Welcome to the Community of Saint Gideon

The Community of Saint Gideon is forming with the intent to organize a network of people to minister to the spiritual needs of those who have been alienated from the Catholic Church due to the narrow expectations of how humanity "aught" to be according to the less-inclusive Catholic denominations (including the Roman Catholic Church and it's affiliated churches) -- and due to the fact that the more-inclusive Independent Catholic jurisdictions that thrive in more urbanized, progressive areas are reluctant to include models of community-building that are viable for inclusive communities in less-than-hospitable areas.

We believe in the importance of Apostolic Succession -- however, unlike the mainline Catholic denominations and many (though not all) of the Independent Catholic denominations, we do not consider it to be so essential that one must allow the Sacraments to be wrongly held hostage by it. In keeping with this, we do not allow ourselves to be stopped by the fact that we were forced to separate from communities that have Apostolic Succession in order to embark on our mission - nor will we accept any Faustian deal for the sake of restoring Apostolic Succession - yet we pray for the day that Apostolic Succession is restored to our community on healthy and affirming terms. We are part of a movement on the very fringes of even Independent Catholicism that we refer to as "Refugant Catholicism".