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Dear Serge,

Certainly, "KaFolik" was Orthodox as the the letter "f" for the "th" in Katholikos was of East Slavic provenance.

"KaTolik" was anyone who was with Rome as the "T" was how Western Slavs/Poles transiterated the "th" sound (Slavs just couldn't pronounce the "th" sound).

Alex

Actually, Serge is absolutely correct.

Alex

Dear DMD,

The pressure for Latinization came via Poland but only to the time of Lev Sapieha when the Polish kingdom, realizing that the Greco-Uniates, as they called them, despite being Latinized, were not going to become Poles and the constant infighting between EC's and EO's was harming the harmony of the kingdom itself.

Latinization occurred later as well - as did Russification, of course.

Very often, and this would make for a fascinating study, Latinization was seen by the EC's as a good thing whenever Russification was being imposed (during Tsarist and Bolshevik times).

The use of the Filioque, at such times, became a "touchstone" of one's identity since the Russians wanted to remove it. The same was true under the Poles and the Austro-Hungarians who removed Saints and Miraculous Icons from the EC calendar for being "too Orthodox."

Orthodoxy in the Kyivan Metropolia became just as heavily Latinized because of the close contact with the West and the fact that so many Orthodox students were going to Western universities to study.

They brought back with them many Latin practices including devotion to the Immaculate Conception (and as late as the 19th century, the Kievan Mohyla Academy was promoting this devotion and had an akathist in its honour - something bemoaned in one place by Fr. Alexander Schemann - +memory eternal!).

St Dmitri of Rostov and others took the "bloody vow" to defend to the death the Immaculate Conception. He introduced all sorts of Western devotions including the Passia service that is widely popular even in Russia to this day.

When the EC's became Latinized, that was seen as a problem. When the Orthodox became Latinized, at least in certain Metropolia, this was seen as a kind of organic development at the time.

Not to be Latinized in the 17th and 18th centuries meant one was uneducated and un-European.

To be educated and European were once one and the same thing.

Alex

Yes, even contemporary Orthodoxy has tolerated the Latinizations of former Uniate parishes that reverted to Russian Orthodoxy over the years.

In many such parishes, the "vidpust" continued to be celebrated even under Orthodoxy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the "vidpust" referred to the indulgence one gained by fulfilling a pilgrimage to a shrine with a miraculous icon. Prof. Poselianin lists countless such "vidpusts" in "formerly Uniate parishes."

In actual fact, the term "Uniate" as used then (and I daresay now) by the Russian Orthodox Church is not intended to be an offensive term.

The ROC sees "uniates" as formerly Orthodox Christians who have been led astray in one way or another to accept a forced union with Rome.

In many ways, such as at the time of St John Pommer of Latvia and others, such Uniates were seen to be practicing Eastern Christians who just needed to be "enlightened" about the "Unia" so they could formally return to Orthodoxy.

In other words, "Uniate" can mean someone who is temporarily out of membership with Orthodoxy and is not necessarily at variance with the spirit of Orthodox faith and worship (i.e. in the spiritual/cultural sense).

Alex

Which vice versa is what Catholicism teaches about Orthodoxy. Not just opines, teaches.

(emphasis mine)

That, Serge, is absolute poppycock and is part of the reason why we ended up the way we did.

Many years,

Neil

The brief given to the Russian Catholic Church on its inception was that they must serve 'nec plus nec minus nec aliter' than the Synodal usage. Sixty years later Vatican II extended that principle to all the Eastern Catholic Churches, as it were, by insisting on our recovering our Tradition integrally. No pick and choose here, please. we've made too much (if pokey) progress at too great a cost for us to backslide now. And No, there are no good 'latinizations' except in the Latin rite!

Anybody acquainted with me knows that, with my church, I am not at all about knocking the pure Byzantine Rite in its various national recensions. Educated Catholics know that the church teaches, as the late forum member Archimandrite Serge (Keleher) wrote, that this ancient and vast tradition is entirely Catholic. St. Pius X knew the self-latinized Ukrainian Catholic Church couldn't convert the Russians; its condition was a hindrance to that. Thus nec plus, nec minus, nec aliter. The Russian Catholic parish in Australia is very faithful and authentic, even retaining the Julian calendar. Great! (I'd like it if Mulberry Street, and indeed all Byzantine Catholics in the West, used the Orthodox date for Easter like San Francisco and El Segundo, Father; certainly a mainstream view in this forum.)

That said, just as Catholicism isn't anti-Eastern, of course it's not anti-Western either. Too often the well-meant zeal for the Byzantine Rite, including from Catholics, in forums like this smacks of Orthodox spite: Orthodox anti-Westernism. Granted, anti-Russian spite is partly why Ukrainian Catholics latinize.

There should be a limit to acceptable latinizations. Old-school ACROD is fine. Bishop Elko's changes weren't. The rosary society can go on forever as far as I'm concerned. Taking down the iconostasis was just plain wrong.

Old latinizations are not heretical, plus, what I am trying to get at here, we're talking about people's living tradition. (Almost every ethnic Byzantine Catholic I've known was not a "purist.") Trampling on such is what started schisms in America. The blogger Modestinus whom I linked to earlier made that point: trying to make the Byzantine Catholics, and former Catholic Orthodox, who do them stop is no better than the bullying from Roman Riters that DMD was alluding to.

Our Lady of Fatima parish uses the Gregorian calendar, but follows the Julian calendar for Great Lent and Pascha.
Saint Andrew's in El Segundo follows the Gregorian Calendar for Lent and Pascha.

Right, Our Lady of Fatima Church interprets St. Pius X's directive about Russia for America today as doing what the OCA does. Makes sense.

All this attention to pre-Vatican II latinizations are pretty much moot points outside of the old country. The older generation to whom that appealed has pretty much died out...it was dying out when I was in seminary during the last years of the old guard; the old guard pretty much knew it, but could not distance themselves entirely from their upbringing.

Thing is, Byzantine Catholicism in America's slowly dying out. The latinized older ethnics were its heart and soul. I know the forum pretty much represents the converts who are enthusiastically living the rite in their parishes, following Rome by trying to live it just like the Orthodox, but the decline is under way. The ethnic kids move out of the old neighborhoods and join the Roman Rite, something else, or nothing, assimilating.

I can imagine it no longer being in greater Philadelphia in 50 years (not wishing it so); the Orthodox (except immigrant Greeks) not faring much better.

In fairness I should have mentioned that the pastor of our local BCC parish, a "krajanyj" (literally "countryman" in that our roots are in the same area) from the Saris region of Slovakia, and a friend, is a graduate of the Pontifical Oriental Institute ("Pontificium Institutum Orientalium") in Rome, where he met his future wife, a Ukrainian American. So, of course, his praxis and rubric reflects an authentic Eastern foundation.

I appreciate the responses as they pretty much reflect the many points of view I learned growing up when I did.

Frankly, as the Byzantine Eparchy was Easternized post Vatican 2, it became more and more impossible for the ACROD not to restore the very same authentic Eastern practices that the fervent (and misguided) Latinizers suppressed, such as Baptism by immersion, communing of infants, presanctified liturgies and teplota, while eliminating Western innovations such as daily liturgies in lent, two same day liturgies by the same priest, wedding vows, white communion clothes and liturgies abbreviated beyond the current practice of Constantinople.

We also learned, to our bemusement, that certain so called "Greek Catholic" practices condemned by earnest Russianizers, were Greek for sure, but rather remnants of earlier Greek Orthodox traditions and even a number of liturgical changes implemented post Unia by the Orthodox of Constantinople.

Over the eight decades ACROD has been Orthodox, things have changed incrementally and somewhat organically, rather than by Chancery fiat. It's worked out well and frankly, folks who have attended Greek Catholic services in the Eparchy of Muchachevo and ACROD these days marvel at their similarity - not as much though with Presov or Pittsburgh as a general rule. I suppose that has more to do with the local eparchs than with any directives from Rome.

Or with what the congregations in Prešov and Pittsburgh want.

Ask your Pittsburgers about their "beloved" Green Book if you think the bishops pander to popular sentiment.