The United Catholic Church was launched in 1996 by our founding bishop, Dr. Robert Bowman in the State of Florida. It was intended to be both a church jurisdiction unto itself, and the means for supporting an inter-church fellowship. The UCC recognizes that there are a myriad of solid Christian Church choices available to Americans today with well-examined, time-tested and solid Christian theologies behind them. Yet, even with all this choice, there is an ever-growing cohort of people who cannot, or will not, be supported by any of those churches. The reasons are many. Some people are overwhelmed by the buildings, trappings and protocol, and just feel like outsiders. Others are unwilling to deal with a church whose rules and requirements seem different to them from what Christ would teach, and maybe even seem harmful. Still others have been hurt emotionally by a church or congregation, and have had their trust shattered. Other people were rejected and judged because they self-identify with a marginalized group. And yet still others are faced with isolation due to age, sickness or another impediment, and find themselves alone. The UCC was launched to be an apostolic and sacramental yet experimental outreach mission church for all these people, as we seek to try new ways to serve the people that traditional churches cannot reach.
We are a Heritage Old Catholic denomination. For some people, the words “Old Catholic” invokes images of renegade Roman Catholics who have split from their home church and launched a home away from home that mimics everything they liked while everything they didn’t like is disregarded. That is the antithesis of what we stand for.
Old Catholicism as a theology had a very long period of development in Europe and finally was adopted organizationally following Vatican I when the Union of Utrecht of Old Catholic Churches was formed in the Netherlands. This history of how all this came about is a huge topic in itself; interested readers can readily find multiple sources that explain the detail of how this centuries-long theological development cycle ebbed and flowed from the seventh century when St. Willibrord, the first Archbishop of Utrecht, settled the Low Countries as a Christian missionary, through the Middle Ages when the Cathedral Chapter in Utrecht (NL) was formally granted the authority to elect its own bishops (1145), and also granted the freedom to conduct its own affairs (1215 and again in 1520), through the initial partial break with Rome over the attempted settlement of a Rome-imposed bishop and a consolidated control structure in 1723, all in violation of earlier set and never to be altered agreements, until the final break of the Dutch Church with Rome occurred following Vatican I.
The “Old” in the title Old Catholic drives to the point that the shaping expert theologians were reaching back to the Early and Undivided Church understanding for their grounding, and they drew upon the full spectrum of Christian beliefs and practices defined by the Seven Ecumenical Councils prior to the Great Schism of 1054. The result of this reach-back is a theology and church with a Western Christian look and feel, that incorporates a lot of interpretations in common with Orthodoxy.
One of the major differences between Roman Catholic and Old Catholic thought that is quickly evident lies in the area of Ecclesiology, or the theology of what a church organization looks like and how it functions. Old Catholicism, like Orthordoxy, holds to a Local Church theology that drives from the bottom up, while Roman Catholic thought follows a hierarchical model that reaches its apex in the Pope, and drives from the top down. The implications of that one difference alone are huge. But there are others as well.
When the European Old Catholics in the European Union of Utrecht started to reach out as a missionary effort in the early 20th century, things did not go particularly well for a variety of reasons, but the apostolic lines the missionaries held got released from a tightly-held point of control, to being easily accessible in America by just about anyone. So people of all stripes adopted the lines and called themselves Old Catholic or Independent Old Catholic or the like, due to holding those Apostolic lines, but for the most part ignored the theology itself, which gave rise to some very peculiar and not necessarily even Christian manifestations.
That makes things a bit difficult at times for people who follow the developed Old Catholic belief system. The term Heritage Old Catholicism is meant to try and be a clarifier in this mismash American name use situation that we have today. The United Catholic Church adheres to the foundational Old Catholic theological understanding developed in Europe, not as a mimic but as a base that has been further customized for our American cultural context as is appropriate in a Local Church ecclesiology. The Apostolic Lines of Succession held by the United Catholic Church, and by all our bishops, line up with our Old Catholic heritage through Bishops DeLandis Berghes, Matthew, and Carfora, although we additionally also hold the Brazilian Catholic succession through Bishop Carlos Duarte Costa (1960) and Russian Orthodox lines through Metropolitan Bishops I. Sergius, Raban Ortinski, and Theophiluss (1917).