I do not know. And neither do you. That’s the concern, isn’t it?
My arguments show that I DO know. If you disagree, then please show this by
refuting them. But allow me to give it one more time. Please engage the arguments, and not irrelevant side points, including what happened to people in the 17th, 18th, or 19th century in Norway or England who, ‘thought they were receiving the Eucharist.’ Now, I have made it clear many times that I do not agree that either the Church of England or the Church of Norway lost succession. But I have,
for the sake of argument, agreed to take that as a premise to show, from the perspective of Roman Catholicism, that we do possess apostolic succession NOW. Can we please focus on that?
So here is my basic argument (note my use of the word ‘supposedly’):
The Church of England
supposedly lost apostolic succession in the 16th century, as the Edwardian Ordinal
supposedly explicitly rejected that bishops and priests were ordained to offer sacrifice (specifically, the sacrament of the Mass). This
supposedly introduced an essential change to the priesthood,
supposedly resulting in the loss of apostolic succession.
The Church of Norway
supposedly lost apostolic succession in the 15th century too (although no explicit rejection of the sacrificial nature of the priesthood was found in the new Ordinals, and Roman Catholic bishops joined the Reformation
as bishops).
Now, to have a valid sacrament, you need a
valid minister (in this case a validly consecrated bishop with apostolic succession),
valid intent (the intent to do what the Church does,
facere quod facit ecclesia, in this case the intent to consecrate a valid bishop or ordain a valid priest), a
valid form (in this case a form that expresses the intention to consecrate a bishop or ordain a priest without the explicit rejection that he offer sacrifice),(*) and
valid matter (in this case a baptised male).
Now, in the 1930s, the Church of England and the Union of Utrecht went into communion with one another, through the
Bonn Agreement. Neither of these comunions agreed with the Roman Catholic Church that the Church of England lacked valid orders, and when the Old Catholic Bishop of Haarlem, +Henry Theoroe John van Vlijmen, were co-consecrator with
+Cosmo Gordon Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury, he did it “to mingle as two streams the episcopal succession which has come down from the Apostles, namely that derived through the bishops of the Old Catholic Church and that which has come down through the Anglican hierarchy until the present time.”(**) So, it is clear they didn’t agree with
Apostolicae curae. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that they did.
When asked what his intention was when he, together with +Cosmo Gordon Lang, laid his hands on a man being consecrated Bishop and said
Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, ‘receive the Holy Spirit,’ +van Vlijmen declared that he “formally intended to confer … the order of the episcopate according to the mind of our holy mother, the Catholic and Apostolic Church … and to impart the same episcopal character which … we bishops of the Old Catholic Church possess, that is,
the fullness of priesthood with each and every function pertaining thereto and with the faculties inherent in the same, in the precise sense in which the fullness of the priesthood has been understood
everywhere, always, and by all.”**]
We thus see that in the 1930s, there was a
valid minister, consecrating
valid matter, using a
valid form (the Anglican ordinal of the 1930s) and with
valid intent. The Church of England thus
supposedly regained valid orders in the 1930s, and in the 1990s, after the Porvoo agreement, bishops of the Church of England were (and remain to this day) con-consecrators of all bishops in the Church of Norway, thus
supposedly giving apostolic succession to the Church of Norway. This included the bishop who ordained me last year.
(*) Note that Pope Pius XII made it clear, in 1947, that for an Ordinal to be invalid (on the question of sacrifice), it must contain an
explicit rejection of the sacrificial nature of the priesthood. The historical form of this is the
traditio instrumentorum, the handing over of the chalice and paten with the following words, “Take authority to offer in the church the sacrifice for the living and the dead.” But Pius XII made it clear that the
traditio instrumentorum is not required for a valid ordination. He wrote, in the Apostolic Constitution
Sacramentum Ordinis(November 30, 1947), emphasis added:
Besides, every one knows that the Roman Church
has always held as valid Ordinations conferred according to the Greek rite without the traditio instrumentorum; so that in the very Council of Florence, in which was effected the union of the Greeks with the Roman Church,
the Greeks were not required to change their rite of Ordination or to add to it the traditio instrumentorum: and it was the will of the Church that in Rome itself the Greeks should be ordained according to their own rite. It follows that, even according to the mind of the Council of Florence itself,
the traditio instrumentorum is not required for the substance and validity of this Sacrament by the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. If it was at one time necessary even for validity by the will and command of the Church, every one knows that the Church has the power to change and abrogate what she herself has established.
(**) Source: Appendix II, footnote 3, in Fr. John J. Hughes’
Stewards of the Lord. Emphasis in original.
