The other day I was watching the Australian Christian Channel and the Senior Pastor of what possibly is the largest church in Australia (reportedly 19000 people per weekend go through their centers) was preaching on the ills and the signs of a Backslider. After a few minutes it was becoming obvious to me that anybody who doubted this Pastors take on Theology (Word of Faith), or questioned the vision of his leadership team was suffering from this very serious malady.  As time went on I began to be overcome by a severe case of deja vu, this was all too familiar to me and is a behavioral practice I have often witnessed within the Autocephalous and Old Catholic Church Movements. Although we are more likely to hear terms like vagante, hetrodox, invalid, illicit or heretic rather than backslider.

While these terms can be extremely painful when they are applied to us, our Parish or Jurisdiction, do they in the greater scheme of things really matter much at all?  As the title of this article implies I have come to the general conclusion that to some degree we are all somebody else’s backslider, vagante or heretic and not much we do or say is going to change that fact. Perhaps the most contentious attack that can be leveled at a Catholic is that their ministry is invalid, this is because as Catholics we understand the importance of sharing valid Sacraments with all who seek them from us in the name of Our Blessed Lord. But what is it that really defines validity, can it actually be defined or is validity like beauty in the eye of the beholder?

Theologian Hans Kung writes in On Being Christian: " The important thing about a Petrine ministry or any other ministry of leadership is not the historical evidence of a line of succession............... If such a person did not carry out this Petrine mission, did not fulfill his appointed task, did not give testimony or perform his service, what would be the use of the entire Apostolic Succession to him or the Church? Thus the important thing is not the claim, the right, the chain of succession, as such but the accomplishment, the exercise, the action, the service itself concretely realized.

A case in point I know two Bishops one quite young whose transition from Deacon, Priest to Bishop was very fast to say the least. The other a veteran with over 30 years in the Episcopacy. The elder man took a dislike to the younger after he was photographed wearing a Cope over his Chasuble and wrote some severe comments about the other for months via the Net. He also demanded complete obedience by all and sundry. While the younger Bishop, less theologically and liturgically trained weekly led groups into the streets feeding the homeless, setting up services in Nursing homes for the elderly and working in the Prison system. Who was more following Our Lord's example, the judge or the servant?

In considering validity I am also reminded of the Gospel of St. Matthew 3:9-10, where John the Baptist referring to the Pharisees says: " Don't just say, we're safe we're the descendants of Abraham. That proves nothing. God can change these stones here into children of Abraham. Even now the axe of God's judgment is poised, ready to sever your roots. Yes, every tree that does not produce good fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire."

The Reformed Catholic Church is well known for its real ministries and its acts of servitude. So it does not really matter what others may say and think about us, our validity is confirmed by our acts of service, visiting those in need at inopportune times, in the snow, rain or the middle of the night when others are unwilling to do so. Our Blessed Lord only gave one criteria to judge ministries validity: "By their fruits you shall know them."

Monsignor Ian Adrian+ OSB

Bishop-elect Australia.

The appointment this week of the Venerable Dermot Dunne, a former Catholic priest, as Dean of Christ Church, one of Dublin's two landmark Anglican cathedrals, highlights a growing trend of "denominational migration".

Up until recently it was regarded as a social stigma, even a badge of shame, for a Catholic to convert to Protestantism, or for a Protestant of whichever strand -- Anglicanism, Presbyterianism or Methodism -- to embrace the Roman Faith.

Indeed, much of the history of 20th century Ireland, especially since the foundation of the State in 1921, was bedevilled by the decline of the minority Protestant population, mainly as a result of the Catholic Church's strict mixed marriage regulations requiring children to be raised as Catholics.

Memories still linger, particularly in the West of Ireland, of the crusades by Protestant evangelicals in the mid-19th century to provide soup-bowls to the starving Catholic poor on condition that they committed their souls to the Bible as propounded by the anti-Romanist preachers since the 16th century Reformation.

When introducing Dean-elect Dunne, and his English wife, Celia, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill, admitted that it was no great shock to him that at a time of change within each of the Christian traditions, individuals are finding their expression of Christian faith in another tradition.

Noting that last year Mrs. Anita Henderson, the wife of the Anglican Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, Dr Richard Henderson, was received into the Catholic Church in Ballina, Co Mayo, Dr Neill said the important thing is that "we do not go seeking people from other denominations to attract them into our own."

Noting that proselytism was something unfortunate that happened in previous generations, he added: "The freedom and acceptance of change and the way that ecumenical relationships remain strong when people change from one denomination to another is not causing great pain," he insisted. "I do not see this as anything like triumphalism. We are all part of the Christian Church."

The reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s spawned a new era of ecumenical détente among previously feuding Christians, but 'the Restoration' policies pursued by the late Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, have put the brakes on the pace of the church unity movement on issues such as shared Eucharist, Rome's continued non-recognition of the validity of Anglican Orders, the compulsory celibacy of Catholic priests, and Rome's refusal to ordain women and its consequent alarm over the ordination of women and gay men to the Anglican episcopacy and priesthood.

At the same time as the re-imposition of Rome's doctrinal authority, increasing numbers of Irish Catholics have adopted 'Protestant' attitudes on issues of personal conscience such as birth control, cohabitation and divorce -- and are out of tune with the Sistine choir.

One option for disaffected Catholics is to join the Church of Ireland. It is estimated that 10pc of its 125,585 members in the 2006 census were born Catholics. This represents the highest figure for the Church of Ireland in the Republic since 1936.

Dean Dunne is but one of several ex-Catholic priests in the Anglican ministry. Another notable recruit is a former Dublin priest, the Rev Mark Hayden, now Rector in Gorey, Co Wexford, who describes his spiritual journey in his book, Changing Colours .

"I was a devout Mass-going Catholic, but I could not take the 'one shoe for all sizes' doctrinal hard-line from the Vatican, as the fate of many distinguished theologians from Jacques Dupuis to Charles Curran amply demonstrates," he says. "I also felt alienated and unwelcome in parish churches which were dominated by poorly read, loud-mouthed Catholic conservatives whose ignorance of theology was matched only by the emptiness of their unthinkingly conformist rhetoric."

Clearly, Rome and Maynooth are losing bright luminaries to the more liberal Church of Ireland. 'Denominational migration' has winners and losers.

- John Cooney