How do you explain Eastern Catholicism to Roman Catholics

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Ghosty said:
In my area many people are familiar with the Eastern Orthodox, so I just say “we’re like the Greek Orthodox, but with the Pope.” That suffices as a quick explaination usually, but I can imagine it would be much complicated when factoring in the Filipino element.

With so much Filipino identity being bound up with a very specific (even more so than just “general Latin”) idea of Catholicism, I imagine that conveying these differences would be quite difficult indeed! 😛

Peace and God bless!
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I know. Like I said, for most Filipinos if you are not Roman Catholic, you’re a Protestant. I’d like to show people we have a nice photo of Pope Benedict XVI in the foryer of the parish, if I could just get them that far 😃
 
ConstantineTG said:
For the first time this week I told a family member that I am attending an Eastern Catholic parish. I am apprehensive because I know they might think I’m becoming Protestant. Indeed my sister’s first reaction was that I might be become like our cousin who lives in the same area as me. My cousin is an Evangelical. Then I proceeded to tell her that I go to a Catholic parish, only that its not Roman Catholic but Greek Catholic. I didn’t bother telling her it was UGCC because hearing the “Ukrainian” will just complicate matters even more. Although being in the US herself, I guess she’s come across some Orthodox and replied by asking about Christmas being on a different date. I told her thats not Catholic but Orthodox and its because they use the Julian Calendar. Catholics use the Gregorian Calendar.

Whew. Now, I’m going to tell me extremely conservative, extremely devout Roman Catholic mom 😃
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Many Catholic churches use the Julian calendar. And many Orthodox use the revised Julian calendar, so it’s not quite as easy as you make it seem.
 
ciero said:
Many Catholic churches use the Julian calendar. And many Orthodox use the revised Julian calendar, so it’s not quite as easy as you make it seem.
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Its easy for me when I don’t have to explain it further 😃
 
It’s probably just for the best to avoid bringing up any calendars. 😃
 
Alveus_Lacuna said:
It’s probably just for the best to avoid bringing up any calendars. 😃
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I didn’t bring it up. My sister said that Christmas is celebrated on a different day. I just gave her the short answer. From the perspective of the UGCC I gave her the correct answer.
 
ConstantineTG said:
I didn’t bring it up. My sister said that Christmas is celebrated on a different day. I just gave her the short answer. From the perspective of the UGCC I gave her the correct answer.
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No you didn’t!
MOST of the UGCC is Julian calendar. Even in Canada and the US it is quite prevalent.
 
ciero said:
No you didn’t!
MOST of the UGCC is Julian calendar. Even in Canada and the US it is quite prevalent.
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Really? I swear we don’t.

edit:
Checked the parish website and Christmas was promptly celebrated on December 25 last year.

So you mean it could vary from Eparchy to Eparchy?
 
ConstantineTG said:
Really? I swear we don’t.

edit:
Checked the parish website and Christmas was promptly celebrated on December 25 last year.

So you mean it could vary from Eparchy to Eparchy?
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Just to clarify-- Christmas is celebrated on December 25 on both the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. 🙂 (Some calendars will put the Julian date in parenthesis on the Gregorian calendar.)

The “revised Julian” calendar has Christmas on the Gregorian calendar’s Dec 25 and celebrates Pascha on the old calendar. Maybe your parish follows that. Mine does as does the OCA parish I go to sometimes.
 
You need to be very careful what you read (I mean the sources). Even programs I’ve seen on the History Channel I have found errors (The Land of the Tsars in regards to the beginning of Christianity in what was then called Rus later to become Ukraine).

Here’s an example I had to deal with: My UGCC had a grade school but not a high school, and I had to go to a Roman Catholic High school.
First day of school the Franciscan principal totally humiliated one of us when she said/yelled: What’s the matter with you, dont you even know how to cross yourself?
Then in History class, the sister was teaching that the Cossacks were Orthodox. I explained that in this time period we are discussing, before the Great Schism (before 1066) there was no such thing as Orthodox, all cossacks were Catholic. That sister first didnt know what to say, then said: I’ve never seen that written anywhere.

In the first case, in fact it is Roman Catholics who cross themselves “wrong”, in that all priests bless the congregation the same way, the Roman Catholics didnt recognize that the priest was blessing them, not himself, and thus the error that stayed.

In the second instance, I’m sorry but I think that is common sense, If a group breaks away from the Catholic church in 1066 and calls itself Orthodox, how could you call Cossacks Orthodox in the 800s?

There is a lot of misinformation out there even from Religious.

I was reading some of these blogs too about the dates of Christmas. I remember when we were little, the parishoners on my church were asked to vote for which Christmas they wanted to celebrate and the bishop would decide. In churches with a lot of old-country people, they wanted to stay with the ‘old calendar’ because that’s what is celebrated in the old country with their relatives. Younger churches wanted to celebrate the 25th because everyone around them in the US celebrated then, they had time off work etc. I have many friends (esp in Canada) who celebrate Christmas in January.
What my mother did was we’d celebrate both, in December as our church/diocese changed it and again in January to “celebrate with our relatives in Ukraine”.

Now I am by no means an authority, in these blogs I really demonstrate only my own experiences growing up Ukrainian Catholic in a Roman Catholic predominant world.
 
In the first case, in fact it is Roman Catholics who cross themselves “wrong”, in that all priests bless the congregation the same way, the Roman Catholics didnt recognize that the priest was blessing them, not himself, and thus the error that stayed.
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A bit off-topic, but did you know that it is ONLY the Byzantine tradition that crosses itself this way? All the other traditions, including Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian, cross themselves the Latin way. By sheer weight of diverse “testimony”, it would seem that our Byzantine style of crossing ourselves is indeed the odd one out. I won’t say “wrong” because there is no “right or wrong” in how to cross oneself, but to say that the Byzantine way is the “right way” when all the other Apostolic traditions do it the other way is a bit haughty and naive, I think. 😛

I mention this because I was starkly reminded of this fact this weekend when I attended an Armenian Orthodox Liturgy, and I felt very conspicuous crossing myself the Melkite way. Fortunately they were very familiar with the Russian Orthodox, and were tolerant (or simply didn’t notice) my doing things “backwards”.😃

Peace and God bless!
 
Ghosty said:
A bit off-topic, but did you know that it is ONLY the Byzantine tradition that crosses itself this way? All the other traditions, including Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian, cross themselves the Latin way. By sheer weight of diverse “testimony”, it would seem that our Byzantine style of crossing ourselves is indeed the odd one out. I won’t say “wrong” because there is no “right or wrong” in how to cross oneself, but to say that the Byzantine way is the “right way” when all the other Apostolic traditions do it the other way is a bit haughty and naive, I think.
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The Assyrian Church of the East, and perhaps their Eastern Catholic counterpart, cross themselves in the same manner as the Eastern Orthodox. Not the Oriental Syriac Church, but the Assyrians certainly do. So we’re not the only ones.
 
to Ghosty,
I’m sorry but again you are wrong: A bit off-topic, but did you know that it is ONLY the Byzantine tradition that crosses itself this way? All the other traditions, including Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian, cross themselves the Latin way.

You assume I’m Byzantine, I am not, I’m Greek Catholic.
 
yaHalyna said:
to Ghosty,
I’m sorry but again you are wrong: A bit off-topic, but did you know that it is ONLY the Byzantine tradition that crosses itself this way? All the other traditions, including Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian, cross themselves the Latin way.

You assume I’m Byzantine, I am not, I’m Greek Catholic.
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Aren’t Greek Catholic of the Byzantine Rite? I think he’s referring to the Byzantine Rite, not the Ruthenian which is (I heard) known as the Byzantine Church in the US.
 
yaHalyna said:
to Ghosty,
I’m sorry but again you are wrong: A bit off-topic, but did you know that it is ONLY the Byzantine tradition that crosses itself this way? All the other traditions, including Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian, cross themselves the Latin way.

You assume I’m Byzantine, I am not, I’m Greek Catholic.
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Greek Catholic = Byzantine

Any church that follows the rite of Constantinople is considered Byzantine, all Greek Catholic churches are Byzantine. The Ruthenians are not the only Byzantine church, even though they have tried to monopolize the term.

And Ghosty is correct!

And up until the 1500’s even the Latin church crossed themselves just like the Byzantines.
 
Its difficult to explain married clergy without going to a lengthy explanation of Church history. I guess the easiest explanation is, “St. Peter was married, and he became Pope.”
 
yaHalyna said:
to Ghosty,
I’m sorry but again you are wrong: A bit off-topic, but did you know that it is ONLY the Byzantine tradition that crosses itself this way? All the other traditions, including Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian, cross themselves the Latin way.

You assume I’m Byzantine, I am not, I’m Greek Catholic.
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Byzantine refers to the Greek-based traditions (from the Byzantine Empire), not just the Byzantine Catholic Church; since you are Greek Catholic (as am I), you follow the Byzantine tradition. This means Melkites, Ukrainians, Byzantines, Russians, Greeks, ect.

The liturgical tradition that comes out of Constantinople does the right-to-left crossing, ALL other Apostolic Traditions (Latin, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syriac) do the left-to-right. 🙂

CORRECTION: I was wrong about the Assyrian tradition. I thought they did the left-to-right as well (I thought I saw them doing it that way when I attended the Assyrian Liturgy), but obviously I am wrong. The others do, however, I am certain.
And up until the 1500’s even the Latin church crossed themselves just like the Byzantines.
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What’s interesting is that the Irish (and perhaps others) seem to have done the left-to-right style earlier, and Popes were complaining about it. My best guess (read: pure speculation) is that the right-to-left was the “Roman Imperial” style, hence it is also used in the Byzantine tradition. Eventually Rome switched to the left-to-right style over time. 😛

Peace and God bless!
 
But if you’re someplace that has Eastern Catholic parishes, why not go there for Liturgy? the difficulty in my situation is I have an entire nation of mostly Roman Catholics who are largely unaware of Eastern Christianity, Catholic or Orthodox. Orthodoxy has taken root in the Philippines in the last 10 years but I suspect they are still looked upon more as Protestants or some other break away group. We have lots of those, groups who claim to be Catholic one way or another even though at best they are schismatic. So the issue becomes that if you are not Roman Catholic, then you are not Catholic at all.
 
ciero said:
The Ruthenians are not the only Byzantine church, even though they have tried to monopolize the term.
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I can understand why they do this. Most Eastern Churches have members who are ethnically tied to the name of the Church. So you’d have Ukrainians in the Ukrainian Church, Russians in the Russian Church. By “rebranding” the Church, you sort of remove that perception and thus the Church becomes more welcoming to others.

I know the UGCC is trying something similar here in Canada. They want to send the message that they are open to non-Ukrainians.
 
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