The Abbey Church (Orthodox Catholic Church of Christ the King) is a place where visitors can experience a sense of peace, tranquillity and hospitality. We welcome everyone wishing to join us in our services or who would like to know more about us.
We are a Christian community dedicated to supporting seekers on their spiritual journey and doing good works for the betterment of the wider community. We welcome all people to worship at our weekly Sunday Services and also participate in the program of activities our Church offers. We believe and acknowledge that all people are children of God, equally loved and valued by our Divine Creator.
Our heritage incorporates both eastern Orthodox and western Catholic traditions and is steeped in the core teachings of Jesus as found in the New Testament. We acknowledge the feminine aspect of God as Divine Mother and Holy Wisdom. (Genesis 1 v 27; Isaiah 66 v 13)
Our goal is to help people know and grow in their personal relationship with God, and to live good lives, serving and helping others with compassion and understanding. We believe that life is like a school offering opportunities to learn lesson and grow as our Soul journeys back to God over subsequent lives. (St Matthew 11 v 11-15; St Matthew 17 v 10-13)
The Abbey Church looks to the coming to earth again of Christ and works to raise the Christ Consciousness in the world.
We acknowledge all other World Faith traditions, believing that each has a role to play in leading people to the Divine.
We seek to respond to the needs of God’s people in the local and wider community … families and individuals… both lifelong seekers of truth and those beginning their spiritual exploration.
The Abbey Church offers a sacred space of deep peace that can nurture the soul and uplift the spirit.
History of the Abbey Church
The Orthodox Catholic Church of Christ the King (the Abbey Church) brings together the traditions of the Eastern and Western Churches, which mutually excommunicated each other at the time of the Great Schism in 1054AD. After the infallibility of the Pope was decreed following the Vatican Council of 1870, a considerable number of Roman Catholics renounced their allegiance to the Pope and sought to form a separate valid Church. However, as they had no Bishops, no one could be confirmed or ordained.
Contact was established with the Old Catholic Church of Holland, which through a curious series of political events had become disassociated from the Roman Catholic Church, and yet had retained valid Orders. Meanwhile, in Goa and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), another large group of Roman Catholics broke away from the Papacy, under the leadership of a Priest named Francis Xavier Alvarez. To obtain consecration, he turned to the Syrian Christians, whose Bishops on the Malabar Coast were under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Antioch.
Our church received these two lines of succession through the consecration of Rev J.S.M Ward our founder, unifying, once more, the eastern and western lines of the Christian Church after 1000 years of separation.