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How To Get
A Byzantine Church in Your Neighborhood
by Father Hal R. Stockert
The first thing you folks need to do is find the folks you're looking
for. There are a few things you can do to this end immediately:
1) Get hold of every pastor of every parish in the Eastern Catholic
Churches in the US, and write them a note asking them to put in their bulletin a plea to inform you of the names, addresses
and telephone numbers of any relatives they may have in your area. You'll have to write the
Chanceries of the other dioceses, Ruthenian, Ukrainian and Melkite. You should be able to find their Chancery addresses in just about any Catholic
Directory, even an outdated one. Ask them for their diocesan
directories.
2) Take out a couple of ads in several different newspapers throughout your region - NOT the big ones, the little ones which serve local areas.
These are the ones that go to people that read everything in it - make sure
they're the ones which carry the obituaries. People who buy newspapers with obituaries tend to check obituaries. See if you can't have your ad
placed on the obituary pages, or facing them. DON'T GO CHEAP! Don't get those little, hard to see, ads. Make sure they're big enough to catch the
eye. Run them for a month. Wait three months. Run them again. Folks will see them the first month and shrug. When they see you're STILL
running them three months later they'll figure you're serious and you might
begin to get some recruits from that. It's how we started the Van Nuys California parish which eventually became the Cathedral. Fr. Chromoga came out there with one address from the Chancery in Pittsburgh....and it was a
wrong address and wrong phone number.
3) Make the rounds of the local RC parishes and see if you can find a
priest who is solid in his teaching, and fervent in his prayer life. You might later approach
the Chancery with the idea of offering this particular priest bi-ritual faculties to serve as a temporary
pastor. The priest shortage is severe, even among the Easterners, and getting worse. Anything you can do to make things easier on that shortage will be to your advantage.
4) Don't just wait for folks to call, take their names and then wait for
them to show up. Go out to visit them personally. Make personal acquaintance with them. Go out of your way. They have to *feel* wanted,
and feel wanted for who they ARE, not for what they can bring..... It's hard work, but that's what evangelization is all about.......and it is NOT
"the priest's job" alone.
5) Meet together at a local RC parish for a while! Get to know each other
and when you have a dozen families or so, you can set up a committee to make an appointment with Archbishop Judson to petition him once again for
consideration as a legitimate parish...... And you're right about Fr. Karl. He was a few years behind me in seminary, and I doubt he remembers me, but he's a fireball all right........... He did some truly terrific
work in Texas.. But he's really heavily burdened now in his present assignment.... But be sure you keep in touch with him and keep him
informed. He could be a valuable ally.
6) Get in touch with EWTN and see if they can't find you some TV coveragefor the attempts to build a mission. Mother Angelica is very favorable
toward eastern Catholics, and particularly in the South. She knows well the problems of building Catholicism in the South, and knows well the problems Eastern Catholics face, not only in a Protestant South but among Southern Roman Catholics as well. We face enough problems with RCs as it is, but it's different in the South in that the suspicion is even more intense - probably as a result of their own disenfranchisement. The persecuted tend to bunch together and view *everyone* different from
themselves as an outsider........
Current
Locations seeking to start a Byzantine Church
California
- Bakersfield/Visalia
- Contact: Coming Soon
New Hampshire
- Manchester
- Contact: Pat and Hope Bronson
Louisiana
- New Orleans
- Contact: Coming Soon
Tennessee
- Nashville
- Eastern Tennessee
- Contact: Coming Soon
If you or somebody you know is working to establish
a Byzantine Church, please email us
with their name and contact information.
Contact Information for the Eparchies
Sample
Letter to Distribute
Coming Soon
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