THE BONN REUNION CONFERENCES.

IN September of 1874 the first of two reunion conferences was held at Bonn, Germany. These were not ordinary gatherings of Old Catholics called to solve local and internal problems and to which a few guests were invited. The Bonn Conferences were called to promote unity among the Churches preserving the historic Christian faith and order. These conferences were sponsored by the Old Catholics and were under the presidency of Dr. Döllinger. It was the first time in the modern era that representatives of East and West gathered to study the differences keeping them apart. These conferences were intended to pave the way for unity between the Orthodox Church and the Old Catholics. They were not, however, official meetings of these Churches but the private discussions of theologians representing these Churches. Invitations were sent to the Anglicans, while other Protestants also were represented. The invitations sent out to theologians states, in part, the basis of the conferences as follows:

It is proposed to take, as the basis and standard of limitation of the endeavors of the conferences, the confessions, teaching, and institutions recognized as essential by both the Eastern and the Western communions before the Great Schism. (47)

Among the Orthodox participants was Professor Zekos D. Rhosse, a theologian from Athens who knew of Overbeck’s scheme. In his book On the Unity of all Religions and Churches (Athens, 1868) he spoke hopefully of the results of Overbeck’s petition. Of the Russians, present was Archpriest John Leont’evich Janyshev (1826-1900), Rector of the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy from 1866 to 1883 and professor of theology. Janyshev was later elevated to the dignity of Protopresbyter and was confessor to the Tsar. Alexander Kireeff represented the Society of Friends of Spiritual Enlightenment and Dr. Overbeck also was present.

As for the Anglican representation, Overbeck and the Orthodox generally, were disturbed that they were there at all and that so much time was spent discussing the problems between them and the Old Catholics. Moreover, it was felt by the Orthodox that a true representation of the Established Church was not present – only the minority which was sympathetic to Döllinger’s scheme. Corporate reunion with the whole English Church was out of the question. It was only after the dis-establishment of the High Church portion capable of union that anything of the sort was possible. The remainder of the Establishment was heretical. "Is it not absurd to think a Church unitable, in which the ministers are permitted by authority to teach heresies?" (48) Overbeck thought it a "pity" that the Bonn Conference, "which seems to have been got up chiefly for the benefit of Anglicans," lost much time for nothing. If the same amount of time had been spent in discussions with the Orthodox that had been wasted on the Anglicans, the conference would have been more profitable. Döllinger had not adhered to his original program in which he had stated that the basis of discussions would be the faith of undivided Christendom (pre-1054). Overbeck doubted if even a single Anglican present accepted that basis: "The highest bidder among the Anglicans did not offer more than six Oecumenical Councils."

In Overbeck’s opinion the question as to whether the Seven Ecumenical Councils were accepted by those present ought to have been proposed. Otherwise discussion was futile. Certainly the Anglicans would have been disappointed by such requirements but at least they would have then realised that their standard of faith was insufficient and that they were "unfit to be partners in a Catholic Union movement." Overbeck, as well as the other Orthodox, felt that the Old Catholics and Orthodox ought to have united first and when this was accomplished to have addressed themselves to the "Anglicans and other Protestants" with proposals of unity. There was hardly anything separating the Old Catholics and the Orthodox. Aside from some minor problems, only the Filioque question required settling. (49) Kireeff, too, was of the opinion that Old Catholic associations with the Anglicans would only make Protestants of the Old Catholics. (50) And even among the Anglicans there were those who agreed with Overbeck. The Church Review (5 December 1874) published a letter from "Apuc," i.e., a member of the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, who agreed that the Establishment was not unitable. The writer expected that the Ritualists would soon be expelled from the Establishment unless they denied their faith in act (ritual) and in deed (doctrine). "Apuc" looked forward to this almost joyfully for then the High Church party would be free to unite with the Eastern Church. (51)

Overbeck had placed all his hopes on the Orthodox – Old Catholic meetings and he looked for a speedy agreement between the two. His transactions for the restoration of the Western Orthodox Church had bogged down in the Levant. In the meanwhile he felt that the Old Catholics were undertaking the same task. As long as the Old Catholics remained on the basis of the faith of undivided Christendom he felt duty-bound to co-operate with them. If, however, he found them deviating from this path, he would resume negotiations with the Church authorities in the East – negotiations which had not entirely ceased. If Döllinger continued to cling to his Anglican-inspired idea of corporate reunion the deathblow would be dealt to any possible union between the Old Catholics and the Orthodox. Unity between these two with the inclusion of the Anglicans was an impossibility. The work ought to have been confined to what was practicable and possible. (52)

The second Reunion Conference was held at Bonn in August 1875. The first conference having aroused considerable interest, formal invitations to the second conference were dispensed with and all theologians interested in the conference were to be considered as invited. Quite a large number of Orthodox theologians attended, among them Archbishop Alexander Lycurgus, who died soon after (17 October 1875). Professor Osinin was there along with the Russians who had been present at the first conference, as was Dr. Overbeck. Other Orthodox notables present were Professor Nicholas M. Damala (1842-92) of the University of Athens, and Professor Nicholas Milash, later to become Bishop Nicodemus (1845-191?), the famous Serbian canonist. Overbeck corresponded with both these men. The Anglicans also came in greater force. At the conference the discussions, for the most part, centered about the Filioque question. (53)

Döllinger again presided and guided the conference almost single-handedly. In evaluating both conferences, Overbeck felt that Döllinger had followed no plan in the selection of topics for discussion, and these seemed rather to have been chosen at random. Although Döllinger was a great historian he was not a dogmatic theologian. Overbeck, as well as the other Orthodox, wanted the central dogma of the Church settled first. It was no use, they thought, to agree to various propositions and individual dogmas while ignoring the basic dogma of the "Catholic Church and its authority." The Old Catholics apparently had no clear-cut doctrine of the Church and did not even believe that the One Church existed in reality. Though Christ had founded one Church it had long ceased to exist exclusively in one body. Such ideas were somewhat akin to the Anglican Branch Theory in that the Old Catholics held that the Churches in existence were only portions of what was once One and Universal. (54) Overbeck thought that Döllinger’s Anglican-type conception of the Church may have obtained from the early anomalous position of the Old Catholics in relation to Rome: the Old Catholics had declared the Roman Church heretical and yet partook of its sacraments and wished to continue intercommunion with it. Such unnatural bonds, however, were soon sundered by Rome.

According to Overbeck, Döllinger was an advocate of corporate reunion with the Anglicans, which involved the supposition that the Established Church of England was a true branch of the Catholic Church. In reality, Anglicanism was a house of heresies and had forfeited its claims to Catholicity. The Orthodox Church, on the other hand, insisted as a fundamental principle that all her dogmas must be Catholic, pure and unaltered, with no taint of heresy. It was impossible to unite with any body that taught heresies. Since the Orthodox Church was the Church of Undivided Christendom, guided by the Holy Spirit, she could make no compromise in faith. In union questions those who united had to accept all the dogmas as they were. There could be no adulteration in order to allow corporate reunion of bodies believing less than the Catholic norm. Only on such conditions was unity possible. With such a viewpoint it is difficult to see how Overbeck justified his presence at the second conference at all since the invitations clearly stated that its aim was to establish a vague sort of "intercommunion and a confederation of Churches." This was not to amount to "amalgamation" and was not to be a detriment to peculiarities in doctrinal beliefs of the Churches involved. (55)

According to Overbeck, Döllinger’s invitation to the first conference was acceptable to the Orthodox because it declared the dogmas of Undivided Christendom as the basis for discussion. Such a period in Church history would therefore included the Seven Ecumenical Councils since they were all held before the schism – even at the earliest dating of the schism in the ninth century. No one should have participated in the conference who did not accept the Seven Councils. To his astonishment, however, the Anglicans, who did not accept the basis of the conference, were not only admitted as observers but as participators. "Thus the only safe principle of Union is sacrificed to Anglican propensities." Archpriest Janyshev also felt that the task would have been much simpler had the original program been adhered to. (56)

Overbeck did not have much to say at the second Bonn Conference but what he did say caused a storm of indignation among the Anglicans. During the seventh session in which four articles were being discussed for acceptance, Dr. Overbeck proposed that the first article state the number of councils accepted as ecumenical. Many Anglicans, he said, would not agree with the Orthodox on the number. He mentioned that a certain Anglican cleric who had gone "over to the Orthodox Church" (James Chrystal) later found that he could not accept the Seventh Council as ecumenical. (57) His mere allusion to the number of Councils touched a tender spot with the Anglicans and caused an uproar. An anonymous writer in the Saturday Review (21 August 1875) attacked Overbeck for mentioning the Councils and said that "the first note of discord was introduced into the Conference by him…" and that only Döllinger’s tact and the "conciliatory temper of the Orientals" prevented a rupture. Dr. Overbeck was accused of having the "ingrained bitterness of his Ultramontane training" and of devoting his energies to the vilification of former communions he had abandoned (including Anglican). (58)

The discussions between the Orthodox and the Old Catholics ceased with the conclusion of the second Bonn Conference. They were not to be resumed until much later. No further such conferences were held although some had, apparently, been planned and Döllinger had intended to continue in the same vein. The Anglicans blamed the discontinuance of the conference chiefly on "the machinations of Dr. Overbeck." (59) Döllinger, too, explained their discontinuance by Overbeck’s agitation against union between the Old Catholics and the Orthodox. In letters to the committee of the Anglo-Continental Society, Döllinger mentioned, among other things, that the unsuccessful Bonn unity attempts were a result of Overbeck’s hostile agitation as well as the dissatisfaction of the Tractarian Dr. E.B. Pusey, who objected to the Anglicans giving into the Orthodox on the Filioque question. (60) Dobronvanov wrote, in his history of the Old Catholic Movement, that the unsuccessful attempts at unity resulted from the sympathy of the Old Catholic toward the Anglicans expressed at the conference. This sympathy brought in a disparity in principle between the Old Catholics and the Orthodox and with it unity became impossible. (61)

Some Anglicans found other reasons for the discontinuance of the conference. Moss thought the hostile relations between Russia and Britain before and during the Russo-Turkish War made it difficult to have theologians of those countries to meet together. (62) After the war interest in such meetings waned and the Old Catholics were concerned with other, internal matters. Mayrick, of the Anglo-Continental Society, wrote that no further conferences were held as a result of Döllinger’s death (he died in 1890, however), and because the Old Catholics entered into closer relations with the Dutch Church with "consequent alienation from the Anglican Churches…" (63) Meyrick spoke highly of the learning of the Russians present at Bonn and said, with some surprise, that they were even able to argue with the great Döllinger! Meyrick did not think quite so highly of Orthodox converts. In the Anglo-Continental Society’s Foreign Church Chronicle and Review (No. No. 4, 8, 1878) Meyrick attacked Dr. Overbeck and Guettee, as well as Michaud with his Orthodox inclinations. Overbeck was singled out for abuse because of his writings but his arguments were not refuted. (64)

Overbeck’s position on future conferences was that they could continue if Döllinger changed the direction in which he was headed, for the Anglicans were not unitable as they then were. His opinion was that if Döllinger continued to deal with them the sooner the Orthodox withdrew the better. (65) In the next few months Overbeck came to the conclusion that he was wasting his time if he awaited anything concrete from the Old Catholic movement. In his book Die Bonner Unions-Konferenzen (Halle, 1876), he stated that in 1870 "union" was closed than in 1876, and that by 1880 it probably would be even further removed. Things had gone as he had foreseen: Old Catholicism was getting rapidly to be like Anglicanism. Before the Bonn Conference he had written to Bishop Reinkens asking that the Anglicans be excluded "provisionally," but this was something Reinkens refused to do. Overbeck stated that he knew from seventeen years daily contact with Anglicans and from his study of Anglican theology the "dangerous latitudinarian character of Anglicanism." When at Munich and even more so at Cologne "aspects discrepant" from his were observed, Overbeck still did not lose hope and thought that the Old Catholics would overcome these wrong views and in the end agree with his ideas of Church unity. But he saw these views, through association with Anglicans, condensing and assuming definite form, and he came to realize that the Old Catholics were pursuing ends leading away from Orthodoxy and not toward her. Even at this stage Overbeck felt sympathetic to that small portion within Old Catholicism which "represents the positive current." (66)

Generally speaking, Overbeck’s evaluation of Old Catholicism’s progress was sad indeed. The movement had not had the success expected of it. He saw the reasons for this in the lax views of the Old Catholics. Such latitude scared off further conversions of Roman Catholics, who were wary of leaving their Church to join one of such "loose tenets, a body with so little ascetic fervour, with so little zeal for propagating what it considers to be the truth among dissenters, a body denouncing Monasticism and asceticism, abolishing Church Commandments, promising liturgical changes of momentous importance." Roman Catholics would think twice before jumping from bad to worse. Had the Old Catholics remained on Catholic ground there was no doubt but that they would have gained considerable converts. Instead of this, some of the best Old Catholic leaders left them and returned to Rome. Overbeck decried Old Catholic laxity about Confession, fasting, the permission for priests to marry after ordination and as many times as desired in succession; to marry widows and non-Catholics, and to allow priest’s children to be brought up as Protestants. There was nothing to prevent an Old Catholic from marrying a Jewess as an Anglican cleric had recently done. Overbeck was afraid the Old Catholics would become a kind of Broad Church. (67)

As far as Overbeck’s scheme for the restoration of Western Orthodoxy was concerned, the Old Catholics took no official note of it at the Bonn Conference, while the Deutscher Merkur repeatedly denounced his scheme as unseasonable. (68) At the second Bonn Conference Bishop Reinkens spoke very plainly when he said: "Let me remind Professor Overbeck that not one of us thinks for a moment of going over to the Eastern Church." (69) By the Autumn of 1876 Overbeck’s interlude with the Old Catholics had ended.

(37) Moss, The Old Catholic Movement, p. 260.

(38) OCR, IV, No. 1 (January-March, 1875), 13.

(39) Ibid., 14-15.

(40) Morgan, "Early Orthodox – Old Catholic Relations," p. 8.

(41) "Apuc’s" letter was reproduced in the OCR, IV, No. 1 (January-March, 1875), 15.

(42) Ibid., 20.

(43) Discussed quite fully in Overbeck’s "The Bonn Conferences, and the Filioque Question," OCR, IV, No. 4 (October-December, 1875), 217-64. This was reprinted separately.

(44) Dr. J.J. Overbeck, "Orthodoxy, Old Catholicism, and Anglicanism," OCR, VII (Part 1, 1878), 35, where he quoted from the Deutscher Merkur, No. 29, 1878, p. 240.

(45) Rev. J.J. Overbeck, "The Bonn Conferences: Impressions produced by their transactions," OCR, IV, No. 3 (July-September, 1875), 146-7, 150-1, 162. This was reprinted in separate form. Note that for a period of several years Overbeck styled himself "Reverend." Cf. [Francis Henry] Reusch, Report of the Proceedings at the Reunion Conference held at Bonn between the 10th and 16th of August, 1875 (London, 1876), pp. liii-liv.

(46) OCR, Ibid., 152-56, 162.

(47) Reusch, Report, pp. 92-93.

(48) Quoted in OCR, IV, No. 3 (July-September, 1875), 170-1; Cf. Johnston, Henry Parry Liddon, p. 190. As shown above (p. 4), Overbeck was never an Ultramontane nor an Anglican!

(49) Moss, Old Catholic Movement, p. 270; Cf. Papadopoulos, Validity of Anglican Ordinations, p. 35n.

(50) V. Dobronravov, "Desjat’ let iz istorii Starokatolicheskago dvizhenija (1871-1881)," Khristianskor Chtenie, II, No. 9-10 (September-October, 1890), 278-79.

(51) Ibid.

(52) Moss, Old Catholic Movement, Ibid.

(53) Frederick Meyrick, Memories of Life at Oxford (London, 1905), p. 264.

(54) Mentioned in OCR, VII (Part II, 1878), 153.

(55) OCR, IV, No. 3 (July-September, 1875), 182.

(56) OCR, V, No. 4 (October-December, 1876), 276, 278, 283.

(57) OCR, VII (Part I, 1878), 33-35; Cf. Moss, Old Catholic Movement, p. 256.

(58) OCR, Ibid., 31.

(59) Reusch, Report, p. 93.