As an outsider from the Roman Catholic Church, I have read the various polemical positions about the episcopal consecrations that took place last 1st July like back in 1988. Also it is time to resume this blog after months of illness from an infection in my large intestine that necessitated a series of surgical operations. I am recovering and hope to have a canal and river sail in my little dinghy at the end of August – and attend the Rendez-vous de l’Erdre. My abdominal muscles are still fragile, and I prefer not to risk a capsize at sea! I will launch at Redon and enter the Nantes-Brest canal to the Erdre which leads to Nantes. I appreciate jazz, and I need the change of surroundings and human contact.

The real subject of this article is my understanding of a dichotomy of two Roman Catholicisms and the fixation many have about obedience to the Pope, something like the Führerprinzip under Hitler in Germany. My understanding of the traditionalists, both Society of St Pius X and Ecclesia Dei (Fraternity of St Peter and the Institute of Christ the King among others) is that there is an authoritarian political basis along with doctrinal issues and the liturgy. The real reason for these consecrations is not to establish an Old Catholic or Anglican church body, but to preserve the priesthood by ensuring younger bishops. We learn from the history of the anti-Pius VII and Napoleon Concordat of 1801 in the wake of the Revolution. The dissenting bishops and priests formed the Petite Eglise of the Deux-Sèvres. Since they consecrated no new bishops, their priesthood died out by the mid nineteenth century. There were Petites Eglises also in other parts of France with doctrinal and spiritual variations.

Bishop Richard Williamson who had been one of Archbishop Lefebvre’s four bishops of 1988 consecrated several bishops for a harder-line traditionalist position. There are also sedevacantist communities under bishops and priests descending from the Ngô Đình Thục succession. These consecrations are not of “vagantes” or charlatans, but for a community and a specific purpose within the limits of discipline and seriousness. There are serious communities of sedevacantists, especially in the USA.

Continuing Anglicanism was not motivated in exactly the same way, but rather wanted to create alternatives to “modernist” official Anglicanism. It had no scruple about adopting a “power of jurisdiction” in the episcopate, especially following the collegiate and synodal model of the Old Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. The Anglican Continuum has lacked seriousness of purpose and real doctrinal content, but has got its act together in the form of the G2 including the Anglican Catholic Church (Original Province) in which I am incardinated as a priest. We separated in order to continue what we believe in in terms of doctrine, morals and liturgical practice. The war is an analogy of this situation of cognitive dissonance to which the alternative is apostasy and secularism.

I hope that the SSPX and sedevacantists will just get rid of their attachment to the Pope (or idea of one) and adhere to a collegial and synodal ecclesiology like ourselves and the Orthodox. We can have primates of honour, but real jurisdiction is in the diocesan bishop and the College of bishops. There is an analogy between us all, though we are as yet far apart. We will see how things evolve both with the present Rome and Pope Leo XIV and the traditionalists who have acted on their decision to safeguard the future of the priesthood.

Perhaps we will begin to understand each other. Perhaps. I hope and pray so.