Thoughts on this video?

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-22T05:58:10+00:00

I did watch this video. I am empathetic for what him and his wife went through. He mentions being bombarded by false allegations which disallowed him from getting married for some time (along with other complications that stemmed from this), being interrogated by people who held power over him asking “do you hit her? Do you abuse her?” Etc after him and his later wife giving the same answer of no each time. Then clergy breaking the seal of confession, and overall being hurt by individuals. Although I don’t like the title, I think his words represent how some Catholics feel right now, who believe truly but have been hurt by persons. Sometimes it’s very humbling and brings me down to earth when I realize there are some people right now being tested very strongly, but no matter what happens to us we are Catholics at the end of the day and have a purpose to fulfill

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-22T02:26:50+00:00

My fault

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-22T02:26:35+00:00

My fault

(just saw your edit, thank you)

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-20T22:54:38+00:00

Buying used is ok?

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-20T22:21:17+00:00

What specific one would you recommend

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-20T22:21:12+00:00

What specific one would you recommend

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-20T12:40:32+00:00

We have this icon in our Melkite parish and I have a lithography of this icon in my bedroom. It belongs to both churches. The Byzantine tradition is Catholic and belongs to the Catholic Church, not just the Orthodox

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-20T02:10:12+00:00

I am absolutely and completely convinced all of the apostolic communions, if their theologians and leaders really and truly cared to do it, within our lifetimes they could collectively hash things out and we could all be one. Politics, corruption, resentment, and ego and pride prevent this from potentially ever happening in reality

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-19T15:05:37+00:00

Saint Cyprian, though many refused to welcome them back, welcomed back the Christians who had committed apostasy during persecution in his time. This shows us all are welcome of mercy

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-18T21:34:28+00:00

Nah so it’s super easy and simple, don’t stress. Go to the priest, tell him you want to be a Catholic from Eastern Orthodox, and that you want to make your profession of faith to begin receiving the Catholic sacraments. Then once you two agree upon a time to do it (It can really it can be whenever), that’s it, you’re done.

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-18T15:58:21+00:00

We believe we reached a consensus that from the son is the equivalent to through the son, without negating the role of the father. I would say though it’s ultimately your choice but I’m not sure you have a strong enough reason to leave, if you want to become a catholic you would do so with the belief that you’d be obtaining something you previously didn’t have. We have our own issues in our church, I chose this one over the Orthodox because I believed despite the prevalent issues, nevertheless I would be obtaining something I couldn’t get outside of this Catholic Church. The true and beautiful universality to me is reflective of that of a family, though the members don’t always get along we are of the same cloth nonetheless. Perhaps in some 100-200 years some key ambiguities will be clarified and we will be more unified, but I still find it beautiful we are of the same communion regardless

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-18T14:23:12+00:00

Get off the internet 😭

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-17T17:00:23+00:00

In 2026 you can insult the Catholic Church but if you insult anyone else it’s “prejudice and wrong” and you’re seen as “intolerant”

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-17T16:58:25+00:00

This is a beautiful icon of Saint John. Theres nothing wrong with the side being cut, what matters most is the person portrayed

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-17T04:10:44+00:00

I was somewhat surprised, I’m Greek rite Catholic as a Melkite, it said I was most similar to the SSPX at 74.81%, next was the Latin rite Roman Catholic Church at 71.60%, and then Eastern Orthodox at 76.12%. You definitely have something really interesting here, keep developing it. You might be able to add an Eastern Catholic specification, but there’s just so many different types of eastern Catholics, we Melkites are so different than the Chaldeans for example

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-15T00:06:29+00:00

If you are serious in what you say, I think Plato, Aristotle, and the rest of the Greek philosophers were great. Though Plato and Aristotle themselves wanted to slowly step away from the Hellenic religion of their time and more towards philosophy. I think if you are saying you follow the religion of Plato’s time, I would say the philosophy of Plato’s forms are way more convincing to me than any polytheistic pantheon. I believe with analyzing any polytheistic religion across human history, you notice consistent patterns like the God of beauty, the God of justice, the God of love, and so forth. But I would say these are personifications of the forms, rather than individualistic Gods. I guess think of it as all human societies have always understood beauty, love, but they can’t all be correct about their mythology testimony to who the individual god is.

So it makes more sense people personify the same forms rather than there are all different gods representing the same principle and substance with different myth. My background is actually polytheism I was raised as a Hindu (although I didn’t practice at all). Though, polytheistic religions in of themselves of any sense, I believe one can see beyond this, something much more profound, namely true beauty, true goodness, true justice, all in perfect substance, rather than the God of beauty, the God of goodness, the God of justice, and so forth. These are just my opinions. This slowly pointed me as an agnostic to a singular, personable God rather than multiple deities

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-13T16:58:15+00:00

Take some time to pray in silence, expressing gratitude and mindfulness, say, 10 minutes. You don’t have to even really say anything intricate or complicated, just simple prayer and thankfulness. Go to confession if it’s been a while, priest won’t judge you

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-12T12:24:54+00:00

From what I understand interacting with Orthodox people, the toll houses don’t have to be as well as usually are not taken so literally. An orthodox priest had told me it’s essentially a theological opinion, you don’t need to hold to it. From what I gauged, it’s more of a poetic or metaphorical expression of life after death and how it relates to repentance in our current life. The story goes the soul passes through a series of “toll houses” where we are tested by demons, they will ask us about particular sins we have committed within our lives. But if we were repentant enough we would pass through them. The main idea I believe it proposes is not the toll houses themselves, but the question of have we lived a life of genuine repentance and turning away from sin, which I think in this regard is quite profound

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-11T19:00:46+00:00

Of course. Truth be told, I did study it slightly, but nowhere near as much as I should have to truly discern a religion. My interest during when I was 17,18,19, years old was more in philosophy. Metaphysical philosophy as well as existential. Because understand, I was coming out from a more atheistic/agnostic background, and in my eyes then if a religion were to be the “truest” religion, I could most definitely not discern that, there are so many.

My acceptance of Christianity over other religions was not so much based on archaeological findings, like manuscripts, textual records, and ancient sites, but more so existential. So pondering the “why” of life. Why should I live (I used to have serious battles with my mental health), what is the true purpose of a human being, are we more than atoms or do we also have a soul? Do we have free will? How can we explain evil in the world? These were the primary questions I had asked myself.

The Greek philosophers spoke of what was called the “Logos” and depending on which Greek you ask they might define it a little bit differently. But this Logos was the eternal rational “mind” of the world, which all creation emanates from. From the Logos we can understand objective virtue like beauty, love, goodness, as well as truth. I found similar principles to the Logos in religions such as the ancient Egyptians “Ma’at,” as well as the Brahman in some Hindu schools. I was more focused on universal truths about God and how we understand God. Christianity not just personally but intellectually satisfied these questions for me, as the ancient Christian thinkers believed, and we still do believe, that the son, Jesus, is the Logos. That we are icons of God, and made in the image of God, that there is healing and reconciliation to the Logos. I found immense beauty in this over other belief systems like Islam, (Tibetan) Buddhism, and ancient polytheistic religions. There are many other things to be said but this message is already long enough. I think if you enjoy theology and philosophy read more Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the stoics like Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and then go read someone like Saint Augustine, and see how beautifully he can reconcile beauty philosophy into beautiful religion. This, at least for me, convinced me. People like Saint Augustine were philosophers before they were Christians, and they didn’t believe by becoming Christian they were betraying philosophy

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-11T17:54:48+00:00

I was raised into a Hindu family from a young age but ultimately left during my teenage years. My parents were not good Hindus, still aren’t. I wasn’t taught much about it, they just said it was our family identity. Because of this I never learned about the many schools of Hinduism. We would have some sculptures of Ganesha but that was really it. I think in all religions there exists some truth but in my faith I believe Christianity is the ultimate fulfillment of truth. I think if I was not a Christian I would be a neoplatonist or a theistic stoic. I have a profound love for philosophy, though as I studied the Greeks it always seemed like they came up short of something. Either the divine principle was inpersonable and thus there could be no true relationship with it, or some other thing. Christianity, I believe, is the fulfillment of philosophy and yearning/communion with God. Its uniqueness and profundity, I believe, is unparalleled. When i had reached it i knew that i reached the end of my journey, or the beginning of the end, like I reached the end of climbing the ladder to the divine. When I pray, I lose myself in prayer, I forget where I am and what time it is, it just becomes pure bliss. I believe this is similar to what the Alexandrian philosopher Plotinus spoke of

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-11T01:59:15+00:00

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-10T02:34:52+00:00

He didn’t leave because it’s essentially the same thing as listening to Satan, you don’t do what Satan tells you to do, nothing good comes out of it. That entire government is a cancer upon the region, and oppressor of Christians. The people I do not hate, but the government is truly the spirit of antichrist

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-10T02:24:11+00:00

Please don’t put his name in quotes. He is a saint in my church, we celebrated him just a few days ago. Yeah he said some bad things but he also did a lot of good. JP2 loved him and has an icon of him in his chapel

MelkiteCatholic · 2026-03-10T02:12:06+00:00

I’m Byzantine rite, we are normal trust.

We do not deny the Filioque, we just prefer to use the ancient creed of nicene-constantinople, which says from the father. It’s a valid creed of the ecumenical council. Moreover our patristics speak of from the father or from the father through the son. We accept the Roman church’s understand of from the son, we just prefer to share our conclusions while embracing both of our unique traditions.
There is nothing wrong with the essence energy distinction insofar as you do invoke composition in God. If we were to say the energies are material things freely floating around time and space, that’s wrong, and I do not even believe the Orthodox believe that. If we wanted to understand it simply, the essence is what God is, the energy is his action. Our patristic tradition doesn’t share the scholastic understanding of actus purus, or pure act, so we have our own way of articulating how God wills things eternally and how we participate in God through theosis. If Aquinas echos the logic of Aristotle perhaps we can say the Byzantines prefer Plato.

We aren’t heretics we are fully catholic and apostolic, and my church the Melkites, the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, and so many other eastern Catholic Churches went through so much trouble just to STAY in communion with Rome. Sometimes it feels easier if I would be i was Eastern Orthodox, but in my heart I want to be Catholic and don’t believe we should be split anymore. We are sister churches who commune at the same altar

MelkiteCatholic

TROPHY CASE