Pope calls for Christ-centered, compassionate, community-based catechesis in line with Vatican II (Vatican Press Office)

Addressing participants in the meeting organized by the National Catechetical Office of the Italian Episcopal Conference, Pope Francis recalled the Old Catholics after the First Vatican Council (1869-70). “If you do not follow the [Second Vatican] Council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you are not with the Church,” he said. “It makes me think of a group of bishops who, after Vatican I, left, a group of lay people, groups, to continue the ‘true doctrine’ that was not that of Vatican I: ‘We are the true Catholics.’ Today they ordain women. The strictest attitude, to guard the faith without the Magisterium of the Church, leads you to ruin.”