ORGANIZATION & MINISTRIES
Old Catholic heritage churches have long had appeal to those who found themselves physically separated from the Roman Catholic Church while they remained connected in the heart and in faith. Our church, like many others, continues to attract people from this cohort group today. There is also a second major group. As people from different denominations began to marry after WWII and their offspring were raised in multiple denominations, a new kind of Christian wanderer was born. A member who could neither feel fully at home in a Roman Catholic or Protestant church nor agree fully with the theology and practice offered by either. The What We Believe section of this website explains how we bridge the schisms and divides of time to embrace all in the Body of Christ while remaining fully Catholic.
As you look at our Church Leadership page, you will see that our bishops come from both backgrounds. That is equally true of our clergy. All are committed to ecumenicism and take to heart the prayer of Jesus recorded in the Gospel of John: “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” (Jn 17:20). In the Communities page, you will find house churches, churches that meet in their own buildings, churches that meet in space utilized primarily by other Christian communities but are separate, and still others that reach in post-denominational ways to integrate into seamless service to all in the Body of Christ while still being true to the Catholic faith. Not surprisingly, the United Catholic Church is also home to many missions and chaplains as well, as you will see in our ministries section of that page. Some are supported by core United Catholic Church clergy and some by clergy who come into relationship with us as covenant members through our Associated Church provision.
Like our churches and our ministries, our ecumenical partners come with a variety of depth in a relationship but all are sister churches whose commonality in faith we mutually recognize. As noted above, there are a few with whom we share a closer covenant relationship as an Associate Church. These churches and their clergy are full members of the United Catholic Church and also concurrently hold a member status elsewhere that is unique to them. Our Articles of Association page describes these relationships in more detail.
