This Month on Viewpoint - January

Sunday, January 22 @ 12:00 PM
Thursday, January 26 @ 7:30 PM


Changes in the Church
On January 1st, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI established the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.  This new diocese allows for Anglicans and Episcopalians to join fully with the Roman Catholic Church, including married priests. Does this contradict the church’s stance on celibacy?

Guests:
Daniel Alvarez, M.A., M.T.S., Florida International University
Lesley Northup, Ph.D., Florida International University
Edward Sunshine, Ph.D., Barry University
Mary Carter Waren, D.Min., St. Thomas University

Comments

[Gregory]

Your discussion would have been more relevant had you included a priest one of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, in Communion with Rome, who have married priests, and which have never imposed celibacy. I believe several such churches, including the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church and other Byzantine Catholic Churches are present in Miami-Dade and Broward. Over the years these churches have been practically ignored when discussions of celibacy of the Roman Catholic priesthood are discussed.

[Arthur]

As usual, I enjoyed this week's Viewpoint but was surprised that there wasn't a deeper discussion on the reason for the Catholic Church's not recognizing Anglican or Episcopal ordinations.

Please provide an email address to send you my complete comments on this. Thank you.

[Arthur]

continuation...

You may want to check this further, but as I understand it, this goes back to the interruption in the Apostolic Succession in the Church of England when a post Henry VIII English monarch appointed a non-ordained person to Archbishop of Canterbury. This would automatically begin to break Apostolic Succession, as subsequent ordinations and consecrations of Bishops performed by this Primate of England, and the subsequent ordinations performed by those ordinands, could not possibly be considered valid due to lack of Succession integrity.

[Arthur]

continued...

Then, centuries later, Pope Leo XIII in an effort to settle the issue (perhaps with an ecumenical eye) requested an in-depth study of the issue of Apostolic Succession in the Church of England, which after years of historical research resulted in the 1896 papal bull "Apostolicae Curae" declaring that due to the changes made in the ordination rite formula under Edward VI (I can't recall if it had been Edward who had also appointed the first unordained person as Archbishop of Canterbury), Anglican ordinations could not be considered valid by the Catholic Church as the Apostolic Succession had definitely been broken.

[Arthur]

continued...

This is an important doctrinal issue, as the apostolicity of the Church is central to the tenets of the Nicean Creed: "...one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church..." And I imagine making any kind of accommodation for Anglicans by adapting the words of the Creed would be unthinkable.

[Arthur]

continued...

Although there do exist ordinations in the Anglican Church which would be considerate valid by the Catholic Church because they were performed by Bishops which had been duly ordained due to the circumstances of their own ordinations (e.g., priests entering the Anglican Church from other Churches, etc.), I imagine that because of the difficulties in establishing such validity beyond doubt, the Church has decided to continue to require a new valid ordination of all Anglican priests or bishops entering into communion with the Catholic Church. But this is no different than what the Church does in, for example, cases of undocumented baptisms that cannot be confirmed before additional Sacraments can be administered. That is, in such cases the assumption is made that the person has not been properly baptized and is baptized, perhaps anew, prior to preparing for other Sacraments.

Thank you for bringing enlightened Spiritual discussions into our home through Viewpoint.