The Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) is a body of Anglican Christians in the continuing Anglican movement, separate from the Anglican Communion centered on the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The continuing Anglican movement, and the Anglican Catholic Church, grew out of the 1977 Congress of St. Louis. The congress was held in response to the Episcopal Church's revision of the Book of Common Prayer, which organizers felt abandoned a true commitment to both scripture and historical Anglicanism. The decision to allow the ordination of women was one part of a larger theological position opposed by the Congress. As a result of the Congress, various Anglicans separated from the Episcopal Church and formed the "Anglican Church in North America" in order to continue the Anglican tradition as they understood it. The name was later changed to the Anglican Catholic Church. Its adherents have therefore claimed that this church is the true heir of the Church of England in the United States.
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.”
Read more about Anglican Catholic Church: History, Province I, Province II - Church of India (Anglican), Leadership
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“The Anglican Church is marked by the grace and good sense of its forms, by the manly grace of its clergy. The gospel it preaches is, “By taste are ye saved.” ... It is not in ordinary a persecuting church; it is not inquisitorial, not even inquisitive, is perfectly well bred and can shut its eyes on all proper occasions. If you let it alone, it will let you alone. But its instinct is hostile to all change in politics, literature, or social arts.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“In fact what America expects of its citizens and what the Catholic Church expects of the faithful are sometimes so different that they lead to an enormous ker-KLUNK between democracy and theology.”
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“Jesus: Senor, the widow Gomez delivered a son this morning, a boy.
Guthrie McCabe: Bully for the widow Gomez.
Jesus: But Senor, it has been more than a year ago since Senor Antonio Gomez has been buried in the church house.
McCabe: Well, there’s some men y’a just can’t trust to stay where you put ‘em.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)