www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Where I am at in all this...

Ahhh the water of life. It warms the cockles of my heart just thinking about it.

I would also put the aforementioned brand fairly low in the pecking order (Kilbeggan is better for the price). Bushmills Single Malt is certainly nice, although I must say I'm partial to the blended Black Bush. A pure pot still can't be beat though.

Andrew

Deacon John,

Do they use feminized inclusive language in their English translations or do they have enough sense to not do this?

Are the they as obsessed as we are about getting in and out of church in under 50 minutes?

Monomakh

That is what I had heard as well...

Gordo

One, laity or clergy, ALWAYS needs the permission of two bishops to transfer jurisdiction. The originating bishop's permission and the receiving bishop's permission. The process, the paperwork, for rite transfer has changed over the decades BUT any canonical change of jurisdiction requires both a release and an acceptance.

You can, of course, attend any liturgy in Catholic communion without anyone's permission at all. But that does not confer any particular canonical status. There is no common-law privilege for membership.

Eli

Eli,
I understand that a change of rite requires such permission, but the Melkites and the Ruthenians both adhere to the Byzantine Rite. If changing between bishops require that paperwork, then moving from one state to another would necessitate it. Are you saying for an average lay person who is canonically a Byzantine Catholic to stop affiliating with the Ruthenian church and officially affiliate with the Melkite church that the permission of both bishops would be required?

I have heard that one belongs to the rite, and the rite belongs to the church, in the east. Your understanding (if I understand you correctly) would counter that, wouldn't it?

No. What you are describing, using Ruthenians and Melkites as examples, is a change in jurisdiction between particular Churches. That requires permission.

Eli

The general principle (or "common law") is that a layman comes and goes as he pleases. So, for example, a cleric who moves house from the territory of the Eparchy of Pleasant Gap to the Eparchy of Gotham City needs some sort of formal agreement between the two hierarchs, but a layman does not need anything of the sort.

However, there is ecclesiastical positive law in force which applies if, for example, a layman wishes to leave the Ethiopian Catholic Church and join the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. This does require an agreement between the two hierarchs (and in that particular case would also require a ratification from Rome).

That raises the question which seems to have started this discussion: what about the layman who is currently a parishioner of Saint Swithun's in the Swamp Bielorussian Greek-Catholic Church and wishes to join Saint Fiddle-Faddle's Bulgarian Greek-Catholic Church? Just for fun we shall add that the layman is originally from Spitsbergen and has not the slightest ethnic derivation from either Belarus or Bulgaria.

He needs nobody's permission. The existing ethnic jurisdictions in the USA and some other places are concessions, not something that exist by divine law. A Greek-Catholic may join whatever Greek-Catholic parish suits him.

As the various parishes and eparchies in the USA become increasingly English-speaking, this phenomenon (parishioners going from a parish of one ethnic jurisdiction to a parish of another ethnic jurisdiction, and not caring because both the Liturgy and the language are the same, even though the music and the parish dinner menus may not be) will increase, strengthened also by the well-known incessant moving house which characterizes contemporary American society. Already the canonists will readily agree that if a Ruthenian parishioner moves to someplace that has only one Greek-Catholic parish and that parish happens to be Melkite or Romanian, the Ruthenian is properly expected to join that parish.

The eventual upshot of it all will necessarily be a restructuring of the Greek-Catholic hierarchy in the USA from an ethnic basis to a territorial basis. Such is life.

[None of this, of course, applies to Irish Greek-Catholics, who are automatically parishioners of our parish in Dublin, even if they live in Antarctica, Baffin Land, or Christmas Island.]

Fr. Serge

Excluded of course are the 2x Australian claims & the NZ one as well (we not greedy) which are of course undispute Eparchy of Melbourne and all Oceania (or at least the nice bits) .Oh and Christmas Island (indian ocean) is also Eparchy of Melbourne (Latin wise Archdiocese of Perth, West Aust.). I think the Eparch in Argentina will probably lay clain to the his nations claim. So if there are any Irish Greek Catholics elsewhere around the South Pole they could be recorded as Fr Serge's parishoners.

I saw a program on some villages near Damascus that still use Aramic as the first language and how their days may be numbered. The clergy were quiet clery Byanintines and by the way of giving out communion with their fingers I guess they were Melchites. They still use Aramaic in Church but there would be very few Churches to do that in Syria today. The problem was that Moslem Arabs were moving into the villages and they insisted on speaking Arabic.

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So my 1/4 Irish ancestry makes me an Irish Greek-Catholic and a parishoner of the Dublin parish?

Why naturally! How could you have thought otherwise!

According to our super-Orthodox doctrine of Praestantia Hiberniae Ecclesiae Greco-Catholicae, the Irish factor prevails over everything else - so yes, John, I am pleased to inform you that you are welcome to our flock of Wild Irish Reason-Endowed Sheep.

We are, of course, in full communion with the Bishop of Melbourne and fully recognize his rights to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and Singapore. There is a proposal to give him also the titular Eparchy of Kilfenora. His Grace has visited us here in Dublin and served Pontifical Liturgy, and I've twice had the joy and honour of visiting His Grace in Melbourne and Sydney. Lovely places - and full of Irish.

Considering the present situation in the world, all this is not entirely a mere pleasant fantasy. The Irish government recognizes as Irish citizens anyone with one Irish grandparent. Those fortunate people who are so unfortunate as to be living in the Washington-Philadelphia-New York- Boston corridor would be well advised to come to Ireland with all deliberate speed before the bombs start falling.

Fr. Serge

Singapore!! Oh you bin chatting to Edward the Eparch's Exarch for nice places in SE Asia. So when next you are in the Cocus-Keeling and Christmas Island territories or Norfolk island remember it is "Peter the bishop that God loves" (is that the right translation). As for the Irish we are just everywhere. The main publican in Kalgoolie in the Goldfields is an Indian guy born in Ireland, Ashok Parekh . Must be a good lad as he turned one of his pubs into a Paddy's Bar and it serves some of his homelands ales.

As I said last night. One may attend any parish they choose of ANY rite and if one is a Catholic in good standing participate in the liturgical and sacramental life of that parish, and be listed on those parish roles as "member".

One may or may not be a "voting" member depending upon the rules within that parish or jurisdiction, but for all other practical purposes, one is a member. For example, I am listed on the membership rolls of an Orthodox parish so that I may most fully, as fully as I may at this time, participate in the life of that parish. On occasion I have been granted special voting privileges, not to sway a vote, but so that I might participate in the ratification of a decision of the parish that is important to all as a parish family.

HOWEVER the authority and responsibility for granting any dispensation, sacramentally, for example, or exacting any other judicial authority, belongs to the sui iuris authority where one is enrolled.

There are laws governing enrollment that I am not listing here but that are enumerated in the Canons, but IF one is legitimately enrolled in one jurisdiction then that is the ONLY jurisdictional authority to which that member can legitimately appeal. That assertion is governed essentially through the following Oriental Canon:


Canon 32
1. No one can validly transfer to another Church sui iuris without the consent of the Apostolic See. 2. In the case of Christian faithful of an eparchy of a certain Church sui iuris who petition to transfer to another Church sui iuris which has its own eparchy in the same territory, this consent of the Apostolic See is presumed, provided that the eparchial bishops of both eparchies consent to the transfer in writing.

There is no "common law" which says that if I spend the next seven years of my life in a parish that is part of the UGCC that I am thereby "enrolled" canonically as a member of that sui iuris jurisdiction, as long as I am already a legitimately enrolled member in ANY other sui iuris jurisdiction.

Do not confuse membership in a parish with some kind of canonical membership status. They are not equivalent at all...by law.

Eli

One does assume that the dicasteries of the Holy See act in accordance with law. It is not unheard of for the Oriental Congregation to grant permission to a Latin Catholic to transfer to "the Byzantine Rite", with no specification as to which sub-group the Holy See has in mind. Res ipsa loquitur.

Fr Serge