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First of all, our full name is the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch, Malabar Rite, but we usually just refer to ourselves as the Church of Antioch. We are an independent, liberal, Catholic church, with valid lines of "apostolic succession" and a real ministry to serve our brothers and sisters. Our spiritual principles emphasize the importance of both Christian faith and personal freedom.

 

We Are Christic   We are a limb of the one Christian church, the Mystical Body of Christ. We acknowledge the Christ as our founder, living head, and eternal high priest.

We Are An Independent Catholic Church   We are a Catholic church in the ancient, universal, sense of that word as well as in our form of sacramental worship.   We are neither Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, nor Protestant, though we trace our episcopal orders, or "apostolic succession," through Roman Catholic and Orthodox lines. In this way our apostolic succession can be traced as far back as any other Catholic or Orthodox church.   Our priests perform the liturgy and administer the seven sacraments, though each priest and bishop is given considerable flexibility in this.

We Are About Fellowship Our church is a spiritual fellowship of followers of the Spirit. We give ourselves and others encouragement to live the truth. To live the truth is to become ever more the Christ, the true self of all and the source of real happiness and abiding fellowship.

We Are Universal We maintain that the Holy Spirit acts through pure channels everywhere, regardless of age, sex, race, creed or culture. There is only one true God, however this God is known or worshipped; hence, there is eternally only one holy universal Church, regardless of the cultural form it happens to assume in a given time and place. We revere the saints, sages, and holy ones of all ages and places.

We Are Spiritual   We seek to draw back the veil, first to discover the deeper intellectual import and then the experiential dimension which is the true meaning of spiritual symbolism in scripture, ritual, liturgy and theology.             We Are Mystical   We are a mystical church, keeping in mind the Old Testament words, "Be still and know I AM - God." We give importantce to Christ's saying, "The kingdom is inside you and it is outside you," and acknowledge that one of the greatest advancements in spiritual truth is made by those who are willing to search for it. If God is Love, then it is through our love that we come to a real and abiding knowledge of God. For the Christian, love is spiritual knowledge par excellence.

We Have Open Communion   We hold that a chief purpose of the church is to perpetuate the historical sacramental tradition as instituted by Jesus Christ, and as preserved through apostolic succession. We maintain that the sacraments are channels of divine grace. Therefore, we make the sacraments easily available to all.   Since the Eucharist puts us in communion with the Christ, it is a channel of Grace without parallel. Therefore, at our altars all reverent persons are welcome to receive communion, whether members of the Church of Antioch or not.   We Have Open Holy Orders   Holy Orders are open to all members of the Church, regardless of gender, marital status, or sexual orientation. While we sympathize with the concept of the priesthood of the laity, we also recognize the importance of apostolic succession. Our solution is to make Holy Orders available to all qualified candidates who wish to serve Christ through ministry or the priesthood. Such candidates are required to have a level of academic achievement and prior life experience which demonstrates the potential for successful completion of a program of priestly formation and for the professional practice of religion. Spiritual and priestly formation is supervised by the church's seminary, Sophia Divinity School. Ministries must be self-supporting.

Archbishop Herman Adrian Spruit founder and late Patriarch

We Invite Not Proselytize   We invite, not proselytize. Do you want the freedom to read and investigate the best of modern thinkers and writers, at the same time keeping your roots in the beauty and form of the traditional church? Large numbers of clergy and lay members are leaving their traditional churches because they have realized that there was no longer a possibility of their using their intelligence to utilize the best thinking in this new age and yet remain in their churches.   The great tragedy is that these people are often the most intelligent and best educated church members! They have used their time and energy to keep up with the times and investigate the best thinking of our age and they have had the heart-breaking experience of having to leave the churches which they still love and in which most of them were raised in, in order to respect what they have learned.   If you are such a person, it could be that you are spiritually ripe to join the Church of Antioch and perhaps do not realize it. This is the church which sets no limits to your thinking but, to the contrary, encourages you to use your intelligence to find the deepest spiritual truths that you can. You are urged to read all you can on scriptural interpretation, comparative religion, mystical traditions, as well as the best works in psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, and anthropology. At the same time, you can share with your fellow seekers experiences of worshiping in the rich traditional beauty of Eucharist fellowship.   Short essays by Herman Adrian Spruit available online   • Friends of God … • As this world looks …