"Old" Catholics. . .

The first time I stumbled across the name Old Catholic Church, I did not know what to make of it.  Eventually I discovered that this was a specific thing, or several things, as it were.  Apparently, there was significant push back in Germany after Vatican I.   They were not alone in questioning the dogma of infallibility that was the hallmark of that council but saw it as the worst kind of innovation and contrary to the faith of the Catholic Church.  Eventually, they would join together forming the “Old Catholic” churches in a number of countries, including Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.  The following year they conferenced, even inviting some Protestants to be observers.  The Vatican responded with a Decree of the Inquisition in September of 1871, insisting the Old Catholics were No Catholics but this group enjoyed some state support in areas where they operated.  Excommunicated and without a Roman bishop to join them, they consecrated their own.  Like the SSPX of today, this was a step too far and Pius IX rejected them for denying his own infallibility and the Church’s indefectibility.  The Polish National Catholic Church came to North America in 1897 and the movement picked up the Church of Utrecht, which had broken with Rome over papal authority in the a couple of hundred years before.  There are now some quarter of a million claimed in the US and the insist that they are the real Catholics and Rome lost its way.  Things have not gone well for the Old Catholics, some ordaining women, some practicing open communion, and some breaking away over these and other issues.

Odd, in a sense, because Lutherans probably have had a decent claim to the term Old Catholics as much as these groups.  Interesting enough, our issue with Rome was only partly due to the papacy -- especially since the infallibility doctrine was to wait more than three hundred years to define.  The claim, however, was the same.  Rome had innovated and the Lutherans were attempting to preserve the ancient faith true to the Scriptures.  The councils had conflicted with each other and even contradicted each other.  The popes had erred.  Moral problems abounded and some related to the discipline of celibacy forced upon those who would be priests.  The problem was not simply language but a break down of catechesis which fostered errors and superstition that masqueraded as piety.  The Mass had become less gift to the Church and means to the faithful to receive the flesh and blood that forgave and cleansed the sins of the faithful than its own form of solemn entertainment, watched without really being part of it.  Luther was bold and his language colorful and his cause encouraged by the advent of the printing press but the Confessions of Lutherans were more churchly and nuanced, especially the Augustana and the Apology.  Luther shone best in his preaching and his catechisms as well as his exegetical work.  But in the end, Lutherans have been their own worst enemies.

Much of Lutheranism has become a sham of progressivism which long ago forsook the Scriptures as the one eternal truth to judge all truths and molded the Confessions into principles which could be used to justify the embrace of modernity.  Divisions were healed and then created anew, trying to sort out the authentic voice of the Augsburg Confession.  Some forgot that liturgical identity and confessional vitality were two sides of the same coin and sought to make doctrine distinct from and unrelated to the things of worship.  Some made their peace with Rome over justification and chose words which both could claim instead of something more clear and specific with integrity over the real causes of the Reformation.  Some, like Missouri, continue to lay claim to being the real voice of the Lutheran movement against the wannabes who find more in common with Methodists and Presbyterians than the LCMS.  Meanwhile, Rome seems to have institutionalized the papacy so well that even an oddball like Francis must be affirmed and his seemingly more careful successor is left to dance around the former's errors rather than simply admit them.  Old Catholics were right to suggest that the papal centrism of Vatican I was the problem as revealed by the way the Paul VI could bypass what Vatican II said to invent a new Mass nobody liked except those who were uncomfortable in their Roman shoes.  Now we have a pope who has to choose German bishops preapproved by those who contradict Roman teaching, submit to the secular rule of the Chinese government to get bishops there, and put up with the lavender mafia still clamoring for a new morality as jarring as was the new Mass nearly sixty years ago.  Sad to say that little Missouri may still be the best candidate for the claim Old Catholic and other Lutherans and Rome seem to be edging toward becoming no Catholic at all.  It is, after all, the reason why so many remain within Missouri's sometimes uncomfortable borders.  I guess it applies to me, as well.  I am not ready to trade one set of problems I know for the ones I am only beginning to discover.  Anglicanism wanted to be the via media but Lutherans wanted, and real Lutherans still want, to hold to the catholic doctrine and practice that is the mark of the faithful communion.