ARCHBISHOP ARNOLD MATTHEW,
1st PRIMATE OF THE OLD ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ENGLAND
His Excellency the Most Reverend Lord Archbishop Arnold Mathew was an indirect descendant of Theobald Mathew the noted "Apostle of Temperance". Born in France in 1852 and baptised in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC); due to his mother's scruples he was rebaptised in the Church of England (CoE). He studied for the ministry in the Scottish Episcopal Church, but sought reconciliation and confirmation in the Church of Rome
As a Roman Catholic, Mathew was ordained a priest in 1877 in the Pro-Cathedral in Glasgow by the Most Reverend Charles Eyre, Archbishop of Anazarba, in partibus infidelium Vicar-General of the Western District of Scotland, who became the first Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow after the restoration of the hierarchy to Scotland. Mathew was granted a Doctor of Divinity degree by Pope Pius IX. He became a Dominican in 1878 but only persevered a year, moving around a number of dioceses: Newcastle, Plymouth, Nottingham and Clifton. He remained a Roman Catholic priest until, in 1889, various personal doubts and issues caused him to retire from the Roman obedience. Later in 1891 he was persuaded to "trial" the Anglican ministry and went to assist the rector of Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, London. He was never officially received into the Church of England, neither did he formally leave the Roman Catholic Church.
Mathew married Margaret Florence Duncan at St Marylebone Parish Church, London, using the name Arnoldo Girolamo Povoleri, "a clerk in holy orders", on 22 February 1892
In 1897, Mathew had met the Revd Richard O'Hallora and became curious about the suggestion of an Old Catholic Church in Great Britain. O'Halloran had been corresponding with the Old Catholic bishops in Holland and Germany and believed that such a movement would interest a large number of disaffected Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. In June 1906 the Royal Commission appointed in 1904 to inquire into "ecclesiastical disorders", afterwards known as the Ritual Commission, The king issued Letters of Business after the report. It was expected that the Catholic-minded Anglican clergy, with their congregations, might, by Act of Parliament, be forced out of the Anglican Communion Persuaded by O'Halloran, Mathew decided to join the movement and was elected the first Regionary Old Catholic Bishop for Great Britain and in 1908 the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands (OCCN) was petitioned to consecrate him to this charge.
On 28 April 1908, Mathew was consecrated Regionary Old Catholic Bishop for Great Britain and Ireland in St Gertrude's Cathedral, Utrecht, by the OCCN's archbishop of Utrecht, Gerardus Gul, assisted by two OCCN bishops, Jacobus Johannes van Thiel of Haarlem and Nicolaus Bartholomeus Petrus Spit of Deventer, and one Catholic Diocese of the Old Catholics in Germany bishop, Josef Demmel of Bonn.
Mathew's election was to some extent a precautionary endeavour by those anticipating a precipitous action by the Government regarding the Ritual Commission's findings, there were only a small number of Old Catholics in England. However, the King's Letters of Business dealing with the Report of the Ritual Commission received no further attention and no action was taken. The result was that those who had taken part in Mathew's election were able to remain within the Anglican Communion. Added to the natural differences with their former brethren in the Roman Church was a campaign of persecution directed by certain elements of the CoE, described by Willibald Beyschleg, as "those who emphatically desire to be 'catholic' but are at the same time wholly out of sympathy with Old Catholics." They were a small group of ritualistic clergy in the established English Church "on the way to Rome" while the Old Catholics were "on the way from Rome" Unprepared for the position in which he then found himself, Mathew disclosed the matter fully to the Dutch bishops who, with the Old Catholic bishops, held an inquiry into the circumstances. Mathew was subsequently publicly exonerated from all suggestion of misrepresentation in a letter to The Manchester Guardian of 3 June 1908, the bishops also refused his request to retire and insisted he continue with the original mission (though they were later to try and retract this affirmation in 1920).
Mathew published The Old Catholic Missal & Ritual in 1909, for the use of English-speaking Old Catholics with the imprimatur of Gul. In September 1909, Mathew attended the Old Catholic Congress in Vienna, where he expressed his sympathy with the conservative position of the Dutch Old Catholics opposing the innovations being introduced among the German and Swiss Old Catholics to accept the decrees of the Holy Synod of Jerusalem (1672) and to renounce the Sacrament of Penance (auricular confession), the intercession of saints and alterations to the liturgy, including the omission of the Pope's name from the Canon of the Mass. Mathew expressed fears that the trend of Continental Old Catholicism was towards Modernism, perhaps because of the growing association with Anglicans and Lutherans, and hoped for a return to the traditional principles of the Church of Utrecht. In Utrecht, in October 1910, he assisted at the consecration of Jan Maria Michał Kowalski as archbishop of the Polish Mariavite Church.
Eventually, with the support of his clergy, on 29 December 1910, Mathew issued a pastoral letter entitled A Declaration Of Autonomy And Independence from the UU. This necessitated then the continuation of the apostolic succession for the survival of the "old" Roman Catholic faith and so, on 7 January 1911, Mathew consecrated Archdeacon Francis Herbert Bacon, Canon Cuthbert Francis Hinton, Fr William Edmond Scott-Hall and Fr Frederick Clement Christie Egerton to the episcopate. An episcopal synod then followed and Mathew was unanimously elected Old Roman Catholic Archbishop of Great Britain and Ireland. Mathew consecrated two former Roman Catholic priests, Herbert Ignatius Beale and Arthur William Howarth, who were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham for embezzling. Mathew then sent documents to Pope Pius X attesting to the episcopal consecrations. On 11 February 1911, in response and arguably in recognition of the validity of the consecrations, Pope Pius X formally excommunicated Beale, Howarth, and Mathew in the motu proprio type apostolic letter Gravi Iamdiu Scandalo for having consecrated bishops without permission of the Holy See (which permission the Dutch Church was granted freedom from by previous papal bulls).
A noted author and historian, Mathew had an excellent knowledge of the Eastern Orthodox Church and established cordial relations between the English Old Catholics and the Patriarchal See of Antioch. Now an archbishop, Mathew had been in contact with people interested in extending the presence of the Eastern Orthodox Church to Western Europe. On 5 August 1911, at a conference in Bredon's Norton, Worcestershire attended by Archbishop Gerassimos Messarra, Archbishop of Beirut, Legate of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Mathew and others. After a long and full discussion the faith of the Old Roman Catholic Church under Archbishop Mathew was considered in full accord with that of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Mathew was then solemnly received by Mgr Messarra on behalf of Gregory IV (Haddad) and the Old Roman Catholic Church into union with the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch as an autocephalous jurisdiction of the Holy Synod[citation needed] and on 26 February 1912, Photius, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria, also accepted this union.[citation needed][12] As this status has never been formally withdrawn or repudiated,[citation needed] it may be reasonably argued[according to whom?] that Old Roman Catholic bishops are not in fact episcopi vagantes (an oft used term of disparagement by critics) but bishops of a canonically autocephalous church in communion with two historical patriarchal sees[citation needed] of the ancient undivided church.
What distinguished the scholarly Mathew and the episcopate he established in Scotland and America from that of the continental Old Catholics was his insistence on the inviolable episcopal authority of each national body of Old Catholics. This had been in the minds of the original Old Catholic congresses, but the German episcopate, because of its preponderance of numbers and wealth attempted to create a small hierarchical system patterned on the Roman administration with the Archbishop of Utrecht in the position of ranking prelate or "little pope". The English Old Catholics, seeing in this the possibilities of the former mistake of the Western Church with a Germanic, instead of an Italian, spiritual protectorate over the whole Christian world, restated the original Old Catholic principles of autonomy and had received the support of their Orthodox friends in this respect.
In 1914, the previous bishops having left the church for various reasons, Mathew elected Bishop Rudolph Francis Edward Hamilton de Lorraine-Brabant, Prince de Landas Berges, to continue the succession and initially to establish the ministry of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Scotland and then later in the United States. Shortly thereafter, Father Carmel Henry Carfora, an Italian Franciscan friar who had left the Roman Catholic Church, was elected to succeed Bishop de Landes Berghes as Archbishop of the Old Roman Catholic Diocese of America. Because of the move to America of Bishop de Landas Berghes, to safeguard the succession once more, Canon Bernard Mary Williams was consecrated by Mathew on 14 April 1916. On 25 March 1917, Mathew appointed Bishop Williams as his successor and, on 20 December 1919, died at South Mimms, Hertfordshire where he had retired.