What follows is a factual correction of the recurring errors, distortions, and falsehoods I found circulated in traditionalist and SSPX-adjacent circles about the Byzantine Catholic Church and its liturgy. These claims are not matters of taste or preference but assertions that can be measured against history, theology, and canon law.
One of the most common accusations is that the Byzantine Catholic Church is Orthodox, semi-Orthodox, or schismatic. This is categorically false. The Byzantine Catholic Church is in full communion with Rome, both juridically and sacramentally. Byzantine Catholics profess communion with the Bishop of Rome, are explicitly listed and governed within Catholic canon law, possess valid hierarchies and jurisdictions, and celebrate valid sacraments. A different liturgical rite does not constitute a different Church, and equating non-Latin worship with schism reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Catholic ecclesiology. This error persists largely because SSPX-influenced polemics often treat Latin practice as synonymous with Catholic identity, a position that is historically indefensible.
Another frequent claim is that the Byzantine Catholic Churches altered or modernized their liturgy after the Second Vatican Council. The reality is precisely the opposite. Where the Latin Rite underwent structural reform after the council, the Byzantine Churches undertook a process of restoration by removing Latinizations that had been imposed or adopted over centuries. These included the insertion of the rosary into liturgical life, the addition of the Filioque into the Creed, and the borrowing of Roman rubrical practices foreign to the Byzantine tradition. The Divine Liturgies of Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Basil were not rewritten or reinvented but returned more closely to their historical forms. Restoration was mistaken for innovation only by those unfamiliar with what the Byzantine tradition actually is.
Traditionalist critics also frequently accuse Byzantine Catholics of heresy for reciting the Nicene Creed without the Filioque, claiming that this represents a denial of Catholic Trinitarian doctrine. This accusation collapses under basic historical scrutiny. The original Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed promulgated in 381 states that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Filioque clause, stating “and the Son,” was added later in the Latin West without an ecuмenical council and was never accepted by the Eastern Churches. Rome itself explicitly permits Eastern Catholic Churches to omit the Filioque, recognizing this as a legitimate theological expression within Catholic unity rather than a doctrinal defect. To label this omission heretical is to contradict Rome’s own magisterial discipline.
Closely related to this is the claim that the Latin Church preserves the original Creed while the Byzantines stubbornly refuse to update it. In reality, the situation is reversed. The Byzantine Churches continue to pray the original ecuмenical text of the Creed, while the Latin Rite uses a later modified version. The Latin addition was historically contested and played a direct role in the East–West schism. The irony is that those accusing Byzantines of innovation are defending the later textual alteration while condemning fidelity to the original form.
Another persistent calumny is that Byzantine spirituality is modernist, ecuмenist, or infected by Vatican II. This misunderstands the very nature of Byzantine theology. The Byzantine spiritual and theological tradition predates scholasticism, Thomism, and the modern Western theological framework by centuries. Its central emphases include theosis or deification, ascetic struggle, fasting, liturgical immersion, and continuity with the Greek Fathers. Far from being shaped by modernist categories, Byzantine theology often stands outside the intellectual currents that produced modernism in the West. If anything, it remains less affected by modern Western theological controversies.
There is also a tendency to characterize the Byzantine Divine Liturgy as casual, informal, or even Protestantized. This claim is difficult to reconcile with reality. The Divine Liturgy is almost entirely chanted, follows a highly fixed and ancient textual structure, and allows virtually no improvisation by the celebrant. There are no optional Eucharistic prayers, no creative adaptations, and no scope for personal liturgical expression. Measured by rigidity and textual stability alone, the Byzantine liturgy is in many respects stricter than the Roman Rite.
Another common error is the assertion that because Byzantines do not use scholastic or Thomistic categories, they therefore reject Catholic doctrine. Scholasticism, however, is a theological method, not a dogma. The Eastern Fathers articulated the same revealed truths using patristic, mystical, and often apophatic language rather than Aristotelian metaphysics. Differences in theological expression do not imply differences in faith, and the Church has never required a single theological method as a condition of orthodoxy.
Finally, some traditionalist rhetoric treats the Eastern Catholic Churches as tolerated anomalies, temporary concessions, or marginal curiosities within the Catholic Church. This too is false. The Catholic Church has always been pluriritual. Many Eastern Churches predate the Latin Rite in their regions, possess their own hierarchies and canonical systems, and are explicitly protected by canon law. They are not guests within the Church but constitutive parts of it.
Taken together, these accusations reveal less about the Byzantine Churches and more about the assumptions of those making them. Much SSPX-adjacent polemic conflates Latin medieval development with Catholic dogma, treats post-Tridentine Western practice as the universal norm, and views anything outside that framework with suspicion. This produces a Latin-centric tunnel vision rather than a genuinely Catholic universality.
The conclusion is straightforward. The common traditionalist claims that the Byzantine Catholic Church is schismatic, Orthodox, modernist, liturgically corrupted after Vatican II, heretical for omitting the Filioque, or spiritually inferior are not merely debatable but factually false. What is often presented as a defense of tradition is, in reality, the projection of Western post-medieval assumptions onto a Church that never shared them.
Topic: Errors about Eastern Rite Churches (Read 3448 times)