Claims of Orthodox poster about Eastern Catholics

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patricius79

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Does anyone know how to respond to this?:

*[Eastern Catholic churches] were established in Orthodox countries by the Latin Church through political power as a consequence of invasion and political takeover… The Latin Rite was not recognizable to these countries peoples who had only known the Orthodox Church back to their beginnings, so that the Latins established churches in Communion with the Pope in Orthodox countries with “Eastern Rite” Services, married priests, etc etc. “Real” Latin Priests, celibate and monastic, scorned these ‘defiled’ priests as a step down, and they were NEVER elevated to positions of power in the Papal hierarchical structure, and none of them ever became a Pope. They were inserted into Orthodox countries in violation of the Canons of the Councils in order to attack the Body of Christ and bring it under subjection to Papal rule… It was a concealing of the Latin Rite in the Eastern “Rite”, because when the military withdrew, and the lands returned to their Apostolic Orthodoxy, with that withdrawal departed also the Latin Rite Churches, and what remained was the Latin Communion hiding under the concealment of the appearance of Orthodoxy, but NOT in Communion with the Source of the Rite they were imitating…

The effort failed…

But it created a lot of troubles, and is an enduring source of conflict between the Churches, where the Latins feel justified in punishing the Greek Rebels who have forsaken their obedience to the Pope and his ruling Authority… And the Orthodox see the Latin incursion as a gross violation of the Body of Christ in Orthodox countries…*
 
It’s obviously written from a one sided, propagandist point of view. The real history is much more complicated and it isnt always the big bad Latins at fault
 
patricius79 said:
Does anyone know how to respond to this?:

*[Eastern Catholic churches] were established in Orthodox countries by the Latin Church through political power as a consequence of invasion and political takeover… The Latin Rite was not recognizable to these countries peoples who had only known the Orthodox Church back to their beginnings, so that the Latins established churches in Communion with the Pope in Orthodox countries with “Eastern Rite” Services, married priests, etc etc. “Real” Latin Priests, celibate and monastic, scorned these ‘defiled’ priests as a step down, and they were NEVER elevated to positions of power in the Papal hierarchical structure, and none of them ever became a Pope. They were inserted into Orthodox countries in violation of the Canons of the Councils in order to attack the Body of Christ and bring it under subjection to Papal rule… It was a concealing of the Latin Rite in the Eastern “Rite”, because when the military withdrew, and the lands returned to their Apostolic Orthodoxy, with that withdrawal departed also the Latin Rite Churches, and what remained was the Latin Communion hiding under the concealment of the appearance of Orthodoxy, but NOT in Communion with the Source of the Rite they were imitating…

The effort failed…

But it created a lot of troubles, and is an enduring source of conflict between the Churches, where the Latins feel justified in punishing the Greek Rebels who have forsaken their obedience to the Pope and his ruling Authority… And the Orthodox see the Latin incursion as a gross violation of the Body of Christ in Orthodox countries…*
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I won’t comment on the polemic, controversial statements made there, but not all Eastern Churches in communion with Rome come from Eastern Orthodoxy. The Maronite Church has always been in communion with Rome; the Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara and the Coptic Catholic Church all come from Oriental Orthodoxy.
 
patricius79 said:
Does anyone know how to respond to this?:

*[Eastern Catholic churches] were established in Orthodox countries by the Latin Church through political power as a consequence of invasion and political takeover… The Latin Rite was not recognizable to these countries peoples who had only known the Orthodox Church back to their beginnings, so that the Latins established churches in Communion with the Pope in Orthodox countries with “Eastern Rite” Services, married priests, etc etc. “Real” Latin Priests, celibate and monastic, scorned these ‘defiled’ priests as a step down, and they were NEVER elevated to positions of power in the Papal hierarchical structure, and none of them ever became a Pope. They were inserted into Orthodox countries in violation of the Canons of the Councils in order to attack the Body of Christ and bring it under subjection to Papal rule… It was a concealing of the Latin Rite in the Eastern “Rite”, because when the military withdrew, and the lands returned to their Apostolic Orthodoxy, with that withdrawal departed also the Latin Rite Churches, and what remained was the Latin Communion hiding under the concealment of the appearance of Orthodoxy, but NOT in Communion with the Source of the Rite they were imitating…

The effort failed…

But it created a lot of troubles, and is an enduring source of conflict between the Churches, where the Latins feel justified in punishing the Greek Rebels who have forsaken their obedience to the Pope and his ruling Authority… And the Orthodox see the Latin incursion as a gross violation of the Body of Christ in Orthodox countries…*
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Hi patricius79. I firmly believe that there are some people who should not be taken as dialogue partners, and based on the above I definitely think that your friend or acquaintance is one of them. Mind you, I’m not just being biased against him/her because he/she is Orthodox – heck, I can think of many, many *Catholics *that I wouldn’t/don’t wish to dialogue with.

On the other hand, there has been an official dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church for decades (see vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/sub-index/index_orthodox-ch.htm) which has led to numerous joint documents, including [Balamand, Lebanon, 23 June 1993].
 
Micosil said:
I won’t comment on the polemic, controversial statements made there, but not all Eastern Churches in communion with Rome come from Eastern Orthodoxy. The Maronite Church has always been in communion with Rome; the Syro-Malabar, Syro-Malankara and the Coptic Catholic Church all come from Oriental Orthodoxy.
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Looking at it another way, it depends on your definition. If we were to define the phrase “Eastern Catholics” to mean Greek Catholics only (and believe me, there *are *websites that do so – I’ve spent sooo much time on them :o) then the statement “Oriental Catholics are not Eastern Catholics” is true, by definition. 😉

(Side note: when there’s great danger of confusion I use the phrase “Greek and Oriental Catholics” rather than “Eastern Catholics”.)
 
patricius79 said:
*[Eastern Catholic churches] were established in Orthodox countries by the Latin Church through political power as a consequence of invasion and political takeover… The Latin Rite was not recognizable to these countries peoples who had only known the Orthodox Church back to their beginnings, so that the Latins established churches in Communion with the Pope in Orthodox countries with “Eastern Rite” Services, married priests, etc etc. “Real” Latin Priests, celibate and monastic, scorned these ‘defiled’ priests as a step down, and they were NEVER elevated to positions of power in the Papal hierarchical structure, and none of them ever became a Pope. They were inserted into Orthodox countries in violation of the Canons of the Councils in order to attack the Body of Christ and bring it under subjection to Papal rule… It was a concealing of the Latin Rite in the Eastern “Rite”, because when the military withdrew, and the lands returned to their Apostolic Orthodoxy, with that withdrawal departed also the Latin Rite Churches, and what remained was the Latin Communion hiding under the concealment of the appearance of Orthodoxy, but NOT in Communion with the Source of the Rite they were imitating…
*
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I think it insufficient to say that this is one-sided or even polemical. In point of fact, it is just untrue, with the exception of one clause:
… none of them ever became a Pope …
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That’s it. Every other statement is objectively falsifiable.

Please give a link; it would be nice to go to the source and suggest some reading material.
 
Even the claim “none of them ever became Pope” is ludicrous, because it denies the early Eastern Popes of Rome (Anacletus, Evaristus, Anicetus, Eleutherius, Zosimus, Agatho), as well as those Eastern Patriarchs/Catholicoi that were almost elected (His Beatitude Gregory Peter XV [Cardinal Agagianian]). It also denies the same scenario among Eastern Orthodox - how many (fill in the blank) autocephalous or autonomous Churches produced Ecumenical Patriarchs?
 
SyroMalankara said:
Even the claim “none of them ever became Pope” is ludicrous, because it denies the early Eastern Popes of Rome (Anacletus, Evaristus, Anicetus, Eleutherius, Zosimus, Agatho), as well as those Eastern Patriarchs/Catholicoi that were almost elected (His Beatitude Gregory Peter XV [Cardinal Agagianian]). It also denies the same scenario among Eastern Orthodox - how many (fill in the blank) autocephalous or autonomous Churches produced Ecumenical Patriarchs?
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Point taken. I gave the benefit of the doubt that “them” referred to post schism Greek Catholics.
 
SyroMalankara said:
It’s obviously written from a one sided, propagandist point of view. The real history is much more complicated and it isnt always the big bad Latins at fault
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It’s interesting that you are a Syro-Malankara Catholic, which as I understand it is part of the Antiochian family of rites. I asked him about this rite, or maybe it was the Syro-Malabarase rite, and he said he didn’t know. previously he had said that all the Eastern rites in the Catholic Church were founded by the Latins and were NOT “Apostolic” churches, all of which, he said, rejected the Papal claims.

May I ask, are you from southern India, then? What is your view of the Papacy? What is important in your spiritual life? Just trying to get a sense of what it is like to the an eastern rite Catholic.
 
Peter_J said:
Looking at it another way, it depends on your definition. If we were to define the phrase “Eastern Catholics” to mean Greek Catholics only (and believe me, there *are *websites that do so – I’ve spent sooo much time on them :o) then the statement “Oriental Catholics are not Eastern Catholics” is true, by definition. 😉

(Side note: when there’s great danger of confusion I use the phrase “Greek and Oriental Catholics” rather than “Eastern Catholics”.)
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Yeah, I suppose that’s true. I’ve only ever seen “Eastern Catholic” to refer to all the non-Latin Churches in communion with Rome, so by default, I had to do a double-take when I read the OP.
 
patricius79 said:
It’s interesting that you are a Syro-Malankara Catholic, which as I understand it is part of the Antiochian family of rites. I asked him about this rite, or maybe it was the Syro-Malabarase rite, and he said he didn’t know. previously he had said that all the Eastern rites in the Catholic Church were founded by the Latins and were NOT “Apostolic” churches, all of which, he said, rejected the Papal claims.

May I ask, are you from southern India, then? What is your view of the Papacy? What is important in your spiritual life? Just trying to get a sense of what it is like to the an eastern rite Catholic.
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Was your friend born Eastern Orthodox or is he a convert from Protestantism?
 
phil19034 said:
Was your friend born Eastern Orthodox or is he a convert from Protestantism?
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He’s from the U.S. and was Presbyterian as a child but didn’t really believed, was an atheist as I recall for a long time and then converted to Orthodoxy in his late 30s.
 
Micosil said:
Yeah, I suppose that’s true. I’ve only ever seen “Eastern Catholic” to refer to all the non-Latin Churches in communion with Rome, so by default, I had to do a double-take when I read the OP.
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🙂
 
Not that we want to make this all about the question of an EC becoming Pope (or do we? ;)) but two things come to mind:
  1. Why would an EC would to be Pope? (Do a lot of LCs want to be the Patriarch of Antioch? :hmmm:)
  2. If we turn our attention to cardinals, we see that (approximately) 1 out of 4,000,000 LCs are Cardinals, whereas 1 out of 2,000,000 Eastern (Greek-or-Oriental) Catholics are Cardinals. :cool:
 
Peter_J said:
Not that we want to make this all about the question of an EC becoming Pope (or do we? ;)) but two things come to mind:
  1. Why would an EC would to be Pope? (Do a lot of LCs want to be the Patriarch of Antioch? :hmmm:)
  2. If we turn our attention to cardinals, we see that (approximately) 1 out of 4,000,000 LCs are Cardinals, whereas 1 out of 2,000,000 Eastern (Greek-or-Oriental) Catholics are Cardinals. :cool:
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You’ve phrased question 1. in a very interesting way. Quite often we forget that in the past, the Pope was considered the Patriarch of the West, and not just the visible head of the Universal Church. However, note that this title is “obsolete and practically unusable” and that it was “pointless to insist on maintaining it”.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch#Patriarchate_of_the_West_.28not_extant.29

As far as number 2 is concerned, yes, I found it curious how both Major Archbishops of the Indian Eastern Catholic Churches (Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara) were elevated to the cardinalate. 😃
 
patricius79 said:
It’s interesting that you are a Syro-Malankara Catholic, which as I understand it is part of the Antiochian family of rites. I asked him about this rite, or maybe it was the Syro-Malabarase rite, and he said he didn’t know. previously he had said that all the Eastern rites in the Catholic Church were founded by the Latins and were NOT “Apostolic” churches, all of which, he said, rejected the Papal claims.
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Not true. All Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Churches are “apostolic”. The SyroMalabar wasn’t founded by Latins, but St. Thomas, it was influenced in the 1600s by the Portuguese Latins… Syro-Malankara also trace origins to St. Thomas, and was reunited with Rome by a native Orthodox bishop Mor Ivanios Gevarghis, not Latin. Similar story for the Chaldean Church, the Syriac Church, and the Melkite Church.
May I ask, are you from southern India, then?
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I’m in North America, but my Church is originally from India. We have an Eparchy in the US/Canada based in NY and some Exarchates in the Gulf and other areas.
What is your view of the Papacy?
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The Papacy is a necessary unifier and spokesman for the Church universal. In relation to the East, historically, it varied depending on the specific Church on how direct it was. For Syriac Churches, we generally hold a very high Petrine view, although vested with the Patriarch of Antioch primarily, then the Pope of the Alexandria and primacy with the Pope of Rome.
What is important in your spiritual life?
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The Syriac Daily Office, Divine Liturgy, the Holy Mysteries, fasting.
 
SyroMalankara said:
Not true. All Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Churches are “apostolic”. The SyroMalabar wasn’t founded by Latins, but St. Thomas, it was influenced in the 1600s by the Portuguese Latins… Syro-Malankara also trace origins to St. Thomas, and was reunited with Rome by a native Orthodox bishop Mor Ivanios Gevarghis, not Latin. Similar story for the Chaldean Church, the Syriac Church, and the Melkite Church.

I’m in North America, but my Church is originally from India. We have an Eparchy in the US/Canada based in NY and some Exarchates in the Gulf and other areas.
The Papacy is a necessary unifier and spokesman for the Church universal. In relation to the East, historically, it varied depending on the specific Church on how direct it was. For Syriac Churches, we generally hold a very high Petrine view, although vested with the Patriarch of Antioch primarily, then the Pope of the Alexandria and primacy with the Pope of Rome.
The Syriac Daily Office, Divine Liturgy, the Holy Mysteries, fasting.
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I love the liturgy used in the Syro-Malankara Church, there’s a video of Holy Mass being celebrated by Baselios Cleemis Cardinal Thottunkal on YouTube which I watch every now and then. 😃
 
SyroMalankara said:
It’s obviously written from a one sided, propagandist point of view. The real history is much more complicated and it isnt always the big bad Latins at fault
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I agree, it seems to be rambling with a hint of discord against Eastern Catholicism.
 
The Byzantine Italo Greeks were formed under the Jurisdiction of Rome in Southern Italy where there was a large ethnic Greek population. Leo III the Isaurian later assigned Southern Italy to Constantinople which held control for four hundred years until the Normans drove out the Muslims and control was returned to Rome. The Normans replaced the Greek Bishops with Latin Bishops and the Italo Greeks virtually died except for the Monastery outside Rome. Then Albanians came into Southern Italy to form the Italo Albanian Church which absorbed the remnants the Italo Greeks in Southern Italy. The Italo Greeks and the Italo Albanians have always been loyal to Rome. There are no Orthodox counterparts to this(ese) church(s). Interestingly the Italo Albanians are the smallest of all Byzantine Catholic Churches and probably any other Byzantine Church.
 
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