www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Starting a community/mission from scratch

Hello folks,

A while back I posted on here inquiring about the status of eastern Catholicism in my state of Vermont. Thank you again to everyone who participated in that thread. The bottom line was though, that there is no solid presence in the state. Several of my friends and I were talking the other day about how people go about trying to start a mission.

Here are some of the factors. We're all technically Latins but we worship with Melkites in our home states. We have talked with others who have expressed interest in seeing some kind of Melkite community in Vermont.

So I guess what I'm asking is what is the proper procedure to initiate the process of starting a community/mission? As Latins, can we even do so?

In order to establish interest could we set up a website? If so, what would the proper way to phrase it be? Something like "Vermont Melkite Catholic Association" or something similar?

Thank you and God Bless,

-VTCatholic

You can and should begin by meeting and praying together to discern the will of God in your plan. Since you are all Latin it might be useful to start a study/prayer group that would spend some time studying Eastern Christian/Catholic beliefs and traditions. Good study resources are available from a number of sources. You could form this as a Meetup group and call it something like the Vermont Eastern Catholic Study group.

I wouldn't limit it to Melkites since you are probably going to need the help and support of all the Eastern Catholics (Byzantines, UGCC etc.) in the area to get a critical mass.

Once you have gotten your group together and made a formal commitment to each other to proceed contact the nearest Melkite parish and visit with the Priest. He will probably have to agree to sponsor you and will probably have to conduct the Divine Liturgy. There aren't a lot of priests sitting around with nothing to do so finding a cooperative and enthusiastic sponsor can go a long way toward success.

Start looking for someplace to meet. A lot of places just aren't very good for the Eastern Catholic Liturgy. A lot of churches are not available when you want to meet and a lot are just not very amenable to the Divine Liturgy.

You will need to find a choir or a competent cantor. Eastern Christian Liturgy can't be done without some way of leading the singing. Since you all are Latin this might be the biggest obstacle.

You and your Priest/mentor will probably want to serve Divine Liturgy regularly (once or twice a month) for a while to make sure that there is a sufficient level of interest and commitment. A lot of people are excited until the find out how much work is involved. My experience is that a priest does not want to get involved if there are only people who want to get together and have a nice cozy liturgy. Our priest specifically stated that we would have to commit to being evangelical and working toward establishment of a permanent parish before he was willing to invest himself in the project.

Becoming a mission is a formal step that you don't need to go through until you have established your presence. We have been meeting for about six months as the San Antonio Byzantine Catholic community. We will pursue being a mission when we have established enough stability and permanence to warrant that designation.

You can also listen to Fr. Rochelle's blog on establishing a mission on Ancient Faith Radio. It can be a trying project but good luck and my the peace of the Lord be on you efforts.

Musings on Mission [ancientfaith.com]

Shlomo (Peace in Syriac-Aramaic) VTCatholic,

You are so lucky to have people who want to start a Church in an Apostolic Tradition that Vermont has not seen. Here are some ideas that may help you.

1. Contact: St. Rafka Retreat, Spiritual and Youth Center
6420 Route 116
Shelburne, Vermont 05482-7191
Phone: 802 660-2528
FAX: 802 660-0868

Even though they are Maronites like myself, they can help you in this journey.

2. Contact: Most Holy Trinity Monastery [maronitemonks.org]
67 Dugway Rd
Petersham, MA 01366
508 724-3347
Liturgical Schedule:
Daily Liturgy at 7:00 AM
Sunday at 8:30 AM

It where founded by Latin Catholics that sought to live, pray and express their Love of God in an Eastern Catholic (in this case Maronite) format.

3. Contact the Melkite Eparchy of Newton [melkite.org]
Chancery & Eparchial Residence
3 VFW Parkway
West Roxbury, MA 02132
(617) 323-9922

Let them know that you wish to found a mission following their Holy Tradition and would like help in organizing. You maybe supprised to find that there are Melkites in Vermont but they were waiting for someone to organize them. Along with that contact the Latin Diocese that covers Vermont. Have them put out a notice that a Melkite Parish is organizing and that Catholics of a Middle Eastern background are encouraged to register with you. Some will be Maronite, some Syriac others Melkite. By having this list you can give them a chance to find their spiritual roots.

Also, you can find out the minimum that would be needed to have a formal mission established.

4. Contact the pastor and members of the parish council of:

Our Lady Of The Cedars [ourladyofcedars.org]
140 Mitchell Street
Manchester, NH 03103
Tel.: (603) 623-8944 Fax: (603) 645-6017
email: oloc.church@verizon.net
Rev. Thomas P. Steinmetz, Pastor
Rt. Rev. Andre St. Germain

They are right next door and their parish is the model that yours will become. Further since they have two priests in residence one can come and preform Divine Liturgy for your group.

5. Create an Eastern Catholic library in your local. Subscribe to Sophia, the Melkite formal Newsletter. Also a must have in my book is Eastern Churches Journal published by Eastern Christian Publications [ecpubs.com]. They can provide you all with great information on the Eastern Churches.

6. Stay in contact with this board. The members here are great resources in themselves, and we all are willing to help where we can.

7. Contact the Maronite Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon [eparchy.org]
1021 S. 10th St.
St. Louis, MO 63104

They have published A Practical Guide to Evangelization for Eastern Catholic Parishes
written by Anthony T. Dragani and myself. The booklets are free from the Eparchy and it will give you some ideas on growing your mission. The Guide [melkite.org] in almost the same format is at on the Melkite website at the link provided.

I will stop here because I do not wish to overwhelm you, but this should help you decern the direction you want to go as well as give you practical ways to get your dreams off the ground.

Fush BaShlomo (Stay in Peace),
Yuhannon

VTCatholic - your PM limit has been exceeded. Have you contacted Fr. Robert at Protection of the Mother of God (UGCC) in Manchester (NH)? He has been involved with some of our mission parishes in the past.

VTCatholic,

We have the same intention here. But we here have no Eastern Catholic parish at all. And most of people will relate Catholicism with Roman/Latin Catholic.

We are all Latins. We set up a study group to know more about EC of all traditions (Melkite, UGCC, Maronite, etc etc) and to exercise the prayers in Eastern tradition (with focus to Byzantine). Usually we meet every 2 weeks, and we discuss many things, share many things, praying the Akathist to Theotokos, practising the chants for Liturgy, etc. According to our experience, belief or not, Theotokos through the Akathist prayer does help us many many many times. We are open to all traditions of EC, with commitment to bring Melkite Catholic to our homeland, hopefully someday we will have a Melkite Catholic mission here. We choose Melkite in consideration that most of the people are Moslems, and they arabicphile (tend to love and receive anything arabic easily). One thing, a Roman Catholic priest supports us.

1 of our members who is taking his master degree in USA has canonically transfered from RC to Melkite Cath. Next year he will come back to strengthen the study group.

1 of the members has proposed to have canon transfer from RC to Melkite Cath. We hope that the transfer will be realised soon.

We have contacted the Melkite Catholic Eparchy of Australia and New Zealand (H.G. Issam John Darwish), and waiting for the new bishop. We have come to the Latin Archdiocese here, and thanks to God, by the prayer of Panagia, that They don't resist us and promise to support us. They gave us some points as advice.

Since we have no EC parish at all here, so we have many things from the Orthodox parishes here. And we exercise the Eastern traditions “formally” in the Orthodox parishes here. To be Orthodox in communion with Rome. Of course this practice needs strong loyalty and careful wise. Starting missionary ministry needs a great passion, strong loyalty to Catholic Church. In some cases we met, that some people is not passion enough to strive for the EC, they gave up and turn to other Churches.

Pray much and work much.

My Green Mountain Brother,

You should be able to send/receive PMs w/in a day or so. (Although you've been here a while, your low post count caused you to be overlooked in being released from moderated status.)

I think that my brothers have offered some excellent suggestions. Some of the contacts suggested were addressed in your prior thread as I recollect and I gather won't work out for the reasons discussed there.

As my Maronite brother, Shawn/Yuhannon, notes, there are 2 priests at the Melkite parish in Manchester. However, Father Archimandrite Andre is retired and I doubt very much that he would be able to travel up there. Not certain what Fr Tom's scheduke is like these days, but OL of the Cedars is a fairly active parish and I have doubts that he has a lot of time available to do so.

As regards the Melkite eparchy, I'd hold off any queries to it until after the 1st of Sept. Bishop Nicholas will be installed in late August and it's doubtful that anyone will consider any such questions prior to that happening.

Deacon Randy/Diak is much more knowledgeable than me as to the UGCC situation (I only know that the parish is in Manchester).

Obviously, the most immediately available source of contact is the Maronite community in Shelburne. As regards that in Petersham MA, while the monastic community there is ascribed to the Maronites, I believe that only a single monastic is actually a canonical Maronite. It's a strange situation that was discussed at length elsewhere on the web recently - with less than satisfactory resolution from what I read. One of the priests from there defended the community's Maronite identity, but the arguments did not appear entirely convincing from what I saw.

I do see 2 obstacles to your search -

My first such is that, while the several of you (not sure how many) have history worshipping with Byzantine parishes - Melkite and Ruthenian primarily, as I best recollect, there are no canonical Byzantines of any stripe among you. With a shortage of clergy overall throughout the states, it's going to be difficult to convince a hierarch to commit a priest to you - even if it's to be on a monthly basis (my second point factors into this).

I previously described to you the situation as regards the very small Lebanese-American community, which doesn't have a history of being committed to its ethnic or religious heritage.

As my brother in Indonesia has demonstrated, it's not to say that the absence of persons with a cultural, ethnic, or religious heritage means that an eparchy won't be interested - but one still must keep in mind that the seeds of the Latin community in Indonesia (and those in Malaysia and Singapore) with Eastern interests are not new. Curiously, they've been planted for a number of years and it's taken some time for them to germinate. Hopefully, when the new Melkite eparch is installed in Oz, he will follow through. But the core group currently there - and several who have emigrated from there in the past few years - has spent a lot of time, energy, and prayer to get to this point.

My second point is that of travel. While there are certainly a number of instances in which clergy throughout the US travel some considerable distance to service missions, many of those involve travel across broad open expanses of flatland. As we in New England are very aware, travel in our northern climes - particularly in Winter - is a real test of endurance. And, yes, my Keystone State brethren, I am very aware of Winter travel conditions through your domain - but a lot of it still allows use of interstates (hellish as the PA Turnpike can be in a storm) - at least until one must leave the highway to travel the state and county roads into the former coal camp towns.

New England, however, has the unfortunate circumstance of its three northern states being effectively only open to N-S travel. One cannot, in reality, travel E-W from ME to NH, NH to VT, or even from upstate NY to VT (except in a few spots), and access from MA to VT depends on a sinle road - I-91. In large part, one can't get from anywhere to there - not easily.

I say none of this to discourage you, just to warn that the task is not clear-cut and resolution will not be easy.

My prayers for your endeavor.

Many years,

Neil

Thank you all for your excellent replies. Clearly my friends and I have our work cut out for us, but God willing, we can hopefully get this started. We've decided to indeed drop the Melkite only focus and instead for now, focus on Eastern Catholicism in general.

Many years,

Dan