Which Catholic Church do you belong to?

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I voted Melkite Greek Catholic, but my situation is complex. Canonically I’m Roman/Latin. My wife and I were planning on officially becoming Melkite because our parish was a Melkite parish, our two children were initiated into the Melkite Church, and our theology and spirituality are thoroughly Melkite. But we decided not to make the official transition because we moved to an area where there is no Melkite (or other Eastern Catholic Church of the Byzantine tradition) parish anywhere near us. Now we are bouncing back and forth between our local Maronite parish and a local Roman parish run by the Dominicans.

So this is how I identify: Canonically Roman, Maronite in practice, Melkite at heart. 😛
 
Peter_J said:
The system doesn’t allow more than 10 choices, so I tried to group churches in a sensible way.
  • “Other Greek Catholics” includes eleven churches:
    Romanian Catholic Church
    Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
    Slovak Byzantine Catholic Church
    Italo-Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
    Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro
    Macedonian Greek Catholic Church
    Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church
    Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
    Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
    Russian Catholic Church
    Belarusian Catholic Church
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I belong to the one at the end of your polling list, i.e., Latin Church. 😃
 
adawgj said:
Looks like the Maronites might be in second in the polls.
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Indeed. You could also say that the West-Syrian family (that is, the Maronite Church, the Syriac Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church together) have as many votes as the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church. 🙂
 
P.S. Actually, the ratio of East-and-West-Syrian Catholics to Greek Catholics is exactly 2 to 3 (8 vs. 12), and the ratio of all Eastern Catholics to Latin Catholics is also 2 to 3 (20 vs. 30). 👍
 
Peter_J said:
P.S. Actually, the ratio of East-and-West-Syrian Catholics to Greek Catholics is exactly 2 to 3 (8 vs. 12), and the ratio of all Eastern Catholics to Latin Catholics is also 2 to 3 (20 vs. 30). 👍
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20 to 30 is pretty good, since in the “real world” Eastern Catholics only make up around 1-2% of Catholics.

Also, Syriac Catholics make up 47% of Eastern Catholics, while Byzantine Catholics make up 46%.

The largest Eastern Churches are the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (5.3 million members), the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (3.8 million), and the Maronite Church (3.2 million members). The total is somewhere around 17-18 million.

And since terminology has been discussed in this thread: “Roman Catholic” is a shorthand for Western/Latin Catholics, but the Holy See itself in official documents never uses “Roman Catholic” to refer just to the Western Church. Also, there are even some Eastern Catholic parishes with “Roman Catholic” in their names. The correct term for the Western Catholics is, as in the poll, the “Latin Church”.

Wikipedia has a great article on this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_%28term%29
 
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
 
Peter

Based on the thread title, I was avoiding this poll, but when I looked more carefully, I noticed that the “Maronite” option in the poll had no qualifier. Whether that was design or by accident I don’t know, but it saved me trouble of posting “Maronite -]Catholic/-] Church” in a comment and actually allowed me to vote (and get rid of that annoying “vote” screen at the same time) 😉 which I otherwise would not have done. Thanks. 🙂
 
malphono said:
Peter

Based on the thread title, I was avoiding this poll, but when I looked more carefully, I noticed that the “Maronite” option in the poll had no qualifier. Whether that was design or by accident I don’t know,
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It was both: I did remember about “Maronite -]Catholic/-] Church” … but even if I hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been an issue because I cut-and-pasted church names from Wikipedia. (I was slightly rushed because I had already clicked the “post a poll” button, and then realized that time-to-edit starts running down from that moment.)

I think the only one I changed was “Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic” (was seemed likely to confuse people) to “Romanian Catholic Church”.

After the fact, I realized that I should have changed “Ethiopian Catholic Church” to “Ethiopian-Eritrean Catholic Church”.
malphono said:
but it saved me trouble of posting “Maronite -]Catholic/-] Church” in a comment and actually allowed me to vote (and get rid of that annoying “vote” screen at the same time) 😉 which I otherwise would not have done. Thanks. 🙂
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And you tied the Ruthenian Byzantine Church. 😉
 
Peter_J said:
The system doesn’t allow more than 10 choices, so I tried to group churches in a sensible way.
  • “Other Greek Catholics” includes eleven churches:
    Romanian Catholic Church
    Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
    Slovak Byzantine Catholic Church
    Italo-Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
    Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro
    Macedonian Greek Catholic Church
    Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church
    Albanian Byzantine Catholic Church
    Greek Byzantine Catholic Church
    Russian Catholic Church
    Belarusian Catholic Church
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This afternoon I re-visited this thread and noticed that the “Other Greek Catholics” category now has three votes. 👍 I already know one of them is Russian Catholic (5Loaves) but I curious which churches the other two belong to … either of you care to post?
 
Peter_J said:
This afternoon I re-visited this thread and noticed that the “Other Greek Catholics” category now has three votes. 👍 I already know one of them is Russian Catholic (5Loaves) but I curious which churches the other two belong to … either of you care to post?
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Seems to me there’s at least one Italo-Greek who stops by this forum from time-to-time, and I seem to think we also have at least one Hungarian who does the same. I’ll be curious to see if I’m right. 😉
 
So far, no Armenians. I don’t think I have seen an Armenian Catholic post here.
 
AnthonyJ said:
The Anglican Ordinariates would be part of the Latin Church.
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This might be a stupid question, but is there any chance that the Anglican Ordinariates could eventually become their own Rite? When was the last time the Church made a new Rite? I mean, they have to start sometime right?

I don’t want to divert the thread, but I very keenly keep track of the developments of the Ordinariates… Has anyone else hear at least speculation that this is possible? *

P.S.
Oh, I put Latin Rite btw.*
 
RC_Sojourner said:
This might be a stupid question, but is there any chance that the Anglican Ordinariates could eventually become their own Rite?
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That’s certainly possible. Keep in mind that the Latin Church already has several rites – besides obviously the Roman Rite, there’s the Mozarabic Rite, the Bragan Rite, the Ambrosian Rite and others.

On the other hand, becoming a church seems unlikely.
 
I am currently Roman Catholic, though I have a strong interest in the Byzantines. I do not have any immediate plans to officially transfer churches, though that might be a possibility if I discern a call to be a deacon in the future (the Byzantines have very beautiful liturgies, including Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts).
 
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