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Was Alan Watts an Independent Catholic Bishop? An Historical Footnote

Was Alan Watts an Independent Catholic Bishop? An Historical Footnote

Last updated on: November 25, 2017 at 4:34 pm by James Ford

Was Alan Watts an Independent Catholic Bishop? An Historical Footnote 2017-11-25T16:34:06-08:00 James Ford

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For several years following my sojourn as a Zen Buddhist monk and before I found a happy home blending Zen Buddhism and Unitarian Universalism, while I was still trying to find my way I fell in with what for a lack of a better term I’ve called ecclesiastical gnostics as a subset of something larger often called “Independent Catholicism.” The far better term coined in recent years by the scholar participant John Plummer is “the Independent Sacramental” movement, particularly in light of the fact many participants are at best marginal Christians.

The theological range is astonishing, even to me. Participants within this independent sacramental movement fall broadly within the Christian camp, but range from ultra orthodox and traditionalist Catholic or Anglican and Orthodox to Theosophists, whom I found quite interesting, and the folk I gravitated most toward, what I’d have to call Gnostic Reconstructionists.

What holds this astonishing breadth of opinion together is admiration for and most often a cultic devotion to the idea of apostolic succession. In a nutshell this is the belief that Jesus commissioned the apostles who in turn commissioned the bishops who through prayer and the laying on of hands have created a line of authority that flows from Jesus to all bishops today who stand within that lineage. Those who hold this view at its highest say there is no church without these bishops of the apostolic succession.

Catholics claim this (both Roman and Old), Orthodox do, as do many Anglicans and some Lutherans.

And through a series of breakaways of individual bishops from these historic communions who have created bishops who are not beholden to those original institutions we have what are technically called Episcopi Vagantes, or “Wandering bishops.” The Orthodox repudiate this as a possibility. Roman Catholic theologians, however, have posited the position that it is possible for a bishop to be created who is schismatic and even within some bounds heretical.

A google search for “Independent Catholic,” “Old Catholic” (one needs here to distinguish between the historic Old Catholic churches all of which are in communion with the historic see of Utrecht or its one substantial schism the Polish National Catholic Church in North America and the many, many independent groups and individuals using the term “Old Catholic.”), “Independent Sacramental,” “Liberal Catholic” and “Gnostic church” will reveal just some of the range within this movement.

There are quite literally thousands of such “jurisdictions.” I include the quotes because while a few of these bodies are real churches with congregations, the vast majority consist of a cleric or two or three with no discernible institution supporting their work, or more brutally, dream of work.

While there are individuals within the movement whom I admire deeply (the good Bishop Plummer, mentioned above is a fine example), I’ve come to the working conclusion this movement such as it is, is in fact a spiritual dead end.

There are among this crowd just too many people playing church.

Still, there are those really interesting folk who are in fact doing things, and one just never knows where the spirit will rest.

One never knows…

Anyway, this is a long way around the barn to note something I stumbled upon today while unpacking long stored away books and files. I did my masters thesis on the institution of independent episcopacy through a focus on the life and work of the remarkable Mikhael Itkin. A worthy figure straddling several aspects of our American culture in the mid and late twentieth century, most notably as an early openly Gay religious leader.

Itkin was an Independent Catholic bishop.

I found some materials I had collected while researching the thesis. Among them I have a photo copy of Itkin’s “episcopal register.’ This is the record he kept in his own hand of those individuals he ordained over the years to various traditional Catholic posts, deacon, priest and bishop.

As I paused from my labors and thumbed through the document I stumbled upon a listing I don’t recall having noticed before. It has been literally years and years since I’ve even seen the document, much less have opened it. I have to admit only trying to avoid unpacking another box led to my perusal this time…

And this is what I found.

His list states that on the 2nd of September in 1968, Mikhael Itkin consecrated Alan Watts a bishop.

Now there are several problems immediate. One, it is possible this is not the former Episcopal priest, philosopher, writer, lecturer, and famous popularizer of Zen, but someone else of the same name. Second the listing itself was added later, it doesn’t follow in the lined pages which otherwise are pretty regular, but is squeezed in between two other people. That’s not a good sign.

But… Watts was an Episcopal priest and so he could have been interested, even in a vague way. And I’m sure Itkin would have been more than willing to provide the honor with no assumptions of Watts taking on any sort of responsibility with the title. And there were various points of time and place where they could easily have met. Still, an old friend of mine who was one of Itkin’s priests at roughly this time had not heard of this putative consecration. So many on this hand, on the other hand in this alleged event…

In fact we only know two things. Watts had left the Episcopal ministry in 1950. And this event if it occurred, eighteen years after he left the priesthood and five years before his death, was not a time where his writings reveal even that vague interest in his past ministry or the Christian church.

A major problem is that Itkin was a great exaggerator. For instance he told me he had been authorized as a Zen master and only when I pushed him hard on when and who made him such did he back off, acknowledging that what he “really meant” was that he had met several Zen teachers in New York City in his youth and that they commented on his depth of insight…

Still… On one more hand I have no memory of Itkin trotting this little tidbit of ecclesiastical gossip out when I was interviewing him. Which I take as generally corroborating a note he wrote intended for no one else’s view. Maybe here he really was able to keep a secret.

So while not a settled question, I think there is at least a passing possibility that for reasons we probably never will know, Alan Watts was an Independent Catholic bishop.

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