Ordination of Priests and Bishops valid?

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Hello,

Please try not to take offense at the following, it is a question that I would argue is critical to the development of my understanding of the faith… I have been wrestling with some Sedevacantist type objections, and while I generally find a certain amount of reprehensibility present in their material, the following has perplexed me.

Is the New Rite Ordination valid?

If so, why are the Anglican ordinations invalid?

Is it due to form, intention or both?

If it is due to form, why is the NO rite valid, as it is guilty of similar changes to form as the Anglican?

If it is due to intention, why is the Anglican rite invalid?

Also, if it is due to intention, why is the Orthodox rite valid while the Anglican isn’t? What is the difference between the two?

How does one reconcile all of these different answers into one cohesive whole?

Thank you for your time, and please understand I am asking these questions in good faith, and having read various materials on both sides of the issue and am cursorily familiar with the history of various declarations on these subjects (i.e. Leo XIII, etc).
 
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Is the new rite ordination valid? Yes.
Why is the Anglican ordination invalid? Because they have no valid bishops to ordain them. After the original group of bishops prior to Henry’s wrench of power (who had been validly ordained in the Roman Catholic Church) died off, the bishops who followed were ordained by Anglican rites, and they in turn ordained priests. Some 450 years on, there are no Anglican priests ordained by a bishop who was ordained validly in the Catholic Church.

So it is due to matter more than any of the others. If there is no valid bishop, there can be no valid rites.
 
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So then the issue lies in a matter of intention on the part of the Anglican bishops during subsequent ordinations, i.e. to consecrate and ordain outside of the magisterium of the church and with an obstinate view as regards doctrine.

Why then, are the Orthodox sacraments considered valid according to the CCC?
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
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noob:
Why then, are the Orthodox sacraments considered valid according to the CCC?
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Because the Orthodox have valid apostolic succession, i.e. valid bishops ordain the Orthodox priests.
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But then the issue becomes why is their apostolic succession valid while the Anglican cannot claim the same. The Anglican rites of ordination are deemed invalid because of a lack of either/both intention and form. Surely this applies to the Orthodox rites, as well.
 
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The Orthodox and Latin/Eastern rites did not split off in the same way. Anglicans can trace their heritage back to approximately AD 1533. But the Orthodox, just like us, can trace their heritage back to the apostles. Their rites also predate the Great Schism. They were valid before the split and they remain valid after. The differences with Catholics and Orthodox do not involve a differing view of the Eucharist. While some ‘high church’ Anglicans hold to a form of view of a Real Presence, many low church Anglicans view the Eucharist as symbolic only.
 
stpurl said:
The Orthodox and Latin/Eastern rites did not split off in the same way. Anglicans can trace their heritage back to approximately AD 1533.
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It could be argued the Orthodox split was more critical! Anglicans trace their heritage back to the time of the apostles, same as the Orthodox, and in a sense they are correct. (I am not a fan of the Anglican church btw and find some of their practices appalling)
stpurl said:
They were valid before the split and they remain valid after. The differences with Catholics and Orthodox do not involve a differing view of the Eucharist.
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Validity before/after only begs the question. Also, if private belief in the Real Presence is a necessity of intention, surely that raises some alarms in regards the Church in modern times…
 
Are you trying to claim that the Anglican rite and intention and practices go back to the time of the apostles? I don’t think so, any more than Lutherans, Anabaptists, Presbyterians etc could claim so. The origininators of each of these faiths were men who took men and women who had been born Catholic and convinced them that the Catholic faith was wrong and that their man-made ‘changes’ were better.

And we’re not talking about belief in the real presence by the laity, we’re talking about belief in the real presence by the priest. Since so many Anglicans/Episcopalians actually teach and believe in a symbolic Eucharist, while the Catholic Church holds to the apostolic truth of a non-symbolic, Real Presence Eucharist, how many in each ‘group’ accept or reject the teaching is not the point; the point is the teaching itself.
 
By the way, noob, your profile lists your religion as ‘catholic’ small c. Are you then Anglican/Episcopal, non denom, or Catholic but ‘questioning’?
 
I appreciate the responses. Let me rephrase in a way that perhaps might cut more to the heart of the issue: if a priest holds heretical values, does that invalidate ipso facto a sacrament by default? Or does it just make it illicit?

If it invalidates entirely, then I see no reason why the Orthodox church should be considered valid, as they are heretical and in schism.
 
Ah. No, that’s related to an old heresy which held that unless the priest was himself sinless the sacraments he performed, including the Mass, would be invalid or illicit. Related to, but not quite the same.

A priest who was guilty of mortal sin (like rape for example) could still celebrate a valid Mass, hear a valid confession, conduct a valid marriage.

But if the priest lacked intent, say did not intend to consecrate the Eucharist, it would not be consecrated. Marriage is a little different; the spouses are the true ministers. Mass of course without the consecration is invalid and illicit, but the people in the congregation would not know, and so even though they didn’t attend a true Mass, they would not be considered as having deliberately missed their Sunday obligation.

But going to the Orthodox, the Eucharist again is considered in the same way the Catholics do. The liturgy is conducted for the same reason. Baptism, confirmation, etc are conducted for the same reason (and with regard to baptism, ALL trinitarian baptisms are valid whether they are celebrated in a Catholic Church, Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist, non denom, or in a private home down by the atheist best friend of the parents when done with the intention to baptize according to the Christian faith).

The orthodox priests do not hold heretical values. Schism and heresy are not the same.
 
Thanks for the response. I need to do more research into Anglicanism. I know to start they almost surely believed in the real presence…which seems to have been Pope Leo XIIIs objection a century later, that their ordination rites left out any language discussing the ‘Sacrifice of the Mass’ and therefore they tacitly abrogated any sort of transubstantiation.

So, the key here is intention: a lack of intention to offer up the sacrifice, or better phrased as a distinct lack of belief in the real presence.

I will grant you, this is a much more crucial aspect of “divine and catholic faith” than many of the Eastern doctrines, one that is obviously key to the entire religion. But I can’t help but feel a certain danger in this way of thinking. Surely many priests similarly must suffer from lack of faith in these matters. Perhaps even Bishops or Popes in times past. It’s uncertain ground and the lack of clarity on what precisely and exactly distinguishes between validly ordained and not is likewise worrisome.
 
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noob said:
why are the Anglican ordinations invalid?
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Apostolici Curae from Leo XIII explains that intention is normally not judged, but the Anglican Ordinal offers proof of intention to do something other than what the Church intends. This was not simply in the references to sacrifice, but in the fact of creating an Ordinal to be different from the approved Ordinal.

Anglicans have an unbroken succession of bishops at Canterbury from the 6th century when St Gregory I sent St Augustine to evangelize England. The Roman Catholic Church does not recognize the validity of the episcopal orders since the 16th century, but a ceremonial laying on of hands has been done continuously from the 6th century to the present day.

The post Vatican II revisions were approved by the Pope. They were done at the request of the Council. They are in no way an act of rebellion against the Church, but a fulfillment of a request by the leaders of the Church.

The same can be said of the Orthodox. Any changes they have made, if they have made any, were done by the Patriarch and bishops. They have the authority over their own liturgy, something the Anglicans did not have. This independence predates the schism with Rome. The schism came long after they had established the rites for ordaining bishops, not at the same time as happened in England.
 
noob said:
It’s uncertain ground and the lack of clarity on what precisely and exactly distinguishes between validly ordained and not is likewise worrisome.
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You are correct. If this line of theology was the only aspect which invalidated Anglican ordination, then it would be worrisome. There is, however, a another rationale when following the invalidity of Anglican ordination.

In this line of reasoning, the question isn’t so much “Is the Anglican Ordination valid?” but rather “In an Anglican Ordination, is the bishop actually a validly ordained bishop?”

In the early years of Anglicanism, it was easy to trace who was a legitimate bishop: those who were bishops before Henry VIII broke from Rome. After that, however, it gets kind of murky. Some bishops were elevated to the episcopate simply by order of the King (there was no actual episcopal ordination). Thus, every priest that these new bishops ordained were not legitimately priests because the bishop who ordained them was not legitimately a bishop. Some priests in the Low Church weren’t even actually ordained in the century or two proceeding Henry and Elizabeth. Instead, those candidates were elevated to the priesthood simply through apprenticeship or decrees of the bishop or monarch. This lack of valid ordination creates a cascade effect.

Historically, I have been told that some Anglican priests have converted to Catholicism and had their ordinations recognized as valid if they could submit a pedigree of legitimate ordination dating back to Henry VIII, but these were few and far between, even in the 400+ years since Anglicanism broke from Catholicism. Nowadays, the Catholic Ordination is simply in recognition that it is nearly impossible to trace an unbroken line of ordination back far enough to satisfy the requirements for validity.
 
noob said:
the key here is intention: a lack of intention to offer up the sacrifice, or better phrased as a distinct lack of belief in the real presence.
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This is just wrong. Anglicans and Catholics share the same faith in the Eucharist, even though their stand on holy orders differs somewhat. This was the conclusion of ARCIC-I which was solemnly affirmed by St John Paul II and the abp of Canterbury in 1996. Even if there was a lack of intent to offer sacrifice, and that has been debated, that has nothing to do with a lack of belief in the real presence.
 

OP, I read about that topic some weeks ago, from this excellent article in Wikipedia.

In short, the question of valid orders only seems to have surged since Leo XIII Pontificate (during the rise of Anglo-Catholicism), and the judgment that the Pope declared is that the Anglican ordinations don’t have the “Sacrificial meaning” of the Catholic Ordinations.

To me, it seems a bit forced, considering they had valid bishops, but it’s part of the Magisterium so I have to obey, I guess.

What we know for sure is that the Anglican ordinations of women are invalid. At least we can all agree there 🤷‍♂️
 
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The late Michael Davies wrote an entire book stating why the new rite of ordination IS valid.

Re Anglicanism: To build on what @stpurl posted, Pope Leo XIII declared that Anglican orders are null and invalid in Apostolicae curae as @AlbMagno posted.

Re Sedevacantism: There’s a lot of good material against it. Personally, I have read True or False Pope? A Refutation of Sedevacantism and Other Errors by John Salza & Robert Siscoe. (they have a website as well) and Sedevacantism: A False Solution to a Real Problem.

TOFP is a big book and very scholarly, with extensive footnotes. The second one is shorter and more easy to read but it’s older (unless there’s a revised version, Idk).

Besides these, the most important is Holy Scripture. Our Lord said: “I will not leave you orphans…” (John 14: 18). An orphan is a child with no parents. Pope Francis has many titles: Vicar of Christ, Your Holiness etc but most of all he is called the Holy Father.

Since Our Lord IS Truth Incarnate, and He said: “I will not leave you orphans…”, He meant it. If the Sedevacantists were right, then we are orphans - which we are NOT since Our Lord ALWAYS keeps His promises.
 
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Here are a few good articles:

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01491a.htm

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01644a.htm

The form used was according to the intention of the “Anglican schism,” wherein we do not find right belief in the priesthood or sacrifice. The “interior” or “psychological” intention of the minister is somewhat less important (so the lack of faith in a bishop of the Catholic hierarchy is not an invalidating factor).
 
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