L’Église Catholique Eucharistique - The Eucharistic Catholic Church (ECE-ECC) has its roots with Bishop John Kazantks of the Orthodox Church in Greece c.1944 when he protested the defrocking of several priests in other dioceses on the charge of being “sodomites.” In the course of this affair he announced to a regional Synod of Bishops that he, like the several priests, was a person of “a same gender affectional and sexual orientation.”
In early 1946 he settled in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. About that time, at Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Atlanta, a confrontation was going on where the priests denied Communion to a half dozen or so men and women who were denied absolution at Confession because they would not agree with the priest that their homosexual orientation was an abomination to God. For four or five consecutive Sundays they would go forward to receive Communion but were by-passed by the priest. Nevertheless, they continued standing at the altar rail until the end of Mass. The priests considered this an act of disorder.
A modest number of non-gay parishioners began standing in support of their gay fellow parishioners. The actions and activities of these protesters eventually were reported in the local paper. Bishop John and Mr. George Hyde, a fellow teacher, discussed the matter and found that they were thinking alike about the situation. They arranged to meet with some of the protesters, offering them support. Subsequently they organised a small group, which met weekly to discuss the plight of gays in being true to their same-gender orientation while trying to be true to their faith. It is out of these actions that the Eucharistic Catholic Church developed. The ECE-ECC was established in Canada in 1977.
Open file below for a fuller historical overview.
| ECE-ECC Historical Overview |