Case 1. Anglican Ordinations

Caius, recently converted to the Catholic faith and often obliged to give to heretical friends a reason for the faith, asks a confessor what answer must be given to a difficulty recently proposed against the Apostolic Bull. For someone wrote as follows in the Contemporary Review, Dec. 1896: “The theological argument is very nebulous. Its defenders are not sure of its meaning. As every one knows, the English ordinations are declared invalid on account of defective form and intention. A French writer has shown that the defect of intention is inferred from the use of a defective form. But English critics of the Bull have shown that what is lacking in our form is lacking also in other forms which are recognized as valid by the Roman Church; indeed in the ancient Roman form itself. Father Bernard Vaughan replies hotly that the fault is attributed not to the form in itself, but to the employment of the form in a new and defective sense. That is to say, the defect of form results from a defective intention. The two arguments combined will make an excellent circle.” P. 796. Hence it is asked:

1. What is a sacrament, and what is essentially required for its validity?

2. What kind of change suffices to invalidate the matter or form of a sacrament?

3. How does the Bull Of Apostolic Care demonstrate that Anglican ordinations are invalid?

4. What answer must briefly be given to Caius?

1. What is a sacrament and what is essential to its validity?

A sacrament is an outward sign of inward grace ordained by Christ for the sanctification and salvation of our souls. Three things are necessary for the validity of a sacrament: the matter, the form, and the minister who makes the sacrament with the intention of doing what the Church does.¹

1 Manual of Moral Theology, vol. ii, 21.

2. What sort of a change is sufficient to invalidate the matter or form of a sacrament?

If a substantial change be made in the matter or form of a sacrament, the sacrament is destroyed. The matter will be substantially changed if in the estimation of ordinary men it is no longer the same, but something else. The form will be substantially changed if the sense is no longer the same.²

2 Ibid., 22.

3. How does the Bull Apostolicae curae show that Anglican ordinations are invalid?

By appealing to precedent and by showing that the form and intention expressed in the Anglican Ordinal are essentially defective. From the time of the legation of Cardinal Pole to England, Orders conferred according to the Anglican Ordinal have always been considered invalid by Rome; all references to the power of consecrating the Eucharist and offering up the Sacrifice of the Mass were excised from the ordination rite, thus showing a want of intention to ordain true priests.

4. A brief answer to Caius. The theological argument of the Bull is clear, and Catholics have no difficulty about its meaning. The defect of intention is not inferred from the defective form, but it is clearly expressed in the changes made in the form for the purpose of cutting out all references to a sacrificing priesthood, which the reformers rejected. There is a great difference between a form which has been altered with the intention of excluding all express references to a sacrificing priesthood, and a form which has not been so altered. The Bull shows that the Anglican Ordinal belongs to the first class, and that thus it has been rendered invalid, whatever might be said of its sufficiency in itself. From this it is clear what the Bull means by defective form and intention, and that it does not argue in a circle.