From the
archives - Published from 1982-96, Fidelity magazine was the predecessor of Culture Wars.
The Tridentine Rite Conference And
Its Schismatic Cousins (Part Two)
by Thomas W. Case
From the March 1993 issue of Fidelity magazine
Does Fr. Wickens subscribe
to the Siri Theory? For him it is an open question. But he wants to include
under the big tent of the TRC those who believe in the Siri papacy, and who
search among the back alleys of schismatic Catholicism for that pure and
unspotted Church of the Ages.
What they will get is
disturbed spirits claiming the Siri mantle (perhaps Father X will reveal it).
The red caps will come out of the closets. On to the Conclave!
Fr. Wickens collection
agency extends to a pan-Christian sect called the Sovereign Order of St John,
Knights of Malta. (There is a papally approved Knights of Malta in the Church,
but this is not it.) The Shickshinny group, as the fictitious OSJ is also
known, traces a fictitious connection to the medieval Hospitalers, or Knights
of St. John of Jerusalem. This quasi-military, 12th century order, originally
established to provide medical aid and to provide protection for pilgrims to
the newly won Holy Land, went through several permutations and name changes
before becoming the Knights of Malta in the 16th century.
There is no space to go
into the controversial history of the Knights. What happened in the birth of
the Shickshinny OSJ was some imaginative men searching history to find the
usual loophole to gain the pretense of Catholicism while remaining independent
from the Church. The loophole was that the medieval Knights had been given
extraordinary papal privileges freeing them from episcopal control. Grasping
this old-time privilege to itself through its own imaginative lineage (by way
of an Eastern Orthodox Czar of Russia) the modern OSJ includes in its
membership a potpourri of diverse Christian groups. Besides traditional
Catholics, these include Eastern Orthodox, High Church Anglicans, Old
Catholics, and (according to a 1967 Shickshinny report), Lutherans, Baptists,
Methodists and other Protestants. Another declaration of the OSJ proclaims that
the Catholic Church and the Old Roman Catholic Church are equally legitimate
bodies of the Catholic faith.
The OSJ is ruled by
vainglorious laymen trying to relive the glory of the past -- aristocratic
connections are usually required for lay officers. The group collects
discredited priests from various Catholic, quasi-Catholic, and other Christian
lineages to act as chaplains. Thus it is in the curious religious position of
having priests under the jurisdiction of laymen. Leonard Messineo, Grand Master
of one of the five or six OSJ factions all of which claim to be the one true
OSJ -- was a speaker at the 1991 Tridentine Rite Conference convention in New
Jersey. Father Wickens acts as a chaplain for the Messineo-led sect of the OSJ.
According to a priest
who knows Messineo, the latter claims to be a seer graced with the power to
open seminaries and ordain priests. Is Messineo a mystical lay bishop? Is he
another one of those fairy-tale prophets who keep popping up in schismland?
Fr. Wickens himself was
a parish priest in New Jersey, but disassociated himself from his diocese when
sex education was introduced in diocesan schools under Bishop Gerety. He
started saying the Tridentine Mass on his own for many years he has been
associated with the Feeneyites, and he and Fr LeBlanc, and probably most other
members of the TRC governing board lean towards the Feeneyites in belief at the
1991 TRC convention in New Jersey, Fr Wickens back-peddled just a little
claiming that baptism by blood or desire (which the Feeneyites deny) is not
defined doctrine, and that the overwhelming majority of the Fathers and
theologians are against it.
Back in the 1940s, Fr
Leonard Feeney, a Jesuit writer and theologian, became upset at what he
considered excessively ecumenical statements by the then Archbishop of Boston,
Cardinal Cushing. Fr Feeney, taking the well-worn phrase "No Salvation
Outside the Church" to its logical conclusion, insisted that there was no
such thing as baptism by blood or desire. Baptism by blood or desire is the
Catholic doctrine that the unbaptized infants or non-Catholics are not ipso
facto excluded from salvation.
Probably many orthodox
Catholics insist that there can be no salvation outside the Church. The problem
comes in defining the Church in this connection too literally. The Church
includes the Church Triumphant, the heavenly Church which all good men will
recognize after death. The innocent child and the "invincibly
ignorant" good man will enter that Church Triumphant in God's good time.
(A clear statement of this doctrine can be found in Radio Replies, 111, #487 )
A too literal
interpretation of the salvation doctrine takes us back to the Jansenist Antoine
Arnauld's statement that "God obviously did not want all men saved,"
and to that Calvinism condemned by the Council of Trent it leads modern
traditionalists into the same heresy that caused the Schism of Utrecht in the
early eighteenth century. If visible membership in the Catholic Church is a
precondition for salvation, then untold millions of good men, women, and
children of other faiths are excluded from heaven through no moral fault of
their own. The next logical step is to say then that God has preselected those
He will gratuitously save and those He will let fall into damnation. And that's
the doctrine of John Calvin.
Today's Feeneyites grasp
the usual loophole to claim they remain Catholics in good standing. In 1950 Fr.
Feeney was dismissed from the Jesuits for disobedience, and in 1953 Cardinal
Cushing excommunicated him. The Cardinal then sent to Rome for a papal
condemnation of Fr. Feeney. The condemnation was delivered in due time by Pope
Pius XII, but no formal papal excommunication came with it. This omission is
used today by Feeneyites such as TRC convention speaker Br. Francis, MICM, to
claim their legitimate Catholic status. In fact Feeney's doctrine had been
formally condemned as heretical by Pius XII.
The Feeneyite heresy is
easy to fall into for Catholics distressed by modernist priests, nuns, and lay
ministers preaching an ecumenism that seems to make all religions equal.
It is important to see
the precise mind of the Church on the question. Pope Pius IX addresses the
matter in his Letter on Indifferentism (August 10, 1863):
"The Catholic
dogma that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church is well-known. Those
who obstinately and knowingly reject the authority and definitions of the
Church, and persist willfully in remaining separated from the unity of the
Church and from the Bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter to whom the charge
of the vineyard was committed by Christ, those cannot be saved. [But he goes on to say] We
know that those who are invincibly ignorant of our holy religion, and who are
prepared to obey God. earnestly observing the natural moral law engraven in the
hearts of all men by God, can be saved by living an honest and just life with
the help of divine light and grace. For God, who clearly discerns the minds and
souls, thoughts an habits of all men, will not, in his goodness and mercy,
permit anyone to be punished eternally who is not guilty of voluntary
sin."
It is ironic that many
of the people the pope has in mind in the first paragraph of this quote reject
the doctrine outlined in the second paragraph. Perhaps it is poetic justice
that people who condemn other people to hell unjustly are in the gravest danger
of hell themselves.
Since schismatics
consign themselves to hell if they are knowingly in schism, they feverishly
dredge up every arcane bit of canon law or canonist opinion from any and all
eras to make the claim that they are not indeed really in schism. I would feel
a bit more sympathy for these worried souls if they would not condemn me and
the 900,000,000 other "Conciliar Catholics" to everlasting perdition.
Feeneyite Br. Francis
was on the program of the September TRC convention. (The "MICM" after
Br. Francis' name stands for the Latin translation of "Slaves of the Immaculate
Conception of Mary" -- the condemned order founded by Fr. Feeney.) Br.
Francis is married and has children. As Br. Francis' order is not under
Catholic Jurisdiction, there are apparently no vows of celibacy to contend
with. Also speaking at the convention were Feeneyite-leaning priests Fr. Quinn
and Fr. Wickens. (Ed. note - for clarification, a vistior to this site
took exception to this paragraph. Her comment is as follows: "Br.
Francis has a wife. Well, he was married before he took his religious
vows, and he even had children. However, since becoming a religious, he
no longer lives as a married man.")
These might be called
the Jansenist contingent. In fact the whole weight of the TRC moves towards a
replay of the original Schism of Utrecht, a holier-than-thou-Calvinist
Christianity under the shadow of God as the Grim Reaper.
On the executive board
of the TRC is Fr. Leonard Giardina, who runs the Christ the King Monastery in
Cullman, Alabama. The "OSB" after his name should mean he is a
Benedictine, but Fr. Giardina is fully independent from the Order of St.
Benedict. His sympathies are sede vacantist. A brochure from the
monastery says that "the Monks of Christ the King Monastery are Priests
and Religious Brothers of the Traditional Roman Catholic Church," which
Church does not exist on this earth, but only in the mind of Fr. Giardina. The
title "Traditional Roman Catholic Church" is deceptive in two
aspects. First, it makes naive Catholics think that Fr. Giardina's church is a
really existing church, and second, that it is a legitimate part of the
Catholic Church.
Not one of these priests
has faculties, none is incardinated in a diocese. None can legally confect the
sacraments. Now this is important for a Catholic to know. Even when a priest
without faculties can claim valid orders, and can validly confect the Sacrament
of the Eucharist (although if he is with-out faculties he acts thus in sin), he
cannot validly hear confessions, nor can he validly witness a marriage. For
these two sacraments jurisdiction is required, and jurisdiction is lost when a
priest has no faculties. In terms of these two sacraments, we have gone past
the point of "illicit" and reached the point of unreality. A marriage
performed by a priest without faculties is not a marriage, and a priest without
faculties cannot absolve sins. Only in the most extreme social situation, as at
the point of death when no legitimate priest is available, will the Church
revoke the Jurisdictional restriction.
Those Catholics who
attended the TRC Conference, and those invited speakers who actually did show
up, associated themselves with a variety of independents, schismatics, and
heretics with strange theories who will nevertheless try to establish a united
front in favor of tradition, which invariably means access to the Tridentine
Mass, which has become the prime recruiting device aimed at Catholics
scandalized by the chaos which followed in the wake of Vatican II. Fr. Wickens'
New Jersey Catholic News periodically provides a directory of
chapels where the Traditional Mass is said.
Included are OSJ
chapels, sede vacantists, Feeneyite houses, Pius V and Pius X churches and a
slew of schismatic independents. Nowhere are Catholic Indult Masses listed,
indicating that there are obviously some limits to the TRC's big tent theory.
The great divide is between those inside the Church and those outside the
Church. The line is drawn deeper and firmer by the TRC's attitude towards the
Indult Mass. In Fr. Wickens' New Jersey Catholic News, the Indult Mass
is seen not as a welcome event but as a seductive enticement that will drag
True Catholics back into the Church of the Modernists. (Anything the Church
does wrong is blasted; anything the Church does right is a clever trick.) This
kind of reasoning a viewpoint the TRC shares with Bishop Williamson of the
Society of Pius X diabolizes the Church of Rome and makes it impossible for
there ever to be a reconciliation. The end of that road is ruin.
To all those Catholics
so disturbed by abuses of faith and liturgy in the modern Church that they have
joined one or another schismatic, traditional "Catholic" communions,
read the following morality tale of the Utrecht Schism and take warning.
The designation of
"schismatic" is already a scandal for many. The members of the
Society of St. Pius X (Lefebvrites) consider themselves faithful Catholics;
they are not in schism: it is the "Conciliar Church" that is in
schism. They rail against the Society of St. Pius V (Kellyites), who are in
schism from the Society of St. Pius X. Meanwhile the Society of St. Pius V
considers itself the True Church; its members rail against those groups
originating in the Thuc lineage of schismatic Catholics. In turn the Thuc
lineage bishops, priests, and faithful excoriate the groups validated by the
Old Catholic lineage. But in terms of excommunicate status, each group is equal
to any other. All are outside the Church of Rome.
Equally outside the
Church? I hear the outrage as I write. In the course of writing this article, I
interviewed a lady who is a member of our local Pius X church. When I pointed
to the 1988 document Ecclesia Dei, excommunicating Archbishop Marcel
Lefebvre and his organization, she informed me in no uncertain terms that you
cannot be excommunicated for upholding the Faith. She gave me some slickly
colorful pamphlets decrying obedience to a false authority.
As time goes on, I hear
a million subtle arguments proving that it is the present Church of Rome that
has lost the true faith, and the Lefebvrites (for example), alone of all the
faithful keep the True Church alive. I hear that the Novus Ordo Mass
is a hodgepodge of Protestantism, or that the new code of Canon Law is
un-Catholic, or that the Second Vatican Council documents are a muddle of
heresy, or that the Chair of Peter is empty, or that the Chair of Peter is
occupied by the Anti-Christ, or any combination and permutation of the above.
All of these opinions are presented to justify separation from the visible
Church of Christ. But let us see what happens to the Catholic faithful when,
for whatever reasons, they become disconnected from the See of Peter.
The Utrecht Schism of
1724 was born from the ultra-rigorous theology of Jansenism. Jansenism is today
considered an archetypal heresy of the Catholic Church, but in its own day it
was a belief held by many of the faithful, basing itself chiefly on notions of
efficacious grace derived from the theology of St. Augustine. The arguments are
subtle, but in essence Jansenism can be reduced to these propositions: 1) By
the sin of Adam all men are condemned, and no human acts are any help to
salvation; 2) God chooses, before anyone's coming into existence, whom He shall
save and whom He shall allow to fall into eternal damnation; 3) In effect God
predisposes the few to a good life and to heaven by providing them with His
irresistible grace, while predisposing the many to an evil life and to eternal
damnation by withholding that grace. (The Council of Trent had roundly
condemned this doctrine of "double predestination.")
As proof for God's
pre-selection of people for heaven or hell, Jansenist theologian Antoine
Arnauld had argued that "God obviously did not I want all men saved,
because otherwise he would not have made membership in his Church a
precondition for salvation. The existence of millions of non-Christians was
proof of his intentions." We have met up with this gloomy logic among
present- day traditionalists, unaware, perhaps, that it has been condemned
implicitly by their favorite Council of Trent.
Jansenist tendencies were
rife in northern France and the Netherlands in the late 1600s. The Diocese of
Utrecht in Holland became a center of Jansenism and a haven for refugee
Jansenists from France. Pieter Codde, the Vicar Apostolic of Utrecht
(1686-1704), enticed towards the Jansenist view by these refugees, was summoned
to Rome in 1699 to answer charges that he taught Jansenism and harbored
influential French Jansenists like Quesnel and Gerberon. A Vatican Commission
eventually required the Dutch clergy to sign a formulary of Pope Alexander VII,
abjuring Jansenist doctrines. Codde (among many others) refused, was suspended
in 1702, and dismissed as Vicar Apostolic. In alliance with a majority of
Utrecht's secular and regular clergy, Codde refused to accept the new Vatican-appointed
Vicar Apostolic of Utrecht, Theodorus de Cock.
From Rome came a bull of
excommunication. Rebellious clergy of the area appointed their own bishop. But
to retain the apostolic succession, and so arguably to remain true Catholics,
the rebels needed their new bishop consecrated by another bishop with valid, if
illicit, orders. They found their man in one Dominique Varlet, a renegade
French missionary bishop suspended for holding Jansenist views. Varlet
consecrated Cornelius Steenoven in 1724, thus establishing a schismatic
communion popularly called the Little Church of Utrecht, which still exists.
During the 18th century,
attempts were made to reunite with Rome. At the Council of Utrecht in 1763, the
Little Church rejected its more extreme Jansenist views and edged closer to the
Tridentine faith of Rome. But doctrinal differences reappeared with the papal
definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and deepened with the dogma of
Papal Infallibility at Vatican I in 1870. By then the Utrecht schismatics were
a remnant.
A new stream of
schismatics appeared after the Vatican Council, soon to take on the title of
Old Catholics. But to retain the apostolic succession, and so arguably to
remain true Catholics, they needed a bishop of their own from a valid, if
illicit, Catholic lineage. They found their man in one Heykemp of Deventer in
Holland, a bishop of the Little Church. In 1873 he consecrated Joseph Reinkens,
thus establishing an Old Catholic\Utrecht schismatic communion which still
exists.
The Old Catholics
swamped the membership of the Utrecht schismatics, and after this time -- the
last decades of the 19th century -- the whole movement was Old Catholic in
essentials. The Little Church of Utrecht had provided an arguably valid
episcopal succession, but its by now ancient Jansenist rigorism was lost in the
shuffle. The movement soon broke into a number of competing and diverse sects,
most of them moving into closer relations with the Protestants after 1870. The
Union of Utrecht in 1889 attempted to bring the various Old Catholic sects into
line, but its Declaration of the same year promulgated a creed shot through
with Protestant doctrines. The Council of Trent, previously held as central and
as the last true ecumenical council by most Old Catholics (in lieu of accepting
the heretical Vatican Council I) was rejected, since its chief canons and
anathemas were directed at Calvinist and Lutheran heresies. The door was now
open to rapprochement with Protestant denominations.
According to the Declaration
of Utrecht, the Bishop of Rome was accorded a primacy of honor, but not of
Jurisdiction (an Eastern Orthodox formula). Typical Catholic doctrines such as
the treasury of merits, indulgences, the Immaculate Conception, and the
Assumption of Mary, were rejected. Also rejected were practices like the
veneration of saints, the rosary, wearing the scapular, pilgrimages,
processions, and clerical celibacy. The Real Presence was accepted, but
transubstantiation was denied. Only the first eight ecumenical councils were
declared valid.
From this list of
deletions, it is easy to see how Anglicans could be accommodated, and in fact
the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 proclaimed that there was nothing in
the 1889 Declaration of Utrecht incompatible with the doctrines of the Church
of England. Intercommunion between High Church Anglicans and Old Catholics
became customary.
The Old Catholic lineage
sired stranger offspring. A mystical sect called Mariavites sprang up in Poland
in the early years of this century. The origin were visions and locutions
vouchsafed to a Third Order Franciscan nun, Sister Maria Felicia Kozlowska. Due
to its questionable mystical practices, the sect was excommunicated in 1906,
whereupon it organized itself into the Mariavite Union. But to retain the
apostolic succession, and so remain (arguably) Catholics, the Mariavites needed
their own bishop. A delegation of Marianites therefore attended the Old
Catholic Congress in Vienna in 1909 and before long an Old Catholic bishop had
consecrated the Mariavite co-founder, Jan Kowalski, thus establishing a
Mariavite/Old Catholic/Utrecht schismatic lineage that still exists today.
A few years later the
Mariavites were thrown out of the Old Catholic communion when it became known
that their "mystic marriages" involved cohabitation of priests and
nuns, whose children would be "conceived without original sin." These
children were declared to be the firstborn of a new and sinless humanity.
Archbishop Zaboroski of the Mariavite Church attended the first TRC
"Priests' Meeting" in 1985.)
The Anglican connection
spawned weirder stuff. Theosophy was born in the fertile imagination of Madame
Blavatsky and became an existing organization in 1875. It is a nebulous muddle
of Eastern mysticism and Western magic, complete with Tibetan "Ascended
Masters" claiming to hold the keys to a synthesis of all religions. Jesus
Christ and the Buddha are pals in the heavens, part of the Great White
Brotherhood helping mankind to achieve nirvana. A member of the Theosophical Society,
Mr. Charles Leadbeater (a renegade Anglican clergyman), decided to form his own
sect of Theosophy with a more traditional religious cloak.
The Old Catholics had
consecrated a Mr. Willoughby (an Anglican minister) as "Presiding Bishop
of the Old Catholics" in England. He in turn consecrated Mr. Wedgewood.
Mr. Leadbeater, desiring an entrance into the apostolic succession, needed a
bishop with valid, if illicit, orders. He found his man in Bishop Wedgewood,
who consecrated Leadbeater as the "Regionary Bishop of Australia."
Bishop Leadbeater then founded his own religion, a blend of Theosophy,
Spiritism and astral and etheric imaginings which are a primary source for the
present day New Age Movement. But Mr. Leadbeater, having, as he supposed, the
apostolic succession, called his religion the Liberal Catholic Church. In this
country you will find Liberal Catholics, Old Catholics, and Old Roman Catholics
all connected by episcopal succession to the Schism of Utrecht. The Old
Catholics are small in number and by-and-large adhere openly to the doctrines
of the Utrecht Convention of 1889 (married priests, no infallible pope, no
Assumption of Mary, etc.). The Liberal Catholics ride every New Age spiritual
fashion from channeling to esoteric astrology to a belief in reincarnation.
The Old Roman Catholics
derive from a one-time Anglican, Arnold Harris Mathew, who was consecrated into
the Old Catholic line in England in 1910. His followers settled in the Chicago area,
and, presumably in order to distinguish themselves from the existing Old
Catholics in the United States, added the title "Roman" to their
name. Today there are at least 300 Old Roman Catholic bishops in the country,
mostly with minuscule flocks, without dioceses, but with loudly proclaimed and
competing jurisdiction over any and all traditionalists. Most Old Roman
Catholics reject the Utrecht Convention doctrines, and are apt to pretend to a
conservative, pre-Vatican II Catholicism. But the theology they hold is as
variable as the bishops who rule their particular sect. Some parishes put on a
good show but allow a wide latitude of belief. In this respect they are much
like the High Anglican Church: incense, bells, reverent music, lots of Latin,
but not much in the way of a Creed (except on paper). Many are annulment mills
and havens for morally sick Catholics.
If anyone claims that
the Old Roman Catholic line is somehow legitimate, it should be known that Pope
Pius X specifically declared Mathew, who tried "to arrogate unto himself
the title of Anglo-Catholic Archbishop of London" and "all others who
lent aid, counsel or consent to this nefarious crime, by the authority of
Almighty God, We hereby excommunicate, anathematize, and solemnly declare to be
separated from the communion of the Church and to be held for
schismatics."
Thus ends the morality
tale (we shall meet up with the Old Catholic lineage again later on). Recall
that neither the Church of Utrecht, nor the Old Catholics, nor the offspring of
the Old Catholics, ever accepted their status as schismatics. Archbishop
Heykemp, at the Utrecht Convention of 1889, said,
We recognize the
Roman Catholic Church as the only Church of Jesus Christ. and the Pope of Rome
as the center of Catholic Unity. We remain, by the grace of God, in the Roman
Catholic Church and abhor schism as one of the greatest crimes in the Church.
This is a preamble to
the Declaration of Utrecht, which went on to reject a whole slew of Catholic
dogmas, doctrines, devotions and disciplines.
As
"Catholics," however these sectarians needed a valid episcopal
succession. Therefore it was necessary for them to gain leaders consecrated by
Catholic bishops who were themselves in schism, but able to pass on such a
valid succession. In this legitimizing process, they naturally promoted the
notion of "sacramental validity" while downplaying the notion of
"licit," as if the state of unlawfulness and excommunication from the
Vicar of Christ, were of no account, so long as "validity" was
preserved. This is exactly the modus operandi of traditionalist movements
today.
It should be made
clear that the claim to apostolicity by excommunicated lineages is spurious.
Here we can do no better than quote Rumble and Carty's Radio Replies on the
issue: The word "Apostolic" in general signifies the identity of a
present Church with the Church of the Apostles. This identity can be either
adequate or inadequate. Adequate apostolicity is present when a Church of today
has not only the same doctrine and worship, and the same episcopal
constitution, but also the same uninterrupted and lawfully transmitted
jurisdiction or authority. Without this later requirement, any vestiges of
apostolicity are inadequate, and useless as a mark or identification By the
mere fact of being in schism, apostolic authority is forfeited.
The authors are here
(Vol. II, 1266) responding to the claim of apostolicity for the Greek Orthodox
Church, but the same argument applies to the Old Catholics or any other group
that claims to retain the apostolic succession while in a state of schism from
Rome. To put it simply: no one can lawfully claim to be a Catholic who is not
in communion with the See of Peter.
That is a crucial point
overlooked by every schismatic straining the bounds of logic to claim he is not
realty in schism. The other thing to take a hard look at is to see what
happened to group of sectarians who split off from the authority of the visible
Church tn order to retain, as they claimed, the true Catholic faith. Without
that Magisterium and without that central authority, they soon dissolved into
competing, back-biting, bitter sects. Rigorous faith and strict morals
dissolved quickly into any old faith at all, and in some cases, bawdy-house
morals. New schismatic movements attached themselves willy-nilly to existing
schismatic movements. Finally, real flakes and mountebanks could claim an
apostolic succession.
Thomas
W. Case is an expert on cults and a frequent contributor to Fidelity.
Part
One was published in Fidelity in February 1993.
Index of SSPX articles
| Home | Books | Tapes | Orders/Subscriptions | Culture Wars | Events | Fidelity Reprints | Donate |
Culture Wars •
Copyright