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May 31, 2010

To the Editor:

I again want to thank Allison de Kanel for bringing up this most interesting topic. It seems some further clarification to my letter is needed.

The initial point about the non-indelibility of orders appeared to be predicated on two connected notions: holy orders are a revocable gift of the Church and not a possession of the individual. I mentioned that the idea that orders could never properly be held to be a possession over and against the Church — a kind of personal property — was attractive. It does, however, have implications worth exploring.

It seems there are logically four possible views:

  1. Holy orders are not indelible and can be given and taken away by the Church.
  2. Holy orders are not indelible and cannot be taken away by the Church.
  3. Holy orders are indelible but one can be deprived of lawful exercise by the Church.
  4. Holy orders are indelible and cannot be taken away by the Church.

Now of these four views our tradition has come down at number 3. I fully hold this view. However, there is still one pending question which my earlier letter attempted to raise. Of these four options above, only numbers 2 and 4 remove from serious consequence the question “But who is the Church?”

In other words, there must be a “valid” Church in the equation to give and to take away the legitimacy of orders -- whether they are indelible or not. If the orders are indelible, they can still be deprived of lawful exercise by the Church. If the orders are not indelible, they can be taken away completely by the Church's pronouncement.

In either case, there must stand in the background a valid “the Church” with such authority to give and take away.

What for us is the Church with that authority? If the answer is TEC as a stand alone, well that leaves our present direction fairly secure in terms of orders. But if that legitimizing Church is the Anglican Communion, then our orders depend in some substantial way on the Communion's broader acceptance.

As our Constitution presently reads, we are a “constituent member” of the Anglican Communion and in that sense a part of the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church” which by its very nature is not local.

TEC can walk away with its indelible orders, on one view, but it will have lost the credibility of genuinely Catholic orders shared by the Communion as a whole. This is a consequence almost never given the weight it warrants.

Rev. Paul J. Hartt

Editor's note: According to White and Dykman, The Annotated Constitution and Canons … (a very large — 100 mb — scanned document) there was no Preamble to the TEC Constitution prior to 1967 though the last sentence of the current Preamble is rooted in historic front matter. The language of the Preamble is this:

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, otherwise known as The Episcopal Church (which name is hereby recognized as also designating the Church), is a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, a Fellowship within the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces, and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. This Constitution, adopted in General Convention in Philadelphia in October, 1789, as amended in subsequent General Conventions, sets forth the basic Articles for the government of this Church, and of its overseas missionary jurisdictions.

Because the Anglican Communion had no formal organization in 1967, the language of the first sentence is commonly understood as defining what is meant by the “Anglican Communion”.

Churches in the Anglican Communion and other churches in the wider Anglican tradition have always understood apostolic succession to be the key to the validity of orders.

Response to the editor: In communication on June 1 Fr. Hartt points out that TEC has attended the Lambeth Conferences since 1867 — more than half of its history and for a full century before the Preamble of 1967. Indeed, the Preface of our first Prayer Book of 1789 is explicit in its statement and concern that no departure from the Faith of the Church of England is intended.

As for communion and interdependence, he suggests that readers might be interested in reviewing the first four resolutions of the First Lambeth Conference.

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