P R A Y I N G W I T H T H E C H U R C H
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INTENTION : |
That the Eastern Catholic Churches and their venerable traditions may be known and esteemed as a spiritual treasure for the whole Church.
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Many educated Catholics have the vaguest idea as to what Eastern Catholic Churches are. They are often quite unsure as to whether they owe allegiance to the Pope or some Patriarch, without realizing that there are Patriarchs in communion with Rome, such as the Maronite and the Chaldean. These Catholics are even more surprised to discover that there is a married clergy in most of these Churches with the blessing of the Pope and that these Churches are largely self-governing. The way the celebrate is quite different from that of the Latin rite: each of these Churches has a different liturgical calendar with special saints, special feasts and fasts and so forth. The surprise is due to the fact that the vast majority of Catholics belong to the Latin Church, yet there are other Churches within the Catholic fold celebrating in a different way but recognizing the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church.
The importance of these Churches is enormous, not only because of the invaluable patrimony they guard, which goes back to the times of the Fathers, but also because they can help Catholics to understand what the Orthodox Churches are. Some of these Churches, such as the Maronite and the Italo-Albanian, claim never to have broken with the Catholic Church, others, such as the Malabarese, to have recognized Rome as soon as the opportunity offered itself. Most of them, however, have broken off from Orthodox Churches after the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century in order to be in communion with the universal Church.
In spite of their importance, all these Churches form a small minority in comparison with the Catholic Church which uses the Latin liturgy, and, as with all minorities, it has taken centuries for their rights to be fully respected. The Magna Carta of their rights was given them by Leo XIII's Orientalium Dignitas in 1894. But, as one Melkite Patriarch, Maximus IV Sayegh, put it at the time of Vatican II, it will take about yet another hundred years before Catholics will fully realize that these Eastern Catholic Churches exist.
The prayers of Pope Benedict want to shorten those hundred years.
An important but relatively unknown instrument to help the Holy Father in upholding their rights and aid these Churches themselves to preserve their patrimony and remain open to the ecumenical challenges of our times in the Jesuit-run Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, Rome, in St Mary Major's Square.
Without entering into detail, we may say that Eastern Catholic Churches fall into four groups.
A) Two Churches have emerged from no Orthodox Church: 1. the Maronite Church and 2. the Italo-Albanian Church.
B) Two Churches derive from a Church which for its great antiquity was simply known as "the Church of the East", but nowadays as "the Assyrian Church of the East": 3. the Chaldean Catholic Church and 4. the Syro-Malabar Church, though this Church had already existed for centuries before it came under the Chaldean hierarchy.
C) Five Churches derive from the Oriental Orthodox Churches, so called because they split off from the Eastern Orthodox Churches not in communion with Constantinople: 5. the Armenian Catholic Church; 6. the Coptic Catholic Church; 7. the Ethiopian Catholic Church; 8. the Syrian Catholic Church; and 9. the Syro-Malalnkara Catholic Church.
D) Ten Churches derive from the Orthodox Byzantine Church: 10. the Melkite Catholic Church; 11. the Ukrainian Catholic Church; 12. the Ruthenian Catholic Church; 13. the Romanian Catholic Church; 14. the Greek Catholic Church; 15. the Byzantine Catholics in former Yugoslavia; 16. the Bulgarian Catholic Church, 17. the Slovak Catholic Church; 18. the Hungarian Catholic Church; and 19. Eastern Catholic Communities without Hierarchies.
This list is drawn from Fr Ronald Roberson, CSP, The Eastern Christian Churches, Rome 2008, published by the Pontifical Oriental Institute.
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