Fr. Hunwicke of Liturgical Notes fame has a new piece up titled "Apostolicae curae today" that will be of interest to our readers. He says, in part,
If our Holy Father really does now continue to expect Ordinariate Anglicans to subscribe heart and soul to the complete applicability in current circumstances of the findings of Apostolicae curae, that Anglican Orders are completely null and utterly void, he has devised a most extraordinarily bizarre and counter-indicative way of manifesting this expectation. Come off it. Anglicanorum coetibus constitutes a deliberate and considered refusal to rub our noses in Apostolicae curae. If such an attitude is good enough for the most learned Sovereign Pontiff since Benedict XIV, why isn't it good enough for some Roman Catholics?
Do read the whole thing and do not miss the very interesting and forceful argument he makes based on giving the use of pontificals to former bishops.
In a somewhat contrasting post, Fr. Tomlinson also has a new piece at the S. Barnabas Blog titled "Regarding holy orders," in which he writes,
Before taunting the Roman position in future I would ask people to remember some crucial facts. It was not Rome who broke with the Church of England. Nor was it Rome who created a national church that was self-governing and out of communion with the rest of the world (until the rise of the Empire allowed it to plant its offshoots). Nor did Rome adopt the Catholic three fold order and yet sit light to it, allowing a ridiculous breadth of opinion in which some reserve the sacrament whilst others pour consecrated elements down the sink. Nor was it Rome who decided that a synod allowed them to change the universal teaching regarding orders without the consent of anybody else! You cannot have your cake (acting autonomously) and eat it (wanting universal recognition)…
These are two very different approaches to the question and both make for good reading.
On a related note, the Church of England has issued a press release announcing the membership of the working group to draft the code of practice for women in the episcopate. The members are:
The Right Revd Nigel Stock, Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich (Chair)
The Right Revd Dr Christopher Cocksworth, Bishop of Coventry
The Right Revd Dr Martin Warner, Bishop of Whitby
Dame Averil Cameron, retired Warden of Keble College, Oxford and former chair of Cathedral Fabrics Commission
The Venerable Christine Hardman, Archdeacon of Lewisham and Greenwich
The Reverend Angus MacLeay, Vicar of St Nicholas Sevenoaks
The Venerable Jane Sinclair, Archdeacon of Stow and Lindsey
Mrs Caroline Spencer, Chair Canterbury Diocese House of Laity
Be sure to follow our Moderator at Eccentric Bliss, his personal blog!
In the Middle ages an Abbess was allowed to have a crozier, etc.
Anglican orders are still judged as invalid by Rome, and in fact the position has worsened as modern Anglican ordination rites are framed to allow women to be ordained. Therefore the native character and spirit… which was Protestant in Cranmer's day is still present.
Conditional ordination was granted to the late Monsignor Graham Leonard as he came to a private agreement with an old Catholic bishop who gave him a supplemental episcopal ordination as distinct from his 1662 consecration ceremony in 1964. he was able to prove this by written documentation. Yet they would not accept him unequivocally.
I don't know a great deal about most of these, but I would wager that it is not going to come up with anything that is any consolation to the traditionally minded members of the Church of England.
Anglicans never accepted Apostolicae Curae which was based on strained arguments that simultaneously disqualified Roman pontificals from conferring valid Orders. No reply was ever received in answer to Saepius Officio published by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York – it was unanswerable.
There was a reply. I have the Latin of it. It was short and dismissive, but reitereated the key point in the dispute, that there was no commonality of intention between the 1662 (or earlier) communion rite and the Tridentine mass. On the other hand, the work of the Archbishops on social issues was given respect.
Saepius Officio is not unanswerable. Parts of it (the minimum requirements for valid ordinations) are competent, but the treatment of the Eucharist is much less so. Moreover, it is not an official document. It is the private work of Bishop Wordsworth (and underlying him of Denny and Lacey) to which the Archbishops put their signature but which they did not take to the Convocations for approval (because they might not have got it). It might therefore be truly said that Anglicans never accepted Saepius Officio either.
Ah the old Saepius Officio canard. It was answered, several times, most notably by Cardinal Vaughan and the Catholic bishops of England & Wales in A Vindication of the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae' (London, 1898).
You may want the chapter 'Roman Catholic response to Saepius Officio' in E.C. Messenger's 1937 book 'The Reformation, the Mass, and the Priesthood'. It is reproduced here: http://www.angelfire.com/nj/malleus/Messenger.html
Michael Davies in The Order of Melchisedech also has some pretty trenchant things to say about Apostolicae Curae, as well as the second Vatican Council.
To pursue the logic of AC means that no priest since 1965 has been validly ordained where the modern rite has been used. The same arguments apply to earlier periods of church history, which would mean that the priesthood died out in the Latin Church several centuries ago.
Fortunately the Holy Spirit is not bound by such legalism, which is how Anglicans rightly view Apostolicae Curae.
Apostolicae Curae is irreformable teaching – if you can't accept it you have no reason to look to the Ordinariate. Neither Catholicism or Orthodoxy recognise Anglican orders, this will not change.
If nothing else Saepius Officio only spoke for one party within the Church of England and it was utterly rejected by Evangelicals, who indeed actually welcomed Apostolicae Curae. Any church that cannot agree even within itself as to the nature of holy orders cannot possibly expect the recognition of either Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
As to your point about about the modern RC ordination rite, in order for an ordination to be invalid there must be a defect of form, matter and intention. Please elaborate on the defect of form and/or intention within the modern rite.
Apostolicae Curae is nonsense when considered objectively. It is only "irreformable" among those who subscribe to absolutist papalism.
The defects of the post-Vatican II rite are extensively documented by Michael Davies. I can only suggest you buy or borrow a copy.
J.M.J.
Sigfrid wrote:
"…Apostolicae Curae is nonsense when considered objectively. It is only "irreformable" among those who subscribe to absolutist papalism…"
It all boils down to Authority in The Church. You appear to have manufactured your own private interpretation on this subject – free will gives you that ability.
Perhaps instead of all the focus on division, we would all do well to consider the words of the Supreme Pontiff towards the end of Apostolicae Curae
"…39. We wish to direct our exhortation and our desires in a special way to those who are ministers of religion in their respective communities. They are men who from their very office take precedence in learning and authority, and who have at heart the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Let them be the first in joyfully submitting to the divine call and obey it, and furnish a glorious example to others. Assuredly, with an exceeding great joy, their Mother, the Church, will welcome them, and will cherish with all her love and care those whom the strength of their generous souls has, amidst many trials and difficulties, led back to her bosom. Nor could words express the recognition which this devoted courage will win for them from the assemblies of the brethren throughout the Catholic world, or what hope or confidence it will merit for them before Christ as their Judge, or what reward it will obtain from Him in the heavenly kingdom! And we, ourselves, in every lawful way, shall continue to promote their reconciliation with the Church in which individuals and masses, as we ardently desire, may find so much for their imitation. In the meantime, by the tender mercy of the Lord our God, we ask and beseech all to strive faithfully to follow in the path of divine grace and truth…"
SWR
On a side note, His Holiness was the first Supreme Pontiff to appear in video form:
http://www.ucatholic.com/videos/oldest-footage-of-a-pope-1896/
Many Anglicans accepted Apostolicae Curae and became Catholics.
The prime reason for the rejection of the Ordinal was its "native character and spirit." It was written by a man who no longer believed in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which he termed a "weed that choketh the Gospel." He thought he was restoring the ministry to its New Testament purity and he did not believe in sacerdotalism. That is why his defective Eucharistic "canon" is not even allowed in the Anglican Use.
There was an official Catholic response to Saepius Officio, and several Anglican bishops also challenged the document, which they stated did not represent the Anglican view.
If you want a copy of "A Vindication of the Bull Apostolicae Curae… a reply to the Archbishops of Canterbury and York," please contact me. They pointed out that York and Canterbury wrote as individuals and not as representatives of the Church of England.
"Apostolicae curae," according to some, was made irrelevant by the "Dutch touch." There certainly seems to be some evidence that communion with the Old Catholics may have changed the situation in the C of E. However, as Fr. Hunwicke points out, it will also become irrelevant again (in England) due to the C of E's decision to ordain women bishops, and has been irrelevant for some time in the US for the same reason. If the bishop who ordained you was a woman, your orders will not be accepted by Catholics or Orthodox. Even if a male bishop ordains you, but he has many women bishops in the line of succession, than the orders may be compromised that way.
The American experience was that after accepting heretic bishops and women bishops, they got homosexual bishops. I hope the C of E does not fall so far, but here the result has been the splitting of Anglicanism many ways. There is TEC as a part of the Anglican Communion (though on bad terms with it), ACNA (trying to be part of the Communion and acknowledged by parts thereof), a proliferation of Continuing bodies, and the Anglican Use Catholic communities.
As an American, I wonder: where in that spectrum of responses does SSWSH fall? It seems a little like the ACNA response, but the establishment of a "new province" in the home province seems an unlikely solution. But unless SSWSH can totally isolate the succession of its leadership from the new women bishops, the march of history will overtake it and destroy its purpose. Some have said it is destined to either enter communion with Rome or become a continuing Anglican church. It does seem like communion with the See of Saint Augustine will be impossible to maintain while still maintaining an argument for the validity of Anglican orders.
The "Dutch Touch" does not affect the invalidity of Anglican orders.
If a correctly consecrated bishop uses the Anglican Cranmerian rite, the result is invalid. Put simply, King Arthur using any sword, does not make it Excalibur.
Where conditional ordination has been offered it is because the person being consecrated arranged a supplemental Old Catholic ordination — that is a participating Old Catholic bishop who said words additional to the Anglican rite and the Anglican consecrators.
Apart from the Polish National Catholic Church , all old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht now ordain women, bless homosexual unions and approve divorce and re-marriage.
I did not realize the Old Catholics had preceded the C of E in compromising their orders, but a quick search confirms they have been ordaining women "bishops" for several decades. Thus, history again shows that it is hard to remain catholic and orthodox outside of being Catholic or Orthodox.
This also means that catholic-minded Anglicans have one less place to turn to than I thought, because if the Old Catholics have lost or are losing sacramental validity in their orders, the "supplemental ordination" you mention would no longer be helpful, even if it could be arranged. Which leads me back to the thought that the options are Rome, Orthodoxy, or giving up on the idea of Apostolic Succession. As someone who already came over to Rome for that exact reason, I suspect that is the eventually inevitable result.
On the Old Catholic debacle, see these two articles:
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=12-01-021-f
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-04-056-r
Did any of the commenters here even read Fr. Hunwicke's post? If so, that is certainly not clear from the responses here.
First, others on this site have said the following: it is the Anglicans, et. al. who are wanting to join the Catholic Church and not the other way around.
Second, this reinforces the golden rule; "He who has the gold, rules." Therefore, since Rome holds the cards, they make the rules.
Each priest will have to decide whether or not to take the offer as it stands on the table, AC read at face value, and decide to take it or leave it. If you believe becoming Catholic is what you should do, then don't sweat the details, painful though they many be. My reading of the documents does not see any "wiggle" room. Sorry, but no sense in crying over spilt milk or beating the proverbial dead horse regarding 100 year old documents.
Blessings,
Clark
PS–I made the decision to convert four years ago precisely because various offshoots of ECUSA just wanted to talk and talk and talk. I appreciate those who are in genuine predicaments, particularly priests, but for those who are just looking for excuses, like those bishops who signed the petition and pledged their belief in the Cathechism, I think they will continue to talk and talk and talk. Now is the time for a decision.
We can't or shouldn't push anyone into making a decision until they truely believe the whole of the Catholic Faith. I just got through posting a response to an Anglican who didn't have their facts correct about the Ordinariate.
I had responded once and they took offence that I had the nerve to correct her/him. It was obvious that they got their information from their priest or other Anglicans who are against the Ordinariate. I found that trying to explain the facts were probably to no avail.
Some Anglicans will probably have to wait and see how the Ordinarites work out, as there is much distrust of Rome from what I have seen. As I told the person I have no desire to force someone to join.
I did have to laugh when she said we would be small and scattered, I reminded her that their are so many Continuing Anglican groups and Bishops that they are also small and scattered. If one wants to stay Anglican I do hope that they can all come together as one as they are just dividing the Body of Christ into more pieces.
I don't think we feel animosity towards those who remain Anglicans, but at times get the general feeling that many of them are angry that we can't see the light.
I have never belonged to a Continuing Anglican group, so I cannot state how large their congregations are or how many of one group there is. There might be a million for all I know, but size is not the issue to me, it is the faith. In fact, most of the TEC parishes I belonged to were small, none over 150.
Ayayayay, is that Bishop Warner, formerly the dean or guardian of the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in that list?
In all fairness to the Old Catholics of the Union of Utrecht they have not consecrated their first women bishop yet. Other groupings who claim their orders from them, have.
Furthermore the informative articles by Doctor Tighe are well worth reading. However it should be noted that the Polish national Catholic Church in Poland has stayed in the Union. Also the PNCC in the US , promotes its self as liberal on Hell, divorce, contraception, clerical celibacy etc. However , it has held the line on gays and women's ordination.. how long it can do this , with an influx of liberal priests defecting from Rome, will be interesting to observe.
In the 1950s PNCC ( USA) claimed 156,000 members..currently it claims 8,000 !
Robert,
Here are some interesting statistics on the various Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States:
http://byztex.blogspot.com/2010/10/orthodoxy-in-america-by-numbers.html
and I would be most interested to learn the source of your figure of 8,000 members of the PNCC. (In the PNCC's last "count" in 1960 they claimed 160,000 members; in the late 80s and throughout the 90s, one heard tell of "a quarter of a million members;" and about a decade ago a PNCC bishop told me that the figure was probably around 20-25,000 "active members." I don't know whether they include their small Canadian diocese in these figures; that diocese once claimed 8,000 members.)
The PNCC is, in fact, holding its quadrennial General Synod meeting this week, to select a new "Prime Bishop" and several other bishops as well. Depending on whom they select to be their leader, they may well begin to pursue a more "activist" policy, not least in regard to attempting to detach their counterpart "Polish Catholic Church" in Poland from its membership of the Utrecht Union. (That Polish body remains in "full communion" with the other Utrecht Union churches, despite its official position that the "ordination" of women to the episcopate, priesthood and diaconate is an impossibility. "Look to the money" seems to be the reason for this strange stance.)
I know!
I (a Roman Catholic) believe that Apostolicae Curae is correct. Even so, obviously the Holy Father has no interest in gloating about the matter, and neither should the rest of us. Valid orders or not, it's clear that many Anglican clergy are sincere in their ministry and are dedicated to the catholic orthodox Christian Faith.
To make sure their orders are valid, Anglican priests joining an ordinariate will have to be ordained according to the Catholic rite… a matter which I would hope wouldn't be much of a hang-up for Anglo-Catholics, since the ordination can't do any harm.
On the other hand, if Pope Benedict is "giving" (I'm not sure that's really the right term) on the issue of pontificals, that's good enough for me.
But Catholics, really, there's no need to kick sand in the face of those on the other bank of the Tiber. It's not going to make them any more likely to swim across!
J.M.J.
Mike wrote:
"…To make sure their orders are valid, Anglican priests joining an ordinariate will have to be ordained according to the Catholic rite… a matter which I would hope wouldn't be much of a hang-up for Anglo-Catholics, since the ordination can't do any harm…"
I wish people would stop speculating. The process will be a case-by-case review and The Church will decide what remedy, if any, is needed.
You can no more make the blanket statement that all will receive a complete ordination, than could someone else say all will be sub conditione.
We will follow the process and the decisions AS THEY ARE MADE after the case-by-case review. Until that happens, it is speculation.
SWR
Sorry, everyone… that last comment was supposed to be a reply to Steve Cavanaugh… I'm not sure how I ended up posting out of its intended thread.
Dr. Tighe, I found the Polish National Catholic statistics on Wikipedia. The following video shows the PNCC's intrinsic liberalism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkllZ_O1JaU
With an influx of liberal Roman Catholics, we may well see that denomination changing. The same process occured in the Western European churches of the Union…
@Robert Ian Williams
Although aware that since the 1930's Old Catholic schismatics were involved in Angican episcopal conscrations, I'd never heard before that "a participating Old Catholic bishop said words additional to the Anglican rite and the Anglican consecrators". Could you please elaborate?
Apostolicae Curae remains part of the irreformable Deposit of Faith. Why is this such a problem for any catholic-minded Anglicans – no one is forcing them to cross the Tiber? And anyway, once they formally accept "everything the Catholic Church believes and teaches to be revealed by God" [Rite of Reception], they'll have to accept Ap.Curae in its entirety – or they will be cheating.
They will also need to receive the sacrament of Confirmation – another witness to the fact that Ecclesial Communities arising from the Protestant Reformation have not preserved the historic succession (cf. Dominus Jesus, 1995).
Surely the Holy Father is drawing the veil of charity over the last 500 years and convening a well-overdue family reunion. If Peter can do this, why can't others be as generous?
But the fact remains: no Charity without Truth. Anglican Orders are not the same as Catholic Orders, no matter how they are decorated. The gift of a ring (+Ramsey) or a kindly embrace (+Williams) does not convey dogmatic recognition – it's no more than good manners and hope for something better.
The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is notorious for inflating its membership numbers. Makes them seem more powerful, more important. Fact is their numbers are down around 5,000-7,000 members. Every one knows that. Even their bishops. Claiming more gives them a false sense of significance. Furthermore the average parishioner age is up in the 70s. The PNCC is dying out.