After repeated calls for Eastern Catholics to recover their traditions, why does this "neo-latinization" continue???
May I humbly posit three answers?
1 - Even in the East, the cultural issues around "the Vatican II moment," - both radical aggiornamento and counter-revolutionary - won't shake out to sanity until there is no bishop left on earth born before 1990. Right now too many people have emotions and career interests tightly bound up in fighting old mid-century cultural battles.
2 - The nation-state; democratic republics; the public school system; and a success-oriented, "employer-employee economy;" whatever their other blessings, all tend to exaggerate the natural human desire to be like one's neighbors into a slavish cultural conformism.
Thus people join more "mainstream" churches for social standing and business connections.
Interestingly, someone told me in the original "Godfather" novel, Michael wanted to raise his kids Protestant so that they would be "more American," and was upset when his Protestant wife converted. Art reflects life.
Several years ago I had a conversation with a person of Spanish descent (literal Spain, I mean) with whom I do business. He told me about his local mega-church ... I told him about my Ukrainian Catholic Church, and he said that he was familiar with the UGCC - he'd been to Kyiv - but "it's not a very *American* way to worship." That statement and his glare was an eye-opening experience for me.
Not everyone is willing to make the jump right to low-church Protestantism, though, so they will either Latinize themselves to "fit in" with the larger Catholic community, or adopt outright Protestantizations, as happened in many Roman Rite parishes.
From my conversations with local Orthodox, they are not immune, and evidently there are Protestantizations in the Orthodox community as well. But this is outside by bailiwick.
3 - The modern individualist mindset dovetails nicely with an anti-formalism that is destructive of any tradition.
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The first of these issues should resolve naturally in the passing of generations. The third can be somewhat "cured" in individual persons through proper catechetical training, and prayer and fasting on the part of those who know better.
The second is a real sticky-wicket though, and I don't see any *human* solution. Probably this will not change until either the Democratic Era comes to a close (not the party, but the rule of nation-states and the mindset of bourgeois individualism), or there is severe persecution, or Our Lord graces us with a supernatural solution.
I am deeply convinced, based on certain theologies of history, that God desires the New Israel to have its "Twelve Tribes" thrive, and so that if we cooperate and pray and fast and evangelize, the "Tribes of Andrew and Thomas" (so to speak) will grow and thrive and retain their individuality.
Thanks for entertaining what turned out to be a really long post.
Christ is Risen!
