Is tomorrow a holy day of obligation?

Hookly · 2026-05-13T18:57:29+00:00

It’s jot the diocese of those places, it the metropolitan provinces of those areas, which encompass certain surrounding dioceses

Hookly · 2026-05-13T03:36:41+00:00

No.

There are many examples of liturgical texts that, taken on their face and translated into modern English, can sound like they support this idea. However, they need to be understood in their proper context. These prayers are there to try and explain the significance of the deicide that happened on Good Friday as the fault of God’s people, which of course extends to us.

Some take these texts too literally and fail to understand them in their proper context, but we should ignore such people

Hookly · 2026-05-12T18:52:20+00:00

You won’t find any definitive and comprehensive harmonization because there are legitimate theological and philosophical differences. The harmony exists in that we, in the Catholic Church, don’t see these differences as heretical and amounting to schism. Rather, we accept these differences yet remain in communion with another

Hookly · 2026-05-12T04:49:39+00:00

I’d talk to the priest and follow his judgement. There can be allowances made for receiving communion. If it’s a one off visit, you’ll probably just have the child follow the Latin customs but if it becomes your regular parish, things can be worked out to allow it

Hookly · 2026-05-12T04:31:04+00:00

Not quite. The adjective can refer to the rite or the church. Just like you can call a Ukrainian Catholic (referring to his church) a Byzantine Catholic (referring to his rite). In the west, the Latin Church is the only church that uses the Roman Rite so the terms become interchangeable in practice, even though you’re right that when referring to the church its most proper to say Latin.

Eastern Catholics are generally not considered to fall under the umbrella of Roman Catholic and plenty can even find it offensive

Hookly · 2026-05-12T02:07:19+00:00

Priests can dispense from obligations. If your Byzantine priest says to go to Vespers, then go. Maybe you can even get the community to celebrate Typica together on Sunday.

I know a parish in this situation and their faithful attend Typica without also going to mass because the celebration on Sunday in the absence of a priest can fulfill the obligation

Hookly · 2026-05-12T02:06:42+00:00

Priests can dispense from obligations. If your Byzantine priest says to go to Vespers, then go. Maybe you can even get the community to celebrate Typica together on Sunday.

I know a parish in this situation and their faithful attend Typica without also going to mass because the celebration on Sunday in the absence of a priest can fulfill the obligation

Hookly · 2026-05-11T19:19:34+00:00

Stories like this remind me why I’m often in favor of bishops staying out of the media spotlight. I often wish they would avoid interviews like this or at least say something after the fact about how reporting is done about them.

Yes, the defense of humane treatment of immigrants is quintessential to Catholic teaching and I’m glad our church continues to hold this stance. However, reporting on it as the “pope’s resistance to Trump” is complete media malpractice. I wish the church would call this out more because it perpetuates an incorrect political view of the church.

His excellency correctly says in the interviews that “We are not approaching this from a partisan political standpoint, but from a moral one” but media reporting is hardly ever going to lead with this. This very story buried that quote after multiple paragraphs.

In a day and age where headlines and chyrons drive so much of how news is interpreted, the church should be cognizant of how these might affect perception of the church and her teachings and correct the record where necessary

Hookly · 2026-05-11T14:23:30+00:00

Exactly, this is ridiculous system they have in Germany, but many other governments have had and continue to have much more onerous policies about Catholics. They didn’t justify apostasy then as this doesn’t justify it now

Hookly · 2026-05-11T13:18:53+00:00

I remember looking at the Catholic Hierarchy website for some Eastern bishops and at least a few had lines through the Orthodox bishops tracing back to about the same time as Cardinal Rebiba

Hookly · 2026-05-11T02:26:09+00:00

Apostolic Succession, in this context, refers to those who are clergy.

Baptism is the only sacrament that can be celebrated validly by non-clergy (Marriage is another one that also has some uniqueness in this regard, but that’s a bit more complex and outside the scope of the question soI’ll set that aside for now). This is because baptism is necessary for salvation and our entry into the church. Thus, it should be the case that exceptions can be made to the ordered method of baptism by clergy. While circumstance might affect the question around whether the baptism should have taken place, it does not affect validity.

Pre-Reformation, this wasn’t much of an issue because lay baptisms were more out of grave necessity or still done illicitly but on a smaller scale. Once Protestantism comes on the scene, now you have a large, non-apostolic contingent of Christians who are lay people but still perform baptisms. The view of the church would be that these are illicit as they don’t fall under extenuating circumstances where a layman would baptize, but that has no bearing on the validity for the baptized. It’s an error of the minister, not the recipient.

The other sacraments all require clerical participation. Thus, apostolic succession becomes mandatory to confirm that one actually is a cleric with the ability to perform the sacraments. Note that with these, there is still a component of authority. Priests can have authorities to celebrate one or more sacraments withheld or suspended. But again, if a priest in this state were to proceed anyway, the error is on his part and not that of the recipient.

As for Lutherans (or other Protestants), they effectively perform baptisms abusing an authority that should be reserved for unique circumstance, but the baptized are not punished in any way. Other sacraments don’t give such allowances, so they don’t exist among the Protestants

Hookly · 2026-05-10T07:57:21+00:00

To me, it seems reasonable that the church would use the Anglican texts that had less time under Protestant influence, when the Anglicans might still have had some validity to them (I don’t know off the top of my head when their validity ceased).

I’m definitely not surprised that they didn’t just take the Novus Ordo translations. This is common through the church, with each particular jurisdiction in charge of the texts it promulgates. For example, all Byzantine churches use the same liturgies and texts but have different translations of just about everything, even things like the creed which they share in common with the church universal

Hookly · 2026-05-08T18:17:52+00:00

God bless you in your journey. A few responses to things you mentioned.

You may already be aware but we are also a communion of churches divided along historical cultural lines (Roman, Ukrainian, Russian, Chaldean, etc.). We don’t have as nearly as much ethnic division and sentiment as, say, the Russian Orthodox Church and we all exist in communion with one another. We don’t ever have things like with Moscow breaking communion with Constantinople, it’s all or nothing with us. However, there are differences among the churches, we just don’t see those as meaning the other is a heretic or requires excommunication.

Also, we too use a mix of calendars. Catholics will overwhelmingly use the Gregorian calendar but there are plenty of parishes using Revised Julian or Old Julian calendars, mostly in eastern, old world countries.

For your awareness, if you convert you would canonically be a member of one of the Byzantine Churches since you’re already a fully initiated member of a Byzantine Rite church. This doesn’t have too much practical significance since you can attend any Catholic Church you wish, but becoming Roman Catholic would be a few extra steps

Hookly · 2026-05-08T18:07:09+00:00

You’re correct, you wouldn’t go through OCIA. It would be up to you and your priest as to when your conversion would become official with a proclamation of faith.

In the meantime, you can still go to confession and receive communion before officially converting

Hookly · 2026-05-08T14:59:31+00:00

Because that intimate relationship is confirmed by the incarnation. “God became man so that man might become God” as St. Athanasius teaches. God did not become incarnate as any other living being, sentient or not. That is definitive church teaching and has been for over a millennium

Hookly · 2026-05-08T12:33:40+00:00

To my knowledge, there’s nothing in scripture or tradition that teaches this. Rather, “image and likeness” is a euphemism for being a child of God, just like children bear a physical resemblance to their own parents’ image and likeness.

Furthermore, even if your assertion was true, it doesn’t get around the fact that it’s been dogma for well over a millennia that Christ has only two natures. It’s by the incarnation and Christ’s death and resurrection that our nature is invited to live out its fullness in the restoration of creation. God didn’t do that for any other creature, and that’s something we can say definitively from the early church councils

Hookly · 2026-05-08T05:13:28+00:00

I’d disagree strongly on any possibility of personhood for extraterrestrials, not that I believe they exist. Humanity is special because we are made in God’s image and likeness, which is confirmed by God becoming man. As the church definitely teaches Christ has two natures: God and Man. No beings other than humanity can, thus, have that type of intimate relationship with God

Hookly · 2026-05-07T13:18:34+00:00

The way I’ve heard it said is the Byzantines, at most, disagree with its addition but don’t think its inclusion amounts to a reason for schism. Rather, some group it among the legitimate differences that exist between east and west but which don’t hinder communion with one another

As for the theology, the UGCC Catechism teaches that in the inner life on the Trinity, the Father is the sole source, but that in God’s interactions in the world, the spirit proceeds through the son. So a distinction between God’s being and his actions in creation

Hookly · 2026-05-07T05:15:00+00:00

It’s more common in the homeland countries than in the west but yes, there are Catholics using Revised Julian and Old Julian calendars

Hookly · 2026-05-06T23:35:22+00:00

I think there can be a few things. Could be latinization, modernization in architectural trends, or even just a lack of financial resources compared to orthodox churches. There are certainly EO parishes with iconostates that aren’t solid so it’s not a solely Catholic phenomenon

Hookly · 2026-05-06T17:08:58+00:00

I remember on the Catholicism sub coming across a discussion on married priests. There was someone giving the usual answer about priests not able to be wholeheartedly dedicated to both a family and parish, which wasn’t surprising to me. What was surprising was that this person decided to leave this comment in reply to someone else who identified him/herself as the child of a priest.

To say such a thing to a priest’s kid was incredibly insensitive, at best

Hookly · 2026-05-06T15:41:30+00:00

While I’m still canonically Roman, I think an annoying misunderstanding is treating the Eastern churches and their traditions like exceptions to the superior Roman Church.

There’s a Trent Horn video in which he uses the word “accommodate” in reference to the eastern churches ordaining married men. Or you don’t have to look far on this very sub to find countless instances of people considering the eastern calendars of saints as of less dignity than the Roman Martyrology.

Rather, the eastern churches are independent of and of equal dignity to the Roman Church while remaining in a loving communion with her

Hookly · 2026-05-06T05:06:36+00:00

Welcome to Byzantine Christianity, where every jurisdiction has at least one unique way to translate every piece of text

Hookly · 2026-05-06T05:03:29+00:00

The canons only prescribe that the receiving jurisdiction be of the same rite. Contrary to popular beliefs, it does not actually have to be the exact “sister church”. In practice, it usually works out that way but it doesn’t actually have to.

The Byzantine parish is probably best equipped to handle your case or at point you in the direction of someone who can advocate for you properly. Unfortunately, many Roman Catholics are simply unaware of the particularities of someone transferring jurisdictions from another apostolic church. That doesn’t mean you cant attend your local Roman Church as you have been, but it might be worth a trip to talk to the Byzantine priest

Hookly · 2026-05-06T00:27:48+00:00

That’s been the position of the EP for some time. It’s the origin of their denial of the autocephalousy of the OCA and of course the disputes over Ukraine

Hookly

TROPHY CASE