ANGLICAN ORDERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 390, 26 June 1928, Page 13

ANGLICAN ORDERS

VALIDITY QUESTION

ADDRESS BY DR. LISTON

"The Validity of Anglican Orders” was the subject of an address delivered by his Lordship Bishop Liston to the first meeting of the Auckland Catholic Students’ Guild, held in St. Benedict’s rooms on Sunday afternoon. His Lordship traced the growth of the Anglo-Catholic movement in England, and dealt with the claim of many Anglicans that their ministers were properly ordained priests in the Catholic sense. He dealt at length with the historical aspect of the question, the radical changes in doctrine and liturgy in the reign of Edward VI., the restoration of Catholicism under Mary, the reversion to Reformed doctrines under Elizabeth. The Reformers rejected the Mass and the Sacraments, disclaimed the power or intention of vesting sacrificial powers in the clergy, and altered the forms of worship and of ordination accordingly. In Mary's reign a Papal decree of 1555, following the report of a commission set up by Cardinal Pole in England, declared that bishops and priests who had been consecrated or ordained by seceding bishops under Edward VI. and had returned to the Roman Church must be reordained, since the bishops at ordination had disclaimed all intention of conferring sacrificial powers upon them. Only in 1659 were the older forms of ordination to some extent restored in the Anglican Church. In the interim, bishops not having received sacrificial powers could not transmit those powers to their successors. His Lordship referred to the special commission set up by Pope Leo XIII. in 1894 to investigate the validity of Anglican orders. Eight famous Church scholars were chosen, equally divided in opinion on the question: but after long research, they reported unanimously against Anglican orders. In the famous Encyclical of 1896, the Pope adopted the report and declared Anglican orders to be invalid in so far as they were assumed to confer on the Anglican clergy the powers conferred on Catholic priests by ordination.

In conclusion, Bishop Liston gave a brief and lucid resume of the meaning and extent of Papal infallibility and supremacy, and stressed the point that Anglicans who wished to be reunited with the Catholic Church either individually or in groups, could not do so by negotiation, but only by submitting to the authority of the Pope upon all questions of faith and morals.