A Confusion of Churches

When the holy water flows over a child’s head in baptism, it is believed that all sins are washed away. For devout Catholics like Guadalupe Gutierrez, baptism points to the mystery at the heart of her deep faith, the promise of eternal salvation.

Because her grandchildren had not been christened as infants, Gutierrez was desperate to have them baptized and receive Holy Communion in a Catholic Church. Her daughter, Gigi, thought she found the perfect parish in Carson: It required a $50 fee for each sacrament, and both rites could be celebrated within six weeks. It was a fast track compared to the year of catechism required by most Catholic churches.

In November, the children were baptized, and shortly after they received Holy Communion.

Still, Gutierrez had her doubts. Last month, after confession at Our Lady Queen of Angels Church in downtown Los Angeles, she asked a priest, “What do you know about Our Lady of Guadalupe church in Carson?”

He said, “Carson? We have no Roman Catholic Church by that name in Carson.”

In the past five years, dozens of independent churches have opened across Southern California that use the words “Catholic,” “Old Catholic” or “Traditional Catholic” in their name but that are not part of the Roman Catholic Church, clergy members say.

Leaders and many priests of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles see those churches as a scam, victimizing people like Gutierrez and her family by passing themselves off as Roman Catholic in ritual and administering illicit sacraments in return for cash.

“They’re opportunists, and this is the prostitution of religion,” said Father Dennis O’Neil, pastor of St. Emydius Church in Lynwood.

Father Albert Vazquez, pastor of Our Lady Queen of Angels Roman Catholic Church in downtown Los Angeles, says the Old Catholic churches “are deceiving people for money. They use trickery and try to imitate the church as much as possible, but they are not being honest about who they are.”

Hundreds of Latino families have come to his church with complaints of being misled by Old Catholic churches, Vazquez said. Parents often discover the truth when they register their children to enter Roman Catholic schools and the baptismal certificate does not bear the seal of the archdiocese, he explained. Responding to such problems, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has issued an advisory about Old Catholic churches and asked churches with large Latino congregations to run it in their Sunday bulletins.

Old Catholic clergy and church members call the criticism slanderous and defamatory. They say the families who use their services understand that they are not Roman Catholic. Their success, they say, is emblematic of a growing dissatisfaction with the Roman Catholic Church in Latino communities, and is much like the inroads that evangelical Protestant churches have had.

Father Jorge Rodriguez of Our Lady of Guadalupe Old Catholic Church at the Los Amigos Swap Meet in South-Central Los Angeles said the independent churches are ministering to those rejected by the Roman Catholic Church.

Roman Catholic churches sometimes refuse to baptize children whose parents are not married, Rodriguez said. Some priests also shy away from administering sacraments to illegal immigrants, he asserted.

The Old Catholic church, by contrast, accepts people unconditionally, Rodriguez said. “Why do they deny these people sacraments?” Rodriguez asked. “To us, it doesn’t matter whether a child’s parents are married or not, or if they have [immigration] papers. We serve them. When Roman Catholics reject them, we take them in.”

Old Catholic priests say their church also provides an alternative faith for Roman Catholics disenchanted with prohibitions on divorce, remarriage and birth control.

And, indeed, many members, like Ana Ruby Aguilar, 29, say they understand the difference and enjoy attending a church that celebrates the rich Catholic rituals and sacraments without all the rules.

“The service is exactly the same as Roman Catholic,” said Aguilar. “But here sacraments are easier to acquire. You don’t have to go through all the red tape. If you ask them to baptize you, they do it. If you ask them to marry you, they do it. No one is excluded.”

At the Los Amigos Swap Meet on Maple and Jefferson streets, the gates surrounding the open-air market are painted a bright purple. To the left of the entrance is a stage with a large picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe hanging over an altar. As Father Rodriguez celebrates Mass, food joints like Super Tacos and Carlin Pizza begin opening their doors for business.

A few steps from the altar are the public bathrooms and a cash machine that reads: “Pay with your ATM card here.” More than 200 people turned up last month at a funeral Mass for a 10-year-old girl. The managers of the swap meet recently ordered Rodriguez to stop holding services there, citing insurance concerns. The congregation now meets in the backyard of a nearby house.

Aguilar, who was raised a Roman Catholic, did not understand that the Old Catholic church was a separate denomination when she began attending Our Lady of Guadalupe two years ago.

“At first, I thought it was deceitful that they didn’t tell us,” she said. “But I continued going, and when I understood the difference it wasn’t important to me.

“Bishop Rodriguez is more attentive and makes himself very accessible to the people he serves. He does house blessings and visits elderly in the hospital. He has a good heart and wants to help people. I see the good he does.”

For others, however, the discovery that the church they attend is not really Roman Catholic is traumatic. Maria Magdalena Sanchez said she believed the church at the swap meet was Roman Catholic. Her son Antonio received the sacrament of Holy Communion there last year.

Earlier this month, while making arrangements for her wedding at St. Odilia’s Roman Catholic Church, Sanchez discovered she had been wrong. Though hesitant to speak about her error, she was finally beginning to come to grips with it.

“I don’t know what to believe. There were so many children there, so many people. I’m confused. If he’s fooling us, God knows what he’s doing,” she said, referring to Rodriguez.

The Old Catholic Church originated in Europe after the first Vatican Council in 1870 when Pope Pius IX declared papal infallibility an official doctrine of the church. Several dissenters, mainly German, Austrian and Swiss, opposed that teaching and broke away from the Roman church, forming their own independent communities known as Old Catholic.

Because they have no central governing body, it is difficult to determine how many Old Catholic churches exist. But most of the controversy has centered on the churches in the areas near downtown Los Angeles, Huntington Park and Long Beach. Two Old Catholic churches in the San Fernando Valley, St. Andrew and Paul in Glendale and Little Flower Chapel in Canyon Country, have not been the subject of complaints.

While the name Old Catholic might seem to imply a more conservative approach toward doctrine, Old Catholics ordain women, allow priests to marry and have no restrictions on divorce, remarriage or birth control, said Bishop Peter Hickman, pastor of St. Matthew Old Catholic Church in Orange.

Most of the priests at St. Matthew are Roman Catholic priests who left the church to get married and start families, Hickman said. And the Old Catholic churches often bring in members who are frustrated with the Roman Catholic Church and its constraints.

Hickman attracted his first congregants to the church by placing ads in local newspapers that read: “Do you want a Catholic wedding but can’t be married in a Roman Catholic Church?”

Mario Calvo was attracted by that sort of message. In 1991, the divorced man was looking for a church where he could celebrate his second marriage. Someone told him about the Old Catholic Church.

“I didn’t like the way the Roman Catholic Church persecutes people because of mistakes they’ve made in life,” said Calvo, who lives in Diamond Bar. “At St. Matthew’s, I’m not persecuted because I was divorced. This is my new home.”

It is not surprising that Roman Catholic officials feel threatened by remarks like that, Hickman said. “For such a long time, Roman Catholics had cornered the market on Catholicism, then we come along and offer the same things without the restrictions.”

Hickman’s church now serves more than 200 families. Nationwide, while no precise numbers exist, some estimate that about 600,000 people attend Old Catholic churches. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church counts 62 million members in the United States, with the biggest populations in California, New York and Texas.

Hickman concedes that not all Old Catholic churches are as scrupulous as his in making clear that they are not part of the Roman Catholic church.

“We’re concerned that people know who we are, and we make a point of explaining that,” he said. “Unfortunately, there are some churches that may not be making as conscientious an effort to do that.”

Msgr. Richard A. Loomis, vicar for clergy of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said that many in the archdiocese are concerned about Old Catholic churches “not being entirely truthful.”

Complaints have been registered from about 100 churches in the area, and the problem appears to be growing, he said.

Charges of Old Catholic churches misleading people have also caused divisions among members of the denomination. Bishop Jurgen Bless, of the German Old Catholic Church in Huntington Beach, had been affiliated with Bishop Rodriguez, but after he heard allegations that people were being misled, he disavowed the swap meet ministry.

“We are not Roman Catholic,” Bless said. “We’re not trying to tell people that we’re Roman Catholic, and until the problem with Rodriguez is resolved, I can’t sanction anything that is going on at that church.”

Legally, there is not much the Roman Catholic Church can do about competition from Old Catholics even in cases in which the independent churches are not fully explaining what they are.

“The name Catholic is not copyrighted,” said the Rev. John F. Hotchkin, executive director of the church’s Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs in Washington, D.C. Moreover, he said, “These tend to be small groups so they’re difficult to track.”

But Roman Catholic officials say they plan to step up their effort to educate the public about the differences.

The choice of a church can have serious implications, Loomis said. First Communion and Confirmation are viewed as sacraments of initiation that bring one deeper into a relationship with the church, he said.

“In our view, people who receive these sacraments in the Old Catholic Church have made a formal act which separates them from their faith,” Loomis said. “For this reason, priests are deeply concerned that they know that such public acts separate them from their Roman Catholic faith.”