Amount of Rome's Control on Eastern Catholics

[Vico]

I disagree.

The father Toth-archbishop Ireland incident happened in 1889AD.

In 1890 the congregation in Minneapolis petitioned the Russian Metropolia to accept them and completely severed ties with the Archdiocese of Minneapolis. In 1892 the synod of the Russian church agreed to accept them and most of the schism unfolded over the next ten years from parish to parish.

It wasn’t until 1905 that Rome took any action at all, and that was because the danger of schism was spreading back into Europe and the alarm it was causing there. So we have fifteen years of unfolding and evolving schism with Rome doing nothing.

It looks pretty obvious that had the Ruthenians complacently accepted the Latin priests they had been instructed to follow (and many actually did), Rome would have been satisfied.

That the appointment of Andrii Hodobay annoyed the local Latin bishops I have no doubt, but he actually had no authority of his own, he was commpletely dependent on the cooperation and good graces of the Latin bishops. His successor Ortinkij was almost equally powerless. One can sense Rome’s reluctance to act, doing the absolute minimum and hoping it will suffice.

This was a remedial action after a decade and a half of widening schism. Band-Aids for a gaping wound.

There is no question that the schism got the attention of the Catholic Church.

No, but close: “It wasn’t until 1905 that Rome took any action at all”.

1884 - 1889 = 5 years from first priest to the schism, many priests did not schism.
1890 Letter that permanent priests in the USA must be celibate. *
1902 Apostolic Visitator Canon Hodobay arrives (May 8)

Yes to: “Ortinkij was almost equally powerless” … for six years: 1907 until 1913.

The Ruthenians knew that they did not have jurisdiction of their own. **

Also they knew in 1890 that they had to avoid scandal of married priests. *

---

• According to Sacred Oriental Congregation, Prot. No. 572-30, Rome, July 23, 1934:
  But your Excellency knows well how, under the appearance of vast questions, there lies prevalently that much more restricted question, which has its origin in the regulation of article XII of the Decree Cum Data Fuerit of March 1,1929, and by which was again decreed what had already been prescribed since 1890; that is to say, “that Greek Ruthenian priests who desire to betake themselves to the United States of America and to remain there must be celibates.”

… the Ruthenian population in the United States of America. There it represents an immigrant element and a minority, and it could not, therefore, pretend to maintain there its own customs and traditions which are in contrast with those which are the legitimate customs and traditions of Catholicism in the United States, and much less to have there a clergy which could be a source of painful perplexity or scandal to the majority of American Catholics.

And, moreover, when the Holy See recognized the peculiarities of the Greek Ruthenian Church and guaranteed them, it intended principally - as is evident from the Decree of Union of 1596, during the Pontificate of Clement VII, and of the Brief of Paul V of 1615 - to recognize and guarantee the ritual traditions of the Ruthenians.

As regards their particular canonical discipline, the Holy See could not have affirmed its integral application at all times and in all places without taking into account the different exigencies and circumstances. Thus one can well understand how a married clergy, permitted in those places where the Greek Ruthenian Rite originated and constitutes a predominant element, could hardly be advisable in places where the same Rite has been imported and finds an environment and mentality altogether different.

You can read that here: stlouis.byzcath.org/links.htm
** From the first Catholic bishop in the United States in 1789 until 1908, all the Catholic Churches there fell under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith as missionary territory. Then from 1908 to 1917, only the Eastern Catholic Churches remained under the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, until the Congregation for the Oriental Churches was established in 1917.

 

[mardukm]

Dear brother Hesychios,

The decree refers to foreign rites. There is no ‘probably’.

If they wanted to exclude the unique practices (which are not very different, after all) of religious orders I think that they could have been clearer than that. There is nothing foreign about religious orders which were established throughout western Europe, and often were headquartered in Rome.

Not true. “Americanism” was the norm. Anything from Europe would have been considered “foreign.” Anything that did not meet the uniform standards that the Latin American bishops were trying to establish would have been considered “foreign.” If the American bishops wanted uniformity, one can understand why they would oppose the Rites of the religious orders, since the religious orders were not under their omophor but were autonomous entities whose ordinaries were seated in Europe.

That the bishops might have also not wanted the religious order variations in the Roman liturgy would be a secondary matter, as they did not mention it in the decrees from Baltimore.

The Rites of the religious orders were considered Rites, not “religious order variations.”

No one said anything about mass migrations. I wrote of a desire for uniformity.

But it would be illogical to assume that they were referring to Rites that did not even exist in the U.S at the time - namely, the Rites of the Eastern Churches.

I did not state that there was a bias against the eastern churches.

OK

The eastern rites were not even considered churches at the time, they were rites of the Roman Catholic church.

Not really relevant in the early-mid 19th century since they did not exist to any appreciable degree at that time.

Nor does the church teach that bishops should be assumed to be ignorant.

Of what? Circumstances that could possibly occur a generation later?

It is a power he reserves to himself. We should expect him to use it well and justly if he expects to keep it.

It is a power that can’t be used to impede the authority of local bishops.

Here’s a statement from HH JP2 of thrice-blessed memory:
"**Vatican I’s definition, however, does not assign to the Pope a power or responsibility to intervene daily in the local churches. It means only to exclude the possibility of imposing norms on him to limit the exercise of the primacy. The Council expressly states: “This power of the Supreme Pontiff does not at all impede the exercise of that power of ordinary and immediate episcopal jurisdiction with which the bishops, appointed by the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 20:28) as successors of the apostles, shepherd and govern the flock entrusted to them as true pastors…” (DS 3061).

Indeed, we should keep in mind a statement of the German episcopate (1875) approved by Pius IX that said: “The episcopate also exists by virtue of the same divine institution on which the office of the Supreme Pontiff is based. It enjoys rights and duties in virtue of a disposition that comes from God himself, and the Supreme Pontiff has neither the right nor the power to change them.” The decrees of Vatican I are thus understood in a completely erroneous way when one presumes that because of them “episcopal jurisdiction has been replaced by papal jurisdiction”; that the Pope “is taking for himself the place of every bishop”; and that the bishops are merely “instruments of the Pope: they are his officials without responsibility of their own” (DS 3115).**”

As the howling from Hungary intensified perhaps.

I thought the “howling from Hungary” came at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century, which resulted in the appointment of the apostolic visitator in 1902. Are you sure there was “howling from Hungary” in the first two years of the 1890’s? If so, can you please present the evidence?

All the while banning the married priesthood at the request of Latin bishops, in France and in the USA, then in Australia.

If it was really the Pope’s wish that they were to be banned, why did the Pope grant several indults in the early 20th century for married Eastern priests to come to the U.S.? Are you aware that Ea Semper was not received with full joy by the Latin bishops, specifically because it gave an explicit loophole for Eastern Catholics to be able to have married clergy in the future?

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[mardukm]

Btw, brother Michael, according to the Historical Mirror, the involvement of the Hungarian secular authorities was initiated by an appeal of the local American Eastern Clergy to the Empire in 1898. Apparently, this was in regards to the issue of property rights (?).

So the Pope’s pastoral response to the Eastern Catholics in 1892 was by no means forced by the Austro-Hungarian authorities.

Btw, I am aware of an old law which forbade Latin clerics from inducing Eastern Catholics to transfer to the Latin Catholic Church under penalty of censure. Does anyone know when this law was enacted, or other info about it?

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[dvdjs]

“Americanism” was the norm. Anything from Europe would have been considered “foreign.” Anything that did not meet the uniform standards that the Latin American bishops were trying to establish would have been considered “foreign.” If the American bishops wanted uniformity, one can understand why they would oppose the Rites of the religious orders, since the religious orders were not under their omophor but were autonomous entities whose ordinaries were seated in Europe.
…
The Rites of the religious orders were considered Rites, not “religious order variations.”
…
But it would be illogical to assume that they were referring to Rites that did not even exist in the U.S at the time - namely, the Rites of the Eastern Churches.

And let’s also underscore the subtle little semantical shift that Hesychios is pulling. The quote from 1852 does not talk about “foreign rites”. It talks about rites foreign to the “Roman usage”. Not “probably”.

The Roman Ritual, adopted by the First Council of Baltimore, is to be observed in all dioceses, and all are forbidden to introduce customs or rites foreign to the Roman usage.

This exclusion applies to all sorts of things that Hesychios wants to think are included (anything Latin), even though the idea does not follow from the quoted passage. And the idea that that passage had something to do with Eastern rites is a fantasy.

From the earlier thread forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=3156745&postcount=80

… you, in effect, assume a tremendous clairvoyance of the bishops. It is only obvious, with the benefit of perfect hindsight, that the US would survive the civil war as a nation, that the industrial North would be essentially unscathed and industrialization would continue, that emigration from Austria-Hungary would be permitted, that coal and steel makers would recruit from Austria-Hungary to [replace] English speaking but restive labor, and that significant numbers of the Austria-Hungarian immigrants would be Greek Catholics. That’s the problem with the time-line: it requires an implausible amount of knowledge of am uncertain future by the bishops. You have provided no foundation to support the idea that the bishops were working with this vision of the future in mind.

And the reality, at least as gleaned from contemporary documents of Fr Slivka is very different from what Hesychios is pushing. The Latin Bishops were in general opposed to a lack of uniformity. But apart from Bishop Ireland and Fr. Toth, things worked out, not smoothly, but married priests were present in the US. And whole the Vatican moved slowly on these matters, within a a decade plus it had begun movement toward separate jurisdiction and the establishment of Eastern Catholic Eparchies in the US. Indeed the problem with the Latins soon was a memory as inter-EC issues rose to the fore.

And Hesychios’s ides of the “gaping wound” is way overstated. The Toth matter was enormous for the proto-OCA: it gave them a missionary to work to establish a presence in the Eastern US. His well-funded activites were certainly a problem for us, but the wound was not “gaping”. Some parishes and laity but an order of magnitude less than ideas presented in this thread. And clergy? Essentially none. Even Fr Toth’s brother, who went over, repented and returned to the Greek Catholic church. The fit in the Orthodox church was good for the Russophile Lemko’s, but hot that Galicians of Uhro-Rusins. Even Toth was rejected by his Minneapolis parish, and eventually sought a new home with the Serbs.

 

[Aramis]

Hesyscos: Prior to 1900, almost no distinction seems to have been made between western rites and eastern rites other than allowing eastern patriarchs… All ritual churches were rites if they had distinctive liturgy or paraliturgy.

 

[Vico]

…

Btw, I am aware of an old law which forbade Latin clerics from inducing Eastern Catholics to transfer to the Latin Catholic Church under penalty of censure. Does anyone know when this law was enacted, or other info about it?

Blessings,
Marduk

Demandatam coelitus humilitati nostrae, of Pope Benedict XIV (Dec. 24, 1743).
books.google.com/books?id=xDERAAAAYAAJ&dq=editions%3AOCLC5049310&pg=RA7-PA2-IA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

It pertained to the Melkites, referring to the Byzantine Rite, but there were exceptions made for those in the Damascus area because of the great number of faithful that switched to Latin Church there.

Pope Leo XIII stated it was still in force and broadened it in 1894 to all the Eastern Churches, Orientalium Dignitas:

papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13orient.htm

Of course the first CIC was in 1917 at the same time as the Congregation for the Oriental Churches was created.

 

[Cecilianus]

Hesyscos: Prior to 1900, almost no distinction seems to have been made between western rites and eastern rites other than allowing eastern patriarchs… All ritual churches were rites if they had distinctive liturgy or paraliturgy.

Although at some places and times (I’m thinking of Norman Sicily) churches that said Liturgy in Greek would be under the jurisdiction of Greek bishops while churches that said Liturgy in Latin would be under the jurisdiction of Norman bishops, both bishops under the direct jurisdiction of the Pope as their local primate. There might not have been any conception of them as different “rites” in the modern sense, but the substance of the distinction was there.

I do agree that your point holds true in the case under discussion, 19th century America, however.

 

[mardukm]

I have a question about the practice of infant communion in the North American diaspora.

I have heard that infant communion was a “recovered” Eastern Tradition in the diaspora. Ea Semper instructed the Easterns to delay confirmation until the age of reason, but did not say anything about infant communion.

My question is, why did infant communion disappear in the first place? Possible reasons:

1. There was a prohibition of infant communion in some other papal or local synodal document.
2. Communion is not normally given before or without confirmation.
3. Easterns wanted to imitate their Latin neighbors.
4. Another reason. Please explain.

What’s the correct answer?

Blessings,
Marduk

 

[Vico]

Mardukm,

Earlier you asked about immigration statistics, which are available for 1850 and later:
census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0029/tab04.html

Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) states:
In the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania there were in 1880 but some 1900 Slavs; in 1890, over 40,000; and in 1900, upwards of 81,000. The same proportion holds good of the bituminous coal-mining districts and of the iron regions in that and other states. Taking simply the past four years (1905-1908), the immigration of the Slovaks and Ruthenians, both of the Greek Catholic Rite, has amounted to 215,972. This leaves out of consideration the immigration (147,675) of the Croatians and Slavonians for the same period, though a considerable portion of them are also of the Greek Rite.
Catholic Encyclopedia 1908 version:
Still the immigration reports show that immigration from Austria-Hungary from 1861 to 1868 was annually in the hundreds; and from 1869 to 1879 it ranged from 1500 to 8000 annually; and in 1880 it suddenly rose to 17,000. From 1880 to 1908 the total immigration from Austria-Hungary to the United States amounted to 2,780,000, and about twenty percent of these were Ruthenians and Slovaks. Within the last four years (1905-1908) the immigration of the Slovaks and Ruthenians has amounted to 215,972. To this must be added the Croatians and Slavonians (117,695), a large proportion of whom are of the Greek Rite.

Also:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[Alexander_Roman]

Dear Friends,

An interesting thread indeed - and very topical.

As far as the Ukrainian Catholic Church is concerned, we have a different set of gripes with Rome (not with the Pope) but with the Roman curial folk.

These gripes are at two levels. One level has to do with our ability to run ourselves as a Particular Church by ourselves. That is one set of problems.

We have been asking Rome to formally acknowledge our Major Archbishop as a Patriarch. Indeed, Vatican II recommended the setting up of patriarchates where the need arose. Frankly, we’re the largest EC church around. Rome won’t recognize the man whom many of us already call “Patriarch” beginning with Patriarch Joseph the Confessor who spent 18 years in Siberia for his loyalty to Rome.

Rome doesn’t like our bishops ordaining married men as priests, in accordance with our rights (guaranteed at the Union of Brest in 1596). Rome also doesn’t like our patriarchal synod naming bishops etc.

I attended our current Bishop’s consecration and heard TWO stories as to who it was who named him bishop for our Eparchy - one from our Patriarch and the other from the Apostolic Nuncio. Two diametrically opposed stories - there is a problem indeed . . .

But I think Ukrainian Catholics have learned well the adage that it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission from Rome (both of which will take a very long time, in any event).

However, at quite another level there is another source of tension which appears to explain why the above occurs.

That tension is Rome’s ecumenical outreach to the Russian Orthodox Church. Rome tends to accept, hook, line and sinker, the ROC’s very anti-UGCC positions. The UGCC returned to western Ukraine after 1991 following years of persecution. And we’re not just talking the underground Church either. Many Russian Orthodox clergy in western Ukraine had accepted the status quo (what else could they do?) but when the moment came to make their move - they affirmed they were Greek-Catholics in communion with Pope John Paul II.

There were many cases of Russian bishops being greeted at the doors of Churches (which the Soviet army took from the UGCC in 1946) where “Orthodox clergy” began singing “Ad Multos Annos” in honour of the . . .Pope.

And yes, Greek-Catholics do tend to be a bit, well, anti-ROC. There may even be some good historical reasons for that.

The Russian Orthodox Church sees the UGCC in western Ukraine as having somehow been set up by “western agents” and the like. Their sorrow at having lost western Ukraine to Catholicism is understandable - western Ukraine is where most of their vocations come from, for one thing. Currently, the Ukrainian Catholic seminaries there have three candidates vying for one position in the seminary. In the Ternopil Region, for example, more than 95% of the population has declared themselves “Greek-Catholic.” Not bad since one doesn’t find those kind of statistics in areas of the Russian Orthodox jurisdiction.

The ROC is constantly throwing its gripes re: the UGCC in the face of Vatican diplomats who have yet publicly to take the side of the UGCC.

Have we missed something here? The last time I looked the UGCC was the one that suffered persecution for loyalty to Rome, not the ROC.

So I’m asking the Catholics on this thread who are very pro-papal to speak up in defence of the UGCC and to let us know your views on Rome’s “ostpolitik” with Moscow.

This matter is not about Roman or papal control over the UGCC. It is about what the UGCC sees as the shameful and inadequate response/defense of the UGCC by Rome.

We don’t mind Roman control so much as Roman collusion with Moscow within the context of failed ecumenical dreams of a union between Elder Rome and the “Third Rome.”

So let us leave the ecclesial arguments aside for now. What do (Latin) Catholics have to say about this matter?

Alex

 

[Vico]

I have a question about the practice of infant communion in the North American diaspora.

I have heard that infant communion was a “recovered” Eastern Tradition in the diaspora. Ea Semper instructed the Easterns to delay confirmation until the age of reason, but did not say anything about infant communion.

My question is, why did infant communion disappear in the first place? Possible reasons:

1. There was a prohibition of infant communion in some other papal or local synodal document.
2. Communion is not normally given before or without confirmation.
3. Easterns wanted to imitate their Latin neighbors.
4. Another reason. Please explain.

What’s the correct answer?

Blessings,
Marduk

Answer 1 & 2. Lateran IV (1215) is a key time. See Chapter 7 and 8 in particular:
Ages of initiation: the first two Christian millennia by Paul Turner

books.google.com/books?id=loi4lDkbOrAC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=gregory+vii+infant+communion&source=bl&ots=xgCr7AR02m&sig=14tosjo2iBqNwTJZL6KmZ6nGkmU&hl=en&ei=YTpQTcHqEofAtgeXkcW3AQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=gregory%20vii%20infant%20communion&f=false

The original order of initiation everywhere is baptism, chrismation, communion, by the bishop. After communion was limited to body only, in the west, infants could not receive it so that mystery was delayed. Chrismation was delayed because it was given, in the west, by the bishop and they took a long time to make the circuit. Some never received chrismation. In the east the holy myron was used by the presbyter so the bishop did not have to make the circuit.