The "Old Catholics" of Holland
255. The "Old Catholics" are trying to secure the union of all separate Churches on the basis of a non-Papal Catholicism.
Having renounced the very principle of unity, the authority of Christ in His Church, they are attempting an impossible task. Events have shown this in the most practical manner possible. The "Old Catholics" are rapidly disintegrating. In the beginning they received great government patronage in Germany and Switzerland, where politicians had great hopes of fostering what they believed to be a disruptive movement in the Catholic Church. But nothing came of it, and the radical liturgical, disciplinary, and constitutional changes adopted in the first fifteen years convinced them that the "Old Catholic" claim to Catholicism was but a fiction. They lost interest in the "Old Catholic" movement, and its vitality rapidly declined.
256. The Lambeth Conference of 1930 agreed that there was nothing in the Declaration of Utrecht inconsistent with the leaching of the Church of England.
That is the death-blow to the "Old Catholics." For it means, not that Anglican doctrine is Catholic, but that the "Old Catholics" are Protestants.
257. There is now complete intercommunion between the "Old Catholics" and the Anglican Communion.
That is not surprising. The "Old Catholics," being simply "New Protestants," recognize those with whom they have a real affinity. If you think I take a harsh and unreasonable view of things, let me ask you to consider a parallel case. If a Congregationalist boasted to an Anglican that his Church had intercommunion with the Methodist Church which had broken away from Anglicanism, would the Anglican be deeply impressed? Can a Catholic be deeply impressed, therefore, when an Anglican boasts that he has intercommunion with a schismatic body which itself has abandoned the Catholic Church? The same difficulty ever recurs. If, instead of merely having intercommunion with the Anglican Church, the "Old Catholics" were completely absorbed in full communion with the Church of England, Christendom would be no nearer unity than it would be if Aimee Macpherson with her "Four-Square Gospelers" decided to amalgamate with Judge Rutherford and the "Witnesses of Jehovah." The union of heretical bodies amongst themselves really leaves the problem untouched. The only hope of a united Christian Church is the return of all schismatical and heretical bodies to the Mother Church of Christendom-the Catholic Church. When all have come back, then, and then only, will there be "one fold under one shepherd."