Incorporated in Alabama on December 10, the ARCC seeks to cover North America through two new eastern and western dioceses. Bishop Jones’ original Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy “remains intact” within the new denomination, though responsibility for chaplain endorsements required by the federal government will pass to another bishop, according to a December 23 communiqué.
“We seek to provide a stable church home characterized by clear leadership accountability, uncompromising doctrinal standards, biblical stewardship of resources, and an abiding connection to Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church,” the church’s website said.
According to initial listings, the ARCC counts 14 parishes and missions and 15 chapels.
The formation of the church comes amid conflict between Bishop Jones and the ACNA. In September, ACNA Archbishop Steve Wood inhibited Jones from ministry, citing chaplains’ allegations of misconduct.
In response, Jones’ jurisdiction announced its separation from the ACNA, then sued the church in federal court for alleged trademark infringement and unfair commercial competition. (In November, Wood was inhibited for alleged misconduct in his diocese.)
While Jones will serve as “Archbishop (elect) and Prime Bishop” of the ARCC, according to its website, he remains under discipline in the ACNA.
On December 16, Jones was formally indicted for ecclesiastical trial on charges of disobeying ACNA canons, causing scandal, and promoting schism.
‘Entering the Union of Scranton’?
Until the evening of December 30, the ARCC’s website described itself as a new member of the Union of Scranton, an Old Catholic umbrella group, and characterized this affiliation as a reunion, not a schism.
“We are not merely establishing another Anglican jurisdiction but pioneering a pathway back to authentic catholicity,” the website said.
“By entering the Union of Scranton, orthodox Anglican churches do not cease to be Anglican. We do not abandon our liturgical patrimony, our theological method, or our historical identity,” it adds. “Rather, we anchor our Anglican identity in the broader catholic tradition from which it emerged and to which it rightfully belongs.”
The publicly accessible ARCC webpage containing the claims of affiliation with the Union of Scranton was moved behind a password on the evening of December 30 after initial reporting by The Living Church.
Speaking to TLC on December 31, both Bishop Jones and the Ven. Kenneth Gillespie, Dean of the ARCC, characterized the webpage as a draft and said the ARCC had not yet entered the Union of Scranton.
“We have spoken with them, but only from the standpoint of theological similarities and perhaps adopting some of those positions,” Jones said. Gillespie called the page “an unpublished draft page created by our communications team,” adding that its content was based on “very preliminary discussions” and that “no further development in that direction has occurred.”
The Most Rev. Anthony Mikovsky, Prime Bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church - the founding church of the Union of Scranton - issued a statement on December 31 that said he and Jones had a single “informal video meeting” on November 6.
The statement continued:
It would seem that since the time of that meeting, Bishop Derek Jones has subsequently formed the Anglican Reformed Catholic Church as well as gotten involved with a number of legal matters involving the ACNA. There are also still the issues that precipitated his leaving the ACNA. These are all matters that need to be taken into consideration should any discussions between our churches move forward.
Any mention of joining the Union of Scranton, of which the Polish National Catholic Church within the USA and Canada and the Nordic Catholic Church in Scandinavia are presently members, is extremely premature. Very many issues, concerning ecclesiology, sacramentology, and especially the Validity of Orders, would need to be researched, discussed, and agreed upon before any such union would even be considered.
The Union of Scranton traces its origin to an 18th-century breakaway of Dutch Catholics from Rome over submission to the pope.
After the First Vatican Council codified papal infallibility in 1870, other European Catholics joined the Union of Scranton, forming the Old Catholic Church. Clerical marriage and vernacular liturgy soon followed, but Old Catholics stayed doctrinally close to Rome, which continued to recognize their holy orders.
In 1897, Polish-American Catholics frustrated with the Irish and Irish-American church hierarchy formed the Polish National Catholic Church, to be run by and for Poles. The founder of the PNCC was consecrated a bishop by Old Catholic bishops in 1907.
Today, the PNCC is a small but stable denomination that primarily ministers to Poles and Polish-Americans as well as former Roman Catholics of other ethnicities. The PNCC permits divorced people to receive Communion and married couples to use contraception, but is conservative on homosexuality.
The PNCC founded the Union of Scranton in 2008 after the Union of Utrecht, the original Old Catholic association, began ordaining women and blessing same-sex unions.
The Nordic Catholic Church - another Old Catholic group, which formed in the 1990s when a group of conservative Lutheran pastors broke away from the Church of Norway over women’s ordination - joined the Union of Scranton in 2011.
“[PNCC members] have maintained apostolic succession, rejected papal supremacy, and preserved the faith of the first millennium. [They] separated from Rome in 1897 not to embrace Protestantism but to maintain catholicity,” the ARCC website said until December 30, claiming “full communion” with the PNCC and likewise praising the Nordic Catholic Church.
The ARCC’s website stressed that joining the Union of Scranton would not represent abandoning Anglican identity, but moving toward “receiving catholic recognition.”
In 1966, the Prime Bishop of the PNCC connected with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Scranton; formal ecumenical dialogue began in 1984, and today the Catholic Church recognizes the holy orders of the PNCC as valid but illicit.
The PNCC’s sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and Communion are likewise valid but not legal for Catholics to “normally” receive, according to the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, but the reverse is more acceptable.
In 1993, Cardinal Edward Cassidy, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said PNCC members may receive the sacraments of penance, Communion, and unction from a Roman Catholic priest if they ask and have no impediment that would exclude a Catholic from them.
Anglicans have long recognized Old Catholic connections as affording closeness to Rome. In the 19th century, the Rt. Rev. Charles Chapman Grafton, Episcopal Bishop of Fond du Lac, asked the Old Catholic bishop of Switzerland to ordain Joseph René Vilatte a priest, thinking Vilatte’s ministry to Belgian Catholics would be more successful if he had holy orders recognized by Rome.
Later, after Vilatte had become an episcopus vagans, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Green Bay conceded that Vilatte was a valid priest.
‘Classic Anglican’
The December communiqué characterized the new ARCC as “Classic Anglican” and linked it to historic reformers like Thomas Cranmer and John Jewel, but the now-removed page on the denomination’s website described Anglicanism as being in an “ambiguous position” since the English Reformation.
“This ambiguity served necessary purposes in previous centuries, but it cannot continue,” the page said before it was taken down, identifying the Union of Scranton as a solution to the “contemporary crisis in global Anglicanism” stemming from women’s ordination and same-sex marriage.
The Union of Scranton has actively courted disaffected conservative Anglicans as “non-Roman Catholics” in recent decades. The Nordic Catholic Church especially has attempted to make inroads in the United Kingdom, where it has a handful of formerly Anglican clergymen (but no parishes).
After Sarah Mullally’s appointment as Archbishop-designate of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Ottar Mikael Myrseth, one of the NCC’s two bishops, offered a welcome to conservative members of the Church of England.
“Together with our Anglican friends we are compelled on theological and historical grounds to reject the legitimacy of [Mullally’s] ministry,” Myrseth wrote in a pastoral letter. “We therefore invite Anglicans who are betrayed by the latest development, and who are looking for a new home, to join in ‘The Society of the faith of the undivided church.’”
The NCC ordained firebrand conservative commentator Calvin Robinson to the priesthood in 2023. The Very Rev. Geoffrey Neal, Vicar General of the NCC in the United Kingdom, described the NCC’s English priests as “warriors from the 1970s to 1990s” who were pleased with the ordination and with Robinson’s “youthful courage.”
Robinson soon announced his move to a paid parish position at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was part of the Anglican Catholic Church, another continuing Anglican jurisdiction (though it has since left).
The Free Church of England, an Anglican denomination founded in the 19th century by evangelicals protesting the Oxford Movement, had ordained Robinson to the diaconate, and has an ambivalent relationship with the NCC.
Talks between the Union of Scranton and the FCE began in 2013, but broke down by 2021 due to unclear goals.
The FCE is historically linked with the Reformed Episcopal Church, a subjurisdiction of the ACNA that also previously licensed Robinson.
Bishop Jones and the new ARCC, appearing to see historic doctrinal disputes as secondary to modern disputes, initially wrote of their hope to expand their reach through the Union of Scranton. Asians and Africans, their website said until December 30, “could maintain their own provinces, adapt liturgy to local culture, and govern themselves according to regional needs, all while enjoying full communion with Old Catholic churches of Europe and North America, united by the apostolic faith and freed from both liberal innovation and reactionary isolation.”
Legal and Canonical Battles
The optimistic ARCC announcement contrasts with the contentious continuing litigation between Bishop Jones’ jurisdiction and the ACNA in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina, wherein the jurisdiction seeks millions of dollars from the ACNA.
In November, the Hon. Bruce Howe Hendricks granted three of the jurisdiction’s nine requests for preliminary injunctive relief, compelling the ACNA to refrain from using the jurisdiction’s trademarked terms or logos.
The ACNA has argued that the court should dismiss the main case outright due to First Amendment protections, citing 2017 litigation between the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and its ACNA counterpart as precedent.
“The result of Derek Jones’ purported schism … is that the new church may only start afresh and with nothing,” the ACNA’s counsel wrote in a December 8 filing. “If Jones desires to establish a new ‘Anglican’ church and call himself Bishop, Potentate, or Archpoobah, he is free to do so. But, as with the schismatic Episcopalians, he leaves all property behind.”
In response, Jones’ latest filing on December 22 accused the ACNA of stealing its trade secrets by copying chaplains’ contact information, to which the jurisdiction had attached chaplains’ “answers to questions concerning criminal history, drug and alcohol use, sexual histories, financial resources, work histories, military service histories and religious confessions.”
In an earlier filing, Jones accused the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, who is acting as the ACNA’s archbishop, of stealing $48,000 from the jurisdiction. Dobbs denied the accusations while speaking with The Washington Post.
In the ACNA’s ecclesiastical court, Jones’ trial is expected to begin after the conclusion of Archbishop Wood’s trial, which has not yet been scheduled.
As the church lacks abandonment canons, which are used in the Episcopal Church to expeditiously depose clergy who the church believes have departed irregularly, Jones is likely to be tried in absentia.