Our History

St. Julian of Norwich Old Catholic Church

Port St. Lucie, Florida

The History

of Our Order

Today, our order is under the leadership and pastoral care of Archbishop Bruce J. Simpson, OSJB.

Archdiocesan web site

THE ORDER OF SAINT JOHN THE BELOVED

An Old Catholic Benedictine Community

The Benedictine Order of Saint John the Beloved was founded in 1909, at Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The founding fathers were: Bishop Charles Grafton of the Episcopal Church and Brother William Henry Francis Brothers of the Old Catholic Church. The first monastery was located next to Saint Paul’s Cathedral in that city and named: Saint John the Baptist. Bishop Grafton incorporated the Order in 1910 as the American Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict as served as the Bishop-Abbot. In 1912, he transferred ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the abbey to the Polish Old Catholic Church.

The Story of the Old Catholic Benedictines begins with Father Bernard Harding, who was at one time a monk at Sacred Heart Abbey in Indian Territory (now Saint Gregory’s Abbey, near Oklahoma City). Father Harding left the monastery and joined the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) and later, the Old Catholic mission in Northeast Wisconsin. He served as pastor of Saint Louis Old Catholic Cathedral in Green Bay and Vicar General to Bishop Joseph Rene Vilatte.

Just prior to Bishop Vilatte’s departure from Wisconsin, Father Harding asked permission to leave the missions there and establish an Old Catholic Benedictine Monastery in Waukegan, Illinois. He called his monastery, Saint Dunstan’s. There were five monks that lived there, including: William Henry Francis.

In 1909, William Henry Francis and four Anglo-Catholic clerics, under the direction of Bishop Charles Grafton of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin established Saint John the Baptist Monastery next door to Saint Paul’s Cathedral, in that city. Father Harding did not move to Wisconsin, but remained in Waukegan. Bishop Grafton had the monastery registered and incorporated as: The American Congregation of the Order of Saint Benedict.

Between 1909 and 1914, Saint John the Baptist Monastery was an active monastery in the Diocese of Fond du Lac and from time to time, Bishop Jon F. Tichy an Old Catholic bishop was in residence. However, until 1913, Bishop Grafton served as the Abbot.

When Bishop Grafton became ill, he made arrangements for Bishop Tichey and the Polish Old Catholic Church to canonically take over Saint John the Baptist Monastery. Being told that they were not wanted, in the Diocese of Fond du lac, they returned to Waukegan and once again joined with Father Harding.

In 1914, William Henry Francis was elected Abbot of the monks and on October 3, 1916, he was consecrated Polish Old Catholic Bishop of the United States. The Church name was changed to: The Old Catholic Church in America. Bishop Francis moved the Benedictine monks to a home in New York City (52 Regent Place) and later to Connecticut and finally to Woodstock, New York.

In 2001, Archbishop Bruce J. Simpson became the Archbishop Protector of the Order. Under the name The Benedictine Order of Saint John the Beloved, Archbishop Simpson has followed Benedictine tradition with a ministry inclusive and welcoming to all. Through our various ministries in nursing homes and hospices, the Order reaches out to bring the "Good News" to a Twenty-first century world. Social justice is a primary ministry of the Order as well as a rule of inclusion of all of God's people.

The History of the Old Catholic Church

The Beginnings of the Old Catholic Church

After the First Vatican Council in 1870, considerable groups of Austrian, German and Swiss Catholics rejected the teaching on papal infallibility, and left to form their own churches outside union with Rome. These churches were supported by the `Old Catholic´ Archbishop of Utrecht, who ordained their priests and bishops; later the Dutch were united more formally with many of these Austrian, German and Swiss Catholics under the name "Utrecht Union of Churches".

In the spring of 1871 a convention in Munich attracted several hundred participants, including Church of England and Protestant observers. The most notable leader of the movement, though maintaining a certain distance from the Old Catholic Church as an institution, was the important church historian and priest Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllinger (1799–1890), who had already been excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church over the affair. Despite never formally becoming a member of the Old Catholic Church, Döllinger requested and took last rites from an Old Catholic priest.

The convention decided to form a new church, to be called the "Old Catholic Church" to distinguish themselves from what they saw as novelty (doctrine of papal infallibility) in the Roman Catholic Church. At their second convention, they elected the first Old Catholic bishop, who was ordained by the Archbishop of Utrecht in the Netherlands. In 1874 they abandoned the requirement of priestly celibacy, which was abandoned in the Dutch Old Catholic Mother Church only as late as 1920. From the middle of the 18th century onward the Dutch Old Catholic See of Utrecht had increasingly vernacularized its originally Roman Rite Latin liturgy and even the Gregorian chant. The vernacular language was slowly adapted in the liturgy by the 1870 Old Catholic churches too, until finally introduced there in 1877. The Old Catholic Church in Germany received some support from the government of the new German Empire of Otto von Bismarck, whose policy was increasingly hostile towards the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy See in the 1870s and 1880s, especially during the Kulturkampf period from 1871–1877. In Austrian territories, Pan-Germanic nationalist groups, like the Away from Rome! Movement of Georg Ritter von Schönerer, supported the conversion of Roman Catholics to Old Catholicism (or Lutheranism). Liberal politicians and philosophers also sympathized with the Old Catholic movement, as Döllinger and other Old Catholic leaders had firmly denounced Quanta Cura (1864).

The Old Catholic Church shares much doctrine and liturgy with the Roman Catholic Church. However it tends to have a more liberal stance on most issues, including the eligibility of women for religious offices, acceptance of openly practiced homosexuality, artificial contraception (birth control) and, less frequently, liturgical reforms/innovations and open communion.

From the Old Catholic Church website:

The "Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany" (Katholisches Bistum der Alt-Katholiken in Deutschland) is an autonomous, episcopally, synodally structured, catholic church, which acknowledges the diversity and the essential teaching and institutions of the early, undivided church during the first millennium. Its origins lie in various Catholic reform movements.

Based on critical examination of the historical witnesses of early Christianity, the leaders of the Old Catholic movement developed an episcopal, synodal church structure, which incorporates the historic episcopal and priestly offices into democratic structures at all levels.

Old Catholics in the United States and Canada

Soon after Old Catholicism's momentous events at the end of the 19th century, Old Catholic missionaries came to the United States.

In the area of Green Bay, Wisconsin, Joseph Rene Vilatte began working with Roman Catholics of Belgian ancestry, who tended to separation from Roman influence due to their isolated geographical position at the time. Vilatte was ordained a deacon on 6 June 1885 and priest on 7 June 1885 by the Most Rev. Eduard Herzog, Bishop of the Old Catholic Church of Switzerland. After his ordination, Fr. Vilatte worked diligently on behalf of his congregations in Wisconsin, providing the only Catholic presence in his very rural part of the state.

Many Old Catholic bishops in the United States trace their Apostolic Succession to Arnold Harris Mathew and the (later independent) Old Catholic Church of England, which is presently widely known as the Old Roman Catholic Church. Father Mathew was consecrated bishop on 28 April 1908, by Utrecht Archbishop Gerhardus Gul, assisted by the Old Catholic Bishops of Deventer and Berne, in St. Gertrude's Old Catholic Cathedral in the city of Utrecht.

Berges came to the United States as at the request of the King and Queen of England to avoid intermit in a POW camp. He was an Austrian citizen and was in England during WW I. Wedgewood went to Australia, but visited the United States often. He was not involved in any American Old Catholic work

Bishop de Landas arrived in the United States on 7 November 1914. He hoped to bring the various Old Catholic jurisdictions into one church organization under Archbishop Arnold Mathew of England. Even though DeLandas Berghes did not establish any Old Catholic Churches in the USA, he did consecrate Bishop Brothers for the Old Catholic Church in America. Berghes was a bishop in the Old Roman Catholic Church, another denomination.

Since the passing of the original organizers from the ecclesiastical scene, the Old Catholic Church in the United States has evolved from a centralized administration with structured oversight of ministry to a local and regional model of administration with self-governing dioceses and provinces. According to some, this local model more closely follows the ancient tradition of the early Christian Churches as a communion of communities each laboring together to proclaim the message of the Gospel.

In time, he petitioned the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht to be consecrated a bishop so that he might confirm children and perform other ministrations for his people. His petition was not granted. Determined to meet the spiritual needs of his people, Father Vilatte sought opportunities in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches.

He was consecrated a bishop in India on the 28 May 1892 under the jurisdiction of the Syriac Patriarch of Antioch. A number of western orthodox churches such as the African Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Catholic Church of America are descended from Bishop Vilatte and claim him as a kind of founder by virtue of his ordinations and consecrations.