Posted by Leo
on 9/7/2009, 12:41 pm, in reply to "Re: The real reason why Carpatho-Russians are 'under Constantinople'"
Thorough as always! You might be interested to know, apropos of ECs going Latin, that I was once engaged to a young lady whose family told me her mother was raised Ukrainian Greek-Catholic in PA, but because my fiancee's father was Latin, they were all going to a Latin parish at the time I met them, and had been for years. (I was born Latin.) My former future mother-in-law had never canonically switched, and figured it was just a matter of registering with the new parish.
Fast-forward 20 years: I'm still single, Googling my ex-fiancee(!), and find evidence strongly suggesting that her father as well was raised UGCC, which I was never told ... and I have strong reason (of a personal nature) to believe he too never canonically switched! It's not required, I know, but they all considered themselves Latins now (then) anyway!
That's not the half of it, and maybe you're aware of what comes next in some of these communities. Apparently my former future father-in-law had ancestors who belonged to parishes of the MP in PA about a century ago. At least one of those ancestors joined the local UGCC parish for its brotherhood life insurance IIRC, but for Nativity and Pascha made sure she and her (UGCC!) kids attended the MP parish! (It didn't say if she Communed.)
When I read that, I recalled I might have read previously that in the Old Country (theirs), sometimes folks went back-and-forth between Orthodox, ECC, Latin, even Protestant, often for similar purely-local reasons, without necessarily changing what they personally believed Christianly. IOW, the groups -- all present in the same geography -- effectively had porous boundaries, conflicting ecclesiologies and canonical strictures notwithstanding!
What I was wondering is: Presumably Rome originally shared the East's one-bishop/one-city rule, for reasons like the East's. But at some point, it became OK with Rome to have more than one jurisdiction in communion with Rome in the same territory. I've read that a Western council -- at Lyons? -- mandated the "right" of any Christian to practice his or her accustomed Rite anywhere in the world, and so ordinaries faced with subjects of Rites different from his own should try to provide them with Services according to them, vicar clergy, even an Auxiliary Bishop if needed ... but definitely NOT a separate diocese, 'since the Church in a place cannot be hydra-headed' or some expression like that. I remember wondering if this was less about Easterners in the West at that time than Crusader Latins sojourning for a century or two in the East, Latin Patriarchs and other bishops there, etc. I think Roberson sometimes notes when an ECC, post-unia, gets its own hierarch(y) in its homeland, clearly overlapping the local Latin hierarchy, and how sometimes it was a matter of conflict, rights, or other issues or problems with the Latins. What I've wondered is whether any theological justification was offered for such an innovation ... or was it strictly oikonomia / "pastoral necessity," or even finding like Robert Frost, "Fences make good neighbors," ie, for slightly more peace between the communities in the same ... community?
I grew up an avid (and very boring!!) reader of my local Latin diocesan newspaper, which sometimes alerted us to ECC news. I'm under the impression that today, ie, since Vatican II if not before, diaspora ECCs consider it pretty much a goal to get enough adherents in a country to warrant / lobby for their own hierarchy, rather than merely an exception in extremis. E.g., one of the Asian Indian groups got their own ruling hierarch here in the States a few years ago, the most recent addition to the growing "overlapping" here. I don't know if there's the kind of issues with "local Latin Ordinaries" as in former years, that drove myriad ECs back to Orthodoxy, now that there's at least more 'political correctness' about ECCs among Latins ... though I thought I heard there was a question about married Romanian GC clergy here, away from the homeland, in the 1990s? This is just as a total outsider, not able to read minds or anything ... although obviously thinking how this might or might not help me think about Orthodoxy's diaspora / mission overlap situation.
Any thoughts, ideas, or recollections?
Thanks,
Leo
Responses:
