MarkosC:
There are two statements in your latest reply that I will address because they make no sense to me.
1) Your reply: Let's put this in an extreme case: one parish in my area has exactly one Lenten service during Great Lent (Salutations doesn't count as a "Lenten" service, but if you count that and the Akathist that brings it up to 6),and never has Great Vespers on Saturday night. We have Great Vespers and a Lenten service each night except Sunday night during said season. [other Orthodox parishes in our area have more full services of course; this extreme case is for illustrative purposes. I would not argue that the local ROCOR parish, which has the fullest schedule of services, is the best parish simply because of its schedule of services].
Response: This is a perfect example of what I mean when I state you are basing our Orthodox Catholic identity purely on the traditions and worship practices we individually observe. ONCE AGAIN, OUR FAITH (ORTHODOXY) IS BASED ON THE THEOLOGY WE BELIEVE, PRACTICE, AND DEFEND. THIS IS DEFINED IN THE DOCTRINES AND DOGMAS WE BELIEVE AND UPHOLD. Not in whether an individual parish has one Vesper service during Lent or Great Vespers during Lent. Many parishes have priests that have secular jobs needed to maintain their families so are not always available to serve. Besides, I know of Greek Catholic (Byzantine & Ukrainian) who never have Vespers and others who do.
It has nothing to do with Orthodox Catholic theology which as stated is what makes us Orthodox and Catholic!
You miss the elephant in the living room. IF eastern Catholics thought that the Catholic Church taught truly heretical dogma and doctrine and had empty sacraments and dead theology, they would not be Catholic. They might not even be Orthodox, for that matter, but they would not be Catholic.
Eastern Catholics are quite capable of teaching from their own tradition without having to use the language of the western Church or focus on their saints, and certainly they do not need the Latin/Roman liturgical traditions to teach the truths of the faith.
That is what union is about. The faithful and intellectual acceptance and understanding of Catholic dogma and doctrine in its fullness which allows for more than one rigid expression of the same truth.
They do not need to define themselves by first stating how they are NOT Catholic. They can simply get down to the business of liturgy, catechesis, and the veneration of saints. They don't even need to emulate the west in their fasting practices and many of them...perhaps even most eastern Catholics fast differently from their western counterparts.
Yes. There have been distortions of the traditions but not every particular jurisdiction was affected in the same way so there is variation as Markos indicated.
And yes, there are eastern Catholics who believe in the Immaculate Conception but I can name names of Orthodox faithful who do the same...and no, they are not misunderstanding the teaching.
So you have a long way to go before you can push your assumptions off on people who are quite comfortable in their eastern "skin" and don't need to negate all Roman/Latin traditions to do it, nor do they emulate them all either.
M.
