Is Church of Antioch Apostolic

[Irish_Melkite]

David Zampino:

He (referring to Spruit) “collected” numerous “lines of succession”, many, if not most, of dubious legitimacy – and through his actions, any legitimacy that might have been present was almost certainly lost. He “consecrated” women (including two wives); his “theology” had more in common with theosophy and modern gnosticism than Christianity, etc. In Melton’s Encyclopedia of Religious Organizations, a fairly standard reference work in the field, Spruit’s organization is not listed with any of the branches of Christianity, but rather in the section dealing with occult, or occult-leaning bodies.

David and I have discussed this same issue recently on another thread here (relating, as memory serves me, to the belated realization by the Charismatic Episcopal Church that episcopal orders from Spruit might not be the ideal on which to base claims of apostolic succession). As I said then, echoing much of what David says above, while not quite so entrenched in theosophy and gnosticism as the various Liberal Catholic Churches (LCC), Spruit’s own episcopal orders were received from Charles Hampton, a LCC hierarch, and Lowell Wadle (who fashioned the so-called “Wadle Mass”, a cabalistically-based liturgy, for what is now Spruit’s Church of Antioch) was a co-consecrator.

All in all, CACA is unlikely at this point in history to have valid orders, other than in the person of clergy who left Catholicism (or another Church with valid orders) for it.

Rafaella,

If you don’t mind, I’d be curious as to the particular Church within which you worshipped - whether it was Spruit’s own or one of the offshoots that inevitably arose when he consecrated additional hierarchs (the tendency in this genre is that everyone wants to be the primate, so that the “ordination” of new “bishops” inevitably results is schism and the erection of a new “church”, and it continues, on and on).

Many years,

Neil

 

[Augustine]

Neil,

Thank you so much for the detailed analysis.

It’s really sad when the Body of Christ is broken up even more.

May He have mercy on us.