Jennie66:
Could anyone tell me if it is true that the RCC has recognized the CEC’s Holy Orders as valid? If so, what does that mean? Is it now permissable for a Catholic to receive at one of their “Masses”?
Jenny,
Not sure if I’m the person to whom GKC was referring, but I can answer you. For some reason, questions regarding the validity of presbyteral orders in the CEC abound lately. The short answer to your first question is “no”; the second question, therefore, is moot; and the answer to the third question is generally “no”, although Semper Fi’s blanket statement above is incorrect as well.
Let me give you some background on the CEC. The CEC (and its parent body the Int’l Communion of the CEC) was formed in the early 1990s, although it has origins in an evangelical movement that arose about 15 years prior to that. It isn’t entirely clear from whence CEC’s first presbyters derived,
i.e., by whom they were ordained and into which ecclesial community - that’s important to keep in mind, since it may have implications for the issue of the validity of the CEC’s orders.
Austin Randolph Adler, who is now the Primate or Patriarch (he has used both titles) of the CEC, was its founding bishop. Prior to becoming such, he pastored Stone Mountain Church, apparently an evangelical - possibly non-denominational - congregation. He was consecrated bishop by Bishop Timothy Barker, then of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch - Malabar Rite (CACA-MR). How Adler came into contact with the CACA-MR is unclear; it is one of several so-called “Spruit-line” Churches - the reference being to Herman Spruit, hierarch of the CACA-MR as well as progenitor of a significant number of other “independent Catholic” and “independent Orthodox” Churches. (The CACA-MR is, by the way, neither Catholic, nor of Antioch, and has no relationship to the Malabarese.)
Subsequently, in the mid-'90s, Adler and Randolph Sly, another CEC bishop, apparently became concerned about the validity of the episcopal lineage conferred by Barker (a not totally-unfounded concerm) and sought additional episcopal consecration from William Millsaps, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Missionary Church (EMC). The EMC was originally a diocese within the Episcopal Church of the USA (ECUSA) but broke with its parent in 1992 (about the same time that the CEC came into being) over issues of theology and practice within the Episcopal Communion.
In 1997, Archbishops Adler, Sly, and 3 other CEC hierarchs were re-consecrated (
sub conditione, I believe) by bishops of
Igreja Catolica Apostolica Brasileira (ICAB) - the Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil. Shortly thereafter, those newly re-consecrated laid hands on most of the remaining CEC hierarchs. The ICAB has its episcopal origins from the so-called “Duarte-Costa line”, which originated in the mid-20th century when Carlos Duarte-Costa, then a Latin Catholic bishop, resigned his titular episcopacy and broke with Rome to found the schismatic ICAB.
The late Bishop Duarte-Costa, together with his immediate episcopal descendents, have been a prolific source of episcopal orders, not only in the Western Hemisphere, but throughout the world - resulting in an abundance of “independent Catholic” Churches and other ecclesial bodies that, arguably, have claim to Apostolic Succession, valid orders, and valid sacraments.
The CEC, as a consequence of the consecration afforded to their hierarchs by the Duarte-Costa connection, also falls into that murky realm of an arguable claim to validity, because of the
Augustinian theory to which the Catholic Church subscribes in determining the validity of Orders. In brief, under the Augustinian theory (which I explained in detail in a post on this forum about a year ago), a bishop with valid episcopal orders continues to have and validly exercise those orders (though he does so illicitly), despite his estrangement from the Church, provided that proper form, matter, and intent are present.
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