Liberal Catholic Church

The name Liberal Catholic Church (LCC) is used by a number of separate Christian churches throughout the world which are open to esoteric beliefs and hold many ideas in common.

Though the term "Liberal Catholic" might suggest otherwise, it does not refer to liberal groups within the Roman Catholic Church but to groups within the "Independent Catholic" movement, unrecognised and not in communion with the Pope or the rest of the Catholic Church.

There are essentially two groups of Liberal Catholic churches: those which espouse theosophical ideas and those which do not do so.

The founding bishops of the Liberal Catholic churches were J. I. Wedgwood of the Wedgwood China family and the Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater. Wedgwood was a former Anglican priest who left the Anglican church on becoming a theosophist in 1904. After serving in several high offices in the Theosophical Society, including being general secretary of the society in England and Wales from 1911 to 1913, he was ordained as a priest in the Old Catholic movement on July 22, 1913, by Arnold Harris Mathew. Matthew in turn was a former Roman Catholic priest who had left to be ordained as a bishop in the Old Catholic Church, which had separated from papal authority in 1873 over the issue of papal infallibility. The Old Catholics maintained that their ordinations were valid within the Catholic tradition, and the Liberal Catholic Church thus claims to trace its apostolic succession back to Rome through Old Catholicism.

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