Dear Rev. Know it all;

What do you think of the Old Catholics both here and in Europe?

Sincerely,

Ben Therdunthat

Dear Ben,  

I think they are misnamed. They are in fact new and not very Catholic. They appeal to 19^th century liberals in Europe and America. Here’s the story as well and as briefly as I can tell it. It is a bit convoluted. 

In 1870 the first Vatican council declared the Pope to be infallible when speaking as the pastor of the whole church on matters of faith and morals. When he speaks as a political leader in Europe or the world, he is not infallible. When he speaks as bishop of Rome regarding matters in that diocese he is not infallible When he expresses his own preferences or theological opinions he is not infallible. He is only infallible, a word meaning that the Holy Spirit  protects him from error, when he speaks as the universal teacher of the church, “from his chair” (Ex Cathedra.)  This in fact limits the pope who, by some, was thought to be always absolutely correct. He is protected from error only in his very specific role as teacher of the universal church. He cannot predict the weather. We have always believed this. It only became necessary to define it as a teaching after the Enlightenment had given the world such treasures as the Terror and Guillotines of the French Revolution and the idiocy of Marxism.

A group of Germans, Swiss and Austrians disagreed with the decision of the council and met to protest at a convention in Munich in 1870. Meanwhile....

There was a line of bishops in Holland that was started by a bishop from, of all places, Iraq.  In 1700, or thereabouts, a visiting Iraqi bishop ordained  a bishop for  Utrecht, Holland, which was without a bishop at the time due to the political climate of Holland. They didn’t even have a papal representative because of a feud with the pope then current, Clement XI. So Utrecht got its own private line of bishops who were not in union with the pope. 

Later, in 1870, when the people who were not happy with papal infallibility held a protest convention in Munich, the “Old Catholic” Bishop in Utrecht from this Iraqi established line of bishops, jumped into the fray and ordained bishops and priests to help the new movement along. They formed the Utrecht Union of Churches and eventually sent bishops to places like Poland and America. The result is that the “Old Catholic” churches have valid orders and wacky theology.

As I said, they started as19th century liberals and have proceeded downhill from there. In Europe they approve of divorce, homosexual marriage, artificial birth control and recently started ordaining women. They are pretty much what a lot of progressive American Catholics would like to see the real Catholic Church become. So they are not actually “Old Catholics” they would be better named “New Sectarians.” 

The word Infallibility derives from the Latin word, “fallax” which means trick or deception.  Infallibility means that the Holy Spirit won’t let the church be fooled, and the world, the flesh and the devil can be mighty tricky. The so called “Old Catholics” agree with the new Catholics that we should just bow down to the desires of the current age. The greatest proof to me of the truth of papal infallibility is that no matter how worldly or corrupt a few popes have been, and we have had a couple of randy old goats in the list of Roman Bishops, none of them has ever changed a word of doctrine.

Irenaeus of Lyon, a Greek speaking bishop of a Latin  city in southern France, said in about 190AD that all other churches had to agree with the Roman Church, whom Christ had appointed to the task of leading all the churches through the first bishop of Rome, St. Peter. If Irenaeus of Lyon were to return to this sorry little planet, he would marvel at how different things were, but he would feel right at home with the doctrines taught by the Roman Church. While some churches are busy pleasing the world and its leaders, the Roman Church and its little Bavarian pope are still ticking everyone off by trying to remind the world of the inconvenient teachings of Jesus. That’s why they have hated us from the beginning and hate us still. We must be doing something right.

Yours sincerely,

Rev. Know-it-all