Why doesn't RCIA teach about Eastern Catholicism?

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Speedypizza

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What I do not understand here is if there are differences between the Catholic rites in how truths are taught, why is this not taught to people in RCIA? Even better would be to have a simple test people could take and then they could find which one fits them the best. I understand if you are born into something, you are born into it. However for those of us who are not, who want to convert, it is a mess that seems to make no sense. It is almost like the Latin rite is hiding this information from us. Something about this whole thing seems to smell very badly to me… 😦

Pax :signofcross:
 
Speedypizza said:
What I do not understand here is if there are differences between the Catholic rites in how truths are taught, why is this not taught to people in RCIA? Even better would be to have a simple test people could take and then they could find which one fits them the best. I understand if you are born into something, you are born into it. However for those of us who are not, who want to convert, it is a mess that seems to make no sense. It is almost like the Latin rite is hiding this information from us. Something about this whole thing seems to smell very badly to me… 😦

Pax :signofcross:
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It is only those adults (age 14) that become Catholic that have never been validly baptised that can freely choose the Catholic ritual Church that they are enrolled in. Otherwise one is enrolled in the one closest to the Church of the Catholic parent or guardian. Since by canon law those people that are not baptised that become Catholic Catechumens are not restricted on ritual Church enrollment, why would the priest want to inform them of choices?

CCEO (eastern) Canon 588
Catechumens are free to enroll in whatever Church sui iuris they want, according to the norm of can. 30; however, it has to be provided that nothing stands in the way of their enrollment in the Church that is more appropriate to their culture.
 
The eastern Catholics are the folks to keep your guard up, its a loose cannon so to speak.

There is plenty good here with the RC.
 
charliedrake said:
The eastern Catholics are the folks to keep your guard up, its a loose cannon so to speak.

There is plenty good here with the RC.
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Well it is not THIS attitude that good about RC, that’s for sure 😛

This just has me chuckling.

Also: What is so difficult about writing out Roman rite Catholics? If you want respect you should respect yourself and not resort to short cuts if you want to make the best possible impression.

In answer to the OP: When I was facilitating RCIA and catechizing, if Father had not already done so, I always had to determine the appropriate canonical home for the candidates and the catechumen as well, if I thought that was important, after the initial interview. So it was not that eastern Catholics were ignored.

Also when I taught lessons on the Church, one of the first things we did was a session on the various eastern Catholic Churches and the papal writings of Blessed John Paul II on the eastern Churches and communion of sister Churches.

I don’t know if some or many did it that way, but I know we did, and at the time I had no idea that I would one day be eastern Catholic.

M.
 
Speedypizza said:
What I do not understand here is if there are differences between the Catholic rites in how truths are taught, why is this not taught to people in RCIA?
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it probably is covered in a general way under the topic of the universal Church, but there is no reason to teach it as if you can give people options which rite to join. The director and pastor should know or find out enough about each candidate or catechumen to know if he should be entering another rite (father was Greek Catholic, for instance).

There is a lot of doctrinal and spiritual ground to cover in a finite time, and the very complicated topic of rites in the Church deserves more time than a typical RCIA class can give. But it is assumed if a catechumen asks a Latin Catholic pastor to receive him, that is the rite he wishes to join.
 
Maybe they think explaining the different rites would be confusing.

RCIA is meant for brand new Christians, people who don’t know God, so maybe they want to keep it simple, stupid. 🤷
 
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the obvious: RCIA is Roman Catholic initiation, not general Catholic initiation. 🙂

Peace and God bless!
 
Ghosty said:
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the obvious: RCIA is Roman Catholic initiation, not general Catholic initiation. 🙂

Peace and God bless!
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I thought RCIA was simply: Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, not Roman Catholic in nature but more general?
 
Speedypizza said:
What I do not understand here is if there are differences between the Catholic rites in how truths are taught, why is this not taught to people in RCIA? Even better would be to have a simple test people could take and then they could find which one fits them the best. I understand if you are born into something, you are born into it. However for those of us who are not, who want to convert, it is a mess that seems to make no sense. It is almost like the Latin rite is hiding this information from us. Something about this whole thing seems to smell very badly to me… 😦

Pax :signofcross:
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Please understand that there are a great many Catholics (perhaps the overwhelming majority, actually) that have no idea that the Eastern Catholic Churches even exist. I sure didn’t until about three years ago, and I’m a cradle Catholic that has been very involved with my church over the years! A lot of it has to do with the fact that many of them are very small, with less than 1 million members worldwide. Also, you’d be hard pressed to find an Eastern Catholic Church outside of the major US cities. In all honesty, if I went to church right now and asked 100 cradle Catholics if they knew what Eastern Catholic Churches were, sadly, I bet at most 15 could give you an answer, if that. I promise this isn’t some big conspiracy, it’s just that the Eastern Catholic Church is a relatively obscure topic to most Latin Catholics. (Now, a discussion on that sad state of affairs could certainly be justified, but it’s reality.)
 
Rolltide said:
Please understand that there are a great many Catholics (perhaps the overwhelming majority, actually) that have no idea that the Eastern Catholic Churches even exist. I sure didn’t until about three years ago, and I’m a cradle Catholic that has been very involved with my church over the years! A lot of it has to do with the fact that many of them are very small, with less than 1 million members worldwide. Also, you’d be hard pressed to find an Eastern Catholic Church outside of the major US cities. In all honesty, if I went to church right now and asked 100 cradle Catholics if they knew what Eastern Catholic Churches were, sadly, I bet at most 15 could give you an answer, if that. I promise this isn’t some big conspiracy, it’s just that the Eastern Catholic Church is a relatively obscure topic to most Latin Catholics. (Now, a discussion on that sad state of affairs could certainly be justified, but it’s reality.)
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I am a Latin Rite Catholic who attends both the Mass and the Divine Liturgy each Sunday. My tiny Eastern Catholic parish clearly makes an effort not to strengthen communication with the local Latin Rite parishes. I suspect that is true in other locations as well.
 
nickybr38 said:
I thought RCIA was simply: Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, not Roman Catholic in nature but more general?
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Its a Latin Rite program.

I think learning about different Rites for a “newbie” can be very confusing. Its better to learn about which Church you are going into.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Its a Latin Rite program.

I think learning about different Rites for a “newbie” can be very confusing. Its better to learn about which Church you are going into.
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Looks like I joined the wrong rite… 😉 What do the other rites use for introduction into the Christian faith?
 
nickybr38 said:
Looks like I joined the wrong rite… 😉 What do the other rites use for introduction into the Christian faith?
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Instruction from Father 😉

It will depend from parish to parish. Generally there are not a lot of converts into Eastern Catholicism. If there are catechists in the parish, they may be assigned to give instruction. Or if Father is available, then he will give instruction. I’m not sure if large parishes would even have an organized program for it. Ours is a small Eparchy, and most of our “converts” like myself are Roman Catholics who doesn’t need much instruction anyway.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Instruction from Father 😉

It will depend from parish to parish. Generally there are not a lot of converts into Eastern Catholicism. If there are catechists in the parish, they may be assigned to give instruction. Or if Father is available, then he will give instruction. I’m not sure if large parishes would even have an organized program for it. Ours is a small Eparchy, and most of our “converts” like myself are Roman Catholics who doesn’t need much instruction anyway.
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I definitely joined the wrong rite! 👍
 
Speedypizza said:
What I do not understand here is if there are differences between the Catholic rites in how truths are taught, why is this not taught to people in RCIA? Even better would be to have a simple test people could take and then they could find which one fits them the best. I understand if you are born into something, you are born into it. However for those of us who are not, who want to convert, it is a mess that seems to make no sense. It is almost like the Latin rite is hiding this information from us. Something about this whole thing seems to smell very badly to me… 😦

Pax :signofcross:
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I’m a catechist in a Latin parish. I have worked now for a number of years with Christians wanting to come into full communion with the Catholic Church and with the unbaptized. During that time I made my own change from the Latin Church to an Eastern Catholic Church.

As a reasonably well catechized Catholic of the Latin Church when I began learning more about the ECCs and having been somewhat active in this Eastern Catholicism section of the CAF for several years I think RCIA is not the place to expose someone who is new to Catholicism to ECCs in any depth.

You can’t teach what you don’t really know about and generally speaking most catechists in the Latin Church know very little about the ECs. The process needs to be us encouraging Latin Catholics to come to know our traditions, just as JPII strongly encouraged.

I think the best way to learn about us is to go to Diving Liturgy and other services such as Vespers. What has happened thankfully in our RCIA is that because of my involvement with ECCs our DRE has the past two years gone to Divine Liturgy during the LA Congress and spent a fair amount of time talking to the EC folks who had a table in the books etc. area. Two of our catechists have gone with me to a festal Vespers/Vigil at the Russian Orthodox Church I go to for such things. I believe that these experiences the other team members have had makes our team richer and helps keep it from being me as the only one familiar with at least some aspects of the ECCs. Sometimes one of them may be the one to mention that something is done differently in the East. 🙂 I don’t mean we get into any serious teaching about ECs, but that we do note when it’s appropriate that there is more to the Church that what is seen in this parish. 🙂

I think with the implementation of new translation of the Roman Missal in the English speaking countries now is a great opportunity for the Latin Church to really be reminded of this diversity and universality. 🙂 I am often the one to bring up that something is done differently in the Extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, when something is said about a universal practice in the Church which is actually only in the Ordinary form of the Roman Rite. 🙂 I do think candidates and catechumens need to know that what they have been drawn to and chosen in this parish in this part of the Catholic Church is perhaps the most common form they will find here but not the only form.

It’s usually the seminarians, we have two from fall semester until Pascha, who are assigned to us who are the most interested in the ECCs when they discover I’m an EC and maybe the larger influence I have as an EC comes in encouraging their interest to learn more, and for them to see a catechist who happens to be an EC functioning well in a Latin parish.

I also went through a three year non degree program the Latin Diocese offers here. In those three years together my classmates were exposed to my more assertive presence as Eastern, since we were all training for leadership in the Latin Church, and they definitely came away with a basic awareness of Eastern Catholics and a good appreciation of the treasures we do bring to the universal Church. They are now involved in teaching and other ministries in their parishes all over the Diocese. Hopefully they do from time to time speak up about the other lung of the Church. 🙂 After I finished the program the Diocese brought on board an EC (Ruthenian) priest to teach the required class on Holy Mysteries/Sacraments! 🙂 I’m sure he has had a serious impact there.

I put announcements in our parish bulletin when there is something of interest on EWTN (Light of the East broadcasts on 12/18, 12/20 & 26) and when my EC parish celebrated the panikhida at the National Shrine of St. Francis, for example. Our catecheumens as well as the rest of the parish see these notices.
 
nickybr38 said:
I definitely joined the wrong rite! 👍
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There’s no right or wrong, only what fits us better 😉

Our Eparchy has adopted the Generations of Faith catechetical program to teach the Byzantine Rite faith to its members. Truth of the matter is, most Ukrainian Catholics in North America think of themselves as Roman Catholics with a different “Mass”. Most think the difference in practice is about difference in ethnicity, and not Liturgical tradition (although ethnicity does play a huge part in it).

Truth of the matter is, for converts, by the time they step inside an Eastern Rite parish they would have already researched a lot about it and have learned quite a lot. Not many non-Ukrainians would just waltz into a Ukrainian parish, or not many would walk into a Ruthenian or Melkite parish without knowing what it is (most people don’t know what Ruthenians and Melkites are).
 
5Loaves said:
You can’t teach what you don’t really know about and generally speaking most catechists in the Latin Church know very little about the ECs. The process needs to be us encouraging Latin Catholics to come to know our traditions, just as JPII strongly encouraged.
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Sadly, in my experience they are not interested.
 
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