More than One Episcopi Vagantes Bishop in the Anglican Church in North America

By Robin G. Jordan

The Anglican Church in North America’s College of Bishops’ reception of Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches Bishop Derek Jones this past June is the tip of the iceberg. Icebergs are always larger under the water than they are above the water’s surface. Upon further investigation I found that the College of Bishops has received at least one other bishop, Communion of Christ the Redeemer Bishop Richard W. Lipka, who, like Bishop Jones, has orders that are traceable to the excommunicated Roman Catholic bishop Carlos Duerta Costa through the Independent Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil. Bishop Lipka was subsequently appointed suffragan bishop of Forward in Faith North America’s Diocese of All Saints. Both Bishop Jones and Bishop Lipka were bishops of charismatic Convergence churches.

This answers the question that one of my readers has been asking, “Why are the Anglo-Catholic bishops of the ACNA not concerned about Bishop Jones’ orders?” The answer is that they recognize the Duarte Costa lineage of Bishop Jones and Bishop Lipka. Put another way, having agreed to Bishop Lipka’s reception, they were in no position to object to Bishop Jones’. Both bishops share the same lineage.

The ICACB claims that the Roman Catholic Church recognizes its orders on the basis that liberal Pope John XXIII received Salomâo Ferraz, an ICACB bishop, as a Roman Catholic bishop in 1958. My investigation into the matter shows that John XXIII’s reception of Ferraz was an anomaly. It was out of the normal because Ferraz had been consecrated by Duerta Costa without the authorization of the Vatican and therefore both Duerta Costa and Ferrez were automatically excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church. Duerta Costa, at the time, he consecrated Ferrez as bishop had already been excommunicated by the Vatican and therefore had no authority under Roman Catholic canon law to consecrate Ferrez. Ferrez was also married. This makes his reception even more irregular from the perspective of Roman Catholic canon law. The Pope, however, is the supreme authority in the Roman Catholic Church. John XXIII not only lifted Ferrez’s excommunication but also recognized his orders even though he was married and had seven children. The anomalous nature of Ferrez’s reception is further supported by the fact that the Vatican has not since that time received into Roman Catholic Church any clergy whose orders are traceable to Duerta Costa except as laymen, as far as I have been able to determine.

In investigating the orders of Bishop Jones and Bishop Lipka, I found that Duerta Costa had consecrated a number of independent bishops between 1945 and his death in 1961. All the bishops that Duerta Costa are excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by the virtue of their consecration at the hands of an excommunicated Roman Catholic bishop.

Bishop Lipka and a number of other Charismatic Episcopal Church bishops sought re-consecration from the Independent Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil when they concluded that they had not received the apostolic succession at their original consecrations. Bishop Lipka subsequently broke with the Charismatic Episcopal Church and formed his own jurisdiction, the Communion of Christ the Redeemer.

On his Introduction to Episcopi Vagantes Lineages web site T. J. Boyle identifies four “complex lineages” comprised of scores of independent Catholic and charismatic Convergence clergy who claim valid Catholic orders on the basis that their orders are traceable to an excommunicated Roman Catholic bishop. In addition to the Duerta Costa consecrations for the Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil, they include the Nun Dinh Thuc consecrations for various groups, the alleged Sánchez consecration for the Mexican National Catholic Church, and the various consecrations for the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Associations.

The Old Catholics of the Union of Utrecht, the Coptic Church, and the various Orthodox churches apply the category of heretics or schismatics to independent Catholic and charismatic Convergence clergy, completely reject the validity of their ordinations, and do not recognize their orders.

Roman Catholic Church has declared that the ordinations performed by excommunicated bishops such as Archbishops Emmanuel Malengo and Piere Martin Nun Dinh Thuc have no canonical effect. It has refrained from commenting upon their validity. It stated that, "as for those who have already thus unlawfully received ordination or any who may yet accept ordination from these, whatever may be the validity of the orders (quidquid sit de ordinum validitate), the Church does not and will not recognise their ordination (ipsorum ordinationem), and will consider them, for all legal effects, as still in the state in which they were before, except that the ... penalties remain until they repent." [Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Decree Episcopi qui alios of September 17, 1976 - Acta Apostolicae Sedis 1976, page 623] The clause "....as still in the state in which they were before.." indicates that the Vatican continued to view them as being laymen. The reception into the Roman Catholic Church of Charismatic Episcopal Church clergy only as laymen supports this conclusion.

With regard to Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo's consecration of four men, all of whom claimed already to be independent Catholic bishops, on September 24, 2006, the Roman Catholic Church, as well as stating that, in accordance with Canon 1382 of the Code of Canon Law, all five men involved incurred automatic ("latae sententiae") excommunication through their actions, declared that "...the Church does not recognise and does not intend in the future to recognise these ordinations or any ordinations derived from them, and she holds that the canonical state of the four alleged bishops is the same as it was prior to the ordination." [Declaration of the Press Office of the Holy See on the present ecclesial situation of Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo]

The foregoing show that John XXIII’s reception of Ferraz as a Roman Catholic bishop cannot be used to support any claim that orders of the Independent Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil or any other orders traceable to excommunicated Roman Catholic Duerta Costa are recognized as valid by the Roman Catholic Church. Subsequent popes have not adopted John XXIII’s position.

The official view of the Eastern Orthodox Churches may be summarised as follows: "While accepting the canonical possibility of recognising the existence (υποστατόν) of sacraments performed outside herself, (the Eastern Orthodox Church) questions their validity (έγκυρον) and certainly rejects their efficacy (ενεργόν)." It sees "the canonical recognition (αναγνώρισις) of the validity of sacraments performed outside the Orthodox Church (as referring) to the validity of the sacraments only of those who join the Orthodox Church (individually or as a body)." The Orthodox Communion clearly does not, and will not, accept as valid the orders of independent Catholic and charismatic Convergence clergy. [Professor Dr. Vlassios Pheidas, Τhe limits of the church in an orthodox perspective] Any supposedly Orthodox ecclesiastical entity that does recognize their orders is not genuinely Orthodox.

In my investigation of the orders of Bishop Jones and Bishop Lipka I have so far found no evidence that any existing Anglican province recognizes the orders of clergy traceable to Duerta Costa. I did find that the Anglican Church of the Province of Uganda has permitted Charismatic Episcopal Church consecrations in its cathedral in Impala. This, however, does not constitute formal recognition of the Charismatic Episcopal Church or of the orders of its ministers any more than Roman Catholic Church permitting Anglican consecrations in its cathedrals. In recognizing their orders and receiving them as ACNA bishops, the College of Bishops appears to have adopted a unilateral course of action, much in the same way as the Episcopal Church did in the case of Bishop Gene Robinson.

The College of Bishops has also adopted a mechanical, reductionist view of apostolic succession, which ties the transmission of the apostolic succession, not to preservation of apostolic teaching as historic Anglicanism has understood the apostolic succession, but to the imposition of the hands of a bishop in a succession of bishops going back to the apostles, that is, the Roman Catholic doctrine of tactual succession. This doctrine is implicit in the ACNA canons, which are based in a number of places upon the canons of the Anglican Church of Rwanda. The Rwandan canons are themselves based in large part upon the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canonical Law.

In its recognition of Bishop Jones’ orders, the College of Bishops has put the Nigerian House of Bishops into the position of recognizing the orders of a number of independent Catholic and charismatic Convergence ecclesiastical entities with the approval of Bishop Jones’ appointment. A number of these entities are nominally Anglican. However, they do not evidence any commitment to classical Anglicanism and Reformation Christianity. The historic Anglican formularies play very little if any part in their teaching and life.

The Nigerian House of Bishops’ approval of Bishop Jones’ appointment will be a coup for independent Catholic and charismatic Convergence ecclesiastical entities that trace their orders to Duerta Costa. A number of these entities are quite Roman Catholic in their doctrine and practices.

Another ramification will be closer relations between the ACNA and the independent Catholic and charismatic Convergence ecclesiastical entities with the Duerta Costa lineage and an high possibility of an influx of congregations and clergy from these entities into the ACNA. The latter will boast the numerical strength of the ACNA. At the same time it will also greatly weaken the Anglican identity of the ACNA, which is already not very sound as it is. It lends credence to my observation that the ACNA is moving in a direction that removes it even further from historic Anglicanism. The prospect of confessional Anglicans—those who uphold the Protestant faith of the reformed Church of England and its formularies and who are committed to the Anglican understanding of the New Testament gospel as articulated in the Thirty-Nine Articles—becoming a decided minority in the Anglican Church in North America is very high, if it is not yet already a present reality.