Arnold Harris Mathew was the first Old Catholic

Old Catholic Church

The term Old Catholic Church is commonly used to describe a number of Ultrajectine Christian churches that originated with groups that split from the Roman Catholic Church over certain doctrines, most importantly that of Papal Infallibility...

 bishop

Bishop

A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...

 in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.

Mathew was a suspended

Suspension (punishment)

Suspension is a form of punishment that people receive for violating rules and regulations.- Workplace :Suspension is a common practice in the workplace for being in violation of an organization's policy...

 Roman Catholic priest before joining the Old Catholic movement. His early life is the subject of some interest from researchers as a result of his aristocratic connections and his father's connection with colonial India.

Context of his mission

Mathew has been the subject of criticism from the Continental Old Catholics who claim that Mathew obtained his consecration to the historic episcopate in 1908 through deception. The consecration of Mathew as a missionary bishop for England has to be set in the context of (1894) in which some Old Catholics within the Union of Utrecht questioned the validity of Anglican orders and Apostolicae Curae

Apostolicae Curae

Apostolicae Curae is the title of a papal bull, issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII, declaring all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void"...

issued (1896) by Pope Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII

Pope Leo XIII , born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci to an Italian comital family, was the 256th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, reigning from 1878 to 1903...

 which concluded that Anglican orders were so lacking in correct intention that they were in effect null and void.

The mission of Mathew was to erect a valid Catholic ministry in England where the Anglican Church was viewed as being deficient in holy orders.

Consecration

Mathew was consecrated in 1908 after the Utrecht Union of Old Catholic Churches

Utrecht Union

The Union of Utrecht is a federation of Old Catholic Churches, not in communion with Rome, that seceded from the Roman Catholic Church over the issue of Papal infallibility. The Declaration of Utrecht solidified this movement in 1889...

 approved the establishment of a mission in the United Kingdom despite there being a vigorous national (Anglican) Church already in existence in the United Kingdom. It was agreed by the Continental Old Catholics that Mathew had a significant following in Britain, although recent research indicates that his actual congregation varied in the period immediately prior to consecration and during his episcopacy. He was consecrated by Old Catholic Archbishop Gerardus Gul

Gerardus Gul

Gerardus Gul was a bishop of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands. He was consecrated Archbishop of Utrecht 11 May 1892. Many Old Catholics and Independent Catholics trace the lineage of their orders through him....

 of Utrecht on April 28, 1908. Assisting Gul was Bishop J. J. Van Thiel of Haarlem, Bishop N. B. P. Spit of Deventer and Bishop J. Demmel of Bonn, Germany.

Mission in England 1908-1919

Mathew formally established the Old Roman Catholic Church of Great Britain, which for a time was part of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht. Mathew eventually raised a number of expelled priests to the episcopacy by himself without notifying the Union of Utrecht. Mathew's consecrations including two former Roman Catholic priests, Fathers Howarth and Beale, who had been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham for embezzling. Mathew then sent documents to Pope Pius X

Pope Pius X

Pope Saint Pius X , born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, was the 257th Pope of the Catholic Church, serving from 1903 to 1914. He was the first pope since Pope Pius V to be canonized. Pius X rejected modernist interpretations of Catholic doctrine, promoting traditional devotional practices and orthodox...

 attesting to the episcopal consecrations. Upon receipt of these documents, Pope Pius X published the bull Gravi Iamdiu Scandalo in which he excommunicated Mathew and condemned him as a "pseudo-bishop" without authority and declared him vitandus, a term in church law which meant that Roman Catholics were subject to censure if they had anything to do with Mathew. Pius X also extended his sentence of excommunication to include those who had been consecrated by Bishop Mathew.

On December 29, 1910, Mathew declared his autonomy from the Continental Old Catholics and their Union of Utrecht

Union of Utrecht

The Union of Utrecht was a treaty signed on 23 January 1579 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, unifying the northern provinces of the Netherlands, until then under the control of Habsburg Spain....

 due to disagreements with certain practices and disciplines that Mathew felt deviated from Catholic tradition, such as the increasing tendency to discourage frequent auricular confession

Confession

This article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...

 and veneration of relics and saints by continental Old Catholics.

Mathew later consecrated Prince Rudolph Edward de Landes Berghes, an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n formerly-Roman Catholic nobleman, in 1913 for apostolic work among Old Catholics (or: Old Roman Catholics) in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. Research in relation to this historic personality is largely unrevealing and more research is required in this area.

In January 1916 Mathew announced that he would be reconciled to the Holy See

Holy See

The Holy See is the episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome, in which its Bishop is commonly known as the Pope. It is the preeminent episcopal see of the Catholic Church, forming the central government of the Church. As such, diplomatically, and in other spheres the Holy See acts and...

 but changed his mind two months later, because the Holy See insisted he would only be reconciled as a layman and would be obliged to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility

Papal infallibility

Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church which states that, by action of the Holy Spirit, the Pope is preserved from even the possibility of error when in his official capacity he solemnly declares or promulgates to the universal Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals...

 and primacy of the Roman Pontiff

Primacy of the Roman Pontiff

The primacy of the Bishop of Rome is an ecclesiastical doctrine held by some branches of Christianity, most notably the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Anglican Communion. The doctrine concerns the respect and authority that is due to the Bishop of Rome from bishops and their...

. Mathew then sought union with the Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

 but the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury

Archbishop of Canterbury

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...

 refused to give Mathew any position as an Anglican clergyman. Mathew retired to a village in the English countryside and contented himself with assisting at services in an Anglican parish church as a layman.

By this time he had been deserted by his wife (he had married after his suspension as Roman Catholic priest) and had been abandoned by virtually all the priests and bishops he had ordained. Mathew died suddenly in December 1919 and was buried as an Anglican layman in the Parish of Saint Giles, South Mimms, Hertfordshire.

Validity and Hiram Richard Hulse

Critics have questioned the validity of the holy orders conferred by Mathew in the period following his departure from the Union of Utrecht. According to supporters the consecration of Hiram Hulse indicates that the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA (PECUSA) regarded the Mathew line as being not only valid but even desirable. On 12 January 1915, in New York City, Hiram Hulse was consecrated as a Bishop in Cuba for the Protestant Episcopal Church assisted by Bishop de Landes Berghes in the Mathew line. This indicates that there were no apparent perceived problems in relation to valid holy orders in the 20th Century. The orders of De Landes Berghes, consecrated after Mathew left the Union of Utrecht, were apparently viewed by his contemporaries as valid despite any adverse comments from Utrecht.

Contemporary significance

Mathew's activities as a bishop gave birth to the Liberal Catholic Church

Liberal Catholic Church

The Liberal Catholic Church is a form of Christianity open to theosophical ideas and even reincarnation. It is not connected to the Roman Catholic Church, which considers it heretical and schismatic...

, founded by two Theosophical

Theosophy

Theosophy, in its modern presentation, is a spiritual philosophy developed since the late 19th century. Its major themes were originally described mainly by Helena Blavatsky , co-founder of the Theosophical Society...

 priests he consecrated to the episcopacy, and the more conservative Old Roman Catholic Churches, which are autocephalous churches holding to a Roman Catholic worship style, while rejecting the dogmas of the First Vatican Council

First Vatican Council

The First Vatican Council was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864. This twentieth ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held three centuries after the Council of Trent, opened on 8 December 1869 and adjourned...

 (1869-1870) in several ways.

There are hundreds of Churches, 'rites' and ecclesiastic bodies in the English speaking world and some in Continental Europe that are in the Mathew line. This makes Mathew a significant figure in Old Catholic history.

In the USA there are two sedevacantist

Sedevacantism

Sedevacantism is the position held by a minority of Traditionalist Catholics who hold that the present occupant of the papal see is not truly Pope and that, for lack of a valid Pope, the see has been vacant since the death of either Pope Pius XII in 1958 or Pope John XXIII in 1963.Sedevacantists...

 "traditionalist" Catholic

Traditionalist Catholic

Traditionalist Catholics are Roman Catholics who believe that there should be a restoration of many or all of the liturgical forms, public and private devotions and presentations of Catholic teachings which prevailed in the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council...

 bishops, the controversial Francis Schuckardt

Francis Schuckardt

Francis Konrad Schuckardt was an American Traditionalist Catholic independent bishop and the first known bishop of the sedevacantist movement in the United States. Sedevacantism holds that Pope Paul VI —sometimes going back to include John XXIII— and his successors are not valid Popes...

 for example, whose orders are descended from Mathew's consecrations. In the United Kingdom the traditionalist 'orthodox' position is often maintained by the Old Catholic Church in Europe

Old Catholic Church in Europe

The Old Catholic Church in Europe or OCCE is a traditionalist Church in the Old Roman Catholic tradition, based in the United Kingdom. The denomination is also known as the "Old Roman Catholic Church in Europe"....

 (OCCE) which has as its stated aim the maintenance of orthodox Old Catholicism which would support the original aims of Mathew.