The terms Old Catholic Church, Old Catholics, Old-Catholic churches, or Old Catholic movement, designate "any of the groups of Western Christians who believe themselves to maintain in complete loyalty the doctrine and traditions of the undivided church but who separated from the see of Rome after the First Vatican council of 1869–70". The expression Old Catholic has been used from the 1850s by communions separated from the Roman Catholic Church over certain doctrines, primarily concerned with papal authority and infallibility. Some of these groups, especially in the Netherlands, had already existed long before the term. The Old Catholic Church is separate and distinct from Traditionalist Catholicism.
The Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands, sometimes Jansenist Church of Holland, is an Old Catholic jurisdiction originating from the Archdiocese of Utrecht (695–1580). The Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands is the mother church of the Old Catholic Union of Utrecht.
The Archdiocese of Utrecht is an archdiocese of the Latin Church of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. The Archbishop of Utrecht is the metropolitan of the ecclesiastical province of Utrecht. There are six suffragan dioceses of the province: Roman Catholic Dioceses of Breda, of Groningen-Leeuwarden, of Haarlem-Amsterdam, of Roermond, of Rotterdam, and of 's-Hertogenbosch. The cathedral church of the archdiocese is Saint Catherine's Cathedral, which replaced the prior cathedral, Saint Martin's Cathedral after it was taken by Protestants in the Reformation.
The Holland Mission or Dutch Mission was the common name of a Catholic Church missionary district in the Low Countries from 1592 to 1853, during and after the Protestant Reformation in the Netherlands.
The Diocese of Haarlem–Amsterdam is a Latin diocese of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands. As one of the seven suffragans in the ecclesiastical province of the Metropolitan Archbishop of Utrecht, the diocesan territory comprises the north west of the Netherlands, including the cities of Haarlem and Amsterdam.
The Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland is an Old Catholic denomination in Switzerland. This denomination is part of the Union of Utrecht.
The Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches, most commonly referred to by the short form Union of Utrecht, is a federation of Old Catholic Churches, nationally organized from schisms which rejected Roman Catholic doctrines of the First Vatican Council in 1870; its member churches are not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
Joris August Odilius Ludovicus Vercammen served as the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands from 1 July 2000 to 11 January 2020.
The Bishopric of Pomesania was a Catholic diocese in the Prussian regions of Pomesania and Pogesania, in modern northern Poland until the 16th century, then shortly a Lutheran diocese, and became a Latin titular see.
Gerardus Gul served as the seventeenth Archbishop of Utrecht from 1892 to 1920. He is known for his role in assisting the persons who would later found the Polish National Catholic Church in the United States, as well as for consecrating Arnold Harris Mathew, the founder and first bishop of the Old Catholic Church in Great Britain.
The Lordship of Utrecht was formed in 1528 when Charles V of Habsburg conquered the Bishopric of Utrecht, during the Guelders Wars.
Dominique-Marie Varlet was a French prelate and missionary of the Catholic Church who served as vicar general of the Diocese of Quebec. Later, as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Babylon, he was involved in a schism within the Roman Catholic Church by consecrating four men successively as Archbishop of Utrecht.
Cornelis van Steenoven was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest who later served as the seventh Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht from 1724 to 1725. Consecrated without the permission of the pope, Steenoven was at the center of the 18th-century controversy between national churches and what many considered to be the overreaching powers of the papacy.
Cornelius Johannes Barchman Wuytiers served as the Old Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht from 1725 to 1733.
Theodorus van der Croon (1668–1739) served as the ninth Archbishop of Utrecht from 1734 to 1739.
Petrus Johannes Meindaerts served as the tenth Archbishop of Utrecht from 1739 to 1767. After the death of his consecrator, Bishop Dominique Marie Varlet, Meindaerts consecrated other bishops, such that all later Old Catholic bishops derive their apostolic succession from him.
Walter Michael van Nieuwenhuisen served as the eleventh Archbishop of Utrecht from 1768 to 1797.
Bernd Wallet serves as the 84th Archbishop of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands. Elected on 15 February 2020, he was consecrated on 18 September 2021, after two delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
