O.C. RELIGION : A Kinder, Gentler Church? : More Forgiving Old Catholic Faith Grows in O.C.

St. Matthew Church in Orange is tucked into a stucco strip mall near a chiropractic office and a submarine sandwich shop. The outside of the church is slightly bleak--with a dirty blue sign and weeds growing in the sidewalk cracks--but the inside is filled with fresh flowers, wooden carvings and familiar Catholic icons.

But this isn’t a Roman Catholic church. Its full name is St. Matthew Ecumenical Old Catholic Church, part of a separate denomination, a Rome-free Catholicism that’s flourishing in Orange County under the leadership of Bishop Peter E. Hickman.

“The Old Catholic Church is a refuge for every disenchanted or unhappy Roman Catholic,” said Hickman, 43, who started St. Matthew Ecumenical Old Catholic Church 14 years ago in a rented mortuary chapel. “Some Roman Catholics are very concerned about our existence.”

Officials at the Roman Catholic Church’s Diocese of Orange say they aren’t threatened by the Old Catholic Church, whose flock is dwarfed in number by their own. But they are concerned about the public confusing the two.

“The Old Catholic Church has been a source of confusion because of people thinking that they are somehow part of the Roman Catholic Church,” said retired Bishop Norman McFarland.

There are many differences between the two branches of Catholicism. Old Catholics, who split off 129 years ago, not only do not recognize the Vatican, they also ordain women, allow priests to marry and have no strictures against divorce or contraception.

Old Catholics are contemporary and traditional at the same time, said Hickman, who started the Orange parish with just six members. Now the church serves about 275 families with three services on Sunday, one in Spanish.

Hickman studied at Fuller Theological Seminary and became an American Baptist minister before founding St. Matthew. He attracted congregants by placing newspaper advertisements aimed at disenfranchised Roman Catholics yearning for Catholic ritual: “Do you want a Catholic wedding but can’t be married in the Roman Catholic church?” one appeal read.

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There are about 600 families that attend the parishes in the Old Catholic diocese, which comprises St. Matthew, Saints Andrew and Paul in Glendale, Holy Trinity Church in Lakewood, Santa Maria de Guadalupe in Huntington Beach, Tvanksta Lithuanian church in Santa Monica and Church of the Holy Family in Aurora, Colo.

Congregants say they joined the Old Catholic Church because they wanted the cherished rituals and symbols of Roman Catholicism--scapulars, rosaries, holy water, saints and the Virgin Mary--but didn’t want to live with its strict rules.

“I didn’t like the exclusion of divorced people,” said Karen Grimmett of Lake Forest, who has been attending St. Matthew for six years. “To me, the church is a place for people with problems. Christ accepted everyone and gave them a chance. No one was ever turned away from him.”

Hickman said it’s the disparity between Christian practice and antiquated theology that brings people to his door.

“The Roman Catholic Church will never have a credible voice in speaking out against the injustice of the world until it addresses the injustices within its own walls,” Hickman said.

The Old Catholic Church formed in Europe in 1870 after Pope Pius IX made papal infallibility a formal element of church doctrine at the first Vatican Council. Some bishops were excommunicated after they refused to accept papal infallibility.

Left to fulfill their own spiritual needs, the dissident Catholics put together their own “Rome-free” diocese that went no higher than a bishop--and they also decreed that the bishop would be elected by clergy and laity.

In 1889, the scattered Old Catholics of Europe were united under a bishops’ council, the Union of Utrecht, which eventually threw out the use of Latin, mandatory celibacy and the obligation to confess one’s sins to a priest.

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For many congregants, those changes are long overdue.

“Women are just as important here. They are equal in God’s eyes to men,” Grimmett said. “The theology of the Old Catholic Church is more consistent with the teachings of Christ.”

Still, Old Catholics number just 60,000, mostly in Europe. The Roman Catholic Church estimated its worldwide membership last year at more than 1 billion.

But according to Hickman, the Old Catholic Church is poised to absorb many more of those Roman Catholics who have strayed from the church because of chauvinism or strictures against divorce.

“Old Catholicism has the opportunity to address those issues in a contemporary manner,” he said. “It’s had a slow start, but its day is yet to come. It’s the Catholicism of the future.”