This is all getting a bit involved. I'm not Phil and won't presume to speak for him, but let me see if I can sort some of this out before folks get off on too many tangents.
What is this wannabe operation? Are they impersonating our church?
Matthew,
The short answer to your question is "yes", but the fuller answer is a bit more complex than that. Let me suggest you do two things. Read this thread from the beginning and also read a thread titled
TOPIC UNFORTUNATELY HAD TO BE REMOVED, where I gave a detailed explanation of the terms
episcopi vagante and
ecclesia vagante. That will give you an understanding of the relationship of these types of Churches to mainstream Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and other Churches, such as Anglicans and Lutherans, which they attempt to mirror.
Please explain the differance. The Orthodox Church in India is much differant than the Ashe Church represents. From my studies the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church in India appearsa to be highly infulenced by the Anglican Church is this true? I have met preists from India and they are nothing like Ashe.
Mar Timotheos I (Rene Villatte), a French "Old Catholic," as Archbishop of an American Mission. Who is this man? Do you know?
I cannot find anything in the Antiochian geneology of the Church concerning this man or a man named Patriarch of Antioch (Mar Ignatius Peter III) of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Did this guy become a schismatic in the Antiochian Church?
Rene Villatte has a sorted past it seems and began "church hopping" looking for someone that believed his "Origen theology" of the "restoration of all thing" meaning all men and even satan will be reconciled to God and saved. I read he tried the Russia Church but they saw him a heretic. I am certain Ashe preaches this error and I have the tapes to prove it. Do you subscribe to this theology?
Orthodoxy,
I suggest you read the same post to which I referred Matthew - although not specific to the differences between authentic Malankara Orthodoxy and Veron Asche's "Church" it should help you to understand the difference between mainstream and
vagante Churches.
As to Joseph Rene Vilatte, a/k/a Mar Timotheos, see this
on-line biography of him. It is reasonably accurate, although somewhat sympathetic, and was written by Donald Weeks, a long-time participant in the so-called "independent Catholic/Orthodox movement" and, last I knew, styling himself as bishop of The Apostolic Episcopal Church Anglican Rite.
Vilatte's "epsicopal consecration" was perfomed by Antonio Francisco-Xavier Alvarez, a/k/a Metropolitan Mar Julius I, an excommunicated Latin Catholic priest, founding hierarch of the Independent Catholic Church of Ceylon, Goa and India, who (at some point) became a hierarch in the Syrian Jacobite Church. Although consistently relied upon as one of the lines of Apostolic Succession by virtually every "Old Catholic" and "independent Catholic" or "independent Orthodox" bishop in the US (as well as many Anglican and Lutheran "independents"), Vilatte's consecration has been regularly described as of dubious validity by Syrian Orthodox sources and documentation produced in support of it has been variously described as "questionable" or worse. Read the following text, taken from a Line of Apostolic Succession purporting to demonstrate the validity of Vilatte's "Syrian Orthodox" orders - this comes from one "independent" Church site - but the exact same text appears on multiple sites across the web - pay close attention to the sequence of dates:
- Paulose Mar Athanasius (Kadavil Kooran) was consecrated on December 4, 1907, by Mar Ignatius Peter III as Syrian Antioch Bishop of Kottayam and Metropolitan of Malabar (India)
- Mar Julius I (Antonio Francis Xavier Alvares) was consecrated July 28, 1889, by Paulose Mar Athanasius, under authority of Patriarch Ignatius Peter III to be Archbishop of the Latin Rite Independent Catholic Church of Ceylon, Goa and India
- Joseph Rene Vilatte was consecrated on May 29, 1892 in Colombo, Ceylon, by Mar Julius I, under authority of a Bull of Mar Ignatius Peter III, to serve as Archbishop of North America
Mar Ignatius Peter III, more properly Mar Ignatius Peter IV (Peter III was Patriarch in the late 6th century, was Patriarch from 1876 until his repose in 1894.
The Syriac Church you describe as heavily influenced by the Anglicans would most likely be the Mar Thoma Church, which retains what has been described as a stripped-down form of its hereditary liturgy but tends to Anglican theology. I am unfamiliar with Vilatte subscribing to an Origen-influenced theology. By the time of his death, he had reconciled with Roman Catholciism (which, btw, was not his cradle faith - his parents belonged to a small French schismatic Catholic Church, called
Petite Eglise; he was, however, raised as a Latin Catholic).
You are correct that he sought orders from both the Old Catholics and the Russian Orthodox, but he was ahead of his time - the flurry of "independent" activity in Catholic and Orthodox circles had not yet really begun in the US - he, in fact, would become one of the progenitors of it. At the point when he was soliciting the Russians, I doubt that they had a formed opinion of him - they just were unlikely to see any point in responding to some American quasi-Catholic who was dabbling with Episcopalians while serving a Belgian-French community of mixed lapsed Catholics, Huegenots, and potential Episcopalian converts in Wisconsin and aggravating both Latin Catholic and Episocopal hierarchs in his approach to doing so. The Old Catholics, on the other hand, from whom he had his presbyteral orders, considered him a potential ecclesiastical detriment to their cause and declined him episcopal orders. It's ironic that so many in the US labeling themselves "Old Catholics" now see him as one of the spiritual forefathers of their movement.
i'm certain Phil can speak for himself, but I assure you that he ascribes to no theology espoused by Veron Ashe.
Many years,
Neil
