www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall What's up with Archbishop Levada?

Dear Daniel,
In specific situations (ditto for fornication), but not - as I wrote in my post - a general policy. I think it would extremely abnormal for anyone to mustered out for spending an evening in a brothel.

If you have come to the Byzantine Catholic Church only because you are fleeing from what you don�t like in the Roman Catholic Church then go back to the Roman Catholic Church and work out your problems. We don�t want you. The Byzantine Catholic Church is not called to be a home to disaffected Roman Catholics who hate that Church. Such people almost always spend their time with us complaining about the Roman Catholic Church and trying to remake us into a pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church instead of learning how the Lord has taught us how to worship Him.

If you have come to the Byzantine Catholic Church because you feel called by the Lord Jesus Christ to make your home with us, we welcome you. Please leave your baggage at the door (the things you do not like in the Roman Catholic Church). Do not bring your baggage into our Church. Instead, we invite you to follow the Lord�s calling and embrace the Byzantine form of worshipping the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In two days and thirteen posts you have already generated six complaints about your lack of charity. Please consider my post a polite warning to always post in charity, praying over your posts and never posting when you are angry.

Please also note that your avatar is too large. Please choose another image from our collection or e-mail your image to me for resizing.

Admin

Greetings to all.

Forgive me in advance, but I like StLouisix' avatar. For some reason, it reminds me of one of my favorite trilogies, "The Lord of the Rings".

In Christ (and ready to accept penance), Michael

stlouisix,

We know there are many problems facing Roman Catholics today. However, you seem to be seeking something here because of that and, obviously your anger about that, is now being directed to those here. This forum is made up of and does welcome many people of various backgrounds. But, it's purpose is not to solve Roman Catholic Church problems.

I am a lifelong Latin Catholic (commonly called Roman Catholic). I fell in love with Byzantine Liturgy, traditions, spirituality, and people about twenty years ago. Having said that I do agree with what Alex has said about the married priesthood. I remind you that the Roman Catholic Church has for some time ordained married men into the permanent diaconate? That is also Holy Orders! There are also many married deacons in the Byzantine Catholic churches and some of them are right here on this forum, One of our most frequent posters is the wife of a Byzantine Catholic deacon.

Sincerely in Christ,

Mary Jo

Let's not be too hard on stlouisix
just yet. I know exactly how he feels as I
too originally came to the Byzantine Church
because I was fleeing from the liturgical
shipwreck of the post-conciliar RC Church.
However, I stayed because I came to appreciate
the beauty and tradition of the Eastern Liturgy.
Now, in all honesty, I am about 80% comfortable
with the Eastern Liturgy and Traditions (as
Eastern theology and spirituality are different
from traditional Western theology and spirituality)
as opposed to about 10% comfortable with what's
left of the RC Church, and I'll take 80% over
10% anyday. And the 20% of the time I'm not
quite "comfortable" in the Eastern Church, I
simply keep my big Latin mouth shut and would
never try to remake the Eastern Church into
what I wish the Western Church was.

That's one of the reasons "Western refugees"
like me are so concerned about the upcoming
"New Translation of the Liturgy", as we don't
want to see the Eastern Liturgies destroyed the
way the Western Liturgy was.


antonius

QUOTE]If you have come to the Byzantine Catholic Church only because you are fleeing from what you don�t like in the Roman Catholic Church then go back to the Roman Catholic Church and work out your problems. We don�t want you. The Byzantine Catholic Church is not called to be a home to disaffected Roman Catholics who hate that Church. Such people almost always spend their time with us complaining about the Roman Catholic Church and trying to remake us into a pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church instead of learning how the Lord has taught us how to worship Him.

If you have come to the Byzantine Catholic Church because you feel called by the Lord Jesus Christ to make your home with us, we welcome you. Please leave your baggage at the door (the things you do not like in the Roman Catholic Church). Do not bring your baggage into our Church. Instead, we invite you to follow the Lord�s calling and embrace the Byzantine form of worshipping the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In two days and thirteen posts you have already generated six complaints about your lack of charity. Please consider my post a polite warning to always post in charity, praying over your posts and never posting when you are angry.

Please also note that your avatar is too large. Please choose another image from our collection or e-mail your image to me for resizing.

Admin [/QB][/QUOTE]

----------------

My, what a "charitable" response. I will convey your sentiments to Archbishop Basil and Fr. Robert Oravetz the pastor of Saint John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church in Hawk Run, PA.

I don't understand your charge that I hate the Roman Catholic Church? Where is the evidence of that? It is certainly in nothing that I've ever written or said. And I have a considerable paper trail in that regard given the articles that I've written in newspapers, magazines, and websites around the world to particularly include my own for which I've received thanks from many priests.

It is expressly because I love the Church that I'm trying to ensure that a recognizable faith is left for my children and grandchildren, which is something my Byzantine pastor understands. Unlike you he and Archbishop Basil have no problem with me attending Divine Liturgies because of the unmistakable sense of the sacred that they convey, as opposed to what has been lost in the Latin Rite. Unlike you, he and Archbishop Basil have made me and my family feel welcome in with the Eastern Rite. And unlike you, the local Byzantine Community understands that we're ALL Catholics trying to defend the Church from assaults on faith and reason with the help of Jesus and through the intercession of Mary, Saint Joseph, and all of the Archangels, Angels, and Saints making up the Church Triumphant, the Holy Souls in Purgatory, the Church Suffering, and the Church militant on Earth.

How the Lord basically taught us how to worship Him is dogma in Roman Catholicism via the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and Divine Liturgy, i.e., transubstantiation remains invariant throughout all rites of the Church - that which uniquesly defines the Church as Catholic. See Trent, and the Sources of Catholic Dogma by Denzinger.

I hope you also conveyed a "polite" warning to those who irrationally impugned my Catholicism, which elicited my reply. If you take the time to look at the genesis of this thread you will see that I, out of courtesy, responded to another member's question re. problems with Archbishop Levada. Subsequent to that, I corrected an erroneous assumption on the part of one poster that immediately correlated the scandals in the Church with a celibate priesthood for which there is absolutely no evidence. In regard to another poster, I took rightful exception to his not so subtle reference that having an affinity for the Mass of Pope Saint Pius V via an indult, which is not required, or attendance of an SSPX celebrated Liturgy somehow made me a member of the "dark side."

And as for the inference that that no one is promoting vice as virture by another poster, I respectfully submit that that is not true when one starts seeing apologetics for "gay" pride parades on purported Catholic websites.


There is not a whole lot I can do about the avatar. I don't know how to reduce that picture. I tried a smaller icon but could not get it accepted. Saint Louis IX is my patron saint, to whom I pray to every day. He led the last Crusade. We put on the armor of Christ to fight the good fight, Christ who promised the sword, per Sacred Scripture, to fight the disciples of the devil for which all Rites should be allies.

God bless you,

JMJ

stlouix

This is normally a very friendly place to post - but from time to time we do get disaffected RCs here , and far too often they think they can change us to their way of thinking.

However - at this point I think I can help you about the size of your Avatar
It's easy to fix - just do as Admin suggested - e-mail it to him and lo and behold it will fit the standard size here.

We all love our own Avatars - many of us have ones that are very dear to us for one reason or another - mine was done from a scan of an Icon that I have a great affection for and Admin managed to re-size it for me.

Anhelyna

Thank you. I will try to do that. I see you're from Glasgow Scotland. My wife Margaret of 35 years is from Dundee Scotland. We met when I was stationed in a Navy tenet unit on a RAF base in 1968. We were married in the Church of a Fransican Friory. Have been in Glasgow, Ullapool in the highlands, Inverness, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Carnoustie, Brechin, Montrose, and Stirling.

I have e-mailed the administrator with a link to my avatar. I also suggested that it could be copied directly from my posts and saved as a j-peg for possible resizing, which I don't know how to do.

Getting back to the original topic, I wonder if the archbishop is being judged fairly. Look at where he was. I would think keeping any kind of peace and semblance of order would have been impossible if he had not been a compromiser. Actively condemning homosexuality there might have touched of a war. Maybe his orthodoxy will be more apparent in a better setting. Of course, there is always the possibility that having him in the Vatican allows keeping an eye on him and supervising him closely, but somehow I doubt that was the reason for his "promotion."

Dear stlouis,

I apologise for what I know was my probing (and perhaps adversarial) manner.

At least you have opened up and explained a few things - things with which I certainly sympathise with as they are experiences I have personally had as well.

As Catholics, I think we need to be careful about condemning the current Latin Church.

For me, it is a struggle to understand why the Latin Church did what it did with her liturgy.

I attended a Latin Catholic college that really turned me off Roman Catholicism.

For me, the Eastern Churches are the best possible link to Apostolic Catholicity and Orthodoxy.

But you do come across, perhaps unintentially, as being a rather dogmatic Latin Catholic espousing Latin theological and ecclesial traditions as "universal" while seeing Eastern Catholicism as a kind of quaint preoccupation with externalities.

Our Lord held celibacy as an ideal for EVERYONE and not just priests. The married priesthood goes back before Rome legislated it for its Church. And we EC's have benefited greatly from a married priesthood and have had this right of ours opposed by the local RC authorities in North America for more years than we can remember.

If you are so against a married priesthood, (as a traditional RC, you would be), then what brings you to the BC Church?

If it is only the ceremonial that isn't "there" in the RC Church, then that is, as the Administrator has said, not a reason to become one of us at all.

You are setting yourself up for problems as you become more familiar with our theological and other perspectives which are integral to our worship and that differ from what I'll call the "Tridentinist" perspective.

We are also still in communion with the Church that you have fled and seem to want to condemn.

Ultimately, that attitude will mean that you will come to condemn us as being wrong by association.

Laudetur Iesus Christus.

Alex

If God has sent one of his children to the mercies of the Byzantine Rite for a place of refuge from the liturgical abuses and heterodoxy of the Roman diocese in which he lives, who are you, even as an "Administrator" to tell him that he is not wanted?

That is a bit presumptuous and lacking in all charity.

Who are you to place conditions on God's unconditional love.

On the other hand, you may simply be say, "We don�t want you" here on this particular Forum.

Even if its simply the latter, why then bother having an "Evangelization" forum, if you place conditions on the Faithful to participate, that may violate God's Will for that Catholic.

You should rethink, as an Administrator, EVER telling a Catholic, "We don�t want you."

Just MHO, of course. YMMV.

Dear DocBrian,

First of all, here we respect our Administrator who acts very much like a parliamentary speaker.

Who is he? He is a man who has dedicated his life to the Eastern Catholic Church and especially to her liturgical worship.

You are a newbie here and you don't know him - it is of you that we can rightly ask, "Who are you to speak to him that way?"

Secondly, IF someone feels that the Latin Church or their bishop is now heterodox, condemns the Novus Ordo Liturgy as heretical etc. - don't YOU know, Sir, that such has placed himself or herself OUTSIDE the fold of the Catholic Church as a whole?

I can't believe this!

It is not we who don't want you - it is people who say things like that who don't want to be in the Catholic Church, Latin, Byzantine or whatever!

One can't just run to another Particular Catholic Church as a Latin refugee to hide out until, in one's estimation, the Latin Church stops being "heretical!"

What kind of Catholic faith is that? What kind of ecclesiology is that?

We are Eastern Catholics and we are in communion with Rome.

We don't believe the Novus Ordo or anything else about the Latin Church is heretical.

If anyone does, then they don't belong in the EC Church or the Latin Church or in ANY Church that is in communion with Rome!

It is such that have placed themselves outside the Church, not anyone here! Such is not a "Catholic" but something other than.

Alex

OK, "We don't want you" appears to be a universal language here, spoken by Administrator and posters both?

You have added the insult that, in your opinion, someone else is not Catholic, to the previous one, "We don't want you here."

I am reluctant to inform you that these comments are very much lacking in both prudence and charity, and that you do not have the competence or authority to judge whether or not a fellow poster is or is not "Catholic."

No one on this Forum, if what you claim about yourselves be true, should be in the business of saying, "We don't want you," or "You are not a Catholic."

Unless you have personally lived through the victimization and persecution those of us fighting heterodoxy and pederasty in the Roman Rite have experienced, you have no right to further victimize and insult us here in the manner you are doing.

Is it common practice to vilify and insult spiritual refugees amongst you folks?

If so, you may be right that eastern Catholicism is not the place for us.

Dear DocBrian,

I have never said that anyone is a Catholic or not.

Please re-read my post and show me WHERE I ever said that.

Then, I'd ask you to withdraw that.

I said that there are conditions attached to being a Catholic.

Roman Catholics have reminded us of that for years - they still do, here especially.

If a Catholic considers the Church to be in heresy, heterodox or otherwise, if a Catholic condemns the liturgy of the Church, Novus Ordo or whatever as heterodox - is that person a Catholic?

Is it legitimate to simply escape to another Particular Church?

I'm not talking Eastern/Western here. I'm talking one Catholic to another.

If you condemn the Latin Church for heresy on these and other scores, are you ('you' in the general sense) putting yourself outside the Church, period?

This is a serious matter for all Catholics to consider.

And, no, I don't think the Eastern Catholic Churches and their bishops would want members who condemn the Latin Church as being heretical in any way.

That doesn't mean that they can't attend or aren't members.

It just means that they aren't being honest about what being a Catholic means.

If this is being "uncharitable" well, as you and others would say, there is no room for political correctness when it comes to affirming the Catholic Church.

So, please stop with all this touchy-feely stuff about rejecting Catholics.

Please demonstrate how a Catholic who condemns the Latin Church in any way is still a Catholic.

We would all like to know.

Alex