Just Visiting: don't change to the Byzantine rite, please...

...if you are a Roman-rite Catholic.

You are so welcome to visit! We love 'normal' Catholics to visit; we'll try not to stuff you with too much sarmale/perogies/kolache. Just make sure that the priest doesn't give your four-year old his First Communion a few years too early.

And you are really welcome to be a 'permanent visitor.' Maybe our Divine Liturgy is at a good time and place for your family to get to on Sunday. Maybe you enjoy the fact that Father encourages/forces the boys and men to serve at the altar. Maybe you appreciate the reverence of the Liturgy that we are trying to instill. Maybe you feel called to pray in this way at this time in your faith journey. Maybe your great-grandparents were born in the old country and you suspect that they might have been Eastern-rite. You want to learn. You want to prepare for the unity that will happen someday, so you want to experience the way other Christians worship. Despite this sour post, I love it when believers find a (usually temporary) home in our church.

but -as a Roman-rite Catholic- should you actually change rites to be Byzantine?

I say---no.

It would be tempting for us Byzantines to encourage Roman-rite Catholics to officially change rites (it helps us feel less small), but we shouldn't push it.

If you want to become Byzantine because we don't play guitars and sing 'Gather Us In,' you will be gone when a local (meaning an hour away or less) Roman-rite parish starts a Latin Mass. 

If you want to become Byzantine because sacraments of initiation are free and easy (no two-year, three-hours a week First Communion program for us), you'll go back to Roman-rite when you realize that Byzantine catechism programs are too free and easy. It's pleasant to not go to catechism every Wednesday evening for two hours, but thirty minutes every other Sunday just does not seem like enough.

If you want to become Byzantine Catholic because we are so 'hard-core' with our meatless Wednesdays, Fridays & longer fasting periods, our no-women-at-the-altar-ways, our tendency to stand a lot, and our lack of guitars, you'll leave when that isn't hard-core enough. You will journey on to the Orthodox because they all seem to be vegan (and not even olive oil!) for half the year and the women are more likely to veil. And they never sit down or kneel! Or you might go on to a SPPX chapel where all the women are sure to veil. 

So please stop by. We love visitors. At our missions, if you come celebrate with us once every three months, you are a treasured friend. A few believers 'supplement' their faith journeys with an occasional Divine Liturgy with us, but they do not miss their geographical Roman-rite parish. This is as it should be. 

I know too many people who have officially changed their rite to Byzantine who no longer attend a Byzantine rite parish. They didn't 'quit' because they moved away, or the Divine Liturgy is scheduled for a truly impossible time, or the priest is an abuser (either sexually or financially). They leave because the parish got big enough to need a meal and clean-up sign-up sheet (they and some other families left- now this parish is small enough again not to need a sign-up sheet). Others leave because their local Byzantine parish is not perfect in its expression (the chant isn't perfect, some of the people sit or- gasp!- kneel) of the Eastern Church; so they save a half-hour drive on Sundays to attend the closest Roman-rite parish where 'Gather Us in' is on a regular rotation and their daughters might get to be altar servers. 

But I think the true reason why these families (anecdotal, I know) who officially changed their rite from Roman to Byzantine but now attend a Roman-rite parish 'quit' the Byzantine rite is that the Eastern Church did not become part of their soul. They are still Roman at heart. In most cases, it is best to stay as one is. Have your parish be the touch-stone of your and your children's lives. Stability is such a good way to live. Visit different parishes of your own rite and those of other rites to learn and live the universal way of the Catholic Church. But don't use us by officially changing rites and then tossing us aside. It hurts.