www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Uhh... Hello

Next year I will be forty years old I was born, baptized and raised a Catholic in what is regarded traditionally as the most Catholic country in the world (Ireland) and recently I was staggered from the toes of my boots to the last hair of my head to find that:

a) Priests of the Eastern Rite of the Catholic Church may be married and;
b) The Catholic Church HAS and Eastern Rite.

The revelation simply blew me away. I went through the entire Catholic school system, sacraments of confession, communion and confirmation, studying catechism by rote from childhood and Catholic theology up until the secondary level (about what Americans call the 11th grade) and NOBODY, ABSOLUTELY NOBODY, no priest, bishop, nun, brother or lay teacher, no textbook or preparatory course informed me that you guys even existed.

You will, of course, be aware of the problem. Roman Catholic is the same as Catholic, right?

I realise now that of course it is nothing of the kind, and I am by turns excited and annoyed about this. Excited, because I am simply bursting with curiousity about you guys, and annoyed that nobody told me about you. Even the catechism available over here (which is titled "Catechism of the Catholic Church", NOT Roman Catholic) doesn't give you a mention. The Orthodox, yes. The Protestants too. Even the Jews and Muslims get paragraph or two, but NOTHING about the Eastern Rite that I can find, save one lonely paragraph which reads, "Particular Churches are fully Catholic through their communion with one of them, the Church of Rome, 'which presides in charity'. For with this Church, by reason of its pre-eminence, the whole Church, that is the faithful everywhere, must necessarily be in accord."

As you can see, even here, there is no explicit mention of you, and if I had not known of your existence (which, of course, I did not) I would wonder what that was all about. In any event, I'd like to know what YOU think of my RC experience, the attitude of the Roman Church towards the Eastern Rite (e.g., do you feel Rome is trying o absorb you, or unduly interfere with you etc;)

And I also just wanted to say a big "HELLO" to my fellow Catholics (now that I know it's not the same as Roman Catholic!)

Thanks for the "hello." I understand what you mean. When the CCC speaks of the "Eastern Church" it is also referring to us.

BTW, there's a Byzantine Catholic community in Dublin:

http://www.stmichaelruscath.org/dublin.htm

David Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

Welcome, GP. You've come to the right place to learn about (Byzantine) Eastern Catholicism. Of course, by now I'm sure you're aware that Byzantine Catholicism is only one segment of Eastern Catholicism as a whole (other traditions being Maronite, Coptic, Ethiopian, Chaldean, Malabar, Malankara, etc.)

I thought this privilege was usually accorded to Portugal. I, for one, consider it the "most Catholic."

Logos Teen

Well a BIG HELLO to you too!! Welcome to the forum!!! May your learnings be enriched and filled with newfound knowledge and wisdom.

Not to mean to go off your subject topic...but I do want to know WHY the RC don't teach other people about other Eastern Catholics (Byzantine, Malabar, Coptics, etc.)???? WHHHHYYYYYY????

My mom said the same thing...she went to Catholic school all her life...and all that...and not once she has ever learned or even heard anyone mentioning anything about Eastern Catholics. Why all the hush-hush or whatever from the schools, priests, nuns, etc.???? WHHHHYYYYY???

Not only I think it's ignorant but downright CRUEL...almost EVIL for them not to even say, mention, educate, etc. to others about US....

GEE! It's no wonder so many people are so anti-Eastern Catholics...not on purpose...but they think that we are schismatic...like going off far off from Catholic Church (because of different traditions, married priests, infant communion, etc.). They think that we are WEIRD..like we are like LOONEY BINS....

Why all the judgemental and criticizing? We are NOT asking the RC to become one of us if they don't want to...but why put up with critism and degrading comments?

Thanks for letting go off steam...I am just frustrated to say at the least. There's so much work to do now!!! It's 2003 now! I'd expect everyone to know everything now..at this day and age...but NOOO I think it's going way off now. Even many RC don't know much about RC Church!

Peace bro,

SPDundas
Deaf Byzantine

ROTFL!

A year or so ago, I asked a fellow (RC) parishioner if he'd be interested in a Byzantine Catholic mission, if we could get one going in our area. He asked what "Byzantine Catholic" meant. He had no clue.

I couldn't believe it. I still can't.

Oh well. Welcome!!!

BTW, have you yet encountered the argument that the old Irish saints and monks were actually Eastern rather than Latin in spirituality? I think this is mythology, myself, but one encounters it a lot in certain Internet circles.

God bless!

ZT, Irish-Italian-American

Yes, it's definitely regrettable that some Latin Catholics are not taught anything about the Eastern Catholic Churches, or even their existence. However, I wonder: if the size of the two lungs of the Church were reversed, would there be many Eastern Catholics who didn't know about the existence of Latin Catholicism? I think so. I think the sheer size factor and the location (Irish Catholic = Roman Catholic, but Hungarian Catholic does not necessarily = Roman Catholic) are the biggies.

Not to say that we can't work to remedy this!!

Logos Teen

Thank you for the heads up about the Byzantine congregation in Dublin's Pro-Cathedral, David. The hundreds of times I've been in and out of this church and I was totally unaware of this. Never mind the secret of Fatima; this one is much more closely guarded!

Teen: Portugal the most Catholic country? Obviously, you have no Irish blood in you. If you had, you'd know that the Irish own the church. At least that is the ethos in which we were bought up. Yes, there may be Catholics in other countries, but they're not really as Catholic as us! I know it sounds ridiculous. It even feels ridiculous as I write it now, but honestly, that's the way we were brought up, and I'm no exaggerating here. I suspect that much of it was a reaction against the British Empire. They were Protestants, wo, by God, we were going to be the best damn Catholics anybody ever saw. In fact, we were taking their ways and mirroring it into our own image; we founded a kind of Irish Empire through the Church. In fact, I believe it was us that put the mockers on the Byzantine Catholic Church's practice of ordaining married men into the priesthood. Apparantly, we were scandalised at the sight of MARRIED Catholic priests. Sorry about that, folks. But I believe that's finally being put right. I hope so.

Zoe and SPDundas: I absolutely agree. I am outraged that I'm only now hearing about you, and I am well annoyed at the treatment ou receive in the Catechism. It virtually says that you are only valid because of your association with Rome. For what it's worth, I totally reject this, and if it means anything, I'm sure most rank and file RCs would feel the same as I do (if somebody would tell them you existed).

Zoe, yes, I've come across the "Irish as Easterner" argument. Essentially, it's based on the fact that early Irish Celtic Christianity was monastic, rather than diosesian, in nature. Power in the Celtic churchwas based in the monestaries and wielded by the abbots. The bishops tended to be somewhat peripherial. The hermits were als greatly venerated, as in the Eastern church, or so I'm told. In the East, they went out into the desert; in Ireland they might go off onto some mountainside or wind blown island. As far as I'm aware, this didn't happen much elsewhere in the Western church, but was quite common in the East.

A particular favourite of mine was so-called "white martyrdom", where some of the more pius hermits would emply some local lady to tempt his vocation to celibacy. As far as I know, the Easterners had more sense!

I'm 1/4 Irish, and all in all I'm half Celtic! LOL, but I understand your point. Irish Catholicism is awesome. I think my Portuguese argument is influenced by Fatima a little bit (i.e. Portugal, unlike basically every other country in the world, will never forsake her Holy Catholic Faith).

Logos Teen

Dear GP, Dia Duit!

There is a tradition which attributes early Celtic conversions to monks from Jerusalem and Alexandria in the fifth and early sixth centuries.

Traditional Celtic monasticism has much in common with the heyday of the desert fathers of Scetis, the Thebaid and Nitria, where hermits lived communally, each in their own cave gathering for the offices, like the beehive huts you can see in the Gallerus Oratory on the Dingle Peninsula (definitely one of my favorite parts of Ireland ), the Skelligs, etc. This was not the style of the later Cistercian and other communal monasteries from the Continent which replaced the traditional Celtic monasticism.

Even some of the illuminated texts such as the Book of Kells have commonalities with Coptic and Ethiopian iconography. Also it is interesting to compare the symbolic carvings on the high crosses of Ireland with some of the Ethiopian and Coptic steles.

Why should a Roman Catholic person who is a member of his/her Roman Catholic parish be "interested in a Byzantine Catholic mission"?

Is a Roman Catholic's salvation at stake if they live their whole life on earth without ever once learning that there are Eastern Catholic (or Orthodox) Churches?

By the way, there are many, many Eastern Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, each of them following varied and numerous Eastern Christian Traditions. There is no such thing as "the Eastern Rite".

Lemko,

Perhaps it's a form of affirmative action. For so long we've downplayed evangelism and left that to the Roman Rite to do.

Of course, if we do adopt a pro-evangelism approach to people in this country that might mean our parishes would no longer just be for "our people." Actually, I think it's imperative we do accept the responsibility of reaching out to everyone...not just to those whose ancestry comes from Eastern Europe.

GP, if you get a chance to visit the Byzantine community in Dublin tell us your impressions!

David Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

Reach out to "everyone"--as long as they are already Roman Catholic. That's the impression I get from what passes for evangelization-talk. If we have nothing to offer anyone except those who already have the Faith, then we might as well pack it in.

Of course we don't target Roman Catholics.

What this means is that we are willing to inculturate the Liturgy and our traditions (being as faithful to them as we can!) just like Sts Cyril and Methodius did to the Slavs. If that means Liturgy in English, Spanish, Swahili or whatever that's what we need to do. The idea that we're just a quaint ethnic Rusyn community just for the descendants of Eastern European immigrants is not faithful to the call of the Gospel.

If some Roman Rite people are drawn to us on their own in the process we should welcome them and not try to drive them away. But our goal in evangelism should not be to target them. For specific evangelism ideas I recommend this article by two of our own:

http://www.melkite.org/Evangelization.htm

David Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

Dave, what are "our traditions"?

Is it praying according to some book like Byzantine Daily Worship? Is it praying Vespers and Matins every Sunday and feastday as a parish community?

How can we share our "traditions" that we ourselves don't even practice? By telling people to read books about Orthodoxy that have little or nothing to do what they see, hear or experience in most of our parishes?

We *do* target Roman Catholics for evangelization. Surf to any typical Byzantine Catholic parish's Web site ("Attending Liturgy (Mass) at our church fulfills the Sunday Obligation") or pick up any Byzantine Catholic parish "evangelization" brochure ("we make the sign of the cross from right to left instead of from left to right; we bow instead of genuflect; we call the Mass 'Divine Liturgy'; attending Liturgy (Mass) at our church fulfills the Sunday Obligation for all Catholics") and it's hard to come away with any other impression.

Why? Because it's the easy way out! Most of our parish communities are already run like Roman Catholic parishes, and our liturgical life is practically the same (Sunday and Anticipated Saturday eve. Masses to fulfill the Sunday obligation, weekday Masses for the dead) and our churches basically look like a Roman Catholic church with perhaps a simple icon screen added. It's the same, only "more Catholic".

Last time I went to a "Liturgy" in the local parish here (a large suburban parish, supposedly one of the most big-O "Orthodox" in the whole Passaic Eparchy) I heard a sermon about Purgatory and there was in the bulletin a scheduled weekday Mass for the "Poor Souls." The parish bulletin has more announcements about programs in the local Latin diocese than anything about our own Eparchy. But the parish bookstore has all sorts of Eastern Christian Publications stuff, books from St. Vladimir's Seminary Press...

I wouldn't expect that such a parish has any function except 1) to provide a haven for local dissatisfied "traditional Roman Catholic" or 2) to be an introduction to Orthodoxy for the eventual conversion of people to Orthodoxy and a feeder for building up the membership of the local Orthodox parishes. This parish, its pastor and people have no idea who or what they are. The born-Byzantine Catholic pastor is never dressed in other than a Latin cassock or clerical suit, yet the associate RC Monsignor parades around in riasa and pectoral cross!

Don't get me wrong, I'm very sorry about this situation. But this is what things have come to, and very few people seem to have an interest in fixing it. Most of them think everything is hunky-dory (pun intended), but come to Liturgy and listen and watch the people worship. This is not Orthodoxy in Communion with Rome, it's not even authentic Byzantine Catholicism. It's neither fish nor fowl, in fact it's sort of like the hermaphrodite that is unable to reproduce.