FROM THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT TO A CREDENTIAL CHALLENGE: A TRAGICOMIC TALE
The argument is placed on the table, waiting to be examined; instead, the critic puts the man who placed it there on trial. A tragedy most comical! Prologue: When the Argument Disappears In my article on the Anglican Eucharist I placed a theological question on the table: What does the Anglican Eucharist mean? What is the Real Presence? Is the Eucharist a true Sacrifice? What kind of priesthood is required to offer that Sacrifice? Does the Anglican Ordinal signify and confer that priesthood? And what are we to make of Pope Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae ? A serious discussion ought to begin there. But a respondent hiding under anonymity did none of that. Rather he wrote: “The question applies first to Ojeka himself: without valid Catholic orders and demonstrable apostolic mission through Peter, he possesses neither the Catholic sacrificial priesthood nor authority to lecture Anglicans about theirs. The collar cannot supply what the Church never conferred. A Roman collar c...