Creeds Of Christendom With A History And Critical Notes

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.

The doctrinal status of the Old Catholic denomination was at first simply Tridentine Romanism versus Vatican Romanism, or the Creed of Pius IV. against the Creed of Pius IX. [377] This is the ground taken by the Old Catholics in Holland, and adhered to by them to this day. But the logic of the protest against modern Popery will hardly allow the Old Catholics of Germany and Switzerland long to remain in this position. Their friendly attitude towards Protestants, as officially shown in their letter to the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, is inconsistent with the Tridentine anathemas. Tridentine Romanism, moreover, is as much an innovation on oecumenical Catholicism as the Vatican Romanism is an innovation on that of Trent, and both are innovations in the same line of consolidation of the one-sided principle of authority. There is no stopping at half-way stations. We must go back to the fountain-head, the Word of God, which is the only final and infallible authority in matters of faith, and furnishes the best corrective against all ecclesiastical abuses.

The leaders of the Old Catholic Church are evidently on this road. They still adhere to Scripture and tradition, as the joint rule of faith: but they confine tradition to the unanimous consent of the ancient undivided Church, consequently to the oecumenical creeds, which are held in common by Greeks, Latins, and orthodox Protestants. They have been forced to give up their belief in the infallibility of an oecumenical Council, since the Vatican Council, which is as oecumenical (from the Roman point of view) as that of Trent, has sanctioned what they regard as fatal error. Moreover, Bishop Reinkens, in an eloquent speech before the Old Catholic Congress at Constance, disowned all Romish prohibitions of Bible reading, and earnestly encouraged the laity to read the Book of Life, that they may get into direct and intimate communion with God. [378] This communion with God through Christ as the only Mediator, and through his Word as the only rule of faith, is the very soul of evangelical Protestantism. The Scripture principle, consistently carried out, must gradually rule out the unscriptural doctrines and usages sanctioned by the Council of Trent.

But it is not necessary on this account that the Old Catholics should ever become Protestants in the historical sense of the term. They may retain those elements of the Catholic system which are not inconsistent with the spirit of the Scriptures, though they may not be expressly sanctioned by the letter. They may occupy a peculiar position of mediation, and in this way contribute their share towards preparing the way for an ultimate reunion of Christendom. And this is their noble aim and desire, openly expressed in a fraternal letter to an assembly of evangelical Christians from nearly all Protestant denominations. They declare: 'We hope and strive for the restoration of the unity of the Christian Church. We frankly acknowledge that no branch of it has exclusively the truth. We hold fast to the ultimate view that upon the foundation of the Gospel, and the doctrines of the Church grounded upon it, and upon the foundation of the ancient, undivided Church, a union of all Christian confessions will be possible through a really oecumenical Council. This is our object and intention in the movement which has led us into close relations with the Evangelical, the Anglican, the Anglo-American, the Russian, and the Greek churches. We know that this goal can not easily be reached, but we see the primary evidences of success in the circumstance that a truly Christian intercourse has already taken place between ourselves and other Christian churches. Therefore we seize with joy the hand of fellowship you have extended to us, and beg you to enter into a more intimate fellowship with us in such a way as may be agreed upon by both parties.' [379]

On the other hand, the Old Catholics have extended the hand of fellowship to the Greeks and Anglo-Catholics, and adopted, at a Union Conference held in Bonn, Sept., 1874, an agreement of fourteen theses, as a doctrinal basis of intercommunion between those Churches which recognize, besides the holy Scriptures, the binding authority of the tradition of the undivided Church of the first six centuries. In a second Conference, in 1875, they surrendered the doctrine of the double procession of the Spirit as a peace-offering to the Orientals. [380]

In the mean time the Pope has cut off all prospect of reconciliation. In his Encyclical of November 21, 1873, addressed to all the dignitaries of the Roman Church, Pius IX., after unsparingly denouncing the governments of Italy, Switzerland, and Germany, for their cruel persecution of the Church, speaks at length of 'those new heretics, who, by a truly ridiculous abuse of the name, call themselves Old Catholics,' and launches at their 'pseudo-bishop' and all his abettors and helpers the sentence of excommunication, as follows:

'The attempts and the aims of these unhappy sons of perdition appear plainly, both from other writings of theirs and most of all from that impious and most impudent of documents which has lately been published by him whom they have set up for themselves as their so-called bishop. For they deny and pervert the true authority of jurisdiction which is in the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops, the successors of the Blessed Peter and the Apostles, and transfer it to the populace, or, as they say, to the community; they stubbornly reject and assail the infallible teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff and of the whole Church; and, contrary to the Holy Spirit, who has been promised by Christ to abide in his Church forever, they audaciously affirm that the Roman Pontiff and the whole of the Bishops, priests, and people who are united with him in one faith and communion, have fallen into heresy by sanctioning and professing the definitions of the oecumenical Vatican Council. Therefore they deny even the indefectibility of the Church, blasphemously saying that it has perished throughout the world, and that its visible head and its Bishops have fallen away; and that for this reason it has been necessary for them to restore the lawful Episcopate in their pseudo-bishop, a man who, entering not by the gate, but coming up by another way, has drawn upon his head the condemnation of Christ.

'Nevertheless, those unhappy men who would undermine the foundations of the Catholic religion, and destroy its character and endowments, who have invented such shameful and manifold errors, or, rather, have collected them together from the old store of heretics, are not ashamed to call themselves Catholics, and Old Catholics; while by their doctrine, their novelty, and their fewness they give up all mark of antiquity and of catholicity. . . .

'But these men, going on more boldly in the way of iniquity and perdition, as by a just judgment of God it happens to heretical sects, have wished also to form to themselves a hierarchy, as we have said, and have chosen and set up for themselves as their pseudo-bishop a certain notorious apostate from the Catholic faith, Joseph Hubert Reinkens; and, that nothing might be wanting to their impudence, for his consecration they have had recourse to those Jansenists of Utrecht whom they themselves, before their falling away from the Church, regarded with other Catholics as heretics and schismatics. Nevertheless this Joseph Hubert Reinkens dares to call himself a bishop, and, incredible as it may seem, the most serene Emperor of Germany has by public decree named and acknowledged him as a Catholic bishop, and exhibited him to all his subjects as one who is to be regarded as a lawful bishop, and as such to be obeyed. But the very rudiments of Catholic teaching declare that no one can be held to be a lawful bishop who is not joined in communion of faith and charity to the rock on which the One Church of Christ is built; who does not adhere to the supreme pastor to whom all the sheep of Christ are committed to be fed; who is not united to the confirmer of the brotherhood which is in the world.' [This cuts off all Greek Bishops as well. Then follow the usual patristic texts for the pretensions of Rome.]

'We therefore, who have been placed, undeserving as we are, in the Supreme See of Peter for the guardianship of the Catholic faith, and for the maintenance of the unity of the universal Church, according to the custom and, example of our predecessors and their holy decrees, by the power given us from on high, not only declare the election of the said Joseph Hubert Reinkens to be contrary to the holy canons, unlawful, and altogether null and void, and denounce and condemn his consecration as sacrilegious; but by the authority of Almighty God we declare the said Joseph Hubert -- together with those who have taken part in his election and sacrilegious consecration, and whoever adhere to and follow the same, giving aid, favor, or consents -- excommunicated under anathema, separated from the communion of the Church, and to be reckoned among those whose fellowship has been forbidden to the faithful by the Apostle, so that they are not so much as to say to them, God speed you!'

As the Pope's letter of complaint to the Emperor of Germany (August, 1873), in which he claims jurisdiction, in some sense, over all baptized Christians, called forth a courteous and pointed reply from the Emperor disclaiming all intention of persecuting the Catholic Church while defending the rights of the civil government against the encroachments of the hierarchy, and informing his Infallibility that Protestants recognize no other mediator between God and themselves than the Lord Jesus Christ; so this Encyclical was met by an able, dignified, and manly Pastoral from Bishop Reinkens, dated Bonn, December 14, 1873, in which, after refuting the accusations of the Pope, he closes with the following words: 'Brethren in the Lord, what shall we do when Pius IX. exhausts the language of reproach and calumny, and calls us even the most miserable sons of perdition (miserrimi isti perditionis filii), to embitter the uninquiring multitude against us? If we are true disciples of Jesus -- as we trust -- we have that peace which the Lord gives, and not the world, and our "heart will not be troubled, neither be afraid" (John xiv.27). O how sweetly sounds the exhortation: "Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not;" "Recompense to no man evil for evil;" "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men" (Rom. xii.14, 17, 18); "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust" (Matt. v.44, 45). Let us look up to Christ, our example, "who, when he was reviled, reviled not again" (1 Pet. ii.21-23). "The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ."'

The Swiss Federal Government, in answer to the charges raised against it in the same Encyclical, has broken off all diplomatic intercourse with the Papal court. In a new Encyclical of March 23, 1875, addressed to the Bishops of Switzerland, Pious IX. confirmed the condemnation of Nov.21, 1873, and hurled it with increased severity against the Old Catholics of that country, 'who attack the very foundations of the Catholic religion, boldly reject the dogmatic definitions of the Council of the Vatican, and by every means labor for the ruin of souls.' He calls upon the faithful to 'avoid their religious ceremonies, their instructions, their chairs of doctrinal pestilence, which they have the audacity to set up for the purpose of betraying the sacred doctrines, their writings, and contact with them. Let them have no part, no relation of any kind, with those intruding priests and the apostates who dare exercise the functions of the ecclesiastical ministry, and who have absolutely no jurisdiction and no legitimate mission at all. Let them hold them in horror as strangers and thieves, who come only to steal, assassinate, and destroy.'

The Old Catholic movement in Switzerland is more radical and political than the German, and bears a similar relation to it as the Zwinglian Reformation does to the Lutheran. Edward Herzog, an able and worthy priest of Olten, was elected first bishop by the Swiss Synod, and consecrated by Bishop Reinkens at Rheinfelden, Sept.18, 1876.