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That may very well have been Mascall's position - I simply don't know. As I wrote, the only work of Mascall's that I recall having read is a slim book of satirical poems.

But if you enjoy fancy footwork, try reading Catholic apologists attempting to explain away that decision of the Holy Office regarding the Methodist Baptisms in Oceania!

Funnily enough, this part of the controversy seems to assume that most people go around "forming intentions" on fairly inane occasions. Most people don't do anything of the kind. We all know people who unfortunately smoke tobacco, and we all know the damage it does to one's health. But I doubt that most smokers "form the intention" of lung cancer, heart attack, stroke, and so forth!

The real problem of Anglican "intention" is that, as Leo XIII put it, it is impossible to tell from the service and texts they use just what they believe themselves to be doing. I happened to attend the ordination of an Anglican bishop (in Westminster Abbey, no less) about 35 years ago - and was fascinated to realize that Leo XIII got it right - it was impossible to tell what they thought they were doing (granted they thought they were making this man a bishop - but even Unitarians do that in parts of Eastern Europe). The most forthright statement was an announcement in the printed program that it would not be possible for lay people to receive the Holy Communion at the Eucharist involved in the ordination! Since this is a flat contradiction of the Book of Common Prayer . . . draw your own conclusion.

The music, I should add, was magnificent.

Fr. Serge

What's important here is why the Orthodox don't care about 'lines.' In Eastern sacramentology (as I understand it--someone correct me if I'm wrong), priesthood is not a "character" placed on the soul, and the powers received through ordination do not inhere in the person receiving it. Rather, these powers inhere in the Church alone, in whose name these powers are delegated to the one being ordained.

From this perspective, only the Church has the authority to confer Holy Orders, which means:
1. a priest's orders cease to exist the moment he separates himself from the Church.
2. to speak of anyone "outside the Church" as having Holy Orders is simply absurd.

What gets me is that a single Anglican cleric could experience doubts about the "validity" of his orders, and not simultaneously doubt the "validity" of the church that conferred them!


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Yes, the Eastern view is centred on the church.

Indelible character isn't defined either way in the East.

As for the rest, on paper that's so but in practice it varies when convert ex-clergy from other churches become Orthodox clergy. Lots of economy. Like I said, with splits 'still in the family' like the Old Calendarists ordinations and so on usually aren't done if the group is reconciled to the Orthodox communion. With ex-Roman or ex-Greek Catholic priests it runs the gamut from vesting (or in Fr Lev Gillet's case simply concelebrating with an Orthodox bishop) to baptism and so on.

That is what I had thought...

To think that the Ultrajectines started from Jansenists schismatics. My what a few centuries can do to some Jansenism!

Jansenists (severe 'Calvinist Catholics') becoming the Old Catholics today (essentiallly Germanic Episcopalians) is like how Congregationalists (the New England Pilgrims) are now the liberal United Church of Christ (not much different from their old Unitarian offshoot?) and stern Scottish settlers turned into the mainline PC(USA). Anglicanism (whence Congregationalism sprang) used to have a strong Calvinist strain in it and look what happened to it.

Calvinism, an intellectually impressive but brittle and monstrous system, inevitably shatters into Unitarianism as Robert Morse has said.

(That said, on the radio in the car today I enjoyed a Scottish Presbyterian minister's sermon on the Book of James and our accountability to God.)

what about Bishop Karl Pruter's "Christ Catholic Church" based in Chicago?
Much Love,
Jonn

Jonn,

Respectable vagantes. Pruter was no fake: he was a real Congregationalist minister of a mystical bent who left and started his own small but very real church. A reporter on this church scene once went to a diocesan meeting of Christ Catholic Church and was impressed by priests giving reports on real congregations. He said Pruter was glad to lose priests who weren't willing to do the work of running such.

But Pruter and Christ Catholic Church were not under Utrecht and thus not Old Catholic.

I'm afraid that the term 'real church' is a matter of interpretation. There can be no real church outside the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But I think I know what you mean.

Fr David Straut

I think you do too, Father. Real as in people meeting regularly for worship and doing good works, not a church primarily online and/or in its clergy's imagination. Real in the sense that the Methodist chapel down the lane is real, not necessarily the 'one true church', 'you ought to join' etc. sense.

There is no particular point in arguing over the precise meaning of "Old Catholic". The term is older than the Utrecht Union.

Fr. Serge

If Linda Richman of SNL's Coffee Talk were here she might aver "Old Catholics are neither old, nor Catholic... discuss!"

IF she were here...

Old Catholics presumably come in various age groups. On the other hand, it seems odd that one would be categorized as "Young Catholic", "Middle-Aged Catholic" (or Catholic medievalist?), or "Old Catholic".

Does anyone know if the expression "Old Catholic" was found prior to 1870?

Fr. Serge

By Utrecht Union do you mean the Old Catholic communion from 1871 to today or the schismatic (from Rome) see of Utrecht started by the Jansenists that later became the primatial see of that communion?

I don't know if the pre-1871 Utrecht (arch)bishop called himself Old Catholic.

But I maintain for simplicity's and comprehension's sake that the term means that communion today.

The only other legitimate use of Old Catholic I know of is older and nothing to do with Utrecht: in England by and for the old families that quietly remained Roman Catholic during Protestant persecution before Roman Catholic emancipation in the 1800s.

I like the Linda Richman line too.

The Utrecht Union of Old Catholic Churches was the result of an episcopal conference summoned and chaired by the Archbishop of Utrecht in 1879. It is a voluntary association of the Church of Utrecht and Churches which derive their ordinations from the Church of Utrecht and are in full communion with one another.

So the question is, to what extent does the expression "Old Catholic" predate 1879? I don't know the answer to that one, but would be pleased to find out. I suspect that "Old Catholic" dates back to Dollinger.

One of the conditions of membership in the Utrecht Union is that no one is to be ordained to the episcopate without the consent of all the bishops in the Episcopal Conference of the Utrecht Union. Ironically enough, the Archdiocese of Utrecht, including its two suffragan bishoprics, is one of the very smallest of the Old Catholic Churches. Its leadership rests on its status as the historic Church of the Netherlands.

Fr. Serge