Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!snorkelwacker!mit-eddie!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu (Cathy Johnston) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: In Communion with Rome? Message-ID: Date: 14 Sep 90 06:08:21 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Department of Computer Science Lines: 107 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article uriel@oak.circa.ufl.edu writes: >With all the Catholics that frequent this newsgroup, I'm sure someone is >bound to know: what churches are considered to be in full Communion with >Rome (i.e. able to participate in services, etc. as though one were a >Roman Catholic)? My (usually impecable) source for these kind of answers, _The_ _Catholic_ _Fact_ _Book_ by John Deedy (Thomas More Press, 1986) falls down on me for this question. (Or perhaps it's just indexed obscurly.) But it does contain two articles which answer the question indirectly. The first is on rites within the Church, and describes the Eastern rites and the groups each serves. The second is from an article on Patriarchs, and contains a list of uniate churches served by the Eastern Patriarchs. Eastern Rites: The Eastern Church has five principal rites, serving the Byzantine, Chaldean, Coptic, Syrian, Maronite, Armenian and Malabar Uniate Churches, with their more than 12-million communicants. The rites are as follows: * Byzantine Rite. This is the largest rite after the Latin or Roman Rite. It draws its name from the old city of Byzantium, later Constantinople, and now Instanbul, and is based on the rite of St. James of Jerusalem and the churches of Antioch. The rite was subsequently reformed by Saints Basil and John Chysostom. The rite embraces Catholic Uniate Bulgarians, Albanian, Byelorussians (White Russians), Georgians, Greeks, Hungarians, Italo-Albanians, Melkites, Romanians, Russians, Ruthenians (Carpatho-Russians), Slovaks, Ukranians (Galician Ruthenians), Yugoslavs, Serbs and Croations. * Alexandrian Rite. This rite draws its name from the city of Alexandria in Egypt. Certain of its liturgical forms are from the Byzantine Rite, while others derive from the liturgies of Saints Mark, Cyril and Gregory of Nazianzen. The rite comprises in the main Egyptian Copts and Ethiopian Uniates located in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somolia and Jerusalem. * Antiochene Rite. This rite features liturgies originally asso- ciated with the Patriarchate of Antioch, in what is now southern Turkey. Its beginnings are found in the eight book of the _Apostolic_ _Constitutions_, a 4th-Century collection of treatises on Christian worship, doctrine and discipline. The rite experi- ences development through the liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem. Members include Uniate Syrians, Maronites and Malankarese (of In- dia). * Armenian Rite. This rite embraces Uniate Armenians, and has jurisdiction in the Near East, Europe, Africa, the Americas and Austral-asia. The language of the rite is classical Armenian, but the liturgical form is that of the older Byzantine Rite, with in- corporations from the Antiochene Rite. * Chaldean Rite. This rite comprises the Chaldean Uniates descen- ded from Nestorians who returned to unity with Rome in the 17th Century, and Syro-Malabarese, descendants of Christians evangelized by St. Thomas in India. The Chaldeans are located across the Mid- dle East, Europe, the Americas and Africa; the Syro-Malabarese are located mainly in India's Malabar region. The liturgy derives from the Antiochene. With the exception of the Maronites, the Uniate communities are counterparts of separated Eastern Christian groups. The Maronites have been in communion with Rome since their community formed around monasteris founded by St. John Maro, a Syrian monk who died in the 5th Century. ... Patriarchs: ... The Eastern Rite patriarchs are those of Alexandria, for the Copts; three of Antioch, for the Syrians, Maronites and Greek and Catholic Melkites; of Babylonia, for the Chaldeans; and of Sis or Cicilia, for the Armenians. ... So... Chaldean, Coptic, Syrian, Maronite, and Armenian appear on both lists, but it's not clear to me what the relationship is between "Malabar and Byzantine" on the one list and "Greek and Catholic Melkites" on the other. And from the discussion of what rites go with what groups, it's clear that there are subdivisions as well. > ... considered to be in full Communion with >Rome (i.e. able to participate in services, etc. as though one were a >Roman Catholic)? I think your definition of "full Communion with Rome" has got some problems. Catholics-of-the-variety-in-full-Communion-with-Rome and Orthodox-of-the-variety-not-in-Communion-with-Rome are permitted (by Rome -- I'm not so sure about the Orthodox side of this) to worship together when the alternative would be not to worship at all. So, for example, a Greek family who are members of a uniate Church but live in an isolated village with only a Greek Orthodox parish would be allowed (indeed obligated) to go to Mass at the Orthodox parish and receive Communion, although they would be expected to worship in a uniate parish whenever possible. All of these groups except the Maronites were returning schismatics -- so each group has its own arrangement with Rome, and so it's hard to make generalizations about what is different or the same between the Latin Rite Catholics and the Eastern Rite(s) Catholics. All recognize the authority of the pope, but anything beyond that gets more complicated. -- Cathy Johnston # Like a dry and weary desert land, cathy@gargoyle.uchicago.edu # so my soul is thirsting for my God. # And my flesh is faint for the God I seek, # for your love is more to me than life.