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I went Catholic, just FYI.

It was more about coming to terms with some of my own flaws. I had to recognize the following:

1) Hyper-focusing on this issue was actually preventing me from advancing in the spiritual life. So I needed to choose a home even without having ultimate certainty. It required humility for me to admit that.

2) Lots of scholarly minds that are eminently more intelligent than I am disagree about this issue. You aren't going to find crushing arguments on one side or another. I can't expect I'll find or devise an answer that has 100% epistemological certitude.

3) Catholics and Orthodox have a lot of the same problems. A lot of the time, I simply had the perception that the grass was greener on one side or the other, when that's not the case in reality. Again, that requires humility to admit.

4) I've been able to see more unifying trends in the various apostolic traditions over time. I think reading the Church Fathers was extraordinarily helpful in this. As such, being inside a Church that is in communion with all the apostolic traditions means a lot to me.

And I've accepted not being 100% sure, in the same way I've accepted that I can't be 100% sure of my salvation. The choice wasn't purely arbitrary; I do think the Catholic Church is the one Christ founded. I can discuss, give my perspective, and present my conclusions for why I think this is correct. But I am working with the evidence that I was given to the best of my ability. I do not condemn those in the Orthodox Church who may have a different perspective. They will answer for themselves on Judgment Day. May the Lord have mercy on us all.

As for the actual process? I was following a Spiritual Father's recommendation. In additional to the usual (participating in liturgical life of the Church, regular Communion/Confession, Morning and Evening prayer rule), I had some dedicated time for the Jesus Prayer with this intention in mind.

If you have any considerable number of people, you're not likely to get 100% of anything. I'm not interested enough to go look at census data myself, but I found this source that summarizes the desired info (Table 4): https://bgazrt.hu/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/5.Majo_jav.pdf

About 2% of Hungarian Slovaks would appear to by Byzantine, and the percentage would appear to be increasing. The largest in the table is 2.1%, back in 1930 (the earliest census included), so it is possible that there was a more significant number >100 years ago.

There are some limits on photo uploads. Posters are limited to 5 photos per thread with a max of just under 4 M per photo. Our hope is that you will reduce the file size to under 4 M each to save on sever space. Thanks!

I had a report of a typo in the 2025 Liturgical Calendar, fixed it and took the opportunity to put up the 2026 liturgical calendar.

If anyone has a chance, can you please review them for accuracy and report to me any typos (either her or via email at the address at the bottom of this page).

You can find them from byzcath.org by boing to "Resources" and choosing them from the pull-down menu.

Thanks!