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Stacey,
Forgive the length of the thoughts I'm about to share but I hope you will find them helpful.
I'm a revert to Catholicism. I left as a youth . . . I wandered . . . and basically became a non-believer.
I found Christ because an Evangelical shared the Gospel with me as he understood it.
Later, after further study, I left the pulpit to return to the Church. During that journey I looked at Eastern Orthodoxy to get a third point of view. I found that in essence, we believe pretty much the same thing . . . but disagree about the extent of the jurisdiction of the Pope.
Mike is correct that we have Eastern Catholics, which express their faith in almost identical fashion to the Eastern Orthodox, but they have returned to full unity with Roman Catholic Church.
Our Eastern Christian brothers, be they Catholic or Orthodox, have much to contribute. They start by asking entirely different questions than we do. Hence, their answers, and expression of faith is different, but entirely equal. They share the same seven sacraments and all essential doctrines even if they express them differently.
The Eastern mind set is Semitic. It accepts paradox and doesn't try to come up with rational explanations for every little aspect of what we believe. They prefer to ponder and enter into the great mysteries of our faith, rather than have an almost equation-type approach to the faith as we often do in the West.
Both East and West are like two lungs that need to breathe together in sync.
- The West has always emphasized reason. That's not always a bad thing. After all if you ask a rational question, we ought to have some kind of answer but in the process we have to be careful not make our faith sound like Algebra.
- Conversely in East, they need to worry about not being so mystical that they get sloppy about what we believe.
So we need both and we need both together.
As I studied Orthodoxy for a short time, I came to the conclusion that historically it shares rightfully the claim to be Apostolic and therefore a Church . . . not just denomination or Ecclesial Community, like our Protestant brothers.
The only thing that separates us is a case of mass stupidity by prideful men on both sides about 1,000 years ago. The Catholics are as culpable as the Orthodox for the Schism.
When I was a Protestant Minister, one my closest colleagues on the local Ministerial Association was the local Greek Orthodox priest. He helped me with my studies as I searched for the truth.
He never once suggested that I convert to Orthodoxy and he was supportive in my decision to become a Roman Catholic.
He did recommend the Orthodox Study Bible. I rely on it often, to this day, when I struggle to break apart what we believe. I obviously don't agree with all the study notes, rejecting those that seek to justify they're status in Schism, but during my journey, it played a huge role in my return to the Catholic Church.
I would also like to address your concerns about the style and language of worship of the Eastern Church. In the East, they were occupied and oppressed by the Muslims for over 1,000 years so the Church also became a source of national identity. It became a way of preserving the culture and, in some cases, even the language. When these Christians came to America, they retained the use of their language in their Liturgy for much the same reason but many of them offered services in English and other languages.
In the West for centuries, we adopted Latin for our liturgies because it was a common language in the West. In fact, medical books and law books were written in Latin for just that reason.
The idea was that a Catholic from Poland traveling to England could attend Mass and worship in the same language he had been exposed to in Poland. Later, Latin no-longer was the common tongue in the West and eventually the Church dropped it as the universal language for the Liturgy, choosing to go the way of the East and using the vernacular.
That said, worship can't be reduced to:
- prayer
- listening to and reading the Scriptures
- singing songs, and
- hearing a sermon.
Worship is Sacrifice. It is the one acceptable Sacrifice of Jesus Christ made present at each and every Mass or Divine Liturgy as they call it in the East. When we are at Mass, we are present mystically and simultaneously at Calvary, at the Resurrection, and in Heaven, where Christ Himself perpetually offers Himself. He and we are not repeating the Sacrifice at Calvary but are entering into that once and for all event: the Sacrifice at Calvary.
God stands outside of time and makes what is in our past, present to us. We also enter into the glorious Heavenly Liturgy which will we someday be a part of in a physical reality.
So while worship should edify us, that's not what it's ultimately about. As long as we are aware that we are in the presence of God and participating in the Sacrifice of Jesus, offering ourselves with Him to the Father, whether we can understand the words being spoken, or not, is irrelevant.
Again, forgive me for the length of this reply but I thought these thoughts might give you a bit more insight into Catholic thinking.
John
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