The Bishop's Weekly Column from the Parish Bulletin

OUR LADY OF FATIMA

CATHOLIC CHURCH

Sacramental Theology 1.01

December 28th 2009

What's going on now down below ?

"Not even the Baptisms performed at that church are valid !" At least that was the Chinese telephone message that reached me rather circuitously recently. The person quoted was said to be a religious sister working at the local chancery. Unnamed officials can never be quoted and conversations over the telephone often have a life of their own: "He said, she said style."

There is of course a reason for the renewed pastoral interest in this church about which I will write next year. Suffice it to say a stray torpedo or ten may be heading my way in the lead up to a big pow-wow mid-January generally designed to get me to blow my stack and spill the beans in this column which would make colder winds than those blowing at present across the State of Florida waft across the Atlantic from the direction of Rome.

Well just to set the record straight the Catholic Church officially recognizes the Baptisms of Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Lutherans, Congregationalist etc. as generally valid even though none of the ministers of these denominations possess valid orders (for the most part). Even a pagan can validly baptize with a minimum of intention although practically we can never be sure of the sufficiency of the intention and so a conditional baptism would be highly prudently conferred.

The smokescreen is of course intended to attack the validity of my ministerial actions here at this church. I have several responses to this nit-picking - the one denying validity has to produce credible evidence of their allegation. A campaign of whispering by phone-calls doesn't cut the canonical mustard.

Happily in my case my orders have come up for discussion in Rome in reference to a cleric I had conditionally ordained in 2003. He thought his best bet was to apostatize over to a continuing Anglican thingamajig and he would profit from swimming the Tiber for a third time. In investigating the validity of his orders Roman Canonists were happy to confirm the validity of my orders (as he was kind enough to inform me himself).

Around the same time the Florida Catholic bishops had the foresight to ask the CDF about the validity of Trad priests and bishops in their jurisdictions. I came up as a valid Bishop accepted by Rome. This was confirmed by an official in the Orlando chancery office. In fact I was more than a little surprised when our local Ordinary (after this high level Vatican investigation) last year feigned ignorance of the source of my orders and attempted to dismiss them offhandedly as "small beer" despite the fact that he had lunch scheduled (according to his blog) a few days later with the local Anglican and Lutheran "Bishops" who between them possess no verifiable orders at all, though from the effusiveness of his post you'd think they'd been his co-consecrators. Well of course he would disparage my orders, wouldn't he ? He wouldn't want a real valid Trad bishop sitting in his own back yard - what Novus ordo bishop would ?

Over 10 years ago an interesting question needed to be handled: one of our girls wanted to marry a Novus Ordo young fellow. Now I told him Rome would catch him on a legal technicality Defect of Form (you need a valid Catholic Priest with jurisdiction presiding at your Wedding for the Sacrament itself to be valid). I advised him to talk to his parish priest, who contacted the bishop, who contacted Rome. The word came back: "Get a copy of the marriage certificate and enter the marriage in the boy's baptismal register as well". Now ordinarily delegated jurisdiction is required for this action, (and a valid Catholic priest presiding) it would seem that both were conceded by Rome in this case (how else could the Marriage have been valid ?). Evidently this sets a precedence and also closes one loophole that Marriages (performed by myself) are not valid in this Church - well not at least for Defect of Form.

Since 1983 Confirmations require the Episcopal Character for validity without the permission of the local bishops, Confirmations conferred without the Episcopal Character are generally held to be invalid. Hence Confirmations conferred by myself are entirely valid - given a valid Episcopal Character (notwithstanding the opinion of the lady in the chancery) who wouldn't know the Episcopal Character if she fell over it.

For the valid Sacrifice of the Mass, the valid exercise of orders is alone required... since Rome has conceded my Sacramental ministrations to be valid elsewhere, evidently there is no problem with the celebration of Mass as well.

There are two other Sacraments left unmentioned: Extreme Unction (not that God-awful Rite of the blessing of the sick that may not in fact confer any Sacramental grace whatsoever but happily the SSPX are discussing the problems of the post-conciliar rites and I'm sure that will figure prominently.) The Code of Canon Law provides explicitly for the reception of this Sacrament from any validly ordained minister even if the legitimate pastor is to be had (i.e. standing right by). The other Sacrament is that of Penance which ordinarily requires the power of governance. However, Church officials in this very ecumenical of ages will go out of their way to hob-nob with Anglican and Lutheran prelates with no valid orders between them, but present a battery of insults about "schism" and "schismatics" about Trad clergy. Well that's at least a little heartening. You see it will be remembered that one coming over from Eastern Orthodoxy is never required to re-confess their sins, since their ministers have valid orders, the Sacraments they received were valid, and the Church supplied the necessary jurisdiction. In fact one Conservative American Moral theologian opined the same argument might be applied to the priests of the Society of St. Pius X (That was before we were told they weren't in schism, and that they were again - Yes Rome cannot quite get that story straight!) I would argue that if this argument does indeed apply to the SSPX priests, then why not to all Trad priests with valid orders ? Of course it does and no moral theologian or canonist worth his salt would dispute it ! There you have it folks, Catholic Sacramental theology 1.01 which not even the local chancery gal can get straight ! Well what did you expect ?

+TF