Why Anglican Orders Are Not Valid

The question of the validity of Anglican and Episcopalian Orders is indeed a deep subject. This booklet is offered to help those researching this subject. The writer of this pamphlet has no interest in controversy. It is not controversial. Anyone who thinks to find in it a word which offends against that aspect of charity which we know as courtesy, will misread wholly the purpose of the writer. What follows is an attempt to state as concisely as possible, in a bare outline, the reasons why the Catholic Church considers Anglican orders invalid. It may not be beside the point to say that the writer knows a number of Anglicans whose good faith he respects, and whose honest search for truth he honors. These persons occupy a position which is trying. Their cheerful effort to deal with the insuperable difficulties involved in the "Anglican Position" are ample proof of their entire sincerity. There are persons in the Anglican Church, both clergymen and laymen, who are fully convinced that Anglican clergymen are priests-in the Catholic sense of the word. In other words, they believe that Anglican ministers have power to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, and to give absolution from sin. Moreover, they think that such clergymen speak with the authority promised by Our Lord to His Apostles and their successors.

This book presents, for the first time, all the available information on the maneuvers which preceded the condemnation by the bull Apostolicae Curae. For Roman Catholics it is disturbing reading. -- Dust jacket

The publication of Pope Leo XI11's apostolic letter declaring Anglican priestly orders to be 'absolutely null and utterly void' sent shock waves throughout the Anglican church which continue to reverberate a century later. Today, as Anglicans and Roman Catholics renew their search for greater mutual understanding, all the documents in the debate which led to the issue of ,Apostolicae Curae are brought together in English translation for the first time. This unique and important book is published with two aims in mind. Firstly, to set out the evidence so that those concerned with the same questions today may better understand the limited context of the verdict reached in 1896 and secondly, in the hope of dispelling the frustration and resentment still provoked, to demonstrate the thoroughness, fairness and wide spectrum of opinion whih characterized the original debate.