We are an Ecumenical and Authentic Catholic Congregation, welcoming all of God's people, and we mean it.

     Though authentically Catholic, we are less rigid toward some traditions that divide us, finding a pastoral care toward our entire human condition that unites us and values our very existence.

    Archbishop Dr. Karl Rodig is our presiding archbishop of the ECCC (Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ), a worldwide Catholic Church Communion; he is also a Consulter for the Worldwide Catholic Movement "Catholic Church Reform International" (over 4 Million strong). A signed letter was sent to Pope Francis on November 1st, 2013. He was also at the Synod in Rome in October of 2014, attending discussion groups, and the opening mass with Pope Francis at St. Peter's.

   Our Cathedral Abbey of St. Anthony is also a member of the Roman Catholic movement of "Elephants in the Living Room" which seeks to keep the ideas and reform issues of the Second Vatican Council alive, seeking active dialog and Reform.

                              

                                   You have not found a Church, because:

• You are divorced and remarried

• you are a woman and have the call to the Catholic Priesthood (See also in the international Website of the ECCC <www.ecumenicalccc.org>, the articles about women ministry in the early Christian centuries, including literature). See also: www.womenpriests.org   www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org 

• you feel excluded, because you LGBT. 

• you are disappointed with some independent churches that due to lack of real spiritual authority, are tragically prone to an accommodation to only a spirit of the age.

• other personal reasons you might have.

You are welcome into our Church!

“The Church must be concerned not just with herself and her relationship of union with God, but with human beings as they really are today.” (Blessed Pope Paul VI. concluding the Second Vatican Council, December 1965)

"More than by fear of going astray, my hope is that we will be moved by the fear of remaining shut up within structures which give us a false sense of security, within rules which make us harsh judges, within habits which make us feel safe, while at our door people are starving." - Pope Francis

 

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Pope Francis:  “A proposal of goals without an adequate communal search for the means of achieving them will inevitably prove illusory.  The important thing is to not walk alone, but to rely on each other as brothers and sisters, especially under the leadership of the bishops, in a wise and realistic pastoral discernment"  (EG. n.33)

 

(The Christian faithful) have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful. (Canon 212, 3)

 

"The Church or people of God . . . fosters and takes to itself, insofar as they are good, the ability, riches and customs in which the genius of each people expresses itself." (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 13)


Walter Cardinal Kasper at the Consistory, February 2014

"It is necessary to take seriously believers’ sense of faith, precisely with regard to our current topic. We here in the Consistory are all celibates; most of the faithful, however, live out their belief in the gospel of the family in concrete families and sometimes in difficult situations. Therefore, we should listen to their witness and also listen to what pastoral coworkers and counselors in pastoral care to families have to say to us. And they do have something to say to us."

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We honor St. Mary Magdalene with Reverence Equal of the Apostles

 

Holy Tradition testifies that when the Apostles departed from Jerusalem to preach to all the ends of the earth, then Mary Magdalene also went with them. A daring woman, whose heart was full of reminiscence of the Resurrection, she went beyond her native borders and went to preach in pagan Rome. Everywhere she proclaimed to people about Christ and His teaching. When many did not believe that Christ is risen, she repeated to them what she had said to the Apostles on the radiant morning of the Resurrection: “I have seen the Lord!” With this message she went all over Italy.

Tradition relates that in Italy Mary Magdalene visited Emperor Tiberius (14-37 A.D.) and proclaimed to him Christ’s Resurrection. According to Tradition, she brought him a red egg as a symbol of the Resurrection,   a symbol of new life with the words: “Christ is Risen!” Then she told the emperor that in his Province of Judea the unjustly condemned Jesus the Galilean, a holy man, a miracle worker, powerful before God and all mankind, had been executed at the instigation of the Jewish High Priests, and the sentence confirmed by the procurator appointed by Tiberius, Pontius Pilate.

Mary repeated the words of the Apostles, that we are redeemed from the vanity of life not with perishable silver or gold, but rather by the precious Blood of Christ.

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Thanks to Mary Magdalene the custom to give each other paschal eggs on the day of the Radiant Resurrection of Christ spread among Christians over all the world. In one ancient Greek manuscript, written on parchment, kept in the monastery library of St Athanasius near Thessaloniki, is a prayer read on the day of Holy Pascha for the blessing of eggs and cheese. In it is indicated that the igumen in passing out the blessed eggs says to the brethren: “Thus have we received from the holy Fathers, who preserved this custom from the very time of the holy Apostles, therefore the holy Equal of the Apostles Mary Magdalene first showed believers the example of this joyful offering.”

Mary Magdalene continued her preaching in Italy and in the city of Rome itself. Evidently, the Apostle Paul has her in mind in his Epistle to the Romans (16: 6), where together with other ascetics of evangelic preaching he mentions Mary (Mariam), who as he expresses “has bestowed much labor on us.” Evidently, she extensively served the Church in its means of subsistence and its difficulties, being exposed to dangers, and sharing with the Apostles the labors of preaching.

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According to Church Tradition, she remained in Rome until the arrival of the Apostle Paul, and for two more years following his departure from Rome after the first court judgment upon him. From Rome, St Mary Magdalene, already bent with age, moved to Ephesus where the holy Apostle John unceasingly labored. There the saint finished her earthly life and was buried.

Her holy relics were transferred in the ninth century to Constantinople, and placed in the monastery Church of St Lazarus. In the era of the Crusader campaigns they were transferred to Italy and placed at Rome under the altar of the Lateran Cathedral. Part of the relics of Mary Magdalene are said to be in Provage, France near Marseilles, where over them at the foot of a steep mountain a splendid church is built in her honor.

 

We are open to Diversity in Christian thought and Practice

Yet, we are not promoting total theological faddism (because not all the latest possibilities of modern thoughts are superior or normative to good Christian tradition of faith and life, and its understanding of reality).

Such thinking has become the going thought in some independent catholic churches, because of their ministers' inadequate theological and biblical education, and lack of spiritual formation.

(Please see also about Reform issues in our "Manifesto", under Documents at: http://www.ecumenicalccc.org/church-documents.php)

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Our Cathedral Abbey of St. Anthony is also the headquarter of the worldwide Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ, and the New Order of St. Francis and St. Clare.

We are present in the five global continents and share an ecumenical perspective to our diverse and good Catholic Traditions. 

As we strife for Unity among the different Catholic Rites and Christian Churches, our members are Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Orthodox, Old Catholics, Lutherans, and Christians of other denominations as well.

 

Yes, there are more "Catholic Rites" besides the Roman Catholic Rite in the world, like the  Eastern Orthodox Catholics, the Anglican Catholics, Greek Catholics, Ukrainian Catholics, Polish National Catholics, Coptic Catholics, Ecumenical Catholics, Old Catholics, Chaldean, Maronite, Episcopalians, St. Thomas Christians in India, Melkite, etc.  Please see also list of Orthodox and Independent Catholic Churches below.**

 

Remember when we pray the Nicene Creed, we pray, "...We believe in the On Holy Catholic And Apostolic Church", this we do in a Spirit of Unity.  No one prays, "We believe in the One Holy Roman Catholic Church" The Roman Rite together with all other Catholic Rites and Christian Churches, are part of the "ONE HOLY CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH."

If you come from a Western Roman Catholic heritage, you will find very little difference from the worship and liturgy you are familiar with.  We celebrate the seven sacraments.  All of our bishops can trace their apostolic succession back to the Apostles, the same as the major Catholic Rites.

 

We invite you, "Taste and See" for yourself the Ecumenical Catholic experience of faith in action.