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Hi all.

When speaking of relations (or lack thereof as the case may be) between Eastern Catholics and Latin Catholics, the language of a "ghetto mentality" is sometimes used; but I'm wondering: which phrase would you be more likely to use, "Eastern Catholic ghetto" or "Latin Catholic ghetto"? Or do you see it as coming down to the same thing either way?

I believe anyone who does not have a properly formed comprehension and acceptance of the catholicity of the Church is "ghetto" in their thinking. Triumphalists on all sides are "ghetto" imo.

Blessings

Well, Catholic teachers here tell me that Coptic Catholic children are expressly forbidden by their parents to ever approach Communion in a Latin Church . . .

I have an Euchologion from the late 19th century in Slavonic where it is stated in the back that Rome, at the time, decreed that Eastern Catholics may approach Communion in the Latin Church - but that Latin Catholics were forbidden from doing so in any Eastern Catholic Church. The decree is laid out in full.

"Ghetto" mentality as such usually implies a defensiveness about a Particular Church's traditions to protect them from being diluted or from losing its particular identity.

Fr. Irenaeus Nazarko, OSBM, in his book, "Kyivan and Galician Metropolitans" cites two RC Synods in Poland in the years following the Union of Brest where the Latin bishops ordered that, for example, Latin seminarians are not to imitate Eastern Catholic traditions, tinged as they were with "the schism of the Orthodox" and the like. Quite an eye-opener.

So, Peter the Rock, your last sentence is, I believe, more than correct.

Alex

I have an Euchologion from the late 19th century in Slavonic where it is stated in the back that Rome, at the time, decreed that Eastern Catholics may approach Communion in the Latin Church - but that Latin Catholics were forbidden from doing so in any Eastern Catholic Church. The decree is laid out in full.

This kind of thing is true and sounds scandalous to us today, but it should be considered in the context of the time, which involved even in intra-Church issues much more restriction on the time and place of the reception of the sacraments (e.g. whether you could confess to clergy of religious orders, whether you had to fulfill the Latin "sunday obligation" or "Easter Duty" at your territorial parish).

Yes, indeed!

Our former parish priest who was a professor of Eastern Christian studies affirmed that it was not true, as detractors of the Union of Brest maintained, that Eastern Catholics had some sort of a privileged position within the Catholic Church.

In fact, he said, Eastern Catholics were often regarded as "half-Catholics" because they insisted on maintaining their "Orthodox rites."

He would add that in Church processions, the EC Metropolitan of Kyiv could only follow after the last RC bishop.

The attitude of EC's being "incomplete Catholics" was also extended to the 20th century. In his memoirs, Blessed New Hieromartyr Basil Velichkovsky wrote that he met RC bishops who told him they believed the Pope was wrong in promoting the union of the Orthodox with Rome in the form of Byzantine Catholicism. It was their ardent belief that the Eastern rites were, in and of themselves, "schismatic" and "leading to schism" and that unless the EC's completely came over to the Roman Rite, they would not be "fully Catholic."

Certainly, this was the attitude that permeated Latin Catholicism in Europe from the 16th until the 19th centuries and accounted for the wholesale coming over to Roman Catholicism of so many Eastern Catholics, and especially the aristocracy, which left the EC parishes with a Latin caricature of their former "Eastern selves."

This also accounted for the Latinization of the Ruthenian Orthodox Metropolia of Kyiv and Halych (Ukrainian and Belarusyan in this instance).

In short, the Roman "Catholic" Church was more "Roman" than it was "universal Catholic."

Alex

If I had the run of the place and could receive the Eucharist anywhere, but the Latins could not, I think that could easily be interpreted as being "privileged."

Of course, it actually went both ways. Even while the head bishop of the Latins permitted non-Latins to receive the Eucharist in Latin Churches and forbade Latins from receiving Eucharist in non-Latin Churches, the non-Latin Church could have the same rule -- allow Latins to receive, but not allow its own members to partake of the Latin Eucharist.

I think the participation strictures were due to the difference between receiving both the Body/Blood in the non-Latin Churches, and receiving only the Body in the Latin Churches. The accommodations that exist today (at least on paper) for Catholics from different Rites did not exist in the early days.

Blessings

Years ago, when my family was Eastern Catholic, my wife took our young toddler to a Roman Catholic service. The priest refused to permit my child to receive because it would "scandalize the parishioners."

In fact, the EC and OC Churches NEVER had a similar rule preventing their members from communing in the Latin Church.

The RC rule was written out and EC prayerbooks were obliged to include it (especially the Euchologion)>

There is no longer any problem. But as Brother Recluse notes, there still are RC priests and parishes with a "siege mentality" - as Bl. New Hieromartyr Basil Velichkovsky also duly noted in his biography.

Alex