Acceptance of the Eastern Rites?

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DrPiano

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I was recently talking with a friend of mine (we’re both Protestants who have gone through/are going through various changes in our spiritual traditions) about the Roman Catholic and Eastern Catholic churches and he said he was talking to a friend who is a Byzantine Catholic and this friend (my friend’s friend) said the following:
a friend of mine who is byzantine said that if i converted to his church, it would not be recognized by rome. i would have to convert thru them too …] i think he also said that if his protestant marriage was accepted in the byzantine church and then wanted to join a roman parish, he would have to go thru the whole process all over again
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How true is this?

He also said the following:
the byzantine thing, i suspect has to do with history. these were people caught between the two worlds and they were given a dispensation to practice an eastern rite while being catholics but they are probably treated like the unwanted step child
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Now taken with the grain of salt that this is hearsay through a convoluted channel (like playing the child’s game “telephone”) how accurate is this of how you all feel? Do you feel marginalized? If yes, why? If not, why? I’m really interested because through listening to EWTN (particularly the show “Light of the East”) I was under the impression that the rites were all one big happy family. Any insights you can give would be awesome. Thanks!
 
Glory be to Jesus Christ!

Elisa, as an adult with free will you may enroll in and join any particular Catholic Church that you wish. That includes the Latin Rite or any of the Eastern Catholic Churches. You should, obviously, receive instruction within the particular Church (Ukrainian Catholic, Melkite, Chaldean, etc.) that you are intending to join.
Fr. Deacon RLB
 
a friend of mine who is byzantine said that if i converted to his church, it would not be recognized by rome. i would have to convert thru them too …] i think he also said that if his protestant marriage was accepted in the byzantine church and then wanted to join a roman parish, he would have to go thru the whole process all over again
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Wrong. If you convert into an Eastern Catholic Church you are a full fledged Catholic with all the rights and responsibilities therein. You would be under an Eastern Catholic Church and the Eastern Code of Canon Law. It would be completely recognized by Rome and you would not have to re-do anything.

If you are married to a fellow Protestant then your marriage will be recognized. If you are married to a fallen away Catholic who did not follow the canons in either having the wedding in a Catholic Church or being granted a dispensation for having it elsewhere then it won’t. If the latter is the case and you have a Catholic ceremony in the Byzantine Church then it is completely recognized by Rome and nothing more needs to be done.
the byzantine thing, i suspect has to do with history. these were people caught between the two worlds and they were given a dispensation to practice an eastern rite while being catholics but they are probably treated like the unwanted step child
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No dispensations were involved. The mentality this person is eschewing is that Eastern Catholics are Roman Catholics with permission to have a funny Mass. We run into people like that here. I warn you now that the Internet is not a mirror of what you will find in a parish so don’t neglect to visit Eastern Catholic churches and attend the services before deciding what you think of them. The Eastern Catholics were mostly Orthodox who desired unity with the Catholic Church and left the Orthodox communion and entered the Catholic communion of Churches. They are sui iuris, or self-governing, and of equal dignity and respect to the western traditions. There is a lot of history, not all of which is nice and pretty and some of which continues to this day. That doesn’t change the fact that the Eastern and Oriental Catholic traditions are paths to salvation ordained by the Lord God for the benefit of His people worthy of respect and honor this person you quote is not giving them.

In real life, most Roman Catholics do not know the Eastern Catholic Churches exist and the ones who do tend to have great respect for them despite their little knowledge and many misunderstandings. I encourage you to stick around and to visit an Eastern Catholic parish to see for yourself how wrong this friend or a friend really is.
 
Thanks for going through it point by point. I KNEW deep inside that my friend was wrong but I didn’t have enough knowledge to back it up. I don’t know much about the marriage involved (it was the friend’s friend’s marriage I think that was in question) but its nice to know that there is that communion between the Catholic Churches than my friend was told 🙂

As for my conversion to the Catholic Church, I will probably convert in the Roman Catholic rite. What I’ve seen of the Eastern Rites (and by this I do actually mean the rite itself) is beautiful but I definitely feel called to the Roman Rite and the Roman church. My friend had considered, at one point, Eastern Orthodoxy, and had also talked to his Byzantine Catholic friend, after which he walked away with the impressions that I quoted above. When we were talking the other day I was very sad at the misperceptions.

Thanks again for your well-thought out answers 🙂 Is there any documentation on any of the above points that I could show my friend, if he asks?
 
a friend of mine who is byzantine said that if i converted to his church, it would not be recognized by rome. i would have to convert thru them too …] i think he also said that if his protestant marriage was accepted in the byzantine church and then wanted to join a roman parish, he would have to go thru the whole process all over again
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I’ve been thinking about this and trying to figure out where this person got these outlandish ideas. I’ve come to a conclusion that helps me to make sense of it. It might be that the first misunderstanding about two conversions was an attempt to explain that Catholics belong to different Churches.

If your friend converted to Roman Catholicism, he would then have to ask for a change of canonical enrollment to become an Eastern Catholic. Because of the communion the Churches share, a Roman Catholic is free to attend and participate in an Eastern Catholic Church. He would remain a Roman Catholic, though. An analogy is an American who decides to visit or live in Europe. Unless paperwork is filed and approved, the person remains an American and is still held to the American citizenship laws, like taxes, no matter where he lives or how long he lives there. In the same way a Roman Catholic can visit or always worship in an Eastern Catholic Church but to become an Eastern Catholic and be under the Eastern Catholic hierarchy and laws, paperwork has to be filed. It isn’t another conversion, though, and the initial conversion to Catholicism is fully recognized by all.

The second misunderstanding is harder to come up with a possible explanation so I’m not going to try. My guess is that the friend’s friend heard about a marriage through the grapevine, misunderstood what happened and why, made generalizations out of a specific case based on the misunderstanding, then inappropriately applied them to other circumstances and himself. You should tell your friend that his friend needs to brush up on his faith. He isn’t being a very good witness to it!
 
There is one outside possibility: said “Byzantine Catholic” may actually be in an ACROD parish (American Carpetho-Rusyn Orthodox Diocese, part of the Constantinople Patriarchate) or a FSSJ affiliated parish.
 
There is one outside possibility: said “Byzantine Catholic” may actually be in an ACROD parish (American Carpetho-Rusyn Orthodox Diocese, part of the Constantinople Patriarchate) or a FSSJ affiliated parish.

Some of the old founding parishes of ACROD still use “Greek Catholic” in their official names, as the courts ruled that term was generic and could refer to Orthodox as well.
 
Aramis said:
There is one outside possibility: said “Byzantine Catholic” may actually be in an ACROD parish (American Carpetho-Rusyn Orthodox Diocese, part of the Constantinople Patriarchate) or a FSSJ affiliated parish.
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It is unlikely that he is Orthodox based on the second quote that says the Byzantines (which he identifies himself as) have a dispensation from Rome to practice their rite. The wording is odd, though, in that he says “they” and not “we” and “probably” instead of “in my experience.”

Whatever the explanation, the friend’s friend has some brushing up to do.
 
Eastern Catholics don’t need a dispensation from Rome or anyone or anywhere else to be themselves.
 
Yeah, dispensation makes no sense. The law itself upholds their rite–no dispensing is needed 🤷
 
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