www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology A Question About Latinizations

I hear the term Latinization on here quite often, and I'am curious as to what exactly brings it about nowdays, and when I say nowdays I mean basically our lifetime.

In particular, I've wondered about things like Rosary devotionals, Crucifixes in Church vestibules, and other Western practices, and how they've found there way into Eastern Churches in recent years.

Latinization is a term with two meanings:
1) [this is more common] the introduction of customs, ideas, symbols and so on from the Latin Church into one or another - or several - of the Eastern Churches.
2) the enticement of faithful of the Eastern Churches into the Latin Church.
Incognitus

Dear friend:

From what I know, in the United States most Byzantine Catholic Ruthenian parishes in union with Rome are gradualy eliminating latinizations, so the rosaries and the stations of the cross are being replaced by more eastern elements, of the ruthenian tradition (not like the Russian Orthodox for example).

The Melkites are also very pure in their Eastern identity. About three years ago I had the chance to visit their church in Mexico city and I can say that it matched word by word that of the greek orthodox church.

Unfortunately it's not the same in Europe. I'm informed that in Romania the hierarchy is extremely latinized, you cn see the pictures of their Bishops often wearing Roman clerical vestments. Rosaries have replaced vespers in some parishes and there's a differenciation between Orthodox and Catholic parishes about the liturgy which is not good.

Of course this is nothing compared to other countries where the Greek Catholic Church has adopted some of the abuses of the modern western liturgy. About 5 years ago my mother was in Slovakia, and she saw guitars in the Kosice byzantine church.

Lawrence,

I'm not sure your question has really been addressed. I understood you as asking what the present-day cause of latiniztion is. This was touched on, just within the last few days, on another thread here, but never delved into in depth. My personal opinion is that there are 4 principal factors:

1. A desire to be attractive to those whom the Eastern Churches hope to attract into their folds (former Latin Catholics - especially those from the traditional ranks, those formerly of other apostolic high church traditions, those coming from low church backgrounds, and even those from evangelical denominations). For the former (RCs and high church), it offers familiar devotions; for the latter, it gives some of the high church flavor that they may be seeking, but using devotions and sacramentals that are somewhat familiar to them thru prior exposure to "mainstream" Christianity - while being less "esoteric", "ethnic", "exotic", "foreign", than our own practices.

2. An effort to keep happy, maintain the peace, and assure the continued allegiance of those among our own who have wandered into the Latin Church at various times and become enamored of devotions encountered there.

3. A misguided attempt on our parts to be more "mainstream", less "ethnic", less "old world".

and,

4. In a few instances, to fill what we see as voids in our spiritual experience, e.g., the Rosary and other attractive devotionals, which speak to religious concepts that are already meaningful to us.

I think both some Eastern Catholic and some Eastern Orthodox Churches or churches are guilty of this.

Many years,

Neil

Dear Lawrence,

An excellent question that brings up a plethora of issues!

For me, "Latinization" is something that involves an undue influence of the Latin Church over an Eastern Church.

That influence can be brought about either by some sort of force, such as Latin bishops imposing certain practices, or else Eastern bishops imposing certain practices due to a "Latin mentality" or else the laity themselves adopting certain Latin practices because of feeling that by doing this they somehow become "more Catholic" or mainstream as Neil said.

And certainly, the Orthodox Churches have adopted Latinizations at times because of the view that "everyone in Europe is doing it" and the like.

But what if an EC or Orthodox Church today decides to keep certain liturgical or ecclesial practices that originated with the Latin Church - or even adopt them?

Is that a "Latinization?" It could be, but it need not be.

People may genuinely like certain Latin practices and that is all the justification they require to hang onto them.

Latin practices such as the Rosary, Eucharistic Adoration and the Stations of the Cross have developed a certain "right of citizenship" among a number of Eastern Catholic Churches, especially in Eastern Europe where these devotions did serve to give them an identity that was separate from, say, that of the Russian Church.

When the Russian Empire through its Church tried to religiously assimilate the "Uniates" back to Orthodoxy, such progammes almost always involved a "pruning" of certain Latin devotions that were seen to be keeping the Uniates in their loyalty to Rome.

By the same token, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, deathly afraid of Russification and its political ramifications, actually ordered the Metropolitan of Lviv and Halych to remove "overtly Eastern" commemorations from the Greek Catholic calendar of the 19th century - including the commemoration of the Kyivan Caves Saints and icons such as that of Kazan and the like!

And what is objectively understood as "Latinized practices" can take on a life of their own depending on the context.

Today there are Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe that have the Stations of the Cross and other practices.

There is also the element involved of defining something as a Latin practice that was really part of the universal heritage of the Church, East and West.

I mean especially the Rosary - the Rule of prayer of the Mother of God. But a Rosary by any other name . . .

The Old Believers have the Lestovka of the Mother of God, 150 small rungs divided every ten by a larger one, to pray what the West knows as the Rosary.

But when I asked for a Lestovka such as this from a certain Old Believer community, the people who make them could NOT obtain the required blessing from their bishop to make one for me. This was seen, by them, as a way by which the bishop was putting some distance between Orthodoxy and RCism . . .

I personally think that we Easterners tend to go off the deep end when it comes to Latinization, a term that is difficult to define objectively at the best of times.

We see a real bogeyman in that term. And when it comes to restoring our Eastern traditions, we often assume that what is "Eastern" is plain for everyone to see and what is "Western" is likewise plain - and it is all a matter of applying some spiritual pruning shears to the latter.

And that is a gross oversimplification.

The monks of Mt Athos itself today regularly use for their spiritual reading translations of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola and a number of other Western works that have been given other titles and have been augmented in a number of ways by such saints as St Nicodemos Aghioritis, St Macarios of Corinth and St Theophan the Recluse - who revised the Spiritual Combat whose original author was an Italian Catholic priest.

There are no clear lines of demarcation here.

And I think the attitude of some Easterners to be always trying to establish them is counterproductive in a number of ways.

I was amazed at the depth of prudence and spiritual wisdom exhibited here by Father Archimandrite Gregory when he commented on the devotion to the Sacred Heart and put to it the ultimate litmus test of all devotions: Does it draw us closer to Christ?

Alex

Alex

I just wanted to say how much I appreciated your post.....truly the litmus test of everything is whether it gets us closer to Christ....thats the bootom line.

I am all for Eastern Churches keeping or restoring their identity, but as we have seen from the past couples decades of Vatican 2 "reform", quick liturgical change is not good for the faithful. When things that people grew up with are suddenly and drastically changed, it usually isn't good for their faith....even if they are changed to the beautiful eastern traditions. Just for the record, I'm not comparing eastern traditions with any post-conciliar "reforms".....they are another thread.

Instead of "lets gid rid of this or that" I would recomend introducing some things like prayer ropes, eastern saints. and icons. The young (and others) will catch on and the Spirit will lead. I think it is strange how some people will (rightly) complain about certain practices being forced on people, then in the next sentence they are planning on how to take down Crucifixes and Stations of the Cross.

Throughout Church history it seems that fast and quick liturgical change has not usually had a good effect no matter how sincere was the intention.

IMHO the eatern Churches live in the west. You have the Holy Father's encyclical on the rosary everywhere and other western traditons are of course encouraged and recommended. I don't think that you can escape people wanting to practice western devotions, Show them the glory of the east too....people will of course be attracted to it. Many of my friends have joined our local Byzcath Church because they love it, but they still like many Latin devotions also. I'm not sure that this can totally be avoided in the west here.

If I may ask...

What is the history of a crucifix being "un-Eastern"? I know the Orthodox use a cross without a corpus, but was the crucifix a post-schism addition to the Roman Catholicism, or does it belong to the universal church?

It seems to me that the crucifix is one of the things that separates Catholics from the Protestants. Why take it down because it's "too Latin"? We don't have to look like clones of the Orthodox any more than we should look like clones of the RC's.

But with that thinking comes the situation of being "hybrids" which the Eastern Catholic Church has been trying to escape from at least since the Second Vatican Council. That feeling of being neither "one" or the "other" It is not a very comfortable place to be.

Dear Tammy,

The Eastern CHurches have crucifixes too!

Perhaps it is just that the East tends to display the brutal suffering of our Lord much less.

The icon crucifix of San Damiano is an excellent example of an Eastern Cross - Christ is depicted larger than anyone else and He is portrayed as the Master of the situation - which He always is.

Alex

The crucifix is a statue of the crucified Christ on the Cross. The use of statues is not proper the Byzantine Church. An icon of the crucifixion is not the same as a three-dimensional crucifix.

We are the Orthodox!

We are not a �Third Way�!

There should be no demonstrable difference between us Eastern Catholics and the rest of Orthodoxy. Where there is a difference we must change ourselves to conform with our mother Churches. When full communion is someday reestablished we will simply be reabsorbed into our mother Churches.

Hmm as usual I'm late

However to me the Crucifix is emphasising Christ's Suffering and Death and this seems to me to be the Latin Influence.

Now as I understand it the East 's emphasis is more that of Christ Died and was raised for us - the emphasis is on the Resurrection - every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection - an Easter in fact.

OK tin hat on - one of these days I'll learn to shut my big mouth.

Anhelyna

Mr. Administrator -

I respectfully disagree. To use a familial metaphor, we are the child of a Catholic father and an Orthodox mother. The child enjoys the heritage of both parents but belongs to the Rite of the father. We have every right to the devotional practices of both our Catholic and Orthodox heritages, but we are Catholic. The Pope accepts us as part of his jurisdiction; the Orthodox do not.

I think Alex put it quite well:
I don't think it's so bad to be a hybrid. Hybrid flowers tend to be prettier and more disease-resistant than their purebred parents. Hybrid dogs ("mutts") tend to be healthier than purebreds, which are now coming up with genetic defects. When left alone, flowers cross-pollinate. When left alone, dogs will mate with any other dog, not caring about breed or pedigree. That is the way of nature, and God designed nature.

I'm sorry if I am offending anyone, but I will stand by this until my dying day.

Tammy

Dear Tammy:

I am sure the pro's will be able to better explain this than I, but it seems to my humble self that when we freely "combine" devotions in the sence that you suggest, then we also lose the fullness that a particular Rite provides.

In other words, each Rite, it seems to me, is set up to fulfill one's spiritual needs in the fullest sence.

When we start "combining," it would seem that we start to lose the "fullness" of what our own Rites call us to be. By trying to combine devotions from different Rites, one inevitably loses something of one's own spiritual tradition which, in turn, leads to something being "missing."

Please don't take this the wrong way, but what you suggest appears to be a variant of "supermarket religion." Not, of course, in the sence that people openly and actively reject moral teachings but, rather, in the sence that one can freely pick between devotions that are particular to different Rites of the big-C Catholic church because we happen to be in communion with each other.

Purity of one's own Rite is, therefore, something for which one must strive. This is not to say that one should "diss" other Rites and not attempt to understand or appreciate them. This also does not mean that an individual cannot worship in another Rite.

However, if the sui juris Churches in communion with Rome begin to take the approach of "a little bit of this and a little bit of that," then we have truly lost something.

Yours,

hal

Hi Tammy!

With all due respect what you are advocating is in direct conflict with the directives of most recent popes, and especially those of Pope John Paul II. PJPII has been extremely clear that we are to witness Orthodoxy within Catholic communion. He has directed us to use the Orthodox Church as our model of Orthodoxy. Please study his writings on this topic.

Admin

Mr. Administrator,

I doubt Pope John Paul II would say we are Orthodox and NOT Catholic!

Tammy