www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization Which Byzantine Rite/Church is thriving?

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Peace everyone,

I was rather disappointed and dismayed learning the trouble that the Ruthenian Byzantine Church is experiencing. I guess I was under the mistaken impression that the Byzantine Catholic Churches were on the upswing. I'm blessed to have three Ukrainian parishes, three Ruthenian parishes, a Melkite parish and a Romanian parish all within a 20-30 minute drive of my home. I thought they were benefiting from Latins looking for more traditional/orthodox pastures.

I was curious which of the Eastern Catholic Churches could be considered as thriving in North America?

None of the above.

Perhaps the Malankarese Rite?

The Melkites are making some moves because of the flight from Lebanon. But the stats are so bad no one really knows.

CDL

I don't think he is talking about people moving from point A to point B. That is not growth just a horizontal move.

Hi, Chance!

Perhaps the blessed situation that you describe above serves to illuminate one of the basic problems our Church faces today. All of our Eastern Catholic Churches have displaced members living in areas that offer no opportunity for them to worship according to their their own canonical traditions. Typically these relocated folks will "default" to the nearest readily-accessible Latin Church (as do their children, and so on), in order to maintain their Catholicity. Take this situation and fast forward a generation or two, and it's not hard to see how entire families of canonical Easterners become lost to our Church, to the point that many today don't even know that, officially, they were and still are Eastern Catholics!

How great it would be if we were able to take situations such as the one you describe in which eight Eastern Catholic parishes are clustered within a half hour of your home and "spread them out" so that none of the transient, mobile members of our Churches need to forfeit their canonical Church affiliation for lack of a reasonably accessible parish!

Al (a pilgrim)

I am astonished and quite frankly envious that you have such a nice choice of EC churches within a short distance. in Tennessee, we are blessed to have one (ONE) Byzantine mission for the whole state, and another small cluster that hopes to become a mission some time in the future.
Much Love,
Jonn

Thriving eastern communities is a hard one to assess. I am inclined to ask "thriving as compared to what?".
In the Phoenix area (now 5th largest in the U.S. in population, having passed San Diego), we have a Melkite parish, Maronite parish, 2 Chaldean Catholic, 1 Ukrainian Catholic, and 2 Ruthenian parishes. I believe that the Ruthenians are the largest single group.

There are also many Orthodox parishes- 4 Greek, 2 Serb, 1 Kievan Ukrainian (non-canonical), 1 Antiochean with a mission, 1 OCA (Russian), 1 ROCOR (may be non-canonical), 1 Roumanian (OCA), and there me be a few more missions. The largest among the Orthodox have been the Greeks- by far the largest single group here, having grown from 1 church to 4 in about 25 years.

Since I originally came from the OCA (Russian) parish, I am inclined to see the Ruthenians as more successful than the OCA here, since they share a great deal in common with the OCA parish, but have steadily grown, while the OCA parish has not.

Jim wrote:
Good question.

I guess at off the top of my head, I'd single out vocations, are they growing or declining? Despite problems in western countries I believe I've read that vocations in the Latin Rite have actually been on the increase since 1985.

Perhaps a less accurate measure might be if the number of parishes are stable or even increasing--though I suppose with many ethnic populations shifting from major cities to the suburbs that skew purely looking at numbers.

Do any of the Byzantine Churches have increasing vocations and a growing number of parishes in the suburbs?

Chance, I guess your answer depends on which part of the world you look at.

In eastern Europe there have been increases in vocations ever since the fall of communism, in all churches, Catholic and Orthodox.

In the U.S., there appears to be varied success in vocations. The smaller the church, the fewer the vocations sometimes. But, within the Orthodox communities, the Greeks have had the largest shortage of priests, and are the largest church, and continue to grow at a healthy pace, Arizona for example.

It would be good to know how many converts to the Faith are occurring, too.

Aye Jim,

I guess I'm reacting to the dire statements about the Ruthenian Byzantine Church down in the revised liturgy forum.

May be I should cut to the chase and ask how the North American Ukrainian Catholic Church is doing? It appears I'm heading in that direction as I discover my Ukie heritage and growing love of Byzantine spirituality. Bouncing around the web, I get the impression to some degree it's flourishing in Canada How's the U.S. Ukrainian Church doing?

Thanks!

You know, I have to wonder how much the lack of vocations is due to internal issues (lack of candidates) and how much of it is external (Latinizations, difficulty in being accepted and making it through seminary, etc).

I've seen this gloom and doom talk, but I realize that the only way we'd be seeing it if there are enough people around who care deeply and passionately to be talking about it. Which leads me to wonder if it is the internals or the externals at work, and if the externals are changed if the internals will be as well.

I believe Fr. Thomas Loya (a Ruthenian) has had much success with a similar (though much more thought out) mentality.

I, for one, am not looking for the next closest Ukrainian parish. I think this is an exciting time to be in the Eastern church, and the Ruthenian church in particular. Sure, things could get pretty bad in the next couple decades. But they can also get really good. And if they are to get really good, the church needs those who know it and love it to stick around with their wisdom and passion. It is apparent to me in all of this that there are plenty of those people still around.

We need to pray for more vocations in the Eastern Church. We have lost a lot of people to the RC church because we just don't have parishes available to everyone. If we must attend an RC church because we do not have the ability to attend an Eastern church then we have an obligation to our children to keep our Eastern faith alive for them at home.

I went to two more Divine Liturgies at two different Ruthernian Byzantine parishes this weekend. They were both wonderful services with friendly people. As another poster mentioned, I don't see why Latins aren't fleeing from the liturgical abuses that are occurring in many Novus Ordo parishes to their closest Eastern Catholic Church.

I know I'm feeling a whole lot better over these last couple of months. Though, I think I've always had Byzantine leanings and these last 15 years, I've been more or less trying to shoehorn myself into mainstream Latin Catholicism.

Peace

Hi everyone,

I'm a new guy to the group. As it happens, I'm a Latin fleeing the liturgical abuses in Novus Ordo parishes! I just had to say hi when I read this thread.

I'm doing a little private research on Eastern rite churches because I think it would be really nice to belong to a community that better understands and practices the Faith as it's been handed down through the centuries.

I've been very impressed with the knowledge, devotion and insight of the people on this site. I look forward to getting to know you better. God bless.

Dan

Welcome to our forum, Dan!

In Christ,
Alice