www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Byzantine Seminary

Slava Jesu Kristu,

I agree Diak. The Ruthenians should join with the Ukrainians again. It is our only hope for survival unless things change.

Dmitri

Ultimately, some form of consolidation must take place among all the Byzantine Catholic jurisdictions in the United States, which allows for an administrative unity that preserves the unique useages of each Church while providing "critical mass", eliminating duplicative efforts and some economies of scale. Without it, we probably are all doomed. I would like to see this consolidation take place in conjunction with a similar move towards jurisdictional unity among the Orthodox in the US, the present situation being uncanonical and pastorally harmful (the same could, of course, be said of us).

I would assume that once there is but one Orthodox and one Byzantine Catholic jurisdiction in the United Sates, the extent and frequency of ecumenical cooperation would increase, as would our visibility in the public square.

I do not know about anyone else out there but I found this comment to be very offensive.

IMHO this is not the place for such thinly veiled accusations.

But then I guess I just agree with the Admin and find most of what is said by this user as negative and at times offensive.


David

Dear Anthony,
Basically I agree with you, but to be blunt, many of these men turned out to be no great loss for us.

This is not accurate. There most certainly is a mother Church of the Pittsburgh Metropolia: the Eparchy of Mukachevo (and in a secondary way, the Eparchy of Presov). The problem is two-fold:

1) There is no canonical relationship between the Pgh. Metropolia and the Eparchy of Mukachevo -- they are separate sui iuris Churches.

2) The relationships that do exist -- the seminarians from the Eparchy of Mukachevo who have spent their summers in the USA have done so at the initiative of individual priests without the sanction of their eparchs. In fact, one eparch forbade one of our priests from hosting any more "foreign" seminarians here -- even though one of those who was hosted by this priest went on to be ordained a priest for our eparchy and is serving successfully in that capacity already for several years.

The simple truth is, our bishops do not want the "foreigners" here.

Lemko, there is a canonical relation between the Eparchy of Uzhorod-Mukachevo and the UCC, in fact I had a former married pastor several years ago now from west of Uzhorod who was serving in the UCC because our eparchy invited him to serve. There are several others like him who are now fully incardinated in the UCC, and several others who are coming. I'm not going to point any fingers at anyone for causing this situation. It ultimately goes back to the separation between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh after Bishop Ortynsky's death.

The bishop of Uzhorod is a voting member of the Ukrainian Catholic Synod. The Bishop of Presov is not a full-time voting member but often attends UGCC synodal events. Formal or informal, both have relations with L'viv (soon to be Kyiv by the mercy of God). We can split hairs all day, but that is the reality.

I probably was a little ambiguous on this point. My point was not that the Pittsburgh metropolia does not have a mother church, although I'm not sure what that means when the "daughter" church reaches higher status canonically (metropolia status versus eparchial status).

My point was that there is no mother church in Eastern Europe for the Pittsburgh Metropolia to receive a significant influx of married priests to help address the critical clergy shortage. Again, another problem with the ever-smaller jurisdictional boxes that we have placed ourselves in. The tiny "Church of Presov sui juris" just simply doesn't have enough resources or men by itself to bail out the US, and several of those men are now in L'viv for formation and may well end up in the US for the UCC if the situation remains the same.

We need to quit splitting jurisdictional hairs and move towards a bigger-picture solution. That type of activity has already precipitated one major jurisdictional division in the US, some of the negative consqeunces of which for the Pittsburgh Metropolia we have discussed on this thread.

Instead of worrying about this or that sui juris or ethnicity, we need to look at what is good for all of the Greek Catholic souls in the USA. Additional division and provincialism will not accomplish much positively.

Huh?
The "tiny" church of Prseov has roughly twice the number of faithful as the Pittsburgh Metropolia or the USUCC. They will shortly be in a position of having to turn away candidates for the seminary, because of so many vocations. I would love to see some of these men in our churches in the US.

djs

Lemko wrote:"...In fact, one eparch forbade one of our priests from hosting any more "foreign" seminarians here -- even though one of those who was hosted by this priest went on to be ordained a priest for our eparchy and is serving successfully in that capacity already for several years.

The simple truth is, our bishops do not want the "foreigners" here."

The simple fact is we can't afford to have them here. The way the Eparch's insurance policy is written, these "visitors" aren't covered under medical insurance. When the seminarians were visiting a couple of years ago and the one ran over the other one with the car, the Eparchy was responsible for ALL the medical and the recoperation period which was several months.

With the cost of most medical procedures these days not to mention medcine, I'm sure this was a nice hefty sum...

Hopefully, this will change with the "newbies" and they'll be able to get some things re-written.

mark

Rev. Andrij Chirovsky made some interesting observations on enviroment in the paper "The Place of Patristic Studies in the Restoration of Ukrainian Theological Education" presented at the International Conference of Patristic Studies at Oxford University, August 1991, published in Logos, vol. 34, nos 1-2, 1993. In summary (re: enviroment) he strongly recommended exposure to a monastic enviroment, in addition to the halls of academia. To this I would add time in parishes. In the real world they call it on-the-job training.

[ 09-06-2002: Message edited by: J Thur ]

Some people are just offended too easily.

I agree with David. There was no need to bring the thread and this Forum down to this level.

Dear Administrator,

Don't you see some truth in what Joe said? If I really really really believe it was God's will for me to be a priest, but I really wanted to be married, yet gave up a normal married life, but was frustrated, and some nice secretary or other lady gave me comfort, maybe I'd end up being naughty. Hey we've had at least one priest in the last 10 years go down that route--actually two--who are now happily married Orthodox priests.

Perhaps Joe could have avoided the bit about little boys, but hey that stuff is going on in the Church and I don't think it hurts to mention these things and speculate on the reasonings. Seminaries keep boys acting like boys instead of letting them develope normally. Look at our priests in the Metropolia--most great and decent, but boy I'm sure we've all met a few who are questionable (and I'm not talking about just from the way they talk or whatever).

The fact is, there are bad things in the Church. Let's not pretend they don't exist. For example, everyone keeps suggesting that Joe submit his paper to the bishops. Has anyone the courage to propose that perhaps some of the bishops don't care? Maybe I'm wrong--let him submit the paper. But as someone else said, we the people need to do the work ourselves as well.

In Christ,

anastasios

djs, do you have any references for numbers in Presov? I would think in terms of numbers of parishes and faithful it would still be lower than the entire Pittsburgh metropolia spread across the entire USA. I didn't mean tiny entirely in terms of vocations, but also size, parishes, etc. I don't have any info for Presov, only Uzhorod/Mukachevo because it is included in the UGCC data.

That's fine if the Pittsburgh metropolia decides it doesn't want any help from abroad. Three seminarians in Pittsburgh ? Got any other ideas ? Perhaps the Metropolia should consider what our eparchies have been doing for years, and teach some guys from Presov English and hoofing it on the insurance for the families,

The "import" approach admittedly has its own unique problems and concerns which have come up in the Ukrainian eparchies. It is not easy for a priest and his family to pack up and make the cultural and linguistic shift overnight, and there are now additional immigration considerations that have to be taken into account.

But, on the other hand, when the house is burning down you can't be too picky about who grabs a bucket. I have been assisting a sister Ruthenian parish 1 1/2 hours away offering Typika with Presanctified gifts because the pastor retired and there was no replacement pastor, and the interim administrator can only fly in every couple of weeks until a permanent assignment is made, as he also has a full time parish. I'm the only active Eastern Catholic cleric in a 150-200 mile radius and I'm not even a priest. It's rough out there. Lots of questions and not a lot of answers.

[ 09-05-2002: Message edited by: Diak ]

Diak,

Roberson http://198.62.75.1/www2/greek-catholic/ecc/ gives the Slovak Church as having 212,000 faithful; this figure includes Slovakia and Canada.

http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/qview.html
gives the following numbers for 2001 for the Presov Eparchy

175,000 faithful, 263 priests, 200 parishes

This number does not include Canada, or those formely of Presov, now in the Ap. Ex. of the Czech republic (this site seems to have an extra zero on the faithful there in the Czech Republic). There is no mention of the Kosice Exarchate. The year 2000 schematizmus of Presov includes a listing of 89 seminarians.

By comparison (faithful in thousands, priests, parishes):

Pittsburgh Metropolia 114 242 236
Philadelphia Metropolia 104 244 202
Winnipeg Metropolia 106 231 ???
(the parish numbers seems odd for Winnipeg)

The situation is Mukachevo (320 182 300) indicates a serious shortage of priests, but Presov is a different matter. I understand that there is some cohort among the seminarians that may be training for service in the US, but am not certain that I got this correctly. I hope that we are not reluctant about recruiting from there.
In the meantime, we are indebted to you for your hard work. Thanks.


djs


PS ...to complete the picture in Slovakia. I just backed into the numbers (73 135 87) for Kosice at http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dkoby.html

[ 09-06-2002: Message edited by: djs ]