In this day and age we are accustomed to customizing about everything. You can customize your car, your license plates, your desktop, your homepage. You can customize your phone, your clothes, and even your diet plan. With all the things you can customize these days, why not your church?

Some of the more advanced thinkers in our society have already begun down this path of customization. Meet Father Bryan Marabanian, priest of the United States Old Catholic Church. What is the Old Catholic Church you ask? Well if you thought that because the name contains the word “Old” that it is likely a group of rad-trads building their own bunker, think again. The United States Old Catholic Church is self described as “a socially progressive catholic faith community and is not associated with the Roman Catholic Church. The USOCC welcomes all people to the reception of all sacraments including eucharist, marriage and holy orders, regardless of their marital status, sexual orientation or identity.”

OK! Back to Fr. Marabanian. Father is being promoted to Bishop of the USOCC. Mazel Tov! Not too shabby for a young man of thirty. The recent press release of the USOCC tells us all about Father.

Father Bryan Marabanian, 30, a native of Chicago, Illinois, was reared
in the Armenian Apostolic tradition. He attended St. Joseph Seminary, Loyola University Chicago and Northwestern Theological Seminary. Father currently serves on the Council of Bishops in the USOCC and as Pastor of the Good Shepherd Community in Richmond, Virginia. He lives in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond with his partner, John Gorman.

Okay again, ’nuff said. Anyway with all this faith customization going on today, I have had a brilliant Kramden-esque idea. I am going to start an online service called MyCustomizedCatholic.com.

On this service, you can customize you your faith profile until your heart is content. There will be a checklist of all the teachings of the really Old Catholic Church (the 2000 yr. old version). Simply by checking a box you can drop any of the more disagreeable teachings. No Sex outside marriage…uncheck.
No artificial contraception…uncheck. Reiki…check.
Whatever you want or don’t want is just a click away!

After you have successfully completed your personal faith profile, MyCustomizedCatholic.com will find other like minded progressive peeps so that you can create your own faith community. For a small additional fee you can even name your faith community. MyCustomizedCatholic.com will maintain a registry of completely made up Church names for you to select from or you can create one of your very own.

MyCustomizedCatholic.com will also have an online directory of dissident priests that you can hire to bring the Sacra-ligious-ments™ to your faith community.

Don’t be stuck with someone else’s version of the Catholic Church anymore! At MyCustomizedCatholic.com build your own Church!