I have been particularly struck by two YouTube videos, one by Jean-Dominique Michel who is a Swiss anthropologist and expert in mental health, specialising in depression and addictions, and speaking on the sovereign importance of spirituality. However, it is not the subject of this essay. The second is this :

The Russian Old Believers

I think the best study I know about the Russian Old Believers is Henri Jean Baptiste Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (1842 – 1912), L’Empire des tsars et les Russes, Paris, Hachette, 1881-1889. I read this monumental book entirely, in French, when I was at seminary when I went through a particular fascination for Russia. Here is the digital version, but I recommend reading the printed book which is available in English translation. There is a whole chapter on the reform of Patriarch Nikon in the mid seventeenth century and the schism of the Old Believers, themselves divided into groups with renegade Orthodox priests and those who were so fanatical that they would not accept any priests at all to avoid their purity becoming defiled. Wikipedia presents an excellent article for an introduction. The issue was not wreckovations of churches and parodies of the Mass, but little more than the way of holding the fingers of the right hand to make the sign of the Cross and the spelling of the holy name Jesus in Church Slavonic ! The persecution by the official Orthodox Church and the fanaticism of the Old Believers were both incredibly out of proportion, but these things mattered to them. It mattered enough for their bishop to be burned at the stake and for groups of faithful to shut themselves into a wooden building and set the whole place on fire. These are historical facts.

The video I have featured informs us that the tiny remainder of the Old Believers was reconciled with the Patriarchate of Moscow and allowed to keep its liturgical and devotional particularities. The seventeenth century was not a time for seeking pastoral solutions, but rather one of brutal persecution and fanaticism.

La Petite Eglise

In France, there was the Petite Eglise that split off from the mainstream French Church in 1801 because of the Concordat between Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte. They were both traditionalist reactions against changes they deemed to be unacceptable. They became “time capsules” of their Churches at a particular moment of history.

This is a story of another time in history, which is little known in the English-speaking world. This phenomenon is obscure because of its extremely local nature. The largest of the communities that refused the deal between Pope Pius VII and Napoleon Bonaparte in 1801 is that of the Deux-Sèvres. There were other dissidences, particularly in the Lyons area and the Walloon, the French-speaking part of what is now Belgium.

When I lived in the Vendée, I visited the village of Courlay and went to the Petite Eglise church. It was locked, but I could see quite a lot through the keyhole. The most striking thing about it is that there was no structure in front of the high altar for Mass facing the people. Otherwise it looked like any rural French village church. On the other hand, Mass has not been celebrated in this church since the early nineteenth century!

The Petite Eglise of the Deux-Sèvres is now mainly concentrated in the north-west of the Deux-Sèvres, essentially in Courlay, Cirières and Montigny. Those people describe themselves as “dissidents” or “those who share our ideas”. They are country folk, honest and hard-working, and remind me a little of the Amish in Pennsylvania.

The origin of this schism in readily available in history books. For those who read French, I recommend the following links:

• La Petite Eglise
• Pérennité du mouvement anticoncordataire: deux siècles plus tard, les fidèles de la “Petite Eglise” persévèrent – Entretien avec Bernard Callebat et Jean-Pierre Chantin

A small bibliography can be found in the second of these two links.

Napoleon wanted a kind of settlement (idea familiar to us Anglicans thinking back to Elizabeth I) to settle the difference between the constitutional priests who signed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and the non-juring or refractory clergy. It resembles something like the Russian Orthodox Church under Communism. There was the Patriarchate of Moscow and then the Russian Church in Exile, now known as the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia and now back in communion with Moscow. Like the Greek Old Calendarists and the Old Believers, there remain a number of “non-juring” communities. Napoleon obtained a concordat with Pius VII, who was Bonaparte’s prisoner, to reorganise the dioceses of the French Church and have the clergy accept the authority of constitutional and refractory bishops alike.

It is the kind of problem that is found in almost all periods of church history, especially after the persecutions under the Roman Empire. The Donatists refused to have anything to do with Christians who had betrayed the Church or given secret liturgical texts to the persecutor. This was the essence of the controversy against which Saint Augustine fought. There is a point at which the moral conscience is excessively rigorist, across which the sin of betrayal or sacrilege is committed – and a point when some flexibility is required to obtain a greater good, across which too much complicity with the world destroys the whole point of Christianity. Those dividing lines are easy enough to understand in hindsight, but someone faced with such a moral dilemma has a hard time of it. See Jansenism and the Convulsionaries of Saint-Médard. These manifestations are absurd to us who are under the influence of the Enlightenment and modern secularism, we who would be tempted to think of such people as psychotic and needing to be taken to a psychiatric hospital. We must think as historians and not commit the error of judging history by our modern standards.

Pius VII agreed to recognise the French Republic and the government of France in its turn recognised Catholicism as the religion of most of the French people. The Holy See let Napoleon name bishops to the various dioceses and require an oath of loyalty to the established government. The diocesan borders were changed to coincide with the Département. Thus the Archdiocese of Rouen covers the Seine Maritime, though there is now a suffragan Diocese of Le Havre for the western part of the Département. That arrangement was not changed by the Separation of Church and State in 1905.

The Concordat of 1801 was refused by a number of bishops like Bishop De Coucy who was at La Rochelle from 1789 until then and who was exiled in Spain to escape the guillotine. The grievances included the integration of constitutional clergy, the reduction of holy days of obligation, the obligation of contracting a civil marriage before the Mayor before being married in church, the oath of loyalty to the Republic and the retention of property seized at the Revolution (monasteries for example).

Many local communities split away and gathered in very localised areas. In 1820, the Petite Eglise numbered around 20,000 souls. That number quickly declined as the clergy died out and the bishops were not prepared to consecrate schismatic bishops. [It was probably this consideration that weighed most in Archbishop Lefebvre’s mind in 1988 as he consecrated four bishops against the will of Pope John Paul II.] Indeed, the last bishop died in 1830, and only the worst quality of priests could be found: immoral priests, alcoholics, adventurers, charlatans, false priests, etc. After a time, they gave up on priests and entrusted the responsibility of their communities to laymen. Worship was definitively lay-led from 1847. Thus, in Courlay, the leader is chosen from the same Texier family, descended from the parents of Fr Pierre Texier (1758-1826). The women have their responsibilities in the schools and looking after the churches. Here is the church at Courlay.

The particularity of the Petite Eglise, like the Amish in America, is not to proselytise or recruit converts. They kept themselves to themselves, and to this day, it is difficult for newspaper reporters or academic researchers to find what they are looking for or to visit a church. By 1958, they were down to about 3,150 souls.

There have been concessions by the Roman Catholic Church in regard to the dissidents, Archbishop Gerlier of Lyons in particular, in the 1950’s. The dissidents were acknowledged as Roman Catholics despite their separation for political and historical reasons. They could receive Roman Catholic sacraments like any Roman Catholic, but it seems that none have availed of this provision. Likewise, a dialogue with the Dutch Old Catholic Church in the nineteenth century came to nothing.

Worship is in the church, but many devotional practices are at home in families. It consists of parts of the Mass without the offertory to the communion, a spiritual “communion of desire”, the Office and traditional lay devotions. A Sunday service takes about two hours. Their fasting practices are very rigorous, and they also abstain from cheese and eggs. Women must wear the veil, and modest dress is a must, as in many traditionalist RC chapels in our own times. Men sit on one side of the church and the women on the other.

The Petite Eglise has two true Sacraments: Baptism and Marriage. The French government dispenses these people from a prior civil wedding before being married in church. One would suppose that the lay leader has delegated powers from Monsieur le Maire. They make confession directly to God and choose their own penance (people can be very hard on themselves).

They use an old catechism from before 1789, so it would be more or less based on the Catechism of the Council of Trent. The children are taught intensively for a month preceding their solemn “communion”, and are dispensed from school. They have their own cemeteries, and are not buried in the regular Roman Catholic cemetery. The graves are oriented to the west.

Their social mores are very similar to the Amish, though young people often leave the community, marry a Roman Catholic and enter secular life. Modern secular life is taking its toll on the Petite Eglise as on all religion in France. I have no accurate information on current statistics or numbers of faithful.

Sedevacantism

In the history of Roman Catholicism, or simply the Western Church before the Reformation, and Orthodoxy, there were schisms at various times caused largely by the corruption of the clergy. There was a number of sects that arose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that rejected the sacramental system and the priesthood, or sought to bring about a new kind of priesthood. Many were based on the message of St Francis of Assisi. There were also Gnostic based groups like the Cathars. One of the most informative books I have read about them is the psychiatrist Dr Arthur Guirdham, The Great Heresy, St Helier 1977. Guirdham sets his subject in the historical context of the Lollards and Hussites who were the progenitors of the Protestant Reformation. The one common idea was to reject the tyranny of the clergy, bishops and the Pope and return to the practice of a Christian life based on individual and common prayer, nourished by the reading of the Scriptures.

The Amish in America came from the Reformed tradition and also set themselves in the period of time from when they emigrated from Europe to the USA. In the early Church, at the time of Saint Augustine, the Donatists showed their fierce rigour faced with Christians who had compromised in any way with the Roman Empire and the persecutors.

In more recent times, in the Roman Catholic world, there was the traditionalist reaction of Archbishop Lefevbre against the reforms of Paul VI following Vatican II in the liturgy and questions of religious freedom. However, the Society of St Pius X took a more pragmatic attitude and was prepared for certain compromises with Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. They kept the 1962 version of the Roman liturgy, remained in the scholastic mould for theology and Aristotelian philosophy and continued to complain about religious freedom as the enemy of “integral Catholicism”, meaning rule by the clergy and a king or a Franco or Pinochet style dictator. In the 1980’s and at some other times, there were dissidences from the Society in the form of sedevacantism or the position of Bishop Richard Williamson objecting to too much compromise with Rome. Sedevacantism itself divided into several “positions”, sometimes combined with Feeneyism, a modern form of Donatism.

The most prevalent form of sedevacantism was the most pragmatic. Most of the founders were ordained before the changes or left the SSPX. As priests with a vocation to training new priests, they needed bishops. The solution was being consecrated by a small number of “respectable” bishops in the Ngô Đình Thục succession or former clandestine prelates found in the old Soviet bloc. They justify their ministry in terms similar to those used by the SSPX: in a situation where literal observance of canon law opposes its intended purpose, the letter of the law can be broken and otherwise illegitimate ministry becomes legitimate. This principle is called epikeia (ἐπιείκεια) roughly corresponding with the notion of οἰκονομία in the Orthodox Churches. However, Roman Catholics have always had a problem with private interpretation and the risk of abuse.

Within this “liberal” branch of sedevacantism, Fr Louis-Michel Guérard des Lauriers OP, a former professor at the Angelicum in Rome, formulated his Cassiciacum Thesis based on the notion of hylomorphism, Aristotle’s theory of matter and form. Matter and form would then be applied to the person occupying the Papacy: the Holy See being materially (materialiter) occupied but formally (formaliter) vacant. The theory is clever, but few follow it. One priestly institute following it is the Istituto Mater Consilii near Turin in Italy. The priests who founded this institute are also dissidents from the SSPX.

We then go a step further and find the conclavists. In the 1990’s certain prominent sedevacantist laity like Elizabeth Gerstner and priests seriously undertook the possibility of electing a Pope by extraordinary means and producing the situation in which that Pope would be legitimate. Here is an explanation of the theory by a fairly articulate lay author. The best known, distinguished from those who believed themselves to be appointed directly by God, are:

Pope Michael (1990). Teresa Stanfill-Benns and David Bawden of Kansas in the US, called for a conclave to elect an alternative pope. They publicised their request around the world, but only six people participated in the election. On 16 July 1990, they elected Bawden who took the name Pope Michael.

Pope Linus II (1994). Another conclave, this time held in Assisi, Italy, elected the South African Victor von Pentz, an ex-seminarian of the Society of St Pius X, as Pope Linus II in 1994. Linus took up residence in Hertfordshire, England. Nothing is known about his present ministry, if any.

Pope Pius XIII (1998–2009). In October 1998, the U.S.-based “true Catholic Church” elected Friar Lucian Pulvermacher as Pope Pius XIII. He died on 30 November 2009. No successor has been named since his death.

Pope Leo XIV (2006–2007). It is not known whether this group is a spoof or an existing group. It is claimed that on 24 March 2006, a group of 34 independent bishops elected the Argentine Oscar Michaelli as Pope Leo XIV. On his death on 14 February 2007, he was succeeded by Juan Bautista Bonetti, who took the name of Pope Innocent XIV, but resigned on 29 May 2007. He was succeeded by Alejandro Tomás Greico, who took the name of –

Pope Alexander IX (2008 – present day). Alejandro Greico was born in 1983, in Buenos Aires. This group claims bishops and churches all over the world. One of my principles is to take a step back and what “What seems to be too good to be true is not true”. No radical traditionalist group could have survived for so long without being known, suffering from splits and fraught with scandal. Pope Alexander is always represented by a photo of a man’s head photoshopped onto the cassock and body of Benedict XVI. This is clear skulduggery.

Alongside that, there are well-known characters like Clemente Dominguez y Gomez who claimed to be appointed directly by God. These are clearly cult gurus and are known for abusive practices. Magnus Lundberg has extensively studied the cult of Palmar de Troya in Spain, now led by a Swiss man going by the name of Peter III.

Going further down the rabbit hole of sedevacantism, we find a phenomenon akin to the priestless (Безпоповцы) Old Believers and the French Petite Eglise. These are the Home Aloners (description given by a priest of the first category of sedevacantists mentioned above). These are lay people for whom no mainstream Catholic bishops or priests are legitimate or even valid, and nor are the various priests and bishops deriving from illicit ordinations like those of Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục. Everything is stripped away in terms of liturgical observance or access to the Sacraments other than Baptism and Marriage. Perhaps some of these people say the Office. They will pray the Rosary and other standard devotions, and they will read the Scriptures, apologetics and a certain level of philosophy and theology. It is a close modern equivalent of the Petite Eglise, but one that is more urban and fragmented than those robust folk of the Vendée. “Home-alone” sedevacantists. These modern dissidents, whose ideology goes far beyond simple fidelity to the old Roman rite, orthodox doctrine or Christian political ideas, tend to be individuals. Here is a somewhat partial article on this subject by a sedevacantist priest – Home Alone? which is no longer available. This is an article by a home-aloner for objectivity. Home-aloners reject all clergy ordained since 1958 (death of Pius XII) and who have never been “compromised” by accepting the teaching of Vatican II. As most such priests are no longer alive, home-aloners do not go to church but rather practice their religion privately through lay devotions and other forms of prayer and worship not requiring a priest.The reasons might be different in theory, but the result is the same. However, I know of no “Home-Alone” church like the Old Believers and the Petite Eglise. How long will a person persevere in such conditions before lapsing into modern life like the rest of his family and friends?

On the other hand, some rare souls are able to find integration and a deeply spiritual life after having rejected institutional Christianity. Such is so radical, something like sailing alone around the world in a small boat. Contrast the examples of Bernard Moitessier and Donald Crowhurst who took his problems to sea, went mad and committed suicide by jumping overboard. Nobility of spirit is something very rare indeed. Most people are designed for living in collectivities and society, with their families and employers in cities. Few are able to deal with solitude. The Church and exoteric Christianity is only capable of so much…

Continuing Anglicanism

Outside Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy, there is Continuing Anglicanism, in which I serve as a priest. Frankly, there is no comparison with the radical ideologies described above. Our bishops and their predecessors simply broke away from the Anglican Communion because of matters like the ordination of women – and formed new Churches with their proprietary names. There has been a lot of trouble in the past between quarrelling bishops, but I am happy to relate that the difficulties of the past are being repaired through the “G3”: the primates of the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church of America, and the Diocese of the Holy Cross. This grouping of the more mainstream Continuing Anglican Churches is also in dialogue with the Polish National Catholic Church and the Nordic Catholic Church led by Bishop Flemestad in Norway.

What can we conclude ?

The lesson to be learned from all this is balancing the notion of Tradition with life, growth and progress. I have approached this subject from various points of view, one being Ecclesial Cosmopolitanism. There is the paradoxical posting “Catholicism made me Protestant” discussing Newman’s conundrum at trying to find Papal Infallibility more coherent than Anglican Liberalism in the early nineteenth century.

There is tension between Tradition and life as there is between faith and reason. It is not by accident that John Paul II and Benedict XVI spent so much time on this question which was at the heart of the Modernist “crisis” in the 1900’s.

Newman tried a distinction between homogenous or organic growth, a hermeneutic of continuity, and changes that involved rupture and contradiction. It is a good base, not perfect, but something. I discuss many issues of continuity and change in Nostalgia and Hope. Static traditionalism is compared with the changelessness of Parmenides – “all reality is one, change is impossible, and existence is timeless, uniform, and necessary” – and the semper idem of Bossuet.

The way ahead is accepting a via media between tradition and organic change whilst resisting rupture and contradiction. In medio stat virtus. The churches of the Reformation other than the glitzy American mega churches are declining. The Old Believers have happily gone back into communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, and they are allowed to keep their liturgical and devotional particularities. The Petite Eglise is declining as the children of those families marry Roman Catholics or embrace modern secularism. Anything can flourish in America, and there are some “moderate” sedevacantist communities in France. Palmar de Troya will end up as an exotic theme park or something that makes money. The other alternative popes will die lonely deaths. Continuing Anglicanism seems to have pulled itself together, and needs more time to be more firmly established without falling into the same traps as the mainstream churches.

I came to a final reflection. Large “mainstream” churches betray the essential purpose of the sacramental community called The Church. These large bureaucratic institutions contain the seeds of their own destruction like secular political parties in the grip of billionaire elites with their diabolical ideologies and ambitions. I have had experience of small parishes with little more than the priest and someone to look after the parish accounts. Smallness is of the essence, so that lust for power and money can never corrupt the essential purpose of the Christian community. It is in such smallness and intimacy that tolerance become possible. Tradition and Novalis – the one who clears new ground. The two walk together and in peace, so that these tragedies of history may not happen again.