Reconstructing "The New Donatists" -- I

My regular correspondent sent me a link to another blog post from 2007 with commentary on Msgr Steenson's previous essay, now apparently purged from the web, "The New Donatists", which contains an excerpt. Depending on what else may come in today, I'll discuss this more tomorrow with whatever excerpts and commentary that may become available. I think this essay is important in the intellectual history of Anglicanorum coetibus due to the insights it provides into the thought processes of Jeffrey Steenson, a key player in its inception.

But it's worth reviewing what Donatism was in the history of the Church. I found this essay by Patrick Madrid at Catholic Answers:

The schism had gotten under way before Donatus came to power, but it became identified with him thereafter. His predecessor, Majorinus, was elected as a rival bishop in Carthage because the bishops who had elected Caecilianus had dealt leniently with the traditores, men and women whose faith was compromised during Diocletian’s brief but bloody persecution, initiated in February, 303.

. . . The traditores were those who renounced Christ to avoid martyrdom or who, when their churches and houses were searched by the Roman authorities, handed over sacred artifacts rather than face death. In light of the many who endured martyrdom rather than renounce Christ, those who survived the persecution (which ended in 305) were outraged that priests and deacons who were traditores were allowed to resume their ministry after being reconciled to the Church through confession. This perceived injustice provoked a popular backlash with grave theological implications.

Majorinus and other leaders of this faction asserted that the sacraments were invalid, even wicked in the eyes of God, if dispensed by a traditor bishop, priest, or deacon. This view expanded to include clergy who were in a state of mortal sin of whatever sort.

By denying the intrinsic efficacy of the sacraments the Donatists claimed the sacraments could be celebrated validly only by those in the state of grace. They required the re-baptism of any Catholic who came over to their sect.

Donatists had the outward forms of Catholicism, including bishops, priests, and deacons, Mass, and the veneration of the relics of martyrs. The heresy of Donatism lay not primarily in the denial of particular Catholic doctrines but in the assertion that only “sinless” men could administer the sacraments validly. The schism was effected by the rejection of the lawful authority of validly-elected Catholic bishops and culminated in illicit but valid ordinations of schismatic bishops, priests, and deacons.

Steenson in his essay drew a parallel between those Episcopalians who, in his view, were insisting that gay priests and bishops be "sinless" in administering the sacraments and the Donatists, who were heretics and schismatics. His implication was that dissident Episcopalians, at the time of his writing in the process of seceding from TEC to form the ACNA, were forming an equivalent schismatic sect.

One problem for Steenson's argument, leaving aside other arguments we've already cited from "continuers", is that probably the most erudite discussion of Donatism in recent decades is Catholic theologian B C Butler's in The Church and Unity (1979). Butler's particular argument, against the Anglican scholar S L Greenslade, is that a detailed reading of the Church Fathers on schismatics, especially including the Donatists, suggests that Anglicans are also schismatic.

Thus an argument from one schismatic that others in the same group are also schismatic is ridiculous. Oddly enough, my regular correspondent makes the point that Steenson's bent was theological and scholarly, not administrative, but certainly in his later role as a professor of patristics in Catholic seminaries, he might have been expected to be familiar with Butler. One might also have expected a man of integrity to disavow the contradictions implicit in "The New Donatists", but instead, he seems to have gone to some effort simply to scrub the whole record.

Of the text itself, my regular correspondent notes

I note it was originally delivered in Elora, ON, a small town about an hour and a half from Toronto. Maybe there is a copy on file in a Divinity school library here.

I hope anyone who has located the original text, or other references on line, can forward them to me. I've now and then been puzzled here about Steenson's somewhat careless and imprecise expression -- his reference to Anglicans coming into the Church via Anglicanorum coetibus as "catechumens" in another public statement was incorrect; these people are clearly already baptized and are "candidates". But in the whole context of Anglicanorum coetibus, none of this should be a surprise.