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This is true. Plus, you can even become Eastern Catholic without needing RCIA or Conversion, I think. This was how I became a parishioner and an altar boy right away, all our family had to do was visit and pray in the church, then the monsignor at the time called us up, wondered if we would join, so we did.

Last edited by 8IronBob; 08/19/12 12:57 PM.
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Originally Posted by StuartK
To be frank, it's highly inconvenient to be a Greek Catholic

I believe I'm beginning to understand just how true this is.


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Originally Posted by 8IronBob
This is true. Plus, you can even become Eastern Catholic without needing RCIA or Conversion, I think. This was how I became a parishioner and an altar boy right away, all our family had to do was visit and pray in the church, then the monsignor at the time called us up, wondered if we would join, so we did.


No bureaucratic processes to follow? Interesting. I know, based on read in Alexander Schmemann's book on Divine Liturgy, and how it plays a role in Christian education, prospective catechumens would take a couple of years, and wouldn't be able to partake in the 2nd half of the divine liturgy, since they haven't been baptized into communion with Orthodoxy.

Were you Christian, beforehand?

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Yes, I was born and baptized into a Western Catholic family, and shortly after I made first communion when I was 10 or 11, that's when my mother and myself have become Byzantine, then in 8th grade, I was confirmed in the Roman Church, even though I was an altar boy at a Byzantine Church at the time (seems like even though my mother and I were in the Byzantine faith, we still had ties to our old Roman lives as well, such as in PSR classes, and my father was in the choir at the Latin Church). Sure, I know that things were split at that time, but...as of now, I have in fact returned to Eastern tradition, and look to stay that way for a good while.

Last edited by 8IronBob; 08/19/12 09:26 PM.
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Originally Posted by 8IronBob
Yes, I was born and baptized into a Western Catholic family, and shortly after I made first communion when I was 10 or 11, that's when my mother and myself have become Byzantine, then in 8th grade, I was confirmed in the Roman Church, even though I was an altar boy at a Byzantine Church at the time (seems like even though my mother and I were in the Byzantine faith, we still had ties to our old Roman lives as well, such as in PSR classes, and my father was in the choir at the Latin Church). Sure, I know that things were split at that time, but...as of now, I have in fact returned to Eastern tradition, and look to stay that way for a good while.


Thanks, for sharing your story. I get the sense, from talking to a friend of mine, at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, and what I'm experiencing at St. Irene is this lack of bureaucracy. As he put it, it's a mess. What I'm trying to get here, there doesn't seem to be a big need to please the bureaucracy when it comes to doing things.

Weeks ago, I was approached about reading the Epistle during liturgy: no form to fill out; I didn't have to wait for a response after filling the aforementioned out; no classes to take.

The same friend was approached by the parish priest about leading the choir, essentially thrown into the wolves. He admits, however, it isn't an ideal pathway to take.

All these mentioned, I do like the idea of, "if I want to keep going, just keep going." Many I've spoken to have said, "there isn't really a need to canonically switch, just keep attending divine liturgy."

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Originally Posted by StuartK
As a convert myself (a real one, not a "rite hopper"). I'd have to say that most of the losses suffered by the Greek Catholics have come among cradle Greek Catholics, not because of lack of evangelization. To be frank, it's highly inconvenient to be a Greek Catholic,


I guess my personal take on this is that it's inconvenient to be Catholic, period.

I've been a parishioner at a Melkite parish (well, 2 different Melkite parishes b/c I moved several years ago) since 2002. I can't say it has made my life a bed of roses, but at least there thinking is encouraged. As a Latin Catholic I felt more like I was supposed to just "pray, pay, obey" and leave the thinking to the Pope.

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Originally Posted by StuartK
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1) so little promotion and information regarding Eastern Catholic Churches.

Hardly. Pope John Paul II made us the subject of no fewer than three of his most important writings: Orientale Lumen, Ut Unum Sint, and Ecclesia in America. It isn't that the faithful don't know who we are, it's that the hierarchy of the Latin Church--and in the Vatican--really find us to be inconvenient and wish we would go away. If Latin bishops thought it important that their faithful know and appreciate us, they would take concrete actions to do so (a few have, most have not).

That, combined with a deep-rooted belief that Roman Catholic (i.e., Latin) liturgy, spirituality and theology are normative not only for all Catholics but for all Christians, creates an attitude that we are just a quaint remnant of the past that has outlived its time. The Latin delegates from the U.S. went to Vatican II intent on suppressing the "Eastern rites" in their country; I don't see much on their part that says they wouldn't do the same thing again, today.

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2) ECC faithfuls are so small compared to Roman Catholics. They underestimate you guys because of that.

No, it's the result of a deliberate policy of repeatedly telling Eastern Catholics their only purpose is looking after the souls of "their people"--leave evangelization to the "real Church", there's a good boy.

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Some people ask, "hey, ECC have been in communion with RC for such a long time, why their number is so small?? Do they not do anything during this period?"

Deliberate efforts to impinge on the Tradition of the Eastern Catholic Churches and to encourage defections of Eastern Catholics to the Latin Church have not helped very much, either.

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I believe the dogma, with assumption that Pope has made consultation before issuing a dogma from Ex Cathedra.

Consultation with whom? The whole Church--or just those bishops with whom the Pope is speaking at the moment? When the Orthodox Church gets a chance to weigh in, and accepts Pastor Aeternus, then it will have some claim to dogmatic status, and not before.

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Originally Posted by StuartK
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2) ECC faithfuls are so small compared to Roman Catholics. They underestimate you guys because of that.

No, it's the result of a deliberate policy of repeatedly telling Eastern Catholics their only purpose is looking after the souls of "their people"--leave evangelization to the "real Church", there's a good boy.

How do you account for the same "their people" attitude seen these days among Orthodox?

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Originally Posted by StuartK
As a convert myself (a real one, not a "rite hopper"). I'd have to say that most of the losses suffered by the Greek Catholics have come among cradle Greek Catholics, not because of lack of evangelization. To be frank, it's highly inconvenient to be a Greek Catholic, and having been subjected since birth to the "Catholic is Catholic" mantra, is it to be wondered that large numbers of them come to see the local RC parish, with its five Masses on Sunday (plus one on Saturday evening) as being an easier option than continuing to belong to a Church that is neither Orthodox nor Roman, constantly denigrated by both, subjected to pushing and pulling and all sorts of factionalism.


Not to mention that most cradle ECs think that the difference really in their "Mass" and the Roman Catholic "Mass" is because of their ethnicity, and not something deeper rooted in the tradition of their ancestors, both ethnic and spiritual. Most continue to attend the Eastern parish because of ethnicity and not the unique spirituality.

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Originally Posted by JDC
How do you account for the same "their people" attitude seen these days among Orthodox?


Even the Orthodox decry the foolishness of ethnic parishes. I know there are those in the Orthodox circles pushing for a unified American Orthodox Church under one hierarchy.

An Orthodox priest I know told me that if he walked into the Serbian Orthodox parish in the area, people will look at him suspiciously. Not because they think he's not Orthodox, but because he's not Serbian.

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Ethnic parishes are becoming rare among some Orthodox jurisdictions due to intermarriage and the influx of converts. In the AOA, converts now account for more than half of the laity, and two-thirds of the faithful; so dominant have these converts (mainly former Evangelical Protestants) become that it is causing tension within the Archdiocese (too much convert zeal is upsetting some of the cradles). The OCA is also becoming a convert Church, albeit at a slower rate (yet even there, the emergence of an important convert component in the clergy was definitely a factor in the Metropolitan Jonah fracas). Even ROCOR is attracting its fair share of converts. The only jurisdictions which have maintained a distinctly ethnic identity are the GOA, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and ACROD, each for its own unique reasons.

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Originally Posted by StuartK
As a convert myself (a real one, not a "rite hopper"). I'd have to say that most of the losses suffered by the Greek Catholics have come among cradle Greek Catholics, not because of lack of evangelization. To be frank, it's highly inconvenient to be a Greek Catholic, and having been subjected since birth to the "Catholic is Catholic" mantra, is it to be wondered that large numbers of them come to see the local RC parish, with its five Masses on Sunday (plus one on Saturday evening) as being an easier option than continuing to belong to a Church that is neither Orthodox nor Roman, constantly denigrated by both, subjected to pushing and pulling and all sorts of factionalism.

I'd agree with Stuart's first sentence, but not the cause put forward. I've never found "Greek Catholicism" to be an inconvenience (except when going to Mount Athos, where's it's a bit of an annoyance). However, my view for what's causing this is even more depressing.

A survey I read several years ago on Orthodox parish demographics is that most clergy are either converts or sons of clergy, i.e. very few non-clergy son cradles are choosing to serve as clergy. A similar phenomenon is seen in church attendance: the Orthodox church is shedding a high percentage of its young, i.e. the children of otherwise faithful families who've gone through all the religious education programs are attending only basic services (i.e. DL on Sunday, a few Lenten services, and the big Great Week services) when they become adults, if they attend church at all. The only exception is, again, the children of clergy, who by birth are highly socialized into Orthodoxy.

I think is is paralleled in Greek Catholicism. Very few clergy (psaltai to presbyters) I know are non-clergy cradles, and one parish I've visited (which is lionized as a model) only has had one home-grown clergy vocation I know of, compared to well over a dozen rite-switcher, convert and even revert vocations (that includes clergy who are still there as well as those who have moved on to other parishes). The added dimension for Greek Catholicism is that the children who become "religiously minimalist" *adults can attend a Latin parish, which is likely much more convenient.

Bottom line, for some reason we're losing most of our children - both Catholics and Orthodox. I think this is a major pastoral problem, but it exists in the way we run things, vice in anything the Latin Church



* I apologize, I don't mean to begrudge those who "only" attend Mass weekly, or swtichers to the Latin rite. Unfortunately I couldn't come up with a more compact and less begrudging way to phrase this. That's a personal decision between them and God, and I'm in no position to dictate how many services people attend.

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Originally Posted by StuartK
Ethnic parishes are becoming rare among some Orthodox jurisdictions due to intermarriage and the influx of converts. In the AOA, converts now account for more than half of the laity, and two-thirds of the faithful; so dominant have these converts (mainly former Evangelical Protestants) become that it is causing tension within the Archdiocese (too much convert zeal is upsetting some of the cradles). The OCA is also becoming a convert Church, albeit at a slower rate (yet even there, the emergence of an important convert component in the clergy was definitely a factor in the Metropolitan Jonah fracas). Even ROCOR is attracting its fair share of converts. The only jurisdictions which have maintained a distinctly ethnic identity are the GOA, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and ACROD, each for its own unique reasons.


The difference in Canada is that we paint ourselves as a multi-ethnic society unlike the US which is an ethnic melting pot. In the US one sheds their ethnic identity to become American. In Canada you are encouraged to stay as you are. The problem now is that there are ethnic ghettoes where people stay within their own ethnic communities and neighborhoods develop into these ethnic ghettoes where some people who work at the businesses there don't even speak English.

And of course religion is part and parcel of this ethnic ghetto. So you'll have the Sikh temples in the Punjabi neighborhoods, Chinese temples in the Chinese neighborhoods, and of course the Orthodox/Eastern Catholic parishes in the Eastern European neighborhoods.

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The difference in Canada is that we paint ourselves as a multi-ethnic society unlike the US which is an ethnic melting pot. In the US one sheds their ethnic identity to become American. In Canada you are encouraged to stay as you are. The problem now is that there are ethnic ghettoes where people stay within their own ethnic communities and neighborhoods develop into these ethnic ghettoes where some people who work at the businesses there don't even speak English.

And of course religion is part and parcel of this ethnic ghetto. So you'll have the Sikh temples in the Punjabi neighborhoods, Chinese temples in the Chinese neighborhoods, and of course the Orthodox/Eastern Catholic parishes in the Eastern European neighborhoods. [/quote]


Constantine-

In reference to your quote: At one time I think that was true of the United States. I certainly don't think that is the caase today. An example of this is the large number of individuals who come to this country today and make no effort to learn the language.

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No, it really is the case today, moreso than say, half a century ago, when one could go into any major American city and find the Polish neighborhood, the Irish neighborhood, the Italian neighborhood, the Ukrainian neighborhood, and so forth. And in each neighborhood, there was an ethnic church--even the Roman Catholic churches were flavored, so that, e.g., the Irish church was very different from the Italian church was very different from the Polish church was very different from the French church. Even in the small town of Pennsylvania, there would be at least two Roman Catholic parishes, plus a Ukrainian parish, a Ruthenian parish, and maybe also a Slovak parish and Hungarian parish, too--and people from one would not attend the others, except maybe for weddings and funerals.

Today, most cities are homogenized, with the exception of black and Hispanic neighborhoods. The suburbs most assuredly are homogenized, as are most small towns. When people speak of "multicultural America", what they really mean is the not-yet-assimilated Hispanic minority and the emergent permanent black underclass (because middle class blacks are totally assimilated and indistinguishable from their middle class white, Asian and Hispanic neighbors).

Yes, there are ethnic and racial activists who are trying to balkanize the United States, but in general they are failing except in a handful of cities where they have managed to attain political power (ruining their cities in the process). But elsewhere, the desire for economic success and the overwhelming lure of American culture (is there a distinct Canadian culture, and do people around the world emulate it?) is more than sufficient to cause people to assimilate.

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