Msgr. Ren Vilatte: Community Organizer of Religion (1854-1929) [Paperback]

Introduction
Those who are looking for more information concerning J.R. Vilatte will find this book helpful. I have never before read a book entirely dedicated to Archbishop Vilatte, so I cannot compare this to other such works, if they exist. Over the years, I have read many accounts of the archbishop in books and on the internet from sources discussing Old Catholicism in general, and none of those showed as full an account of his life as this book.

The book is not without its faults, however. The book was harder to get through than it should have been, not because the writing was at all conceptually difficult, but because the biographical story did not flow well. I believe the book would benefit greatly from a re-organization, and even from simple re-formatting.

Format
The formatting is sloppy-- at times the right margin is justified, other times not (this is true for both sides of the page); sometimes part of a page is justified, and the remainder is not. I believe justification is easier on the eyes, and makes highlighting text easier. Also, there are many occasions where there is extra space between letters of the same word, there is punctuation that occasionally doesn't belong, and a couple of misspellings.

The author uses italics for quotations. I prefer quotation marks, especially when the book is using a font (verdana) where there is little difference between italics and normal type.

Next, photographs, documents, tables and drawings are interwoven into the text, which, when it is done to excess, is distracting. In my opinion, it would be much better to have two or three collected sections for most visual subjects the book has to offer.

Since I scribble comments in books I read, I appreciated the generosity afforded by the horizontal margins, but the vertical margins were excessive, top and bottom 1 1/2" and 1 1/4", respectively. This not only further breaks up text (especially when visual aids are taking up text space), but such large margins prevented the book from showing one or two document representations at a large enough scale to be legible.

Finally, considering the above facts, I believe endnotes would have been better than footnotes.

Organization
The organization of the book disrupts the flow of the text to a much greater degree than the format.

The book not only discusses Vilatte's life, it also gives an account of the community church movement and the history of several organizations surrounding it. Since Vilatte was a part of this movement, it is certainly valid to discuss it. However, it is done during the biographical story to the extent where, for part of the book, the text no longer centers around Vilatte, but around the community movement. As such, it would have been far better to have a separate chapter telling the story of the movement, so it only be need mentioned in direct context to Vilatte in the rest of the book. The book does have a list of these community organizations and their abbreviations, which is helpful.

It also discusses religious organizations, such as the Order of the Crown of Thorns and the Society of the Precious Blood. Just as with the community church movement, these societies must be discussed as they are a part of Vilatte's life, but efforts to explain the history and structure of these societies deep within a chapter telling Vilatte's story again disrupts the flow of the text and would have been better regulated to separate chapters.

The chapters that are used are not well structured. There are too few chapters to be helpful (three for the first 205 pp. of the book out of a total of 216 pp.), and too many informal sub-sections.

Many items in the appendix are important enough to be in the text (in my opinion, 2, 7, 9-14), and several times the text describes incidental details which should have been regulated to the appendix. These items would include a 7-page section listing families who attended a particular Old Catholic church, as well as a large portion of document representations, especially portions of letters the Archbishop had written.

any of the passages making up footnotes are important enough to be treated in the main text, and historical minutiae (such as individual church communion service-vespers schedules, who ordained the rector or when the rector had been ordained) could have been regulated to endnotes. It seems that the author regulated many points of controversy to the endnotes, to de-emphasize them-- either not to stain the history of his church, not to sully current relations with other denominations, and/or not to seem to be blaming after so many years have passed. This is an important mistake. The truth is the truth: to explain what happened without sweeping it under the rug is not blaming, and to the extent it concerns Vilatte, it is the very purpose of the book.

Text Critique
There are some issues that seem important, albeit in a negative way, to Vilatte's church movement that are not discussed in as much detail as they should have been.

One paper on the internet alleges that Vilatte gave the Episcopal Church the rights to many of his church properties in exchange for money needed to support his clergy and their education. Obviously, the paper said, this had been a huge mistake, as the Episcopalians would wind up taking these churches away from him. This was not mentioned in Therriault's book. If true, it should have been included, mistake as it was, for it shows Villate's concern for his clergy, if not his business or street sense. The only thing the book says is that Vilatte's church lost church property to the Episcopalians and Roman Catholics without saying why, and this only in a footnote. A major move by Vilatte, from America to Europe, was made because of these controversies, and the reasons for his departure are not dealt with in much detail. Independent Catholics in the Continuing Anglican movement could attest to the fact that the Episcopalians are doing business the same way-- many churches wanted to split since 1977, but the movement was greatly hampered when the ECUSA kept on winning court cases which allowed them to keep church properties, even when the parishioners had paid for them. Sometimes denominations die out, and sometimes they last, for all the wrong reasons.

I must admit I was shocked at finding out the origin of the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC). This too, for some reason, was regulated to a footnote, and should have been dealt with in the main text in as much detail as possible.

Controversy between Independent Catholics and the RCC in France is also regulated to a short footnote statement. Again, an important force against Vilatte and the Independent Catholic movement is de-emphasized, evidently to serve the icon of political correctness. Instead of forthrightly "grappling" with these important issues, the author writes the bare minimum, sheepishly in fine print. Why write the book? We all know the movement did not greatly succeed, so why not? The minimum story is told, and there is no re-visiting events for analysis. There is a one-page summation on p. 205, which is inadequate in detail and simply re-tells facts already stated.

Toward the end of Vilatte's life, he entered a RC abbey in France. Many other sources say he had reconciled with Rome. There was one that maintained he did not, and actually consecrated seven people at that time as an act of protest because they would not recognize his episcopal orders. The book doesn't mention any of this. The claim that he reconciled with Rome is very common, and, like other matters surrounding Vilatte, it should be addressed instead of ignored. If not true, deny it, if true explain why. Old and in ailing health, with his own remaining churches too poor to support him, perhaps he had no choice.

There is a short chapter addressing the continuation of Vilatte's work, but it is only 8 pp., with 3 1/2 pp. of photos. Not much. Only one of Vilatte's lines is briefly discussed, that of the church that the author now leads. Their theology is ignored, and one must go to their website to find that he leads five churches. Even their website leaves their doctrine in obscurity.

Catholic practice necessitates three consecrators in order for a consecration of a bishop to be considered valid. Vilatte received this in Sri Lanka, and emphatically pointed this out to those attempting to discredit him, but he could not extend this to any of the people he consecrated. There is a disconnect here, and it was never discussed. If the RCC, ECUSA and Utrecht Union were not so hostile, the lack of co-consecrators would never have been an issue, but apparently there was no attempt to send the elected to Sri Lanka.

For good or bad, it is hard to evaluate Vilatte's legacy without a discussion of the episcopal lines that followed him. With the possible exception of the co-consecrator issue, Vilatte is not necessarily to blame for consecrating those who later took faith in other directions. Vilatte was evidently not like Carfora, who seemingly would consecrate anything that moved. Nevertheless, nothing is said about the fact that most of Vilatte's lines turned theosophical, something that Vilatte himself would have never accepted. As stated, the author is one of Vilatte's episcopal descendants, and has ordained women in his own church. This is certainly an anti-catholic practice that Vilatte would have condemned, and yet there is no effort to reconcile the fact that the author is using Vilatte's orders for legitimacy without being willing to continue the faith he held.

It is important to discuss this. The book shows the Archbishop to be a hard-working man of God who was acting in good faith. In most other literature, Vilatte's lines are discussed much more than the man himself, and the Archbishop winds up being judged entirely on the basis of his episcopal progeny, which the book shows is not a fair judgment. It should be explicitly stated that it is not a fair judgment, and to do that, the issue has to be discussed.

The author discusses theology, but keeps it to a minimum. Is the author worried about boring readers with too much doctrine? It stands to reason that anyone willing to purchase a book centered around such an obscure figure would not be put off by a greater degree of theological discussion. Perhaps this is why he made the choices he did for inclusion into footnotes and the appendix.

Summary
All these criticisms are of course intended as a review for those who have not read the book, but they are also intended as a means of improving a book that I could have savored. Rather, I was, at least to some extent, reduced to working through some of it and wanting more of the rest. If the book could only get out of it's own way, it would have been much more enjoyable to read.

› Go to Amazon.com to see the review  3.0 out of 5 stars