What are Old Catholics?
The Old Catholic Church is a community of Christian churches. Many of these were German-speaking churches which split from the Roman Catholic Church in the 1870s because of the promulgation of the dogma of Papal Infallibility as promoted by the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870. The term ‘Old Catholic’ was first used in 1853 to describe the members of the See of Utrecht, who were not under Papal authority. While the European Old Catholic Churches are a part of the Union of Utrecht, there are many more that are independent, especially in the United States.
Soon after Old Catholicism’s momentous events at the end of the 19th century, Old Catholic missionaries came to the United States. In the 20th century, some of the Old Catholic groups became partners with the National Catholics from Latin America.
From the Patriarch of Antioch
In the area of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Joseph Rene Vilatte began working with Roman Catholics of Belgian ancestry, who tended to be separated from Roman influence due to their geographical isolation. Vilatte was ordained a priest on June 7th, 1885 by the Most Rev. Eduard Herzog, Bishop of the Old Catholic Church of Switzerland. After his ordination, Fr. Vilatte worked diligently on behalf of his congregations in Wisconsin, providing the only Catholic presence in his very rural part of the state. Fr. Vilatte began to get old but there were no Old Catholic Bishops in the United States who could ordain a priest to succeed him in his ministry.
Bishop Herzog refused to ordain anyone in the United States a Bishop so in order to maintain apostolic succession, Fr. Vilate sought other alternatives for his ordination. In May of 1892, Ignatius Peter III, Patriarch of Antioch and Bishops Julius Alvarez, George Gregorius, and Paul Athanasius consecrated Fr. Joseph Vilatte Metroplitan Archbishop of the archdiocese of America. A number of western orthodox churches such as the African Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Catholic Church of America are descended from Bishop Vilatte and claim him as a kind of founder by virtue of his ordinations and consecrations.
From European Old Catholics
Many Old Catholic bishops in the United States trace their Apostolic Succession to Arnold Harris Mathew. Father Mathew was consecrated bishop on April 28th, 1908, by Utrecht Archbishop Gerardus Gul, assisted by the Old Catholic Bishops of Deventer and Berne, in St. Gertrude’s Old Catholic Cathedral in the city of Utrecht. Bishop Matthew ordained men to the Episcopacy without the permission of the continental Old Catholics which put him in strife with Europe. Bishop Mathew had an excellent knowledge of the Orthodox Church and established the most cordial relations between the English Old Catholics and the Patriarchal See of Antioch through his Eminence the Most Reverend Archbishop Gearrasimos Messara of Beirut, Syria, who on August 5th, 1911, signed a Statement of Union with the Old Catholics under Bishop Mathew into union and full communion with the Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch. Thus a genuine and practical rapprochement between the Catholics of the East and of the West was for the first time established after a breach which had lasted almost 10 centuries. Bishop Mathew looked beyond continental Europe and sent pioneers to the United States including the theosophist Bishop James Ingall Wedgwood and Bishop Rudolph de Landas Berghes et de Rache. The Liberal Catholic Church and the North American Roman Catholic Church owe their apostolic succession to Bishop Matthew.
Bishop de Landas arrived in the United States on November 7th, 1914. He hoped to bring the various Old Catholic jurisdictions into one church organization under Archbishop Arnold Mathew of England. Bishop de Landas contributed greatly to the growth and development of the Old Catholic Church during his active years. He ordained and consecrated other priestly pioneers including William Francis Brothers and Carmel Henry Cafora.
From the National Catholics of Brazil
A later Independent Catholic Bishop arouse out of the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil. Carlos Duarte Costa was consecrated as the Roman Catholic Diocesan Bishop of Botucatu, Brazil, on December 8, 1924, until certain views he expressed about treatment of the Brazil's poor, by both the civil government and the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil, caused his removal from the Diocese of Botucatu. Bishop Duarte Costa was subsequently named Titular Bishop of Maura by Pope Pius XII who, at the time, was the Vatican Secretary of State under Pope Pius XI. Bishop Duarte Costa had been a strong advocate in the 1930's for reform of the Roman Church; he challenged many of the key issues that the Second Vatican Council would later thirty-five years take action upon.
Bishop Duarte Costa's criticisms of the Holy See, particularly about Vatican foreign policy during World War II toward Nazi Germany, were not well received at the Vatican, and he was eventually separated from the Roman Church by Pope Pius XII. This action was taken only after Duarte Costa's strong and repeated public denunciations over the fact that the Vatican Secretariat of State was engaged in the issuance of Vatican Passports to some very high ranking German ex-Nazis, a practice referred to as the "Ratline."
These former Nazi officials were among some of the most notorious of war criminals, such as, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Commandant Adolf Eichmann and the infamous, Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death," both of whom traveled after the War on officially issued Vatican Passports. Such criminals were in flight from trial to South America in 1945.
The Brazilian Government came under the criticism of Bishop Duarte Costa for collaboration with the Roman Church over these passports. Bishop Duarte Costa espoused more pastoral church positions on divorce, challenged mandatory celibacy for the clergy, and publicly stated his concerns regarding abuses of church power.
Several warnings had been given to Dom Carlos Duarte Costa, from the Roman Apostolic administration. But the more he was warned, more he defended the Christian faith, the laborers, the existing native land against the fascists and Nazis in the Church and its hierarchy. Without any hope of the submission of Dom Carlos Duarte Costa, the Vatican, enraged, laid against Dom Carlos Duarte Costa, Bishop of Maura, the penalty of excommunication on July 02, 1945.
A few days after learning of his excommunication, Dom Carlos established the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church. Shortly after founding the church Dom Carlos consecrated two more bishops, Salomão Barbosa Ferraz, and Luis Fernando Castillo Mendez. These three bishops went on to establish similar autonomous Catholic Apostolic National Churches in several other Latin American countries. Dom Carlos served as consecrator or co-consecrator of eleven additional bishops, each of whom took a leadership role in either the Brazilian church or one of the other national churches.
Dom Carlos served as leader of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church and its international affiliates for sixteen years until his death in 1961, by which time the church in Brazil is said to have grown to 60,000 members.
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