Cardinal Newman and the validity of Holy Orders—What would he think today?
Cardinal Newman's letter to Father Henry James Coleridge SJ on the question of Anglican Orders provides a way of approaching the question of the Novus Ordo sacramental rites.
Editors’ Notes
Writing in 1868, Cardinal (then Father) John Henry Newman was asked by his friend, Fr Henry James Coleridge SJ (whose work we have championed many times here), what he thought about the validity of Anglican orders.
His reply offers traditional Catholics a way of looking at the reformed postconciliar rites of holy orders, without entering into detailed analyses Paul VI’s sacramental forms.
This reply came well before Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 Bull, Apostolicae Curae, which finally settled that Anglican orders were were invalid, and had no part with the priesthood of the New Covenant, established by Christ.
However, before that Bull, there were opinions here and there, some of which held that Anglican orders were valid. Catholics held different opinions. Even though converted Anglican ministers (including Newman himself) were ordained absolutely, and not conditionally, there were differing opinions on how to explain this matter.
Many Anglicans themselves were also unsure what to make of the issue before the ruling, and it played no little role in driving some to Rome. Indeed, after Pope Leo’s bull, they famously persuaded schismatic groups to co-consecrate their bishops, in order to attempt to secure valid orders for themselves.
But what did Newman make of it all?
Newman’s problems
Newman seems reluctant to enter into the topic with Fr Coleridge, and to engage in detailed discussions of sacramental theology. Instead, he draws attention to four key points – which have clear similarities with our day.
First, the idea that we must study charts of lineages and the history of various ordinations, in order to ascertain whether one’s sacraments are valid, is a great burden and quite implausible.
Second, apostolic succession. Both the Anglican Church and the Conciliar-Synodal Church have significant difficulties when it comes to the matter of apostolic succession. In both cases, some strongly hold to a Catholic view – but others reject it entirely, hold it of no account or introduce strange distortions (such as a “branch theory” in which schismatic groups can be said to have such true apostolic succession). This is manifested in those adherents of the Conciliar-Synodal Church who claim that the schismatic Orthodox are “true particular churches” and have apostolic succession (whereas they have only a material succession).1 In short, although the Conciliar-Synodal Church has maintained the language and terms, it has changed its understanding of apostolic succession itself – leaving it vulnerable to some of the critiques Newman raises.
Next, Newman points out that the Anglican eucharistic rite is manifestly unworthy of the Blessed Sacrament and the real presence of Christ, and presents the implications of this in relation to the validity of orders. The parallels with the Novus Ordo are obvious.
Finally, he points out the implications of the endemic sloppy administration of the sacrament of baptism in the Church of England, and the doubts about validity that thereby arise. The question, which Newman writes elsewhere, is unavoidable:
‘If we do not even receive the baptism of Anglicans, how can we receive their ordinations?'2
Given several documented cases of sloppiness resulting in thousands of invalid baptisms in the conciliar milieu, one cannot help but see parallels with our own day.
We hope that sharing this text may be helpful to some in understanding the challenges of our current day – as well as the sort of response which the late Cardinal (so often maligned by a minority of traditionalists) might have had following Vatican II.
We are sharing this letter to show how he responded to this question and problems (so similar to those of our day) prior to the ruling of the Church. Given the controversy sometimes raised over the late cardinal, it is interesting how similar his observations are to those of many traditionalists since Vatican II.
All this points to the fact that, to preserve sacramental integrity, safeguard the common good, and secure peace of conscience, it is essential that all traditionalist groups systematically implement the conditional ordination/consecration of clerics whose orders depend on the validity of the Novus Ordo rites.
As a last note, let’s also draw attention to Mgr Robert Hugh Benson’s writing on the spiritual implication of doubtful sacraments and their repetition under condition to secure moral certainty of validity.
Headings and some line breaks added by The WM Review for clarity of reading on a screen.
Newman’s Letter to Fr Coleridge
The Oratory, Birmingham
August 5th, 1868
My Dear Father Coleridge,
You ask me what I precisely mean, in my Apologia, Appendix, p. 26, by saying, apropos of Anglican Orders, that “Antiquarian arguments are altogether unequal to the urgency of visible facts.”
I will try to explain:—
Tedious inquiries
I. The inquiry into Anglican Orders has ever been to me of the class which I must call dreary; for it is dreary surely to have to grope into the minute intricate passages and obscure corners of past occurrences, in order to ascertain whether this man was ever consecrated, whether that man used a valid form, whether a certain sacramental intention came up to the mark, whether the report or register of an ecclesiastical act can be cleared of suspicion.
On giving myself to consider the question, I never have been able to arrive at anything higher than a probable conclusion, which is most unsatisfactory except to antiquarians, who delight in researches into the past for their own sake.
Visible Facts
II. Now, on the other hand, what do I mean by “visible facts”? I mean such definite facts as throw a broad antecedent light upon what may be presumed, in a case in which sufficient evidence is not forthcoming. For instance—
Lack of consensus on apostolic succession, its nature and importance
1. The Apostolical Succession, its necessity, and its grace, is not an Anglican tradition, though it is a tradition found in the Anglican Church.
By contrast, our Lord’s divinity is an Anglican tradition—every one, high and low, holds it. It is not only in Prayer Book and Catechism, but in the mouths of all professors of Anglicanism.
Not to believe it, is to be no Anglican; and any persons in authority, for three hundred years, who were suspected to doubt or explain it away, were marked men, as Dr. Colenso is now marked. And they have been so few that they could be counted.
Not such is the Apostolic Succession; and, considering the Church is the columna et firmamentum veritatis, and is ever bound to stir up the gift that is in her, there is surely a strong presumption that the Anglican body has not, what it does not profess to have.
I wonder how many of its bishops and deans hold the doctrine at this time; some who do not, occur to the mind at once. One knows what was the case thirty or forty years ago by the famous saying of Blomfield, Bishop of London.
A rite that offers no respectful guardianship of the Eucharist
2. Where there is a true Succession, there is a true Eucharist, if there is not a true Eucharist, there is no true Succession.
Now what is the presumption here? I think it is Mr. Alexander Knox who says or suggests that, if so great a gift be given, it must have a rite. I add, if it has a rite, it must have a custos of the rite.
Who is the custos of the Anglican Eucharist? The Anglican clergy?
Could I, without distressing or offending an Anglican, describe what sort of custodes they have been, and are, to their Eucharist? “O bone custos,” in the words of the poet, “cui commendavi Filium Meum!”
Is it not charitable towards the bulk of the Anglican clergy to hope, to believe, that so great a treasure has not been given to their keeping? And would our Lord leave Himself for centuries in such hands?
Inasmuch, then, as “the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ” in the Anglican communion is without protective ritual and jealous guardianship, there seems to me a strong presumption that neither the real gift, nor its appointed guardians, are to be found in that communion.
Careless baptisms
3. Previous baptism is the condition of the valid administration of the other sacraments.
When I was in the Anglican Church I saw enough of the lax administration of baptism, even among High Churchmen, though they did not of course intend it, to fill me with great uneasiness.
Of course there are definite persons whom one might point out, whose baptisms are sure to be valid. But my argument has nothing to do with present baptisms. Bishops were baptized, not lately, but as children. The present bishops were consecrated by other bishops, they again by others.
What I have seen in the Anglican Church makes it very difficult for me to deny that every now and then a bishop was a consecrator who had never been baptized. Some bishops have been brought up in the north as Presbyterians, others as Dissenters, others as Low Churchmen, others have been baptized in the careless perfunctory way once so common; there is then much reason to believe that some consecrators were not bishops, for the simple reason that, formally speaking, they were not Christians.
But at least there is a great presumption that where evidently our Lord has not provided a rigid rule of baptism, He has not provided a valid ordination.
Conclusion
By the light of such presumptions as these, I interpret the doubtful issues of the antiquarian argument, and feel deeply that, if Anglican Orders are unsafe with reference to the actual evidence producible for their validity, much more unsafe are they when considered in their surroundings.
Most sincerely yours,
JOHN H. NEWMAN
Taken from Essays Critical & Historical, Vol. 2, pp 109-111. Longmans, Green, and Co., London, 1907.
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Further Reading:
Bishop E.T. O’Dwyer – Cardinal Newman and the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis
Fr E.D. Benard – A Preface to Newman’s Theology
Did Cardinal Newman want to “rethink” the papacy?
Bishop Ullathorne’s vindication of Newman’s writings on Our Lady
Should converts set themselves up as teachers? Newman’s answer
John Henry Newman, Anti-Modernist
Part I
Part II
Part III
John Henry Newman, Anti-Ecumenist
Bishop and Cardinal – What should we make of certain allegations against Cardinal Newman? (Part I)
Although many contemporary Conciliar-Synodal conservatives would hold, against the classical branch theory, that the Catholic Church alone is the true Church of Christ, it is not uncommon for them to hold a branch theory with regard to true apostolic succession in the schismatic Orthodox. This novelty is at best a very misleading way of speaking – but more often is a symptom of confusion over the Catholic understanding of apostolic succession. Schismatics groups evidently have what theologians would call a material succession, but not a formal succession – for example, Berry writes:
“Succession, as used in this connection, is the following of one person after another in an official position, and may be either legitimate or illegitimate. Theologians call the one formal succession; the other, material.
“A material successor is one who assumes the official position of another contrary to the laws or constitution of the society in question. He may be called a successor in as much as he actually holds the position, but he has no authority, and his acts have no official value, even though he be ignorant of the illegal tenure of his office.
“A formal, or legitimate, successor not only succeeds to the place of his predecessor, but also receives due authority to exercise the functions of his office with binding force in the society. It is evident that authority can be transmitted only by legitimate succession; therefore, the Church must have a legitimate, or formal, succession of pastors to transmit apostolic authority from age to age. One who intrudes himself into the ministry against the laws of the Church receives no authority, and consequently can transmit none to his successors.”
E. Sylvester Berry, The Church of Christ, 76. 1955 version, Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR, 2009.
John Henry Newman, Essays Critical and Historical, Vol. 2, New Impression, p 84. Longmans, Green & Co, London 1907. The letter to Fr Coleridge is printed in this same work.
Regarding the doubtful baptisms in “The Novus Ordo”, we could express the problem like this. We know that a certain percentage of baptisms administered by Novus Ordo ministers (viz. both priests and deacons) are invalid or doubtful, due to defect of form or matter, and that this is directly attributable to the collapse of sacramental discipline and education in those environemnts. We also know that a certain percentage are certainly valid. We also know that a positive doubt is needed to justify a conditional or absolute repetition of the sacrament.
It is clear that if one has been putatively baptised by a minister in the first category, it is necessary to seek absolute or conditional baptism – and that if one was baptised by a minister in the latter category, it would be sacrilegious to seek another baptism.
But the problem arises – what if one does now know whether the minister falls into the first or second category? Another way of phrasing the matter: how probable must it be that the minister fell into the first camp to create a positive doubt?
In some dioceses of America and Australia in the 1970s and 1980s, based on the cases of which we are all aware, there were clearly a number of ministers administering invalid or doubtful baptism. On the other hand, in many dioceses at the same time, it seems likely that there were no such cases at all.
As such, it seems unwarranted to assume that if a person has a record of their baptism in a Novus Ordo parish register, then their baptism is valid and some positive evidence is needed in order to justify a conditional baptism. Under the circumstances described above, in which there have been thousands of invalid baptisms, the mere situation alone seems to be capable of giving rise to a positive doubt and thereby justifying conditional repetition. Read more here.
“If we do not even receive the baptism of Anglicans, how can we receive their ordinations?”- were Anglican baptisms not accepted by the Catholic Church???