The Old Roman Catholic Church,
possessing a line of Holy Orders originating with our Lord Jesus Christ, and
held in common with the undivided Church of earlier centuries, holds its
Apostolic Succession in more recent centuries through the ancient See of Utrecht
in Holland. Saint Willibrord, the “Apostle to the Netherlands,” was consecrated
bishop by Pope Sergius I at Rome in A.D. 696, and the city of Utrecht was raised
to the dignity of a diocese. Saint Boniface, the "Apostle of Germany," was
bishop of Utrecht, and the same See also provided a worthy occupant for the See
of Peter in 1522 in the person of Adrian VI. Two most able exponents of the
religious life, Geert Groote, who founded the Brothers of the Common Life, and
Thomas à Kempis, who is credited with writing The Imitation of Christ,
were from the Dutch Church.
For a number of reasons the Jesuits began to invade the
jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Utrecht around 1590; and, although they were
more than once rebuked therefor by the Pope and ordered to submit themselves to
the Archbishop's authority, their machinations against him and the See of
Utrecht continued unabated. This has been an all too common tendency of the
Jesuits over the centuries in many different sees throughout the world and for
which they have been more than once rebuffed and/or suppressed by the Pope and
ordered out of certain countries by the respective civil authorities. No one
can deny that the Jesuits have produced a number of men who were holy, heroic,
and scholarly—bold men like Saint Francis Xavier, the North American Martyrs,
and Jacques Marquette; scholars like Robert Bellarmine, Philip Hughes, and
Frederick Copelston; scientists like Matteo Ricci, Christopher Clavius and
Johann Adam Schall. But the Jesuit Order has also produced a number of
“misfires” like political activists Daniel Berrigan and Fernando Cardenal, and
Modernist theologians like George Tyrrell, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and Hans
Urs von Balthasar.
For our purposes it will serve to identify a few points of
contention between the Jesuits and the clergy of Holland.
The Dutch maintained a spirit of humility and poverty that
had vanished in the Romance language parts of Christendom and in much of the
Jesuit Order. During the period in question the crowned heads of Europe—and the
Pope as chief among them—lived in an opulence never seen in the world before or
since. They built magnificent palaces and basilicas, monuments to themselves,
they decorated with the finest art, and heard the music of masters.
Some of them enjoyed the “finest” women as well. This elegance was possible
only through the taxation of their subjects and the exploitation of the
Americas. Many of the Jesuits insinuated themselves into the courts of these
crowned heads, and lived in the regal styles of the court. In contrast, you
have the Dutch Pope Hadrian:
Hadrian VI (1522-23) ... a
carpenter’s son from the Netherlands, former tutor to the Emperor Charles V,
Governor of the Netherlands, and Grand Inquisitor of Spain. He made it clear
that there would be none of the customary bonanza of papal favors, and
instituted a programme of drastic economies which included a swingeing reduction
of personnel in the Curia. He announced his intention of abolishing many of the
offices invented and sold by his predecessors. An old fashioned scholastic
theologian.... The Vatican collection of classical sculpture was dismissed as
so many heathen idols, Raphael’s pupils were sent packing, and the decoration of
the Vatican apartments halted.... He caused astonishment by celebrating Mass
every day.... [B]iblical studies, clerical education, improved preaching....
There was also Johannes van Neercassel, Fifth Archbishop of Utrecht, who was
mocked while visiting Rome in 1671 for having only one servant in his employ.
He was accompanied by but a single
servant, one of whose duties it was to read to the prelate every night till he
fell off to sleep. The plainness of his attendance excited great ridicule at the
court of Rome, and Questo vescovo sta in ristretto was their comment.
Certainly these good Dutchmen were despised by the self-indulgent Churchmen of
Rome and the Society of Jesus. The dispute between the “monument” builders and
those with humble and contrite hearts went far beyond issues of art and
architecture. There were moral issues as well—and not just the private moral
issues of a few straying Popes and prelates—the very moral philosophy of
Christendom was under attack.
The Jesuits were in the vanguard of a movement to liberalize the penitential
practices of the Church. Jesuit opinions were sometimes condemned by the
Church tending toward moral laxity. To the traditional Catholics of the day
this movement must have seemed every bit as pernicious as Modernism seems to us
today. The probabilism of the Jesuits—that in doubt about a moral action, one
can follow the opinion of any reputable theologian even if many other
theologians disagree—might seem reasonable in a thoroughly Catholic society, but
look what happens when the Church has theologians like Hans Küng! In his
Lettres provinciales, Blaise Pascal was rightly critical of casuist Jesuit
confessors to the wealthy who based moral judgment and penance on the size of
their contributions to the Church. In general, the Jesuit attitude on penance
was far more liberal than that of previous eras, and the fear of significant
penance served less to deter the sinner.
The Jesuits seemed to think of theology as a blood sport—even in matters like
grace and predestination, which are so highly speculative. Getting someone
branded as a heretic or in trouble with the Inquisition was all part of the
sport. The Jesuits were anxious to replace the theology of Saint Augustine and
Saint Thomas with that of their theologian, Luis de Molina. This was an attempt
to reconcile the Augustinian doctrines of predestination and efficacious grace
with the new ideals of the Renaissance concerning man's free will. Molina was
opposed not only by the Dominicans but also by fellow Jesuits Enrique Henríquez
and Juan de Mariana. The Jesuits would later attack the writings of the
Dutchman Cornelius Jansen, in 1643 getting Pope Innocent X to condemn five
propositions on the relationship between nature and grace, which they claim to
have found in Jansen's treatise, the Augustinus, on Saint Augustine's
theology. Eventually the Jesuits would convince the Pope to require the clergy
and religious to sign a formulary, condemning the propositions and
agreeing to the claim that they were found in the Augustinus. An
Archbishop of Utrecht would request a copy of the Augustinus with the
offending passages underlined, but such a thing could not be produced.
It is one thing to say that the condemned propositions are heretical—clearly
they are—but quite another thing to demand that everyone attribute them to
Cornelius Jansen. As Catholics we must accept the declaration of the Pope that
some idea must be believed as doctrine, or conversely must be rejected as
heretical, but if, on the Pope's authority, we were to claim that the idea in
question was held by a particular author we would be committing perjury if we
knew it was not. But for Jesuits the situation is far simpler—in his Spiritual Exercises, the Jesuit founder, Saint Ignatius held that “we ought
always to hold that the white which I see, is black, if the Hierarchical Church
so decides it....”The Jesuit concept, then, is that words can alter reality
if they come from authority! This is Modernism—we will dialogue until white
becomes black!
Years later, in 1827, John van Santen, the Archbishop of Utrecht, was told by the papal
nuncio, Msgr. Capaccini that he must condemn Jansen out of obedience.
Capaccini held the absurd notion that the father of a family could oblige his
children, under obedience, to believe that a certain green table cloth was red!
If fathers of families can order such falsity, certainly so could the Pope!
In Holland itself, during the persecution of the Church by Protestantism,
Jesuits resolutely refused necessary help from the secular clergy at their
mission stations, while also demanding to be stationed in locales that were
already evangelized and under the cure of the secular clergy.
In 1691, the Jesuits falsely accused Archbishop Peter
Codde, the occupant of the See of Utrecht, of favoring the so-called "Jansenist
Heresy." (We say “so-called,” because, while the propositions condemned by Pope
Innocent X are indeed erroneous and inconsistent with the true Faith, they are
not clearly to be found in the works of Cornelius Jansen.) Numerous archbishops,
bishops, and other clergy, along with faculty members of the prestigious
Catholic universities at Rheims, Sorbonne, Nantes, and Louvain rejected the
documents which denounced Jansen—all a matter of record. The issue was not the
correctness of the propositions, but whether or not these were in fact contained
in Jansen's writings—and whether third parties should be made to denounce Jansen
without regard to that fact.
Archbishop Codde refused to accept the formulary of
condemnation, not because he favored the heretical propositions, but because he
did not believe them to be espoused by Jansen. His unwillingness to unjustly
condemn the works of the deceased bishop resulted in Archbishop Codde's
suspension in 1699. Refusing to permit Archbishop Codde any defense in these
accusations created a breach not yet healed; although, among others, Pope
Clement XIV was favorably disposed toward the grievously wronged church in
Utrecht. These irregular proceedings against our predecessors, based on charges
then proved groundless, had no lawful effect, leaving the church of Utrecht
within the pale of Catholic unity, and its bishop the just successor of the
Apostles.
Our position is not significantly different from those
current estrangements from the Holy See on the part of the late Archbishop
Marcel Lefebvre and others as a result of the innovations of Vatican Council II.
We are simply three hundred years earlier than our contemporary counterparts who
join us in protesting the abuses of Vatican II by refusing to blindly obey
proclamations clearly at odds with the Faith.
In 1739 Dominique Marie Varlet, Roman Catholic titular
Bishop of Ascalon, consecrated Peter John Meindaerts to fill the vacant See of
Utrecht, without having asked for or obtained a papal bull authorizing the
consecration.
Since then the church of Utrecht, retaining in every detail the worship and
doctrine as formerly, became known as the Old Roman Catholic Church of Holland.
Old Roman Catholicism is the same Mystical Body of Christ
as in the first Christian centuries. There have been no changes in doctrine or
moral teaching. The decrees of the Second Council of Utrecht, held under
Archbishop Meindaerts in 1763, are a monument of orthodoxy and respect for the
Holy See. In a meeting at the Hague in the Autumn of 1823, Archbishop Willibrord van Os of Utrecht; John Bon, Bishop of Haarlem and Gisbert de Jong,
Bishop of Deventer proclaimed to Nazalli, titular Archbishop of Cyprus and papal
nuncio that they...
… accept,
without any exception whatever, all the Articles of the holy Catholic faith,
would neither hold nor teach, then or afterwards, any other opinions than those
that had been decreed, determined, and published by our mother, the holy Church,
conformably to Holy Scripture, tradition, the acts of Œcumenical Councils, and
those of the Council of Trent; as also that they reject and condemn everything
opposed to them—especially all heresies, without any one exception—that the
Church has rejected and condemned; that they also detest at the same time every
schism which might separate them from the communion of the Catholic, Apostolic,
and Roman Church, and of its visible head upon earth; that they never made
common cause with those that had broken the bond of unity; that in particular
they reject and condemn the Five Propositions condemned by the Holy See, and
which are stated to be found in the book of Jansenius called Augustinus;
that they promise as well for the future as for the present, and in all things,
to his Holiness the actual Pope Leo XII, and to his successors, fidelity,
obedience, and submission, according to the Canons of the Church; and also to
accept respectfully, to teach and to maintain, conformably with the same Canons,
the decrees and constitutions of the Apostolic See.
In the light of the developments of previous centuries we
see that the Old Roman Catholic Church received and still preserves, the Mass
and seven Sacraments, the doctrines, and moral teachings of the Church of Christ
and the Apostles. The Church is called “Old” because she rejects Modernism and
every recent innovation, while adhering faithfully to the doctrine and
discipline of the Church of Apostolic times. She is called “Roman” because Her
teaching is identical with that of the Holy See of Rome in the authentic
exercise of Its magisterium; because the line of her Apostolic Succession from
the first century until 1739 was held in common with the Roman Catholic Church;
and because She uses the Roman Rite (in the form prescribed by Pope Saint
Gregory the Great, and codified by Pope Saint Pius V) without addition or
change, using the time honored texts of the Missale, Pontificale, and Rituale Romanum with great care and exactness as to minister, matter, form
and intention in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the
administration of the Sacraments. The Church is “Catholic” because She is not
confined to any one nation or place or time, teaching the same Faith once
delivered by her Divine Founder, Jesus Christ to the Apostles.
The honest inquirer must be cautioned not to confuse the
Old Roman Catholic Church with those groups calling themselves 'Old Catholic,”
or usurping the name “Old Roman Catholic.” Fostering this sort of confusion has
been a favored tactic of those hoping to promote schism within the traditional
Catholic resistance to Modernism. Much which in this age calls itself Old
Catholic represents some compromise with Protestantism, or, in a wider
digression, with the non-Christian cult theosophy, bearing little resemblance to
Catholicism. (In 1870, Dr. Ignaz von Dollinger brought the Old Catholics into
being to offer resistance to the dogma of Papal Infallibility. In 1873, the
Church of Utrecht was, most unhappily, prevailed upon to provide these Old
Catholics with a bishop. In 1889, an amalgamation took place between Utrecht and
the Old Catholics. Thus the Church of Utrecht laid the foundation for her
subsequent fall into Modernism.) The Old Roman Catholic Church has no connection
with these “churches.”
Before the great See of Utrecht abandoned her historic
position, however, God in His Divine Providence provided for the continuation of
Old Roman Catholicism. Though Utrecht was eventually to abandon traditional
Catholicism, the Church was not to perish. On April 28, 1908, Archbishop Arnold
Harris Mathew of England was consecrated to the Episcopate by Archbishop Gerard
Gul of Utrecht, assisted by Bishops N.B.P. Spitt of Deventer, and J.J van Thiel
of Haarlem in the Netherlands, and Bishop J. Demmel of Bonn, Germany. By the end
of 1910, however, the influence of the Old Catholics had proved too much for
Utrecht and had overwhelmed her. So great and far reaching were the changes
which she was prevailed upon to make in her formularies and doctrinal position
that, on December 29, 1910, Archbishop Mathew was forced to withdraw the Old
Roman Catholic Church in England from communion with Utrecht in order to
preserve its orthodoxy intact.
Archbishop Mathew cited several innovations of the Old
Catholics which required him to withdraw from union with Utrecht: 1) An
indeterminate number of Sacraments. 2) Abandonment of auricular Confession. 3)
Departure from the veneration of the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. 4)
Mutilation of the sacred rites and decreased devotion to our Lord in the Blessed
Sacrament. 5) Omission of prayers for the Pope in the Canon of the Mass. 6)
Loss of devotion to daily Mass and infrequency of Holy Communion. 7)
Iconoclasm. 8) Admission of non-Catholics to Holy Communion. 9) Abolition of
fasting and abstinence, and of the Eucharistic fast.
The reader will notice a similarity between the Old Catholicism which Mathew
rejected and the Modernist Catholicism so widely practiced today.
Utrecht is no longer Old Roman Catholic but simply Old
Catholic. Thus it comes about that the ancient and glorious Church of Saint
Willibrord and Saint Boniface has its continuation and perpetuation through the
present Old Roman Catholic Church, which is compelled, in defense of its
orthodoxy, to refuse to hold union with either Utrecht or the Old Catholics, or
with their Modernist counterparts.
By the middle of this century, during the reign of the
saintly Pope Pius XII, the intellectual climate had changed and there was no
longer any demand by the Holy See for unreasoned condemnations of third parties.
Jansenism had long been reduced to a footnote in the history texts, and post-war
Rome seemed to have lost interest in perpetuating the theoretical conflict that
caused it to originate the separation in the 17th century.
Seemingly having lost its reason for existence, the Old Roman Catholic hierarchy
determined that no new priests would be ordained and no bishops would be
consecrated—on the assumption that Roman priests and bishops would provide for
the spiritual needs of all the Faithful.
At their beginnings, the pontificate of Pope John XXIII and
the Second Vatican Council were viewed as favorable signs. Regrettably,
however, Vatican II and its postconciliar developments were a serious
disappointment to all those Catholics concerned with preserving the Deposit of
Faith and Morals given to Peter and the Apostles by our Lord.
The greatest tragedy was the disruption of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and
the other Sacraments. Radically corrupted by “ecumenism,” and poorly translated
into modern languages, the liturgical books no longer guarantee the Catholic
Faith. The “law of prayer being the law of belief,” many modern Catholics are
unaware of (or positively disbelieve) the sacrificial nature of the Mass and the
Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament—the Sunday morning service
has been reduced to a communal gathering. And, forty-odd years later there is no
sign that any of the errors of the Council are to be corrected. From the highest
to the lowest levels of the hierarchy, the only prescription for the few evils
that are admitted to be plaguing the Mystical Body is another infusion of what
afflicted It to begin with—all that’s needed is a little bit more of “the
correct interpretation of the principles of Vatican II”!
Among the Vatican II era bishops there were only a handful
who resisted the movement away from Catholicism. In the early days of the
resistance there were a fair number of priests who remained orthodox, a number
of Catholic men hoping to study for the priesthood, and even a bishop or two who
promised to ordain them. But no conciliar bishop was willing to provide for the
Church's future by consecrating truly Catholic bishops. One European bishop
tried to arrange for an Old Catholic bishop to ordain the future priests of his
Society (an idea quickly rejected by his membership). An Asian bishop found a
mad man or two upon whom to lay hands; quickly retreating back to the New Order
as one of his creations claimed then to be pope!
Some rethinking of the decision to leave everything in the
hands of Rome was obviously in order. Modernism had clearly replaced Jansenism
as the topic of the discussion—and if there is a “left” and a “right” to such
things, Rome was clearly leaning toward the left. If nothing else, provision had
to be made to secure the Mass and the Sacraments, along with the principles of
faith and morals, for future generations of the Catholic people.
To this end, Archbishop Gerard G. Shelley, head of the Old
Roman Catholic Church, together with his priests and bishops, approved a new
Constitution to renew the Old Roman Catholic Church and allow it to cope with
its contemporary mission. This Constitution, ratified in 1976, and subsequently
amended, reaffirms our acceptance of traditional Catholic doctrine, morals, and
worship. Through it, we acknowledge the primacy and infallibility of the Holy
Father, while providing for the Faithful who wish to maintain the traditions of
the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Archbishop Shelley's intentions are clearly seen in the
mandate that he issued for the consecration of his successor, the current
titular Archbishop of Cær Glow and Bishop of Florida:
+ In the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
By these
presents be it known to all concerned that in view of the ever-growing spiritual
needs of the historic and canonical Old Roman Catholic Church in the
ecclesiastical Province of Florida, which by the will of God in fulfillment of
the inscrutable designs of His providence, has brought together in wondrous
fashion an ever- increasing number of the Faithful who ardently desire to
maintain the fullness of the traditional Catholic faith and practice, it has
become incumbent upon the Bishops of the Church to take these paramount needs
into consideration and to provide for the future of the Church in the Apostolic
manner. Accordingly, after due reflection in humble submission to the
inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the Bishops of the Primatial Synod, rejoicing
with the angels of Heaven at the steadfast fidelity of so many devout persons to
the ancient and ever-living traditions of the true Catholic Faith and practice,
have deemed it necessary to meet these paramount needs and to raise to the
sacred order of the Episcopate their beloved priest and brother in Christ, the
Right Reverend John J. Humphreys, investing him with full jurisdiction in the
ecclesiastical Province of Florida, and in any other area of North America,
should existing circumstances require, to the honor and glory of God and the
benefit of His holy Church.
Additional information may be found in the sources
referenced in the footnotes, as well as in The Catholic Encyclopedia,
Addis and Arnold's Roman Catholic Dictionary, Donald Attwater's A Catholic
Dictionary, Father Konrad Algermissen's Christian Denominations, and
the Columban Father's The Far East Magazine for January 1928. And, of
course, your questions are welcome.
Table of Apostolic
Succession
