www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Proper Way to Address a Bishop and Some Encouragement

Good Morning,
Christ is Risen!
I hope I'm posting this in the right forum. I recently went on vacation with my family and attended the DL at a Ruthenian church. After Liturgy was over, I spoke to the Deacon for a little while and, without going into detail, left the church discouraged and insulted. I am RC but am considering transferring rites and am discerning a vocation to the Deaconate so needless to say this conversation was disturbing. When I got back home I spoke to the priest in my Ruthenian parish and he said I should write the Bishop (Passaic) a short email and let him know my experience. So, my question is: do you have any suggestions of how I should address the email, format, etc? I would also appreciate some encouragement as I love the Eastern Rite but I'm worried that I'm living in a "orthodox" bubble in my home parish. The DL was much shorter and lacked a lot of the prayers I'm used to. Thank You!

Carlos,

It sounds as though your home parish is one of the few parishes of the Pittsburgh Metropolia that do not use the so-called "Revised Divine Liturgy." You then attended a parish that did, and experienced a severe case of "culture shock."

Two suggestions: first, take some time to look over at least a few of the numerous threads here on the RDL; that will give you a better idea of how the bishops are viewing the whole situation and enable you to write a more educated letter. Second, use the more formal method of "snail" mail when writing to a bishop, especially if he doesn't already know you; e-mails from unknown senders are often ignored.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

On the other hand, as a Passaic chancery drone once said, "The bishop does not talk to ordinary people". Maybe things have changed since then.

One correctly and formally addresses a bishop in this manner:

The Most Reverend John (Smith),
Bishop of Oxbridge
[street address]

Your Grace:


One correctly and formally concludes a letter to one's own bishop in this manner:

Asking the archpastoral and paternal blessing, I remain, as ever,

obediently yours in Christ,


John Doe


One correctly and formally concludes a letter to a bishop not of one's own diocese in this manner:

Asking a blessing, I remain, as ever,

devotedly yours in Christ,


John Doe

so that bishop only spoke to EXTRAordinary people? where'd he find such folks? he must not have had many conversations...

tomorrow those 2 new auxiliary bishops for the RC diocese of Dallas are being ordained & installed: +Mark Seitz & +J. Douglas Deshotel. i hope they won't turn out to be a---s. So far they haven't been.

Carlos,

Christ is risen!

Regardless of the details of your concerns, I would suggest that you do write to your bishop. There is (and has always been) a very wide divergence in practice; a lot depends on whether the abbreviations you experienced were common practice elsewhere with which you were unfamiliar, or if there really was something out of the ordinary going on.

There are those here who make a practice of excoriating bishops publicly; I suspect that that sometimes leads to episcopal reluctance to respond. If you bring up your concerns with candor and willingness to listen (as it sounds like you did with your parish priest), you are much more likely to get both a hearing and an answer.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Christ is Risen!!

C'mon, sielos. Let's be charitable. It can be lonely at the top and both these men need our prayers. Sometimes a bishop can be a lightening rod: he can draw the charged ire of people from every angle.

Bob

Our capacity for charity knows no bounds: one can and must always become yet more charitable. A friend has in her house a plaque that says, "Be kinder than you must be, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."

However, your quote was incomplete.I also said the 2 bishop-elects had not so far behaved like a---s. Knowing them both as well as i do; and also knowing some of the bishop role models they've seen in action, I suspect they are very concerned lest they devolve into self-satisfied, egotistical, pompous jerks.I bet they'd be grateful for our prayers.

The biggest problem leading to pedophile and autority abuse scandals in the Churches is not mandatory celibacy or latent homosexuality. I think it's clericalism.

I'm with you on this one.

Ryan

Then we should be careful not to overreact by veering into the mirror opposite of clericalism, which is congregationalism. The Church is neither clericalist nor congregationalist, but a communion in which each order has a distinct and vital role, without which the Church is incomplete.

Christ is Risen!
I thank you all for the input. My letter to the Bishop will actually involve a conversation with the Deacon in which he pretty much insulted my parish and my Priest when I mentioned where I attended. I don't know if Father Deacon was just tactless (I don't mean this disrespectfully), or his dislike for my parish Priest was just too intense.

My worry as I get closer to the East is that I will make the change and find that much of what I love about the church I attend has been removed. I don't know much about the Revised DL. But one thing I did notice is that we still say "lover of mankind" as opposed to "lover of us all" (which I heard at the new parish). Is that just for the Ruthenian church or all eastern churches? Thanks again for the input!

Carlos,

Just a quick comment to echo something that was said earlier (before the topic went awry) by Deacon Richard, I believe, ... do not e-mail the bishop, do write instead. Passaic explicitly states on its webpage that the eparchy does not conduct business by e-mail. That's also true, albeit unstated, of most other eparchies.

Many years,

Neil

E-mail is forever, while snail mail can be "lost", "misplaced" or "accidentally discarded".

sielos:

Christ is Risen!!

I suspect there is a very real danger at moving on up to the top. As Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA remarked about putting a man in the middle of the church, dressing him like a Byzantine autocrat, and praying that he live forever, it can drain away anyone's humility. My thought was that we ought to pray for these two men. People change when they have been in authority for awhile. You get everyone addressing you as "Your Excellency" and kissing your ring and soon you think you're far removed from what Leona Helmsley called "the little people."

Bob

Carlos,
Do not be discouraged and insulted this Deacon surley has some inner issues the Ruthenian Church is a good choice I love the church and her people do not let one discourage you.
May Our Lord only Bless you and the Holy Spirit guide you.You will be welcomed by all.
+. Gods Blessings

IN DEED HE HAS RISEN!

Just remember that such things are hardly unique to Bishops and the Church. It happens throughout the human experience, be it in business, politics or the family.

The admonition I received to be more charitable was welcome and very needed.

I think that to honor the episcopal ordinations taking place in Dallas today I'll devote prayer and energy toward removing the beam in my own eye & lay off preoccupations about splinters in the eyes of other peoples.

A Latin bishop once remarked that after you receive the Pallium, two things are certain: you will never again eat a bad meal, and you will never again hear the truth about yourself.

Carlos,

My guess is that it was probably both. Many people have a hard time concealing their disdain for individuals or institutions, and this sometimes gets in the way of their good manners.

Why would he be so disdainful of your parish? Well, since your parish hasn't "gotten with the program" and adopted the RDL, it is easy for other parishes to interpret this holding out as an act of self-righteousness, of looking down on the other parishes that conform (not to mention the bishops, who are unanimously promoting the RDL).


The UGCC Eparchy of St. Josaphat in Parma has its own English translaion of the DL, which incorporates "gender-neutral" language. (It does not, however, eliminate or shorten any of the familiar prayers or ekteniyas of the DL.) I am not aware of any other ECCs doing this.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

sielos:

Christ is Risen!!

Don't know about that. You seem to be a rather charitable person. It's a natural reaction sometimes if we've had a bad experience with a bishop. Remember that underneath the vestments is another man with the same struggle with the Faith and his own faith gift as the person in the congregation to which he is called to witness and to strengthen in the same Faith. Can be a daunting job.

My own bishop once remarked to me that it gets lonely since he knows he can't "kick back" with his priests because his mere presence makes them all nervous. After all, he holds their lives in his hands. When you think of it, that can be lonely. After all, who do you go to just for some human contact? Who do you really trust? If you think that politics doesn' enter into the life of a bishop, think again. There's always someone out there who doesn't like you. Makes me think of Fr. Dmitri Dutko's comments in his book Our Hope, written in samizdat during the ending years of the Soviet Union. Writing about the Patriarch, he mentions that his every word is listened to by the authorities and he was constantly spied on. So with any bishop. His brothers are watching him, the clergy are watching him, and he can get to feel very isolated.

Bob

Just like St. Maximos the Confessor's refusal to receive the Ecthesis indicated his self-righteousness and unwillingness to get with the program--and boy, did he ever get a lot of bishops annoyed.

I appreciate your kind words. i sure hope GOD has a high opinion of my charitableness!

Yes, it's true: a certain bishop once made decisions which had a very negative, almost catastrophic effect on the faith of our family. Best to try & relegate THAT unhappy episode to the past & to God's Mercy...

Still, I admit I have had the joy of knowing 2 bishops who made me glad I was Catholic and that I believed in God: the late Latin-rite auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, Bishop Carl Fisher (+ 1993) and the eparch-emeritus of the eparchy of St. Nicholas in Chicago, Bishop Innocent Letocky, OSBM. As far as I know he is still in the land of the living.

But isn't something seriously askew when the bishop holds the priests' lives in his hands - our lives are in GOD's hands, or so I was taught - and they do not say, "Thank God, the bishop is now here and everything is gonna be alright!"

Priests - and everyone else as well - ought to expect encouragement, love, respect, and compassion from the bishop. That they might be afraid of him indicates something is really, really wrong.

If a priest has been misbehaving seriously, he has serious reason to be afraid of the bishop!

Fr. Serge

and one more bishop who has brought grace, peace and joy into my life is Archbishop DMITRI (Royster), retired bishop of the OCA Diocese of the South.

mnohaja litta, Vladiko!

True. But I am sure we can both think of some bishops who themselves were guilty of misbehavior and terrorized their presbyters both to cover their own misdeeds and to ensure that things would be done their way, right or wrong.