What do all these Archbishops of Canterbury have in common? According to the following statement, taken from an official Roman Catholic source, these men are not proper priests, and as far as Rome is concerned, none of their successors will ever be either.

“For us Catholics the question was decided by the Bull Apostolice Curae (Sept. 13, 1869), which declared Anglican orders to be “absolutely null and utterly void,” on the ground of defect of form in the rite, and defect of intention in the minister…The Catholic Church, though it had not pronounced a formal decision on the validity of Anglican orders, had in place treated them as invalid, since Anglican clergymen had to go through all the usual stages before being admitted to the priesthood, as though they were simple laymen…Even if their orders were valid, Anglicans would not any more belong to the true Church. Many of the Eastern so-called “Orthodox Churches have valid orders, but by the very fact that they are in schism they are not Catholics” (A Catholic Dictionary, St. John’s Seminary, Wonersh, 1960, p. 25).

Now I would like to know what the Anglican Church is doing being yoked to Rome when the Catholic Church has such contempt for the state Church of England? And what must the laity think of this? Are you happy that your vicars and priests are “absolutely null and utterly void?”

Yet what makes this whole phoney ecumenical movement even more sinister, is that with the one hand Rome reaches out to welcome all churches, yet with the other hand, continues to hold the following quote, which is still applicable for today, for most Anglicans and Bible-believing Christians: “…In pronouncing anathema against wilful heretics [that’s anybody (Anglicans included) who don’t believe in Mary worship or a literal bodily presence of Jesus in the Eucharist], the Church does but declare that they are excluded from her communion and that they must, if they continue obstinate, perish eternally” (p. 23).

 

JGB

April 2006

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