Invalidity of Anglican Orders

Does the Question of Anglican Orders Admit of Further Investigation?

 

Q. As the late decree of the Pope declaring the nullity of Anglican Orders is not an infallible utterance, does it not leave the question as it was, a case for further investigation? Of course, it commands and will receive the obedient acceptance of all Catholics, as a matter of submission to law. This, however, does not make belief in its being infallible as a matter of divine Catholic faith necessary.

 

May it not be somewhat like the decree of Pope Stephen, who ordered all who had received ordinations from his predecessor, Formosus, to be re-ordained?

 

~I. N.

Response. The Pontifical Decision regarding the nullity of Anglican Orders is not of a nature to command the same internal assent which is to be given to an infallible utterance regarding a doctrine of faith or morals. It is a judicial sentence as to the proper application of certain laws or forms to an established fact. Hence, it is a misapprehension on the part of Anglicans to assume that the Pope pretends to settle an historical fact by an appeal to infallible authority, that is to say, as if the infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost had revealed to him the nature of such a fact.

          Not at all. The Pontiff simply collects all the accessible evidence which establishes beyond human doubt the credibility of a certain fact. Having ascertained that fact he pronounces that it stands as an infallible evidence that the Anglican Orders administered for a full century were not the same as the priestly Orders of the Catholic Church, and that the difference, as he shows, was one of essentials. Nor can the fact, upon which the Papal judgment rests its logical conclusion of the invalidity of Anglican Orders, be held as doubtful. It is admitted by Anglicans, as well as by those who differ from them (and fully established by documents at hand and known to both parties) that the Edwardian Ritual was used (by law established) in the entire Anglican communion for more than three generations. If the heads of a church make a public avowal of Protestantism in the expressed sense of excluding a priestly ministry (such as is conveyed in the priestly Orders as administered from the days of St. Augustine in England); if that same form of Protestantism is declared by the supreme ministers of state to be the religion of the land; if it is incorporated in the ritual book which declared the norm of public worship; if it is acknowledged in the confessions of the apologists and theologists of the Anglican establishment down to the present day —you cannot say that this Protestantism was not a fact, nor that it was Catholicism.

          It boots nothing that some modern Anglicans of a more pronounced tendency toward the old forms of worship call the Edwardian Ritual a Catholic Ritual, and hence claim the validity of the Orders administered according to its forms. Surely, we who are Catholics, by the admission of all—at least so far as our sacramental worship and the sacerdotal continuity is concerned—should know what Catholic Orders are, and what the Church holds them to be. Indeed, our chief theologian, the Pope, is the very one who is asked for an expression on a subject which he must surely be at home with, and which he could not very well distort or exaggerate to the prejudice of anyone, for there are some more theologians, past and present, who have had knowledge on the same subject, and who establish an important recourse to the fountain of Catholic truth.

          Hence, as the fact of the use of the Edwardian form is unquestioned, and as the difference between that form and the Catholic form in essentials is easily ascertained, the Pope did not have to seek information beyond that of historical evidence and Catholic doctrine. What he had to do was to show his readiness to have the topic discussed, lest anyone be kept from the fold by false pretense or the influence of blinded guides. The Papal utterance thus stands, not as an infallible declaration, but as a judicial sentence which practically admits of no appeal or reversal.

I say practically, because the possibility of a further discussion theoretically is not excluded by the Papal document. It may, indeed, be that not all the facts concerning the Edwardian ordination have been ascertained. Nevertheless, one thing is assured, that, whatever facts may come to light, they cannot alter the evidence at hand. They may cause new investigation and fresh discussion, not with a view of changing the verdict of Leo XIII, which is that of his predecessors only confirmed, but in order to satisfy anxious minds who have been led to think there is no evidence against Anglicanism

Yet even this chance of ever having the question recalled for examination by the Holy See is practically null; each past declaration has lessened the probability of a reopening. There has been no changing in the judgment of the highest court of appeal for three centuries, and Leo’s words do not indicate the likelihood of a change in the future. “Wherefore,” says the Pontiff, “strictly adhering in this matter to the decrees of the Pontiffs, our predecessors, confirming them most fully, and, as it were, renewing them by our authority, of our own motion and certain knowledge, We pronounce and declare that the ordinations conferred according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and void.”

 

~The American Ecclesiastical Review (1897, Vol 16)