The Sacramental Priesthood

• Re: Bishops:
  • "Priest" and "bishop" may have been interchangeable titles in the New Testament period:
    • Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 4:14; Titus 1:5-7; 1 Peter 5:1-2; 2 John 1; 3 John 1;
    • St. Jerome, Ep. 146, i;

  • A bishop is a chief of priests, elected from among his colleagues to provide leadership in the same way that a general is (or was in the later Roman Empire) a soldier elected to lead his fellow fighters:
    • St. Jerome, Ep. 146, i: (Jerome associates this idea particularly with Alexandria.)

• Re: Deacons:
  • Priests said to outrank deacons in the ecclesiastical hierarchy:
    • St. Jerome, Ep. 146;