Old Catholic jurisdictions
Old Catholic jurisdictions belongs to the Independent and Old Catholic family of churches.
Governance: episcopal.
Many small jurisdictions; the string never names one.
Small American jurisdictions claiming the Old Catholic name and succession of Utrecht — a label that in Europe means one historic communion and in America means many unrelated small churches.
Heritage
European Old Catholicism has two roots: the See of Utrecht in the Netherlands, separated from Rome in 1724, and the movement of Catholics — around scholars like Ignaz von Döllinger — who rejected the First Vatican Council's 1870 definition of papal infallibility. These churches formed the Union of Utrecht in 1889 and entered full communion with Anglicans by the Bonn Agreement of 1931. In the United States the picture is entirely different: the Union of Utrecht has had no American member church since the Polish National Catholic Church's departure in 2003, so "Old Catholic" on an American sign nearly always means one of many small, mutually independent jurisdictions claiming Utrecht-derived apostolic succession — some of a few parishes, some of one. This grouping exists because the string never says which.
Theological family
Typically catholic in sacramental form — seven sacraments, apostolic succession claimed through Old Catholic lines — without communion with Rome and without papal infallibility. Many American jurisdictions are notably progressive, ordaining women and married and LGBT clergy; others are traditionalist. The name predicts the liturgy far better than it predicts the theology.
Who decides what
Episcopal in form — bishops abound; the movement is sometimes noted for having more bishops than parishes — but with no common authority: each jurisdiction is self-governing, and no American body speaks for Old Catholicism as a whole.
What a first-time visitor would find
Usually a recognizably Catholic liturgy — vestments, altar, Eucharist — in a small congregation, a house chapel, or a rented space; some jurisdictions maintain conventional parishes. Intimacy and sacramental welcome are common notes.
What it has always cared about
Apostolic succession held apart from Rome; sacramental life offered to people who feel unwelcome in larger churches; and, in the European heritage they claim, a scholarly conscience-based dissent from 1870.
Its gift to the wider church
At their best, these jurisdictions extend catholic sacramental life to the margins — and their existence keeps alive the historic question, posed at Utrecht and in 1870, of what catholicity without the papacy can mean.
Commonly confused with
With the Roman Catholic Church, from which the name alone is nearly indistinguishable in a data source; with the Polish National Catholic Church, the one historically Utrecht-affiliated American church, which is a distinct and much more established body; and with European Union-of-Utrecht churches, which have no American member.
Range of views inside it
The range is nearly total — progressive to traditionalist, one-priest missions to organized dioceses, carefully historic to newly founded — because these are many unrelated bodies sharing a name, not one church.
A note from the mapmakers: This is a grouping, not a body: our data cannot tell which jurisdiction a congregation belongs to, how large it is, or whether its succession claims are recognized by anyone else, and none of that may be asserted of a specific congregation. RCMS 2020 publishes no row for these jurisdictions, so we hold no count. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Old Catholic jurisdictions vary…" and yield to each congregation's own materials.
Sources: Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · The Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht — history (Union of Utrecht of the Old Catholic Churches)
More of the Independent and Old Catholic story · Find these churches on the map