Old Catholic Church
From CatholicWikipedia
The Old Catholic Church is a Christian denomination originating with mainly groups in Northern Europe (Netherlands, Germany, and elsewhere) that would not go along with the Roman sect, when -- in the 1870s-- the Bishop of Rome declared himself to be infallibile on matters of church doctrine. This was promulgated by the Roman synod, called the First Vatican Council (1869–1870). At that point, bishops in the northern parts of Europe observed that the Italians were being too cavalier with their innovations to church teachings.
The Old Catholic Church holds close to ideas of ecclesiastical liberalism. The Old Catholic Church is in full communion with the Anglican Communion but not the Roman sect, which it considers to be schismatic and prays that it will regain its humility and rejoin mainstream Christianity.
The term "Old Catholic" was first used in 1853 to describe the members of the See of Utrecht (Holland) who were never under papal authority. The Old Catholic Churches which form the Union of Utrecht look to one church group per country, and that church group may become part of the Union of Utrecht. Each national church remains fundamentally independent. There is no monarch, such as a pope, who can impose his will on other church groups.
Contents |
[edit] Beliefs
Members of the Church, called the laity, remain soverign. At no time does the Old Catholic Church order anyone to have a certain belief or reality map, or to perform a certain ritual at a certain time. The Church would say that it is not a "melting pot" but rather a "tossed salad," where each individual retains its own character. Taken as a whole, the Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, but each individual is an incarnation of that Body. How that works is a mystery.
Old Catholics reject papal infallibility, instead proposing that only the Church in Ecumenical Council may speak infallibly. For Old Catholics, the fullness of authoritative power in the Church is vested in the Bishopric, and a Council of the Bishops as a whole alone may speak infallibly.
Old Catholics view the Bishop of Rome (the so-called "pope") as primus inter pares or "First Among Equals". Old Catholics usually refer to the Church Father St. Vincent of Lerins in his saying: "We must hold fast to that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all the Faithful."
[edit] History
[edit] The Netherlands
Willibrord was consecrated to the episcopacy by Pope Sergius I in 696 at Rome. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he established his see at Ütrecht. In addition, he established the dioceses at Deventer and Haarlem. The Diocese of Utrecht provided two prominent writers on the spiritual life, Geert Groote, who founded the Brethren of the Common Life, and Thomas à Kempis, who wrote the Imitation of Christ.
In 1125, at the request of the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II, and Bishop Heribert of Utrecht, the Roman bishop (Eugene III) re-affirmed Utrecht's right to elect its own bishops. This was again affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. In 1520, Pope Leo X told the Roman curia and courts that no clergy or laity from Utrecht would ever be tried by a Roman tribunal.
During the Protestant Reformation the Roman Catholic Church "suspended" Dutch dioceses north of the Rhine and Waal. Protestants occupied most church buildings, and those remaining were confiscated by the government of the Dutch Republic of Seven Provinces, which favoured Calvanism.
About a third of the population in the northern parts of the Netherlands remained Catholic. Clergy secretly celebrated the sacraments in a variety of places and were cared for by German and Flemish missionaries.
In 1691, the Jesuits accused Petrus Codde, the then apostolic vicar, of favouring Jansenism. The Roman pontiff -- Innocent XII -- ignored church law covering Dutch autonomy and appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the accusations. The commission concluded that the accusations were groundless.
In 1700 a new bishop of Rome -- Clement XI -- summoned Codde to Rome in order to participate in the Jubilee Year, whereupon a second commission was appointed to try Codde. The result of this second proceeding was again acquittal. However, in 1701 Clement XI decided to suspend Codde and appoint a successor. The Church in Utrecht refused to accept the replacement and Codde continued in office until 1703, when he resigned.
After Codde's resignation, the Diocese of Utrecht chose Cornelius van Steenoven as bishop. He was consecrated by Dominique Marie Varlet, the bishop of Babylon (1678-1742), who was visiting the Netherlands. Van Steenoven appointed and ordained bishops to the sees of Deventer, Haarlem and Groningen. Although the pope was duly notified of all proceedings, the Holy See still regarded these dioceses as vacant due to papal permission not being sought. The pope, therefore, continued to appoint apostolic vicars for the Netherlands. Van Steenoven and the other bishops were excommunicated and thus began the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands.
Some Dutch Catholics remained in full communion with the Roman sect. However, due to prevailing anti-papal feeling among the powerful Dutch Calvinists, the Church of Utrecht was tolerated and even praised by the government of the Dutch Republic.
In 1853 Pope Pius IX received guarantees of religious freedom from the Dutch King (Willem II) and established a Catholic hierarchy, loyal to the pope, in the Netherlands. This existed alongside that of the Old Catholic See of Utrecht. Thereafter in the Netherlands the Utrecht hierarchy was referred to as the Old Catholic Church to distinguish it from the heretical Roman group.
In the mind of the Vatical, the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht had maintained apostolic succession and its clergy thus celebrated valid sacraments in every respect.
[edit] Impact of the First Vatican Council
After the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), several groups of Austrian, German and Swiss Christians rejected Rome's change in church doctrine concerning papal infallibility in matters of faith and morals and left to form their own churches. These were supported by the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, who ordained priests and bishops for them. Later the Dutch were united more formally with many of these groups under the name Utrecht Union of Churches".
In the spring of 1871 a convention in Munich attracted several hundred participants, including Church of England and Protestant observers. The most notable leader of the movement, though maintaining a certain distance from the Old Catholic Church as an institution, was the renowned church historian and priest Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890), who had been excommunicated by the pope because of his support for the affair.
The convention decided to form the "Old Catholic Church" in order to distinguish its members from what they saw as the novel teaching of papal infallibility in the Catholic Church. Although it had continued to use the Roman Rite, from the middle of the 18th century, the Dutch Old Catholic See of Utrecht had increasingly used the vernacular instead of Latin. The churches which broke from the Holy See in 1870 and subsequently entered into union with the Old Catholic See of Utrecht gradually introduced the vernacular into the Liturgy until it completely replaced Latin in 1877. In 1874 Old Catholics removed the requirement of clerical celibacy.
The Old Catholic Church in Germany received some support from the new German Empire of Otto von Bismarck, whose policy was increasingly hostile towards the Catholic Church in the 1870s and 1880s. In Austria-Hungary|Austrian territories, pan-Germanic nationalist groups, like those of Georg Ritter von Schönerer, promoted the conversion to Old Catholicism or Lutheranism of those Catholics loyal to the Holy See.
[edit] Doctrine
The Old Catholic Church shares much doctrine and liturgy with the Roman Catholic Church, but has a more liberal stance on most issues, such as the ordination of women, the morality of homosexual acts, artificial contraception and liturgical reforms such as open communion. Its liturgy has departed significantly from the Tridentine Mass, as is shown in the http://www.alt-katholisch.de/information/liturgie/altarbook/index.html English translation of the German Altarbook (missal). In 1994 the German bishops decided to ordain women as priests, and put this into practice on 27 May 1996; similar decisions and practices followed in Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands.[1] The Utrecht Union allows those who are divorced to have a new religious marriage and upholds no teaching on birth control, leaving such decisions to the married couple.[2]
The "Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany" (Katholisches Bistum der Alt-Katholiken in Deutschland) is
- autonomous,
- synodally structured,
- catholic
- a church, which acknowledges the diversity and the essential teaching and institutions of the early, undivided church during the first millennium. Its origins lie in various Catholic reform movements.
[edit] United States
Soon after Old Catholicism's events at the end of the 19th century, Old Catholic missionaries came to the United States.
On 28 April 1908, Arnold Harris Mathew, a suspended Catholic priest who had joined the Old Catholic Church, was ordained to the episcopacy by Utrecht Archbishop Gerhardus Gul, assisted by the Old Catholic bishops of Deventer and Berne, in St. Gertrude's Old Catholic Cathedral, Utrecht. Mathew had been ordained a bishop as the Old Catholic Church believed that he had a significant following, and wished to establish a mission in the United Kingdom. Only two years later, Mathew declared his autonomy from the Union of Utrecht, with which he had experienced tension from the beginning. Thus began the Independent Old Catholic movement.
Mathew sent missionaries to the United States, including the theosophist Bishop J. I. Wedgwood (1892-1950) and Bishop Rudolph de Landas Berghes et de Rache (1873–1920). De Landas arrived in the United States on 7 November 1914, hoping to unite the various independent Old Catholic jurisdictions under Archbishop Mathew. He ordained a significant number of priests and consecrated others including William Francis Brothers and Carmel Henry Carfora.
In the area of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Joseph René Vilatte began working with Catholics of Belgian ancestry, who tended to be isolated influence due to their geographical position. Vilatte was ordained a deacon on 6 June 1885 and priest on 7 June 1885 by the Most Rev. Eduard Herzog, bishop of the Old Catholic Church of Switzerland. Vilatte's work provided the only sacramental presence in that particular part of rural Wisconsin.
In time, Vilatte asked the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht to be ordained a bishop so that he might confirm, but his petition was not granted. Vilatte sought opportunities for consecration in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches. He was ordained a bishop in India on the 28 May 1892 under the jurisdiction of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch. Over the years, literally hundreds of people in the United States have come to claim apostolic succession from Vilatte; none are in communion with, nor recognised by, the Old Catholic See of Utrecht.
[edit] Polish National Catholic Church
The Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC) is not in communion with any other body, and it is one of the largest of the Old Catholic communities in the United States. The Polish National Catholic Church began in the late 19th century over issues concerning the ownership of church property and the domination of the U.S. hierarchy by Irish prelates. The church traces its apostolic succession directly to the Utrecht Union and thus possesses orders and sacraments which are recognised by the Holy See.
In 2003 the PNCC withdrew from the Utrecht Union due to Utrecht's acceptance of the ordination of women and open attitude towards gay rights, both of which the Polish Church rejects.
[edit] North America Today
The North American Old Catholic Church is the national Latin Rite church in the United States.
[edit] References
- ↑ http://www.alt-katholisch.de/information/frauenordination/index.html Frauenordination (Ordination of women)
- ↑ http://www.alt-katholisch.de/information/haeufig_gestellte_fragen/ehe_scheidung_wiederheirat/index.html Ehe, Scheidung, Wiederheirat (Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage)
[edit] Bibliography
- Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church. Henry R.T. Brandreth. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1947.
- Episcopi vagantes in church history. A.J. Macdonald. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1945.
- History of the So-Called Jansenist Church of Holland. John M. Neale. New York: AMS Press, 1958.
- Old Catholic: History, Ministry, Faith & Mission. Andre J. Queen. iUniverse title, 2003.
- The Old Catholic Church: A History and Chronology (The Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, No. 3). Karl Pruter. Highlandville, Missouri: St. Willibrord's Press, 1996.
- The Old Catholic Sourcebook (Garland Reference Library of Social Science). Karl Pruter and J. Gordon Melton. New York: Garland Publishers, 1983.
- The Old Catholic Churches and Anglican Orders. C.B. Moss. The Christian East, January, 1926.
- The Old Catholic Movement. C.B. Moss. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1964.
