Recently on Usenet I thanked the post-er who gave the URL for the story on Russian rural life I reposted here, mentioning there I'd spread it here. There was some criticism from someone there that this site is co-administered by Catholics, which Orthodoc and I answered, and one of the things this person mentioned was our logo taken from St Elias Church in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.
I took another look at that church's site and was wowed. A very, very Orthodox-oriented Byzantine Catholic church indeed.
While I've never been there, I'd put it on a list of the most Orthodox-oriented Byzantine Catholic churches in North America.
Others would include:
St Michael's Russian Catholic Church in SoHo, New York City. You can read about it and find an URL for it on the Faith page of my site. The
only thing that distinguishes this church's practice from the Russian Orthodox is that inexplicably they are on the Western paschalion. A sweet, homey kind of place, very small, totally orthodox liturgically and AFAIK in their teachings, with a dedicated congregation of non-Russian born Catholics who love everything Russian Orthodox.
AFAIK any Russian Catholic church in the US (there are three of them) would go on this list and they are made up of congregations pretty much like St Michael's. Our Lady of Fatima in San Francisco, despite its un-Orthodox name, uses the Orthodox paschalion and OCA menaion. Writer Lee Penn, whom you can read on my site, is a member.
The Melkites would be on the list too. In my experience I'd include Holy Transfiguration Church in McLean, Va., in the D.C. suburbs. Like St Michael's they may be on the Western paschalion but there are no pews and no other latinizations in sight.
Orthodox-oriented places are rare among Ruthenians but I can think of two such places, Holy Resurrection Monastery in the Mojave Desert in California and SS. Cyril & Methodius Church in Cary, N.C. (with the caveat that many/most of its people don't identify with the Orthodox). Dan Lauffer's church would make the list, but alas, pews.
One can only hope that the Pope doesn't intend to ruin these places by 'aggiornamentizing' them: the unkindest cut of all after they so successfully have resisted latinization.
It's only fair that there'd be similar lists for
least Orthodox-oriented Catholic churches and even for most westernized Orthodox churches.
The only horror stories I can think of firsthand are two iconostasis-less Ukrainian Catholic places of worship, one a broom-closet-sized college chapel, the other a moribund Pennsylvania church. As for the latter, there are the Greeks: pews and organs.
