Ordination

[Byzantine]

Do diaconal and episcopal ordinations leave an indelible seal, or is it only ordination to the presbyterate? I was reading my YOUCAT and it occurred to me that it mentioned the seal for priests. It doesn't mention a seal for bishops. The section for deacons says it leaves "a lifelong, irrevocable mark" on the deacon, but doesn't the mark given priests endure forever? Thanks!

[cappie]

CCC 1121    The three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders confer, in addition to grace, a sacramental character or “seal” by which the Christian shares in Christ’s priesthood and is made a member of the Church according to different states and functions. This configuration to Christ and to the Church, brought about by the Spirit, is indelible;40 it remains for ever in the Christian as a positive disposition for grace, a promise and guarantee of divine protection, and as a vocation to divine worship and to the service of the Church. Therefore these sacraments can never be repeated.

 

III. The Three Degrees of the Sacrament of Holy Orders

1554    “The divinely instituted ecclesiastical ministry is exercised in different degrees by those who even from ancient times have been called bishops, priests, and deacons.”32 Catholic doctrine, expressed in the liturgy, the Magisterium, and the constant practice of the Church, recognizes that there are two degrees of ministerial participation in the priesthood of Christ: the episcopacy and the presbyterate. The diaconate is intended to help and serve them. For this reason the term sacerdos in current usage denotes bishops and priests but not deacons. Yet Catholic doctrine teaches that the degrees of priestly participation (episcopate and presbyterate) and the degree of service (diaconate) are all three conferred by a sacramental act called “ordination,” that is, by the sacrament of Holy Orders

 

The only orders which are Sacramental (and thus leave an indelible mark on the soul) are the Diaconate, Priesthood and Episcopacy, and with the last there is at least some debate as to whether it is truly a separate Order, or if it is merely a ceremony by which the fullness of the Priesthood is conferred (and thus not a separate sacrament or mark, but merely conferring the last of the powers which a priest can possess, such as the ability to confer Orders.)

Since it is a single Sacrament, merely with different levels of reception of that Sacrament, it would seem that there it is best not to think of each level as conferring a separate mark, but perhaps more that the mark, given at when the Diaconate is conferred, is the same mark which is completed in the reception of the Priesthood.