I don’t think most of us are competent to discuss this topic. It brings in a lot of prejudices, generalizations and assumptions.
Thanks for an excellent post.
I agree completely. I’ll tell you what, you’ll never get me to take the bait again.
What specifically did you see in the Greek Orthodox church that were Latinizations?The amount of Latinizations is not really a matter of Church-to-Church, but more like parish-to-parish. It is possible to find Ukrainian, Romanian and Ruthenian Catholic parishes that are extremely “Orthodox” (sometimes more “Orthodox” than the Orthodox themselves), and it is likewise possible to find Melkite Catholic parishes that are heavily Latinized. So, as others have pointed out, it is hard to generalize. On an official level the Melkites and the Ukrainians seem to have been the most outspoken about maintaining our Orthodox roots, as well as returning to them where we have allowed Latin influence to replace our heritage. The Romanian Greek Catholic Church here in the U.S. is so small that often times not many people know what’s going on with it. I know that Bishop John Michael is a firm believer in restoring the Byzantine heritage where it has been supplanted by Latinization, but I also understand that he has been fought tooth-and-nail by a number of his parishes that are comfortable in their Latinizations. One must be pastoral about these things and not rock the boat too much at one time lest we cause scandal to our faithful.
I would also like to point out, however, that it is also easy to find Orthodox parishes that are Latinized. The Greek Orthodox parish up the street from me has a number of Latinizations. Although I’m by no means a supporter of the Latinization of the Eastern Catholic Churches, I am curious as to why it seems to be no big deal when the Orthodox Latinize themselves.
Pews and organs, for starters. The church building itself is also of a very unusual/modern architecture. Oh, and there are some stained glass windows in the dome. I don’t really see any of this as being a bad thing necessarily (except the organ, but then again I hate organs even when they’re in their proper Latin context), I’m just pointing out that the Eastern Catholics aren’t the only one’s who have sometimes adopted Latin customs.
That seems to be fairly typical of Orthodox parishes in Western countries such as ours (i.e. the Americas). To me it seems simply to be a cultural adaptation. I can certainly understand it for parishes which are primarily made up of Catholic or Protestant converts, and are therefore used to pews. It only makes sense that such a thing would take place. Sadly, however, it does hinder the freedom of movement among the congregation that is one of the beauties of Byzantine worship. My parish has chairs, and although they certainly don’t keep some people from moving around during the Liturgy, especially people with small children who take them around to visit the icons, they do seem to hinder others from moving about.
For the Greeks, I understand that there was an intense amount of pressure put on them from Protestants (mainly the WASPy types) who wanted everyone to look like Anglicans, hence them adopting many of the trappings (pews, organs, dog collar, etc.). Our Greek parish here in Roanoke, VA was threatened and even vandalized by the KKK back in the day. From what I recall, this was not an isolated incident here in VA, sadly.
More and more Orthodox missions are nixing pews altogether, from what I understand and have seen (and it’s one less expense, too! 
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), rather than Byzantine like one would find in Bulgaria. Personally, I don’t like pews at all, but sometimes churches aren’t fortunate enough to be able to get rid of them. It doesn’t make them less Orthodox, IMHO.That’s very true. Good wording