Classification Lutheran Polity Episcopal Name Anglo-Lutheran Church | Orientation Evangelical Catholic Founder Irl A. Gladfelter | |
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Associations Augustana Catholic Communion Origin 1997Kansas City, Missouri | ||
The Augustana Catholic Church (ACC), formerly the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) and the Evangelical Community Church-Lutheran (ECCL), is an American church in the Lutheran Evangelical Catholic tradition. The ACC says it is unique among Lutheran churches in that it is of both Lutheran and Anglo-Catholic heritage and has also been significantly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. The church was founded in 1997 by former members of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. Its headquarters are in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The ACC has long had a policy of seeking union with the Catholic Church and announced in 2011 that it would accept the conditions of Anglicanorum coetibus and join the personal ordinariates as they are established. Later developments on limitations of joining the ordinariate caused the ACC to hold their offer while they established intercommunion with groups such as the Old Roman Catholic Church of North America. The Church claims a membership in excess of 60,000 in 12 countries.
Contents
Doctrine
The Augustana Catholic Church considers Lutherans to be Catholics in a temporary involuntary schism imposed on it by the Roman Catholic Church when Martin Luther's attempt to start a renewal movement within Roman Catholicism slipped out of his control. The ACC teaches that Lutheranism in general is a form of non-Roman Catholicism, and considers the other Lutheran churches to be "Protestant" only to the extent that they have accepted insights from the Calvinist and Zwinglian phases of the Reformation.
The Augustana Catholic Church accepts the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, and Martin Luther's Small Catechism, but only insofar as they are in full agreement with Roman Catholic faith and order, doctrines, and traditions. The ACC recognizes the other documents contained in The Book of Concord—except for the Formula of Concord—but only insofar as they are in full agreement with Roman Catholic faith, order, doctrines and traditions. It does not accept the Formula of Concord on any level, nor is it bound by any of its terms and provisions, though it does respect it as a historical Lutheran document.
The ACC has accepted major modifications in sacramental theology and principles of church government from the Church of Sweden (Lutheran), the Oxford Movement of the Anglican Communion, and the documents and teachings of the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church which includes the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994).
The ACC says it is unique among Lutheran churches in that it accepts, as additional confessional documents, the Articles of Religion from the Book of Common Prayer as interpreted by John Henry Newman in Tracts for the Times (insofar as they do not conflict with authentic Catholic faith and tradition); the Roman Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Augsburg, Germany, 1999); the Catechism of the Catholic Church; and the documents and decrees of all Ecumenical Councils recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. The ACC's strongest connections are with the Roman Catholic Church and some form of visible, corporate unity with that church is the ecumenical goal of the ACC.
Since June 2008, all clergy of the ACC are required to sign a version of the Roman Catholic mandatum, a legally binding contract requiring the signatories not to teach, preach, write, or publish anything contrary to the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Augustana Catholic Church accepts papal primacy and papal infallibility even though it is not under papal control at this time.
The ACC is theologically and socially conservative, with the same view of the nature and authority of scripture as the Roman Catholic Church as stated in the Vatican II document, The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation - Dei verbum and the Pontifical Biblical Commission's document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church.
Worship
The worship of the Augustana Catholic Church is sacramental. It differs from other Lutheran churches by recognizing and celebrating the seven sacraments. The primary liturgy of the ACC is from the Book of Divine Worship, a book of rites authorized by Vatican and used by Anglican Use parishes of the Roman Catholic Church. Other rites approved and authorized for use by the Roman Catholic Church can also used by ACC clergy. Anglican, Lutheran, and other Protestant rites are not authorized for use by ACC clergy.
Polity and organization
The polity of the Augustana Catholic Church is episcopal rather than congregationalist and follows the model of the Roman Catholic Church. The ACC is governed by a metropolitan archbishop assisted by a vicar general and the Holy Synod (which consists of the bishops of the church and is concerned with matters of doctrine and polity) and the National Standing Committee (which includes lay members and is concerned with temporal administration and finance) and together they comprise the corporate Board of Directors. The ACC operates in accordance with the 1983 Code of Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church in areas not covered by its own canon law code.
The leadership of the Augustana Catholic Church changed on December 1, 2011, with the resignations of its founding metropolitan archbishop and the bishop of the Diocese of Michigan. On December 12, 2011, the Holy Synod (composed of the bishops) of the ACC elected and installed Archbishop Robert W. Edmondson as the church's second metropolitan archbishop.
On 8 April 2012, the ACC underwent a major reorganization by the metropolitan archbishop. It has two dioceses. The Diocese of the Northeast has been renamed the Diocese of the East and given the territory east of the western border of Ontario, Michigan; Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee to the Atlantic Ocean; and also given jurisdiction over the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and South America. The dioceses formerly having jurisdiction over those areas have been suppressed, and its former diocesan bishops given titular dioceses and positions as bishop directors of the various major church-wide offices in the metropolitan archbishop's curia which are identical in scope and authority to the similar dicasteries in the Roman Catholic Church's curia. The Diocese of the West has been given jurisdiction over the rest of the United States including Alaska and Hawaii, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
On April 24, 2012, Archbishop Edmondson of the Augustana Catholic Church and Archbishop Chris M. Hernandez, Archbishop Co-Adjutor of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church - Utrecht Succession, signed a Concordat of Full Communion and Pledge to Full Unity.
The ACC is a member of the Augustana Catholic Communion, the Sudanese Council of Churches USA and the Sudanese Council of Churches, and is in full communion with the Traditional Church of England, the Anglican Church-Traditional Rite (England, Scotland, and Wales,) the Anglican Church of the Americas, and the North American Old Roman Catholic Church - Utrecht Succession.
Orders
Where ordination, the priesthood, the episcopacy, and the papacy are concerned, the ACC rejects the teachings of Lutheranism and accepts all the Roman Catholic teachings. Other than not requiring celibacy of its clergy, there are no differences between the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and those of the ACC regarding the sacrament of Holy Orders. All ordinations and re-ordinations - without exception - are performed using the rites of ordination found in the most current edition of the Ordinal from the Pontifical of the Roman Catholic Church set within a celebration of the Roman Missal (Third Edition) or the Mass from the Roman Catholic Anglican Use Book of Divine Worship exclusively, with no additions or deletions apart from the deletion of the celibacy vow in the diaconal ordination rite, with the specific intention that ordination is into a sacrificing (sacerdotal) priesthood—a sacerdotium—instead of into a ministerium; admitting, both in theory and in practice, all that is involved in the Catholic doctrine of the sacerdotium.
All clergy entering from other churches who have not been ordained in the historic apostolic succession must be re-ordained. The clergy of the Augustana Catholic Church have all been ordained (or re-ordained) as deacons, priests and bishops in the historic apostolic succession, which it obtained in 2004 from Archbishop Peter Paul Brennan, O.C.R. of the Ecumenical Catholic Diocese of the Americas and Archbishops Francis C. Spataro, O.C.R. and Paget E. J. Mack, O.S.B.M. of the Apostolic Episcopal Church. The ACC's primary apostolic lineage is the Rebiban or Vatican succession, derived from the Roman Catholic Church through Archbishop Carlos Duarte Costa and the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church (ICAB). It also holds the Gerardus Gul lineage of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands among several others.
The Augustana Catholic Church has never had female clergy for the same reasons the Roman Catholic Church rejects the ordination of women, and has placed a moratorium on the ordination of women until such time as it is ordered by a Pope (for the diaconate) or an Ecumenical Council (for the priesthood and episcopacy). The ACC has the same policies as the Roman Catholic Church on the ordination of non celibate homosexual persons and the blessing of same-sex unions, permitting neither.
Petition for unity with the Holy See
On May 15, 2009, the Augustana Catholic Church officially filed a formal petition to enter the Roman Catholic Church "as a unified body" in whichever form the Pope and the Curia decides is the most appropriate. The ACC's petition was filed with the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and is before the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is a separate petition from that of the Traditional Anglican Communion.