ANGLICAN ORDERS

New Zealand Tablet, 22 October 1908, Page 10

ANGLICAN ORDERS

SOME OBJECTIONS AND REPLIES The following letter has, been sent to us for publication by Mr. John W. Warren, architect, Hamilton :—: — To the Editor, N.Z. Tablet.) Sir, — My attention was drawn to your issue of the 24th September, wherein you quote a writer in the Dominion, who says, inter alia (referring to the Bishops who consecrated Parker): ' It is a matter of history that these men. not only did not themselves believe in Orders in the Catholic historic sense, but they used a new form of ordination, etc. 1 That Barlow expressed contempt for his own orders is admitted, but no such can attach itself to Scory, Coverdalc, or Hodgkins. As to ttv* insufficiency of the Ordinal, was it in the words or the acts of the consecrating bishops? The form used was taken from the Latin Pontifical, where its intention is determined by the context, and to which is added in the English book a quotation from S. Paul to S. Timothy, which leaves no doubt as to what Order is intended to be conferred. With respect to the acts, there is no question as to the imposition of hands, and if the porrectio instrununtorum was not included— well, this ceremony had been unknown in the Church for' >000 years, was only introduced into Western Ordinals in the eleventh century, and is not found in Eastern rites. Again, if the Anglican Church lost valid Orders at the time alleged— viz., at the consecration «. f Parker— did she not recover them in the consecration of Lauil and Williams, in whom converged thcthre* lines of the Italian, Irish, and English succession? In conclusion, Jet me quote the opinion of Dr. Dollinger, expressed at. .the. Bonn Reunion Conference in 1874 :. ' The result of my investigation is that I h.-.ve no manner of doubt as to the validity of the Episcopal succession in the English Church.'— l am, etc., Hamilton. .. .JNO. W. WARREN. • ■ " ' _ "■ _ '• *- , COMMENTS AND REPLIES. By the Rev. W. D. Goggan, S.M., St. Patrick's College, Wellington. I. ' In which consecration, this memorable felicity came to hiiu, that,- being the seventieth Archbishop after Augustine, he was

nevertheless the only one and the first who, all that prolix and putrid papal superstition having been torn off, received consecration without the approbation of the Pope by Bull, and without those idle and more than Aaronical orrjaments, gloves, rings, sandals, slippers, mitre, pallium,' and such-like baubles. ■ And much more simply did he make his beginning with -prayers and " invocation of the Holy Spirit, imposition of hands, pious stipulations being interposed by him; in garments, too, agreeing with the Archiepiscopal authority and gravity, and, with the preaching , of an admonition by a learned and pious theologian in place of a sermon, and at the end of that the receiving of the Eucharist by a crowd of most grave persons.-

Thus does Mason (cd. 1625,. Matthqeus, with the marginal note, Author vitae Matthaei Tarkcr) describe what took pta:« between five and six in the morning, sc Lambeth Chapel (London), on December 17, 1559. In Lambeth Chapel on that morning there was no altar, but a table necessary for transacting sacred things — mensa quoque sacris peragendis necessaria, tapeto pulvinarique ornata, ad orientem sita erit (Lambeth Register). There is to be no Mass — no Holy Sacrifice — and yet an Arcnbishop of Canterbury is to be consecrated By Royal Letters Patent, dated December 6, 1559, Queen Elizabeth (as Supreme Head of the newly-established Protestant Church in England) ' commissioned Kitchin of Llandaff, Barlow (sometime of Bath), Hodgkins (sometime Suffragan of Bedford), Scory, and Coverdale (Bishops), John Salisbury (Suffragan Bishop of Thetford), and John Beale (Bishop, by Letters Patent, of Ossory in Ireland), and that the whole of them, or any Ie ur o r them, were to proceed to the confirmation of the election and the consecration of Matthew Parker, Archbishop-Elect.' Kitchin, Beale, and Salisbury refused to act, and the royal mandate was complied witn by Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkins — four men without Sees. Of these, Barlow was chosen by the Archbishop-Elect to be his consecrator. The ceremonies of consecration were carried out, not according to the old Catholic rite, but according to the new Protestant Ordinal devised by the reformer Cranmer and brought into force by Act of Parliament in 1549 in the reign of the boy-king, Edward VI. From this consecration Anglican Orders are derived.

11. According to the law of the Catholic Church, then and now, the election and consecration of Parker weie irregular and uncanonical. The question arises : Was his consecration also invalid—* null and void and of no effect? The invalidity of a consecration may arise from the impotency of the consccrators, the lack of essentials, in the form of consecration used, the defect of matter used, and the non-intention of the consecrators. Barlow (Parker's consecrator) was in 1536 appointed to the bishopric of St. Asaph, then to that of St. David's. There was only one consecration of bishops in that year — namely, on Jane 11 — and Barlow's name does not appear among them; ' nay,' says the Rev. M. Fillingham, Anglican vicar of Hexton (in London Echo, quoted in full, in London Tablet, December 19, 1896) ' we may be almost certain that he was not ' consecrated then, for, the very next day, Cromwell, the Vicar-General, styles him " Bishop-Elect." . . Apparently Barlow was never a bishop at all. Barlow consecrated Parker, the first Protestant Archbishop. There ar«, therefore, no Orders, . no bishops, jio priests in the Reformed Church 7of England. ' -In Edward's reign Barlow was transferred to Bath and Wells; in Mary's reign ' he was ejected,' and it is only known that the See w.as declared to be vacant by his ' deprivation and removal ' (Rymer, xv., 376). In that sixth year of Queen Elizabeth— at the time he * consecrated ' Parker— he had not even yet got a See. In fact; no register of his consecration ; has ever been found. Barlow's .statement — ' that a layman should be as good' a bishop as himself.

. . . if the King chose to make him a bishop ' — may, in the light of history, be a declaration of the fact that he himself was only a layman with the perquisites of a bishop—said perquisites being the" gift of the Crown.

So much for Barlow. As to Scory and Coverdale : they were both consecrated in 155! by the E<iwardine Ordinal (of which more in due time), and were not acknowledged to. N be bishops' even in Queen Mary's reign. Scory then acted as chaplain to Bonner, and was no bishop. Coverdale considered all ecclesiastical robes as 'heathen and Babylonish garments.' Even at what we shall call, for formes sake, "the' consecration of Parker, he donned not even a surplice, but was vested in a woollen gown — ' Milo vero Coverdallus non nisi toga lanca talari utebatur ' (Lambeth Register). Were Scory and Coverdale recognised as bishops iri the Catholic sense of the word? - No. For, in the first and chiefest place, Popes Julius 111. and Paul IV: refused,

in Queen Mary's reign, fo regard "as priests or bishops any who had been ordained or consecrated according to the Ordinal of King Edward VI., and for the past three centuries, and more the Catffolic .Church; has. constantly regarded orders conferred by that rite as null, and void. And in^ Mary's reign the Houses of Parliament and the two Houses of Convocation directed that aTi ordained and consecrated by the Edwardine Ordinal, . and who were willing to. conform, should be ordained and consecrated anew. Parliament and the bishops and thei canonists, then, did not consider as valid the Orders conferred by- the Edwardine Ordinal. • , - — - r f< 111. • What the Anglican rector of Hexton considers ' the most significant of all ' the presumptions against the validity of Anglican Orders is the well-known historical fact thus described by him in the newspaper already quoted' above : ' A' little "later [than Parker's consecration] * we have the Church and the statesmen practically admitting the invalidity of Anglican Orders. ,In *5 6 5f Home, Bishop of Winchester ' [who had been consecrated, like Parker, by the Edwardine Ordinal], ' tendered the oath of * [the Royal] Supremacy to the deprived Catholic Bishop Bonner, J who was a prisoner in his diocese, and indicted him for refusing it. Bonner's plea, in reply, was that Home was not a bishop \ at all, so could not legally tender the oath. Here was an opportunity fpr the Church of England to prove to the world the validity of her Orders! But Bonner's plea fell like a thunderbolt among churchmen and statesmen'; they found Bonner was right; they quashed the trial, and troubled him about the oath no more.' So terrible was the effect of the Bonner bomb that an Act of Parliament was passed (the 8 Eliz., c. i) 'declaring the"making and consecrating of the Archbishops and Bishops of this Realm, to be good, lawful, and perfect. 1 In said Act it is stated that the Queen dispenseth with any want of power or other disabilities of the consecrators, who had hitherto given Orders according to Edward Vl. 's Ordinal. In the reign of Elizabeth, then, the validity of the Orders came not from the Ordinal or the consecrators, but from an Act of Parliament, operating retrospectively, and from an exercise of the Supreme power over the Anglican Church vested in the lay Sovereign by Act of Parliament— said exercise of the royal power likewise operating retrospectively. • Here,' exclaims the Anglican Rector of Hexton, ' we have the Church owning her inability to prove the validity of her ordinations, and obliged to have recourse to an Act of Parliament to rehabilitate them ! It needs no further argument; we have the tacit confession of the Church herself. 1 But the English Protestant clergy were not even yet satisfied about their Orders; for "in our ordinals they do not find anr positive distinction between a bishop and a priest, in the words used at the imposition of hands ' ; and, again, 'as to the form of the episcopacy, it is so defective . that it is altogether insignicative, not distinguishing between a bishop and a justice of the peace.' The English Protestant clergy, therefore, in 1662, asked for a change in the Ordinal, and in that year, by a decree of Convocation, the form was altered. The following was inserted for the priesthood: 'For Ihe work and office of a priest in the Church of God, now committed to thee by the imposition of hands'; in the form for the consecration of a bishop, after the words 'Receive the Holy Ghost,' the following were added- - For the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God, now etc. The very alteration of the Ordinal of Edward VI by the decree of Convocation in 1662 is sufficient additional proof that the form used therein was insufficient to confer the priesthood and the episcopal office, even in the eyes of the Anglican clergy of that time. bJ *v Th ,! J f bove arguments are not adduced by Catholics against the vahdjty of Anglican Orders, but are the outcome of the gravest doubts and difficulties amongst Anglicans themselves. Th,s argument, too, can be brought forward from an outside hZ CG ; ,°, ,? ngl l can minist^, no Anglican bishop, has ever been translated and accepted even by schismatic Catholics as a sSi^'JtSid. Even by schismatlcs Angncan ° rd - «

IV. Mr. Warren confounds two things whidf are quite distinct Zl \ , * ISt Ordination > the ' instruments •of his office he Jr, t ' Pate " } ' and t0 the bish °P' at his consecration! etc) Hi' «T ° f lhß **"**** (the * aStoral **«> etc.). Here Mr. Warren confounds matter that i s o f the essence of the Sacrament of Order with what is merely «* extension or development of the essential matter. In the coT fernng of every Sacrament the Church insists on P ray er But

' in addition to this, she requires the proper- matter, and -the proper form of words, and thejr proper application. In regard to the Sacrament of Y\6\y. Order, for instance, St. Ambrose (De Dignitate Sacerdotali) puts it ."thus tersely : ' Homo iin-ponit manum, et Deus largitnr gratiam ' — ' Man imposes hands, and God gives the grace. ' The Church has ever taught that it is requisite to . make use of some, matter or outward token to signify and distinguish the power .that is conferred* Thus, Cfirist Himself, at the Last Supper, made use of.a definite matter at' that first ordination. The need ., of this external "specifying o* • the particular power to be conferred is evident ffom every ritu-il both of East arid West, from the very, first extant down even to our day. There has been. a. growth of ritual, it is true, but at no time was any Sacrament'conferred without a determinate form and the.use of symbolic; matter. St. Augustine of Hippo, who lived long centuries before Parker, and died in the year 437, thus expresses this truth his Ep. 33 : ' Nisi Sacramento, aliquam sitnilitudinem haberent .earum rerum quas denofant, jam non cssent Sacramenta '—that is, 4 .the Sacraments must bear some likeness or indication of what they denote, otherwise .they are not Sacraments at all. In regard to the porrectio itistmmentorum (or handing over of ..the insignia office to the person' being ordained or consecrated) : If Mr. Warren will only study a 1549 Ordinal of Edward VI., he will read there that it is ' formally and expressly enjoined that a pastoral staff be given \ to the newly-consecrated bishop as the insignia, of his office. That Ordinal considered the pastoral staff as part of the rite. The consecrators of ArchbisHbp Parker did not, however, comply with that rite. It was eliminated then ; it has been eliminated ever since in the Anglican Church.

In the Catholic Church, the porrzetio instrumentorum (or handing over of the insignia of his office) to a bishop at his consecration can be described as the ' matter ' of the Sacrament

only in the sense of matter which is an expansion,, or belongfcig to the integrity, not to the essence, of the Sacrament Easterns always used the essential mattei— namely, the inijSosition of hands— together with the right irtentioa. and the proper form of words indicating the office conferred.?- The Catholic Church therefore accepted, and accepts, the Orders of the schismatic Greeks. She (and the Eastern Churches"* as well) ,rWse to recognise Anglican Orders on the sure grounds (as we shall see) of defect of form and of intention. Three centuries before the Anglican Reformed Church took its rise, St. BonavenWe taught openly in the schools that Orders could be validly conferred without any handing over of the instruments or insignia of office, and that this rite was to be regarded as a nfere extension or development of the essential matter of Holy Orders, which is the laying on of hands. The Catholic Church had before her the full knowledge of the later stages of liturgical development when, in 1685 and in 1704, she decided against :he validity, of Anglican Orders. x „

V. The judgment of the Catholic Church, affirming the nullity of Anglican Orders, bases itself (as stated) . chiefly on two certain grounds of invalidity, namely, defect of form and defect of intention. After Henry VIII. had constituted himself head of the Church, and ' broken with Rome,' sundry priests were irregularly ordained, and sundry bishops consecrated, in England during his reign. Such ordinations and consecrations were deemed to be ' uncanonical and annulled as to jurisdiction'; but their validity was never questioned. In the reign of Edward VI., not only were there errors and omissions, which declared the insufficiency of the new Ordinal, but there were alterations in .doctrinal points regarding the Sacrament of Holy Orders, which, if held by the consecrating prelates, would render their act invalid. ' These errors were the Arian heresy, or ' non-essential difference, between the episcopal and sacerdotal character.' To the above may be added the following doctrinal errors : ' Ordination. as a Sacrament was not instituted by Jesus Christ, but was only, a ceremony to appoint a ministry in religious performances ' ; ' That .all power, both temporal and spiritual, was derived from the civil power ' . (Dodds* Church History of England, dissert. 42, pt. 3). Other alterations in doctrine were the following : The Church of England did not, and does not, intend her clergy. to be sacrificing priests, offering the objective Sacrifice of our Lord's Body arid Blood ; on the contrary, such an idea, in the Catholic sense, was utterly rejected, the Mass was abolished, altars overthrown, and altar-stones put to vile or common uses. The Apostolic Succession ceased to be taught and. was .at least inferentially excluded; the bishop was no longer (as he was and is in the Catholic Church) the- exclusive channel of the grace of Holy Orders; Presbyterian Orders were admitted, and for at least the first century after the separation from the Holy See, the Sacrament

of Baptism was regarded as a matter of disciplinary importance — but not of doctrinal necessity, even as a condition for receiving Orders. Thus the Reformed Church of England ceased to believe in priests and bishops in the Catholic sense. And this change of belief found ample expression in the new Ordinal of King .Edward VI. Thus, every trace of the old Catholic teaching of Sacrifice, consecration, priesthood was utterly rejected and struck out. Catholic Orders were spoken and written about in terms of the bitterest hatred and contempt, and the innovators were, in fact, at great pains to make it as clear as the noonday sun that their idea of Holy Orders was essentially different from, that of the Catholic Church, and that, in the new Ordinal, nothing was farther from their minds than the conferring of priestly or episcopal Orders in the Catholic sense.

There is ample proof in their life and acts that the beliefs regarding Catholic Orders referred to above were shared by Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Parker (see, for instance, Article 25 of 1562, to which these three subscribed). With such beliefs, there could, of course, be no intention to confer or receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders, or the episcopal office, as instituted by Christ and taught by the Catholic Chui eh ; and, for defect of intention, as well as of-form, any ordination or consecration so performed would be null and void. VI. Before resuming, it may not be out of place to say that Hodgkins (formerly suffragan of Bedford) was consecrated by John Stokesly, Bishop of London, in 1537. There is no doubt- as to his consecration. He was a friend of Cranmer, joined the new faith, abjured Protestantism in Queen Mary's reign, anil 'verted again to the new creed under Elizabeth. At the consecration ceremony of Archbishop Parker, he wore a surplice. After the ceremony both Barlow and Scory got bishoprics, but of Hodgkins nothing further is stated. The various points raised by Mr. Warren in regard to the form used — the porrectio instrumentorum and the intention of the consecrators — have been already touched on. Let us now look back at the ceremony of Sunday, December 17, 1559, and at the person, Matthew Parker, who was then consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. Dr. Matthew Parken was once chaplain to Anne Boleyn. Afterwards, as Dean of Lincoln, he sat on ihe commission that framed the Articles of Religion of 1552, and was the head of the commission for the Thirty-nine Articles in 1562. He was the man whom naturally Queen Elizabeth elected to be Archbishop of Canterbury and the chief instrument for propagating the new creed. In September, 1559, she issued a commission for his consecration. The bishops with Sees refused to act and were deprived of their Sees ; fifteen other bishops with Sees resigned, and Kitchin of Llandaff was actually the only bishop in Great Britain at the time who had a See. Cecil (Secretary of State) then wrote (State Papers, Domestic, Queen Eliz., vol. 5) : ' There is no Archb. nor iij bishopps to be had.' But the law required these for the election of the Primate (the Archbishop of Canterbury). The second difficulty was with regard to the Ordinal. The ancient Pontifical of Salisbury had just been set aside by Elizabeth ; the Ordinal of Edward VI. had been formally abolished in Queen Mary's reign and had not been restored. ' This booke is not jestablished by Parlement,' wrote Cecil, Secretary of State. These were the two difficulties to be overcome. Cecil consulted Parker and the canonists, and it was decided that ' the Queen, by virtue of her ecclesiastical supremacy, could supply every defect' (Styrpe's Parker, 40). The second commission was issued on December 6, 1559, and :n: n the actual consecration the Lambeth Register tells us that the Ordinal used was the one ' Juxta formam libri auctoritate parhamenti editi (in accordance with the form contained in the book published by authority of Parliament). According to Canon 2 of the Fourth Council of Carthage, « two bishops held a copy of the Gospels over the bent head and neck of the bishop to be consecrated, the consecrator pronounced the form, and the other bishops present imposed hands -and touched his head ' In the consecration of Parker this was not done, but the whole four imposed hands and said these words as the form': 'Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is in .thee by, the imposition of hands, for. God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and soberness Even F. G. Lee in his Church Under Queen Elisabeth (vol i ) admits that ' in these records there was no specification of the office to be-conferred.' There was no unction, no delivery of a pastoral staff (though the 1549 Ordinal of Edward VI enjoins it as a rite). Be it noted though lhat the Lambeth Register informs us that,, after the imposition of hands, a copy of the Bible was put in Parker's hands, ' as it is meete should of a Gospellike pastor ' (HistonoHa, 1574).

All the facts, or at least the leading ones, are placed before your readers arid will, I trust, convince them, and perhaps also Mr. Warren, that the Church's attitude ~ towards Anglican Orders is not one of mere antagonism, but is founded on fact. There is little need to/ add anything further in regard to the- attempt made by Laud and Williams, , a century after the consecration of Parker, to revalidate Anglican Orders. In the first place, even if the additions they made to the Ordinal had made the form of ordination and' consecration right in itself, that alteration came too late; for a century had elapsed since the adoption of the Edwardine Ordinal* the Hierarchy. haS become extinct, and there remained no power of ordaining or consecrating, since the courtesy bishops of the time could not pass on to others a power which they themselves had not received. In the second place, it cannot (as stated above) be admitted that the words ' priest ' and ' bishop ' introduced, into the Ordinal in the days of Laud and Williams are to be understood in the same sense in which they are understood in the Catholic rite of ordination and consecration. Of this we have already spoken. And in the third place, the question of the validity of the Baptism of persons in Anglican Orders has to be deeply considered. Reference has already been made to this subject. Baptism is the gate of the other Sacraments, that of Holy Orders included. We will merely add here that an Anglican clergyman, when received into the Catholic Church, receives Baptism conditionally— that is, the " 'certainty' of his baptism is not conceded ' (Protestant Orders, p. 105). Mr. WaFren states that the historian, Dr. Dollinger, at the Bonn Conference, 1574, said : ' The result of my investigation is that I have no manner of doubt as to the Validity of the Episcopal succession in the English Church.' But, in the first place, this is a question of theology as much as It is a question of history, and theology was not a subject in which the noted German shone. In the second place, Dollinger was then not alone in an advanced old age, and with intellectual powers on the wane; but he was just at that time at the height of his hostility to the Church which he had abandoned; and it is to be feared that his desire to bring adherents to the • Old Catholic Party ' (of which he was the leader) may have turned topsyturvy his well-garnered storehouse of historical lore. He lived long enough to see the error of his ways. We were told that his eyes were yearningly turning to (he Mother Church, which pride of intellect had led him to forsake, when death suddenly claimed him. VII. Many of your readers will, no doubt, remember the commission set up by Pope Leo XIII., in 1896, to consider the question of Anglican Orders and their validity. This inquiry was made by the lute Pontiff at the request of a section of Anglicans. The whole Anglican case was stated in a work written in Latin (De Re Anglicana, with a preface by the Anglican Bishop of Salisbury) with a view to its use by Latin theologians. Copies of it were distributed gratis to a number of the Roman authorities. The Rev. Mr. Puller and the Rev. Mr. Lacy were sent to Rome to interview members oF the commission. They remained for some months in the Eternal City endeavoring to influence those Cardinals who had any say in the expected decision ; and (we are told) • the Anglican teaders most identified with the movement have repeatedly expressed their entire satisfaction with the way in which the commission was composed, and with the way in which the eminent Catholics who represented their claims acquitted themselves of their task ' (London Tablet September 26, 1896).

That Commission sifted every fact, scanned every Ordinal, and Maid their finding at the feet of the Vicar of Christ. It was then (September 13, 1896) that Leo XIII., in the Bull Apostolicae Curae, declared Anglican Orders to be invalid on account of defect of form and defect of intention. For us Catholics, the question of the validity of Anglican Orders remains finally-settled.. The Apostolicae Curae did not make them invalid—they were invalid always, on account of the above-stated defects. Some ill-informed persons think that once the Church has made a pronouncement, we Catholics are forbidden all freedom of research. The above jottings \vill, I/ trust , convince them of the fallacy of their opinion, and enable" them to .realise that we live in a time when it behoveth every Catholic to be ready to • give an account of the faith that is in him '