www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Eastern Religious Orders ?

Are there any religious orders in ANY of the Eastern Churches whether Catholic or Orthodox ?????????

Yes, the Orders, Congregations etc was introduced as a means of regulating religous life after the various acts of union. Changing monks to members of clerical institutes and nuns to sisters was all viewed as progress. Having non monks as bishops among the Eastern Catholics may have helped force the change in some places. Tensions between the new non monastic bishops and the monastics and other religious meant that getting pontifical status helped to restored a better balance of power.

In the Catholic Church there very few religious orders in the Eastern Churches.

I believe that the Brasilians, Redemptorists, Fransicians, and Benedictines have Byzantine groups. I don't think the Denedictines will be around much longer though.

This is why I have started formation with a Latin order, the Carmelites.

For nuns I believe there are Discalced Carmelites and Sisters of Saint Basil.

Dear David,

I know about the Basilian order, but have never heard about the Brasilian order! Do they come from Brazil?!? *WINK*

Fondly,
Alice

Duh!

And seeing that I am attending one of their Universities (of their Latin Order) you would think I would get that one right.

I just want to stress that I do not think it is all that "sinister" as the first reply made it out to be.

I believe that there is a need for more active religious in the Eastern Churches and the old monasticism does not seem to be answering that need. Nor is it really answering the need for monks in the Eastern Catholic Churches as there are not a whole bunch of them running around either.

I know of at least one Carmelite Monastery that embraces Byzantine Spirituality:

Byzantine Carmelite [rumkatkilise.org]

BTW, do any of the Eastern Catholic monastic orders have Third Order/Secular affiliations?

Yes, this is a group of Carmelite nuns in France.

There is also a group of Byzantine Discalced nuns in Sugarloaf, PA.

Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Byzantine Catholic Church [byzantinediscalcedcarmelites.com]

David,

Are you in formation at Holly Hill? I took my family on pilgrimage there in June. It was wonderful!

Peace

There aren't monastic orders in Orthodoxy.

Andrew

Andrew, I think the question was more about active religious orders and monasteries.

Even the monasteries in the Orthodox and Byzantine Chruches (except for the Byzantine Benedictines) are formed differently than the monasteries in the Latin Church.

No, I am in the USA and am in formation with the Carmelite Province of Chicago (O. Carm.)

I am currently finishing my bachelors degree (Liberal Arts concentrating in Philosophy and Theology) before moving on to the Novitiate (which will be in June of 2007, God Willing).

And I could use some prayers in this as my Fall semester is 18 credits and my Spring semester will be 21 credits.

As my friend and brother Andrew has noted, monastics in Orthodoxy are not " orders" as those are commonly understood in Catholicism - rather they are "communities" (to avoid the redundancy of using "monasteries" and, in effect, defining a word by use of itself).

Additionally, there are few monastic communities in the sense that those existed historically in the East (and still do among the Orthodox), among Eastern Catholics. While "sinister" may be a bit strong as a descriptor, I generally agree with my friend and brother David that the point of view offered by our brother Pavel suggests more of a "plan" to eliminate Eastern monasticism at the times of union than was actually the case. (Should my beloved spiritual father and brother, Incognitus, see fit to weigh in here, he has some excellent thoughts on this matter, as I recollect.)

In actuality, when various Eastern Christian bodies left Orthodoxy to enter communion with Rome, those most resistent to doing so were the monks - as the monasteries were the bastions of "true orthodoxy" - the spiritually hardcore, as it were. So, a translation of the ethos of Eastern monasticism from Orthodoxy to the newly-created Eastern Catholicism was lacking from the outset and never really revived in most instances. (In fact, I cannot think, off-hand, of a single monastery that transitioned from Orthodoxy to Catholicism at time of union.)

All but one of the Melkite monastic orders, for instance, were formed post-union, the exception being the Basilian Salvatorians, who came into being essentially contemporaneously with the overtures of their founder, Eftimios Saifi, of thrice-blessed memory, to Rome.

There have been efforts to revive a true monastic lifestyle in some of the Eastern Catholic Churches. These have, however, been at least hampered, if not thwarted, by shortages of patriarchal and eparchial clergy on whom, historically, pastoral care should fall. Thus, one finds relatively few men in monastic communities who are not hieromonks and the latter have been regularly requisitioned by hierarchs - not merely to serve the occasional need of "supply priest", but to routinely fill pastoral vacancies within the eparchies.

It is easy to criticize this process as lending itself to a huge void, not only in the tradition from which Eastern Catholicism originates but in the prayer life that is the hallmark of monasticism and both offers example and serves as a spiritual bulwark to the Churches. Reality, however, is that (for the Melkites, at least) the vast majority of our older parishes in the diaspora would not exist today were it not for religious order monks. Already fulfilling pastoral roles in the old country, it was natural that the monks would accompany their villagers in emigration and, typically, a parish was served by a hieromonk of whichever order cared for its spiritual needs back home.

So, a revival of monasticism in its historic form is indeed a need generally within Eastern Catholicism, but I would be loath to see the religious order monks be disparaged.

Many years,

Neil

I feel the gap between Eastern Rite Catholics and Orthodox is seen here. The Orthodox do not have Orders and congregations etc etc. while Eastern Rite Catholics took on all of this when they left Orthodoxy. These newly created Orders like the Basilians became in effect Roman Catholics of a sort of Byzantine Rite. In the end they were just another Austro-Hungarian order (who were now a clerical institute and no longer Monks) with their own Mass. They restructured themselves on western lines often with the aid of westerns like the Jesuits (like the Basilians of the Austria-Hungary did)and changed to a western style of dress which they still keep. A suggestion of the need for more active orders is not in keeping with the Holy Sees instuctions on de-Latinising that it expects to be happening across all Eastern Rite Churches. The role of lay people in doing things in the Church should be examined given the recognition of the role of the laity in the Church to act without modeling themselves on the monastics, as was the case pre-vatican II. The UGCC got monastercism back through the Studites and this was why Metropolitan Andrew sent his brother to do his noviciate in a Benedictine monastery in Germany.

Can do, David.

BTW, I meant Holy Hill, the Discalced monastery in Wisconsin. My bad typo...

I have a favorite O. Carmel writer in Ven. John of St. Samson. Perhaps he's worthy of a thread in the forum's book section.

My apologies then, I thought the question was whether or not Orthodox monastics are split in to orders like the Benedictines, Norbertines, Carthusians, etc. I wouldn't mind a few ale making Orthodox trappists truth be told.

Just as an aside, whenever I have seen pictures of Eastern Catholic monastics (men or women), they appear to me to look no different than a member of a Roman Catholic religious order. Given how important monasticism is in Orthodoxy, that has always made me wonder what effect that has. Especially since bishops, at least in Orthodoxy, are traditionally drawn from the black and not the white order.

Andrew