Liturgical church that has attempted to blend Roman Catholic and Anglical ritual forms with a theosophical theology. The church was founded by former members of the Old Roman Catholic Church in England. The Old Roman Catholic Church was founded in 1908 following the consecration of Arnold Harris Mathew as a bishop by the bishops of the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands. The Old Catholics were orthodox Catholics who rejected the promulgations of the Vatican Council of 1870-71, especially the declaration of the infallibility of the pope.
In England, however, there was little support for the Old Catholic movement and the church tended to be filled by a number of priests who for one reason or another did not fit in either the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church. Among them were some who had developed a belief in Theosophy and were preaching a theosophical interpretation of Christianity.
Mathew was somewhat tolerant of Theosophy at first, and in 1914 consecrated a person known to be a Theosophist, Frederick Samuel Willoughby, as a bishop to assist him. He became more aware of theosophical teachings and the influence they were beginning to have in his church, however, and in 1915 he condemned it as a heresy and ordered all of his priests to sever their ties with it. The result was that the majority of the priests withdrew and largely gutted the Old Catholic Church.
The clergy who had withdrawn reorganized, and on February 13, 1916, Willoughby consecrated James Ingall Wedgwood (1883-1951) as the regionary bishop for England. At this time the group was operating as the Old Roman Catholic Church, and Wedgwood set out on a world tour to build support among ritually-oriented Theosophists around the world. In Australia he consecrated Charles W. Leadbeater as regionary bishop and in the United States named four new bishops, including Irving S. Cooper, as regionary. At a synod in London in 1918, the name Liberal Catholic was adopted as the official name of the church and Wedgwood was named as presiding bishop. The church subsequently spread to many countries.
The Liberal Catholic Church affirms a number of Christian beliefs but injects a Gnostic or theosophical meaning into them. The church believes that humans are sparks of divinity (rather than creatures of God) and believes in reincarnation (rather than resurrection). The church also accepts the idea of the spiritual hierarchy of masters, or highly evolved beings who guide the spiritual development of the race. In this regard, it accepts the idea that Jesus is one of the masters, but separates the human Jesus (known in the hierarchy as "the Lord Matreya") from the master Jesus (a position in the hierarchy held by the person known in his early life as Appolonius of Tyanna).
The church is headquartered in London. It is organized into a number of regionary provinces usually made up of one or two countries. In the United States the church is headquartered at Ojai, California, where the cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels has been built. Ubique, the church's periodical, is published by Presiding Bishop Joseph Tisch, who also serves as pastor of the congregation in Melbourne, Florida.
Sources:
The Liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church. London: St. Alban Press, 1983.
Norton, Robert. The Willow in the Tempest: A Brief History of the Liberal Catholic Church in the United States, 1817-1942. Ojai, Calif.: St. Alban Press, 1990.
Ward, Gary L. Independent Bishops: An Independent Directory. Detroit: Apogee Books, 1990.
Wedgwood, James Ingall. The Beginning of the Liberal Catholic Church. Lakewood, N.J.: Ubique, 1967.
Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Copyright © 2001 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
