Members of the American Catholic Communities are, first and foremost, Christians who are committed to the person of Jesus Christ and to his teaching. We accept and believe the testimony of his apostles and disciples who were eyewitnesses of his life, death, and resurrection from the dead. Through their witness, the Church has received the testimony which lay at the heart of her faith, her mission, and her commitment to the world.
What follows is a brief introduction to the history of the Church, with an emphasis on the origin of Old Catholicism, and the evolution of the Communion of International Catholic Communities, our global fellowship.
The Apostolic Era
The initial testimony of the apostles and disciples was passed down verbally and forms the heart of what is known as Apostolic Tradition. The word "tradition" is that which is passed on from one generation to another. Simply put, the leaders and servants of the early Church proclaimed and taught the Good News (Gospel) of Jesus Christ. Those who believed the Good News were baptized and brought into a new community that was formed by the apostles. This community, which in early tradition was known as The Way, is what we today call the Church.
Within this community, the Christians (as they came to be called) worshiped together, worked together, and took care of one another. They made every effort to follow the command of Jesus to love one another. The apostles gave this community the Apostolic Tradition to be passed on to succeeding generations. One witness to this is Saint Paul who, in his Second Letter to the Thessalonians writes: “Dear brothers and sisters, stand firm and keep a strong grip on the teaching we passed on to you both in person and by letter.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (NLT)
In the later years of the Apostolic era, the Apostles and their followers began committing this Tradition to writing in the forms of the Gospels, Acts, the Letters, and the Book of Revelation. Over time, these were collected into what we now call the New Testament. This did not put an end to other forms of tradition, however. In a particular way, the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, the Mass, and the Sacraments serves to embody and incarnate the Good News of Jesus in ways handed down to us from those early times.
As we see the development of Tradition, Scripture, and Liturgy, we must view it in through the lens of the active work of the Spirit of God. Within the early Christian community (just as today) individuals are privileged to experience the very presence of God Himself. This presence of God, at work in the life of the Church as a whole, and of each believer, is made manifest by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This same Spirit empowered the apostles to proclaim the Gospel and could continue the work of Jesus Christ through healing the sick and reconciling sinners to God and to one another. Without the Holy Spirit there could not be an authentic Christian community, and our traditions – be they oral or written, sacramental or intellectual – would be worthless.
The Church Becomes “Catholic”
With the passing of time, the message of Jesus spread, and the Church grew. Initially, the followers of Jesus became known as Christians, a word which means “little Christs”. This term stuck, but within a century, various movements began to evolve among the early Christians, each claiming to be the sole truth. Many of these movements, however, denied core aspects of the faith – the divinity of Jesus, his dual nature, the practice of the sacraments, and so on. A new term was coined by those who steadfastly maintained the Apostolic Tradition and Practices they had received… the word “catholic”. The word "catholic" means universal. Those who altered the Apostolic Tradition came to be known as “Gnostics”, meaning “special knowledge”. The principal authority upon which changes were made seemed to always come down to the claim of some individual leader to have received a special divine revelation or knowledge of truth, and so the word Gnostic stuck, becoming the moniker for those who deviated from the Apostolic faith.
The “Catholics”, on the other hand, held fast to what they had received, and insisted that Jesus Christ was universal. Thus, his message was the same for all people, no matter where or when they lived. In other words, the community founded by the apostles is one, continuous in both time and space, and are called to believe the same Good News forever.
The first centuries of the Church were a challenge. As if internal strife wasn’t enough, strong persecution from pagan rulers throughout the Roman Empire and beyond saw significant oppression fall upon Christians, who frequently shed their blood for the faith. Nevertheless, during this time, Christianity quickly expanded: eastward to India and even China, west across Europe, and south into Africa. While there is much legend surrounding Christianity coming to the British Isles, there is solid historical evidence of an active Celtic Church in the Apostolic era.
The Catholic Church Expands, Branches, and Fractures
Once Christianity became legal (a process that took nearly three-quarters of a century in the Roman Empire), the Church began to move into a more structured life. Church Councils were held, Monastic Orders established, Missions to new lands were sent forth. There were challenges in this era, of course. One significant challenge was the translation of important terms between various languages. In particular, the way that different languages spoke about the person of Jesus Christ and his human and divine natures became an early source of unfortunate division. Though the modern Church has acknowledged that this was a sad misunderstanding of challenging language, an early split in the late fourth century formed what is now known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches. These Churches, which spoke various semitic languages could not reach an adequate mutual understanding with the predominantly Greek-speaking Churches of the time, and unfortunately split.
Most Christians remained in the Church influenced by the Greek language. However, even at this time, the rise of Latin as the language of the Church of Rome was underway. As the Bishop of Rome gained increased ecclesiastical power and secular deference, a major fault line began to appear between those Christians centered on Rome, and those centered on the other prominent Christian centers of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. Despite the challenges, all of these ancient patriarchates remained Catholic in their beliefs. They became divided, ultimately, over the question of leadership.
Jesus commissioned his apostles to be the first leaders of His church. Before they died, they appointed others to lead the Church. These leaders, the bishops, were set apart with the laying on of hands and prayer – a form we now call the Sacrament of Holy Orders. Thus, the apostles ordained the first bishops to be their successors. These bishops in turn ordained others to succeed them. This line of leadership is known as Apostolic Succession or, in some circles, as the Historic Episcopate.
As the Church grew and developed, some bishops became more powerful than others. The bishops of Rome acquired considerable influence. It was not long before they began to call themselves “Supreme Pontiff”. With such grand titles came an insistence that they were, by Divine Right, the head of the entire Catholic Church. Many bishops, particularly of the Eastern Church resisted the claim of the Roman Pope.
By the mid eleventh century, the disagreements reached a boiling point, and the Bishop of Rome and Patriarch of Constantinople mutually excommunicated one another in the year 1054. As a result, most of the Eastern, Greek-speaking churches became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, while the Western, Latin-speaking church became the Roman Catholic Church.
Reformation
After the Great Schism, the Roman Catholic Church continued to develop in Western Europe. For the next 450 years, throughout the Middle Ages, the Roman Popes consolidated their power and extended their influence over the Church and society. With the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church was over laden with moral and political corruption. Many concerned religious leaders made efforts to reform the Church. These efforts at reform became known collectively as the Reformation.
Several very different reformations resulted from these tensions.
Early reformers such as Jan Hus and John Wycliff sought to make the Scriptures accessible in the native language of the people, and to restore full participation of the laity in the worship of the Church, particularly by allowing them to receive Holy Communion frequently, and in both kinds. Both left lasting marks, with the so-called Hussites surviving to this day in the Mariavite Church.
In the following century, Martin Luther once again ignited the fires of Reformation on European soil. This time, the impetus grew, and others felt liberated to likewise engage in their own efforts to alleviate what they saw as problems in the Church. On the continent, the likes of Calvin, Bucer, and Simons led their own movements. In England, the political upheaval caused by King Henry VIII’s pursuit of divorce (after divorce after divorce) afforded an opportunity for individuals sympathetic to reforming the Church to inherit positions of power in the English Church, ultimately paving the way for Reformation in the British Isles. Ultimately, from these threads of Reformation, the Lutheran, Reformed, Anabaptist, and Anglican streams of Christianity began to branch out.
The Roman Church made efforts to internally reform in response. This so-called Counter-Reformation, anchored by the Council of Trent, sought to free the Roman Church from some of its abuses, while at the same time doubling down on certain areas of doctrine that the Reformers had challenged or outright rejected.
Throughout this time, a group of Catholic communities in the land we today know as the Netherlands was experiencing challenges on multiple fronts. The secular government and most of society was broadly Protestant, and the diocesan structures of the Church were dissolved. The remaining clergy and faithful were essentially practicing their faith in an underground manner, with little help from Rome, who suppressed the Archdiocese in the year 1580.
The Church of Utrecht
After being founded by Saint Willibrord in the eighth century, the Archdiocese of Utrecht became a center of Catholic faith and practice in the Low Countries. Initially imbued with aspects of Celtic spirituality due to its foundation by missionaries from the British Isles, the Church was in all respects Catholic. The journey towards what became known as Old Catholicism began in 1145 when Pope Eugene III issued a decree granting the Archdiocese of Utrecht the right of elect their own bishops without recourse to the Pope or the Roman Curia. This right was reaffirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and by Pope Leo X in 1517.
Although formally suppressed in the year 1580, the faithful Dutch Catholics continued to practice their faith in secret. In 1595 Pope Clement VIII established the Holland Mission, and within short order, controversy arose over Dutch Catholic leadership embracing a heresy known as Jansenism. Throughout this time, however, there was no unification of the Holland Mission with those still maintaining the suppressed archdiocese in hiding. The cathedral chapter continued arranging for outside bishops to ordain priests for the underground movement as late as 1617.
By 1723, the dissatisfaction of the Dutch clergy over the situation reached a boiling point, and they Cornelius Steenoven as archbishop. He was consecrated in 1724 without a papal mandate and was subsequently excommunicated for claiming authority in the archdiocese without the permission of the Roman Pope. In subsequent years, three additional bishops were consecrated for the essentially independent Church, which became known as “Old Catholic” around the year 1853. They were called “Old Catholics” because they sought to turn the clock back and adhere to the beliefs and practices of the Catholic Church prior to the various schisms.
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Vatican I and the Expansion of Old Catholicism
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By the time of the First Vatican Council in 1870, there was no turning back. The declaration of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility, which stood in stark contrast to the Conciliar nature of the early Church, was a step to far for reconciliation, for either the Dutch, or for others in German and Switzerland who vehemently opposed this “new” doctrine. By 1880, the Dutch, German, and Swiss Old Catholic churches had stated their theological basis and were firmly entrenched in the European religious landscape.
In the early twentieth century, expansion of the movement continued into England, and onward to the United States and other countries. Some of these church bodies thrived and flourished, others became insular and remained small, often dying out with their founders. Today, there exist millions of Catholics who are independent of Roman jurisdiction while maintaining a vibrant Catholic expression of faith. Such Catholics acknowledge the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox, as well as those Anglicans and Lutherans who have maintained (or re-established) participation in the Historic Episcopate as being a part of the Catholic Church.
The Question of Sacramental Validity
Old Catholics, by virtue of ordinations performed by bishops within the historic Apostolic Succession have a valid line of succession, a valid priesthood, and valid sacraments. This fact has never been denied by the Roman Catholic Church. In Pope John Paul II’s declaration Dominus Iesus (issued in the 2000 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) writes: “The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches.”
Thus, Old Catholics with valid apostolic succession are, like their Orthodox siblings, are viewed even by Rome as true Churches, albethey in a state of imperfect communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
Our Unique History
The American Catholic Communities (and, subsequently, the global fellowship which has formed out of the origins of the ACC) was birthed out of the continued evolution of the Old and Independent Catholic experience in the United States.
In the 1980’s, C. Daniel Gincig began attending Saint Matthew’s, an Old Catholic congregation in Southern California. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1991, serving at Saint Matthew’s for a year before relocating to Aurora, Colorado, where he established Christ the King Church.
In 1995, he was elected Bishop for the community centered on Christ the King, and – desiring to remain a middle way between the rigidity of the Roman Catholic Church and the growing liberalization of the Old and Independent Catholic world, he formed what he initially named The American Old Catholic Church. A significant intention in forming the body was the desire to bring about unity within the Independent and Old Catholic Movement through a relationship with Utrecht. At our Annual Convergence Conference in 2009, through encouragement and support of our liaison from Utrecht, Fr. Gunter Esser, the jurisdiction went international, becoming known as the Communion of International Catholic Communities, with the diocese serving North American becoming known as the American Catholic Communities.
Conclusion
Holding true to the historical teachings of the Church, our Communion continues to reach out to the lost, marginalized, and disenfranchised – reaching out to welcome the people of God home to communities of refuge and love.
