www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Question for Latins going East

Wow...I've been unable to get to the forum for a while and when I finally do get here, I find this great thread...

Latin born and bred, I get so tired of people(or I should say, my Roman family and friends) assuming that I went East because of the Novus Ordo. Fact is, child of a Jewish mother and Sicilian father, I never did fit in well with the scholasticism of the West. There was always a part of me that just didn't 'get it'. The fights started from when I was six years old and just starting Catholic school, pre-VCII btw.

Anyway..I just wanted to say 'ditto' to what others have posted here and thank Dr. Roman for starting such a great thread.

Vie

I attended 1 indult TLM and was not very thrilled. It was with my Confirmation class in high school. We felt so unwelcome. The people really gave off this radiance of being better than us and so stuck on the letter of the law that they had no understanding for the *spirit* While it might have been glorious in its day, my impression of it in our day is not very high. The TLM has absolutely nothing to do with my looking into Byz. Catholicism.

I have always been a bit of an outsider in the Latin Rite regarding certain teachings and understandings. My husband and I were surprised that Orthodoxy had the same understandings as us. We didn't look into it very long, though. We simply will not leave the Catholic Church. So when we found out that Eastern Catholics exist ( ), we started looking into it. So here I am today. One has nothing to do with the other.

Vie, there were many Italo-Greeks in Calabria, Sicily, on many of the other islands, Corsica, etc. who are descended from Greek Catholics. It's probably in your blood, actually...

Yea, put there by my dad who, though Roman all his life, had a lot of ways of doing things that seem more Eastern now that I know the difference. Looking back now, I can see how much that my dad did and believed was more rooted in the East than the West, and as for my mom, who probably would have ended up a Rabbi if such things were allowed when she was a kid, she can still argue Torah with the best of them.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Irenikon/

I am inclined to also say that we can be called to a particular ecclisiastical, liturgical and spiritual expression.

I began moving east when I discerned a call to the monastic life through Carmel and explored the root of that call, and discovered that I was liturgically at home anywhere Catholic, but since one must commit at some point, I committed to an eastern Catholic jurisdiction and spiritual father, for it was laid upon my like a burden on my heart.

Turn back from the plow? I hear it is a dangerous move...

Blessings....Mary

Dear Eliza-Mary,

Are you still involved with Carmel?

The icon in my avatar is the original Our Lady of Mt Carmel!

Alex

Dear Alex,

I am clothed as a secular Carmelite but not actively in any community at the moment though I maintain formation studies with a Carmelite hermit. I am discerning a call to the religious life in the form of the life of a consecrated hermit. If the Byzantine Metropolitan, and my bishop, accepts my vows as a consecrated hermit, then I will ask for an affiliation with the Order of Carmelites Discalced as well.

Blessings....Mary

Dear Mary,

Excellent!

My UGCC parish has an anchorite - a former RC nun who joined our church and did her formation as an anchorite. I was present at her dedication, a most beautiful service!

Carmel has always had a hold on me and I think there are many points of contact with the Byzantine East, i.e. the scapular and the veneration for the Veil of Protection of our Lady, the Byzantine well-springs of ancient Carmel (there was a scholarly article posted here about that some time ago, reviewing the Rule of St Albert).

Alex

Was that an article written by a Carmelite historian?

It is indeed interesting that St. Albert did not turn to any of the other great rules in use but chose to write a very simple rule for very simple, very European old soldiers living on Mt. Carmel.

Mary

Dear Mary in Carmel,

Yes, it was a Carmelite historian - it is posted somewhere here but I'll need to do some digging, unless someone else has it handy.

He even said the rule of substituting the Office with Our Father's comes from the East as well.

I think it was "elexie" who first posted it.

You refer to the "old soldiers" living on Carmel.

Would these be Templar Knights? If so, would they be the ones defeated at Akkar? They also used a rule of Our Father's similar to the one St Albert describes in his Rule.

Alex

Which east? Alexandria or Antioch?

All of the old monastic rules had abbreviated prayer disciplines for the busy and the infirm that used the Our Father. It is the prayer the Lord taught us after all, and as I noted the divide between east and west was never so immense as we'd like to "envision" it today. There was more of a gulf between Alexander and Antioch than there was between Rome and Constantinople...then, and now.

Blessings....Mary

Dear Mary,

I believe the author referred to the Thebaid. The Churches of Constantinople also had a rule of Our Father's, up to 150, to substitute for the Psalter. St Seraphim of Sarov likewise taught that the Rule of the Theotokos or the Rosary came from the Thebaid, having been revealed to a monk there.

And I never mentioned anything about a divide between East and West here.

You are more than correct about the differences between Alexandria and Antioch being greater than those between the "two Romes" prior to 1054.

In fact, as you doubtless know, when the Oriental Orthodox refer to the "Roman West" they are, at once, referring to BOTH the Latin and Byzantine Churches.

Alex

Dear Friends,

A further question to those Latin Catholics who have gone East.

Is it a "total experience" for you, I mean, do you embrace the East with its theology and spirituality as well?

And is that experience SOMETHING like a "new conversion" for you?

Do you feel you are leaving something behind?

Alex

Alex,

Interesting question. For me, yes, I've been reading a lot about spirituality and theology and I talk to my parish priest a lot. I'm now teaching ECF and bringing my background as a well-trained Latin together with my new Eastern knowledge and my ability to find/learn new information quickly. Having to teach ECF is forcing me to learn quickly, and I'm grateful for this.

Is it something of a conversion? Well, it feels more like a homecoming to me, but I also feel like an intruder -- my Orthodox friends I think see me differently now (why didn't I go Carpatho-Russian Orthodox?). I've dealt with being an outsider by becoming an insider, by volunteering and going to as many parish functions as I can. I don't believe that one just "belongs" to a parish; one must really devote his or her self to the parish.

Do I feel I'm leaving anything behind? No, not at all.
OK, maybe there's a LOT more single Latin women than Byzantine women (I haven't met ANY single Byzantine women over 20), and I'm single and starting to get some kind of "settle-down" bug, which I don't rightly understand

Do you remember if the reference to Thebaid was to Pachomius or Anthony? I wish we could find that article...well...I wish you could find that article.

And to the last...yes.

Seraphim of Sarov has a particular place in my spiritual life and I am blessed with the friendship of a monk who is in a direct line of his patrimony through John Maximovich.

Thebaid...

How did you ever manage to get a phid in sociology of all things!!

Mary