Fr Faber on doubtful ordinations – frightening parallels with Novus Ordo ordinations

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Fr Faber on doubtful ordinations – frightening parallels with Novus Ordo ordinations
The beloved writer of devotional works, Fr Frederick W. Faber, discusses doubtfully valid holy orders and sacraments 

– with frightening parallels to Novus Ordo sacraments reformed after Vatican II.

wmreview.org [slightly adapted - red font emphasis mine] | July 23, 2024

Fr Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863) needs little introduction. He is one of the most celebrated and beloved Catholic figures of the nineteenth century.

After spending time with different religious ideas as a young man, he eventually fell in with John Henry Newman, and became a part of the Anglican Tractarian movement and the associated patristic revival.

He received Anglican orders in 1839. Over the next few years he made two tours of Europe and became attracted by Catholic rites and devotion. When he returned to England in 1944, he established numerous Catholic practices where he ministered in Elton, Northamptonshire: this included confessions, teaching various Catholic doctrines, promoting the lives of saints and advocating the claims of the Roman Church.

In November 1845 – the month following Newman’s reception at Littlemore, near Oxford - Faber was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Bishop Waring at Northampton.

In 1846 he formed a religious community in Staffordshire, and in 1847 he was ordained a priest. His community had grown to about forty, and their zeal apparently converted nearly the whole parish.

In 1848 he joined Newman’s newly established Oratory of St Philip Neri as a novice – and was sent to London by Newman, to found a house there in 1849. In time, this house and Church relocated to South Kensington, and became the celebrated London (or “Brompton”) Oratory.

There is much that could be said about his life, but for now, let’s return to his conversion.


The Pamphlet

After Faber became a Catholic, he published a pamphlet on the matter in 1846 – as did many other converts. This pamphlet was entitled Grounds for Remaining in the Anglican Communion, and was written as a letter to a “High-Church” friend, pursuing a similar, “catholicising” line in the Church of England as he had.

It is a remarkable, relentless tour de force of a polemic. It has several sections which are relevant to our current crisis.

The section which we are republishing here relates to what he calls “the miserable, much-vexed question of Anglican orders.” Let us bear in mind two points.

First, Faber himself had been living and working as an Anglican minister for around five years. His discussion of Anglican orders is not an abstract topic with no relevance to himself. It relates to all his work as a minister to that date.

No doubt forming such a conclusion about his orders was a challenge. We have previously published a very helpful text from Mgr Robert Hugh Benson which considers the implications of previous sacraments being invalid as sacramental rites. It casts the matter in a different light to what one might expect.

Second, this text was written several decades before Leo XIII’s definitive settling of the question with the 1896 Bull Apostolicae Curae. In that Bull, the pope recognised the existence of a controversy, even amongst Catholics, over whether Anglican orders were absolutely invalid, or simply doubtful.

In the first part of the Bull, Leo XIII recounts various documents which showed that the controversy "had already been definitely settled by the Apostolic See," and that it was only considered as an open question at the time because of "insufficient knowledge of these documents."

Nonetheless, we could say that this was a confusing question at the time, and there were arguments for both sides.


The pre-Apostolicae Curae situation was similar to the post-conciliar situation

This is pertinent to our own day. For reasons discussed elsewhere, it is difficult to affirm with certainty that the reformed rites of ordination have come to us from the Church, with her guarantees and authority. This applies also to the other sacramental rites, and particularly those which have been changed in their essentials.

Further, even if these rites are valid, the widespread carelessness in sacramental discipline makes it extremely difficult – if not impossible – to assume that they have been administered according to the reformed books themselves: therefore, combined with doubts about the rites themselves, there seems to be a general presumption against validity in the practical order.

This may seem shocking for some, especially regarding sacraments which cannot be repeated (baptism, confirmation and holy orders). But while it might well be shocking, and confusing, it need not disheartening, as the extract from Mgr Robert Hugh Benson (mentioned above) explains.


Pressing Questions regarding Novus Ordo priests and sacraments

Faber’s text addresses things that might begin to help us answer contemporary questions – even if it does not take us to neat, clear answers.

• How should we relate to these reformed sacramental rites – including the ministers ordained in them?
  
• Should we receive the sacraments in these rites, from priests ordained with these rites, by bishops consecrated with these rites – or fly from them all?
  
• Is it morally possible to administer or receive doubtful sacraments?
  
• Do we need to prove with certainty that they are invalid before we fly from such things?
  
• What are the effects of not flying from these reformed rites once we have recognised that they are of doubtful validity?
  
• Can one live a Christian life in habitual danger of doubtful sacraments?
  
• Should we keep our thoughts on this matter to ourselves, to avoid unsettling others?
  

Fr Faber’s hymns and devotional works have given him a reputation of sweetness and sentimentality.

As a result, the answers he gives to these questions may be surprising.

Grounds for Remaining in the Anglican Communion

A Letter to a High-Church Friend

Frederick William Faber
James Toovey, London 1846
pp 54-58, 61-62
Available Online

My dear friend, this wish to imitate the Saints leads me to say a few words, not of a learned sort, but as addressed to one anxious about his soul, on the miserable, much-vexed question of Anglican orders. You have doubts and misgivings about your position, and of course the very first question which faces a man who wishes to tread in the steps of the Catholic Saints, is:

• “Am I sure that I have priests round me, that they have jurisdiction to absolve me, that I can attend upon the highest ordinances of religion with faith, and without the perpetual distraction and unsettlement of doubts, the existence of which on such subjects goes far to destroy the very office of a visible Church?
  
• “Am I sure of all this?
  
• “And if not, and I do believe in a visible Church, have I any right to be short of sure on such matters?”
  

Another Way of Approaching the Problem

Now I have purposely avoided entering into any theological arguments, which have been handled far better by others; I have kept to the peculiar grounds of yourself and your friends; and have tried to look at everything in the way in which I should have thought it would have come home to one simply and seekingly anxious about his soul. What little I shall say about Anglican orders shall be in the same line.

You say that the Church has never decided the question, and that the Pope has passed no dogmatic judgment on it, to which you would bow when given. Now, my dear friend, in the outset let me ask you if you are acting honestly towards the Anglican communion, when you remain in it with a determination, ready beforehand, to submit to a decree of Gregory XVI on the subject of the orders of your ministers? To be plain, is not this quite dishonest?

And then, in the next place, has not Rome implicitly settled the question of your orders by the administration of confirmation, and of ordination also, without any condition?

This is the more remarkable [in comparison], from the way in which the Church administers conditional baptism to converts; without ceremonies, and with every possible want of solemnity beyond what mere safety requires, to intimate her fear of sacrilege, and the simple prudence of charity which has forced her thereto.

But now, look at the question of Anglican orders in another way.


Multiplicity of Arguments Pointing to the Conclusion

If a man had wished to learn the mind of the Church, as well as he could, on the Arian or Eutychian heresies before they were condemned, the way by which he would approach to it would be, by finding that different theological schools in the Church, or even her individual doctors, starting from different points and premises, and theologizing on somewhat different principles, all came to conclusions equally unfavourable to the heresy in question. Surely, if a man could arrive at this, he would have grounds more than sufficient to act upon.

And may not something of this sort be arrived at, in regard to Anglican orders?

One set of men start with history; some take the deposition of a consecrator, others other points, and they decide against Anglican orders. Some start from the point of "intention:" this man argues it on the omission of intention in the consecration of bishops for so many years; that man argues it from the fact that the compilers of the Thirty-Nine Articles did, as a matter of history, include the sacramentality of orders under a "corrupt following of the Apostles," and that no subsequent High-church divines could inject an interpretative intention into words not intended to convey it; and both decide against Anglican orders.

Others start with the principle of jurisdiction, which you as well as they consider essential to the power of keys, except in articulo mortis; if you do not hold the Queen to be the fountain of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, nor the Chair of Peter, then I presume you must consider it as infused into each individual bishop at the moment of consecration, and for this theory I fear you are unprovided either with scripture or tradition: and these scholars, on the ground of jurisdiction, decide against Anglican orders.

Then, again, the "English Churchman" has made it most probable that several bishops may have been unbaptized, from the suicidal exposure which the Editor has made of negligence and sacrilege among Anglicans in their practice of baptism; and here again it fares ill with Anglican orders.

Now, I do not wish to argue the question in any hard theological way; I do not mean to say that any one of these theories is necessarily true, or of itself decisive against the orders: but I ask you, if the diversity goes to show that the Church has not yet, totidem verbis, decided the question, do not the variety of premisses, and the unity of conclusion, prove to a moral certainty how the Church would decide it?


Impossibility of the Christian Life in a situation of doubtful orders

And alas! can it be well, can it be right, can it be — to use your own fearful, bold word – providential, that you should go on your way encumbered and weighed down with this dismal blighting cloud, pressing on you at every turn, darkening every ministerial act you confront, turning into ungraceful, yea, intolerable gloom, all that was meant to cheer and to illuminate the poor striving penitent?

Ah! how many a young man's heart is bleeding at every pore, miserable under the weight of his past years, half-ruined by the neglect of what calls itself his Church and spiritual mother, now humbling himself to confession, and in many, many cases repulsed, his confession refused to be heard, bandied from one minister to another; and, when all is over, to have no security, but every ground for gravely doubting whether he has ever been absolved at all, or ever received the Blessed Eucharist, or can by any possibility come across any of the endearing powers lodged by virtue of the Incarnation in the priesthood of the Catholic Church!

Is not this positively affrighting?

Is it not enough to make the deadest and the coldest Catholic call loudly and imploringly upon you to abandon that perverse system, which you are trying to force upon your own reluctant communion; and which every day takes more and more the compact and cognizable form of a dreadful delusion?


Is it wrong to unsettle others by talking about doubtful sacraments?

Is it sinful to unsettle men's minds when they are lying in the lap of death, and know it not?

Is it sinful, when we reject your claim to be a Church, or to have bishops, or to be other than a misled disunited number of wandering sheep, to call you one by one, as we can, and where we can, and when we can?

Are we, as you say, immoral when we treat you as in no Church at all, because we do not admit your premisses, and so cannot act on your conclusions? Are you not judging us through out, as though we held what you hold? If it be undignified treatment for those who buoy themselves up on the inflated claims of Anglicanism, it is such treatment as the strenuous, pitiful, charity of Catholics in all ages has shown to blindfold perishing souls.

I am really surprised at the way in which some urge the immorality of unsettling men's minds; as if it was not a positive obligation to unsettle those whom we believe in fearful error.

Surely it is most false, as well as daring, to say that a work is not from the Holy Spirit because it is not calm: shall we venture to limit His dealings? shall we condemn, for the sake of some sickly theory of our own, the tumultuous contrition which the Saints have deemed heroic, and which has sometimes separated body and soul. Surely one would rather say that truth in its beginnings has mostly, and very markedly, been an unsettling thing; and it should be remembered that solemn steps may be taken while the greatest calmness reigns within, which, nevertheless, from certain outward circumstances, may have every appearance of hurry and perturbation.

But is not such a charge as this, brought forward with quiet unsuspecting self-complacency, another sign of the marvellous blind pride which characterizes your position? and all such charges are of quite recent invention; you have made a new position for yourselves.


Incoherency of a “high church” party, trying to change the Church of England, accusing others of causing strife

For, supposing such a charge to be true, or fair, it comes with an uncommonly bad grace from men who first unsettled our minds [with their attempts to "re-catholicise" the Church of England, including in liturgical matters]; who have unsettled their own communion from its very bottom, with quite as much appearance of wantonness as we have shown; who are more painfully unsettling it now by their remaining, than we by our seceding; and whose work was not only not calm in its beginnings, nor calm in its progress, but breeds even daily increasing scandal, tumult, strife, faction, and schism, among yourselves, as it approaches, by the help of the momentum which juvenile ecclesiologists have given it, to its goal of a broken purpose and frustrate expectations.

Are you to have a monopoly of unsettlement? Have you some graduated scale of unsettlement, up to which men's minds may be blamelessly disturbed, and which you alone know how to manage?

After all you have done, and all you are doing in your own communion, this show of meek indignation at our immoral unsettling of men's minds must be, to Dissenters and Low-church men, amusing and instructive in the extreme. Yet it is natural enough; it is but the jealous snappish anger of a sportsman with one who crosses his beat. Forgive me this ill-natured figure, which really forces itself upon me. […]


Illegitimacy of acting on probable opinions

[S]urely your reverence for the authority of St Thomas, backed as it is by Suarez and St Alphonsus, may incline you to admit principles of moral theology, which, with respect to the very questions of the succession and sacraments, may point out a line of conduct different from the one you are pursuing.

They, in common with the other masters of moral science, rule that in matter of faith and sacraments it is not lawful to follow even a very probable opinion, but that the safe and more certain side is to be followed; that there is a religious obligation on men to follow it: and the propositions, taking the other side, have been condemned by the Church in the pontificate of Innocent XI; and it is remarkable that even the bold proposition, condemned by him, itself denies the right to use the probable opinion in the case of priests' or bishops' orders.

Now you, on your own showing, have not a shadow of a doubt about our succession and our sacraments; whereas, to say the least, you confess to having chill and uncomfortable misgivings about your own; and this, on the principles which define and limit the nature and extent of probable conscience, ought at once to decide your submission to the Church.

In a word, either you must go back to the simpler Protestantism you have outgrown, and realize that; — or you must go on, and submit to the Roman Church; — or you must deal unfairly and dishonestly with your conscience and your present communion in remaining where you are.


Summary

You have come now to the place where the roads part; the next step may involve final grace: and if, with grave doubts yourself, you invoke your brother's blood upon your head, by stifling his doubts by your superiority of intellect, it probably will involve final grace.

Now, without entering directly into the question of Anglican orders, and the validity of your sacraments, and avoiding, not altogether certainly, yet as far as was possible, the use of distressing language which would take for granted a view so painful to you, I have shown that there is at least a very grave doubt cast over the whole subject, to put it no higher than a doubt; and that such a doubt is in many ways inexpressibly injurious to the life of the soul, retarding, thwarting, chilling, quenching everything which is high and holy and aiming at perfection.

[color=#71101]Then I have shown you, that supposing you have a very strong probability on your side, still in matter of faith and sacraments that is not sufficient; and that, according to the doctrine of St Thomas, and St Alphonsus, and all the great masters of moral theology, you are bound in those matters, not to put up with probable opinion, but to take the safer side.[/color]

I do not think that, if you give these two points the consideration they deserve, you can be quite easy even about the orders and the sacraments regarding which you were so confident.