www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Orthodox to Eastern Catholic?

It seems a number of Eastern Catholics end up becoming Orthodox, but I am curious if many Orthodox become Byzantine Catholic (in the present day). And, if they do, why do they become Byzantine Catholic?

I don't mean this question to sound triumphalistic on either side, just a genuine question of curiosity.

I know of one priest who left the Orthodox Church for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church because, apparently, he became disillusioned by the jurisdictionalism within American Orthodoxy. I have no knowledge of the particulars of his case, nor do I know if he found satisfaction in his new situation.

I think there are numerous posters here that have come from the Orthodox Communion (either Eastern or Oriental) to the Catholic Communion.

I am one and became a Byzantine Catholic (through profession) after becoming disillusioned by, like the priest noted by StuartK, jurisdictionalism within American Orthodoxy. Also, the writings of JPII on the Christian East and his call to unity played a crucial role in my entering into the Catholic Communion. Ultimately, it was through prayer and asking the Holy Spirit for guidance that guided me into the Byzantine Catholic Church.

I still consider myself Orthodox but in Communion with the Roman Church.

Happy New Year and Feast of St. Basil the Great.

Like Nelson Chase, I was inspired by the magnanimous words and gestures of PJP II. What is more, I felt I had to do personally what I felt the Orthodox churches had to do as corporate bodies. I simply felt the reasons for separation were no longer there, or at least, could be worked out with more good will than was shown by many of my Orthodox brethren who, I felt, very often were under the undo influence of a rigid monasticism. Quite frankly, I found many expressions of hostility unchristian and intolerable. At my age, I just could not wait for what might come about after I am gone.

I left the Orthodox Church for one of the Eastern Catholic Churches my wife, who is a life-long Roman Catholic and I agreed on that as a compromise of sorts. She was unwilling to leave the Catholic Church. However, she agreed to our worshiping in an Eastern Catholic Church and to raising our children as Eastern Catholics. Since I do not agree with the exclusionary claims made by some on either the Catholic or Orthodox sides, and because-having been raised Protestant-I don't see the doctrinal differences between the Catholic and the Orthodox to be that big of a deal, it was an easy change for me to make. To be perfectly honest, I would have personally preferred to have remained Orthodox, but I did not want my children to be raised with parents in a "mixed" marriage.

In the interest of fairness, I must point out that one can certainly find "expressions of hostility" that are "unchristian and intolerable" directed to the Orthodox by some Catholics. Listen to so-called traditionalist Catholics discuss the Orthodox, and you will sooner or later (probably sooner) discover that the Orthodox are hell-bound heretics who shoulder the entire blame for the greatest schism in the history of Christianity.

The problem is that you listen to the so called "traditional Catholics" who are not, in fact, Catholic at all but off on some planet that spun out of orbit decades if not centuries ago. I have never heard a negative word about Orthodox among people whom I would consider Roman Catholic. Of course, having met a few "traditional Catholics" years ago, I have made it a point to avoid them like the plague, which, of course, in my opinion they are.

Predanije:

Christ is Born!! Glorify Him!!

A man's (or woman's) pilgrimage is a very personal thing. Why one moves form one place to another is as mysterious, IMHO, as the reason Abraham abandoned his father, his extended family, and everything he had as a support structure in his life to follow the call of a God he could not see but believed in with his whole being.

Certainly it is not an easy thing to move from one's childhood upbringing to another totally different place. One experiences the hostility of family and friends; the suspicion of the new place; and the nagging doubts that must accompany this type of soul searching and moving on that painful decision. But conscience and the Voice of God deep within one's being will not be silenced, nor will it be ignored. Unless you have experienced this thing and lived it out, you may never understand it.

We can come to some surface answers that will satisfy the curious, but ultimately this movement is an intensely personal response to the Holy Spirit calling so deep within one's being that the reference in the Gospel to the Holy Spirit praying within one's being with "unutterable groans" will be the only explanation. It will alwyas be a mystery difficult to explain to those around the one called.

Whether one moves from Orthodox to Catholic or from Catholic to Orthodox, the struggle is there.

Now, admittedly, there are those who are fleeing rather than approaching and you may encounter this, but this is a different phenomenon that sometimes finds a person disenchanted. But a genuine conversion experience is a movement of grace and the response to the call of Divine Providence Who wills that all of us be saved.

In Christ,

Bob

Another reason for changing from Eastern Catholic to Orthodox or vice versa is the non-availability of one's preferred Church. As the Eastern Churches are in the minority across the nation one may choose to belong to a different but similar church out of necessity.

While I am not technically of this camp, as I was not previously a member of the Orthodox Church, I feel like I am. I have always been drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy and attended the GO church, but never joined it. This is mainly, I think in hindsight, because although I am half Greek, I was not raised Greek, and although I felt partly at home and connected to the ethnically Greek part of the church, I also felt equally an outsider. I don't speak the language, and thus missed out on portions of the Liturgy, and wasn't 100% connected to the church culturally. I never even considered the OCA as it didn't seem as "authentic". Not a fair description I know, but it was my honest feeling. But I still felt a very strong pull towards and connection with Eastern spirituality and theology.

My fiancee is Roman Catholic, and after we met and grew serious in our relationship, it became clear that I would need to make a move East or West (I was raised Anglican). I didn't feel comfortable in the Roman Catholic Church (and still don't, to be honest) but the idea of being in separate churches didn't appeal to either one of us. Through some research (largely initially via this website and forum) I became aware of the Byzantine Catholic Church, and I will be an Eastern Catholic when we are crowned this summer.

It took some very serious scrutiny of how an Eastern Church fits into the greater Catholic Church, and I definitely feel that there is a lot of work that still needs to be done there, but I have also come to appreciate my role as an Eastern Christian who is living in anticipation of and looking forward to the day when we are once again in communion with our Eastern brothers and sisters. The idea of being a small part of that - by living an authentic and uncompromising Eastern faith in the Catholic Church - is something that edifies me in a way that I haven't felt in a long, long time.

Born ethnic members of either rarely switch now and when they do it's like most other people, for marriage.

The traffic is a convert thing; I don't know how much each way.

From 10 years of reading these boards it seems a few convert Greek Catholics get fed up and 'dox after a couple of years. A few come back, a few burn out and drop out, and a few convert to something completely different but as one blogger noted, they never seem to revert to evangelical Protestantism.

JJP,

Thanks for sharing a bit of your journey. I enjoyed reading it. Also, that last paragraph is really beautiful, and if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to repost it on Facebook and other places because it resonates with me and reflects much of my own journey.

Blessings to you, my brother.

-Scott

That is kind of you, thanks By all means do!

Blessings in kind,

Josh

They complain about everyone who is not on their boat, so don't feel they are singling out the Orthodox. They don't like other Roman Catholics either. They think the post-Vatican II Catholic Church is questionable at best, along with the Pauline Mass.

The reaction to Eastern Catholic Churches varies among traditionalists though. Some welcome the very traditional practices of Eastern Churches, while for others the TLM is the only valid Liturgy of the Church. The funniest thing is these traditionalists will never accept a Mass in anything other than Latin, but readily accepts the Divine Liturgy in English.

Fr. Schimdberger, the de facto theologian for the SSPX, declared as much at an address I attended (which is in full print at http://www.sspx.org/discussions/fr_schimdbergers_talk.htm ). I politely walked out after he declared the Orthodox were heretics because of their refusal to accept the Filoque amongst other polemical statements. "They are schismatics and even, to a certain point, heretics". I won't forget that statement and that was the last time I was at any sort of SSPX-sponsored event.