"The crucial point in the Roman position is their doctrine of
intention," said Mr. Ogilvie. "It always seems to me that this doctrine
is a particularly dangerous one for them to play with and one that may
recoil at any moment upon their own heads. There has been a great deal
of super-subtle dividing of intentions into actual, virtual, habitual,
and interpretative; but if you are going to take your stand on logic you
must be ready to face a logical conclusion. Let us agree for a moment
that Barlow and the other bishops who consecrated Matthew Parker had no
intention of consecrating him as a bishop for the purpose of ordaining
priests in the sense in which Catholics understand the word priest. Do
the Romans expect us to believe that all their prelates in the time of
the Renaissance had a perfect intention when they were consecrating? Or
leave on one side for a moment the sacrament of Orders; the validity of
other sacraments is affected by their extension of the doctrine beyond
the interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas. However improbable it may be
that at one moment all the priests of the Catholic Church should lack
the intention let us say of absolution, it _is_ a _logical_ possibility,
in which case all the faithful would logically speaking be damned.
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