www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Note on terminology

There was an earlier post I made, my first post to the forum, with a link to a piece using the term "Eastern Rite Catholics" in reference to your tradition. And I think the forum's response was quite gracious, particularly as my post touched a nerve.

One of the responses made reference to the terminology, and I wanted to give a note of explanation of sorts.

Without going too much into how you make a website something people can find, which language you use matters. Travel sites advertising "low fares" sell poorly because they are using travel agent language to address people who neither know nor want to know travel agents' terms. Travel sites advertising "cheap tickets" or "cheap airline tickets" communicate better because those are words people will use. ("Low fares" and "cheap tickets" mean the exact same thing.)

Before writing the piece I linked to, I researched on the web for "Greek Catholic", "Uniate", and something like half a dozen terms, and "Eastern Rite Catholic" appeared more than ten times as often as the first runner-up. My preferred term for your community, as with many Orthodox, is "Uniates," and I have seen "Uniate Catholic" on this forum, but I chose "Eastern Rite Catholic" as what will apparently communicate to the broadest spread.

I received a generous response from this forum and perhaps no one even remembers that I used the not-favorite "Eastern Rite Catholic" term. So maybe this note is not needed, but if it helps, I wanted to clarify.

With love,
Christos Jonathan

As an inclusive term, "Eastern Catholics" is the most appropriate in general terms, Catholics of the Eastern Churches or Catholics of the Eastern Rites are more technical, more cumbersome, and more academic... The nerve is touched by not wanting us all seen as one monolithic rite. What you search for on the net, however, is likely to find lots of bad form, even bad faith, materials.

And low fares and cheap tickets don't mean exactly the same thing; one could include exhorbitant fees, the other generally can't, since fares doesn't include fees and taxes, but tickets does... tho' were one to venn diagram them, they would overlap quite a bit...

I'm sorry that I seem to have offended you.

At any rate, the reason I got on the forum was to say this (a moderator may move it to another place if desired):

"Give a man money, and he may eat for a day. Give a man a job, and he may eat for life. Give a man your prayer, and he may eat for eternity."

Christos Jonathan

That is very nice!

Offended? Not really. Mildly annoyed, perhaps, but not any worse than a random sample of three 4th graders are likely to...

And it is a case of hoping you know better in the future, so you don't get someone ired up who does take offense.

I'm just prone to pedantry.

"Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer".

I honestly don't know what is so annoying...It is not like Jonathon came here saying 'Uniates' which I would understand being offensive. I think that people really get offended way too easily. Is the term 'Byzantine' Catholic then also as offensive as Eastern rite Catholic? What *is* acceptable?

(Should I be annoyed if someone called me an Eastern Orthodox rather than a Greek Orthodox??)

Let's be careful not to run new posters, especially Orthodox posters, off the board with this nit picking. Corrections can be made gently and charitably...

Jonathon has been very gracious. I, for one, when I first joined here many years ago, got tarred and feathered for mistakenly saying 'the' Ukraine, and I can tell you, I almost never came back because of it!!

Alice, curious as to what all the ado is about

I've known Russian Orthodox to get bent when referred to as "Greek Orthodox", so better safe than sorry. But, as an Eastern Catholic, I don't get upset with people who, not knowing better, refer to us as "Eastern rite Catholics". It's an entirely different matter with scholars, clergy and others who ought to know better, and use the term mainly for polemical purposes.

The same thing goes for "uniate" and "uniatism". Both have a specific historical meaning, and we can't pretend that they don't exist and expect to have a full and open discussion of our own history. We also need to acknowledge that there are, within our own ranks, quite a few people who still support the concept known as "uniatism", and therefore can and should be called "uniates".

Hmmm...well, I can certainly understand them wanting to correct the person making the mistake, but 'bent out of shape' over something so trivial, in psychological circles, screams 'chip on the shoulder' (aka: complex) and that is never a good thing for any one group, especially in a diverse culture where people just don't know the differences!! (Infact, on the most part, we should just be happy if they even know what Orthodox Christianity is and that Orthodoxy exists as a Christian faith tradition!!)

Many of us Orthodox like to chuckle over how many think we are Jewish!

I am not opposed to the moniker, "Eastern Rite Catholic." But, to clarify I do not belong to an Eastern Rite Catholic Church. The Rites of my church are the various divine liturgies currently in use.

I am a member of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church through the Byzantine Catholic Metropolia of Pittsburgh. Which is not the Roman Catholic Church, or under it, or subject to it. We have our own code of canon law, just as the Church of Rome does.

What makes us Catholic is that "we share that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly 'Catholic." (The Vincentian Canon of St. Vincent of Lerins) [I just took a page from the Anglo-Catholics!] We also acknowledge the Pope of Rome as the holy ecumenical Pontiff and the visible head of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

St. Ambrose is commemorated today, I think he put it the best when he said, "It is to Peter that he says: ‘You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church’ [Matt. 16:18]. Where Peter is, there is the Church. And where the Church is, no death is there, but life eternal" (Commentary on Twelve Psalms of David 40:30 [A.D. 389]).

CJ,

It has been my experience that the term "Eastern Rite Catholic" is the best, clearest way for me to explain what I am to RCs, and that it is important to use a term that they are likely to recognize, since everything that goes with that term is so unfamiliar to most of them.

If I get a chance, I'll go into an explanation of "Eastern Churches," but I have to be careful, since most RCs have been trained to think in terms of "the Church" being the RCC and "the churches" being the collection of all non-Catholic bodies calling themselves "Christian." Once that button has been pushed, many of them become suspicious that you're really a non-Catholic trying to pass yourself off as one.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

The trouble with "Eastern rite Catholic" is there are several "Eastern rites" in the true sense of the word. To use it as a synonym for Catholics who follow the Byzantine rite, let alone for the Ruthenian Metropolitan Church, isn't correct and isn't fair to the Armenians, Maronites, Copts, Chaldeans, Malabarese and Ge'ez Catholics--all of whom are "Eastern rite". It isn't even fair to the Ukrainians, Melkites, Romanians, Russians and other members of Byzantine rite Churches.

So, I just say I'm Greek Catholic, and let them go all cross-eyed. Then I explain, and if they don't get it, they don't get it. The most important thing for them to "get" is that we are not Roman Catholics, but still Catholics nonetheless.

It's interesting that the Russian Orthodox up here seem to be rather touchy when you call them either Byzantine or Greek... and the RO-OB's tend to see the rest of Orthodoxy as heretics. Not that their clergy do, but the people do. Locally, one RO married into the OB group down on the kenai... they rebaptised him.

Religious identity is a major part of many people's self-identity; anything that slights that tends to elicit strong responses.

What does OB stand for ?

Probably "Old Believers", aka Old Ritualists, the Russian Orthodox who clung to the pre-Nikonian form of worship. Gotta see Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina, you really do!

Yes, okay, I know who they are...it is just that all these abbreviations make my head spin sometime!!

Thank you Stuart.

I feel the same way about the continuing Anglican groups. They have real alphabet soup. Never have so few reorganized themselves into so many churches.

Stuart,

The problem is that most people like to take things one step at a time, and since most RCs are only vaguely aware that there is such thing as an "Eastern Rite Catholic," to try and go into all that with everyone who asks only leads to confusion, in my experience.

If they seem interested, of course, I'll give more of an explanation ...


Peace,
Deacon Richard