Petite Église
Petite Église ("Little Church") is a collective term for Catholic communities that developed in the French-speaking area from the conservative opposition to the Concordat of 1801 and remained outside the church fellowship with the Pope of Rome.
origin
The reorganization of the Catholic Church after the French Revolution with the Concordat between Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII of July 11, 1801 as well as the French state organic articles of 1802 met with resistance within French Catholicism, which was strongly encouraged by some of the in Bishops of the Ancien Régime emigrated abroad , who refused to resign from office as demanded by Pius VII.
The resistance was concentrated in two areas, on the one hand the west (Deux-Sèvres, Vendée, Maine-et-Loire, Morbihan, Sarthe) and north-west (Normandy) of France and Belgium, on the other hand the south-east (region of Lyon, Isère, Hautes-Alpes , Provence). A propaganda cell was active in London.
The motives of the opposition were attachment to the executed king, the bishops and priests who had remained loyal to the Pope and the Church during the revolution, but above all the impression that in the wake of the Concordat the inherited Catholic religion would be changed by innovations, e.g. by abolition or Relocation of festivals (e.g. Corpus Christi ) and the dissolution of historical dioceses and parishes.
In the area around Lyon in particular , the resistance , which was shaped by Jansenists , was strengthened by reports of visions and private revelations and turned against the Pope. In some circles, Pope Pius VII was considered a schismatic and heretic because of the Concordat, and the Kathedra Petri was therefore vacant since 1801 (see today's Sedis vacantism ).
development
The approximately forty anti-concordat groups had some 100,000 members at the beginning of the 19th century. With the restoration , almost all of the bishops still alive submitted to the resistance of the papal call to resign. The only exception, Alexandre Lauzières de Thémines , Bishop of Blois , did not ordain a priest or a bishop. As a result, the clergy within the dissident groups died out over time, and the recruitment of apostate priests of the main church disappointed expectations. From this followed around 1840: (a) the establishment of church leaderships in the hands of lay people , (b) the organization of Catholic services without priests. An attempt by the Union with the “Roomsch Katholieke Kerk van de Oud-Bisschoppelijke Clerezie” in Utrecht , who was not bound to Rome , failed around 1850. An appeal to Vatican I to heal the injustice committed by Pius VII remained without reaction. In the 1950s, on behalf of Pope Pius XII. the French mission bishop Alexandre Derouineau (* 1898, † 1973), expelled from China, with moderate success at the reconciliation of the dissidents. In the wake of Vatican II , a small group (150–200 believers) resumed full communion with the Pope in Rome. The Petite Église now has 10,000 to 20,000 members. Exact numbers are unknown.
Stevenists
The Belgian Petite Église Apostolique of the "Stevenists" goes back to an anti-revolutionary group around the canon Corneille Stevens . After the latter was reconciled with the Roman Catholic Church in 1814, the priests Gilles-François Theys (until 1816) and Philippe Winnepenninckx (1820–1837) took over the management, then that of the Gallican " Église Catholique Française " of Ferdinand François Châtel (1795 –1857) sent Bishop Julien Lerousseau. From 1866 the Stevenist community was headed by the “Père spirituel” (= spiritual father), a layman. A 1957 by Pope Pius XII. The attempt at reconciliation under the commission of a special pastor, Titular Bishop Louis Marin von Enos, did not achieve its goal, but reinforced the desire to be able to celebrate and receive all sacraments again, especially the Eucharist. The 13th Père spirituel, Aimé Bausier, was ordained a priest in 1969 and a bishop in 1971 by Charles Brearley, Archbishop-Primate of the Old Catholic Church of England, which goes back to Arnold Harris Mathew and is not a member of the Union of Utrecht . In 1979 Bausier consecrated the current bishop, Christian Vestraet, to the episcopal ordination. In order to document the connection to Old Catholicism, the church is now called Petite Église Apostolique Vieille Catholique or Small Apostolische Oud-Katholieke Kerk van België . Bishop Christian Vestraet, 14th Père spirituel, consecrated Jean Ndjewel as Bishop Superior of the "Congregation des Pères Stévennistes", which has been active in Cameroon since 2000, on April 25, 2004. On November 24, 2007, he in turn ordained the member of his congregation, Bernard Mengoumou .
In Gits and Leerbeek there are still groups of priestless “Stevenists” with church services in the style and spirit of the historic Petite Église.