Thursday, December 22, 2022

Catholic vs. Catholic: thou shalt not mix rites

I'm not interested in "enriching" the Eastern rites with latinizations any more than I am in "enriching" the hell out of Latin Catholics by throwing away the medieval Mass. Latinizing a rite means you don't really believe in it.
  • First, the good, an article on Demandatam Coelitus Humilitati Nostrae from Pope Benedict XIV in 1743. Not Catholic doctrine but good all the same. In the first part of the 18th century, many liturgical latinisations were introduced in some communities of the Melkite Catholic Church, mainly by Euthymios Saifi and Cyril VI Tanas, and supported by many Latin missionaries (mainly Franciscans) against the wishes of the papacy. These changes led to a division in the Melkite Catholic Church between those who went on following the pure Byzantine Rite (as the Basilian Chouerite monks) and those who, named "Latinisers" in the apostolic constitution, mixed the Byzantine Rite with the Latin Rite. Rome had already taken measures against the uses of the "Latinisers" (e.g., the letters to Saifi in 1723 or the decree of July 8, 1729). However these measures did not resolve the issue, and in 1743, before granting the pallium to Cyril VI Tanas, Pope Benedict XIV issued the Demandatam apostolic constitution to put an end to the mixture of liturgical rites... It is forbidden to any one, including the patriarch, to change, to add or to remove anything from the Byzantine Rite and uses (para. 3).
  • Now the bad, this latinizing nonsense from Bishop Gregory (Khomyshyn) in Polish Galicia, now part of the Ukraine, in 1931. Not only ignoring the Pope from centuries ago; dead against him. The Uniates often still are, out of spite as much as ignorance; anti-Russianness in Galicia for example.
Respect the integrity of rites, which are not costumes or styles of church services but whole schools of Christian thought and living.

Byzantine? (Actually those people were the Roman Empire; 1800s Western historians renamed them.) Then your patrimony, from church services to monastic life to prayer at home, is... Orthodox.

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