Saturday, September 23
Protestant Converts and the Eastern Rites
I need to check my email more. Here is a very thorough response from a Catholic professor:
In the question posted at "The Shrine" concerning the selection of rites by converts. A convert is expected to enter the rite which corresponds to the dissonant group to which he or she previously belonged. So a Syro-Antiochian Orthodox would become a Melkite Catholic, a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church would become a Ukrainian Rite Catholic. A Protestant (i.e. dissonant non-oriental of any sort) would become a Latin Rite Catholic. An unbaptized person can choose their rite.
It is possible for a Protestant to become a member of a dissonant Eastern Church and then enter the Catholic Church in that rite, but the willingness to accept them as a member of that rite would be up to the bishop. In the case of clergy, the Protestant minister might become Orthodox, get ordained and then enter the Catholic Church and probably be accepted as a priest of that rite, rather than a Latin Rite priest. But that is an unusual case. As a way around the difficulty of getting a pastoral provision ordination as a married priest this starts to sound very much like wanting to have one's cake and eat it too. A conscientious bishop right wonder about the intentions of such a man and whether he wanted to have to deal with someone so determined to circumvent the canon law. But who knows.
In the question posted at "The Shrine" concerning the selection of rites by converts. A convert is expected to enter the rite which corresponds to the dissonant group to which he or she previously belonged. So a Syro-Antiochian Orthodox would become a Melkite Catholic, a member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church would become a Ukrainian Rite Catholic. A Protestant (i.e. dissonant non-oriental of any sort) would become a Latin Rite Catholic. An unbaptized person can choose their rite.
It is possible for a Protestant to become a member of a dissonant Eastern Church and then enter the Catholic Church in that rite, but the willingness to accept them as a member of that rite would be up to the bishop. In the case of clergy, the Protestant minister might become Orthodox, get ordained and then enter the Catholic Church and probably be accepted as a priest of that rite, rather than a Latin Rite priest. But that is an unusual case. As a way around the difficulty of getting a pastoral provision ordination as a married priest this starts to sound very much like wanting to have one's cake and eat it too. A conscientious bishop right wonder about the intentions of such a man and whether he wanted to have to deal with someone so determined to circumvent the canon law. But who knows.
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