(Death, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES
If you actually do attend a service at a Byzantine Rite Church (or any other unfamiliar rite of the Church), you'll probably have dozens of questions whirling through your mind - among which will very probably be the wonderment as to whether the Church you've just visited is *really* Catholic. The Official Catholic Directory will have told you so, and the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory will have done the same. But the doubt will remain the same. There is something about Catholics in the West that simply *insists* on a uniformity of practice in order for there to be a unity in faith. It's false, of course, but then the existence of falsity has never in history ever dissuaded men from following a feeling or an idea that has with it a minimal plausibility - or a sufficiency of ignorance.
You'll wonder, as others have, how these people can be Catholic when they do things so very differently than other Catholics do. You'll wonder why there should be more than one rite, even as bishops in this country have, and why one rite isn't good enough.
These people don't genuflect, they use strange languages. They even seem to make the Sign of the Cross backwards.
If these are questions that disturb you then you are among those who needs to spend some time and effort in trying to understand those elements of our faith which are essential, and to distinguish them from those elements which, though very important and significant, are still only "accidents" (in the sense in which St. Thomas Aquinas used it - something not "of the essence"), and because they are "accidents" can easily differ from place to place in various parts of the world without being at all in conflict with unity - indeed, at times, enhancing it.
There MUST have been times in your own life when, in spite of your own efforts to live up to the demands of your faith, in spite of your open and public profession of the faith, others failed to recognize you as a Catholic - or simply, perhaps, as a *good* Catholic, or perhaps refused to recognize the validity or sincerity of your beliefs. If not, you've been hiding your faith too successfully.
With those who are not Catholic fail to recognize our efforts to live up to the demands the faith places upon us, we are most likely to exhibit dismay, perhaps even annoyance. But when other CATHOLICS make that *same* uncharitable judgment concerning us, the indignity suffered is even greater, for the closer the bonds of brotherhood, the greater the expectations of love, charity and acceptance. Yet, the experience of rejection by Catholics themselves is a very common experience. Very, very few of us have not experienced that - and often. Even in the 1980s. I've experienced it even here online.
Roman Catholics often have a way of practicing their faith which makes them look upon their Eastern Rite brothers as heretics, schismatics and even as enemies of the Church; at best as a group of Catholics to be "tolerated" within the family of Catholics until they ultimately fade into a well-deserved oblivion and the Church is *truly* one - i.e., Roman.
But Jesus was no "Roman Catholic," and certainly not a Roman Rite Catholic, nor were Joseph, Mary, nor any of the Apostles. The term "Roman" was first joined to the term "Catholic" ONLY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, during the Reformation, and then only to designate a specific body of Christians in that century. It would not at all be pressing the point too far to say that, if Christ, Mary, Joseph and the Apostles can be deemed to be Catholics of a given rite at all, then they were most certainly EASTERN Catholic, for they lived all their lives in the eastern half of the Roman Empire, with the exception of Peter and Paul, who spent a dozen years or so in Rome.
To return to the opening comments, the comment made by the Eastern scholar, Donald Attwater, the Catholic Church has, in fact, appeared before the world for almost nine hundred years as though it were of European origin, and has been designed by its very nature to fit into a culture that is thoroughly Western. The truth, of course, is quite different; the Church of Christ is neither of these (i.e. of Western origin, or designed to fit into a Western culture); it is designed by its very nature to be "catholic," that is to say, "universal," and by NO stretch of the imagination can the Church be said to be European in origin.
Sadly, the vast bulk of American Catholics not only perceive it that way, but even in the mission territories, behave as though it were so.
During the first three centuries of Christianity, when ALL the rites as we know them were forming, the ceremonies commonly used throughout the Christian world were, in fact, mostly of Eastern origin. During these centuries, too, the Greek language enjoyed the first place among the languages used by the Church in her ceremonies and in her documents, whereas it remained for the third-century Christians to witness the earliest use of the Latin tongue in the Church ceremonies in Rome, and the regions of the Christian world then under the domination of Rome.
In the 1980s there are many rites in daily use throughout the Church. See one of the earlier postings of this conference for a genealogical tree of rites and their historical roots. Depending on the basis on which we make the division, we may count as low as five or as many as nineteen. When we speak of only four basic rites, we are speaking of the four *families* of rites - Roman, Antiochene, Alexandrian, and Byzantine. In such a division we use the basic rite as the source from which many daughter rites arose. Eastern Rite Catholics living in the United States today number roughly two million.
The same Catholic Church exists in all parts of the world. The same truths of the faith are professed by all Catholics of many nationalities and speaking many languages. The same Sacrifice of Christ is offered, the same seven sacraments administered. Yet, side by side with this marvelous unity, there exists within the Catholic Church an equally marvelous diversity: a variety of tongues and customs whose very presence testifies eloquently to the universality within the Catholic Church. Unfortunately this very diversity often leads to suspicion, a suspicion that is based on false premises, namely that unity necessarily implies uniformity. A most distressing attitude, particularly among Catholics in this country who are most loudly insistent that even diversity in the teachings of the Church are to be permitted (called "dissent") in "The American Catholic Church," demanding for themselves that which not even members of other rites have even *dreamed* of ASKING....the right to establish one's own doctrine and still remain members of the Catholic Church. Disquieting, to say the least, to be looked down on as "schismatics" by those who have quite specifically rejected in their lives, if not in their specific utterances, the very real doctrines contained in the universal magisterium of the Church.
Then questions arise for most, once they are aware that it *is* possible to be Catholic and yet be different in praxis is this: how did that diversity come about? What caused it? Does it still continue? Are there new rites arising? Where? Why?
To find answers suitable it is needful to return once again to the history of the beginnings of Christianity itself.
Courtesy of Catholic Information Network (CIN)