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CONVERSATIONS
WITH "FATHER"
Part
I
Valerie
Kane
This past June, the Most Reverend Francis
Facione, Ph.D., Presiding Bishop of the Old Roman
Catholic Church in North America, celebrated the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his consecration to the
episcopacy. Over the summer, I recorded two
conversations with him in which he spoke out on an
array of subjects that included the state of the
Roman Catholic Church ("in crisis"); the papacy of
John Paul II ("fair to middling"); the identity of
the Old Roman Catholic Church ("WE ARE CATHOLICS!
And I will stand up to any Roman priest, cardinal
-- the pope, if necessary -- to express our
principles and beliefs."); his tenure as presiding
bishop, the achievement of which he is "sinfully"
proud, and how he wants to be remembered ("as an
S.O.B. who got things done.") Characteristically,
the man who has been my pastor for over four years
and is known to the parishioners of St. Mark's in
Louisville, Kentucky simply and affectionately as
"Father", was unequivocal, unapologetic, sometimes
profane and never more passionate than when
discussing the sacred traditions of the faith to
which he has devoted his life and the Church whose
message as the alternative Catholicism he is
committed to evangelizing.
VK:
Father, in our many discussions about the
forces warring for the soul of the Church --
feminism, secularism, authoritarianism, even heresy
-- what we've come to call, collectively, "crisis
in the Church" --
there's one
facet of Catholicism we haven't mentioned. Isn't it
time we once again recognize the Catholic Church as
a cultural as well as a religious institution, and
as one of the pillars of western
civilization?
FF:
Absolutely. Especially in America, the Church
has surrendered that role in its drive to be
relevant and politically correct, and seems to have
come under the influence of what we call modernism,
which has adversely impacted the life of the
Church. But in my opinion, the leaders of the
Church clearly don't understand this. Only now are
they beginning to realize that many things that
have occurred in the name of the Second Vatican
Council were an aberration.
VK: Given
that Catholics under the age of forty have no
memory of the pre-Vatican II Church and its
liturgical and devotional traditions, is it
possible, as Bishop Adams has observed, that the
major crisis in the Church is that the Church
doesn't know there is a crisis?
FF:
Certainly, since the Council, it seems that the
laity, who are unaware of the settled teachings and
traditions of the Church, are also unaware of a
crisis . . .
VK: When
you say "modernism", are you referring to the
movement that began in the middle of the last
[nineteenth] century or something
new?
FF: I'm
referring to an extension of that movement that's
resulted today --
that makes
it possible for a Roman pastor in the Detroit area
to openly say, "We don't want any of that
Tridentine crap around here." I mean, he actually
said that. And he could get away with it because
the Roman clergy has portrayed what we [Old
Roman Catholics] represent as reactionary. The
laity has picked up on that because, as we said
before, they're in many ways not as well educated
as they once were about the faith, and even the
Mass and what it means. Now we have this idea of
the Church as community and in many instances, the
Mass as entertainment . . . there is a diminished
sense of the sacred, the transcendent mysteries.
The idea of the Mass as sacrifice and the priest's
role in its celebration has been diminished. You
know, I was ordained to offer the Holy Sacrifice of
the Mass. Today, the priest "presides" at
Eucharist. Well, I'm sorry, I can't buy into it and
never will. I think it's an aberration that has
gone beyond reforming language to destroying
meaning. Words have meaning and if you change
words, meanings will also change . . .
VK: If
you would, Father, give us your vision for the
Church in the next century.
FF:
The crisis
in the Catholic Church -- indeed the Church
Catholic -- aside, I think I have to comment
primarily on the vision I see for the Old Roman
Catholic Church in the next millennium. I see it as
the Church that will remain as a refuge for those
who have had enough of the
modernist
trends;
for those
who've had enough of blind obedience, and as a
refuge for those who want to exercise their rightly
formed consciences in their relationships with our
Lord -- and practice their Catholic faith. I think
that in conjunction with a reformed and
re-vitalized larger Old Catholic movement, it will
be a vehicle to bring Christ to people in this
country and throughout North America because our
brethren in the larger Communions seem to have lost
that sense of mission and concern for repairing the
fabric of the body of Christ, which is the Church,
that has been so rent by the modernists and
innovators who desire change for the sake of
change. Our role is to preserve tradition and to
respect conscience and to get the message out: yes,
you can be a good, practicing Catholic and still
follow your conscience. Our liturgy will retain the
emphasis on the sacred mysteries and a personal
relationship with the Lord -- the "philosophia
Christi" -- as Desiderius Erasmus termed it.
And at the same time we can be that community of
believers that was intended by the Second Vatican
Council without the excesses that have occurred and
are occurring. When we understand that there are
some eighty million unchurched people in the United
States, when we look at the number of Catholic
parishes suffering from a shortage of priests, when
we look at the lack of vocations to the priesthood
and religious life and that people seem to be
voting with their feet, we begin to realize that it
is not politically correct to be a Catholic today.
I think people are staying away from the Church
because they have not been taught the basic tenets
of the faith in the same way they were thirty-five
years ago. And I don't mean to suggest that we
return to the days when the parish priest was a
tyrant and the good sisters were experts in "laying
guilt trips". People are saying, why should I
become a Catholic or remain a Catholic when I can
get the same thing at some local Protestant church?
In many ways I think the Catholic Church has been
"Protestantized", and now, like the mainline
Protestant communions, it's finding its pews
emptying. Of course, the Catholic Church must reach
out in a spirit of ecumenism, but it must also
retain its uniquely Catholic identity. That's what
the Old Roman Catholic Church is doing, preserving
the Church's historic traditions, preserving
primacy of conscience, and rejecting excessive
authoritarianism. And that's our mission as Old
Roman Catholics, to repair the fabric of the body
of Christ, and bring Christ to the masses within
the framework of the Catholic tradition.
VK:
Another part of our mission is to -- it says in
our mission statement that besides excessive
authoritarianism, one of the factors that has
impaired the Church's original Catholicity is the
blurring of the distinctions between doctrine and
dogma. What exactly are the
distinctions?
FF: All
dogma is doctrine, a teaching of the Church. But
not all doctrine is dogma. Dogma is that which must
be believed, that which is essential to the faith.
The dogma of the Trinity, for example. The dogma of
the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The
Church has blurred doctrine and dogma by attempting
to make all papal pronouncements appear as dogma.
Humanae Vitae, Paul VI's encyclical, for
example, is not dogma. It is doctrine and as such,
is subject to change. Doctrine is subject to
change; dogma is not. Dogma is an irrevocable
revelation or teaching evident from the Lord
Himself or the apostles, or the fathers of the
Church. Doctrine is purely a
teaching --
the doctrine
on celibacy, the doctrine on birth
control.
VK: Papal
infallibility?
FF: Yes,
because you see, since the pope had himself
declared infallible in 1870, we have this
sanctification of infallibility and universal papal
primacy, which are innovations in the Church.
Attempts to infallibilize all papal pronouncements
are reactions to this new theology that has
desacrilized the Church and diluted its dogma. So
you have the pope's statement excluding women from
holy orders being presented as dogma, but I'm not
so sure it is. But you see, that's a reaction to
this new theology, the modernists who want to
reconsider not only doctrine but also dogma that's
been settled by ecumenical council. It's [the
new theology] changing the face of the Church,
changing its mission, which is to bring souls to
Christ. And something must be done to re-identify
Catholicism with its original mission instead of
with peripheral issues like birth control and
married clergy, and we're -- we Old Roman Catholics
-- are doing that in our Church.
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