Lutheran 'Orders'?

[chevalier]

It is theoretically possible that a Protestant could have valid orders. But he would need to receive them from a Catholic or Orthodox bishop with apostolic succession in the proper rite. Sometimes it happens.

There are no proper orders where the intention to ordain a sacrificing priest is lost. This way, if an Anglican pastor (Anglo-Catholic ones tend to be called priests) receives orders from an Old Catholic bishop, it’s likely to be valid. But if the Anglicans later on ordain him bishop, only his priestly orders are valid because the Anglican bishops don’t have valid episcopal orders (because they don’t have valid priestly orders in the first place).

With Anglicans, it comes down to two things: apostolic succession and the rite. They could even have proper apostolic succession, were it not for Cranmer’s rite. Amending the rite later on and making it more Catholic-like couldn’t have retroactively convalidated the null and void orders.

With bishops, practically everything comes down to the rite, as you don’t have to include sacrificing in the ordination - the ordination only administered to those who already are sacrificing priests.

The same holds for other Protestant churches. Defective rite, defective intent, no apostolic succession (a priest can validly confirm you even though it’s the bishop’s job, but no priest can validly ordain a priest).

In as far as no Lutheran church body that I know of has ever defined marriage as a sacrament I just imagine it would be hard for the RC Church to view Lutherans as practicing the sacrament of matrimony. Certainly not in the way Catholics do. It seems to me that we would have to first say that marriage is a sacrament and then Catholics would recoginze that and say, “Yes, Lutherans practice that sacrament…”

But in our Canon Law we’re basically saying all valid marriage between baptised Christians is sacramental. Before you ask: two Catholics can’t validly contract marriage if it isn’t sacramental marriage according to the laws of the church.

If a Protestant couple converts, its marriage is considered sacramental without any additional blessings or prayers or declarations or anything.

As a catholic swede I have studied this a bit. It seems NOT to be valid because of involuntary behaviour. The last Catholic Bishop of Strengnäs, if he can be called so, was Magnus Sommar (1528-36), dean of Strengnäs in 1518, nominated bishop by Gustavus Vasa in 1522, and consecrated WHITHOUT papal confirmation by Petrus Magni, Bishop of Westeraas, 6 Jan., 1528. The bishops elect signed a document in which they promised to go to Rome to seek papal confirmation, and thus persuaded Petrus Magni to proceed to the consecration. They never went to Rome.

Consecration is valid even without papal approval. In fact, it can be valid if it’s expressly forbidden by the Pope. The are canonical penalties for the old bishop (suspended from ordaining) and the newly ordained (insta-suspension a divinis), but those are “bans”. They are forbidden to exercise powers which are in no way removed from them. Because they can’t be. There’s also a question of what rite was used and whether the bishop was willing or coerced and all other requirements for the validity of ordination.

 

[chevalier]

Only a Catholic Bishop can confer Holy Orders by the laying on of hands. This goes back through Apostolic Succession to Jesus who iniated the Priesthood.

Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox bishops can too. Jesus didn’t really confer two separate orders on the Apostles, but they were bishops (i.e. they were more than bishops, but they were valid bishops themselves). It seems the office of the Apostle was unique but it contained epispocal powers. Consequently, it seems that Jesus didn’t ordain any priests - He only ordained bishops. Unless someone could prove that the Apostles received priestly orders before episcopal orders, bishops were first and priests were “invented” only later, to help bishops.

But there’s a problem with Protestant bishops with valid orders (e.g. from Old Catholics) ordaining anyone in a Protestant church. While they did have the ability to ordain people, the rite was most probably deficient. In the Anglican Church, Cranmer’s rite wouldn’t be sufficient, but it was amended later on, so it could have enabled such bishops to confer valid orders.

It seems that such a bishop would have to use a rite reflecting the sacrificial nature of priesthood, or a rite that didn’t contradict it with himself in this case having an intention of ordaining a sacrificing priest. As for episcopal orders, no rite or intention will help if the priestly orders aren’t valid. If a valid bishop were to ordain a valid priest to the episcopate, the ordination could be valid, although it seems the Protestant churches have altered the rite too much (e.g. removing the Deus honorum omnium prayer) for the orders to be valid.

 

[GKC]

chevalier:

It is theoretically possible that a Protestant could have valid orders. But he would need to receive them from a Catholic or Orthodox bishop with apostolic succession in the proper rite. Sometimes it happens.

There are no proper orders where the intention to ordain a sacrificing priest is lost. This way, if an Anglican pastor (Anglo-Catholic ones tend to be called priests) receives orders from an Old Catholic bishop, it’s likely to be valid. But if the Anglicans later on ordain him bishop, only his priestly orders are valid because the Anglican bishops don’t have valid episcopal orders (because they don’t have valid priestly orders in the first place).

With Anglicans, it comes down to two things: apostolic succession and the rite. They could even have proper apostolic succession, were it not for Cranmer’s rite. Amending the rite later on and making it more Catholic-like couldn’t have retroactively convalidated the null and void orders.

With bishops, practically everything comes down to the rite, as you don’t have to include sacrificing in the ordination - the ordination only administered to those who already are sacrificing priests.

The same holds for other Protestant churches. Defective rite, defective intent, no apostolic succession (a priest can validly confirm you even though it’s the bishop’s job, but no priest can validly ordain a priest).

But in our Canon Law we’re basically saying all valid marriage between baptised Christians is sacramental. Before you ask: two Catholics can’t validly contract marriage if it isn’t sacramental marriage according to the laws of the church.

If a Protestant couple converts, its marriage is considered sacramental without any additional blessings or prayers or declarations or anything.

Consecration is valid even without papal approval. In fact, it can be valid if it’s expressly forbidden by the Pope. The are canonical penalties for the old bishop (suspended from ordaining) and the newly ordained (insta-suspension a divinis), but those are “bans”. They are forbidden to exercise powers which are in no way removed from them. Because they can’t be. There’s also a question of what rite was used and whether the bishop was willing or coerced and all other requirements for the validity of ordination.

Greetings, chevalier,

It is far more common to find Old Catholic or PNCC bishops participating in Anglican consecrations, esp. since 1932, and while such things were theoretically possible (i.e., before the Anglican Communion started to go off the rails) than to find such particpation at the sacerdotal ordination level. There is a heavy infusion of such episcopal lines in Anglicanism. My own rector was ordained by a bishop only one time removed from consecration by a PNCC bishop.

And Anglicans don’t accept Apostolicae Curae. That RCs do is right and proper.

As to the rite used, the judgement of AC, faulting intention and form, is almost always limited to intention, in contemporary discussions, it being a simple matter to find rites which Rome does approve of that are not essentially different in form from the Edwardine Ordinal.

GKC

traditional Anglican