The Rev. Thomas Altepeter is an Ecumenical Catholic priest and pastor of St. Clare Ecumenical Catholic Community in Spokane.
He is also a licensed psychologist and has previously served as pastor of an ECC community in Wisconsin, been employed as a university professor, served as a director of a large behavioral health department, and worked in private practice as a psychologist. He has graduate degrees in spirituality and psychology.
Altepeter is interested in spirituality, the integration of spirituality with emotional well being, and a contemporary approach to living within the Catholic Christian tradition. He is married and has four children.
The Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC) is a different way to be Catholic, he said. The ECC is not under the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church, yet shares a common theological and liturgical history. The ECC ordains married men and women, is welcoming of gays and lesbians, and supports the primacy of individual conscience. The ECC has communities in every region of the US, and through Europe. The ECC is the largest non-Roman Catholic denomination in the United States.
