Christianity: Details about 'Arnold Mathew'
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Arnold Harris Mathew (1852–1919) was the first Old Catholic bishop in the United Kingdom. He was a suspended Roman Catholic priest who became the leading prelate of the Old Catholic sect in the U.K. Mathew was appointed in 1908 after the Utrecht Union of Churches approved the establishment of a mission in the U.K. Mathew convinced the continental Old Catholic prelates that he had a significant following in the U.K. which, in fact, was a rather small following. He was consecrated by Archbishop Gerardus Gul of Utrecht on April 28, 1908. Assisting Gul was Bishop J. J. Van Thiel of Haarlem, Bishop N. B. P. Spit of Deventer and Bishop J. Demmel of Bonn, Germany. He then returned to England and eventually raised a number of men to the episcopacy himself, including two former Catholic priests, Howarth and Beale, who had been excommunicated by the Bishop of Nottingham for embezzling. Mathew then sent documents to Pope Pius X attesting to the consecrations. Upon receipt of these documents, Pope Pius X published the Bull Cravi Iamdiu Scandalo in which he excommunicated Mathew and condemned him as a "pseudo-bishop" and declared him vitandus, a term in church law which meant that Catholics were subject to censure if they had anything to do with Mathew. Pius X also extended his sentence of excommunication to include those who had been consecrated by Mathew. On December 29, 1910 Mathew declared his autonomy from the continental Old Catholics due to disagrements with certain practices and disciplines that Mathew felt deviated from Catholic tradition. Mathew later consecrated Prince Rudolph Edward de Landes Berghes, an Austrian nobleman, in 1913 for work in Scotland. In January 1916, he announced that he would be reconciled to the Holy See, but changed his mind two months later. He then sought union with the Church of England but the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to give Mathew any position as an Anglican clergyman. Mathew retired to a village in the countryside and contented himself with assisting at services in an Anglican parish church as a layman. By this time, he had been deserted by his wife and abandoned by virtually all the priests and bishops he had made. He died suddenly in December 1919 and was buried as an Anglican layman. His episcopal seal and other documents disappeared after his death.
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