www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall A Lament

Christos Voskrese!
I love this forum. I love the wisdom that has been imparted to the internet from this forum, which has come from personal experience and from reading. But, this forum is to be frank, dead. Many of its members are dead, have passed on to (Hopeful) union with God in Heaven. We do seem to have some new members, but this forum isn't what it used to. Look at the "thrice-defunct" ByzanTEEN subforum, not a single thread. How many great stories and answers to questions will die with the death of our older members? It saddens me to think about this, this is reality, and the Nature of life. I check this forum multiple times a day, hoping that there will be a new post, but 9 times out of 10, there aren't any. Lord have mercy on us all!

In Christ,

Joshua.

Vostinu voskrese!

Speaking for myself, I was a very frequent contributor while I was discerning the Eastern Catholic church and was new to it. This forum was incredibly helpful. A lifesaver in many respects.

Now, I lurk around fairly often, but my phase of spiritual life has evolved much more fully into parish life. As it should! I don't have big burning questions, etc. Anything that I do need to chew on or talk through happens for me within my parish.

I'm sure as you suspect demographics also contribute to forum activity. But I hope you have a similar experience to me

Fifteen years ago when I had first seen--actually, dazzeled by-- the True Light of the East a tri-ritual Catholic Priest who I had known for decades highly recommended that I begin reading this site.

The very respectful, well moderated discussions were exactly what was needed in those initial (and later) stages of a journey from Lutheran ministry into Orthodox Clergy.

Isn't this the general trend of our Ruthenian Church? Mr Stuart Koehl had shared some statistics once on facebook showing that, barring divine intervention, the Ruthenian Church was going to die in the next century or two. A handful of parishes here and there are experiencing growth (our parish being one of them) but by and large we are dying out. Vocations are down, we don't have enough bishops or priests to maintain what we have, let alone to expand to new peoples. The Melkites seem to be holding their own and the Ukranians, but them aside the rest of us Byzantine rite Catholic Churches are on life support and the prognosis is terminal.

But Christ is the Divine Physician and through Him all things are possible. Pray and fast for vocations and for more babies in our parishes! We still have so much to offer to people and to our brothers and sisters in the Roman Church. It would be a shame for us to die out and have our small but potent light snuffed out. As God wills!

~ 2/3 of my parish is Latin Rite, they are actually a source of growth for Byzantine churches.

The key, of course, is ensuring that they are catechized and instructed in the Byzantine Rite and are not simply refugees looking for a place to be Roman with a "more traditional" atmosphere.

Agree. That's why I think it's so imperative that Roman Catholics who decide to attend our parish as their primary parish and want to be with us long term ought to be obligated to make a canonical transfer. Too many of our priests, my pastor included, when telling visiting romans about the canonical transfer, always end it with, "But you don't have to! It's most for canonical reasons involving sacraments for kids or marriage with one byzantine spouse and another spouse from another tradition." (I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of it).

From what I hear, the Ruthenian Church is experiencing it's death rattle right now and barring a miraculous intervention by the Lord, we probably won't exist as a church in 100 years. It will be a piece of cake for the visiting Romans to just keep parish shopping on to other roman parishes nearby. But what for us? Become Roman and abandon our theology, spirituality, our entire Christian phronema? Or do we stick with our faith and become Eastern Orthodox, at the sacrifice of communion with Rome?

I pray I don't live long enough to see this day come to pass, even if it sounds like it is right around the corner in another generation or two.

Too many of our people are Latinized to the point they don't want to give up their Latinizations. They have become attached to them. We need to recover our identity and authentically be the eastern church we are supposed to be. Communion with Rome is fine, but we are not Latins. I don't think we do a good job of teaching and reinforcing our identity. The lack of clergy is a huge problem and there just are not enough priests to go around outside of major population centers. I hear they are having trouble with this, too.

True. Only time will tell what God has planned for our churches. Perhaps it is the role of Eastern Catholicism to perish in order for Rome to have an easier time returning to Holy Orthodoxy? So long as they exist and claim to be Orthodox then it creates barriers to reunification. As Eastern Catholics our number one priority (outside of our own salvation) ought to be restoring communion with our Orthodox Mother Church. If we aren't doing that we are failing our vocation as Eastern Christians. And a big step in that direction is the rejection of everything western/latin that our parishes have embraced that rob us of our identity.

While I am byzcath my brother is Orthodox, and his Antiochian parish is struggling with its own identity crisis, one of Evangelical converts trying to get their footing in Orthodoxy - clergy included. Plenty of discouraging and existential stories to be had.

The details don't matter, but the point is that while our church has its own unique challenges, it is not unique in having challenges. I can't effect change across the Byzantine Catholic Church but I can put the work in at my parish. We are blessed to have a priest who takes the exhortation of Orientale Lumen seriously. Good things are happening!

Joshua speaks the painful truth.

This forum is dead because the church is dead.

Much of the problem is because the church failed to find a way to separate ethnicity from church.

Ukrainians went from simply calling themselves “Greek Catholics” to “Ukrainian Greek Catholic” to “Ukrainian Catholic.” Churches that went from celebrating the liturgy in Slavonic to English (in the 1980s and 1990s) are now actively encouraged to use Ukrainian. Metropolitan Borys is really into promoting everything Ukrainian. Their music anthology is much better than what it replaced, but it is still very ethnic and the settings don’t properly accent the English texts – making it both difficult to sing and unattractive to the American ear. But the biggest problem for them remains ethnicity. But, to be fair to them, they are quite happy to die off as long as they can retain their Ukrainian ethnicity.

Ruthenians did better. They changed their name from “Greek Catholic” to “Byzantine Catholic” and never added an ethnic identifier to their name. They made a good start at re-casting the ethnic elements of their chant into English settings attractive to the American ear, but didn’t go far enough. But then in 2007 they re-cast the liturgy using the Vatican 2 Roman Catholic model (prayers out loud, etc.) and – like the Ukrainians – recast their “canonical chant” to emphasize the Ruthenian melodies to the point where you wonder if the people who set it speak English as first language. Our cantors can’t sing it. The singing in our church never recovered once the “Teal Terror” was adopted. If our own people laugh at the chant what do you think a visitor is going to do? How is that going to be attractive? But - like the Ukrainians - among the people in charge of everything there are those who would rather die off while keeping the ethnicity pure than do a major adaptation to make it attractive to Americans.

Melkites and Romanians did the same things, except they are smaller.

To be fair, the Orthodox are not all that different. The OCA is pretty dead – excepting some bright lights in the south. The Greek Archdiocese has nowhere near the 1.4 million they often claim. That number reflects all those of Greek ancestry. Active Greek Orthodox believers are more likely 200,000 nationwide.

It has long been known that ethnic immigrants to any country lose their ethnicity in about 3 generations. Church-wise, here in America couples getting married most often choose to join and worship in the non-ethnic church. For both Byzantine / Greek Catholics and Orthodox that means they become Roman Catholics. Or they go nowhere.

There has got to be a balance between allowing people to retain some ethnicity when they come to church but not forcing a non-ethnic who walks in the doors to adopt it. Sadly, most of the people in charge in our churches don’t seem to even be aware of this, let alone address it. If you want to attract people you have to make the liturgical experience attractive. You just can’t hit them over the head with ethnicity.

So. Don’t expect our bishops to do anything to attract non-original-ethnicity Americans. We’ll get a few disgruntled RCs here and there. But our old people are dying off rapidly and there are none to replace them.

Back to lurking mode.

{{{sigh}}}

My GOA parish is currently experiencing a strong (but hardly overwhelming) influx of inquirers becoming converts who were neither ethnically or linguistically Greek or Orthodox.

Yes, there is some pushback, especially against their sometimes vocal pre-school children.

Most have soldiered onward.

My first Godson's (former Lutheran, like me) son has been sponsored by first-generation Greek immigrant.

Glory to God for all things!

I don't know about Metropolitan Borys's efforts so cannot comment but from what I've seen, the Ukrainian Catholic Church here in northeast Canada tries to accommodate as best it can.
That leaves most folks less than completely pleased.
Here in Quebec, older immigrants and their children tended to speak English but in the last 25 years or so, newer immigrants have to send their kids to French schools, so that creates a unique dynamic...

The super-patriotic Ukrainians who arrived after WWII are dying off and their children will be more pragmatic about compromises.
I, for one, would not be against the Ukrainian Catholic Church reuniting with the Byzantine Catholic Church and keeping the latter name.
But you know who is in the details

I try to be active as can be. And I'm a Latin Catholic. I just like learning about Eastern Christianity. Ever since my first experience at a Melkite Divine Liturgy in 2010.

I'm skeptical as to your claim about the ethnic ties driving people away. Look at the Old Rite parish in Erie. Those people are as Russian as they get culturally, and half of them aren't even Russian anymore. Ethnicity is not an issue.

Well, online forums overall are declining. Apps like Reddit and Twitter / X have taken their place.

The Eastern Catholic subReddit has about 5,000 members and averages at least a couple new posts per day. Forums like this one are just outdated technology. On Reddit, under one login someone can access multiple interests and hobbies, under a more intuitive and frequently updated interface.

I agree that there is a wealth of information on here that can be searched and mined, but young folks coming into the Church largely aren't looking for forums like this anymore.