www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Evangelization in the Byzantine Catholic Church

My cousin contemplated joining the Roman Catholic church and visited one community, but found it dead. Even something as petty as personal greetings was too much to expect. He ended up introducing himself, but hardly anyone wanted to talk. For those who did hang around after worship, they looked strangely at him when he asked about Jesus. The music was poorly planned and executed. The homily was mostly about the one giving it. People complained about the lenght of the Mass (45 minutes) and that it just so happened to go over this limit by at least five minutes.

Then my cousin visited another Roman Catholic church in another community and was warmly welcomed, introduced to other members of the church, had coffee with several familes at a social which is held at this church after every Sunday service, and was astonished at how many loved to talk about Jesus, the Bible, about God in their lives. He ended up contributing to their food drive to help the poor and the soup kitchen which they assist in another church. They also have a large convert class this year preparing for Baptism. The singing was uplifting and joyful. Mass was almost twice as long as the other community and no one stood around complaining. They were on so much fire that a good number hung around inside the church still praying!

Now, both were communities of the same church, though different locations, but one was dead and the other was alive. The former consolidated its church services due to lack of people; the latter was standing room only and recently began a parish mission outreach. Both worshipped God using the same service or mass and both had the eucharistic bread and wine. I would imagine that both thought that God was present.

How does the Byzantine Catholic church evangelize? Is it involved in missions to non-Christians? What activities does this evangelization/mission entail? I know prayer is wonderful and necessary, but one can pray all one wants, God can grant us spiritual rewards, but converts can still be chased away by one's actions or lack of actions.

Ed

This is a good question Ed! Our new Bishop is coming to visit are Church soon. If time permits I plan on asking him these same questions. When I get the answer I will let you know.

Sinner
Ray

Honestly Ed? With no rancor or bitterness, just attempting personal honesty, to answer your question "How does the Byzantine Catholic church evangelize?" I must say "very poorly."

As Father Serge mentioned earlier this week, there is no shame in being a little but faithful flock. But as +NICHOLAS (Melkites) (in town for a mission) told us today, as we look inward with an ethnic focus of having "our church" for "our people" celebrating "our traditions" we fail, and do so miserably. We yoke the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to that which is extraneous to our detriment. Be baptized into Christ and (insert ethnicity here).

+NICHOLAS got into no small amount of trouble (by his own admission!) a few years back when he said just that in no uncertain terms to a gathering of Ukrainainian Greek Catholics who were rather mixed in their reception of it with some finding it very reasonable, and some wanting to know "Who the hell invited him!"

My own parish is benefitting from a prayerful inward examination of where we intend to be in the next few decades and how we can reach some of the hundreds of thousands (which is accurate enough in a city of 700K+) people who are unchurched.

If we are going to he honest with ourselves, throughout the whole of the Eastern Christian community - Orthodox & Catholic - in the US, much shrinking has occured. Ordaining bi-vocational priests who will serve small and shrinking parishes expecting no compensastion from the parish is making some places look - through their proliferation of clergy - much more vibrant. But the massive hemoraging of the second and third generation non-ethnic grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are going Roman, "Church of the Holy Roller", or "Church of the Sunday afternoon sleep-in followed by the Sunday paper & Donuts" is no longer up for debate. It is happening, pure and simple, and no community is immune.

I would be (un)happy to introduce anyone who thinks it isn't so to some two dozen people I know of in this city with Greek, Rusyn, Ukrainian, Armenian, Syrian, etc grandparents who are now practicing NO faith or attending Evangelical churches. (There are 50+ student members of the university Ukrainian club in town. Exactly ONE of them comes to our parish. Maybe by some statistical anomaly all the rest are Orthodox and going to the OCA parish. Anyone want to put money on that?) People who believe that these folks who marry up (or otherwise make babies) with folks from other ethnic groups are going to have children who one day magically want to "reconnect with Catholocism/Orthodoxy" while embracing an ethnic heritage that is vague or alien to them are smoking "the good stuff."

My challenge to Eastern Christians of all stripes is to be generous in service and open in welcoming members of the community. Even tiny churches can have soup kitchens, support charities, and serve the community, adopt mission parishes in other lands. I am aware of an African RC parish that needs $1,022.20 (Or The Cost of 330 Big Macs) [blog.ancient-future.net]to put a roof on the church they just built for 1,260 Catholic faithful. Orthodox of course have parishes in Africa: [ocmc.org] Uganda, Madagascar, Kenya and Indonesia, and we both have them in parts of Eastern Europe that are DESPERATELY poor. To support them and "only" ask they pray for us in return would yield much. Are we doing that?

Once people believe that the parish "is too small to worry about others" or "doesn't need THOSE people" pack it up and go home. Just forget about it. Really, at that point you are just hedging your bets that the parish will be open long enough for your funeral. After that, what would it matter? That is selfish vanity.

Sorry the post is so long. And I apologize for my tone (but NOT my content) if I offend anyone. I don't mean to do so, but hearing my old home-town parish is down to under 50 people on an average sunday, seeing my current parish "maintaining" and not remembering the last time their was a wedding at our parish or a baptism of a baby NOT born to the two families with 5+ children in the parish (fertility "rates" being what they are)... I also can't speak of any notable influx of converts to Orthodoxy or Catholicism that was not essentially "flock switching"...

Well pondering all this has given me some melancholy. Our liturgy is gorgeous and truly Divine. If we keep it a secret or put barriers between the non-believers/unbaptized and Faith, it will only serve to keep us small AND shrinking.

-Simple

Simple Sinner,

You painted a picture of a church in desperate need to survive. If this is the general tone of the Byzantine Catholic churches, then it looks like Doomsday will cometh sooner than later. Evangelization and mission are luxuries that could not be afforded.

My aunt says that her church attendance is down to around 100 people. The joy is gone and no one sings. My interest in the RDL that has gained so much attention and become so much of a controversy is to understand why it had to happen if it was only helping to close the coffin before the body got cold.

I know looks can be deceiving, but when a worshipping community gives the impression that THEY don't want to be there then what makes outsiders want to be there? If I went to a restaurant and the waitress and cook both told me not to eat there --- my next decision and action would be obvious.

I have a hard time believing that it is God who is chasing away people - even people who were born into the church as Byzantine Catholics. What could be so detestable?

Ed

Ed,

I honestly can't tell you why it (the RDL) had to happen. I don't know myself. I have suspicions, but I am no insider and for me to air them here would be (again for me) wreckless.

For any number of reasons some have latched onto the RDL as being the source of all bad things. Rumor has it, if you listen to some, that it causes Ozone depletion, a rise in gasoline prices, and previously friendly pet dogs grow mean...

The RDL has been discussed at length here and one could spend a few weeks just reading the archived debate, let alone taking a partisan stance one way or another and debating it.

POINT #1
Now I will grant it has made things none the easier. In fact some wonder why it was made such a priority at this time. (I am one of them). I will also grant that some left our parish over it. But in our parish, those that did were actually (by and large) Latins who had hung out with us for a decade or two and high-tailed it over to the Tridentine Masses offered in town when it was promulgated, being heard to mutter "Vatican II is bad, mmmmmkay". Taking it as a sign of Providence it was time for them to return from the land of refuge back to the Roman empire they left.

The funny thing is, on the books, when they departed, we lost NO members. They never canonically switched ritual churches! From there we could discuss what it tells us that they were not so invested that they wanted to fight for a liturgy that sustained some of them for a couple of decades... Once the MP freeing up the TLM was released, the all remembered where their Trid. missals were, dusted them off, and never looked back. So much for that.

POINT #2
These things I speak of have been a problem in the Eastern Christianity BEFORE the RDL, and in places that did not have an RDL. The parish in my hometown that is under 50 communicants a Sunday is about 15 minutes from the Ukie parish, whose services have not changed, but whose numbers have not been better. If it were just the RDL, it would stand to reason that all other Eastern Christians (Byzantine & Oriental, Catholic & Orthodox)would be fairing far better... But where massive immigration has not been experienced, this is just not the case.

Father Hopko speaks of similar difficulties in the OCA in the " Hopko Letter [orthodoxnet.com] " where he even notes:

• the virtual reduction of church life among many clergy to liturgical services and ritual practices,
• the virtual reduction of supra-parochial church life to liturgical services, ecclesiastical celebrations and social events
  
• our church's failure to attract American born Orthodox young people to our seminaries and monasteries (for if we did not have the converts, those born abroad, and the clergy children that we do in our seminaries and monasteries, we would have almost no seminarians and monastics at all!)
  
• dioceses that have fewer members than their cathedral churches alone had 50 years ago
  
• the point where a church of 200 people is considered to be large

Think I am bashing the OCA? I am not - every one of Father Thomas' concerns listed here, and several more in the link (take time to read it) are pressing problems for the BCC.

The Greek kid I worked with who does not go to church at all, and the Chaldean gal I worked with who is "just a Christian" (Evangelical) can't be said to have made decisions based on what was going on in the BCC.

If anything, it made a bad situation worse, but it alone does not address the root causes that are affecting us all.

POINT #3
I risk crucifixtion for saying this, but having been away from the practice of any faith for half a decade up until two years ago, I am grateful to be back and be receiving the mysteries, even if it is using the RDL. Even with the RDL, grace can be received, I receive absolution, I receive the Eucharist, I can pray, I can have joyful hope for the world to come. Given the choice between traveling back to dark days of rejecting God's friendship (which I all too readily did) versus struggling with some revisions and music, my choice is clear.

The situation is not hopeless... There are parishes that have a missionary spirit. There are places where there is some growth.

Really, we will continue to exist for some time to come - dozens and dozens of newly ordained deacons who could end up being bi-vocational priests, bi-ritual priests, and a likely disinterest on the part of the Vatican in suppressing us canonically assures that we will have - minimally - small chapels in some places for a good time to come. Is that all we want? Does that satisfy me? NO.

When we sing "God grant you many years" it isn't a blessing we request for someone so that they can have the joy of long life for the sake of a long life. Better to die a saint at 12 than a sinner at 112! It is a prayer that they have the years they need to repent of sins, grow in theosis, and prepare rightly for the next life.

We aren't in desperate need to survive. Like Gloria Gaynor, "we will survive"! But we have the little matter of what Jesus commanded - it was "Go therefore and teach all nations" or "Go ye therefore and set up the traditions of your people in foreign lands and survive?"

If we aren't out there evangelizing and teaching all nations - one at a time, our neighbors, our grandkids, the neighbor's grandkids. Preserving and holding onto this treasure so tighly, quietly, and selfishly may just backfire and invite condemnation on us.

To whom much has been given...

I recognize the first quote, but not the second. Maybe the focus on the latter at the expense of the former was what got the BCC into this mess?

Ed

Ed, the foucus on the latter quote is having devastating effects on all Eastern Christian communities in the US. It isn't isolated to the BCC. I am trying to make that as clear as possible without screaming it, but the sad truth is, it is affecting UCCC, UOC, OCA, Melkites, Armenians, Maronites, and many more just the same as it is us. It isn't a "BCC-only" difficulty. Why do you almost seem determined to couch it in terms that make it sound unique to the BCC?

Because I was only discussing Evangelization in the Byzantine Catholic Church. I never mentioned the UCCCC, UOC, OCA -- ??? you did. But thanks for pointing out that it is a phenomenon common to other Eastern churches. Now that the problem has been identified, what would you say would be the solution?

Ed

Fortunately for everyone involved, I am not in charge...

Off the top of my head, not wanting to write a manifesto - some of the following occurs to me:

• An honest assesment of our current decline - actually TALKED about from the pulpit and in the bishop's letters
• Point blank ask the faithful what would be more painful: no more (Ukrainian/Arabic/Slavonic/Other) or no more PARISH. English-only speaking grandkids whose one Greek-cath by birth parent doesn't speak (Ukrainian/Arabic/Rusyn/Other)to his/her Irish spouse doesn't learn, by Holy Osmosis a non-English lang once a week.
• An honest assesment of service even small communities need to do for the greater community. Fundraising just for the parish needs, the bishop's appeal, or to an ethnic benevolent fund is NOT looking outward. Much as I do NOT agree with some of the beliefs and praxis of the Episcopal Church, around here, some parishes as small or smaller than your avg BCC parish help run food pantries, soup kitchens, etc.
• Public prayer and mention in sermons that converts are needed. Don't just waive at your neighbor as you get in your car to go to church - ask him/her if he wants to come with you. He/she may say "yes"... don't know that till you ask!
• We all know a priest who preaches about vocations is a vague sort of way. Many don't even do that. We need one or two sundays a year for the priest to say "we have 79 priests, we actually need 85, we have 1 seminarian this year. We need more. I am planning a roat trip to visit the sem on (DATE), see me afterwards to go see it"
• If priests or laity see someone who may make a good deacon, ask him if he has thought about it. Ditto for priest. Ditto for nun. Ditto for monk. Ditto for cantor. etc, etc.
• Pastors, tell the flock that the first thing they ask a newcomer to the parish SHOULD NOT be "What's your last name?" If I had a dollar for everytime I heard that one! Some days I will explain what my maternal grandmother's maiden name was. Anymore, I don't feel like it. My last name is common to Scots and Irish. What does that tell ANYONE? Does it matter?
• Non ("Ethnic group X") spouses should not be "tolerated" - they should be welcomed. My French-Canadian (maternal) family first cousin married the son of a Greek Catholic father whose mother DID NOT go to the Greek Catholic parish - his dad went alone. My cousin has NO INTEREST in an ethnic club parish. She married him, not 50% of his ethnicity. Little secret? Wives will insist on another church (Latin with a school!), husbands will just NOT go to church. I don't know why that is, moms veto, dad's sit sunday out.

Certainly much smarter men and women than I putting their heads together could come up with a far superior list of suggestions.

If I were bishop - an indignity you all have 0% chance of ever having to suffer - I would hit the ground running and set crazy goals. If you are (Lord have mercy on them!) crazy enough to become a bishop, don't go halfway - be 110% crazy and announce that you want to expand the missions, see growth, ordain oodles of deacons, support monasteries, adopt a mission parish to support somewhere, and (why not?) build a school! You may not be able to, but if you don't set your goals ridiculously high, how will you know they are ridiculous?

Acting like there is no problem isn't cutting it.

I think there are Eastern Catholic churches that thrive even though the have an ethnic presence. Just vist St. Elias Church in Brampton, Ontario.



Ung

And no one doubts or disputes that some do.

Examining when that peaks, and what is being done about the second and third gen, or the spouses that married in, is what I am talking about.

I have known some third gen Ukies that still speak it in the home, and have an interest in meeting others of the same or similar situation. No doubt it happens...

Father Pavlo Hayda of blessed memory gave a speech a few years back where it was mentioned that 80% of the descendants of Ukrainians Greek Catholics had - over the course of generations - taken their business elsewhere.

What I would like to know about Brampton:

• What efforts are made to accomadate spouses?
• What efforts are made to accomadate families where the kids aren't learning the ethnic language?
• What is the size of the larger general population of that ethnic community in that area and what percentage of the population of same is in attendence?
• Can souls wearing bodies with a different ethnic DNA who do not marry in, find a place in this parish to receive the mysteries without special additional effort to adopt the dom ethnicity?

Can some here speak up and dispute, agree, or deal with these issues?

The talk of ethnic issues and ethnic preservaion on here is manifold. When this quarter-ethnic-revert speaks up and talks about the 600 pound gorilla, the silence is deafening.

I am frustrated by the shear silence on these matters and how so many are ignoring that we are running on the borrowed time of an ethnic juggernaugt that is largely aging and losing steam. When the 60-somethings still supporting my home-parish (I live elsewhere now) die, so will the parish. What does that give it a decade?

And that is NOT unique to that parish OR to Greek Catholics...

We spend a lot of time bantering about a lot of things. This killer seems to invite ONLY deafening silence.

Archbishop Joseph (Tawil), of blessed memory, spoke of the twin dangers of assimiliation and ghettoization more than 30 years ago. His words [melkite.com] remain as relevant today as they were then.

Many years,

Neil

Ecumenism is the main cause of this problem, which also effects the Roman Catholic Church. East and West used to unofficially teach that those who left the Church and became Protestant (or totally secularized) would likely go to hell. The modern Church unofficially teaches that those outside the Church are likely to also go to heaven. This leads the uncatechized laity to conclude that all 'Christians' are the same, so, why go the a 'church' that has requirements when one can go to one that only has entertainment and 'you-fill-in-the-blank' requirements. This is 'cafeteria Christianity'.

The Church (I speak of this as the Roman Catholics and Orthodox) used to be too much stick and no carrot. Now, there is too much carrot and little, if any, stick. We need to return to a more balanced approach.

Some Orthodox churches in this country are in decline, but some are doing quite well in terms of growth. It's a matter of priorities and focus. Where you put your energy, you're likely to reap the benefits.