Friday, June 30, 2006
VILATTE, OLD CATHOLICS, AND ANGLICANS
The early years of the American frontier brought religious confusion to the people of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. According to the Fond du Lac Episcopal Diocesan website:
The relationships of Fr. Villatte, Precious Blood Church, the Roman Catholic and Old Catholic Communions, and the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac are complex and fascinating. Not surprisingly, there has oftentimes been much misinformation as well. Suffice it to say that, in the time before the arrival of the Roman Catholic Norbertine Fathers, the Belgian settlers in the Little Sturgeon area (most of whom were Roman Catholics) had been all but forgotten. Mass was said perhaps only once in three months, the result being that many had begun to drift. Mr. Villatte, formerly a Roman Catholic religious who had become a pastor of a French-speaking Protestant congregation in Green Bay, was led in some way to approach the first Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac, John Henry Hobart Brown, about this matter. If he were to be received into the Episcopal Church, he proposed to minister to and win these people back to the Catholic Faith, albeit not the Roman Catholic Church.
The relationship of the Catholic and Anglican churches is an old one. So is the relationship between the Anglicans and the Old Catholics.
So, while Fr. Villatte was indeed ordained by the Old Catholic Church, and while Precious Blood Church was known to be an Old Catholic congregation both in name and ritual, it had always been a missionary outreach of the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac.
The Church of the Precious Blood was founded in 1885, but a formal union between the Old Catholics and the Episcopal Church did not come into being until 1931 with the Bonn Agreement which states:
The Bonn Agreement is based on three statements:
1. Each Communion recognizes the catholicity and independence of the other and maintains its own.
2. Each Communion agrees to admit members of the other Communion to participate in the Sacraments.
3. Full Communion does not require from either Communion the acceptance of all doctrinal opinion, sacramental devotion or liturgical practice characteristic of the other, but implies that each believes the other to hold all the essentials of the Christian faith.
Anglican-Old Catholic communion is furthered today by the Anglican Old Catholic International Co-ordination Council (AOCICC). Anglican and Old Catholic membership in this Council includes Old Catholic priest The Reverend Dr. Angela Berlis, Co-Secretary.
Berlis, a theologian who works to promote women's ordination, is a married former Roman Catholic, who, along with Regina Pickel-Bossau, also a former Roman Catholic, were the first ordained women in the Old Catholic church. The National Catholic Reporter covered the story in 1996:
[Bishop Joachim] Vobbe ordained two women at the Church of Christ in Konstanz, Germany. This is the first time that women have been publicly ordained by a bishop whose authority to ordain is recognized by the Catholic Church. The Old Catholic church is a small group with 300,000 members worldwide.
In a move hailed as highly symbolic by advocates of women's ordination and highly offensive by U.S. leaders of the Old Catholic church, a German bishop of that denomination laid hands on two female deacons on May 27, ordaining them priests.
Although the Old Catholic church is small in membership, numbering about 300,000 worldwide and 50,000 in the United States, the ordinations are important because they mark the first time that women have been ordained openly by a bishop whose authority to ordain is unquestioned by the Vatican.
The Anglican Communion News Service reported that Angela Berlis was a chaplain at Bonn University at the time of her ordination. It appears that Berlis is married to Rev. Peter Feenstra, who pastors the St. Willibrord's Old Catholic parish in the Netherlands. A picture of their church can be seen here.
Until that ordination, the Polish National Catholic Church in North America had been part of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht, according to InclusiveChurch.net:
The Council was saddened by the fact that the Polish National Catholic Church in North America had become estranged from other churches of the Union of Utrecht, which has culminated in a break over the issue of the ordination of women to the priesthood.
AOCICC is seeking ways to "move together in developing relationships with the Luthern and Orthodox Churches" according to the report.
One Orthodox church has already accepted the Vilatte succession:
It was through the Holy Spirit that Joseph Rene Vilatte fought the good fight and secured for Americans their own self-governing National Church known as The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America. To Joseph Rene Vilatte we in The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America will always be indebted.
They consider themselves to be part of the long history of Eastern Orthodoxy as the website indicates (though no doubt Orthodox Churches may view this differently). Presumably AOCICC will find intercommunion with this group acceptable if it is requested. What, then, will that mean for Roman Catholic ecumenism with the Orthodox, with the Anglicans, and inevitably at some point in time with the Gnostic Catholic Church, particularly if the concept of "clustering" moves forward?
