Thread: Eastern Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox can survive mass emigration and displacement by seeing its mission and gifts as universal and not as particular and bound to an ethnicity as unfortunately often happens.

Which nation's monastic tradition saved Latin and Greek literature from an age of relative illiteracy? Ireland. Ireland was never conquered by the Roman Empire and yet became the gold standard of Latin Christianity for centuries.

In the same way, the spirits of Byzantine, Alexandrine, Syriac, Armenian, and any others I am forgetting, must be seen as universal spiritual gifts to the whole world. Certainly work is being done in this regard. For example...

...Archbishop Joseph Raya started a Melkite Catholic mission for African-Americans in Birmingham. Many Orthodox churches have now embraced a missionary spirit, and now Greek Orthodoxy is flourishing in Africa and Syriac Orthodoxy has taken root in Guatemala among the indigenous.

The African-American Melkite Catholics and African Greek Orthodox and are spiritual Byzantines, and these Guatemalans are spiritual Syriacs. Yes, that is not the same as being ethnic Greek or Syriac, there is a cultural history that is not there. But does it matter that much?

It becomes a part of the history of this communion just as much as the incorporation of non-Roman peoples into the communion of Latin Christianity becomes a part of Latin history. The Martyrs of Japan are spiritually equal to the Martyrs of Lyons despite not being Romans.

I am a Latin Catholic. Half of my family came from the frontier of the Roman Empire in modern Germany. The other half came from the furthest parts of Ireland, where you can see Croagh Patrick from the farm, where Rome never conquered but Saint Patrick brought the Latin faith.

In the very same way that Latin Christianity survived and flourished beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire by rightly recognizing its universal nature, so too can Eastern Christianity and a communion of spiritual Byzantines and spiritual Alexandrines can flourish.

I recognize that this may be easy to say when my Church had the luxury of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires to travel the entire world, whereas the Eastern churches were largely strangled by the Ottomans. But the world has changed and this new opportunity can be seized.