The modern ecumenical movement is usually traced to Protestant missionary conferences in the early 20th century. This has led to a common perception that ecumenism was primarily born out of interdenominational interactions in places where Christianity’s presence was nascent, historic theological disagreements seemed insignificant, and the operative ecclesiological framework was Protestant. Catholics without Rome: Old Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, and the Reunion Negotiations of the 1870s by Bryn Geffert and LeRoy Boerneke, challenges this narrative by recounting an ecumenical effort made some decades earlier. Only in this case, the events happened in places like England, Germany, and Russia, where Christianity was well-established; the main people involved were academic theologians, who did not shy away from controversy; and it was carried on in the context of more catholic or “high church” ecclesiologies.
The book tells the story of a rather little-known episode in Christian history. In the aftermath of the First Vatican Council (1869-70), which made the infallibility of the pope official dogma in the Roman Catholic Church, a number of dissenters in central Europe cut ties with Rome and formed a set of independent churches that came to be known as Old Catholic. Almost immediately, the Old Catholics made overtures to the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican churches to explore the possibility of forming a united church. These efforts culminated in two “reunion conferences” held in Bonn in 1874 and 1875. While these meetings had no official status, they brought together ecclesiastical leaders and theologians from all three traditions, and even included some Protestant representatives. The first conference showed some promise of agreement on several divisive topics, and the second even achieved a jointly signed on the filioque controversy regarding the procession of the Holy Spirit, one of the most significant points of contention between Eastern and Western Christians. However, when the conferences failed to receive sufficient support or reception from official ecclesial bodies, the movement ran out of momentum and the conferences were largely forgotten.
In some ways the book reads like a novel, and the main protagonist is Ignaz von Döllinger, a Roman Catholic priest and scholar from Germany who was excommunicated for refusing to accept the dogmatic definition of papal infallibility. While Döllinger himself never formally joined the Old Catholic church, he was greatly involved in its early formation, and was the main coordinator of the Bonn reunion conferences. Several other notable figures loom large in the story, including Anglicans like Christopher Wordsworth and Edward Bouverie Pusey, Orthodox like Aleksandr Kireev and Ioann Ianyshev, and even some political leaders like William Gladstone and Otto von Bismarck.
In addition to providing the historical background for the Bonn conferences, the authors give extensive attention to assessing the conferences’ failure and aftermath. Chapter 12, “Explaining Failure,” the longest chapter in the book, explores why the efforts in Bonn did not catch on in the represented churches. A number of explanations are analyzed (and some rejected), but the main culprits seem to be the internal divisions within the Anglican and Orthodox churches, the lack of a shared, coherent ecclesiology, and the indifference of the public and laity toward what was, in many ways, a project carried on by academics. Nationalism proves to be a surprisingly ambivalent factor; in some cases, nationalist sentiments openly opposed reunion efforts, yet many of the Bonn participants saw no contradiction between their own sense of national identity and their desire for a reunited trans-national church.
The final chapter, “Aftermath as Conclusion,” traces the history of relations between the three traditions in the decades since the Bonn conferences. Despite many ongoing and often positive efforts, on the whole, the project of reunion has not really progressed since the 1870s. While the Anglicans and Old Catholics reached an intercommunion agreement in 1931, no further steps have been taken toward formal reunion. Meanwhile, new internal divisions have impacted the Anglican, Orthodox, and Old Catholic churches. This chapter tries to cover a lot of ground, and without disputing the overall bleak picture it paints, it is worth noting two points that the authors omit or downplay. The first is the Anglican Communion’s Lambeth Conference of 1888. This is included in the chapter, but only briefly and in connection with the Old Catholics or Orthodox. What the chapter omits is the adoption of the Lambeth Quadrilateral, which became the basis for Anglican ecumenical relations in general, including the 1931 agreement with Old Catholics. The second point is the emergence of ecumenical efforts from the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Given that separation from Rome was a major catalyst of the Bonn conferences, the significant shift in ecumenical outlook by the Roman Catholic Church may merit greater acknowledgement than the authors give it.
The story of the book’s origins is almost as interesting as the story it tells. It was begun as a doctoral dissertation written in the 1970s by LeRoy Boerneke, a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran pastor and teacher—an unlikely background for someone to take an interest in the topic of study. It was not until thirty years later, and after Boerneke’s death, that Theofanis Savrou, Boerneke’s former advisor, asked Bryn Geffert to edit the manuscript for publication. Geffert soon found that the original work needed substantial updating and rewriting in light of more recent scholarship. The result is a book effectively written by two co-authors who never met one another.
This volume is readable and engaging, and it contains sufficient explanations to be accessible to the non-expert. It does contain some typos and factual errors, especially concerning dates. Overall, though, Catholics without Rome is a welcome contribution to the study of Christian history, as it sheds light on an oft-neglected set of events that anticipated the modern ecumenical movement.
Matthew Kemp is a teaching assistant professor in theology at Marquette University.
Matthew Kemp
Date Of Review:
June 27, 2023
