Fr. Calderon's Study on Novus Ordo Episcopal Consecrations

[Stone]

From the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia on Anglican Orders

[Recall there are many similarities between the changes, omissions, etc. that occurred in the Anglican Rite of Orders that was condemned by Pope Leo XIII that found their way into the Novus Ordo Rite of Orders of Paul VI. It appears very, very likely then that the same course of action that the Catholic Church took in the matter of the Anglican Orders will likely be It's mandate at some future point for the Novus Ordo Orders. We know this is how the Church has acted:  "Innocent XI condemned the position that it is permissible in conferring sacraments to follow a probable opinion regarding the value of the sacrament, the safer opinion being abandoned.... Therefore, one should not make use of probable opinions only in conferring baptism, sacerdotal or episcopal orders." (Proposition 1 condemned and prohibited by Innocent XI, Dz. 1151)" - The Catacombs]

The practice of the Holy See

Apart from exceptional circumstances, such as arose in 1896, the Holy See does not indulge in purely theoretical pronouncements on questions like that of Anglican Orders, but limits its intervention to cases of practical difficulty that are brought before it — as when persons or classes of persons who wish to minister at the Church's altars have undergone ceremonies of ordination outside its fold. And even in thus intervening the Holy See is chary of doctrinal decisions, but applies a common-sense rule that can give practical security.

Where it judges that the previous orders were certainly valid it permits their use, supposing the candidate to be acceptable; where it judges the previous orders to be certainly invalid it disregards them altogether, and enjoins a re-ordination according to its own rite; where it judges that the validity of the previous orders is doubtful, even though the doubt be slight, it forbids their use until a conditional ceremony of re-ordination has first been undergone.

Such a class of cases requiring its intervention arose when Queen Mary set to work to draw order out of the chaos in which her two predecessors had involved the affairs of the Church. What was to be done with those who had received Edwardine orders? The question was investigated at Rome, whither the needful information and documents were sent by [Cardinal] Pole, and, although we have no record of the discussion, it is clear from what has just been said about its known principles of action that the Holy See judged these orders to be invalid, for it sent directions to Pole to treat them as non-existent. That this was so appears

• from the letters of Julius III and Paul IV, and the sense in which they were taken by Pole, for these letters direct that all recipients of Edwardine Orders shall, if accepted for the Church's ministry, be ordained afresh;
  

• from a comparison between the Edwardine and Marian registers which reveals several double entries of names of persons who received first Edwardine and afterwards Catholic ordination;
  

• from the course taken in punishing recalcitrant Edwardine ecclesiastics, in the ceremony of whose degradation no account was taken of their Edwardine orders.
  

And the practice thus initiated during the reign of Mary was adhered to ever afterwards, when Anglican clergymen came over to the Catholic Church and sought admission into the ranks of the priesthood. [...]  Moreover, Leo XIII, in his Bull "Apostolicae Curae", speaks of many such cases as having been formally referred to the Holy See at different times, with the result that the practice of re-ordaining was invariably observed. Two of these cases were, in 1684 and 1704, the second of which attracted a certain amount of attention. It was that of John Clement Gordon, who had received all the Anglican orders, the episcopate included, by the Edwardine rite and from the hands of the prelates who derived their orders from the Anglican succession. The decision was that, if he would minister as a priest, he must receive the priesthood and all previous orders afresh. [Emphasis mine.]