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There's nothing particularly Roman or Western about the absence of incense, altar servers or a choir. All those things belong properly to both Eastern and Western traditions. Wherever they are missing, they need to be brought back ASAP!

I agree ASAP!.

Hard to do when certain bishops frown upon the practice and make their displeasure all too well known.

Then those Bishops should be brought into to question as to whether they are truly Eastern Bishops or Pro-Roman Rite Bishops. If the latter than letters to Rome explaining their not keeping with their liturgical traditions and the damage they are doing to the spirituality of Eastern Catholics.

It is you who have said it.

Being utterly ignorant of the Slavic-Greek Catholic Churches, I'm wondering how severe this situation actually is. In our city we have Melkite (of which I am a member), Ukrainian, and Ruthenian parishes, but aside from the Ruthenian priest occaisionally serving in place of our priest I've not dealt with much outside of the Middle Eastern community.

Just some background: Our priest has concelebrated with a Syriac Orthodox priest on a number of occaisions, once with Sayedna Cyril presiding at the Liturgy. We have several Eastern Orthodox families in the parish, and several Orthodox are on our parish Council. Obviously our Bishop is quite comfortable with the Orthodox, and our priest has had good relations with them as well. In our case the "coldness" seems to be more from the Orthodox hierarchies' side, but I wouldn't say that there's overt conflict.

My question is basically this: how does our situation differ from that of the Slavo-centered Churches? Is there a strong tendency, even on the part of the hierarchs, to intentionally create division between Orthodox and Catholics? How does the membership of "Latin Trads in exile" (I've only seen them in the Ruthenian parish locally) affect these parishes' relations with Eastern Orthodox? This is all pretty interesting to me as an outsider.

Peace and God bless!

I wish to tell my experience that I had with a Greek Orthodox Priest. When I told the priest I felt God was calling me to enter communion with the Catholic Church (which took me many months of soul searching and prayer) I was sent email after email telling me of the spiritual danger I was in. That I would be excommunicated and that since I had been thinking of this while still actively attending a Greek parish (and receiving the mysteries) that I was in grave sin.

So while some Greek Orthodox Churches may have good relationships with Greek Catholics it has been not the case in mine. I wish this wasn't the case, since I feel that I am Orthodox in Communion with Rome but just what happened to me. What really hurt me is that the priest was and is a good priest who I like and respect. It hurt me greatly.

Of course I am hopeful in the future for a growth in relations with the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Orthodox Church and I don't think whath happened to me is the norm.

Well, most Greek Orthodox parishes don't have much of any relationship with Greek Catholics, because they do not have any significant Greek Catholic counterpart Church (there is a miniscule "Hellenic Catholic Church" with two parishes and about 2500 members in Greece). Similarly, there are very few Russian Catholic churches (three in this country, I think) to which ROCOR parishes might relate.

On the other hand, in this country most of the OCA can trace its origins to the exodus of Greek Catholic parishes in the late 1890s (due to the imposition of clerical celibacy). Same thing can be said for ACROD, which absorbed about 80,000 Ruthenian Greek Catholics who left in the 1930s, again over clerical celibacy. And the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the United States likewise owes its existence to the exodus of Ukrainian Greek Catholics. What you will find, because of the schisms revolving around these Churches, is families with members on both sides. It is not unusual, in fact, to find families in which one brother is an Orthodox priest or deacon, and the other is a Greek Catholic priest or deacon. Under such circumstances, it's hard to keep up the hostility level.

The Melkites didn't contribute much in the way of numbers to the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese (most of their growth is due to Protestant converts), but the Melkites have always had close relations with the Orthodox in the Middle East.

I'm pretty sure that if you had dealt with any one of these Orthodox jurisdictions, you may have gotten a different response--though, mind you, a Greek Catholic priest might very well give you a similar spiel if you told him you were leaving for the Orthodox Church. They don't reward these guys for losing members.

It's not often that Stuart and I see eye to eye, but I'm with him on this and find Serge's characterization very much at odds with the situation as I know it - and I'm not limiting my observation to Arab Christians.

Many years,

Neil

A mini-Chornock split over the revised Divine Liturgy?

Wonderful to hear that some parishioners of St Nicholas OCA Cathedral in DC are friendly with Epiphany.

In my experience born Greek Catholics of all ages when there's no church of their own and sometimes even when there is (after they've switched to the modern Roman Rite at university) go to the local modern Roman Rite parish.

As for brothers who are clergy on each side I know of (but have never met) one instance of that (and AFAIK they're converts not Slavs). I'd say it's unusual.

The resistance of Greek Catholic bishops to ecumenical contact with the Orthodox reflects most of their people. As I and then Stuart wrote of Greek Orthodox, most of the time they have no contact with the other side ecclesiastically.

Again in my experience the Slav situation is very different to the Arab.

Regarding Latin traditionalists in exile, refugee Roman Riters are fine folk who've revived a few Greek Catholic parishes where the Slav population is thin. If they're really trads and in an old-line Slav Greek Catholic parish they wouldn't affect local relations with the Orthodox because there weren't any to begin with. Neither the old-time members nor the newcomers are interested in it.

But if the newcomers are non-trad but conservative Roman Catholics, as I wrote earlier they often try to follow the Pope both on being ecumenical and on Eastern Catholics being Eastern so they might try to start some ecumenical contact to share the spirituality as someone wrote.

How is pointing out that only converts or the relatively recently theologically trained in the Greek Catholic churches have anything to do with the local Orthodox 'running down converts'? I never said it was bad - the opposite really.

Sorry, Nelson, but that was understandable given the two sides' competing one-true-church claims.

I can speak to the situation in the Scranton area of Northeast Pa. For years, there has been a regular, ongoing, monthly luncheon of Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic clergy. Unfortunately, I cannot attend because I have a regular day job situated 20 miles away in the wrong direction. My wife volunteers in our rectory 3 days a week, and confirms that our pastor regularly attends the luncheon, and rides to it with a local, retired OCA priest who lives around the block from our parish. Been here 9 years +. Relationships between Orthodox and Greek Catholics here are quite cordial, and this includes local ROCOR parishes, all of which jumped from OCA with the calendar change. When I think about it, as a transplant to the area, I can say that my closest friendships formed in the last nine years are with Orthodox clergy and laity. They all do state their desire that reunification of Orthodoxy and Catholicism should happen sooner rather than later. However, from my personal experience, our (Ruthenian Greek Catholic) new English translation of the Liturgy has proven to be a "fly in the ointment". The above retired OCA priest, when I showed him our new liturgicon, at first commented that he liked the big print, but then, as he read on, he asked me why we were having this problem with gender issues.

Dn. Robert

In the Washington area, Greek Catholics and Orthodox commingle quite freely. We are a minority of a minority, and naturally gravitate towards each other. Ethnic ties go a long way--we frequent each others' parish festivals--as does a shared spiritual and liturgical heritage. Once people begin to meet each other socially, it's a small step to visiting each others' churches and building those pesky bridges that aren't supposed to exist.

Great to hear things are friendly in NE Pa. and DC.

A revised liturgy with 'gender issues' rather proves the point that America's Greek Catholic authorities identify with the modern Roman Rite in practice and not with the Orthodox: the modern version of taking down the iconostasis and putting up statues.

I was going to say: cosmopolitan DC with lots of transplants doesn't really represent the population we're talking about, AFAIK older folk still mostly in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

But, to be blunt, the future of the Church isn't in dying rustbelt states like Ohio and Pennsylvania (whose population losses generally parallel the decline in the size of parishes across the region). It lies with parishes outside the "Old Country" that are full of young and enthusiastic families. These young people came out of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they brought their faith with them. And because they were not sufficiently numerous on their own to support viable parishes, they had to be more open to people who were "not Nas". The Church is growing outside the heartland, even as it dies back there. My previous analogy to the creosote bush holds.

The exception to the rule is Florida, "home of the newly wed and the nearly dead". A lot of the people who used to populate our churches in the rustbelt are now down there, happily retired. But not too many of their parishes are working hard to reach beyond the supply of octogenarians coming from the North.

Demography is destiny, always. Parishes that have more baptisms than funerals will live. Those that have more funerals than baptisms will die. "Tomorrow belongs to me!"

I'm startled by the lack of this. Here, the relations are cordial, as they were in DuBois (with an Orthodox bishop even attending a funeral at the Byzantine Catholic Church).

I hear of the hostile behaviors, and scratch my head.


Again, we're a quite mixed parish. A slight Roman Catholic (or former Roman) majority, with multiple kinds of Orthodox, and several different kinds of Eastern Catholic.

Anyway, afaik, we have only one parishioner who has spent time with the "Trad Lats," and his was more about values, reverent liturgy, etc.

We did have a couple visit recently. We were hospitable, but a couple of us had to correct them a couple of times (no, the Tridentine liturgy is not 1500 years old, and no, our RC members are not fleeing the new Mass.) They didn't receive communion, and when invited for refreshments, they couldn't stay as they were rushing to their schismatic parish . . .

Those actually fleeing the new Mass don't seem to stick around. [Our prior priest told of having been approached after liturgy by visitors, who told them that their priest had said that they could come there when he was absent, as they still had valid sacraments {as opposed to to NO Masses}. He asked them why, if the Sacraments were invalid when he celebrated in his own rite (Roman), they were suddenly valid when he served them in an eastern rite? He never heard from them again.]

Anyway, what I was leading to is that I'm not certain that someone merely showing up as a "Second Best" to a Latin liturgy that they can't find, and who insists that the NO Mass is invalid, would make a good parishioner anyway . . .

hawk