Unity of Catholic Churches. Is there a Catholic family tree?

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Hi Richard.
Richard_White said:
Hi everybody! I know that we have basically moved away from this thread, but I would like to say on more thing after I did some reading on the subject.

I understand that all of these different Churches are the various particular divisions of the Catholic Church and are fully in communion with Rome. They are all good and wholesome and based on the various local traditions and customs of each region in which they developed.

What makes it confusing is that, in the West, the Church grew out of only one early Patriarchatenin Rome. However, in the East, it grew out of four more in Antioch, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Alexandria. During the Great Schism of 1054, these four patriarchates separated from Rome because they did jot like the supremacy of the Roman Patriarch: the Pope, the descendant of Saint Peter.

Then, throughout the ages of schsim, the Eastern Patriarchates further developed into the Churches that we have today as liated in the poll, about 23, right? They eventually came back into full communion with Rome and are now that way: Catholic, meremly according to their various traditions and customs based on region. I got it now!

However, I learned them in school to be Rites, so forgive me. I understand that they are Cheches, but in the sense that they are particular groupings of the Catholic people according to these various traditions. I personally still like to call them Rites, however, because the word Church makes it sound like a separate entity when in fact it obvioously isn’t. I don’t know what the big deal is in calling them Rites, but whatever.

I do value the Eastern traditions because many of the Church Fathers came from there, and a lot of good tradition came out of there, too, so don’t get me wrong.

I simply got confused by your usage of the word Church, because I never really used it like that before.
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Oh boy.

To be honest, it’s tempting to rake over each detail of what you’ve talked about; however, let me instead just make one point: Within Orthodoxy, there are some parishes known as Western-Rite Orthodox. These are Orthodox who used to be Latin Catholic (or protestant) then became Orthodox but maintained their Westernness (or whatever we want to call it). With that in mind I would ask you: does Christian unity mean for all the other Latin Catholics to become Western-Rite Orthodox?
 
Peter_J said:
To be honest, it’s tempting to rake over each detail of what you’ve talked about; however, let me instead just make one point: Within Orthodoxy, there are some parishes known as Western-Rite Orthodox. These are Orthodox who used to be Latin Catholic (or protestant) then became Orthodox but maintained their Westernness (or whatever we want to call it). With that in mind I would ask you: does Christian unity mean for all the other Latin Catholics to become Western-Rite Orthodox?
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I don’t even know what Orthodoxy is!

I do know that those Eastern Churches who did not come back into communion with the Catholic Church are the Orthodox Churches: the Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, for example.
 
Richard_White said:
I do know that those Eastern Churches who did not come back into communion with the Catholic Church are the Orthodox Churches: the Greek Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church, for example.
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In the sentence right before that you said “I don’t even know what Orthodoxy is!” 🤷
 
Peter_J said:
In the sentence right before that you said “I don’t even know what Orthodoxy is!” 🤷
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Oh, what I meant was that I don’t know what the differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy are! Also, I wasn’t sure if that was what you were talking about or not. So, nevermind! Haha!

Um, no, Christian unity to me means that Orthodoxy shouldn’t exist and those Churches should come back into full communion with Rome, too, along with all of the protestant denominations. We need to be One Church, because that is how we are meant to be and how Our Lord founded us those many years ago, not for people to think that they can just break away and do whatever they want.

I’m seriously done with this thread now, so Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and thanks for clarifying some of this stuff for me! Sorry if my original post offended you, I was just confused by the terminology and made a simple mistake.
 
This Thread has evolved away from the original intent and is going into new and interesting details. However, I’m getting confused given that I only started to be aware that not every Catholic Church is simply a Roman Catholic Church about a year or so ago. Sorry, I don’t mean to offend anyone and please don’t jump on me, we are all on the same journey but not necessarily at the same place.

Can we take a step back from detail and precise wording for just a moment to allow one or two of us to catch our breath?

Pause.

Is there a Catholic family tree? Something that shows the different descriptions (for want of a better word) that are “in Communion” or accept the Papacy. I would find that very helpful.
 
Richard_White said:
Um, no, Christian unity to me means that Orthodoxy shouldn’t exist and those Churches should come back into full communion with Rome, too, along with all of the protestant denominations.
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You might be expecting me to respond angrily to this statement, but I won’t. Why, you ask? Well, after meeting as many “ecumenism of return” type Catholics as I have (mainly on the web) you kind of get used to it.

Sigh. Merry Christmas!
 
Avila123 said:
Is there a Catholic family tree? Something that shows the different descriptions (for want of a better word) that are “in Communion” or accept the Papacy. I would find that very helpful.
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Well, as Gicutzu Gicutzu mentioned earlier, out of the 17-18 million Eastern Catholics (22 different Churches):
  • 47% are Syriac (5 different Churches) and
  • 46% are Greek Catholic (14 different Churches, all using the Byzantine Rite).
On this forum, most of the former group are Maronites, and most of the latter group are Ruthenian-Byzantine Catholics.
 
Avila123 said:
This Thread has evolved away from the original intent and is going into new and interesting details. However, I’m getting confused given that I only started to be aware that not every Catholic Church is simply a Roman Catholic Church about a year or so ago. Sorry, I don’t mean to offend anyone and please don’t jump on me, we are all on the same journey but not necessarily at the same place.

Can we take a step back from detail and precise wording for just a moment to allow one or two of us to catch our breath?

Pause.

Is there a Catholic family tree? Something that shows the different descriptions (for want of a better word) that are “in Communion” or accept the Papacy. I would find that very helpful.
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:hmmm:, I found these:

maryourmother.net/Catholic.jpeg

restlesspilgrim.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/catholic_rites.gif

stefanomazzi.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/new-sheet_4186f.png
 
Hey Everybody! I know I said that I was going to leave this thread, but I just wanted to say one more thing. I visited those links that that were posted above and they were really good! They clarified what I thought: that the various Eastern Churches grew out of the Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, and Alexandria.

I will also say that I now see your reasoning for the terminology of the word Church in terms of the Eastern Churches. I just realized that I call my particular Church the Roman Catholic Church, which is the Western Rite, so therefore, why wouldn’t I call you guys’ Churches “Churches,” too? Duh, I was pretty dumb in refuting that.

However, I still think that either Church or Rite could be used interchangeably in that sense. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if someone said I belonged to the Roman, or Latin, or Western Rite.

So, that’s just my last two cents on the matter.

Thanks for putting up with me! 😊
 
Richard_White said:
However, I still think that either Church or Rite could be used interchangeably in that sense. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if someone said I belonged to the Roman, or Latin, or Western Rite.
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It’s great that you’re investigating and learning about the Eastern Catholic Churches! Even I. as a lifelong Catholic, was not aware of them for many years. It’s fascinating that so many of us discover the existence of the Eastern Catholics in this way, and it always ends up the same… confusion, fascination, awkward questions and great excitement for a time! It is a rich heritage we have within the Catholic Church!

Now, here is why interchanging “Church” and “Rite” is problematic. A “rite” is the form of the liturgy, but a “Church”, in the Catholic sense here, refers to the line of administration as much as anything… So, the problem is that you can have many branches of the Catholic Churches that use the same liturgy. For example, the Greek Melkite Catholic Church and the Ukranian Greek Catholic Church have separate lines of authority, but utilize the same exact rite.
 
Richard_White said:
Hey Everybody! I know I said that I was going to leave this thread, but I just wanted to say one more thing.
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Can’t really criticize you for that – I know I have, many times, said to myself “That’s it, I’m not posting on Blank anymore.” but then just hours later I’ll think “Oh well, one more couldn’t hurt.” 😉

But anyhow, consider this: there are several Western rites (the Roman Rite, the Ambrosian Rite, the Mozarabic Rite, the Bragan Rite, etc) but none of them is a church … they all exist within the Latin Church.

P.S. In retrospect, I was probably asking for trouble by not adding a clarifier to the original poll/post about the 23 Catholic churches … something like NOTE: These are all in the Roman Communion.
 
Rolltide said:
Now, here is why interchanging “Church” and “Rite” is problematic. A “rite” is the form of the liturgy, but a “Church”, in the Catholic sense here, refers to the line of administration as much as anything… So, the problem is that you can have many branches of the Catholic Churches that use the same liturgy. For example, the Greek Melkite Catholic Church and the Ukranian Greek Catholic Church have separate lines of authority, but utilize the same exact rite.
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Okay, fine! Like I said earlier, I now agree with the usage of Church when referring to the various traditions within the One Catholic Church, so I will just use it that way from now on. It all makes sense now! Haha!

-Ryan
 
Richard_White said:
Okay, fine! Like I said earlier, I now agree with the usage of Church when referring to the various traditions within the One Catholic Church, so I will just use it that way from now on. It all makes sense now! Haha!

-Ryan
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None of us said that a tradition should be called a church.
 
Peace,

Here is a good diagram that I personally prefer. It’s not the best diagram ever made, but it is a bit more detailed than the other ones out there:

i31.tinypic.com/e6tw83.jpg

God bless,

Rony
 
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