 |
The Chapel at Lambeth Palace
where Matthew Parker was
consecrated Archbishop of
Canterbury
|
Elizabeth’s challenge was to get her new
Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated.
All the Marian bishops, including Anthony Kitchin of Llandaff in Wales
who had adopted the Protestant Rites under Edward VI, reverted to Catholicism
under Mary, and would adopt Protestant worship again under Elizabeth,
refused. In the end Elizabeth came up
with four co-consecrating bishops which is, after all, one more than required.
However the credentials of several of them were not as impeccable as one might
have hoped.
The consecration of Matthew Parker is a key
stumbling block in Catholic/Anglican dialogue.
All current Anglican Bishops can trace their lineage back to
Parker. If he was not consecrated
validly, then the validity of the diaconal and priestly ordinations and episcopal
consecrations of subsequent Anglican bishops gets called into question. If he was consecrated validly then all
subsequent Anglican bishops stand in the Apostolic Succession and the Churches
of the Anglican Communion have, by Catholic standards, a fully valid
sacramental system. (The issue is
complicated, by the way, by the introduction of Old Catholic co-consecrating
bishops in the 19th and 20th centuries, but that is for a
later post.)
Spoiler alert: Pope Leo XIII declared in the
Bull Apostolicae Curae of 1896 that
Parker’s episcopal consecration was invalid on several points and thus the
Anglican Church does not stand in the Apostolic Succession. For us historians, the issue is far more
complex and not as easily settled however, and so we want to look in detail at
the Parker consecration and what happened so as to see the evidence on which
Leo’s commission appointed to study the issue came to their conclusions. And for those who think it is a settled
question, consider this: In 1993, in an effort to persuade the Church of
England not to go ahead with women’s ordination (to the priesthood)
then-Cardinal Ratzinger as head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the
Faith, offered that in return for the Church of England backing away from this
historic step of admitting women to the priesthood, the Holy See would re-open
the question of Valid Orders. To
proceed, however, with the ordination of women to priestly ministry as either
bishops or priests would mark a definitive closure to this question as the
Catholic Church believes that it is of divine law that only men can be ordained
bishops and priests. The willingness of
the Catholic Church—and Cardinal Ratzinger could not have made the offer
without the consent of the Pope at the time (Saint John Paul II)—to reexamine
the decision of Apostolicae Curae
does mean that Leo’s Bull is not irreversible.
What do we mean by valid orders? The Catholic Church—along with the Orthodox
Churches, the Churches of the East and the Copts, the Anglican Church and
several branches of Lutheranism (among them the Church of Sweden)—holds that
bishops receive not only their authority but their sacramental “power” from
standing in a long line of bishops traceable back to the Apostles through the prayer
invoking the Holy Spirit on the new bishop and the laying on of hands conferred
on each new bishop in each successive generation from the Apostles to the
present day. Priests, likewise, receive
the “power” to celebrate the Eucharist and forgive sins by the laying on of hands
by their ordaining bishops who stand in this lineage traced back to the
apostles.
Frankly, no one has the papers to show an
unbroken line back to any of the 12, but the claim of an unbroken succession
from the Apostles is not as outlandish as it may seem. From the first century onwards their was
great scrupulosity about making sure that this transmission of office was done
through the laying on of hands and it is a very reasonable assumption that
bishops can indeed trace the lineage back to the Apostles laying hands on those
they chose for ministry in the primitive Church.
If it were simply a matter of the lineage of
the hand-onlaying, it wouldn’t be complex.
But historically there were challenges to various features of the
ritual. Were there specific words, or at
least specific ideas, that had to be vocalized in the accompanying prayer
invoking the Holy Spirit? Were there
other accompanying actions that comprised an essential part of the ritual? What if the ordaining bishop were not
orthodox in his faith? Would an ordination conferred by him be valid? What if candidate was not orthodox in
his? What if either secretly rejected
what was supposedly happening? There is
no end to the number of pins on which a questionable number of angels can
dance.
The allegation that ordinations had been
invalid or where ordinations were subsequently annulled has been widely abused
in the history of the Church. Various
movements and groups in the Church of the third and fourth century had declared
the ordinations of their rivals “invalid” in order to discredit them and shake
the confidence of their adherents. The
Donatists claimed that the personal sinfulness of the bishop or priest made him
incapable of conferring sacraments validly.
The Montanists refused to recognize the ordination of those outside
their movement and orthodox Christians in turn rejected the ordinations of the
Montanists. In the ninth and tenth
century it got even worse as successive popes annulled the ordinations of their
predecessors who came from rival political factions in Rome. Popes declared the ordinations of antipopes
invalid and antipopes returned the compliment which sounds reasonable until you
realize that most often it was only years later that it was settled which
claimant to the papacy wore the white tiara and which wore the black. All of this is to say that the charge of “invalid
orders” was so overused and abused throughout history as to have little
credibility except as a polemical tool.
And so when told that their ordinations were not valid, the
sixteenth-century reformers sort of shrugged their shoulders and went on with
their lives. “Wolf” had been cried too
often.
This isn’t to say that there is not
substance the idea of “valid” and “invalid” orders, but only that the entire
matter has to be very carefully nuanced.
It isn’t like buying a quart of milk with an expiration date on it. The milk is either sour or it isn’t and
everyone can tell. What do you mean by
“valid” or “invalid” orders? How can you
tell?
I remember one time forty years ago, as the
ecumenical movement was just beginning to dawn, being at a very High Church
Episcopal Eucharist. A friend of mine,
then a Catholic seminarian, said as the Sacrament was being incensed at the
consecration: “Don’t they know that it is just crackers and grape-juice.” That then-seminarian is now dean of an
Episcopalian Cathedral and he obviously doesn’t know that it “is just crackers
and grape-juice.” Nor is it. Chapter 22 of Unitatis Reintegratio, Vatican II’s Declaration on Ecumenism, says
of the Eucharist as celebrated in the various churches that we Catholics judge
to stand outside the Apostolic Succession
Though the ecclesial Communities which are separated from us lack
the fullness of unity with us flowing from Baptism, and though we believe they
have not retained the proper reality of the eucharistic mystery in its
fullness, especially because of the absence of the sacrament of Orders,
nevertheless when they commemorate His death and resurrection in the Lord's
Supper, they profess that it signifies life in communion with Christ and look
forward to His coming in glory. Therefore the teaching concerning the Lord's
Supper, the other sacraments, worship, the ministry of the Church, must be the
subject of the dialogue.
Notice: “while we believe that they have
not retained the fullness of the Eucharistic Mystery”—primarily because of the
break in the Apostolic Succession—we acknowledge that
1.
Like our understanding of the Mass, the
Eucharist in these communities commemorates the death and resurrection of the
Lord,
2.
It signifies (a word replete with
sacramental meaning) life in communion with Christ
3.
And it is a sign of the Kingdom of God
It is amazing that the Council Fathers chose
to admit their subjectivity in this crucial matter and did not make an absolute
pronunciation on the full validity of non-Catholic Eucharists. The Council Fathers also spoke of the
“fullness of the Eucharistic Mystery,” again not saying that the Protestant
Holy Communion is “crackers and grape-juice” but only somehow lacking in what
it might have should the Apostolic Succession have been maintained. There is, the Catholic Church says, an
authentic union with Christ; the issue is whether Christ is corporally
present.
There is a reason for this to be challenged. Jesus asks: what father among you would hand
your child a stone if he asked for bread…” (Matthew 7:9; Luke 11:11.) No serious theologian, unless he were
descending from theology into polemics, would claim that the prayers of the
baptized would go unheard by our heavenly Father when the baptized ask him for
their spiritual nourishment in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. No, the understanding of the Eucharist is
most often different among our separated brothers and sisters; the experience
is most often different as well. But
that “nothing” happens? Well, actually
that is what many Catholics believed for several centuries, but then we were burning
women for witches and spreading stories about Jews stealing the Eucharistic
host to use in the ritual killing of Christian children. That great age of Counter-Reformation
baroque: It often wasn’t a pretty sight when you looked too close.
By the way, just as a point of
clarification: while the Catholic Church questions the precise nature of the
sacramental systems of the various Protestant Churches, we accept the validly
of the Sacraments of the Orthodox Churches (though they do not all accept
ours), the Ancient Churches of the East, and the Copts and other ancient
Churches.
We have drifted far from Matthew Parker’s
Episcopal consecration, but let’s review.
We need validly ordained consecrating bishops (one is absolutely
required; three is usual, and we have four—though that validly ordained thing
is sketchy for two of them, as we will see.)
We need to be able to reasonably presume that the ordaining bishops
intend to pass on the Apostolic Succession, or we at least need to have no
evidence that they are withholding their intention do so do. We need a ritual
that has an acceptable verbal formula for calling down the Holy Spirit upon
those being ordained/consecrated. We
need whatever other parts of the ritual are required for validity. (This last will be interesting because the
Catholic Church will change horses in mid-theological-stream, leaving Leo XIII
hanging out to dry on this point.)
What do we get? There are four consecrating bishops. We have William Barlow, once Bishop of Bath
and Wells. We have John Scory, once Bishop
of Chichester. We have Miles Coverdale,
once Bishop of Exeter. And we have John
Hodgkins, Bishop of Bedford. Barlow was
consecrated a bishop in 1536 when England was in Schism but still using the
traditional Pontifical. He was therefore
a validly ordained bishop. Hodgkins was
similarly consecrated under the ancient ritual in 1537. Coverdale and Scory were consecrated Bishops
according the revised Protestant rites in the Ordinal of Edward VI. Their
ordinations are, therefore, less certain depending on whether one acknowledges
the validity of the Reformed Rite.
Nevertheless, we only need one and we have at least two.
No comments:
Post a Comment