Episcopi Vagantes

Revised 18-xii-03

Definition

EPISCOPUS VAGANS: (Latin) literally "wandering bishop". Those who are, or at least represent themselves as, properly consecrated bishops, but who are not part of the church within which they were consecrated, and are not in communion with any historical metropolitical see. [Definition adapted from Brandreth, op.cit.infra, p. 2].

Some links

NOTE: given that this religious subculture seems to attract a great many eccentrics and obsessives, I have taken care to select links with orthodox, scholarly content. (The same comment applies mutatis mutandis to the books listed below.)

• Professor David McClean QC's page on Episcopi vagantes, Independent Catholic or Orthodox and 'Continuing Anglican' Churches contains an introduction and some links for further exploration
• "The Measure of a Bishop", a Master's thesis by Eric A. Badertscher which considers the history and ecclesiology of episcopi vagantes in the context of the American Continuing Church movement
• Church Times article on Episcopi Vagantes (March 2000) by Rev Dr Kenneth Leech of St Botolph's, Aldgate, London.

Some books

NOTE: in addition to those works specifically listed below, relevant considerations will be found in the literature on the following subjects: the acceptance of Anglican orders by Rome, the Oxford Movement, and indeed the ordination of women.

• Dr C B Moss "The Old Catholic Movement" (SPCK, 2/e 1964)
• Fr Henry R T Brandreth "Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church" (SPCK, 1/e 1947; greatly revised 2/e, 1961)
• Peter Anson "Bishops at Large" (Faber, 1964). Though Anson treats his subject with unflagging levity, this is a carefully researched work.
• Nicolas Barker "Stanley Morison" (Macmillan, 1972). Nicolas Barker's biography of the distinguished typographer, best known for designing the Times New Roman typeface. Contains some amusing material (pp. 79 - 82) about a projected history of the Old Catholics, with special reference to Mathew, which Morison was encouraged to write by his spiritual director towards the end of the Great War while Morison, a conscientious objector, eked out a living growing tomatoes in north London. Barker's notes direct the reader to Brandreth (op.cit.supra) for more information.

Cautionary notes

• Brandreth's characterisation of the psychology of the freelance bishop: "The condition of fantasy is common enough, but certain religious interests or instincts have, in these cases, given to it this strange form. It is not without significance that a trade in worthless degrees and equally worthless titles of nobility often goes hand in hand with the episcopal office as many of the 'episcopi vagantes' conceive it."(Brandreth, op.cit.,p.3)
• First [of three main types], there are those [episcopi vagantes] who, while conforming to Catholic orthodoxy, are mainly concerned with valid orders and with the acquisition of various successions. These groups have few lay people, and members tend to become bishops fairly quickly -- and then, almost as quickly, excommunicate one another. One might see this tradition as the reductio ad absurdum of the Augustinian theory of validity, described by Hugh Montefiore as "grace by pipeline" (Church Times, 6 May 1994) -- combined with a more or less psychopathic interest in ceremonial and ecclesiastical paraphernalia. (Leech, loc.cit.)
• ...Third, there are groups, ultimately deriving from the Liberal Catholic movement of Willoughby and Leadbeater, who are involved with the occult, theosophy, the magical fringes of Freemasonry, and various gnostic traditions.... Such groups tend to make connections with the occult wings of the counterculture, as in the late 1960s; and the New Age resurgence will be a godsend to them. (ibid.)
• They sometimes manage to establish small denominations which endure, but often they preside over a church so small that it seems to exist largely for their sake. At the extreme vagans end of the spectrum, the bishop will have an enormously impressive title, will claim links with other prelates seeming equally splendid, will probably claim several different strands of apostolic succession (often acquired through repeated conditional consecration), and will almost certainly have a website which is silent on the existence of any actual congregation, let alone church buildings. (McClean, loc.cit.)

C B Moss on the validity of orders

"... There are several sects which claim to derive their episcopal succession from [Mathew], which are often confused with the Old Catholics, and which in some cases make use of the name "Old Catholic". It cannot be too strongly emphasized that none of these sects is Old Catholic or is recognized in any way by the genuine old Catholic churches in communion with the Archbishop of Utrecht...

"They all lay great stress on the validity of their orders, and it seems desirable to state the facts about this claim. The word 'valid' is used in different senses, but in my opinion it has properly only one meaning: it means recognized by the competent authority. It is a legal term, and conveys an idea which no society can do without.

"An ordination is valid when it is recognised by the Church (whatever is meant by the Church). It is not necessarily valid because the ordained man is effective or successful (any more than a marriage is valid because the couple live happily together). 'Spiritually valid' can only mean 'recognised by the spiritual or ecclesiastical authority': not 'recognised by God', because we have no certain means of ascertaining what ministry or sacrament God recognizes, unless we believe that what the Church, as God's representative, recognizes is necessarily recognized by Him.

"The ministry of every communion is valid for that communion. Disputes about validity only arise when the mutual recognition of different communions is proposed, or when a minister of one communion wishes to serve in another. Every communion has the right to decide for itself what conditions it requires for its ministry; so that, for instance, an Anglican priest has no right to complain that he cannot become a priest of the Roman Communion without a fresh ordination.

[...]

"The question... remains, whether the practice of recognising schismatic ordinations, introduced by St Augustine in order to reconcile the Donatist Church, will bear application to the 'wandering bishops' with irregular succession derived from Bishops Mathew and Vilatte... Dr O C Quick criticizes the Augustinian theory, because 'it makes the essence of a valid sacrament consist in a divine action performed in response to the utterance of a particular form by a person who has a ministerial power inherent in himself, rather than by a person who has a ministerial authority by virtue of an office held" (The Christian Sacraments, p. 154). A bishop is an officer of the Church, and has the right to consecrate bishops and ordain priests for the Church only because he holds that position. But according to the traditional Western theory, an excommunicated bishop, even if completely isolated, can go about the world consecrating bishops and ordaining priests at his own discretion, and the Church is bound to recognise that they are bishops and priests, who cannot be consecrated or ordained again. It is this theory which has made possible the vagaries of the Mathew and Vilatte successions. And it is at any rate a possible view that the Church ought to have some means of preventing an unsatisfactory and irresponsible bishop, after he has been excommunicated and has ceased to have the authority of any church, even a heretical one, behind him, from filling the world with irregular bishops and priests, whose performances deceive the ignorant and unwary, and bring the sacraments and ministry of the Church into disrepute and ridicule."

(C B Moss, The Old Catholic Movement, SPCK, 1948: pp. 308-311)