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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.