APPENDIX.

ARCHBISHOP KENRICK ON ANGLICAN ORDINATIONS.

Although many tracts on the validity of Anglican orders had been published ere his time, the first comprehensive treatise on the subject in the United States came from the pen of the late Archbishop Kenrick. It differed from preceding ones in the fact that while most of those dealt with particular branches or aspects of the theme, his surveyed it as a whole, as it presented itself in a bird's-eye historical view. The decision of the late Pope Leo XIII. dealt with the matter chiefly from the doctrinal point of the sacramental validity. Archbishop Kenrick rendered great service by analyzing the historical grounds upon which the English Church based its claim, as well as by exposing the dual position assumed by antagonists of the Catholic Church within the Anglican pale-one claiming to be of lawful derivation in the matter of orders; the other that orders were of no account. As his great and painstaking work is now out of print, for the general run of readers it is useful to reproduce some of its leading arguments.

"Whether the Anglican orders be valid or not does not involve any dogma or principle of Catholic faith. The Church recognizes the orders of the Greek and other schismatic churches, which have been, for ages, separated from her communion; nor would she hesitate to admit those of the Anglican Church were their validity sustained by the facts of the case. It would, therefore, be an erroneous impression to suppose that Catholics have any possible inducement to deny the validity of the Anglican ordinations. So far from this

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being the case, it has been regarded by some as a great misfortune that the succession of the ministry was not kept up in England at the time of the miscalled Reformation in that country. Speaking of the attempt made by a French ecclesiastic, Courayer, to defend the ordinations of the English Church, Chardon says: 'It would have been desirable that he (Courayer) had cleared up all doubt on that subject, since there would then be one obstacle less to a reunion, of which we should never despair; and this would attach still more closely to the Catholic Church that illustrious nation from which so many learned and holy men have sprung, and which, even nowadays, is so famous for the number of virtuous and scientific men whom it produces; who are distinguished from all the other Calvinists by their regard for the episcopal hierarchy, whose rights and prerogatives they zealously maintain.' It is not, then, from any principle she holds, or any apparent advantage the denial might be supposed to afford her, that the Catholic Church has constantly rejected the ordinations of the Anglican Church as invalid, but merely because the facts of the case do not warrant her in coming to any other conclusion. Whether these facts are such as I have here represented them or not, the reader, who will accompany me in the following examination, will be enabled to decide.

"It is here necessary to point out the distinction between a valid and a lawful ordination. The one is an act to which nothing is wanting that is necessary to give it effect; whereas, the other is one not only complete in itself, but conformable to the laws that have been made to direct and govern the power that produced it. Thus, for example, a clergyman who has been suspended from the exercise of his ministry may, if he be so regardless of his duty, continue to officiate, and his official acts

would, in most instances, be valid. They would not, indeed, be lawful acts, but, on the contrary, a sacrilegious abuse of the powers of the ministry. Hence, were a Catholic Bishop to apostatize from the faith and confer the order of priesthood on one of his partisans in error, his apostasy or heresy would not invalidate the act, although it would render it plainly unlawful. And hence it is that the Catholic regards all ordinations that are made in the sects separated from her communion as unlawful; but she only considers those invalid in which either the ordaining prelate was not himself consecrated, or in which he had no serious intention of performing a sacred rite.

"The foregoing explanations have been thought necessary in order to show more clearly to the general reader that a participation of the Apostolic ministry, by means of valid ordination, does not suffice for the lawful exercise of its functions: and hence that those who infer that the Anglican Church enjoys an apostolical succession, because, in their opinion, she has an apostolic ministry, overlook one of the most obvious and most universally admitted principles of church government, and one which they themselves recognize. When a clergyman of the Church of England is silenced by his Bishop, no orthodox churchman attaches any importance to his ministrations. Why? Because he has ceased to derive the right of ministering from the source in which ecclesiastical authority is presumed to dwell. Suppose, now, that there is not question of an individual, but of a body of clergymen of a Bishop, or of many Bishops, who revolt against the Church of which they were ordained ministers; and are, therefore, deprived by the proper authority of the right to continue to act as ministers of such Church, surely no one will say that there is a shadow of difference in principle between this case and that of