www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Intercommunion taken to an extreme?

Good point, Father; it was a big deal for the priests. And what you say proves something I've said before. Fr Chornock and the other priests didn't really want to leave. They wanted something perfectly good and doable, and were pushed out for no good reason.

Interesting. So the decline in Greek Catholic numbers isn't because of the schisms but, my guess, the Second Vatican Council eroding Catholic identity, combined with pressure from our ex-Protestant host culture in America, now more hostile to the faith (the Sixties and their aftermath now), plus assimilation as the younger generations are less ethnic and move away. So for religion they go Roman Rite (blowback from reinforcing Catholic identity after the schisms?), Protestant or nowhere.

The Orthodox are losing people for almost all the same reasons and maybe at the same rate but of course the council and competition from the dominant Roman Rite aren't factors for them. (Married priests aren't a cure for the vocations drought. Whither the Slavic boys at Christ the Savior, St Tikhon's, etc.?)

Fr Chornock and his cohorts were kicked out unjustly over traditions, not Tradition.

No wonder po-nashomu didn't see itself as strongly Catholic or Orthodox, which is why the immigrants on the stand in the church lawsuits at the Toth schism sounded as they did. In the old country there wasn't freedom of religion or religious choice, unlike modern America where you can easily join, change, or drop a church because nobody cares what you do. You had your family, your village, and that village's only church, which happened to be Greek Catholic. The Pope was a distant figure you didn't think about much or at all. The priests knew they were Catholic and that was about it.

Father James is much more than "charitable", he is a member of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Consultation, a co-author of their 2010 Agreed Statement, and a very vocal supporter of a more open communicatio in sacris, in recognition of that which happens on the ground every Sunday, in both directions. [url=][/url]

If there was one thing at Orientale Lumen on which the Orthodox and Greek Catholics were in firm agreement, it was the restrictions on ordaining married men to the presbyterate in North America was a "Church dividing issue". The fury from both against the ban was palpable, and the Roman Catholics present were absolutely taken aback by what they obviously considered a tangential matter. They were wrong. The married priesthood is not small-t, but integral to the very fabric of the Eastern Churches, therefore a Big-T matter. Mutual respect for Traditions means just that: you accept the other as he is, not as you would like him to be.

In that regard, Archimandrite Robert Taft offered a comment on the Anglican Ordinariate and the way in which it treats married Anglican bishops: they are received as presbyters, but are allowed to wear episcopal insignia: "What is this? Halloween? When a community is received into the Catholic Church, it should be received as it is. Married bishops are their Tradition, and the Church should just learn to live with it" (as indeed, it must if it intends ever to reestablish communion with the Church of the East).

That would be a difficult proposition to prove, given the fuzziness of the numbers and the prolonged nature of the schism(s), which accelerated over a period of several decades. If there were, as some sources claim, about 625,0000 "Ruteni" (Ukrainians and Carpatho-Rusyn) in the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, that number had fallen below 350,000 by mid-century. It is estimated that about 125,000 Ruthenians joined the Russian Orthodox North American Mission between 1896 and 1930, and that about 30,000 more joined the Carpatho-Rusyn Greek Catholic Orthodox Diocese in the 1930s and 40s. How many more ended up in the various Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictions, how many drifted to Roman Catholicism, and how many just dropped out altogether has never been calculated with any statistical rigor.

What we do know today is most of the Greek Catholic jurisdictions in the U.S. are bleeding members like a stuck pig. Where do they go? Many, of course, joint the Latin Church, and a substantial number become Orthodox--mainly joining the Orthodox Church parallel to their own. But the majority, I believe, simply drop out altogether, which certainly speaks volumes about the failure of the tertium quid.

Well there's a certain irony in that complaint from an honorary Archimandrite. He's not actually in charge of a group of monasteries, yet he is (at least entitled to) wear a mitre and carry a pastoral staff.

It seems that the west and the east both have this tradition of priests using elements of episcopal insignia.

Not surprising for a born Orthodox who's a priest. Not by the book necessarily (not uncommon with ethnic Orthodox) but nice (ditto), which counts for a lot. His grandparents' generation's fight with the church isn't his. Good.

That said, ecumenism's still zero-sum even with sister apostolic churches. Either the Pope's what he says he is or he's not. I think Catholicism and Orthodoxy are parallel tracks an inch apart. Parallel lines of course never meet, even if they're thisclose like we are. I don't see one side giving in.

Wrong. You know damn well what big-T Tradition is. To Kallistos (Ware)'s credit, he gets it right. The Protestants are dead wrong. Tradition came first; scripture is part of Tradition. (Mainline Protestants twist our position to support their fantasy of a fungible church that follows modern mores; unlike them, Tradition doesn't contradict itself including scripture.) Celibacy's not doctrine.

Anglicans aren't a church. Taft knows that. Celibate bishops aren't big-T Tradition but awfully close. (The Catholic Church had Solomão Ferraz, an ex-Protestant minister turned ex-vagante bishop it received in his orders.)

True except ethnics don't 'dox.

Touché.

I would say that Father Robert is more worthy of the mitre than most of the diocesan bishops I have encountered. The same would go for our own beloved Archimandrite Serge.

But the honorific of "Mitred Archimandrite" (and an archimandriate is not the head of a monastery, but merely a senior monastic, for which Father Robert as a member of the Society of Jesus qualifies) is quite a different thing from allowing an ordinary presbyter to wear full episcopal regalia. A mitred archimandrite does not wear the sakkos, nor the omophorion, nor carry the episcopal staff, nor wear a panacea--he just wears a crown. Only someone utterly unfamiliar with Byzantine vestments and customs would mistake a mitred archimandrite for a bishop.

Reposted for formatting.

And the Byzantines are right. That said, again, ordaining married men isn't a cure-all for our vocations drought.

Wrong. You know damn well what big-T Tradition is. To Kallistos (Ware)'s credit, he gets it right. The Protestants are dead wrong. Tradition came first; scripture is part of Tradition. (Mainline Protestants twist our position to support their fantasy of a fungible church that follows modern mores; unlike them, Tradition doesn't contradict itself including scripture.) Celibacy's not doctrine.

There is no limit to the inventiveness to which some people will not resort to maintain our separation. Beyond that, your statement reveals that you have not been following the course of the dialogue very closely. Maybe what you see would frighten you too much?

Here we go again, ad infinitum. People who follow Catholic doctrine are stupid, unlike the great Stuart Koehl. (Following Catholic doctrine = 'maintain our separation'. Yadda.) We get it. You want to convert Catholicism to Orthodoxy from within. Not gonna happen.

The 'dialogue' isn't Catholic doctrine. If it doesn't speak from Catholic doctrine, it's not worth my attention.

That said, I'm on board with this site's main mission, to give born Orthodox the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging them as sister apostolic churches with real apostolic authority over their people, and thus to work for corporate reunion of the whole Orthodox communion with the Catholic Church rather than seek individual conversions. And to encourage Greek Catholics who, with that goal in mind, are making their practice as Orthodox as possible (while also respecting the longtime generational members' centuries-old latinizations). Just like Fr Serge did.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America are sisters, one fully in the church under Rome. The Catholic Church as a whole has no sisters.