Why are anglican orders invalid?

[Novocastrian]

Ahhh yes. I hear you loud and clear. Christ came to not witness to the truth but to witness to ambiguity.

Last time I checked, ambiguity and truth were neither antonyms nor mutually exclusive.

 

[Picky_Picky]

Would seem simple to have a definitive statement on the OC/PNCC question,as I have oft observed. But none comes, definitively and authoritatively.

Perhaps the Magisterium has seen no good reason to investigate the matter. Of course in some different (and at present quite unimaginable) future an investigation of Anglican orders in the light of their Dutchness and Polishness might be possible if needed, and might then present options for decisions which would not give rise to an uninformed questioning of the infallibility of Leo. Not much to be gained, and perhaps something to be lost, in investigating them now.

 

[Memaw]

Anglicans come to different conclusions on all sorts of things. It’s never stopped them in the past, and I doubt it will stop them in the future. I mean we don’t even all agree on the exact nature of the Eucharist. It’s why the very general “Real Presence” is used to describe it, in part because Anglicans run the gamut on what that actually entails. Why should the nature of holy orders be any different

Have you ever studied into Eucharistic Miracles within the Catholic Church. So you have any in yours?? God Bless, Memaw

 

[masuwerte]

The Eucharist is a miracle.

 

[Padres1969]

The Eucharist is a miracle.

Indeed it is.

 

[Padres1969]

Have you ever studied into Eucharistic Miracles within the Catholic Church. So you have any in yours?? God Bless, Memaw

I have studied many of them yes, and frankly I’ve also found enough evidence disproving some of them to be more than a little skeptical of the rest. As for Eucharistic miracles in my church I’ve not heard of any. Which is fine by me taking Matthew 12:39 into account.

 

[GKC]

Perhaps the Magisterium has seen no good reason to investigate the matter. Of course in some different (and at present quite unimaginable) future an investigation of Anglican orders in the light of their Dutchness and Polishness might be possible if needed, and might then present options for decisions which would not give rise to an uninformed questioning of the infallibility of Leo. Not much to be gained, and perhaps something to be lost, in investigating them now.

Perhaps so. In any case, I’m not the boss of them.

 

[Picky_Picky]

Perhaps so. In any case, I’m not the boss of them.

Indeed. Some sort of discrimination in the selection process, I don’t doubt.

 

[GKC]

Indeed. Some sort of discrimination in the selection process, I don’t doubt.

In truth, I never got around to submitting my application.

 

[KjetilK]

You do not understand the key point of the document, one which the Dutch Touch cannot fix, in a Catholic’s eyes. The rite of Anglican ordination in use, was, is, and will always be, defective. This is just part of an article found here: rtforum.org/lt/lt14.htmlPart I.

That Ordinal hasn’t been used since the 17th century, AFAICR.

 

[Memaw]

The Eucharist is a miracle.

Believe me I Do know that, but not just because I “think” it is or because I “want” it to be. Not up to me. I think you know what I meant by a Eucharistic Miracle.
Like the Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano. Check it out!. Do you have any such thing ??? God Bless

 

[Memaw]

I have studied many of them yes, and frankly I’ve also found enough evidence disproving some of them to be more than a little skeptical of the rest. As for Eucharistic miracles in my church I’ve not heard of any. Which is fine by me taking Matthew 12:39 into account.

Putting meaning into one line that is not intended to be there. God is the one who preforms miracles, even today. It’s a little hard to “dismiss” them all. God Bless, Memaw

 

[Tomdstone]

Putting meaning into one line that is not intended to be there. God is the one who preforms miracles, even today. It’s a little hard to “dismiss” them all. God Bless, Memaw

Can you give us an example of a convincing miracle in recent times which has no natural explanation ?

 

[Padres1969]

Putting meaning into one line that is not intended to be there. God is the one who preforms miracles, even today. It’s a little hard to “dismiss” them all. God Bless, Memaw

No all of them, just the Eucharistic ones you’re referring to. Never seen anything compelling that makes me believe them and plenty that makes me not.

 

[ComplineSanFran]

No all of them, just the Eucharistic ones you’re referring to. Never seen anything compelling that makes me believe them and plenty that makes me not.

I would agree with you here, Padres. If I were to make a sweeping generalization, I would say that Anglicans (at least in the west) are not so prone to believe in Eucharistic miracles. I can hear a number of friends and colleagues dismiss it as being a bit too ‘Catholic’. Not being uncharitable here, just saying it belongs more to the RCC than other branches. Opinion only.

 

[SAVINGRACE]

Their orders must be valid to some extent otherwise my baptism would not have been recognised when I converted to Catholicism.

 

[Padres1969]

Their orders must be valid to some extent otherwise my baptism would not have been recognised when I converted to Catholicism.

All Trinitarian baptisms in the proper form are recognized by the RCC, even ones done by lay persons.

 

[GKC]

Their orders must be valid to some extent otherwise my baptism would not have been recognised when I converted to Catholicism.

Orders are not required for a valid baptism. Only the Trinitarian form, and water.

The baptizing individual need not even be Christian, provided the intent is to do what the Church does in baptism.

 

[Duane1966]

That Ordinal hasn’t been used since the 17th century, AFAICR.

Words have been changed, but the rite was implemented specifically to reject what Catholicism intended to confer to a priest when he is ordained. From what I posted earlier.

Leo XIII’s argument could be summed up, then, as being based on the principle that a rite cannot convey something which it was intended specifically to exclude and repudiate. And in fact, as the Pope and many others since have pointed out, there have always been many Anglicans who agree entirely with Leo’s condemnation of Anglican orders - in the sense that they do not believe their rite conveys those powers which Catholics ascribe to ordained priests, and indeed, would be totally opposed to any attempt to convey such powers. They do not want their orders to be valid in the Catholic sense! A recent study by an Evangelical Anglican scholar, Colin Buchanan,13 expresses this viewpoint very clearly, underlining the fact that Cranmer knew what the Catholic doctrine was and wanted to make quite sure it was utterly excluded from his new rite of ordination.

    At this point someone might object that the argument we have expounded seems to contradict what we said earlier about the defect of form being quite independent from, and anterior to, the defect of intention. Leo XIII's argument for the defectiveness of the form (it might be said) turns out after all to depend crucially on Cranmer's intentions, and not simply on the actual words he used in his Ordinal.

    The answer to this objection - which seems to have been a source of confusion for quite a few people who have studied this problem - would be that **we must distinguish carefully between the intention of those who use the Anglican Ordinal in ordaining men to the Anglican ministry, and the intention of the authors of the Ordinal when they were composing it. What Pope Leo teaches is that the latter intention - *an anti-sacrificial and anti-Catholic one - is written into the Anglican rite, and "sticks" or "clings" to it, so to speak, for ever afterwards. ***That anti-sacrificial intention is thus the **objective and perduring meaning of the rite, and "infects," as it were,** the words "priest" and "bishop" in the essential prayers in such a way that those prayers are an invalid form of the sacrament. **In other words, according to Leo's teaching, *it is not good enough for an Anglo-Catholic bishop to come along at a later date (even assuming he has been validly consecrated) and say, "When I use the Anglican Ordinal, I am using the words "priest" (or "bishop") to mean exactly what the Roman Catholic Church means. Therefore the form is quite valid when I use it, and since my intentions are also Catholic, my ordinations convey true priestly powers." ***Not good enough, says Leo - the reason being that the words in the rite mean only what the original Anglican authors intended them to mean. ***They cannot have that meaning "flushed out" by some well-intentioned individual who wants to inject into them a Catholic meaning of his own choosing.*** When the Pope says that the defect of intention is a distinct and secondary defect, however, he is not talking about the intention written into the Ordinal by its authors. Rather, he is referring to the presumed intentions of the original users of the Anglican Ordinal - some of whom, of course, were the same persons who had a hand in composing it. At that time, long before there was a definite Anglo-Catholic party which had recovered a Catholic understanding of the Eucharist and Priesthood, those who knowingly chose to use a rite from which essential Catholic doctrines had been "deliberately stripped" must be presumed, says Pope Leo, to have had an un-Catholic intention.** And this would be a further reason for the invalidity of their ordinations, over and above the fact that they used a defective form of the sacrament.**

 

[KjetilK]

Words have been changed, but the rite was implemented specifically to reject what Catholicism intended to confer to a priest when he is ordained. From what I posted earlier.

Yes, that is the claim made in Apostolicae curae. You have successfully stated that argument. But, as we can see, not all agree there, and the ordinal was changed again in the 17th century, meaning that the form was ‘rectified’ (if we assume that it needed to be rectified, a view not universally shared).

What remains, then, is the question of intent (which was perhaps the most important point in Apostolicae curae). But, assuming that Apostolicae curae was correct, you cannot coherently hold that this still applies. In the 20th century the Dutch Old Catholics participated in the consecrations of the bishops. Here is what one of them, Henry Theoroe John van Vlijmen, the Old Catholic Bishop of Haarlem, had to say on the matter of intent:

He declared that when he, together with the Archbishop of Canterbury, laid his hands upon the bishop elect, and said the formula, “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” 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.” (Emphasis in original.) He then went on to say that the reason for this participation was “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.”

What we see here, then, are three important things: (1) Neither the Old Catholics nor the Church of England believed that either lacked valid orders (believing that the succession if both came “down from the Apostles”); (2) they did so as a sign of communion (“to mingle as two streams…”); and (3) the consecration was valid if we follow the logic behind the Roman Catholic view of episcopal consecration.

As for the point of what the Church of England teaches on the sacrificial nature of the Mass, consider the 1979 Elucidation of the statement on ministry and ordination in the documents from the Anglican-Catholic dialogue (ARCIC):

[The] ordained ministry is called priestly principally because it has a particular sacramental relationship with Christ as High Priest. At the eucharist Christ’s people do what he commanded in memory of himself and Christ unites them sacramentally with himself in his self-offering. But in this action it is only the ordained minister who presides at the eucharist, in which, in the name of Christ and on behalf of his Church, he recites the narrative of the institution of the Last Supper, and invokes the Holy Spirit upon the gifts.

And in Five Affirmations on the Eucharist as Sacrifice, the American Anglican–Roman Catholic dialogue (ARC/USA) affirms that “only a validly ordained priest can be the minister who, in the person of Christ, brings into being the sacrament of the Eucharist and offers sacramentally the redemptive sacrifice of Christ which God offers us,” and concludes that “in the light of these five affirmations ARC/USA records its conclusions that the eucharist as sacrifice is not an issue that divides our two Churches.” (Emphasis added)

So no, the situation in 1896, as described in Apostolicae curae no longer exist (if it ever did).

But maybe you are a better judge than the Anglican churches on what constitutues Anglican theology.