Answer to the Apostolic Letter

of Pope Leo XJJJ.

On English Ordinations

TO THE WHOLE BODY OF BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH, FROM THE ARCHBISHOPS OF ENGLAND,
GREETING.

I. It is the fortune of our office that often, when we English would fain write about the common salvation, an occasion Ordinations. arises for debating some controverted question which cannot be postponed to another time. This certainly was recently the case when in the month of September last there suddenly arrived in this country from Rome a letter, already printed and published, which aimed at overthrowing our whole position as a Church. It was upon this letter that our minds were engaged with the attention it demanded when our beloved brother Edward, at that time Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Metropolitan, was in God's providence taken from us by sudden death. In his last written words he bequeathed to us the treatment of the question which he was doubtless himself about to treat with the greatest learning and theological grace. It has therefore seemed good to us, the Archbishops and Primates of England, that this answer should be written in order that the truth on this matter might be made known both to our venerable brother Pope Leo XIIIth, in whose name the letter from Rome was issued, and also to all other bishops of the Christian Church settled throughout the world.

English

II. The duty indeed is a serious one; one which cannot Ordinations, be discharged without a certain deep and strong emotion. But since we firmly believe that we have been truly ordained by the Chief Shepherd to bear a part of His tremendous office in the Catholic Church, we are not at all disturbed by the opinion expressed in that letter. So we approach the task which is of necessity laid upon us in the spirit of meekness;' and we deem it of greater importance to make plain for all time our doctrine about holy orders and other matters pertaining to them, than to win a victory in controversy over a sister Church of Christ. Still it is necessary that our answer be cast in a controversial form lest it be said by any one that we have shrunk from the force of the arguments put forward on the other side.

III. There was an old controversy, but not a bitter one, with respect to the form and matter of holy orders, which has arisen from the nature of the case, inasmuch as it is impossible to find any tradition on the subject coming from our Lord or His Apostles, except the well-known example of prayer with laying on of hands. But little is to be found bearing on this matter in the decrees of Provincial Councils, and nothing certain or decisive in those of Ecumenical and General Assemblies.

Nor indeed does the Council of Trent, in which our Fathers took no part, touch the subject directly. Its passing remark about the laying on of hands (Session XIV. On Extreme Unction, chap. III.), and its more decided utterance on the force of the words 'Receive the Holy Ghost,' which it seems to consider the form of Order (Session XXIII. On the Sacrament of Order, canon Iv.), are satisfactory enough to us, and certainly are in no way repugnant to our feelings.

There has been a more recent and a more bitter controversy on the validity of Anglican ordinations, into which theologians on the Roman side have thrown themselves with eagerness, and in doing so have, for the most part,

imputed to us various crimes and defects. There are English others, and those not the least wise among them, who, Ordinations. with a nobler feeling, have undertaken our defence. But no decision of the Roman pontiffs, fully supported by arguments, has ever before appeared, nor has it been possible for us, while we knew that the practice of reordaining our Priests clearly prevailed (though this practice has not been without exception), to learn on what grounds of defect they were re-ordained. We knew of the unworthy struggles about Formosus, and the long vacillations about heretical, schismatic and simoniacal ordinations. We had access to the letter of Innocent IIId on the necessity of supplying unction and the Decree of Eugenius IVth for the Armenians; we had the historical documents of the XVIth century, though of these many are unknown even to the present day; we had various decisions of later Popes, Clement XIth and Benedict XIVth, but those of Clement were couched in general terms and therefore uncertain. We had also the Roman Pontifical as reformed from time to time, but, as it now exists, so confusedly arranged as to puzzle rather than enlighten the minds of inquirers. For if any one considers the rite Of the ordination of a Presbyter, he sees that the proper laying on of hands stands apart from the utterance of the form. He also cannot tell whether the man, who in the rubrics is called 'ordained,' has really been ordained, or whether the power, which is given at the end of the office by the words- Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou shalt have remitted they are remitted unto them, and whose sins thou shalt have retained they are retained '—with the laying on of pontifical hands, is a necessary part of the priesthood (as the Council of Trent seems to teach 1) or not necessary. In like manner if any one reads through the rite of the consecration of an elect as Bishop, he will nowhere find that he is called Bishop' in the prayers

III. Sess. xxiii. On the Sacrament of Order, Canon 1, where a certain power of consecrating and offering is claimed for the priesthood together with one of remitting and retaining sins. Cp. ib. Chap. 1. See below Chaps. xv. and xix.