I grew up with Star Trek before I had language for ecclesiology.
Before I knew the word sacrament, I knew that bridges were places where diverse beings sat in communion. Before I understood the theology of incarnation, I knew that the best captains were the ones who got their hands dirty—who beamed down to the planet, who took the risk, who refused to command from a safe distance.
The Bridge as Altar
There is something deeply sacramental about the bridge of a starship.
It is a place of gathering. Of diverse beings—human and non-human, different species and different histories—united around a common mission. It is a place where decisions of life and death are made, where the fate of worlds hangs in the balance, where the crew must trust each other across every difference.
In the best Star Trek episodes, the bridge becomes a kind of sacred space. Not because anyone is praying (though sometimes they are), but because something real is happening there. Something that matters. Something that cannot be reduced to procedure or protocol.
This is what I mean by sacramental.
What Independent Sacramentalism Is
Independent Sacramentalism is a movement within the broader Catholic tradition—one that takes seriously the sacramental life (baptism, Eucharist, ordination, anointing) while refusing to be bound by the institutional structures that have often been used to exclude, control, and harm.
It is Catholicism without the empire.
It is the sacraments offered to everyone—regardless of gender, sexuality, marital status, or doctrinal conformity.
It is the ancient forms of worship held in living rooms, community centers, and yes—sometimes in spaces that look nothing like a church.
The Mission of the Church
The mission of the original Starfleet was not to conquer. It was to explore. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To go where no one had gone before.
I think this is a better image of the Church's mission than the ones we have often been given.
Not to defend territory. Not to maintain orthodoxy through coercion. Not to protect the institution at the expense of the people.
But to go. To seek. To encounter the other with curiosity rather than fear. To bring the healing and the light to places that have not yet received it.
An Invitation
If you have felt excluded from the sacramental life of the Church—if you have been told that the table is not for you, that the altar is off-limits, that your body or your love or your history disqualifies you—
I want to tell you something:
The sacraments belong to the whole people of God.
They are not the property of any institution. They are not rewards for doctrinal conformity. They are the means by which the grace of God is made tangible, embodied, real.
And there are communities—small, imperfect, still finding their way—who are trying to offer them without gatekeeping.
You are welcome at this table.
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Church. Its continuing mission: to seek out the lost, the excluded, and the spiritually homeless. To boldly go where the institution has refused to go.