Description:

When Pope Pius IX declared himself infallible at the First Vatican Council in 1869, clergy and theologians across Europe cried foul. After reconciliation proved impossible, tens of thousands of European Catholics broke with Rome and formed their own independent national churches. These "Old Catholics" pledged to maintain the traditions of the ancient Catholic Church against the "New Catholicism" of the Pope and the Roman Curia. Written pseudonymously by James Bass Mullinger in 1874, this book is the only known eyewitness account of the formation of the European Old Catholic churches from the perspective of the Old Catholics themselves. Unavailable for well over a century, this new edition is not a holograph reprint but has been rescanned, re-edited and completely reset, with a modern index and table of contents.