We now come to the consideration of Old Catholicism as an instrument of union between the Christian Episcopal churches. In accordance with their “Declaration,” the Old Catholics insist upon its being one of their main objects to reunite the Christian churches separated from Rome during the VIIIth and IXth centuries, and complacently boast of the marks of sympathy bestowed upon them by these churches.
From one of their manifestoes Father Tondini quotes the following important statements:
“The bishops of the Oriental Orthodox Church”—thus runs the manifesto—“and those of the Episcopal Church of England and the United States of America (!) encourage Old Catholicism with their most profound sympathy. Representatives of the Orthodox Church of Russia assist every year at its congress.… The interest displayed for it by governments is not inferior to that of the churches.… The governments of Russia and of England are disposed to recognize its rights when it shall be opportune to do so.”[196]
Upon which he points out the exceeding inexpediency, for their own sakes, of these governments or their bishops having any participation in the doings of Old Catholics; and this for the following reasons, which are worthy of careful consideration by the two governments in question, and which we give in his own words:
“In order, it would seem, to escape the stringent conclusion of S. Cyprian’s words, ‘He who does not succeed to other bishops, but is self-originated, cannot be reckoned among bishops,’ Mgr. Reinkens, in his above-quoted pastoral letter, … authoritatively declared not only that the ‘apostolic see of Rome was vacant,’ but that not one of the actually existing Roman Catholic bishops was legitimate.
“In support of this assumption the Old-Catholic bishop invokes some fathers of the church—not, indeed, what they said or did while living, but what they would say or do if they were to return to life: ‘If the great bishops of the ancient church were to return to life in the midst of us,’ says Mgr. Reinkens, ‘a Cyprian, (!) a Hilary, an Ambrose, … they would acknowledge none of the existing bishops of the Roman Catholic Church as validly elected.’[197]
“So much for the fact. As it can only be ascertained when those great bishops are restored to life, all we can do is to defer this verification until the great day of judgment.
“Now comes the general principle on which the assumed fact is founded. Let us listen again to Mgr. Reinkens: ‘They [the resuscitated bishops of the ancient church] would not acknowledge any of the existing bishops of the Roman Catholic Church as validly elected, because none of them were appointed in conformity with the immutable rule of the fathers of the church. Never! no, never! would they have received into their company, in the quality of a Catholic bishop, one who had not been chosen by the people and the clergy. This mode of election was considered by them as of divine precept, and consequently as immutable.’”
“How many bishops are there in existence at the present day,” asks Father Tondini, “either in the Anglican Church or in the Christian East, who have been chosen by the people and the clergy?”
In answer to this question we have, respecting the non-popular mode of election in the Oriental Orthodox Church, the following trustworthy information: In the Orthodox Church of the Turkish Empire the election of a patriarch is made by the members of its synod, which is composed of metropolitans, of one of their own number, and this election “is then made known to the people assembled in the atrium of the synodicon, who give, by acclamation and the cry of ἄξιος (worthy), their assent to the election.… This, however, is in fact an empty formality; the more so as the election itself is the result of previous secret understandings between the more influential members of the synod and the leading men among the people.”[198]