Byzantine Catholic priests meet in Pittsburgh
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In a first-of-its kind gathering, Byzantine Catholic priests from across the U.S. met in Pittsburgh this week, hearing from the head of the Vatican office for Eastern Churches in a rare opportunity to get to know one another.
The gathering, however, was tinged with sadness: The man who arranged it, Metropolitan Basil Schott of the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh, was hospitalized with cancer. An announcement during the meeting said he was in critical but stable condition, and that treatment for the disease he has battled since last year was being discontinued.
"Please keep him in your prayers," said the Rev. John Kachuba, archpriest of the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma, Ohio.
Byzantine Catholics are among more than 20 Eastern Catholic churches that are loyal to the pope, but whose liturgy and other practices are nearly identical to those of Orthodox Christianity.
In their historical homelands in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, they have always ordained married men to the priesthood. The Vatican banned married Eastern Catholic priests for the United States in 1929, but in recent years such ordinations resumed with case-by-case approval from Rome.
About 150 priests from the nation's four Byzantine Catholic dioceses attended the gathering, marking the end of the Vatican's Year for Priests. It was held at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cathedral in Munhall. They heard from Archbishop Cyril Vasil, a Byzantine Catholic Jesuit from Slovakia, who last year was named secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Oriental Churches. The 45-year-old archbishop spoke about similarities and differences between the Byzantine Catholic churches in Slovakia and the United States.
The Byzantine Catholic Church in Slovakia has strengths that the U.S. church could learn from, he said. These include many men entering the priesthood and "the ability to suffer for faithfulness to the church," most recently under Soviet communism.
The Slovaks also have a deep love for the liturgy, he said. But due to the lack of religious education under decades of oppression, "there is a danger of formalism and superficial piety."
The experience of the church in the U.S. could help the Slovak church establish new models of religious education and to begin outreach beyond its rural ethnic constituency.
"Organizing in the big cities would help to alleviate this generation's spiritual poverty," he said.
In an interview, Archbishop Vasil said part of the reason for his visit was to learn more about the churches here. In his talk he didn't address the still-simmering issue of whether Eastern Catholics in the U.S. would ever be able to ordain married men as freely as those in Eastern Europe do. He is not hearing much talk about it, he said.
"In this eparchy [diocese] there are married priests, with the permission of the Holy See," he said. "It is permitted on a case-by-case basis. In the Latin church now we also see [former] Anglicans who are married, so there is also an acceptance of married men in the Latin Church on a case-by-case basis. It's not an acute problem as it was 70 years ago."
First Published June 10, 2010 12:00 am
