www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Why I am leaving this forum

I came here to learn about Byzantine Christianity. I loved it and learned alot, at least before the server crash of aproximately one year ago.

Before the Crash there was a spirit of charity and prayer that prevailed on this forum. People like myself asked questions and answers were provided in a charitable manner. When people such as myself occasionaly voiced a concern about an attack on the venerable traditions of the west, the participants of this forum showed sympathy towards myself and others. Before the crash my attachment to the Rites of 1962 was met with sympathy and charity.

Since the crash, it is a different story. There is a sense of almost constant petty bickering back and forth between posters on various issues. Questions are answered with briskness and then simply ignored. There was no charity, no follow up conversations. When myself or someone else voiced concern because one of the venerable traditions of the west were being attacked, myself and others were belittled and debased for our concern over tradition. There has been numerous instances in which there was such condescending remarks as "ignorant latins" and one remark by a certain individual poster that now the Roman Ritual was returned to true apostolic Christianity by adopting elements from the Byzantine Ritual. What of the fact that the Roman Church also dates back to the apostles? Far from sympathy, in a recent post, my attachment and the attachment of millions of others around the world to the Rites of 1962 was labelled as "rebellion against the Magisterium" and placed in the same camp as the liberals.

I came here to learn about Byzantine Christianity, now I can see that there is no interest in those of us "ignorant latins" who want to learn about "true apostolic Christianity". I am sad to go, but go I must. I ask your prayers for me and my prayers, immensly sinful and unworthy as they are with you all as well.

I now go to follow such living saints formally of this forum as Serge.

If you wish to carry on a fruitful conversation with me, please contact me via email:

joe_zollars@hotmail.com

Joe Zollars

[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Johanam ]

Dear Jonaham.

I support your views about the liturgical problems in the West and how they represent a departure from the Christian Tradition (as seen by most of the Orthodox, byzcath and Latin posters here) , and I've seen that many people in this forum also support these views.

On the other side, it's important to understand that Byzantine Catholics, as a part of the Catholic Communion, cannot doubt or deny (officialy) the orthodoxy and validity of the New Mass of the RC, in spite of the liturgical abuses that have been discussed.

I am sure that a lot of Orthodox and Byzantine people outside this forum share your concern about the liturgical problem in the West (I mentioned Paul de Ballestar, do you remember?)and the loose of spirituality. So don't feel that everybody will despise your defence of the Christian Tradition.

We cannot judge the actions or the lifestyle of our brothers, we also do bad things and we are also vulnerable to sin.
It's easier to influence people in a charitable way and with advices, even if they are critical, and not with accusations.

[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Remie ]

I agree with Joe.

I realize that there are lots of unpleasant feelings of Easterners towards Latins, but walk a mile in their shoes...what if someone called you an "ignorant Byzantine" and told you to get in step with the "true Christianity of the Roman West" because your Eastern practices just aren't cuttin' it. Pretty rude I would venture to say. Judging solely from a very small minority on this forum, it seems the pendulum of "tradition superiority" has taken a mighty big swing the other way since Vatican II if you know what I mean. Let's be charitable and realize that both traditions are equally valid: The East was not, is not, and never will be better than the West, and vice versa.

ChristTeen287

[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Diak ]

[ 09-17-2002: Message edited by: Steven ]

Mr. Zollars,

I wish you well in your spiritual journey and will pray for you.

I will suggest once again that you need to spend less time on internet messageboards and more time in prayer and study. I highly recommend that you print out your posts on this Forum and share them with your spiritual director and ask his counsel. While you say that you have come here to learn about the Christian East, the simply fact is that most of your posts (including those you have deleted) have been simply accusations and attacks against the Roman Catholic Church. You have been one of the most disruptive posters on this Forum in the last year. I think it is very poor on your part to attempt to blame the other posters.

Why is it that you believe that the spirit of charity disappears only when people do not agree with everything you post? Think about it.

Admin

Admin, against my better judgement and in large part due to my immense sinfulness I came back to this forum time and time again including now to read the replies to my farewell message.

The entire time I have been here I have been under the strict guidance of my Spiritual Father. Every post I have ever written was given to him to read.

It was under his advice that I leave the forum and delete all the messages I had ever made to this forum.

It was against his advice that I came back and it is with his blessing that I now leave again, permanently.

Admin, my posts have not been, or at least not intended to be, attacks against the Roman Church but were rather attacks on liberalism and modernism, two heresies aloof today in the Roman Church in America and Europe. This has sometimes been refferred to as AmChurh or as McCatholicism. I attack this because it is attacking the Roman Church. It is neccesary that we Romans defend our Church from the great problems afflicting it, including this crises.

I am sorry that I have been so disruptive. If I was that disruptive you should of asked me to leave as you did Reader Sergius.

I do not ask that they agree with me, they did not before the crash. However, I ask that they treat my case and the case of the other traditionalists with sympathy as dose the Pope. I suppose that if we are in a state of rebelion than so are the old calandrists.

It is with deepest contrition and sorry that I ask ya'll's forgivenss and blessing as I leave this forum.

If anyone has anything further to say to me, than I ask you to contact me via email: joe_zollars@hotmail.com

as I will not be coming back here.

It is time I take admins advice and leave this forum permanently.

Please pray for me. My sinful and unworthy prayers are with you.

Joe Zollars

I believe that we all have only feelings of sadness when a person feels this way, but I can't help but wonder why a spiritual director would advise someone to delete all former posts??? This would seem to me to `be a certain sense of denial.

And I really haven't noticed a large degree of insensitivity to Roman traditionalism save where it has infringed or attempted to be imposed on our own customs. Where it has been discussed, there would appear to be more of a leaning towards the traditional devotional practices of the Latin Rite than anything that could be considered "innovative."

But then again, the main objective of this forum is not to discuss the various matters pertaining to the Roman Rite.

Nevertheless, our prayers are with those who leave here.

Fr. Joe

Dear Joe,

Go with God.

But remember that whatever Eastern church members had or have to say about the Latin Church, the vast majority of Latin Catholics who accept the NO and the Catholic Church under the authority of the Pope would have much more to say to those of the traditionalist Tridentine camp.

And I don't have the answers here. We have had our Old Believers who refused to accept reforms under Patriarch Nikon and considered them heretical. They even went to the stake holding the two-fingered sign of the Cross above saying that whosoever signs themselves in that manner would be protected by God, otherwise . . .

If the Tridentine Rite is your home, stay with your home. No one is telling you that you have to like the NO.

If you were Orthodox and opposed your bishops as you do in the Latin Church now, you would probably be excommunicated - unless you went to another jurisdiction, of course .

So stay Tridentine and try not to judge others who follow other Rites.

Remember that there were a number of elements of the traditional Latin Mass that the Orthodox Church not only disagrees with but considered heretical e.g. the use of unleavened bread etc.

You are 18 years old, I believe. That means you have some years of good, hard study and spiritual development ahead of you.

Follow the advice of your spiritual father and add to it what our Administrator suggested as well.

Hopefully, in a few years' time, you will continue in your strong convictions.

And hopefully a reaction against your convictions won't set in. I'd hate to see you in one of those clown Masses . . .

God bless,

Alex

Mr. Zollars,

1. I have communicated to you several times during the past year or so that your posts were not acceptable. The last time I did so you accused me publicly of being a heretic. I highly doubt that these types of accusations had the blessing of your spiritual director as you have indicated.

2. The Reader Serge was never asked to leave. He was asked to refrain from using this Forum as a launching point for his ongoing attacks on the Roman Catholic Church. It was his choice to stop posting here.

I wish you well on your spiritual journey and will pray for you. I also ask you to remember all of us in your prayers.

Admin

Dear Joe:

I think the problem lies in your mistaken conviction that you have singly, and uniquely, corralled "true" Roman Catholicism by your inexplicable oedipal attachment to the Tridentine Mass.

Your attitude as a Protestant convert displays an inadequate knowledge of what Tradition is, whether Catholic or otherwise: which is living and alive. And that it is impermanent and is susceptible to change.

I am a cradle Roman Catholic and I daily served Masses under the Tridentine liturgy as I did under the Novus Ordo in my younger days.

What you have missed is that both are the same Latin Masses, or the "Missale Romano," proper to us Roman Rite Catholics. The big difference is that the new "Ordo" promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 allowed for the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular languages authorized by the Vatican, in additon to Latin.

I am saddened not only by your leave-taking but more so because your sojourn in the Roman Catholic Church was punctuated with what you believed the Church should be and not what she is.

In attacking your OWN Church, unknowingly you bit the hand that feeds you.

I hope you find what you seek in Orthodoxy, as you have more than once expressed.


AmdG

I doubt whether the attitudes that Joe has expressed here would be acceptable to a balanced Orthodox priest!

Dear Brian,

Then please don't tell him about the imbalanced ones!

Alex

Our friend Amado said:

"I think the problem lies in your mistaken conviction ...inexplicable oedipal attachment to the Tridentine Mass"

I feel bad when I see that people who are attached to the Tradition are treated like "frustrated intelectuals", "out of fashion" and other kinds of things. It confirms that there's a real crisis of faith in the West.

"Your attitude as a Protestant convert displays an inadequate knowledge of what Tradition is... and that it is impermanent and is susceptible to change"

I disagree with you.
I would feel betrayed and alienated if the holy icons were removed from our parishes, if rock music was introduced instead of liturgical chant, or if the meaningful symbols of the Divine Liturgy were eliminated, and I am sure that millions of Orthodox and Byzantine catholics would feel the same.

"What you have missed is that both are the same Latin Masses..."

I wouldn't like to be extense about this because this is a byzantine forum and I wounldn't like to offend the feelings of our latin brothers but a clarification is necesary.

"the big difference is that the new "Ordo" promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969 allowed for the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular languages authorized by the Vatican, in additon to Latin."

The introduction of vernacular is only a MINOR difference (every other aspect of the Roman Rite changed in practice and theory).
If you compare the texts of both masses, and then with the texts of the Eastern Liturgies you'll notice that important things that were present in the Old Latin Mass and that still exist in the Eastern Rites, are missing.
I suggest you to read some articles about the Liturgical reform in the West, such as the "Ottaviani Intervention", they will explain you how the liturgy changed and how it affected other things.

Joe:

Be happy and don't feel sad.

[ 09-17-2002: Message edited by: Remie ]

I am wondering, if the Novus Ordo is such a bad, bad liturgy as I would say most of the traditionalist element in the Latin Church says it is (I say this as someone who was involved in such an element), why did someone such as myself, who knew no Traditional Latin Mass until I was 25 years old, turned out with such a strong faith, one that even persisted in some form when I fell away from the Church for a few years? I think it comes down to proper catechesis and not the outward forms of the Mass, as well as fidelity to the missal itself and to the Magisterium of the Church. Growing up, my parish had no "clown masses" or anything of the sort. Once a month, we had a Mass in Latin that I was usually privileged to serve at. The only "objective" thing I can think of is the occassional Mass that substituted an acoustic guitar duo from the organ, but they played all traditional hymns with little or no deviation from the music. What made St. Agnes parish so wonderful was our pastor, Father Brannon (God rest his soul). He was hard at times and could be downright brutal in his honesty and fidelity to the Truth, but he taught us all well, so well that I know many who have fallen away from the Church are coming back as they start families, thanks in part to Fr. Brannon's influence on our lives as children.

Are there problems with the Pauline Mass? Sure there are. Are the rubrics abused? You're darn tootin' right they are, in a distrubing number of places and in a more disturbing number of ways.

Anyone who says I'm painting a bad picture of traditionalists has to open their eyes. There are FEW "Tridentines" who think the Pauline Mass can be celebrated in a beautiful and uplifting manner. Those who do not think it can are well advised to visit the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in DC on Sundays at 1:30pm for the Latin mass, complete with incense and Gregorian chant.

In Christ,
mikey.