A historical explanation of how things came to be?

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brotherhrolf

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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? 🤷
 
OK
Now you have your own thread -

pull up a chair

start brewing coffee and with any luck the historians NEIL ??? ] will be attracted by the smell and come and answer
 
I wanna hear this story, too. I’d never even heard of the EO church until I signed on to these boards.
 
mommyof4 said:
I wanna hear this story, too. I’d never even heard of the EO church until I signed on to these boards.
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If I felt that it would be OK, I would tell you a little bit. The Eastern Catholics can only be addressed in reference to their total history, not just their recent past.

But if you need to know the story of the EO, I think the non-Catholic forum is where that question is to go.

Michael
 
brotherhrolf said:
The only eastern Europeans here in south Louisiana are Croats and unless I am mistaken, they are Latin rite Catholics.
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You are partially correct. There are Byzantine Rite Croatians but they are from Zumberak and most of the Croatians in the NO area are from Slavonija and Dalmacia and they are overwhelmingly Latin Rite.

You do have a Byzantine Ruthenian Rite parish in NO, it’s called St. Nicholas. Pre-KATRINA, the were in a parish that was attached to a Catholic high school. they were in the old church. I’m sure about post KATRINA as their church had water over the pews.

There are also some Melkite and Marionite parishes down there too if I’m not mistaken…

Hope this helps…
 
Most of the Byzantine Rite Catholics in the United States are descended from immigrants in the late 19th/early 20th century who came from areas in Eastern Europe (mostly in the old Hapsburg ruled Austria-Hungarian Empire.) where a large number of formerly EO groups reunited with the Catholic Church.

The date of the reunifications were in the late 16th-early 17th century, and caused a bit of a stir at the time.
 
Kielbasi said:
Most of the Byzantine Rite Catholics in the United States are descended from immigrants in the late 19th/early 20th century who came from areas in Eastern Europe (mostly in the old Hapsburg ruled Austria-Hungarian Empire.) where a large number of formerly EO groups reunited with the Catholic Church.
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My great-great grandmother is listed as being from Austria-Hungary on her immigration paperwork. Is it possible that she might have been Eastern Catholic? I am not aware of any Eastern Catholics in my family, but would she have switched to Laitn Catholic after marriage to a Latin Catholic?
 
lak611 said:
My great-great grandmother is listed as being from Austria-Hungary on her immigration paperwork. Is it possible that she might have been Eastern Catholic? I am not aware of any Eastern Catholics in my family, but would she have switched to Laitn Catholic after marriage to a Latin Catholic?
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Its possible certainly, but not necessarily true. A large number of Latin Rite catholics, including most Slovaks, Slovenes and Croats all lived in the empire as well.
 
lak611 said:
My great-great grandmother is listed as being from Austria-Hungary on her immigration paperwork. Is it possible that she might have been Eastern Catholic? I am not aware of any Eastern Catholics in my family, but would she have switched to Laitn Catholic after marriage to a Latin Catholic?
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Anything is possible. Austria-Hungary covered a large area. All of or part of 8 countries today.

She could have been Greek Catholic (Eastern Catholic) and then followed the Rite of her husband after marriage which was the custom.

Where did she live when she came to this country?

I’d still give the Ellis Island site a try and she was you come up with.

Email me off-list and let me know her name and I will try to give you some alternate spellings that may help in your search. Do you know how old she was when she came to this country?
 
Patchunky said:
Anything is possible. Austria-Hungary covered a large area. All of or part of 8 countries today.

She could have been Greek Catholic (Eastern Catholic) and then followed the Rite of her husband after marriage which was the custom.

Where did she live when she came to this country?

I’d still give the Ellis Island site a try and she was you come up with.

Email me off-list and let me know her name and I will try to give you some alternate spellings that may help in your search. Do you know how old she was when she came to this country?
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Thanks! 🙂 I sent you PM.
 
what I can only call the Great Vigil on Holy Saturday in 1976 at the then local EO church

To make sure we understand each other, was this the Vesperal Liturgy of Holy Saturday (supposedly held around 4 pm but in parishes much earlier) or the Midnight Matins and Divine Liturgy of Pascha?
 
Hesychios said:
If I felt that it would be OK, I would tell you a little bit. The Eastern Catholics can only be addressed in reference to their total history, not just their recent past.

But if you need to know the story of the EO, I think the non-Catholic forum is where that question is to go.

Michael
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Michael,

Eastern Catholic history is a pertinent topic for this board, including their Orthodox origins when appropriate. The Orthodox opinion of Eastern Catholicism or the history of Orthodoxy distinct from Eastern Catholicism belong on the non-Catholic board.

If you or anyone else is unsure about the appropriate place for a particular conversation, please feel free to PM me.

May God Bless You Abundantly,
Catherine
 
Before anyone gets too excited about those links, it’s important to note that 4 of them are to articles in NewAdvent, the on-line 1911 (?) edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, making them outdated by a century.

Now, one can argue that, as the OP asked for a historical explanation, that lapse in time is inconsequential. But, it is not. Today, other than the broad-based topic of “Ecclesiastical History”, such would most likely be contributed (one hopes) by clergy or laypersons of Eastern Christian heritage - or, at the very least, co-authored by Eastern and Western scholars. Not so in the era that brought them to paper - particularly in an English-speaking nation where:
Instead, the two pieces dealing principally with the Eastern Churches were authored by Father Adrian Fortescue, an English Catholic priest and liturgist who, despite a deserved reputation as a Byzantine scholar, was an ultramontanist and wrote of the East from that perspective. The third, on Rites, was produced by Patrick J. Griffin, whose credentials to have done so are not immediately available - but whose scholarship as applied to the East appears to have been wanting.

The remaining link, on Eastern Orthodoxy, is an unsigned piece from CAF’s library. On a cursory review, it can hardly claim to be scholarly. laden with opinion, much of which is not encumbered by citations and the accuracy of which as a reliable resource is significantly tainted by this inaccurate statement:
and in 1995, Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople concelebrated the Eucharist together
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No one, no one, with even a vague understanding of Catholic-Orthodox relations could read that and not shake their head in disbelief that it appears as a factual statement on the website of a major Catholic apologetic site. Had HH the Ecumenical Patriarch concelebrated with HH the Pope of Rome, the hue and cry raised by the more conservative faithful within both Churches would have reached even to the heavens. Not under the Canons of either Church, Catholic or Orthodox, would such be permissible given the current lack of communio in sacris between the two ecclesia. Yet, that glaring inaccuracy has been brought to the attention of CA staff on at least two prior occasions, some 2 years ago, but has yet to be corrected. On the basis of that alone, putting aside the casual textual presentation, I can’t recommend it as an accurate source from which to learn of the Christian East.

For a brief presentation of the history associated with each of the Catholic Churches of the Eastern and Oriental Communions (and the corresponding Orthodox Churches) from an admittedly Catholic but relatively non-polemical view, I don’t think that one can do much better than Father Ronald Roberson’s The Eastern Churches - A Brief Survey (7th ed) on the Catholic Near East Welfare Association website. I feel relatively certain that my brother and friend, Michael, would concur with me in this recommendation.

On-line excerpts from The Orthodox Church: History by Bishop Kallistos Ware, while no substitute for reading the full text, afford those previously unfamiliar with the history of Eastern Christianity an opportunity to gain familiarity with it from the Orthodox perspective, again in a relatively non-polemical presentation, albeit its focus is principally on Eastern Orthodoxy and doesn’t address the pre-Chalcedonian Churches or those of the Oriental Orthodox Communion. Again, I would anticipate that my brother would agree with me.

As to the history of Oriental Orthodoxy, it is difficult to locate, on-line, a concise piece that is encompassing of all the Churches in the Communion. If there’s sufficient interest, I can pull together pieces on its individual Churches. There is excellent and extensive material available on-line as to the pre-Chalcedonian Assyrian Church. Its history and that of the Ancient Church of the East are the same until a half-century ago, when the schism that separated them occurred.

Many years,

Neil
 
Catherine Grant:
Eastern Catholic history is a pertinent topic for this board, including their Orthodox origins when appropriate. The Orthodox opinion of Eastern Catholicism or the history of Orthodoxy distinct from Eastern Catholicism belong on the non-Catholic board.
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Catherine,

With all due respect, one cannot discuss the history of Eastern or Oriental Catholicism, from whence it came, where it is now, nor where it will be in the near or distant future, in a vacuum which separates it from Orthodoxy - of which it once was, with which it shares its spirituality, culture, and ecclesial praxis, and to which same origins it has been directed to return by no less a person of authority than the Pope.

The opinions of the Orthodox Church as to its Catholic counterparts are of significant import in discussion such as the dialogues at Ravenna. Additionally, it is manifestly unclear as to how discussion of the history of Orthodoxy can be had distinct from that of Eastern Catholicism or Catholicism in general. The intertwined nature of the Apostolic Churches is what effectively drives the periodic and recurrent re-examination of issues between the Churches over this thousand years past - a re-visiting that has not been similarly mirrored between Rome and any other of the religious entities with which it no longer shares communio in sacris.

Many years,

Neil
 
Thank you for those posts Neil.

Some of this I knew in outline - but not the detail .

As you say
With all due respect, one cannot discuss the history of Eastern or Oriental Catholicism, from whence it came, where it is now, nor where it will be in the near or distant future, in a vacuum which separates it from Orthodoxy - of which it once was, with which it shares its spirituality, culture, and ecclesial praxis, and to which same origins it has been directed to return by no less a person of authority than the Pope.
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Orthodox Christianity and Eastern/Oriental Catholicism are intertwined and it is time that this was accepted more readily.
 
Irish_Melkite said:
On-line excerpts from The Orthodox Church: History by Bishop Kallistos Ware, while no substitute for reading the full text, afford those previously unfamiliar with the history of Eastern Christianity an opportunity to gain familiarity with it from the Orthodox perspective, again in a relatively non-polemical presentation, albeit its focus is principally on Eastern Orthodoxy and doesn’t address the pre-Chalcedonian Churches or those of the Oriental Orthodox Communion. Again, I would anticipate that my brother would agree with me.
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Dear brother Neil, how is that so many years have passed and you still remain unaware that the full text of “The Orthodox Church” is available online at Intratext (and has been for several years) 🙂
intratext.com/x/eng0804.htm

Many years,
John
 
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