Orthodox Catholic?

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Today while pulling into a resaurant I saw a bus from a Church that said it was Orthodox Catholic. What does it mean by this? Is it similar to the Eastern Catholic Churches, I don’t know much about Eastern Catholicism, but I thought the Orthodox was different than Roman Catholic.

Any clarification would be great 🙂
 
I DO know that the Eastern Orthodox Church often calls itself the Orthodox Catholic Church, so the parish may be EO. Someone else more than likely has a better answer.
 
Today while pulling into a resaurant I saw a bus from a Church that said it was Orthodox Catholic. What does it mean by this? Is it similar to the Eastern Catholic Churches, I don’t know much about Eastern Catholicism, but I thought the Orthodox was different than Roman Catholic.

Any clarification would be great 🙂
Hard to say. We Orthodox consider ourselves to be fully catholic and sometimes use the name Orthodox Catholic. It’s also entirely possible that it’s from some schismatic/vagante group attempting to distinguish itself from the mainstream Catholic Church. It’s also may just be a single church somewhere that decided to use that name for one reason or the other.

In Christ
Joe
 
I did a google search with the following words “orthodox catholic texas”.

I got two hits of Churches using this in their name.

The Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic. Church in North America (they claim to be the “Only Orthodox Church with Sacramental Authority” in America)

Orthodox Catholic Church (this is a strange group and their “bishop” for the Austin diocese (yes they use the word diocese) is a woman)

Maybe one of our Orthodox users here can comment on these two groups.
 
The Holy Eastern Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic. Church in North America (they claim to be the “Only Orthodox Church with Sacramental Authority” in America)
Never heard of them before. They certainly aren’t members of Scoba (which includes all Orthodox in North America with the exception of ROCOR), my guess was they were founded as the North American Branch of the Living Church (the Communist Church), but I don’t actually know that.

It is particularly interesting that they claim all other Churches in North America are “usurpers” but go on to state they use the Liturgy (both Eastern and Western Rite) as printed by the Antiochan Archdiocese of North America (aka non-canonical usurpers).

The quality of the writing on that site is horrendous, it does not appear the group really wants to be taken seriously.
Orthodox Catholic Church (this is a strange group and their “bishop” for the Austin diocese (yes they use the word diocese) is a woman)

Maybe one of our Orthodox users here can comment on these two groups.
This one, according to the website, was originally founded as “The American Catholic Church”, unlike the first site it makes no claim to Apostolic Succession. Its interpretation of the Nicene Creed (that it is IN the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church) is very Protestant, It does include minimal Eastern Language, so I’m going to say it was a Protestant Church founded by someone who believed in an episcopal style hierarchy and later on one of its leaders learned a little bit about Orthodoxy and thought “Hey! That’s neat! We should adopt some of those things!”.

Again, I could be wrong, but that’s what it looks like.

I just noticed, they have a list of “canons” on the site. No mention of the canons of the Orthodox Church.
 
Today while pulling into a resaurant I saw a bus from a Church that said it was Orthodox Catholic. What does it mean by this? Is it similar to the Eastern Catholic Churches, I don’t know much about Eastern Catholicism, but I thought the Orthodox was different than Roman Catholic.

Any clarification would be great 🙂
Unlikely wording for an Eastern Catholic parish, as has been indicated. You can locate Eastern and Oriental Catholic parishes by using this Find-A-Parish resource. It’s kept up to date extremely well.
 
I did some research on a church called the “Orthodox-Catholic Church”, which has four parishes in Texas and may be the one that you saw. The website is: “Contact The Orthodox-Catholic Church of America”. If this is the correct church, it is not Catholic or Orthodox, it’s a independent church that was founded in the late 19th century. There are a number of these non-canonical groups that claim to be legitimate, and the best way is to confer with your diocese about them before visiting or getting involved.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 

Hard to say. We Orthodox consider ourselves to be fully catholic and sometimes use the name Orthodox Catholic. It’s also entirely possible that it’s from some schismatic/vagante group attempting to distinguish itself from the mainstream Catholic Church. It’s also may just be a single church somewhere that decided to use that name for one reason or the other.

In Christ
Joe
I am curious…your view…on how this can be true…(Orthodox consider themselves) …“catholic” …ergo…“universal”?1. Orthodox churches have no (real-time) connection to the Papacy and the Magisterium of the Universal Latin Catholic Church (nor to the other national/cultural/ethnic Orthodox churches)…most especially no real Missionary missions…active efforts to fulfill the The Great Commission given directly by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Matthew 28: 17-20 http://www.newadvent.org/bible/mat028.htm
17 And seeing him they adored: but some doubted. 18 And Jesus heaven and in earth. 19 Going therefore, teach all nations: baptizing them in the name Father and of the Son Holy Ghost. 20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. and of the And behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.

  1. It is my understanding that , say “for example” a Russian Orthodox Church in Detroit, MI, is in communion with its “Mother” Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch in Moscow…but the Detroit, MI church/diocese is not a missionary activity…no evangelization, except within its own community. Also, the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is not connected to the Papacy/Latin Church…so how is it fulfilling the Great Commission? Does it even consider the Great Commission as a still “active” or “valid” commission"…an “active” command by Our Lord Jesus Christ?
  2. Conversely the Eastern Rite (Orthodox) Churches in communion with the Pope/Latin Catholic Church…even though they have no real Great Commission missionary activity…can claim to fulfill the Great Commission…simply and explicitly becasue…they are in communion with the Papacy and Latin Chruch.
What am I missing?..misconstruing?..or do I have a (somewhat) valid point?

Pax Christi
 

I am curious…your view…on how this can be true…(Orthodox consider themselves) …“catholic” …ergo…“universal”?1. Orthodox churches have no (real-time) connection to the Papacy and the Magisterium of the Universal Latin Catholic Church (nor to the other national/cultural/ethnic Orthodox churches)…most especially no real Missionary missions…active efforts to fulfill the The Great Commission given directly by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
  1. It is my understanding that , say “for example” a Russian Orthodox Church in Detroit, MI, is in communion with its “Mother” Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch in Moscow…but the Detroit, MI church/diocese is not a missionary activity…no evangelization, except within its own community. Also, the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is not connected to the Papacy/Latin Church…so how is it fulfilling the Great Commission? Does it even consider the Great Commission as a still “active” or “valid” commission"…an “active” command by Our Lord Jesus Christ?
  2. Conversely the Eastern Rite (Orthodox) Churches in communion with the Pope/Latin Catholic Church…even though they have no real Great Commission missionary activity…can claim to fulfill the Great Commission…simply and explicitly becasue…they are in communion with the Papacy and Latin Chruch.
What am I missing?..misconstruing?..or do I have a (somewhat) valid point?

Pax Christi
The meaning of the word “Catholic” has no connection whatsoever with the Papacy, and as (name removed by moderator) pointed out, we do indeed have missions. How do you think we got to North America? It is a common belief among Catholics that Orthodox don’t have missions. As an aside, it is a common belief among Protestants that Catholics don’t do missions. The point being common belief has nothing to do with reality.
 

I am curious…your view…on how this can be true…(Orthodox consider themselves) …“catholic” …ergo…“universal”?1. Orthodox churches have no (real-time) connection to the Papacy and the Magisterium of the Universal Latin Catholic Church (nor to the other national/cultural/ethnic Orthodox churches)…most especially no real Missionary missions…active efforts to fulfill the The Great Commission given directly by Our Lord Jesus Christ.
  1. It is my understanding that , say “for example” a Russian Orthodox Church in Detroit, MI, is in communion with its “Mother” Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch in Moscow…but the Detroit, MI church/diocese is not a missionary activity…no evangelization, except within its own community. Also, the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow is not connected to the Papacy/Latin Church…so how is it fulfilling the Great Commission? Does it even consider the Great Commission as a still “active” or “valid” commission"…an “active” command by Our Lord Jesus Christ?
  2. Conversely the Eastern Rite (Orthodox) Churches in communion with the Pope/Latin Catholic Church…even though they have no real Great Commission missionary activity…can claim to fulfill the Great Commission…simply and explicitly becasue…they are in communion with the Papacy and Latin Chruch.
What am I missing?..misconstruing?..or do I have a (somewhat) valid point?

Pax Christi
I have to ask a question and I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way. Where in the world do you guys get this stuff from? :confused:
 
The meaning of the word “Catholic” has no connection whatsoever with the Papacy, and as (name removed by moderator) pointed out, we do indeed have missions. How do you think we got to North America? It is a common belief among Catholics that Orthodox don’t have missions. As an aside, it is a common belief among Protestants that Catholics don’t do missions. The point being common belief has nothing to do with reality.
I have to post this info at least once a month in response to a Catholic saying that the Orthodox Chruch is not a missionary Church. I’m just going to copy and paste from the last one I did Oct 28th. Perhaps I’ll just save it on my desktop to make it easy to post it in the future. :cool:

Historically there were fewer Orthodox missionaries because of a number of circumstances. The great world powers when the Age of Exploration began were all Western European, Catholic nations. Most of the Orthodox world was under Muslim domination or, in the case of Russia, grossly underdeveloped compared to their Western counterparts.

Despite that, the Russian Church has always been active in missionary activity. They evangelized the Tartars, the Mongols and sent missionaries to China, to Alaska, to Japan. Currently the Orthodox Christian Mission Center has active missionaries in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Albania, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania, India, Indonesia, South Korea and Guatemala.

Also recently some 5,000 Mexican Indians were received into the OCA and, even more impressively, some 500,000 Guatemalans were received under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. 👍
 
I know a parish belonging to ACROD here in Illinois with a prominent sign declaring ORTHODOX CATHOLIC at the roadside. Very nice temple.

I don’t believe they have a bus though.
 
I know a parish belonging to ACROD here in Illinois with a prominent sign declaring ORTHODOX CATHOLIC at the roadside. Very nice temple.

I don’t believe they have a bus though.
I’m pretty sure they use vans, hybrids. They got inspired by the “Green Patriarch", even tho he’s from that other jurisdiction.
:whistle:
 
There is no shortage of Evangelization by the Orthodox…

… If you know where to look.

The biggest efforts in Alaska are done via newspaper, really, and its true for both Orthodox and Catholic; often, by careful selection of which journalists to invite for certain stories. It’s not uncommon to see a 2-3 page Great Lent or Phillipova article in the ADN covering the Diocese of Alaska.

The RC Archdiocese of Anchorage has a regular section (weekly) in the ADN.

Many parishes, both Orthodox and Catholic, including St. Nick (Ruthenian), have ads placed on their behalf by parishioners just before Lent and Advent.

And the Archdiocese of Anchorage televises Christmas and Easter midnight masses on Channel 2. (The costs are paid for by a parishioner, not by the archdiocese.)

Then again, the odds are 1-in-4 that any random person in Anchorage self-identifies as Catholic, and 1-in-5 that they self identify as Orthodox. (And about 1-in-2000 that they identify as Eastern Catholic.)

Plus, there’s no shortage of teens from the Orthodox parishes inviting friends to church.
 
I did some research on a church called the “Orthodox-Catholic Church”, which has four parishes in Texas and may be the one that you saw. The website is: “http://www.orthodoxcatholicchurch.org/index.html”. If this is the correct church, it is not Catholic or Orthodox, it’s a independent church that was founded in the late 19th century. There are a number of these non-canonical groups that claim to be legitimate, and the best way is to confer with your diocese about them before visiting or getting involved.

http://www.christisall.org/wp-content/images/Wolf - sheep.jpg
I AGREE.
You are either Orthodox OR Catholic. You cannot be both. This is a marketing technique. Easy way to find out: If you are Catholic, Do you believe in the infallibility of the Pope. If you do,you are CAtholic.
I did some work with the Billy Graham crusade years ago. What he does is match up people of similar faiths (so he is not pushing Protestant or Presby per se) and he is only encouraging people back to their churches. But working with him I found Ukrainian Baptists (Ukes were only Catholic or Orthodox) ,Uke Protestants, Uke Independent Catholics and Ukrainian Independent Orthodox. I suppose anyone can start their own churches - maybe its better than nothing.
 
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