THE ORDER OF MELCHISEDECH A Defence of ... - Rore Sanctifica

priest not simply in degree but in essence from a layman, as Vatican II teaches with admirable
clarity in no. 10 of Lumen gentium. As is explained on page 81, the form in the traditional rite,
carried over virtually unchanged into the 1968 Ordinal, is indeterminate. There is not a word in it
that is incompatible with Protestant belief. But this indeterminate form was given an
unambiguously Catholic connotation by other prayers and ceremonies in the traditional rite, prayers
and ceremonies which were all removed or considerably modified in the 1968 Ordinal.
My condemnation of the ambiguity of the 1968 Ordinal was vindicated by three remarkable
testimonies. The first was a letter from an English bishop praising my book and assuring me that
my reservations concerning the new Ordinal were shared by the hierarchy of England and Wales
which had protested to Rome at its imposition in 1968 (the faith still meant something to these
bishops, most of whom had been appointed before the Council). The second vindication can be
found in a long review of my book by Dr. Francis Clark, who is certainly one of the greatest of all
living authorities on the Sacrament of Order. While Dr. Clark accepted that my criticism was
justified, he insisted that the Catholicity of the 1968 Ordinal was guaranteed by a number of ex
adiunctis factors, an argument which I accept. Some of his comments will be cited at length later in
this introduction. The third, most authoritative, and most dramatic confirmation of my thesis is that
of a spokesman for the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
(CDWS) in the February 1990 issue of Notitiae. In 1989, following continued criticisms of the
ambiguity of the 1968 Ordinal, a second typical edition was published with a number of revisions.
It may even be possible that my book, which was presented to twelve of the more traditional
cardinals in the Curia, played some small part in this decision. The CDWS accepted the fact that
whereas the Catholic theology of the priesthood was made explicit in the Traditional Ordinal this
was no longer the case in that of 1968. It admitted that the New Ordinal had "aroused frequent
criticism from both bishops and priests as well as the ordinands themselves", and went on to claim
that its 1989 revision had rectified its deficiencies. It is my contention that the 1989 Ordinal is only
marginally better than that of 1968, and that it is still far from adequate as a liturgical expression of
the Catholic doctrine of the priesthood. The 1989 Ordinal is examined in great detail in Appendix
IX. The frank admission by the CDWS of the deficiencies of the 1968 Ordinal vindicates fully my
criticisms of it in this book.
Criticisms of the First Edition
In a long review which appeared in the June 1979 issue of Christian Order, Dr. Francis Clark
expressed the opinion that the analogy that I had drawn between Cranmer's Ordinal and the 1968
Catholic Ordinal could not bear the weight that I had put upon it, and broke down at a certain point:
The new English rites composed in the reign of Edward VI had an objective anti-sacerdotal stamp
because history demonstrates that the supreme authority which ordered and sanctioned the liturgical
changes, imposing them by the combined power of State and Church, was determined to eliminate
the Catholic Mass and priesthood. The authors of the Anglican Ordinal were themselves part of the
politico-religious regime that vested it with authority, and the total anti-sacerdotal significance of
the rite stems above all from that official stamp. But when we look at the other term of Mr. Davies's
analogy we find the case is altered. Even if some of the promoters of the new Roman rites in the
decade following Vatican II were animated by a questionable theological liberalism, even if
Protestant "observers" were accorded a role which enabled them to influence (informally but
effectively) the deliberation of the Roman Consilium which drafted the new rites, there is not the
slightest doubt that the supreme authority that sanctioned the changes, the Holy See, was
determined to maintain intact the full Catholic doctrine of the Mass and the priesthood. The new
forms, liturgically impoverished though they are, are nevertheless still vested with the sacred
significance which the supreme authority of the Catholic Church attaches to its sacraments,
ministry, and rites. The documents of the Second Vatican Council and the teaching of Pope Paul VI
are the contemporary overall context which objectively supplies the due meaning which is no
longer explicit in the ritual forms. This is the overriding determinatio ex adiunctis which safeguards