Well, this has left me confused.

If a Byzantine deacon is given faculties to assist as a deacon in the Roman church; ergo, wouldn't that include all that a Roman deacon can do?

I personally know a Byzantine deacon who was granted bi-ritual faculties and recently baptized a family member according to the Roman-rite, since the family is primarily Roman Catholic.

Does that mean this baptism is invalid?

Just another reason to avoid the concept of bi-ritual clergy.

Absolutely not.

Griego:

Biritual doesn't mean changing enrollment. It means being granted permission to apply one's faculties to a wider context as a routine matter.

Now, a Biritual deacon who was incardinated into a Roman diocese, he would most likely then also be granted those specific faculties by the new bishop. Most biritual eastern deacons remain incardinated in their eastern diocese; most biritual Roman deacons remain incardinated in their Roman diocese. It requires three people to agree to change one's incardination: The losing bishop, the gaining bishop, and the cleric in question. It's not common, and it's not supposed to be common, for a deacon to change incardination.

And as to baptisms: Any trinitarian baptism using correct wording and form is valid, and the baptized intends to be joined to Christ by baptism.
Eastern deacons have the faculty to baptize, but almost never use it... because in the east, Baptism is immediately followed by chrismation (confirmation), which requires a priest or bishop.

Perhaps you misunderstood my answer, which was in response to Our Lady's Slave's very specific question about sacramental service outside of that allowed in one's particular Church. The response had nothing to do with conferences or other miscellania, but solely with requests for Greek Catholic deacons to perform sacramental duties and rites that they do not enjoy a blessing for in their own particular Churches (baptisms or marriages in a Latin church). They simply cannot do so without the blessing of their own bishop first, and only at the invitation of the Latin bishop [or delegate].

I do try to honor our tradition which generally maintains that a deacon receive a blessing everytime he serves or obtain a general blessing for a certain type of service from his bishop. I've never had my chancery yet tell me not to call them for guidance or a blessing to do something, and they usually appreciate knowing what the clergy are up to.

I can't answer your specific questions (I do have opinions of the excercise of economia in such cases), but surely your pastor or bishop can.

Actually any Latin priest who is to celebrate Mass publically outside of his own diocese that he has faculties for should make some notification to the diocese he is visiting as a courtesy which I don't think is excessive at all.

Another problem I have found is that once you start accepting, the invitations themselves increase in frequency. I had to greatly eliminate most things except very select pro-life activities and some catechetical requests for the Latins related to Eastern Christianity to keep up with my own apostolate obligations.

I now try to get a service of our tradition added to the schedule when I am asked to do something (even for pro-life activities) rather than just be a Greek Catholic vestment ornament in an otherwise Latin liturgy.

Fr. Deacon Randy,

Agreed. We are making an effort to do that at next years Catechetical conference for precisely this reason.

That said, I think the difficulty is that we need to be ready to help our Latin brothers and sisters come to know us better since this inevitably seems to be one dimension of our apostolate.

Agreed, but that instruction is but a few years old and it may have been that Eastern Deacons were doing this before it was issued.

My own involvement with the Latin Church has only been family/friends funerals/baptisms/weddings(not presiding).

Fr. Deacon Lance

Naming no names, there was an interesting (and unintended) "test case" back in the nineteen-sixties, if memory serves me correctly. A certain Greek-Catholic Eparchy in the USA had a Deacon (celibate) who had completed his education for the priesthood, but the bishop kept postponing the ordination to the priesthood.

The Deacon had a close family member who was getting married, and naturally wanted the candidate to be ordained priest, so that he might do the wedding. The bishop was still hesitant to ordain the man - so the bishop attempted to "dispense" the Deacon and permit him to do the wedding, on the example of the Latins.

When these tidings reached Rome, the Holy See was not in the least amused, ruled that the wedding was invalid, and required the bishop to see to it that the wedding was done again, by a priest this time - and also required the bishop to "fish or cut bait" with the Deacon. The bishop swallowed hard, finally ordained the candidate to the priesthood, and blessed him to do the wedding.

Fr. Serge

Fascinating, Father Serge! As always, you are a tremendous wealth of history, stories and insight!

I do my best - and it's nice to be appreciated. Now bring back the Emperor and petition him to award me the rank of Ecumenical Raconteur!

Fr. Serge

Well - as a RC layman I have served as a ponomary the Orthodox Archmandrite in the monastery during the Liturgy...But I suppose this is a very different thing?!?

"The Sexton or Ponomar
The sexton designates a warden or a gatekeeper. The name sexton (ponomar) is derived from guardian (Gr. paramonarios, Ru. paramonar). Their duty in the ancient Church was mainly to be continually present at the holy places (Bethlehem - birthplace of the Savior, Golgotha and so forth), both for protecting them, and for the convenience of tourists. They also looked after the accessories of the temple: the utensils, the sacred vestments and other church property, they lit and put out the lamps at the divineservices. With the passage of time their duties included reading and singing during the divine services, bringing into the sanctuary altar-breads, wine, water, incense and flint, the preparation and giving the censer and the hot water to the priest-server, the cleaning of the church and the porch, the cleaning of the icons, the walls and the ceiling from dust and cobwebs, and finally, the calling of the believers to the divine services by ringing the bells from the middle of the bell-tower."

Yep. That all I did when serving as a voluntary ponomary in the Holy Monastery of New Valaam (Uusi Valamo) in the 80´...Except singing and reading:_)