I was recently up at the Monastery(Jordanville) for the Synaxis of the Archangel, and I ran across 2 clerics of some sort who were visiting. Upon talking with them, they claim to be with the African Catholic Apostolic Church. They were wearing Greek style riassas and Greek kamilavkas. I've never heard of them, nor could I find any reference on Google,so I guess what I am asking is are they a legitimate rite of the Church, or does the Catholic Church have the same problem as the Orthodox Church does with looneys incorporating the word Catholic or Orthodox in their name? :rolleyes:

baffled Alexandr

Probably Old Catholic claimants in transition to Orthodoxy, having an Anglican foundation. ROCOR does have Ugandan & Haitian missions--so they were probably there to establish some sort of relationship and see if Orthodoxy was for them. Africa at this time has many groups claiming to be "Orthodox," "Coptic," "Apostolic," "Catholic," etc., for ritual and Apostolic, conservative Christianity are, indeed, what the continent wants. Africa may indeed be the first place secular humanism is stayed and a rebuttal issues forth, but it will probably also be the site of the bloodiest jihad the world has ever known.

Not trying to sound racist, but were these gentlemen "African" for lack of better terminology? If so, they may be members of the African Orthodox Church. I believe that they are an Anglican off-shoot. I also did a quick search online, but other than archives they do not have an internet presence. By last recall, their hierarchy had been quite aged and may have died off. Without any new consecrators they may have been seeking a "more" regular path and union.

I hope this helps.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

I bet this is one of the thousand vagant sects that dwell on the Internet, in this case they must come from the "African Orthodox" who are actualy not Orthodox at all and trace their origin in Fr. Jean Vilatte, an "Old-Catholic" pseudo-bishop.

Among these groups (those that exist in reality and are not simple trademarks) you can find a mixture of Anglican, pseudo-catholic, orthodox, "oriental orthodox" and new-age thinking.

Best regards!

Pity you did not ask anyone at Jordanville who they were. There are heap of strange goups who use the words Catholic or Orthodox an it is confusing. When I was in Melbourne a few years ago there was an indian monk who used to conselebrate whith the Copts. I did try and get some info out of himas whom he was in communion with because I hada feeling he realy should not have been using he Copic altar at all. He was very evasive when asked if he was in communion whith the Syrian Patriarch or not. He did not answer only that it was complicated and he wanted to give me literature to read. All I wanted was a yes or No answer. I suspect despite all the ritual he was really a protestant.

There are a plethora of such bodies - most of which exist primarily on paper, or on the Internet - and trying to track their pedigrees is seldom, if ever, worth the trouble.

There is a genuine African Orthodox Church, which belongs to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, and does good work particularly in Kenya and Uganda. There are also some substantial groups of Coptic Orthodox Africans, belonging to Pope Shenhouda (in Cairo). The "original African Orthodox Church", so to speak was a US - Carribean invention connected with Marcus Garvey's political movement; there are probably still some remnants of it and it managed to export itself back to Africa, where there may also be some remnants of it.

Incognitus

Alexandr,

The Catholic Church indeed has the same problem as the Orthodox in this regard. It was actually a Catholic problem initially but, since late in the 19th century, Orthodoxy has been "blessed" with the same issue when people like Archbishop Rene Joseph Vilatte looked eastward and were seemingly attracted by such things as the mystery, ceremony, liturgical beauty, diversity of honorifics and titles, etc and decided that there was a whole new ecclesial horizon to be explored.

The one answer that can be given with certainty is to your question as to whether they are a "legitimate rite" of the Church - the answer is unequivocally "No" and that is the case regardless of whether, by "the Church", one means Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

I'm a serious student of such "independent Catholic" and "independent Orthodox" Churches, new ones of which are created daily and which are often short-lived. This particular one is unknown to me, although the name has similarity to a few others.

Like Father Anthony, I am curious whether these clerics were black and also whether they were Americans or appeared to have an accent. There is a body in South Africa of slightly different, but similar name - African Apostolic Orthodox Church versus African Catholic Apostolic Church. They have a very limited, web presence . That particular body has its lines of episcopal lineage through the usual group of suspects: Bishop Carlos Duarte-Costa for its Catholic ancestry, Archbishops Gerardus Gul and Arnold Harris Mathew from the Old Catholic side, and Archbishop Vilatte for an Oriental Orthodox connection.

My revered brother and father, Incognitus, says correctly , but I have to somewhat disagree with him that Although he's essentially correct, for some few of us who are a bit "strange" ourselves (myself and my friend and brother, Daniel/iconophile, come immediately to mind) it is a rather fascinating field of study.

Someone mentioned Marcus Garvey's African Orthodox Church of America, of which George McGuire was the first hierarch. Anyone wanting to learn more about these folk could do worse than to read through the posts on the thread Does Eastern Christianity exist in Africa? . Start with page 2 (page 1 is more vitroil than wisdom ). The same thread discusses the Orthodox presence in Africa to which Incognitus alludes.

Pavel,

Wish you had taken that literature ; ever since Vilatte meandered among them, there have been some fascinating characters claiming ties to a Syriac heritage and I'm always interested in identifying any new variations on the theme.

Many years,

Neil