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Defect of Sacramental Intention: The Background of Apostolicae Curae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Simon Francis Gaine OP
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In 1896 Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae declared definitively that the Anglican orders of the past and of his own day were ‘absolutely null and utterly void’. His principal reason was defect of sacramental form, but to that was added a second reason, namely, defect of sacramental intention. In other words, the sacrament of holy order was not conferred among Anglicans on account of the deficient form found in their Ordinal dating from the reign of King Edward VI, but also on account of a defective internal intention to perform the sacrament on the part of Anglican ministers.

Type
Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 82 , Issue 959 , January 2001 , pp. 4 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Hill, C. and Yarnold, E. J. SJ (eds.), Anglican Orders: the documents in the debate (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1997), p. 276fGoogle Scholar.

2 The documents are collected in English translation in Hill and Yarnold, op.cit.

3 Ibid., pp. 121–149, esp. pp. 142ff.

4 ST IIIa, q. 64, a. 9 ad 1.

5 DS 3102.

6 Hill and Yarnold, op.cit., pp. 83–119, esp. pp. 105–9.

7 See Noonan, J. T. Jr., Power to Dissolve. Lawyers and Marriages in the Courts of the Roman Curia (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. ch. 5, and Clark, F. SJ, Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention (London, New York and Toronto: Longmans. Green, and Co., 1956)Google Scholar, ch. 6.

8 Hill and Yarnold, op.cit., pp. 33–82, esp. pp. 49–62.

9 In fact a letter written in 1555 by Cardinal Pole to the Bishop of Norwich indicates that right intention was included in what Julius III called the ‘customary form of the Church’ such that defect of intention was also urged at that time against ordinations performed according to the Edwardine ordinal. See ibid., p. 6.

10 ST IIIa, q. 60, a. 8.

11 But see n. 9.

12 Hill and Yarnold, op.cit., pp, 201–263, esp. pp. 240ff.

13 Ibid., pp. 151–198.

14 Ibid., p. 196.

15 Ibid., p. 276f.

16 I take my account from the Proceedings of the Thirty First Annual Conference of the Canon Law Society of Australia and New Zealand, pp. 129–132.

17 See Clark, op cit., pp. 8–10.

18 Clark, ibid., esp. pp. 42ff., has shown how Anglican responses to Catholic assertion of defect of intention have classically rejected the requisite intention being an internal rather than external one. An upshot of this would be that classical Anglican theology should have difficulty in accepting the declarations of nullity of marriage granted in the Catholic Church on the basis of defect of (internal) intention.

19 On the conditional ordination of Fr Graham Leonard, see the documentation in the 30 April 1994 number of The Tablet.

20 This is the phrase used by ARCIC I.

21 Hill and Yarnold, op.cit., p. 277 (my emphasis).