Who needs the Liberal Catholic Church

by Bishop Bennett D. D. Burke
Published in 2002

Bishop Burke is the bishop of the Diocese of Arizona.

On Advent Sunday in December 1996, we celebrated our first Holy Eucharist at St. Michael and All Angels (then a Mission of the) Liberal Catholic Church. We’re in Casa Grande, Arizona, a community of about 20,000 souls located half an hour south of the Phoenix metropolitan area (population well over a million), and about an hour north of Tucson (about half a million people). Casa Grande’s demographics break down like this – a poor to middle class, rural, agrarian town. Ethnically, Casa Grande is about thirty percent Hispanic, sixty percent non-Hispanic white, about seven percent black, with the remainder consisting of a very small percentage of Asians and Native Americans (large numbers of Native Americans, however, live on nearby reservations). Neighboring towns include several similar, but even smaller and poorer communities such as Eloy, Florence and Coolidge. Each of these towns, like Casa Grande, has one Roman Catholic diocese, and there are a smattering of Roman Catholic missions in more remote areas of the county and on the reservations.

As one would expect in a heavily Hispanic area, many local residents are Roman Catholic by heritage, if not exactly by official membership or regular attendance at Roman churches. So, since our inception as a congregation, we began to ask ourselves the question, "Who needs the Liberal Catholic Church?" Here are some of the answers we’ve heard in Casa Grande:

Children and others denied baptism by the Roman Church

Not long after we made our presence known in Casa Grande, we began to get calls from people asking if St. Michael’s would baptize their children. Over the course of several years, here are some of the reasons I’ve been told that the local Roman parishes have refused to baptize children (please note that I have heard most of these reasons many times, from many people who have brought their children to us):

The parents of the child are not married.
The parents of the child are married, but only in a civil ceremony.
The parents of the child have not received all of their Sacraments.
The godparents are not married, are not married to each other, were not married in a church ceremony, and so on.
The chosen godparents are too young to offer good religious education (godparents in their late teens or early twenties, for example).
The chosen godparents are too old to live long enough to see the child educated into adulthood (godparents in their seventies).
The parents have not been attending church in the parish for a long enough period of time.
The parents have not donated enough money to the church (one family, who brought their child to St. Michael’s for baptism, and eventually joined the Liberal Catholic Church, was asked by a Roman priest for a copy of their tax return to verify that their annual contributions were of a sufficient percentage of their income – I swear I’m not making this up!).

Children need to be baptized. Here in Casa Grande, and probably in many other towns and cities, they need the Liberal Catholic Church to be warmly welcomed into the family of God.

Those for whom regular, aural Confession doesn’t make sense

Most if not all of our parishioners appreciate having the Confiteor as part of Mass. I frequently remind visitors just before the homily that they need not feel they can’t take Communion if they haven’t been to Confession lately – they just went to Confession at the beginning of Mass! I tell them to save private, aural confession for the "big-ticket" items, not the everyday run-of-the-mill "I said a bad word in traffic the other day" kind of sins. I distinctly remember, as a child, sitting outside the confessional struggling to come up with a sufficient number of "sins" to make the effort worthwhile. Not that I was a saint, mind you, nor am I today. But I really had a hard time coming up with "sins" week after week. I now see how much time I wasted trying to prove to myself what a miserable sinner I was! Modern Americans, familiar with the need for appropriate reflection and correction, but also aware of the value of high self-esteem, need the Liberal Catholic Church.

Children and others who have never received their First Holy Communion, or those who have been denied Communion

This year we are holding First Holy Communion classes for the second time. Last year, we prepared 31 children, youth and adults for Communion, and for a special celebration of their first Communion on Easter! Most of these communicants, and their families, joined our church the same day. This year, we will see 17 children and teens at the altar rail for the first time on Easter, and we expect our congregation to grow again in the same way as last year. Liberal Catholic clergy often lament that those who come to our churches for baptisms or weddings do not come back again. And that, I think, is a problem of short-term relationships. The time we spend preparing them for those sacraments does not usually extend long enough for them to know us, and us to really know them. But after seven weeks of 2-hour First Holy Communion classes, which include and heavily involve the parents of the children, we do create sustainable relationships. We also find that many people who come to St. Michael’s are divorced and remarried, and have either been denied the Holy Eucharist in another church, or have begun to feel guilty for receiving it without revealing their marital status to their priest. What a wonderful feeling when we welcome them to our altar, regardless of the reasons they may have been denied this most important gift in another parish! I think every one of these people would have an answer to "who needs the Liberal Catholic Church."

Those who have never been Confirmed

Now, in our growing congregation, we have a backlog of people who have never been Confirmed. That’s my next project – a confirmation curriculum, which educates and builds relationships in the same way as our First Holy Communion program. Building loving relationships with God, and with each other – that’s what "church" is all about. People who need warm and loving faith communities need the Liberal Catholic Church, too.

Those denied marriage in another church

Mixed marriages, those who have not received all their Sacraments, those turned off by written promises to raise their children in a particular faith – these couples need the Liberal Catholic Church.

Holy Orders

I wish this one were more obvious to more people. The Roman laity often complains that celibacy requirements lead to a shortage of priests. We’ve solved that problem, but we could still need more clergy candidates. People with a family and a calling need the Liberal Catholic Church!

Holy Unction

People need the Liberal Catholic Church coming into this world, for all the reasons listed under "Baptism" above. Those same people need the Liberal Catholic Church leaving this world on their way to the next one. So, who else needs the Liberal Catholic Church? Our Vestry Board members need it – this is where they find opportunities for learning, and for helping to determine the direction of a congregation and denomination that they might never have in another church. Our Sunday School teachers need the Liberal Catholic Church – they find themselves enriched by , as they enrich the spiritual lives of, our children. Our Youth Group members need the Liberal Catholic Church – and the positive social, educational and spiritual experiences it provides. Who else needs the Liberal Catholic Church? When we first started, I tried to estimate how large our congregation could reasonably expect to grow in a small town of twenty thousand. Being a realistic kind of guy (or a cynic – your choice of words!), I estimated we might eventually serve one out of every five hundred people. Well, I thought, I can handle a congregation of 40 people! After about two years, we passed that mark. I revised my estimate. What if we served one of every two hundred people? That math said we could eventually serve one hundred. We passed that mark a while back, too. Is the right number one in one hundred? One in fifty? Who knows! What I do know is, that despite all our efforts, I still run into people who tell me "I never heard of the Liberal Catholic Church!" So I think it would be reasonable to assume - there are a lot more people out there who need the Liberal Catholic Church. People who have been denied the Sacraments. People who have been made to feel like second-class citizens in other churches. People looking for a relationship with our Lord Christ, which doesn’t come with lots of rules and restrictions. At St. Michael’s, I think we’ve stumbled across some of the answers to "Who needs the Liberal Catholic Church." Now, I hope we’ll work on answering these questions, too, in future editions of Community: "Where do we find them?" "How do we reach them?" "How do we get them to stop by for a visit?" And last, but certainly not least, "How do we get them to come back, and stay awhile?"

This document is part of The Global Library,
from the The Southern Province USA of the North American Old Catholic Church.

Additional funding provided by The Wynn and Rick Wagner Foundation.