Regarding the Singapore consecrations: since we have entered the land of words such as regularity and validity, there are to be mentioned some of the other terms that are part of that kind of sacramental theology. I think that the case could be made that there was, in addition to the problems your other correspondents have mentioned, a "defect of intent" in Singapore. To consecrate bishops intending to create a fifth column in a place where the sacraments are already celebrated is to deny directly the nature of the episcopate as a sign of unity and the Church as the context in which Holy Orders have meaning. While I continue to believe that liberal bishops could be more accommodating to conservative parishes, after the wonderful example of Bishop Geralyn Wolf of RI, for instance, there is no absence of Church in the USA in the sense that the consecration of "missionary bishops" implies.
To ordain so clandestinely, without election and without the consent of the laos, raises equally serious questions, including questions about the bona fides of bishops who choose not to ordain in "the face of the Church" in any meaningful sense. Fifty some years ago Dom Gregory Dix challenged the Anglican tendency toward the "contagion theory" of ordination, as though the prayer of the Church were inconsequential compared to the tactile zap of the Bishop's hands, would "work" even if the bishop were totally batty and wandered about ordaining promiscuously (there is a wonderful 50s novel based on this supposition, but I cannot recall the title). Merely man-handling these two men does not bishops make. A practice I have borrowed from Bishop John Spong is to make the point of letting that prayer of the assembly take enough time until the room is full of prayer, and this is a time longer than the bishop's prayer will take. It is to be out of that prayer of the assembly that the ordination prayer and hand-laying emerge.
I may be totally wrong about all this, of course, but I really do wonder whether any sacrament celebrated out of anger, arrogance, hostility, etc., can be efficacious, which is a much more important issue than regularity or validity. This is not Donatism, I would insist, as it has to do with the disposition of the recipient as well as the president. I go so far to wonder, ala First Corinthians, whether one can receive/celebrate this sacrament to one's own harm, but I will not press the point. I acknowledge that to the infra-low view of the Church held by the ordinands, these questions are all irrelevant, but they are vital to many of us nonetheless.
Hostile ordination is very much akin to destroying a village in order to save it.
(If I have not sent this to the convention discussion list you maintain, I would appreciate your forwarding it. Thank you.)
+Paul Marshall
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