Writing Some Essays on Eastern Catholic Churches... Ideas?

[billy15]

So for the past several months, I’ve been contributing to the site Catholic365.com with various essays and articles I’ve shared on my personal blog. Now I know this doesn’t make me special in any way; virtually anybody can write for this site and the screening process really isn’t as rigorous as you’d think it would be. But nonetheless, I love to write and this has been a good outlet for me and a great tool that has helped me articulate my faith better.

I’ve noticed as I’ve searched the site that there aren’t too many mentions of the various Eastern Catholic Churches. My searches only turned up two or three articles such as this one on Maronite Catholics: catholic365.com/article/428/what-do-you-mean-you-are-a-maronite-catholic.html

It’s obvious that many Latin Catholics today are virtually clueless about the other 23 Catholic Churches in communion with the Pope. I had an idea to help people learn a bit more about their Catholic brothers and sisters by writing a series of essays on the site, starting with an introduction on the various Eastern Catholic Churches, and then follow that intro with posts on each specific Eastern Rite (Byzantine, West Syrian/Antiochene, East Syrian, Armenian, and then Alexandrian). So, a total of six posts.

Now, I am a Latin Catholic, but my maternal grandmother’s side of the family is Ukrainian Greek Catholic, so I’ve been around both the Byzantine and Latin Rites all my life. I’m not an expert on the Byzantine Rite, but I’m not clueless either. Same goes for the other 4 Eastern Rites; I know less about those rites than i do about the Byzantine Rite, but I am not clueless. That being said, I’d like to get some (name removed by moderator)ut from those that actually belong to these particular Churches:

What would you like Latin Catholics who are unfamiliar at best, and completely ignorant at worst, to know about your Church and its traditions? This can be something basic, or something much more in depth and technical.

As a religious education teacher, I made it a point to let my 6th graders know that we have Eastern Catholic brothers and sisters, stemming from a question by one student who asked why “the Eucharist is always a circle and not other shapes.” This opened the door for several weeks worth of tidbits of information on the various Eastern Catholic Churches, and made it apparent to me that ALL of the Catholic laity should know more about the “Eastern lung” of the Catholic Church. My thinking is, if we claim to be ecumenical and try to reach out to other non-Catholic Christians, how can we as Latin Catholics be completely ignorant of our own Catholic brothers and sisters who are not Latin?

So again, any ideas from those who are of these particular Churches would be greatly appreciated, especially those that are not Byzantine as I have much to learn myself on your traditions.

One specific question I have though… What is the number of particular Churches in the universal Catholic Church? I have always thought it was 24, going off of this picture (and Wikipedia as well) which was put out before the Eritrean Catholic Church was established last year:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=601&pictureid=9279

However, looking at this statistical document HERE from the 2015 Annuario Pontificio, only 19 particular Eastern Catholic Churches are listed, excluding the Albanian Catholic Church, the Belarusian Catholic Church, the Macedonian Catholic Church, and the Russian Catholic Church. You add those four and the Roman Catholic Church to those 19 listed, then you get the 24 enumerated by the picture I posted and the Wikipedia article.

Why the difference in numbers? Are those four Churches still considered particular Churches? The Albanian Catholic Church is still mentioned as late as the 2012 edition of the Annuario Pontifico as seen HERE, and the Macedonian Catholic Church has a footnote every year up until 2014 (seen HERE) which reads: “The 2012 Annuario Pontificio lists the Apostolic Exarchate in Macedonia separately from the other two jurisdictions, which are listed as ‘The Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro’.” However, I see no mention whatsoever of the Russian Catholic Church or the Belarusian Catholic Church. I want to make sure I’m as accurate as I can be when listing the total number of particular Churches within the Byzantine Rite when I write this essay. Thanks.

 

[Vico]

…
One specific question I have though… What is the number of particular Churches in the universal Catholic Church? I have always thought it was 24, going off of this picture (and Wikipedia as well) which was put out before the Eritrean Catholic Church was established last year:

…

Why the difference in numbers? Are those four Churches still considered particular Churches? The Albanian Catholic Church is still mentioned as late as the 2012 edition of the Annuario Pontifico as seen HERE, and the Macedonian Catholic Church has a footnote every year up until 2014 (seen HERE) which reads: “The 2012 Annuario Pontificio lists the Apostolic Exarchate in Macedonia separately from the other two jurisdictions, which are listed as ‘The Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro’.” However, I see no mention whatsoever of the Russian Catholic Church or the Belarusian Catholic Church. I want to make sure I’m as accurate as I can be when listing the total number of particular Churches within the Byzantine Rite when I write this essay. Thanks.

I updated it in 2015, shown below. A sui iuris Catholic church mey be in the care of the Latin Church because they do not have a hierarchy of their own. Also their numbers have dwindled, some have only a few parishes, such as the Belarusian and Russian. Here are the bishops of the smaller Byzantine sui iuris churches that are neither Metropolitan nor Major Archepiscopal:

Albanian:
Bishop Hil Kabashi, O.F.M. Apostolic Administrator of Southern Albania of the Albanese (Albania)

Belarusian:
Apostolic Visitor in Belarus: Archimandrite Jan Sergiusz Gajek, M.I.C.

Bulgarian
Bishop Christo Proykov, Apostolic Exarch of Sofia, Bulgaria

Greek
Father Manuel Nin, O.S.B. Apostolic Exarch of Greece

Italo-Albanian (Byzatine Church in Italy):
Abbot Emiliano Fabbricatore, O.S.B.I., Abbot Emeritus of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata, Italy
Bishop Sotìr Ferrara, Bishop Emeritus of Piana degli Albanesi, Italy
Bishop Giorgio Demetrio Gallaro, Bishop of Piana degli Albanesi, Italy
Bishop Ercole Lupinacci, Bishop Emeritus of Lungro degli Italo-Albanesi, Italy
Archbishop Salvatore Nunnari, Archbishop Emeritus of Cosenza-Bisignano, Italy
Bishop Donato Oliverio, Bishop of Lungro degli Italo-Albanesi, Italy
Paolo Cardinal Romeo, Archbishop Emeritus of Palermo, Italy
Bishop Marcello Semeraro, Bishop of Albano, Italy

Krizhevci
Bishop Djura Džudžar, Apostolic Exarch of Serbia, Serbia
Bishop Nikola Nino Kekić, Bishop of Križevci (Kreutz), Croatia

Macedonian:
Bishop Kiro Stojanov Bishop of Skopje (Macedonia) Apostolic Exarch of Macedonia of the Macedonians (Macedonia)

Russian:
Bishop Joseph Werth, S.J., Bishop of Trasfigurazione a Novosibirsk, Russian Federation
No hierarchy of their own.

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=601&pictureid=17655

 

[billy15]

Awesome, thank you Vico! I wasn’t aware of all that before. And thanks for the updated picture of the 24 Catholic Churches. I hadn’t realized you had made that; it’s certainly helped me explain the Eastern Catholic Churches to friends and relatives on many occasions!

I’m curious though, where did you get all the information on the bishops of the respective Churches? For instance, I would’ve never been able to find information on Bishop Joseph Werth, S.J.on my own, as his Wikipedia page doesn’t have nay info pertaining to the Russian Catholic Church.

 

[Vico]

Awesome, thank you Vico! I wasn’t aware of all that before. And thanks for the updated picture of the 24 Catholic Churches. I hadn’t realized you had made that; it’s certainly helped me explain the Eastern Catholic Churches to friends and relatives on many occasions!

I’m curious though, where did you get all the information on the bishops of the respective Churches? For instance, I would’ve never been able to find information on Bishop Joseph Werth, S.J.on my own, as his Wikipedia page doesn’t have nay info pertaining to the Russian Catholic Church.

I am glad it was useful. It took a lot of research to find some of the historical information.

Two sites are helpful for bishops and they are maintaining them quickly with changes:

gcatholic.org/
catholic-hierarchy.org/

This is an overlay showing the Eastern Orthodox correspondences:

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=601&pictureid=12328

 

[PollyM]

Thank you for the excellent tips and comments. They are really useful and helped me to gather necessary information, though, it appeared to be not enough for writing a good paper. You can know lots of facts, but it is necessary at least to see a good example to create something like this and for this reason I checked essay writing services review to get an idea. Though, I believe that it is also important to make your own research to have understanding.

 

[yawsep1569]

It’s obvious that many Latin Catholics today are virtually clueless about the other 23 Catholic Churches in communion with the Pope. I had an idea to help people learn a bit more about their Catholic brothers and sisters by writing a series of essays on the site, starting with an introduction on the various Eastern Catholic Churches, and then follow that intro with posts on each specific Eastern Rite (Byzantine, West Syrian/Antiochene, East Syrian, Armenian, and then Alexandrian). So, a total of six posts.

The following is from Mar Sarhad Jammo, former Chaldean bishop of the eparchy of San Diego regarding the “East Syrian” rite.

 The Church of the East was so simply named because of its historic and geographic reality for many centuries. Considering the Euphrates as the stable boundary between the two superpowers of the early Christian centuries until the Arab conquest, i.e. the Roman and the Persian Empires, “East,” in that context, meant the countries and regions east of that very river, up to the Yellow Sea of China. Christianity spread in Mesopotamia, as well as in Persia and India, from the Apostolic era on, and was carried in the following centuries to the adjacent regions by eastern missionaries who established hierarchical centers throughout most of Asia. The headquarters of this immense ecclesiastic organization had settled, since the third century, in the twin cities of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which was succeeded by Baghdad, as being the civil capital of the eastern empires of their times.

  Following the Mongolian invasions during the 13th and 14th centuries, culminated by the pervasive destruction of Tamerlane’s attacks, this magnificent Church was reduced to a shadow of its former self, preserving only a small remnant in the countries of its origin: Mesopotamia, Persia, and India. Consequently, it has adopted, since the 15th century, regional names of its enduring presence (Chaldean, Assyrian, Malabar) to signify its identity and historic background.

A Confusion

  In astonishing disregard to elementary facts of history and geography, many scholars, unconcerned about the identity and dignity of renowned nations, glorious civilizations, and Apostolic Churches, continue to use, until the present time, the term “East Syrian” while talking about peoples, churches, and countries that are not Syrian at all. “Syrian,” in fact, is a term reflecting direct relation to the land of Syria, not to that of Mesopotamia or Persia, or their peoples or churches.

  On the other hand, “Syriac,” in classical linguistics, is one of the major dialects of the Aramaic language. During the first six centuries of Christianity, it was the dialect of rural Syria and of Edessa, a city-state which fell, in the 3rd century, within the Roman province of Syria, and was the host of major Christian Aramaic academies. “East Syriac” is the dialect used in Eastern Syria, which is the region of Edessa, and may include Nisibis as an extended cultural zone. Under the influence of major schools in that region, Syriac became the scholastic language of near-eastern Christian literature, patristics and liturgy, during ancient times and the middle ages, whose knowledge remains quite relevant to the history of Christianity and its patrimony.

  At the present time, however, Syrians in Syria do not speak Syriac but Arabic; Edessa and Nisibis are in Turkey, and their populations speak Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic, not Syriac at all. I should not forget to mention the village of Ma’lula in Syria, so much cherished by western connoisseurs of the matter as evidence of living Aramaic, where a few families are encouraged to show their usage of Aramaic. And yet, east of the Euphrates, the Assyrians and Chaldeans of Mesopotamia, before and after Christ, spoke their own genuine dialect of Aramaic, which they preserve until the present time. It should be called rightly the “Vernacular Aramaic” of Mesopotamia or simply “Chaldean” or “Modern Assyrian.” Though Christians of Mesopotamia have also used the classic Edessene dialect in scholastic literature and ancient liturgy, Mesopotamia or Iraq is where the living Aramaic language survives until the present time, mostly in its Vernacular form.

Reality at the Present Time
Serious scholars should know these facts and acknowledge them in their writings. I notice, unexpectedly and unfortunately, that many of them, while dealing with the history of Mesopotamian Christianity, are stuck at its theological centers of the 4th or 5th century, as if Edessa, with its School of the Persians, and Nisibis, with its prominent Academy, still exist through the third millennium, towering on the landscape of the Church of the East, devised by them as the fantastical entity of the “East-Syrians.” I am amazed to observe how, with all the information the researchers collect, they do not realize that this nomenclature is, and has been for most of history, a complete phantom.

 

[kdbueno]

Inasmuch as we know, we better off calling eastern orthodoxy, oriental.