Founding The Liberal Catholic Church
On his return to England, Wedgwood learned that one of the bishops of the church, Frederick Samuel Willoughby, had become enmeshed in a homosexuality scandal and as a result had been suspended by Archbishop Mathew. He also learned that Mathew wanted all the clergy of the church to renounce Theosophy as he had heard from a non-Theosophical priest that the beliefs of the society were incompatible. Few bothered to reply to Mathew and shortly thereafter Mathew "dissolved" his church. Bishop Willoughby offered to consecrate Wedgwood to the episcopate in order to guard the apostolic succession as he had received it. Wedgwood, however, aware that the charges against Willoughby were substantially true, approached a number of other bishops seeking consecration. He wrote to the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, by whom Mathew had originally been consecrated, but received no reply. He then approached Bishop Frederick James, a fellow Theosophist and homosexual and a number of other freelance bishops, but none would oblige. With no other options open, Wedgwood received from Willoughy, King and Gauntlett the apostolic succession on 13 February 1916. This took place only after Archbishop Mathew had dissolved the Old Catholic Church in Great Britain and published a letter in The Times announcing his intention to join the Roman Catholic Church.
Later that year Wedgwood again travelled to Australia where he consecrated Leadbeater a bishop in Sydney on 22 July 1916. Leadbeater eventually succeeded Wedgwood as Presiding Bishop of the LCC. From that time forward Wedgwood travelled the world as a missionary bishop, creating the Liberal Rite (a form of Christian liturgy) in co-operation with Leadbeater, establishing missions of the church and publishing a stream of works on theology and liturgy including New Insights into Christian Worship and The Presence of Christ in the Holy Communion.
Read more about this topic: J. I. Wedgwood
Famous quotes containing the words catholic church, founding, liberal, catholic and/or church:
“It is time that the Protestant Church, the Church of the Son, should be one again with the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Father. It is time that man shall cease, first to live in the flesh, with joy, and then, unsatisfied, to renounce and to mortify the flesh.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education. School is where you go between when your parents cant take you and industry cant take you.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Barnards greatest war service ... was the continuance of full-scale instruction in the liberal arts ... It was Barnards responsibility to keep alive in the minds of young people the great liberal tradition of the past and the study of philosophy, of history, of Greek.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (18771965)
“Go, you are dismissed.
[Ite missa est.]”
—Missal, The. The Ordinary of the Mass.
Missal is book of prayers and rites used to celebrate the Roman Catholic mass during the year.
“She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God.”
—Alice Walker (b. 1944)