Folia Theologica et Canonica 11. 33/25 (2022)

Ius canonicum

140

GORAN JOVICIC

of reconciliation follows also from the fact that its efficacy is dependent on its administration by the official ministers of the Church”83 (Epist. 66: 5).

According to St. Cyprian, the unity of the Church, like its holiness, is to be found in the bishops in their unity with one another as “one and undivided,” affirmed by the words of Jesus to Peter in Matthew 16:18-1984 (De Unitatae, 4-5). He expresses his conviction of the Church as holy and catholic and that heresy and schism are closely related because both of them violate the unity of the Church:85

The form of public penance according to Cyprian involved three stages:86

1. the first part started with the private confession made to the bishop and the period of penance was imposed upon the contrite sinner, which would include prayer, fasting, and acts of charity and other renunciations; those who were gravely ill were imposed a less strict penitential discipline;

2. The second stage involved the request by the sinner to the bishop, clergy, and congregation to be readmitted to communion with the Church;

3. The third and final phase consisted of the reconciliation ceremony, which consisted in the laying on of hands by the bishop87 (absolution), usually on Holy Thursday.

The chief characteristic of the public penance of the first four centuries was that it could be perfonned but once. Among a great number of Church Fathers, the witness of Origen and St. Ambrose is important, since they attest to this practice in both the Eastern and Western Churches.88 The single (only one) penance, however, was to pose a very grave pastoral problem in the fifth and sixth centuries,89 which led to relatively small number of penitents who were ready to undertake the public penance (because of hard consequences of the

83 See Poschmann, B., Penance and the Anointing of the Sick, 60; cf. Fastiggi, R. L., The Sacrament of Reconciliation, 39.

84 See Pelikan, J., The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of the Doctrine, I. 159.

85 “The spouse of Christ cannot be adulterous; she is uncorrupted and pure. She knows one home; she guards with chaste modesty the sanctity of one couch. She keeps us for God. She appoints the sons whom she has bom for the kingdom. Whoever is separated from the Church and is joined to an adulteress, is separated from the promises of the Church; nor can he who forsakes the Church of Christ attain to the rewards of Christ. He is a stranger; he is profane; he is an enemy. He can no longer have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. If anyone could escape who was outside the ark of Noah, then he also may escape who shall be outside of the Church.” (De Unitatae, 5); cf. Pelikan, J., The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of the Doctrine, I. 159.

“ Haffner, P., The Sacramental Mystery, 122.

87 Ibid. 122.

88 See Riga, P., Sin and Penance, 98-99.

89 See Poschmann, B., Die Abendländische Kirchenbusse in Früher Mittelater, 63-108. Riga, P., Sin and Penance, 99.