www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Czech & Slovak Catholics

Dear Friends,
I work beside a girl who's family is from the Czech Republic. We have often discussed religion and to my surprise she is a Latin Rite Catholic.

Why are there Latin Catholics from Czech Republic and Byzantine Catholics from Slovakia ?

Here in Toronto we have the Eparchy of Sts. Cyril and Methodius Slovak Greek Catholic with a population of of about 5,000 faithful.

Brad

Simply put, Byzantine Catholics are Eastern Catholics. Slovakia lies to the east of the Czech lands.

But actually, Slovakia is traditionally Roman Catholic, now with around 60% of the populations identifying as RC.

Greek Catholics, as they're known there, are a minority religion in Slovakia.

Here's a breakdown for Slovakia:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/D/De/Demographics_of_Slovakia.htm

Roman Catholic 60.3%, atheist 9.7%, Protestant (Evangelic Church of Augsburg Affiliation) 8.4%, Greek catholic 4.1%, Orthodox 4.1%, Reformed Christian Church 2.04%, other 6.37% (2004 survey)


Most current statistics show around 40% of Czechs identify themselves as Roman Catholics, while a similar percentage identify themselves as atheists.

Here are some stats for the Czech Republic:

http://www.countryreports.org/country.asp?countryid=65&countryName=Czech%20Republic

--tim

Brad,

Why would there not be? There are Latin and Byzantine Catholics in both the Czech and Slovak Republics.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Thanks for that info.
I just assumed that Slavic countries were predominantly Byzantine Rite.

I stand corrected.

Brad

The Czech lands were not the historic settlement area for Greek Catholics.

Greek Catholics who now live there are internal migrants (or the offspring of migrants) from the days of the Czechoslovak Republic, moving from the northeast of modern-day Slovakia, along with modern-day Transcarpathia (now part of Ukraine and part of Czechoslovaka until it was annexed by the Soviet Union and made part of the Ukrainian SSR by Stalin.)

The migration continues from both Slovakia and Ukraine for economic reasons.

--tim

Among Slavic countries, Poland, the Czech lands, Slovakia, Croatia and Slovenia identify with Western Christianity, specifically, Roman Catholicism.

Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia point Eastward.

Bosnia, of course, is divided by religion, with Muslims, Orthodox Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats.

--tim

Dear Friends,

Among the Slovak Greek-Catholics up here are those who would define themselves as properly being "Ruthenian."

Tim, what about that? Are these descendants of Ruthenians formerly from Slovakia?

Alex

Dear Brad,

Certainly, the Czech Orthodox Church in the Czech Republic promotes the view that the earliest form of Christianity there was Byzantine Christianity via the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition.

So it affirms itself to be the best and most direct descendant of that same tradition in the Czech Republic today.

It also connects itself to Jan Hus and the Hussite movement (which is connected to today's Czech Protestant groups) and affirms that the Hussite movement was inspired by the Cyrillo-Methodian tradition that Bohemia lost and which precipitated the Hussite movement (Communion in both Kinds, liturgy in Slavonic, married priesthood etc.).

Pope John Paul the Great himself was greatly inspired by the Cyrillo-Methodian movement and there are some who say the Eastern Church was also the first Church in Poland, ahead of the Latin Church.

And it was he who declared the Thessalonian brothers as co-patrons of Europe along with Benedict.

So even the Latin Slavic countries were initially influenced by Sts Cyril and Methodius - which influence would have been Byzantine.

Alex

This kind of stuff always causes fur to fly, but my belief is that the Slovak Greek Catholics of Canada are actually ethnically Rusyn.

I think their official adoption of a Slovak identity has to do with the ethnic ethnic situation in Canada, where you have a very dominant Ukrainian ethnicity.

Identifying as "Slovak" prevents the old "all Rusyns are actually Ukrainians" argument, and maintains a distinct identity for these folks.


--tim

Tim,

Some Greek Catholics really are Slovak. In the the 18th century some Slovak Lutherans came back to the Catholic Church but as Byzantines, just as Hungarian Reformeds did in Hungary. As to whether any Slovaks of the original SS Cyril and Methodius mission remained Byzantine is disputed, but some claim this and I would not be surprised if some of those in the mountains in the East with Rusyns as neighbors were able to do so.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Other than a few specific villages (including, I believe, at least one village that was originally ethnically German), it's not likely that it occurred in measurable numbers, and there's no evidence widespread conversions from Protestantism to Greek Catholicism.

Paul Robert Magocsi in "The Rusyns of Slovakia," page 18, notes that some previously Roman Catholic villages (Dacov, Jakubany, Stankovce, L'ubotin) that had converted to Lutheranism in the Reformation, became Greek Catholic in the Counter-Reformation.

The fact that he can list the villages shows there's no evidence that it was a widespread phenomenon.

The Union of Uzhorod was a preservationist act, not an act of expansion.

The Greek Catholic Church created by the Union of Uzhorod in the lands controlled by Hungary was never formed as a way of going on the offensive of spreading the faith of the East. It was a defensive act to prevent the obliteration of Eastern Christianity .

First, authorities wouldn't have allowed much in the way of spreading the Greek Catholic Church and diluting the state religion.

Second, for a village to adopt the Greek Catholic faith would have been to voluntarily adopt a lower socio-economic level. Slovaks didn't aspire to be Rusyns, who were a step or two down on the ladder under Magyar control.

For people who weren't the Eastern Slav (Slovaks are Western Slavs), Eastern Christians to join the Greek Catholic Church doesn't seem to make much sense in the context of the times.

--tim

OK, this might seem really petty, but this discussion has peaked my curiosity. My paternal grandmother was, I always understood, of Czechoslovakian ancestry. I believe she was born in the US and she was Roman Catholic. But I'm curious- she spoke Slovak and somewhere I have an icon that was hers, so I suspect that her family may originally have been Byzantine Catholic from Slovakia. Is it possible/probable that her parents or grandparents were Eastern Catholic and that the family became RC after immigrating to the US? The reason I find this interesting is that my daughter is seriously investigating the Byzantine Catholic Church with the intention of converting. Interesting how God works.
Michele
(on my daughter's screen name)

This makes me wonder.

Here outside of Birmingham, there is a Russian Orthodox Church in a town called Brookside, it is very small. It is my understanding that at one time it was Ruthenain Byzantine. The priest at that time, got mad about something and took the people and church to the Orthodox. Although there doesn't seem to be a mention of it in their history as such. But then I really don't understand http://www.oca.org/DocsPrintable.asp?ID=60&section=official
http://www.the-messenger.com/articl...dox-patriarch-is-in-Moscow_religion.html

Now yesterday I was talking with someone in a store, a stranger, and she told me her husbands family said they were Russian Orthodox Catholic and the family goes to Church in Brookside. So I am assuming that they never really gave up the Catholic standing as individuals.

Some links
http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=408&category_sakey=214

Is the parish OCA, ROCOR?? Some OCA parishes that were formally Greek Catholic still have in their titles "Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church" stemming from the time when St Alexis Toth came to the Russian Orthodox Metropolia.