I see the Ecumenical Catholic Church has a mission in St. Louis

[flameburns623]

I noticed this weekend that the Ecumenical Catholic Church is now meeting in St. Louis at one of the more-liberal Anglican churches. Looked 'em up: they are, among other things, apparently supportive of immoral lifestyles. I am wondering if this congregation has come into being as a result of the ‘ordination’ of several Catholic women a few months ago. Anyone have any info? Sorry if this is not an ideal placement for this thread.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

I noticed this weekend that the Ecumenical Catholic Church is now meeting in St. Louis at one of the more-liberal Anglican churches. Looked 'em up: they are, among other things, apparently supportive of immoral lifestyles. I am wondering if this congregation has come into being as a result of the ‘ordination’ of several Catholic women a few months ago. Anyone have any info? Sorry if this is not an ideal placement for this thread.

I used to sort of keep track of different groups like this…

They come and go, generally are just disaffected Catholics, do not build their own churches, do not establish legacies…

There is similar where I live and the ex-wife of the governor from the 1980s fancies herself a priest for them. She gets column inches every so often for “having mass” on a table in some small borrowed chapel or church basement for pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, or divorced-remarred Catholics. If 20 people show up, it would be a huge crowd for her. But she gets column inches and attention from newspaper religion writers who think she is cutting edge…

I don’t really bother with them.

 

[flameburns623]

I used to sort of keep track of different groups like this…

They come and go, generally are just disaffected Catholics, do not build their own churches, do not establish legacies…

There is similar where I live and the ex-wife of the governor from the 1980s fancies herself a priest for them. She gets column inches every so often for “having mass” on a table in some small borrowed chapel or church basement for pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, or divorced-remarred Catholics. If 20 people show up, it would be a huge crowd for her. But she gets column inches and attention from newspaper religion writers who think she is cutting edge…

I don’t really bother with them.

I was surprised to see them adverting their presence in the Religion pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There are two or three other autocephalous Catholic groups with a presence in St. Louis, but none of them have sufficient size or budget to list themselves. A P-D church listing is rather expensive I understand.

 

[ALLGIRLS]

I was surprised to see them adverting their presence in the Religion pages of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. There are two or three other autocephalous Catholic groups with a presence in St. Louis, but none of them have sufficient size or budget to list themselves. A P-D church listing is rather expensive I understand.

Hi , I’m in the St. Louis area. What exactly is an “autocephalous” Catholic group? I’ve never heard that term. Are you familiar w/ what’s going on at St. Stanislas Kostka? Apparently their priest is letting active homosexuals, divorced and remarried (w/o annulment, outside the Church) couples, and maybe even nonCatholics (I read one article that specifically mentioned nonCatholics, another that did not) receive Communion, and he is also supportive (was at the ceremony) of the “ordination” of the “womenpriests” that took place at the synogogue recently. He’s insisting that none of these things are dogma’s, but simply “practices” that can be changed, so he’s not doing anything wrong About 2/3rds of the church is supportive of him, and 1/3 (including the guy who was responsible for bringing him up from the Springfield/Cape Girardeau diocese, who now feels he was “betrayed”) want him out.

My question to these people (as always) is, why not just become Episcopalian? You can find very “high church” liturgical Episcopal churches, w/ more “smells and bells” than most Catholic parishes nowadays (some even have altar rails!), and get to freely believe all that liberal, feminist theology that the Catholic Church rejects. These people obviously don’t like the Pope, and (by freely dissenting on so many teachings) don’t believe he has authority to declare doctrine that is binding on the faithful, so why stay? It appears they just want to cause scandel and generate publicity, which, IMHO, isn’t very Christian. If one is sincerely interested in living the truth he or she believes Christ is revealing (through the bible, Tradition, Holy Spirit, some new Revelation, whatever), why stay in a church you don’t believe is living that truth? Find one that is, or start one, but don’t call it Catholic (Big C), or Roman Catholic. It drives me nuts!

Just my :2cents:

In Christ,

Ellen

 

[ASimpleSinner]

Hi , I’m in the St. Louis area. What exactly is an “autocephalous” Catholic group? I’ve never heard that term.

It means self-governing.

It is a remarkably charitable and generous to refer to small schismatic groups like this as self-governing.

Generally, anyone who can cough up the loot can advertise in the religion section’s “Church directory”. I used to advocate our parish give it a shot, but honestly I don’t want our parish to give the local paper one red cent.

These folks come and go and they are generally filled with ex-Catholics who are dissidents. I have yet to hear of any such group being established that adheres to celibacy, male only ordination or affirms the traditional Christian teaching on artificial birth control. Nine times out of ten, opposing these things are their “selling points”.

Now for all the groups out there that try these failing things (get a clue!) which could be said to have had even a modicum of short term moderate success in:

• Building Churches
• Growing membership besides a few disafected partoes
• Evangelizing the unchurched
• Starting missions overseas
• Building accredited seminaries
• Starting effective charities…

These experiements have uniformly been modern Towers of Babel.

Frankly, every few months when some woman or another gets written up in local and national press for “getting ordained in a dissident Catholic sect” she is getting far more column inches than she deserves.

http://images.lancasteronline.com/ap/women_priest_ordination__topix.sff_ful.jpg

Whatever…

 

[flameburns623]

Hi , I’m in the St. Louis area. What exactly is an “autocephalous” Catholic group? I’ve never heard that term. Are you familiar w/ what’s going on at St. Stanislas Kostka? Apparently their priest is letting active homosexuals, divorced and remarried (w/o annulment, outside the Church) couples, and maybe even non-Catholics (I read one article that specifically mentioned non-Catholics, another that did not) receive Communion, and he is also supportive (was at the ceremony) of the “ordination” of the “womenpriests” that took place at the synagogue recently. He’s insisting that none of these things are dogma’s, but simply “practices” that can be changed, so he’s not doing anything wrong About 2/3rds of the church is supportive of him, and 1/3 (including the guy who was responsible for bringing him up from the Springfield/Cape Girardeau diocese, who now feels he was “betrayed”) want him out.

My question to these people (as always) is, why not just become Episcopalian? You can find very “high church” liturgical Episcopal churches, w/ more “smells and bells” than most Catholic parishes nowadays (some even have altar rails!), and get to freely believe all that liberal, feminist theology that the Catholic Church rejects. These people obviously don’t like the Pope, and (by freely dissenting on so many teachings) don’t believe he has authority to declare doctrine that is binding on the faithful, so why stay? It appears they just want to cause scandal and generate publicity, which, IMHO, isn’t very Christian. If one is sincerely interested in living the truth he or she believes Christ is revealing (through the bible, Tradition, Holy Spirit, some new Revelation, whatever), why stay in a church you don’t believe is living that truth? Find one that is, or start one, but don’t call it Catholic (Big C), or Roman Catholic. It drives me nuts!

Just my :2cents:

In Christ,

Ellen

I’m going to screw this up royally but here’s what I understand of the meaning of ‘autocephalous. As someone has already noted–it means ‘self-governing’’. It is applied to churches that have a valid but illicit priesthood, usually at least one valid but renegade bishop, and what would be in many ways a Catholic identity. They celebrate Masses, tend to teach along Roman Catholic models, and so forth. Many of the autocephalous Catholic churches have become very liberal; some are ultra-conservative.

The Polish National Catholic Church is an example. They are a group with a very weak presence in St. Louis. They possibly have folded up their tent entirely, unless St. Stanislaus has joined with them. The Lefebvre group is another example of an autocephalous church. (These are the folks, headquartered on Watson Road near Crestwood Mall, that do Latin Masses. I think they worship somewhere in south St. Louis City these days, not overly distant from the St. Francis de Sales Oratory–which does LEGAL Latin Masses, permitted by the bishop/archbishop/cardinal, or whatever rank Raymond Burke holds–I can never keep the categories straight).

We Anglicans, although we speak of ourselves as ‘Catholics in the English tradition’, don’t count as an autocephalous church: for one thing, we aren’t considered to have a valid lineage of priests and bishops. Don’t open that can of worms too widely, but if there are questions, someone on this forum is very very well-informed about the issues involving autocephalous Catholic churches, Anglicanism, and so forth. At one point I strongly considered reading for Orders in one of these churches and you’d think I knew more than I do; what little I saw of these organizations suggested to me that most of them are much too liberal for my tastes. Hence I remain in one of the conservative-Evangelical movements within Anglicanism.

Hope that clarified some of the questions you raised. Ask more: someone who actually knows something may happen along and give better answers.

 

[flameburns623]

By the way: I already had posted about St. Stan’s on another thread, in the Catholic News section of this forum:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=3389761#post3389761

Not all of us Episcopalians approve of the ordination of woman and practicing homosexuals, btw. I do of course support the idea of married clergy–one of the issues that separated me from the RCC. Celibacy is a nice idea, but it became the rule in the Western Church in order to combat one set of evils–priests with multile wives and/or concubines–in the fifth and sixth centuries. The experience in the West was that the priestly orders which held strictly to celibacy were more consistently successful in upholding Christian standards of chastity and morals, and hence celibacy became decreed as the norm for the Western Church. (In the East, there were apparently fewer issues with married clergy, and therefore no such requirement was laid upon clergy there).

I think the last 1400 years or so show that the Church would have done better simply to uphold monogamous marriage as the ideal for most priests, rather than impose a discipline which limits the ability of the Church to attract candidates to the priesthood, and which has encouraged periodic scandals for hundreds of years. Celibacy, after all, did not bring an end to ‘priest-whores’, concubinage, sexual trysts and affairs, and so forth. Most folks–Catholic and non-Catholic alike–have long known–or at least suspected–that the RCC priesthood was disproportionately populated by homosexuals, not all of them making an honest effort to remain chaste within their sexual orientation. Such things just weren’t ‘talked about’ until recent times.

It has only been the scandals of the past 25 years or so that have driven such issues out of the shadows. (And yes: the vast majority of priests, like the vast majority of clergy in every religious faith, should not be smeared because of the lapses of a tiny percentage of their number).

But that issue would derail my own thread. And wins very few hearts or minds among the Catholics on this board anyhow. 'Nuff said.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

I’m going to screw this up royally but here’s what I understand of the meaning of ‘autocephalous. As someone has already noted–it means ‘self-governing’’. It is applied to churches that have a valid but illicit priesthood, usually at least one valid but renegade bishop, and what would be in many ways a Catholic identity.

Really FB, one seldom to never hears this term being applied to “Old Cahtolic” (Ultrajectine) bodies… It is used almost with exclusion for Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches… And even then mostly therein.

 

[ASimpleSinner]

I think the last 1400 years or so show that the Church would have done better simply to uphold monogamous marriage as the ideal for most priests, rather than impose a discipline which limits the ability of the Church to attract candidates to the priesthood, and which has encouraged periodic scandals for hundreds of years. Celibacy, after all, did not bring an end to ‘priest-whores’, concubinage, sexual trysts and affairs, and so forth. Most folks–Catholic and non-Catholic alike–have long known–or at least suspected–that the RCC priesthood was disproportionately populated by homosexuals, not all of them making an honest effort to remain chaste within their sexual orientation. Such things just weren’t ‘talked about’ until recent times.

I couldn’t disagree more.

And I come from a Catholic Church with a tradition of married priests.

One of the things that was devastating and a cause of schism among the Greek Catholics in America was the 1929 ban on married clergy here in the west - we were told “When in Roman waters…” And it caused not one but too major splits among our community with two different Orthodox jurisdictions being formed out of the melee.

That as the case may be, the mostly celibate clergy that we had were successful in establishing parishes and missions that remarkably had parity with the Orthox counterparts which today are doing little better than we are at attracting clergy that can be supported.

They do have more clergy who are bi-vocational and many, many more tiny chapels. Until 10-20 years ago when we saw a drammatic spike in our “grandkids” “going native” we were largely successful in keeping our parishes somewhat larger…

There is nothing wrong with married clergy, per se, but it has been through the labors of the celibate clergy and religous that have been able to dedicate their lives to growth and missionary work that the Catholic Church has had much great success.

Re-considering the ban on married priesthood in the Roman Church doesn’t seem all that wise at this time.

 

[ALLGIRLS]

We Anglicans, although we speak of ourselves as ‘Catholics in the English tradition’, don’t count as an autocephalous church: for one thing, we aren’t considered to have a valid lineage of priests and bishops. Don’t open that can of worms too widely, but if there are questions, someone on this forum is very very well-informed about the issues involving autocephalous Catholic churches, Anglicanism, and so forth. At one point I strongly considered reading for Orders in one of these churches and you’d think I knew more than I do; what little I saw of these organizations suggested to me that most of them are much too liberal for my tastes. Hence I remain in one of the conservative-Evangelical movements within Anglicanism.

Thanks for your reply. I totally understand what you wrote above. What I can never understand is why these people don’t just leave the Catholic Church altogether and join an Episcopal parish that conforms to their beliefs in women’s ordination, homosexual unions, being able to remarry w/o an annulment and open communion. By staying in the Catholic Church (even forming an “autocephalous” church) and activing dissenting I believe causes grave scandal and confusion among the rest of the faithful. It’s almost like they want to “take a stand” and “prove a point”, and worshipping God is actually secondary to this.

This brings something else to mind, and maybe one of our more conservative/evangelical/fundamental (whatever you want to call it!) NonCatholic posters can answer this. Does this happen in your churches? Say, Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, for instance-do you have “renegade” women getting ordained, and homosexual members protesting b/c you won’t let them get married, or members actively, vocally, dissenting your stance against abortion (when they could just join the ELCA)? Same w/ Southern, Independent, or Regular Baptist, or the conservative Presbyterians (can’t remember which branch is the conservative one, sorry!).

It just boggles my mind. There are thousands of churches, why stay at one that obviously doesn’t believe what you do? Find one that does instead of trying to force that one to change its teachings. Because, after all, don’t churches have the right to decide what doctrines and teachings they’re going to espouse (whatever their teaching authority may be)?

Sigh. So much to think about.

In Christ,

Ellen

 

[ASimpleSinner]

This brings something else to mind, and maybe one of our more conservative/evangelical/fundamental (whatever you want to call it!) NonCatholic posters can answer this. Does this happen in your churches? Say, Missouri Synod or Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, for instance-do you have “renegade” women getting ordained, and homosexual members protesting b/c you won’t let them get married, or members actively, vocally, dissenting your stance against abortion (when they could just join the ELCA)? Same w/ Southern, Independent, or Regular Baptist, or the conservative Presbyterians (can’t remember which branch is the conservative one, sorry!).

They seem to drift over to their more liberal counterparts… Apostolic Succession being what it is in the communities you mention - a matter of no consideration - finding renegade “ordainers” just isn’t the same possibility. Rather a Missouri Synod gal may go ELCA and proceed to point out she is just as ordained…