Yes he was defrocked, which is why he was 'retired' to begin with. He was effectively fired for marrying.

http://books.google.com/books?id=hRQO9N0QLzwC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=Matthew+Parker+defrocked+Queen+Mary&source=bl&ots=JTbQNfCAHi&sig=kbeOfPKGqOuNDFaILCAEtg9Sey0&hl=en&ei=IoJhTfjWJoH_8Abm8LXRCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Matthew%20Parker%20defrocked%20Queen%20Mary&f=false

http://books.google.com/books?id=MFcZudiylNAC&pg=PA64&lpg=PA64&dq=matthew+parker+defrocked+archbishop+Queen+Mary&source=bl&ots=YP8X3NlbXE&sig=cU9ZUnyJNX85-zFz88VctwUYoSA&hl=en&ei=F4NhTZvNNoKs8AbbpLGEDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=matthew%20parker%20defrocked%20archbishop%20Queen%20Mary&f=false

Look Putin

We both know that this isn't your argument, it's Matt Banacore's. You can come up with objection after objection but the argument is flawed.

You're beginning to sound more and more like you're insisting that the only true Church is the Roman Catholic Church. If that's how you feel great, go join. However the manic insistence on minutia (For instance insisting that the Anglican Church's Apostolic sucession is invalid because of the marriage of a priest when quite a few Pope's had kids) is just silly.

Here's a change for ya' Show me where the Anglican Church is heretical according to the Nicean Creed (That's been the yardstick for heresy for centuries). You can't do it becasue all of the objections that you have put forth were innovations by the RCC after the Great Schism. The only thing would be the filioque that the Roman Catholic Church insisted upon and put in the Creed without the approval of the Orthodox Church.


Finally let's get to the Official Anglican response in the Serpis Officio:

"The Archbishops pointed out that "many rites used historically in the Roman church did not contain this language". Even more significantly, "none of the ordination rites of the Eastern Orthodox Churches used such language", and Rome recognized their orders as valid! By Leo's reasoning, all Eastern Orthodox ministers and an undetermined number of Roman ministers were actually invalidly ordained. Finally, they pointed out that during the brief return of Roman authority under Queen Mary, not one priest ordained under the Edwardian Ordinal had been required to be re-ordained."

Therefore the entire argument rests not on the presumably deficient language of the Edwardian Ordinal because that wasn't uncommon in other rites that Rome recognized. The Aposolicae Curae rests entirely on the presumption that those words were left out in an attempt to change the Anglican definition of the preisthood. THat's where the fallacy of omniscience comes in. These rites were used and changed many times by different churches even by Rome, but in this particular incedence it's not okay because the Pope presumes to know that the Anglican's intended to change the role of the priesthood even though sacrificial language is used in Anglican Eucharistic theology.

@Putin: right. Because it's meta-physically (really really) Jesus' body, even though it has the physical characteristics of bread.

"We both know that this isn't your argument, it's Matt Banacore's. You can come up with objection after objection but the argument is flawed."

It's not enough to say it's flawed. Some actual argument is in order. And why do you keep complaining that this is somebody else's argument? It's as if nobody has ever provided a link before. It's as if you haven't been providing 'other people's arguments' in the form of father x or whomever's official Anglican response.

"You're beginning to sound more and more like you're insisting that the only true Church is the Roman Catholic Church. If that's how you feel great, go join. "

Well yes, it is the only real church. Most of the rest are little more than bible reading circles. But I don't believe in Christianity, or any religion for that matter, so I'm not going to go back to the church.

"For instance insisting that the Anglican Church's Apostolic sucession is invalid because of the marriage of a priest when quite a few Pope's had kids)"

Well he was defrocked and the bishops who consecrated him weren't bishops. I don't know of this issue of priests being required to be re-ordained under Mary. I'll have to research it.

I have to admit one thing Putin:

Nobody can clear a thread like us. You can almost imagine people putting their hands over their beers and slipping out the door :-)

"Well he was defrocked and the bishops who consecrated him weren't bishops. I don't know of this issue of priests being required to be re-ordained under Mary. I'll have to research it."

The point was that this is minutia. Basically a priest was ordained by a bishop who was also ordained by a bishop, etc. That priest later became a bishop ordained by other bishops who ran afoul of the temporal establishment. As Christians, one side sees God freely willing to withdraw his blessing of Apostolic Succesion to an entire country because a few of the leaders of the Church dropped a couple of words out of the liturgy. When other churches had dropped the same wording out of their liturgies (some never had it to begin with) without having God withdraw that blessing from their people.

Add to this the reason these bishops weren't bishops, as you put it, was similar to the case against Matthew Parker himself. They had been fired or freely resigned to flee for their lives when Mary I came to power.

Basically after two protestant monarchs and one Catholic there weren't any bishops in office to begin with (one of fourteen in the country). These guys who weren't bishops included a suffragin bishop and three former bishops. One of them wrote the first translation of the Holy Bible into English. It isn't as if they went out to find whomever they could in a whimsical or even irreverant manner. The invalidity comes back to dropping a few words that were dropped at other time by other churches which Rome recognizes. You don't see a conflict there?

Another thing about the Apostolicae Curiae. Even though Pope Leo XIII declared the Anglican orders invalid, his commission was as split decision. Only four of the eight members of the team decided against the Anglicans. Pope Leo had to make the decision that historical sucession was of less importance than theological succession. Then it was decided that the Anglicans willfully dropped the wording about a sacrificing priesthood in an attempt to subvert Roman Catholic Church doctrine. As the Anglicans responded in the Serpis Officio, this language about a sacrificing priesthood was not in the language of several ordination rites that the Roman Catholic Church recognized. In effect they were making an special case for the Anglicans based upon the assumption that the Anglicans had the intention of changing the nature of the priesthood. So, the Pope speaks and that's law, but up until that point not even all of the Roman authorities on the subject agreed.

http://www.usccb.org/seia/arc_anglicanorders_1990.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolicae_Curae#Anglican_responses

Saepis Officio wasn't an official Church of England response but rather a response from the Archbishops of York and Canterbury.

Here is a detailed rebuttal of the Anglican response, but I point your attention to page 47.
http://www.angelfire.com/nj/malleus/PDFs/Vindication-AC.pdf

It's a list of all the ordinals which the Church finds sufficient. Notice all of them explicitly state the order they are for. This is a central defect of the Edwardine Ordinal (because it doesn't do this), and why the Edwardine Ordinal is different.

Also, I point your attention to subheading 15. To be a valid ordination, there must be a valid rite & intention. The essential part of the rite must signify the power being conveyed, and the signification must not be ambiguous. So the Edwardine Ordinal is invalid precisely because it does signify what the sacrament is conveying. You already claimed that the intention argument is supposedly a 'fallacy of omniscience'. You lay the blame for this 'fallacy' at the feet of Bonocore. Notice though that the intention point is made by the Church itself when it comes to recognizing an ordinal as valid. The Church considers that the intention of the rite was to set up a rite in opposition to the Church, in order to reject the kind of priesthood the previous rite was established for.

In subheading 20, the document very explicitly goes into detail as to why the Edwardine Ordinal is not sufficient, namely because it does not signify the priesthood.

Also on the question of reordination under Mary, see page 11.

"We have it therefore on his authority that all the ministers in Edwardine Orders who were taken on by Mary's prelates went through a ceremony of Catholic reordination..."

"There are entered, in the Marian registers of the diocese of London and Oxford alone, thirteen or fourteen names of persons then ordained, who in the Edwardine registers are entered as having previously received Anglican Orders....this is a large number of a total of one hundred clergy and six bishops whose names are recorded as having received Orders through the use of the new Ordinal"

Page 12 goes on to provide further evidence as to how Edwardine priests were dealt with under Mary.

"Thus Cranmer, Eidley, and Latimer, who were all consecrated by the Catholic rite, were degraded from the episcopate ; whereas Hooper and Ferrar,
who had been consecrated bishops by the new method but ordained priests by the old, were degraded only from the priesthood–which must mean that their episcopal orders were treated as non-existent. Several similar cases are on record out of which we can construct a table showing that, when ordination was by the Catholic rite, degradation from the order thus received was always part of the sentence, whilst, when
it was by the Edwardine rite, no mention is made of any degradation to be inflicted.

Bradford’s case is
of special interest. There is extant among the British Museum MSS. the original instrument, containing his sentence of condemnation. He had been ordained deacon by Kidley according to the Edwardine rite, and had held the living of Kentish Town. Yet in this sentence of condemnation, not only is he called ’John Bradford, layman,’but the clause ’that he must be degraded and deposed from every priestly order according
to the sacred canons,’ which had been inserted by the engrossing clerk, is scored through. Nor is there any substituted clause to require his degradation from the diacon-ate. He was not to be degraded at all, which must mean that there was considered to be in him no character from which he could be degraded. Moreover John Taylor, John Hooper, and John Harley, the Edwardine Bishops of Lincoln, Worcester and Gloucester,and Hereford, according to Wharton are entered in the Canterbury Register expressly as deprived propter nullitatem consecrationis."

Furthermore this comparison of the eastern churches with the Anglicans on the issue of the real sacrifice in the ordinal doesn't really work, since the eastern churches uphold the real sacrifice, while the 39 articles and the Anglicans explicitly reject it, despite the claims of a 'sacrificial theology'. Furthermore, have a look at subheading 35 and 36 and the quotes therein. Then come back and tell me that the intention issue is a 'fallacy of omniscience'.

And really, to sit here and claim this is all about a couple of words and "minutiae", and completely ignore the fact that altars were desecrated and replaced by tables (more evidence of 'sacrificial theology'?), completely ignore the resolute hostility and contempt with which the authors of the BCP viewed the catholic and the priesthood and indeed the whole Catholic Church, completely ignore the 16+ changes the Anglicans made to the Liturgy to strike out any mention of sacrifice, while claiming this was a naked power grab by Pope Leo is absurd and disingenuous in the extreme.

Why were all these changes made, if supposedly the Anglicans believe in the real presence and the real sacrifice? That's the real question. The whole point of the priesthood, is to perform this sacrifice. Strike this down and the priesthood is struck down as well.

"Here we see that Casanata refers indeed to the omission of the delivery of the instruments in your
Ordinal, and deduces an argument from it. But this argument is not that your Ordinal, being one in which
delivery of the instruments has no place, belongs to a class of Ordinals which are certainly invalid. On the
contrary, he expressly acknowledges that there are Ordinals without delivery of the instruments which the
Church has never hesitated to treat as valid. And although he reminds the Congregation that in the ’Western
Church this ceremony may possibly be essential, by reason of the Church’s adoption of it as her authorised
mode of signifying the sacramental effect, still he is careful not to rest his absolute rejection of your Ordinal
on this. His main argument, on which alone he rests his conclusion that Gordon must be reordained, is
that, whereas imposition of hands is of itself an ambiguous sign, there is nothing in the Ordinations of the
English by which its ambiguity is determined to the power of offering sacrifice–neither the accompanying
words, nor the delivery of sacrificial instruments, nor anything else, whether ’explicit or implicit.’ In the
face, then, of this passage from Casanata we hardly think you will continue to suggest that the Gordon
decision was based either on ignorance of the text of your Ordinal, or on obsolete ideas about the necessity
of a certain ceremony."

Wow, pretty much giving me an entire document of Roman Catholic propaganda? Okay well let’s take a look:
First I liked this statement as to the Pope’s singular authority in deciding the question. (Remember this is a response from the Roman Catholic Cardinal and bishops of Westminster, so the first thing that we can assume is that the Anglicans weren’t going to be given a fair court in this issue. This is one Church making a naked attempt to attack the validity of another one. Remember the Roman Catholic Church had already tried to discredit Anglican apostolic succession with the Nag’s Head Fable. The old story was that Parker was ordained in a tavern in a manner that was entirely irreverent and unacceptable). This has been discredited as a work of fiction through and through, but it serves to show that the Roman Catholic Church would like for the world to see Anglican orders as invalid and that Leo’s Bull was just another salvo in the barrage. The vindication says this:
“If he [Pope Leo XIII] does possess any authority over the Church, and is capable of passing final judgment in appeal upon any question, surely it must be upon so elementary, so practical, so vital a question as the valid administration of sacraments. On the other hand, if he be not capable of giving a final judgment on such a matter, who else in the world can be capable of giving one?”


Basically, “Who can make this decision if not the Pope?” There are several other people actually. The Roman Catholic Church is the only one with which I’m familiar that sees Papal infallibility as a basic doctrine of Christianity. In Orthodox terms, the Pope is merely the bishop of Rome. Any patriarch of any Orthodox Church has a position roughly equivalent to that of the Pope, although to the credit of the Orthodox Christians nobody presumes him to be infallible in any sense. The Pope is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church; The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople is first among equals in the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is to say he’s the leader of the Church of New Rome (Constantinople) and is frequently called upon to be an arbiter in relations between Churches. In 1928, Meletius II found no fault with the same ordinals and took part in Anglican services (which is not to claim intercommunication with the Eastern Orthodox Church but merely to state a separate authority that disagreed with the Pope on this issue) and I remind you that only four out of eight members of Leo’s own commission found sufficient fault with the ordinals. Yet, with the Roman Catholic Church when the Pope speaks all further question is moot. This whole question of authority to decide is to some degree based upon the idea that the Pope is the only person capable of passing judgment on the issue. He is not. So for the sake of argument, since neither of us believes in Papal infallibility, let’s presume some chance that the Pope could be mistaken on this issue.

Now upon the subject of Archbishop Parker’s consecration, you’ve said:

“Well he was defrocked and the bishops who consecrated him weren't bishops.”

As to his being defrocked, perhaps but at the insistence of one Queen of England and reinstated at the insistence of another Queen of England. Also even being defrocked does not reduce one to the laity. Parker was ordained to the priesthood under the Latin Rite. That means that he received an indelible spiritual character that could not be conferred temporarily.
From The Second edition of the Catechism regarding Holy Ordination:
“1582 As in the case of Baptism and Confirmation this share in Christ's office is granted once for all. The sacrament of Holy Orders, like the other two, confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily.74
1583 It is true that someone validly ordained can, for grave reasons, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them; but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense,75 because the character imprinted by ordination is forever. The vocation and mission received on the day of his ordination mark him permanently”
(http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c3a6.htm)
So a bishop remains a bishop whether he remains at his post or not. Therefore:
A quick Wikipedia quote on sacrament given without the consent of the Pope in the RCC:
“All bishops are able to ordain a able to deacon, priest, or bishop. A valid but illicit ordination, as the name suggests, is a non-Roman Catholic sanctioned ordination; that is, one where a bishop uses his valid ability to ordain someone without having first received permission from the Roman Catholic Church. The bishop is therefore acting in a manner deemed illicit or illegal.”
So, two of the bishops at Archbishop Parker’s ordination, Hodgkins and Barlow, were consecrated under the Henrican Church were most certainly bishops. Oddly enough one of the others was consecrated under the Edwardian Ordinal but his translation of the Roman Canon is still approved and used in Anglican Use Roman Catholic Churches with no apparent problem. It seems odd that the RCC would use his words in their liturgy but not admit that he was a valid co-consecrator. Even that merely moves the issue back a generation. Sooner or later a valid bishop gave the gift of the Holy Spirit in a valid manner to one of his predecessors. The question must rest upon whether the Holy Spirit can move though the Edwardian Ordinal.

To answer this question, I’ll see your Pope and raise you a saint. The defect, according to the vindication that you cited, of the Edwardian Ordinal is not what it says but in what it leaves out the specific nature of the priesthood. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his work Summa Theologica states that this is not playing fair. Here are his words:
“Consequently, others with better reason hold that the minister of a sacrament acts in the person of the whole Church, whose minister he is; while in the words uttered by him, the intention of the Church is expressed; and that this suffices for the validity of the sacrament, except the contrary be expressed on the part either of the minister or of the recipient of the sacrament.” (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4064.htm#article8)

So none other than St. Thomas Aquinas states that you cannot brand someone a heretic nor can you see their intent based upon what they did not say. In that ordinal (undoubtedly written by Cranmer whatever his opinions might have been) there is no refutation of a priest’s sacrificial nature. It should be mentioned that St. Thomas was not covering for heretics
“Some heretics in conferring sacraments do not observe the form prescribed by the Church: and these confer neither the sacrament nor the reality of the sacrament. But some do observe the form prescribed by the Church: and these confer indeed the sacrament but not the reality. I say this in the supposition that they are outwardly cut off from the Church; because from the very fact that anyone receives the sacrament from them, he sins; and consequently is hindered from receiving the effect of the sacrament. Wherefore Augustine (Fulgentius, De Fide ad Pet.) says: "Be well assured and have no doubt whatever that those who are baptized outside the Church, unless they come back to the Church, will reap disaster from their Baptism." In this sense Pope Leo says that "the light of the sacraments was extinguished in the Church of Alexandria"; viz. in regard to the reality of the sacrament, not as to the sacrament itself.” (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4064.htm#article8)
He was stating quite reasonably though that you cannot brand someone a heretic based upon what they do not say. The Ministers of the Word are shown in other places to be deacons, priests, and bishops (The Abyssinian Ordinal that the RCC embraces in the vindication only calls them leaders). There is also no written evidence that any of the bishops who consecrated Parker held any of the beliefs that were expressed in the works of Cranmer and others. Their intentions are the ones that matter, as they were the ones who consecrated Parker to the Archbishopric. For this we have the following quotes from the Vindication:
Barlow apparently wrote “The oblation and sacrifice of Christ mentioned in the Mass is a memorial of Christ’s only sacrifice upon the Cross once offered for ever’,”

Okay, big surprise, Barlow did not embrace transubstantiation. I told you five pages ago that this boils down to Transubstantiation vs. Consubstantiation. This was supposed to be a surprise? Consubstantiation does not invalidate the ordination or all that need be said would be that the CofE teaches Consubstantiation. Not all Eastern Churches completely embrace Transubstantiation and they are seen as apostolic. The intimation is that Barlow was Zwinglian, he might have been, or he may have been referring to the Holy Scripture “This do in remembrance of Me”. Memorials are performed in remembrance.

Apparently he also said this “a layman, if appointed by the King, without any mention of Orders, should be as good a Bishop as he is, or the best in England.’” That’s just scandalous. He’s humble enough to think that a layman could do his job as well as he or anyone in England? Still it doesn’t speak to his intent as officiant that day. Whatever he might have said years before or after the fact, on that day he was not recognizing a layman; he was ordaining a bishop. The entire celebration is on record at Lambeth and at Corpus Christi College. (http://anglicanhistory.org/orders/dart1948.html)


Coverdale is the most curious member of the cohort. He is a reformer and no mistake. However the Roman Catholic Church still uses his work. He was a translator and despite not being very good with Hebrew, he wrote the English version of the Roman Canon that is in use in Anglican use Roman Catholic Churches. For shame, how could you let your liturgy pass through the hands of a “heretic” like that?

Nothing is mentioned about Hodgkins whatever, so we must assume by his silence, that he was a heretic? St. Thomas says no to that. Some references to ordination in the New Testament refer to only “laying hands” upon another. There is no record of their words, nor do I believe that those words would be magical incantations through which we can force God to do our will. In true protestant form (I am a protestant and made no bones about it if you recall) let’s go to the scripture if in doubt. Can you show any scriptural reference about ordination to which Archbishop Parker’s ordination did not conform or surpass? I doubt it.

Here are three to start with that support his ordination.

1 Timothy 4:14
“Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic R162 utterance with the R163 laying on of hands by the presbytery.”

Priests can ordain? That opens up a can of worms.

2 Timothy 1:6
“For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the R16 gift of God which is in you through the R16 laying on of my hands.”

Laying on of hands only? No mention of the special rite through which the Holy Spirit has been conferred? They didn’t spell it out? At all?

2 Timothy 5:22
“Do R208 not lay hands upon anyone too hastily and thereby F50 share responsibility R209 for the sins of others; keep yourself free F51 from sin.”

When given the spotty record of some Popes, I doubt that one could argue they had kept themselves “free from sin” and all Parker did was get married. All this being said,

St. Thomas Aquinas,
Meletius II The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople (the only man in history to successively be the head of three Churches in Eastern Orthodoxy),
half of Pope Leo XIII’s own Commission on Anglican Orders,
the Lutherans,
the Presbyterians,

So in spite of your original objection that “Yes, Anglicans may claim [to be apostolic] but I don't think many take their claim to be continuous with the pre-Reform Church in England very seriously” Basically lots of people with whom the Anglican Church shares communion, and some that they don’t, take the Anglican claim to apostolicity seriously. That, I believe, is enough to sweep away the original objection.

It's RCC "propaganda" but your official Anglican screeds are objective? Give me a break.