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)
