Dear Pete:

Once a man is validly ordained a priest he is a priest forever. The mark of Holy Orders is permanently on his soul. This is true about baptism as well. When we are baptized the mark of baptism is permanent. That is why one can only be baptized once.

Once a man is ordained a priest he receives from God, not from the Church, the powers of the priesthood. Nothing can remove those priestly powers. One cannot be de-priested.

The license to exercise his powers, however, come from the Church. Thus, the Church can suspend a priest's "license" to exercise those powers. The Church can also "de-frock" a priest, that is laicize him. This means that the priest, who is clergy, is removed from the clergy state (granted to him by the Church) and returned to the lay state. Even though now a layman he still is a priest and can still perform priestly powers -- but he no longer as a "license" to perform those powers.

This is what is meant by valid, but illicit. A priest returned to the lay state, or excommunicated, or who has gone into schism is stripped of his "license" to practice his priestly faculties. He has the power, but cannot legally exercise them.

That is the source of the true scandal of schism. When a bishop goes into schism he takes with him his priestly powers to confect the Sacraments and his power to ordain priests and consecrate bishops. Those priests and bishops are also illegal, but they are valid as apostolic succession has been maintained through the valid bishop.

This means that the Orthodox Churches, the Old Catholic Churches, the SSPX, and other similar schismatic groups have valid Holy Orders because they have maintained apostolic succession from a valid pedigree. As long as they keep that pedigree pure and unbroken apostolic succession is assured and their Holy Orders will continue to be valid (albeit illicitly).

The Anglicans, however, did not maintain unbroken apostolic succession and so their Holy Orders are not valid, their priests are not real priests and they cannot convect a valid Eucharist.

There are some Anglican priests, however, who are ordained by two bishops -- one an Anglican bishop (who is technically invalid) and the other a valid but schismatic bishop. Thus, they attain true priesthood, not through their own Anglican Church, but through schismatic Catholic bishops (often through a pedigree line of a schismatic Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa of Brazil who was excommunicated in 1945).

An Anglican priest can convect the true Eucharist only if he happened to have been ordained by a valid schismatic bishop.

Thus, you can see why schism is so terrible. It is not just a break in unity of the Body of Christ, it is an abuse of our Lord's Body (His real presence in the Eucharist).

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary