pablope;12416895:
Maybe.
The Edwardine ordinal, in the form considered in Apostolicae curae
, was “cured”, in the change in 1662.
AC makes no definitive statement as to that change, and how it would affect the charge of invalidity of form, if at all.
The use of the original ordinal was the fact taken as allowing
determinatio ex adiunctis, to conclude an invalid sacramental intent, in 1559. This was not directly due to the actual structure of the form (which was not exceptional; other rites with the same defect were and are considered as transmitting Orders validly) but from the circumstances in which the form was composed. Absent that original form, using the 1662 form, and assuming that all other sacramental factors were valid, Ott’s assertion as to the ability of any validly consecrated bishop (including schismatic ones) to confer orders validly, if illicitly, leads to the question of what does the Dutch Touch mean, if anything to the RCC, and why.
I’ve read varying opinions. Still watching for a definitive statement, analogous to
AC. Remaining curious, in the meanwhile.
GKC
Actually, GK, your first statement is false.
"Apologists for the validity of Anglican Orders have made much of the slight revisions made to the Ordinal in 1662. The words ‘for the office of and work of a priest in the Church of God now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands’ were added to the indeterminate form of the 1552 Ordinal. The complete form read: Receive the Holy Ghost, whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy sacraments: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
The word ‘priest’ does not occur in this form, which remained unchanged when the 1552 Prayer Book was restored to use with some revisions under Elizabeth I in 1559, after the return to the traditional rites during the reign of Queen Mary. The failure to use this word in the form itself, although the word priesthood is used elsewhere in the rite, is of considerable significance. Apologists for the validity of Anglican Orders lay great stress on the fact that an ancient form has now been discovered (The Sacramentary of Seraphion), where the word is also not used. The comparison is irrelevant as there is far more significance attached to the removal of the word from an existing form than its failure to appear in an ancient one.
The same apologists also lay considerable stress on the fact that Pope Leo claimed that the addition of the extra words in the 1662 revision showed that the Anglicans themselves realized that the 1552 form was inadequate. They allege that the Pope was mistaken and that these changes were made to rule out the claim of Presbyterians that the Orders of bishop and priest are really one and the same. Nothing is lost in conceding this argument; it does not affect the theological point at issue, namely the Pope’s judgment that these changes were not capable of imparting validity to an invalid rite.
The complete 1662 form reads as follows: Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven: and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of his Holy Sacraments; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
It will be noted that, even with this addition, it is simply a case of an "office’ being ‘committed’ to the ordinand, and the assistance of the Holy Ghost is invoked to help him fulfill it worthily. There is no suggestion here (or anywhere else in the rite) that new powers which he did not possess before have been conferred upon him. "Committed’ is not a sacramental word. The Church does not ‘commit’ sacraments, she ‘confers’ them.
Pope Leo XIII took the 1662 changes into consideration but ruled that they could not be considered as imparting validity to a rite which had never been valid: “Any words in the Anglican Ordinal, as it is now, which lend themselves to ambiguity, cannot be taken in the same sense as they possess in the Catholic rite. For once a new rite has been initiated, in which, as we have seen, the Sacrament of Order is adulterated or denied, and from which all idea of consecration and sacrifice has been rejected, the formula, “Receive the Holy Ghost,” no longer holds good, because the Spirit is infused into the soul with the grace of the Sacrament, and so the words “for the office and work of a priest or a bishop,” and the like no longer hold good, but remain as words without the reality which Christ instituted.”
From 'The Order of Melchisedech" by Michael Davies pps 39 - 41.
I’m glad you have this book.