Our basic beliefs are:

• that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary for salvation. Where Scripture does not speak clearly, we defer to apostolic tradition and our own reason
• that the historic creeds of the undivided Church provide a clear and indisputable summary of the Christian faith. The historic creeds are known as: The Nicene Creed, The Apostles Creed, and the Athanasius Creed
• that we are saved by grace, through faith in the teachings of Jesus Christ
• that the Sacraments of the Church impart the grace of God
• that the Holy Spirit is at work today through spiritual gifts and signs given to the Church

St. Francis Old Catholic Church is sacramental as opposed to confessional. We are bound together in fellowship by Baptism and the Eucharist -- not by doctrinal formulas. If we have been water-baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, and if we prepare for and receive the Holy Eucharist desiring a closer relationship with God, we are St. Francis Old Catholic Church members.

Sacramental unity seeks to contain conflict within the boundaries of mutual charity. When the rule is not "Believe what we believe," but "Pray with us," there is freedom for lots of discussion.

By contrast, most Protestant Churches are confessional. The bond of unity is a set of precise doctrinal formulas (e.g. Predestination, Justification by Faith, the Incarnation, etc.) intended to ward off error. Examples of confessions include the Westminster Confessions (Reformed, Presbyterian), the Augsburg Confession (Lutheran), or a local Statement of Beliefs (Baptist, Free Church).

Confessional unity seeks to preserve doctrinal purity in the face of conflict.

Visitors and members of St. Francis Old Catholic Church who have not been alerted to that difference from their previous denominations will be startled (and perhaps distressed) at the range of different opinions our sacramental bond enables. The freedom of discussion which sacramental unity permits can feel dangerous and without boundaries. It takes getting used to.

Jesus Christ is the head of the Church and as proclaimed by the Early Church Fathers the Holy Spirit is the Vicar of Christ. However, our parishes and clergy, like all other Catholic Communions, are under the guidance and authority of a Bishop. Our denomination maintains valid lines of Apostolic Succession, which can be traced to the ancient and undivided church. All clergy in the NAOCC are ordained by the “laying on of hands”. St. Francis Old Catholic Church recognizes a three-fold basis for authority governing belief and practice. Its three elements are Scripture, Tradition, and Reason.

Scripture refers to the Old and New Testaments as "the Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation."

Tradition is the history of the Church's interpretation of the Bible. It includes basic doctrinal formulas like the Creeds, the Doctrine of the Trinity, and of the Incarnation and includes the many theories of the Atonement (i.e. the findings of the first four Ecumenical Councils). It includes our four-fold ministry (baptized laity, bishops, priests, deacons) and Canon Law. Those are all post-biblical developments -- but they grew up early in the Church which employed the Bible as its norm. Tradition is deeper than mere custom.

Reason is the evidence of the Holy Spirit's ongoing ministry to the Church as it adapts to changing circumstances, to new knowledge, to fresh challenges. Reason is not limited to formal logic. It includes the fruit of Christian experience and the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the prayerful conscience.

We resolve issues of belief and practice by struggling together prayerfully until Scripture, Tradition, and Reason line up together. Basing a position on the one element that yields the answer you like best, disregarding the others, is considered irresponsible.

Our three-fold understanding of authority differs from the widespread Protestant position, sola scriptura - 'the scriptures alone.' Old Catholics were swift to discern that various beliefs, practices, and teachings drawn solely from the Bible often ignore or suppress balancing biblical positions. If the Bible were unambiguously clear on all important matters, Lutherans would be just like Presbyterians, and Baptists would be identical to both. (Historically all three groups have sought earnestly to apply the Bible directly.) Reliance on the Bible by itself has not furnished the Church with the protection against human whim that we all desire.

That three-fold approach to authority thrusts us into a search for the principle underlying a Bible passage, for the spirit within the letter. Searching for the principle of Scripture by prayerful Reason is a key element in our Tradition.

Historically that prayerful exercise has led the Church to several radical modifications of biblical law that most of us today take comfortably for granted. For example: As Reason uncovered new understandings of economics (money is not only a means of exchange but a form of capital capable of producing wealth) our Tradition encompassed lending money at interest, thus allowing Capitalism to develop. This was done in order that Scriptural principles of economic justice might no longer be hampered by a rigid application of biblical letter.

The reasoned determination that slavery is unchristian (though biblical) was another radical shift that we now take for granted.

A recent example: prayerful Reason concluded that the Scriptural principle of protecting women against male capriciousness mandates occasionally permitting remarriage after divorce within the community of faith; our pastoral Tradition required the Church to open that question.

We find that such an approach to authority provides us with a godly manner of remaining faithful to the Revelation, attentive to the Spirit's present voice, and courteous to one another. That is not easy to get used to, takes maturity to exercise, and occasionally gets mishandled.

The term 'absolutes' arises from discussions that we took no part in. Frankly, we find the notion overly simplistic. (The yearning for bedrock certainty is an expression of the fear of death, the very death that Christ overcame by his own. God's ministry to our death-fear is personal, not objective.) With our understanding of the Spirit's direction through Scripture, Tradition, and Reason, few of us have felt the need for such a category as 'absolutes' and have welcomed the space a judicious amount of uncertainty allows. The following scriptures are typical of many that suggest that no human understanding will ever approach the absolute:

Job 38:1-5
Then the LORD answered job out of the storm. He said:
Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.
Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it?

Rom. 11:33-34
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?

God alone is absolute for us. The Scriptures point to the absolute God but the Scriptures themselves must never be confused with God. For that reason, we do not talk much about absolutes; but at our best, we do pray a lot. God alone is absolute. That makes us all nervous. We have to take that nervousness to Jesus Himself not to our favorite theologies.

There are four implications for us in trying not to absolutize.

First, the Bible cannot be seen as a closed system. The Bible is open to the winds of the Holy Spirit, and of the World, and of the Devil. That ought to keep us deeply prayerful when we read and interpret it. The Bible is validated by the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers. But the rebellious human will is fully able to invalidate it -- not for others, to be sure, but for self. The Bible depends for its effectiveness on a force outside itself -- the Spirit of God.

Second, a passage which once undergirded a particular approach to things can change its meaning on you without prior notice-- from one reading to the next -- should it please our Lord the Holy Spirit. (For example, on one reading, "Render unto Caesar..." means "Pay your taxes;" on the next reading it can mean, "Your submission to the State has robbed you of moral choice.")

Third, if God alone is absolute for us, it follows that no doctrine is absolute for us either, though we regard some doctrines as indispensable. (For example, the Trinity, the Bodily Resurrection, Two Natures of Christ, and the Incarnation, etc.) The value of any doctrine is its ability to point to the God who self-reveals to us in the Bible and in Jesus Christ. True doctrines enhance our appreciation of God and our ability to focus on God. But since doctrines are not absolute in themselves, we are able (in ideal principle, at least) to share the grace we receive through them with each other rather than engage in strife over them.

A fourth implication: our yearning for certainty in areas where God has not given it tempts us to flee to post-biblical notions of truth, assuming a point-for-point correlation between what happens and what gets written. That can lead us to insisting that the Bible is 'true' in literal ways that its very characters would not recognize. But for us, the truth is a Person: Jesus Christ. Saying it that way can be frustrating to the part of each of us that feels safest in the concrete. But the questions, "Where is Jesus in all this?" and, "What would Jesus do right now?" produce ready concrete answers that can satisfy and challenge us all. Those questions produce reliable truth.

That standard may at first seem vague and manipulable. But it has served the Church for many centuries in discriminating good doctrine from bad. The test of Scripture, Tradition, and Reason can be applied openly in ways that can be publicly checked.

We place utter reliance on the grace of God. We do not use grace as an excuse to violate God's commandments. Rather, we know that we can only grow into joyful obedience by being forgiven repeatedly for our disobedience. We think of the grace of God as the indispensable requirement for spiritual growth into maturity.

That sometimes gets confused by outsiders as moral laxity.

At the risk of caricature, one major denomination used to put up with pretty much anything in its members as long as they went to Confession on Saturday; at least that was our impression of them. Another denomination made 'looking good' the basic criterion for leadership, as though its elders and deacons never even got parking tickets. We have tried to steer between those extremes, by acknowledging our sin, regretting it, getting it pardoned, and moving on.

St. Francis Old Catholic Church is not hospitable either to perfectionism or to moral sloth. Where Grace operates, sinners improve.

The Bible takes sin dead serious. But the Bible does not offer us precise definitions. If you search a concordance for the phrases "thus and such is a sin" you will get no result. We have to approach the documents with prayerful Reason to get the definitions of sin that our modern thought patterns require.

We do that reasoning in good company. Our Lord Himself, and Saints Peter and Paul independently concluded that the regulations about cleanliness and purity that they found in the Old Testament did not pertain to Christians in their received, externalized forms. They sought the deeper principle in the depths of the human heart.

Theologians normally use two definitions of sin. One relies on the etymology of our English word: sin is that which separates, which sunders. The other relies on an extrapolation from the Bible: sin is a deliberate misuse of the will, willing something which is contrary to God's will.

Sins (plural) are actions which have the characteristics of sin: they divide us from God by misuse of our wills.

That's difficult and scary, especially if you think the safest way to deal with God is to stay off Heaven's sinner-list. But the experience of the Church for many centuries suggests that this understanding permits spiritual growth. The sinful tendency to play fast and loose with the rules and to seek loopholes can be countered in the context of prayerful, loving fellowship.

We describe our life as incarnational. That means that our thinking and ministry tend to stay engaged with the World -- like Jesus. We feel called to live in the middle of things, not apart from them. (If you read it in the paper, you are likely to discuss it in Church. We do not try to lock ourselves into holy enclaves, shutting out the naughty world. Historically, that tendency allowed us to weather Darwin's theories with scarcely a ripple, and to discover in Freud's atheistic pessimism a deeper exposition of what the Bible calls 'the heart.' A Christian cannot flee from the World in the Church. It does get exhausting at times. But we think that's what Jesus asked us to do in John 14-17.

We are forming a monastic community of celibate, single, and couples who love and care for each other as we worship God together. We will center our community around a monastic rule which will be added to by each monastic tradition (Franciscan, Benedictine, Trappist, etc.) to include each traditions specific charisms. The Monastery will be led by a Presiding Abbot with each tradition electing from within its members a Spiritual Mother and Spiritual Father which will serve on the Family Council to assist the Presiding Abbot in leading the Monastery. The vision is that the Monastery will become like a family working together to bring the Kingdom of God to the earth.

We will be a mainly Old Catholic-based monastic community of celibate brothers, celibate sisters, families, and single persons called together as a spiritual family into deep relationships with and in Jesus Christ. Although we will be liturgically and theologically Old Catholic, in true Old Catholic spirit we will strive to be ecumenical and welcome all Christian denominations within the community so long as the candidate can agree to the Nicene Creed and to our Community Rule. We will share common work and recreation areas while retaining appropriate separate areas for each expression (celibate, single, family, and gender). Most of the members of the monastic expression will live and work at the Monastery. We will also have a Third Order expression consisting of single men and women and families, living in their own homes and sharing the same Rule and Constitution with the monastic expression. One of the ways one could describe the Monastery is integrated. We will seek to balance contemplative and charismatic, stable (i.e., living in one place) and itinerant (i.e., traveling); solitary and communal; and eremitical and active ministry. Another major monastic integration is that of celibate men and women and families existing side by side without losing their uniqueness.

Most of the work we will do at the Monastery will consist of farming/gardening, office work, cooking, cleaning and maintenance of the grounds and buildings. Part of our life deals with the manual tasks of making the Monastery as self-sufficient as possible. Each brother or sister may also choose to spend a few hours a week doing some ministry in the nearby towns.

We will seek to discern how the local community can be helped by our presence and create an outreach to fill that need. Members may also be asked to utilize their God given talents in making various items for sale to help support the Monastery. This could range from quilting, vestment making, or crafts. Another way of making the Monastery self-sufficient will be to offer a Retreat and Training Center for individuals and small groups and simply being a loving presence to the “pilgrims” who come to visit the Monastery for spiritual renewal.

Our life will be a head-on confrontation with one’s personal relationship with Jesus and the reality of dealing with human sin and imperfection in oneself and others, as we strive for honest community openness in seeking to be conformed to the image of Jesus. Ours is a life of well-balanced prayer, study, work and service.

The overall Monastery will have a simple Habit which will consist of a Cross. Each member will be asked to wear the Monastery Cross as often as is possible. Those members who live at the Monastery will have some form of a traditional habit, however each tradition will determine the style, color, and rules about the wearing of the habit. The Monastery will have overall rules about the wearing of the habit such as during liturgical events.

Any Christian who feels called to monastic life should contact us so that we can work to discern their call. Candidates will be considered without regard to gender, gender identity, race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Candidates to the monastic expression must be in good health (physically, emotionally and spiritually) and debt-free.

Below is a suggested schedule to give you an idea of what life might be like. Please remember that it is only an example and the actual schedule of the Monastery might be different.

Mon-Fri
6:45 a.m. Morning Prayer (followed by Mass)
7:30 a.m. Community Breakfast (some may choose to eat in silence)
8:15-11:30 a.m. Work time
11:30–Noon Private Prayer time (in silence)
12 Noon Noon Prayer in chapel, followed by a common lunch (sometimes will be taken in silence) Simple, light meals on Wednesdays and Fridays.
1:00-5:00 p.m. Work time
5:30 p.m. Evening Prayer
6:00 p.m. Dinner/social time
7:00–9:30 p.m. Personal Prayer and Study except on community meeting (Chapter) nights. Chapter meets on Wednesday evenings at 7pm. ALL Community members will be required to attend this meeting each week unless approval is given by your Vicar or the Presiding Abbot.
9:30 p.m. Compline
10:00 p.m. Grand Silence begins

Saturday is an unscheduled day except for Morning Prayer, Noon Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline (extra prayer and study time, needed work, and recreation)

Sunday
10:30 a.m. Mass
12 Noon Community Lunch served for all who attended Mass.
4:30 p.m. Council of Vicars meeting
5:30 p.m. Evening Prayer followed by Common Dinner.