A Christian Journey: Part 5

I wanted to share with all of you a new and exciting spiritual development in my life--I have found a church where I can finally "belong". I thought I'd share it with you over Christmas in several short posts instead of one big long one. I can't wait to hear what you think. I'm hoping you'll be excited for me, and perhaps encouraged about finding spiritual community for yourself, if you've not found somewhere yet. 

Part 5 of 6:

(...continued from Part 4)

So that means that I also believe in an open communion table. This means that I believe that all Christians should be able to come and receive communion, whether or not they belong to the particular church. This is quite controversial in some faiths. 

I don’t belief in original sin. I believe that people are just born. Not born good or bad, just born. I learned this from my wise nephew. So that means all kind of unorthodox spiritual things to some people. It leads many to call me “not a Christian”, which is okay, I suppose. There is nothing much I can do about that. I know that many people don’t believe in original sin and don’t let it bother them if their church believes in it and derives its theology from it. This is too hard for me to do, and it leads to many other beliefs I cannot accept. 

I have a love for liturgy and for mystery, and I love communion especially. I sound like a Roman Catholic; however, I object strongly to aspects of the Catholic Church, like papal infallability, strong demarcations between religious orders and laity, and annulments. I also object to women not being allowed to be priests, to the taboo on most methods of contraception, and many other things. So I wouldn’t make a very good conventional Roman Catholic. 

However, recently I came across some information about a "renegade" Catholic denomination called the Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC), which they say is  “an alternate way to celebrate your Catholic faith”. I know that the term "renegade" is pejorative, but to me in this case, being renegade is delightful. The ECC is gay-welcoming. It does not accept the authority of the pope, but of a local bishop. It allows congregations to choose priests, not be assigned them, and the priests work with the people together in the congregation.  And the priest can be a woman, too, married or single, gay or lesbian. It does not require annulments for divorce and remarriage, although it grieves the breakup of any marriage. It allows contraception to be decided privately by the couple involved. It is concerned with justice issues. It has an open table for communion.

It accepts the orthodox Catholic creeds, and the orthodox Catholic faith, even if not the ways the faith is lived out today. 


I'm guessing you can tell how much I like this church :)

(To be continued...)




~Photo by LoveHubbie Mark