What makes one an Eastern Catholic?

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Warrior4Him

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I hate to sound ignorant but what exactly qualifies or makes one an Eastern Catholic?
 
Warrior4Him said:
I hate to sound ignorant but what exactly qualifies or makes one an Eastern Catholic?
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The Eastern Catholic Churches are those Ancient Churches, such as the Chaldean, Antiochian, Ephesian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Maronite, Byzantine or other Sui Juris Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See which hold to the ancient eastern Liturgical praxes and theological traditions.
 
An Eastern Catholic Church is any of the 22 Eastern Catholic churches in Communion with Rome. There are 23 Catholic churches that make up the One Catholic Church. Most people only know about the Roman Catholic Church because it is the largest. I believe the second largest Catholic church is the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

If you have anymore questions feel free to ask.
 
holdencaulfield said:
Most people only know about the Roman Catholic Church because it is the largest.
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Here’s an illustration that I worked up a couple of years ago - quite apropos, since we here in America are knee-deep in baseball season:

If you took all of the world’s Catholics and shrunk their population such that they would just fit into all 30 Major League Baseball ballparks (avg. 47,000+ seats per ballpark), the members of the Roman (Latin) Catholic Church would fill over 29 and one half of those ballparks! The members of all 22 Eastern Catholic Churches combined would fill less than one half of one ballpark!.

For what it’s worth… the members of my own particular church, the Byzantine Catholic Church in America (Ruthenian), would occupy a mere 128 seats.
 
Proudly baptized and confirmed in the Ukrainian Catholic Church!

The Divine Liturgy is such a amazing celebration. Even though it’s been 17 years since I’ve spoken what little Ukrainain I did know, I can follow along in the Ukrainan liturgy.

Both the east and west are like two lungs - they work best with each other.
 
JugglingReferee said:
Proudly baptized and confirmed in the Ukrainian Catholic Church!

The Divine Liturgy is such a amazing celebration. Even though it’s been 17 years since I’ve spoken what little Ukrainain I did know, I can follow along in the Ukrainan liturgy.

Both the east and west are like two lungs - they work best with each other.
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I wish I had a Ukrainian Catholic parish around me, the only one is over an hour away.
 
a_pilgrim said:
The members of all 22 Eastern Catholic Churches combined would fill less than one half of one ballpark!.

For what it’s worth… the members of my own particular church, the Byzantine Catholic Church in America (Ruthenian), would occupy a mere 128 seats.
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However the actual number is many 10s’ of millions of souls! The number of non-roman Sui Juris Catholics is larger than the Anglican Communion, which is actually made up of a number of separate denominations including Anglican, Episcopal, The Church in Wales, and the Church of Ireland, and the Scottish Episcopal Church, Church of England. etc. The Church of England is the largest with 25,000,000; a fraction of the number of Eastern Catholics.
 
Ignatius said:
However the actual number is many 10s’ of millions of souls! The number of non-roman Sui Juris Catholics is larger than the Anglican Communion, which is actually made up of a number of separate denominations including Anglican, Episcopal, The Church in Wales, and the Church of Ireland, and the Scottish Episcopal Church, Church of England. etc. The Church of England is the largest with 25,000,000; a fraction of the number of Eastern Catholics.
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There are approximately 16,100,000 of all particular churches combined, I’d say give or take 50,000.

Of these approximately 7.6 million worship in some recension of Byzantine liturgy: Russian, Ruthenian, Melkite etc…

The rest are spread around in other liturgical traditions: East Syrian, West Syrian, Coptic…

Then there are the Armenians, I am not quite sure how they are categorized so I usually list them separately…

This according to the Annuario Pontificio 2005.

Michael
 
According to Wikipedia the Russian Catholic Church has about 15 parishes. Is that true.
 
holdencaulfield said:
According to Wikipedia the Russian Catholic Church has about 15 parishes. Is that true.
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Depends on where you are talking about. In the United States there are three parishes (New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles) and one mission (Denver).

Deacon Ed
 
Deacon_Ed said:
Depends on where you are talking about. In the United States there are three parishes (New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles) and one mission (Denver).

Deacon Ed
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I think it said in the world. I count 19 on wikipedia for the world. That’s very small.
 
I wonder why the Russian Catholic Church is so small. Why wouldn’t you want to be united with Rome. 🙂
 
Nicholas82 said:
I can think of more than a few reasons. 😉
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I was just kidding. I don’t like everything that Rome does anyways, but I don’t want this to become a Papacy thread. Those kind of tired me out. At first I took the Catholic side, then the Orthodox, and now again the Catholic. 🤷
 
I found some statistics for the Eastern Catholic Churches. It shows about how many people are part of the particular churches as of 2007.
  • The Ukrainian Catholic Church - 4,223,425
  • The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church - 3,902,089
  • The Maronite Catholic Church - 3,105,278
  • The Melkite Catholic Church - 1,346,635
  • The Romanian Catholic Church - 763,083
  • The Ruthenian Catholic Church - 594,465
  • The Chaldean Catholic Church - 418,194
  • The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church - 412,640
  • The Armenian Catholic Church - 375,182
  • The Hungarian Catholic Church - 290,000
  • The Slovakian Catholic Church - 243,335
  • The Ethiopian Coptic Catholic Church - 222,861
  • The Egyptian Coptic Catholic Church - 161,327
  • The Syrian Catholic Church - 131,692
  • The Italo-Albanian Catholic Church - 63,240
  • The Croatian Catholic Church - 49,000
  • The Macedonian Catholic Church - 11,400
  • The Bulgarian Catholic Church - 10,107
  • The Georgian Catholic Church - 8,000
  • The Russian Catholic Church - 3,500
  • The Greek Catholic Church - 2,325
  • The Belarusian Catholic Church - 2,000
 
Hesychios said:
There are approximately 16,100,000 of all particular churches combined, I’d say give or take 50,000.

Of these approximately 7.6 million worship in some recension of Byzantine liturgy: Russian, Ruthenian, Melkite etc…

The rest are spread around in other liturgical traditions: East Syrian, West Syrian, Coptic…

Then there are the Armenians, I am not quite sure how they are categorized so I usually list them separately…

This according to the Annuario Pontificio 2005.

Michael
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apilgrim:
The members of all 22 Eastern Catholic Churches combined would fill less than one half of one ballpark!.
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I was responding to the post above seems to say the number is insignificant. Even if the number is 16,000,000 souls, it is not insignificant.
 
Ignatius said:
I was responding to the post above seems to say the number is insignificant. Even if the number is 16,000,000 souls, it is not insignificant.
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There is no way that I would ever consider 16,000,000 souls (or even one soul, for that matter) to be insignificant. Heck, I’m one of those 16,000,000! 🙂 I’m sorry if you misinterpreted my post. I was merely using a visualization to illustrate the relative size of the Eastern Catholic Churches within the Catholic communion, in response to a previous poster’s comment about the same.

There can be no denying that this extreme disproportionality with regard to the relative sizes of the Eastern Churches within the Catholic communion vis a vis the Latin Church has, and does, cause many to consider those of the Eastern persuasion to be “insignificant.” My post was not intended to fuel that fire but to illustrate it. It’s kinda tough to be accepted as a “real” Catholic when the entire membership of your sui iuris Church represents less than 0.009% of Catholicism.
 
Just as I correct people when I hear them speaking incorrect about the CC, I correct anyone, including RCs about the ECs.

The RCC does not equal the Catholic Church, imho. JP2 even said that the two are like two lungs working together.
 
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