Ecumenical Catholic Communion
Ecumenical Catholic Communion belongs to the Independent and Old Catholic family of churches.
Governance: episcopal.
An independent Catholic communion (2003) of parishes practicing Catholic sacramental life with married, women, and LGBT clergy — outside communion with Rome, which is the point of its existence and the reason it is filed here.
Congregation count not yet source-verified against RCMS 2020; NULL rather than estimated.
An independent Catholic communion founded in 2003 for Catholic sacramental life with married, women, and LGBT clergy — outside communion with Rome by design, not by accident.
Heritage
The Ecumenical Catholic Communion was founded in 2003, gathering independent Catholic parishes and communities around Bishop Peter Hickman of St. Matthew Ecumenical Catholic Church in Orange, California. Its self-description is straightforward: Catholic faith, sacraments, and apostolic succession, practiced with clergy who may be married, women, or openly LGBT, and with laypeople sharing real governance — the very things that place it outside communion with Rome, which is the point of its existence and the reason this taxonomy files it under Independent Catholic. Its communities are scattered across the United States, many small, some meeting in shared or borrowed spaces. This is a deliberately short record for a young, small body with a thin published record.
Theological family
Catholic in sacrament and creed by self-description — Eucharist-centered, trinitarian, holding apostolic succession through independent Catholic lines — combined with convictions about inclusion that Rome does not share; trinitarian bodies differ over its succession claims and its departures from Roman discipline, and this record adjudicates none of it.
Who decides what
Episcopal and synodal by self-description: a presiding bishop, regional communities, and councils in which clergy and laity both hold authority, with local communities retaining substantial self-governance.
What a first-time visitor would find
A recognizably Catholic Mass — liturgy, vestments, Eucharist — with an explicit open-table welcome, in congregations that are typically small and often meet in shared, rented, or house settings.
What it has always cared about
Sacramental life joined to inclusion; lay voice in governance; and a home for Catholics who did not wish to stop being Catholic in practice when they could no longer remain in Roman communion.
Its gift to the wider church
It keeps a pastoral question before the wider church — who may stand at the altar, and who decides — while refusing to abandon the sacramental tradition in which the question is asked.
Commonly confused with
With the Roman Catholic Church, from which its name and liturgy are nearly indistinguishable in a data source — it is not in communion with Rome; and with other independent and Old Catholic jurisdictions, from some of which its clergy derive their orders.
Range of views inside it
Range from congregations very close to Roman liturgical practice to freer adaptations; the communion is small enough that character varies community by community.
A note from the mapmakers: We hold no verified US congregation count — none is published in RCMS 2020, and we record NULL rather than an estimate. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific community, including its size, setting, or clergy. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "ECC communities typically…" and yield to the communion's own materials.
Sources: Ecumenical Catholic Communion — who we are (Ecumenical Catholic Communion) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press)
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