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Seraphim73
Guest
I understand what you are saying. My point is I don’t think it’s the proper way to refer to a Church. The Book of Revelation doesn’t refer to the rite that resides in Corinth. We don’t refer to the Russian Orthodox rite or the Greek Orthodox rite. They are autocephalous sister Churches. I just think referring to Eastern Rite Catholics makes them seem less like sister Churches and more like children.Although the “ceremonies, prayers, and functions” of each Catholic sui iuris church are distinct, they may also be grouped so terms like Roman Rite and Byzantine Rite have been used.
The Catholic Encyclopedia has this under the article Rites, but makes the point that is it not a church that is referred to:
In English the word “rite” ordinarily means, the ceremonies, prayers, and functions of any religious body, whether pagan, Jewish, Moslem, or Christian. But here we must distinguish two uses of the word. We speak of any one such religious function as a rite — the rite of the blessing of palms, the coronation rite, etc. In a slightly different sense we call the whole complex of the services of any Church or group of Churches a rite-thus we speak of the Roman Rite, Byzantine Rite, and various Eastern rites. In the latter sense the word is often considered equivalent to liturgy, …
newadvent.org/cathen/01707c.htm