The Church has since focused on establishing communities and training ministers to expand the Church worldwide. Also in 2014 the ACC opened Alpha & Omega Institute, a distance learning Seminary with the mission of training laymen and clergy for service in the Church. The Liberal Catholic Union is an autocephalous branch of the Liberal Catholic Movement formed after the Consecration of Tau Meinrad(Michael Robert Lawrence) McDonald, OSM/EBOE to the office of Bishop in the old/Liberal Catholic and Gnostic lineages of Apostolic succession held by Tau Michael Bertiaux through Tau Allen H. Greenfield. Along with several Bishops and Clergy the Liberal Catholic Union formed as a vehicle for reintroducing Theosophical context that they felt had been stripped from common Liberal Catholic Practice. The LCU creates a distinct practice through the incorporation and infusion of not only Theosophical but French Gnostic theological concepts. The Church is active in several states with its largest community established in Indiana. The LCU does not have a seminary and instead relies on the "apprentice" method that they believe was originally the model of training used in the early Christian community. The Liberal Catholic Union is seen as a heavily esoteric order and promotes such practices as open communion offered to Christians as well as Non Christians without distinction. The International Liberal Catholic Church was founded in 1966 by Bishop Edmund Walter Sheehan and others who left the Liberal Catholic Church branch led by Bishop Edward M. Matthews. He had previously served as an auxiliary bishop under Bishop Charles Hampton. His disagreement with Matthews concerned administrative matters. Sheehan linked the International Liberal Catholic Church to the Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament, a Dutch group which had broken with the British headquarters of the Liberal Catholic Church. The Brotherhood had originally sided with Matthews but had broken relations with him in 1962. The International Liberal Catholic Church followed the Matthews faction in doctrinal and liturgical matters. While reporting 9 bishops, 25 clergy, and 3,000 members in 1969, the International Church dwindled to only a few parishes during the 1970s, and in the early 1980s was disbanded. The Independent Catholic Church International was formed in 1981 as both a new jurisdiction out of the Anglican heritage and an ecumenical body which related a variety of independent episcopal bodies, some out of the theosophical Liberal Catholic tradition. The first primate was Peter Wayne Goodrich. Goodrich resigned in 1983 and was succeeded by R. V. Bernard Dawe (b. 1925), who had been consecrated in 1980 and had served as the church's international legate.