‘Valid in a Certain Context’

16 May 2017 • Persistent link: iarccum.org/?p=2831

Pope Leo XIIIs papal bull Apostolicae Curae (1896), which declared Anglican ordersabsolutely null and utterly void,” has long cast a shadow over the search for unity between Anglicans and Roman Catholics. Anglican churchesordination of women as priests is a further complication, as Pope John Paul II made clear.

Now one of the Vaticans top legal minds seems to have opened the way to reconsider Pope Leos teaching on Anglican orders. “When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in a community, we cannot say nothing has happened, that everything is invalid,” said Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.

The disclosure comes in a volume of papers and discussions in Rome as part of an ecumenical forum on the Malines Conversations. Its title refers to a series of AnglicanCatholic conversations acting on the 1920 Lambeth ConferencesAppeal to All Christian People,” a statement widely credited as foundational to modern ecumenism. The Malines Conversations met with only lukewarm support from Rome and Canterbury but are now considered an important ecumenical stepping stone.

Cardinal Coccopalmerio argues that the Catholic Church hasa very rigid understanding of validity and invalidityon Anglican orders, and he believes it could be revised. “One should be able to say: ‘this is valid in a certain context, and that is valid in another context.’”

What does it mean when Pope Paul VI gave a chalice to the Archbishop of Canterbury? If it was to celebrate the Lords Supper, the Eucharist, it was meant to be done validly, no?” the cardinal said, as reported by The Tablet, an international Roman Catholic newsweekly in London. “This is stronger than the pectoral cross, because a chalice is used not just for drinking but for celebrating the Eucharist. With these gestures the Catholic Church already intuits, recognizes a reality.”

The Rt. Rev. Geoffrey Rowell, retired as the Church of Englands Bishop in Europe, coedited papers recording discussions between Anglicans and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He quotes Cardinal Ratzinger as saying, “We cannot do anything about Leo XIIIs words but there areother ways of looking at things.”

Rowell said that Ratzinger, who served as Pope Benedict XVI from 2006 to 2013, accepts that an Anglican Eucharist has value.