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5Loaves
Guest
I hope OP will find out if this is the group that her husband’s best friend the “Orthodox monk” is affiliated with. If it is that group then that is not something her husband should be pursuing at all in my opinion.
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Friar_David_O.Carm
Guest
Not necessarily. The fact that she does not say that her mother also received First Eucharist raises some doubt.
The Latin Church in the United States will confirm infants at the time of baptism if there is some medical condition that is grave. Also Churches in other countries, such as Mexico, routinely confirm infants in certain areas.
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BertBlyleven
Guest
Lots of bickering.
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lo_amo87
Guest
It was an odd situation with my mother and her siblings. Her father’s family were the eastern rite and her mother’s side was western. From what I understand, the two families and the churches came to some sort of agreement where she was baptized/confirmed in the eastern rite but she was further raised in western (attended roman catholic private school, received First Holy Communion in 2nd grade, etc.)
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lo_amo87
Guest
The monk, as I’ve described, is of the Benedictine order (however his spiritual father belongs to the russian orthodoxy). He is currently misplaced as far as living in a monastery as the one in ohio he belonged to completely fell apart due to a negligent monastery leader. He is finishing his college degree here before he goes to texas to join one the monasteries down there. However, that monastery is not the same one that he and my husband are planning on visiting. Oh the confusion
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Alexander_Roman
Guest
Dear Friend,
I’ve assisted (with literature mostly) a number of friends to find their place in either the Eastern Catholic or Orthodox Churches (their choice, in the end).
I’ve known EC’s who have even studied in Rome but who became Orthodox because they felt “freer” as married priests. One fellow I met just yesterday and who surprised me when he told me he was ordained an Orthodox priest, said that he just didn’t want to go through the “nonsense” with bishops who are fundamentally against married priests but who tolerate them only.
(One of our married priests asked the bishop not to transfer him to another parish since his son needed to complete his school year - at that, the bishop sneered and said to him, “You shouldn’t have gotten married then . . .” That was grossly unfair both in terms of his attitude to the man’s role as a father AND because of the fact that we have celibate priests who stay in their parishes continuously for years without being transferred.)
So while we are big on married priests, it doesn’t mean that the bishops are big on them or don’t give them grief.
If your husband wishes to become a married Orthodox priest and feels he has a vocation to it, that is the Church he will be going to, not any EC Church. He sounds like someone who has thought about this for a very long time and is well informed via reading and study. He “knows where it’s at” in this regard.
The issue is . . . yourself. You married your husband in the Catholic Church and you are a Catholic, period.
As a convert to Catholicism, he is already used to, and forgive me if I sound harsh, “church musical chairs.” I’ve a number of friends who began as Baptists and went “through the ranks” so to speak, until they got to High Church Anglicanism and then jumped to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
So becoming Orthodox won’t be a big deal for him. It will be a big deal for you.
At this point, you should speak with him about how YOU really feel about being and remaining a Catholic.
The idea of him being an Orthodox priest and you a Catholic sounds equitable on paper - but it won’t work as far as family life is concerned. It just won’t, period. Both Churches believe themselves to be the only true Church and they don’t compromise on that, ever.
If your husband becomes an Orthodox priest, and I have seen this many times before, he will harden in his views on Roman Catholicism (which won’t be on the positive side at all).
And you have to see if having a husband with a beard will be agreeable to you . . .
Speak to him in depth on this since he and you are coming from different religious experiences on the matter of spiritual commitment - he is already used to changing churches whereas you aren’t.
As to how faithful we are to Catholic practice, there was a Dutch Catholic priest who lived in sin with a woman.
When Protestant pirates took over his town, they told him to blaspheme against the Blessed Sacrament.
At that, the priest said, “I have sinned against my vocation of celibacy, but I am no heretic.” And the pirates hanged him. Bl. John Paul the Great beatified this priest.
All the best!
Alex
I’ve assisted (with literature mostly) a number of friends to find their place in either the Eastern Catholic or Orthodox Churches (their choice, in the end).
I’ve known EC’s who have even studied in Rome but who became Orthodox because they felt “freer” as married priests. One fellow I met just yesterday and who surprised me when he told me he was ordained an Orthodox priest, said that he just didn’t want to go through the “nonsense” with bishops who are fundamentally against married priests but who tolerate them only.
(One of our married priests asked the bishop not to transfer him to another parish since his son needed to complete his school year - at that, the bishop sneered and said to him, “You shouldn’t have gotten married then . . .” That was grossly unfair both in terms of his attitude to the man’s role as a father AND because of the fact that we have celibate priests who stay in their parishes continuously for years without being transferred.)
So while we are big on married priests, it doesn’t mean that the bishops are big on them or don’t give them grief.
If your husband wishes to become a married Orthodox priest and feels he has a vocation to it, that is the Church he will be going to, not any EC Church. He sounds like someone who has thought about this for a very long time and is well informed via reading and study. He “knows where it’s at” in this regard.
The issue is . . . yourself. You married your husband in the Catholic Church and you are a Catholic, period.
As a convert to Catholicism, he is already used to, and forgive me if I sound harsh, “church musical chairs.” I’ve a number of friends who began as Baptists and went “through the ranks” so to speak, until they got to High Church Anglicanism and then jumped to either Catholicism or Orthodoxy.
So becoming Orthodox won’t be a big deal for him. It will be a big deal for you.
At this point, you should speak with him about how YOU really feel about being and remaining a Catholic.
The idea of him being an Orthodox priest and you a Catholic sounds equitable on paper - but it won’t work as far as family life is concerned. It just won’t, period. Both Churches believe themselves to be the only true Church and they don’t compromise on that, ever.
If your husband becomes an Orthodox priest, and I have seen this many times before, he will harden in his views on Roman Catholicism (which won’t be on the positive side at all).
And you have to see if having a husband with a beard will be agreeable to you . . .
Speak to him in depth on this since he and you are coming from different religious experiences on the matter of spiritual commitment - he is already used to changing churches whereas you aren’t.
As to how faithful we are to Catholic practice, there was a Dutch Catholic priest who lived in sin with a woman.
When Protestant pirates took over his town, they told him to blaspheme against the Blessed Sacrament.
At that, the priest said, “I have sinned against my vocation of celibacy, but I am no heretic.” And the pirates hanged him. Bl. John Paul the Great beatified this priest.
All the best!
Alex
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Friar_David_O.Carm
Guest
There we go, now we have more information.
Church membership follows the father, so your mother was/is an eastern Catholic.
Your Church membership would depend on your father, unless he was not Catholic, then you would officially be a member of the same eastern Catholic Church as your mother and your grandfather.
That is unless any official Church membership changes were made.
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lo_amo87
Guest
Well my parents married in a Roman Catholic church but my father was Lutheran at the time and signed an agreement that he and my mother would raise us Roman Catholic, and indeed we were. And surprisingly enough, my grandfather had his funeral at a roman catholic church and was buried with my grandmother in a roman catholic graveyard which also housed all the ukrainian catholics on my grandfather’s side.
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lo_amo87
Guest
Thank you, Alex, for your post. It’s certainly food for thought and helps me understand a bit better why I’m having some issues with this and he’s not!
Haha, yeah I’m not excited about the beard but he is. He used to have one and I made him shave it cause it drove me crazy!
Haha, yeah I’m not excited about the beard but he is. He used to have one and I made him shave it cause it drove me crazy!
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Rawb
Guest
Alexander, speaking as someone who’s gone from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy, I don’t think this statement is quite fair. It can be a huge, difficult step even for converts to Roman Catholicism.
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ConstantineTG
Guest
I think what Alex means there is that the husband wants to become Orthodox, so he will accept any and all changes. But lo here doesn’t want to become Orthodox, so the changes may not be agreeable or could be difficult for her.
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vsedriver
Guest
the biggest problems will come when you have children. Even if you remained a Latin Catholic your children would probably be raised in their father’s faith. Then you will have to explain how it is that daddy is a priest of one religion but mommy follows another. What this teaches children is that no faith is true. Better for a family to be all of one religion.Thank you, Alex, for your post. It’s certainly food for thought and helps me understand a bit better why I’m having some issues with this and he’s not!
Haha, yeah I’m not excited about the beard but he is. He used to have one and I made him shave it cause it drove me crazy!
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Aramis
Guest
Alexander is also speaking from a (rather pointedly) Ukrainian point of view. The Vatican II directives on the eastern churches make it clear that, in a mixed marriage between Catholic and Orthodox, it’s expected to raise the children in Orthodoxy, and acceptable to the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council to do so; it is preferable, however, to raise them in the Eastern Catholic Church if that can be arranged.
Alex also misrepresents the Church’s teaching on the Orthodox; the EO and OO are considered to be fully valid by the Catholic Church. Even if some individual Catholics disagree vociferously.
As for the Celtic Orthodox: They are a schismatic group from the Antiochian Orthodox; they started with Valid orders, and appear to maintain them. They reconstructed the Celtic Rite service, and it appears to be a valid service, and their service book matches every description of the Celtic rite I’ve been able to find predating them. They are in communion only with themselves. They are one of the fruits of the AO’s WRO experiment… one that, from the AO perspective, went sour. By EO reconning, they lost validity when they went schismatic. By Catholic, it depends on their bishops.
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Alexander_Roman
Guest
Going from RCism to Orthodoxy IS a big step, to be sure! Lots of guilt there, either direction one goes . . .
However, in my (OK, I’ll say it “considerable”) experience with Protestants who move from church to church looking not so much for the “true Faith” but for simple adherence to Biblical morality, I know they will drop their church when it becomes too liberal for them.
And the ones I know have changed churches at least, I will say, four times minimum.
It’s my own personal observation, I hope it is a fair one, but I realize I could be totally off - but do not mean to be . . . mean.
Cheers,
Alex
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Alexander_Roman
Guest
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Alexander_Roman
Guest
Well, sir - How do I speak from a “Ukrainian” point of view? Just interested in how that comes across!
We do accept Vatican II, most of us accept it as the “21st Ecumenical Council” would you believe . . .And actually, you are misrepresenting what I said. At NO time, and not ever in my life, have I said that the EO or OO are not considered fully “valid” by the Catholic Church.
That’s not the point at all here.
The point is that RC’s and EO’s are separated, period. Neither will recognize the other as “fully the true Church.” Is that misrepresentation? I don’t believe it is.
And so an RC wife of an Orthodox priest . . . well, it would make for a difficult family life and a difficult parish life. I’ve seen it happen, if you haven’t. In two cases, things became quite tragic.
I’m not talking theory or generalities here, but am trying to talk about the human/familial issues. Church documents et al. are, for the most part, irrelevant in such a case.
And I know all about Vatican II and how ecumenically warm and friendly Roman Catholics are to the Orthodox (especially the Moscow Patriarchate!
).The point is that our sister’s future Orthodox priest-husband won’t be able to reciprocate in as warm a fashion. That’s not misrepresenting anything, that’s simply waking all “Orthodox in communion with Rome” Christians up to realities.
Our sister needs to speak to her husband (beginning with that beard . . .
) and arrive at an understanding. You mention the right to raise children in the Orthodox Church - is our sister OK with that, given she is a Catholic? Why do you assume it is OK with her and that she would agree to that? Who is the primary socializer in the family, if not the mother?Of course, if our sister agreed to become Orthodox, then there would be no problem.
I apologise in advance for any additional misrepresentations that may have crept into my post, here and there . . .
Alex
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Poor_Soul
Guest
If that’s true then you cannot join them nor can your husband. I would check out the Eastern Catholic Churches that are in communion with Rome.
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Alexander_Roman
Guest
Excuse me, you Poor Soul, but yes they can, if they believe it is the true Church. Roman and Eastern Catholics have and do become Orthodox Christians (and even priests).
Alex
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Poor_Soul
Guest
But Dr. How do they do so without becoming schismatic if they are not in communion with Rome?
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lo_amo87
Guest
I guess I should clear up a couple things! I am open to joining the church my husband is looking into. I could never have a different faith than my husband, nor raise my children in such a confusing environment. Thank God though that I have a husband who is endlessly patient with me and understands my hesitation. I admit at first I was completely against the idea of him becoming a priest (he has 3 bachelor degrees, english, classics and greek/latin; our plans were for him to pursue teaching). But I have been praying over it and after a few months the idea doesn’t seem as scary anymore. If anything, I want to learn as much as I can about the faith and how the liturgy works.
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