Excerpt from The Catholic World, Vol. 87: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science; April, 1908, to September, 1908

Still, this does not seem to them to destroy utterly their claim to valid ordination. They have an inner line of defense to which they can retreat; namely, that just as we acknowledge that even a Jew or an infidel may validly baptize, even though he does not believe in any. Real change effected by the act, if only he seriously intends to perform a Christian ceremony, so the Calvinist bishops, who abhorred the idea of the Mass, still might validly ordain mass-priests, by simply intending to per form Christian ordination. The ordaining Anglican bishop says Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God. Even though the bishop is entirely mistaken as to what that office and work is, a High Church man might still say that the true office and work are produced by his words, just as regeneration is produced in baptism by the Jew or infidel who gives it, but does not believe in it at all. The same, of course, may be said of the corresponding words in the order of consecration of a bishop.

The words specifying the office and work of a priest (or a bishop) were not in the Ordinal of Edward VI., as our Anglican clergy are aware; still they may persuade themselves that the office and work were, or at any rate had been, well enough understood without expressing them, and that it really makes no difference whether they are expressed or not. A candidate is present to be made priest or bishop; every one knows what he is there for. The bishop, by words which can be conceived as having sufficient sacramental efficacy, makes him a priest or a bishop; what difference, they may say, does it make what the individual consecrating bishop thinks a bishop or a priest is? He may regard a priest as merely a preacher, or paro chial visitor; a bishop simply as one appointed to oversee the priests, and to make new ones; but even so, it may still be urged, why should his misconception or ignorance invalidate the ordination or consecration which he gives, if the unbelief or indifference of an infidel baptizer as to the effect of baptism does not destroy that effect?

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