A historical explanation of how things came to be?

[Irish_Melkite]

I also found this but no promise of its accuracy:

The first of the Orthodox Churches of the East to bring the message of Orthodoxy to North America was the venerable Russian Orthodox Church. In 1794, eight monks from a Russian monastery founded an Orthodox mission on Kodiak Island, which then belonged, together with all the lands of Alaska, to Russia. By 1840, a Russian Orthodox Bishop had been consecrated for the lands in Alaska. In 1872, his seat of authority was moved to San Francisco, and, in 1905, the Russian Orthodox Church moved its Diocesan and administrative headquarters to New York City.
geocities.com/theocacnainc/history.htm

A link posted by Woodstock in another thread prompted me to look back at this thread and notice the above - which slipped past my eye earlier.

THEOCACNA - the source to which that link goes - is a vagante ecclesia of the first order, being run out of a house trailer in the Ozarks until relatively recently (last I heard, they were relocating to TX). Patriarch (or however he is presently styling himself) Victor Prentiss and his Church (using the term in the broadest possible sense) should not be relied on as a valid source for any information pertaining to Orthodoxy or Eastern Christianity.

Many years,

Neil

 

[jj2011]

Brotherhrolf sticks head out of deeeep foxhole he’s been in for the last several years and says is it safe to come out and ask a question?

I grew up as a Latin rite Catholic in an overwhelmingly Latin rite area. My first experience with Eastern Christianity came when I was invited (along with several other Roman Catholics) to attend what I can only call the Great Vigil on Holy Saturday in 1976 at the then local EO church and thence to celebrate the Paschal feast with my classmate and her family.

Two years later in grad school, I was asked to read at the wedding of a Byzantine Catholic - who was married according to the Byzantine Rite. That is the sum total of my experience with Eastern Christianity. My ancestors were Irish, French, English, Scot and Bavarian German Latin rite Catholics.

The only eastern Europeans here in south Louisiana are Croats and unless I am mistaken, they are Latin rite Catholics.

Can someone please provide me with some sort of historical explanation of how things came to be? This was not covered in either Catholic high school or in all of the significant numbers of hours in history I have.

I made the mistake of reporting about what happened to the EO Cathedral down in NO after Katrina and had my head presented to me on a platter because I did not know correct terminology. I want to learn. I want to understand. What part of I have never been exposed to any of this presents a problem?

Brother,

Having recommended this on another thread, I still say Donald Attwater’s The Christian Churches of the East is a gold mine of information.

amazon.com/Christian-Chur…409810&sr=1-10

Keep in mind that the Divine Liturgy developed organically in the east as well as west. The Byzantine Liturgy is that of St. John Chrysostom, which is sometimes called an abbreviated version of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. Very different in its externals from the Roman rite you and I knew, yet plenty of common elements as well.

The nice thing is that the Byzantine Rite can use so called “sacred languages” like Greek or Slavonic, the vernacular, or a combination of both.

 

[brotherhrolf]

My Christmas wish list has grown…Thank you jj2011