Free An Experience With An Eastern Rite Church And An Orthodox Shul Essay Sample

For this project, I visited both an Eastern Rite Church and a Jewish Shul, which practices Orthodox Judaism. I learned a significant amount from both experiences. Becoming more acquainted with different religious traditions can be difficult, because it can be hard to leave my comfort zone and go out and experience new things. However, I found that my experiences at both the Eastern Rite Church and the Orthodox Synagogue were positive experiences, and a met a lot of interesting people who saw life in a very different way than I do.
The Eastern Rite Church that I attended was a Catholic Church, but it was not a Catholic Church like any I had experienced before. I expected the Shul to be more strict and traditional in the rites and service performed, but it was the Eastern Rite Church that seemed to be more traditional. The church I attended was an Armenian Catholic Church, which means that it follows a specific set of rites and rules that are unique to this particular culture. Although the service was in English and I was able to understand it, I felt that there were significant differences between what I experienced in the Eastern Rite Church and the regular Catholic Church. I was able to have some discussion with the priest after the service, and he was more than willing to talk to me about the similarities and differences between the Catholic Church in Rome and the Armenian Orthodox tradition.
The most important and interesting thing that I learned from this particular experience is that the Pope in Rome recognizes all the Eastern Rite Churches. Although these traditions are different from the Roman Catholic traditions, they are still controlled by the same organization. The Pope and the Vatican recognize how important the various traditions are, the priest said, and they support the various organizations and the different cultures that practice Catholicism in different ways. The most important thing is recognizing that the Vatican is the head of Catholicism, and that one’s personal relationship with Jesus is based on a number of different factors.
The priest also talked to me extensively about the importance of Communion in the Armenian tradition of Catholicism. In the Armenian tradition, any infants that are baptized can receive the Eucharist and confirmation, which is different than the Catholic tradition, which requires that children wait for their first communion. The priest told me that a lot of traditions are cultural traditions that are associated with the Armenian culture as well as the Armenian Catholic Church, which is why it is important to remain an independent part of the Catholic community.
The Orthodox Shul that I visited was very different from the Catholic Church that I visited. There were many differences between the two religions and the two services; while I found the Armenian Catholic service to be extremely long and complex, the liturgical traditions in the Orthodox Jewish community are extremely different.
I was only able to attend the evening orthodox service, and I found it to be much easier to understand than the Eastern Rite Church service. There were parts of the service that were done in Hebrew, which I had a hard time understanding. I understood the general gist of what was going on in the service, however, because of the classroom work I have done. I had a very hard time following along with some of the siddur, but the people I was sitting with were kind enough to help me through the process without judgment.
Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to experience the morning prayers in the Orthodox Synagogue. I would have liked to have experienced them, because I was told that they are a little longer and more in-depth than the evening prayers. I was unable to talk to the rabbi before or after the evening prayers as well, which is something I would have liked to do. I thought it was interesting that men and women were separated during prayer time; I was unaware that this was common in all kinds of orthodox communities.
One thing that I found interesting about both experiences is the dependence that both communities have on culture and tradition. Both communities are incredibly invested in their shared culture, and the religion of that shared culture is one of the things that keeps these communities together. Culture and religion in these more conservative communities are tied so closely together that it is almost impossible to divorce the two from each other; an Armenian family that is Catholic will likely have friends and family that all attend the same Armenian Church. In this way, the religious aspect of culture becomes tied closely to the community aspect of culture, insofar as they are impossible to separate from each other. I experienced this in both of my trips to different religious centers.