I remember Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the 1976 film Network, an unforgettable performance for which Finch posthumously won an Oscar.  In a pivotal moment-one of the all-time great movie moments-Beale metamorphosed from a television news commentator into the "Mad Prophet of the Airwaves".  Wet and disheveled, he stood before the camera, staring into the lens as a confused viewing audience watched and waited.  Abruptly, he raised his fists, shook them violently, and exhorted his viewers to "Go to the window and shout as loud as you can: 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!'"  Within minutes, thousands of people tore open their windows and resoundingly announced their revolt to the world.  What made this a landmark moment was that a fictional character had tapped into the repressed angst of not just his fictional audience, but of the film's audience.  Beale's "mad as hell"line became the war cry of the then newly-identified "silent majority".

I confess that as I write these words, I'm feeling Howard Beale-like.  There's something that I'm mad as hell about, and have been for decades.  And for decades I've tried to do something about it in all the nice, polite ways.  But my efforts have been wasted, even counterproductive (think "pearls before swine").  Thus, I've decided to take the cathartic approach of the Mad Prophet.  I want everyone to know, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more!

For nearly thirty years, I've been assembling a list of observations that others have made about Old Catholicism and the relationship-or more accurately, the lack thereof-between Old Catholics and Roman Catholics of the curial persuasion (whom my predecessors called, somewhat derisively, "Vatican Catholics").  I've gleaned these observations from a variety of sources, including the secular and religious presses, various Web sites, and from private conversations and correspondence.  While they have come both from VatCaths and "Orccy-Occies"*, no real dialogue has occurred.  The Vat Cath position, depending on how politically correct the writer is feeling, is that Old Catholics are either "separated Catholics", not really Catholic, or just plain "wacky"(see Crisis Magazine, May 2001).  Regardless of how cleverly the old Romanita may be disguised as an objective news story about Old Catholics and what they believe, the intent (and most often, the result) is to discredit Old Catholicism in the minds of the Roman Catholic laity.  The Orccy-Occy response has been understandably reactive, ranging from conciliation, to numb indifference, to sputtering, inarticulate rage. 

Until now. 

It’s time to get proactive and reclaim-or more accurately, rescue-the term "Catholic"from those who have successfully equated it with a narrow and stultifying sectarianism that has nevertheless, not only marginalized all "non-papal"Catholics, but also forced the curial Church into untenable-and often, downright silly-intellectual positions. 

Let me give you an example of this peculiar sectarianism in operation. Several weeks ago, while I was visiting St. Mark's in Louisville, a curious message was left on the answering machine.  A gentleman was inquiring about a particular Old Catholic parish, wanting to know if it was "really Catholic".  A relative had explained to him that the parish in question couldn't really be Catholic, "since they're not under the pope".  Being "under the pope"is really important to curial Catholics, so important that being "Catholic" has come to mean being papal.  In other words, according to VatCaths, for one to be truly Catholic, one must be "under the pope".  I have come to call this absolute requirement of being under papal domination the "missionary position" theory of Catholic identity.  If you're  a real Catholic, the pope must always be on top. 

One of the things that separates Old Catholics from Vatican Catholics is that we are reluctant to "assume the position"-i.e., submit to papal domination-as a matter of course.  By no means do we advocate the abrogation of the papacy, or even deny that it ought play a unique role in the Church.  Historically, however, we have tended to conciliarism rather than curialism.  Revisionist historians of the curial stripe would have everyone believe that our "uppity" attitude is a recent aberration brought about by an overreaction to the declaration of papal infallibility which Pio Nono finessed out of Vatican I in 1870.  A more objective analysis would clearly demonstrate that we adopted our attitude toward the papacy long before Vatican I, and in so doing, joined the good and godly company of the likes of Saints Gregory I and Augustine of Hippo. 

With Gregory, we maintain that there are no "bishops of bishops", "office" and "order" not being synonymous.  For example, no one has ever been "ordained" archbishop, cardinal, or pope.  Such positions are filled by appointment or election.  These are clearly political "offices" rather than sacramental "orders". 

With Augustine, we affirm that the papacy can be (and has often been) downright wrong and in need of occasional correction and redirection.  Also, that it has a tendency to overstep its legitimate boundaries.  Unlike VatCaths, we Old Catholics have retained the Church’s historic understanding of papal primacy, universal jurisdiction, and papal infallibility as three distinct and evolved concepts.  That muddle-headed and dependent personalities wad them together, and are thus unable to evaluate the nature and validity of each, is their misfortune. 

Still, even if we were to succeed in convincing Vatican Catholics that the pope is not the dispenser of Catholicity, they would inevitably play what they consider their trump card, the Jansenist "heresy".  At least one curial commentator has suggested that Old Catholics avoid discussing or at least downplay their Jansenist origins and the activities of Arnold Harris Mathew or Rene Vilatte.* To him and other Jansenism-phobes, I say, "Read my lips.  I am a Jansenist and proud of it!" 

Of course, being a Jansenist, I do not consider the Jansenist movement to have been heretical.  Rather, it was a reform movement that was essentially political and ideological, not theological, in nature.  In the eyes of the papal supremacists, however, the Jansenists' real crime was their refusal to submit to papal intimidation.  Given a choice between conscience and lying under oath at the pope's command, they chose conscience, and suffered persecution as a result. 

Subsequent Vatican spin has portrayed Jansenism as Calvinism and Catholic puritanism.  I readily concede a certain "strictness" and moralistic tone in some of the Jansenist pastoral positions.  Here, as in all historical analysis, context is relevant.  Jansenism began in an era when nuns were known to have operated brothels out of their abbeys, and courtesans to come directly from assignations to Confession and Communion.  Is it possible, then, that a certain "strictness" was warranted, and that a criticism of "frequent Communion", practiced in such away as to make a mockery of the Sacrament, was not entirely out of place?  Because of this "moral rigor", Jansenist Catholics have been described as morbidly preoccupied with fear of Hell, and distrust and hatred for all things bright and beautiful.  But this is a caricature that is patently inconsistent with the philosophical works of Arnauld, the vibrant spirituality of Pascal's Pensées, the warm colors and tangible hope and joy of Champaigne's canvases, the poetry and prose of Racine, and the choral and instrumental music of Charpentier, all of which were the product of Jansenists!  Again, the Jansenists' unforgivable offense was to criticize the Church-in particular, the Jesuits and the papacy-for moral laxity, political machinations and unholy alliances, and a general skewing of priorities.  In other words, the real issue underlying Jansenism always was and still is the nature and abuse of authority in the Church!

In referring to the activities of Mathew and Vilatte, some authors have sought to discredit them on the basis of character, thereby impugning the ordinations performed and/or the persons ordained by them. As to questions about Mathew and Vilatte, I am inclined to borrow a phrase from my God-daughter and her peerage:  Don't go there!   Several authors, however, have gone there, thereby giving me license to go there as well, and to respond in kind.  Vilatte, not being my direct ecclesiastical progenitor, does not warrant my defense.  Mathew, however, for better or for worse, does. 

I readily concede that his actions were sometimes indefensible.  In a number of areas, he exhibited poor judgment.  Some of the people he consecrated to the episcopacy turned out to be less than admirable, or idiosyncratic in their interpretation of doctrine, to say the least.  Mathew did come up with some hare-brained schemes and couldn't always read (or at least accurately interpret) the handwriting on the wall.  These flaws certainly predisposed him to being, at best, inept and befuddled, and at worst, grandiose. 

At the time of this writing, the media is focused on a former VatCath priest who is being tried for sexually abusing little boys over a period of several decades.  His story is most certainly not the first of its kind to receive news coverage.  Indeed, reports of these incidents have occurred so frequently that, sadly, I’ve lost count.  Several archbishops have apologized for the laxity of Church officials in dealing with the problem of pedophile priests in a timely and caring fashion.  On another front, in the last decade, at least three American VatCath archbishops have resigned their offices in the wake of highly publicized, personal sexual scandals.  According to the logic applied by VatCaths to Mathew, the errors in judgment acknowledged by these bishops must somehow invalidate or nullify their sacramental actions.  The problem with this criterion, no matter to whom it's applied, is that it smacks of  Donatism, the 5^th century heresy that implied that the validity of a sacrament depended on the moral character of the cleric administering it.  Donatism aside, to my knowledge, Mathew never covered up acts of child sexual abuse or personally engaged in Church-financed extramarital affairs.  And although he did indeed did indeed have a wife, he did not wed her in a mass ceremony performed by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon! (At last report, Vatican spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls had personally overseen the separation of septuagenarian VatCath Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo from his twenty-something bride, Maria, whom he married in a Moonie "wed-in"in May, 2001.)  Whatever Mathew's failings may have been, they were certainly not of the magnitude currently in the news.  So, to revert once again to common parlance, we need to move on.

Another VatCath tactic in discrediting Old Catholics is to refer to them as "former" Catholics.  Old Catholic clergy are "former" Catholic seminarians, as are priests who left (or were asked to leave) the Vatican Church (read "the one, true Church").  According to one "press release", they are "mostly malcontents".  As one of those malcontents who left the VatCath confines, I am more than happy to respond to these two allegations.

As to the first, I am not a "former" Catholic.  I am a continuing Catholic.  I have chosen to identify with one historical tradition within the body of the Church Catholic rather than with another, namely, with the Ultrajectine rather than the Ultramontane.  I stand happily within a continuing Catholic faith tradition shared by Geert Groote, Thomas á Kempis, Zerbolt of Zutphen, Wesel Gansfort, and Desiderius Erasmus; a tradition defended by the likes of Antoine Arnauld, Blaise Pascal, Lord Acton, and Ignatz von Döllinger.  To my way of thinking, "Is the pope Catholic?" is a question that remains to be settled.  But my posing of the question is just the tip of the iceberg.  Below its cold surface is that solid mass of nominal "Roman" Catholics who have no more regard for a monarchical papacy than I do and no greater confidence in the validity of papal encyclicals. 

As to the appellation, "malcontent", I embrace it wholeheartedly!  I was decidedly not a happy camper in the VatCath campground.  Wake up, folks.  There was and is a lot to be unhappy about and I, for one, have never been given to masochism.  Nor have I ever willingly participated in shared delusion for the sake of maintaining an empty peace.  Whenever it has come to my attention that the emperor was, as Grandmother Annis would have said, "buck nekkid", I've noted all the warts and wrinkles.  Right now, the Church Catholic is more exposed than ever, and curial "clothing" has tried but failed to completely hide its warty nakedness.  Of course I'm not content, and I won't be until the warts are excised and the wrinkles ironed out!    

Another means VatCaths employ in their attempts to discredit Old Catholic clergy is  to assign guilt by association.  Whenever some Orccy-Occy miscreant cleric engages in reprehensible behavior, an eager VatCath portrays him as "representative" of the movement.  I guess that means that the VatCath priest who was indicted for attempting to gun down the new teenage boyfriend of his own under-aged girlfriend is representative of curial clergy.  It means no such thing, of course.  The only lesson to be drawn from such examples is that there are a lot of sociopaths out there, some of them find their way into the clergy, and the Church must do a better job of both screening them out and removing them once they surface. 

In an unrelated but parallel vein, I recall the firestorm that Old Roman Catholic Archbishop Richard A. Marchenna touched off when he consecrated Fr. Robert Clement, founder of The Church of the Beloved Disciple, a gay congregation in New York city, to the episcopacy.   The curial types had a field day, missing no opportunity to proclaim that Fr. Clement's consecration was proof that the "controversial" Old Catholic movement was essentially gay, which no doubt, came as a great surprise to the many thoroughly heterosexual and very married Old Catholic priests and bishops! 

Recently, however, the gender orientation worm has turned.  In the wake of Donald Cozzens' The Changing Face of the Priesthood (2000), Gary Wills' Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit (2000), and John Cornwell's Breaking Faith (2001), which discuss, among other matters, homosexual orientation and sexual practices in VatCath seminaries and the priesthood, the subject no longer seems to be a "hot topic" among the curial types. Could this be another example of that peculiarly sectarian, institutionally egocentric VatCath perspective?

Several decades ago, my predecessors would likely have been unable to provide such rejoinders as these.  They couldn't "go there".  They simply did not have access to the information that would have equipped them to do so.  They didn't know what I know, what  everybody now knows.  Was that because curial Catholicism, wielding its influence behind the scenes, controlled the flow of information and manipulated public opinion?  Was information suppressed?  Were criminal priests protected, simply reassigned over and over to different parishes while bishops attempted to "buy off" their victims?  Were all those seemingly wild accusations of rampant Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church (1962) leveled by ex-Franciscan priest and notorious Rome-baiter Emmett McLoughlin really true?  Were the occasional inevitable flaws and failings of Old Catholics exploited while the numerous lascivious deeds of curial Catholics were being hidden away?  Was it possible that someone forgot (or never took seriously) Jesus' warning about pharisaical subterfuge and complicity:  "Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy.  Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.  Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops" (Luke 12: 1-3. ).

Students of religion have identified a phenomenon that I believe is relevant to this discussion.  This phenomenon is called odium theologicum.  Thomas Cahill has described it as an intense hatred for those who are religiously similar to oneself yet somehow different, suggesting a correlation between the degree of similarity and the intensity of hate:  the greater the similarity, the more intense the hatred.  By way of example, Cahill noted the attitude of Jews toward Samaritans, so evident in the gospels, stating that "for them [the Samaritans] the Jews reserved a contempt they did not display even toward gentiles" (Desire of the Everlasting Hills, 1999, p. 184). Could odium theologicum help to explain the VatCath obsession with Old Catholicity and Old Catholics? 

Over time, I have observed the reaction of the average VatCath upon his introduction to Old Catholicism.  It follows a tediously predictable pattern of sequential cognitive constructions:*

1) The VatCath calls to mind the unshakeable presumption with which he’s been indoctrinated, namely that Vatican Catholics are the only Catholics.     

2) Therefore, the person before him, claiming to be at one and the same time a Catholic and not subject to the jurisdiction of Rome, must be either addled or mendacious or more likely, both, since what he claims contradicts VatCath assumptions and ipso facto, is not possible.  (What is ironic is that, following the Ecumenical movement, more VatCaths will concede that Protestants are truly Christians than that Old Catholics are truly Catholics, though, of course, most VatCaths have never even heard of Old Catholicism.) 

3) The VatCath, in an "Oh, now I get it" moment, concludes that Old Catholics are only pretending to be Catholics and their clergy merely playing ecclesiastical  "dress-up".  (At this point, should the conversation miraculously escape death by condescension, the VatCath will inevitably ask if sacraments administered by Old Catholic priests "take", a curious exercise since he will never be convinced that they do. 

4) As day leads to night, so does grandiosity give way to paranoia, into which the VatCath now descends.  Surely these counterfeit Catholics must have a hidden agenda, and what could it be if not to snooker Roman Catholics into allowing them to "pass"for real Catholics?  Can't let that happen because, my God, there would go the papally pure (and purely papal) neighborhood!

By way of example, some years ago a VatCath priest smugly put forward the "demand" that Old Catholic clergy involved in chaplaincy and inner city mission work avoid using the term "Catholic" in all signage and literature, as this would be "confusing to Catholics". His fear was that we might be mistaken for Roman Catholic priests.  In an effort to allay his fears, I assured him that the last thing any of us would ever want to be mistaken for was a Roman Catholic priest!  I felt compelled to add that all of those persons who availed themselves of our ministry were very much aware of the difference, and suggested that that might perhaps be his real issue.   

That such blatant VatCath odium toward Old Catholics exists is undeniable.  I have seen in print several VatCath "warnings" about Old Catholics, purporting to "clarify the confusion".  I do not recall having seen such warnings about Episcopalians or Lutherans.  While taking Mathew and Vilatte to task for their alleged poor judgment and eccentricities, VatCath commentators do not seem to have felt called to discuss the foibles of Anglican or Orthodox bishops (and I respectfully suggest there have been a few particularly noteworthy individuals who have provided more than ample material for such commentary).  Could it be the case that formally labeled Protestants or "schismatics" do not evoke the VatCath ire simply because they are Protestants, which in the VatCath mind translates as not Catholic and therefore, need not be taken seriously?  In contradistinction, Old Catholics insist that they are not Protestants but Catholics-albeit "not under the pope", but Catholics nonetheless.  In so doing, they, in effect, refuse to allow VatCaths to define Catholicity as exclusively papal.  Moreover, they further refuse to concede to curialism the very right to define Catholicity.  This is a fundamental difference with significant implications.  What curialists believe to be their prerogative, Old Catholics consider presumption.  Where curialists see in the papacy the privilege of authority, Old Catholics see a distortion of authority, if not outright self-deluding usurpation of divinity. Much of what curialists claim by divine right to be absolute truth, other Catholics perceive to be gross error, grandiosity, confabulation, or excuse.  Some of what curialists define as heresy, Old Catholics affirm as essential to Catholic faith and praxis.   

     This is why I suspect that what really makes Old Catholicism so offensive to curial Catholicism is the Old Catholic insistence that good, faithful, genuine Catholics can legitimately affirm primacy of conscience, and ecclesial collegiality and conciliarism; and can legitimately reject such doctrines as universal jurisdiction and personal infallibility as absolutes.  Moreover, we can point to the history that bears out the very fact of this Ultrajectine Catholic tradition.  Even more irritating to VatCaths is that we have in our camp some of the greatest Roman Catholic thinkers and theologians of their times.  For these reasons, we Old Catholics can credibly maintain that we have not broken with the Church, but represent a theologically orthodox, intellectually strong, and spiritually rich tradition within the Church that is alter-Ultramontane.  This position and its proofs, therefore, automatically call into question the force-and legitimacy-of papal positions and directives regarding such issues as contraception, divorce and remarriage, clerical celibacy, and the method of appointment of pastors and election of bishops (just to scratch the surface).  Operating from this position, one can entertain the opinion that contraception might actually be a morally sound choice for married couples.  One can question how denial of the sacraments to divorced Catholics is anything other than punitive and destructive to their spiritual growth.  One can believe that a married priest or bishop can be a good pastor and leader.  One can maintain that the laity should have an active voice in parish decisions and in the election of bishops.  However, one cannot do this and still make a legitimate claim of being under the pope.  Therefore, the millions of Roman Catholics who, in defiance of papal authority, practice contraception, or receive the sacraments after divorce and remarriage, must not be real Catholics, after all!  The same must be true of clergy who privately advise their parishioners to follow their consciences in such matters.  (One is compelled to wonder if VatCaths doubt that the sacraments these Roman priests administer "take".)       

And herein may lie the real reason extreme VatCaths find Old Catholics so odious:  they are all too aware that many nominal Roman Catholics, including a number of clergy, actually believe what Old Catholics believe about such matters.  What the laity are being "warned" about has little to do with what the persons issuing those warnings are really concerned about-i.e., really afraid of:  that one can adamantly say "NO!" to curialism and still be a Catholic.  Indeed, being a Catholic of conscience-a prophetic Catholic-sometimes mandates that one say "no" quite unequivocally.  Saying "no" in good conscience to that which warrants refusal is not disobedience or disloyalty.  It is genuine fidelity.  Catholic unity has nothing to do with being "under the pope".  We maintain that we are "in union"with the pope, and thus with everyone who holds and affirms the essential credal faith and sacramental praxis of the one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic church.  We cannot be "cut off" from or cut out of that unity by curial fiat.  We can no more be ordered to stop belonging to that unity by mandate than we can be made to stop thinking, stop believing, or stop loving on command.  To quote George Tyrell, following his excommunication for holding Modernist views: 

"Who shall separate us [from the Church]?" Not twenty popes nor a hundred excommunications.  I belong to her in the only way that I care to belong to her-in spirit and in truth; by the bond of my free conviction that no bishop can snap. . . [Quoting Augustine] Multi intus sunt qui foris videntur-many who, with "the apostate Dollinger", seem to be outside are really inside.  Many who, with their traducers, seem to be inside are really outside; for, what they hold to under the name of Catholicism is only a monopolized individualism-not the supremacy, but the absolute servitude and subjection of the orbis terrarum- (Medievalism,  Burns & Oates Limited, 1994, reprinted from the Third Impression, with additions, 1909, p. 168).

In other words, unity is not conformity!  While we certainly affirm the traditional role of the papacy, we do not concede to it more than the tradition of the Church Fathers-and the popes who rejected the notion of their own infallibility--did.  We do not acknowledge that the papacy has the right to supercede that tradition.  Indeed, we must respectfully and lovingly let the pope, as we do our civil authorities, know when he is "buck nekkid".  As Old Catholics, we must maintain unity, not by complicity with innovation and error, but by following the apostolic mandate to speak the truth in love - no matter how inconvenient that loving truth-speaking might be.  We have to say "no", even in the face of overwhelming opposition.  Our Catholic history should have taught us that being in the minority does not mean being in the wrong--does the name "Galileo" ring a bell?  So we have yet another apostolic mandate to consider:  God must be found true if every man living be shown a liar.

Ultimately and essentially, Catholic unity is effected by being one with Christ.  Christ is the Head of His Body, the Church.  Nothing will change this. Nothing will make Old Catholics "submit", knuckle under, shut up, go away.  Or hide.  Not from "warnings" about Old Catholics, accusations of Jansenism, criticisms of Mathew or Vilatte, sensationalistic journalism, and the droning mantra of missionary position Catholicism.  These are old, tired, tactics.  We are not the first to be subjected to the tedium of pharisaic demands for conformity. Indeed, we find ourselves in excellent company: 

[Jesus said] "How can I describe this generation?  They are like children sitting in the market-place and shouting at each other, 'We piped for you and you would not dance. We wept and wailed, and you would not mourn.' For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He is possessed.' The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him!  A glutton and a drinker, a friend of tax-gatherers and sinners!' And yet God's wisdom is proved right by its results" (Matthew 11: 16-19 NEB).