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A Brief History of the Old Catholic Church
The Declaration Of Utrecht (1889)
Declaration of the Catholic Congress at Munich (1871)
The 14 Theses of the Old Catholic Union Conference at Bonn (1874)
A Brief History of the Old Catholic Church
Today’s Old Catholic Church is more than a single group run by a monarch. It continues the older practice where bishops assert authority over church matters and practices. This is both good and bad news. The good news is that you will find a rich and diverse approach to Catholic worship among Old Catholics. The bad news is that there’s so much diversity, you don’t always know what to expect.
Before the Protestant reformation, the western church included rites and reality maps tailored to the local conditions. The Mass said in Gall (France) wasn’t exactly the same as the one said in Hungary. Some bishops took their license so far that people began to revolt. After the revolt became a schism, the Roman Catholic Church tried to clean up its own house. This Counter-Reformation took the form of some specific and unbending rules. Mass said in Call was exactly the same as Mass said in Hungary. No teaching was to vary. These rules came from a Roman synod that took place in Trent (1545-1563). This meeting produced the “Tridentine” liturgies, which became the standard rites used by the Roman rite until it was replaced by the Mass of Paul VI as a result of its second Vatican synod in the 1960s. Trent marked the end of diversity in the Roman Catholic Church.
Those who come to us from the Roman church are surprised at the tapestry of teachings and rituals. The Old Catholic church is more like a tossed salad than a pot of homogeneous milk.
What follows is a general overview of what you will find in the Old Catholic Church. Depending on where you land, you may find something different.
- The Old Catholic Church is autonomous and governed by a synod. Its chief executive is the Presiding Bishop. Local areas are governed by a bishop.
- Clergy of the Old Catholic Church maintain Apostolic Succession, which is an uninterrupted line of ordinations reaching back to one or more of our Lord’s original disciples.
- There are three pillars of faith: scripture, tradition and the church.
- The church celebrates the seven traditional sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist (the Mass or Lord’s Supper), Absolution, Holy Orders (ordination), Matrimony and the Anointing of the Sick (unction).
- Old Catholics are not in communion with the Roman church. Our altars are not available for the use of any Roman cleric.
- Old Catholics are in communion with the Anglicans. In a pinch, an Anglican priest would be most welcome to say Mass inside an Old Catholic church.
- Gender and sexual orientation are not impediments to any sacrament, including Matrimony and Holy Orders.
- Liturgies are often in the local language or in Latin, but the liturgies are the oldest ones generally available. The local bishop approves the rituals available for use in his or her area. The Mass is often the Knott Mass (English, 1928, Anglican), Tridentine (Latin, 1958 or before, Roman) or Mystical (English, 1916, Mathew/Wedgwood/Leadbeater). A few bishops permit the colloquial Mass from the Roman Catholic Church.
- The bishop of Rome is not infallible even when he speaks on matters of faith. He is one of the great patriarchs of the Christian church. Some even say he is primus inter pares (first among equals).
- The Old Catholic Church, along with some Eastern denominations, continue to be part of the universal Christian community (i.e., completely catholic). The Old Catholics were never part of a schism.
- The Bible contains the inspired message of God. Because its contents have been filtered through centuries of translations and mistakes in copying, no single word or phrase can be said to be without error.
- Not all parts of the Bible are of equal importance. The text of the Gospels, for example, are given more weight than passages from Leviticus or Numbers.
- Communion is open to any believer, not merely members and not merely to those in a “state of grace.”
The Netherlands
From Wikipedia
St. 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 Utrecht. In addition, he established the dioceses at Deventer and Haarlem. The Diocese of Utrecht provided the only Dutch pope Adrian VI in 1552 and 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.
At the request of the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II, and Bishop Heribert of Utrecht, in 1125 Pope Eugene III gave Utrecht the right to elect its own bishops, and this was affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. In 1520, Pope Leo X granted to the then Bishop of Utrecht (Philip of Burgundy), that no clergy or laity from Utrecht, would ever be tried by a Roman tribunal. During the Reformation the Catholic Church was persecuted and the Dutch dioceses north of the Rhine and Waal were suspended by the Holy See. Protestants occupied most church buildings, and those remaining were confiscated by the government of the Dutch Republic of Seven Provinces which favoured Calvinism.
However, about one third of the population in the northern Netherlands remained Catholic, and the popes appointed apostolic vicars (based in Utrecht) to care for these people. Clergy secretly celebrated the sacraments in a variety of places and were cared for by German and Flemish missionaries. The person named as apostolic vicar was also called Archbishop of Utrecht in partibus infidelium (i.e., archbishop in the land of unbelievers).
In 1691, the Jesuits accused Petrus Codde, the then apostolic vicar of favouring the Jansenist heresy. Pope Innocent XII appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the accusations - apparently violating the exemption granted in 1520. The commission concluded that the accusations were groundless.
In 1700 a new pope, 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 a complete 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 he resigned in 1703.
After Codde's resignation, the Diocese of Utrecht chose Cornelius van Steenoven as bishop, and 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; therefore, the pope 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
Most Dutch Catholics remained in full communion with pope and with the apostolic vicars appointed by him. 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 those in union with the pope. In the mind of the Holy See, the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht had maintained apostolic succession, and its clergy thus celebrated valid sacraments in every respect; the Diocese of Utrecht was considered schismatic but not in heresy.
Impact of the First Vatican Council
Old Catholic Parish Church in Gablonz an der Neiße, Austria-Hungary (now Jablonec nad Nisou, Czech Republic). A considerable number of ethnic German Catholics supported Döllinger in his rejection of the dogma of papal infallibility.After the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), several groups of Austrian, German and Swiss Catholics rejected the solemn declaration 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 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.
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 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. 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.
The "Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany" (Katholisches Bistum der Alt-Katholiken in Deutschland) is
- autonomous,
- episcopally, 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
The Declaration Of Utrecht (1889)
THE DECLARATION OF UTRECHT of the Old Catholic Bishops of the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland
- We adhere faithfully to the Rule of Faith laid down by St. Vincent of Lerins in these terms: "Id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est; hoc est etenim vere proprieque catholicum." For this reason we preserve in professing the faith of the primitive Church, as formulated in the ecumenical symbols and specified precisely by the unanimously accepted decisions of the ecumenical Councils held in the undivided Church of the first thousand years.
- We therefore reject the decrees of the so-called Council of the Vatican, which were promulgated July 18th, 1870, concerning the infallibility and the universal Episcopate of the Bishop of Rome, decrees which are in contradiction with the faith of the ancient Church, and which destroy its ancient canonical constitution by attributing to the Pope the plentitude of ecclesiastical powers over all Dioceses and over all the faithful. By denial of this primatial jurisdiction we do not wish to deny the historical primacy which several Ecumenical Councils and Fathers of the ancient Church have attributed to the Bishop of Rome by recognizing him as the Primus inter pares.
- We also reject the dogma of the Immaculate Conception promulgated by Pius IX in 1854 in defiance of the Holy Scriptures and in contradiction to the tradition of the centuries.
- As for other Encyclicals published by the Bishops of Rome in recent times for example, the Bulls, Unigenitus and Auctorem Fidei, and the Syllabus of 1864, we reject them on all such points as are in contradiction with the doctrine of the primitive Church, and we do not recognize them as binding on the consciences of the faithful. We also renew the ancient protests of the Catholic Church of Holland against the errors of the Roman Curia, and against its attacks upon the rights of national Churches.
- We refuse to accept the decrees of the Council of Trent in matters of discipline, and as for the dogmatic decisions of that Council we accept them only so far as they are in harmony with the teaching of the primitive Church.
- Considering that the Holy Eucharist has always been the true central point of Catholic worship, we consider it our right to declare that we maintain with perfect fidelity the ancient Catholic doctrine concerning the Sacrament of the Altar, by believing that we receive the Body and Blood of our Savior Jesus Christ under the species of bread and wine. The Eucharistic celebration in the Church is neither a continual repetition nor a renewal of the expiatory sacrifice which Jesus offered once for all upon the Cross: but it is a sacrifice because it is the perpetual commemoration of the sacrifice offered upon the Cross, and it is the act by which we represent upon earth and appropriate to ourselves the one offering which Jesus Christ makes in Heaven, according to the Epistle to the Hebrews 9:11-12, for the salvation of redeemed humanity, by appearing for us in the presence of God (Heb. 9:24). The character of the Holy Eucharist being thus understood, it is, at the same time, a sacrificial feast, by means of which the faithful in receiving the Body and Blood of our Savior, enter into communion with one another. (I Cor. 10:17)
- We hope that Catholic theologians, in maintaining the faith of the undivided Church, will succeed in establishing an agreement upon questions which have been controversial ever since the divisions which arose between the Churches. We exhort the priests under our jurisdiction to teach, both by preaching and by the instruction of the young, especially the essential Christian truths professed by all the Christian confessions, to avoid, in discussing controverted doctrines, any violation of truth or charity, and in word and deed to set an example to the members.
- By maintaining and professing faithfully the doctrine of Jesus Christ, by refusing to admit those errors which by the fault of men have crept into the Catholic Church, by laying aside the abuses in ecclesiastical matters, together with the worldly tendencies of the hierarchy, we believe that we shall be able to combat efficaciously the great evils of our day, which are unbelief and indifference in matters of religion.
Declaration of the Catholic Congress at Munich (1871)
Conscious of our religious duties, we hold fast to the Old Catholic creed and worship, as attested in scripture, and in tradition. We regard ourselves, therefore, as actual members of the Catholic Church, and will not be deprived of communion with the Church, nor of the rights, which through this communion, accrue to us in Church and State.
We declare the ecclesiastical penalties decreed against us, on account of our fidelity to our creed,to be unjustifiable and tyrannical; and we will not allow ourselves to be daunted or hindered by these censures in availing ourselves of our communion with the Church according to our conscience.
From the point of view of the confession of faith contained in the so-called Tridentine Creed, we repudiate the dogmas introduced under the pontificate of Pius IX in contradiction to the doctrine of the Church, and to the principles continuously followed since the Council of Jerusalem, especially the dogmas of the Pope's infallible teaching, and of his supreme episcopal and immediate jurisdiction.
We rely on the old constitution of the Church. We protest against every attempt to oust the bishops from the immediate and independent control of the separate Churches. We repudiate, as in conflict with the Tridentine Canon, according to which there exists a God-appointed hierarchy of bishops, priests, and deacons, the doctrine embodied in the Vatican doctrine, that the Pope is the sole God-appointed depositary of all ecclesiastical authority and power. We recognise the primacy of the Bishop of Rome as it was acknowledged, on authority of Scripture, by Fathers and Councils in the old undivided Christian Church.
- We declare that articles of belief cannot be defined merely by the utterance of the Pope for the time being, and the express or tacit assent of the bishops, bound as they are by oath to unqualified obedience to the Pope; but only in accordance with Holy Scripture and the old tradition of the Church, as it is set forth in the recognised Fathers and Councils. Moreover a council which was not, as the Vatican Council was, deficient in the actual external conditions of oecuminicity, but which, in the general sentiment of its members, exhibited a disregard of the fundamental principles and of the past history of the Church, could not issue decrees binding upon the consciences of the members of the Church.
- We lay stress upon this principle that the conformity of the doctrinal decisions of a council, with the primitive and traditional creed of the Church, must be determined by the consciousness of belief of the Catholic people and by theological science. We maintain for the Catholic laity and the clergy, as well as for theological sciences, the right of testifying and of objecting on the occasion of establishing articles of belief.
We aim at a reform in the Church in cooperation with the sciences of theology and canon law, which shall, in the spirit of the ancient Church, remove the present defects and abuses, and in particular shall fulfil the legitimate decrees of the Catholic people for a constitutionally regulated participation in Church business, whereby, without risk to doctrinal unity or doctrine, national considerations and needs may be taken account of.
We declare that the charge of Jansenism against the Church of Utrecht is unfounded, and that consequently no opposition in dogma exists between it and us. We hope for a reunion with the Greco-oriental and Russian Church, the separation of which had no sufficient origin, and depends upon no insuperable difference in dogma. Whilst pursuing the desired reforms in the path of science and a progressive Christian culture, we hope gradually to bring about a good understanding with the Protestant and Episcopal churches.
We hold scientific study indispensable for the training of the clergy. We consider that the artificial seclusion of the clergy from the intellectual culture of the present century (as in the seminaries and higher schools under the sole conduct of the bishops) is dangerous, from the great influence which the clergy possess over the culture of the people, and that it is altogether unsuited to give the clergy such an education and training as shall combine piety and morality, intellectual culture and patriotic feeling. We claim for the lower order of clergy a suitable position of consideration, protected against all hierarchical tyranny. We protest against the arbitrary removal of secular priests, amovibilitas ad nutum, a practice introduced through the French Code, and latterly imposed everywhere.
We support the constitutions of our countries, which secure us civil freedom and culture. Therefore we repudiate on national and historical grounds the dangerous dogma of Papal supremacy; and promise to stand faithfully and resolutely by our respective Governments in the struggle against that ultramontanism which assumes the form of dogma in the Syllabus.
Since manifestly the present miserable confusion in the Church has been occasioned by the society called that of Jesus; since this order abuses its influence to spread and cherish among the hierarchy, clergy, and people, tendencies hostile to culture, dangerous to the State and to the nation; since it teaches and encourages a false and corrupting morality: we declare it as our conviction that peace and prosperity, unity in the Church, and just relations between her and civil society, will only be possible when the pernicious activity of this order is put an end to.
As members of the Catholic Church, to which — not yet altered by the Vatican decrees — Government had guaranteed political recognition and public protection, we maintain our claims to all the real property and legal rights of the Church.
The 14 Theses of the Old Catholic Union Conference at Bonn (1874)
- We agree that the apocryphal or deutero-canonical books of the Old Testament are not of the same canonicity as the books contained in the Hebrew Canon.
- We agree that no translation of Holy Scripture can claim an authority superior to that of the original text.
- We agree that the reading of Holy Scripture in the vulgar tongue can not be lawfully forbidden.
- We agree that, in general, it is more fitting, and in accordance with the spirit of the Church, that the Liturgy should be in the tongue understood by the people.
- We agree that Faith working by Love, not Faith without Love, is the means and condition of Man’s justification before God.
- Salvation cannot be merited by “merit of condignity,” because there is no proportion between the infinite worth of salvation promised by God and the finite worth of man’s works.
- We agree that the doctrine of “opera supererogationis”* and of a “thesaurus meritorum sanctorum,” i.e., that the overflowing merits of the Saints can be transferred to others, either by the rulers of the Church, or by the authors of the good works themselves, is untenable.
- We acknowledge that the number of the sacraments was fixed at seven, first in the twelfth century, and then was received into the general teaching of the Church, not as tradition coming down from the Apostles or from the earliest times, but as the result of theological speculation.
Catholic theologians acknowledge, and we acknowledge with them, that Baptism and the Eucharist are “principalia, praecipus, eximia salutis nostrae sacramenta.”
The Holy Scriptures being recognized as the primary rule of Faith, we agree that the genuine tradition, i.e. the unbroken transmission partly oral, partly in writing of the doctrine delivered by Christ and the Apostles is an authoritative source of teaching for all successive generations of Christians. This tradition is partly to be found in the consensus of the great ecclesiastical bodies standing in historical continuity with the primitive Church, partly to be gathered by scientific method from the written documents of all centuries.
- We acknowledge that the Church of England, and the Churches derived from her, have maintained unbroken the Episcopal succession.
- We reject the new Roman doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as being contrary to the tradition of the first thirteen centuries according to which Christ alone is conceived without sin.
- We agree that the practice of confession of sins before the congregation or a Priest, together with the exercise of the power of the keys, has come down to us from the primitive Church, and that, purged from the abuses and free from constraint, it should be preserved in the Church.
- We agree that “indulgences” can only refer to penalties actually imposed by the Church herself.
- We acknowledge that the practice of the commemoration of the faithful departed, i.e. the calling down of a richer outpouring of Christ’s grace upon them, has come down to us from the primitive Church, and is to be preserved in the Church.
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- The Eucharistic celebration in the Church is not a continuous repetition or renewal of the propitiatory sacrifice offered once for ever by Christ upon the cross; but its sacrificial character consists in this, that it is the permanent memorial of it, and a representation and presentation on earth of that one oblation of Christ for the salvation of redeemed mankind, which according to the Epistle to the Hebrews (9:11,12), is continuously presented in heaven by Christ, who now appears in the presence of God for us (9:24).
- While this is the character of the Eucharist in reference to the sacrifice of Christ, it is also a sacred feast, wherein the faithful, receiving the Body and Blood of our Lord, have communion one with another (I Cor. 10:17).
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