We Must Show Mercy to All
I was interested to read three reactions in TLC to the words that Bishop Budde spoke directly to President Trump at Washington National Cathedral’s prayer service [“Bishop Budde’s Sermon Ignites Web Debates,” March 16]. The reactions ranged from slightly to very critical of Bishop Budde. In the interest of a more balanced representation of reactions, I ask you to consider a few things.
Billy Graham spoke to several U.S. presidents from the pulpit, including Richard Nixon, but he experienced nothing like the gnashing of teeth and death threats that Bishop Budde has received. Such extreme reaction to the bishop’s gentle words of compassion must be because her words “landed,” because they touched a nerve among those for whom the homiletic shoe fits.
Bishop Budde asked the president for mercy; even if one feels that immigrants are not welcome in the U.S. nor are non-immigrants welcome to live into an identity that does not conform to those of the majority, the Bible is clear about showing mercy to all.
How refreshing it would have been if Trump had later responded to the sermon, “You’re right: I haven’t been as merciful as I should. I was wrong; I’m sorry. I realize that I can’t force everyone to live according to the gender assigned to them at birth; it would be unmerciful to force undocumented immigrants who are law-abiding, productive, tax-paying members of society to leave this country; and I urge my supporters to stop persecuting Bishop Budde.”
Has anyone noticed the multiple asymmetries of our cultural moment? Who wins in a power struggle between the tolerant and the intolerant? If one side is truthful and the other lies, uses their lies to entrench their power, and punishes those who dispute them, which side is more empowered? If one side supports reasonable means of resolving conflicts and the other threatens censorship, financial punishment, and intimations of violence, who is more empowered?
David Palmer
Falls Church, Virginia
Community Ecumenism Works
I am writing in response to “An Episcopus Vagans Who Never Stopped Wandering” [Jan. 12]. I was troubled by the tone and accusations levied against Bishop Vilatte.
Along with inaccuracies about Bishop Vilatte, I also find very troubling what seem to be aspersions cast upon Community-based, ecumenical Christianity. In your second sentence you state, as you introduce your theme of wandering, “He was, at various points, a Catholic, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and a Congregationalist.” This is what draws me to the ministry of someone like Bishop Vilatte. As an Old Catholic priest in the late 19th-century Wisconsin, he was one of the key founders of the Christian Community Church, also called the Christian Catholic Rite of Community Churches, and was important in the development of their faith and liturgy. These churches are part of a strand in Christian history known as the Community Churches Movement, which today is manifest in the International Council of Community Churches (ICCC).
These community-based churches sought to overcome restrictive denominational machinery, to form churches more inclusive to the ministry of laity and women, and dedicated to local mission needs and opportunities. Many of these Community-type churches in the United States and Canada were formed among those coming from denominations historically connected to the Protestant Reformation.
What is important about the ministry of Bishop Vilatte is that his mission to Catholics and Anglicans, could form a bridge to the Reformation tradition churches in a spirit of true ecumenism. Bishop Vilatte wrote in his autobiography in 1910, “I visited the various families and urged them to ignore their doctrinal differences for the present and unite in one Community Church. I felt I could preach nothing but the Gospel of Grace; that neither Roman Catholicism nor Protestantism could satisfy the needs of these people but a Christian Catholic Church without any other qualification. A purified Church which would present the Gospel to them as did the Primitive Church, and exercise authority according to the spirit of free America.”
Bishop Vilatte is an important historical figure in our Community Churches Movement, and his ministry among Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists is something we celebrate!
You may cast the aspersion of Bishop Vilatte as a “wandering bishop” who worked with Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists. Yet in my 37 years of ordained ministry in the ICCC, I have served as pastor in Community, United Methodist, Lutheran, United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ congregations, with time commitments to the World Council of Churches and the Consultation on Church Union/Churches Uniting in Christ.
My ministry does not make me a “wandering presbyter,” but instead one completely committed to a Church of Jesus Christ where “all may be one” (John 17:21). I believe Bishop Vilatte was committed to the same.
The Rev. Bob Fread
President
International Council of Community Churches
Cedar Falls, Iowa
History Speaks Well of Bishop Vilatte
I am the bishop mentioned by Council Minister Emeritus Don Ashmall (ICCC), in his reaction to the article on Msgr. René Vilatte.
I read The Living Church regularly. The subjects are relevant and usually dealt with in a responsible manner. But Ms. Gaffin’s article on Msgr. Vilatte boggles my mind. She degrades his character by making delusive remarks that present an untrue picture of him.
I have researched Msgr. Vilatte for 30 years. I have read what he wrote and almost everything that has been published on him and his ministry, notably in Wisconsin. I went to Green Bay, Duval, and Brussels, and I spoke with the descendants of the Belgians and French Canadians who built the churches there, including Precious Blood, mentioned in the article. They all remembered the “model pastor” described in The Church Scholiast and elsewhere. The sources are all mentioned in my book Msgr. Rene Vilatte: Community Organizer of Religion, 1854-1929 (Apocryphile Press, Berkeley, 2012).
I also had the chance to know Paul and Rene Durand, the sons of Bishop Vilatte’s successor, Casimir Durand (1879-1957). Rene had Msgr. Vilatte as godfather and bore his name. They remembered him as a good and devoted pastor, who could sell his personal possessions to pay church bills. A poor clergyman, serving the people, not the fraud bishop who, according to Ms. Gaffin, had an insatiable lust for money, to the point of selling presbyteral and episcopal ordinations. Such individuals don’t end their days in a monastery, as did Msgr. Vilatte, among the Cistercians of Versailles, France (1925-29).
Nor is there anything negative about him at the municipality of Notre Dame du Laus, Quebec, whose general manager I met some years ago. Msgr. Vilatte was a schoolmaster and pastoral animator there (1874-75). He also did well at Collège des Pères de Sainte-Croix in Saint Laurent (Montreal), where he took his classical course (1878-80), and at the Presbyterian College (McGill University), where he did his theology, after joining the reformer priest Charles Chiniquy (1881-83).
It’s all very well for the new Diocese of Wisconsin to remember Msgr. Vilatte. But let it be done responsibly, based on facts and with a sense of proportion and restraint.
Msg. Serge A. Theriault
Bishop of the Christian Catholic Rite
in the International Council of Community Churches
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Recommended Reading
To assume that “Bishop Vilatte was a fraud and that signatures on his supposed petition of election were fake” is an awful allegation. In 1888 was established the Old Catholic Ordinariate of America, incorporated in 1890 and recognized alongside the Roman, Anglican, Orthodox, and Protestant churches. The Rt. Rev. René Vilatte was duly elected as the first bishop ordinary at the November 16, 1889, Duval Synod. Accordingly, his consecration as first Bishop Ordinary in 1892 was done by an Independent Catholic Church in Sri Lanka, attached to the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.
After doing a full and real research on Msgr. René Vilatte, the author would have had a more respectful and honest opinion of Bishop Vilatte. I therefore invite Ms. Greta Gaffin to consult two well-researched publications on Msgr. Rene Vilatte: Msgr. Rene Vilatte, Community Organizer of Religion, 1854-1929 and Pastoral Letters and Instructions, Sermons, Statements, and Circulars of Msgr. Rene Vilatte, 1892-1925, both by Msg. Serge A. Theriault. Both publications are available at Amazon.
I was surprised that this article was published in The Living Church, a publication that I have always considered a respectful and serious magazine with usually well-researched articles.
The Rev. Willard Dionne
Ottawa-Gatineau Community
Christian Catholic Church
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
