www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Does God love the Byzantine Catholic Church?

I took the test too, scoring 100% Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic. No questions about my patrimony or secular culture!

Did anyone notice that SelectSmart.com markets itself as a virtual sales source to use before you decide? Sounds a bit "western."

>>>I found a site that tries to test persons on their religious preferences. <<<

I took the test, but had trouble with some of the questions, as they weren't nuanced enough. My results were interesting. On a score of 0-100, it ranked my religious preferences as

Hindu-100%
Orthodox Quaker-99%
Eastern Orthodox-98%
Roman Catholic-98%

I am not sure how the first two got in there, but I suspect it has something to do with my answers to the ambiguous questions.

Stuart

I have been quietly lurking around here as of late, but now I will speak (well type really) a bit on this topic.

I fear that I am the "young Byzantine Catholic in NY state" that Anthony was speaking of in the initinal post of this topic.

I will give a little background information on myself. I was born in Tucson, AZ, in 1967. My father's father was an emigrant to this county from the Carpathian Mountains of Europe. He was a practing Byzantine-Ruthenian. My father also tells me that his grandfather, I do not know from which side, was a Russian Orthodox. My father married my mother in a Byzantine Church and both my older and younger brothers was baptized in the same church that my parents married in.

Now I was baptized in a Latin Church because the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church didn't have a church in Arizona till 1968. I was raised with no faith formation at all.

I decided that I wanted to enter the Catholic Church so I went to the nearest parish and provided them with my baptizmal certificate. The parish priest told that, as far as he is concerned, I am a Roman Catholic because of my baptism. Now I know better.

I have always felt a call, I just never knew to what. I feel this call is to the active religious life. This type of life is very limited in the Byzantine church.

I do not plan on "changing rites". It is my understanding that I could join a Roman relgious community while staying a Byzantine with the goal of one day being allowed to be bi-ritual.

I do not wish to give up my Byzantine standing because I do not really know what this means. The closest Byzantine-Ruthenian church is over an hour away. I am only exposed to the Roman Catholic Church.

Your little brother in Christ,
David

Stuart,

Agreed. Some of those questions were quite ambiguous. So how do you like saffron robes??


Your "Friend"


Sharon

Sharon Mech, SFO
Cantor & sinner
sharon@cmhc.com

Dear David,
The important thing is that you feel a call from Christ to live as a religious and you are following that call. There are many roman religious orders and congregations that are very open to allowing their priests to be bi-ritual.
www.unafides.homestead.com/ [unafides.homestead.com]

[This message has been edited by Khaled (edited 12-11-2000).]

Dorohoj druh Stuart,

I took the test, but had trouble with some of the questions, as they weren't nuanced enough. My results were interesting. On a score of 0-100, it ranked my religious preferences as

Hindu-100%
Orthodox Quaker-99%
Eastern Orthodox-98%
Roman Catholic-98%

I am not sure how the first two got in there, but I suspect it has something to do with my answers to the ambiguous questions.

Looking forward to your next album appearance with George Harrison and Ravi Shankar.

(Though George belongs to no religion, on his own he believes everything the Hare Krishnas do, but they claim to be a different faith from Hinduism while using the same religious source materials Hinduism does. Trivium: the spiritual Beatle is the only one of the four who is a baptized Catholic.)

That so many of us are scoring equally for RC and Orthodox might mean something. The differences aren�t as insurmountable as some hardliners would like us to think.

<A HREF="http://oldworldrus.com">Old World Rus�</A>

What is an Orthodox Quaker and how are they different from an unorthodox Quaker???? Stuart and Sharon enlighten us please. Just kidding. :-)
I think the reason why many of us received hundred percent on both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic is because people just don't see the unbridgeable divide that many ultra Orthodox and ultra Catholics want people to believe exists out there. I think the poll also discredits Jennifer's thesis in progress that we all are predestined to remain that which we are born into.

>>>The important thing is that you feel a call from Christ to live as a religious and you are following that
call. There are many roman religious orders and congregations that are very open to allowing their
priests to be bi-ritual.<<<

I have mixed feelings about this. One of the greatest tragedies of uniatism is the way in which it caused true Byzantine monasticism to become practically extinct, replaced by Byzantine rites of various Western orders, a concept alien to Byzantine spirituality. Only in the last few decades has Byzantine monasticism begun the process of rediscovery and renewal called for in the Vatican II Decree on the Oriental Churches, and reiterated by Pope John Paul II in Orientale Lumen. If I were completely free and unfettered, with no concern for the persons involved, I would by fiat abolish the so-called "Byzantine rites" of the Western orders and have their members reorganize as cenobitic Byzantine communities unde the Rule of St. Basil. That, however, is not really practical. But, to the greatest extent possible, I think we should encourage Byzantine Catholics who feel called to the contemplative life to follow the path to true Byzantine monasticism, and not the hybrid Byzantine rites of the Western orders.

I say this, even though I know many Byzantine Fransciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits who are truly holy men. But, as a minority within a minority within a minority, they will always find it difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the goals of Byzantine monasticism (which are rather different from those which are held by present-day Western orders) while under the discipline, and saturated by the spirituality, of those Western orders.

Is there such thing as an "active" religious community in the Byzantine tradition? I thought that the rule of St. Basil the Great was like that of St. Benedict, a purely monastic rule.

As David said he wanted to be an "active religious", i take that to mean he is looking for a community that is Not purely monastic. Is there a group of Byzantine religious(outside of those Byzantines stuart mentioned above) that are "active" or Not purely monastic or contemplative. Is there another rule for Byzantine religious other than St. Basil's rule?

Friend dbalok,

Glory to God for your vocation. I will pray for you.

You are fortunate that you had some reference as to your Rusyn Catholic/Orthodox past. I am ashamed to admit it, but some of us had grandparents and parents who were "ashamed" (hate that word!) of their pasts and did what they could to "change their stripes," but in disjointed and contradictory ways.

How do you explain someone like ( my grandfather) who was so desperate to anglicize his Rusyn last name that he took the name of his "favorite" mining engineer from West Virginia, yet insisted on marrying a Rusyn woman ( my grandmother) and, although he never attended Mass on a regular basis, insisted all of his children and grandchildren be baptized in the Rusyn Church? My personal intuition is that this has happened many, many times within American or Americanized Slavic Catholic communities. My sister and I literally had to dig through an attic to put together the pieces of the puzzle that was our complex family history. ( It was worth the effort.)

Their are other posters here who also hint that they live with the mysteries of their origins. For those of us who have discovered our Rusyn roots, I hope that we will do our best, in Christ, to serve as a "bridge over troubled waters"----a bridge connecting Catholics and Orthodox through our shared ethnic patrimony, but most importantly by our common Catholic and Orthodox faith and, as Kurt, Rusnak, Dr.John, and Father Kyrill insist, by love and communion in the Holy Spirit. In this sense, our ethnic heritage is an apostolate engaged in the ministry of reconciliation, but not a form of chauvinism that opens new wounds in the Body of our Savior--His Holy Church.


(If any of our "lurkers" have similar family stories to tell, I sure would enjoy your inpute.)
BTW: This is an apostolate we also share with the Ukrainians, Melkites/Antiochians, and Romanians.

[This message has been edited by Vasili (edited 12-11-2000).]

Dear Dan,
That little exam is but skewed and should not be recommended to anybody. I took the silly test and here are the results:

SCORE
Jehovahs Witness 100%
Eastern Orthodox 98%
Roman Catholic 98%
Latter Day Saints 88%
Seventh Day Adevent 87%
Orthodox Quaker 82%
Bahai 71%
Mainline to Conservative
Protestant 71%
Hindu 70%

I am glad that a Jehovah Witness wasn't sitting next to me to see these results. LOL! There must be better methods to test one's orthodoxy or heresy. It is most unusual that I should score 98% in both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic. In your eyes you would be happy and justified with such scoring even though my face would turn purple like the icon above from saying it isn't so.

P.S. I'm just giving you a hard time. Season greetings.

Dan,
The www.selectsmart.com [selectsmart.com] should be listed as www.selectedheresy.com. [selectedheresy.com.] Hey, you know what? I 'm going to see if there is such a site :-)

Robert,

I rank that test along with those tests one often finds in popular magazines. They are fun to take but not authoritative. Surprisingly, though, after having served as a United Methodist Minister for 27 years I still ranked 100 on both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.

Thanks for the friendly post. Was there such a website as www.heresy [heresy] ?

God is with us,

Dan Lauffer

<b><font color=blue>Hey, hey, hey (as Fat Albert used ta say!!)

The catechumen got 100% Roman Catholic and 100% Eastern Orthodox.

St. Ann's is doing a good job teaching me!!

Brother Catechumen Ed

Om mani padme ommmmmm
Om mani padme ommmmmm
Om mani padme ommmmmm
Om mani padme ommmmmm
Om mani padme ommmmmm

Greeting to thee, Friend!