If I were an Anglican, I would cling to the validity of Anglican Orders for dear life. But, the question was thoroughly examined by the Church. If I were an Anglican and someone cast aspersion on the validty of my Orders, not the liceity, of the rite of Consecration, and that there was a gap of 200-300 for the possibility of any validly consecrated bishop, I’d be beside myself.
Denial is the only route open to me then, other than finding a valid bishop who would re-ordain me, or return to the Catholic Church, for conditional re-ordination.
An occasional schismatic Catholic bishop shows up on the scene, and maybe a retired Eastern Orthodox, who could be convinced to re-ordain me.
Generally, Re-ordination is out of the question, so is my return to the CC. So we see all this denial going on.
Denial, denial, denial.
PS. WHERE IS THE FACTUAL ERROR IN THE BULL???
mgrfin
Para 26. See above.
In fact, I am not sure whether the issue was correctly resolved by
AC or not. But I am of the opinion that the matter was not throughly examined, to reach the conclusion. I base this primarily on the historical accounts in Fr. Hughes ABSOLUTELY NULL AND UTTERLY VOID.
I honestly have little time, in a given on-line session, to make substantial posts any more. But here is a cut and paste from something I did in more leisurely hours.
*The commissioners met first on 24 Mar 1896, for a procedural meeting. There were 10 other working meetings, and a final procedural one, on 7 May. The 10 working sessions lasted approx. 3 hours each, as far as can be shown. Of the 30 or so hours thus spent discussing Anglican orders, 19 had been taken up with historical questions, primarily relating to Cardinal Pole during Mary’s reign. Halfway through the 8th meeting, the subject of the adequacy of the Edwardine Ordinal was taken up. There is no evidence of discussion of intent, from available records and memos (the secret archives of the Vatican, through Leo XIII, including the papers of the Commission, were opened by JP II in 1978). The Commission wound up its work and passed its recommendations to the Cardinals who were to advise Leo.
It is possible to determine, with some confidence, the final positions of the commissioners on the issue. Generally, 4 of the 8 (Duchesne, Gasparri, de Augustinis, Scannell [the non-Vaughan-selected English priest]) were in favor of declaring Anglican orders either valid or possibly valid. 4 were for invalidity (Gasquet, Moyes, Fleming [Cardinal Vaughan’s 3 representatives] and de Llaveneras. And it appears that none of the commissioners had changed their minds during the discussions; that was how it had begun. Now the case went to the Cardinals, under the Holy Office. *
*The Cardinals met once, after about a month of manuverings, primarily by Cardinal Vaughan and his representatives, on Thursday, 16 July 1896. This was a Feria V meeting, under the personal presidency of the Pope, which lends greater solemnity and authority to the final decision. An unusual effort to have the maximum number of Cardinals in attendence resulted in an ill Cardinal (Mertel) being carried into the meeting. But there was one notable absence: Cardinal Rampolla, the Cardinal Sec. of State, the only high Vatican official to have shown favor to Halifax’s and Portal’s idea from the first, was not present.
The Cardinals sat for about 2-3 hours. The vote, in brief, was that Anglican orders were invalid. Monsignor Merry Del Val, who had served as the original Commission secretary, and had worked closely with Cardinal Vaughan throughout, and Dom Francis Gasquet, from the Commission, drafted the original of the Bull. And it was issued on 13 Sep, 1896. *
As an aside, what is your understanding of how the Bull, the commission, and all, came to be? What started this? And precisely what question was the commission charged to answer?
BTW, I am a Continuing Anglican, not the official variety. My priest was ordained by one of the first 4 Continuing Anglican bishops, who was himself consecrated by an ECUSA bishop with definitive PNCC lines (received in 1962). I am at ease about the validity (not the liceity) of the orders that I am surrounded by. And the ordinal we use would pass muster by anyone. Includes porrection of the instruments, it does. Compares favorably with the Roman Pontifical of the 16th century, to say nothing of the current Roman rite.
I find
AC a complicated and fascinating subject, but not one I hyper-ventilate on. I accept the ruling that *AC * made, for the RCs, as binding on them. But it is not something that greatly perturbs me, as I kneel at the altar rail to receive the Body and Blood. (Yes, I know).
GKC
