"Head East, careless reporter!"

The Vancouver Sun has a most curious piece about the recent visit of Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to British Columbia. For whatever reason, the reporter failed rather badly at getting the facts straight about some essential subjects:

Patriarch Shevchuk, 42, is back to Vancouver as the youngest “Catholic” bishop in the world, says his Canadian colleague, Ken Nowakowski, the Ukrainian-Catholic bishop for B.C. and Yukon.

Even though the Ukrainian Catholic Church follows Eastern Orthodox rituals and has an arms-length relationship with the Vatican, Shevchuk’s election as Ukrainian patriarch, or main archbishop, was confirmed last year by Pope Benedict XVI.

Wha....? Why the scare quotes around "Catholic"? The Patriarch is just as Catholic as the Pope. Why is that difficult to grasp? And the bit about the Ukrainian Catholic Church following "Eastern Orthodox rituals" is strange; this bit, from further on in the piece, is even worse:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Comments

[Deacon Harold]

Clearly, there is still a lot of work to be done in educating people about Eastern Catholics.

I had the great privilege of leading a young adult retreat at St. George Byzantine Catholic Church (Ruthenian Rite) in Olympia, WA a month ago. The Divine Liturgy was absolutely beautiful and thoroughly Catholic! Here's what they have on their website:

"St. George Byzantine Catholic Church is in full communion with the Roman Pontiff, Pope Benedict XVI, and invites all Catholics to come to share the Light of the East!"

I encourage everyone to attend the local Eastern Catholic Church in your area. Bathe in the Light of the East until you're sunburned! :)

[craig]

It's not rocket science folks: Catholic = Catholic, and Orthodox = Orthodox. It is simply an issue of Communion--people in Communion with Catholcis are Catholics and people in Communion with the Orthodox are Orthodox. No "quotation marks" needed!