Holy orders in the Church of Bloom are open to every baptized person found fit, and the gates a candidate passes are published before anyone passes them. This page sets out the offices of this church, the discipline governing admission, and Rome’s contrary position stated in its own terms.
On the office of the Ordinary
The Ordinary and Chief Pastor is an office of this church, erected by its Constitution and held under it, not a personal possession of whoever occupies it. The office survives the officer; the discipline binds the officer; the register outlasts both.
On the state of orders
No ordinations have been conferred in this church to date. The Ordination Discipline, the gates, and the examination were written and put in force before the first candidate, which is the order a young church should do this in.
On the non-waivable gates
A criminal background check and current Safe Environment and Mandatory Reporter training are conditions of candidacy and of every clerical office in this church. Neither is waivable by anyone, including the Ordinary, and no formation, reference, or urgency substitutes for either.
A petition for holy orders is received by the Office of the Ordinary and answered personally. What follows is an extended conversation rather than an interview: why this, why here, what has already happened to this person in church, and what they think the office actually consists of. Candidates who want authority rather than work are identified at this stage, and they are told so kindly and clearly.
A criminal background check follows, and it is not waivable. Current Safe Environment and Mandatory Reporter training is required and kept current thereafter, because Oregon clergy are mandatory reporters under ORS 419B.010 and a cleric who does not know what that obliges is a hazard. Both requirements sit ahead of formation deliberately — a church that runs the coursework first has already invested in someone before it has checked them.
Formation is then prescribed in writing: scripture, the Roman Rite in the books of 1962, the 1917 Code as this church applies it, sacramental theology, pastoral practice, boundaries, and the specific pastoral realities of trans, disabled, and cast-out people who arrive already injured by clergy. Examination is conducted against that written course of study, and it can be failed.
Admission to orders is by decree of the Ordinary, entered in the register, with the candidate’s Profession of Faith subscribed and held on file. Clerical celibacy is not a condition of orders here. Fitness is assessed as fitness — competence, stability, honesty about one’s own history, and the capacity to be told no — and not as conformity to a body type.
Ordinary and Chief Pastor
Governance, admission to orders, dispensations, and final pastoral responsibility.
Erected — filledChancellor
Custody of the instruments, the Document Register, and correspondence of the Chancery.
Erected — filledVicar General
Ordinary executive authority delegated by the Constitution when erected.
Provided for — openPriest
Sacramental ministry under the books of 1962 and the Ordination Discipline.
No ordinations to dateDeacon
Ministry of word, charity, and assistance at the altar; the diaconate is open on the same terms as the priesthood.
No ordinations to dateNotary of the Chancery
Attests acts, decrees, and entries in the bound registers.
Provided for — openSafeguarding Officer
Receives reports independently of the Ordinary and reports to the Board.
Provided for — openCertified Support Group Leader
A lay office, not an order. Certification under the leader track, re-certified annually.
Enrolment openThe 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code, which is the canonical framework of this church, provides at canon 968 §1 that only a baptized male validly receives sacred ordination. Rome maintains that position today at canon 1024 of the 1983 Code, argued at length in Inter Insigniores in 1976 and declared definitive in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in 1994. Rome does not present this as a rule it could change; it presents it as a limit on its own authority.
This church takes the same Code as its framework and departs at that canon knowingly, on stated grounds: Galatians 3:28; Phoebe named as deacon of the church at Cenchreae in Romans 16:1; the documented movement of the Church’s own discipline across nineteen centuries, including on married clergy, minor orders, and lay preaching; and conscience formed inside the tradition rather than against it. Holy orders here are open to every baptized person found fit.
Two things follow and are stated rather than implied. Rome will not recognise orders conferred here. And a candidate whose sense of vocation depends on Roman recognition should not begin here, and will be told so in the first conversation rather than the last.
Petitions for holy orders are received by the Office of the Ordinary and answered within two days.
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