of the Council of Trent to the effect that extreme unction is " the consummation of the whole Christian life"; and Kern has collected an imposing weight of evidence in favour of his thesis from ancient and medieval and modern writers of authority. Dr. Pohle (op. cit.. pp. 5.35, .536) reviews Kern's suggestion sympathetically. Besides being self-consistent and free from any serious diiBculty, it is recommended by many positive arguments, and in connexion with the controverted point we have been discussing it has the advantage of combining and co-ordinating as parts of the principal effect — i. e. perfect spiritual health — not only the remission of venial sins and the invigoration of the soul, for which respectively Scotists and their opponents have contended too exclusively, but also the remission of temporal punishment, which not a few theologians have neglected.
VIII. Xecessity. — Theologians are agreed that extreme unction may in certain circumstances be the only, and therefore the necessary, means of salvation for a dying person. This happens when there is question of a person who is dying without the use of reason, and whose soul is burdened with the guilt of mortal sin for which he has only habitual attrition; and for this and similar cases in which other means of obtaining justification are certainly or even probably unavailing, there is no doubt as to the grave obliga- tion of procuring extreme unction for the dying. But theologians are not agreed as to whether or not a sick person in the state of grace is per se under a grave obligation of seeking this sacrament before death. It is evident ex hypothesi that there is no obligation aris- ing from the need of salvation {necessitate medii), and the great majority of theologians deny that a grave obligation per se has been imposed by Divine or eccle- siastical law. The injunction of St. James, it is said, may be understood as being merely a counsel or ex- hortation, not a command, and there is no convincing evidence from tradition that the Church has under- stood a Divine command to have been given, or has ever imposed one of her own. Yet it is recognized that, in the words of Trent, " contempt of so great a sacrament cannot take place without an enormous crime and an injury to the Holy Cihost Himself" (Sess. XIV, cap. iii); and it is held to depend on circum- stances whether mere neglect or express refusal of the sacrament would amount to contempt of it. The soundness, however, of the reasons alleged for this common teaching is open to doubt, and the strength of the arguments advanced by so recent a theolf)gian as Kern (pp. 304 sq.) to prove the existence of the obligation which so many have denied is calculated to weaken one's confidence in the received opinion.
IX. Repetition. — The Council of Trent teaches that "if the sick recover after receiving this unction, they can again receive the aid of this sacrament, when they fall anew into a similar danger of death" (Sess. XIV, cap. iii, De Extr. Unct.). In the Middle Ages doubts were entertained by some ecclesiastics on this subject, as we learn from the correspondence between Abbot (later Cardinal) Godfried and St. Yves, Bishop of Cliartres (d. 1117). Ciodfried considered the cus- tom in vogue in the Benedictine monasteries, of repeat- ing extreme unction, reprehensible on the ground that " no sacrament ought to be repeated " (P. L., CLVII,
87 sq.) ; but he wished to have St. Yves's opinion, and
the latter quite agreed with his friend (ibid., 88). Not
long afterwards Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny,
was asked by Abbot Theobald to explain " why it was
that the unction of the sick was the only unction [out
of many] repeated, and why this took place only at
Cluny ", and Peter in reply gave a convincing explana-
tion of the Benedictine practice, his main contention
being that the person anointed may on recovery have
sinned again and be in need of the remission of sins
promised by St. James, anil that the .\postle himself
not only does not suggest that the unction may be
given only once, but clearly implies the contrary —
" ut quoties quis infirmatus fuerit, toties inungatur"
(P. L., CLXXXIX, 3112 sq.). After this all opposition
to the repetition of the sacrament disappears, and
subsequent writers unanimously teach, what has been
defined by the Council of Trent, that it may under
certain conditions be validly and lawfully repeated.
It should be noted, moreover, that the practice of re-
peating it at this period was not confined to the Bene-
dictines or to Cluny. The Cistercians of Clairvaux,
for example, were also in the habit of repeating it, but
subject to the restriction that it was not to be given
more than once within a year; and several Ordines of
particular Churches dating from the ninth, tenth,
eleventh, and twelfth centuries, have a rubric pre-
scribing the repetition of the unction for seven suc-
cessive days (cf. Kern, op. cit., pp. 334, 338 sq.).
Coming to the more accurate determination of the circumstances or conditions which justify the repeti- tion of extreme unction, theologians, following the authority of Trent, are agreed that it may be validly and lawfully repeated as often as the sick person, after recovery, becomes seriously ill again, or, in cases of lingering illness where no complete recovery takes place, as often as the probable danger of death, after disappearing, returns. For verification of this latter condition some theologians would require the lapse of a certain interval, say a month, during which the danger would seem to have passed; but there is really no reason for insisting on this any more than on the year which medieval custom in some places was wont to require. St. Bonaventure's remark, that " it is ab- surd for a sacrament to be regulated by the motion of the stars" (in IV Semt., dist. xxiii, a. 2, q. iv, ad 2), applies to a month as well as to a year. Not a few theologians (among recent ones De .\ugustinis, " De Re Sacramentaria", II, 408) understand, by the new danger of death, proximate or imminent danger, so that, once imminent danger has passed and returned, the sacrament may be repeated without waiting for any definite interval to elapse. The majority of theo- logians, however, deny the validity of extreme unction repeated while the danger of death remains the same, and they assume that this is the implicit teaching of the Council of Trent. But among contemporary authors, Kern, following the lead of several positive theologians eminent for their knowledge of sacra- mental history (Menard, Launoi, Martene, Juenin, Drouven, Pouget, Pellicia, Binterim, Heinrich. — See references in Kern, op. cit., pp. 357, 538), maintains the probable validity of extreme unction repeated, no matter how often, during the same danger of death; and it will be found easier to ignore, than to meet and answer, the argument by which he supports his view. He furnishes, in the first place, abundant evidence of the widespread practice in the Western Church from the ninth to the twelfth, and even, in some places, to the thirteenth century, of repeating the unction for seven daj's, or indefinitely while the sickness lasted; and he is able to claim the authority of Oriental theo- logians for explaining the modern practice in the Eastern Church of a sevenfold anointing by seven prie.sts as being due to a more ancient practice of re- peating the unction for seven ilays — a practice to which the Coptic Liturgy bears witness. By admit-
