PopeWatch: School of Bologna

The Ultrajectines have a rather curious history.
In 1704, Catholics in the Dutch Republic were governed by Vicars Apostolic, one of whom, Peter Codde refused to sign the anti-Jansenist formula and was deposed. It was the old story; he was prepared to condemn the Five Propositions, but he denied they were contained in the Augustinus of Jansen.
He was not without support amongst the local clergy, who refused to recognise the new Vatican appointee. In 1723, half-a-dozen or so constituted themselves the Chapter of Utrecht and elected Cornelius Steenhoven, the Vicar-General as their Archbishop, who was consecrated by Dominique MarieVarlet, formerly a missionary bishop in Canada (he was Bishop of Ascalon in partibus, and coadjutor to Pidou de Saint Olon, Bishop of Babylon) Later, three new dioceses were created, Haarlem, Deventer and Groningen.
After the re-establishment of the hierarchy in the Netherlands in 1853, the Ultrajectines became known as the Old Catholics.
By a curious quirk of ecclesiastical history, this rigorous (and tiny) sect of appellant Jansenists was approached by (mostly liberal) dissenters from Vatican I‘s declaration of papal infallibility in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for episcopal consecration of their bishop elect. These bodies formed the Union of Utrecht. Some High Anglicans, who had doubts about Apostolic Succession in the Church of England, also obtained episcopal consecration from them and this gave rise to some rather intriguing and colourful “episcopi vagantes,” in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
They are now, in effect, a liberal, Protestant body. After all, if the judgment of the Holy See may be rejected on one point (whether the Five Propositions are in the Augustinus), why not on any, or all? Any check on private judgment has been removed.

Recall the famous “Ratzinger Proposal” – “Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one also presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium. Rome need not ask for more. Reunion could take place in this context if, on the one hand, the East would cease to oppose as heretical the developments that took place in the West in the second millennium and would accept the Catholic Church as legitimate and orthodox in the form she had acquired in the course of that development, while, on the other hand, the West would recognize the Church of the East as orthodox and legitimate in the form she has always had.”

The doctrine of the Primacy is one thing; the concrete form it has taken is another. That is the gist of the Ratzinger Proposal. Insofar as the School of Bologna goes beyond that, I am not concerned to defend them.

As Bl John Henry Newman explained, “the progress of concentration was not the work of the Pope; it was brought about by the changes of times and the vicissitudes of nations. It was not his fault that the Vandals swept away the African sees, and the Saracens those of Syria and Asia Minor, or that Constantinople and its dependencies became the creatures of Imperialism, or that France, England, and Germany would obey none but the author of their own Christianity, or that clergy and people at a distance were obstinate in sheltering themselves under the majesty of Rome against their own fierce kings and nobles or imperious bishops, even to the imposing forgeries on the world and on the Pope in justification of their proceedings. All this will be fact, whether the Popes were ambitious or not; and still it will be fact that the issue of that great change was a great benefit to the whole of Europe.”
Theological development is often prompted by historical circumstances and is no less legitmate on that account.

The Holy Father has said a lot of things. Then he says other things. And then he does things.

I stand by my post.

The Old Catholics are the bearer of a model of Church that pleases not a few progressive Catholics. It recognizes a primacy of honor for the pope, but it does not accept that he is infallible or has jurisdiction over the bishops. It has its bishops elected by a synod composed of clergy and laity. At Mass it gives Eucharistic communion to all, as long as they are baptized in one of the various Christian confessions. It administers collective absolution of sins. It allows second marriages for the divorced. check, check, check, check, and check. What is not for Francis to like? But… how is their economics? Is it socialist, is it sound? Do they recognize the primacy of the State? Could be a sticking point.

Tasmin asked, “Do they recognize the primacy of the State?”

In the Netherlands, they relied on the (largely Calvinist) States-General to protect them against Rome, as they did in Germany in the 19th century.

One recalls that, in France, the Parlement of Paris was a great ally of the Jansenists, as it was of the Gallicans.