Ultrajectine - Orthodoxy and Sensus Catholicus

Orthodoxy and Sensus Catholicus

To back the claims of heresy, the Roman Catholic Church maintains that the actions and teachings of the Ultrajectines are contrary to Catholic orthodoxy and the Sensus Catholicus. This is proven, according to the belief of the Papacy, that any movement which denies Papal supremacy is a heretical sect which has arisen out of rejection of the Papacy. According to Vatican I, such a hatred to Papal supremacy makes the movement antithetical to Roman Catholic beliefs and therefore a heresy.

In this coherent if circular logic of the Papacy, this is proven by the case of an ex-Roman Catholic, a suspended chaplain, Arnold Harris Mathew, who was directed towards the Ultrajectines by Fr. George Tyrrell, an excommunicated priest and founder of the condemned modernist theology.

Thus we find in Cekada's article that:

Tyrrell took advantage of Mathew's predicament, urging him on in the destruction of sacerdotalism. Mathew adopted an anti-papal position in 1907 as a result of Tyrrell's influence, saying, "…the papacy is the origin… of discord…, the fomenter of schisms, and the seat of ecclesiastical despotism and tyranny."

And if Mathew was influenced towards his course by Tyrrell, who had been cast out of the Church for his heresy, Vilatte was influenced towards his course by Charles Chiniquy, another apostate Catholic priest who fell out because he was removed from the ministry for seducing girls under his charge, and then went on to level outlandish charges against the Catholic Church.

These two, Mathew and Vilatte, are the two principal founding fathers of most Old Catholic ecclesial bodies in the USA, and a bridge between the more staid Ultrajectines and these latter offspring, most of whom remain part of the formal Ultrajectine Communion.

Again, if we examine the history of the Döllingerite Old Catholics, as distinct from the Jansenist or Ultrajectine Old Catholics of the Netherlands, we find that these Döllingerites not only received their bishops from the Ultrajectines, but also at the same time, followed the Protestants in many of their reforms — the abolition of clerical celibacy, the introduction of liturgy in the vernacular, the disencouragement of frequent Sacrament of Confession etc.

And, further proof of the Ultrajectine Communion's opposition to Catholicism is to be found in the fact that it sought and received the full support of anti-Catholic governments of Prussia-Germany (Otto von Bismarck's anti-Catholic Kulturkampf), Switzerland, the Netherlands (mostly Protestants), etc. and that the Dollingerites, morally supported by the Ultrajectines, collaborated with these governments in persecuting the Roman Catholics during the Kulturkampf.

Lastly, the Papacy claims there is the fact that the Ultrajectine Communion has federated with the Anglicans and Aglipayans, which themselves are heretical because they too refuse to recognize Papal supremacy and deny other Catholic doctrines which are of divine and defined Faith, e.g. the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin as well as the necessity of communion with Rome for eternal salvation. Thus, in Roman Catholic doctrine by association with such heresies, the Jansenists are against the Roman Catholic Church.