www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Why BC's and RC's don't always find common ground

Dear Zoe,

You posted:

"I have heard horror stories galore about the Diocese of Raleigh!!! You poor kid! I hope your bishop is retiring soon. You can bet dollars to doughnuts that the Holy Father will replace him with a conservative. That's been a trend for a while...and in the wake of the clergy sex-abuse scandal, the trend is accelerating. The Vatican has definitely figured out that liberalism is at the core of our crisis."


What is the horror or what are the horrors in the Church of Raleigh? Does it or do they encompass what the Church of Raleigh is about?

Here's why I'm asking.

In traveling through and staying in Raleigh and Durham, I attended Mass in several Roman Catholic Churches. There was no horror. There was the Mass in its simplicity and beauty. There may be abuses, I didn't see them. I didn't hear horror stories from my friends there.

Why do you hope that a bishop of the Church resigns? Is he a poor shepherd? What makes him less orthodox that the bishop of Charlotte? How did you reach this conclusion? Has the Pope red flagged the diocese somehow? What is the litmus test of orthodoxy that the bishop and some priests and seminarians of the Church of Raleigh fail when compared with your diocese's younger priests and seminarians?


Don't you think that the only thing one can be sure of when the Pope appoints a new bishop for the diocese is that the Pope will replace him with a Catholic who is eligible to be bishop? Just like Supreme Court appointees in civil society, Bishops tend to grow into the position and sometimes they change as they grow.

It seems to me that all of us Catholics, in all of the sui juris Churches are blessed to be able to participate in the work of the people, the Liturgy of our Church. If there are abuses, we need to work to change them. As Dan has stressed, we must work to ensure that Liturgy is what it should be as best we can make it that.

To loose the freedom to preach the Gospel, to celebrate the Eucharist, and to do good works in evidence of our Christian faith as did the people of Eastern Europe, there would be horror stories galore, I think! To have Bishops and priests and religious and laity martyred here for loyalty to Christ and to union with the rest of the Catholic Communion, as is still the case in China, those would be horror stories galore.

So what is the horror or what are the horrors in Raliegh that are the source of horror stories galore?

Doesn't the Church of Raleigh celebrate the liturgy? Doesn't it proclaim the Gospel? Don't the chaplains visit the sick and the imprisoned? Don't its workers work with the poor?

Isn't that what the real story of the Church in Raleigh is; that it does all of those good things and more?

Somehow that doesn't come through in your posting.

Thanks for hearing me out.

Steve

Hello Steve..

I am RC too, and here in the East Coast the RC experience is beautiful. As is the Orthodox and Byzantine. There are no malcontents.

Most RC churches were built by Irish and Italian and Polish immigrants. Boy - they knew how to make great churches.

Mass is respectful. You cannot travel by car for 10 minutes before you find yet another RC church. Statues, candles, strained glass to die for and overwhelmingly good priests and daily Catholic activities. Catholic Services is a main stay of community services and with Catholic Parochial school and hospitals too many to count. Prayer groups, soup kitchens - there is no lack of daily Catholic activity here.

And between the Orthodox and Catholics there is no division or animosity. Orthodox clergy teach in Roman Catholic seminaries and the Orthodox seminar uses many books authored by Catholics. The Orthodox population being small - we Catholics sometimes help them when painting and stuff needs to be done.

Orthodox here to not call Roman Catholics �Latins� and in all my 53 here I have never heard one Greek or Russian Orthodox refer to Catholics as �Latins�. My wife�s family is Greek Orthodox.

The local Byzantine church is very small but well cared for.

-ray

arrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!!

Good grief, I wasn't trying to slam the Diocese of Raleigh. I was just responding to the person who had indicated that it was a more liberal diocese than Charlotte. (Which I understand it is.) Thass all!

Can't win for losing 'round here. :rolleyes:

ZT

I will definately pass the word on to Fr. Rick...hmmmmmm, for some good souvlaki, we might all move on up...LOL.
Tomorrow we get to spend the day making pirohi and kielbasa for our booth in a street fair next week..if you get a chance to come up to Cary next weekend, our booth is in a little side street...stop on by for the best pirohi, kielbasa and nut rolls this side of the Atlantic
Am I biased? Of course, I just got done peeling and boiling ten pounds of potatoes, then mashing them and mixing them with the cheese and other ingredients...for a Sicilian/Jew I am doing pretty good at this type of cooking:D

You're part Sicilian too? Join the club! Zoe, aren't you as well?

Logos Teen
(Provincia di Messina, Citta di Spadafora)

Si, Signore!

La mia famiglia viene di Catania.

(Did I say that right?)

ZT, also half Irish

Do you guys know that there are Greek Catholics in southern Italy and the islands? Who knows, maybe some ancient Byzantine blood here...

Diak...
There were many devotions and beliefs that my dad(he was sicilian) passed on to us as kids, ways of praying, of showing reverence and respect, that seem to fit in more easily in Byzantine spirituality than RC. I had ways of doing things, even little things like how I held my hand when I crossed myself, times to bow from my waist, to bow my head, that always caused me trouble with the nuns when I was a kid till they 'broke' me of my strange habits. I walk into a Byzantine Church for the first time and everyone is doing things the way my dad did, but he was RC all his life and came from a long line of RC's. The only explanation I have heard that makes sense is that there was a strong Eastern presence in Sicily at one time and some of the customs still remain.

La mia famiglia viene di Porto Empodcle(not sure if I got the spelling correct...we come from a little fishing village on the southern coast)

Dear LadyHawke (what is your real name?) and others of Sicilian descent,

Have any of you ever been there? I hear it is ABSOLUTELY beautiful!

A cute story from my college days:

I had a friend whose descent was Sicilian, and he was fortunate enough to have learned how to speak 'Italian' from his family.

Well one summer while we were still in college, he visited Italy. That is when he stopped priding himself on knowing 'Italian'. It turned out that the Italian he knew was pure Sicilian dialect from the days of his grandparent's immigration and NO ONE in Italy could understand a word that he was saying!

Suffice it to say, upon his return, he took it upon himself to learn proper Italian!

Alice...
members of my family had similiar problems when speaking Sicilian as opposed to Italian...

My cousin, while in HS, took an Italian class thinking she would breeze right thru it..her first test in the class came back with a big red 0..in checking the test paper, her mother noticed that every answer was correct, so off my Aunt went to demand an answer from the teacher. The teacher agreed that every answer was correct, in Sicilian...in Italian they were all wrong...LOL. While Sicilian was my father's family's primary dialect(and language, they learned English in school)they were able to speak in other dialects due to growing up in NYC's Little Italy...years later, when I worked in a beauty parlor, I had little difficulty talking to most of our clients, since most spoke Sicilian, with a few other dialects thrown in...very few of the women spoke pure Florentine Italian...

Wow...talk about topic drift ...and I guess I must take the blame for this one...

Vie(which is the shortened version of my real name which is Vincenza)

Dear LadyHawk,

Vincenza is a beautiful name!

Alice

Grazie, Signora

Alice! you're posting again! Wonderful

Michael

Oh echoed by me as well !

And Michael - another wonderful Atavar

reminds me - must start a thread hmm

Anhelyna