Revision/Clarification of Thoughts on Traditionalist Consecrations

Keywords: sedevacantism, sedeprivationism, episcopal consecration, defect of sacramental intention

Sources: Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention. Francis Clark, SJ. 1956.

De Ecclesia Christi. Timoteo Zapelena. 1954.

De Episcopo. Dominique Bouix. 1859 (First edition).

Intervista a Mons. Guérard des Lauriers OP sulla Tesi di Cassiciacum. Sodalitium.

Satis Cognitum. Leo XIII. 1896.

Theologia Moralis Universa. Pietro Scavini. 1869 (Eleventh ed.).

Various testimonies of Doctors Eberhard Heller and Kurt Hiller, published in Einsicht.

I’m publishing this post because though I still have doubts about the validity of the episcopal consecrations putatively conferred by Fr. Guérard des Lauriers OP on Fathers Günther Storck and Robert McKenna, I now realize that my prior post on this topic did not offer a convincing enough argument in favor of the doubtfulness of these consecrations.

I believe that I presented enough evidence in that post to make a convincing argument that sedeprivationism as a school of thought contains serious errors regarding the nature of the episcopate as an order. But my argument for the doubtfulness of the consecrations was weak because I did not provide evidence showing that these errors influenced the sacramental intention of Fr. Guérard des Lauriers in putatively consecrating Fathers Storck and McKenna, and so it could reasonably have been objected that, absent evidence to the contrary, these errors could safely be assumed to be merely concomitant and not invalidating.

That was foolish oversight on my part because I had first realized there might be a problem with the consecrations when I read Sodalitium’s interview with Fr. Guérard and made connections between what he says about his intentions in consecrating Fathers Storck and McKenna and what I had read about the episcopate in Dominique Bouix’s treatise De Episcopo.

In the published transcript of the above mentioned interview can be found the explanation of Fr. Guérard himself, when asked about the consecrations, that he had no intention of saving the Church (and that he refuses to associate with those who say that they have this intention) but rather intended firstly to preserve the “oblatio munda” or spotless oblation, which to him means the Mass offered “non una cum” Wojtyla, and secondly to allow the faithful to continue receiving the Sacraments. He summarizes his intentions as “misereor super Sacrificium” and “misereor super turbam.” His comment about not intending to save the Church and not associating with those who intend to do so was a reference to Archbishop Thuc and other bishops from the archbishop’s episcopal lineage who saw themselves as preserving Apostolic Succession in the Catholic Church. Such a possibility was emphatically rejected by Fr. Guérard, who, despite the belief of the other bishops themselves, believed instead that the line of “Thuc bishops” was “expressly ordered to the Missio” — that is, to the Church’s mission to offer the Mass and Sacraments.

But Fr. Dominique Bouix, in his treatise De Episcopo, states explicitly that such a concept of the episcopate (one expressly ordered to the power of orders and that alone) would not be the episcopate as Christ intended, for Christ intended that bishops should rule in the Church. It is true that in practice, not every bishop rules in the Church at every moment. But it is one thing to appoint a man to the office of auxiliary bishop and another to consecrate him a bishop. Auxiliary bishops are often subsequently appointed diocesan bishops, and so though in act they begin to exercise jurisdiction only after the latter appointment, it is by virtue of their episcopal consecration that they receive the “proximate disposition and exigency of episcopal jurisdiction,” consistent with Christ’s intention for the order of the episcopate.

Lastly, it remains to be said that, as Fr. Francis Clark explains in Anglican Orders and Defect of Intention, Pope Leo XIII’s reasoning in Apostolicae Curae endorses the idea concerning sacramental intention espoused by Cardinals de Lugo and Gasparri that an intention that is contrary to what is essential to a sacrament will invalidate the sacrament even if the minister also has the general intention to confer the sacrament. In contrast, some have argued that Anglicans who intend to consecrate bishops and ordain priests do so validly (or at least with a sufficiently valid intention) because if they knew that the errors that they espouse and that are reflected in their liturgical books are contrary to what Christ intended in instituting the Sacrament of Orders, they would correct their errors, and the intention to ordain priests and consecrate bishops would prevail. This is the thesis of the interpretative intention, which has been rejected in favor of the de Lugo-Gasparri thesis regarding sacramental intention.