Angry in the Great White North

News that a clutch of pseudo-Catholics in Canada has ordained more women priests:

An ordination ceremony that openly defies Roman Catholic doctrine has taken place in Toronto.

Five women and a married man, all Roman Catholics, have been ordained as priests and deacons by a female Catholic bishop.

Bishop Patricia Fresen, one of the most well-known figures in the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, led the five women and one married man through a number of rituals to mark their ordination.

[The] archdiocese of Toronto said that the organisation responsible for the ordinations had no affiliation or any dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church.

It said that ordaining men into the priesthood was a sacrament that cannot be changed.

But the bishops in the Womenpriests movement claim they are part of the Church's valid apostolic succession, because Catholic bishops in good standing ordained them secretly.

So how did Patricia Fresen come to claim the title of bishop?

Fresen was ordained as a priest at a ceremony in Barcelona, Spain in 2003.

The ceremony was performed by two of the ordained women who, by that time, had also been ordained as bishops.

The women were made bishops by three male Roman Catholic bishops who sympathized with their cause.

Fresen was eventually contacted by one of the three male bishops who had helped to ordain the two female bishops.

He said he was afraid the church hierarchy was going to figure out who he was soon, and he and his peers wanted to ordain one more female bishop first.

“He said ‘We need one more.’ To ordain priests, you only need one bishop. But to ordain bishops, you need three bishops. They ordained me as a bishop on Jan. 1, 2005. So I’m a very young bishop, although I’m a very old lady.”

Fresen said the male bishops who ordained her have not yet been caught, but they live in fear that the church hierarchy is going to find out who they are.

Fear? Oh, for crying out loud. The Church is not likely to burn them. They would almost certainly be stripped of their position as bishops, of course, and that puts the lie to Fresen's argument that the people she ordained are also legitimate members of the clergy.

The arguments relies on the notion of Apostolic Succession. The Catholic Church holds to the "historic" Succession, that is, each priest is ordained by a bishop who in turn was ordained as a priest by another bishop in an unbroken line that goes back to Saint Peter. Note that some Protestant churches begun by laypeople define Apostolic Succession to mean a theological lineage, since clearly the personal line back to Saint Peter does not exist.

But to remain in "good standing" means to adhere to Church teachings with obsequim religiosum, which is Latin for religious assent. Here is the relevant bit from Lumen Gentium:

Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent. This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgements made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.

OK, there are a lot of odd words along with Latin mixed in there. But basically it says that even when the Pope is speaking of the ordinary magisterium, that is, the authoritative teachings of the Holy See, the Pope is presumed to be speaking with the near authority of infallibility. Moreover, a bishop must teach, both in words and in action, in communion with his fellow bishops and with the authority in Rome. Any action outside of this communion is illegitimate, including secret ceremonies:

But the college or body of bishops has no authority unless it is understood together with the Roman Pontiff, the successor of Peter as its head. The pope's power of primacy over all, both pastors and faithful, remains whole and intact. In virtue of his office, that is as Vicar of Christ and pastor of the whole Church, the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and universal power over the Church. And he is always free to exercise this power. The order of bishops, which succeeds to the college of apostles and gives this apostolic body continued existence, is also the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, provided we understand this body together with its head the Roman Pontiff and never without this head. This power can be exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff.

This is not an argument for or against women clergy, or married clergy. I'm just interested in this notion promoted by this group that once you are made a bishop, you can celebrate the Sacrament of Orders with impunity. That isn't true, it has never been true, and they each knew that as part of their theological training. The fact that they are acting in secret makes it clear they know that their arguments would not stand up to any sort of theological scrutiny. The validity of Apostolic Succession requires a valid exercise of the sacrament, and that depends a lot more than merely the presence of a bishop. Indeed, it requires that the entire College of Bishops, along with the head of the College, that is, the Pope, be in agreement with the validity of the sacrament performed.

Or at least it does for the sacrament to be considered legitimately Roman Catholic.

As it is, the legitimacy of these ordinations, as well as Fresen's own, might be recognized by other parties outside of the Catholic Church. That's fine for them, but being a Catholic priest is not like a case of catching cooties. It is not transmitted by touch from someone else claiming to have the same cotties condition. Authority is distributed and communally agreed upon -- and it can only be exercised in that same communal environment. Without that, the ceremony has no meaning to Roman Catholics, and the Apostolic Succession does not apply.

Since Fresen's own ordination was clearly outside of the recognized bounds of Church authority (performed in secret in express violation of the requirement of obsequim religiosum), she is not a member of the Apostolic Succession, and any action that traces back to her alleged authority is equally invalid, and the Church is under no requirement to recognize it as anything but a fiction.

So she can have her "ordination parties" at any Protestant church that decides to host one. The Protestants in attendence can imagine that they are somehow affecting a change on the Roman Catholic Church. They're mistaken, of course, based on a lie being promoted by Fresen and her colleagues in her movement.

Lying is a sin, too.