Notes

Introduction: Other Catholics

1. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Richmond, Va., October 14–17, 2005.

2. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 16, 2005.

3. Ibid. “Sheep not of this fold” is a paraphrase of the Gospel of John 10:16.

4. Independent Catholics tend to call their bodies “churches” or “jurisdictions” rather than “denominations,” since the latter is a historically Protestant term with Protestant ecclesiological assumptions. That said, many independents do not find “denomination” objectionable and use it interchangeably with “church” and “jurisdiction.”

5. United States Department of the Interior, Census Office, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States, Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894), p. 3 (first listing of “Other Catholics [6 bodies]”).

After I adopted the working title “The Other Catholics” and before I found the phrase in the Census of 1890, I read that Father Jim Callan, a priest associated with the independent Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester, N.Y., called his parish “the other Catholic Church.” See Benjamin Zeller, “‘We’re the Other Catholic Church’: Feminism in a Radical Catholic Renewal Community,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 19, no. 2 (2003): 123–43, at pp. 123, 143. I also read journalist Nicholas Kristof’s column “The Other Catholic Church” (New York Times, April 17, 2010), which discusses not independent Catholics but rather Roman Catholic religious orders and laypeople committed to social justice and charity work.

6. Scholars of American religion often point out that labels borrowed from US political life such as “right,” “left,” “liberal,” and “conservative” are not satisfying and often inaccurate for religious groups, including Catholicism. But Catholics themselves use these words all the time, so for the sake of subjects’ self-description and fluid communication, I use them as well.

7. See Michael Cuneo, Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), which is the best work on the traditionalist side of non-Roman Catholicism.

8. In 2015 the Pew Research Center published “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” a study that calculates religious groups’ memberships as percentages of the population, with Catholics (presumptively Roman) coming in at 20.8 percent. The next largest body is the Southern Baptist Convention, which claims 5.3 percent. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” full report, May 12, 2015, p. 21.

9. In 2010 the United States Census Bureau estimated the national population at 308,745,531 people. To arrive at numbers for religious groups, I used percentages in the 2015 Pew study, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” p. 21: Orthodox 0.5, Muslim 0.9, Episcopalian 0.9, Mormon 1.6, Jewish 1.9, Pentecostal 3.6, Catholic 20.8. For the estimate of the number of US Quakers, I used the more accurate number of 87,000 (in 2007) cited on the website of the Friends General Conference.

10. In 2011, Roman Catholic Womenpriests split into two groups, the second of which is the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests. For more on Spiritus Christi, see Jody Caldwell, “From Corpus Christi to Spiritus Christi: The R/Evolution of an Independent Catholic Church,” PhD diss., Drew University, September 2010. For more on the Santa Muerte church, see R. Andrew Chesnut, Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

11. Robert Foss, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-eight, interview, Los Angeles, Calif., November 24, 2007.

12. A Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, Prepared and Enjoined by Order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (Rockford, Ill.: Tan Books, 1977), lesson 11, q. 496. Originally published by Benziger Brothers in New York in 1933.

13. On the Anglican origin of the term “Roman Catholic” and the opinion that it is a “qualification of the name Catholic commonly used in English-speaking countries by those unwilling to recognize the claims of the One True Church,” see, for example, Herbert Thurston, “Roman Catholic,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 13 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1912).

14. For examples of these discussions, see Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism: New Study Edition, new ed. (New York: HarperOne, 1994), pp. 4–5; Gerald O’Collins, Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. xi; Lawrence Cunningham, An Introduction to Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 7–8; and Evyatar Marienberg, Catholicism Today: An Introduction to the Contemporary Catholic Church (New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 3. My thanks go to William T. Cavanaugh for consultation on this question: email to author, January 27, 2015.

15. This line paraphrases Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 27. There are some self-identified US Catholics who do not do “sacraments, saints, and succession,” such as John Alexander Dowie and his “Christian Catholic Church,” many bishop-headed Catholic or “Cathol-ish” black Spiritualist and Pentecostal groups, and millions of Catholics who do not practice their faith. In these cases, I would still count them as Catholics on the basis of self-identification, with riffs on Hans Baer’s argument that the claim to Catholicism still means something about Catholicism, even in these cases, such as positioning for heritage, prestige, or authority in contexts of racism (or antienthusiasm or presumptive religiosity). Baer, The Black Spiritualist Movement: A Religious Response to Racism, 2nd ed. (1984; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001).

16. There was no formal Church of Antioch Annual Report in 2009, so for these numbers I used the Annual Reports of 2007 and 2008 (distributed at Convocations in Salinas, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico, respectively). States where the Church of Antioch had official presence in 2009 were Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. For reasons of national and international law, Antioch’s presence in Argentina under Archbishop Anastasia Voyatjides and in Australia under Archbishop Frank Bugge is as legally separate entities that maintain intercommunion agreements with the US body.

17. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch presiding archbishop and patriarch, age seventy-one, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., May 28, 2005.

18. Call to Action conferences featured masses celebrated by independent women priests from Spiritus Christi and Roman Catholic Womenpriests starting in 2002. On July 19, 2008, I sat in on the “Alternative Catholic” workshop: field notes, Joint Conference (Federation of Christian Ministries, CORPUS, Women’s Ordination Conference, and Roman Catholic Womenpriests), Boston, Massachusetts, July 18–20, 2008.

19. I spoke to two independent Catholic priests who were at that time serving as full-time pastors in Protestant churches: Richard Mapplebeckpalmer, White-Robed Monks of St. Benedict priest, interview; and Ken Babauta, Independent Catholic Churches International (ICCI) priest, telephone call with author, both in San Francisco, California, both on August 9, 2005. Mapplebeckpalmer served Grace North in Berkeley, California, a historically Congregational church. When he left, Grace North called another independent priest as its pastor, John Mabry of the American Catholic Church. Ken Babauta was called to two Disciples of Christ pastorates: St. Victor Catholic Community Church in Vallejo and then Barrett Avenue Christian Church in Richmond. Babauta said that Frederic Jones and Judith Jones, leaders of ICCI (now dispersed), also served as pastors of Congregational and Disciples of Christ churches in Vallejo and Chico. In addition, I heard about an independent priest working full-time on the ministry team of a Presbyterian church via my survey (Independent Catholicism Survey, question 29, respondent 395, April 11, 2012). Instances of the same are uncommon but not unheard of in American independent Catholic history.

On the “third stream,” see Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 6. In this reading, the other two streams are “mainline-denominational” and “evangelical.”

20. Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, p. 515.

21. I am thinking here of broad poststructuralist and decolonial projects (from Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault to Frantz Fanon and Ashis Nandy, and many more) to describe social systems riven with the interests of capital, surveillance, and subjection but never completely homogenized. As such, even repressive systems signal the heterogeneous other and the potential for change in micropolitical or even macropolitical ways. Interestingly, in this literature a consistent description of the heterogeneous other involves its weirdness and eccentricity—words that are often applied disparagingly to independents but that in this literature count as compliments. As Ashis Nandy quotes a character in E. M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India, “There are many kinds of failure, some of which succeed.” Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 107. On religion as flows, see Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008).

I am indebted to others who think about independent Catholics as “other” in similar ways. Scholar-bishop John Plummer writes that maybe the “anarchic confusion” of independent Catholicism actually constitutes “creative ferment” and “valuable ecclesiastical experiments,” in Plummer, The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement: A Study of Its Liturgy, Doctrine and Leadership in America (Dallas: Newt Books, 2004), p. 3. Kathleen Kautzer sees what she calls an “underground church” (including some independent Catholics) operating in resistance to imperial models of Catholicism, as described in Kautzer, The Underground Church: Nonviolent Resistance to Vatican Empire (London: Brill, 2012). Independent Catholic layperson Claudia Patchen heard my presentation on “other Catholics” and said she was reminded of the Jungian “other,” describing unknown or shadow parts of the self (field notes, Ascension Alliance Convocation, Seattle, Wash., August 20, 2011).

22. Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 207–16.

23. Roger Finke and Patricia Wittberg, “Organizational Revival from Within: Explaining Revivalism and Reform in the Roman Catholic Church,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39, no. 2 (June 2000): 154–70; H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Holt, 1929). Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch had developed the vocabulary of “church” and “sect” in earlier works.

24. Dena Ross, “Sinéad O’Connor’s Act of Love,” Beliefnet, no date (late June 2007); and Ted Olsen, “Sinéad O’Connor’s Theology and ‘Theology,’” Christianity Today, July 9, 2007. For the New York show, see Ben Ratliff, “Old-Time Religion in Modern Guise,” New York Times, July 28, 2013.

25. Plummer, Many Paths, pp. v, 66–67; Lewis Keizer, The Wandering Bishops: Apostles of a New Spirituality (1976; Aromas, Calif.: Home Temple Press, 2001), pp. 21–22. The episcopi vagantes, or “wandering bishops,” date to the fourth century. These bishops were usually recognized by church authorities as bishops but were not associated with a particular diocese in regular ways; rather, they roamed and ministered across diocesan boundaries, sometimes causing problems for jurisdictional order.

26. J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, 8th ed. (Detroit: Gale/Cengage, 2009).

27. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, [midwestern city and state], September 10–14, 2009.

1. Weeping and Woo-Woo: Observing Independent Catholicism in America

1. Karen Arthur, dir., The Staircase (BWE Distribution/Craig Anderson Productions/TeleVest Entertainment, 1998).

2. Field notes, Santa Fe, N.M., May 23, 2008.

3. On the “proximate other,” see Jonathan Z. Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes” (1985), republished in Relating Religion: Essays in the Study of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 251–302.

4. On my Independent Catholic Survey, 64 percent of Antioch respondents said they were formerly Roman Catholic or Eastern Catholic within the Roman communion (question 30). I talked with Marian and Cindy after mass in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania: field notes, Philadelphia, Pa., July 29, 2007.

5. Field notes, Santa Fe, N.M., April 7, 2007. As Bryan and his fianceé learned in a Pre-Cana class in a Roman Catholic parish, Roman canon law requires a Petrine Privilege or a Pauline Privilege to go forward with a marriage such as theirs. These Privileges are somewhat similar to annulments, granted to dissolve nonsacramental marriages in favor of marriages in which one of the parties will first be newly baptized a Catholic. See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Norms on the Preparation of the Process for the Dissolution of the Marriage Bond in Favour of the Faith, April 30, 2001.

6. Conservative Roman takes on left-leaning and right-leaning independents can be found in many fora of conservative Catholic opinion. Richard Chonak, for example, used the word “kooks” for sedevacantists. Richard Chonak, “Come Home, Traditionalists,” Catholic Light, July 10, 2004.

Roman excommunications of independents have been covered in the US media. In the cases of Father Anthony Garduno and Father Ned Reidy, their former Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino held heresy trials in 2003 and 2005, respectively, after they left Rome to found independent Catholic parishes. In 2003, the Archdiocese of Atlanta sued the Mision Catolica: Capilla de la Fe, headed by Bishop Julio Cesar Freitas, possibly associated with the Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church, charging that it falsely claimed to be Catholic. The church protested that it was Catholic but not Roman Catholic. The archdiocese won the suit, as reported by the Associated Press, “Judge Sides with Archdiocese in Lawsuit,” October 7, 2003. In addition to other coverage, see Michael McGough, “‘Property of Rome’? Does the Vatican Have Exclusive Rights to the Word ‘Catholic’?,” Slate, October 31, 2003.

For the Hotchkin quotation, see Margaret Ramirez, “A Confusion of Churches,” Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2000. For the Cairo quotation, see Julie Gallego, “Old Catholic Mission an Independent Success,” Press-Telegram (Long Beach, Calif.), July 9, 1990, in J. Gordon Melton American Religions Collection, University of California at Santa Barbara Archives, Folder: American Catholic Church–Old Catholic (St. Matthew’s).

7. Vatican Council II, Unitatis redintegratio, November 21, 1964, sections 1, 3, 4, and 13.

8. See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “General Decree Regarding the Delict of Attempted Sacred Ordination of a Woman,” December 19, 2007, and Vatican Information Service, “Modifications Made in the Normae de gravioribus delicts,” July 15, 2010. Both documents deal with specific canons in the Code of Canon Law, cc. 1365 and 1378, in The Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition (Washington, D.C.: Canon Law Society of America, 1983).

9. For the Vilatte quotation, see Serge A. Theriault, Msgr. René Vilatte: Community Organizer of Religion, 1854–1929 (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006), p. 171. For the Ramerman quotation, see Angela Bonavoglia, “One Woman Who Refused to Wait: The Ordination of Mary Ramerman,” in Good Catholic Girls: How Women Are Leading the Fight to Change the Church (New York: ReganBooks, 2005), pp. 237–56, at p. 248.

10. In 2012 the Polish National Catholic Church website claimed twenty-five thousand members in the United States. In his study of traditionalists, Michael Cuneo says the SSPX has thirty to forty thousand members: Cuneo, The Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 92.

11. Reverend Phil, “Thou Shalt Love,” television interview of Archbishop Richard Gundrey and Bishop Daniel Dangaran on “Words of the Prophets,” Santa Fe Community TV, Comcast Cable Channel 16 (Santa Fe, N.M.), Program #21 (November 2, 2009).

12. Herman Spruit, “Toward a Synthesis of the Metaphysical and Sacramental Schools of Spirituality,” Church Archives CD, Document 99, no date, p. 1.

13. Usage of “independent Catholic” by independents themselves became common in the 1990s, likely due to increased use by authors of encyclopedias and compilers of directories. J. Gordon Melton’s first edition of the Encyclopedia of American Religions was published in 1978 and includes, under “Western Liturgical Family,” a section for “Independent and Old Catholic Churches.” Alan Bain’s “Bishops Irregular”: An International Directory of Independent Bishops (Bristol, UK: A. M. Bain, 1985) and his directory (compiled with Gary Ward and Bertil Persson) Independent Bishops: An International Directory (Detroit: Apogee Books, 1990) mention “independent bishops,” not “independent Catholics,” but in the latter volume Melton supplies a preface that calls its subjects “independent Catholic bishops” (p. v). Antioch founder Herman Spruit certainly used the term. One work from 1980, for example, mentions the “free and independent Catholic Movement,” “Independent Catholics,” and (in a draft version) “Independent Catholic Christianity.” See The Conquest of the Rings: A Writing by Patriarch Herman as an Introduction to Sophia Divinity School and a Few Other Brief Articles, book C, ed. Richard Gundrey (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School Press, 2008), first item, no pagination, original pagination 1–12. Also available in Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Faith. See also Herman Spruit, “The Conquest of the Rings,” draft of The Conquest of the Rings, Church Archives CD, Document 31, January 1, 1980.

Possibly the earliest usage of “independent Catholic” in the United States, however, dates to 1819, when a Roman Catholic priest was solicited by parish trustees in Charleston, South Carolina, to help start an “Independent Catholick Church of the United States,” as I describe more in the next chapter. See Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, First Bishop of Charleston, 1786–1842, vol. 1 (New York: America Press, 1927), pp. 271–79. After that, players in various church ruptures as well as historians of these episodes continually used terms such as “independent Catholic church,” “Independent American Catholic Church,” and “independentism.”

14. Thomas Siebert, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-two, interview, Richmond, Va., July 22, 2007. Michael Adams, email to author, February 10, 2011. Roman Catholic Womenpriests (RCWP) claims its first ordinations took place at the hands of Roman bishops operating outside of Roman protocols, a common independent pattern. But RCWP wishes its ordinations to be seen as prophetic and transformational within and for Roman Catholicism, not for an independent body. It models itself on the “Philadelphia Eleven,” unauthorized women priests in the US Episcopal Church who were later accepted by its General Convention. I acknowledge here that my discussing RCWP alongside independents does not accord with many Womenpriests’ self-understanding. I stop short of calling them independents, but do believe there is warrant to include Womenpriests in a discussion of independents.

15. John Plummer, The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement (Dallas: Newt Books, 2004). As Plummer acknowledges, part of the term was first used in the 1980s by the Synod of Independent Sacramental Churches. See J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, 8th ed. (Detroit: Gale/Cengage, 2009), pp. 721, 1207. Then Richard Smoley wrote of “independent sacramental” groups in Smoley, Inner Christianity: A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition (Boston: Shambhala, 2002), pp. 223–24. But it was definitely Plummer who catalyzed the widespread discussion and common use of it among independents themselves.

On the Independent Catholic Survey, I asked: “This survey uses the term ‘independent Catholicism’—is that what you call it?” Of all respondents, 54 percent said yes, 21 percent said no, and 26 percent said sometimes (Independent Catholicism Survey, question 15). Of those who responded no or sometimes and gave a further explanation in the Independent Catholicism Survey, question 16, almost all mentioned “independent sacramental” or Plummer’s work specifically.

16. Lewis Keizer, The Wandering Bishops: Apostles of a New Spirituality (1976; Aromas, Calif.: Home Temple Press, 2001), p. 41.

17. Cuneo, Smoke of Satan, pp. 100–108. See also Plummer, Many Paths, pp. 21–25.

18. On the word “tradition” as used in religions and religious studies, as well as the idea that some traditions serve to authorize other traditions, see Ann Taves, “Catholic Studies and Religious Studies: Reflections on the Concept of Tradition,” in The Catholic Studies Reader, ed. James Fisher and Margaret McGuinness (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), pp. 113–28.

19. Cyprian, De unitate (251), in St. Cyprian, The Lapsed/The Unity of the Catholic Church, trans. Maurice Bévenot, Ancient Christian Writers: Ante-Nicene Era Collection 25 (Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist/Newman Press, 1957), pp. 43–65.

20. Augustine, Contra epistolam Parmeniani II: 28 (c. 400 CE). See Augustin, Contra epistulam Parmeniani, in Oeuvres de Saint Augustin, Bibliothèque Augustinienne, vol. 28, 4e série, Traités Anti-Donatistes, vol. 1, trans. G. Finaert (Paris: Desclée de Brower, 1963), pp. 208–481. See also canon 6 of the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE); and Edward Schillebeeckx, The Church with a Human Face: A New and Expanded Theology of Ministry (New York: Crossroad, 1985), pp. 154–56, 191–94. The phrase ex opere operato was defended in the Council of Trent document On the Sacraments (Seventh Session, First Decree, c. VIII) to counter the Protestant idea of ex opere operantis, which held that sacramental efficacy was affected by the moral standing of the priest and the recipient. The idea of the “indelible” mark of ordination can be seen in c. IX of the same Trent document, which anathematizes anyone who would deny that “in the three sacraments, Baptism, to wit, Confirmation, and Order, there is not imprinted in the soul a character, that is, a certain spiritual and indelible Sign, on account of which they cannot be repeated.” Council of Trent, On the Sacraments, March 3, 1547.

21. For an account of eastern Christian churches, see Michael Burgess, The Eastern Orthodox Churches: Concise Histories with Chronological Checklists of Their Primates (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005).

22. Taves, “Catholic Studies and Religious Studies,” p. 118; see also pp. 124–26.

23. Jordan Stratford, quoted in Siobhan Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians: European Roots of Esoteric Independent Catholicism (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), p. 6.

24. Pope Leo XIII pronounced Anglican orders invalid in Apostolicae curae, September 18, 1896.

25. Alan Bain, “Bishops Irregular,” p. 12.

26. “Magic hands theology” is a phrase I first heard at the Joint Conference (Federation of Christian Ministries, CORPUS, Women’s Ordination Conference, and Roman Catholic Womenpriests) in Boston in 2008 (field notes, July 19, 2008). Various progressive Roman Catholics since Vatican II experimented with or even standardized in their communities such practices as communal consecration of the Eucharist, lay presidership, or priestless masses, usually shielding local bishops from the knowledge of such practices.

27. For the Schüssler-Fiorenza quotation, see Peter Steinfels, “Women Wary About Aiming to Be Priests,” New York Times, November 14, 1995. Women-Church Convergence describes itself as “Catholic-rooted” on its website homepage. Dutch Province of the Dominicans, “Church and Ministry,” January 11, 2007. Garry Wills, Why Priests? A Failed Tradition (New York: Penguin, 2013), p. 256. Hans Küng, Why Priests? A Proposal for a New Church Ministry (New York: Doubleday, 1972).

28. Marian Ronan, “Living It Out: Ethical Challenges Confronting the Roman Catholic Women’s Ordination Movement in the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 23, no. 2 (2007): 149–69, at p. 162. Field notes, Intentional Eucharistic Communities Conference, Chevy Chase, Md., May 15–17, 2009 (IEC Conference 2009). Michele Dillon, “Lived Spirituality,” PowerPoint presentation at IEC Conference 2009, May 16.

29. Archbishop Irene (no last name given), quoted in Karl Pruter and J. Gordon Melton, eds., The Old Catholic Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 1983), pp. 86–87. Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Women Priests Offer Different Approaches to Valid Ordination,” National Catholic Reporter, August 10, 2010.

30. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, March 1, 2008. Diana Phipps, Church of Antioch bishop, age sixty-three, interview, Fredericksburg, Tex., June 16, 2007. Pope Paul VI, Lumen gentium, November 21, 1964, sec. 10. Plummer, Many Paths, p. 103.

31. On these “inner” lines of apostolic succession, see Plummer, Many Paths, pp. 31–36; Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians, pp. 37–66; Rob Angus Jones, Independent Sacramental Bishops: Ordination, Authority, Lineage, and Validity (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2010), pp. 154–81; and Phillip Charles Lucas, The Odyssey of a New Religion: The Holy Order of MANS from New Age to Orthodoxy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

32. John Plummer, Twitter @priestcraft, June 3, 2012.

33. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Santa Fe, N.M., October 21, 2006.

34. Bain, “Bishops Irregular,” p. 14.

35. Bob Ross, radio interview of Archbishop Richard Gundrey, “Live from the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market,” Santa Fe Public Radio KSFR (March 15, 2008); and Richard Gundrey, “Starting a Real Church and Keeping It Going,” presentation at Sursum Corda II Conference, October 5–8, 2003, DVD by Jim Waters/Sanctus Media. Gentle Shepherd Church, brochure, obtained by author in church vestibule, October 2005. “All of the sacraments” was on the website of the Ancient Apostolic Communion. “Vatican-Free Catholics!” was on the website of the National Catholic Church of America.

36. Richard Gundrey, “What Is an Independent Catholic Church?,” brochure (Church of Antioch, 2002), obtained by author at the information table before mass at Loretto.

37. Peter Levenda, “A Field Guide to Wandering Bishops,” in Sinister Forces: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft, book 1, The Nine (Walterville, Oreg.: Trineday), pp. 333–45, at p. 339.

38. Scholars who have analyzed the roles of Catholicism and Protestantism in American imagination and ideology include Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Tracy Fessenden, Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); and John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: Norton, 2003).

39. Jeff Diamant, “Some Dissenters Quit the Church but Don’t Stop Being Catholic,” Washington Post (Religion News Service), January 10, 2007. Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 8, 510.

40. Adolph Schalk, “The New-Fashioned Old Catholics,” U.S. Catholic, May 1974, pp. 35–38, at pp. 35, 38. Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism: New Study Edition, new ed. (New York: HarperOne, 1994), pp. 242–46. Garry Wills, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (New York: Doubleday, 2000). Hans Küng, The Catholic Church: A Short History (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 167.

41. David Haldane, “Faithful, Yet Not Traditional Catholics,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 2006. Independent Catholic Survey, question 32. Thomas Reese, “The Hidden Exodus: Catholics Becoming Protestants,” National Catholic Reporter, April 18, 2011. William Byron and Charles Zech, “Why They Left: Exit Interviews Shed Light on Empty Pews,” America, April 30, 2012. See also Jerry Filteau, “Unusual Study Asks Former Catholics Why They Left Church,” National Catholic Reporter, March 23, 2012; and the Pew Research Center, “U.S. Catholics Open to Non-Traditional Families,” full report, September 2, 2015, pp. 12–17.

42. On the Ecumenical Catholic Diocese of America, see Melton, Encyclopedia, p. 115. Call to Action conference programs publicized the celebration of mass by women priests as of 2006, but Mary Ramerman of Spiritus Christi presided at conference altars earlier: field notes, Joint Conference, July 19, 2008.

43. Field notes, Joint Conference, July 19, 2008. For the story of cooperation between CORPUS, the ECC, and the Community of John XXIII, see the link on the Community of John XXIII’s website.

44. Kathleen Kautzer, The Underground Church: Nonviolent Resistance to Vatican Empire (London: Brill, 2012), pp. 9, 23, 25, 36–37.

45. On trends of Roman Catholic laity, see William D’Antonio, James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge, and Mary L. Gautier, American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), esp. pp. 173–83; and William D’Antonio, Michele Dillon, and Mary Gautier, American Catholics in Transition (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), esp. pp. 167–79. I found the review of “keelynelson” not on Yelp but on a wedding website forum, projectwedding.com (dated July 29, 2010).

46. Field notes, Santa Fe, N.M., May 23, 2008.

47. Robert Dittler, White-Robed Monks abbot, and Tom Dowling, White-Robed Monks priest, joint interview, San Francisco, Calif., August 10, 2005. Dittler, email to author, August 5, 2012, and “About the Monks” on the White-Robed Monks website. In the same interview, Tom Dowling described Roman priests’ referrals as “totally off-the-radar.”

48. For “entrepreneurial,” see “While We’re at It,” First Things, April 2000, pp. 89–90, which mentions Antioch’s Sophia Divinity School by name. Old Catholics of Europe and the United States also criticize US independents for being “entrepreneurs” running “sacrament mills” who have “objectified the laity as consumers of religion”: see Robert Caruso, The Old Catholic Church (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), pp. 95 and 139, as well as the introduction by Björn Marcussen, p. xi. Plummer, Many Paths, p. 92.

49. Tim Townsend, “St. Stanislaus in Discussions to Join Episcopal Diocese of Missouri,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 3, 2013.

50. Currently the community church movement manifests primarily in the International Council of Community Churches. See Melton, Encyclopedia, pp. 262–63; Theriault, Msgr. René Vilatte, pp. 32–41; and Ralph J. Shotwell, Unity Without Uniformity: History of the Community Church Movement, 2nd ed. (Frankfort, Ill.: Community Church Press, 2000). Peter E. Gillquist, Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith, rev. ed. (1992; Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2001).

51. Field notes, Shabazz African Orthodox Church, The Slave Theater #1, Brooklyn, N.Y., October 16, 2011. I used the population of Goldston as listed in the 2010 US Census for zip code 27252.

52. Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain: An Autobiography of Faith, 50th anniversary ed. (1948; San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1998), pp. 357–58.

53. Linda Rounds-Nichols, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-eight, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007. Field notes, Gig Harbor, Wash., September 14, 2008.

54. For attendance figures: Richard Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ in All Life,” in A Strange Vocation: Independent Bishops Tell Their Stories, ed. Alistair Bate (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), pp. 72–77, at p. 75; Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, April 17, 2006; Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, December 26, 2006; field notes, Santa Fe, N.M., April 8. Archbishop Richard defined membership as “Show up and give money” at a Convocation business meeting: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 21, 2006.

55. On Roman Catholic counting, see Clifford Grammich, Kirk Hadaway, Richard Houseal et al., 2010 U.S. Religious Census: Religious Congregations and Membership Study, Association for Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (Kansas City, Mo.: Nazarene Publishing House, 2012), pp. 655–56.

56. See the appendix for my Independent Catholicism Survey and detailed results. The questions it replicates are found in D’Antonio, Davidson, Hoge, and Gautier, American Catholics Today, pp. 173–83. I compared responses on my survey with results in that volume, and in D’Antonio, Dillon, and Gautier, American Catholics in Transition, pp. 167–79.

I also consulted books that focus on Roman Catholic progressives: William D’Antonio and Anthony Pogorelc, Voices of the Faithful: Loyal Catholics Striving for Change (New York: Herder and Herder, 2007), pp. 226–35; and Michele Dillon, Catholic Identity: Balancing Reason, Faith, and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Dillon’s small survey of IEC attendees was a final source of comparison with Roman church members whom she calls “pro-change Catholics”: Michele Dillon, “Lived Spirituality,” PowerPoint presentation at Intentional Eucharistic Communities Conference, Chevy Chase, Md., May 16, 2009.

Though I copied D’Antonio’s questions in American Catholics Today wherever possible, my comparisons of independents and Romans are inexact for several reasons. The biggest reason, as I state in the main text, is that the aforementioned surveys of Roman Catholics are large national polls of statistically random samples, and my survey is a convenience sample of only 407 respondents. To compare results from these two poll genres is to compare the proverbial apples and oranges.

Comparison is also problematic because my survey could not ask all the same questions or ask them in the same way. For example, the D’Antonio survey asks a question that assumes “the Catholic Church” teaches against same-sex marriage (D’Antonio, Davidson, Hoge, and Gautier, American Catholics Today, pp. 173–74). I could not replicate this question, given the vagueness of “the Catholic Church” to my respondents and their lack of supposition that Catholic teaching opposes same-sex marriage. In this case and other cases, I adapted questions to fit independent respondents. Conversely, my survey asks questions that these surveys of Roman Catholics do not, such as what kind of Catholicism respondents follow and their sexual orientation. But whenever I adjust or add questions, comparability suffers.

A final drawback to the comparison is the difference in the clergy component of respondents. My survey culls a majority of clergy—64 percent—because independent churches are made up primarily of worker-priests who minister outside their own group. Surveys of Roman Catholics poll almost exclusively laypeople. However, for my purpose of a very rough comparison between independent and Roman Catholics, this is a difference I can live with, for three reasons. First, in analyzing my results I always separate lay and clerical responses where that status is relevant. Second, independent worker-priests with day-jobs, the option to marry, and children live lives structurally more similar to Roman Catholic lay leaders than Roman Catholic professional priests. Third, more of the independent Catholic population can receive Holy Orders—not just celibates and not just men. This means that more independents are priests because they can be, and also because “open orders” actively attract those who understand themselves to be called to the priesthood but who are unable to answer the vocation in another communion.

57. For these numbers: Dillon, “Lived Spirituality,” slide 8; D’Antonio, Davidson, Hoge, and Gautier, American Catholics Today, p. 178; D’Antonio and Pogorelc, Voices of the Faithful, p. 226; and Independent Catholicism Survey, questions 35, 19, and 20.

58. Dillon, “Lived Spirituality,” slide 8. Independent Catholicism Survey, questions 36, 37.

59. Independent Catholicism Survey, question 43, asked, “How do you identify your sexual orientation?,” and question 42 asked about gender identity, listing transgender and four other choices. Figures on the prevalence of gender transitioning in the general population are disputed, but are usually given in the range of one in tens of thousands, for example, at the website of the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health. So no matter what figures you use, the independent Catholic answer—1 in 66—is a much higher prevalence. For my gender totals, I counted transgender persons in the category of the gender to which they transitioned.

60. For a poignant and provocative discussion of Catholicism’s non-cis qualities, see Mark Jordan, The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). On the past innovating functions of religious orders, see Roger Finke and Patricia Wittberg, “Organizational Revival from Within: Explaining Revivalism and Reform in the Roman Catholic Church,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 39, no. 2 (June 2000): 154–70.

61. Gundrey, interview by Ross, 2008.

62. “Wildcat” is a characterization that shows up successively in William Whalen, Separated Brethren: A Survey of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Old Catholic, and Other Denominations in the United States, rev. and enlarged (Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1972), p. 228; Schalk, “The New-Fashioned Old Catholics,” p. 37; and Richard Newman, “Black Bishops: Some African-American Old Catholics and Their Churches,” in Words Like Freedom: Essays on African-American Culture and History (West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1996), pp. 107–48, at pp. 111–12.

63. Claire Vincent (pseudonymized at interviewee’s request), Church of Antioch seminarian, age forty-five, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007.

64. I presented work at the American Religious History Workshop at Princeton University on October 22, 2009, and the next day Father Ted Feldmann reported to the group on the listserv. Father Ted’s partner John DeLoach as well as Mother JoEllen Werthman and her husband Rob Werthman made the trip.

65. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Santa Fe, N.M., May 2005, April 2007, and May 2008.

66. Herman Spruit, The Conquest of the Rings, inner front cover.

67. On the “ethnography uncertainty principle,” see Sarah McFarland Taylor, Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. xviii–xx.

68. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Richmond, Va., October 16, 2005; Antioch Convocation, October 20 and 22, 2006; Austin, Tex., June 23, 2007; Richmond, Va., July 22, 2007; Church of Antioch Convocation, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007; Santa Fe, N.M., May 27, 2008; Gig Harbor, Wash., September 14, 2008; and Arizona (mostly Phoenix area), April 7–9, 2009.

69. Field notes, Ascension Alliance Convocation, Seattle, Wash., August 20, 2011; Ascension Alliance Convocation, Tahlequah, Okla., August 24, 2014; and Church of Antioch Convocation, [midwestern city and state], October 25, 2014.

70. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 21, 2006; Antioch Convocation, October 7, 2007; [Arizona city], Ariz., April 8, 2009. Daniel Dangaran, Church of Antioch priest (later bishop), age fifty-three, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 5, 2007. In my field notes I count five other times that Antiochians counseled me to answer a call to the priesthood.

71. Field notes, Santa Fe, various; Antioch Convocation, October 21, 2006; Houston, Tex., June 20, 2007; [Arizona city], Ariz., April 8, 2009.

72. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 16, 2005; Antioch Convocation, October 21, 2006; Santa Fe, N.M., May 25–26, 2008.

73. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 16, 2005.

2. Mission and Metamorphosis: Narrating Modern Catholic History

1. For accounts of Varlet’s life, see Basil Guy, ed., Domestic Correspondence of Dominique-Marie Varlet, Bishop of Babylon, 1678–1742 (Leiden: Brill, 1986); Serge Theriault, Msgr. Dominique M. Varlet: Originator of the Old Catholic Episcopal Succession, 1678–1742 (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2008); Pierre Hurtubise, “Dominique-Marie Varlet, 1678–1742,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3, 1741–1770, ed. Marc La Terreur et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), pp. 639–41; J. M. Neale, A History of the So-Called Jansenist Church of Holland (1858; New York: AMS Press, 1970), pp. 241–77; and C. B. Moss, The Old Catholic Movement, Its Origins and History (London: Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, 1948), pp. 119–23. Throughout this section I use common information in these biographies, and add footnotes for unique or contested information.

2. Charles E. Peterson, Notes on Old Cahokia (Cahokia, Ill.: Jarrot Mansion Project, 1999).

3. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, pp. 84–85.

4. On the European religious scene from the ancien régime to Revolutionary France, I consulted Jean Delumeau, Catholicism Between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (London: Burns and Oates, 1977); Dale Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996); Jeffrey Burson, “The Catholic Enlightenment in France from the Fin de Siècle Crisis of Consciousness to the Revolution, 1650–1789,” in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, ed. Ulrich Lehner and Michael Printy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 63–126; and Derek Beales, Prosperity and Plunder: European Catholic Monasteries in the Age of Revolution, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

5. See Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition: Constitutionalism Within the Catholic Church, 1300–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); and Dale Van Kley, “Catholic Conciliar Reform in an Age of Anti-Catholic Revolution,” in Religious Differences in France: Past and Present, ed. Kathleen Perry Long (Kirkland, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2006), pp. 91–140.

6. Following the practice of historians of the era, I have not used the word “Jansenism” for Augustinianism prior to the turn of the eighteenth century, before which the label would be “anachronistic,” says historian Charles Parker, “impos[ing] a view that they would not recognize or accept” (email to author, January 22, 2009). On Jansenism here and throughout this section, see Dale Van Kley, The Jansenists and the Expulsion of the Jesuits from France, 1757–65 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975); Brian Strayer, Suffering Saints: Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in France, 1640–1799 (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2008); and Catherine Maire, “Port Royal: The Jansenist Schism,” in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions, ed. Pierre Nora and Lawrence Kritzman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), pp. 301–52. For “campaigns,” see Strayer, Suffering Saints, pp. 10–11.

7. On widespread Catholic experimentation, see Van Kley, The Religious Origins. For quotation, see Strayer, Suffering Saints, pp. 10–11; see also 280–81.

8. Owen Chadwick, “The Italian Enlightenment,” in The Enlightenment in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 90–105, at p. 103. Ulrich Lehner, Enlightened Monks: The German Benedictines, 1740–1803 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 2. Lehner, “Introduction: The Many Faces of the Catholic Enlightenment,” in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, ed. Ulrich Lehner and Michael Printy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 1–62, at p. 12. On the stateside reputation of Jansenism, see Lawrence McCaffrey, Textures of Irish America (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998), pp. 56, 191–92.

9. Lynn Wood Mollenauer, Strange Revelations: Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIV’s France (University Park: Penn State University Press, 2007).

10. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, pp. 3, 24–25.

11. Ibid., p. 10.

12. Ibid., pp. 3–4.

13. On Mobile, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia, see Jay Higgenbotham, Old Mobile: Fort Louis de la Louisiane, 1702–1711 (1977; Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1990), and Natalie Maree Belting, Kaskaskia Under the French Regime (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1948). In addition, John Gilmary Shea discusses the “famous Jansenist Varlet” by name in Shea, History of the Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States, 1529–1854 (New York: Dunigan and Brother, 1855), pp. 12, 424; he tells of the death of Bergier and the celebration of the medicine men (p. 422). See also Shea, The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, 1521–1763 (New York: John G. Shea, 1886), which features sections on “The Seminary Priests at Tamarois,” “Very Rev. Dominic M. Varlet, V.G.,” and “Cahokia” (pp. 535–38, 543–44, 554–57).

14. On Cahokia’s population, Shea says Cahokia had “forty-seven families” in 1715, the year Varlet arrived. Shea, Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 554. “White collars” vs. “black robes”: Higgenbotham, Old Mobile, p. 102.

15. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, p. 5. Belting, Kaskaskia Under the French Regime, pp. 12, 41. See also Hurtubise, “Dominique-Marie Varlet.”

16. Here and following, I use Laurence Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavid Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 9, 31–33, 74–79; Roger Savory, Iran Under the Safavids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 120, 176; and Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), p. 151.

17. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, pp. 5–6, 25–26.

18. Ibid., p. 6. Neale (History of the So-Called Jansenist Church, p. 242) and Moss (The Old Catholic Movement, p. 120) give different accounts of the route change.

19. Charles H. Parker, Faith on the Margins: Catholics and Catholicism in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 1–58.

20. For “never forgotten,” see Neale, History of the So-Called Jansenist Church, p. 244. For “charity” and the rest, see Guy, Domestic Correspondence, p. 7.

21. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, p. 8. Moss, The Old Catholic Movement, p. 121. Alexander Hamilton, A New Account of the East Indies, vol. 1 (London: C. Hitch and A. Millar, 1744). For consular reports of detainment in Shamakhi, see Savory, Iran Under the Safavids, pp. 117, 176–77.

22. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, pp. 8–9. Neale, History of the So-Called Jansenist Church, p. 245.

23. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, pp. 9, 26, 31–32.

24. Ibid., pp. 11–12.

25. Neale, History of the So-Called Jansenist Church, pp. 249, 253.

26. Ibid., p. 256.

27. Ibid., pp. 256–57, 266–67.

28. Guy, Domestic Correspondence, p. 20. Neale, History of the So-Called Jansenist Church, p. 277.

29. Guy notes (Domestic Correspondence, p. 22) that brothers attending Varlet’s room at his death reported the odeur de sainteté—the supernaturally floral scent traditionally said to rise from the bodies of expired saints. John E. Holman writes that the Old Catholic Church of America celebrates Varlet’s anniversary of death as a feast day: Holman, The Old Catholic Church of America (n.p.: Old Catholic Church of America, 1977), p. 72. Raphael J. Adams, “Meet the Ultrajectines: A Brief Introduction to Old Catholic Thought,” New Perspectives (Louisville, Ky.) 3, no. 1 (2002): 11–14.

30. Van Kley, “Catholic Conciliar Reform,” p. 99.

31. Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John Carroll: Archbishop of Baltimore, 1735–1815 (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1922), p. 769. Jay Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), pp. 184–85.

32. Guilday, Life and Times, pp. 786, 752, 784. James Hennesey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 97.

33. For a portion of the trustees’ letter and “Independent Catholick Church,” see Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, First Bishop of Charleston, 1786–1842, vol. 1 (New York: America Press, 1927), pp. 271–79. John Gilmary Shea, “Jansenists, Old Catholics, and Their Friends in America,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 14 (January–October 1889): 533–41, at p. 534. For “malcontents,” see Peter Guilday, The Catholic Church in Virginia, 1815–1822 (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1924), p. xiv. For a thoroughly revised history of the people and events of this era, see Michael Pasquier, Fathers on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789–1870 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

34. Guilday, Catholic Church in Virginia, pp. xii, xiv.

35. United States Catholic Historical Society, Historical Records, vol. 2 (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1901), pp. 184–90, 439. The Gazette treats the matter on June 5–6 of 1835, as reported in Thomas Meehan, “Link Between East and West,” Illinois Catholic Historical Review 2, no. 3 (1920): 339–47, at p. 340.

36. Van Kley, “Catholic Conciliar Reform,” p. 93. For “social utility” and “surprise and relief,” see Luca Codignola, “Roman Catholic Conservatism in a New North Atlantic World, 1760–1829,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 64, no. 4 (October 2007): 717–56, at pp. 720–21.

37. John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: Norton, 2003), p. 29. For “updated version,” see R. Scott Appleby, “The Triumph of Americanism: Common Ground for U.S. Catholics in the Twentieth Century,” in Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America, ed. Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 37–62, at p. 39. For “papal internationalism,” see Peter D’Agostino, Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), p. 7. For “loyalty to . . . the Holy See,” see Terence Fay, A History of Canadian Catholics: Gallicanism, Romanism and Canadianism (Toronto: McGill University Press, 2002), p. 69.

38. Johannes Ronge, A German Catholic’s Farewell to Rome (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1845), p. 15.

39. Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes, 1830–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. 252. In Tuas libenter, Pius IX writes the archbishop of Munich in dismay over a conference Döllinger had convened (on December 21, 1863); this is the letter that serves as the citation for the Syllabus of Errors, proposition 13 (Pius IX, Syllabus errorum, December 8, 1864).

English-language sources I consulted on Old Catholicism included J. Bass Mullinger, The New Reformation: A Narrative of the Old Catholic Movement from 1870 to the Present Time (London: Longmans, Green, 1875); A. M. E. Scarth, The Story of the Old Catholic and Kindred Movements, Leading Up to a Union of National Independent Churches (London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1883); Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, “The History of the Old Catholic Movement,” Church Quarterly Review 19, no. 37 (October 1884): 130–58; Moss, The Old Catholic Movement; and Victor Conzemius, “Catholicism: Old and Roman,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Summer 1967): 426–45.

40. On Utrecht Union numbers: Maja Weyermann, Office of Information of the Old Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Union of Utrecht, email to author, May 20, 2011. Leo XIII, Iampridem, January 6, 1886, section 3. Peter-Ben Smit, Old Catholic and Philippine Independent Ecclesiologies in History: The Catholic Church in Every Place (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Ludvik Nemec, The Czechoslovak Heresy and Schism: The Emergence of a National Czechoslovak Church (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1975).

41. Franciszek Hodur, “The Eleven Great Principles” (1923), in The Confession of Faith and the Eleven Great Principles of the Polish National Catholic Church in Polish and English, ed. Polish National Catholic Church (Scranton, Pa.: Polish National Catholic Church, n.d.), pp. 25–38, at pp. 33–34. On the future priesthood, see Hodur, Apocalypse of the Twentieth Century, trans. Metchie Budka, ed. Albert Tarka, co-ed. Louise Orzech (1930; Scranton, Pa.: Polish National Catholic Church, 1977): “The priesthood of the future will not be a caste of men mercenaries growing rich and fat, but rather it will be a free association of individuals dedicating themselves to higher purposes. It will be a brotherhood of men and women chosen by God, prepared and ordained for this purpose” (p. 219). Within the PNCC, Women’s Ordination Now (WON) is working for that cause. For more on Hodur and the PNCC, see Hodur, Hodur: A Compilation of Selected Translations, 2nd ed., trans. Theodore L. Zawistowski (Scranton, Pa.: Bishop Hodur Biography Commission of the Central Diocese and the Commission on History and Archives of the PNCC, 1990); Stephen Wlodarski, The Origin and Growth of the Polish National Catholic Church (Scranton, Pa.: Polish National Catholic Church, 1975); and Hieronim Kubiak, The Polish National Catholic Church in the United States of America from 1897 to 1980: Its Social Conditioning and Social Functions (Zeszyty Naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego: Prace Polonijne, 1982).

42. On the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church, see J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, 8th ed. (Detroit: Gale/Cengage, 2009), pp. 85–86. For numbers, I consulted the website of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics. For numbers of the Brazilian church’s Worldwide Communion of Catholic Apostolic Churches, see Phyllis Zagano, Women and Catholicism: Gender, Communion, and Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 66, 73. The Brazil-connected church in the United States is the Catholic Apostolic National Church, in 2016 led by Patriarch Robert Gubala. For the Mbewe quotation, see “Splinter Catholic Church Launched,” Times of Zambia, December 26, 2007, via allafrica.com.

43. Matthew Butler, “Sotanas Rojinegras: Catholic Anticlericalism and Mexico’s Revolutionary Schism,” Americas 65, no. 4 (April 2009): 535–58, at pp. 536–37.

44. Ibid. In the United States this church is sometimes called the Mexican National Catholic Church. For example, see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 125.

45. Ibid.

46. Kozlowski is quoted in Robert Trisco, “The Holy See and the First ‘Independent Catholic Church’ in the United States,” in Studies in Catholic History in Honor of John Tracy Ellis, ed. Nelson Minnich, Robert B. Eno, and Robert Trisco (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, 1985), pp. 175–238, at pp. 225–26.

47. Hickman is quoted in Scott Fagerstrom, “Old Catholics Retain Roots but Accept Married Clergy,” Orange County Register, July 11, 1988: J. Gordon Melton American Religions Collection/University of California at Santa Barbara Library, File: American Catholic Church–Old Catholic (St. Matthew).

48. For the backdrop of La Petite Église, see Van Kley, “Catholic Conciliar,” pp. 94, 130, 137–39. For Vilatte biographical information and context used throughout this section, see Joseph René Vilatte, My Relations with the Protestant Episcopal Church, in Old Catholic: History, Ministry, Faith and Mission, by Andre’ Queen (New York: iUniverse, 2003), pp. 195–210; Jean Parisot, Mgr Vilatte, fondateur de l’Église vieille-catholique aux États-Unis d’Amérique (Tours: E. Soudée, 1899); A. Parker Curtiss, History of the Diocese of Fond du Lac and Its Several Congregations (Fond du Lac, Wis.: P. B. Haber, 1925); Joseph Marx and Benjamin Blied, “Joseph René Vilatte,” Salesianum (Milwaukee, Wis.: Alumni Association of St. Francis Seminary) 37, no. 1 (January 1942): 1–8; Peter Anson, Bishops at Large (1964; Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006); Serge Theriault, Msgr. René Vilatte: Community Organizer of Religion, 1854–1929 (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006); Gerard O’Sullivan, “Historical Vignettes: Joseph René Vilatte,” FICOB and Friends 1, no. 3 (Fall 1996): 3, in the Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Fed of Ind. Cath & Orth Bishops. For this section I also consulted extensively with Alexis Tancibok, whose dissertation for the PhD in the Theology and Religion Department at Durham University in England supplements or corrects aspects of Vilatte’s biography with a close examination of primary sources: “Early Independent Catholicism in Context: A Re-examination of the Career of Archbishop Joseph René Vilatte (1884–1929),” scheduled for defense in 2016. I cite emails with Tancibok in what follows.

49. Parisot, who likely interviewed Vilatte personally, seems to think that declining numbers in the Petite Église meant that Vilatte was baptized in the Roman church shortly after birth (Parisot, Mgr Vilatte, chap. 1, unpaginated, first page).

50. For “rabidly Romanist,” see Vilatte, My Relations, p. 196. On host-stomping, see Yves Roby, “Charles Chiniquy,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 12, 1891–1900 (Toronto: University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003). For this section I also use Richard Lougheed, The Controversial Conversion of Charles Chiniquy (Toronto: Clements Academic, 2009).

51. Chiniquy’s autobiography is Fifty Years in the Church of Rome: The Life Story of Pastor Chiniquy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Book House, 1961). It was a best seller. So was The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional (Ontario: Chick Publications, 1979). The latter is so full of boilerplate vitriol that, as you can see, it remains in print per the publishing house of the notoriously anti-Roman American pamphleteer Jack Chick. “Father Chiniquy Establishing a New Church Neither Protestant nor Roman,” Montreal Witness, September 4, 1858, in Lougheed, Controversial Conversion, p. 108, fig. 29.

52. On the Door peninsula, spiritualism, and “Villatte,” see Hjalmar Holand, History of Door County, Wisconsin, the County Beautiful (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1917), pp. 209, 316, 416–18. Vilatte, My Relations, pp. 196–97.

53. Thérèse of Lisieux, Letters of St. Thérèse of Lisieux: General Correspondence, vol. 2, 1890–1897, trans. John Clarke (Washington, D.C.: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1988), pp. 728–30. On Loyson’s Gallican Catholic Church (there were several of that name over time), see Henry Lascelles Jenner, ed., The Gallican Catholic Church: Some Account of Its Progress and of Its Present Condition and Prospects (London: Church Street Printing, 1888); Moss, The Old Catholic Movement, pp. 283–84; and Anthony Cross, “Père Hyacinthe Loyson, The Église Catholique Gallicane (1879–1893) and the Anglican Reform Mission,” PhD diss., University of Reading, 2011. James McCartin at Fordham University treats Loyson in a forthcoming book (manuscript in progress, 2016).

The national churches of Old Catholicism gradually accepted clerical marriage: Switzerland in 1875, Germany in 1877, Austria in 1880, and the Netherlands in 1922. Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: C. 1100–1700 (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010), p. 216.

54. Elizabeth Clark, Founding the Fathers: Early Church History and Protestant Professors in Nineteenth-Century America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), p. 85.

55. O’Sullivan, “Historical Vignettes,” p. 4. For this section I also consulted William M. Hogue, “The Episcopal Church and Archbishop Vilatte,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 34, no. 1 (March 1965): 35–55; John M. Kinney, “‘The Fond du Lac Circus’: The Consecration of Reginald Heber Weller,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 38, no. 1 (March 1969): 3–24; and Glenn D. Johnson, “Joseph René Vilatte: Accidental Catalyst to Ecumenical Dialog,” Anglican and Episcopal History 71, no. 1 (March 2002): 42–60. The area of the PEC Diocese of Fond-du-Lac, created in 1874, overlapped with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, created in 1868.

56. Hogue, “The Episcopal Church,” p. 41.

57. Ibid.

58. On Vilatte’s thoughts in the interim between Brown and Grafton, see Vilatte, My Relations, p. 203. On the Fond-du-Lac diocese, Grafton, Monte Cassino, and the infamous photo of the “Fond-du-Lac Circus,” which played a key role in wide PEC acceptance of “Catholic” sensibilities, see Kinney, “The Fond du Lac Circus.” On Grafton’s involvement with Anglican, Old Catholic, and PNCC monasticism, see René Kollar, “Travels in America: Aelred Carlyle, His American ‘Allies,’ and Anglican Benedictine Monasticism,” Project Canterbury, 2003.

59. Vilatte, My Relations, pp. 207–8. On the synod, see Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, p. 94. For the articles of incorporation, see ibid., 238–40. A Sketch of the Belief of the Old Catholics, preface by Joseph René Vilatte (Fort Howard, Wis.: James Kerr and Son, 1890), p. 4.

60. Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 101.

61. US Department of the Interior, Census Office, Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States at the Eleventh Census: 1890 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1894), pp. iv, xvi, xviii. For the first use of the column heading “Other Catholics (6 bodies),” see p. 3. For the count of 665, see p. 39.

On the accuracy and utility of the US Census Office’s endeavors to count religious adherents between 1850 to 1936, see Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), pp. 6–13.

62. On the “Reformed Catholics,” see US Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies: 1906, Part II (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), pp. 596–97. The Reformed Catholics are first mentioned on the contents page of the 1890 Report on the Statistics of Churches, p. iv. Headquartered on West 21st Street in Manhattan and “incorporated as Christ’s Mission,” the Reformed Catholic Church had about a thousand members in a half-dozen parishes in five states, according to the reports from 1890 and 1906. For the tenor of coverage of this church, see the New York Times, “Señor Fernando de Ortollak Speaks in Father O’Connor’s Church,” May 27, 1895.

63. Religious Bodies: 1906, Part II, pp. 15–18, 506–8.

64. Matthew Butler, “Ever Unfaithful? Independent Catholicism in Modern Mexico,” paper presented at American Academy of Religion annual meeting, San Diego, Calif., November 24, 2014. Butler’s forthcoming book on this topic will be published by the University of New Mexico Press: Father Pérez’s Revolution: Or, Making Catholicism “Mexican” in Twentieth-Century Mexico.

65. Alexis Tancibok, emails to author, March 15, 2015.

66. Hogue, “The Episcopal Church,” pp. 54–55. On Vilatte’s good looks and charming personality, see Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 100–101, and Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, p. 91. For more information on Grafton, including the conflict with Vilatte, see Grafton’s own numerous publications, for example, Charles Grafton, Personal Reminiscences: A Journey Godward of Doulous Iesou Kristou (Milwaukee: Young Churchman Company, 1910), pp. 155–56, 170–72.

67. On Harding, see Hogue, “The Episcopal Church,” p. 48, and Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, pp. 110–12. Mar Ignatius Peter IV is the same person as Mar Ignatius Peter III, depending on the numbering used. On Indian Catholicism, the independent Indian church, and Álvarez, see Amir Harrak, “Trade Routes and the Christianization of the Near East,” Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 2 (2002): 46–61; Susan Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Abba Seraphim (William Henry Hugo Newman-Norton), Flesh of Our Brethren: An Historical Examination of Western Episcopal Successions Originating from the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (London: British Orthodox Press, 2006), pp. 113–44; and Pratima P. Kamat, “The Goa-Ceylon Religious Connection: A Review of the ‘Indian Cry’ of Álvares Mar Julius, Archbishop of Ceylon, Goa and India,” Sabaragamuwa University Journal 12, no. 1 (December 2013): 61–82.

68. Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 106–7. See also George Anton Kiraz, “The Credentials of Mar Julius Álvares, Bishop of Ceylon, Goa and India Excluding Malabar,” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 7, no. 2 (July 2004): 157–68, in which Kiraz attempts to reconstruct the original Syriac version of Vilatte’s certificate of consecration.

69. For this section, see Hogue, “The Episcopal Church,” pp. 49–51, and O’Sullivan, “Historical Vignettes,” p. 7. Joseph René Vilatte, “An Encyclical to All Bishops Claiming to Be of the Apostolic Succession,” Project Canterbury, 1893.

70. Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, p. 134. In an email, Theriault told me that Vilatte wrote of his participation in the Parliament in his newsletter the Old Catholic, likely volume 2 (November/Advent 1893), but the archives of Theriault’s church (a member of the International Council of Community Churches, which traces heritage to Vilatte; see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 262–63) no longer have that issue (email to author, June 24, 2015). See also Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 111. On Roman Catholic participation in the Parliament, see John F. Cleary, “Catholic Participation in the World’s Parliament of Religions,” Catholic Historical Review 55, no. 4 (January 1970): 585–609. On Vilatte’s relegation to the margins, see Carlos Parra, “Standing with Unfamiliar Company on Uncommon Ground: The Catholic Church and the Chicago Parliaments of Religions,” PhD diss., University of Toronto, December 18, 2012, p. 60n40.

71. Parisot, Mgr Vilatte, chap. 5, unpaginated, fourth page.

72. Hogue, “The Episcopal Church,” pp. 52–53. Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, p. 148n195. On the Order of Corporate Reunion, see Henry R. T. Brandreth, Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church (1947; Springfield, Mo.: St. Willibrord Press, 1987), p. 64.

73. Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 126–28. Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, pp. 22, 200–204.

74. For “farmers and fur trappers,” see Bayly, Saints, Goddesses and Kings, p. 318. Vilatte’s anniversaries of consecration (May 29) and death (July 1) are both noted by independents as feast days on listservs to which I subscribed: a Yahoo New York City Independent Catholic/Old Catholic list (July 1, 2007), the Church of Antioch list (May 29, 2002), and the Ascension Alliance list (May 24, 2012). One listserv member wrote a post with a link to a Vilatte relic on eBay (Independent Sacramental Movement listserv, Yahoo, October 1, 2007).

75. Raymond Rudorff, The Belle Epoque: Paris in the Nineties (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), pp. 193–200. Joanne Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage: Ritual, Sex and Magic (London: Routledge, 2007), pp. 43–44.

76. Pius X, Gravissimo officii munere, August 10, 1906.

77. On Parisot, see Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, p. 149n196. Jean Parisot, Mgr Vilatte. On smoking Cubans with Huysmans, see Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 120. Huysmans’s novel L’Oblat (1903) includes descriptions of his time at Ligugé.

78. On Roman Catholic protests against Vilatte’s church in France, see J. F. Boyd, “The French Ecclesiastical Revolution,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 32 (January–October 1907): 181–83, 269, 653–58. Giraud was consecrated by Jules-Ernest Houssaye, who was consecrated by Paolo Miraglia-Gulotti, who was consecrated by Vilatte.

79. Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage, pp. 45–47. Apiryon (Tau Apiryon), “History of the Gnostic Catholic Church,” Ordo Templi Orientis, 1995.

80. Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage, p. 58.

81. Ibid. Aleister Crowley, Liber XV—Ecclesiae Gnosticae Catholicae Canon Missae, Ordo Templi Orientis, 1913.

82. Augustine, In epistulam Ioannis ad Parthos (Tractatus VII, 8) (c. 416 CE), in Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, trans. Boniface Ramsey, Works of Saint Augustine series (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2008), pp. 104–14. Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage, p. 47.

83. Pearson, Wicca and the Christian Heritage, pp. 1–10 and chap. 2, “Episcopi Vagantes and Heterodox Christianity.” See also Hugh Urban, Magia Sexualis: Sex, Magic, and Liberation in Modern Western Esotericism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).

84. On the number of consecrations, I use Alexis Tancibok’s figure: Tancibok, email to author, January 27, 2015.

85. See Trisco, “The Holy See,” and Conzemius, “Catholicism,” as well as Lawrence Orton, Polish Detroit and the Kolasinski Affair (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981), and Leslie Tentler, “Who Is the Church? Conflict in a Polish Immigrant Parish in Late Nineteenth-Century Detroit,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25, no. 2 (April 1983): 241–76, at p. 269.

86. Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, pp. 135, 137–39, reproduces press reports of the Cleveland consecration and convention, including in the newspaper of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose leader, Charles Taze Russell, was a Vilatte correspondent (p. 163).

87. In 1907, when Hodur became the second American Old Catholic bishop and the first PNCC bishop, the Kozlowski group joined the PNCC. The Kaminski group remained separate.

88. Robert Nevin, “The Modern Savonarola,” Churchman 74, no. 14 (October 3, 1896): 400. Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, “Declaration of Major Excommunication That Was Incurred by the Two Priests Miraglia and Vilatte” (June 13, 1900), American Ecclesiastical Review 23 (July–December 1900): 287–88. For more on the North American Old Roman Catholic Church, see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 125–26, and Jonathan Trela, A History of the North American Old Roman Catholic Church (Scranton, Pa.: Straz Printery, 1979).

89. Butler mentions the survival of parishes of the Mexican Catholic Apostolic Church in Mexico as of 2009 in “Sotanas Rojinegras,” p. 557. Instances of survival in the United States are documented by Paul Schultz, who wrote “The Bishop Who Ran in the 1932 Olympics” about Olympian runner and Mexican church bishop Emile Federico Rodríguez in the Christian News, July 30, 1984, p. 5 (J. Gordon Melton American Religions Collection/University of California at Santa Barbara Library, Folder: Mexican National Catholic Church), and Michael Marinacci, “The Mexican National Catholic Church,” Califia’s Children blog, November 19, 2014. Especially notable is St. Augustine’s Catholic Church headed by Bishop John Parnell in Fort Worth, Texas.

90. “‘Hippie Priest’ Dead at 96,” Daily Freeman (Kingston, N.Y.), July 23, 1979 (J. Gordon Melton American Religions Collection/University of California at Santa Barbara Library, Folder: Old Catholic Church [Francis]). This article says that Bob Dylan attended Brothers’s church and the priest influenced Dylan’s “new moral.” On the bike shop and photo, see Tusha Yakovleva, “Bicycle Matchmaker: Woodstock’s Michael Esposito,” Faster Times website, October 13, 2009. See also Richard Heppner and Janine Fallon-Mower, “Father Francis,” in Legendary Locals of Woodstock (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2013), p. 45; Tobe Carey, dir., Father Francis, 1974–1975, Glenford, N.Y.: Willow Mixed Media, no date; and Paul McMahon, “Woodstock’s Centennial Anthem,” a song written and performed for the town’s centennial celebration in 2002. The song repeats the local legend that Father Francis married Dylan and first wife, Sara Lownds, though I did not find evidence of that in several biographies of Dylan.

91. Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, pp. 138–39. Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 125, 258–59. For “married a Peabody,” see J. A. Douglas, “Foreword,” in Brandreth, Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church, pp. ix–xix, at p. xvii.

92. Richard Newman, “Archbishop Daniel Alexander and the African Orthodox Church,” in The Colonial Epoch in Africa, vol. 2, ed. Gregory Maddox (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 65–80, at pp. 65, 75–78. For more on the AOC branches in Africa, see F. B. Welbourn, East African Rebels: A Study of Some Independent Churches (London: SCM Press, 1961). On the AOC, I also drew on Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 179–80; and Richard Newman, “Black Bishops: Some African-American Old Catholics and Their Churches,” in Words Like Freedom: Essays on African-American Culture and History (West Cornwall, Conn.: Locust Hill Press, 1996), pp. 107–48. See also the forthcoming book by Tshepo Masango Chéry, as of 2016 a manuscript titled “Kingdoms of the Earth: Daniel Williams Alexander and the Rise of the Black Church in South Africa.”

93. William Montgomery Brown, The Crucial Race Question: Where and How Shall the Color Line Be Drawn, 2nd ed. (Little Rock, Ark.: Arkansas Churchman’s Publishing, 1907), p. 249. For UNIA numbers, see Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 20. Newman, “Archbishop Daniel Alexander,” p. 69; and Newman, “Black Bishops,” pp. 107–12.

94. Newman, “Archbishop Daniel,” p. 69; Newman, “Black Bishops,” p. 128. On the Irvine essay, see George Augustine Hyde, Genesis of the Orthodox Catholic Church of America (Indianapolis: Orthodox Catholic Church of America, 1993), section titled “Ongoing Ecclesiastical Disorientation.”

95. Black priests in the big bodies came relatively quickly compared to the long wait for black bishops with standing equal to white bishops. In McGuire’s time the PEC allowed black men as “suffragan” bishops without rights of voting or succession to diocesan leadership. This second-class “racial episcopate” was condemned within the PEC in 1957. It changed with the consecration in 1962 of John M. Burgess, who became diocesan bishop of Massachusetts in 1969. On Healy, see James O’Toole, Passing for White: Race, Religion and the Healy Family, 1820–1920 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). In 1965, James Lawson Howze was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.

96. Theriault, Msgr. Vilatte, pp. 196, 131.

97. Field notes, St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, San Francisco, Calif., August 7, 2005. Franzo King, interview, San Francisco, Calif., August 10, 2005.

98. Field notes, St. John AOC, August 7, 2005. The history that included mention of Syrian Christianity, Mar Julius, and Vilatte was on the church website. See also Newman, “Black Bishops,” pp. 115–16; and David Bry, “Ascension,” Vibe 5, no. 6 (August 1997): 106–9.

3. Love and Meta-Catholicism: Founding the Church of Antioch

1. On US religion as seen from the West Coast, see Laurie Maffly-Kipp, “Eastward Ho! American Religion from the Perspective of the Pacific Rim,” in Retelling American Religious History, ed. Thomas Tweed (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 127–48. On the Crystal Cathedral, see Dennis Voskuil, Mountains Into Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel of Success (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1983).

2. On the British Old Catholic and Liberal Catholic churches throughout this section, see James Ingall Wedgwood, Beginnings of the Liberal Catholic Church, February 13, 1916 (1937; Lakewood, N.J.: Ubique, 1966); Peter Anson, Bishops at Large (1964; Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006), pp. 185–87, 192–98, 323–442; Robert Ellwood and Harry B. Partin, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1988), pp. 107–9; and Siobhan Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians: European Roots of Esoteric Independent Catholicism (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), pp. 67–120.

For “neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant,” see the Liberal Catholic Church, The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church, 3rd ed. (San Diego: The St. Alban Press, 2002), p. 7; written by Wedgwood for the first edition (see p. 17), the formulation repeats throughout Liberal Catholic Church history, in statements of principles and on websites.

Mathew claimed distress at his clergy’s involvement in Theosophy. In hindsight, it is likely that Mathew was actually more disturbed by the “immorality” of some of his priests, namely, same-sex amorous activities, which had upset him in Anglican and Roman contexts, too. In particular, Old Catholic bishop Frederick Willoughby had been targeted for exposés in the London magazine John Bull. In 1915 Mathew dissolved the church. See Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 158–59, 165, 193–94, 198.

3. The number of members in the Theosophical Society at its height is usually given as forty-five thousand, for example, in Anne Tyler, Annie Besant: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 328. Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), chap. 6, “Metaphysical Asia,” pp. 330–93. Besides the Liberal Catholic Church, other esoteric sacramental groups started by former Theosophists include Rudolf Steiner’s Christian Community, Dion Fortune’s Guild of the Master Jesus (later called the Church of the Graal), and Richard, Duc de Palatine’s Pre-Nicene Gnostic Catholic Church.

After Blavatsky’s death, the Theosophical Society split into a number of organizations. My references to Theosophy refer to the major inheritor, the organization led by Besant based in Adyar. As an adjective, I sometimes use “theosophical” to describe the general orientation of the assorted organizations.

4. The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church, pp. 7–8.

5. Ibid., pp. 10–13. For “zoological,” I use Anson’s quote of an earlier edition, since it captures Wedgwood’s original colorful language. Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 354.

6. Charles Leadbeater, The Science of the Sacraments (1920; Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980), pp. xi–xiv, 3.

7. For “curious result,” see Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 348, quoting a letter from Leadbeater to Besant. For “Catholic bondage,” see Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 351, citing a pamphlet published by an American Theosophy group headed by Celestia Root Lang, “Shall the American Section T. S. Be Sold Into Catholic Bondage?,” Divine Life (1917), published by the Independent Theosophical Society of America in Chicago. Annie Besant, “On the Watch-Tower,” Theosophist 38, no. 1 (October 1916): 1–8, at p. 5. See also Edward Roslof, Red Priests: Renovationism, Russian Orthodoxy, and Revolution, 1905–1946 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). On Besant’s benedictions, see Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians, p. 96, and Gregory Tillett, The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 603–4. A photograph understood in independent Catholic oral history to depict Annie Besant vested in the sanctuary of a Liberal Catholic Church is reprinted by Lewis Keizer, The Wandering Bishops: Apostles of a New Spirituality (1976; Aromas, Calif.: Home Temple Press, 2001), p. 26, leading him and others to wonder whether Besant was ordained to minor or major Catholic orders. But the provenance of the photograph and its images is not clear. Keizer, emails to author, March, April, and August 2012. On the Order of the World Mother, see Joseph Ross, Spirit of Womanhood: A Journey with Rukmini Devi (Ojai, Calif.: Joseph E. Ross/Krotona Archives, 2009); and Leela Samson, Rukmini Devi: A Life (Gurgaon: Penguin Books India, 2010).

8. On early growth, see the historical section of the Liberal Catholic Church website. On Henry Agard Wallace and the Liberal Catholic Church, see John Culver and John Hyde, American Dreamer: A Life of Henry A. Wallace (New York: Norton, 2001), pp. 76–82, 96.

9. Besant, a lifelong supporter of Krishnamurti, nevertheless stood by Leadbeater against all accusers. She accepted, for example, that Leadbeater gave boys lessons in masturbation techniques, pointing out that all sex education was considered scandalous at the time, and Theosophy should help dispel the miasma of British prudery. Tillett, The Elder Brother, pp. 77–86, 104–7, 152, 347–48, 635–36.

10. Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Dissolution of the Order of the Star: A Statement by J. Krishnamurti (Eerde, Ommen: Star Publishing Trust, 1929). For “The Coming” quotation, see Tillett, The Elder Brother, p. 240.

11. Tillett, The Elder Brother, p. ix. Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 27. On Leadbeater’s wider influence, see also Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, pp. 452–65.

12. On Hampton, here and throughout this section, see J. Gordon Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, 8th ed. (Detroit: Gale/Cengage, 2009), p. 725; Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 350, 363–64; Herman Spruit, The Sacramentarion: A Record of a Personalized Journey Into the Inner Life of the Least Understood of Christianity’s Major Mysteries (1979; Nevada City, Calif.: Sophia Divinity School, 1999), unpaginated front matter, third page; and Charles Hampton, The Leadbeater, Hampton, Spruit Story and the Loss of Archbishop Hampton’s Church Building (c. 1955; Nevada, Calif.: Sophia Divinity School Press/Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2006). For the quotation from the radio show: Charles Hampton, “Sacraments,” Liberal Catholic Quarter Hour, KFAC (Los Angeles), July 28, 1940 (Church Archives CD, Document 30b), p. 2. (Document 30, titled “Confirmation” on the CD, actually includes two documents that I have informally labeled 30a, “Confirmation,” and 30b, “Sacraments.”) The former cathedral of St. Alban still stands at 2041 North Argyle Avenue as of 2016. In 1964 it became the home of Protection of the Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church.

13. Herman Spruit, “An Interview with Herman Adrian Spruit by AROHN a Rosicrucian Publication,” in Herman Adrian Spruit: Articles and Writings About Him and By Him, book A, ed. Richard Gundrey (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School Press, 2008), second reprinted article, original date 1981, original pagination pp. 23–29, at p. 26. AROHN was edited by Edward Sullivan, at that time the secretary general of the Holy Order of the Rosy Cross and archbishop in the Church of Antioch.

14. John Plummer, The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement: A Study of Its Liturgy, Doctrine and Leadership in America (Dallas: Newt Books, 2004), p. 78. Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians, pp. 115–16. Anson, Bishops at Large, p. 362.

15. For Spruit’s account of his visit to St. Alban, see Hampton, The Leadbeater, Hampton, Spruit Story, pp. 28–29. For the other anecdotes, see Spruit, “An Interview,” p. 26, as well as Herman Spruit, “Another Interview with Herman Adrian Spruit by AROHN,” in Gundrey, Herman Adrian Spruit, book A, third reprinted article, original date 1981, original pagination pp. 25–30, at pp. 28–29.

16. For a photograph of Hampton making eggs in his trailer, see Hampton, The Leadbeater, Hampton, Spruit Story, p. 9. Herman Spruit, “Holistic Meditation of Antiochean Bishops” (Mountain View, Calif.: Church of Antioch Press, 1978), Church Archives CD, Document 47, p. 42. Richard Gundrey, “Historical Background on the Spruit Succession,” no date, Church Archives CD, Document 45.

17. After this point in the narrative I mostly call Herman Spruit by his first name, so as not to confuse him with Meri Spruit and to be consistent with my use of other Antiochians’ first names after initial citations.

18. Meri Louise Spruit, Church of Antioch matriarch emerita, age eighty-one, interview, Marina, Calif., October 8, 2007.

It is common if not universal knowledge among Church of Antioch leaders that Herman and Meri were not legally married. Consulting public records for Herman, Meri, and family members at Ancestry.com on May 3, 2013, there were incomplete records of the marriage and divorce of Herman and Hulda Zurbuchen (1930s–1950s), Herman and Violet Walp (1960–?), and Herman and Helen Banks aka Helen Seymour (1965 to 1969 or 1970).

Piecing together public records and information from my interviews and field notes, it seems that the children in Herman’s life were his two sons with Hulda, Dennis (b. 1945) and Douglas (b. 1950), a stepson with Violet, and four stepchildren with Helen. Meri had four children from two marriages: Carol, Charles, Richard, and Rosemary.

19. Meri Louise Spruit’s birthday is August 1, 1926. Herman’s birthday is January 26, 1911. On his grandfather, see Spruit, The Sacramentarion, p. 131. (Book 5 of The Sacramentarion is titled “Search for Truth” and subtitled “An Abbreviated Auto-Biographical Sketch of Herman Adrian Spruit,” announced on an unpaginated page and running pp. 118–37.)

On Herman’s emigration, see Edward Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit: A More Detailed History/Archbishop-Patriarch Herman Adrian Spruit,” in Gundrey, Herman Adrian Spruit, book A, first reprinted article, original date n.a., pp. 40–41. Found at Ancestry.com on May 3, 2013, the “California Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882–1957” show original logs for Helene (age forty-three), Hermann (age sixteen), and Helmut (age nine) sailing from Antwerp and arriving in Los Angeles on December 19, 1927. Hermann the father, listed as of Dutch ethnicity and born in 1886, sailed nine months earlier, arriving in Los Angeles on March 20, 1927.

I draw on the following sources for Herman’s life here and throughout: Spruit, “An Interview” and “Another Interview,” as well as Herman Spruit, “How to Demonstrate What You Believe You Have a Right to Expect,” in Herman Adrian Spruit: Various Historical Papers, Pictures and Letters Pertaining to Our Church, book B, ed. Richard Gundrey (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School Press, 2008), seventh document, three pages, no original pagination; and, in the same volume, Herman Spruit, “This Piece Is Written by Patriarch Herman About His Life” and “This Piece Is ABOUT Patriarch Herman’s Life History,” eighth and ninth reprinted documents, one page each; Herman Spruit, The Conquest of the Rings: A Writing by Patriarch Herman as an Introduction to Sophia Divinity School and a Few Other Brief Articles, book C, ed. Richard Gundrey (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School Press, 2008), first item, no pagination, original pagination pp. 1–12, at pp. 7–9) (also available in the Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Faith); Terry Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” Contact (Archdiocese of the Church of Antioch), August 1967, pp. 1+, Church Archives CD, Document 41; Jan Kooistra Van Campenhout, Apostolic Succession in the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch, Malabar Rite, ed. Richard Gundrey (Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School, 1998), pp. 49–50; Paul Clemens, “Preface,” in The Rule of Antioch, by Herman Spruit, new ed., ed. Paul Clemens (1979, 2002; Nevada City, Calif.: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2010), pp. vii–xi; Karl Pruter and J. Gordon Melton, eds., The Old Catholic Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 1983), pp. 62–63; Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 364–65; Keizer, Wandering Bishops, pp. 62–65; and Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians, pp. 119–20.

20. At Ancestry.com on May 3, 2013, the “U.S. City Directories, 1821–1989” for 1930 listed “Herman Spruit Jr” with his parents at 50 Bixel Street in Los Angeles and his profession as “Pntr.”

21. Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” pp. 40–42. Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” p. 1. Spruit, “Another Interview,” p. 25. Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 63. Herman Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit: The Man,” draft of interview (1981; Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School Press, 2007), p. 4. (The first half of the latter interview is reproduced in “Another Interview,” but I cite it separately because it includes more of the interview and other material not included in the published version.)

22. Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit.” Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit the Man,” p. 6. Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” p. 41. For more on Harkness and this trip, see Rebekah Miles, “Georgia Elma Harkness,” in Makers of Christian Theology in America, ed. Mark Toulouse and James Duke (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), pp. 430–33.

23. Herman repeatedly called himself a mystic and was so named by others, for example, Jim Willems, Church of Antioch member, age sixty-three, interview, Ojai, Calif., November 25, 2007. For “lonely” and “misunderstood,” I quote Willems. For the “Radiance” quotation, see Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” p. 49.

24. D. J. Waldie, “L.A.’s Postwar Art Scene: Hot Rods and Hedonism,” Los Angeles Times, September 8, 2011.

25. On Herman’s rate of reading, see Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” unpaginated second page of interview. On “fountain” and building funds, see Spruit, “This Piece Is Written.” On Spruit’s time at the University of Southern California, see Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” pp. 2–3, 40–41, and Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 63.

Herman’s work at USC fell within the time when Robert J. Taylor was dean of the Graduate School of Religion; Herman mentions Taylor’s influence. Herman’s classes, however, did not culminate in a degree, which he explained as an effect of concentrating on desired courses rather than degree requirements. Spruit, The Sacramentarion, p. 126. Herman’s doctorate (or doctorates—he listed both the PhD and DD at various times) may have been granted later by another institution, for example by Sophia Divinity School.

26. For “soft peddle” and “dawn on me,” see Spruit, “This Piece Is Written.” “Soft peddle” is a common misspelling of the idiom “soft pedal.”

27. For the resignation date of January 1951, see Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” p. 42. For “deeper spirituality,” see Clemens, “Preface,” p. 7. For “shattering,” see Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 64. For “clear cut,” see Spruit, “This Piece Is Written.”

28. Spruit, “How to Demonstrate,” unpaginated, first page. Herman Spruit, “Letters from the Apostles,” no date, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Hermans (sic) Writings loose in box, pp. 2–3.

29. Spruit, “How to Demonstrate,” unpaginated, all three pages. Science of Mind archivist James Abbott confirms Herman’s positions as executive secretary and licentiate minister according to minutes of meetings of the International Association of Religious Science Churches from 1951 (email to author, May 8, 2013). Articles by Herman published in the Institute’s Science of Mind journal include “I Discovered the Secret of Prayer” (December 1951): 23–24+, and “The Best Is Yet to Come” (March 1954): 4–7. Herman was listed as a Religious Science practitioner in Science of Mind through the January 1955 issue (p. 91).

30. For “my thing” and “great leader,” see Spruit, “This Piece Is Written.” For “Methodist grooves” and “true prophet,” see Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit, the Man,” pp. 6, 11. For “fast friends,” see Spruit, Letters from the Apostles, p. 3. On Maude Lathem, see Spruit, “Another Interview,” p. 28, and Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit, the Man,” p. 11.

31. On the issues in Religious Science from 1953 to 1954, see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 887; John Dart, “Rev. William Hornaday; Religious Science Leader,” Los Angeles Times, March 20, 1992. On Holmes’s idea of the “Church Universal,” see Reginald C. Armor and Robin Llast, That Was Ernest: The Story of Ernest Holmes and the Religious Science Movement, ed. Arthur Vergara (Camarillo, Calif.: DeVorss, 1999), p. 142.

32. For “stately grandeur,” see Spruit, “Letters from the Apostles,” p. 3. For Methodists’ superior warmth and “flower,” see Spruit, Conquest of the Rings, pp. 7–8.

33. For Herman’s introduction to Leadbeater, his reintroduction to Old Catholicism, and the “vital non-Papal” quotation, see Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” pp. 43–44. I guess that it is Maude Lathem who gave Herman a copy of Leadbeater because Sullivan says it is a “she.” Lathem was among few women employed in the top ranks of Religious Science and Herman mentioned her by name as a friend. Still, I am just guessing.

34. For “prior to his death” and “crowning touch,” see Spruit, “Conquest of the Rings,” p. 9. For “too young and inexperienced,” see “Letters from the Apostles,” p. 4. For three other accounts of this Holmes request, see Spruit, “Psycho-Pneumatology,” no date, Church Archives CD, Document 68, p. 12; Spruit, “Conquest of the Rings,” p. 26; and Spruit, “Another Interview,” p. 28.

35. For “passing phenomenon” and other Holmes words as remembered by Herman, see Spruit, “Another Interview,” p. 28, and also “Herman Adrian Spruit the Man,” p. 11, which is the same document in draft version. For “ecclesiastical tramp,” see Spruit, Conquest of the Rings, p. 8.

36. On the stint with Golden State University, see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 719, and materials in Church of Antioch Archives, Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Golden State. This university had several incarnations, later ones only on paper, and by 2013 it was generally noted as a degree mill, if anything. On the Popenoe certification, see Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” p. 46. On other employment and activities, see Spruit, “This Piece Is ABOUT”; Herman Spruit, “Upward Still and Onward,” no date, c. 1982, Church Archives CD, Document 100, p. 3; Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” p. 1; and materials in Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HAS files/File: Hearst Mansion.

37. Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” p. 1 and third page.

38. Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 721. On Herman and Palatine’s relationship, see Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” pp. 43–45; Sullivan reports that Herman met Hampton at Palatine’s “behest.” On St. Michael’s, see Pruter and Melton, Old Catholic Sourcebook, pp. 96–97. For more on Palatine and Stephan Hoeller, see Keizer, Wandering Bishops, pp. 48–55, 60–61. For more on Hoeller, see Stephan Hoeller, “Guest Addendum,” in The Sacramentarion, by Herman Spruit (1979; Nevada City, Calif.: Sophia Divinity School, 1999), pp. 273–75, and A. W. Hill, “Exile in Godville: Profile of a Postmodern Heretic,” LA Weekly, May 19–25, 2005.

39. St. Francis-by-the-Sea still stands and is pastored by American Catholic Church bishops following Wadle. See Leslie Earnest, “Laguna Beach: Tiny Church Designated a Landmark,” Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1990.

On Herman’s ordinations, see Sullivan, “Herman Adrian Spruit,” pp. 45–46, and Spruit, “Another Interview,” pp. 28–30. Wadle’s requirements are mentioned in the latter. Wadle was married; Melton speculated that his celibacy requirement was aimed at gay men more than straight men, but whatever its goal, Herman seemed put off (J. Gordon Melton, email to author, July 6, 2015). On the start of FICOB, see Gundrey, “Historical Background.” For various FICOB documents, see Herman Spruit, “Our Seventeen Lines of Apostolic Succession,” undated, Church Archives CD, Document 63; and materials in Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Fed of Ind. Cath & Orth Bishops. On various names of Herman’s church, see Gundrey, “Our Beginning.” For a copy of Herman’s certificate of episcopal ordination, see Church Archives CD, Document 35.

The speed with which Herman was ordained and then consecrated would be unusual for the big-body Catholicisms in the twentieth century, but requirements for time (and age and education) before ordination have fluctuated in the history of Catholicism.

40. Melton credits the start of the practice of multiple consecrations to Hugh George de Willmott Newman, who founded the Catholicate of the West in Britain in 1944 (Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 84–85). Herman explained in “Our Seventeen Lines” that (in his view) while reconsecrations in the 1940s aimed to shore up validity to a wider Catholic world, within a few decades the “lines” were more a matter of “roots,” “historical interest,” “identity and pride.” More, Melton wrote that “by the 1990s, the several lines of apostolic succession had become well established in the person of a large number of the independent bishops . . . and the practice of multiple consecrations . . . largely disappeared” (Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 84). For extended discussion of the practice, see Rob Angus Jones, Independent Sacramental Bishops: Ordination, Authority, Lineage, and Validity (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2010), pp. 66–92.

41. For more on Herman’s accrual of churches, lines, FICOB, Sophia, and episcopal effects, see Spruit, “Another Interview,” pp. 29–30; Spruit, “Conquest of the Rings,” pp. 24–27; Richard Gundrey, “Our Beginning,” Church of Antioch listserv, January 23, 2007; Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 257–61; Pruter and Melton, Old Catholic Sourcebook, p. 96; Houston, Priests, Gnostics and Magicians, pp. 118–21; Keizer, Wandering Bishops, pp. 32–36; and Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 1157–61.

42. For the date of his being raised to the status of archbishop, see Spruit, “Another Interview,” pp. 29–30.

The apostolic succession of the Church of Antioch is given as an example in John Plummer and John Mabry, Who Are the In dependent Catholics? An Introduction to the Independent and Old Catholic Churches (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006), pp. 92–95.

I do not know how many diaconal and priestly ordinations Herman performed, but a church source lists his number of consecrations at forty-one, plus an additional six for which he served as co-consecrator. Of the forty-one, all but eight were consecrations for the Church of Antioch itself. If this record is accurate, Herman consecrated abundantly within his church, but carefully outside of it. Van Campenhout, Apostolic Succession, pp. 75–79.

43. For “validity of much psychism,” see Spruit, “Another Interview.” On western Orthodox independent bishops such as Aneed, Jules Ferrette, Aftimios Ofiesh, and Ulrich Herford, see John Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 58–83; Michael Prokurat, Alexander Golitzin, and Michael D. Peterson, The A to Z of the Orthodox Church (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1996); Thomas Fitzgerald, The Orthodox Church (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995); Pruter and Melton, Old Catholic Sourcebook, pp. 34–37 and 67–76; Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 1157–61; and Mariam Namey Ofiesh, Archbishop Aftimios Ofiesh, 1880–1966: A Biography Revealing His Contribution to Orthodoxy and Christendom (Sun City West, Ariz.: Abihider, 1999).

44. On Antioch’s corporation sole arrangement, see Gundrey, “Historical Background”; and Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 14, 2006. As Gundrey explained in the latter, the state of California no longer issues corporation soles, but since the Church of Antioch remains continuously the same organization, it remains legally an entity of that status.

45. On the names, see Gundrey, “Our Beginning.” In April 2008, church bishops voted to drop the “Malabar Rite” part and make the official name simply “The Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch.” Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch Newsletter, June 5, 2008, unpaginated, first page. Archbishop Leon Hunt, presiding bishop of the Autocephalous Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch in the United Kingdom, knew Herman personally and described Herman’s mass: field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation 2014, [Roman Catholic retreat center, midwestern city and state], October 26. On Herman’s title as patriarch, see Spruit, “Another Interview,” p. 29.

46. Paul Clemens, email to author, June 3, 2010.

47. On the church newsletter numbers, see Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” second page. On the higher numbers from 1980, see Spruit, Conquest of the Rings, p. 10. On the “thorny problem,” see Spruit, “Our Gideon’s Call,” June 14, 1981, Church Archives CD, Document 62, pp. 1–2.

From circumstantial evidence, I gather that in 1979, Herman agreed to serve as bishop for the Holy Order of the Rosy Cross (HORC), based in Burlington, Washington, and led by Edward Sullivan, soon a bishop and then archbishop of Antioch. As members of HORC got ordained, too, they accounted for the tripling of clergy numbers by 1980. The HORC-Antioch collaboration remained strong throughout the 1980s, and Meri Spruit mentioned it in a letter to Richard Gundrey. “There were a lot of people involved in the Church work at Washington,” she wrote. “They came together for the formulation of the newsletter, writing the articles, mass daily, all the church work, their own jobs for the separate family livelihood, care of children, fixing meals, and meetings ad infinitum.” Letter to Richard Gundrey, “At Long Last . . . ,” June 20, 2007, in Gundrey, Herman Adrian Spruit, book A, first reprinted letter, no pagination.

48. For examples of documents in which Herman wrote of conflict, see Herman Spruit, Letter to Arnold and Shirley (October 1, 1981), Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Letters, etc.—HAS; Herman Spruit, “Constitution and Statement of Principles of the Church of Antioch” (Mountain View, Calif.: Church of Antioch Press, 1978), Church Archives CD, Document 77; Spruit, “Our Seventeen Lines”; Herman Spruit, “A Frank Appraisal of My Ministry and a New Year’s Message for Myself and Those Who Would Walk with Me,” copy of original writing dated 1986, posted to the Church of Antioch listserv by Daniel Dangaran, June 1, 2009.

49. For “worthless,” see Spruit, “Psycho-Pneumatology,” p. 13. For “museum pieces,” see Spruit, “Another Interview,” pp. 27–28. For “amazingly wondrous” “real Catholicism,” see Spruit, The Sacramentarion, pp. 131–32.

50. Bell, “For This Was the Bishop Called,” third page.

51. Spruit, The Sacramentarion, pp. 10–11, 277. See also Herman’s reference to the Masters in “An Interview,” pp. 23–24.

52. For the vision of Jesus, see Herman Spruit, “Some Years Ago . . . ,” no date (after 1980), Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—4/File: Sophia Divinity School, pp. 4–5. Herman indicated on page 5 that by 1980, thirty years had elapsed since the vision, so it apparently happened around 1950. For the “dark night,” see Herman Spruit, “After a Prolonged Period . . .” (a meditation), February 18, 1982, Church Archives CD, Document 14(b). For “Help your wife,” see Herman Spruit, “This Is Like a Buffet Supper . . . ,” no date, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—4/File: History & Notes of H.A.S., unpaginated, first page. The latter is a very thick sheaf that looks like notes toward an autobiography.

53. For “finishing touches,” the “Fourth Way,” and “Integral Christianity,” see “Some Years Ago . . . ,” pp. 4–7. (“Integral” is generally a hot word in metaphysical circles, but in 1980 the California Institute of Integral Studies was so renamed, that is, around the same time that Herman wrote of “Integral Christianity.”) Also for the “Fourth Way,” see Spruit, Conquest of the Rings, p. 9. For “meta-catholic,” see Spruit, “Toward a Synthesis,” p. 2. For “ecclesiastical imperialism” and “basic purpose,” see Terry Bell, “Liberal Religion,” Cosmos (June 1973), Church Archives CD, Document 54.

54. Herman Spruit, The Rule of Antioch, new ed., edited by Paul Clemens (1979, 2002; Nevada City, Calif.: Church of Antioch by Blue Dolphin Publishing, 2010), p. 2. Frank Bugge, Church of Antioch listserv, June 1, 2009.

55. For characterizations of Herman’s theology as Augustinian, see Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 64; Bell, “For This Was . . . ,” second page; Bell, “Liberal Religion”; and Herman Spruit, “Conquest of the Rings” (draft version), p. 25. Augustine’s words “Love, and do what thou wilt” are in his seventh homily on the First Epistle of John, section 8. See Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st ser., vol. 7 (Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing, 1888). For Herman’s riff on Augustine’s words, see Herman Spruit, “My Philosophical Manifesto,” no date, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—2/File: Philosophy, unpaginated, second page.

56. Augustine, Retractions 1.12.3, in The Retractions, trans. Mary Inez Bogan, RSM, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Patristic Series) 60 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), p. 52. According to historian Elizabeth Clark, it was a common late ancient Christian trope that Christianity was older than Christ, who completed or fulfilled an older monotheism in which wise pagans partook (email to author, March 14, 2011). For “Church of Tomorrow,” see Herman Spruit, “Old Wine for New Skins,” 1966, Church Archives CD, Document 59, pp. 3–4.

57. Spruit, The Rule of Antioch, p. 4.

58. For Herman’s Masonic and Rosicrucian affiliations, see Spruit, “An Interview,” p. 29; Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” pp. 7–8; and Herman Spruit, “The Technique: The Development of Spiritual Consciousness, the Jesus Christ Method,” no date, Church Archives CD, Document 95, p. 2. Besides Mother Jennie Maiereder, other local intuitives Herman knew personally included Charlotte von Strahl, Edith Gable, and Simon Amador (the latter was an Antioch priest). Additionally he used the work of Louise Hay and Corinne Heline. He might have met the latter—a fellow former Methodist in southern California who was immersed in metaphysics and devoted to “the Madonna,” whom Heline saw frequently in visions. For these references, see Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” pp. 10–11, 13–14, 52; Spruit, “Technique,” p. 3; and a photocopy of the first pages of Louise Hay’s Heal Your Body (1984), in the Church of Antioch Archives, Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: HAS’s notes/musings. Examples of letters of inquiry about the Church of Antioch from far-flung places can be found in the Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Independent Churches as well as Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—2/File: Nigeria—this inquiry came to Meri Spruit and near it were notes for her response letter. On the Druid initiation, see “The Ritual of Initiation of Herman and Meri Spruit to the Ancient Order of Druids,” author unknown, with a note by Richard Gundrey at the top: “Performed in December 1987 in Australia at the same time Herman and Meri consecrated Frank & Chyrlle (sic) Bugge to the order of bishops,” Church Archives CD, Document 92. (Bishop C. Bugge’s first name is actually spelled Chearle.) Frank Bugge also posted information about this event to the church listserv in July and August 2003, and it is preserved as “Female Lines of Apostolic Succession,” Church Archives CD, Document 38. The website of Bugge’s autocephalous Australian Church of Antioch names the consecrator as the archbishop and arch-druid Tim Ryan. References to other techniques, organizations, and persons with whom Herman had contact were rife throughout his writings and papers. For the paper signage, see Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Astrology. In all fairness, there is a chance that this sign refers to Helen Spruit, known as a gifted astrologer, but I guess it has to do with Herman poking fun at Herman.

59. For “the Galilean Master,” see Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” p. 47. For “Number One,” see Bell, “For This Was . . . ,” third page. On Hampton’s anointing, the sacraments of healing, and “Absolution,” see Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” pp. 5–6.

60. Herman Spruit, “Psycho-Pneumatology,” pp. 10–14; Herman also talks about Bussell within these pages. For Bussell’s cure of his kidney stones and the crucial role of love in healing, see Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” pp. 16–18, 48. See also D. J. Bussell (?), “The Chirothesian Church,” no date, Church Archives CD, Document 83.

61. For no “mind over matter,” see Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” p. 51. For “innate divinity,” see Herman Spruit, “Prosperity Is Up to You,” no date, Church Archives CD, Document 67, p. 3. For “sun would shine,” see Spruit, “Psycho-Pneumatology,” p. 10. For more on the relationship between New Thought and prosperity, see Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit, pp. 437–48, and Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the Prosperity Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 11–40.

62. For “went broke,” see William Whalen, Faiths for the Few: A Study of Minority Religions (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1963), p. 74. On the fire and starting over, see Bell, “For This Was . . . ,” second page, and Spruit, “Holistic Meditation,” p. 20. For the Decra-Led windows ad, see Church of Antioch Archives, Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Architecture. For “last $10.00,” see Linda Rounds-Nichols, “Sophia Divinity School: A History,” published in four parts, Antioch Clarion (January/February 2010–July/August 2010), part 1. For the request for medical funds, see Herman Spruit, “The Full Truth of My Condition,” April 15, 1985, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Letters, etc.—HAS, p. 2.

63. For the wish list, see Herman Spruit, “For Myself,” August 13, 1981, Church of Antioch Archives, Box: Herman & Meri’s files—4/File: Incomplete 1. On the haircuts and “Deliverance,” see Herman Spruit, “Escaping the Wheel of Karma and Finding the Full Life,” no date, c. spring 1986, Church Archive CD, Document 37, pp. 2–4.

64. Spruit, “Escaping the Wheel,” pp. 2–4.

65. For “steam,” see Herman Spruit, “Old Wine for New Skins,” p. 1. On Spruit being “embarrassed” and repudiating priest Michael Zaharakis, see Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 76. Melton also mentions that Zaharakis’s ministry emphasized social justice issues: Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 721.

66. For “renegade,” see Sullivan, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 46, quoting a friend of Herman’s. For “seminal,” see Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 65. For “giants on earth,” a quote of Genesis 6:4, see Robert Burns, On Being a Bishop (1980; Santa Fe, N.M.: Sophia Divinity School Press, 2005), unpaginated dedication page. On May 29, 2009, a post on the Yahoo Independent Sacramental Movement listserv named Herman a “saint,” as did a post by Archbishop Frank Bugge on the Church of Antioch listserv on June 1, 2009.

67. For “bi-polarity” supported by Genesis, see Herman Spruit, “An Interview,” pp. 24, 26. For the midrash tradition of Adam’s hermaphroditism, see Genesis Rabba 8:1 and Leviticus Rabba 14:1. For Herman on Fillmore and Eddy, see “Psycho-Pneumatology,” pp. 10–11.

68. Bell, “For This Was . . . ,” third page.

69. Spruit, “An Interview,” pp. 27–28.

70. Ibid. I found “A Church Divorce Ceremony,” an Associated Press article appearing in the Peninsula Times Tribune (Palo Alto/Redwood City) (September 16, 1980) on p. A-8, in the Church of Antioch Archives, Box: Herman & Meri’s files—2/File: Liturgies 3.

71. For Miller’s story, see her own account in Rosamonde Miller, “Wild Gnosis,” in A Strange Vocation: Independent Bishops Tell Their Stories, ed. Alistair Bate (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), pp. 128–43. For “not doctrine,” see Miller’s shorter account at the website of the Ecclesia Gnostica Mysteriorum. See also Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, p. 72, and Keizer, Wandering Bishops, pp. 55–58. For “more than ready,” see Spruit, “An Interview,” pp. 25–26. For Spruit’s participation, see also Stephan Hoeller, “Independent Catholic Bishop Spruit Dies,” Gnosis (Winter 1995): 11. In Wandering Bishops, Keizer writes in a photograph caption that Jennie Maiereder was consecrated by Spruit as the first female bishop in United States in 1974 (p. 45). In a subsequent book, Keizer says that the ordination date was the spring equinox of 1975. Keizer, Mother Jennie’s Garden: The Life Story of a Great Theosophical Sage, Saint and Psychic (self-published by Lewis Keizer, 2009), chap. 10. Keizer told me that the former date was correct, that is, 1974 (email to author, March 26, 2012). It also sounds more right because Maiereder died in 1975.

72. Itkin’s episcopal register is in the possession of James Ishmael Ford, an author, Zen priest, and Universalist-Unitarian minister who wrote a thesis on Itkin: James Ishmael Ford, “Forever a Priest: Episcopi Vagantes and the Myth of Catholic Ministry,” MA thesis, Pacific School of Religion, 1990. Ford kindly sent me a copy of the register (emails to author, May 2014).

73. James Ishmael Ford, “Was Alan Watts an Independent Catholic Bishop? An Historical Footnote,” Monkey Mind blog, May 25, 2009. See also Pruter and Melton, Old Catholic Sourcebook, pp. 78–79; Mark Sullivan and Ian Young, eds., The Radical Bishop and Gay Consciousness: The Passion of Mikhail Itkin (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia, 2014); and “Bishop Michael Francis Augustine Itkin,” profile at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Religious Archives Network. Several of these sources state without offering specifics that Itkin ordained women as of the late 1960s.

74. On Roman Catholic activism for women’s ordination at this time, see Mary Jeremy Daigler, Incompatible with God’s Design: A History of the Women’s Ordination Movement in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church (New York: Scarecrow Press, 2012), pp. 1–52. For Rahner’s early advocacy of women’s ordination, see Rahner, The Dynamic Element in the Church (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), pp. 42–83. On the diaconal ordination of Edwards by Pike, see Episcopal News Service, “Phyllis Edwards Ordained Priest Declared Deacon in 1964,” July 10, 1980. For more on Roman and Episcopal women’s ordination, see Fredrica Harris Thompsett, “Women in the American Episcopal Church,” in Encyclopedia of Women and Religion in North America, ed. Rosemary Keller and Rosemary Radford Ruether (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), pp. 269–79; and Maureen Fiedler and Dolly Pomerleau, “The Women’s Ordination Movement in the Roman Catholic Church,” in Keller and Ruether, Encyclopedia of Women and Religion, pp. 951–59.

75. See Karen J. Torjesen, When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of Their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (1993; San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995); Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998); Ute Eisen, Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies, trans. Linda Maroney (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000); Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek, Ordained Women in the Early Church: A Documentary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Phyllis Zagano, Women and Catholicism: Gender, Communion, and Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Zagano, “Catholic Women’s Ordination: The Ecumenical Implications of Women Deacons in the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church of Greece, and the Union of Utrecht Old Catholic Churches,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 43, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 124–37.

76. On the Christian Community priesthood and Czechoslovak Hussite Church, see Plummer, The Many Paths, pp. 23, 33. On the African Orthodox Church ordination of Sister Phoebe to the diaconate on June 23, 1923, see an excerpt from The Negro Churchman (the African Orthodox Church organ of that time), quoted in Father Furblur, “The McGuire Years,” Trumpet 2, no. 2 (November 1980): 7 (J. Gordon Melton American Religions Collection/University of California at Santa Barbara Library, Folder: AOC—serials—The Trumpet). On the Mariavites, see Jerzy Peterkiewicz, The Third Adam (London: Oxford University Press, 1975); Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 1151–52; and Anson, Bishops at Large, pp. 117–23. On de Willmott Newman’s diaconal ordinations, see Keizer, Wandering Bishops, pp. 34–35.

77. Miriam Therese Winter, Out of the Depths: The Story of Ludmila Javorová, Ordained Roman Catholic Priest (New York: Crossroad, 2001). Fiedler and Pomerlau, “The Women’s Ordination Movement,” p. 957. “Czech Hierarchy Bars Some Priests,” New York Times, December 8, 1991.

78. Spruit, “An Interview,” p. 25. Keizer, Wandering Bishops, p. 41.

79. On the Collin heritage of high Marianism, I consulted bishop-scholar John Plummer (emails to author, January 2015). On the Apostles of Infinite Love, see Michael Cuneo, Smoke of Satan: Conservative and Traditionalist Dissent in Contemporary American Catholicism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 125. Cuneo gives no definite date for the ordination of women, though a revelation came in the “early seventies” and women of the community were ordained priests “over the next several years.”

80. For Herman’s words here, see Spruit, “An Interview,” pp. 24–25; and Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit: The Man,” p. 19. These are different versions of the same interview but “Jesus plus Mary equals Christ” appears only in the latter of the two.

There are Christian (including Catholic) precedents for imagining a complementary female Christ, for example, Shaker theology in the United States and Mariavite theology in Poland. Earl Blighton, or Father Paul, founder of the Holy Order of MANS in the United States, thought of Mary as the female Christ. No one except Herman to my knowledge thought of Mary and Jesus as gendered poles of the same Christ.

81. Jeffrey Isbrandtsen, “An Interview with Three Women Bishops/Women in the Episcopate” (originally published in AROHN), in Gundrey, Herman Adrian Spruit, book A, fourth reprinted article, original pagination pp. 77–86, at p. 81.

82. Spruit, “An Interview,” p. 25. Herman Spruit, “What Is the Church of Antioch?,” no date, Church Archives CD, Document 103. There are two slightly different copies of this brochure, one from Creswell, Ore. (no date), and one from Santa Fe, N.M. (revised January 1, 2001, by Richard Gundrey). Here I used the Creswell one.

83. Per public records as noted above, Herman and Helen’s divorce was finalized sometime in 1969 or 1970. Mary met them sometime after her split from John Reynolds in 1972, at which time Herman and Helen still lived at the same address.

84. Meri Louise Spruit, Church of Antioch matriarch emerita, age eighty-one, interview, Marina, Calif., October 8, 2007. Carol Lauderdale, “In Memory of Mary Louise Reynolds, August 1, 1929–June 3, 2014,” obituary sent via Ascension Alliance listserv by Alan Kemp, July 26, 2014, and published in several newspapers and online sources.

85. Meri Spruit, interview.

86. Ibid.

87. Ibid.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid. Lauderdale, obituary.

90. Meri Spruit, interview.

91. Ibid.

92. Ibid. Lauderdale, obituary. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Salinas, California, October 6–8, 2007.

93. Meri Spruit, interview.

94. On the home routine, see Meri Spruit, Letter to Richard Gundrey and Mandate of the Matriarch and Instrument of Succession, September 18 and September 20, 2004, respectively, sent with cover letters by Richard Gundrey to the church on October 15, 2004, and again on July 14, 2009; sent to author on July 14, 2009. On the road trips: Meri Spruit, interview. On Meri’s family dynamics: Carol Lauderdale, telephone call with author, July 11, 2015.

95. Meri Spruit, interview. Spruit, “For Myself.”

96. One of several southern California Liberal Catholic heads of splinter churches, Edmund Sheehan started the International Liberal Catholic Church. On Meri’s ordination class, see “Ordination to the Priesthood, Fall Class of 1979,” photograph caption, in Gundrey, Herman Adrian Spruit, book B, fourteenth document. The caption notes the seven class members, the five consecrators, the place, and the date. Meri Spruit, “Women in Holy Orders?” (September 12, 1981), Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Meri’s Writings, p. 2.

97. Spruit, The Sacramentarion, unpaginated front matter, third and fourth pages.

98. For “lying in bed,” see Spruit, “How to Demonstrate,” unpaginated first page. For “are we kidding,” see Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit: The Man,” p. 22.

99. Herman Spruit, Letter to Meri, October 7, 1981, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit Writings/File: Letters, etc.—HAS.

100. Spruit, “Herman Adrian Spruit: The Man,” pp. 8, 21.

101. Most of Herman and Meri’s consecrations are listed in Van Campenhout, Apostolic Succession, pp. 75–82, but for the consecration of Vivian Godfrey and Leon Barcynski in June 1982, see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 1209–10, and the history at the website of the House of Adocentyn: Ordo Astrum Sophiae. Frank Bugge, Church of Antioch listserv, March 26, 2006.

102. Isbrandtsen, “An Interview with Three Women Bishops,” pp. 77–78.

103. Ibid., p. 86. On the consecratees, see Van Campenhout, Apostolic Succession, pp. 75–82. On the Holy Orthodox Catholic Church, see Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, pp. 194, 704–5.

104. Meri Spruit, Letter to Richard Gundrey. Herman Spruit, “The Full Truth.”

105. Herman Spruit, Protocol of Election of Meri Louise Spruit to the Office of Matriarch, no date but c. January 1986, Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch Important Papers, Book #1 (1987–2005). Spruit, “Escaping the Wheel,” pp. 2–3. Herman Spruit, Letter (elevating Archbishop Meri Louise Spruit to position of presiding Matriarch), April 6, 1990, Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch Important Papers, Book #1 (1987–2005).

106. On the India trip: Carol Lauderdale, email to author, July 11, 2015.

107. Meri Spruit, “Women in Holy Orders?,” p. 1. Meri Spruit, “Sermon at Phoenix ordination of 14 to Subdeacon and Deacon,” November 5, 1985, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Meri’s Writings, pp. 1–2. Meri Spruit, “Re-Building the Garden—Re-Building Our Ministries,” October 28, 2000, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Meri’s Writings, p. 5.

108. For “entire housefull,” see Herman Spruit, Protocol of Election of Meri Louise Spruit. Mark Elliot Newman, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-nine, interview, Phoenix, Ariz., April 13, 2009.

109. Meri Spruit, “Women in Holy Orders?,” p. 4. “Painless Public Speaking Workshop,” flyer and other materials, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—3/“Public Speaking.”

110. For “serve without appreciation,” see Isbrandtsen, “An Interview with Three Women Bishops,” p. 85. Meri Spruit, interview. Herman Spruit, Letter to Most Rev. Michael Daigneault et al., November 3, 1990, Church of Antioch Archives/Box: HA & Meri Spruit’s Writings/File: Letters, etc.—HAS. On the resignations, I talked to Richard Gundrey (telephone conversation with author, August 2, 2010).

111. For evidence of conflicts Meri faced, see Meri Spruit, “At My Request That Michael and Timothy Be the Co-Consecrating Bishops of R. Gundrey,” no date (c. October 1990), in Gundrey, Herman Adrian Spruit, book B, eleventh document, one page. For the letter on which Gundrey handwrote a note, see Spruit, Letter to Daigneault.

112. Spruit, Letter to Arnold and Shirley. For the accounts of Linda Rounds-Nichols and Richard Gundrey: field notes, Church of Antioch, Santa Fe, N.M., May 23–29, 2008.

113. Federation of Independent and Orthodox Bishops, FICOB and Friends 1, no. 3 (Fall 1996), Church of Antioch Archives/Box: Herman & Meri’s files—1/File: Fed of Ind. Cath & Orth Bishops, p. 9.

114. Father Jay Nelson, Church of Antioch listserv, January 7, 2009.

115. I talked with Bishop Connie Poggiani of Antioch about this episode in Meri’s life: field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Richmond, Va., October 14–17, 2005 (October 15); others confirmed the information. For “dangerous,” see Meri Spruit, Letter to Richard Gundrey. According to information easily available on the Internet, the man remained an independent Catholic priest and then bishop until his death in 2014. He ran street and prison ministries based on the twelve-step program to help people who had simultaneous problems with substance abuse and mental health.

116. Meri Spruit, Letter to Richard Gundrey.

117. Ibid. On the pallium, see Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter, February 2006, unpaginated, fourth page.

118. The only other independent Catholic jurisdiction with a sizable number of women bishops was the Mariavite Catholic Church in Poland.

119. Keizer, Wandering Bishops, pp. 41, 65. Thomas Hickey, Free Catholicism and the God Within (Richland, Iowa: Esoterica Press, 1990), p. 10. Burns, cover page.

120. Field notes, Richmond Convocation, October 15, 2005.

4. Dance and Balance: Leading American Independents

1. Field notes, Santa Fe, N.M., May 23, 2008. Manuel and Pilar are not the couple’s real names.

2. Roman canon law allows for the “non-sacramental” marriage in Roman churches of couples made up of a Roman Catholic and a nonbaptized person, but if such couples want a Catholic marriage at the sacramental level or a wedding mass where both of them can take communion, they may look for an independent Catholic priest. Code of Canon Law, c. 1086, §1, in The Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition (Washington, D.C.: Canon Law Society of America, 1983).

3. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 2–3, 9, 11, 2007. Richard Gundrey, “Starting a Real Church and Keeping It Going,” presentation at Sursum Corda II Conference, October 5–8, 2003, DVD by Jim Waters/Sanctus Media. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 11, 2007.

4. Ibid., April 4, 2007. Annie and Jake are not the couple’s real names. For “SOUPY”: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, January 30, 2007.

5. Richard Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ in All Life,” in A Strange Vocation: Independent Bishops Tell Their Stories, ed. Alistair Bate (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), pp. 72–77, at p. 74.

6. For life details, see Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” pp. 72–74. For quotations: Richard Gundrey, interview of Archbishop Richard Gundrey by Bob Ross, Santa Fe Public Radio KSFR, March 15, 2008. On Esther Williams: field notes, Santa Fe, April 4, 2007.

7. On SUNY–Farmingdale, see Meri Spruit, Protocol of Election of the Very Reverend Richard Alston Gundrey (October 27, 1990), Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch Important Papers, Book #1 (1987–2005). For “airplane hangar”: field notes, Santa Fe, April 2, 2007. On falling in love with the west: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch archbishop and presiding patriarch, age seventy-one, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., May 28, 2005. On “dance teacher,” see Gussie Fauntleroy, “Bishop Juggles Religion, Restaurant Job,” New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.) (October 17, 1992), p. A-9, also in Church of Antioch Important Papers, Book #1 (1987–2005).

8. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 2 and 4, 2007.

9. For “answers,” “dogmatic,” and “consciousness,” see Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” p. 73. On TM: Gundrey, interview. On the Religious Science details: Meri Spruit, Gundrey Protocol of Election. Richard Gundrey, Order of Service for Holy Eucharist, Church of Antioch at Santa Fe (May 29, 2005, and October 22, 2006, for example). The Holmes prayer was not printed in mass programs of later years.

10. For “sense of spell,” see Fauntleroy, “Bishop Juggles.” For “buzz words” and “perfect home,” see Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” p. 74. Otherwise, Gundrey, interview.

11. For dates, see Meri Spruit, Gundrey Protocol of Election. For the anecdote, see Meri Spruit, Letter to Richard Gundrey, Mandate of the Matriarch and Instrument of Succession, September 18 and September 20, 2004, respectively, sent with cover letters by Richard Gundrey to the church on October 15, 2004, and again on July 14, 2009; sent to author on July 14, 2009.

12. On Richard’s first space in Santa Fe, see Meri Spruit, Gundrey Protocol. For “all my friends”: Gundrey, Sursum Corda. Otherwise, Gundrey, interview.

13. No lease: field notes, Santa Fe, April 2, 2007. “It takes prayer”: Gundrey, interview. No incense: Gundrey, Ross interview. For no childcare and “in heaven”: Gundrey, Sursum Corda.

14. Field notes, Santa Fe, May 25, 2008; April 8, 2007.

15. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 11, 2007. Cassandra is not the church member’s real name.

16. Field notes, Santa Fe, May 23 and 25, 2008.

17. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 2, 2007; May 23, 2008. Richard used “ladyfriend” on the listserv when referring to Ilene.

18. Gundrey, interview. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 2, 2007; May 23, 2008. Ilene Dunn, “The Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch–Malabar Rite,” promotional DVD, October 2006. On the handwritten notes: Gundrey, Sursum Corda. Lian Reed, Church of Antioch seminarian, age fifty-one, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 6, 2007.

19. “A great guy”: Gundrey, interview. On relations with local independents: Gundrey, telephone conversation with author, February 25, 2015. Seeing Holy Trinity monks: field notes, Santa Fe, April 8, 2007.

20. For “good friends”: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter, April 2005, unpaginated, first page. The rest: Gundrey, interview.

21. On Li’l Abner: Daniel Dangaran, Church of Antioch listserv, March 2, 2008. On his rates: Gundrey, Sursum Corda. On the annual number of weddings: field notes, Church of Antioch, Santa Fe, April 2, 2007. Meri Spruit, Letter to Richard Gundrey.

22. For “very comfortable”: Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” p. 75. For “does it for money”: Gundrey, Sursum Corda. Otherwise, Gundrey, interview.

23. On the visiting clergy, see Fauntleroy, “Bishop Juggles.” Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, December 26, 2006.

24. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter, January 18, 2008, unpaginated, third page.

25. Doug Walker, Church of Antioch listserv, February 29, 2008.

26. Gundrey, interview. The vast majority of Antiochians likewise dispute or downplay the idea of sin. It came up in at least four other interviews of clergy.

27. Ibid.

28. For “this world matters”: Roberto Foss, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-eight, interview, Los Angeles, Calif., November 24, 2007.

29. Gundrey, interview.

30. For Richard saying people should stick to their beliefs if it “gets” you “through the night”: Church of Antioch listserv, April 19, 2006, and field notes, Santa Fe, April 7, 2007.

31. Liza Molina, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., May 27, 2008.

32. Reed, interview.

33. Field notes, Santa Fe, May 23, 2008; April 3, 2007; May 27, 2008.

34. Gundrey, Sursum Corda. There are additional annual clergy dues that range from $75 for a deacon to $175 for an archbishop. As noted in Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter (February 8, 2007), unpaginated, second page, these sums represented a hike in rates for the first time in fifteen years.

35. On using the Trinitarian formula: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, March 1, 2008. On keeping good records: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, April 15, 2007, January 9, 2008, December 8, 2008. On using baptism certificates as identification: field notes, Santa Fe, April 8, 2007.

36. These mass titles can be found among masses collected in the Church of Antioch Archives, Box: Herman & Meri’s files—2/Files: Liturgy 1 and Liturgy 2.

37. Richard Gundrey, telephone conversation with author, August 2, 2010.

38. On the Buddhist monks: Gundrey, interview with Ross. On Mother Linda’s mass: field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Richmond, Va., October 14, 2005. On the pentagram: Linda Rounds-Nichols, email to author, January 13, 2015.

39. Reed, interview.

40. Ibid.

41. Field notes at masses celebrated by Richard Gundrey. Gundrey, Order of Service, p. 6.

42. Gundrey, Order of Service, p. 11.

43. Ibid. For “particular womb”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, April 19, 2006.

44. Linda Rounds-Nichols, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-eight, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007. Reed, interview.

45. Jorge Eagar, Church of Antioch bishop, age sixty-three, interview, Tempe, Ariz., April 13, 2009.

46. Carol Calvert, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-seven, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 5, 2007.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 6, 2007.

50. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 7, 2007.

51. Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi Sunday bulletin, October 2, 1994. Letters from Bishop Richard Gundrey to Father Gilbert Schneider and Archbishop Michael Sheehan (October 24, 1994); letter from Father Ernest Falardeau to Bishop Richard Gundrey (November 1, 1994); letter from Archbishop Michael Sheehan to Bishop Richard Gundrey (November 4, 1994); all Church of Antioch file copies provided to author by Bishop Mark Newman, March 28, 2015. For Richard’s account of the whole story and his response to the ecumenical officer: Gundrey, interview.

52. Tom Roberts, “Bishop Decries ‘Combative Tactics’ of a Minority of U.S. Bishops,” National Catholic Reporter, August 26, 2009. On Richard’s around-the-town interactions with Sheehan: Gundrey, interview, and Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, September 11, 2006.

53. Michael Sheehan, “What Is an Independent Catholic Church?,” People of God, Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M., June 1997.

54. Letter from Bishop Richard Gundrey to Archbishop Michael Sheehan, July 7, 1997, Church of Antioch file copy provided to author by Bishop Mark Newman, March 28, 2015.

55. I do not have copies of the follow-up letters, the gist of which Richard described to me: Gundrey, interview. But a subsequent letter from the ecumenical officer to Richard corroborates that Sheehan argued that “there was confusion in the minds of the laity about which ‘Catholic Church’ you represent and whether or not they can, in good conscience, accept Sacraments from you”: letter from Father Ernest Falardeau to Archbishop Richard Gundrey, February 23, 2000, Church of Antioch file copy provided to author by Bishop Mark Newman, March 28, 2015. “Message from Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan: Attention Roman Catholics,” Sunday bulletin notice, May 2004 and continuous, for example, in the “Liturgy” section of the website of Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church in Albuquerque, N.M. For one parishioner’s analysis and the date of the original notice: Stephanie Block, “The Archbishop’s List,” Los Pequeños Pepper (Albuquerque: Los Pequeños de Cristo) 7, no. 1 (January 2005): 8–10. Archdiocese of Santa Fe website.

56. Michael Sheehan, “Don’t Be Fooled!,” People of God, Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M., September 2006, p. 2.

57. Vatican Council II, Unitatis redintegratio, November 21, 1964. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 2011), section 816. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Iesus, August 6, 2000, section 22. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, September 11, 2006.

58. For “dishearten”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, September 11, 2006. For “TOO MANY”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, December 15, 2005. Bishop Oscar Trujillo heads the American Catholic Communities based at Holy Spirit Cathedral in Albuquerque; on its website I accessed a link to the exchange with Sheehan on October 12, 2014. For “ego,” see Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” p. 76. For “badmouth”: Gundrey, Sursum Corda.

59. Field notes, Santa Fe, May 23, 2008.

60. Deacon Doug’s presentation: field notes, Santa Fe, April 11, 2007. Rabbi Gold’s presentation: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, April 8, 2008.

61. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 4 and 11, 2007.

62. For “bachelor pad,” ironing, and kitchen tour: field notes, Santa Fe, April 3, 2007. On “Christ Consciousness energy,” field notes, Santa Fe, April 9, 2007. On being “addicted” to work: field notes, Santa Fe, May 23, 2008.

63. Reed, interview. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Santa Fe, N.M., October 21, 2006.

64. Church of Antioch Important Documents, Book #1.

65. Field notes, Santa Fe, April 4, 2007.

66. Diana Phipps, Church of Antioch bishop, age sixty-three, interview, Fredericksburg, Tex., June 16, 2007.

67. Jay Nelson, email to author, June 24, 2015. Father Jay created an online tribute with links to national media coverage of Father Tom’s death and the history of Linkup: http://archives.weirdload.com/economus/index.html.

68. Jack Sweeley, Church of Antioch priest, age sixty-four, interview, Baltimore, Md., July 24, 2007.

69. John Plummer, The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement: A Study of Its Liturgy, Doctrine and Leadership in America (Dallas: Newt Books, 2004), p. 37. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, March 1, 2008.

70. Jeff Genung, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-seven, interview, Austin, Tex., June 23, 2007. On “a fit”: I keep this interviewee anonymous here.

71. Gundrey, interview.

72. Gundrey, Order of Service, p. 3. Herman Spruit, “Constitution and Statement of Principles of the Church of Antioch” (Mountain View, Calif.: Church of Antioch Press, 1978), Church Archives CD, Document 77. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, April 19, 2006. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, March 7, 2008.

73. On the Independent Catholicism Survey, question 17, and in my interviews, respondents said “no dogma” or “freedom” was the “best thing” about the church more than any other answer, at least fifty times. Sara Yonce, Church of Antioch priest, age sixty-five, interview, Montgomery, Tex., June 19, 2007. Foss, interview.

74. Genung, interview. Reed, interview.

75. Rounds-Nichols, interview.

76. Foss, interview.

77. Ted Feldmann, Church of Antioch deacon, age fifty-seven, interview, Baltimore, Md., July 23, 2007. Mark Elliot Newman, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-nine, interview, Phoenix, Ariz., April 13, 2009.

78. Becky Taylor, Church of Antioch seminarian, age fifty-six, interview, Richmond, Va., July 23, 2007.

79. For “zooey”: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 6, 2007. “Killing chickens,” “worshiping Satan,” and otherwise accusing “nutsos” came up in several interviews, as well as in a Church of Antioch listserv discussion.

80. Calvert, interview. Jack Pischner, Church of Antioch seminarian, age sixty-two, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007. Reed, interview.

81. For “water”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, April 19, 2006.

82. For “great SELF SELECTING”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, December 12, 2007. On other Sophia processes: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15, 2005; and Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 2, 2008.

83. For these conversations with Richard Gundrey: field notes, Santa Fe, May 24, 2008, and April 2, 2007. See also Associated Press, “From Prison-Lifer to Priest, Former Principal, Murderer Believes He Has Been Rehabilitated,” Daily Journal (Kankakee, Ill.) (February 18, 2002). For “white bread”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, December 12, 2007.

84. Gundrey, interview.

85. J. Gordon Melton, “Preface,” in Independent Bishops: An International Directory, ed. Gary L. Ward, Bertil Persson, and Alan Bain (Detroit: Apogee Books, 1990), pp. v–viii, at p. vii.

86. For the quotation, see Maude Petre, Autobiography and Life of Father Tyrrell, vol. 2 (London: E. Arnold, 1912), pp. 379–80. On the friendship between Tyrrell and Mathew, see Peter Anson, Bishops at Large (1964; Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2006), pp. 165, 175–76, 179.

87. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 21, 2006. Yonce, interview.

88. For the percentage of full-time independent Catholic priests: Independent Catholicism Survey, question 55. For examples of their professions: Independent Catholicism Survey, question 57.

89. For “stealth” priests: John Plummer, Independent Sacramental Movement listserv on Yahoo, December 14, 2006. For “gypsy church”: Franzo King, African Orthodox Church archbishop and pastor of St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, interview, San Francisco, Calif., August 10, 2005. For the quotation of Bishop Diana Dale: Uwe Siemon-Netto, “New Leaders for Old Catholic Church,” Beliefnet, August 7, 2001. For “love and appreciation,” see Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” pp. 76–77. Lemieux: field notes, Santa Fe, May 25, 2008.

90. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 2, 2008.

91. Acts of the Apostles 8:9–24. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, October 25, 2005.

92. For “very prevalent”: Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, October 25, 2005. For “integrity,” see Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” p. 77.

93. Richard Marosi, “Beloved Mexican Priest Is Branded a Rogue,” Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2009. Roberto Foss called attention to this news item on the Church of Antioch listserv, December 21, 2009. Omar Millán, “Vatican Ousts Beloved Priest for Defying Order,” SanDiegoRed.com, January 12, 2012.

94. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, October 25, 2005.

95. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 14, 2006.

96. For “moved along”: Gundrey, interview. Bishops were discussing aspects of the future leadership plan by 2005: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15, 2005.

97. Richard Gundrey, “Free House,” Church of Antioch newsletter, April 2005, unpaginated, sixth page. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15, 2005.

98. For this conversation with Richard: field notes, Santa Fe, April 9, 2007. On the hope to buy (or get donated) Loretto Chapel: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15, 2005.

99. For Richard’s words: field notes, Santa Fe, April 8, 2007, and May 23, 2008.

100. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, February 23, 2008; March 1, 2008; April 19, 2006. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 6, 2007.

101. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, July 1, 2008; Sweeley, interview.

102. Richard Gundrey, adding to Church of Antioch listserv thread of March 2007. Richard Gundrey, adding to Church of Antioch listserv thread of November 2007.

103. On “for the best”: field notes, Santa Fe, May 24, 2008.

104. Foss, interview. Pischner, interview. Sweeley, interview.

105. Sweeley, interview.

106. J. A. Douglas, “Foreword,” in Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church, ed. Henry R. T. Brandreth (1947; Springfield, Mo.: St. Willibrord Press, 1987), p. xvi.

107. Eagar, interview. Sweeley, interview.

5. Mix and Mysticism: Experimenting with US Catholicism

1. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Los Angeles, November 23, 2007. Paula is not the real name of Roberto’s colleague and I have occluded other identifying details to preserve her anonymity.

2. Field notes, Church of Antioch, southern California, November 24, 2007.

3. This whole section draws on my interview with Roberto Foss, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-eight, Los Angeles, Calif., November 24, 2007; and field notes, southern California, November 21–25, 2007.

4. On the Catholic charismatic movement, see Susan A. Maurer, The Spirit of Enthusiasm: A History of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, 1967–2000 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2010).

5. On being a love consultant: field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Santa Fe, N.M., October 20, 2006. On the Dignity mass: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter, April 26, 2008, unpaginated, second page.

6. On the Yogi Bhajan homily: Jack Pischner, Church of Antioch seminarian, age sixty-two, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007. On the World Parliament event: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, October 23, 2009.

7. The website of the Old Catholic Church (Province of the USA) had the most complete account of this meeting and subsequent events.

8. Björn Marcussen, “A Background to Professor Esser’s Four Points,” written after the Queens Village meeting, on the website of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion.

9. Bowdoin College scholar Elizabeth Pritchard’s forthcoming book on TOCCUSA promises a rich ethnographic and historical narrative of this independent body. The working title is Intimate Catholics.

The announcement about the appointment of Esser as official liaison was posted on the website of TOCCUSA as of September 2013. The announcement was no longer posted as of October 4, 2014. According to Pritchard, Archbishop Vercammen recalled Esser as official liaison so that TOCCUSA might first develop its relationship with the Episcopal Church, but Esser has stayed on as a resource for TOCCUSA in an unofficial capacity. Elizabeth Pritchard, email to author, January 14, 2015.

10. I read discussions about implicit ultramontanism, possible self-hatred, and exclusion-by-intercommunion on two independent Catholic Yahoo groups, the Independent Sacramental Movement and the Autocephalous Sacramental Movement, between 2006 and 2009. During most of Richard’s tenure, Bishop Mark Newman headed ecumenical activities for Antioch and told me about church guidelines for intercommunion agreements: Mark Elliott Newman, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-nine, interview, Phoenix, Ariz., April 13, 2009.

11. On the Independent Catholic Survey, 64 percent of Antioch respondents said they were formerly Roman Catholic or Eastern Catholic within the Roman communion (question 30). Jack Sweeley, Church of Antioch priest, age sixty-four, interview, Baltimore, Md., July 24, 2007. Bob Mitchell, Church of Antioch listserv, April 20, 2008. For Marian Bellus’s words: field notes, Church of Antioch, Philadelphia, Pa., July 29.

12. On Sister Helen Prejean and the monk, see (respectively) Church of Antioch at Santa Fe Facebook announcement for January 25, 2015, and field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, [midwestern city and state], September 11, 2009. On St. Vincent’s: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter, April 26, 2008, unpaginated, first page.

13. Jim St. George, Church of Antioch listserv, August 19, 2007. An example of a similar event: on April 28, 2012, I attended an ordination anniversary and party for a Manhattan independent Catholic priest (not in the Church of Antioch). The mass was held in a Roman Catholic sanctuary with the approval of the parish’s pastor, clearly a good friend. About two hundred gathered parishioners seemed unevenly aware that the feted priest is independent. Among places he works, as listed on his Silver Jubilee prayer card, are three Roman Catholic parishes and two independent Catholic churches.

I ran across two accounts of independent priests doing weddings in Roman churches with the pastor’s permission: Paul Clemens, Church of Antioch listserv, November 8, 2007; and Robert Dittler, abbot-bishop, and Tom Dowling, priest, White-Robed Monks of Saint Benedict, interview, San Francisco, Calif., August 10, 2005.

The anecdote about chancery office referrals comes from one of my Antioch interviews.

14. I know of two instances in other jurisdictions in which independent Catholics reported being fired from Rome-affiliated jobs due to independent affiliation: one was mentioned on the Independent Sacramental Movement Yahoo listserv in April 2007, and the other on the Autocephalous Sacramental Movement Yahoo listserv in July 2008. In a slightly different instance, the adjunct professorship of Antioch priest Jim St. George at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia provoked a local media storm in 2011, when the college fired him after someone notified the institution that Father Jim is not a Roman priest and is married to his partner Sean. Chestnut Hill administrators said they were not aware of those commitments, while Father Jim is certainly “out” and publicly known as the pastor of an independent church. Eventually the parties resolved things “amicably,” as quoted in Theresa Materson, “Gay Priest Settles with Chestnut Hill College,” NBC10.com, March 21, 2011. For “jazzed”: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 20, 2006.

15. For Bishop Michael’s request: field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Richmond, Va., October 16, 2005. Father Tom David is quoted in Chris Dovi, “Unconditional Faith: An Independent Catholic Community in Richmond Makes Acceptance the Foundation of Faith,” RVA Magazine 1 (Spring 2010): 46–49, at p. 49. Roberto Foss, Church of Antioch listserv, January 15, 2009.

16. For “our sister church”: Diana Phipps, Church of Antioch listserv, December 18, 2005.

17. On intercommunion: documentation of five agreements dated 2005–8 are located in Richard’s Important Documents Book #1 (1987–2005), and Bishop Mark Newman sent me word of one more. These are not counting three intercommunion agreements that found the relationships between autocephalous Churches of Antioch in Argentina, Australia, and, as of November 2010, England (Mark Newman, Church of Antioch listserv, October 26, 2010, and email to author, June 6, 2015). On the Arizona independent collaboration and the Liberal Catholic Apostolic Church seminarian: field notes, Church of Antioch, Arizona (mostly Phoenix area), April 7, 9–12, 2009; Arizona Association of Independent Catholic Clergy, Directory of Arizona Independent Catholic Clergy, Seminarians, and Religious, March 29, 2009; and Arizona Association of Independent Catholic Clergy, Mission Statement/General Principles, no date. The latter two are short Word documents, both sent by Bishop Mark Newman, email to author, April 16, 2009.

18. On Father Ted: field notes, Church of Antioch, Baltimore, Md., July 23–24, 2007. On Monsignor Bowling: field notes, Church of Antioch, Harker Heights, Texas, June 15–16, 2007. On the Episcopal homilists: field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Salinas, Calif., October 6, 2007; and Bishop Jorge Eagar, email to author, January 25, 2015. On the substitute or interim gigs, sources are respectively: Linda Rounds-Nichols, Church of Antioch listserv, January 30, 2006; Deirdre Brousseau, Church of Antioch listserv, March 22, 2008; Michael Adams, Church of Antioch listserv, January 22, 2010; Richard Gundrey, “Supply Clergy,” Church of Antioch newsletter, February 2006, unpaginated, second page; and field notes, Church of Antioch, Washington State, September 9–16, 2008.

19. On vows as a hermit and sarabite: field notes, Church of Antioch, Washington (mostly Seattle area), September 11, 2008; and Father Jay Nelson, Church of Antioch listserv, October 24, 2006. On Dick Gray’s community: field notes, Church of Antioch, Ariz., April 7, 2009. On Lanzetta’s keynote: Church of Antioch Convocation Schedule 2008 (October 30–November 3), listing Lanzetta for November 1 (I was not present for this Convocation but did receive registration materials). On Jeff Genung: Jeff Genung, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-seven, interview, Austin, Tex., June 23, 2007; and field notes, Church of Antioch, Texas, June 23–24, 2007.

20. Jim Willems, Church of Antioch member, age sixty-three, interview, Ojai, Calif., November 25, 2007 (initiated by Anagarika Sri Munindra). Daniel Dangaran, Church of Antioch priest (later bishop), age fifty-three, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 5, 2007. Paul Clemens, photographs of chapel, Church of Antioch listserv, May 27, 2007. On Kemp: field notes, Ascension Alliance Convocation, August 20, 2011; Alan Kemp, “A Eucharistic Pooja,” in A Free Catholic Concise Liturgy and Other Useful Writings (Gig Harbor, Wash.: Hermitage Desktop Press, 2015), pp. 113–36; and Alan Kemp, Ascension Alliance listserv, July 14, 2014. On Eagar: Jorge Eagar, Church of Antioch bishop, age sixty-three, interview, Tempe, Ariz., April 13, 2009; and field notes, Church of Antioch, Arizona, April 12, 2009.

21. For “non-sacramental,” see Jim Willems, Church of Antioch listserv, February 16, 2010. For the rest: William Buehler, email to author, June 24, 2015; field notes, Ascension Alliance Convocation, Seattle, Wash., August 20; and Diana Phipps, Church of Antioch bishop, age sixty-three, interview, Fredericksburg, Tex., June 16, 2007.

22. PJ Johnston, “The Church on Armenian Street: Capuchin Friars, the British East India Company, and the Second Church of Colonial Madras,” PhD diss., University of Iowa, May 2015.

23. PJ Johnston, email to author, September 4, 2012. I accessed the website in February 2005 but it was defunct within a few years.

24. On Burke, see J. Gordon Melton, The Encyclopedia of American Religions, 8th ed. (Detroit: Gale/Cengage, 2009), p. 723; and James Lewis, “Gnostic Orthodox Church of America,” in The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects and New Religions, 2nd ed. (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001), p. 360.

25. For “fringe”: Genung, interview. For “way out there”: Alan Kemp, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-eight, interview, Gig Harbor, Wash., October 10, 2008. Hamilton, interview. Pischner, interview.

26. Genung, interview. Clemens, interview. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Tex., June 20, 2007. Michael Adams, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 6, 2007. Doug Walker, Church of Antioch seminarian, age fifty-nine, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 10, 2007. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Salinas, Calif., October 5–8, 2007 (October 6). Willems, interview. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Ariz., April 8, 2009.

27. Adams, interview. Phipps, interview. Kemp, interview. Anonymous, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-four, interview, [city], Wash., September 11, 2008. Claire Vincent (pseudonymized at interviewee’s request), Church of Antioch seminarian, age forty-five, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007.

28. As John Plummer wrote, independents consistently labored to bring “public, visible, esoteric churches . . . into being,” hoping to incarnate the “esoteric Christian tradition in ecclesiastical expression”: Plummer, The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement (Dallas: Newt Books, 2004), pp. 71, 97. Antiochians who expressed a wish for more appreciation of western mysticism include Genung, interview; Eagar, interview; and Mark Newman, field notes, Phoenix, Ariz., April 7, 2009.

29. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15–16, 2005. “Mildred Joy Cowan Gulbenk,” Tennessean, July 8, 2008. Jim Willems et al., Guild for Mystical Praxis, distributed at Antioch Convocation, [midwestern city and state], September 13, 2009.

30. On the attributed “ahistoricism” of practitioners of “metaphysical, mystical, and harmonial traditions,” see Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 8; and Courtney Bender, The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), pp. 5–10. On the historical rather than theological emphasis of independent Catholicism, see Robert J. Caruso, The Old Catholic Church (Berkeley: Apocryphile Press, 2009), p. 97.

31. For the “experiential turn,” see Ann Taves, Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 3–5. Thomas Hickey, Independent Catholicism for the Third Millennium, 3rd ed., ed. Alan Kemp (1989; Tacoma, Wash.: Ascension Desktop Press, 2002), pp. 41–42.

32. Lian Reed, Church of Antioch seminarian, age fifty-one, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 6, 2007.

33. On the progress of Spanish-language initiatives: Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch newsletter, January 18, 2008, unpaginated, first page; June 5, 2008, unpaginated, first page; January 7, 2009, unpaginated, first page; and Eagar, interview.

34. On Trujillo and Granberry, see, respectively, the website of the American Catholic Communities and the Facebook page of the Walking in Faith International Worship Center. I talked to Bishop King on August 10, 2005, and attended St. John Coltrane on August 7, 2005. I also talked to leaders and members of the Imani Temple and attended mass at its cathedral at Maryland Street and C Street about ten times from 2001 to 2004. Sources include Clinton Anderson, deacon, interview, July 1, 2003; anonymous layperson, interview, June 24, 2003; Adrian Isaac Bayo, priest, interview, June 23, 2003; Bill Beaviers, layperson, interview, July 1, 2003; Robert Gibbs, seminarian, interview, June 24, 2003; Carlos Harvin, bishop, interview, July 3, 2003; Soyami Stallings, Imani Temple First Lady, July 1, 2003, all in Washington, D.C.; field notes, Imani Temple, Washington, D.C., June 2001, May 2002, June–July 2003, and May–July 2004; field notes and archival research, Josephite Archives, Baltimore, Md., May 2002; and Bishop Glenn V. Jeanmarie et al., Masumbu Ya Imani, rev. ed. (c. 1989; Washington, D.C.: African-American Catholic Congregation, 1996). The latter serves as the Imani theological and constitutional text.

35. Willems, interview.

36. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation: Diverse and Dynamic,” full report, February 2008, pp. 20–35. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 1, 2008.

37. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15, 2005; and Antioch Convocation, October 21, 2006.

38. Richard Gundrey, compiler and editor, “A Brief History on the Origins and Faith of the Church of Antioch,” October 2004, Church Archives CD, Document 7, p. 10. Other sources for Archbishop Richard’s invocation of the Law of Attraction: field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 15, 2005; and Richard Gundrey, “Starting a Real Church and Keeping It Going,” presentation at Sursum Corda II Conference, October 5–8, 2003, DVD by Jim Waters/Sanctus Media.

39. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 2, 2008. Kera Hamilton, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-seven, interview, Philadelphia, Pa., July 27, 2007.

40. Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, June 2, 2008. Other mentions of “Julie’s book” in this capacity include Linda Rounds-Nichols, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-eight, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007; field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 6, 2007; Linda Rounds-Nichols, Church of Antioch listserv, October 27, 2008; Ted Feldmann, Church of Antioch listserv, October 28, 2009; field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, [Roman Catholic retreat center, midwestern city and state], October 26, 2014.

41. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Santa Fe, N.M., April 4, 2007.

42. Richard Gundrey, letter of resignation, November 17, 2008, sent to the church mailing list.

43. Official Church of Antioch numbers as of February 2008: seventy-five clergy and thirty-three registered churches or ministries in the United States. Gundrey, “Seeing the Christ,” p. 72. Official numbers reported at Convocation two years earlier were sixty-seven clergy and twenty-eight churches or ministries in the United States. “Annual Report,” distributed to the assembled, October 21, 2006. Ted Feldmann, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-seven, interview, Baltimore, Md., July 23, 2007.

44. Becky Taylor, Church of Antioch seminarian, age fifty-six, interview, Richmond, Va., July 23, 2007.

45. Pischner, interview. Sweeley, interview. Carol Calvert, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-seven, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 5, 2007. Walker, interview. Kemp, interview.

46. On the home addition: field notes, Santa Fe, April 9, 2007. For the reception: field notes, Antioch Convocation, September 10, 2009.

47. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 22, 2006.

48. Bob Ross, in interview of Archbishop Richard Gundrey, Santa Fe Public Radio KSFR, March 15, 2008. Calvert, interview.

49. Herman Spruit, “What Does It Take to Be a Bishop in Our Church?,” August 3, 1981, Church Archives CD, Document 101.

6. Sacraments and Saints: Hearing a New Call

1. Here and throughout this section, I draw on Kera Hamilton, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-seven, interview, Philadelphia, Pa., July 27, 2007.

2. Ibid. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Philadelphia, Pa., July 29, 2007.

3. Field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Santa Fe, N.M., October 20, 2006. The ex-Catholic population of the United States in 2008 was about 10 percent of the total US population, which would be 30 million people. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” 2008, full report, p. 7. Since about 34 percent of US Catholics live in the east, I surmise that about 34 percent of ex-Catholics also live in the east, which would be roughly ten million ex-Catholics. For the regional distribution of Catholics: William D’Antonio et al., American Catholics Today (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), p. 183. Here I used the D’Antonio study of 2007 and the Pew numbers from 2008 rather than updated numbers, since the time of my study is closer to 2007.

4. Here and throughout this section, I draw on JoEllen Werthman, Church of Antioch priest, age sixty-one, interview, Philadelphia, Pa., July 27, 2007.

5. Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter stating that the question of women in the priesthood is not “open to debate” is Ordinatio sacerdotalis, May 22, 1994.

6. Werthman, interview.

7. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Philadelphia, July 29, 2007.

8. St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch, mass program, July 29, 2007. Code of Canon Law, cc. 924–25, in The Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition (Washington, D.C.: Canon Law Society of America, 1983).

9. Here and throughout this section, I draw on field notes, Church of Antioch, Philadelphia, July 29, 2007.

10. A number of parishioners mentioned these same words as the source of great solace, which have been spoken and printed in the mass programs at St. Mary Magdalene since 2001. In 2013 Pope Francis wrote something similar in Evangelii gaudium: “The Eucharist, although it is the fullness of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak” (November 24, 2013, sec. 47). The idea of communion as “medicine” dates to the second-century Christian title given to the Eucharist, the “medicine of immortality.” It is first written as such in Ignatius of Antioch’s Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 20 (c. 98–117 CE). See the relevant passage in The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, edited and translated by Bart Ehrman, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 240–41.

11. “Open orders”: Richard Gundrey, interview of Archbishop Richard Gundrey by Bob Ross, Santa Fe Public Radio KSFR, March 15, 2008. For “open to all humanity,” see Kate McGraw, “A Community ‘Open to All Humanity,’” Albuquerque Journal–Santa Fe/North, May 18, 2006. Roberto Foss, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-eight, interview, Los Angeles, Calif., November 24, 2007.

12. For Episcopal acknowledgment of moral relationships apart from marriage, see Caroline Addington Hall, A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality Is Changing the Episcopal Church (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), p. 137.

13. Lian Reed, Church of Antioch seminarian, age fifty-one, interview, Santa Fe, N.M., April 6, 2007.

14. Claire Vincent (pseudonymized at interviewee’s request), Church of Antioch seminarian, age forty-five, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007.

15. Michael Adams, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 6, 2007.

16. Modern Roman canonical norms indicate that ordained men cannot marry, but married men can be ordained, for example, when married priests of Eastern churches or the Anglican communion are accepted as priests into the Roman church. Orthodox and Roman bishops cannot ever be married. Yet there is at least one instance in which a married independent Catholic bishop was accepted back into the Roman church and, still married, became a Roman bishop. Salomão Barbosa Ferraz had founded a “Free Catholic Church” and was consecrated a bishop by Carlos Duarte Costa of the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church. After Barbosa Ferraz’s reconciliation with Rome, in 1963 Pope John XXIII named him a titular bishop. See Phyllis Zagano, Women and Catholicism: Gender, Communion, and Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 74.

Jeff Genung, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-seven, interview, Austin, Tex., June 23, 2007. Ted Feldmann, Church of Antioch deacon, age fifty-seven, interview, Baltimore, Md., July 23, 2007.

17. For “You’ve done this before” and “You are a continuation”: Hamilton, interview; Darleen Mitchell, in field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, [midwestern city and state], September 12, 2009. Deirdre Brousseau, Church of Antioch listserv, September 21, 2006. Diana Phipps, Lian Reed, and Claire Vincent also cited warrant for ordination in past lives, in interviews or Convocation conversations.

18. Linda Rounds-Nichols, Church of Antioch listserv, November 1, 2013. Diana Phipps, Church of Antioch bishop, age sixty-three, interview, Fredericksburg, Tex., June 16, 2007. Field notes from 2007, not specified here in the interest of discretion.

19. Werthman, interview. Hamilton, interview.

20. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Philadelphia, July 29, 2007.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. On the various collaborations: Kera Hamilton, Church of Antioch listserv, August 12, 2007, December 28, 2007, and March 23, 2008; JoEllen Werthman, telephone call with author, February 22, 2010. “St. Paul Episcopal Church to Host Food with Friends,” Bristol Pilot (Bristol, Pa.), February 5, 2011.

24. Werthman, telephone call.

25. Hamilton, interview.

26. Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacrament, Redemptionis Sacramentum, section 104, April 23, 2004. “The Custom of Intinction,” insert in mass program, St. Mary Magdalene, Fairless Hills, Pa., July 29, 2007.

27. Hamilton, interview.

28. States’ composite religious affiliations are available at the website for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey,” February 2008. In 2000 and 2004 the county of Richmond voted for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush, and in 2008 it went for Barack Obama. This information is available from numerous sources.

29. On religious same-sex marriage ceremonies in the United States, see Jeff Wilson, “‘All Beings Are Equally Embraced by Amida Buddha’: Jodo Shinshu Buddhism and Same-Sex Marriage in the United States,” Journal of Global Buddhism 13 (June 2012): 31–59; and Wilson, “‘Which One of You Is the Bride?’ Unitarian Universalism and Same-Sex Marriage in North America, 1957–1972,” Journal of Unitarian Universalist History 35 (Spring 2012): 156–72. Wilson told me that his oral-historical research for these articles suggests that religious (including Catholic) same-sex marriages could have been performed even earlier, but more historical work remains to be done. Jeff Wilson, email to author, January 13, 2015.

30. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, section 3, October 1, 1986. Jane Gross, “Suffering in Dignity and Exile,” New York Times, December 20, 1988.

31. Timothy d’Arch Smith, Love in Earnest: Some Notes on the Lives and Writings of English “Uranian” Poets from 1880–1930 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970). Sheila Rowbotham, Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love (London: Verso, 2009), pp. 150, 351. Gregory Tillett, The Elder Brother: A Biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), pp. 283, 997, as well as chapter 23.

32. Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement (New York: Alyson, 1990), pp. 27–28.

33. Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, rev. ed. (1973; New York: Orbis Books, 1988); it was originally published in Spanish in 1971. For more on Itkin, see Mark Sullivan and Ian Young, eds., The Radical Bishop and Gay Consciousness: The Passion of Mikhail Itkin (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Autonomedia, 2014), esp. pp. 59, 80, and 117. The Sullivan and Young volume reproduces Itkin’s Radical Jesus and Gay Consciousness, 2nd ed. (pp. 58–60 and 70–145). It was first published as Mikhail Itkin, The Radical Jesus and Gay Consciousness: Notes for a Theology of Gay Liberation, 2nd ed. (Long Beach, Calif.: Communiversity West, 1972).

34. “Rev. George Augustine Hyde,” profile, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network. “Rev. George Augustine Hyde,” oral history interview by J. Gordon Melton, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network.

35. Ibid. Heather Rachelle White, “Proclaiming Liberation: The Historical Roots of LGBT Religious Organizing, 1946–1976,” Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 11, no. 4 (May 2008): 102–19, at pp. 103–4, 113–15. On the Mattachine ad: Karl Pruter and J. Gordon Melton, The Old Catholic Sourcebook (New York: Garland, 1983), pp. 65–66, 77–80. See also Mark D. Jordan, Recruiting Young Love: How Christians Talk About Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 66–70.

36. Ronald Enroth and Gerald Jamison, The Gay Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1974), pp. 102–4. See also Sullivan and Young, Radical Bishop and Gay Consciousness; and White, “Proclaiming Liberation.” On Broshears, see Pruter and Melton, Old Catholic Sourcebook, p. 79; and “The Sexes: The Lavender Panthers,” Time, October 8, 1973. “Bishop Michael Francis Augustine Itkin,” profile, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network. Jordan, Recruiting Young Love, pp. 104–5, 120.

37. “Rev. Robert Mary Clement,” profile, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Religious Archives Network. For another oral-historical account of Clement, his partner John Noble Darcy, the Church of the Beloved Disciple, and their famous “church shop,” Lavender Elephants, see the memoir by New York fashion photographer and socialite Patrick McMullan, “Stonewall and the Church of the Beloved Disciple,” PMc Blog, June 20, 2009. Wilson, email to author.

38. On “a gay subset”: Tom Dowling, in Robert Dittler, White-Robed Monks abbot, and Tom Dowling, White-Robed Monks priest, interview, San Francisco, Calif., August 10, 2005. Lester Kinsolving, “The Paper Priests,” San Francisco Examiner, October 11, 1971, p. 33. Enroth and Jamison, The Gay Church, p. 5.

39. Independent Catholicism Survey, question 12: “Besides religious and spiritual affiliations, what organizations or social causes are a main part of your life, if any?” Fifty-one of 270 independent Catholic responses indicated involvement in advocacy for the LGBTQ community; the next most popular causes were the environment (14), professional organizations (12), human rights, children, and homelessness (11 each), and women’s rights (9). On the poly-wedding jurisdiction: John Plummer, The Many Paths of the Independent Sacramental Movement (Dallas: Newt Books, 2004), p. 94.

40. Tom Gallub, Church of Antioch deacon, age sixty-three, interview, Richmond, Va., July 21 and 22, 2007.

41. Here and throughout this section, I draw on Gallub, interview.

42. Ibid. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Richmond, Va., July 21–22, 2007. Chris Dovi, “Unconditional Faith: An Independent Catholic Community in Richmond Makes Acceptance the Foundation of Faith,” RVA Magazine 1 (Spring 2010): 46–49.

43. Gallub, interview.

44. Ibid. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Richmond, July 21–22, 2007.

45. Gallub, interview.

46. Ibid. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Richmond, July 22, 2007.

47. Gallub, interview.

48. Anonymous, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-four, interview, September 11, 2008. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Santa Fe, N.M., April 11, 2007.

49. Richard Gundrey, Church of Antioch listserv, January 18, 2008. Field notes, Church of Antioch, Santa Fe, April 11, 2007. Reed, interview.

50. Foss, interview.

51. Feldmann, interview.

52. Vincent, interview. Mark Elliott Newman, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-nine, interview, Phoenix, Ariz., April 13, 2009.

53. Feldmann, interview. Foss, interview. Werthman, interview. Jack Pischner, Church of Antioch seminarian, age sixty-two, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 7, 2007.

54. Church of Antioch listserv discussion, November 2006. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, September 13, 2009.

55. Field notes, Antioch Convocation, October 19, 2006.

56. “Reverend Uly Harrison Gooch: Obituary,” Salisbury Post (Salisbury, N.C.), October 21, 2006.

57. Here and throughout this section, I draw on Thomas David Siebert, Church of Antioch priest, age fifty-two, interview, Richmond, Va., July 22, 2007.

58. Siebert, interview. Dovi, “Unconditional Faith,” p. 49.

59. Siebert, interview. Tom David Siebert, email to author, March 3, 2009.

60. Siebert, interview.

61. Patsy Grubbs, Church of Antioch listserv, March 23, 2008.

Conclusion: All Catholics

1. JoEllen Werthman, email to author, August 24, 2013.

2. Michael Adams, email to author, February 10, 2011.

3. On Richard’s activities: Richard Gundrey, message forwarded to the Ascension Alliance listserv by Alan Kemp, September 22, 2013. On the new ministry: Alan Kemp, Ascension Alliance listserv, October 25, 2012.

4. Alan Kemp, Ascension Alliance listserv, June 3, 2014. Mark Elliott Newman, Church of Antioch listserv, June 4, 2014.

5. On Meri’s funeral: Alan Kemp, Ascension Alliance listserv, June 21 and 27, 2014; and Mark Elliott Newman, Church of Antioch listserv, June 23, 2014.

6. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” full report, May 12, 2015, p. 21. Lawrence S. Cunningham, An Introduction to Catholicism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 23.

7. Cunningham, An Introduction to Catholicism, p. 8; Mark D. Jordan, The Silence of Sodom: Homosexuality in Modern Catholicism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 1.

8. Dena Ross, “Sinéad O’Connor’s Act of Love,” Beliefnet, June 27, 2007.

9. Manuel Vásquez, presentation at session “Critical Catholic Studies” sponsored by the Roman Catholic Studies Group, American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, Baltimore, Md., November 23, 2013. Others who propose a Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” approach to defining Catholicism include independent scholar-bishop John Plummer; Elizabeth Pritchard, author of a forthcoming book on the Old Catholic Church USA; and Ludger Viefhues-Bailey, who identifies “conduits of discourse” to define evangelicalism: Viefhues-Bailey, Between a Man and a Woman? Why Conservatives Oppose Same-Sex Marriage (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), pp. 4–6.

10. Though I doubt he was the first, Victor Conzemius used the word “anti-Romanism” to describe some US Polish Catholics in his discussion of Old Catholic outposts in the United States: Victor Conzemius, “Catholicism: Old and Roman,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Summer 1967): 426–45, at pp. 436–37.

11. My suggestion that Catholic splits are human rather than Protestant comes from reading F. B. Welbourn on African Independent Churches, or AICs, Christian groups also known for splitting and often explained as imitative “of white America.” Instead, Welbourn writes, maybe human institutions just always break and branch. F. B. Welbourn, East African Rebels: A Study of Some Independent Churches (London: SCM Press, 1961), pp. 168–69.

12. Michael Adams, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty, interview, Salinas, Calif., October 6, 2007. The phrase “the centre cannot hold” comes from the poem “The Second Coming,” by W. B. Yeats (1919).

13. Marian Ronan, “What Would Dorothy Do?,” An American Catholic on the Margins blog, June 2, 2014.

14. J. A. Douglas, “Foreword,” in Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church, ed. Henry R. T. Brandreth (1947; Springfield, Mo.: St. Willibrord Press, 1987), pp. ix–xix, at p. xiv. Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, “The History of the Old Catholic Movement,” Church Quarterly Review 19, no. 37 (October 1884): 130–59, at pp. 151, 158–59.

15. Alan Bain, “Bishops Irregular”: An International Directory of Independent Bishops (Bristol, UK: A. M. Bain, 1985), pp. 11–13. Independent Catholicism Survey, question 26.

16. Independent Catholicism Survey, question 27.

17. Bain, “Bishops Irregular,” pp. 11–13.

18. Jim Willems, Church of Antioch listserv, February 16, 2010.

19. Jeff Genung, Church of Antioch deacon, age forty-seven, interview, Austin, Tex., June 23, 2007. Frank Bugge, Church of Antioch listserv, July 6, 2003. This post and several of Archbishop Frank’s emails on the same topic are collected as “Female Lines of Apostolic Succession,” Church of Antioch Archives CD, Document 38.

20. Kera Hamilton, Church of Antioch bishop, age fifty-seven, interview, Philadelphia, Pa., July 27, 2007.

21. Pope Francis, Evangelii gaudium, November 24, 2013. Rachel Donadio, “On Gay Priests, Pope Francis Asks, ‘Who Am I to Judge?,’” New York Times, July 29, 2013. For “the people’s pope,” see Howard Chua-Eoan and Elizabeth Dias, “Pope Francis, The People’s Pope,” Time, December 11, 2013.

22. For 90 percent: David Masci, “Pope Francis’s Popularity Extends Beyond Catholics,” Pew Research Center, March 13, 2015. On meeting with the widow: Chua-Eoan and Dias, “Pope Francis.” (The bishop and concelebrator in question are Jerónimo Podestá and Clelia Luro.) On Old Catholics: “Pope’s Address to Old Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Union of Utrecht,” Zenit, October 30, 2014. On outreach to the Society of St. Pius X: “Letter of His Holiness Pope Francis According to Which an Indulgence Is Granted to the Faithful on the Occasion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy,” September 1, 2015.

23. For “son of the Church”: Antonio Spadaro, “A Big Heart Open to God,” interview with Pope Francis, America, September 30, 2013.

24. Peter Manseau, “What It Means to Be Catholic Now,” New York Times, March 10, 2014.

25. Ibid. Peter Manseau, Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son (New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2005).

26. Here and in this section, I draw on field notes, Church of Antioch Convocation, Richmond, Va., October 14–17, 2005.