I feel highly enriched by this conversation about independent sacramental clergy and their communities, and personal reflection helps me see clear.

If we see things from the institutional churches, especially Rome and those Orthodox jurisdictions interested in attracting western converts, I’ll caricature it a little for the sake of clarity, though there are nuances in reality. For the “one true” churches, you are either in or out. The Catholic Church subsists in that institution wholly and entirely, and anything outside it is devoid of grace. Usually the Roman Catholic Church is more nuanced than that in the teachings of Vatican II and more recent doctrinal statements concerning ecclesiology coming from the Vatican. In practice, when it is a matter of the clergy, the application of canon law is quite “black and white” and the authorities would almost be more comfortable seeing a man lose his faith and become an atheist than live his faith in a different ecclesial context. I have often heard it said than schism is worse than heresy! As in Erastian Anglicanism, institutional integrity is more important than doctrinal integrity. That is quite an indictment.

When dealing with separate bodies, the Roman Catholic Church has tended to distinguish between historical schisms of large bodies, including the recent example of the Society of Saint Pius X, sanctioned by excommunication for the uncanonical consecration of four bishops in 1988, and – on the other hand – marginal groups founded by small groups of clergy or individuals. This seems to be a distinction we must bear in mind. The canonical procedure is entirely different for a priest who was originally Roman Catholic, joined the Society of Saint Pius X, was ordained by one of its bishops, and then wished to reconcile with Rome. From the mid 1980’s, these ordinations were accepted as valid, and the cleric in question could be incardinated in a Roman Catholic jurisdiction without any re-ordination, even conditional. The same thing happens with a cleric having joined one of the sedevacantist bodies in the USA founded around a bishop in the Ngo-Dinh-Thuc lineage. The cleric will be judged as possibly valid but under canonical irregularities, and therefore may be received only as a layman. It is the same procedure as with all the bishops labelled as episcopi vagantes. It is also the case of a Roman Catholic who joins another church body, even a mainstream one, and wants to return. There are few exceptions to this rule. As we were taught at university, canon law is a practical expression of ecclesiology. There are also rules that govern the application of economy as the Orthodox call it or epikeia (also a Greek word) as Latin canon lawyers term it.

It is also a question of ecclesial context. There is a difficulty, that of knowing whether a very small community of laity and priests electing a bishop does or does not have the essential and ontological characteristics of a Church. The SSPX has several hundred priests, several thousand lay faithful and has money, property and a high profile. It is verifiable and tangible. Anything smaller, especially if little known, has to be checked out for these essential characteristics.

A point I have made is that the rigidity of the mainstream churches in certain matters has been the cause of schisms. Typically, the official authorities changed something that should have left as it was or introduced doctrines and changes of discipline that meant only one thing – more centralised power and control. Other schisms and dissidences have been caused by pastoral negligence or by a strategy involving driving the “problem” clergy into schism. Give someone an order he cannot execute, and then punish him for failing to carry out the order. It is the oldest one in the book! If Rome ever accepts the blame for a breakaway, it is not until centuries later and when the differences are so engrained that reconciliation becomes impossible. It was also the same in Russian Orthodoxy with the Reform of Peter the Great and the Raskol (Old Believers) in the 1660’s. Go back to the days of the Inquisition in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, and one will find hundreds of little groups of revolted men and women in their little groups. History repeats itself again and again.

This point had to be made, not to offend devout Roman Catholics, but to give the starting point from which it is possible to make an argument. Dr Tighe has rightly made the point that there have always been hundreds of heretical and schismatic groups like the Donatists, the Novatianists, the Marcionites, Montanists, Gnostics and many more. Some claimed to be legitimate churches and others remained as “movements”. In the middle-ages, there were various groups more or less radical or inspired by St Francis of Assisi reacting against the wealth and political power of the institutional Church. Later, there were the Lollards and the first Reformation movements. When we analyse it, innovations made by the “official” authorities clashed with the conservative instinct.

Dr Tighe would conclude that the number of those tiny groups would point to their being wrong and only the mainstream Church being right. The heretics and schismatics had only to return to the unity of the Church, not merely the sacramental and ontological unity of the Church but also its material, institutional and political unity maintained by some form of constraint. I see things differently. The past and present existence of these groups, or some of them, points to the notion of the main Church being inadequate in some way or lacking in the mark of Catholicity – being open to all.

These problems have to be addressed and not swept under the carpet in a puff of complacent dismissal. I believe that people become heretical or lose the faith through anger at not been heard, understood and included in a dialogue. The bitterness in some of Luther’s writings betrays this possibility. Much evil has been committed on the side of those who claimed to uphold orthodoxy and institutional unity. This process continues to this day, and it is apparent in the diatribes of some clergy in the traditionalist movement. I will merely mention the name of Bishop Williamson of the SSPX, about to be expelled.

I return to the theme of the dissident community and the dissident individual. I have seen few if any individual clerics having succeeded in building up a durable community, one that would survive the founder’s death. This, I believe, is the essential problem with many independent communities. Their theology can be difficult to discern, especially if they have done little in the way of studies of theology, church history, scripture and all the other traditional disciplines. Ignorance is very dangerous when it is the characteristic of a man who thinks he knows everything and has narcissistic tendencies. If the reason of existence of a community is an individual; this is something that is hard to accept as a church.

The individual, fundamentally, has two options – joining an established church (not necessarily the Roman Catholics, the Orthodox or the Canterbury Anglicans but perhaps a member Church of the Union of Scranton, one of the Lutheran synods or a Continuing Anglican jurisdiction like the ACC), or going it alone. If he goes it alone, the only vocation open to him is as a hermit, a solitary contemplative who exercises the priesthood in the same way as a monk in a monastery. Such a vocation, if authentically lived, can attract credibility and respect.

There is another possibility for individuals who have got themselves ordained and wish to pursue some form of ministry. Now this idea comes from the newest tendency which I have also described, a kind of sacramental emerging church movement. Admittedly, most of these churches are extremely liberal and go further in this direction than even the Episcopal Church in the USA. Even if this approach is fraught with danger, and it is not one that attracts me personally, it is something that needs to be studied. It may represent a pastoral outreach to marginal persons who cannot be reached by ordinary parochial and diocesan structures and methods. There is a notion of “niche” ministry similar to the Worker Priest movement of the post-war period in France. I think good can be done by unconventional means, and I keep an open mind.

These are the distinctions I am making to promote a sense of tolerance and understanding, a quest for justice and pastoral inclusion to the greatest extent possible, and for a multi-sided and constructive reflection. Keep the comments coming!