leschornmom:
So, the Roman Catholics don’t do the chanting and incence?
They do sometimes!
I went to a catholic funeral (my grandmothers) and they did the incence and some Latin I think does that mean that he was of the Bynzantine rite?
No, not necessarily, and actually probably not. There just aren’t enough Byzantine churches around to make that likely.
All of the churches use incense, but the Roman church (the BIG one) has minimized use of incense and might only use it for very special Holy days and very solemn occasions. This is all at the discretion of the local pastor.
That’s why some people comment on it, they don’t experience it often enough and they appreciate it.
Is that the only other difference between the two… Married men obtaining the Priesthood & the chanting and such or is there more?
The big difference is not so apparent, the spirituality is different, the way ideas are expressed is different. The core beliefs are the same.
It might help if we go over some of the basics of the church growth and development:
What we are dealing with here is churches of very ancient history, the Apostles (especially) and other disciples spread in all directions, especially when there was unrest in Palestine. Usually they travelled along the well established trade routes. They planted new churches wherever they could, usually among Jews first. They were spreading the news that the Jewish Messiah had come and it was imperative that people (who were expecting a Messiah) be told!
As we know, most (not all) of the Jews were scepticle, but there were usually some God fearing gentiles associated with the Jewish temples who were also likely converts, they reflected the cultures they lived in.
Liturgy was rather simple then, and derived mostly from Jewish blessing prayers and synagog service. The basics of the liturgy are common to all of the rites of the Christian church, and can still be identified in every liturgy, including the Roman Catholic Mass.
BTW The first Prince to become a Christian was (I believe) the client-king of Edessa. The first independant
country to become Christian officially was actually Armenia. All that time Christianity was spreading throughout the Roman Empire, even though it was outlawed, so there were many cultures touched by the Christian Faith in the first three centuries.
All of these cultures developed their liturgies as expressions of their own cultures, while they all believed the same truths. They all had a hierarchical structure: bishops, priests and deacons! They didn’t have detailed manuals or schools. Each new priest would learn up close from the bishop, like apprentices learn from a journeyman.
The first bishops were mostly just presiders, they were the successors of the apostles but in the beginning they might have had only one or two small congregations, The elders were close by in the congregation, but as the faith grew the bishop-presiders would send elders out to lead the faithful in the further villages and in neighborhoods of the big cities. The bishops (bishop-episkopos means overseer, or supervisor) would control the far flung congregations in their area, visit them and teach the priests their own way of saying prayers and doing the liturgy.
So every area had a local culture, and a particular way of doing liturgy.
Since the faith spread from city to city first, and then into the countryside and small towns, the earliest Christian congregation were established in the biggest cities, and the bishops from there would plant churches in other places further and further away, helping these fledgling churches with money and sending out new priests where there might be a need.
{continued}
http://saints.oca.org/IconDirectory/sm/generaluse/holytheotokos.jpg
Hopefully, inquiries like the ones you posted here will serve as “door-openers” with regard to the amazing diversity present in our Catholic Church, for both Catholics and non-Catholics alike!
