Until the year 1054 AD when the first unhappy division took place, the Church was as it should be, "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic." What happened after the division of course appears differently to the mind of every individual and the truth becomes hard to discern. It is safe to say then, that the only way of proving the truth of any contemporary interpretation of Christianity, is to submit it to the examination of the common mind of the Christian Church before its division took place. Was it believed by all Christians everywhere, at all times before the year 1054 A.D.? ~ is the test every question of faith should meet.
The Old Catholic Movement maintains that the obvious basis of reuniting the several divisions of the Christian Church is the common acceptance of the Faith of the entire Church prior to the first division in the year 1054 A.D. from whence all the familiar divisions of today ultimately stem. This theory admits that the 16th century Reformation is not principally responsible for the "unhappy divisions" that beset the Christian religion in the western world.
What caused the first division was not a
point of faith so much as it was a matter of jurisdiction and administration.
History reveals that the early Church was governed by the Apostolic
authority vested in all the bishops. Matters of faith and morals affecting the
whole Church were brought before an Ecumenical Council (of which there were
seven universally accepted) over which the five great bishops of Christendom
presided. These bishops, whose Sees represented the
important cities of
If we are to single out the primary cause
of the first division of this Church, it would be the deeply rooted objection
of the Patriarch of Rome to this particular theory of Church government.
The four patriarchs of the Church in the East maintained the traditional belief in the administration of Christ’s Church, offering for the sake of unity the title "primus inter pares" (first amongst equals) to the Roman bishop.
But with the Church of the West developing a strong belief that a kind of primacy resided in the Roman bishop by divine enactment, the breach widened into an open division and henceforth the Christian Church in the East and in the West was to be distinct and divided. In the East, to this day, the patriarchal theory of the Church’s government is held, while in the West the emphasis on the personal supremacy of the Pope over all Christendom was gradually increased from the year 1054 until the final definition of Papal infallibility was decreed in the Vatican Council of A.D. 1870 as a dogma which all Christians were bound to accept as an article of faith.
It is important for our immediate purpose to establish the basis upon which a school of thought regarding the Church’s administration developed within the Roman Church, flourishing time and again in such celebrated and glorious figures as Savanarola, Paulo Sarpl, the Scholars of Port-Royal, the so-called "Jansenists", the Church of Holland and others, to develop finally in the twilight of the nineteenth century into what came to be known as "Primitive" or "Old" Catholicism.
We are left free now in the following paragraphs to touch upon the stirring and romantic history of the Port-Royalists of France, the rise of the movement within the Church of Rome and finally the dramatic Vatican Council which culminated in the definite formation of the present Old Catholic movement whose purpose is not a new reformation from without, but a quiet restoration of the Christian Church to its original state from within.
From 1054 A.D. to the very threshold of our own times, the question of defining the extent of Papal authority continually occupied the growing Catholic Church in the West. A struggle was manifested in two distinct schools of thought.
One school of thought maintained the belief that the supreme teaching authority within the Church rested in the Ecumenical Councils on the ground that all Catholic Bishops have equal pastoral authority.
The other school in opposition advanced the principle called "ultra-montanism," which maintained that the Pope was above the authority of the Councils.
During the 17th Century "ultra-montanism" found its principle resistance in the
The entire body of French clergy drew up a
declaration in 1682 A.D. in order to protect the canonical rights of the
The Declaration, signed by thirty-four
Archbishops and Bishops and formulated under the guidance of Bossuet, Bishop of
Meaux, reaffirmed the position which had at all times
been dear to the
writers attacked the French clergy. In response, Bishop Bossuet wrote a
"Defense of the Declaration" which so powerfully influenced belief in
the principles held by the
However, the most powerful factor in
preserving the "Old" Catholic tradition in
Francois Mauriac, whose judgment of Port
Royal is obviously biased by personal predilections, nevertheless admits, in
his recent book on
Port Royal in France was not only the vessel containing the mental and spiritual giants of its day, but it proved a major influence in preserving for our time the Tradition of the Church, that her children believe, and that the Saints knew, loved, lived, and died for.
To trace the origin of
The community of nuns of Port Royal flourished during the 14th and 15th centuries and attained certain fame, but in the 16th century the religious wars and the war with England tended to relax the discipline of all religious houses ~ and Port Royal did not escape from this infection of its religious life. As everywhere, in the religious houses of the time, the nuns of Port Royal became worldly and the rule of St. Benedict was forgotten, while for more than thirty years, no sermon had been preached save at seven or eight professions.
The regeneration of
To escape the unhealthy conditions
engendered by the swamp land surrounding the Abbey, the community was required
to take a house in
About 1636 A.D. a remarkable group of men ~ physicians, men of letters, soldiers, scholars and ecclesiasts, influenced by a friend of Port Royal, the Abbe de S. Cyran, took up their residence at Les Grange, near Port Royal des Champs, where they resolved to lead a life of self-renunciation and consecration and took for their rallying cry "Thought allied with faith", making redemption of souls their mission. These men were the Solitaires. They took no vows, but systematically divided their time between religious exercises, literary pursuits, teaching and manual labour.
The Solitaires were regarded as forming a
joint community with the nuns of
The Abbey of Port Royal was more than a
convent of reformed nuns and the community of "Solitaires" more than
a band of holy men gathered together from every walk of life to give themselves
wholly to God. They had ideas which, supported by brilliant minds and holy
lives, were considered dangerous to the pretensions of ultra-montanists, scholastics and ecclesiastical politicos. Saint
Cyran had worked with Cornelius Jansen, Bishop of
Ypres, in a study of the early Fathers in an attempt to restore vitality to the
lifeless theology of the time and restore the Church to the simplicity and
purity of primitive times. Jansen’s work culminated in the publication of
in which their theories, based on the writings of
Richelieu, who had not been able to win
Saint Cyran, whom he considered the "most
learned man in
But the Port Royalists did not flee fro the
ordeal. Saint Cyran, upon the death of
The ruin of
Quesnel, the last of the so-called "Jansenists" connected with
The French cause upheld by the Gallican Bishops against the growing claims of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, was to be crushed under the heel of Napoleon, who proved an unwitting ally of ultra-montanists. However, the Tradition and Episcopate of the Catholic Church was to be carried on through the Church of Holland and preserved until the day when the ultimate goal of ultra-montanism, the Declaration of Papal Infallibility, was to enslave all Roman Catholics to the will of a few and leave a portion of the Catholic flock, that adhered to the old and unchangeable faith of the Christian Church, without shepherds.
Here the intervention of the Hand of God, through the agency of Dominique Mary Varlet, Roman Catholic Bishop of Ascalon, forged the link by which Old Catholics the world over were to receive an Episcopate of undeniable Catholic authority and Apostolic Succession.
In 1697, exercising this customary privilege, the Chapter elected Peter Codde, their Vicar General and already Bishop of Sebaste, as their Archbishop. The Pope would not recognize this election and substituted a person of his own appointment, Theodore de Cock, who was expelled by the Chapter. But with the death of Archbishop Codde the See of Utrecht became vacant and Rome, refusing to accept Bishops elected by the Metropolitan Chapter, adopted a policy of withholding the Episcopate from the Church of Holland in the hope that the independent Church of Holland would submit to the will of the papacy or die a natural death.
Bishop Varlet, a French refugee in
There were Catholics in countries other
William E. Gladstone in his book "Vaticanism" quotes Bishop Baine,
a Roman Catholic Bishop in
hoped to eliminate this belief amongst the Roman Catholics of Great Britain and
Up to the eve of the famous Vatican I Council we have shown, in the preceding paragraphs, the uninterrupted existence within the Roman Church of "Old" Catholics struggling always to maintain an non-mutilated faith in the Catholic Church. But with the curtain rising on the first Vatican Council, we enter the final phase of their struggles, a period that is, from any point of view, the most critical in the history of the papacy. On the 18th of July 1870 the transition of Roman Catholicism into a new phase of Catholicism took place, to leave only a remnant of the faithful clinging to what the Church had always, everywhere believed ~ the "Old" Catholic Faith, unchanged, yet progressively revealing.
Sensing the growing intellectual freedom of Catholics everywhere, the ultra-montanists felt that only by an absolute dictatorship over the thoughts and conscience of the faithful could Rome regain its former power over the entire occidental world ~ a power weakened by the great Protestant Reformation. The establishment of such a dictatorship they sought, and obtained, through the agency of the first Vatican Council of 1870.
Up to the time of this Council the personal infallibility of the Pope was considered nothing more than a "pious opinion" held by a faction within the Church. The larger part of the Catholic Church so little believed in it, that when Protestants reproached them with this superstition, Roman theologians regarded it as a calumny. The Vatican Council was a bold step in an attempt to make what had formerly been regarded as a "Protestant invention" into the keystone of the Catholic Faith.
Pius IX, an aging pope without much
theological culture, who had been inspired by the Jesuits into sensing his own
personal infallibility, accordingly, to secure the official recognition of the
Church by a so-called General Council in this matter, summoned the Vatican
Council to open on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin
Mary (8th December 1870). On that very day, fifteen years earlier, Pius IX had
himself proclaimed this new dogma, and a fervid prelate, who had just returned
from a visit to
In the Vatican Council the representatives of the great majority of Roman Catholics, the German, French, Austrian, English, Czech, Irish and American bishops, oddly enough formed the minority. The great majority was to be found in Italian bishops representing numerous diminutive dioceses and in titular bishops without dioceses, whose expenses, Cardinal Schwarzenburg said, "the Pope was obliged to pay entire, even to their very socks, so that they voted blindly at his bidding." The minority had little opportunity of voicing their opposition to the creation of the new dogma. An order of business described by a Roman Catholic Archbishop who was present at the Council as "a cursed congeries of pitfalls," precluded all free discussion.
If the minority could not be heard in
Council and wished to have a memoir of their opposition printed, the printing
In a last minute appeal to the Pope, when
several bishops were allowed an audience, the proud bishop of
With all opposition dispersed the ultra-montanists sealed their triumph in the final vote with still two negative voices on July 18th, 1870. On that day, in the midst of one of the fiercest storms to break across the city of Rome, accompanied by thundering and lightning, while rain poured in through the broken glass of the roof near him, Pius IX rose in the darkness, and by the aid of the feeble light of a candle, read the momentous affirmation of his own infallibility. "We declare it to be an article of faith that the Roman Pope possesses infallibility in any doctrine relating to faith and morals. If anyone shall oppose this our decision, which God forbid, let him be accursed,"
The storm has been variously interpreted by
friend or foe, as comparable to the solemn legislation of
With the declaration of the doctrine of papal infallibility at the closing session of the First Vatican Council in 1870, a new condition of faith was to be imposed on all Catholics. As far as the ultra-montanists were concerned, the question that stirred men’s hearts within the church for centuries past was now settled ~ in their favour. "The Pope had spoken" indeed, but the cause was by no means ended. In fact, the real struggle was now taking shape.
There were able and learned members of the Roman Catholic Church to whom it was impossible to reconcile the new dogma with what they had always believed. The Catholic consciousness of early ages presented a theory out of which papal infallibility could never legitimately grow. The primitive theory, as the Councils of the Church made plain, placed final authority in the ecumenical council of all the bishops of the entire church and the transference of this authority from the entire body of the church to one individual was no true Catholic development at all, but a dislocation of the original constitution of the Church.
If most of the Bishops were coerced or
threatened by official intimidation to accept the new belief, there were others
that officialdom could not touch nor frighten. Several Bishops refused to
publish the new dogma within their diocese. In
again if bishops were to prove as "timorous as women" in the face of
official displeasure, then it remained for theologians and scholars to defend
the faith. Such men as von Shulte,
Reinkins, Lord Acton, von Dollinger
and other distinguished scholars of northern
revulsion to the new dogma arose like a swift tide
amongst lay-folk and clergy throughout northern
Shortly before this, forty-three professors and teachers of the University of Munich, not members of the theological faculty, drew up a similar declaration, and this was followed in April 1871 by the "Munich Museum" address with eighteen thousand signers, which went to the government, its purpose being "to prevent the adoption in church and school of the new dogma and to revise the relations of church and state."
These lay-folk looked to brave men for
leadership who now came to the front in the struggle for the restoration of the
ancient faith. In
The actual rebuilding of the church was far more difficult than the creation of thousand-voiced protests. How should it take shape? These men, pious Catholics, inflamed with the passion for truth, desired to remain where they were. For this very reason genuine Catholicism, not the ultra-montanist, but the ideal Catholicism of the Church as it had always, everywhere been known was the cherished hope of their souls and the pattern after which they wanted to build. Irrevocably outlawed by the Roman Church it was not to take form outside of that body and its destiny lay in their hands.
In this sense, the Munich Congress, made up
of three hundred delegates from
They rejected the newly created dogmas of Pius IX, including that of the immaculate conception of Mary, and further declared, "We aim, with the cooperation of theological and canonical science, at a reform of the church which, conceived in the spirit of the ancient church, shall remove the existing defects and abuses, and in particular meet the just wishes of the Catholic people for constitutionally regulated participation in church affairs."
Under brilliant leadership the movement rose to meet the challenge of persecution and intimidation which its larger erring sister church of Rome now leveled at it. Priests were cut off from their pensions unless they subscribed to the new dogma of Papal Infallibility, which soon became known amongst them as the "hunger dogma." Boycott and social ostracism and even the arm of the state were employed by the infuriated ultra-montanists in their attempts to force the submission of the recalcitrant Catholic population to their wishes. Against all this the conscientious faith of thousands of earnest Christians stood firm.
Though these Catholics preserved the faith as they had always believed it, the question that was not fearfully evident to the flock without a shepherd was how to continue the succession of this faith for unborn generations. It was necessary with the establishment of the Old Catholic Church order and its independent government that a bishop was chosen. But how could a legitimate bishop be obtained, since, according to Catholic conception, a candidate could be consecrated only by another legitimate bishop?
The Dutch Archbishop, Loos,
in 1872, had helped the German Old Catholics with confirmation and was willing
to consecrate their bishop, but it was necessary first for the movement to have
the recognition of the state. Dr. von Schulte applied to the Prussian
Government and received Royal recognition, as a Catholic, for the bishop to be
elected, as well as a grant of 48,000 marks for the expenses of the bishop and
his administration. Old Catholicism, without this recognition of the state,
would have been, in the eyes of many European peoples, a sect, and it would
have meant a renunciation on the part of the Old Catholic Movement of its legal
standing and its right to the same support which the Roman Church enjoyed if it
had not sought this recognition. With this accomplished the delegates of the
German congregations, both clerical and lay, in the manner of the ancient
Church in the chapel of the City Hall of Cologne June 4th, 1873, unanimously
elected Professor D. Reinkins, of Bonn, as their
future Bishop. As Archbishop Loos had just died,
Bishop Heykamp of
Out of the hard struggles of countless intrepid little bands of Catholic priests and laymen all the elements within the Church that rebelled against the corruption of its faith and realized the original Christian Ideal of the one Flock of Christ, were drawn together and, if at first in the shape of a small model only, assumed the form of the ancient Church again.
But the greater works of this small church were only now to begin even if its martyrs and saints, the progenitors in small numbers through the ages, lay in eternal sleep. A new spiritual impetus, an evangelical Catholic spirit was to be borne on the first winds of the twentieth century as they swept, first across Poland, then through England, France, the Balkans, and thence to America, to bring a new sense of spiritual freedom with the old and unchanging truths of Christianity ~ born to set the souls of all people free.
The Archbishop and his little flock in
Certain unprincipled elements of this
"Anglo-Catholic" group exerted pressure on the
The clique of English churchmen continued to use this disreputable stratagem against the Old Catholics in the English speaking world even after Bishop Mathew’s death. Bishop Mathew, however, maintained a high standard of Christian tolerance and continued his work, unmoved by the persistent noisiness of his detractors who nonetheless caused him much pain.
As evidence of their confidence in
Archbishop Mathew, the Dutch Bishops had him participate in every consecration
A noted author and historian, Bishop Mathew had an excellent knowledge of the Orthodox Church and established the most cordial relations between the English Old Catholics and the Patriarchal See of Antioch through his Eminence the Most Reverend Archbishop Gearrasimos Messara of Beruit, Syria, who on August 5th, 1911, received the Old Catholics under Bishop Mathew into union and full communion with the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch. Thus a genuine and practical raproachment between the Catholics of the East and of the West was for the first time established after a breach which had lasted almost ten centuries.
What distinguished the scholarly Archbishop Mathew and the Episcopate he established in Scotland and America from that of the continental Old Catholics was his insistence on the inviolable Episcopal authority of each national body of Old Catholics. This had been in the minds of the original Old Catholic congresses, but the German Episcopate, because of its preponderance of numbers and wealth attempted to create a small hierarchical system patterned on the Roman administration with the Archbishop of Utrecht in the position of ranking prelate or "little pope." The English Old Catholics, seeing in this the possibilities of the former mistake of the Western Church with a Germanic, instead of an Italian, spiritual protectorate over the whole Christian world, restated the original Old Catholic principles of autonomy and have received the support of their Orthodox friends in this respect.
Bishop Mathew’s personal contribution to the Old Catholic Movement can be summed up as a broadening of the Catholic mind to an acceptance of the necessity of the unifying of Christ’s Church on the basis of the original tenets of the Christian Faith as it was once believed by all Christians everywhere, and the recognition that this can only be accomplished by complete cooperation with Christians of the Eastern Churches, whose proximity in language, in tradition, and in mind with the early Christians, makes them the ideal vehicle.
Bishop Mathew’s death, on December 20th, 1919, the small body of Old Catholics
The Right Reverend +Seán Manchester, O.S.G.
(standing before lectern, centre)
Presiding Bishop, British Old Catholic Church