ANGLICAN ORDERS

The problem of the validity of Anglican orders arose in the Catholic Church during the reign of the Catholic Queen mary (1553–1558), when Cardinal Reginald pole as papal legate governed the reconciliation of the Church in England with the Holy See. The English Church had been schismatic under henry viii (1509–1547) since the Act of Supremacy adopted in 1534. Under edward vi (1547–1553) it had officially endorsed and enforced Protestant doctrines with a Calvinist orientation, yet without modifying the episcopal organization. The validity of its ordinations became a problem because of the liturgical reforms of Archbishop Thomas cranmer (1489–1557). Edward's government, bent on reformation on a continental model, successively adopted the book of common prayer in 1549 (revised in a more Protestant direction in 1552), the Ordinal in 1550, and Forty-two Articles of Religion in 1552 (reduced to Thirty-nine under Queen Elizabeth). From 1550 on, the ritual of ordination departed from the rite that had been traditional in the English Church from time immemorial.

Due to the circumstances of the times the theological question was inextricably bound with politics. Upon the

death of Edward on July 6, 1553, the attempt to place the young Lady Jane Grey (1537–1554) on the throne was in keeping with an Act of Succession signed by the king. It was somewhat reluctantly agreed to by Archbishop Cranmer and enthusiastically supported by Nicholas Ridley (c. 1503–1555), bishop of London. The Catholic Queen Mary, however, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, got enough support to conquer the crown some two weeks later, and the pious Protestant Queen Jane was beheaded on Feb. 1, 1554. Mary wished to have the entire kingdom reconciled with the Holy See and the old liturgy restored. At her request this task was entrusted by Pope julius iii (1550–1555) to the queen's relative, Reginald Pole (1500–1558), the first prelate who faced Anglican ordinations as a problem.

From time to time during the next three centuries, the question was raised again, until Pope leo xiii (1878–1903) appointed a special commission with a view to settling the matter once for all. He reached his conclusion in the apostolic letter Apostolicae curae, issued in 1896.

The Question in the Sixteenth Century

A cardinal and a deacon since December of 1536, Reginald Pole had been named papal legate to England by Paul III on Feb. 15, 1537, but, Henry VIII having ordered his assassination, he had not gone to England at the time. His legatine commission was renewed by Julius III (Si ullo unquam tempore, on Aug. 5, 1553) and the extent of his powers determined on August 6 (Post nuntium nobis ). Having finally landed in England on Nov. 20, 1554, the cardinal officially absolved the kingdom of England from schism ten days later, and Parliament passed an Act of Reconciliation on Jan. 4, 1555, thus repealing the ecclesiastical legislation of both Henry and Edward.

The situation that faced Pole was extremely complex. Under Edward VI and his Protestant advisers, priests and bishops had been ordained at first with the old Pontifical, then with the Ordinal. Most of those who opted for the Reformation had time to flee to the Continent. A few bishops, notably Nicholas Ridley and Cranmer, were arrested for high treason because of their support of Jane Grey. Hugh Latimer (c. 1483–1555), bishop of Worcester, was arrested on suspicion of heresy. He was burnt on Oct. 15, 1555, together with Nicholas Ridley. Archbishop Cranmer was eventually tried for heresy. Deprived of his see by Paul IV (1555–1559) on Dec. 4, 1555, he was burnt on March 21, 1556, while Pole, promoted to the see of Canterbury as soon as it was officially vacant, was hurriedly ordained a priest on March 20 and a bishop two days later. The remaining clergy of Edward VI were generally willing, and some were eager, to be reconciled with the Holy See. Many of the priests, however, were now married and the status of their wives raised difficult questions.

The history of the reconciliation begins in uncertainty, for one cannot know what happened before the arrival of Cardinal Pole in England in November of 1554. It is inconceivable that no reintegration of the clergy had taken place. Many of the priests, including those ordained under Edward, simply changed their liturgy of Holy Communion and picked it up where it had been in the last years of the reign of Henry VIII. Instructions sent by the queen to Bishop Edward Bonner on March 4, 1554 specified that no heretic may now be admitted to ecclesiastical functions, that priests who refuse to separate from their wives must be deprived while those who, with their wife's consent, promise to abstain from matrimony may be assigned ecclesiastical functions, and that all former religious who have attempted marriage must be divorced without exception. These instructions do not question the validity of the priests' orders.

Meanwhile, the papal bull of Julius III Dudum dum charissima (March 8, 1554) gave Cardinal Pole, though he was not a priest, and was not yet in England, unlimited power of absolution for all those (even "in patriarchal dignity") who "ask to be received in the orthodox faith." The papal instructions regarding the reconciliation of the clergy, however, were far from clear. Some, the bull noted, had been properly ordained (with the old Pontifical). Others were never ordained at all: they must now be ordained if they wish to remain in ministry and if they are otherwise qualified. A third category includes priests who are in "orders that they never or badly received," and also bishops who received their orders "from other heretical or schismatic bishops or archbishops, or otherwise less properly [minus rite ] and the usual form of the Church not being followed." The bull does not specify what the legate should do in regard to their ordination. A fourth category is that of bishops who were promoted by the king or the metropolitan, and thus without the proper papal bulls; the legate has full authority to confirm them, with the queen's agreement, in their see or place them in another one. There is no suggestion that these illegitimate bishops are not in valid orders or that they should now be ordained.

Paul IV. Three bulls of paul iv, composed during Queen Mary's reign, touch on the question of Anglican orders. Praeclara charissimi (June 20, 1555) approves generally the rulings that have been made by the legate, including his decisions and dispensations regarding those who had obtained indults "concerning orders" by virtue of "the pretended authority of the Supremacy of the Church of England" so that these men could "remain in their orders or benefices." The bull specifies that only the orders conferred by bishops who had been ordained rite et recte (with the Pontifical) are to be honored. The pope does not mention the ritual specifically; one may infer from this that Paul IV's concern was not with the rite, but with the lack of proper jurisdiction of the Edwardian bishops, since neither the metropolitans (of Canterbury and of York) nor the king had the canonical power to give spiritual jurisdiction to new bishops.

Dudum ecclesiae eboracensis (Oct. 30, 1555), a brief addressed to the Church in York, was composed to explain a mistake made in the Roman offices concerning Nicholas Heath (d. 1572), whom the queen wanted to transfer from the diocese of Worcester to the archdiocese of York. The pope had agreed to the transfer but had said that Heath must now be consecrated. He had, however, already been consecrated in 1540, with the Pontifical. Pole asked for further instructions. Dudum ecclesiae blamed the mistake on the insufficient information provided by England. It went on to declare that the three bishops who had consecrated Heath were lacking in executione ordinis episcopalis. In other words, they were true bishops, who nonetheless lacked the proper jurisdiction since they were functioning under the king's usurped supremacy.

The bull Regimini universalis ecclesiae bears the same date and was composed on the same occasion. Addressed to the papal legate, it is more general in scope. It formulates the question well: Which bishops, "during the schism of the kingdom, could be said to be licitly and rightly [rite et recte ] ordained?" The answer, however, cast in the form of a double negation, is unclear: "Only those cannot be said to have been ordained rite et recte who were not ordained and consecrated in the form of the Church; and therefore the persons whom they promoted to these orders did not receive the orders, but must receive them again…. The others to whom these orders were given by bishops and archbishops who had been ordained and consecrated in the form of the Church, even though these bishops and archbishops were schismatic and received the churches over which they presided from Henry VIII and Edward VI, pretended kings of England … did receive the character of the orders given to them and were only lacking in regard to the fullness of the same orders." The text does not specify if the form of the Church is the rite of the Pontifical (which would rule out ordinations according to the Ordinal) or the canonical confirmation of their election by the bishop of Rome (which would deny these bishops' power of jurisdiction, but not the validity of their ordination). Since the bull, however, shows no intent of introducing a new principle in the legate's extended authority, one must assume that, like Julius III, Paul IV denies the validity of episcopal jurisdiction received nulliter et de facto from the royal supremacy, but says nothing about the rite of ordination. In fact, the researches that have been made into the episcopal registers of Queen Mary's time, especially by W. H. Frere, indicate that only about fifteen reordinations took place under Cardinal Pole's authority (Hughes, Absolutely Null, 253–254).

Pius V. After Elizabeth ascended the throne on Nov. 17, 1558, she reversed the Catholic measures taken by her sister, though she did not share the Calvinist principles of her brother. She selected a scholar from Cambridge, Matthew Parker (1504–1575), to succeed Cardinal Pole in Canterbury. Parker was consecrated on Dec. 17, 1559 by four bishops, two of whom had been ordained according to the Pontifical, two according to the Ordinal. The queen also issued a decree, Supplentes, to the effect that by virtue of the Royal Supremacy she "supplied" whatever could happen to be defective in the proceedings. The queen's ability to do this was precisely what the papal policy toward England was determined to deny. While Pius IV (1555–1565) did not interfere in English affairs, it was under Elizabeth, during the "Great Controversy" between the Anglican John Jewel and the Catholic Thomas Harding, that the validity of Anglican orders was openly denied for the first time. The main reason given by Harding when he refused the title of bishop to Jewel was that he had been made bishop (of Salisbury) by the queen, who had no authority to do this. Finally, in 1571 (Regnans in excelsis ) Pius V accused the "pretended queen" of destroying the Church and giving "ecclesiastical possessions" to heretics, and he declared her excommunicate, thereby inviting her subjects to rebel. While Julius III had dealt chiefly with the problem of married priests, and Paul IV with the Royal Supremacy and bishops who had no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, Pius V approached the Anglican problem politically, and his wish to unseat the queen was frustrated.

The Council of Trent. The lack of precision as to the meaning of rite et recte in the papal documents of the sixteenth century is not surprising. The Council of Trent gave no more information in the decree of its 23d session on the sacrament of orders (July 15, 1563). Neither the four chapters of the decree nor the following eight canons specify what rites are adequate. Chapter 3 says simply that sacred ordination "is done with words and external signs" (quae verbis et signis exterioribus perficitur : DS 1766), and canon 3 anathematizes anyone who says that ordination is "only a rite [ritum quemdam ] for selecting ministers of the word of God and the sacraments" (DS 1773). A few words of the ritual appear in canon 4, which says that the bishops do not say "Accipe Spiritum Sanctum" in vain (DS 1774). These words also begin the formula that accompanies the laying on of hands in the Ordinal. Canon 5 condemns those who say that "the sacred unction used by the Church in holy ordination not only is not needed, but is contemptible and pernicious, and likewise the other ceremonies" (DS 1775). Canon 7 rejects the idea that "those who are not rite ordained and sent by ecclesiastical and canonical authority, but come from somewhere else, are legitimate ministers of word and sacraments" (DS 1777). By implication this denies that the Royal Supremacy can be a legitimate source of ministerial authority, but it says nothing about any specific rite. In all the decree there is not even an allusion to the scholastic theology of the form and matter of a sacrament.

This lack of interest in the rite of ordination is confirmed by the Catechism of the Council of Trent, or Roman Catechism, that was issued by Pius V. The twenty-three sections of its long treatment of the sacrament of orders (pt. II, ch. VII) allude to the rite of all the minor and major orders, the priesthood included (XXV), drawing attention to the porrection of instruments and the accompanying words. Within the priesthood it places the ranks of bishop, archbishop, and patriarchs (XXVI–XXVII), of whom the pope is the principal, episcopus maximus by divine law, successor of Peter and vicar of Christ (XXVIII). The bishop is the only minister of the major orders (XXIX). In keeping with "the tradition of the Apostles," he is himself consecrated by three bishops. But there is no reference to the words and gestures of the rite. The most likely explanation for this silence is that legitimate episcopal authority did not depend on the rite of episcopal consecration but on the source of episcopal jurisdiction. The question was not: How was he consecrated? It was: By whom was he ordained a priest, and by what authority was he made a bishop?

The Question in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The Ordinal was slightly modified in 1662 in order to pull the rug out from under a Puritan interpretation that argued that the bishops of the Church of England had only a title without substance because the rite of ordination did not specify that its purpose was precisely the making of a bishop. Though the intent of the rite was already formulated in the preface to the Ordinal, the formula of ordination was henceforth: "Receive the Holy Ghost for the office of a Bishop in the Church of God now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands." The opinion of the Recusants on the value of Anglican ordination was not a factor in the process.

In 1684 a former French Calvinist, who had been ordained a priest by an Anglican bishop and had entered the Catholic Church later as layman, asked the apostolic nuncio in Paris if he was free to marry or if he was bound by the law of clerical celibacy. The problem went to Cardinal Jerome Casanate, prefect of the Holy Office under Pope Innocent XI (1676–1689). Casanate, who was unacquainted with the bulls of the sixteenth century, focused his attention on episcopal succession at the time of the Reformation, on the Ordinal, and on the "form and matter" of the rite. He consulted with the apostolic nuncio in the Netherlands and with the internuncio in Flanders, who journeyed to England before taking his position. The nuncio argued that the ordinations were invalid because the Ordinal does not mention the priest's sacrificial function. The internuncio reached the same negative conclusion on the general opinion of English Recusants that Matthew Parker was not a true bishop, and the belief that the Catholic "form" of ordination had been sufficiently altered in the Ordinal to warrant a negative judgment. A similar conclusion was therefore reached by the Holy Office on Aug. 13, 1685, to the effect that the petitioner was not a priest and was therefore free to marry. The decision, however, "delayed" in order not to increase the political difficulties of the Catholic King James II (king, 1665–1689), was never officially promulgated.

Clement XI (1700–1721) faced a somewhat similar question in 1704, when John Clement Gordon (1644–1726), a bishop ordained in the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1688, was received in the Roman Catholic Church. What rite was used at his consecration, the English rite of 1662 being illegal in Scotland at the time, has not been ascertained. In fact, no new investigation was made. The Holy Office declared that Gordon was not in ecclesiastical orders.

During this period, Catholic scholars in France studied the problem of Anglican orders in learned publications, and, as would be expected, they reached divergent verdicts. In 1720 the liturgiologist Eusèbe Renaudot concluded to their invalidity (Mémoire sur les ordinations des Anglais ). In 1723 the theologian Pierre François Le Courayer reached the opposite conclusion (Dissertation sur la validité des ordinations des Anglais ). In 1725 Michel Le Quien denied their validity (La Nullité des ordinations anglicanes ), and the two of them argued back and forth without reaching agreement (Le Courayer in 1726, Le Quien in 1730, and again Le Courayer in 1732). Although the controversy was inconclusive, it did refocus the question, which now became whether the essence of the sacrament of Orders had been preserved in the rite of the Ordinal and the consecration of Matthew Parker.

The Question in the Nineteenth century

Pope Leo XIII (1878–1908) would have had no reason to study the Ordinal if, in 1894, the Vincentian Fernand Portal (1885–1926) and the distinguished Anglican layman Lord Halifax (1839–1834) had not asked him to recognize the validity of Anglican orders. There had been a new flurry of writing pro and con, with books or memoranda by Peter Kenrick (1841), E. E. Estcourt (1873), Johann Baptist Franzelin (1875), F. Dalbus (penname of Fernand Portal, 1894), Sydney Smith (1894), Auguste Boudinhon (1895), among others. A pontifical commission was created, the work of which is now well known thanks to the opening of the Vatican archives for the period and the subsequent publication of the documentation. Although the commission (Adrian Gasquet, James Moyes, David Fleming, known to favor the negative opinion; Duchesne, Pietro Gasparri, Emilio De Augustinis, known to be more or less favorable; plus, added after the first meeting, Calasanzio de Llaveneras, T. B. Scannell) was chaired by Cardinal Marcello Mazzella, and Rafael Merry del Val acted as its secretary. Although it met twelve times betweem March 24, and May 5, 1896, it made no recommendation, for it was suddenly disbanded by Pope Leo, who ordered the documentation to be handed over to the master of the sacred palace, Rafaele Pierotti. His negative conclusion passed into Leo's apostolic letter, written under Mazzella's supervision. The apostolic letter, Apostolicae curae, was dated Sept. 13, 1896, and it said that ordinations (of bishops) according to the Ordinal are invalid for defect of form and defect of intention. The argumentation was based on the text of the Ordinal and what was deemed to be its "native character and spirit" (nativa indoles ac spiritus ). (see apostolicae curae.)

The Emergence of a "New Context"

The ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion that followed Vatican Council II was bound to bring up the question of Anglican orders again. ARCIC-I (anglican/roman catholic international commission) felt that the time was not ripe for an attempt to solve the impasse created by Leo XIII's rejection of their validity. In 1973 it nevertheless recorded its agreement as to the nature of ordination (Canterbury statement, n. 14) and declared that "the development of the thinking in our two communions regarding the nature of the Church and of the ordained ministry, as represented by our statement, has put these issues in a new context" (n. 17). On July 13, 1985 Cardinal Jan Willebrands, in a letter to the co-chairs of ARCIC-II, recognized the existence of this new context and suggested that the doctrinal agreements reached between the two Churches should eventually remove what Leo XIII considered to be unacceptable in the "native character and spirit" of the Ordinal. This topic was taken up by the American dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Episcopal Church (ARC-USA), which issued its findings in 1994: Anglican Orders: A Report on the Evolving Context of Their Evaluation in the Roman Catholic Church.

The situation is still ambiguous. On the one hand, the ordination of women to the presbyterate and the episcopate in parts of the Anglican Communion has suggested that Anglicans may not exactly share the sacramental doctrine of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches. In addition, the hypothesis has been raised that the condemnation of Anglican orders might belong in the undefined category of doctrines that could be infallible by virtue of being universally taught in the ordinary magisterium of the episcopal college. On the other hand, it is not without significance that on Jan. 6, 2001, as he closed the Great Jubilee of the new millennium, John Paul II made a sharp distinction between "the Anglican Communion and the Ecclesial Communities issued from the Reformation" (Novo millennio ineunte, 48).

Bibliography: g. dix, The Question of Anglican Orders (London 1944). f. clark, Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention (London 1956); Eucharistic Sacrifice and the Reformation (Oxford 1967). j. j. hughes, Absolutely Null and Utterly Void: An Account of the 1896 Papal Condemnation of Anglican Orders (Washington 1968); Stewards of the Lord: A Reappraisal of Anglican Orders (London 1970). e. p. echlin, The Story of Anglican Ministry (Slough 1974). c. f. schreiner, The Christian Priesthood of the Anglican Communion and Apostolicae Curae (Pelham Manor 1974). e. yarnold, Anglican Orders: A Way Forward? (London 1977). g. h. tavard, A Review of Anglican Orders: The Problem and the Solution (Collegeville, Minn. 1990). r. w. franklin, ed., Anglican Orders: Essays on the Centenary of Apostolicae Curae, 1896–1996 (New York 1996). j. gros et al., eds., Common Witness to the Gospel: Documents on Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations, 1983–1995 (Washington 1997).

[g. tavard]