Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
TREASURES FROM OUR TRADITION
	The wonderful diversity of life and worship among Roman Catholics of East and West is an example of God writing straight with crooked lines. The steady hand of the villainous Emperor Diocletian drew a line across Europe and Africa that split the empire in two, and for the most part determined how Christians would worship two thousand years later.
	Italy’s heel and the far northern city of Trieste fell on the Eastern side, and have had a form of Eastern liturgy ever since. Constantinople, which soon became the seat of the Roman Empire, became a base for Christianizing the East up to Russia and Poland. Poland was on the Eastern side, but a series of wars and medieval mayhem pushed the religious boundary back to the Ukraine, and Poland remains an outpost of the Latin Church to this day.
	An old rule of thumb declared that whatever religion was observed by the local prince, the people had to follow. This gave rise to persecution and migration as people sought toleration for their expressions of faith. In the United States, we are accustomed to peaceful collaboration among Christians of East and West, a situation that challenges churches that still feel the pinch of age-old division.
—James Field