www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Hi! I'm new here....

"I still love the West, though I am increasingly disturbed by the liberal modernist garbage and outright heresy that has infiltrated the Roman church for the past forty years.. "

Heresy? I suppose that there are heretics lurking in any corner of the Church, but the Catholic Church itself is never in heresy....I'm not certain what you had in mind here...perhaps you have met too many people who were not upholding the true teachings of the Church...that's very disconcerting. We need to know our own minds and the true mind of the Church, and be willing to hold up against conflict.....

....but I'm not here to start an argument...you have found solace in the beautiful Byzantine Rite and are eager to get fully settled in...that's very understandable....

I'm not happy with the fact that you feel so strong a negative with your experience in the Latin Rite....we are not all modernist liberals.

I'm hoping to take the beauties of the East home, and share them with other Latins....I also want to let the East know that we are worth getting to know....and that we aren't having such an awful time in the West.....some of us at least...

Let's not have any hard feelings...just deep thinking....okay?

Of course I didn't mean that the Roman Church teaches heresy-- not officially anyway. I'm thinking mainly of the novus ordo Mass, and the novel theological concepts it promotes (the obsessive-- and Protestant-- emphasis on the Eucharist as a "meal", a "memorial" and a dangerous DE-emphasis on the fact that it's the propitatory sacrifice of Christ.

I'm not attacking the Roman rite.. it's part of the Church, and I love it 9and like I said, the Eastern rites aren't without their own problems). I just wish we'd quit trying to be so "ecumenical" and "modern." Instead of trying to win a popularity contest with the secular world (we tried this forty years ago, and it's obviously not working-- we're as unpopular as ever), we should be trying to win the world to Christ. When the Church is in "sync" with the world, something's very wrong.

Thanks Saint Clare,

I'm glad for your clarifications.....loving the East and the West is important....

I understand that the Novus Ordo Mass is sometimes celebrated well outside the rubrics....I happen to live in an area where it is celebrated well and reverently.

As for "non-official" heresy....It is scary sometimes to meet people who should know the truth and don't....

As an outgoing, gregarious zealot for truth, I hope to help change things from within. The truth needs to be held up on a mountaintop...no lights under bushels...

Worldliness....ugh. Living for Christ is #1. And that usually puts Christians in opposition to the world.....

Ecumenism....well and good when done within bounds.....but it can go too far.

Now that we are talking....please tell me a little about icons.....I want to know more, but I hardly know where to get started....

Thanks!

Unity....

Hi again Unity,

Glad I could clarify myself.:-)

I'm all for genuine ecumenism-- which means setting aside our religious differences to band together for a common cause. However, I do NOT support the sort of false ecumenism that pretends our religous differences don't exist. This is really religious relativism. I applaud your love for Truth... Truth isn't a thing, or a concept, it's a Person (actually, THREE Persons :-)

I'd love to discuss icons... I'm a huge iconophile... I'll start another thread, probably in the faith and worship folder.

Hello there! My introduction is on "RC turning BC"...

After having read through this topic, this question is going to sound so dumb I am almost afraid to ask, but here goes (gulp!):

Could somebody please explain the whole "changing Rites" thing? The leaflets in the BC Church I attended stated that a RC in good standing is welcome to partake of the Mysteries. So why would somebody formally need to change Rites? I just assumed it was a matter of going to Divine Liturgy instead of to Mass. I know this sounds dumb-- sorry! I am clueless!!!

Your friend in Jesus,
Donna

Thanks St. Clare.....I'm looking forward to learning about icons... Please speak as unto an utter beginner...

By the way, another thought on ecumenism....I agree that it is not pretending that differences don't exist or saying that untruth is the same as true doctrine....that would devalue what we have to offer.

But I think that true ecumenism also seeks to discover what we do have in common with non-Catholics and build new levels of communication upon whatever little common ground we have with an individual or a denomination, and doing what we can to build on whatever unity we have for the sake of Christ....(like you said, joining in a united effort might be a start....)

See you in another thread....

Donna,
This is not a dumb question. Actually, you really don't need to change rites. You can remain officially Roman Catholic and simply attend liturgy at a BC church. In fact, most people don't. It's simply a formality.

I personally *want* to change rites officially just because there are so few Eastern rite Catholics in the U.S. that I want our numbers accruately represented.

Unity,

I agree. As long as the truth isn't compromised, ecumenism is a good thing.

BTW, I started a thread in "Byzantine Faith And Worship" folder entitled "Spirituality of Icons 101". Check it out, if you haven't already. I can also recommend some great books on the subject...

Thanks St. Clare....here I go to your Icons posting

Donna, There's a lot I don't know either...join the crowd. Keep asking questions, and we all learn from each other....

Dear Donna-
My pastor discouraged me from officially changing rites, saying it was a western, juridical approach to things. He himself only changed rites officially on the verge of ordination. Also if one is going to "make it official" one ought not be hasty; it is something that can only be done once. One ought to be very certain.
At any rate, after joining the parish my children are receiving communion and the pastor has promised to chrismate them before Christmas. Perhaps I am setting us all up for a juridical mess later on but for now it is a pleasant place to be.

Hello to all, I am also a new member to this forum although I have been reading, learning and praying with you for some time.

I also have only recently discovered the beauty of the BC worship. I have little excuse for taking so long, I am from a Ukrainian background but my dad was christened RC(practiced BC) because that was the priest who came to the town at that time. (I understand this was not uncommon in those days) Dad went on to marry into a deeply RC family and chose to have us all attend under one rite. We seldom attended BC mostly a language thing and to me as a child Baba's church was where we went to funerals.

Over the last year, partly because of some issues my husband and I have with our local RC priest, partly because my kids are intensely involved in Ukrainian dance and wanted to immerse themselves in the culture language and traditions and mostly because we have a new wonderful passionate Ukrainian Catholic Priest who invited us to worhips with his parish, we have discovered that the "other catholic church" performs a deeply moving and indescribably beautiful liturgy. My first thought was that there was a profound humility in the liturgy that I had not felt before.

For me this "find" has enriched me spiritually in ways I have a hard time expressing. I pray daily that the joy I feel after divine liturgy will take root in my heart and the peace I feel will never leave me.

We have talked rather casually about what it would mean to "switch" but for now we are happy to participate and share the eucharist. We have tried to help the kids understand the "two lungs" concept as you have so often discussed in this forum and they seem to accept this rather easily. (Of course our young Ukrainian Father being a very real presence in their Catholic School helps too)

My mother is having a great deal of difficulty accepting that we regularily attend the Ukrainian Church and this is difficult but I pray in time she will understand.

I thank God for you all and pray for you. I will continue to read and learn as the days go by.

Through technicalities, you may be Byzantine anyway. You are just coming home.

Donna and Clare,

a Change of Rite or Canonical Enrollment (the term in the new Code) is intended to be a 'once in a lifetime' event - not necessarily a bad thing. Please don't take the next paragraph personally, I'm not suggesting that it is you, but it describes a phenomenon that seems, in my experience, to be regularly repeated in Eastern Catholic communities.

Many Eastern Catholics have encountered 'the church shopper' - whose 'faith journey' has a stop at every station. (Here I exaggerate, but not by much):

Joe starts as a Methodist, feels called to the liturgical worship style of "High Church" Protestantism and moves to the Lutherans, decides to "go home" to Latin Catholicism, finds Eastern spirituality and begins attending Maronite
Catholic liturgy, encounters the 'mystery' of the Byzantine Rite and formally transfers to the Melkites, finds a Ukrainian parish where the beauty of chant and the pastor's theological musings are more profound and becomes a regular there, departs when he discovers a "purer, deeper" Eastern theology among Old Calendar Russian Orthodox, finally achieves happiness in a Skete on Mount Athos (no disrespect intended to my Orthodox brothers and sisters and no disrespect to the many Ruthenians here for leaving them out of the scenario). (Do you think we've all known the same guy, or are there really a bunch of them out there?)

Changing rites or canonical enrollment is a decision that should not be lightly made. For many, it is not only a change of parish and rite, but also a whole process of inculturation, particularly given the ethnicity of our parishes. We tend to be a 'family', I firmly believe that is much more so than our Latin brothers and sisters. But 'family' is more than liking the pirohi, the fataya, or the lahmajun at the annual food fair weekend. Anyone intending to make a change should feel certain that they feel comfortable not only with the spirituality, but with the community with whom they will share and explore and develop that spirituality. You are often entering into a community whose ties to one another stretch back generations - sometimes back to a single village in the Levant, the Ukraine, or elsewhere. Our parishes are either very welcoming to outsiders who come among us or incredibly closed - there is no in-between. (And we need, so very badly, to be welcoming - 30+ years ago I heard my new Exarch, Archbishop Joseph Tawil, of blessed memory, warn that the seemingly conflicting dangers to our continued existence were assimilation and a ghetto mentality. The truth of that statement has not changed.)

(I had the good fortune, almost 40 years ago, to wander into a Melkite community who were wonderfully welcoming to a redheaded Irish kid - today, the hair is not as red and there's less of it, my Arabic is limited to a few words - mostly useful at the food fair weekend, but I feel no less accepted or welcomed than I did way back when.)

That said, changes occur over time, priests come and go - it's no different than any other church experience in any denomination - some inspire us, others aggravate us. We have to be in it, like the stock market, for the long run.

I wish you both well in your quest to make the changes you need for your spiritual well-being.

Many years,

Neil

It may be but our church is run by that juridical western concept and your children are going to have problems if they are initiated there and you do not at some point get received into our church canonically. Please do so at your earliest convenience.

anastasios

anastasios wrote:

"It may be but our church is run by that juridical western concept and your children are going to have problems if they are initiated there and you do not at some point get received into our church canonically."

I can only see an issue if the parents revert to attending a Latin parish and then seek administration of the sacraments of the Eucharist and confirmation to their children in that church. If they continue attending the Eastern Church and raise the children there, their failure to formally change their canonical enrollment has no potential for adverse effect. Do I think it best that they consider doing so? Yes, if that is where God leads them.

Many years,

Neil