By Steven R. Ford

Armed with a laptop and with far too much time on one’s hands, it’s possible to become a sort of ecclesiastical Columbus — “discovering” a previously uncharted world of Christian denominations. One can find easily more than 100 websites of self-styled “Catholic/Old Catholic/Orthodox/Anglican” churches and communions, all claiming to have valid apostolic orders and to teach uncompromised doctrine. Only a tiny handful, however, appear to have any actual members.

These churches are presided over by Most Reverend and Right Honorable archbishops of anywhere and even of everywhere. There are beatified patriarchs, presiding bishops, episcopal abbots-general, hieropriests, cardinals, and even a smattering of popes. These are the major (and some would argue the only) players in a bizarre and generally ignored ecclesial subculture. Consisting largely of the self-called who have been turned down for ordination in the historic churches, they have historically been known as episcopi vagantes (“wandering bishops”), and more recently as “bishops irregular.” Most today identify themselves by the oxymoronic term of “independent catholics.”

These are folks for whom “valid” apostolic succession and “correct” Christian doctrine count for everything. Most trace their lineages, however, through the most highly questionable sources of both that one can possibly imagine.

The first and most common is an Arnold Harris Mathew (1853-1919), an Anglican layman become Roman Catholic priest who in 1892 renounced his vows in favor of marriage and the Church of England. Eventually he became a Unitarian. It wasn’t long, however, until he received a unilateral call to episcopal authority. His new vocation was realized at the hands of the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, and he was consecrated to head a mostly imaginary English Old Catholic Church. Accusing the new “bishop” of obtaining orders through fraud, Utrecht (and all Old Catholics) disavowed Mathew. He responded by severing ties with Old Catholics on account of their wanting theology (many accepted Anglican orders as valid, after all). He spent the balance of his life indiscriminately “consecrating” all comers — for a fee. None, by the way, stayed in his English church for very long.

On the American scene, at about the same time, there appeared a flunked-out Roman Catholic seminarian and now a freelance Presbyterian missionary in the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac. J. Rene Vilatte (1854-1929) established several French-language missions in the diocese, and he persuaded the diocese to support them. He eventually obtained orders (acceptable to both the diocesan, Bishop John H.H. Brown, and to the House of Bishops) through the Old Catholic Bishop of Berne in 1885.

In 1891, Brown’s successor, Charles Grafton, suspended Vilatte. This was done, in no small part, in response to what Vilatte now insisted was his own clear calling to the episcopate. Now freed from the “Anglican heresy,” he selflessly offered himself for leadership to both Old Catholic and Alaskan-Russian Orthodox communities, but found no takers. He eventually hooked up with an ex-Roman Catholic priest named Antonio Francisco-Xavier, who represented himself as “Mar Julius I,” metropolitan of the Independent Catholic Church of Ceylon, Goa and India. In Ceylon in 1892, he received some sort of laying on of hands from Francisco-Xavier.

His finances and followers quickly falling away, he sought “reconciliation” with Rome, but to no avail. Entering into a concordat with a self-styled “Syrian-Jacobean” bishop, he thereafter styled himself as “Orthodox.” He spent his final days ordaining and consecrating in a kind of sub-ecclesiatical eBay. The elaborate website of one (apparently single-member) Old Catholic jurisdiction credits Mr. Vilatte with founding more than 20 Orthodox/Catholic denominations.

Ever popular among self-styled Anglican prelates is the line of George David Cummins (1822-1876), sometime assistant bishop of Kentucky, who in 1873 abandoned the communion of this church “to preach the gospel elsewhere.” Curiously, this catholic leader denied the reality of a Christian priesthood, even as he denied the necessity of the historic episcopate. More recently, there’s the “Costa line,” derived from a removed and subsequently excommunicated Roman Catholic bishop of Botucatu, Brazil. In 1946, Carlos Duarte-Costa founded and installed himself as patriarch of the Brazilian Apostolic Catholic Church, running it as a virtual ordination/consecration mill until his death in 1961.

“Valid” orders are important to these people — so important, in fact, that many consume a good deal of their personal time and resources in obtaining as many “lines” as possible. This is typically accomplished through repeated conditional consecrations at the hands of other members of the subculture.

We, as Anglicans, have a deep and rightful commitment to the historic episcopate. Yet we willingly divide ourselves according to which particular line we consider to be “valid.” Where will it ever end?

The Rev. Steven Ford is interim rector of St. Mark’s Church, Mesa, Ariz.

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