Here is a quote from the "bishop" of this "church".
October 13, 2003
"Schismatic" Bishop to discuss ‘Roots of Catholicism'
Freedom is important to Bishop Peter Hickman. So is being Catholic.
On Saturday, he will talk about how he found both. Hickman is the bishop of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion, which allows priests to marry and women to enter the clergy.
The free day-long event, "Renewing the Roots of Catholicism" is at The Pathfinder Community of the Risen Christ church in Bermuda Dunes. Hickman invites people of all faiths, as well as disillusioned Catholics.
Originally a Baptist minister, Hickman converted to Catholicism because he was attracted to the liturgy and spirituality.
However, he said, he did not find comfort in the authoritative manner and claim of infallibility of the Roman Church.
"Really, it’s contrary to the original meaning of what is Catholic," Hickman said, which means universal.
He said changes, such as accepting gay and lesbian couples, are inevitable for Catholicism to be a viable religion of the future.
Upon arrest (not conviction) for even slight suspicion of heresy, the accused's assets were inventoried and impounded by the church30. If the accused was proven innocent (which very, very rarely happened), the goods were returned. All goods, including the family home, were seized. A man's family (wife, children, dependent siblings or parents) were turned out to fend for themselves31. Yet, someone who helped even people related to a person accused of slight suspicion of heresy risked being charged with heresy himself. All of the accused's possessions were forfeit, even a king's entire kingdom the moment the heresy took place32, even if it went undetected for years. The accused was assumed to be guilty from the moment at which the alleged heresy took place. If the accused sold any goods between the time of his alleged heresy and the detection of the alleged crime, the church went to the current owner of the property to recover the goods for the church, no matter how many hands the property had passed through or how many years had elapsed since the alleged heresy. Commerce stagnated since no contract could be depended on to be valid and binding33. Even the possessions of dead men who had died in communion with the church and who were posthumously deemed to be heretics were confiscated from his heirs or from his heirs' heirs or from whomever the property currently belonged. So even property that had been in a family for many generations was not held securely because even heirs could be deprived of their inheritance.
In Italy and elsewhere, the property was split into 3 equal portions with one portion going to the church, one to the state, and one to the Inquisition34- quite a motivation for the state to be complicit with the church in such a gross miscarriage of justice. In other places, one third went to the church, one third to the state, and one third to the accuser- quite a motivation for an individual to report heretics on the flimsiest of evidence.
Slight suspicion of heresy eventually lead to a system of fines as a penance by doing good works.35 Eventually almost all penalties could be commuted for the right price, and, even later, this process would lead to the selling of indulgences.
Slight suspicion of heresy entailed going on a pilgrimage in which the penitent was required to bring back a testimonial letter from the shrine indicating that the penitent actually performed the pilgrimage.36 Often these pilgrimages lasted for years which entailed a separation from home and family for years. In the absence of the penitent, the family carried on as best as it could.
Once accused of suspicion of heresy, a man lost his office and was disqualified from all official positions in future.37 Required to a life-long "wearing of the crosses" as a symbol of his perpetual infamy, the penitent was subjected to life long ridicule and, perhaps, even worse, to the knowledge that if any person accused him of heresy, he faced either certain lifelong imprisonment on bread and water or the stake.
Suspicion of heresy annulled all rights.38 Like a heretic, someone accused of suspicion of heresy was an outlaw, a man outside of the law, where one's life and possessions were forfeit to the first comer strong enough to take them from him. He was a pariah, finding employment enough to earn his daily bread honestly was a perpetual struggle.
Scourging, as Lea writes, was no trivial matter.
"Stripped as much as decency and the inclemency of the weather would permit, the penitent presented himself every Sunday, between the Epistle and the Gospel, with a rod in his hand, to the priest engaged in celebrating mass, who soundly scourged him in the presence of the congregation, as a fitting interlude in the mysteries of divine service. On the first Sunday in every month, after mass, he was to visit, similarly equipped, every house in which he had seen heretics, and receive the same infliction; and on the occasion of every solemn procession he was to accompany it in the same guise, to be beaten at every station and at the end. Even when the town happened to be placed under interdict, or himself to be excommunicated, there was to be no cessation of the penance, and apparently it lasted as long as the wretched life of the penitent, or at least until it pleased the inquisitor to remember him and liberate him.39"
Finally, it should be noted that as part of the trial procedure itself, the accused were routinely tortured, often resulting in lifelong physical suffering, mental anguish, and crippling disabilities for the survivors40.
Punishment for vehement suspicion of heresy with abjuration was life imprisonment on bread and water which served as a penance for the accused, a way for the authorities to ensure that the penitent was keeping to the straight and narrow, and as a method of keeping the potential source of infection away from the rest of the flock.
The penalties for actual heresy included all the penalties for suspicion of heresy. Further, all of the heretics children, to the second generation, were declared ineligible for any positions of emolument or dignity, unless they should win mercy by betraying their father or some other heretic41. His house was to be destroyed and never to be rebuilt.42
If the heretic abjured his heresy before sentence was passed, he spent the remainder of his life doing penance in prison on rations of bread and water. If he relapsed into heresy, he was burned at the stake
If the heretic abjured his heresy between the passing of sentence and his execution, as a show of mercy the heretic would be strangled before burning.
If the heretic did not abjure his sin, the Inquisition wanted a slow and painful death at the stake in the hope that earthly torments would cause the heretic to abjure his heresies so that his soul could be snatched from the devil at the last moment43
If the heretic did not abjure his heresy, he was burned at the stake. Lea gives us a first hand account of the burning of Jan Hus.
"As for minor details, we happen to have them preserved in an account by an eye-witness of the execution of John Huss at Constance, in 1415. He was made to stand upon a couple of fagots and tightly bound to a thick post with ropes, around the ankles, below the knee, above the knee, at the groin, the waist, and under the arms. A chain was also secured around his neck. Then it was observed that he faced east, which was not fitting for a heretic, and he was shifted to the west; fagots mixed with straw were piled around him to the chin. Then the Count Palatine Louis, who superintended the execution, approached with the Marshal of Constance, and asked him for the last time to recant. On his refusal they withdrew and clapped their hands, which was the signal for the executioners to light the pile. After it had burned away there followed the revolting process requisite to utterly destroy the half-burned body -- separating it in pieces, breaking up the bones and throwing the fragments and the viscera on a fresh fire of logs.44"
The Church had the right at any time to increase or decrease the penalty (for example, one convicted of vehement suspicion of heresy could be freed from prison, or sent to the stake)45
Relapsed heretics were not given a third chance, they went to the stake. Those guilty of the vehement suspicion of heresy who were later found to express heretical ideas were treated as relapsed heretics and went to the stake.
Ned was probably against child-touching too. No wonder they're out to crucify him!
Personally, I'm relieved this has nothing to do with Mel Gibson or the SSPX. Actually, come to think of it, that would be an interesting tact: The SSPX should demand a heresy trial!
There must be more to this than papal infallibility and women clergy. He believed in the Trinity or Transubstantiation or something?