Eastern Rite canon law question

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Dair said:
I actually did think that all Eastern Churches were, basically, Orthodox Churches in communion with Rome.
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Some are, some of them try to be as Orthodox as possible. Like the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, I heard, is like 99% Orthodox. But in communion w Rome. Others, like my church (Syro-Malabar), are more latinized.

SyroMalabars and Chaldean Catholics don’t have an Orthodox counterpart church as previously mentioned. And the Maronite Catholic Church does not have any counterpart church on the eastern side. But they are considered to be in the West Syriac Rite family. I think these 3 churches are the only exception. all the other Eastern Catholic churches have an Orthodox counterpart.
 
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Alexandria2020 said:
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Dair:
I actually did think that all Eastern Churches were, basically, Orthodox Churches in communion with Rome.
Click to expand...
Some are, some of them try to be as Orthodox as possible. Like the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, I heard, is like 99% Orthodox. But in communion w Rome. Others, like my church (Syro-Malabar), are more latinized.

SyroMalabars and Chaldean Catholics don’t have an Orthodox counterpart church as previously mentioned. And the Maronite Catholic Church does not have any counterpart church on the eastern side. But they are considered to be in the West Syriac Rite family. I think these 3 churches are the only exception. all the other Eastern Catholic churches have an Orthodox counterpart.
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Italo-Albanian is also unique. Greek Orthodox corresponds to two eastern Catholic sui iuris churches, depending upon the tradition: Greek speaking (Hellenic) or Arabic speaking (Melkite).
 
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I know that the Maronites historically belong to the west syriac rite, but they are very unique and have no corresponding orthodox church. Theologically they were always supportive of chalcedon so they can’t really be grouped woth the oriental orthodox.
 
The melkites are also syriac in their origin, but became ”byzantinzed” after chalcedon , probably to manifest that they shared the faith of the Byzantine emperor and weren’t like the syriacs who had broken communion. A bit like how the maronites became latinized in order to prove their fielty to Rome.
 
tuffsmurf said:
melkites are also syriac in their origin, but became ”byzantinzed”
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makes sense. I always agree with the Syriac Orthodox when they say their Patriarch is the original Patriarch of Antioch. As the Greek Orthodox Church in Antioch and the Melkites are just the Chalcedonian Byzantines who influenced in the Antioch region. Same situation in Alexandria. The Patriarch of Alexandria is the Coptic Pope. But the Byzantines came to Alexandria as well.
tuffsmurf said:
The melkites are also syriac in their origin, but became ”byzantinzed” after chalcedon
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Hellenized. In fact the Liturgy of St James employed by the Syriac Orthodox is the Syriac translation of the Greek. It was originally in Syriac, but it’s been lost.

St John of Chrysostom himself was born in Antioch.
 
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So, could I just ask you all about the identities of the heads of these Churches?

I know that the head of the UGCC is designated ‘Major Archbishop’ by Rome rather than Patriarch, for political reasons. But what about the other Churches?
Are they Popes/Patriarchs? And what are their names?

I would like to be able to pray for them all by name.

Thanks again for imparting your knowledge.
 
A helpful reference is on Wikipedia:


It lists the names and polity and other features of each Church, but you’ll have to click through for the current name of each head. No Eastern Catholic leader is styled as “Pope”, that is for the Roman Pontiff alone. There is, however, a well-known Coptic Pope who is Oriental Orthodox (not in communion with Rome.)
 
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If you are in the US, there’s 10 EC churches here.

Ukranian Catholic - they have the Archeparchy of Philadelphia and 3 other suffrage Eparchies.

Byzantine Catholic -Archeparchy of Pittsburgh and 3 other suffrage Eparchies - the Byzantine Catholics are the only EC to have a Major Archdiocese based in the US that’s a self governing sui iuris church. Officially they are called the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church. Their eparchies are also open to Albanian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Hungarian, Italo-Albanian, Macedonian, Russian, and Slovakian Byzantine Catholic Churches.

Romanian Catholic Church (Eparchy of St George’s in Canton) and Melkite Catholic Church (Eparchy of Newton) each has one eparchy

Chaldean Catholic Church has 2 Eparchies (Eparchy of Detroit and San Diego) while the SyroMalabar Church has one Eparchy (Eparchy of Chicago).

All the West Syriac Rite churches are here. Syriac Catholic (Eparchy of Newark), Maronite Catholic (Eparchy of Brooklyn and Los Angeles), Malankara Catholic (Eparchy of the USA and Canada)- all have one eparchy in the US, except the Maronites have two.

And the Armenian Catholic Church has a Eparchy in the US (Eparchy of Our Lady of Nareg in the USA and Canada)

The only ones not here are the Alexandrian Rite EC churches
 
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While you are correct that there are no Alexadrian Rite (Ethiopian, Eritrean, Coptic) eparchies in the United States, there are individual parishes of these churches in the US.

Also, while the Russian Catholic Church does celebrate the Byzantine RIte, their parishes fall under the jurisdiction of the Latin Catholic Diocese in which they are located, not in the Ruthenian (Byzantine) eparchy.
 
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