Do Eastern Catholic Churches have valid sacraments?

[Ignatius]

Can anyone please enlighten me as to the nature of the Eastern Catholic Churches? For those who are in full communion with the pope, why have they retained their rites and not adopted the Latin or the Western rite?

Why haven’t the Latin Rite churches adopted the Eastern Divine Liturgy which goes back to The Apostle James? Where does the Western rite Liturgy come from? No one knows.

 

[Jack_Bauer]

Why haven’t the Latin Rite churches adopted the Eastern Divine Liturgy which goes back to The Apostle James? Where does the Western rite Liturgy come from? No one knows.

Ummm, not exactly. There is a book put out by someone… can’t think right off the bat that gives a history of the mass. Personally, I would rather a Divine Liturgy over a TLM, and most definitly over the ordinary form of the mass today. However, if a parish is run by an orthodox priest then the mass increases exponentially in what it was meant to be. The problem is that there are so many half cocked presentations of the mass from what I’ve seen. Homilies, when proclaimed loudly (from the guidance of the Holy Spirit - as should always be assumed unless it digresses from Church teaching) speaks profoundly to the heart and mind.

 

[Patchunky]

My pastor shared an interesting event that happened a few weeks ago. A Latin Rite couple visited our byzantine church and after the liturgy, approached the pastor with a few questions. First, are you in communion with the pope. My priest answered, yes of course we are. Did you hear during the litanies, for Benedict XVI, the Pope of Rome, let us pray to the lord.

Next, they asked if he believed in transubstantiation. Father said, yes, we believe the eucharist is the body & blood of Christ, yet the Eastern Church does not focus on the notion of the substance and actions, rather on the holy mystery that is the eucharist. The couple said, Oh, so you’re not Catholic and turned around and left.

Oh boy.

Bet the woman was wearing a mantilla too!

 

[Patchunky]

When I was a greeter I got this kind of interogation on a regular basis.

We have a greeter who is a former Latin Catholic. We had a retired priest, whom I recognized, come in to church and asked if “this was a Greek Catholic parish”. Our greeter has never heard the term before and was completely un-glued.

I looked at the priest and told him in Slovak that yes, it was a Greek Catholic parish and he just looked at me and laughed. He was on vacation and was staying in the area with relatives and came to help out at Liturgy.

 

[pjcsisabel]

All this being said, I understand that I can attend an Eastern Catholic Mass without any problems, right? And probably even practice the Catholic faith in the Eastern rite for good.