Is it weird for Roman Catholic to switch?

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George720 said:
With a Southern Accent…
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Tennessee, Carolina, or Oklahoma?

:crazy_face: 😱 🤣
new-kirishitan said:
I heard that the Eastern Catholic churches are running short on priests,
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???

In the US?

Sure, we could always use more, as could any church, but we have priests in parishes with less than 100 families, and a proportionally staggering number of vocations . . . now, we need proportionally more, given the relative sizes of the churches, but . . .

We are also importing priests from a seminary in Slovakia that has so many graduates that it can’t place them all in Europe (and every last one is married!)

I can’t say that I"ve ever heard of an EC priest that wanted to switch. Many (most, in fact, I think) have biritual faculties to help the local RC diocese. In fact, in smaller parishes, they often get paid by the RC parish/diocese that needs help, and work part time at the tiny EC parish (which typically puts what they could pay into the building fund).
 
Hollywood said:
The TLM is closer to the Divine Liturgy than the modern Mass.
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Dr. Peter Kwasniewski had an article re that very point:


Also, if you look at the propers of the TLM and Divine Liturgy esp for pre-Schism Saints, they’re very similar and sometimes identical as is the case with the Feast of the 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste.
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I read the article. I found it to be oozing with arrogance and contempt towards the Ordinary Form of the Mass, as well as those who prefer it, and the hierarchy of the Church that authorizes its use. The article was entirely lacking in balance or even a hint of objectivity. In spite of having some good points, I couldn’t take the article as a whole seriously.
 
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As a student of the Roman, Byzantine, and Maronite liturgies, I must say that I find far more in common between the liturgies of the East and the Ordinary Form of the Mass than just the use of the vernacular and the “active/actual participation” of the lay faithful. It was very unfair of the author to characterize those of us who see these similarities as looking at only superficialities.
 
The author is also wrong in stating that the Anaphorae of the Eastern liturgies are determined by the liturgical calendar. This may be true of the Byzantine East, but it’s not true of the Maronites (nor of the rest of the Syriac East if memory serves me correctly). It also may not be true of the Coptics or Ethiopians. The author misses the reality that the East is not limited to the Byzantine tradition.
 
Phillip_Rolfes said:
but it’s not true of the Maronites (nor of the rest of the Syriac East if memory serves me correctly).
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I can’t speak for the others, but the Maronites make it through all of their anaphorae in a single year of Sundays!!!
 
If that’s true, it’s not by design. And there’s no way we could actually make it through all our Anaphorae… at least not if we were using our Anaphorae that are still in Syriac. We have around 99 of them after all. I’ve talked to my parish priest about it, and he’s told me that the choice of what Anaphora to use on most Sundays is left up to the discretion of the celebrant. There are, I believe, a few Sundays (feastdays) when the Anaphora is prescribed. But for the most part it’s up to the celebrant… And that’s just not a big deal for us…
 
ack, ack, ack.

my “could not possibly” got lost in the sentence! 😡 🤯 😱

And one priest I asked (I forget whether it was the Maronite or Melkite) informed me that those 99 aren’t even all, but only those that got translated (to Arabic?)
 
Thank you for sharing that wonderful article. This is very important and especially relevant to our dialogue here: Is there a real chance of communion between the Catholic Church and the orthodox?

"I conclude with the words of Martin Mosebach: “All the striving towards ecumenism, however necessary, must begin not with attention-grabbing meetings with Eastern hierarchs but with the restoration of the Latin liturgy, which represents the real connection between the Latin and Greek churches.”

Recently I watched my first Catholic Traditional Latin Mass here:


After watching it I knew in my heart this was the Liturgy that converted nations, nurtured Saints and fed faithful Christians since the days of the Apostles. My heart aches to see the destruction and confusions wrought by Vatican II reforms and the loss of the ancient apostolic rites that formed the soul of Western Christendom.

Out of all the reservations I have with Catholicism, my greatest reservation is with Vatican II and its rupture with Holy Tradition. If Vatican II had not happened or was declared to be a robber council, or if a future council were to correct its errors, then I would don swim trunks and joyfully swim the Tiber. Until that day or the Lord leads me otherwise, I shall continue to thank God for preserving Byzantine Rite Orthodoxy in its fullness of liturgical expression.
 
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Don’t forget the Eastern Catholic Churches! I’m Ukrainian Greek Catholic. We have the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom as the Orthodox but are in full communion with the Holy See.
 
PilgrimMichelangelo said:
"I conclude with the words of Martin Mosebach: “All the striving towards ecumenism, however necessary, must begin not with attention-grabbing meetings with Eastern hierarchs but with the restoration of the Latin liturgy, which represents the real connection between the Latin and Greek churches.”
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🤔 🤔 🤔

Unless he’s suggesting a stronger connection between the EF and the greek liturgy which predate it than between the OF and greek liturgy, all I can do is wonder what color the sky is in his world . . .

The west didn’t switch to the vernacular (latin) from greek until the third and fourth centuries, while the East still uses fourth century liturgies (which, except for the Liturgy of St. James, are abbreviations of older Byzantine Liturgy).
 
Could you clarify? I am a bit confused…He seems to be arguing for a relation between the EF and the Greek as opposed to the OF.
 
I know several people who have felt called to the Eastern Church; some followed through and made the change permanent while others are visitors. One has to discern if they are being called to change and work this out with God and a good confessor/director. (it’s important to do your homework - research the history)
 
If you want a brief overview of what a true Eastern liturgical scholar thinks of the reforms made to the Roman Mass by Pope St. Paul VI (not Vatican II), then read this article by Fr. Robert Taft, S.J. - a Russian Catholic priest, former professor of liturgy at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, leading historian of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and now enjoying his eternal reward.

One point that Fr. Taft makes in re “active/actual participation” - “The pastoral liturgical movement began in the 19th century as an attempt to get the people not to pray at the liturgy but to pray the liturgy.” (emphasis in the original). Those who denigrate this call to “active/actual participation” miss this vital point.
 
As much as I love +Fr. Taft, he had two whopping boo-boos in that interview. First of all, the SSPX (he mentioned them by an uncharitable name) has ALWAYS believed that Pope Paul VI, PJPI, PJPII, and PF are true popes. Second was his remark re Matrimony. That blew me away.
 
I can concede the SSPX point, but what specifically about his marriage comment blew you away as a “whopping boo-boo”?
 
“People think Matrimony is a ritual expression of the love between a man and a woman. Baloney. You can do that at City Hall.”

Re his last sentence: No, +Father, you can’t. It might be technically legal but in the eyes of God and the Church that “marriage” is not valid. In the Latin Tradition, a priest must witness the marriage, whereas in the East the blessing of the priest is necessary for the validity of the marriage.
 
Fair enough. If you read that quote in isolation, I can see where you’d think he’s wrong. But you have to read the rest.

"A Christian marriage should be about what Jesus Christ’s death and Resurrection has to do with marriage.

What does Christ tell us through St. Paul in Ephesians? Ephesians says Christian marriage is like the union between Christ and the church, a permanent union, a union of love, a union of shared life.

It’s not about the love of a man and a woman; it’s about the love of a man and a woman in the context of the fact that Jesus Christ died and rose for our salvation."

According to this, Christian marriage is not about a ritual expression of the love between a man and a woman. Christian marriage is about the spousal love between Christ and the Church. That’s why it’s a Sacrament. It points to something beyond itself. Incidentally, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, in one of his many talks on marriage, said almost the exact same thing as what Fr. Taft said.
 
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