Anglican Catholic Church

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The Anglican Catholic Church is a worldwide body of Anglican Christians, in the Continuing Anglican Movement, which grew out of the 1977 Congress of St. Louis. The Congress was called in response to decisions made by the Episcopal Church to approve the ordination of women and to issue a heavily revised Book of Common Prayer. As a result of the desire to maintain the Apostolic tradition of male-only clergy and the exclusive use of historical Anglican liturgical forms, a new church was founded--the Anglican Church in North America. The name was later changed to the Anglican Catholic Church.

The Congress's statement of principles, the "Affirmation of St. Louis," summarized the new church's reason for being as follows:“…the Anglican Church of Canada and the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, by their unlawful attempts to alter Faith, Order and Morality (especially in their General Synod of 1975 and General Convention of 1976), have departed from Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.”^[1]

1 History
2 Present
3 Province I
4 Province II - Church of India (Anglican)
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] History

By 1978, four bishops had been consecrated. Shortly thereafter, the Canadian parishes left to form the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, while two dioceses in the United States withdrew to form the Diocese of Christ the King, now named the Anglican Province of Christ the King.

In 1984, the five dioceses of the Church of India (Anglican) were received by the Anglican Catholic Church and constituted as its Second Province. Since 1990, the Anglican Catholic Church has expanded to include a bishopric in New Zealand, deaneries in Spain and in South America and twelve dioceses in the Americas, the United Kingdom and Australia. Also during this time period, a number of parishes left the Anglican Catholic Church to merge with the American Episcopal Church in forming the Anglican Church in America, and it further suffered the loss of additional parishes which formed themselves into the Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite).

[edit] Present

Today the Anglican Catholic Church has 135 parish churches and missions. In October 2005, the Most Rev. Mark D. Haverland replaced the Most Rev. Brother John Charles as Archbishop and Metropolitan.