OLD ROMAN CATHOLIC
CHURCH IN EUROPE

“From today’s crisis, a Church will emerge tomorrow that will have lost a great deal. She will be small and, to a large extent, will have to start from the beginning. She will no longer be able to fill many of the buildings created in her period of great splendour. Because of the smaller number of her followers, she will lose many of her privileges in society. Contrary to what has happened until now, she will present herself much more as a community of volunteers… As a small community, she will demand much more from the initiative of each of her members and she will certainly also acknowledge new forms of ministry and will raise up to the priesthood proven Christians who have other jobs… There will be an interiorised Church, which neither takes advantage of its political mandate nor flirts with the left or the right. This will be achieved with effort because the process of crystallization and clarification will demand great exertion. It will make her poor and a Church of the little people… All this will require time. The process will be slow and painful.” Glaube und Zukunft, Jospeh Ratzinger 1970

These seemingly prophetic words belong to none other than the present Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, yet they describe a very real and present situation in the Western Catholic Church, a scenario that has existed for over a hundred years and whose nativity began two hundred years before then. The young Fr Jospeh Ratzinger, recorded on radio in 1969 broadcasting in Baveria and Hessen, thought he was describing a future yet to be, yet for Old Roman Catholics, he describes the Church which already exists... stripped of wordly privileges and prestige, reduced to few in number, yet full of faith, hope and love.

It is true, of course, that Fr Ratzinger had in his mind the future of the Roman Catholic Church of which he is now Supreme Pontiff. We would not question that fact nor indeed his position, Old Roman Catholics regard the Pope as their Patriarch and the Pope of the universal Church, though our understanding of the Petrine Ministry is different from that defined as dogma by Blessed Pius IX and the First Vatican Council in 1870.

We hope that this website will provide you with information about our life and mission to serve and to proclaim Jesus Christ as Our Lord and Saviour and to maintain the original Catholic Faith for future generations.