"The Rite Not to Be Roman"

Speaking of Eastern Catholics (a topic that pops up from time to time on this blog since I attend a Byzantine Catholic parish), an article I wrote a few months ago for This Rock magazine is now available on the Catholic Answers website. It begins with this fictitious conversation:

Two men flying across the country settle into their seats and soon strike up a conversation. The conversation turns to religion. Paul, a devout Evangelical Protestant, asks Richard, "So, are you a believer?"

"Um, yes. I’m a Catholic," replies Richard.

"Oh. I see," says Paul. There is a brief, awkward silence. "I used to be a Catholic."

"Really?" says Richard.

"Yep. In fact, I used to be an altar boy back when everything was in Latin."

Richard nods. "Well, my church doesn’t use Latin."

"Yeah, that all changed in the 60s, didn’t it?"

"What I mean is that my church hasn’t used Latin for centuries, if ever."

Paul is puzzled. "Oh. Well, one reason I left the Catholic Church is because I believe that married men should be allowed to be priests."

"My church has always had married priests," responds Richard.

"What? Really? What about women priests?"

Richard shakes his head. "No women priests. In fact, we don’t even have female altar servers or even extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist."

"You can’t be Catholic!" Paul laughs. "Next you’ll tell me your church doesn’t have statues, rosaries, or adoration!"

Richard smiles. "That’s right—we don’t. Believe it or not, we don’t even kneel while at Mass. And we never celebrate Ash Wednesday."

"I’m sorry," Paul says, shaking his head, "but you have to be pulling my leg. I was raised Catholic and I know the pope would never allow the Roman Catholic Church you’re describing to exist."

"I never said I was Roman Catholic," says Richard. "I said I was Catholic. And Pope John Paul II explicitly praised the Catholic tradition I come from."

Read the rest of "The Rite Not to Be Roman". And here is a short sidebar on Byzantine worship. And many thanks to my pastor, Fr. Richard Janowicz, for his many invaluable suggestions and corrections.

Comments

[Holopupenko]

Hi Carl:
     You may be interested in my reflections on Eastern Rite Catholicism in Ukraine here and here.

[ellen]

Very interesting. Growing up in U.K. prior to Vatican II, I was taught that the Anglican designation of the Catholic Church as "Roman" (because they thought themselves Anglo-Catholic) could be accepted by us as meaning that we accepted the authority of the pope in Rome. We were also taught that it was proper to refer to ourselves as Latin rite to differentiate with other Catholics of other rites. We were not given a lot of information about the other rites, however, because the main emphasis was on our differences with the Anglicans and other Protestants. I am ignorant of the differences between the Eastern rite Catholics and the Orthodox. I am under the impression that the major points of difference would be Papal Supremacy, the Filioque, Purgatory, the Immaculate Conception, contraception and divorce. Is this correct? Is there anything else?

[Jeff]

Well, we in the Western Church use icons (e.g., Our Lady of Perpetual Help, of Czestochowa, and others) and pray the Jesus prayer, etc., etc.

Eastern Catholics used to have the Rosary and not to be afraid to have the occasional statue, etc.

It's true that there was a bet too much Westernization in the Eastern Churches before Vatican Two, but the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that Eastern Catholics have had precious things taken away from them. Some of them even amount, unfortunately, to Orthodox-Wannabes. The Melkite Church near me won't use the name of the Pope in their equivalent of the Eucharistic Prayer, for example.