Eastern Catholic spirituality: more Orthodox or Catholic?

[KjetilK]

Finally, the Orthodox do not have a Latin concept of purgatory, but they do pray for the dead–including that their sins be forgiven–and they believe that the process of theosis continues into eternity.

While the Orthodox do not have this (which is a debatable point), Eastern Catholics have. Purgatory is a dogma in the Catholic Church, therefore Eastern Catholics (in communion with Rome) do not have the option to ‘opt out’ of the belief in it.

 

[Peter_J]

While the Orthodox do not have this (which is a debatable point), Eastern Catholics have. Purgatory is a dogma in the Catholic Church, therefore Eastern Catholics (in communion with Rome) do not have the option to ‘opt out’ of the belief in it.

Yes and no: there are certain beliefs about “purgatory” that all Catholics are supposed to believe, but not necessarily the entire conception that is typically meant by the word “purgatory”.

 

[chimo]

Catholics believe the Orthodox are schismatic but still have valid Sacraments, but the Orthodox consider the Catholics as heretics (“Frankish”, “innovations”, “papists”). If the Orthodox are “validated” by the lives of numerous holy monks and saints and the apparitions of Our Lord and the Theotokos, then does that make their side more “correct”? But Jesus and the Blessed Mother also appear to Catholics saints…

I feel like a child of divorced parents not knowing which parent to live with.

May be the parents will make up someday to make it easier for all of us. I would not call Catholic and Orthodox divorced. They are somewhat bewildered.

 

[ronyodish]

Eastern Catholic spirituality: more Orthodox or Catholic?

EIF5A,

Spirituality is not an exclusive attribute of one Communion vs. another. In other words, spirituality is not Catholic vs. Eastern Orthodox vs. Oriental Orthodox vs. Assyrian Church of the East.

Spirituality is an attribute of one ritual tradition vs. another: Latin vs. Constantinopolitan vs. Alexandrian vs. Antiochene vs. Armenian vs. Assyrian-Chaldean. The Catholic Communion has inherited all six of these ritual traditions, and so a Catholic may embrace any one of these, and may not consider the others to be heretical.

Because spirituality is an attribute of a ritual tradition, rather than a Communion, then spirituality can be shared across Communions. This goes also for the three other attributes of a ritual tradition: liturgy, theology, and disciplines. For example, both the Byzantine Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox have inherited the basics of the Constantinopolitan ritual tradition, even though they are in two separate Communions.

I think the question you were intending to ask was probably something like this: Byzantine Catholic spirituality: more Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic? If that’s the underlying question you were meaning to ask, then the answer is: More Eastern Orthodox. It is more like Eastern Orthodox, because as I said, the Byzantine Catholics have inherited the same basic Constantinopolitan spirituality as the Eastern Orthodox, and not the Latin spirituality of the Roman Catholics. Granted, that such historical factors as Latinizations have influenced Byzantine Catholic spirituality, nevertheless, the spiritually is not Latin.

The question can be rephrased to include the other ritual traditions as well, such as my own Eastern tradition called the Assyrian-Chaldean tradition. My Chaldean Catholic Church of the East is currently not in full communion with our sister Assyrian Church of the East, but despite this separation, we continue to share the basics of the Assyrian-Chaldean ritual tradition that we both inherited from our common Fathers of the Church of the East. There are minor differences in how we express this tradition vs. how they express it, due to various historical “izations”, but the basics of the tradition is found among the both of us.

Hope this helps.

God bless,

Rony