The Other Catholics: A Short Guide to the Eastern Catholic Churches

I want to thank LWU and other posters like More Coffee who have been putting up Eastern Catholic interest articles. Thanks, you guys! Posters like Anhelyna, myself, Going Byzantine, we're all grateful. Maybe we should start some threads about the differences in approach for EC's compared to RC's? Not that the differences are superior, just that--different. I noted that Living Word Unity said he doesn't know much about Eastern Catholicism. I know I'd love to talk about it. I've spent 6 years in the Orthodox Church, and despite being under Rome, there is VERY little difference if any in spirituality, worship, and logistics.

Thanks again to all interested!

It makes me very happy when people are interested in the East, and I suppose you could add the "orient" to that as well.

LivingWordUnity said:

The article that I posted it says this about the Georgian Catholic Church:

"At present, the Georgian Catholic Church has no organized hierarchy."

So perhaps your friend might be using a different standard of existence than the article is using. Your friend might be saying that it doesn't exist because there has been no organized hierarchy while the article may just be estimating the number of people living at the time of the article who still identify with that rite.

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No, I am saying that there are no living persons now, nor in the past half century, who are of the Georgian Byzantine Catholic Church, which is only of blessed memory and has been such for that long a period.

The Georgian Byzantine Church has actually never had a hierarch (a prelate of episcopal rank). Its sole prelate was a presbyter who was accorded the authority of Exarch (but never received episcopal ordination), by either Metropolitan Archbishop Andrij Sheptytsky or Bishop Michel d'Herbigny, SJ, both of blessed memory. The Servant of God Father Exarch Shio Batmalashvili was martyred in odium fidei by the Communists in 1937. The last members of the Church's two religious congregations, which were situated in Constantinople, reposed in the late 1950s.

The Church's sole temple, also in Constantinople, was Notre Dame de Lourdes Georgian Byzantine Catholic Church. It was given over to the usage and pastoral care of the Chaldean Catholic Church about the same time that those religious congregations died out. In the aftermath of these events, any remaining faithful of the Church returned to Georgian Orthodoxy or were subsumed into either the Georgian Latin or Armenian Catholic Churches.

The Annuario Pontificio no longer lists the Georgian Byzantine Church as an extant ecclesia and has not for many decades.

And it is not and never was a 'rite', it was a Church that served according to the Byzantine Rite.

Many years,

Neil

I have visited a couple of Romanian Rite parishes in my town. There were a few differences (sign of the cross was reversed and there were panels instead of statues) but I felt quite welcome and would have had little problem joining them if I chose. javascript:showDisclaimer('http://www.romaniancatholic.org/',722);

And St Thomas of Canterbury in Chicago has a rite that I found confusing when I visited the church:

Sunday: 8:00 (Viet/Lao), 10:00 a.m., 12:00 p.m. (Spanish), 3:00 p.m. (Ge'ez/Eritrean 1st & 3rd Sun

I also found this for Illinois:
St. Nicholas of Chicago for Ukrainians
2245 W. Rice Street
Chicago, IL 60622
esnucc.org. . . Bishop Richard Stephen Seminack
Bishop for St. Nicholas of Chicago for Ukraninans

St. Thomas Syro Malabar Diocese of Chicago
372 South Prairie Avenue
Elmhurst, IL 60126-4020
stthomasdiocese.org/. . . Bishop Jacob Angadiath
Bishop of St. Thomas Syro Malabar Diocese of Chicago

Bishop Joy Alappat
Auxiliary Bishop of St. Thomas Syro Malabar Diocese of Chicago

Let me clear up some terminology for everyone.

The "panels" are icons and should always be seen, rather than statues, in Eastern Catholic temples; in Oriental Catholic temples, you may see icons, statues, or a mixture, it can vary depending on the Church sui iuris.

There is not a 'Romanian Rite'; Romanian parishes serve according to the Byzantine Rite. In the US, Romanian parishes belong to the Eparchy of St George in Canton of the Romanians in the US and Canada. It is a canonical jurisdiction of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church in Union with Rome.

St Thomas of Canterbury in Chicago hosts an Eritrean Catholic congregation, the Eritrean (Ge'ez) Catholic Mission of Chicago. The Ùér’ata Qéddase or Divine Liturgy of St Basil is served there twice each month in Tigrinya. The Eritrean Catholic Church is the most recently erected of the Eastern and Oriental Catholic Churches, having been separated last year from its mother Church, the Ethiopian (Ge'ez) Catholic Church.

There are four canonical jurisdictions in the United States for Ukrainian Greek-Catholics, a metropolitan archeparchy and three eparchies. Kyr Richard heads one of the three eparchies. Formally, it is the Eparchy of St Nicholas in Chicago of the Ukrainians and Kyr Richard is its Eparch.

The Syro-Malabar Eparchy is the sole one of that Church in the US and is responsible for the entire country. Formally, it is the Eparchy of St Thomas in Chicago of the Syro-Malabar. Mar Jacob is the Eparch; his Cathedral is Mar Thoma Shleeha Syro-Malabar Catholic Cathedral in Bellwood, IL

Many years,

Neil

My ancestral Church is the Ruthenian Catholic Church but there are no Eastern Catholic churches in the area so we are currently attending the Latin Rite Church.
At the bottom of this article there is a list of

pdudgeon said:

so are there any other guides to the Eastern Catholic churches that anyone could recommend?

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At the end of this article is a list of Eastern Catholic Churches SUI JURIS. It's supposed to be current as of 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches

Here are the up-to-date statistics for the Eastern Catholic Churches for 2014

http://www.cnewa.org/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholic-stat14.pdf