I actually like orthodox Christianity more than modern Christianity. The Eastern CATHOLIC churches actually teach the same thing as the rest of the Church. The Eastern churches look like a more sacred place to be than the Latin church.
Possibly I don’t understand the problem, if there is a problem.
Any Catholic, Latin or whatever, is always free to attend and receive the sacraments in any Eastern Catholic Church. It’s no different from attending a Latin parish when you’re the member of another Latin parish.
But when it comes to officially becoming a member of an Eastern parish, you are, I believe, expected to have the permission of the pastors of both the parish you are going to become a member of, and of the Latin parish of which you would otherwise be a member.
But you have to do that to leave one Latin parish to become, officially, a member of another, and that’s fairly easy to do.
Now, it’s my understanding (and perhaps mistaken) that it isn’t quite as easy to go from a Latin parish to an Eastern Catholic parish as an official thing, though I don’t think you would ever be unwelcome in one. I think the pastor of the Eastern Catholic parish would want to be reasonably assured you really have some knowledge and appreciation of the Eastern church; that you aren’t just on some liturgical lark. I think it’s even more difficult, if you’re a Latin Catholic to become a seminarian in an Eastern Church; perhaps vice versa as well.
I can sympathize with your feeling that the Eastern Churches can be/are more conducive to a particular KIND of worship than are at least some parishes in the Latin Church. More mystical, perhaps. Perhaps more relfective. More given to ornateness in giving glory to God. Absolutely mesmerizing music. I find a LOT of attractiveness in the Eastern Catholic Churches myself.
However, culture is something that likely has a deeper hold on us than we often think it does. As opposed to Greek traditions, Roman ones were always rather spare. Much more simple and less adorned. Romans were a practical people; Greeks perhaps more imaginative; perhaps more dreamy and mystical. Even Latin Church vestments are simply the clothing Romans wore; some slightly adorned, some not at all. Eastern vestments are ornate almost beyond belief. Latin art is realistic, for the most part. Eastern art is idealized and sort of psychologically oriented.
In the West, it’s hard to realize how “Romanized” we really are. Our laws, our lettering, a good half of many of our languages, our building styles, the way we lay out cities, even our absolute insistence on utilities and straight highways. Our nearly pervasive emphasis on practicality. Even some of the things people like me don’t especially like; the unadorned and “modernistic” church buildings. Even that is a reach for practicality; misguided oftentimes in my view, but that’s what it is. We’re profoundly Romanized; probably in ways we don’t even know.
So, while one (including myself) can be fascinated by the Eastern traditions, appreciate them, even grow to live in them and love them, one must ask oneself whether one is going against one’s own deeply inculturated grain to make a full switch. Can Latins really, fully, be Eastern, and for a lifetime? I don’t know. Probably many can. Probably many cannot.
This might seem silly, but if one, say, attends an Easter Liturgy in an Eastern Church, yet feels more elevated by hearing a truly great Latin choir sing something written by Mozart, then one really needs to consider whether his attraction to the Eastern tradition is more aesthetic than anything else.
