Eastern Catholics are those Christians who are in full communion
with the Bishop of Rome, and worship according to one of the five ancient liturgical
Traditions (Rites) of the Christian East: the Alexandrian, East Syrian, West
Syrian, Byzantine, and Armenian Traditions. This entry is focused on the
historical development and current status of the twenty-two Eastern Catholic
Churches.
The one
Catholic Church is comprised of over 1.1 billion members distributed among twenty-three
“particular Churches or rites,” also known as “autonomous ritual Churches” or
“Churches sui iuris” (lit., “of their own law”). The vast majority
belong to the Latin (Western) Rite Church. The twenty-two Eastern Catholic
Churches have about 16.5 million adherents combined. They are governed by the Code
of Canons of the Eastern Churches (1990), together with their own
“particular laws.”
The four
ancient, Eastern patriarchal sees of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and
Constantinople (Byzantium), together with the Western patriarchate of Rome,
were recognized by the earliest ecumenical councils as having a special dignity
and influence. The Roman Patriarch held
the undisputed primacy of honor, as the “first among equals.” A characteristic
of the Catholic Church is its belief in a universal, as well as local,
jurisdiction exercised over the entire Church by the Pope as the successor of Peter.
The beginnings
of division between eastern and western Christians were rooted in linguistic,
liturgical, disciplinary, theological, and cultural differences (for which,
consult the “See Also” entries, below). After the fall of Rome
in 476, the Greek-speaking half of the Roman Empire (Byzantium )
was cut off from the Latin-speaking west, yet continued to rule the Levant for
another millennium until the fall of Constantinople
in 1453. The effect was a Christian culture that developed independently from the
Western (Latin, Roman) Church. The
Orthodox Churches have held ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the majority of
Christians in the Levant and in Eastern Europe
since the Great Schism of 1054. The
schism was deepened by the unauthorized sacking of Constantinople
in 1204.
Attempts at
reuniting Orthodox Churches with the Catholic Church were made at the Councils
of Lyons (1274) and Florence
(1438) with only limited temporary successes.
Nevertheless, due largely to the presence of Jesuit and Franciscan
missionaries in the Middle East and Europe, a number of eastern Christians resumed
communion with the Bishop of Rome in the past millennium.
Those Eastern
Catholics who have left the Eastern Orthodox Church (under the Ecumenical
Patriarch of Constantinople) are commonly referred to as “Byzantine Catholics” in
America and “Greek Catholics” in Europe.
“Oriental Catholic” refers to any Eastern Catholic generally, or to those
that come from one of the six Oriental Orthodox Churches that, historically,
rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon . “Uniate” is another name for Eastern Christians
who left Orthodoxy and united themselves to Rome , but this name has become derogatory.
The West
Syrian, Byzantine, and Armenian Traditions/Rites all trace back to one
Antiochian Tradition which developed from the early Christian liturgies at
Antioch, i.e. the Eighth Book of the Apostolic Constitutions and the
liturgy of St James the Apostle, bishop of Jerusalem .
From the Alexandrian Tradition
The Liturgy of St Mark, the rite of
The Coptic
Catholic Church has origins in the Council of Florence, but a Catholic
community was not founded until Franciscans and Jesuits began missionary
activity in Egypt
during the 17th century. In
1741 the Coptic Catholics gained their first bishop when the Coptic bishop of Jerusalem became
Catholic. The Patriarchate “of Alexandria of the Copts”
was re-established by Pope Leo XIII in 1895.
Members: 161,327 in Egypt Liturgical languages: Coptic, Arabic (all
member statistics herein are taken from the Annuario Pontificio 2007,
and include only the major population centers).
The Ethiopian
Catholic Church comes from the Abyssinian Orthodox Church. The entire Christian community of Ethiopia had a short-lived union with Rome when their Emperor
became Catholic through contact with a Portuguese Jesuit missionary in
1622. Italian Franciscans established a
few missions in the 1890’s and 1930’s.
The current Ethiopian-rite Catholic Church dates from 1951 when Orthodox
priests cared for Latin Rite communities whose priests had been expelled
following World War II. A metropolitan
see was established for these communities at Addis Ababa in 1961. Members: 222,861 in Ethiopia , Eritrea . Liturgical language: Ge’ez
(Semitic).
From the East Syrian Tradition (Assyrian Church
of the East)
The
The Chaldean
Catholic Church. Beginning in the mid-15th century
to the present, the Assyrian patriarchal throne of Babylon
(moved to Baghdad
in 766) has been passed down within a single family. A number of Assyrian bishops refused to
accept the boy patriarch appointed in 1552, and elected their own candidate, a
monk, sending him to Rome where he was ordained Patriarch “of the Chaldeans” by
Julius III in 1553. The Catholic
patriarchate moved to Mosul in 1830 and back to Baghdad in 1950. The Chaldean
Church has recently experienced persecution
by Al Qaeda terrorists in Iraq . Members: 418,194 in the Middle East, USA , Australia . Liturgical languages: Syriac (Aramaic),
Arabic.
The Syro-Malabar
Catholic Church, centered on the Malabar Coast of India, is made up of Thomas
Christians who came into contact with Portuguese colonists in 1498. The 1599 Synod
of Diamper (Udayamperur) convened by the Latin Archbishop of Goa brought an end
to the connection between Thomas Christians and the East Syrian Church which
had come to India in the 4th century. Some of these Thomas Christians united
themselves to the West Syrian Orthodox Church (Jacobites) in 1653 because of
latinizations imposed on them, but many stayed within the Catholic Church after
Carmelite missionaries helped to settle the disputes in 1662. By 1896, the Carmelite bishops had all been
replaced by native Indian bishops who triggered unprecedented growth within
their Church. Members: 3,902,089 in India , North America . Liturgical languages: Syriac, Malayalam.
From the West Syrian Tradition
The West Syrian Tradition still celebrates the Divine
Liturgy of St James (the Syriac rite of
The Maronite
Catholic Church in Lebanon
has always been in communion with Rome . This union was formally confirmed during the
Crusades in 1182. The Maronites are named after St. Maron, who founded a
monastery near Antioch
in the late 4th century.
Members: 3,105,278 in the Middle East, the Americas ,
Australia . Liturgical languages: Syriac, Arabic.
The Syrian
Catholic Church. There have been
good relations between Orthodox and Catholics in Syria since the Crusades. A “Catholic party” was started among the
laity of Aleppo
in 1626 by Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries.
In 1782 the Orthodox Holy Synod elected Metropolitan Michael Jarweh of Aleppo as Patriarch of
Antioch after which he declared himself Catholic. This Catholic line of Antiochian Patriarchs
has remained unbroken since that time.
Members: 131,692 in Syria ,
Lebanon , Iraq , diaspora. Liturgical languages: Syriac, Arabic.
The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church of the Kerala State, India came into existence in 1930 when four Malankara Orthodox bishops who were opposed to the jurisdiction of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarch and desiring to preserve their own oriental rite of
From the Byzantine or Constantinopolitan Tradition
All Byzantine Christians celebrate the Divine Liturgies of
St Basil (Caesarea) and of
The Melkite
Catholic Church grew out of the Byzantine Orthodox patriarchal sees of Antioch , Jerusalem , and Alexandria . It has its origin in the 1724 Patriarchal
schism of Antioch ,
when, of two elected candidates for the empty throne, the Ecumenical Patriarch
ordained one and the Roman Pontiff recognized the other. Today, Orthodox and Catholics are working to
heal this schism. Pending union between
these two Churches, the Melkite Patriarch and bishops have professed they would
step down and reintegrate themselves into the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.
Members: 1,346,635 in the Middle East, Europe, Australia ,
the Americas . Liturgical languages: Syriac, Koine Greek,
Arabic, English.
The Ukrainian
Catholic Church. In 1596 the
Metropolitan of Kiev signed the Union of Brest with the Pope, in Rome . He hoped this would unite Catholics and
Orthodox against the growing influence of Protestants in Ukraine . Eastern Ukrainian Cossacks saw this union as
a move toward polonization (Ukraine
was then under Polish rule) and resisted it violently. When Orthodox Russia re-conquered Ukraine , Tsar
Nicholas I abolished Catholicism in 1839.
Ukrainian Catholics were also forbidden to worship under the Soviet
régime and their churches were given to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1946. All of its bishops and faithful priests (c. 1,400)
were arrested and sent to labor camps.
But under Soviet President Michael Gorbachev, millions of Ukrainian
Catholics were allowed to emerge from the underground. Members: 4,223,425 in Ukraine , Poland ,
USA , Canada , Australia ,
Western Europe, and Brazil . Liturgical languages: Ukrainian, Church
Slavonic, English.
The Ruthenian
Catholic Church of the Rusyns (a people from the Carpathian Mountains of western
Ukraine and eastern Slovakia , Maramures in northern Romania ,
and the diocese of Hajdúdorog in northern Hungry) was established under the 1646
Union of Užhorod and the 1664 Union of Mukačevo, making this formally Orthodox
region almost entirely Catholic. Many Ruthenian Catholics immigrated to North America around 1900. But about two-thirds of these left the
Catholic Church and became Orthodox in 1929, when the Latin Catholic bishops in
America
imposed celibacy on Eastern Catholic clergy.
Ruthenian Catholics have been celebrating the liturgy in English for
several decades and sometimes refer to themselves as the “Byzantine Catholic
Church in America ”. Members: 594,465 in Ukraine , Czech
Republic , and USA . Liturgical languages: Church Slavonic,
English.
The Romanian
Catholic Church is related closely to the Greek tradition. The Romanians are ethnically “Roman” (ancient
province of Dacia established A.D. 106) and have
been praying the Byzantine (Greek) liturgy in Romanian since 1568. In 1687 the province of Transylvania came under the rule of the
Habsburg Austrian Emperor Leopold I. The
emperor encouraged all Orthodox Christians in his empire to become Greek
Catholic. Jesuits worked among the
Orthodox clergy and in 1698 the Orthodox Metropolitan Atanasie of Transylvania
requested union with Rome .
Members: 763,083 in Romania and USA . Liturgical language: Romanian.
The Greek
Catholic Church was founded in Constantinople
in 1856 by a Latin priest. Eventually
this community immigrated to Greece
where, as of 2007, it is served by one bishop and eight priests in the city of Athens . Members: 2,300 in Athens
and 25 in Istanbul . Liturgical languages: Koine and Modern Greek.
The first
Orthodox Christians to become Greek Catholics in former Yugoslavia were Serbs living in
Hungarian Croatia in 1611. The formation
of a Yugoslavian state after World War I brought together five different ethnic
groups under the Catholic diocese of Križevci , Croatia :
Serbs, Ruthenian and Ukrainian immigrants, Slavic Macedonians who had
become Catholic in the 19th century, and a few Romanian Catholics in
Banat .
Members: 55,691 in Croatia ,
Serbia , Montenegro , and Macedonia . Liturgical languages: Church Slavonic, Ukrainian,
Romanian, Macedonian.
The Slovak
Catholic Church is historically related to the Ruthenians and the Union of
Užhorod. These Christians are those
Byzantine Catholics from the diocese of Prešov ,
Slovakia which
include a number of ethnic Rusyns who have largely become assimilated into
Slovak culture. Members: 243,335 in Slovakia , Canada . Liturgical languages: Church Slavonic and
Slovak.
The Hungarian
Catholic Church was founded by Orthodox immigrants to Hungary (Serbs, Ruthenians,
Slovaks, and Greeks) who became Catholic.
In 1795 the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom was translated into
Hungarian, but not approved for use by ecclesiastical authorities until after
1940. Members: 290,000 in Hungary . Liturgical languages: Greek, Church Slavonic,
Hungarian.
The Italo-Albanian
Catholic Church is located in Southern Italy and Sicily .
Because these were Greek colonies, they fell under the jurisdiction of Constantinople until early 11th century. After struggling for spiritual survival under
Norman rule for several centuries, their
liturgical culture was revitalized by the immigration of Orthodox Albanians
fleeing Turkish persecution in the 15th century. In 1742 Pope Benedict XIV improved their
situation by defending the equality of the Byzantine Rite with that of the
Latin Rite in the papal bull, Etsi Pastoralis. Members: 63,240 in Italy ,
Sicily . Liturgical languages: Greek, Italo-Albanian.
There are four Eastern Catholic
communities without hierarchies. Three Russian
Catholic parishes in Russia ,
and a number in the diaspora (mostly Europe and the Americas )
have historical ties to a Catholic community in Russia which began in the mid-1890’s.
The Russicum is their world-renowned college in Rome (Liturgical language: Church Slavonic, English).
About twenty-five Belarusan Greek Catholic parishes in post-communist Belarus
trace their origins to the Union of Brest (Liturgical language: Belarusan). In 1905 a small number of Georgian
Catholics that had been celebrating the Armenian Rite returned to their
native Byzantine Rite. The Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
began as a mission along the coast of Epirus (1628-1765). A second founding was in 1900 by an Albanian
Orthodox priest, but this was suppressed by the atheist state in 1967. They once
again have an Apostolic Administration of Southern Albania, numbering about
3,500, including a majority of Latin Rite and a small percent of Byzantine
Catholics (Liturgical language: Albanian).
From the Armenian Tradition
The Armenian liturgy was developed between the 5th-7th
centuries and includes traces of the Syriac, The Armenian Catholic Church. This pre-Chalcedonian church resumed communion with
Orthodox-Catholic dialogue
In 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I
lifted the mutual excommunications imposed on each other’s predecessors in
1054, giving new impetus to ecumenical dialogue. The Joint International Commission for
Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church now
meets on a regular basis. “Uniatism” has
been mutually rejected as a model for achieving unity, being replaced by an
ecclesiology of “sister-churches” seeking understanding and new models for
reunion. Continuing this work, Benedict XVI and Bartholomew I met at the Phanar
in 2006 to express a mutual desire for the re-establishment of full communion,
John Paul
II worked tirelessly with Christians worldwide in hopes that they would once
again “breathe with both lungs: east and west.” The Vatican II document, Orientalium
Ecclesiarum, urges Eastern Catholics to “promote the unity of all
Christians, especially Eastern Christians, by prayer, the example of their
lives, religious fidelity to the ancient Eastern traditions, a greater
knowledge of each other, collaboration, and a brotherly regard for objects and
feelings” (par. No. 24).
Today, the
biggest stumbling block to full unity between Orthodox and Catholics is not
doctrinal or liturgical, but the understanding of papal ministry within the
Church, i.e. the definitions of papal infallibility and universal jurisdiction.