Dear friends,

Some of you may remember Anne, the self-titled "Black Byzantine Catholic" who posted on here last year. She had joined one of our parishes only a year ago, and now has left - to become Eastern Orthodox.

You may remember Gordo, who attempted to start a discussion on "The Face of God." He's now taking steps to (possibly) become a Roman Deacon. He is Byzantine no more.

Do you remember Theodosy? He was discerning a vocation as a Byzantine Catholic monk. He's now an Orthodox Jew.

Recently, my childhood best friend, who introduced me to Byzantine Catholicism, has departed us. When I was a little boy, he would take me to the Byzantine parish with him. His family taught me about Byzantine Catholicism. He was even a Byzantine seminarian for a year. Guess what, he has left the Byzantine Church that he grew up in and has joined a Roman parish! This has left me heartbroken. All of his sisters are becoming Roman too. Only his parents are left in the Byzantine Church.

My best friend who left told me this: the days are numbered. He doesn't want to be part of a Church in the throws of death, as the only members left are 70 and above.

I think that Byzantine Catholicism will ONLY have a future in this country if it does a few things: (and these won't be popular)

1. EVANGELIZE! We desperately need new blood. All of the old folks have raised their kids to become Roman. Whether they did this consciously or not, I don't know. But the fact is that our parishes are packed with senior citizens who raised their offspring to join the Roman parish down the street. Of course, evangelizing entails shedding our ethnic trappings.

2. DITCH THE DARN "RUTHENIAN" NAME
This is for the best, because most Ruthenian people apparently have no real love for their Church, as they leave so easily. Why should our Church be named after an ethnic group that by and large has ABANDONED their Church????!!!! The ethnic folk have (mostly) left their Church to die, and it's going to take lots of new non-ethnic members for it to survive. I think that we should adopt the name "Byzantine Catholic Church in America."

3. STOP WORSHIPPING THE ORTHODOX!
While I love my Orthodox brethren, we should stop placing them on such a high pedestal. Why? Because so many people who join us become enamoured with Orthodoxy, at our bidding, and end up leaving us to become Orthodox. We MUST start emphasizing that there is something special and worthwhile about being in communion with Rome. Being in communion with Rome isn't a terrible handicap, as we are so quick to make it out to be, but is actually an ADVANTAGE. We shouldn't do this in a triumphalistic way of course, but with charity. We must be proud of our status as Eastern Christians IN COMMUNION WITH ROME, or else there is no reason to stick with us. Might as well just join the Orthodox Church.

Now, I anticipate some of you being ticked off over this message. But WAKE UP and see reality. I love many of the old Ruthenian people in my parish. God Bless them. But why did all of their children become Roman?
Heck, most of their children attend the Roman Church a couple of blocks away! I would be supportive of retaining the Ruthenian ethnic identity if it had born fruit. But it didn't. It seems to me that the Ruthenian ethnic group was all too quick to abandon their Church.

I apologize in advance for the frustration in the message. But I AM frustrated. I WANT TO BE EASTERN, BUT IN COMMUNION WITH ROME. I fear that there will be no way to do this in the near future, as the Eastern Catholic Churches in the USA vanish before my eyes.

Please pray that God saves and restores our Byzantine Catholic Church. That it will have a future.

Anthony

>>>While I love my Orthodox brethren, we should stop placing them on such a high pedestal. Why? Because
so many people who join us become enamoured with Orthodoxy, at our bidding, and end up leaving us to
become Orthodox.<<<

Is that such a bad thing? We are all headed back to our Mother Churches eventually. Some will get there a little sooner, that's all.

>>>Being in communion with Rome isn't a terrible handicap, as we are so quick to make it out to be, but is actually an
ADVANTAGE.<<<

Other than having the Bishop of Rome as the focus of unity, what, precisely, are the advantages that accrue from our communion with Rome, Anthony?

>>>We must be proud of our status
as Eastern Christians IN COMMUNION WITH ROME, or else there is no reason to stick with us.<<<

But will we ever be allowed to be Orthodox Christians in communion with Rome? Or will we always be, in the immemorable phrase of Kyr Elias, "spiritual helots" in the Catholic Church?

>>>Might as well just join
the Orthodox Church.<<<

But then, how could we fulfill our vocation to enlighten the West concerning the spiritual treasures of the East, and manifest to the East the possibility of being "Orthodox in communion with Rome", without losing our Byzantine patrimony?

>>> I love many of the
old Ruthenian people in my parish. God Bless them. But why did all of their children become Roman?<<<

Because "Catholic is Catholic"? Because those self-same Ruthenians worked so hard to erase differences between themselves and the Roman Church, and to erect barriers between themselves and the Orthodox? Because they got lazy, and thought that the Byzantine patrimony was something passed along in the blood, like a hankering for pirohi? Because, in a society dominated by convenience, it is just so much easier and more convenient to be Roman? Bishop Kallistos made a very telling remark, to the effect that the day was coming when no one would be an Orthodox Christian who did not consciously choose to be one. That is, as the old ethnic lines break down, people will not gravitate to the Orthodox Church because they are Greek, or Russian, or Arab, or Ukrainian or Rusyn; Orthodoxy is just too countercultural--it requires a real commitment in a way that Western Christianity does not. And so, only those who willingly make that commitment will be Orthodox. And since the Byzantine Catholics are, or ought to be Orthodox Christians (are we not Pravoslavie Khristianji?), the same applies to us.

>>>I apologize in advance for the frustration in the message. But I AM frustrated. I WANT TO BE EASTERN, BUT IN
COMMUNION WITH ROME. I fear that there will be no way to do this in the near future, as the Eastern Catholic
Churches in the USA vanish before my eyes.<<<

But are they vanishing, Anthony? Or are they just changing? When the Rusyn came here, they settled in Ohio and Pennsylvania, mainly, and went to work in the mills and the mines. Since the 1970s, the mills and mines have closed, and the people, those who had ambition and education, began moving to other places. Both Pennsylvania and Ohio, and to a lesser extent, New Jersey, have lost population in the last two decades (Pennsylvania even offers a bounty to Pennsylvanians who move back). It stands to reason that the children and grandchildren of the immigrants, having been blessed with college educations, would want to go to places where they could use their talents and earn a decent living. And it is also axiomatic that those who remain are usually those who are too old to start over.

That is precisely what I see happening in the Byzantine Catholic Church today: the parishes of the original settlement are, in many cases, dying off, because all the young people have moved elsewhere. The parishes are aging, because only those who wouldn't move remain. They are, not coincidentally, those most wedded to the idea of an ethnically exclusive Church, and so they do not evangelize, with the result that few people from outside the ethnic core join them. And the parishes age, and wither, and some die.

But outside the ethnic settlement, a younger generation of Byzantines has found work and started families, and these want to live their Byzantine faith. They start parishes (often with great difficulty, because, for some reason, our hierarch look upon missions as a bother, a drain on eparchial resources), and because they know that there aren't enough Ruthenians in the region to make a viable parish, they automatically reach out to other groups. Their parishes aren't overtly ethnic; you find a real melting pot there. The people who convert to the Byzantine Church have both enthusiasm (damned converts, so much energy!) and a lack of ethnic baggage (we'll talk to anyone at any time). Those parishes are dynamic, and they are growing. We can add to that the peculiarity of Florida and the Southwest, where older Byzantines who retired established parishes, and perforce had to reach out to the people who lived in the area, regardless of background. Hence, in the Eparchy of Van Nuys, it isn't that unusual to hear the Divine Liturgy celebrated in Spanish.

The creosote bush provides a useful paradigm: it dies out from the center, but grows on the edges, so that it takes on the form of a hollow ring. It continues to grow and push outward, but never seems to die; indeed, the oldest living thing on the planet appears to be a particular creosote bush out in Arizona.

If the Byzantine Catholic Church can emulate the creosote bush, I will be content. The parishes of the first foundation may die out in the "old country", but their daughter parishes will carry on their work.

Finally, Anthony, never forget that our vocation as Byzantine Catholics is to render our own independent existence redundant. If we do our jobs, that day may come sooner rather than later. And then, we can be truly Orthodox and truly Catholic at the same time.

Dear Anthony,

I am as disturbed by born Byzantine Catholics going Roman as you are (Stuart’s right about why this happens) and understand your and cradle Byzantine Catholics’ hurt and disgruntlement when people pass through your churches and then ’dox. I can understand why, after having been stepped on a few too many times by such converts breezing through, some might get their back up, resent the Orthodox and so heighten differences in reaction. But Stuart is right that this is wrong. Ultimately the Melkites and Russian Catholics are right and the way to go is to follow the Orthodox. In fact, if most Byzantine Catholics, including all the Ruthenian and Ukrainian bishops, took this ‘Orthodoxy in communion with Rome’ stuff seriously and stopped trying to be a tertium quid (a small point: no more funny riassas with red stripes or episcopal rings; let’s see some beards and klobuki!), then fewer enthusiastic converts to the tradition would get fed up and move on.

Since hardly anybody outside the group knows what ‘Ruthenian’ means, I see your point about dropping the word (sorry, Rusyns... actually ‘Rusyn’ would be a better moniker for that Church), but then again ‘Byzantine’ is artificial too, plus the Melkites also use it, which would get confusing. And why shouldn’t Rusyns be as proud of their ethnicity as the Russian Catholics (most of whom aren’t Russian) are of their Church’s? Welcome everybody, but keep the moniker.

The trouble with Byzantines not evangelizing may come from being cowed by the Romans, who see evangelizing in America as their turf. Time for some moxie, Rusyny!

<a href="http://oldworldrus.com">Old World Rus’</a>

[This message has been edited by Rusnak (edited 10-18-2000).]

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Anthony,

I agree! I see some of the same problems here in California. The Melkites and the Ukrainians seem to have the ethnic problem, not the Ruthenians. I have found, among the Melkites, a tendency to "worship the Orthodox."

My Russian parish only seems to have a problem with numbers. Being Russian we are both very Catholic but also very Orthodox. Whenever we have Orthodox visitors we have the usual discussions about the compatibility of Orthodoxy with papal infallibility, enumeration of Ecumenical Councils, Purgatory, Immaculate Conception, etc. We usually try to understand our position. We are also big on promoting the causes of Russian Catholic saints, martyrs and confessors. We have made only a few converts from Orthodoxy. It does happen, Anthony.

I guess what I am saying is that we have a very strong sense of identity and mission. Perhaps that is really the question. We believe that the Holy Union was God's way of Trying to end the East/West split. We are a community of Catholics who profess and live according to the Russian Tradition. We benefit from the prayers and sacrifices of all of those Russian Catholic martyrs and confessors.

Does Carpatho-Rusyn Byzantine Catholicism have anything to offer 21st century Americans ? What are these treasures ? How can American Roman Catholics and other Americans be made aware of these treasures ?

Doulos,

Being Russian we are both very Catholic but also very Orthodox.

Glory to God!

Whenever we have Orthodox visitors we have the usual discussions about the compatibility of Orthodoxy with papal infallibility, enumeration of Ecumenical Councils, Purgatory, Immaculate Conception, etc. We usually try to understand our position.

That’s great — honest-to-goodness dialogue face to face.

We are also big on promoting the causes of Russian Catholic saints, martyrs and confessors.

To whom, the Catholic authorities (which is good) or to the Orthodox visitors (which may be misconstrued as Orthodox-bashing)?

We have made only a few converts from Orthodoxy. It does happen, Anthony.

Although once upon a time, in the late 1800s, the Russian Catholic churches were set up in order to do this, this isn’t what you should be doing today. One doesn’t ‘make converts’ from a Church you’re supposed to be restoring communion with. You are supposed to be a kind of ‘interface’ with the Orthodox, not to grab people away from them but rather to prove that their Church could be in communion with Rome (ending the Schism) while keeping its theological and ritual tradition entire and intact. Prove it can be done, if possible.

Does Carpatho-Rusyn Byzantine Catholicism have anything to offer 21st century Americans? What are these treasures? How can American Roman Catholics and other Americans be made aware of these treasures?

Besides the obvious imperative of ministering to its Rusyn congregations, young and old (the po-našemu people of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida), I think Ruthenian churches can appeal especially to traditional or Eastern-minded outsiders looking to join because they are part of the great Russian Orthodox tradition, in a way (yes, I know Rusyn usage differs from Russian usage, but that doesn’t matter much to slavophile newbies), but not nearly as exclusively ethnic as perhaps Ukrainian Catholic or Russian Orthodox (ROCOR or Moscow Patriarchal) churches may seem to be, looking in from the outside. This puts the Ruthenians in a fine position to promote Eastern Christianity to ‘whitebread’ and black America, if they have a mind to.

<a href="http://oldworldrus.com">Old World Rus’</a>

[This message has been edited by Rusnak (edited 10-18-2000).]

Glory to Jesus Christ !

Rusnak,

Thank you for your close reading of my post.
As you noted in your post the Russian Catholic Church was to convert Russian Orthodox to Holy Union. This is no longer one of our goals. My point was to inform Anthony that sometimes Orthodox visitors do feel moved to join the Byzantine Catholic Church.

You are correct. We do not ply Orthodox visitors with vodka and promise them prominent positions in the choir or free vestments from Holoviak's in order to get them to join our parish.

StuartK and Rusnak,

You have a good sense of the future of the Ruthenian Church in America. I think that it can become the main Catholic vehicle for promoting Russian Orthodox Tradition to American Roman Catholics and other Americans. As StuartK has noted, one can already see some of this in the American Southwest and in California.

Do the leaders of the Pittsburgh Metropolia really understand this? Will the church use good judgement in promoting prostopinije without forcing perohis?

By the way I do enjoy Carpatho-Rusyn/Russian cuisine. At my parish we have our Pascha Feast in the parish hall. It usually lasts about 3hrs. This is in addition to Matins and Divine Liturgy.

Anthony, perhaps you could arrange to have a priest celebate Divine Liturgy or at the university. If you could do this on a regular basis, yearly I mean, you might be able to get some converts and educate your student body about Eastern Christianity.

To All,

Christ is in our Midst!

Perhaps the best counsel I can offer is the same counsel that Bishop Kallistos (Ware) offered in Great Britain (and in his excellent basic text on Orthodoxy--The Orthodox Church). That counsel is that there is coming a day in which only those who choose to be Orthodox will be Orthodox---It will not be an ethnic issue.

I have seen this happen in the various jurisdictions of the eastern Orthodox Church.
Even in what some see as the hinterlands of ethnic orthodoxy ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate, English is becoming more frequently used---new missions addressing the non-Russian in America may be found throughout the country ,especially in the south and midwest Sun belt---just where those kids and grandkids of Russian emigrants have gone to settle.

With the demands of Eastern Christian tradition and mystiology being so contrary to western thought, is it little wonder that His Grace, Kallistos noted that in the near future the only Orthodox will be those who choose to be so (be they eastern Orthodox or orthodox in communion with Rome).

Much love and always with prayer,
your brother in Christ,

Thomas

[This message has been edited by Thomas (edited 10-18-2000).]

Excuse this ethnic “Ruthenian” from butting in. As a preface, I realize the validity of many of these ideas, and the need for re-evaluation of our priorities and our MO.

Anthony wrote:
>>Now, I anticipate some of you being ticked off over this message. But WAKE UP and see reality. I love many of the old Ruthenian people in my parish. God Bless them. But why did all of their children become Roman?

Anthony, I’m not ticked off, because it is nothing more or less than I would expect from you. Pardon me, however, if I take your rhetoric as presumptuous and, well, rude.

Why did their children become Roman? Why don’t you ask them? Why don’t you ask their children? I would be surprised if any of the answers are “the Byzantine church is just for my Ruthenian grandparents; I’m an American.”

Here's one for you to tackle: why don't we have any Byzantine Catholic campus ministry programs? There used to be a very active one at Penn State, and before that, at the Pittsburgh colleges, but what are we doing now? A Liturgy on campus every week is a good start, but it helps when the priest actually *wants* to be there and it's not held in a tiny bare chapel with all of 4 or 5 students.

>>1. EVANGELIZE! We desperately need new blood. All of the old folks have raised their kids to become Roman. Whether they did this consciously or not, I don't know. But the fact is that our parishes are packed with senior citizens who raised their offspring to join the Roman parish down the street. Of course, evangelizing entails shedding our ethnic trappings.

The only “ethnic trappings” I’m aware of that would be recognizable to an outsider would be: an occasional festival or pyrohy sale; mail-ordering some instant pysanky for an Easter basket; and perhaps an occasional reference in a sermon to “the old country”, “babas”, or even a clothing collection for our impoverished “spiritual ancestors.”

Notice I didn’t say anything about language. I hardly think most Roman Catholics get an ethnic nostalgia trip from singing Pater Noster, Agnus Dei, or Gloria Patri. Maybe they’re just lucky that Latin bears a vague resemblance to English, and Church Slavonic does not. Otherwise, their converts would use the RC Church as a waystation on the way to Anglicanism, right?

>>2. DITCH THE DARN "RUTHENIAN" NAME
This is for the best, because most Ruthenian people apparently have no real love for their Church, as they leave so easily. Why should our Church be named after an ethnic group that by and large has ABANDONED their Church????!!!!

Point 1: the name is pretty much ditched as is. How many of our churches are listed as “Ruthenian” in the phone book? On the sign in front of the church? In the bulletin?

Point 2: Why should it be named after… etc.? Because that is its name. Most Byzantine Catholics I know have some “Ruthenian” ethnic tie, and they have a true, sacrificial love for their Church. I know also a fair number of other Byzantine Catholics, and to be honest they have not once expressed to me, nor have I overheard them say, that they see the name “Ruthenian” as a liability. I imagine they see it as a non-issue. Whence comes this irritation for you?

>>3. STOP WORSHIPPING THE ORTHODOX!

First of all, I worship God alone, as do most Byzantine Catholics I know. Even Bingo and catering occupies a spot slightly lower than the Holy Virgin ;-)

In fact, the Byzantine Catholics I know are far too busy trying to live the Gospel the best way they know how to be preoccupied with any sort of ritual, ecumenical, or other “churchy” concerns. Sure, a better appreciation -- and observance -- of our Byzantine Tradition would strengthen our people. But you’re fighting against clubs, sports leagues, and making the almighty buck in that battle, not against “Ruthenianism.”

In my home parish (and another with which I’m familiar), it is the refugee “trad” Latins who seem to be worshipping something, and it ain’t the Orthodox. Those who have *any* awareness of the Orthodox are not the converts; they are the ethnic Byzantine Catholics who tend to see the Orthodox matter-of-factly and are neither phobic nor phylic towards them.

Stuart wrote:
>>But then, how could we fulfill our vocation to enlighten the West concerning the spiritual treasures of the East, and manifest to the East the possibility of being "Orthodox in communion with Rome", without losing our Byzantine patrimony?

Stuart, I thought with your impressive resume of ecumenical work, you would realize that the Orthodox don’t care anything about “maintaining their Byzantine patrimony” in the event of communion, they care about maintaining Orthodoxy--the purity of the Faith. Unless by “the West” you mean Protestants and the unchurched, I don’t see how “enlightening the West” about *anything* is part of our “vocation” or will contribute to our numerical viability.

Rusnak wrote:
>>In fact, if most Byzantine Catholics, including all the Ruthenian and Ukrainian bishops, took this ‘Orthodoxy in communion with Rome’ stuff seriously and stopped trying to be a tertium quid (a small point: no more funny riassas with red stripes or episcopal rings; let’s see some beards and klobuki!), then fewer enthusiastic converts to the tradition would get fed up and move on.

So our primary motivation must be adopting “traditional” externals, in order to prevent the flavor-of-the-month church-hopping converts from ditching us? Where does the Gospel fit into all this?

Doulos of Fatima wrote:
>>Does Carpatho-Rusyn Byzantine Catholicism have anything to offer 21st century Americans ? What are these treasures ? How can American Roman Catholics and other Americans be made aware of these treasures ?

This sort of talk really floors me. Why should our effort be directed at “American Roman Catholics” who ostensibly are already gifted with the Faith? Many RCs have become enthusiastic and indispensable members of our parishes (some have even canonically joined our Churches), and they should continue to be welcomed. That’s completely different from going out and getting them… we have been wasting our resources on this sort of thing for 30+ years and our numerical trends are still downward.

Stuart’s observations about new parish growth & development, and the perhaps natural attrition from small, older parishes, are well-taken. This thread seems to be based on the posters’ familiarity with a handful of examples of cradle Byzantine Catholics becoming Latins, and visitors and/or converts using us as a bus stop on the way to Orthodoxy. The experience of other people contains many counter-examples which, taken together, hardly sound the claxon of impending oblivion that Anthony’s post seems to express.

To be sure, things are not hunky-dory (no pun intended!). But checking our priorities and recommitting our efforts might be more constructive than battening down the hatches and praying for dawn.

Just a rhetorical question: is the situation in the “ethnic” Orthodox churches any different? Or have their children likewise fled to Protestantism, fundamentalism / pentecostalism, or indifferentism? Even most professed-Orthodox young adults I know go to church at best a few times a year. They are Greek, Russian, Syrian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, you name it. A few of them are even “Ruthenian.”

RDC

[This message has been edited by RichC (edited 10-19-2000).]

>>>Stuart, I thought with your impressive resume of ecumenical work, you would realize that the Orthodox don’t care anything
about “maintaining their Byzantine patrimony” in the event of communion, they care about maintaining Orthodoxy--the purity of
the Faith. Unless by “the West” you mean Protestants and the unchurched, I don’t see how “enlightening the West” about
*anything* is part of our “vocation” or will contribute to our numerical viability.<<<

My dear Rich,

You are quite correct that the Orthodox are most concerned with the preservation of "Orthodoxy". You are disingenuous, though, when you ignore the fact that, in their eyes, Orthodoxy is inextricably bound up in the Byzantine patrimony. That is how they express their Orthodoxy. And, as the history of the past 800 years has demonstrated, communion with the Church of Rome has had, as its concomitant, assimilation of all other Traditions into the Tradition of the Church of Rome. This was the spur to the action of the Latin Church in 1204, when Innocent III, rather than condemning the Fourth Crusade, appointed a Latin patriarch to the See of Constantinople "so that the East may be brought into the bosom of the Catholic Church" (same Innocent III once said that "diversity was the mother of heresy"). The assimilationist urge was present in the Councils of Lyons and Florence (of the latter, Fr. Robert Taft observed that even the Armenians, who had maintained communion with the Latin Church, broke it because acceptance of the Council would have meant a complete submergence of their ecclesial and spiritual identity). And, of course, the entire history of the Unia has been one of constant encroachment by the Latin Church on the legitimate Tradition of the Eastern Churches in communion with her.

So, for the Orthodox, the key question, inseparable from the question of the "orthodoxy" of the Roman Church, is whether one can be in communion with Rome and still be a Church in the full sense of the word. The experience of the Unia to date says no--and the Orthodox really do notice the difference between what Rome says the Orthodox can expect when they reestablish communion, and the way in which Rome treats those Eastern Churches which are ALREADY in communion with her.

Thus, the importance of each Eastern Catholic Church recovering, maintaining and living the fullness of their respective TRaditions. For us, members of a Church following the Byzantine rite, that means restoring, maintaining and living the fullness of the Byzantine Tradition, opposing all attempts to impose a foreign theology or spirituality upon us, even (in the words of Protopresbyter Lawrence Cross of the Russian Catholic Center in Melbourne) "to the point of schism if needs be".

If we succeed in this vocation, we will serve two purposes. First, we will expose the Christian West to the treasures of the Byzantine Tradition. Second, we will demonstrate through positive actions that communion with Rome need not mean submission, assimilation and absorbtion. Our doing so will move the day of reconcilliation that much closer, so that we may finally "go home".

In the process, we will do ourselves some real good as well, for it is clear that the attempt to maintain a distinct "Byzantine Catholic" identity, with a hybrid liturgy, a hybrid spirituality, and a hybrid theology, cannot and is not working. When the only discriminant between the Byzantine Catholic and the Roman Catholic Church is the liturgy (and not even the fullness of the liturgy, but only the truncated experience of liturgy as it is known in most Byzantine Catholic parishes), then there is little to choose between the two. Those who have been inculcated with the philosophy that "Catholic is Catholic" will respond as rational economic beings, and choose the Church that offers the most convenience and the least demands upon their time while promising them the path of salvation.

On the other hand, those who really are devoted to the Byzantine way find the experience of being a Byzantine Catholic frustrating in the extreme. Those who are exposed to the fullness of Byzantine worship in an Orthodox church will constantly be reminded of how deformed and truncated their own liturgical tradition has become. Their efforts at restoring the fullness of the rite are continually rebuffed, and eventually, many conclude that it is in Orthodoxy that they must follow the path of their salvation. For making this choice I blame them not at all. From my perspective, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church are both the same Church that Christ instituted, true Sisters, whose blood relation can be ignored but not denied. It may be indifferentism to some, but I am truly indifferent to the differences between the two communions.

Why, then, am I still where I am? It is quite obvious to me that this is my vocation. God went through a lot of trouble to put me where I am, and he must have put me there for a reason. That reason, as I perceive it, is to work within the Catholic Church for the unity which God so desires. There are two sides to that vocation, one of which is to teach the Latins about that part of the Church they so often ignore and of which they are, as a rule, utterly ignorant. The other part is to bear witness to the Orthodox, that I can indeed be an Orthodox Christian, in every way, while maintaining communion with the Church of Rome.

It is not surprising that those who are spiritual searchers might come into the Byzantine Catholic community and then leave for another spiritual home. They are pilgrims on a journey and one never knows if they are passing through or have found their home until their funeral Liturgy.

Such a spiritual journey tends to be a very personal matter, therefore we find for the most part it tends to be individuals and not families (with some exceptions- but notice here the total lack of discussion of the poster's children).

Here in the United States we may be developing something new and beautiful. But it should be noted that it is something new. The Church has no real history of distinct ritual communities within the same territory and amoung the same social groups.

So it is a brave new world and we will have to realize we just can't fall back on questionable claims that "tradition", "canons" or "Orthodoxt" give us a clear road map.

K.

Interesting discussion.

The command is to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to everybody. Are we in some inner corridor to which people find the door only *after* they have been initially evangelized elsewhere?


Sharon

Sharon Mech, SFO
Cantor & sinner
sharon@cmhc.com

Rich (and others),

I apologize for you only expecting "rudeness" and "presumptiveness" from me as of late. I am going through a personal heartache, as you may be able to tell from this message.

Essentially, my "Ruthenian" best friend, who brought me to this Church in the first place, has left to "go Latin." In the process, he has filled my head with images of impending doom and gloom. He blames "ethnicity" as being the number one reason as to why he is leaving. Likewise, he was a Seminarian for a while, and claims firsthand knowledge that the Church is vanishing fast.

I feel abandoned. He brought me to the Byzantine Church when I was a child, and now he has "moved on" to what he calls the "better Church." This has been going on for the past three months, and it is tormenting me. Every time we meet, he goes into a tirade against the Byzantine Church. I am now avoiding him, because it hurts too badly.

That is the source of my frustrated messages.

I saw signs of hope in the "conversion" of Gordo, Anne, Theodosy, and others. Each of these individuals has left us. Now I am LOOKING for some hope. Desperately. I don't want to feel as if I have boarded the Titanic.

Meanwhile, I see Orthodox parishes booming around me. Whenever I visit an Orthodox parish, I am astounded at the number of young people there. In almost every Byzantine Catholic parish that I have visited, there are virtually no young people.

So if things look worse to me than they are, and I come across as rude and presumtuous, you now know why.

Please realize that I'm usually a very nice guy - whenever I don't feel down about the future of my Church, which I LOVE.

Please pray for me, Rich. This has been a very hard experience for me.

Anthony

Sharon,

What you say is so true. Right on my rightous sister!!!

Sending a speaker to a RC parish adult education class may have some merit, but it is not evangelization. Millions of unchurched people live in our communities and live in those parts of the world where our Church is the normative expression of Catholicism. Furthermore, new citizens are coming to our country from Eastern Europe who are postchristian. They too need evangelization and we have a special ability to serve them and bring Christ to them which we are not fullfilling.

In Israel, postchristian Ukrainian women are being brought there to a life of prostitution and we have no program for outreach to them, either ourselves or in cooperation with our Melkite brothers and sisters.

K.

In my home parish (and another with which I’m familiar), it is the refugee “trad” Latins who seem to be worshipping something, and it ain’t the Orthodox. Those who have *any* awareness of the Orthodox are not the converts; they are the ethnic Byzantine Catholics who tend to see the Orthodox matter-of-factly and are neither phobic nor phylic towards them.

‘Trad’ Latins get about as bad a rap here as they do in dissenters’ rags. I’ve known three people who used to go to the Society of St Pius X but now worship at your churches. They are not stupid and do not force latinisms there — they know better. They don’t idolize trappings over being in the Church, which is why they in good conscience aren’t at the SSPX anymore. Of course if they became Orthophile Byzantine Catholics (as some do), canonically and all the rest, they’d be slammed by some as ‘transritualist’ pseudo-Easterns. The longer I live and the more I read and listen, the more I am convinced that choosing to be a serious Eastern Catholic — Orthodox in communion with Rome — is a kind of martyrdom. (Being a committed Latin traditionalist is also a kind of martyrdom.)

The ethnic Ruthenians I remember didn’t give a hoot, good or bad, about the Orthodox. And in that they were wrong.

Furthermore, new citizens are coming to our country from Eastern Europe who are postchristian.

I really have a problem with the trendy word ‘post-Christian’, which makes it sound as if Christianity, the revelation of God made man, is passé and we’re only waiting for a new and better faith, or no faith, to replace it (the Muslims think it already has been superseded with Muhammad’s teachings), reducing the faith to only a cultural phenomenon. What you call ‘post-Christian’ I call ‘secularized’ or ‘unchurched’ (in the case of unbaptized people from Communist countries, never churched). The Christian era began with the Incarnation and will last forever, as Christ our God is immortal.

<a href="http://oldworldrus.com">Old World Rus’</a>

[This message has been edited by Rusnak (edited 10-19-2000).]