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The Catholic Church has Eastern and Western Rites
The Church seeks unity rather than uniformity among her Christian peoples
"Isn't the Catholic Church the same everywhere?" People invariably expect a reply in the affirmative and are really quite surprised to hear otherwise.
The Catholic Church is, one -- in her beliefs and in her doctrines. But she manifests a marvelous diversity in her rituals, her ceremonies, her customs, and her language. Her Rites (the way we do things) are not the same, but many.
Christianity originated in Jerusalem that was the center of the early Church. We see its beginnings described in the Book of Acts and from there spreading out to the whole world.
With Jerusalem as its point of origin, Christianity spread east to Antioch, south to Alexandria, west to Rome, and north to Byzantium, which would become Constantinople (modern Istanbul). These centers became the 'launch pads' for the evangelization of neighboring regions reaching far beyond the Roman Empire.
Constantinople became the origin of Slavic Christianity, including Poland, Slovakia, Czech, Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia, parts of Bavaria, Slovenia, Carinthia, Hungry, Prussia, and East Prussia.
Antioch spread its message toward what is now Iraq, Iran, and as far as India and China.
Jerusalem evangelized the "Phoenician world" and Arabia
Rome evangelized Western Europe and Iberia.
Alexandria influenced Northern Africa and the East Coast of Africa.
Each area developed its own method of celebrating the Christian mysteries and prayer life, sensitive to its particular cultural and regional differences.
From this structure developed two basic divisions within Christianity, Eastern and Western. Western Christianity consists of Latin Catholics (750+ million), some of which are called "Roman Catholics" and the Protestant denominations. Eastern Christianity consists of various Eastern Rites (200+ million) and the Orthodox (300+ million). All give allegiance to Rome except the Protestants in the west and the Orthodox in the east.
The history of how the geographical divisions occurred begins with the elevation of the Roman Emperor Diocletian (285-305) to the Imperial throne. Diocletian moved the seat of the Empire east to a more central location, Byzantium, which he called the "New Rome." He reorganized the Empire for purposes of effective and efficient government. The division still survives today, a line drawn from roughly Copenhagen straight down to a point east of Trieste. This east/west division of the Empire evolved into the east/west division within the Church.
At the very beginning of the Christian era, there was no question of "rites." You simply were a Christian or you were not. Only following the great schism of 1054 did the categories fall into the present-day mold, when the Orthodox churches split from the Catholic Church over papal infallibility.
These two basic divisions of the Church, the Eastern and Western Rites, each further subdivided and fifteen or more variations have grown up throughout the course of history -- this makes up the Catholic Church.
The Eastern Rites have three major subdivisions, based largely on origins: Alexandrian, Antiochene, and Byzantine. Each of those hold under its influence one or more of the following: Armenian, Chaldaean, Coptic, Georgian, Greek, Melkite, Maronite, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, Ruthenian, Malabar, Malankaran, West Syrian, Ethopian, Ukrainian, and Hungarian.
Western Rites have under its influence the Latin Rites (Roman, Ambrosian, and Gallican) and the non-Latin Rites (Mozarabic, and Italo-Greek). The Mozarabic rite exists almost exclusively in Spain and uses Arabic as its liturgical language, and the Italo-Greek uses the liturgies of the Byzantine Rite, but celebrates them in Latin or Italian. The Italo-Greek is classified as non-Latin, although it uses Latin because its liturgy is essentially Byzantine in nature.
Most groups have counterparts among the Orthodox. These are usually larger than the Catholic segments.
In the Catholic Church there are such diverse as Armenian Catholics, Byzantine Catholics, and Melkites, non-of which ever used Latin in their liturgies. It is an irony of history that Pope John XXIII was elevated to the Papacy by a small margin over the Armenian Patriarch, Cardinal Gregory Peter Agajanian. We nearly had an Eastern Catholic Pope in the 1960s.
Not only does the Church permit the existence of these rites, she insists that each has a right to exist, in the family of Catholicism, and that all of these are her rites. The Degree on the Eastern Churches from Vatican II speaks loudly: "All Eastern rite members should know and be convinced that they can and should always preserve their lawful liturgical rites and their established way of life."
So it should be clear that unity rather than uniformity is what the Church seeks among her Christian peoples.
Deacon Lee Hunt, 1977
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