A COMMENT

New Zealand Tablet, 26 November 1908, Page 11

A COMMENT

(By Rev. W. D. Goggan, S.M., St. Patrick's College, Wellington.) It is undoubtedly a pleasure to chat, even on paper, with an earnest and courteous seeker after truth of Mr. Warren's type. He wants not controversy, but marshals in logical order what he believes to be historical arguments in favor of the apostolicity or validity of Orders in the Anglican Church. To him and to millions like him, ' with the heart naturally Christian,' that Church is so much that, even in the very face of facts, it must be hard to admit that she is in error. He has my sincere sympathy, and to him and others goes forth my prayer 1 that truth may prevail.' To further that object I will again try to answer his queries and place before him and your readers the Catholic teaching respecting the invalidity of Anglican Orders. I. The sole and only minister of the Sacrament of Orders, according to the Catholic Church, must be a bishop "validly consecrated. The Anglican episcopate and Anglican Orders of the present day come through the Elizabethan Archbishop Parker, of Canterbury, who was consecrated on December 17, 1559, by Barlow, sometime bishop of Bath. So far there is no historical certainty that Barlow ever was consecrated bishop. I have been unable to find the quotation given by Mr. Warren from Lingard, as he has given no detailed reference. But in any case, it in no way affects the issue ; for (1) research into this matter has moved far since Lingard died in 1851, and (2) the question of the validity or invalidity of .Anglican Orders is totally unaffected, whether Barlow was or -was not a bishop! Hence the absence of reference to Barlow in the Bull Apostolicce Cures, which leaves the doubt as to Barlow's consecration where it found it. I have already pointed out, and will point^out again, -that the Church's adverse decision on Anglican Orders is based on the invariable practice of the Holy See, and this in turn on the Defecf of Form and the Defect of Intention in those who performed the ordinations and consecrations under the Ordinal drawn up in the time of King Edward VI. by Cranmer. However, the doubts, - and grave doubts, as to Barlow's consecration as a bishop still endure. In your issue of October 22 I indicated some of the grounds of this grave historical doubt. They have never been set aside. I may here recapitulate a few of them from the Rev. S. Smith. Not merely is there the fact of no reference to Barlow's consecration" in Cranmer 's Register, but (1) the absence of an entire set of documents which should

have borne reference to his consecration if it occurred; (2) th~ discovery of one document which is exceptionally worded, and so> worded as apparently to provide for the avoidance of consecration ; (3) tha views of the non-necessity of episcopal consecration and of the power of the king to make bishops by his mere appointment, which Barlow held and expressed ; (4) the difficulty of assigning a date when the ceremony could have taken place -, (5) and the likelihood that, as the king and Cranmer are known to have shared his views, he might have been able to keep the secret to himself and pass as a consecrated bishop. StiH, Catholic writers, do not maintain, on these grounds, that it is certain that Barlow was not consecrated, but only that it is not certain that he was, and hence, that Orders derived from him (as are those of the Anglican clergy) must be considered doubtful, unless supplemented by a conditional ceremony of ordination or consecration. And Catholic teaching and natural right alike forbid the exercise of Orders that are doubtfully received. According to Catholic doctrine, it is necessary for the validity of a Sacrament that the minister of a Sacrament (that is, the person who confers it) should not alone employ the proper form of words, but should also have The Proper Intention. But in the alleged consecration of Archbishop Parker both the form and the intention were defective and incapable of conferring either the priesthood or the episcopate in the Catholic meaning of these things. And the defect in the consecration of Queen Elizabeth's Archbishop, Parker, has passed down upon the clergy of the Anglican Church since then. The apostolic succession of bishops was broken ; there were no priests or bishops in the Catholic sense ; and the courtesy bishops, not being in reality bishops, could not pass on to succeeding generations the power which they themselves did not possess. Barlow, the consecrator of Parker, had lost faith in the Catholic teaching regarding the Sacrament of Holy Orders ; he did not believe in the Mass, nor in the sacrificial power of the priesthood, nor in the succession of the bishops from the Apostles, nor in their appointment ly the Saviour as the ruling and teaching body in the Church of God. To him, the Mass was an abomination, and he was a ready lieutenant to Cranmer and Parker in propagating the new ideas in religion. Even Queen Elizabeth was not blind as to his lack of moral worth. In the Saturday Review of March 29. 1873, we read : 'It is curious to see how persistently Elizabeth says she will carry out the true worship of God after the model of the Augsburgh Confession ; and in one of these letters to Albert, Duke of Prussia, July 2, 1559, she informs him that, at his request, as well as for Barlow's own merit, she had promoted that scoundrel to the see of Chichester.' The other bishops present at the consecration of Parker were Hodgkijis Scory, and Coverdale. Scory and Coverdale were not recognised as bishops in Queen Mary's reign, because they were consecrated under the defective form of the Edwardine Ordinal. Of the bishops (real or alleged) present at Archbishop Parker's consecration, Hodgkins was a validly consecrated bishop; it is doubtful that Barlow, the consecrating bishop of Parker, was a bishop at all; Scory and Coverdale were not validly consecrated bishops The consecration of Archbishop Parker under the circumstances would, to say the least, be very doubtful according to the canons and to Catholic liturgy and tneology. But Mr. Warren should know that the Church asserts Parker s consecration to be invalid, not on account of his consecrators personally, but on account of the absolute defect of form in the Edwardine Ordinal used, and of the no less absolute defect of intention on the part of the consecrators. The Controversy Anent Barlow, to my mind is the drawing of the proverbial red herring across the trail Mr. Warren seems to find some significance-in Barlow s favor-.n the fact that the question of Barlow's consecration was not raised till 16 i6. But the fact is easy of explanation, and is quite devoid of the significance which Mr Warren attaches to it. From iSS9i SS9 to i 6r 3 the Catholic writers of such good repute as Sanders, Allen, Stapleton, Bristow, Harding (Confutation of Jewel's Apologie in 1565) demanded of Parkef and of each successor of Parker, to produce a register and slow their succession a*,d consecration. The register of Parker's" con secration, known as the Lambeth Register, (of which only three cop,es are extant), was not produced till 1613. There Were rumors as to a consecration ceremony on Parker, but when whe re> and by whom performed was not authoritatively known' When the reg ls ter was published, the antecedents of the principal actors were examined, and it is thus that the Barlow cause

did not come on till 1616. This delay was due to the action of the Anglicans themselves, and not to the Catholic writers referred to above. It was during that long silence between 7 1559 and 1613 that one Neal invented the ridiculous story of a sham consecration of Parker at the Nag's Head Inn, London. Of it Lingard in his History of England (vol. vii.) writes : * I can find no trace in any author or document of the reign of Elizabeth.' To-day no credence is placed in the story. It belongs to that class of recriminative literature which usually arises, but always soils its cause, be it political or religious. UMr. Warren in the second part of his letter refers to the ' lack of essentials in the form of consecration and the defect of matter used. Hammond, in his Liturgies Eastern and Western, admits that a Catholic sees in the living liturgy of the Roman Church the essential forms ' which remain still what they were 1200, perhaps nearly 1400, years ago.' From the Apostolic times to the fifth century N there had been a development and growth of the ritual of ordination and consecration, but nowhere do we find The Essential Form altered. All admit this; though amongst schoolmen there is often a controversy as to whether this word or that phrase is ' essentially necessary to the essence of the form. ' With the growth of ritual the porrectio instrumentomm (that is, handing to the person to be ordained or consecrated the instruments or insignia of his office) comes more into evidence, and where the defect of that matter was proved, the Sacrament was formerly conditionally repeated. I have, however, already shown, in your issue of October 22 (to which the reader is referred) that in the Catholic Church the porrectio instrumentorum for handing over, to the person being ordained priest or consecrated bishop, of the instruments or insignia of his office) can be described as the ' matter ' of the Sacrament of Holy Orders only in the sense of matter which is an expansion, or belonging to -the integrity (not to the essence) of the Sacrament. The essential matter is the imposition of hands, which must be joined to the right intention, and to the right form of words indicating the office to be conferred. In the papal Bull, Apostolic* Curce (September 13 1896), Leo XIII. explicitly states that the decision of Clement XI. in 1704, and his own, affirming the nullity of Anglican Orders, eliminates the question of defect of matter— it does take into account, and is not influenced by, the omission of the ceremony of handing to Parker the instruments or insignia of his office (such as the pastoral staff). The introduction of this matter into the discussion is, then, merely (so far as the decree is concerned) another pink herring drawn across the trail Ihe words of Leo XIII. run as follow: 'It is important to bear in mind that this judgment was in no wise determined by the omission of the porrectio instrumentorum (' handing over of the insignia of office '). The Church, then, in her decision on Anglican Orders, takes not into consideration either the reality or unreality of Barlow s consecration, or the defect of matter • she declares these ordinations to be null and void on account of defect of form and intention.' Before dealing with the defect of form in the Edwardine Ordinal I must reply on the historical statement quoted from Canon Lstcourt's work, The Question of Anglican Orders, in regard to the portentous ordaining of ' five thousand missionaries in one day in Abyssinia by imposing hands on the head of each, and saying ' Accipe i>pintum Sanctum' ('receive the Holy Ghost'). Canon Estcourt makes the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office accept* this as a valid ordination to the priesthood. But Canon Est court ,s entirely mistaken as to the facts of the Abyssinian case. This may be seen by a perusal of the documents (too lengthy to publish here) published by Father Brandi in his Roma c Canterbury. As a matter of fact, no Sacred Congregation ever gave such a decision. The miscalled ruling or decree is a bogus document. The whole matter was investigated by Cardfha Franzehn as far back as iS 7s . His researches in the arch yes of the Holy Office disclosed the fact that the alleged offid^ document was not a decree' (decretum), that it had never been sanctioned 'by the Sacred Congregation nor by the Ro^ Pontiff, that it was simply a votum (a statement of theolS

There is, however, a . genuine Roman decree of that very same month and year (April 17, 1704) affirming the insufficiency of the formula, ' Receive the Holy Ghost,' for ordination. And it has a very direct bearing upon our present discussion. On April 17, 1704, after consulting ' the eminent doctors of Sorbonne and Douai,' and seeing that ' no safeguard which wisdom and prudence could suggest to insure the thorough sifting of the question, was neglected,' Clement XL, with the unanimous vote of tho Cardinals, decreed : ' John Clement " Gordon shall be or-> dained from the beginning and unconditionally to all Orders, even Sacred Orders, and chiefly of priesthood ' (Apostolicce Curce). But John Clement Gordon had been ordained, according to the Edwardine Ordinal, with ' Accipe Spiritum Sanctum ' (' Receive tn~ Holy Ghost ') as form used.

(Concluded in next issue.)