www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Is your parish geared towards Byzantine Spirituality or Ethnicity

Depends on where you go. Certainly among the Orthodox there is a tendency to divide by sex, with the women on the left and the men on the right--as I found out to my chagrin at the Greek Orthodox cathedral in Bonn.

Women on the left and men on the right is or was the practice everyplace in Europe, even today in the Alpine regions in the West. Not very long ago, maybe still, boys and girls were on the right and left in Catholic churches at children's masses.

As for veils, we now see many younger women in Orthodox churches wearing long shapeless dresses and veils sort of in the Muslim style while in the old days and in Europe,at least in Ukraine, women wore colorful babushkas and knee length folk dresses. Where is this "new" style in Russian churches coming from?

The romanticization of 19th century rural Russian life - a dangerous trend in my opinion as the experience of the state church in 19th century Russia is hardly a paradigm of anything. You see a lot of this among the convert class in some American Orthodox jurisdictions and it causes a fair amount of discord as the piety of the old timers and their progeny is put into question by the behaviors of such types. I should step back and take a breath here as my opinions are probably too harsh to post any further.

Well, I can tell you that St. Josaphat Cathedral here seems to be campaigning for more parishioners, but now it seems like they want just about anybody, whether one is of Ukrainian descent or immigrated from Ukraine or not. In fact, I'm sure they're looking for more non-Ukrainians from other Catholic Churches than anything. Maybe their English DLs aren't getting enough attendance? Considering how similar the UGCC is to the RBCC in terms of having the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and considering that the sacraments are received in the same fashion, I'm pretty sure that we may soon see Ruthenians come into the UGCC for all we know, and perhaps even Latin Rite Catholics might wind up even taking the bait. Who knows?

It was explained to me once as the men being on Joseph's side of the church, and the women on Mary's, and tied to their roles as model spouses.

In St. Joseph's in DuBois, PA, a Lithuanian RC parish, there were hat clips in the pews on the right side of the church, but not on the left (except for two pews that apparently got put back in on the other side for some reason)>

hawk

The real answer goes back to Hagia Sophia when John Chrysostom was Archbishop of Constantinople. Scandalized by the behavior of the congregation during the exchange of the Kiss of Peace (then done by the laity as well as the clergy, and with more than the perfunctory handshake used in the Latin Church today), he had a barrier erected down the center aisle to keep the sexes separated. The idea caught on. Says something about the nature of liturgy in the Patristic era. The laity had a different idea of what full and active participation really meant.