Bishop Joseph V. Brennan, Catholic Bishop of Fresno (California) appears in a video circulated on social media actively participating by imposing hands on the elect and reciting the consecratory prayer during an Anglican episcopal ordination.
He did not attend in choir habit from the nave, as ecumenical courtesy would allow.
He was at the center of the rite, performing the essential gestures of consecration.
The material has been circulated by Novus Ordo Watch.
What is seen in the video
In the video, Brennan is alongside the group of Anglican bishops at the central moment of the ceremony: the «ordinand» kneeling, hands extended over his head, the consecratory prayer.
There is no room for interpretation: anyone familiar with the Anglican Ordinal recognizes the exact moment when the rite intends to confer the episcopate.
That the Bishop of Fresno participates in that instant - imposition of hands with the consecratory formula - is what Catholic ecumenism has never authorized.
The limits of the Ecumenical Directory
Those who minimize the episode will invoke, as always, the 1993 Ecumenical Directory. It is advisable to read it before quoting it. Nos. 118 to 121 admit the presence of a Catholic bishop at celebrations of other confessions as a fraternal gesture and common prayer.
What the Directory does not authorize - and could not do so without contradicting previous Magisterium - is participation in the matter and form of the rite.
The correct canonical qualification
It is advisable to specify, because Canon Law admits no shortcuts. What Brennan has done is not an illicit episcopal consecration in the sense of c. 1387 - the canon applied to Écône in 1988. For Rome, Anglican orders are invalid (Apostolicae Curae, 1896), so Brennan has not “validly consecrated” anyone without pontifical mandate.
The correct qualification is another, and equally severe:
Simulation of a sacrament (c. 1379 §1, 2º CIC), in the wording of Pascite gregem Dei (2021). Performing the gestures and words proper to sacramental confection outside the conditions of validity configures this type, reserved to the Apostolic See when the active subject is a bishop.
Illicit communicatio in sacris (c. 1365), by far exceeding the limits of c. 844.
Public scandal and doctrinal confusion, which although not autonomous criminal types, are the concrete harm to the People of God.
Apostolicae Curae remains in force
Leo XIII solemnly taught in Apostolicae Curae that Anglican orders are absolute nullas et omnino irritas.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in the 1998 Note on the Professio fidei, placed this teaching among the truths definitive tenenda: irrevocable.
To deny them - says the Note - places the subject in opposition to Catholic doctrine.
Imposing hands in an Anglican ordination communicates, with the language of the body that is proper to the liturgy, exactly the opposite of what those two documents teach.
The asymmetry that hurts
And here comes the question that every Catholic has the right to ask aloud:
Every time the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X announces episcopal ordinations - invoking a state of necessity and the traditional teaching on suppletory jurisdiction - the Vatican response is immediate.
Notes, warnings, reminders that those who participate incur latae sententiae.
The disciplinary machinery works with speed, clarity, and doctrinal firmness.
Will it work with the same speed when the deviation goes in the opposite direction?
We do not ask that what is canonically not equivalent be equated. The Écône consecrations were valid but illicit acts, sanctioned under the current c. 1387.
Brennan’s, if confirmed, is sacramental simulation under c. 1379. They are different types, with different penalties.
What we do ask - and it is legitimate to ask - is that canonical discipline be applied with the same diligence in one direction and the other.
Because the faithful’s suspicion is not paranoia. There is institutional zeal to pursue deviation “by excess of tradition” and prolonged silence before deviation “by excess of modernity.”
That asymmetry, maintained over time, communicates something that theologically unformed faithful grasp perfectly: that not all disobediences weigh the same.
That there are tolerated disobediences and persecuted disobediences. And that the boundary between one and the other is not marked by doctrine, but by ideological sympathy.
If Brennan does not even receive a canonical notification, while bishops who agree to consecrate for the FSSPX are punctually reminded of the penalties that threaten them, the message will be as unequivocal as it is devastating.
What would correspond
Being a diocesan Bishop, the case is reserved to the Roman Pontiff.
The channel is the Dicastery for Bishops, eventually with intervention from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith if the doctrine on apostolic succession is considered compromised.
The minimum required - before any penal decision - is a public clarification that reaffirms the validity of Apostolicae Curae.
Not to humiliate anyone, but to prevent silence from being read, as it inevitably will be, as tacit derogation.
Endorsement: the Mullally case in the Clementine Chapel
The Fresno episode is not an isolated fact. Mrs. Sarah Mullally, designated to occupy the See of Canterbury, visited the Clementine Chapel, where she prayed alongside Archbishop Flavio Pace, Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, and imparted a “blessing” while Msgr. Pace himself bowed and made the sign of the cross.
Making the sign of the cross before the blessing of someone the Catholic Church does not recognize as an ordained minister- remember that Apostolicae Curae is added here by Ordinatio Sacerdotalis - amounts to recognizing her as such.
And it does so, moreover, by the second-in-command of the dicastery precisely competent in matters of Christian unity.
Two episodes, two continents, one same question: does the Church continue to teach what it has solemnly taught, or not?