What Are the Eastern Catholic Churches and Their Rites?

More Than the Latin Church

When most people picture the Catholic Church, they picture the Latin, or Roman, Church: the Mass in its Roman form, celibate priests, Western saints and devotions. That is the largest part of the Catholic Church, but it is not the whole.

The Catholic Church is a communion of Churches. Alongside the Latin Church, there are 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, each with its own liturgy, spiritual tradition, theology and law, all in full communion with the Pope. Together they number roughly eighteen million faithful.

The Second Vatican Council’s decree on the Eastern Churches, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (1964), insisted that these Churches are of equal dignity with the Latin Church, and that they have the right and duty to preserve their own traditions.

Churches and Rites

Two words need explaining.

A Church in this sense (technically a Church sui iuris, “of its own right”) is a community of the faithful with its own hierarchy, usually headed by a patriarch, major archbishop or metropolitan, in communion with Rome. The Maronite Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church are examples.

A rite or tradition is a liturgical, theological, spiritual and legal heritage. Several Churches may share one tradition. The Eastern Code of Canon Law (1990) names five great Eastern traditions, alongside the Latin.

The Great Eastern Traditions

The Byzantine (Constantinopolitan) tradition

The Byzantine tradition developed in Constantinople and is shared with the Eastern Orthodox. Its principal liturgy is the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. It is the tradition of the largest group of Eastern Catholic Churches, including:

the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest Eastern Catholic Church;
the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, centred in Syria and Lebanon;
the Ruthenian, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian, Greek, Italo-Albanian and other Byzantine Churches.

The Alexandrian tradition

From Alexandria in Egypt come the Coptic Catholic Church and the Ethiopian and Eritrean Catholic Churches, whose liturgies use the ancient Coptic and Ge’ez languages.

The Antiochene (West Syriac) tradition

From Antioch, one of the earliest centres of Christianity, comes the Maronite Church of Lebanon, which holds that it has never been out of communion with Rome, together with the Syriac Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church of India.

The Chaldean (East Syriac) tradition

This tradition developed in Mesopotamia, beyond the Roman Empire. Its heirs include the Chaldean Catholic Church, centred in Iraq, and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church of India, which traces its origins to St Thomas the Apostle and is today one of the largest Eastern Catholic Churches.

The Armenian tradition

The Armenian Catholic Church preserves the liturgy of the first nation to adopt Christianity officially, around 301.

What Is Different?

Visiting an Eastern Catholic parish can be a surprise for a Latin Catholic. Some of the most noticeable differences:

Liturgy. Eastern liturgies are often longer, mostly sung, rich in incense, and celebrated before an iconostasis, a screen of icons separating the sanctuary from the nave.

Sacraments of initiation. Infants receive Baptism, Chrismation (Confirmation) and Holy Communion together. An Eastern Catholic baby receives Communion at their baptism.

Married priests. Most Eastern Catholic Churches ordain married men as priests, as the Orthodox do, though bishops are chosen from among celibate clergy.

Theology and spirituality. Eastern traditions often emphasise theosis (divinisation), the mystery of God, the Resurrection, and the role of the Holy Spirit. They express the faith in their own theological language.

The Creed. Many Eastern Catholic Churches recite the Nicene Creed without the filioque (see What Is the Filioque?).

Law. Eastern Catholics follow their own Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (1990), not the Latin Code of Canon Law.

Why Do They Exist?

Most Eastern Catholic Churches came from Orthodox or other Eastern Christian communities that entered into full communion with Rome, often in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. The Union of Brest (1595–1596), for instance, brought part of the Ruthenian Orthodox Church into communion with Rome, giving rise to today’s Ukrainian and Belarusian Greek Catholic Churches.

These unions were sometimes controversial. The Orthodox have criticised them as “uniatism,” a method of drawing their faithful away. In the Balamand Statement of 1993, a joint Catholic–Orthodox commission agreed that this method should not be used to seek unity in the future, while affirming that the existing Eastern Catholic Churches have the right to exist and to serve their faithful.

Many Eastern Catholics suffered heavily for their communion with Rome. Under Soviet rule, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was forcibly suppressed in 1946 and survived underground for over forty years.

Eastern Catholics in Australia

Australia is home to many Eastern Catholics, brought by migration from Lebanon, Ukraine, Iraq, India, Syria and elsewhere. There are eparchies (dioceses) for the Maronite, Melkite, Ukrainian, Chaldean and Syro-Malabar Churches. A Latin Catholic is welcome to attend Mass in any Eastern Catholic parish, to receive Holy Communion there, and to fulfil the Sunday obligation by doing so (canon 1248).

What They Show

The Eastern Catholic Churches are a living sign that unity is not uniformity. One faith, one set of sacraments and communion with the Pope can be expressed in different languages, liturgies and spiritual traditions, each of which goes back to the apostolic age.

St John Paul II often said that the Church must learn to “breathe with both her lungs,” East and West. The Eastern Catholic Churches show what that looks like. They also keep before the Church the hope of full reunion with the Orthodox, whose traditions they share.