True Catholic Church
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- The title of this article is incorrect because of technical limitations. The correct title is true Catholic Church.
The true Catholic Church (tCC) is a small Roman Catholic Conclavist (see sedevacantist) movement based in Montana, United States, that argues that Pope John XXIII1 and his successors were all antipopes and that the See of Peter was empty since the death of Pope Pius XII in 1958. In 1998 it held a telephone conclave to elect a valid successor to Pope Pius XII. The Tridentine priest chosen, Reverend Father Earl Lucian Pulvermacher, OFM Cap, proclaimed himself Pope Pius XIII. The tCC uses the lower-case "t" in its name because its adherents believe it to be the remnant of the Catholic Church, which they claim to have "wandered in the wilderness" for 40 years from Pius XII's death to Pius XIII's election.
The "true Catholic Church" rejects the reforms within Roman Catholicism of the Second Vatican Council and regards the Council as a Latrocinium or invalid council. While in the Catholic Church in communion with Pope Benedict XVI the use of the Tridentine Mass needs permission of the local Ordinary (Bishop) and most Masses in Latin are celebrated according to the Roman Missal approved by Pope Paul VI (Novus Ordo Missę, the new order of the Mass), the tCC continues to use the Tridentine liturgy.
While it claims a worldwide membership, all available evidence suggests that this church has a small, largely Montana-based membership. On his election to the tCC papacy, Pope Pius XIII's raising to episcopal office, which took place in a hotel ballroom, was attended by just twenty-eight people (Roman Catholic policy says that if someone not already a bishop is elected pope, then he is first consecrated as a bishop before his installation as pope. In Pulvermacher's case, the man who consecrated him was a bishop only to the extent that Pulvermacher had declared him to be one, and later broke ties with and denounced the tCC, which has no links to the Historic episcopate central to Catholic Holy Orders).
As of February, 2005, the "true Catholic Church" has only two "priests" including Pulvermacher/Pius XIII and a handful of members.
Footnote
1 It argues without much evidence that Pope John XXIII, Angelo Roncalli, joined the Freemasons in 1935, an act which earned him automatic excommunication, thus invalidating his election as pope. It argues that Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul I, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI were and are not valid popes because (i) their election followed a death of an invalid predecessor, thus invalidating the conclave, and (ii) that their policies and support for Vatican II broke fundamental beliefs laid down at and since the Council of Trent and thus could only have been performed by an antipope. In 2002 it was revealed that Pulvermacher had practiced divination as a seminarian and by his own logic should have been excommunicated and therefore ineligible for the Papacy.
External link
- the webpage of Pope/Antipope Pius XIII (http://www.truecatholic.org/pope/)
- True Catholic Church (http://www.truecatholic.org/)