Catholic Mariavite Church

Catholic Mariavite Church
Mariavite emblem
Classification	Old Catholic
Orientation	Old Catholicism
Polity	Episcopal/Presbyterial
Prime bishop	Maria Beatrycze Szulgowicz ()
Associations	none
Region	Poland
Headquarters	Felicjanów, Republic of Poland
Origin	1935 Felicjanów, Second Polish Republic
Separated from	Old Catholic Mariavite Church
Congregations	17
Members	1980
Ministers	11
Other name(s)	Mariavite Catholic Church
Official website	mariawityzm.dbv.pl

The Catholic Mariavite Church is an autonomous religious organization in Poland resulting from a schism in 1935 within the Old Catholic Mariavite Church.

After its foundress, Sister Feliksa Kozłowska died in 1921, Jan Maria Michał Kowalski, a Catholic priest, became the leader of the Old Catholic Mariavite Church. He had been Kozłowska's spiritual adviser and confidante. He had been the leader of the failed 1903–1906 attempt to incorporate the Mariavite movement within the Roman Catholic Church and to have Kozłowska's revelations judged by the Roman Catholic Church as worthy of belief. When this attempt was rejected by Pope Pius X, and the Mariavites excommunicated finally in 1906, the then Kowalski set about codifying the movement's doctrines and beliefs in concert with Kozłowska. He found a welcome among the clergy of the Old Catholic Church based in Utrecht, Holland, as they had split from the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of papal infallibility in the 1870s. In 1909, Kowalski was consecrated as a bishop in Utrecht, thus ensuring the Apostolic succession.

However, under his leadership Mariavites dwindled. This was due to the rise of Polish nationalism, in which Roman Catholicism was an intrinsic part of the Polish national identity, and the creation of a sovereign Second Polish Republic in 1918. Another factor in the decline of the group was persecution of the Mariavites by Roman Catholics with the scarcely veiled support of the Polish government. But much of the decline could be traced to factors involving Kowalski himself – his generally autocratic rule of the church as Kozłowska's successor, and innovations that he had introduced which drove him further from the Catholic Church, such as the endorsement of consummated clerical marriages between priests and nuns, and later the ordination of women as priests and bishops, which took him out of fellowship with the Old Catholic movement as well.