Roman Catholic Church is invalidly ordaining bishops

Catholic doctrine is that the powers and authority of a bishop have been passed down from the twelve apostles. A break in the chain means the end result is a fake bishop.  The bishop is held to have the full priesthood.  A fake bishop may think he ordains priests but they are not priests at all and their Masses will not be really Masses.

One way the Roman Catholic Church has got so much respect in the Christian family is because it is allegedly very careful with safeguarding the ordination line.

Pope Pius XII in Sacramentum Ordinis in 1947, declared what is the essential for the ordination/consecration of bishops.  "Complete in Your Priest the fullness of Your ministry, and sanctify him, adorned with the ornament of all glorification, with the dew of heavenly anointing".

The rite says the intention is to give full ordination.  The new ritual merely reads, "And now pour out upon this chosen one the power that comes from You, the excellent spirit You gave Your beloved Son Jesus Christ, which He Himself gave the Holy Apostles, who built the Church in every place as Your Sanctuary for the everlasting glory and praise of His name.” It does not read as an ordination at all but as a confirmation.

The prayer saying what a bishop is for has been abolished: "Give him, O Lord, the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven... Whatsoever he shall bind upon earth, let it be bound likewise in Heaven, and whatsoever he shall loose upon earth, let it likewise be loosed in Heaven. Whose sins he shall retain, let them be retained, and do Thou remit the sins of whomsoever he shall remit... Grant him, O Lord, an Episcopal chair..."

“When anyone has rightly and seriously made use of the due form and the matter requisite for effecting or conferring the sacrament he is considered by that very fact to do what the Church does. On this principle rests the doctrine that a sacrament is truly conferred by the ministry of one who is a heretic or unbaptized, provided the Catholic rite be employed. On the other hand, if the rite be changed, with the manifest intention of introducing another rite not approved by the Church, and of rejecting what the Church does, and what by the institution of Christ belongs to the nature of the sacrament, then it is clear that not only is the necessary intention wanting to the sacrament, but that the intention is adverse to and destructive of the sacrament” Pope Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae, 1896.

While the Church does not assess the intention of the consecrating bishop, it says that if the ceremony does not declare clearly what it is doing then the bishop has to be assumed to be not trying to do what the Church does.  If there is no intention to do what the Church does then there is no sacrament.  That is why baptising with whiskey would not work.  This is not seen as neutral - acting and not doing what the Church does implies a rejection of what the Church does.

In 1996, Maureen Day wrote to her traditionalist bishop, Fellay the SSPX leader:

The valid Ordination Rites which were actually in use, in the early days of the Church, provide an illustration of how the principle of determinatio ex adjunctis applies to Sacramental Forms. With regard to these early Rites: the wording of the Form usually contained virtually no expression of the conferring of the valid Christian Priesthood (to our modern understanding); and the Rite as a whole usually contained virtually no additional ceremonial. But the conformity of the Rite with the traditional liturgical practices of that time, and, if the Rite was a Catholic one, the acceptance of its validity by the Catholic Church, will have constituted an Historical Context which will have imparted the required valid signification to the Form.

Her statement does not give much assurance that any bishop or priest is really ordained.

Dr. Francis Clark wrote, “In the Bull Apostolicae Curae of 1896, pronouncing Anglican orders invalid, Pope Leo XIII singled out one factor as vital; on it his central argument depends. It is the ‘native character and spirit’ of the Ordinal, the anti-sacerdotal and anti-sacrificial connotation, which, he declared, the new rite acquired from the circumstances of its origin and which rendered its wording incapable of serving as a sacramental form for ordination.”

Comment: The Catholic doctrine that the words matter which is why Anglican bishops are not ordained does not fit how the early Church did worse rites than the Anglicans did and the Church recognises them!