OLD CATHOLICS (Altkatholiken). – This is the name given to the members of the schismatic Church that arose in opposition to the Vatican Council and to the proclamation of papal infallibility. The name signified their rejection of the dogmas then proclaimed and their desire to remain faithful to the ancient Church, understood as the Church of the first eight ecumenical councils.
The constitution of the new community was decided at the Congress that the opponents of the Vatican Council, Germans and others, held in Munich in September 1871 under the presidency of the canonist J. F. von Schulte (v.). Among the principal promoters of the movement were the professors Friedrich and Messmer of Munich, Reusch, Langen, Hilgers, Knodt of Bonn, Baltzze and Reinkens of Breslau, Michelis and Menzel of Braunsberg, Döllinger (v.) warned against setting up altar against altar. In 1873 the new Church elected a bishop in the person of Prof. Reinkens, who received episcopal consecration from a bishop Utrecht (v.). The juridical organization of the new Church was established at the first General Synod held in Bonn in 1874, and is chiefly the work of Schulte. The Old Catholics of the various nations form separate autonomous national Churches, linked only in the general conference of bishops (since 1889, when the Old Catholics entered into stable union with the Church of Utrecht, the conference has been presided over by the archbishop of that see). The highest authority in each national Church is the synod, which includes lay members; it is responsible for electing bishops and enacting laws.
The dogmatic teaching of the Old Catholics is more traditional than Protestantism, but it does not preserve the entire patrimony of truths professed in the Catholic Church up to the Vatican Council. The concept of the visible Church is reduced to the aggregate of Christian confessions, none of which fully realizes the true Church of Christ. The liturgy, which preserves not only the Mass but also the cult of the saints and sacramentals, is generally celebrated in the language of the respective nations.
Today the principal communities of Old Catholics are found in Germany (about 25,000 faithful, with a resident bishop at Bonn), in Switzerland (30,000 faithful with a bishop resident at Berne), and in Austria (since 1913, with its see at Vienna and about 30,000 faithful). To the Old Catholic community there have also been grafted various other schismatic movements with a national character: thus the Jugoslav national Church, which arose after the First World War (Marco Kalogjera), and the Polish national Church, which originated in the 19th century among the Poles of America and was later transplanted to Europe as well.