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The Old Catholics of Utrecht
St. Willibrord was consecrated to the Episcopacy by Pope Sergius I in 696 at Rome. Upon his return to the Netherlands, he established his See at Utrecht. In addition, he established the dioceses at Deventer and Haarlem. The Church of Utrecht also provided a worthy occupant for the Papal See in 1552 in the person of Pope Hadrian VI, while two of the most able exponents of the spiritual life, Geert Groote, who founded the Brothers of the Common Life, and Thomas a Kempis, who is credited with writing The Imitation of Christ, were both from the Dutch Church.

Granting the petition made by the Holy Roman Emperor, Conrad II and Bishop Heribert of Utrecht, Blessed Pope Eugene III, in the year 1145, granted the See of Utrecht the right to elect successors to the See in times of vacancy. This privilege was affirmed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The autonomous nature of this See was further demonstrated when a second papal grant by Pope Leo X, Debitum Pastoralis, conceded to Philip of Burgundy, the 57th Bishop of Utrecht, that neither he nor any of his successors, or any of their clergy or laity, should ever be tried by a tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church, and that if any such tribunals where called against them, those tribunals would be, ipso facto, null and void. This papal concession, in 1520, was of the greatest importance in the defense of the rights of the Church of Utrecht. During the Reformation the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands remained under attack and the dioceses north of the Rhine and Waal eventually were dissolved and suspended by the Holy See. Protestants had occupied most church buildings, and those left were confiscated by the government of the Dutch Republic of Seven Provinces which favored Calvinist Protestantism.

However about one third of the population north of the Rhine in the Netherlands, remained staunchly Catholic. The 17th century Popes appointed one bishop at a time to be Apostolic Vicar for territories of the Dutch Republic who, governing from the city of Utrecht, sacramentally served the needs of the Dutch Roman Catholics, who secretly celebrated Holy Masses in private homes, farm houses, or small chapels which resembled ordinary sheds rather than parish churches. The Apostolic Vicar of Utrecht thus had to serve from many hundreds of thousands to up to a million of Catholics. German and Belgian missionaries secretly helped out.

In 1691, the Jesuits took the step of accusing the Apostolic Vicar of Utrecht, Petrus Codde, of favoring the so-called Jansenist heresy. The Holy Father, Pope Innocent XII appointed a Commission of Cardinals to investigate the accusations against Apostolic Vicar Codde, violating the previous Debitum Pastoralis. The result of this inquiry was a complete and unconditional exoneration of the Apostolic Vicar.

Undaunted by the decision of the Commission, the new Pope, Clement XI, summoned Codde to Rome in 1700 to participate in the Jubilee Year whereupon a second Commission was appointed to try Codde. The result of this second proceeding was again a complete and unconditional acquittal. Pope Clement XI decided to issue an order which suspended the Apostolic Vicar in 1701 and appointed a successor to the Apostolic Vicariate of Utrecht, despite the ruling of the Commission.

Bishop Petrus Codde resented the attempts by the Papacy and the Jesuits to interfere with the affairs of his diocese. The Dutch refused to accept the replacement the Pope had appointed, and Codde continued in his office; however he resigned in 1703.

A replacement Archbishop, Cornelius van Steenoven, was elected by dissatisfied clergy in 1723. Van Steenoven was consecrated a bishop by a missionary bishop who was appointed by the Pope to a titular see in Lebanon, but never went to the Middle East. The consecration was done without the Apostolic Mandate of the Pope according to the right previously granted to the See of Utrecht. However, Van Steenoven and his successors were not recognized by the Roman Catholic Church and the Popes of Rome appointed Apostolic Vicars, while excommunicating the bishops who had taken by their own declaration the See of Utrecht. This was the beginning of the Old Catholic Church in the Netherlands, also known as the Ancient Catholic Church or the Roman Catholic Church of the Old Episcopal Order.

Van Steenoven on his own behalf appointed and consecrated bishops to the Sees of Deventer, Haarlem and Groningen, which had all been vacant since the dissolution of the Roman Catholic diocesan structure in the Northern Netherlands due to the rise of Protestantism and the eighty years lasting Protestant Dutch Rebellion against Spanish (Catholic) rule. These appointments were again made without the consent of the Roman Pontiff.

Most of the Dutch Catholics, who since 1600 had been mainly served by regular missionary priests, not by secular clergy, did not follow the Old Catholic bishops of Utrecht and remained in full communion with the Holy See in Rome.

Pope Pius IX, in 1853, established his own Roman Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands, to rival the hierarchy established by the Old Catholic See of Utrecht. Thereafter in the Netherlands the Utrecht hierarchy was referred to as the 'Old Catholic Church', to distinguish it from the 'new' Catholic Church, the hierarchy of which had been more recently re-established by Pope Pius IX.

Impact of the First Vatican Council
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 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 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. The church 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 in the 1870s and 1880s, especially during the Kulturkampf period from 1871–1877.

Arnold Harris Mathew
Arnold Harris Ochterlony Matthews (he would revert to his family's original name Mathew from 1894 onwards) was born in 1852 in Montpellier, France, to an aristocratic family which claimed the succession to the Earldom of Landaff in the Peerage of Ireland. Mathew's claim to this title was recorded in both Burke's and Debrett's Peerage, and in Who's Who, although he never proved his right to vote at the election of Irish Peers to the House of Lords. Mathew also inherited the Italian title of Marchese Povoleri de Vicenza through his paternal grandmother, though he used the courtesy title of Count only during the first half of his life.



Destined for the priesthood, he trained initially as an Exhibitioner of the Anglican College of the Holy Spirit, Cumbrae, but decided to reconcile with Rome and transferred to St Peter's Diocesan Seminary, Glasgow. He was ordained priest in the Roman Catholic Church on 24 June 1877 following an accelerated training in which he had distinguished himself. That same year, Mgr. Charles Eyre, Titular Bishop of Anazarba, recommended Mathew to Pope Pius IX, who awarded him the degree of Doctor of Divinity.

After a year as curate of St Andrew's Cathedral, Glasgow, Mathew entered the Dominican Woodchester Priory in Gloucestershire, taking the name in religion of Fr. Jerome. He made his profession in June 1879, but later that year left the Priory when he discovered that homosexual activity was taking place between some of the brethren. At the commission of Mgr. James Chadwick, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, he became priest-in-charge of a newly established mission at Dunston-on-Tyne, Northumberland. Here he built a school and chapel, dedicated to St Philip Neri.

In 1881, Mgr. William Vaughan, Bishop of Plymouth, appointed Mathew as Assistant Priest at the cathedral of St Mary and St Boniface, where he earned a name for himself as a preacher and demonstrated a great affinity for animals (zoology was to be a lifelong interest). A visit by Dom Adam Hamilton, OSB, to Mathew led to discussion about finding a home for the monks of Pierre-qui-Vire, who were temporarily staying in Ireland having been driven out of France. It was Mathew who suggested to Dom Adam that Buckfast Abbey was up for sale and might provide a suitable destination, and thus it has proved up to the present day.

Mathew left the cathedral at Plymouth for a curacy at St Teresa, Warsop, Nottinghamshire, from 1884-85. This led to further appointment in 1885 as priest at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, where Mathew built a church. In 1888 there followed an appointment as Missionary-Rector of St Mary's Church, Bath, a new church established to relieve the pressure on Downside Abbey.

The doctrine of papal infallibility was by now causing Mathew a great crisis of conscience, and contact with the modernist Fr. Hyacinthe Loyson of the Eglise Catholique Gallicane, a French mission of the Utrecht Union, helped to crystallise Mathew's ideas. He took the decision in 1889 to resign from St Mary's and from all duties in the Roman Catholic Church. Seeking ways to continue ministry in accordance with his conscience, he first turned to Unitarianism (in its traditional rather than contemporary sense) and then to the Church of England. He could not be formally incardinated into the Anglican communion because he refused to sign A Form of Renunciation of Roman Doctrine, at that time promulgated by Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1892, having made a favourable impression, he was appointed curate at the strongly Anglo-Catholic Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, London, described by Betjeman as "the Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement", and was granted informal permission to officiate by Frederick Temple, Anglican Bishop of London. That same year, he fell in love with and married Florence Margaret Duncan, and in 1895 their first of three children was born.

In 1899, the former Rector of Holy Trinity, Prebendary R.W. Eyton, was involved in a homosexual scandal. Mathew had served under Eyton, who had conducted his marriage, and had maintained contact with him following his appointment as Rector of St Margaret's, Westminster. Mathew feared that he would be dragged into the scandal, though he himself was not homosexual, and must also have felt thoroughly disillusioned with the Church of England. He resigned his curacy at Holy Trinity Church and rejoined the Roman Catholic Church as a layman, the Vatican refusing to dispense him from his vow of celibacy and thus making his return as a priest conditional on his repudiating his wife, a condition which was unacceptable to him. During this period he worked at his secular passion, zoology. He was instrumental in establishing the Zoological Gardens at Brighton, and was one of the first advocates of keeping wild animals in enclosures instead of cages. He also began a successful career as an author, publishing books on Catholic subjects and beyond. Between 1898 and 1912, residing at his estate in Chelsfield in Kent, he worked on areas including Catholic biography, women's suffrage, the history of the Papacy, and those church communities separated from Rome, and published at least fifteen books. During this time, he also corresponded with the Roman Catholic modernist and former Jesuit George Tyrrell, with whom he collaborated on the third edition of Lea's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, a work exposing to the full the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church. By 1907 he, like Tyrrell, had become a convinced opponent of the Papacy. Wishing to resume his vocation in the Church of England, he had discussions with the Bishop of Rochester and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson. Davidson made Mathew's return conditional on an unspecified period of probation, a condition which Mathew rejected.

In 1907, Mathew began to correspond with Mgr. Edward Herzog, a bishop of the Old Catholic Church in Switzerland. Mathew signed the 1889 Utrecht Declaration (a copy is here on the site of the Old Catholic Information Center). Fr. Richard O'Halloran, a dissatisfied Roman Catholic priest, convinced Mathew that there were sizeable numbers of laity who were seeking Old Catholic leadership in Britain, particularly among the modernists and Anglo-Catholics (who feared the Report of the Ritual Commission, which was set up in 1904 to investigate allegedly illegal ritual and ceremonial), and that the lack of a bishop was preventing their pastoral care. Indeed, an approach had previously been made by O'Halloran and other disaffected Roman Catholics to Mgr. Gerard Gul, the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, in November 1901. Gul in September 1907 consecrated the former Roman Catholic priest Frantisek Hodur for the recently-established Polish National Catholic Church, thereby showing explicitly that he was prepared to offer support to groups seeking alternatives to the Roman Catholic Church. The PNCC remains the only Old Catholic church in North America still acknowledged by the Utrecht Union, though it is no longer in communion with it. A major appeal of the Old Catholic Church to Mathew was that it would not, in his vision, enforce clerical celibacy, thus allowing married men such as himself to become priests (clerical celibacy had been abolished in all Old Catholic branches save those in Holland, which would maintain it until 1922). He wrote to Randall Davidson outlining his thoughts and suggesting that a British Old Catholic Church could act as an effective bridge between Rome and Canterbury, and proposing that a Bishop of the Church of England should be appointed as an Old Catholic Coadjutor. Davidson rejected this proposal.

This decision left O'Halloran's group no choice but to select a bishop from among their own ranks. On 18 February 1908, a meeting chaired by O'Halloran and consisting of 17 priests and 16 laymen elected Mathew Regionary Old Catholic Bishop of Great Britain and Ireland. Mathew initially flatly refused to accept, but in the end consented to allow his name to go forward. Following this, O'Halloran sent a letter to Mgr. Herzog asking for Mathew's consecration. Mathew and O'Halloran travelled to Utrecht to meet Gul, who was somewhat shocked to discover that Mathew was married. However, it was decided to allow an exception to priestly celibacy in his case, and on 28 April 1908 Gul, together with fellow Old Catholic bishops Mgr. Johannes van Thiel, Mgr. Nicolaus Split and Mgr. Johannes Demmel, consecrated Mathew according to the Roman rite in the church of St Gertrude, Utrecht. The consecration was reported in the Church Times. The Church of England had protested at this event, but the Utrecht Union had taken the view that it was not the Anglicans' business to intervene in their affairs.

It was soon after this that Mathew found that O'Halloran had deceived him and that the lay following for Old Catholicism in Britain was much smaller than he had been told. Acting honourably, he offered his retirement to Mgr. Herzog. However, his fellow bishops refused to accept it. This left Mathew in an extremely difficult position where he was effectively responsible for creating a community that he could serve amid the counter-interests of Roman Catholics and Anglicans in Britain, who both saw him as a threat. George Tyrrell wrote to Mathew on July 25 1908, pointing out the advantages of what he described as the "primitive "household" church and priesthood". Tyrrell hoped that Mathew "might inaugurate a new and important era in Church history" through building a clergy entirely from men employed in secular professions. "Cut off the pecuniary advantage, and you cut off the rest of sacerdotalism, and all the doctrinal and other corruptions it entails."

O'Halloran did not take these developments well. He petitioned Mathew for consecration as a bishop, which Mathew very properly refused outright. As a result, O'Halloran became active in spreading slander about Mathew, sometimes using false names in the process.

Mathew moved from Chelsfield to Hampstead in 1909. That same year, he published the Old Catholic Missal and Ritual, which brought the Old Catholic Mass in the vernacular to Britain (view the revised version of the Mathew Mass by Bishop Wynn Wagner here). He was elected vice-president of the Society of St Willibrord (a society promoting union between Anglicans and Old Catholics which he would leave later that year), and ordained several men as priests. From 6-10 September 1909, Mathew participated in the Old Catholic Conference in Vienna. He gave a speech in which he proclaimed that the aim of Old Catholicism was the reunion of churches, and especially reunion with the Orthodox Churches of the East. This event was also important in that it showed to Mathew for the first time that the majority of Old Catholic bishops in fact tended towards Protestant theology, while he himself, being more in line with the Oxford Movement, was in fact in an isolated minority. Nevertheless, he was well regarded by Utrecht, with Herzog writing to van Thiel on 20 August 1908, "Mathew ist ohne Zweifel ein Mann, der sehr viel weiss und in weiten Kreisen geachtet ist." (Mathew is without doubt a man who knows a great deal and is widely respected.)

On 5 October 1909, Mathew participated as co-consecrator with Gul, Spit, Demmel and van Thiel in the consecration of Johann Michael Kowalsky for the Mariavite Church, then part of the Utrecht Union. On 1 November, Mathew was consecrated sub conditione in secrecy by the bishops of the Order of Corporate Reunion. This placed him at a pivotal point in the debate concerning the validity of Anglican orders that had followed the publication of Apostolicae Curae in 1896. Mathew published several works on Anglican validity that demonstrate a detailed understanding of the issues involved, which had resulted from a close study of sixteenth-century Church history.

In 1910, Mathew through an intermediary, Fr. Bacon, made contact with the Syrian Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East. That same year, in a public meeting at Carshalton, Surrey, he expressed his doubts about the validity of Anglican orders. He went on to consecrate three bishops, Whitman, Beale and Howarth, in order to ensure that the Old Catholic Church in Britain did not risk the loss of the Apostolic Succession in the event of his death without having first appointed a co-adjutor. Whitman was consecrated in secrecy for service in Wales, but soon afterwards emigrated to Canada. The other two were suspended Roman Catholic priests, Beale having been one of those who with O'Halloran had petitioned Gul in 1901. As was customary, Mathew sent notification to the Vatican that he had performed the consecrations; this notice was generally not responded to by custom. On 4 September, 1910, Mathew was invited to assist Kowalsky together with Gul and van Thiel in the consecration of two new bishops for the Mariavites, Golebiowski and Prochniewski, but distance and expense precluded his participation. Hearing of Mathew's consecration of the three bishops mentioned above, the Utrecht Union protested that they had not been consulted, that the consecrations had been performed solo and in secrecy, and that Beale and Howarth were technically subordinate to the Holy See. These objections were published in De Oud-Catholiek of 1 December 1910. However, Mathew was never excommunicated by Utrecht.

On 29 December 1910, in response to this censure, Mathew issued a Declaration of Autonomy and Independence from the Utrecht Union in which he itemised what he saw as the Union's descent into Protestant practices with which he disagreed, as well as meanwhile citing the consecration within the Utrecht Union of Herzog by Reinckens in 1876, which had likewise occurred without the formal consent of other bishops. The Declaration can be read online at the Global Library. He also made reference to the decision of the continental Old Catholics to allow Anglican priests (whom Mathew regarded as invalid) to celebrate Holy Communion in their churches. Mathew did not intend his Declaration to be an act of separation from the Utrecht Union, but instead a loosening of ties to enable him to fulfil a wider mission. The Utrecht Union, however, did not understand this context and saw Mathew's Declaration as an act of severance of relations. In 1911, Mathew succeeded Henry Arthur Stanton as Primate of the Order of Corporate Reunion, which was at that time stagnant and in need of the revival which Mathew brought about. Mathew also established the Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain and Ireland as an independent body from the Utrecht Union, and inaugurated a short-lived Benedictine monastery at Barry in Wales that closed through lack of funds. He wrote to Cardinal Merry de Val at the Vatican to seek papal authorisation for a British Uniate Rite. The response of the Vatican was to issue a Bull excommunicating him. Mathew sued The Times in libel in 1913, claiming that their published translation of this Bull was inaccurate. Although his position had merit, he lost the case, in which he was opposed by F.E. Smith (later the first Earl of Birkenhead), the leading barrister of his generation.

By the end of 1910, Mathew and his wife had separated following the breakdown of their relationship over several years. His overtures to the Patriarchate of Antioch bore fruit on August 25, 1911, when he signed an Act of Union with the Patriarchate. However, Randall Davidson dispatched Winnington-Ingram, Anglican Bishop of London, to Syria for the express purpose of offering money to the Patriarch of Antioch so that he would repudiate his Act of Union with Mathew. According to Mathew's co-adjutor, Bernard Mary Williams, the considerable sum offered by Winnington-Ingram to the Patriarch was found to be insufficient, and the Act remained intact at least until Mathew's death. When a group of Old Catholic bishops (outside the Utrecht Union) approached the Patriarchate in the 1980s, they were informed that the Act was now regarded as having lapsed, since there had been no contact between the churches in the intervening period (on account of the fragmentation of the OCCGB).

Davidson's behaviour was but one incident in what amounted to a hate campaign waged by the Anglican hierarchy against Mathew. Mathew's approaches to the Russian Orthodox Church were aborted because of the intervention mounted by John Wordsworth, the Anglican Bishop of Salisbury and several Anglican priests, who asserted lies concerning Mathew in a bid to discredit him. Worse still was the worldwide circulation of a Memorandum by Davidson concerning Mathew, which consisted largely of malicious falsehoods. Mathew's reply to this document, likewise circulated worldwide, was described by Williams as "the greatest blow to [Davidson's] prestige he had ever received." Nevertheless this did not stop the Anglican hostilities.


More successful were Mathew's overtures to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and Patriarch Photios (via his supporters Baroness Natalie d'Uxhull and Mme Olga Novikoff). An Act of Union was signed in February 1912. From 1912 to 1919, Mathew was also Provisional Bishop of the Eglise Catholique Française, and consecrated de Lignières as Metropolitan of this church in 1912. By 1915, the ORCC had parishes in Chiswick, Croydon, Broadstairs, Belford, Oxford and Dublin, as well as elsewhere in London.


Throughout the following years, Mathew ordained and consecrated a number of men for service throughout the world. Some were Anglicans seeking valid orders, others were seeking a Christian expression independent of the mainstream denominations. A number of those whom he ordained priest according to the OCR rite were subsequently accepted into the Church of England without reordination. Mathew continued to offer help to the Church of England, offering in a 1915 letter to Davidson's chaplain to reordain and reconsecrate Winnington-Ingram, their Bishop of London, so that he might be the instrument for the restoration of Catholic unity to Britain. This offer was refused by Davidson in insulting terms.

Mathew ordained several members of the then highly active Theosophical Society who would go on to form the Liberal Catholic Church, including James Ingall Wedgwood, the L.C.C.'s founder and a former Anglican priest. Mathew himself was initially sympathetic towards Theosophy and its president, Mrs Annie Besant, whom, he recounted, he had often seen in dreams robed as an abbess. Subsequently, he came to consider Theosophy to be in opposition to his outlook. He forbade his clergy to be members of the Theosophical Society in a pastoral letter promulgated in August 1915 and subsequently forced the resignation of six Theosophical priests who had hitherto been loyal to him but had refused to resign from the Theosophical Society. Only (James T.A.) Bernard Mary Williams (1889-1952) now remained with Mathew. This action reduced the size of Mathew's flock considerably. In a further blow to Mathew, Frederick Samuel Willoughby, who had been consecrated by Mathew but excommunicated by him in 1915 for alleged homosexuality, now consecrated two of the Theosophical priests, Wedgwood and King. These bishops now claimed that the true O.R.C.C. was vested in them and not in Mathew's small remnant.

After the Theosophical split in 1915, Mathew wrote to Pope Benedict XV on 16 December offering him his complete submission and placing such parts of the Old Catholic movement in Britain as remained loyal to him under his jurisdiction. On 18 December he appointed (as what he believed to be his last independent episcopal act) Mgr. Bernard Mary Williams as Grand Vicar and Administrator of the Vacant See, and reconciled with Rome on 31 December. It appears to have been his intention to lay aside his episcopate and revert to his former status of a priest in the Roman church.

However, Rome refused Mathew's request to take on the care of the British Old Catholics as a movement, and made it clear that, firstly, it would only accept Mathew's return under punitive terms as a layman (notwithstanding his Roman Catholic priesthood), and, secondly, that a condition of his return would be his acceptance of the doctrine of Papal infallibility and the primacy of the Pope. This forced Mathew into an impossible situation. On the one hand, he wished to submit himself and his movement to Rome, but on the other, he could not leave what little remained of his movement effectively without leadership if Rome refused to allow him to continue to act as a clergyman, nor could he lay aside the exercise of his ministry and the objections of his conscience. There was thus no alternative but to rescind his submission to Rome and to resume his duties as Old Catholic Archbishop. This he did on 5 March 1916, officially adopting the name Uniate Western Catholic Church for what he hoped would be a renewed mission.

In 1916, Mathew wrote to Davidson once more, suggesting that the U.W.C.C. might form an Anglican Uniate Church. Surprisingly, in view of earlier events, Davidson responded by inviting Mathew to visit him. This he did on 15 April 1916 accompanied by Williams, whom he had meanwhile consecrated, though Williams was not permitted to participate or observe the discussions. Davidson offered Mathew a deal. If Mathew halted the issue of his reply to Davidson's Memorandum described above, Davidson would see his way to co-operation between Mathew and his clergy and the Anglican Communion. Davidson also offered a personal apology to Mathew for his actions. Following his acceptance of this bargain, Mathew did perform certain limited actions within the Church of England for the remainder of his life.

However, Bernard Mary Williams, who had made a written record of everything said at the meeting from Mathew's account delivered immediately afterwards, took the position that Davidson's statements had been insincere and that as a Protestant, Davidson had no right to dictate terms to a Catholic prelate such as Mathew. As a result, and with Mathew now merely an aged and impoverished figurehead, largely supported by Williams' charity, Williams was instrumental in the readoption of the former name Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain and Ireland in 1917, which body he now effectively led, having been appointed Mathew's co-adjutor on March 25. Just as Williams grew more anti-Anglican, Mathew took the position that he was largely reconciled with Canterbury. He sought permission to officiate in Anglican churches, but found Davidson once more lapsing into hostility as Williams had predicted. Shortly before Mathew's death, he wrote to Davidson, "I have endured thirty years' persecution, at the hands of certain people, and at the close of life this assault comes as a blow from one whom I wished to look upon with respect if not as a friend."

In 1918, the Revd. Allan Hay, Anglican Vicar of South Mymms, Hertfordshire, had generously provided Mathew, who was at that time living in great poverty, with a cottage in his village. Mathew worshipped at Hay's church, sitting in choir in his episcopal robes and insignia. Mathew went on to consecrate Hay in secrecy according to the Order of Corporate Reunion rite, and various Anglican clergymen sought him out in South Mymms so that they might receive valid orders. In all, some 400 Anglican priests had eventually been validly reordained. On 20 December 1919, Mathew died. His tomb in South Mymms churchyard bears the inscription:


Mathew's character
Mathew, like his mother, was spiritually an Anglo-Catholic throughout his life. His theology, strong leanings towards Catholicism and his ritualism placed him squarely in the mould of the Oxford Movement. Like many High Church Anglicans, he faced a dilemma in the early years of the twentieth-century as to whether Canterbury could continue to accommodate them or whether low church elements would force them out to seek sanctuary with the Roman Catholics (see the reference above to the Ritual Commission). What he ultimately sought, and created in his own way, was a bridge between Rome and Canterbury that avoided many of the problems that attached to both. In his libel proceedings against The Times, Mathew stated that he had regarded himself throughout as a Catholic throughout, whichever church he had served in. That position, which Anson found utterly incomprehensible in Bishops at Large, is precisely that of legions of Anglo-Catholics and the founding principle of the Oxford Movement.

His character is best summed up by Williams,

"He was truly one of those of whom the world was not worthy - a man without guile. His kindness, sympathy and generosity were only too easily aroused and knew no bounds. Himself a good man, he seems to have been incapable of suspecting or understanding bad faith and treachery in others and so became a very easy victim to the unscrupulous...No man has ever been more thoroughly misunderstood or more viciously, wantonly and most unjustly persecuted. He was a man of simple tastes, possessed of a high appreciation of the beauties of nature, with a deep knowledge of Natural History. A real scholar, whose sound learning was by no means confined to the usual fields of clerical knowledge; a nobleman of great courage, perfect courtesy, the highest integrity and an address which can only be described as charming. A prelate of wonderful humility and very great personal sanctity, he died in the sixty-seventh year of his age, the forty-third of his priesthood and the twelfth of his episcopate."

Mathew could not believe that Davidson or other senior Anglicans could act out of malice towards him. He applied his own nobleman's standards to them as he did to all others he encountered.

Why did the Anglicans see Mathew as such a threat?
Mathew's consecration highlighted a crisis within the Church of England. After the condemnation of Anglican orders as "completely null and utterly void" by the Pope in Apostolicae Curae, many on the Catholic wing of the Church of England began to feel that Canterbury did not merit their loyalty. Factors such as the prosecutions and convictions of Arthur Tooth and Sydney Faithorn Green in the 1870s, and the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874, had also served to emphasise a Protestant ascendancy and the marginalisation of Anglo-Catholics.

While there was still widespread anti-Roman prejudice in Britain, the Church of England could rely on being able to control the majority of Anglo-Catholics in its ranks, as they would not leave to join the Roman Catholic Church. Mathew, however, threatened to split this position wide open by introducing an indigenous English ritualist church with valid orders and sacraments. The Anglicans feared that Anglo-Catholics would leave en masse to join Mathew, thereby plunging the Church of England into crisis and exposing the weakness that Apostolicae Curae had set out so clearly. This would have left the Church of England as a mere Protestant rump shorn of its former power. It was in order to preserve this power that Davidson determined that the only course open to the Church of England was to discredit Mathew and his successors through the spreading of falsehoods.

Were Mathew's orders valid in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church?
Unquestionably Mathew was accepted as a valid Roman Catholic priest, since he served in that denomination for a number of years. His Old Catholic episcopate was bestowed by four bishops, all of whom were in a valid line of Apostolic Succession from the Roman Catholic Church. His episcopate in the Order of Corporate Reunion likewise derived directly from Rome as well as from the Orthodox churches.

Writing in "Bishops at Large" (p.173), Peter Anson states,

"[The Anglican bishops] could not deny the validity of either Mathew's priesthood or his episcopate, for both were derived from unquestioned Roman Catholic sources. In 1908, the Church of Rome herself accepted the validity of orders conferred by the Church of Utrecht, which had been in a state of schism for nearly two hundred years."

In order to establish the issue beyond doubt, the Old Catholic Churches not in communion with the Utrecht Union determined to obtain a formal ruling from the Vatican. Accordingly, in 1982, the Vatican responded by confirming the sacramental validity of Mathew's orders, using the customary formula of description as "valid but illicit" since they were bestowed without the Vatican's consent. This means that both Mathew and those consecrated by him stand in valid Apostolic Succession according to the determination of the Vatican.

In addition, both the Patriarchate of Antioch and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria formally recognised the validity of Mathew and his church in the Acts of Union signed in 1911 and 1912 respectively, after he had broken from Utrecht. This places Mathew in the position of being a historical bridge between the East and West, a role which many of his successors have continued to take up.

The great majority of Independent and Old Catholics outside the Utrecht Union are the lineal descendants of Mathew, although others descend from Orthodox roots such as Vilatte and Ferrette, as well as from Roman Catholics such as Duarte Costa. The Mathew and Vilatte streams in particular united early on, meaning that relatively few bishops now descend only from Mathew. There are also many bishops who can claim descent from Utrecht via Michael Kowalsky and the Mariavite Church, and from a further line through Kreutzer which will be discussed below.

From time to time someone attempts to assert that Mathew's orders were invalid because of defective intent on his part. This false assertion arises through ignorance of normative canon law as practiced by the Roman Catholic Church. According to canon law, which holds that schismatic clergy retain all sacramental powers, Mathew's adherence to a particular denomination after his ordination or consecration had no bearing on his sacramental validity as a priest and bishop.

The Utrecht Union since Mathew's time
The Utrecht Union had already begun a movement towards Protestantism that was at odds with Mathew's view of ecclesiological development, as explained above. This work continued after the parting of the ways with Mathew in 1910. In 1925 the Utrecht Union accepted the validity of Anglican orders. In 1931 it entered into formal intercommunion with the Church of England, and remains so united.

The Utrecht Union has always been centred in continental Europe and particularly in the Low Countries, Germany and Switzerland. It has no presence in Britain as such because it regards the Church of England as its presence in that country.

Because of Anglican hostility to Mathew and his movement, as explained above, after 1910 the Union decided that it would not recognise its "separated brethren" who were the lineal heirs of Mathew's ORCC in Britain or the United States, where a large number of Mathew-derived communities exist. Even today, it does not generally comment officially on such clergy other than to say, correctly, that they are not in communion with the Union.

Concerning Mathew, their lost sheep, they are likewise keen to avoid discussion. In conferences and communications in the years after Mathew's departure in 1910, Herzog, who at one point had held Mathew in high regard, turned sharply against him, unfairly and falsely casting doubts on his validity and that of his successors. Much of the hearsay that had been put about by the Anglicans was now encouraged without regard for its truth. In particular, Herzog's statement that Mathew's motivation in seeking the episcopate was personal gain could not have been further from the truth, as the circumstances recounted above show. It was most convenient to discredit Mathew and forget about his ever having been a bishop of the Utrecht Union, whatever the truth of the matter, and their declaration of 28-29 April 1920 sought to do just that, blaming Mathew for O'Halloran's deception and ignoring that it was Mathew himself who had brought that deception to their attention with an offer of his immediate retirement which they had themselves refused. The Union's final word on Mathew was to pronounce his episcopate invalid on the spurious count that the documents presented by O'Halloran were materially false.

The Church of England under Davidson was, of course, only too ready to follow suit in their acceptance of this deliberate falsehood, since it removed from them the problem of recognition of Mathew's successors. Subsequent correspondence from Bishop Rinkel of the Union to Archbishop of Canterbury Cosmo Gordon Lang (11 March 1940) confirmed the decision of these churches to collude in explicitly denying the validity of Mathew, Vilatte (who had been ordained by Herzog) and their successors. This murky policy of involvement in deliberate falsehoods has impaired relations between the Anglican communion and the independent movement ever since, and has also influenced many who have written and spoken on the subject without necessarily being aware that they were acting as mouthpieces for Anglican propaganda.

Continuing on these lines, the Union has made clear thus far that there is no current possibility for those in the independent sacramental movement in Britain or the USA to seek intercommunion, concordats of amity or any other type of relationship with it unless their churches are sufficiently wealthy to own substantial church property and have large numbers of clergy and laity. In the United States, the Union took the decision to recognise only the Polish National Catholic Church, and no competing movements to it. The PNCC began its separation from the Union over the issue of women priests in 1997 and was eventually expelled from the Union in 2003, although its cathedral in Toronto reconciled with the Union on its own in 2004. Also in 2004, the Old Catholic Church in Slovakia seceded from the Union, again over the issue of women priests and the blessing of same-sex unions. Both the PNCC and the OCCS are now independent denominations.

Despite the position of the Union on the independent sacramental movement as outlined above, there are several bishops of Independent Catholic churches who are in fact in communion of it by virtue of their simultaneous status as bishops in the Philippine Independent Church (Aglipayan). The Philippine Independent Church, which is also in full communion with the Church of England, joined the Utrecht Union in 1965. Several bishops affiliated to the Apostolic Episcopal Church have also served the PIC as missionary bishops. These bishops include most prominently Archbishop Bertil Persson (Primate Emeritus, Apostolic Episcopal Church) and Bishop Count George Boyer (Bishop Emeritus, Apostolic Episcopal Church).

A further tacit acknowledgement of the validity of the Mathew line by the Union was in the consecration of the founding bishop of the Old Catholic Church of Hungary of the Utrecht Union, Fr. Vidor Deák. Deák's consecrator, of necessity, was none other than the Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, Adriaan Gerard Vreede, who had himself been consecrated by Wedgwood.

The Utrecht Union may be the largest lineal descendant of the Old Catholic movement, but it is not the only such descendant, nor are those churches that are not affiliated to it in any way lesser heirs to the heritage of Gul and Mathew - the Utrecht Succession. Because succession in the Catholic Church vests in individual bishops, not purely in this or that denomination, every bishop who has been validly consecrated in the line of Mathew inherits the full and unimpaired apostolic succession that he himself inherited from the Utrecht Union bishops Gul, van Thiel, Spit and Demmel. Just as the Utrecht Union retained its validity even after it had separated from Rome, the successors of Mathew, who represent the widest possible spectrum of theologies and individuals, retain their validity and apostolic history despite their separation from Utrecht. They are the Independent Old Catholics of the Utrecht Succession, preserving the freedom of conscience that characterises the history of Utrecht's own diocese as recounted above.

Erwin Kreutzer and Albert Dunstan Bell
Perhaps surprisingly in view of the events described above, a further Utrecht Union line  has passed into the independent sacramental movement some years after Mathew. This results from the consecration of Albert Dunstan Bell by Erwin Kreutzer, Old Catholic (Utrecht Union) Bishop of Bonn, Germany. Kreutzer himself was in direct apostolic line from Gul. Assisted by Utrecht Union bishops Henricus Johannes van Vlijmen, 13th Bishop of Haarlem (himself consecrated by Gul), and Johannes Hermannus Berends, Bishop of Deventer, Kreutzer consecrated Bell subconditionally in 1939. Bell was a bishop of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church - Utrecht Succession. He in turn consecrated Edgar Ramon Verostek for the NAORCCUS, who was active in consecrating other bishops, and who thus ensured that the line from Kreutzer has spread widely within the independent movement.

The Kreutzer consecration of Bell is significant because it means that the independent movement not only has a lineal descent from the Utrecht Union that is not through Mathew, but one that dates from well after his time. It provides a link within living memory that - just as the Mathew succession - reinforces that, although there may be a hopefully temporary separation between Utrecht and her independent descendants, that link is forever imprinted upon living history.

An ironic conclusion
Numerous bishops of Independent Catholic churches are in Apostolic Succession from both Mathew and Davidson, the latter via the line of the Philippine Independent Church.

Acknowledgements
This paper is indebted to the research of my friend and fellow bishop +Professor Bertil Persson, who has done a great deal to bring to light the true story of Mathew and subsequent events. His "A Brief Biographical Sketch" on Arnold Harris Mathew (Solna, St Ephrem's Institute, 2001) is full of relevant information and pointers to further research resources.