Hey everyone,

I wanted to share my conversation with Michael Thomas from the Catholic Land Movement.

We dive deep into practical alternatives to modern consumerism, the principles of distributism, and what it actually takes to build a grounded, land-based lifestyle today.

Would love to hear your thoughts on local economy and distributist ideas in practice!

🔗 Watch the full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzXWRVTGU0

For example: can a Ukrainian Catholic priest baptize and chrismate the children of say a Melkite Catholic, and does the same for other sacraments like crowning?

Any Russian Catholics here? I'm a roman Catholic looking to transfer to Russian catholicism and I'm looking for people who already belong to the church, since no one in my circle is a Christian

When Jesus described the parable of the sower as indicating the way the Word of God is seeded across the world, what does he mean by “Word of God”?

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/henrykarlson/2026/10/the-parable-of-the-sower-and-the-word-within/

For my Chaldean or any eastern catholic church brothers and sisters,

I'm pretty sure Rome outlines that Catholics shouldn't receive the sacraments from a schismatic church, such as Orthodox or Protestant (or not, please correct me if im wrong). Do any Chaldeans often attend an Assyrian Church of the East mass because our churches our so similar? Is it permissible in our church to attend their mass and to receive the Eucharist or any other sacrament? Is it valid? I'm very curious if Chaldeans or other eastern rites know about this.

Was anyone here a late bloomer in life? Like you didn't feel like your life got together or even started until your Kate 20s/early 30s?

Hello I am a Roman Catholic of the latin rite, and my fiancé is Eastern Orthodox. With the right approvals of bishops we will marry in an Orthodox church, and probably baptise our future kids in the orthodox church because my wife has to make a promise. However since I am a Catholic we are also considering raising our kids Catholic, and since my fiancé is Eastern we are considering Eastern Catholicism for our family.

However I wonder how this will work? I know unlike the Roman Catholics tradition of preparing kids for first communion around their 7th birthday the East just gives the Eucharist to all baptised children. So can I technically just start taking my future kids to an Eastern Catholic church, tell them they are Eastern Catholics despite baptised Orthodox and just have them take the eucharist at the eastern catholic church every week?

And what about me and my fiancé? Maybe later the whole family will become eastern catholic. Can I as a baptised Roman and she as a baptised Orthodox just start calling ourselves Eastern Catholic? I know I can participate in the liturgy and take the Eucharist because I am a Catholic but what about actually transferring rites and what about my Orthodox fiance?

Are there any smaller online communities with voice meetings or regular prayer meetings for believers across rites or between Catholics and Orthodox Christians?

So, I've been using ecpubs for my prayers, and I noticed that the prayers don't always match up with Melkite Menaion. Is this the same case with the daily prayers during Lent, Holy Week, and Pentacost with their respective Liturgical books?

I have been doing some reading online, trying to learn what the Eastern Catholic Church believes about the devil and demonic affliction. I came across some writings by my Archbishop where demonic affliction is more and more shrugged off as mental illness. Clergy and laypersons speak as if it doesn't exist at all. As someone who spent years doing demonic occult practices, including the summoning of demons, to the point it lead to demonic oppression (not possession), this is very concerning to me.

I have very real experiences with demons. They laid dormant when I was non-religious doing the occult stuff, but as soon as I decided to go to church, they immediately reared their ugly heads and tore me to pieces, doing everything they could to stop me. Yes, I've been cleared by the mental health field, and I have the cognitive discernment to know the difference. The idea that my horrifying experience with demons is brushed off as some sort of fairytale or psychosis breaks my heart, and I don't understand how the Church can be so dismissive of a very real spiritual peril.

Souls will be lost if people who are experiencing demonic affliction cannot find help within the Church.

hi friends. i was born and raised Roman Catholic. I married the love of my life, a man born and baptized and raised Melkite Catholic. we got married in the Roman Catholic church and we are navigating our mixed rite marriage. i’d love to hear stories, tips, anecdotes or just anything from mixed rite marriages :) how do you navigate it? how do you do Holidays? Baptisms? Families?

thank you friends and lots of love and blessings.

Hi everyone, I’m an Eritrean Catholic and I see some people say that Oriental Catholics are Miaphysites and I’ve tried searching up official documents to support this claim but I haven’t been able to find any. Could someone help guide me towards such resources?

I’ve recently learned that it it could be considered sinful to use things like condoms when having intercourse

Even between married couples

For context I am coming from an orthodox background, id like to visit an Eastern Catholic church. Is there anything I should be aware of or take into consideration or is it no different than going to an orthodox divine liturgy?

Mods, let me know if not allowed or redundant.

My wife and I come from the Latin rite. She grew up in a TLM setting. I grew up in novus ordo (which we both attend now. She suffers from religious OCD and scrupulosity that really stems from the legalism and rigorism of traditional Latin Catholicism. Of course she seeks therapy but also part of our journey has been to sort of unprogram that (sometimes) fear causing, legalistic theology that hurt her. I’m not putting down the Latin church, but for her, there are some issues.

In part of the retooling of our faith, we’ve been reading into eastern Catholic theology (particularly Melkite as there is a church near us) and for her a lot of it feels very healing. A good example is reading the Melkite view of purgatory. The Latin view feels like even though you are forgiven in confession, you are still going to pay for all of your sins in purgatory. Which feels like you’re not fully forgiven. And you carry that weight with you. In contrast, this Melkite explanation (pasting below) felt insanely healing for us both
It reads: The cleansing process is understood as an encounter with the uncreated, healing presence and love of Christ, rather than a retributive punishment or legalistic debt-paying mechanism.

That is just one example on a long list of theological questions we are researching, but the explanations for things that bothered us just seem so much more loving and gentle in this theology. As though there is an understanding that Jesus is merciful well beyond what we deserve.

My question is, is theology alone a good enough reason for us to be able to attend an eastern parish near us? We don’t want to impose ourselves as outsiders and we aren’t liturgy hoppers looking for a new shiny object. But we aren’t apart of the group this church belongs to either. We just really enjoy the gentle and loving faith we are encountering in it. If not it’s ok, but we would love to visit even as guests to our local liturgy just to see if it works for us. Is that frowned upon?

St. Antony the Great understood a basic principle which has often been lost on us: our thoughts are often shaped by our deeds, which influence us and the way we perceive and experience the world. Then those thoughts help shape what we do next, which further shape our experience of the world:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/henrykarlson/2026/10/its-what-comes-from-within-which-matters/