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

Andrew,

Where I agree that your approach is somewhat unique, I know that it is good when there a couple of ordinations. What would be of concern to me if you that same number of priests dying, and then also that same number of priests either retiring or worse yet, being incapacitated, then you are not keeping up with the numbers to maintain the needs of the communities that need to be serve. I would rather see ordinations over deaths of priests anyday in the Church papers. I am just concerned that we can keep on nuturing vocations, and that starts in the parishes from the time they are young, not when they apply to seminary.

Just my thoughts.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Ilian-

The Antiochian Orthoodox, according to orthodoxwiki/Word Magazine, have 236 parishes with 51,320 people (217 parishoners per parish). Their website says they have "4 hierarchs and over four hundred clergy in 238 churches and missions throughout the United States and Canada", a 1.68 clergy/church ratio.

By contrast, we have 27,207 registered Melkites in 35 parishes (777 Melkites per parish - an auspicious number, don't you think? ), served by two hierarchs, 103 major clergy (35 priests, 15 priests in a religious order, 43 deacons) with one more deacon coming in a few days. That's 2.22 secular clergy per parish. Though there are some quite large parishes in the eparchy, I'd imagine that a number of the Melkites are registered but not near any Melkite parish. Indeed, our parish sees some of these folks fairly often, including a significant Good Friday-Pascha influx (I know at least some are from outside our parish boundaries, as opposed to the usual Easter- and-Christmas Christians).

And as Father Deacon Lance points out, there are reportedly about a dozen missions waiting for a priest (bringing us down to 579 Melkites per congregation).


So, as you can see we have a higher nominal Melkite to parish ratio than our Antiochian sister Church, but the Antiochians have more parishes and about twice as many clergy. In terms of parishoners, they're about twice our size; they also have about five times the numbers of parishes and would-be missions.

I don't know what the reasons for this are. Ideas I'd put forward include:

- we had no eparchy until 1975; AO has had a variety of eparchies going back to 1904. I'm sure a good number of our immigrants Latinized (and Latinize), especially in the early parts of the last century. They've also had much longer to build themselves, whereas we've been just getting off our feet for much of the past 30 years.

- the AO has had whole Protestant congregations integrate with them, something we do not have.

- I also get the impression that they've been VERY good at evangelization

- most importantly, thus far God has been behind them, and their tenure of their patch of His vineyard has apparently been very good.

Markos

I would frankly be a little suspicious of the accuracy of that number. Does your weekly attendance come anywhere near that number? I have a lot of trouble believing each and every Melkite parish in this country has on average that many people. I looked at the CNEWA stats, and right below Newton it has an Eparchy in Canada that lists 33,000 members in three parishes (11,000 members per parish ?????). Something just doesn't seem right with those numbers. 217 per AOA parish does sound fairly reasonable to me.

Again, I'm not sold on the ratio being accurate.

Why haven't the Melkites targeted the same groups?

And the Melkites?

Ilian-

I'm not an eparchal or even a parish insider, and I don't have the answers to your questions. Just to clarify:



Me too. Some parishes I'm told do have a lot of people; I have no idea what the count is in my parish but I doubt it's 777. The Antiochian 217 per parish sounds more reasonable to me. I also don't know how they get 27,000; again my first guess would be

Good Friday, Pascha we see a HUGE surge of Christmas-Easter christians and Melkites who arrive irregularly from places (sometimes hours away) without Melkite parishes. I'd expect some of the latter account for the 27,000. Unfortunately, I can't provide more info.


Again, I'm sorry I can't provide any more info on this question.

Okay. The question just stuck out to me because it seems to me that the Melkites share much of the same tradition that's found in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch. I was just curious how their approaches are different here, and how it might be yielding different results.

I did notice one thing in an letter written by Bishop John Elya in 2003. He says

http://www.melkite.org/sa54.htm

Has the Melkite church in North America actually contracted?