Quote:But how far does this presumption extend? Does it extend  even to orders conferred by an underworld traditionalist “bishop” of the type mentioned at the beginning of this article — someone canonically unfit for the priesthood himself, lacking a  proper ecclesiastical education, summarily ordained a priest, and raised to the episcopate, perhaps by a bishop equally ignorant and canonically unfit?

I doubt that any Roman canonist explored such an issue in a pre-Vatican II canon law manual — Holy Orders conferred by, say, a chicken farmer-bishop untrained in Latin and theology.

The principle to be applied, nevertheless, is clear enough: Unless someone has received proper training, no presumption of validity is accorded to the sacraments he confers, because he may not know enough to confer them validly.
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Quote:Old Catholic Schismatics

Canonists such as Beste26 and Regatillo27 concede the presumption of validity to orders conferred by the Old Catholic bishops in Holland, Germany and Switzerland only. Of orders conferred by the countless other Old Catholic bishops operating (in the U.S., England, etc.) at the time they were writing, the canonists say nothing at all.

Here too, the distinction appears to be based on whether or not the clergy had an ecclesiastical education. In Holland, Germany and Switzerland, Old Catholic clergy were required to have theological training. [Dutch Old Catholics studied at their theological school in Utrecht or at a university, Germans at a theological school in Bonn, and the Swiss at the University of Berne. P. Baumgarten, “Old Catholics,” Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Appleton 1913) 11:235–6. These groups were also organized and somewhat centralized. They consecrated a limited number of bishops, kept proper records, followed the old ordination rites, and had clear lines of succession.] In the other countries Old Catholic bishops conferred ordinations and consecrations pell-mell on hundreds of untrained candidates.

To demonstrate the problem this poses for the validity of Holy Orders conferred in the latter group, we need take as an example only one series of Old Catholic bishops in the U.S.: Mathew (consecrated 1908), de Landas Berghes (1913), Carfora (1916), Rogers (1942), Brown (1969).

While the first and third bishops in the line, Mathew and Carfora, had been properly-trained Catholic priests and presumably would have known how to confer a sacrament properly, the second and fourth, de Landas Berghes and Rogers, are identified only as, respectively, “a distinguished Austrian nobleman” and “a West Indian Negro.” But navigating through the second most complex ceremony in the Roman Rite — Episcopal Consecration — and getting the essential parts right (or even knowing what they are) is not exactly something a layman picks up in a Habsburg emperor’s court or a Caribbean sugar cane field. There is no reason then to assume that either de Landas Berghes or Rogers had any idea about how to confer this sacrament validly.

This problem is complicated by yet another: Rogers’ own priestly ordination was doubtful, which would in turn render his episcopal consecration doubtful. [He appears to have been ordained a priest in the Vilatte succession (Anson, 433), which was of uncertain validity. According to most theologians the order of priesthood is required to receive episcopal consecration validly.]

So by the time we get to Brown in 1969, there is no possible way to sort out whether his orders are valid or not. Such problems are encountered across the board with orders derived not only from the Old Catholics, but also from the Brazilian nationalist schismatics. [Apologists for the validity of Old Catholic or Old Roman Catholic orders in the United States (the terms are interchangeable) invariably try to support their case by citing the same group of published statements by various Catholic authors. With one exception, however, these statements appeared not in theological works, but in popular ones (various religious dictionaries for the laity, overviews of non-Catholic sects, etc.), or they refer to the Old Catholic bodies in Europe about whose orders there is no dispute. The one article cited from a scholarly journal (“Schismatical Movements among Catholics,” American Ecclesiastical Review 21 [July 1899], 2–3) is from a passage concerning the specific issue of the priestly ordination of René Vilatte which cannot be disputed. The passage cited proves nothing about subsequent Old Catholic episcopal consecrations in the U.S., which were a dog’s breakfast of the type already described above.] Sacraments conferred by the ignorant cannot be presumed valid.