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Editorial: Byzantine blessings The area's Eastern-rite Catholics celebrate 75 years Saturday, October 09, 1999
When immigrants came to Western Pennsylvania to seek work, they brought their faith with them. The result is a skyline in which steeples, bell towers and onion-shaped domes are as common a sight as skyscrapers.
One of the most important religious groups to come to this region on a wave of immigration are Byzantine Catholics, Christians who straddle two better-known traditions: Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Like Catholics of the Roman Rite, Byzantine Catholics recognize the ultimate authority of the pope in Rome, but in their traditions and style of worship they have more in common with the Eastern Orthodox churches.
On Sunday, the Byzantine Catholic Archdiocese of Pittsburgh celebrated its 75th anniversary with a Divine Liturgy at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The anniversary also is being marked by an exhibit of Byzantine religious articles that will be displayed for several months at the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center
In the past, Eastern Catholics in America often had to contend with the ignorance and even intolerance of fellow Catholics who followed the dominant Roman Rite.
For example, in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, married men were permitted to be ordained as priests in Eastern Catholic churches, as they are in Orthodox churches.
But when Eastern Catholics came to the United States, Roman Catholic bishops - fearful that their own faithful might be confused or scandalized by the sight of priests with wives and children - pressed the Vatican to insist that Eastern Catholic priests in America follow the Roman Catholic example and remain celibate. That edict led to the defection of some Eastern Catholics here and elsewhere to Orthodox congregations.
Since the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, Rome has been more respectful of the distinctive traditions of the Eastern churches. But the uneasiness about married Eastern Catholic priests persisted. Recently, however, partly as a result of diplomacy by Pittsburgh Byzantine Archbishop Judson Procyk, the Vatican has relaxed the ban and allowed American Byzantine bishops to ordain married men on a case-by-case basis.
"Multiculturalism" is a new and controversial term, but the anniversary of the Byzantine archdiocese is a reminder that the Catholic Church - like this region - long has been a mosaic, not a melting pot.
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