{"id":2991,"date":"2011-08-04T20:09:39","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T02:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2991"},"modified":"2011-12-31T15:15:34","modified_gmt":"2011-12-31T22:15:34","slug":"home-county-southern-colorado-catholic-splinter-group-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2991","title":{"rendered":"Home Country: A Southern Colorado Catholic Splinter Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

I visited Florence, Colorado<\/a>, yesterday and noticed that the congregation of St. Jude the Apostle of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ<\/a>\u00a0 (not to be confused with the Ecumenical Catholic Church<\/a>) had apparently evaporated.<\/p>\n

\"Gateway<\/a>At least their sign was missing from the old brick church on Second Street by which I like to park on hot summer days because of the big trees there.<\/p>\n

(Street shade is precious. Although Florence is not a Mormon settlement, it has little street-side irrigation channels like Weber City or Vernal, Utah, that seem to cool the air.)<\/p>\n

The ECCC website is poorly designed and graphics-heavy, but if you scroll down you you can find the building and shots of the interior. At least one wedding was celebrated while the congregation occupied that space. Maybe it was like the last wedding at Hvalsey church in Greenland<\/a>, in or about 1408<\/p>\n

Like most Catholic splinter churches, the ECCC seems to have a high ratio of bishops and priests to parishioners.<\/p>\n

It is one of the “independent Catholic churches,<\/a>” shepherded or founded by “wandering bishops<\/a>,” a term I first encountered when writing for Gnosis<\/em>\u00a0 magazine<\/a> back in the 1990s. “Congregations tend to be minuscule and sometimes even non-existent” (Wikipedia<\/a>).<\/p>\n

If you have read this far, you are probably wondering why you are reading about St. Jude’s the Ephemeral on a Pagan blog.<\/p>\n

Reading about ambitious Pagan centers that are\/are not foundering <\/a>makes me think of the way in which little religious groups that are big on robes and ritual but short on cash sometimes over-extend themselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I visited Florence, Colorado, yesterday and noticed that the congregation of St. Jude the Apostle of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ\u00a0 (not to be confused with the Ecumenical Catholic Church) had apparently evaporated. At least their sign was missing from the old brick church on Second Street by which I like to park on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-Mf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4741,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4741","url_meta":{"origin":2991,"position":0},"title":"When Esotericists Were Really Underground","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"A 250-year-old ciphered manuscript is deciphered and turns out to have been created by a Masonic-type fraternity. Hundreds of thousands of Europeans belonged to secret societies in the 18th century, \u00d6nnerfors explained to Megyesi; in Sweden alone, there were more than a hundred orders. Though they were clandestine, they were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"esotericism\"","block_context":{"text":"esotericism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=esotericism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12396,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12396","url_meta":{"origin":2991,"position":1},"title":"Will the Temple Return to Florence? A Small Town Watches","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In March 2020, when the Masonic temple building up in Florence, Colorado, went on sale, I wrote a post titled \"Start Your Own Magical Lodge in Southern Colorado.\" Maybe I was a little under the spell of the AMC television series Lodge 49. I had the usual fantasies about what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5392.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5392.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/IMG_5392.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":995,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=995","url_meta":{"origin":2991,"position":2},"title":"Gallimaufry with Beheaded Statues","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 When monotheists turn violent (which is often): Mormon missionaries vandalize Catholic shrine in southern Colorado. Mormon higher-ups ask forgiveness of Blessed Mother. That was a joke. Actually, they apologized to the San Luis, Colo., town board: one quasi-theocracy to another. They also want to build a huge church in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3682,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3682","url_meta":{"origin":2991,"position":3},"title":"What Do Pagans Get from Interfaith Activities?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"What does \"ecumenism\" mean when you don't \"all worship the same god\"? Elizabeth Scalia, a\/k\/a The Anchoress, a Roman Catholic blogger at Patheos, comments simultaneously on posts by another Patheos Catholic blogger and by Star Foster, who manages the site's Pagan portal. Both of the latter, in Star's words, hold\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":253,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=253","url_meta":{"origin":2991,"position":4},"title":"\"The Witches Next Door\" Crisis,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Witches Next Door\" Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine, offers a new article on evangelizing Pagans, which such quotes as these: \"Why should Catholics care about a religious system so alien to ours? The simple answer is: It\u2019s there, it\u2019s growing, and some ex-Catholics find it attractive. (A more flippant\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10886,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10886","url_meta":{"origin":2991,"position":5},"title":"Catholic Church Struggles with De Facto Polytheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"This is an old story, but it erupts in new forms. Polytheistic-style devotion keeps irrupting in the Roman Catholic Church, much to the concern of the hierarchs. From The Catholic Herald (UK): \"The Church\u2019s life-and-death struggle with Santa Muerte: The Church in the Americas is sounding the alarm over a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Catholicism\"","block_context":{"text":"Catholicism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=catholicism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/santa-Muerte.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2991"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3665,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2991\/revisions\/3665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}