www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Smithtown Church & Fr. Daniel Bitsko

Gordo:

Your response to Meg is one of the most profound and concise applications of the Faith and the understanding of the application of the spiritual life to a concrete case that I have witnessed in awhile. It reminds me of a passage sent to me authored by Archbishop Averky (ROCOR) of blessed memory where he states that the Christian life is a life of being conformed to christ by suffering, penance, mortification, and metanoia.

God bless you for it. I plan to paste it into a collection of spiritual gems I have collected over the years.

The Holy Spirit has spoken in your post and I bow to His inspiration.

In Christ,

BOB

Our lay representative did not say "it is none of your business" when asked about the collection money. It was the person next to her. To Ebed Melech "thank you".

You're correct, Winston, and I apologize for my post being ambiguous. I should have made that clearer. I too would like to thank Ebed Melech for those comforting words. I have put them in a separate folder to contemplate whenever I feel "down."

Today I received the latest copy of "Eastern Catholic Life." On page 2 there is an article entitled "95 Years Remembered in Rahway." The article concerns the celebration of St. Thomas Parish's 95th anniversary; The parish was founded in 1912. Here is an excerpt from the body of the article:

"Bishop Andrew Pataki, DD, JCL served the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning in celebration of 95 years of worship and service to the community. Bishop Andrew praised the people for their faithfulness and urged them to continue that faithfulness and to reach out to others who may have drifted away or may be in need of a place to worship God. Bishop Andrew said that if each one present would encourage one more to attend, how the parish would grow."

Thank you all for your kind words about my post. I hope they have helped in some small way.

God bless,

Gordo

Glory to Jesus Christ!


Although I'm a parishioner at St. Thomas, I cannot confirm that he said this, since my family and I happened to spend that particular Sunday at the Orthodox half of the original St. John's Greek Catholic Church around the corner.

Of course, it would not surprise me -- this is precisely the kind of "listen to my words, ignore my actions" that has characterized His Grace's episcopate in Passaic from the start.

Unfortunately, and not to put to fine a point on it, the people eat it up and consider him a modest, avuncular man of God. Two cheers for democracy, eh?

In Christ,
Theophilos

"Bishop Andrew said that if each one present would encourage one more to attend, how the parish would grow."


Thats pretty much his standard line wherever he goes. I've taken it to mean "If I shut you down its your own fault."
How much more faithful can you be reaching out to the community by having a nursery, religious ed program, huge bazaar, etc? Smithtown was doing all of those things. Reaching out didn't make a whole lot of difference to Bishop Pataki in this instance. He knew what was going on there and sent someone in to specifically destroy all of those things. Actions speak much more than words.

If there were so many parishioners who were not actually caononically Byzantine Catholic (even after 30+ years) wouldn't it have been more pastoral for Fr Untereiner AND/OR Bishop Pataki to assist you to change rites rather than telling you all to get out?
How does a bishop of a church, out of one side of his mouth fluff about reaching out, and out of the other side make decisions such as those made in Smithtown, Connecticut, Florida, etc geared specifically to shut faithful Catholics out?


This un-Christian method of leadership does nothing to build up the Church of Christ, and everything to further the destruction of this church. Isn't this the exact opposite of what Christ teaches?

His wisdom is inscrutable. And not in the good sense. In the sense that it may be non-existent.