There are few religion-beat rabbit holes deeper and more twisted than the world of alternative and splinter Catholic churches and the bishops and priests who lead them.

Be careful out there, folks. Long ago, I spent days chasing the “apostolic succession” claims of a U.S. Postal Service carrier in a Denver suburb who was a mail-order archbishop in one of the hundreds of “Old Catholic” flocks linked to various schisms after Vatican I or II. Some alternative Catholic of these flocks are conservative and some are liberal. Some have actual parishes. To tip your toe into these troubled waters, click here.

Religion-beat professionals are aware that not all people — men and women — who say they are Catholic priests are actually Roman Catholic priests. As Mollie “GetReligionista emerita” Hemingway said more than a decade ago, just because someone says that he or she plays shortstop for the New York Yankees doesn’t mean that this claim is true. Someone in the House of Steinbrenner gets to make that call.

I say this because of the small, but educational, waves of social-media chatter the other day about the testimony of Father Gabriel Lavery at an Ohio legislature hearing linked to a bill that would prohibit vaccine mandates.

Eyebrows were raised when Lavery, during a discussion of the current pope’s support for COVID-19 vaccines, said that he doesn’t recognize Pope Francis as pope because “you have to be a Catholic to be the pope.”

There’s a sound bite for you. As scribes at The Pillar noted:

In another clip, the priest said of Francis that “there are many clergy, bishops around the world who have simply have looked at the obvious, that his teachings on many things contradict Catholic teaching, and it’s a simple basic principle of Catholic theology — you can’t be the head of the Church if you don’t profess the Catholic faith.”

The priest’s remarks have attracted attention, and have been covered in some press reports with little mention of his ecclesiastical status. In some accounts, he has been identified as a parish pastor. 

As I noted earlier, religion-beat professionals know to ask questions about clergy folks of this kind — who play essential roles, for example, in the history of ordination claims in the the Womenpriests, WomenPriests or Women Priests movement. General-assignment reporters covering these events often quote what the activists are saying about their credentials and that is that. Why ask hard questions to the good guys and gals?

In this Ohio vaccines case, we are dealing with a priest who is on the cultural and theological right.

The Pillar offered the basic background info that copy editors and reporters need to know:

The priest, Fr. Gabriel Lavery, is a member of a group called the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen (CMRI) — a group not in the communion of the [Roman Catholic] Church.

The CMRI denies the validity of the Second Vatican Council and the validity of recent papacies — teaching that all the popes since Pope St. Paul VI have illegitimately claimed the papacy, and that there is presently no valid pope.

Lavery, who was ordained a priest in 2003, has taught in high schools and seminaries connected to the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, and now leads two Ohio “chapels” —  not formally parishes, as they are outside the communion of the Catholic Church, but communities which worship according to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and espouse a theology which parallels that of the CMRI.

There’s more to this story, of course. While the following isn’t essential information in a short, hard-news report, if may be useful file material for journalists who want to understand how ordination claims — especially those linked to the consecration of a bishop — affect the status of these kinds of splinter groups (even those on the doctrinal left).

Note the key phrase in the following — “Outside the communion of the Church.”

The priest’s community, the Congregation of Mary Immaculate Queen, was founded in 1967 by U.S. Catholics who soon came to believe that the Pope Paul VI was not legitimately the pope. Some of the group were ordained by bishops outside the communion of the Church, first in 1971, and then in 1985, when several men in the community were illicitly ordained priests, and in 1991, when one was illicitly consecrated a bishop.

Things get REALLY complicated when — as often happens — leaders of one splinter group begin challenging the credentials of those in another group. Here is one more block of helpful material from The Pillar:

Because of the Church’s theology of apostolic succession, and murky records of episcopal ordination among suspect bishops outside the communion of the Church, some traditionalist groups have questioned the validity of priestly ordination within the CMRI. 

The Church has not ruled definitively on that question, and traditionalist groups outside the Church’s communion have differing views on whose ordinations are valid, and whose are not. 

But the ordination of CMRI clerics, like Lavery, is usually regarded as valid but illicit. Some of the sacraments celebrated by members of the community, because they lack faculties and jurisdiction, are not regarded to be validly offered.

“Murky records”? Oh yeah. Been there. Dug into that.

I think we will call it a day, at this point. Some rabbit holes are more frustrating than others.

FIRST IMAGE: “Down the Rabbit Hole” illustration at the website of the Jolie Tea Company.