HISTORY AND FAITH

All the British Isles were to become Christian within five centuries. Breton bishops took part in various councils during the fourth century. This Church was well known since in 358, Saint Hilary of Poitiers, exiled in Asia Minor, dedicated a work called “De Synodis” to the bishops of the Breton provinces. It is indisputable that a non Roman Church was well established in the British Isles during the first centuries of the Christian Era, and that it remained Orthodox, since it confessed the dogmas of the Christian Faith established by the seven first Councils of the first millennium. 

The mainly rural Celtic tribes in the British Isles were barely romanized. There were no big cities or any central power. Thus the Celtic Orthodox Church embodied a form of Christianity whose monasteries were the vital center of ecclesial life. Both its knowledge, which stemmed from the fili—what Saint Columba of Iona called the druids—and its political life were in keeping with the Christian Faith. Between two to three thousand monks lived in some of the monasteries in Ireland. That is why it is called the Island of Saints. 

These countless and tireless missionaries from the British Isles and Brittany brought Christ to the confines of Europe. They went as far as Kiev in Ukraine, Taranto in Sicily, the faraway lands of Nordic countries and Iceland, Spain where Breton clans had established themselves in Galicia and where there were still three Breton dioceses in the 10th century. 

Great names and a multitude of saints left their mark on the history of the Western Church, thanks to saints like Patrick, Brigit, Hilda, Columba of Iona, Brendan, Samson, Amand, Fare, 

Columbanus and many others. The Celtic saints established at least 550 monastic foundations, 134 of which by saint Columbanus and his disciples. These monasteries lifted up a Christian Europe collapsed into barbarism after the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. 

Despite this extraordinary missionary saga, the Celtic Church underwent a slow decline. It is at the Synod of Kells (Ireland) in 1152 that a reform put an end to the sovereignty of the customs and traditions of the Celtic Church. 

In 1866 an inspired man, Jules Ferrette—and by the prophetic intuition of a metropolitan of the Syrian Orthodox Church, the future Patriarch Ignatius Peter IV5—was consecrated bishop “for the Isle of Iona and its dependencies”. 

The first Primate of the Celtic Church, Richard William Morgan, was consecrated on June 6, 1874. He took the name of Pelagius. He was an Anglican priest, a Welsh writer and nationalist, and militated for the restoration of the ancient Church of his fathers. 

In 1955, Saint Tugdual settled in a swamp in Brittany and built a hermitage, dedicating it to the Holy Presence. He died in 1968 at the age of 51 and prophesied that his hermitage would become a monastery 10 years after his death.

In 1977, Father Paul (de Fournier de Brescia)—who became Bishop Mael and later Primate of the Church—and two other monks raised up the hermitage which had fallen into abandonment. He undertook deep reforms, and the Church came to be called the Celtic Orthodox Church (COC). During his episcopacy, considerable work was carried out to reclaim the history, traditions, and especially the Eucharistic Liturgy and monastic offices of the Church. 

Two other monasteries have been established: One in Virginia for the American continent, and another one in the Canton of Valais for Switzerland. There is also a women’s monastery in Saint-Dolay. 

In 2002 the Celtic Orthodox Church rediscovered the Liturgy of its fathers and is called the “Eucharistic Liturgy according to the Celtic Codices”. All the texts of our Eucharistic Liturgy are drawn from Irish and Frankish codices, and more particularly from a sacramentary palimpsest called “Monacencis of Munich”. 

Who are we and what is our faith?

We confess the primitive faith of the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Ephesus (431). By this confession we take as our spiritual reference point the so-called “Oriental” Orthodox Churches, rejecting any charges of “monophysitism” which have been wrongfully linked to this confession.
 

We are happy to accept all the definitions of the four further Ecumenical Councils, believing in particular that the Christological formulations of Chalcedon explicitly render the doctrine of the Undivided Church complete.

We also accept the Councils of Constantinople of 1341 and 1351 which confirm the teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas on the Divine Light and the Uncreated Energies, as well as the whole doctrine and practice of Hesychasm.
 

While we accept the true theology of the holy councils named above, we reject all the unjust condemnations of people which may have been pronounced in the fiery heat of human passions. We state that there are no fundamental differences of faith between the Orthodox Churches in spite of the misunderstanding of the Council of Chalcedon. For us, the unity of the Orthodox Church is defined by its common faith and not by jurisdictions, institutions. Thus we are, in effect, in communion with the Orthodox Churches.
 

Following the example of the Undivided Church, our faith does not primarily mean adhering intellectually to truths to be believed, but experiencing the mysteries which the Church confesses. At the heart of everything and above all there is Someone: the active Presence of the paschal Christ, dead and risen, Who gives life, energises and gives meaning to every aspect of our daily lives. 

This means clearly affirming the primacy of the spiritual, the concrete practice of a Way of transformation and access of the heart (body-soul-spirit) to reality. We recognise our own position completely in this powerful assertion by Father Alexander Schmemann: “The first Christians did not provide any programme, any theory, but wherever they went the seed of the Kingdom germinated, the flame started to burn, their whole being was a living torch of praise for the risen Christ; He and He alone was the sole happiness of their life, and the Church had no other aim than to make present in the world and in history the Joy of the Risen Christ, in whom all things have their beginning and their end. Without proclaiming this Joy, Christianity is incomprehensible!” We wish to be the witnesses to this reality at the heart of human distress in a world searching for God, going as far as loving our enemies according to Christ’s commandment.
 

Not out of moral laxity, nor out of spirit of relativism, nor in order to proselytise, but out of obedience to Christ who said: “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat; and I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.” (Mt 15:32), we welcome into Eucharist Communion all Christians who have been baptised into Christ in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
 

Concerning the liturgical calendar, we follow the Gregorian Calendar, because we are a Western Church living in the midst of Christians who, for the greater part, follow this calendar. 

We are members of the Orthodox Church, more precisely of the Celtic Orthodox Church wich is in communion with the Orthodox Church of the Gauls and the French Orthodox Church, and in a communion of faith with all the Orthodox Churches.

Each of these Churches manifests aspects of this Tradition through its rites and customs, updating them in accordance with the call it has received from God, so that the fullness of faith and the apostolic kerygma may be deeply rooted in the history of salvation of each people. That is why this Communion is open to other Western Orthodox Churches animated by the same spirit.
 

We are Orthodox, that is to say that we profess the Christian faith as expressed in all the writings of the Apostles and the Holy Fathers, in the Creeds and the Canons of the Ecumenical Councils of the whole Church, in the whole ascetic and liturgical tradition of the Early, Undivided Church. Equally far from any individualism or authoritarianism, the Orthodox Church is both a Church of tradition and of freedom at the same time. Above all, it strives to be a Church of love. It relies on no external power, nor on isolated efforts, but solely on divine grace and brotherly love in order to stay united and to give life to the members of the mystical Body of Christ.
 

We do not proselytise. We respect and love all our brothers and sisters in Christ. Far from wanting to clash or compete, we pray that we can collaborate, wherever possible, so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can be preached to our parched and broken world. We deeply regret the fact the Christendom has been shattered and we pray that God will speedily restore our unity, so that the world will recognise us as his disciples by the love which we have for one another.
 

We feel that we are linked to the ancient “Orthodox” tradition of Western Europe, to the Europe of those centuries when the East and the West were not separated.
 

For more than ten centuries, Western Europe was in a fundamental communion of faith with the Christian East in spite of the occasional incidents and quarrels which can be found in all “families”. Then followed a long separation (8 centuries), when both sides gradually lost much knowledge of the other.
 

This quick summary of the foundations of our communities and of the history of the Church will help you to understand better why and how we are both Orthodox and Western.
 

In conclusion, we make our own the declaration by Bishop Kallistos Ware: “Neither an Ecumenical Council, nor the Patriarchate of Constantinople or of Moscow, nor any other Mother-Church can create a new local Church. The most that they can do is to recognise such a Church. But the act of creation must be carried out in situ, locally, by the living Eucharistic cells which are called to gradually make up the body of a new local Church.” (SOP 302, Nov. 2005, given at the St. Serge Institute of Theology in Paris). 

This is even more so since it is not a new local Church which is being created here, but the restoration of an ancient local Church, faithful to the spirit of the Undivided Church, poor, mystical and ecumenical.