With all humility I would like to submit some food for thought to those Roman Catholics considering joining the Byzantine (Catholic or Orthodox) Church.
1. Are you seeking or fleeing? Byzantines and Romans - despite ongoing disagreements - both offer a life in worship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All those who are seeking to live this life in the Trinity are welcome. Those who are not really seeking but fleeing something in another Church that they don't like are advised to take great time in discerning what the Holy Spirit is calling them to. One does not choose a Church based upon how close it comes to their personal beliefs. One chooses a Church - East or West - because the Spirit calls them to believe and profess what the Church believes and professes. Those who flee one Church for another and then attempt to remold the new Church according to their personal expectations can do great harm.
2. If you do feel called to life in a Byzantine Church what reasons would you have for choosing either Orthodoxy or Byzantine Catholicism? The lived experience for the ordinary believer is identical since we are what we worship and our worship is the same. One should not choose or reject a Church based upon whether that Church currently ordains married men, follows a particular method of dissolving marriages, etc. In my opinion the only central issue is where the Spirit is leading you. The other issues are important but are secondary to the call of the Spirit. Byzantine Catholics, for example, see communion with Peter to be so important that we have willingly paid a great price to preserve it (this price being the loss of full communion with the rest of Orthodoxy and the on-going attempts to latinize us even as we reclaim our authentic Byzantine-Orthodox heritage). Orthodoxy considers the direction the papacy has taken to be so unacceptable to preclude full communion until such time as the issues are resolved. The other issues are all important but all fail when stacked against what the Spirit is calling you to. Again, one does not just choose a Church based upon whether its beliefs are similar to our personal beliefs but because one is convinced that that Church is the one to which the Spirit is leading them. Those who pick and choose what they like and don't like in Roman Catholicism generally do the same once they become Byzantine Catholic or Orthodox.
Melkite1 provided a summary worth repeating: "[A]bove all, recognize first that these issues of ecclesiology have very little bearing on the spirituality of the vast, vast majority of believers, Catholic and Orthodox. Christ is met and experienced, the Holy Trinity is lived and experienced, not in the abstract world of ecclesiology and jurisdiction, but in the local parish, which is in every way, fully and completely, "the Church". Both Catholicism and Orthodoxy recognize and respect your decision to follow the Spirit wherever He may lead you.
