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SLAVA ISUSU CHRISTU!

Hey Alex, that white KLOBUK looks FABU on you!!!

mark

Dear Admin:

A "Ukrainian Catholic" parish is, like it or not, "Ukrainian" in its outlook.

Therefore, accepting your claims of massive assimilation, the "Ukrainian Church" as such in North America is destined to die one way or the other.

So, the question becomes, why bother with dragging us into your ethnically-neutral fold kicking and screaming?

You yourself admit that many who leave the fold of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches in North America turn to the RC's or to the Protestants.

Don't you think that if the 52% who have left the Toronto eparchy wanted to find an ethnically-neutral Byzantine Rite parish they would have sought you or the OCA out already?

The fact remains that being "Ukrainian" in North America equates to being of the Byzantine Rite and vice versa. Take away one and the other inevitably goes with it. Good, bad or indifferent, that's the perception.

In short, why not just let us die away slowly one by one? Eventually, the last Ukrainian parish here will close its doors and, according to your model, your church will be the last one standing.

Why deprive us poor stragglers who live in a state of percieved perpetual immigration of that kernal of happiness (and, in some cases, familial legacy) that comes with jurisdictional ties to Kyiv?

Might as well save yourselves the headache.

Yours,

hal

Does anyone have any idea how many have left the Byzantine Catholic Churches to become Orthodox? Most people that I am aware of who have left the Byzantine Church have become Orthodox, not Roman Catholic.

Dear Administrator,

Hal is quite right.

I share your concerns, Sir, but I disagree with your options.

Assimilation will occur, yes, and it is not ONLY occurring along the ethnic language/cultural identity scale.

It is, as Hal points out, also occurring on the religious scale - people leave the Eastern Church not only because of language and cultural barriers, but ALSO because they want to attend a more MAINSTREAM church that doesn't have cupolas, censors and bearded priests et al.

I know this because I have family members who have left our Eastern Church complaining not about the language or culture - but about the cupolas.

When my cousin was dying of cancer (and he died at the age of 40), he told us that he wanted to be buried by a RC priest, not a Byzantine priest.

He did not, he said, want one of our priests to "wave a censor" over him with all that silly chanting and words to that effect, I don't need to repeat them.

Assimilation as we are discussing involves MORE than language and culture. It involves our cupolas, long services, beards and other things that people wanting to become more like the mainstream prefer to go without.

We too have Protestant converts and RC Tridentine refugees escaping the Novus Ordo et al.

And my point is that the issue of cultural barrier does not END with your proposal to prevent ethnicity from being a "barrier" to membership.

The mainstream here see the entire Byzantine religious culture as part and parcel of a foreign cultural enterprise - something you have repeatedly refused to seriously address in your discussion of your vision for a united Byzantine jurisdiction.

And I think it is crucial to your argument - why won't you take it seriously and discuss it?

I think that there is another dynamic at work in the Orthodox Churches that bears discussing, perhaps it is because the Orthodox Church has no tie to a larger Western church and spiritual culture where no ready comparisons can be made by those wanting to become "mainstream" - I'd have to think about it more.

Frankly, by equating ethnicity simply with its externalities and refusing to see the "ethnicity" of the Byzantine spiritual culture in North America - you do your own cause no good, Sir!

And there you go talking about food again!

I read on another thread about Incognitus' chocolate recipe.

I thought he was beginning a thread on law since he mentioned "torte!"

Hal and I have you pinned down on this point, Sir.

Let's see you get yourself out of this one.

(Father Deacon Montalvo - why leave this Forum indeed! Isn't this fun? Albeit at the Administrator's expense! )

Alex

The Byzantines in America should be ethnically AMERICAN! Let's fill the halls with cheeseburgers with fries, coke, pizza, nachos with cheese, hot dogs, steak with baked potatoes and cotton candy!!! And a bottle of tums to go with it!

Dear SPDundas,

Every time I think of the Administrator's unified Byzantine scheme, I reach for a bottle of TUMS!

Keep the fries and burgers!

But the point is that a mainstream American is more likely to feel culturally at home in a Western Church.

Until the Administrator addresses this issue seriously and without his usual dismissive tone towards "ethnic foods and ways," this will continue to be an intellectual argument that will go nowhere.

Alex

Back to Perogi's. Now Stop it!
Im on the South Beach Diet and it isnt allowed.
Stephanos I

Dear Administrator, Alex, et al,

Would you accept my proposition that the "mainstream" American is not comfortable or "at home" in ANY church or Church?

The longer I deal with the public in my daily contact with people reacting to death, the more I am convinced of this fact than anything else.

Five and a half years ago, our professional organization told us that the results of our own internal surveys of people we deal with indicated that almost 60% had no religious preference or affiliation. My favorite anecdote in the last two years is the question by one not-so-young person during a funeral service: the child asked his parent in a very loud voice "what's the Bible"?

In Christ,

BOB

Yes! Back to pyrohy, pirohi, pierogie or other ethnic way of saying small dough wrapped mashed vegetable or meat or cheese and cooked in every which way imaginable.

Must every thought of pirohi, pyrohy- or kielbasa, kolbasi, halushki, halubki etc, be a starting point for online spell checkers and the ethnic vs anti ethnic vs pan ethnic posts? Enjoy the variety.

I once came across an article on how many different ways one can make stuffed cabbage (halupki{and it's variants}). Seems there are more than 120!!! Almost any continent has some variety of making an edible dish from cabbage.

As one might guess, there are as many ways of stuffing dough.

I like them regardless of how they are spelled or pronounced, Just make them right.

Just my most insignificant view on this.......

back to lurking....and thinking I might cook some pierogies I have in the freezer...MMMMmm

Steve

I feel left out...all this talk of pierogies and kielbasa being a part of Eastern Christianity ...there are some of us here whose Eastern Christianity involves souvlaki and spanakopita! hehehehe! :rolleyes:

Alice

The mainstream sees the entire Byzantine religious culture as part and parcel of a foreign cultural enterprise only because Byzantines have hidden the religious culture underneath a cloak of ethnicity. If we remove the cloak of ethnicity and allow the Light of Christ to shine through the Byzantine lens we can indeed win many unchurched people in North America to Christ.

Look at the cultural barriers that Saints Cyril & Methodius faced. When they headed north to the Slavic lands did they insist on taking souvlaki and spanakopita (as delicious as they are)? No! They studied the Khazar�s culture and language and presented Christ to them in a way they could understand and transformed the Khazars. They were so successful that Rastislav, Prince of Moravia, asked the Byzantine Emperor Michael I for missionaries to come to his country to teach them. Again they were successful and brought Christ and the Byzantine Christian Life to Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Moravia and the peoples in and around the Carpathian Mountains. They didn't turn these Slavs into ethnic Greeks. They merely baptized the Slavic culture and let it grow.

But those German missionaries, you see, didn�t like this one bit! They said that the Slavs should be assimilated into the larger, growing Germanic culture of central Europe (resistance is futile, you know). That Greek form of Christianity was all fine and well for Greeks, but Slavs should choose a mainstream religion and mainstream was Latin Catholicism (if only these Slavs were smart enough to understand this). Those Slavs didn�t need an alphabet. Just have the missionaries teach them Latin and German so that they can be absorbed into the dominant western European culture. That Greek religious culture is part and parcel of a foreign cultural enterprise. No need for it here in central and eastern Europe. The Slavs didn�t need a religious culture with long services, funny chant, and a requirement that Christians bathe every year. They need mainstream European culture! But Saints Cyril & Methodius felt that Byzantine Christianity could not only lead the Slavs to Christ but that the Slavs would take Byzantine Christianity and make it their own.

Yes, the tale is a bit over-the-top but it makes the point I want. Where would the Slavs be if SS Cyril and Methodius thought them to be too different? Where would the Slavs be if SS Cyril and Methodius thought that the language and cultural barriers, together with the idea that Latin Christianity (which was the growing mainstream religion of Europe) were all too difficult for Slavs?

Byzantine Christianity can transform North America. I�ve seen vibrant Byzantine Christian parishes (mostly Orthodox) that are attracting the people you consider to be so bland. They are becoming wonderful Byzantine Christians. Yes, they are not Slavic and never will be Slavic. But why should anyone care?

Dear Bob,

Very good point!

But I think the main reason Americans don't like onion domes is because they don't like onions period!

If you are arguing that mainstream America is uncouthed, uncultured, ignorant of world affairs and sees all it needs of religion on the television early Sunday morning, then you've no argument from me!

I think the way the USA treated Orthodox Serbia and continues to treat it by proxy through the UN "peacekeeping" force there shows the way the US in general views the Eastern Churches.

The Administrator will not be happy with me (again) on this, but I think he is imposing his own deeply-held beliefs and understandings of spiritual culture on the US mainstream that is simply incapable of comprehending it.

But enough from me for one day, don't you think?

Alex

Dear Administrator,

Yes, you are right - but I think within Orthodoxy there is another dynamic at work altogether that is NOT comparable to Byzantine Catholicism.

For one thing, Orthodoxy is a "stand alone" Church and faith.

Byzantine Catholics have all sorts of bad historical baggage built into their psychology through years of nasty relations with Rome ie. married priests, jurisdictional issues, Latinization - you name it and there are probably several threads on it on this forum.

Orthodoxy does not have a "second-class" mentality outlook and makes no apologies for anything.

In addition, to what extent are American converts to Orthodoxy (and also to Eastern Catholicism) running away from something rather than coming TO something that's new.

In our parish we have many Roman Catholics who attend Sunday Liturgy regularly, but who remain Roman Catholic in spiritual outlook etc.

In fact, in talking to them, one gets the sense that they are indeed refugees from a Latin Church that they feel they can no longer relate to.

It all has precious little to do with Christ and evangelism, but with other issues. And I'm not saying those issues aren't valid, only that I fail to see the connection in this respect with Sts Cyril and Methodius.

There is every need for an American Orthodox/Eastern Catholic Church and every right for it to be established.

I'd have to think about it more, but I think that Orthodoxy is much better positioned as a Church to be that American Church than our Eastern Catholic Churches are.

In fact, the more "Orthodox" an Eastern Catholic becomes, the more likelihood that he or she will, at some point, "Dox" or become Orthodox NOT in communion with Rome.

And again, this has nothing to do with evangelization, but with finding the right Church to worship in, that's more traditional, that's this or that.

It is about Christians who are Christians already, and probably very zealous Christians, who are moving away from their mainstream Churches toward Orthodoxy that they feel have betrayed the Gospel, the historic liturgical traditions and the like.

And that, too, will be a death sentence for Eastern Catholicism in North America, my dear Sir.

I've read many statements of congratulation here on this forum to those who have "doxed" out of conscience.

The fact is that they have left the Eastern Catholic Churches and this means that something is wrong that we perhaps aren't addressing.

And, at that point, it has precious little to do with ethnic exclusivity, culture, languages and the like.

Finally, Sir, you continue to refuse to consider the CULTURAL aspect of Byzantine Christianity.

No one is forcing you to if you don't want to.

But I think that you yourself have put your finger on what is perhaps THE most crucial aspect of this entire discussion - and it is perhaps because of that that you would rather not face it head-on.

That is fine. But it leaves a great big gap in your argument that I feel should be addressed.

Alex

Skip back a thousand years:

Those Greek Monks, Cyril & Methodius are imposing their own deeply-held beliefs and understandings of spiritual culture on the Slavs, who are simply incapable of comprehending it.

This is nothing more than a cop out.

I can do all thing through Christ, who gives me strength. (Phil 4:13)