OVERBECK AND THE OLD CATHOLIC MOVEMENT.

THE Old Catholic movement, beginning after the Vatican Council of 1870, arose from the refusal to accept the new dogma of the Infallibility and universal ordinary jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome as defined by that Council. The movement was confined chiefly to the Germanic countries. In a short time the Old Catholics joined with the Church of Utrecht (Holland) which had seceded from Rome in 1724. (37) This revolt against Rome stirred the imaginations of many Orthodox churchmen who saw in it the way for the reunion of at least part of the Western Church with the East.

Overbeck, too, was taken by the vision of the great things promised by the Old Catholic revolt. He followed the movement with paramount interest. He knew most of the Old Catholic leaders personally from his school and university days and some of them, like Dr. J.F. Ritter von Schulte, were former colleagues of his at the University of Bonn. He considered them as men of high character and scholarship, unlike the usual Roman "mercenaries" who "march with that cadaverous obedience enacted in the rules of Loyola’s order."

When the first Old Catholic congress was announced for September 1871, Overbeck sensed its importance in the matter of Christian unity and he discussed it with his Orthodox Russian friends. They, too, saw the importance of the congress and hoped that Orthodox-Old Catholic unity would be considered there. Overbeck communicated with J.J.I. von Döllinger (1799-1890), one of the chief leaders in the movement, who answered that the question of unity would certainly be treated and invited Overbeck and his friends to attend. He hoped, at the same time, that "Russia would take steps, or give utterances expressing the wish and hope of a Union." (38)

The Russian Church had high hopes for the outcome of relations with the Old Catholics. Professor John Terent’evich Osinin (1835-1887) was sent to Munich as a representative and observer. Osinin, a member of the Synodal Commission established after Overbeck’s petition was received at St. Petersburg, was particularly equipped to deal with Western Churchmen. Born in Copenhagen of a Danish mother (his father has been attached to the Russian church there as a Reader), he had studied in Germany and had finished the St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy where his Magister’s dissertation was on "The new Roman Dogma of the Conception of the All-holy Virgin Mary." He held the cathedra of comparitive theology at the Academy and an instructorship in German which he spoke fluently. He was married to the daughter of Fr. E. I. Popoff.

When Overbeck arrived in Munich for the congress he visited the various Old Catholic leaders to feel out their attitude towards unity with the Orthodox Church. He found that Döllinger’s prejudices against the Russian Church had abated somewhat since the publication of his book Kirche und Kirchen. (39) Overbeck discussed with Döllinger the prevalent fear that Old Catholicism might degenerate into another Protestant sect but was assured that any tendency towards Protestantism would speedily be checked. Overbeck’s meeting with two professors of the University of Munich, Dr. Johannes Huber and Dr. Johann Friedrich, convinced him that both these men favored unity with the Eastern Church.

At the congress itself, presided over by Schulte while Döllinger preferred to remain in the background, Dr. Huber, in Overbeck’s view, prefaced the discussion about unity with the Orthodox Church rather unsatisfactorily. In view of this, Professor Friedrich Michelis of Braunsburg, an acquaintance of Overbeck for over twenty years, spoke very warmly on behalf of unity. In his speech Dr. Michelis mentioned the Synodal Commission’s activity in the work of restoration of the Western Orthodox Church and its revision of the Roman Mass. (40)

At the time of the Munich Congress the Old Catholics were in an anomalous position. They still adhered to the Tridentine faith and wished to remain in communion with the Ultramontanes who, on the other hand, had expelled them from the Roman Church and considered them as Neo-Protestants. Overbeck could not perceive how the Old Catholics could unite with the Orthodox Church and still have communion with the heretical Roman Church. At this stage Döllinger still resisted any changes which would lead to the formation of a separate ecclesiastical body. Overbeck, on the other hand, hoped that the Old Catholics would soon organize their own Church and declare Rome heretical, since it was impossible to hope for the Vatican to turn the pages of its history backwards. The Old Catholics should not fear that they might sink to the level of a small sect for if they united with the Eastern Church they would acquire many millions of co-religionists. By such a union the Old Catholics would gain power to resist Rome and even to cause it to retreat. One of the paragraphs of the Munich Program stated that the congress looked forward to unity with the Greek and Russian Church since the reasons causing the separation of East and West were "insufficient" and there were no irreconcilable differences between the two. At the conclusion of the Munich Congress Overbeck had hopes that something would be accomplished. (41)

Dr. Overbeck’s article in the Orthodox Catholic Review on the Munich Congress, which has been cited here, was commented on in the Old Catholic newspaper Rheinischer Merkur (later changed to Deutscher Merkur) by one of its correspondents who disapproved of its tenor. The statements in Overbeck’s article to which the writer objected most were those stating that the Old Catholics had to adopt the whole of the Orthodox faith before there could be any unity, for only Orthodoxy had preserved the purity of the Apostolic tradition. The writer said that in such categorical statements there was left no room for exchange of ideas or mutual agreement. Doctrinally the West would be converted to the East. The correspondent felt that what was needed was the dispassionate discussion of the differences in doctrine in order to arrive at a mutual understanding. Otherwise, another Florentine Union would result.

Overbeck answered this in a letter to the Rheinischer Merkur in which he said the Eastern Church regarded the Old Catholics with hope and trust, and desired speedy and complete communion with them in order to re-establish Catholic unity between the East and West and thus battle the Ultramontane Roman Catholics with a common force. The Orthodox Church did not require blind submission from the Old Catholics but rather wanted a mutual agreement, though not an elastic one. Orthodoxy had preserved the true faith and if it could be shown that she was not the true bearer of the Apostolic tradition she would stand corrected. He called upon the newspaper to become the organ wherein questions separating the two Churches could be aired. He hoped that at least one step could be taken in the proper direction before the Cologne Congress was convened. (42)

By the time the second Old Catholic Congress was held at Cologne in September 1872, Old Catholicism had developed somewhat and exhibited new features. It had advanced to the stage of an independent Church organization and new parishes were being formed. In June of the following year Joseph Hubert Reinkens (1821-96) was elected the first Old Catholic bishop. He was consecrated at Rotterdam, Holland by the Dutch Bishop of Deventer, Hermann Heykamp, on 11 August 1873.

Dr. Overbeck had little to say about the Cologne Congress and only mentioned it in connection with a review of a book (43) by Abbé Eugène-Philibert Michaud (1839-1918) several years later. Overbeck said that he heard Dr. Michaud’s address at the Cologne Congress and admired his efforts to bring about unity between the Old Catholics and the Orthodox Church (44) . Michaud, a Roman Catholic priest from Paris, had joined the Old Catholic movement. At Cologne he proposed that the congress proclaim its recognition of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and declare that the later Western Councils, including Trent, were not ecumenical. Such a move was not yet acceptable, however, and a committee was appointed to examine the question of the Western councils. Michaud had apparently taken a position quite near the Orthodox one and it was expected that he would join the Church. Overbeck spoke of him as "not yet a formal member of the Orthodox Church." (45) Michaud, however, remained an Old Catholic and was later appointed to the Old Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Berne. Michaud met the Russian General Alexander Kireeff (1833-1910), an Orthodox layman greatly interested in questions of Church unity, at the Cologne Congress and these two carried on a correspondence for many years. (46)

(37) For full particulars on the Old Catholic movement see: C.B. Moss, The Old Catholic Movement: Its Origins and History (London, 1948).

(38) Dr. J.J. Overbeck, "The Old-Catholic Movement and the Munich Congress," OCR, III, No. 1-6 (January-June, 1871), 119-122.

(39) Overbeck had examined and refuted Döllinger’s charges against the Russian Church in his Die orthodoxe katholische Anschauung, pp. 89-95.

(40) OCR, III, No. 1-6 (January-June, 1871), 122-125.

(41) Ibid., 127-29. After the congress Overbeck published his Die Wiedervereinigung der Morgen und Abendlandischen Kirche (Halle, 1872) which was concerned with the possibilities opened by the congress.

(42) Rheinischer Merkur, No. No. 24, 26, 1872. Quoted in Khristianskoe Chtenie, 1872, III, 172-77.

(43) Discussion sur les Sept Conciles OEcumeniques, etudies au point de vue traditionnel et liberal (Berne, 1878). Michaud dedicated this work to the "venerable Church of the East."

(44) OCR, VII (Part II, 1878), 151.

(45) Ibid.

(46) J.H. Morgan, "Early Orthodox – Old Catholic Relations: General Kireeff and Professor Michaud," The Church Quarterly Review, CLII, (April-June, 1951), 1-10.