2 Churches Feud Over Advertising : Religion: American Catholic branch attracts people who wish to remarry, but Roman Catholic diocese says it is misleading people.

The local newspaper advertisements aim at divorced Roman Catholics who, because they were once married, are barred from remarrying in their church.

“Want a Catholic Wedding but Cannot Be Married in Your Roman Catholic Parish? Call the Priests of Saint Matthew Church. An American Catholic Community.”

Such marketing has lured a booming wedding business to St. Matthew, a tiny church in Orange where priests say they officiate at about 300 marriages a year.

But St. Matthew’s advertising, which targets “unhappy or disenfranchised Roman Catholics,” its founding pastor says, has spurred an ongoing feud with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange.

Msgr. Lawrence J. Baird, the diocese spokesman, contends that the priests at St. Matthew are trying to deceive Roman Catholics that theirs is a Roman Catholic church when it is not.

St. Matthew’s designation as a Catholic Church, albeit American rather than Roman Catholic, in itself is confusing, he said.

“It is clear that St. Matthew is being disingenuous in regard to appealing to Roman Catholics,” Baird said. “The issue is deceptive advertising.”

Because of complaints from some Roman Catholics who were misled, Baird said, the official diocesan newsletter last year ran a warning that marriage attempted before priests or deacons of St. Matthew would be invalid in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church.

Baird said that at the urging of the diocese, most Roman Catholic parishes in Orange County over the last 12 months have placed similar alerts in the bulletins they distribute at Sunday Mass.

The diocese has angered Father Peter E. Hickman, founder of St. Matthew, who said the accusations falsely impugn the reputation of his church.

“This has been a campaign to discredit St. Matthew,” he complained. It worries him, he said, because “the Roman Catholic Church is a moral force that carries a big punch.”

Hickman said he was insulted by a letter that a Roman Catholic priest in Riverside sent to the parents of a prospective bride in September, alleging that those running St. Matthew were “posing” as Roman Catholic priests. The Riverside priest refused to forward the bride’s baptismal certificate to St. Matthew in preparation for the marriage.

Hickman, whose 400-member congregation meets in a converted office building close to the Orange Freeway, said he is eager for the church to grow. He attributed his missionary zeal in part to his training as a Southern Baptist minister before his conversion to Catholicism.

He is recruiting Roman Catholics who, because of divorce and remarriage or the practice of artificial birth control, are no longer welcome to receive the sacraments in the church of their youth, he said.

Hickman said his congregation consists largely of baby boomers between 30 and 50 for whom St. Matthew’s Mass and sacraments offer comfortable familiarity.

Diane Troianello, 44, of north Tustin said she had been brought up Catholic but after finishing parochial school and leaving home, went to church only when her mother visited her.

She sought Hickman six years ago when she wanted to marry a divorced man.

“It was really for my mother so she wouldn’t be disappointed,” Troianello said. The couple also decided it would be “beyond hypocrisy” to apply to the Roman Catholic church to have his former marriage annulled, she said.

But the Troianellos said Father Peter, as his parishioners call him, never claimed that St. Matthew was Roman Catholic.

Hickman said he tells newcomers that St. Matthew is part of the Old Catholic Movement, which broke off from Roman Catholicism more than a century ago.

A brochure describing St. Matthew says that unlike a Roman Catholic church, it does not accept the teaching of papal infallibility. Among other differences, its priests may marry, divorced parishioners may remarry without having their former marriages annulled, and the use of artificial contraception is permitted.

But Old Catholicism’s similarity to Roman Catholicism also makes it attractive to fallen-away Roman Catholics, Hickman said. Most important, he said, the ordination of Old Catholic priests, like the ordination of Roman Catholic priests, can be traced in unbroken succession to the Apostles. Moreover, he said, some Old Catholic priests, including two at St. Matthew, were ordained in the Roman Catholic Church but left to marry.

Father Gregory Coiro, director of public affairs for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, acknowledged that because the “apostolic succession” has been preserved in some Old Catholic churches, the Roman Catholic religion would consider their sacraments, such as Holy Communion and penance, to be valid in those churches.

But he added that it would be sinful for a Roman Catholic to knowingly attend a church separated from Rome.

Coiro said Roman Catholics may receive sacraments from an Old Catholic priest only in an emergency, such as a last confession when no Roman Catholic priest is available.

Msgr. Daniel Brennan, judicial vicar at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, added that special church laws governing marriage stipulate that no clergy but the priests of the couple’s parish may perform a marriage for Roman Catholics unless the bishop approves.

“The Roman Catholic Church seeks to tightly control the lives of its members,” Hickman said. “By providing an alternative, we are undermining their control.”

Patrick Callahan, a bishop in the Old Catholic Church who oversees St. Matthew, said he believes an “economic issue” lies at the heart of the diocesan warnings: concern about the prospect of losing income that churches obtain from marriages and other sacraments.

Callahan said there are about 20 churches in Southern California with Old Catholic roots, of which St. Matthew is one of the largest and most active. He said less active churches with Catholic in their name have avoided the attention of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

One such church, St. Francis-By-The-Sea American Catholic Church, has operated quietly in Laguna Beach since 1933.

“We have not heard anything from the Diocese of Orange,” said Bishop Simon Eugene Talarczyk. He said the church has done very little advertising and performs weddings “by way of referral.”

Officials at the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles said they became aware of another church in the Old Catholic tradition, St. Augustine Old Roman Catholic Church in East Los Angeles, after news last summer about a scandal involving a priest there.

Brenda Anaya-Eckdahl, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said that when stories about the priest’s conviction for child molestation stated he was not Roman Catholic, the archdiocese was flooded with calls from St. Augustine parishioners.

She said St. Augustine “had been appealing to newly arrived immigrants, and they thought they were receiving sacraments from the Roman Catholic Church.” The pastor of St. Augustine, however, contends he tells all his members that the church “is not under the jurisdiction of the Pope.”

Baird, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange spokesman, said his church is simply trying to prevent its own members from being misguided, to exert a form of “quality control.”

He suggested that in Orange County, St. Matthew should reach out to the “unchurched” people and leave Roman Catholics alone.

“We are very concerned about lapsed Catholics, and both priests and lay people in the parishes have really been trying to do whatever they can to bring people back,” he said. “There are heroic people living happy lives as Roman Catholics, and we don’t need St. Matthew to assist with the evangelization of those born Roman Catholic.”