ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS. —
I. Antecedents
The question regarding the validity of the sacraments—specifically whether ministers ordained according to the rite of the Church of England are true priests and true bishops and thus comparable to the bishops and priests of the Eastern schismatic Churches—aroused much controversy, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, which was brought to a close by Pope Leo XIII’s bull *Apostolicae curae* of 13 September 1896.As is known, every sacrament must necessarily possess matter and form; the matter is in itself indeterminate and must be determined by the form. Thus, for example, the laying on of hands is the common matter of both the presbyterate and the episcopate: to it must be added the form, that is, the words which determine and signify the specific grace bestowed and the particular power conferred. When such determination does not occur, a defect of form arises. During the schism of Henry VIII (1534–47), all ordinations were performed according to the Roman Ritual and were considered valid; the same may be said of the ordinations performed during the first three years of Edward VI’s reign (1547–50). However, in 1550, the *Book of Common Prayer* (v.) of Edward VI came into force, in which the English Ordinal replaced the Roman Pontifical. In both the ordination of priests and the consecration of bishops, this Ordinal did not specify the power conferred. There was thus a defect of form. Another necessary requirement for the validity of a sacrament is the minister’s intention, that is, the will to do what the Church does. If the minister—and in the case of Holy Orders, the consecrator—has a completely erroneous and false idea of what the Church does and intends to do what he himself can do rather than what the Church does, this intention is lacking and the sacrament is invalid. Now, in the *Prayer Book* of 1550, not only was the sacrament of Orders denied, but in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, which replaced the Mass, every idea of sacrifice and of the consecration of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord was eliminated. There was thus a defect of intention.
During the reign of Mary Tudor (1553–58), Cardinal Reginald Pole, sent as papal legate to England, took care to examine individual ordinations, declaring all those performed according to the English Ordinal invalid due to defects of form and intention. Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603) renewed the schism and, as successor to Cardinal Pole in the See of Canterbury, chose Matthew Parker, who had been chaplain to her mother Anne Boleyn. Parker had been ordained priest according to the English Ordinal and thus invalidly. Moreover, the validity of his own consecration as bishop was always a matter of serious doubt. From Parker, other Anglican bishops were subsequently consecrated, all according to the Ordinal of Edward VI, from whom, through successive invalid consecrations, the present Anglican episcopate derives. More than a century later, in 1662, the authorities of the Anglican Church, aware of the indeterminacy of their consecration rites, amended them. For priests, they added: “Receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, etc.” and for bishops: “Receive the Holy Spirit for the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God, etc.” However, as the bull *Apostolicae curae* rightly observed, these additions may perhaps have given the formulas a legitimate meaning, but they came too late, since after a century the legitimate hierarchy—and thus the power to ordain—had certainly become extinct.
2. The Bull *Apostolicae curae*
From the legation of Cardinal Pole until the mid-19th century, some Anglican ministers entered the Catholic Church, such as the Anglican bishop Gordon in 1704. The Catholic Church regarded them as simple laity. Toward the middle of the 19th century, as the theory of the three branches developed among Anglicans, it immediately became apparent how futile this theory was if the Anglican ordinations were not considered valid by the other two branches, namely the Catholic and the Eastern schismatic Churches. Anglicans therefore wished to be regarded as true priests and true bishops. The Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches rejected this claim. A tenacious controversy thus arose, in which, assuming the validity to be certain and beyond dispute, Anglicans strove to demonstrate it with various and manifold arguments.The benevolence which Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903), who had always shown toward the English, demonstrated in, among other documents, his letter *Ad Anglos* of 15 April 1895, induced some non-English Catholics, and especially the Anglo-Catholic Lord Halifax, to request a papal declaration regarding Anglican ordinations. The Pope then appointed a commission of learned ecclesiastics from various nations to study the question thoroughly, with the faculty to examine all documents in the Vatican Archives. The commission submitted its reports to the Congregation of the Holy Office; the cardinals composing that supreme tribunal gave their judgment, and the conclusions were examined by the Pope himself. Two distinguished Anglican ecclesiastics, Drs. Puller and Lacey, were summoned to Rome and were able to present to the commission all the arguments and documents they deemed appropriate.
After this careful work, after all the relevant documents—both for and against—had been diligently examined, and after comparing the ordination formulas of various schismatic Churches, the Supreme Pontiff issued the bull *Apostolicae curae*, which declared Anglican ordinations invalid. After touching on the disputed question of the validity or invalidity of the consecration of Matthew Parker, from whom the entire Anglican hierarchy derives, the Supreme Pontiff insisted on the two main points already indicated, namely that Anglican ordinations are invalid due to defects of form and of intention.
3. After the Bull *Apostolicae curae*
The impression produced by the bull varied according to the groups involved in the question. English Catholics felt great relief, seeing in it the solution to a grave problem that had been hindering the conversion of those Protestants who, in good faith, believed they could avail themselves in the Anglican Church of the grace of the sacraments conferred by true ministers who had been validly ordained. Anglicans, especially those of the Low Church, who held markedly Protestant views, rejoiced because they viewed with great displeasure the defense, by other Anglicans, of the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist and the attempts to restore the priesthood, which they did not believe in.For the ritualists and Anglo-Catholics, the bull was a hard blow, as it destroyed their theories and ideals. The two archbishops of Canterbury and York, a few months later, published their famous *Responsio* in Latin to Leo XIII, which, as Birbeck noted in a letter to Lord Halifax, satisfied neither the ritualists nor the more Protestant-leaning Anglicans. The Anglo-Catholics, ever more tenacious in their ideal of possessing the true priesthood, sought compensation for the adverse and decisive Roman judgment in rapprochement with the schismatic Churches, with little or no success.