TRANSLATION OF the video about the Greek Catholics by priest Olivera Ravasi
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"My experience in the Greek Catholic world. live from the Airport."
(first he checks the sound) Sorry for the face and the place, but I am in Frankfurt, Germany, making a half long layover because I have to wait a couple of hours more coming from Romania. First time in my life that I go to Romania, I really had no idea what Romania was, far from it. As you will see I have a couple of people in the back walking around, as you will see next to me I have a couple of Chinese [dressed in uniform], but I don't know if they are Chinese or from wherever... .... I have a flight from Frankfurt at 10:30 at night to Argentina and another one the day after tomorrow to Peru and from there 5 more days to the USA. For those who always ask how I travel I tell them what I always say: they invite me, they pay my ticket, they pay my accommodation, I never ask for anything and I take advantage of my "vacations" I am in a school and now it is the long summer vacation in Argentina, and I leave when they allow me to do so. Obviously I am very tired, I got up very early and I still have 13 hours of flight to Argentina. But I wanted to make this little live because later I will forget it. [He is distracted commenting on the sculpture of a man behind him, who he doesn't know who he is, he assumes it is Goethe.]
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I am in Germany, traveling to Argentina, I left last Wednesday to Romania at the invitation of the bishop... [I do not know how to write the name] of the diocese of [sounds like Lugoj] of Romania.
The Greek Catholics are that part of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church that use the rite called Byzantine, they are not Roman Apostolic Catholics of the Latin (Roman) rite but they are Roman Apostolic Catholics but of the Byzantine rite (Greek Catholics). In the case of Romania it was a group of people who at the beginning of the XVIII century, 1700, joined Rome and from that time on they were seen as a kind of traitors to the Romanian nationality. But Greek Catholics exist in Romania, in Greece itself, in Russia, in various places. And many are in the so-called diaspora: they are of Byzantine rite but they are in distant places. Here I am not going to speak technically, it is not a subject that I handle, but I want to tell you purely an experience in case what I am going to say is useful to some of you. I was invited to make a congress of 3 whole days: two conferences per day plus the Holy Mass. The Mass was in the Byzantine rite, I do not know this rite. I concelebrated with the bishop once and twice with the priests in the part of the Eucharistic prayer. They have the authorization in the Byzantine rite.
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What was seen? It was seen that it is a very, very persecuted church. A church that has gone through communism, and only returned to openness to the Catholic faith at the beginning of the 90's, when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. So the vast majority of the people I knew suffered under communism. Everybody knows what communism is, it is an ideology, as the Church has declared: intrinsically perverse, pathetic, but it is one thing to read about it in books and another thing to talk to people... for example, I stayed in the parish of a priest who had a clandestine seminary. That is to say, he did not do a seminary. His formation was similar to that of Carol Wojtila, then John Paul II. It was a clandestine seminary. They gave him to read texts, they ordained him clandestinely. Well, and then eventually, finally, with the opening of the Church after communism he has his own parish and everything but first the masses were clandestine, in houses. The Soviet government expropriated all the churches, gave them to the Russian Orthodox and therefore the Greek Catholics faithful to Rome are very few. In fact, in the diocese where I came, it has only 100 priests, of which... listen well to this because it is rare for us, only 10 are celibate, 90% are married, why? Because in the Byzantine world there is still the privilege of being able to marry before the priesthood. You cannot marry while you are already a priest. You have to decide if you want to be celibate or if you want to be married and therefore if you study in the seminary, before the priestly ordination you have to find a bride, sometimes it takes longer than usual, get a fiancé and get engaged and get married in the Catholic Church, and after the marriage you are ordained a priest. But it does not exist the other way around. Never in the history of the Church does it exist the other way around: that one after being ordained a priest has been married.
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What more can I say? I can say that the same priests I was with were married. In fact, I stopped in a parish where the 3 priests there were 3 married priests, 3 Byzantine priests, with a lot of faith, with their wives and children, which was strange for me, that the priest would introduce you to his wife, that the priest would introduce you to his children, for someone like me, who comes from the Latin rite, it is a little strange, isn't it? Later I can tell you a little bit about my experiences. But I want to tell you about the persecution under the communists, very briefly, this is an experience, this is not a history book, it is not a lecture, do not expect something different, but at the same time what these same married priests told me about priestly celibacy.
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The first part is not going to be the history of the Byzantine world in Romania, they have their own rite, the Romanian rite, from 1700 and so much, approved by the Church when they unite with Rome and what's more, the same Byzantine Greek-Catholic Romanian rite was forging the Romanian language. Today, whether a Greek-Catholic Romanian, an Orthodox, an atheist, a Buddhist or a Romanian in Romania speaks the language of the Church, the language as the Romanian was petrified at that time, in the 18th century. When communism came, you know, the communist world preferred or took to dominate precisely the Orthodox world, those schismatics who separated from Rome in the 11th century and from that moment onwards, Orthodox churches and Greek Catholic churches practically coexist in the same rite, in the same city.
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Some people ask me here in a commentary about the Orthodox and the Catholics, I made a live, no, an interview, excuse me, and I published in this channel a whole conference of Father Carlos Baliña, my friend, Argentinean, he is a Greek-Catholic Argentinean-Ukrainian and he told me a little bit about the separation, "when the East separated from Peter" is the name of the conference, I have it uploaded in Que no te la cuenten and I have another one called "Eastern Schism and Orthodox Catholics". That may help you to know a little bit more about the history of the separation, of the schism.
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The point is that when communism came, the Orthodox coexisted with the Greek Catholics, but the Greek Catholics began to be dominated by the communists, and therefore they put them in prison, they banished many of them, they persecuted them, they took away all their properties, everything: parishes, parish house, everything, they were left with nothing, practically in the street. They have several martyrs, many confessors of the faith (more confessors of the faith means people who have been imprisoned for confessing the faith than martyrs). I think a few years ago the Vatican beatified some Romanian martyrs for communism. Some [confessors] are still alive. The bishop who invited me to that diocese had had his seminary professors, his bishop, his vicar some time ago, all of them had been in prison, all of them had been confessors of the faith. They were a people with a material faith, not like us, most of us have not suffered such strong, bloody persecutions. And that is why when you meet this type of people, it is the minimum percent of the population... ... and we complain that we have to travel half an hour to go to Mass, one hour... these people spent years and years without catechism, without Masses, without Baptisms, they did the baptisms themselves, they had to go to the Orthodox parish to receive the sacraments, they were treated like garbage, a tremendous thing. First thing then: tremendous adversity then by the Greek Catholic world.
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Second thing: the priests, I was saying, because of this privilege that they have had for many centuries, they have the possibility of getting married before the priestly ordination, but these married priests that I was with told me, very good, very dedicated, everything... it is obvious, they have a wife and children, they cannot dedicate their whole life as they would like to the Catholic apostolate. They cannot dedicate their whole life as they would like, to the mission. There are some of them, Romanians, who are in the diaspora, i.e. they went to Germany, to Italy, to France or wherever and they have nowhere to go to Mass, so what do they do: they go to Mass with the Orthodox, wherever they can find somewhere in the world. [That shows how deviant they are, they should go to Catholic Mass, if they are so Greek-Catholic and not with the schismatic enemy. It seems to me that their union with the true religion is very lukewarm, they are not with the Catholic Church. It was already said by Our Lady of the Roses on June 12, 1976: "The rabat is the teacher of life, but woe to those who choose to foul their garments!" tldm translated rabat by priest in Spanish]. That's why there are some Romanian missionary priests, especially celibate ones who go to far away places to assist these Romanians who are living in the diaspora, working, whatever.
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What did these married priests (very good, excellent Greek-Catholics) say to me? They told me this: Father, never believe that celibacy [abandonment of celibacy] is the solution for the Church. Why? Because we know the cloth well. We know who we are. We also know married priests who have fallen into very serious sins: either abuse or cheating on their wives. Then there are many priests who cannot dedicate themselves 100% to souls because they are working, they have their priestly life, family, Sunday Mass and then they have to feed the family. A Greek Catholic priest in Romania, do you know how much he earns? They say they get between 300 and 500 euros, which is nothing for that country, impossible to support a family with children. Here in Germany, where I am now, they get 1800. In Germany a minimum wage is 1000 euros. They used to tell me: "Father, we earn a little less than half, how can we support a family? They have to be part-time priests, that is, they have to work as a mechanic or as a doctor or as a cell phone assembler or work in a butcher's shop, he was a priest and a butcher. Look how hard it was. So they were priests who could only go to celebrate Mass on weekends.
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Then I was told that priests in a celibate state are called monks even though they are not monks, let's say. But it is the priest to whom a person goes when he wants to go to confession or to ask for more important spiritual advice. Why? Because if they go directly to a priest who is married, they will say "well, he does more or less the same as me". So they go to those who have a celibate or chaste life or try to have that life. So they tell you themselves, the married priests. They also told me that to be a bishop, only the one who is celibate can be a bishop, this is the condition in the Byzantine world: only the one who is chaste, who has made a vow of chastity, has made the option of not getting married in the Byzantine or Greek Catholic world [why that clarification?] have the option of being a bishop. And those who were married, the ones I knew, who were very good, I say, if they become widowed, they can no longer have access to marriage. Why? Because it is found in St. Paul's letters and everything. When St. Paul writes I think to Timothy or Titus, that the bishop should be married only once. It didn't mean that they couldn't be married but that if he was married, this was the privilege...if afterwards the wife of this priest or this bishop died he couldn't marry again because it implied that he was not able to maintain chastity.
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They told me that even with the permission to marry in the Greek Catholic world, in their diocese, where I was recently... notice how interesting because I already said that only 10% are celibate, 90% are married, of the priests in their diocese, where they can marry perfectly well, I repeat, last year there were no vocations. THAT IS TO SAY, THERE WERE NO PRIESTLY VOCATIONS EVEN THOUGH MARRIAGE IS ALLOWED IN THE GREEK CATHOLIC WORLD.
Why do I say this? Because many times it is said: the solution for more vocations is for priests to marry. NOOO. No. No. The solution for more vocations is to have seminaries of correct doctrine. It is to have seminaries that handle and maintain the liturgy well. It is to have seminaries where the boys are not offered the same things that are offered to them in the world. If a boy is told that in order to become a priest I can speak like the world speaks, dress like the worldly, go to the same places that the worldly go, listen to all kinds of spirituality, Buddhist, Catholic... "then let's go ahead"... then he will not enter the seminary, because what for? So if to become a priest I am going to live like a layman, then I remain a layman, why do I become a priest?
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[It is vox populi that if a priest is a saint, his parish is pious, if he is pious, his parish is devout, if he is devout, his parish is only dutiful. Sooner or later the lack of vocations had to come to them. They held on as long as they had Byzantine or Communist enemies, but now they have loosened up].]
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So I say this because it's interesting, even in the Greek Catholic world, where you can have married priests (up to the time of ordination or before), once ordained you can't have a wife, that's it, period, it's the choice for life... even in those places it's not the choice. Where I was, unfortunately there were no priestly ordinations and they don't even have a seminarian to this day. Even though the bishop who is there now is very good. He came up two years ago or at most three years ago.
What else? The faith of the people is impressive because they live in a post-Soviet world, in a world where they live together with the Orthodox and therefore they are seen as pariahs in their own Romanian nation, but still they keep the faith in union with Rome. And they keep the faith in union with Rome in the times of John Paul II, Benedict XVI and now, always, they have always kept it. Does it hurt them what is happening in the Church? Yes, obviously it hurts them. Are they aware of the crisis the Church is going through today? Of course they are aware, they are not fools. But even so, they are aware that it is enough to carry out the catechism, the Bible and the bimillenary magisterium of the Church. They do not believe that whatever an enlightened person says in these times is a "holy word". They know what to do, they know what to believe and they know why to die.
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Last thing, for those who ask me here in the chat, I am coming from Romania to Argentina and I am leaving the day after tomorrow to Peru and then to the USA to give lectures. Last thing, when I give lectures I have little time and nothing to see places, I am confined in.... [and he is interrupted by a lady at the airport to greet him] [resumes] I have little time to see things when I go to visit places but I was able to go one morning to walk around the city of Timisoara [I don't know if this is spelled correctly] which is the place where I was giving conferences and one thing that seemed very strange to me, very strange, is that when I was walking with these priests with their cassocks and everything, people recognize the priests with cassocks, there are still some more, I was struck by the fact that there are families: I was struck by the fact that you see families: mom and dad with two kids, more or less, and then you don't see homosexuals, you don't see lesbians, and I honestly felt strange, why? Because years ago in Argentina you go down the street, especially in the downtown bars, and you see couples of two men [makes a gesture of displeasure] of two women, with a little boy... and I was looking and I said: "Father, I feel I am walking 20 years ago when I was young. And he said to me: "No, Father, here it is... not like in Russia, where it is forbidden by law, it is a criminal offense, but it is very bad seen. It is a great shame. It exists as it has always existed, but in a more hidden way. Well, secularization has not yet reached those places and that is why there is still a little more natural order, let's say, well. I also visited a very good Greek-Catholic Byzantine monastery, which has vocations, thank God. And that is my experience in the Greek-Catholic Byzantine world, I wanted to tell this little experience because these are the things that God allows one to see when I am traveling to various places. God bless you all.
If you want to like the video and share to hit the algorithm so that this will spread... and I'll leave you because I have a flight right now. Best regards. See you next time, God willing. God bless you all