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stphilipneri
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Where did the eastern catholics come from? and why aren’t they latin?
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Hatikvah
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This is an article that can help, divided into sections corresponding to important events: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches#History
I don’t know very much myself.
I don’t know very much myself.
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adamhovey1988
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Lebanon, Palestine, Eastern Europe, India, Syria, etc. Do you mean why do we have Sui iuris churches instead of everyone being a Latin? Well, I can tell you the stories of the Maronites and Melkites, but not much else. Luckily, there are other folks to do that for you, and lucky for both of us, CAF is swarming with Eastern Christians.
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PaulfromIowa
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The Church has always had East-West, i.e. Greek-Latin, differences. The East-West Great Schism of 1054 was a huge tragedy. Some Eastern Christians came back into communion with Rome as the Eastern Catholic Churches. Some, like the Maronite, were never out of Communion, just physically separated.
We should all pray for full re-Communion of East and West.
We should all pray for full re-Communion of East and West.
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Crusaderbear
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Google “great schism” it’s all there. Geographically, its just eastern europe vs western europe, with some middle east and africa thrown it, east isn’t like china or anything…
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MorEphrem
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Eastern Christians are the primordial Christians (hence why the most ancient liturgies are from the Middle East and Christians are first called so at Antioch of Syria). Christianity [chronologically] later spread to the West.
It is, nonetheless, an important question why all Eastern Catholics aren’t Latin (especially considering the history of the Eastern Churches). In large part, when Orthodox bishops would come into communion with Rome they would prove their “Catholicity” by adopting Latin practices (e.g. Maronites adapting Trent to their tradition, Ukrainians adopting Latin customs to distinguish themselves from the Orthodox Slavs, etc.). Indeed, even the West would send Papal legates to Eastern Catholics to make them change their customs to conform with Western practice. The mentality was that all Catholics should be Latin, and this unfortunate mentality continued even into the 20th century (e.g. Archbishop Ireland). It was not until the late 19th century that the West realized the error of its ways with Leo XIII in Orientalium Dignitias. The West began to recognize not only the ritual integrity of the Eastern Catholic Churches but hierarchical.
Certainly that is a very broad survey and there are many lasting issues - many Latin bishops still believe that we should conform to the Latin tradition. To do so, however, would be to destroy rich traditions that help express the undefinable nature of God.
The [West and East] Syriacs in India. Formerly Syriacs as far as China (the Mongolian alphabet is a testament to this - it was simply Syriac turned vertically).
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Claire_from_DE
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:When I saw this question my first thought was ‘the apostles, the same as western Catholics’.
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scapularkid8
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Wow, do tell…
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Hatikvah
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I never suspected that! Yes, I thought it was something turned vertically (otherwise it’s just a whole bunch of squiggly lines). What other implications could this have for linguistic learning?!Wow, do tell…
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Kielbasi
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Originally from the Eastern Roman Empire and the areas controlled from Constantinople.
Eastern Europe and the middle east, basically.
Some groups- like the Maronites- remained loyal to Rome after the 1054 Greek Orthodox schism, most didn’t. During the counter reformation of the 16th Century, some groups- including parts of Ukraine and the Austro Hungarian empire- groups came back to Rome. Folks from those areas, the Greek Catholics- later immigrated to America seeking entry level opportunities in coal excavation and transportation or steel fabrication- and they sent for their own priests once they were established.
The descendants of these immigrants make up the bulk of today’s Eastern Catholic communities here in America. And that’s why you’ll see more Eastern Catholics in places like Pennsylvania where the mills and mines were
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Kmon23
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Many people made very good answers, but to further elucidate your second part.
There is the Latin Church, which itself used to contain many different liturgical rites, such as the Gallican, Mozarabic, Ambrosian, Durham, Sarum, Benedictine, Carmelite, Carthusian, and Roman rites for example. There was a lot of liturgical rites/traditions, a lot of diversity. After Trent, the Roman liturgical rite became the standard for the Latin Church and the rest basically went out of use and extinct.
And the Latin Church was not the only church. There is also the Alexandrian Church, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople (these are the big ones), along with many others stretching to India for example. All of these different churches had their own liturgical traditions (such as the Byzantine, coptic, ethiopic, maronite, west syrian, armenian, chaldean, and byzantine rite).
So for the latter question, everyone isn’t Latin because they were just one of many different churches where there was a rich liturgical diversity across all of Christendom. And of course, even within the Latin Church there was a huge liturgical diversity until it became standardized to the Roman Rite (so much so that the Roman Rite is sometimes mistaken to be equivalent with being a Latin Christian, which is not true).
And this is where the Eastern Catholics come from (besides a few exceptions), Christians that were of a non-Latin liturgical background that went into communion with the Pope of Rome after the Great Schism.
P.S. And be careful in your wording, my friend was a bit irked, thinking you were implying that everyone should be Latin Christian. Eastern Christians have had latinizations in the past, so for some it’s a somewhat sensitive topic where it could come off as offensive if (mistakenly I hope) the person is supporting the idea that eastern christians should give up their liturgical traditions to become Roman Rite.
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malphono
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I doubt it has any. The language itself is totally unrelated to Syriac. It was the alphabet that adapted to accommodate it, and even that has had several iterations. It’s interesting, too, to note that several other alphabets were also adapted to the Mongolian language, including Tibetan, Latin (for a short time), and CyrillicI never suspected that! Yes, I thought it was something turned vertically (otherwise it’s just a whole bunch of squiggly lines). What other implications could this have for linguistic learning?!
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ameliepoir
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The East. 
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prodromos
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While we are on the subject of adapting alphabets, in a village in Greece an Old Testament was discovered that was written in Aramaic using the Greek alphabet. Jews living in the area were illiterate in their mother tongue so they adapted the Greek alphabet in which they were literate to produce a Torah which they could read.
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Vico
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At the very least the Maronites and the Byzantines of Italy were always in union with the Latin Church. The other sui iuris eastern Churches were all formed by the Orthodox (Easter or Oriental) and Assyrian Church uniting with the Latin Church, mostly after the time of the Council of Trent.
Always united with Rome:
Byzantines of Italy (Italo-Albanian, Italo-Greek, Italo-Albanian)
Maronite (reaffirmed 1182)
Reunited, or split:
1552 Chaldean
1595 Belarusan, Ukrainian
1599 Syro-Malabar
1611 Krizevci (Croatia)
1628 Albanian
1646 Ruthenian, 1997 Slovakian, 1912 Hungarian
1697 Romanian
1724 Melkite
1741 Coptic
1742 Armenian
1781 Syrian
1829 Greek
1846 Ethiopian, 2015 Eritrean (from Ethiopian)
1861 Bulgarian
1905 Russian
1918 Macedonian
1930 Syro-Malankara
cnewa.org/default.aspx?ID=123&pagetypeID=9&sitecode=HQ&pageno=1
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scapularkid8
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Wonderful
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steve_b
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The important point of this is, those fully united with the pope wherever they are on the planet, are Catholic. Regardless of geography, or whether they are Latin or Greek etc etc, they are Catholic. From an “Eastern” perspective, Melkite Bp John, said it well.
For additional historical perspective:
Irenaeus writing ~180 a.d. in his work “Against Heresies” wrote (condensed)
[all emphasis mine]
“1. The Church though dispersed through out the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith … 2. As I have already observed, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, yet, as if occupying but one house, carefully preserves it…3. the Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world, as we have already said”.
For full context (Bk 1 )
To Irenaeus point, regardless of geography or where someone falls on a compass point, the Catholic Church is one and one faith. There is no East or West, North or South, Latin or Greek etc etc.
Further Consider, who is the book of
- Romans written to? The Church of Rome
- Ephesians written to? The Church of Ephesus
- Corinthians written to? The Church of Corinth
- etc etc etc
What also makes the Church one? One Church in particular has pre-eminent authority
Bk 3 [Chapter 3 (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm) v 2
"2. Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that **every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre- eminent authority, inasmuch as the apostolic tradition has been preserved continuously by those faithful men] who exist everywhere."
** for full context Bk 3 [Chapter 3 (http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103303.htm), vs 1-3
therefore, Irenaeus is teaching, those who are in union with the bishop of Rome, wherever they are located in the world, are following apostolic tradition passed on by Peter and Paul at Rome, and in extension by those faithful men who followed Peter and Paul passing on the faith faithfully. Irenaeus then goes on to name 12 bishops of Rome, successors to Peter, down to his day as those faithful men in succession to Peter. By naming those bishops in succession, shows succession of the position they held is an important point,*** AND*** it removes any doubt as to which Church is “This Church” Irenaeus is referring to.
as an aside,
Irenaeus geographically speaking, was from Smyrna, which is today, in Turkey. He was made bishop of Lyon, which is today, in France. Irenaeus was taught by Bp Polycarp, who himself was a disciple of St John the apostle. If one looks at this geographically speaking, Irenaeus isn’t making an East West argument. He argues for the Apostolic Tradition faithfully passed on in the Catholic Church
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TIK
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I’m actually kinda sad that that happened. On the one hand I’m very happy that we got the liturgical rite of Trent as sort of a “universal standard for the whole church”, but I’m sad that we lost so much diversity in the process.
It would be cool if all these other rites were brought back. It is my impression that they didn’t so much go out of fashion, but that they were actually actively suppressed. I see no reason why they can’t come back today. We already have the Anglican Use, as well as the ordinary form and the extraordinary form of the Roman rite to choose from, and the ordinary form liturgy is allowed to be performed in the local language, so why not bring back some of the ancient rites or allow new ones to develop (carefully of course)? You can always choose the extraordinary latin mass if you want to.
Personally I would also like to see the Latin church stop being so monolithic and divide itself into some more sui iuris churches. For example a self-governing French catholic church, a self-governing catholic church in the UK, a self-governing church in Spain and portugal, a self governing church in China, a self governing church in Vietnam etc. Give them some more freedom to express themselves according to their local culture and allow them to develop independant theologies, of course everyone should still respect the authority of the Pope/magisterium and stay in line with the defined catholic dogma, but I think allowing room for some more diversity would be a great thing.
edit: maybe it would be good to have a single extraordinary form rite per sui iuris church, which acts as the liturgical and spiritual benchmark and then allow them to have as many alternitive (ordinary) rites as they’d like, based on pragmatic concerns (for example not everyone wants to hear a latin mass if they can’t really understand latin. similarly not everyone wants to hear a greek mass if they can’t understand greek. But the byzantine sui iuris church should still have its extraordinary greek rite available, even if it uses the local language, similar to how the latin rite has it’s extraordinary latin mass available, even though it has ordinary forms in the local language)
Just thinking out loud before I run off to cook dinner.
sorry for a messy edit
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spina1953
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It is my understanding that within the Latin Rite there is still some of the other Latin rite that were mentioned that are from time to time used. not of those Rite that were in use til Trent but a few like the Carmelite Rite.but the thing is nearly all of those Rites that were within the Latin Rite were very simular which is why most are not used now days
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