Church background

A founder of the LCC was J.I. Wedgwood of the Wedgwood China family, a theosophist who was ordained as a priest in the Ancient Catholic Church on July 22, 1913 by Arnold Harris Mathew, a resigned Roman Catholic priest who had been consecrated by Archbishop Gerardus Gul of Utrecht on April 28th, 1908, and appointed as the first Old Catholic Bishop in England. So it claims apostolic succession going back to Rome. In a prevent Mathew come to prevent everthing ties by having the Utrecht Union of Churches, to vow allegiance once more to the Roman Catholic Church and to advise victims of his flock world health organization were theosophists to resign membership of the Theosophical Society Adyar. This advice was non taken seriously by numerous of the church's members. Wedgwood was consecrated to the episcopate in February 13, 1916 by Bishop Frederick Samuel Willoughby (who experienced been consecrated by Mathew), & began a organisation that would late be a Liberal Catholic Church, of which Wedgwood became a number 1 Presiding Bishop. Wedgwood published articles in a Theosophical Society on ceremonial work. These interested C.W. Leadbeater, an alleged clairvoyant and Anglican priest who was consecrated as a Liberal Catholic bishop in 1916. C. W. Leadbeater became a Second Presiding Bishop.

Schism
Around 1941, there was the schism in the Liberal Catholic Church in the United States, surrounding a arguing involving Bishop Charles Hampton, who, when he was himself the theosophist, wished to keep adherence to theosophical dogma optional for the clergy. This was inside keeping by owning what was taken to exist as a original intent of the church's founders, world health organization, although it were theosophists, wanted a church to remain primarily Catholic & to exist as open to everyone. A church experienced never compulsory membership in the Theosophical Society.

Legal battle
This led to the legal battle in the United States which finally produced 2 different Synods, both of which claiming to exist as a Liberal Catholic Church. Frank W. Pigott, the church's 3rd Presiding Bishop in England, who had come to embrace a more theosophical ideal for the church, removed Hampton and then ordered the confiscation of certain church property at the Regionary headquarters in California and forced the resignation of those clergy under Hampton who refused to support his new episcopal replacement. At a period, a majority of Liberal Catholics within a United States supported Hampton & saw his removal from either a professional of Regionary & the more subsequent precedings as a breach of ecclesiastical law & a violation of a select few of the laws of California under which the church experienced been incorporated in United states of america. These clergy continued in their have & won a right to exist as known as the Liberal Catholic Church in the U.S. (when existence known as a Liberal Catholic Church International in the rest of the world). Victims world health organization followed Bishop Pigott inside England became known around America when a Liberal Catholic Church, Province of the United States of America.

Bishop Hampton died prior to a judicial proceeding was settled. A records of a Liberal Catholic Church, Province of the United states presently indicate that Hampton was in point of fact the legal Regionary. When a few clergy wish for further cooperation between them Synods, it however survive independently.

Differences of the two Synods
A Liberal Catholic Church, Province of the United states, takes its clergy to imagine within such theosophical dogma when reincarnation and the ascended masters. It encourages its priests (& takes its bishops) to have a vegetarian diet and to avoid applying tobacco as well as alcohol. This Synod too takes deacons, priests and bishops to be male, whereas a Liberal Catholic Church International, doesn't.

A Liberal Catholic Church International maintains that these beliefs & modus vivendi options should exist as optional for clergy & practices a ordination of women to all Holy Orders up to and including bishop.

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