§ 36. The Old Catholics.
Literature.
I. By Old Catholic Authors.
The writings of Döllinger, Reinkens, von Schulte, Friedrich, Huber, Reusch, Langen, Michelis, Hyacinthe Loyson, Michaud, bearing on the Vatican Council and the Old Catholic movement since 1870. See Literature in §§ 31 and 34.
The Reports of the Old Catholic Congresses, held at Munich, September, 1871; at Cologne, September, 1872; at Constance, September, 1873; at Freiburg, 1874. Published at Munich, Cologne, Leipzig, and Bonn.
Joseph Hubert Reinkens: Katholischer Bischof, den im alten Kathol. Glauben verharrenden Priestern und Laien des deutschen Reiches. Dated August 11, 1873 (the day of his consecration).
The Letter of the Old Catholic Congress of Constance (signed by Bishop Reinkens, President von Schulte, and the Vice-Presidents Cornelius and Keller) to the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, held at New York, October, 1873. In the Proceedings of the Conference, New York, 1874.
P. H. Reusch: Bericht über die am 14, 15, und 16 Sept. 1874, zu Bonn gehaltenen Unions-Conferenzen, im Auftrag Dr. v. Döllinger herausgegeben, Bonn, 1875 (75 pp.).
Deutscher Merkur, Organ für die Katholische Reformbewegung, ed. by Hirschwälder, Weltpriester. The popular aud official weekly organ since 1871.
Theologisches Literaturblatt, ed. by Prof. Reusch, Bonn. The literary organ of the Old Catholics (10th year, 1875).
II. By Protestant Authors.
Friedberg: Sammlung der Actenstücke zum ersten Vatic. Concil. Tübingen, 1872, pp. 53-63, 625-731, 775-898.
Frommann: Geschichte und Kritik des Vatic. Concils. Gotha, 1872, pp. 250-272.
J. Williamson Nevin (of Lancaster, Pa.): The Old Catholic Movement, in the 'Mercersburg Review' for April, 1873, pp. 240-294.
The Alt-Catholic Movement (anonymous), in the (Amer. Episc.) 'Church Review,' New York, July, 1873.
W. Krafft (Professor of Church History in Bonn): The Vatican Council and the Old Catholic Movement, read before, and published in the Proceedings of, the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in New York, October, 1873.
Cæsar Pronier (late Professor of Theology in the Free Church Seminary at Geneva, perished in the shipwreck of the Ville du Havre, Nov. 22, 1873, on his return from the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance): Roman Catholicism in Switzerland since the Proclamation of the Syllabus, 1873 (in the Proceedings of the Alliance Conference, New York, 1874).
III. By Roman Catholics.
Besides many controversial writings since the year 1870 (quoted in part in §§ 31 and 34, and articles in Roman Catholic reviews (as the Dublin Review, the Civiltà Cattolica, the Catholic World) and newspapers (as the Paris L'Univers, the London Tablet, the Berlin Germania, etc.), see especially the Papal Encyclical of Nov. 21, 1873, in condemnation of the 'new heretics,' miscalled 'Old Catholics.'
The Old Catholic movement--the most important in the Latin Church since the Reformation, with the exception, perhaps, of Jansenism--began during the Vatican Council, and was organized into a distinct Church three years afterwards (1873), at Constance, in the very hall where, three hundred and sixty years before, an oecumenical Council was held which, by deposing two rival Popes and electing another, asserted its superiority over the Papacy, but which, by burning John Huss for teaching evangelical doctrines, defeated its own professed object of a 'Reformation of the Church in the head and the members.' This strange coincidence of history brings to mind Luther's poem on the Belgian martyrs:
'Die Asche will nicht lassen ab,
Sie stäubt in allen Landen;
Hier hilft kein Loch, noch Grab, noch Grab,
Sie macht den Feind zu Schanden.'
The God of history has his horas et moras, but he always carries out his designs at last. The Old Catholic secession would have assumed far more formidable proportions, and cut off from the dominion of the Pope the most intelligent and influential dioceses, if the eighty-eight Bishops who in the Vatican Council voted against Papal Infallibility, had carried out their conviction, instead of making their submission for the sake of a hollow peace. But next to the Pope, Bishops, from an instinctive fear of losing power, have always been most hostile to any serious reform. The old story of the Jewish hierarchy, in dealing with Christ and the Apostles, is repeated again and again in the history of the Church, though also with the honorable exceptions of a Nicodemus and Gamaliel.
OEcumenical Councils are very apt to give rise to secessions. A conscientious minority will not yield, in matters of faith, to a mere majority vote. Thus the Council of Nicæa (325) was only the signal for a new and more serious war between orthodoxy and the Arian heresy, and, even after the triumph of the former at Constantinople (381), the latter lingered for centuries among the newly converted German races. The Council of Ephesus (431) gave rise to the Nestorian schism, and the Council of Chalcedon (451) to the several Monophysite sects, which continue in the East to this day with almost as much tenacity of life as the orthodox Greek Church. From the sixth oecumenical Council (680) dates the Monothelite schism. The Council of Florence (1439) failed to effect a union between the Latin and the Greek communions. The Council of Trent (1563), instead of healing the split caused by the Reformation, only deepened and perpetuated it by consolidating Romanism and anathematizing evangelical doctrines. The nearest parallel to the case in hand is the schism of the Bishops and clergy of Utrecht, which originated in a protest against the implied Papal Infallibility of the anti-Jansenist bull Unigenitus, and which recently made common cause with the Old Catholics of Germany by giving them the Episcopal succession.
The Old Catholic Church in Germany and Switzerland arose from a protest, in the name of conscience, reason, and honest learning, against the Papal absolutism and infallibilism of the Vatican Council, and against the obsolete mediævalism of the Papal Syllabus. It lifts its voice against unscrupulous Jesuitical falsifications of history, and against that spiritual despotism which requires, as the highest act of piety, the slaughter of the intellect and will, and thereby destroys the sense of personal responsibility. It has in its favor all the traditions of Gallicanism and liberal Catholicism, which place an oecumenical Council or the whole representative Church above the Pope, the testimony of the ancient Græco-Latin Church, which knew nothing of Papal Infallibility, and even condemned some Popes as heretics, and the current of history, which can not be turned backward.
The leaders of the new Church are eminent for learning, ability, moral character, and position, and were esteemed, before the Vatican Council, pillars and ornaments of the Roman Church--viz., Döllinger, [362] Reinkens, [363] Friedrich, [364] Huber, [365] Michelis, [366] Reusch, [367] Langen, [368] von Schulte, [369] and ex-Père Hyacinthe Loyson. [370]
The centres of Old Catholicism are Munich and Bonn in Germany, and Geneva and Soleure (also Olten) in Switzerland. Beyond these two countries it has many isolated sympathies, but no organized form, and no hold upon the people. [371] In September, 1873, the Old Catholics in the German Empire numbered about one hundred congregations (mostly in Prussia, Baden, and Bavaria), forty priests, and fifty thousand professed members. Since their more complete organization they will probably make more rapid progress. Heretofore the movement in Germany has been more scholastic than popular. It has enlisted the sympathies of the educated, but not to an equal extent the enthusiasm of the people. The question of Papal Infallibility has no such direct practical bearing as the question of personal salvation and peace of conscience, which made the Reformation spread with such irresistible power over all Western Christendom. The masses of Roman Catholics are either too ignorant or too indifferent to care much whether another dogma is added to the large number already adopted, and have no more difficulty to believe blindly in Papal Infallibility than in the daily miracle of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass. [372] On the other hand, however, the Old Catholics are powerfully aided by the widespread indignation against priestcraft, and the serious conflict of the German Empire and the Swiss Republic with the Papacy, which was provoked by the Papal Syllabus and the Vatican Council, and may lead to a thorough revision of the ecclesiastical status of the Continent. Their ultimate success as a Church must chiefly depend upon the continued ascendency of the positive Christian element over the negative and radical (which raised and ruined the 'German Catholic' or Ronge movement of 1844); for only the enthusiasm of faith has constructive power, and that spirit of sacrifice and endurance which is necessary for the establishment of permanent institutions.
The Old Catholic movement was foreshadowed in the liberal Catholic literature preceding the Vatican Council, especially Janus; it gathered strength during the Council; it uttered itself in a united protest against the decrees of the Council at a meeting of distinguished Catholic scholars at Nuremberg in August, 1870; and it came to an open rupture with Rome by the excommunication of Döllinger and his sympathizers.
Being called upon by the Archbishop of Munich (his former pupil, and at first an anti-Infallibilist) to submit to the new dogma of Papal absolutism and Infallibility, Dr. Döllinger, in an open answer dated Munich, March 28,1871, declared that, as a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, and as a citizen, he could not accept the Vatican decrees, for the reasons that they are inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel and the clear teaching of Christ and the Apostles; that they contradict the whole genuine tradition of the Church; that the attempt to carry out the Papal absolutism had been in times past the cause of endless bloodshed, confusion, and corruption; and that a similar attempt now must lead to an irreconcilable conflict of the Church with the State, and of the clergy with the laity. [373] Whereupon Döllinger was excommunicated April 17, 1871, as being guilty of 'the crime of open and formal heresy.' [374]
His colleague, Professor Friedrich, incurred the same fate. Other Bishops, forgetting their recent change of conviction, proceeded with the same rigor against refractory priests. Cardinal Rauscher suspended the Lent preacher Pederzani; Cardinal Schwarzenberg, Professor Pelleter (who afterwards became a Protestant); Bishop Förster (whose offer to resign was refused by the Pope) suspended Professors Reinkens, Baltzer, and Weber, of Breslau; the Bishop of Ermeland, Professors Michelis and Menzel, and Dr. Wollmann, in Braunsberg; the Archbishop of Cologne deposed the priest Dr. W. Tangermann, of Cologne, and suspended Professors Hilgers, Reusch, Langen, and Knoodt, of Bonn, who, however, supported by the Prussian Government, retained their official positions in the University.
In spite of these summary proceedings of the Bishops, the Old Catholic party, aided by the sympathies of the educated classes, made steady progress, organizing congregations, holding annual meetings, and enlisting the secular and religions press. With great prudence the leaders avoided or postponed reforms, till they could be inaugurated and sanctioned by properly constituted authorities, and moved cautiously between a timid conservatism and a radical liberalism; thus retaining a hold on both wings of the nominal Catholic population.
In the year 1873 the Old Catholics effected a regular Church organization, and secured a legal status in the German Empire, with the prospect of support from the national treasury. Professor Joseph Hubert Reinkens was elected Bishop by the clergy and the representatives of the laity, and was consecrated at Rotterdam by the Old Catholic Bishop Heykamp, of Deventer (Aug. 11, 1873). [375] He was recognized in his new dignity by the King of Prussia, and took the customary oath of allegiance at Berlin (Oct. 7). Other governments of Germany followed this example. (The Empire as such has nothing to do with the Church.) To complete the organization, the Congress at Constance adopted a synodical and parochial constitution, which makes full provision for an equal share of the laity with the clergy in the government of the Church; the synodical representation (Synodal-Repräsentanz), or executive committee, being composed of five laymen and five clergymen, including the Bishop. [376] This implies the Protestant principle of the general priesthood of believers, and will prevent hierarchical abuses. Certain changes in the cultus, such as the simplification of the mass as a memorial service of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, the substitution of the vernacular language for the Latin, the restoring of the cup to the laity, the introduction of more preaching, and the abolition of various abuses (including the forced celibacy of the clergy), will inevitably follow sooner or later.