From time to time, this magazine mentions the Swiss Willibrord Society. Willibrord is not a kind of Norwegian sandwich, nor an Australian musical instrument. Willibrord was a missionary who lived 1300 years ago.
He came from the north of England. He was born in 658, and was educated by the monks at Ripon, in Yorkshire. These were difficult years in England, and one problem was the relationship between the settlers who had moved in from Germany and Denmark (the "English"), and the native Celts, who had their own very distinctive Christian traditions and practices. The abbot of Ripon was called Wilfrid. Wilfrid supported the English viewpoint, which was that church life should be harmonised as far as possible with the rest of western Europe, and in 664, Wilfrid persuaded a synod which met at Whitby to adopt the Roman way of reckoning the date of Easter, and other "Roman" (as opposed to "Celtic") practices.
At the age of twenty, Willibrord left Ripon, and studied for twelve years in Ireland. Here, he decided he wanted to be a missionary, and set out with some companions for Frisia - modern day Holland. This was in 690, some seventy years after St Gall had made a very similar journey from Ireland to Switzerland.
Willibrord's mission was successful. In 695, the Pope consecrated him as Bishop of the Frisians, and Pepin, the Frankish king, gave him land to build a cathedral in Utrecht. His work covered a large area, from Luxembourg in the south, where he founded the monastery at Echternach in 698, to Denmark, where his success was more limited.
So why is there a Swiss Willibrord Society? Well, Utrecht is the link. Holland became officially Calvinist at the Reformation, but there was a sizeable Roman Catholic minority. Some of these tended also to the view that we were powerless to follow God of our own free will, and for this they were censured by the Pope. As a result, a number of Dutch Christians separated from Rome in 1724. They emphasized their links with the church founded by Willibrord, and came to be known as Old Catholics.
In 1870, a number of churches in Germany, Austria and Switzerland rejected the dogma of Papal Infallibility as defined by the first Vatican Council. They turned to the Church of Utrecht, and received support from there. In Switzerland, Bishop Eduard Herzog was consecrated bishop in 1876, and since then the Old Catholics have had a small but significant structure based in Berne.
The Declaration of Utrecht in 1889 defined the Old Catholics' position, and explained their differences with the Roman church. The Church of England had always taken a close and friendly interest in the Old Catholics, with whom we have much in common. In 1931, the two churches entered into the Bonn Agreement, accepting each other's ministries, recognizing each other's clergy, and entering into full communion.
Full communion means little if churches do not work together, and it is to help in this that the Willibrord Society was set up. Willibrord Societies in England and in Holland work hard to share ideas and to enable each church to help the other. Here in Switzerland, the Willibrord Society was only set up last year, and has sought to help build up relations between our two churches - the Anglican church, with largely expatriate congregations, and the Old Catholics (or Christian Catholics), with their own traditions, and the problem of being an isolated minority in an increasingly secular land.
The next Old Catholic bishop, Fritz-René Müller, will be consecrated in Berne on Ascension Day, 9 May. Let us remember the long connection between the English church and the Old Catholics, and join our prayers to those of our fellow Christians, that his ministry may indeed bear as much fruit as Willibrord's did!
HD