Anglican orders as bones of contention; conference glitch shows ecumenism still adrift

National Catholic Reporter, April 28, 1995 by Tim Unsworth

John Henry Newman joined the Roman Catholic church in 1845. The leading spirit of the Oxford movement, he had received Anglican orders in 1824. When he entered the Vatican's College of Propaganda, the seminary for students from mission countries, he stated that he would have "difficulty" about being reordained. "I could not say that Anglican orders were invalid," he wrote.

Newman was a big catch for a church that had lost England over the validity of another sacrament, Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. So Newman's concerns were set aside with the assurance that, although ordination would not be explicitly conditional, the "condition" would be "implied in the church's intention."

Although not always welcomed by a church he sometimes found insensitive, he gradually earned respect, even for his occasional criticisms. Leo XIII, the man who would issue a papal bull in 1896 that would declare Anglican orders null and void, named Newman a cardinal in 1879. Newman didn't live to see the papal bull: He had died of pneumonia in 1890 in his 90th year.

Apostolicae Curae, released Sept. 13, 1896, claimed Anglican orders were invalid because they were conferred according to a rite that was substantially defective in form and intent and because of a break in apostolic succession that occurred when Archbishop Matthew Parker became head of the Anglican hierarchy in 1559. In making the declaration, Leo XIII cited early arguments against validity made by Julius III in 1553-54 and Paul IV in 1555. He also noted related directives requiring absolute ordination, according to the Catholic ritual, of convert ministers who had been ordained according to the Anglican ordinal.

The argument has raged for more than four centuries. As recently as April 1994, retired Anglican Bishop Graham Leonard of London was received into the Roman Catholic church and conditionally ordained to the Catholic priesthood by London's Cardinal Basil Hume. Again, Leonard's ordination was "conditional" because it was judged that his prior ordination as an Anglican might have been valid because of the involvement of a bishop of the Old Catholic church of Utrecht, who had been validly ordained.

Somehow the issue echoes one of those old theology cases about the dying bishop who confessed on his deathbed that he had withheld the intention when ordaining a passel of trusting seminarians. The tale went that each had to be contacted and informed that he had been consecrating the Real Absence all those years. It was said that one priest got the vapors, another took to drink, a third left town with the housekeeper, and still another had a nervous breakdown -- all because of a mental lapse, likely caused when the bishop unwittingly sniffed the glue from his "Keep the Fatima Promises" bumper sticker.

The issue of Anglican orders still haunts ecumenical souls. It can be as big a stumbling block as the celibacy issue. It can have profound doctrinal implications. The solution may involve the adoption of a hierarchy of truths, conceptually akin to the principle of doctrinal relativity now being applied by ecumenists regarding issues such as the immaculate conception, the assumption and papal infallibility.

The Marian dogmas date only to 1854 and 1950 respectively. Pius IX defined papal infallibility during the fourth session of Vatican I in 1870. The validity of Anglican orders has a longer history but it carries less theological weight. Yet, it remains one of the main reasons why ecumenical efforts have remained principally the work of non-papists.

Those who make the shift to Rome are not always welcomed with open crosiers. Until the end of his life, for example, Newman periodically heard gossip from both sides that he was thinking of returning to the Church of England, now armed with valid orders.

Anglican priests who turn to Rome must endure a process that questions the validity of orders the converts considered both sacred and valid. They often have problems with parish assignments, especially if they are married. Not long ago, a married Anglican priest who made the change was assigned to a small parish where he served until he died. His former church honored his pension and continued it for his widow; his new church stopped his pension with his last breath.

Some churchmen held that married converts from the Anglican tradition must be considered bigamists since Roman priests were married to the church. Others simply regarded Anglicans as Protestants with no special links to the Roman Catholic tradition.

Fr. John Jay Hughes, a historian, author and diocesan priest from St. Louis, has written several books on the topic. He is himself a former Anglican priest and son of an Anglican priest who had to go to Germany to find a diocese that would accept him.

In his most recent book, Pontiffs: Popes Who Shaped History, Hughes traces the history just prior to Leo XIII's letter. It began in 1890 with a chance meeting between Lord Halifax, a devout Anglican and supporter of Newman's Oxford movement, and a French Vincentian, the Abbe Fernand Portal. Halifax introduced Portal to an Anglo-Catholicism that he didn't know existed.