The Validity of Churches and the Validity of Continuation

Editor’s Note: This article appears as part of a symposium responding to a recent essay by Joe Colletti (“The Young Anglican”), in which he announced his departure from the ACNA to join The Episcopal Church as part of what he describes as an Anglican “reconquista.” Please check back in the coming weeks as we continue this important conversation.

As a member of an Anglican denomination that is not in full communion with the Protestant Episcopal Church, I have wanted for some time to address the ecclesiology of our communion that undergirds our status vis-à-vis the PECUSA. This has been especially important to me with regard to dialogue with the “Reconquista” crowd, which often presumes Presbyterian and non-catholic (let alone spiritually damaging) theology. In this article, I want to try and work out that doctrine, even if it is ultimately prefatory in content, because of recent events that have moved my hand and forced the subject even more into the light. This is the separation of the prominent layman Joe Colletti from the ACNA to join the PECUSA, which he announced a few days ago. I wish to affirm that my analysis remains neutral and is purely driven by the basic principles of historic-catholic ecclesiology. In order to address the error of Colletti’s decision, I will lay out those principles, putting them in dialogue where and however applicable to what Colletti lays out in his essay.

The historic-catholic, and particularly Anglican, expression of ecclesiology is given in two works by prominent divines: William Palmer’s A Treatise on the Church of Christ (2 vols.; 1838; esp. 1:1-422) and Richard Field’s Of the Church, in Five Books (3 vols.; 3rd ed.; 1847-50; esp. vol. 1). These works both heavily depend upon and evaluate patrisic and Reformation theology on the Church, her nature, and on the “ethics” of certain relations to the Church. If anyone wants to move beyond whatever I have to say and get right to the root of things, reading both of these works would be your best bet.^[1] The basic ecclesiology formulated by both, in likeness of mind with the consensus fidelium,^[2] is that the Church was one, true, visible, indefectible body founded by and of the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, consecrated and commissioned in the descent of the Holy Ghost on Pentecost, and enduring unto the end of the age by the guidance and preservation of the selfsame Triune Godhead. There is not one jot or tittle of patristic or dogmatic material that contravenes such a notion.^[3] The marks of this Church, or how to distinguish it, were identified from the first by the Fathers of Nicaea as its unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity.^[4] If we want to clarify this in any further manner, it would be by saying that while all these marks are irreducibly mutual and dynamic, unity and sanctity provide a fundamental character and catholicity and apostolicity provide a fundamental structure. We can see this prototypically in the theology of St. Ignatius, one of the Fathers Colletti appeals to, when he says

And do ye, each and all, form yourselves into a chorus, that being harmonious in concord and taking the key note of God ye may in unison sing with one voice through Jesus Christ unto the Father, that He may both hear you and acknowledge you by your good deeds to be members of His Son. It is therefore profitable for you to be in blameless unity, that ye may also be partakers of God always. (Ign.Eph. 4:2)

The unity and the sanctity of the Church both leads to and comes from catholicity and apostolicity. By being united, a Christian is obedient unto the catholic faith shepherded by the apostolic episcopate. By being holy, a Christian practices the spiritual discipline of obedience unto the same. The catholic faith through its maintenance of the Truth stirs up unity among its followers, and the same stirs up holiness by encouraging “the fruit of the Spirit [which are] love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law” (Gal. 5:22). The apostolic faith, led by the ministry of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, is tasked with tending to the vine/flock/household of Israel (see the Parables of the Wicked Husbandmen and Faithful Steward, and the commentary of the divines on the same). Christ Himself “gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:11-13), and so by their charge to “feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind” (1 Pet. 5:2) so that the High Priestly Prayer may be fulfilled “for them also which shall believe on me through their word [the apostolic teaching]; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me” (Jn. 17:20-23). All of these elements relate to each other and revolve around each other, hence why they are the most ancient and true marks of the Church.

Now, another important clarification is in order, which Palmer is one to provide: a church need not hold these marks perfectly, but may simply have the mind of these marks (cf. Phil. 2:5), i.e., be in terms of its worship, spirit, and structure conducive to and embracing of these marks. For example, while Palmer identifies catholicity as meaning the breadth and depth of the Church throughout the whole world (ἐκκλησία καθ’ ὅλης),^[5] he would not deny that the Church Militant in Japan, consisting of around 500,000 people, despite (likely, depending on which demographic-historical reconstruction you go by) being of the same or smaller population proportionally as all the way back during the start of the Edo period. The reason would be that the Church in Japan has never ceased desiring to “[go] and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Mt. 28:19).^[6] Likewise, for apostolicity,^[7] in an ordinary state Palmer would not deny a diocese that is sede vacante would be non-apostolic, because in worship, spirit, and structure such a diocese would, clearly, desire and receive a new bishop as soon as he has been appointed. In an extraordinary case, such as Chinese Christians whose episcopate remains continuously vacant due to the intrusions of the communist regime, Palmer would still not deny that this church is apostolic, because its genuine desire to be an apostolic and catholic church is being forcibly impeded by wicked worldly powers that have yet to be humbled by the Cross. (In the foregoing passage, all references to “Palmer” of course include Field and are meant to speak more to the historic-catholic consensus he speaks on behalf of.) In this sense, we see that the four marks of the Church are essential to identifying it, but also have a certain economy to them.

What now must be asked is what happens, or how it can happen, that these marks are undermined in a particular jurisdiction. What can make a church go from being a church to not being one? Well, as Palmer commits to discussing at length,^[8] the unity of the Church cannot be broken whatsoever, and any breaking thereof must presume some degree and kind of wickedness. Internally, through apostasy, heresy, or schism, or externally, through recognition of the same excommunicable crimes by a proper^[9] ecclesiastical authority. This can affect persons, parishes, dioceses, and provinces. Now, in my own words (I am not so sure what Palmer, Field, Gore, Laud, Stone, or other eminent divines would say to this), the diocese/bishop is the fundamental authority in a Church. Archbishops, provinces, tribunals, etc., are all “extraneous” or “canonical” inventions, deriving from the ancient, apostolic authority of the bishop. Only insofar as bishops recognize the existence of an archdiocese, a tribunal, a constitution and canons, a customary, et al., do they exist and bear weight.^[10] That being said, the validity and liceity of anything above or below a bishop/diocese depends on the validity and liceity recognized thereof by the bishop, or of the bishop himself. St. Ignatius said, “But shun divisions, as the beginning of evils. Do ye all follow your bishop, as Jesus Christ followed the Father” (Ign.Smyr. 8:1). The implication of this verse is that divisions, disunity, derive from non-apostolicity, therefore to be an apostolic and catholic Christian, obedient unto the rule of the bishop, means to be a united Christian. Again, we see the interrelation examined above. However, another crucial implication is the validity and liceity of the bishop, as it would be settled in later ecclesiological terminology. Even in the New Testament, however, the teaching is clear: false teachers/shepherds are false, their teaching and pastorate a sham, for as Paul says (2 Cor. 11:13-15) these men are masquerading, and therefore have no true authority, as the reference to Satan denotes. A similar misdoing in the New Testament is that of divisive or disobedient rulers, those that are factious, insubordinate, unruly, rebellious, there are plenty of verses that encompass this character and condemn it (e.g., Rom. 16:17-18; 1 Tim. 3:15; 4:1-3; 5:19-6:5; Tit. 1:10-11, 13-14; 3:10-11; Heb. 13:17).

Now, let us apply all of this to the history of the PECUSA. On September 15, 1976 the General Conference of the PECUSA recognized the rebellious act of the Bishops Daniel Corrigan, Robert DeWitt, and Edward Welles in ordaining eleven women to the priesthood two years earlier. The question that arises from this is the exact kind of error that the bishops and the bishops in the General Conference fully affirmed and participated: (1) an invalid and illicit act or (2) a heretical act.

If women’s ordination is to be considered a heresy, then as a repudiation of the catholic faith the bishops would have renounced the conditions under which they hold ecclesiastical office in the first place. Their office would be null and void; non-Christians cannot be Christian clerics. However, can it be? Since heresy is to be defined as “the pertinacious [deliberately stubborn] denial of some truth certainly revealed”^[11] we need to determine if the Truth of Christianity is denied in women’s ordination. Quid est veritas? “Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice” for “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me” (Jn. 18:38; 14:6; cf. 1:1-18). St. John elaborates on this doctrine of Christ later in his life:

That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. … Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time. … Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also. … Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. (1 Jn. 1:3; 2:18, 22-23; 4:2-3; 2 Jn. 1:7)

These words express what I have taken to calling the “incarnational-Trinitarian dogmatic core of the Christian religion,”^[12] what it fundamentally means to be a Christian, which inspired the confessional material of the later Catholic Church “for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.”

Does theological feminism constitute a pertinacious denial of this incarnational-Trinitarian core? Let us be completely fair here. It is hard to argue such. Perhaps one might say that the incarnate maleness of Christ (Lk. 2:21), the incarnate maleness of His priesthood (Rom. 1:3; Heb. 7:17), and the incarnate maleness of those called to this office (the Pastorals), make theological feminism a form of Gnosticism, a “spiritual transvestism” as it is worded by Paul Facey. Maybe, but I think the bar is set very high by the Fathers, by this definition just provided, and I am not entirely confident that the error of the feminists clears that. It would seem like a second-order complication of the dogmatic core, rather than a first-order denial of the same, as can be seen in comparing it to what St. John lays out: the denial is of Christ, of His nature, of His incarnation, not so much what the Incarnation means for the Church, or for the sacraments, or for ecology, whatever and so on. Such second-order errors may certainly be harshly impugned on such grounds, but so long as someone with such an error is saying “Jesus Christ is the Son of God come in the flesh to bear our sins,” and such confessional definitions of the same (e.g., the Nicene and Chalcedonian), but appends something like “God would never let Himself be cannibalized in the Eucharist!” then they would be complicating the second-order effects of the core, but not denying the core. I hope this makes sense.

If, then, we conclude that the complete affirmation and participation of an invalid and illicit act was the error of the bishops of the PECUSA, this still does not mean that an errant bishop is secure in his office. Per the terms of historic-catholic ecclesiology, canonical disobedience is a punishable offence, and I mentioned the biblical foundations for such above. Even if the faith itself is not denied, the faith is built on its unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity, which are marks of the Church that is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15), which further deepens our understanding of the Four Marks as the elements necessary for the Church to fulfill its vocation of living, obeying, and preaching that Truth in the world. While the “procedural” rules of the Church might seem to be of a second-order, that is what the verses I referenced above may be taken as referring to: if Paul speaks to things being done orderly in the Church of God, which includes such (open-ended) concerns as worship (1 Cor. 14:26-40; 1 Tim. 3:14-16), then those who disobey what is determined by the authority (e.g., St. Timothy) have contravened the spirit of order, which also undermines unity; it is also a spiritually ill-gotten practice, which therefore undermines sanctity. The mind need not be stretched too far to see how this would also touch apostolicity and catholicity. Accordingly, canonical disobedience has always been punished, either latae sententiae and ferendae sententiae. There are more examples of latae sententiae punishments than ferendae, but that only strengthens my point, because these judgments are by vice of the crime itself, with any subsequent declarations of a proper authority only being complementary/recognitory. Interestingly, under the current canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, “Both a person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order, incur a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; a cleric, moreover, may be punished by dismissal from the clerical state” (can. 1379§3). Because the maleness of the priesthood is grounded on apostolic authority (the Pastorals), and divinely created anthropology (Gen. 1-3; cf. 1 Tim. 2:14), canon law is simply a temporally refracted expression of this theological principle, just how the specifics of habeus corpus might have statutory and terminological distinctions in England vs. America, but remains the same basic legal principle.^[13] Ergo, the canons against women’s ordination overturned by the 1976 PECUSA General Conference could not actually be overturned, meaning their crime was twofold: falsifying good and true canons, and approving the corruption of the priesthood. Since, in principle, the original canons would still be in effect, then, the bishops of the PECUSA all dirtied their hands with the same (and further) crimes of the Corrigan, DeWitt, and Welles.

Now, per ecumenical canon law, and historic-catholic ecclesiology, what is the punishment incurred for participating in an illicit and invalid ordination? While all may feel free to reinforce me on this point, I must take note of the general character of Canon 22 of Antioch 341, ecumenically affirmed as part of Chalcedon’s Codex Canonum, which states that improper ordinations are void and the consecrator “shall be punished by the synod.” I think I should also say that the consciousness of the Catholic Church, which would trickle into the current canon law of the Roman Catholic Church, would in general, even if not specified, agree that such an act would “incur a latae sententiae excommunication.” That being said, on September 15, 1976, the entire episcopate of the PECUSA was rendered excommunicated for the crime of corrupting the priesthood. However, even if the punishment would only be suspension/interdiction, the continued ecclesiastical activity of the PECUSA bishops would aggravate their error, and perhaps then excommunicate them.

But, let us make it even more difficult. Say I am wrong in all this, and while the bishops could be subject to some degree or kind of “impairment,” they would still be full bishops with the full exercise of their full authority. However, this would end as soon as (1) a woman was “elected” to a diocese and (2) a woman joined in as a pretended “co-consecrator” of a bishop, priest, or deacon. This would make things more difficult for the ACNA and Continuum, however, because despite the Philadelphia Eleven no woman was “made” “bishop” until 1988, in the person of Barbara Harris. Even then, not every diocese had a woman pretend to be bishop at the same time, thus only a part of the ACNA and Continuum would have validly and licitly “continued” apart from the PECUSA. For example, the Episcopal Diocese of Albany under Bishop William Love validly and licitly recognized a state of discommunion between itself and the dioceses of the PECUSA because the latter violated canon law in intruding upon the episcopal authority of +Love, approving sacraments (matrimony) that +Love had not (and could not). However, the Diocese of San Joaquin under Bishop John-David Schofield simply broke off from the entire mainline province, not just those with invalid and illicit bishops (particularly the women pretenders). The Diocese of San Joaquin, then, under this stricter rule would have engaged in voluntary schism, a serious offense per Palmer (and the Church). Yikes. The only rescuing device would be to argue whether the errancy of the PECUSA’s presiding bishop at the time, the woman pretender Katharine Schori, would be enough, because as clarified above such extra-canonical inventions depend on the (proper) bishops for their authority, and bishops would be under no obligation to affirm or be in communion with a pretender.

With all of this laid out now, we can see that, in varying respects, the ACNA and Continuum were completely in the right to “continue” in being the orthodox and proper ecclesiastical authorities representing the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church in the province(s) of North America. That is a highly significant point, mind you. The authors of schism are not the orthodox, but the schismatics. In the Anglican patrimony we have the 1604 Canons proclaiming excommunication for all who undermine or impugn the legitimacy and authority of the Church of England (III-XII), which would incontrovertibly be the act of the PECUSA College of Bishops, and per this traditional standard it can be declared “Let them be Excommunicated [ipso facto^[14]].”

How, then, does this relate to the recent, public decision by Joe Colletti to separate from the ACNA and rejoin the PECUSA? Unfortunately, given the criteria just established, Colletti’s action could only be seen as blatantly improper, since the PECUSA no longer represents a proper ecclesiastical authority.^[15] This outweighs everything he says in his essay on his decision, because it says nothing to any of this. From the Anglican tradition he only refers to one private authority, John Davenant, and one dogmatic authority, Article XXVI. While Davenant is not an authority such as the Articles^[16] he is still an important divine in Anglican heritage, so I will address the main points Colletti derives from him. First, there is his contention “that all of the Protestant churches should be in communion with each other” which is grounded on “fundamental doctrines necessary for communion and salvation” which “can be summarized as the Creeds + the Law + the Gospel.” Concerning the Church of Rome, “he does not say that they have failed in the fundamental doctrines, but that by the doctrine of the Papacy they have overthrown the foundation of those doctrines.” Davenant “also addresses the question of what to do when ‘wicked doctors’ are being tolerated in a church body” to wit he says “the moderation of Cyprian is commended, who held communion with those Churches, whom he conceived to live in a grievous errour” nonetheless.

However, all of these points are touched by the Articles, and further exposited, such as in Article XXVI that Colletti quotes. The simple fact of the matter is that by employing these concepts and Articles Colletti is only obfuscating, not actually meaningfully addressing the matter at hand.

Consider what Article XXVI and Davenant say about “evil Ministers”/“wicked doctors,” which is merely the historic-catholic response to the Donatist controversy.^[17] That response formulated the principle of ex opere operato, the principle that the sacramental character of a properly ordained minister transcends their own personal character. A wicked minister’s sacramental efficacy could only be doubted if he intentionally profaned the sacrament, which itself could only be done with the lack, substitution, or defectivity of the matter, form, and/or intent.^[18] It is the final line in Article XXVI that especially overturns Colletti’s obfuscation: “Nevertheless it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church, that inquiry be made of evil Ministers, and that they be accused by those that have knowledge of their offences; and finally being found guilty, by just judgement be deposed.” The Article is speaking to an all-too-real situation wherein they may know their rector to be guilty of some sin, and the bravery but also the time needed for this to be properly, canonically addressed takes more than one Sunday. In other words, it perfectly coheres with the situation I outlined above, for the bishops of the PECUSA were not guilty ferendae sententiae, but latae sententiae. Even if they were, though, they would be subject to the canonical investigation of the “surviving” bishops, which is exactly that those men did, by judging^[19] the vast majority of the Episcopalian hierarchy to have excommunicated itself via abject canonical disobedience, and in recognition of that proceeded to reorganize the ecclesiastical structure of the Catholic Church in (North) America around the surviving remnant. So, again, we see that the schism was the doing of the PECUSA by its mass affirmation of error, and the only thing to do in response to schism is recognize it and move forward, to continue as orthodox Anglicans (nudge-nudge). Accordingly, the facts are that proper bishops (1) formally recognized that the Episcopalian hierarchy had (2) willingly self-separated itself from the Church, therefore judging the latter as having removed themselves from the lawful Body of Christ in order to maintain an errant communion among themselves, therefore they are to be “Excommunicated, and not restored until they repent, and publickly revoke such their wicked Errors” (cf. 1604 Can. IX-X).

However, this does bring us to an important question about what excommunication exactly is, which will bring us to the two first core points made by Davenant (through Colletti). Briefly, excommunication is a recognition that some person, parish, diocese/bishop, or province is out of communion with another, and a state that can only be recognized by a superior proper ecclesiastical authority.^[20] Being out of communion can further manifest in two ways: a breaking of external communion, or a breaking of internal communion.^[21] The former is more properly to be understood as “impaired communion,” in which what is absolutely essential to (1) being Christian and (2) being a proper Church is not outright absent or null, but in some way complicated. The latter must apply to a situation of the caliber outlined earlier, given what has been said about the indivisibility of the Church, and thus would also mean that the essentials of being Christian and a Church are absent/null. Given this we see that Davenant was not correct in his views, but breaks against the rock of the Articles. He does this by overjudging the Church of Rome, and underjudging the non-episcopal Protestant churches. When he says “We excommunicate the Romanists because they trade the place of Christ for the Pope” he is reproved by Article XIX which states “the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred: so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.” Do not miss this detail: they are still called Churches. (What I say here parallels nicely what James Clark has independently written in his contribution to this symposium.) As Browne exposits, “Some might expect the Article to have denounced the Church of Rome, not as a Church in error, but as the synagogue of Antichrist, an antichristian assembly, not an erring Church… But in their most sober and guarded language, not only our own, but Luther, Calvin, and other continental reformers, speak of the Church of Rome as a Church, though a fallen and corrupt Church.” Likewise, as another formulary, the 1662 Ordinals, declares, “No man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawfull Bishop, Priest, or Deacon in the Church of England, or suffered to execute any of the said Functions, except he be called, tryed, examined, and admitted thereunto, according to the Form hereafter following, or hath had formerly Episcopall Consecration or Ordination.” As it is further exposited by Browne concerning the same Article, a proper church has a valid and licit episcopal ministry. Ergo, as with a number of other divines, dissenting/presbyterian/congregationalist bodies cannot be recognized as parts of the Church.^[22] They may certainly be recognized as Christians, generally, but the historic-catholic doctrine is that a Church, which is the institution to which unity is prescribed by Scripture, is constituted by the four ecumenical marks and the three Protestant marks: “The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly ministered, according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same” (and, as Browne exposits, the third note presumes the ministerial component). Full communion cannot be had with the non-catholic Christians because they do not have a ministry, they therefore also do not minister the sacraments to their congregation, do not minister the Word because they have no one lawfully sent, and do not belong to churches that can be assigned to a lawful jurisdiction of religious communion (but merely voluntary associations of lay Christians).^[23] Ecumenical dialogue, then, must constitute, certainly, addressing grievances that might prevent honesty and clarity in dialogue, but most importantly an impassioned plea to the dissenters to join the proper Church.

Therefore, we see that all the principles of historic-catholic ecclesiology, especially as they are made present in the Anglican patrimony and its documentary foundations, were followed by the ACNA/Continuum in recognizing and responding to the PECUSA’s mass rebellion. Colletti himself says that two principles consistent with the views he surveys in his essay are “We should excommunicate heretics” and “If we can take communion with or in some church body, we should not set up a parallel overlapping jurisdiction” which is precisely what the ACNA/Continuum did, but to which Colletti devotes no consideration. We should excommunicate heretics, but even further those who are canonically disobedient, which these jurisdictions have done, and we should maintain communion as much as possible with as many jurisdictions as possible, and not violate the ancient and ecumenical canons against violating episcopal sovereignty, but these only apply to proper ecclesiastical authorities; the PECUSA for nearly 50 years has not constituted a proper ecclesiastical authority.

There is only one other aspect of Colletti’s essay that we should address, which are the “circumstantial” details he mentions, which especially crop up in his concluding section. First of all, these are besides the point, whatever an individual or province’s whims may be, the principles they affirm or live up to, or fail to, are what is more important. So, that Colletti “know[s] few if any within the ACNA who would hesitate to take communion from a conservative and orthodox minister in the Episcopal Church” or that the “odd state of the ACNA and the Anglican Continuum is that while positive separations have been made, no effective negative separation is put into practice as all parties are open communion” is superfluous in deciding what is right or not. If these proper jurisdictions are not living up to all the principles of historic-catholic ecclesiology, then that is something Colletti, along with other orthodox laymen and clerics in the same, could petition correction on internal to those jurisdictions, so as not to tarnish their continuation in the true and proper Church with fence-sitting or inconsistency. Perhaps, the ACNA, especially, needs to reckon with it taking over three decades to come to this realization, particularly because not every parish/diocese that came to constitute it were part of the few remaining (if any) proper jurisdictions in the PECUSA, but this hardly outweighs its propriety in full. The response to such circumstantial matters is absolutely not to leave the Catholics for the Arians because the Catholics are not perfect Catholics; again, the wheat is mixed with the tares, so it is principles that transcend these which matter—the super-personal, sacramental character of ministers, and the proper ordination of the same. Because, as we have taken lengths to demonstrate in this essay, the PECUSA lacks the latter it therefore also lacks the former. Colletti obfuscates this further by writing “though heretical forces ‘have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments,’” changing the words of the Article from “evil” to “heretical.” Heretics cannot be part of the Church, so if Colletti’s admission is that authority in the PECUSA is primarily composed by heretics, then he is admitting the PECUSA has a vast network of void ecclesiastical authorities, and hence dioceses and parishes without any authority to submit to. The only “other valid government of the church exists in the United States,” then, are the proper jurisdictions reconstituted from the faithful bishops of the 1976 General Conference, or supplied from orthodox jurisdictions overseas (common in the ACNA).

Given all this, then, Colletti would be guilty of voluntary self-separation from the Church of God in order to join an improper jurisdiction rife with heresy and apostasy. I do not want to spell out, for leniency and mercy’s sake, what exactly “self-separation” means and entails, but I think it’s clear. Colletti has thrown his hat in the ring of a group of hasty neophytes who believe that subjecting families to constant spiritual torment, and mocking families who have decided to do otherwise, is the actual path forward. There is nothing to reconquer in the mainline because they are not churches. The actual Spanish Reconquista was the true Spain driving back a wicked invader, not a rebellion within the Emirate of Al-Andalus to the end of installing a Christian Emir. The very name of the unordained,^[24] non-catholic,^[25] pretended theologian^[26] Richard Ackerman’s movement, then, speaks against its entire mission and strategy. Colletti, shackling himself and the souls of his wife and child to this movement, has betrayed the trust of thousands and will now continue to lead thousands into confusion and misconduct. May God have mercy on his soul.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

1. I would clarify, though, that much of Palmer’s discourse includes an evaluation of other Christian bodies according to the criteria he establishes; reading just for the criteria would be a shorter read constituting pp. 1-178. ↑
2. T. Oden, Classic Christianity, 717-65. ↑
3. Palmer, A Treatise, 5-13; C. Gore, The Church and the Ministry (new ed.), 1-52. ↑
4. See also D. Stone, The Church (3rd. ed.), 37-64. ↑
5. Palmer, A Treatise, 148-59. ↑
6. Faults in the missiology of Japanese Christians are not relevant to evaluating their catholicity, just their missiology. ↑
7. Palmer, A Treatise, 160-78. ↑
8. Ibid. 46-131. ↑
9. “Proper” here encompasses the ecclesiological terminology of “valid and licit” (and everything encompassed by that term) as a shorthand. ↑
10. I affirm this on the basis of being a “Muscovite loyalist,” i.e., submitting to the terms of the 1976 Moscow Agreed Statement, the only ecumenical dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox Church to occur before the first major rupture in the Anglican Communion caused by the Episcopal schism, as will be discussed in the main text. §6 speaks to the nature of the Church as a local eucharistic community, which “simplifies” the Church’s ecclesiology back to what it was like at the time of the Nicene settlement, and before the post-imperial largesse that accrued to it under the Roman and Byzantine aegises. This “Moscow localism” as I’ve called it is also reciprocated, in greater detail, by §5 of the 2006 Cyprus Statement, which is tentatively substantive because these dialogues were had with the Anglican Communion at-large, and among the orthodox jurisdictions of Reformed Catholicism the invalidity of said super-jurisdiction was not declared until 2014 (by the revision of the Affirmation of St. Louis) or 2025 (by the declaration of the GAFCON primates concerning the Archdiocese of Canterbury). ↑
11. Palmer, A Treatise, 91. ↑
12. For some other formulations, or applications, of this core, see J. Zimmermann, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics; F. Sanders, Fountain of Salvation; T. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith. ↑
13. See N. Afanasiev, “The Canons of the Church: Changeable or Unchangeable?” ↑
14. This sometimes-present element of ipso facto maps onto our above discussion of latae sententiae. ↑
15. Especially because the diocese that Colletti would now belong to, the diocese of the Susquehanna I believe, is “under” a woman pretender; unless he would be in the diocese of Pennsylvania, but, still, that would only be permissible if the minimal case route is taken, which is not evidently so. ↑
16. This is not to say divines are not important, but to say a rather evident fact: the Nicene Creed or Athanasius? While certainly Athanasius played an important role in the composing of the former, he did so in order to submit to it above his own private opinion. Otherwise, what was the point for struggling for an ecumenical consensus on doctrine? This is the same for all later confessional materials, down to the Articles of Religion. ↑
17. On what is said about the Articles in what follows, and anywhere else in this essay, one should refer to E. Harold Browne’s exposition of the same, which has been completely digitized and republished through this platform. ↑
18. I.e., a sodomical priest would be able to consecrate a Eucharist of bread and wine per the approved form of the proper ecclesiastical authority with the intent to consecrate these elements by the epiclesis of the Holy Ghost for the communication of the faithful. He would not, however, be able to do so with skittles and Kool-Aid, per an unapproved “Queer Mass,” with an intent to “celebrate” a “hetero-normativity challenging Eucharist.” ↑
19. For the Continuum in the Affirmation of St. Louis, and for the ACNA/GAFCON in the Jerusalem Declaration. ↑
20. Which is to prevent what I just said from being confused as saying that Christian laymen can excommunicate each other, laymen can excommunicate bishops, or priests can excommunicate bishops, et al. ↑
21. See Palmer, A Treatise, 71-86. ↑
22. See Palmer, A Treatise, 399-417; E. Stillingfleet, The Unreasonableness of Separation; the relevant Canons of 1604; the aforementioned exposition of Browne; and other works from the pens of impactful divines who wrote polemics against the dissenters, such as Laud, Hooker, Waterland, Gathercole, and Gibson. ↑
23. All of this should be taken in the full, proper, catholic sense of these terms, not just nominally, for certainly such churches present bread and wine, formally articulate the phonemes of scriptural passages, and the like. ↑
24. Heb. 5:1, 4. ↑
25. On the errancy of the dissenting Christians, from which Ackerman’s Presbyterianism is derived, see fn. 22 above. ↑
26. Jas. 3:1-4; Eph. 4:11. ↑