Is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Orthodox?

Go here and discuss.

Rome Creates a New Sui Juris Church

Interesting. See the details here.

Vatican Approves Married Clergy for Eastern Rite in the West

The Vatican has taken steps to end a long simmering controversy. With the approval of Pope Francis, most restrictions in the diaspora on ordaining married men, or importing married clergy from the East are being lifted. The broad enforcement of the Latin discipline of celibacy on all Eastern Rite clergy in the West has been a sore point for more than a century.

Details here.

Ortho-Cath Ecumenical Group calls for married clergy in Eastern Rite

Read the story here. Mixed feeling on this one. I deeply sympathize with the Greek Rite Catholics who have lived with 2nd class status in the Catholic Church pretty much for as long as they have existed. And I am delighted that some high ranking people in their church seem to be coming around on this subject. But I am less sanguine about OUR clergy opining on this in any kind of official capacity. In the end, they are not Orthodox and we are not Catholic. Its an internal disciplinary issue of the Catholic Church for them to sort out, not us.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's none of our business.

Sad News

One of the most beautiful churches in Canada, St. Elias The Prophet (Ukrainian Greek Rite Catholic) was completely destroyed by fire yesterday. Please keep the parishioners in your prayers.

Met. Hilarion in a frank interview on the Ukraine

Read it here. Please leave comments there.

Melkite Leader Says U.S. Attacks on Syria Would Worsen the Conflict

WASHINGTON — The leader of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church has argued that, despite reported chemical attacks in Syria, foreign military intervention is a destructive option that will only worsen the ongoing civil war.

“I am adding my voice to all the statements made by most of my brother Eastern patriarchs, several episcopal conferences, the archbishop of Canterbury, and especially His Holiness Pope Francis and his representative at the United Nations in Geneva,” said Melkite Patriarch Gregorios III in an Aug. 30 statement.

“I state categorical rejection by Syria’s Catholic Churches, including the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, in Arab countries and those of the expansion, of any foreign intervention in Syria and any attack or intervention of any sort whatsoever.”

Patriarch Gregorios III, a native-born Syrian, is the president of the Assembly of the Catholic Hierarchy in Syria, as well as patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, an Eastern Church in communion with Rome.

Read the rest here.
HT: Blog reader John L.

A review of the new Ukrainian Catholic (uniate) catechism

Read it here.

Eastern Rite Catholics Complain of Roman Interference and Indifference

 Gathered for their ad limina, Eastern Catholic bishops from the U.S. were addressed last week by Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Leonardo Cardinal Sandri. His injunction—made not about abortion, the HHS mandate, war, wealth redistribution, or gay marriage—could have a critical influence on the Christian response to all of the above.

Among the Cardinal’s remarks was a tersely reiterated expectation of celibacy for priests serving the Eastern Catholic Churches in diaspora—in this case the U.S. The message may not have been carried directly from the hand of Benedict but the effect has been unpleasant to say the least.

Enter Thomas Loya, a Ruthenian Catholic priest of the Parma Ohio Eparchy, writing his eparch in response.

    In addition to being chillingly reminiscent of the demeaning attitude of the Latin Rite bishops toward the Eastern Catholic Churches during the beginning of the last century in America, the Cardinal's remarks about celibacy seem to confirm what so many Eastern Catholics in America have suspected for too long: Rome and the Latin Rite see the Eastern Catholic Churches in America as essentially inconsequential, perhaps even in the way of ecumenism between Rome and the Orthodox Churches.

The chilling reminiscence refers, in part, to an exercise in aberrant ecclesiology—more a power play—engineered by Archbishop John Ireland that resulted in an entire body of U.S. Eastern Catholics breaking communion with Rome.

Read the rest here.
HT: The Deacons Bench

Vatican pushes celibacy on Eastern Catholic clergy

The money quote...

On what theological grounds can the jurisdiction of the Eastern Churches be restricted to the “historical territories”, the same principle not being applied to the Roman Church? These are issues that require further serious research and discussion, not least because of the desire for Roman union with the present Orthodox Churches.

Read it all here.
HT: Dave Brown.

Vatican doctrinal office warns Catholics against schismatic group

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sounded a warning against four excommunicated priests who continue to claim they represent the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the largest of the Eastern churches in full communion with Rome.

Despite encouragement and hopes the excommunicated clerics would reconcile with the Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Holy See, recent events and their continued slander demonstrate the leaders are only creating "confusion and havoc in the community of faithful," the congregation said in a written declaration, dated Feb. 22 and released by the Vatican March 29.

The doctrinal congregation formally does "not recognize the validity of their episcopal ordinations and all the ordinations that derived or will derive from them," it said.

The men, Fathers Elias A. Dohnal, Markian V. Hitiuk, Metodej R. Spirik and Robert Oberhauser, were expelled from the Basilian Fathers.

In 2008, they said they were consecrated as bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the statement said.

They were subsequently excommunicated in 2008 after being found guilty, according to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, of illegitimate usurpation of authority, inciting sedition and hatred toward people in the church hierarchy, provoking disobedience, and seriously damaging a person's good name through calumny, the doctrinal office said.

It said the so-called bishops recently sought to register with Ukrainian authorities as the "Ukrainian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church," a movement the four, with three other priests, established in 2009.

"The Holy See has followed with great apprehension" the group's unsuccessful attempt to register itself as part of the Catholic Church and said it was "illegitimate and illicit" for any group not recognized by the proper ecclesial authorities to assume the name "Catholic."

The doctrinal congregation warned all Catholic faithful to "not belong to the aforementioned group" as it is not in communion with the Catholic Church and to pray for the members of the group "to mend its ways" so as to return to the church.

According to its website, the movement "accepts the primacy of the Roman pontiff, is founded on the Apostolic and Eastern Catholic tradition and, above all, dissociates itself from the contemporary heresies which destroy both the Eastern and the Western church."

In 2011, the group excommunicated Pope Benedict XVI and most of the world's cardinals and bishops and declared the establishment of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate, with Father Dohnal as the patriarch.

Source.

Melkite Greek Catholic Bishop Condemns "First Communion" Ceremonies

An excellent read (it's in PDF).  Click here.

HT: Blog reader Dave

A Russian Rite Catholic Ordination

Joseph over at Byzantine Texas has a video up of a priest being ordained into the Russian Rite of the Catholic Church.  The Russian Rite is among the smallest of Rome's various uniate churches and the last I heard they had no bishops of their own.  There is a Russian Rite parish in San Francisco not far from ROCOR's cathedral.  I have always meant to visit but never seem to have gotten around to it.  The title of the post suggests that some people will be upset by it since the newly ordained priest is formerly Orthodox.  Personally, it's not something that I am getting worked up over, though I do take exception to the term "Orthodox in communion with Rome."  See my comment there.

George Weigal on the situation in the Ukraine

Summary: The Ukrainian Greek Catholic (uniate) Church is the repository of Ukrainian nationalism trying to fend off Putin and his puppet Russian Orthodox Church from stamping out Ukraine's independence.  Read the article here if you are so inclined. 

Weigal's Russophobia and pronounced hostility to the Orthodox Church is becoming tiresome.  Speaking of which, Mr. Weigal now lays the blame for the suppression of the UGRCC on the Russian Orthodox Church co-equally with Stalin's secret police. As though the window dressing that was the above ground Russian Church could so much as take a bathroom break without Stalin's prior direction.  That said the Russian Church keeps handing ammunition to Weigal and others like him by their obstinate refusal to disavow the sham union of 1946-47.

Lebanese patriarch urges vigilance to avoid 'Arab Winter'

New York City, N.Y., Oct 25, 2011 / 04:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The leader of Lebanon's Maronite Catholic Church says the world must not let the “Arab Spring” turn into a “winter” of civil war and minority oppression.

“The so-called 'Arab Spring' sweeping the Middle East holds much promise, yet we must remain vigilant. The Church abhors the use of violence to meet any goal,” said Patriarch Bechara Rai of Antioch, in an Oct. 20 conference at the Catholic Near East Welfare Association's U.S. headquarters.

“We do not wish to see happening in these countries what happened in Iraq, where the country now is in the middle of a civil war,” said the leader of 3.2 million Eastern Catholics of the Maronite tradition. “In such a situation, this will not be a 'spring.' It will be rather a 'winter.'”

Read the rest here.

A sneak preview of the new Ukrainian Catholic Catechism

In June of this year, after ten years of preparation, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) –an Eastern Catholic Church in union with the Pope of Rome– released its first official Catechism. Entitled Christ our Pascha, it received the unanimous support of all the Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church and also was reviewed by the Eastern Congregation in Rome before publication. A description of the development process by the Patriarchal Catechetical Commission can be read here. Translation into other languages is proceeding, including Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and English.

There was speculation that the new Catechism might present some nuanced understandings of some of the issues that divide the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, especially with regards to the role of the papacy. However, some rough, unofficial translations of key paragraphs in the new UGCC Catechism indicate that this is not a breakthrough document that might suggest a way to resolve the doctrinal differences.

For example, here are two key paragraphs that describe the Pope:

Read the rest here.
HT: Blog reader Dave

No surprises here.

Russian Orthodox leader urges Vatican to resolve dispute and pave way for summit

(Reuters) - A senior leader of the Russian Orthodox Church on Monday called on the Vatican to do more to resolve outstanding disputes so that a meeting between Pope Benedict and the Russian Patriarch could take place.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan (Archbishop) Hilarion, urged the Vatican to show "some signs" of readiness to resolve a decades-long conflict between Orthodox and Catholics in Ukraine that has been blocking a meeting of the two world religious leaders.

An unprecedented meeting between Benedict and Patriarch Kirill could begin to heal the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, which split in the Great Schism of 1054.

Read the rest here.

I have said it before, here and elsewhere, but it bears repeating.  I may be Orthodox, but if the home team is wrong, it's wrong.  The Russian Church is skating on very thin moral ice when the subject is the forced unification of the Ukrainian Greek Rite Catholics in the late 1940's.  No reputable historian accepts the claim that it was voluntary and the transfer of church buildings and other property was little more than theft.  Let's grow up, admit the obvious and try to reach an amicable settlement.

My above opinion is utterly uninfluenced by the much discussed, but never materializing, Pope-Patriarch summit.  I could care less about that.  Bickering over real estate is not what divides Rome from the Orthodox Church, and any settlement will not end in restored communion.  Nor will any meeting between Benedict XVI and Patriarch Kyril.  We need to settle the dispute with the Ukrainian Catholics because they were the victim of a great injustice and right now the Russian Church is perpetuating that situation unnecessarily.  

In short we need to do this because it's the right thing to do irrespective of future relations with Rome.

Orthodox In Communion With Rome?

We Eastern Catholics should ponder the words of Pope Benedict and really examine our belief in the idea of being Orthodox in Communion of Rome. Not that all Eastern Catholics buy into the OICWR idea. It did strike me to the core and is making me examine my beliefs. The Ratzinger proposal was something I believed in, but it seems that Pope Benedict didn’t mean it as many see it, as his later clarification seems to imply.

I ,and many, fully believe[d] that “Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium” but does Rome?

Read the rest here.

New Ukrainian Catholic Primate's First Priority... a Patriarchate

The newly elected head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC), Sviatoslav Shevchuk, is planning to meet with Pope Benedict XVI and ask him to grant the UGCC the status of a patriarchate of the Roman Catholic Church.

"Today I'm departing with my bishops and all of the metropolitans of our church to Rome, because it's our duty to make a courtesy visit to the Holy Father," he said a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday.

The UGCC leader said that the UGCC Synod of Bishops had prepared a number of proposals for the Pope.

"We're really going to tell of how our church is developing and that each developing church [becomes] a patriarchate, because a patriarchate is a period in the completion of the development of a church," he said.

He said that the 20 years of Ukraine's independence had been a period of development for the UGCC.

Source

Many Years

To bishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the newly elected primate of the Ukrainian Greek Rite Catholic Church (UGCC). Read the story at Byzantine Texas.