A History of Central Eastern Europe

Growing up there was the Roman Catholic Church and …. everyone else. To the
Orthodox Church, they are rock, the foundation of Catholicism….and everyone else
claiming the Catholic label is just that …. everyone else. The Roman Catholics? The result of
their misunderstanding or misreading of the Holy Scriptures, it’s just so darn obvious – their
Schismatic all right, but not as bad as some of the other ones. So there’s the Orthodox
Church (associated with Russia) and the Roman Catholic Church one leaderless and the
other used to have warrior-kings as their leader. Then within the Roman Catholic Church
there are different “rites” the 2 biggies being the Latin Rite and the Byzantine Rite, basically
West/Rome/Latin and East/Constantinople/Byzantine. Now the Eastern Right churches have
all sorts of names and some have several names to one church….So ‘n’ So Byzantine Catholic
Church = So ‘n’ So Catholic Church of the Eastern Rite = So ‘n’ So Greek Catholic Church.
(Foggy on just how Greek got in, but it did) But with the Eastern Rite Catholic Church there
is often confusion with an alternate name used for Orthodox Churches on occasion – Eastern
Orthodox. What it all boils down to is more churches built for the same # of people – ergo –
there is competition to win & grow & beat your opponents. But for our purposes, let’s focus
on the Latin rite and the Byzantine rite. We grew up within the Latin rite – ‘nuf said. Greek
Catholic was the more a century ago, Byzantine Catholic is now preferred The Byzantine
Catholics have certain characteristics that set them apart (otherwise why have a schism?):
Byzantine liturgies and disciplines of the church used. (As do practically all Eastern
Orthodox – point of confusion)
Different set of prayers for mass
Different cycle of readings
Married parish clergy in countries of origin (though bishops are celibate)
Separating the sanctuary and the main church with a screen of painted icons
Giving communion and confirmation to infants at the time of baptism (Efficient)
Now, Eastern Orthdoxy has 12 national churches that look to Moscow. Parishioners
within these 12 different countries, at one point or another, started looking the other way
and we have 12 different national churches for the Byzantine Catholics – and each of these
has reunited with, is “in communion with” technically Rome at different times. Each
churches is equal in dignity to every other “in communion with” the “Patriarch of the West“
So, on one hand you can get the first 3 Holy Sacraments all at once at the hands of a
married priest, but only if that priest is Byzantine Rite. If the married priest is a Latin Rite
guy – then it’s all wrong, invalid, perhaps even a huge sin and everyone involved needs to be
!
Now that you’re, perhaps, even less clear (or more likely care even less) on these different
yet related, somehow, in a kinda odd way that can’t really be reckoned since both can’t really
be right, but neither can be wrong either…
condemned and even excommunicated. Talk about a classic case of split-personalities
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