Elzee:
The priest said he would refer to our Bishop as ‘Your Grace’ in the Byzantine Church. Is this how I would address a Byzantine Bishop?
The proper way to address a Bishop of an the Eastern or Oriental Catholic Church varies somewhat from Church to Church, reflective of linguistic and cultural differences among them. As David noted,
Your Eminence is the proper greeting for Metropolitan Basil, presiding hierarch of the Metropolia of Pittsburgh of the Ruthenians.
Excellency or
Your Excellency almost always can be appropriately used in greeting any other Byzantine bishop or archbishop, regardless of Church (
e.g., Melkite, Ruthenian, or Ukrainian). Melkites and faithful of the Oriental Catholic Churches with origins in the Middle East (
i.e., Maronites and Syriacs) often address their bishops as
Sayidna; faithful of the Byzantine Churches that originated in Eastern Europe frequently greet their bishops as
Vladyka.
Your Grace is only commonly used in addressing bishops of Oriental Catholic Churches that have their origins in former British lands. Thus, Syro-Malankarese and Syro-Malabarese Catholics, both faithful of Oriental Catholic Churches with Indian origins, greet their bishops as
Your Grace.
Elzee:
What is a ‘metropolitan’? I heard this word in the prayers for the Pope and our Bishop.
There are, as David noted, Metropolitan Archbishops in the Latin Church but, presently, it is more a title of honor than function.
A diocese is ordinarily headed by a bishop; an archdiocese by an archbishop. Many archdioceses are also metropolitan sees, in which case the archbishop is, technically, styled
metropolitan archbishop. To understand this, realize that the US (as an example) is divided into ecclesiastical
provinces, each of which consists of (generally) one archdiocese and one or more dioceses. A metropolitan see (or metropolitanate or metropolis) is the principal see within the province and the other sees (usually dioceses) within the province are referred to as
suffragn sees and their bishops (or archbishops) are said to be suffragn to the metropolitan archbishop.
At one time, particularly before advances in communication and transportation technology made it possible for Rome to contact or be contacted by almost any hierarch within a matter of minutes, metropolitans exercised considerable jurisdictional authority over their suffragns. That is now solely a matter of historical interest and the role of metropolitan is essentially honorific, having very limited authority with respect to his suffragns. Presemtly, a metropolitan’s rights are:
- to have the place of precedence over any hierarch (other than a patriach or a papal legate) in any procession or ecclesiastical function within a suffragn diocese at which he happens to be in attendance
- to display or have his symbol of office (e.g., his archepiscopal crozier) borne before him when participating in any ecclesiastical function within a suffragn diocese. (Ordinarily, a hierarch - other than a patriarch or papal legate - has no right to display the signs of his jurisdictional authority outside the territorial bounds of his own See.)
- to convoke a provincial council once in every three years, which his suffragns are bound to attend, for the purpose of non-binding discussion relative to issues and/or problems common to two or more of the jurisdictions within the province
- to lead his suffragns in their dicennial ad limina visit to the Holy See to report on the state of their jurisdictions
- to afford a tribunal to hear appeals made to it from decisions taken in the first instance in the tribunals of his suffragn jurisdictions, and
- to name the vicar capitular of a suffragn diocese which is sede vacante, but only if the chapter of the suffragn diocese has failed to do so within the required 8 days after the death of its ordinary
I don’t ordinarily recommend the on-line Catholic Encyclopedia as a resource, since so much of the info in it is out-of-date and it often reflects the biases and prejudices of the era in which it was written; however, the topic on
Metropolitans gives a good explanation of the authority that metropolitans once exercised (and shows how much that had diminished, even by the first decade of the 20th century, when the encyclopedia entry was written).
In the Eastern and Oriental Catholic Churches, however, the office of Metropolitan or Metropolitan Archbishop ordinarily still carries with it more authority than is the present case in the Latin Church.
Many years,
Neil