www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Catholic Eastern Churches and their Orthodox Counterparts

I have created a chart to help visualize and organize the 22 eastern catholic churches. The introduction and pdf download can be found on this page:

http://puluka.com/home/index.php?id=85

This is created as a handout to support my teaching on eastern church history. I'd be interested in feedback on the approach.
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Catholic Eastern Churches and their Orthodox Counterparts
By Steve Puluka

There are twenty-two eastern churches in communion with Rome. These vary in size from quite large with multiple bishops and a patriarchate to quite small without any episcopal leadership at all. All but two have direct counterparts in the Orthodox communions that are parallel in liturgy and discipline.

This table attempts to organize the relationship of these many independent churches to each other and their traditional roots. The first column "Eastern Communion" denotes the three major sub-divisions of Orthodox communions. These are the direct result of how various early churches accepted the first seven ecumenical councils that helped define and shape christianity.

The Assyrian Church of the East left the conciliar fold first by rejecting the third ecumenical council of Ephesus. This council rejected the teachings of Nestorianism and bestowed the title Theotokos (god bearer) on Mary the mother of god.
The Oriental Orthodox Church rejected the fourth ecumenical council of Chalcedon. This council rejected the teaching of monophysitism and defined the two natures of Christ as human and divine.

The Byzantine Church is also known as simply the Orthodox Church. This includes all those who followed the liturgy and traditions that centered on the great church in Byzantinum (Constantinople, now Istanbul). This is the main body of Orthodox christians and accept all seven of the early ecumenical councils.

As you can see, until modern times these communions are organized by simple geography. But in the modern age with migration and colonization there is now significant communities that overlap in the same countries. This is especially true in western europe, the Australian continent and the Americas.

You will also notice that three of these catholic eastern communities have long interruptions in there union relationship with Rome. These occur when internal conflicts and regional politics prevented the continuation of the union for an extended period of time.
The Ukrainian communities also have a recent history of jurisdictional conflict on the Orthodox side. There are currently three competing hierarchies claiming jurisdiction as the Orthodox church in Ukraine but only one is recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Also in eastern europe the Ruthenian catholic union has spawned additional national catholic eastern churches in Slovakia and Hungary. And the traditional homeland in the Carpathian mountains of the Ruthenian church encompasses parts of Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. This is also a source of difficulty in the establishment of church discipline in the post communist age.

Hungary in particular makes for a difficulty in this chart. The Hungarian eastern catholic community is culturally and liturgically related to the Ruthenian community. But the very recent inroads of Orthodoxy into the traditionally Roman Catholic Hungary are from the Serbian Orthodox communities. Here we have a unique situation where the Orthodox and catholic counterparts are from similar but not the same traditions.

For more information about any of these Orthodox or catholic communities see Roberson's fine brief outlines in The Eastern Christian Churches: a brief Survey.

Steve Puluka
MA, Theology Duquesne University
Cantor Holy Ghost Church
Carpatho-Rusyn tradition
Mckees Rocks, PA
http://puluka.com

It would be better organized by rite, IMO.

The Saint Thomas Christians belong to multiple Communities - they are in the Syro-Malabar Catholic, Chaldean-Syrian (ACoE in India), Syriac Orthodox, Malankara Orthodox, and Syro-Malankara Catholic Churches.. Also, I think it's important to note that the Oriental Communion does not support Monophysitism, in fact they reject it entirely - they reject Chalcedon because they see it as motivated for political reasons.

To show just how insignificant the substantive differences in Christology are, a large part of the Syro-Malabarese Orthodox Church, nominally Nestorian, broke away to become the Syro-Malankerese Orthodox Church, nominally Monophysite, without missing a beat. And, of course, there are Catholic offshoots of both which are Chalcedonian.

Steve,

The title and layout are not in synch -
Title: Catholic Eastern Churches & Their Orthodox Counterparts
Layout: display is reversed, with Orthodox Counterpart Churches first, followed by Catholic Churches

Using 'Eastern Orthodox' generically to encompass 'Oriental Orthodox', 'Eastern Orthodox', and the Assyrian Churches runs counter to standard nomenclature and the terminology that the Churches themselves use in self-identification.

As Michael notes, Thomas Christians is an umbrella term that is applied to all of the Eastern Christian ecclesia in the Indian sub-continent.

There are 2 counterpart Churches to the Chaldeans, the Assyrian Church and the Ancient Church of the East which broke from it a half-century back.

The Eritrean Orthodox are missing from the listing of Oriental Orthodox (and have a distinct counterpart in the Eritrean Catholics of the Ethiopian Catholic Church, albeit the Eritreans do not constitute a distinct Church sui iuris).

Why would one denominate the Antiochian Orthodox as the 'Patriarchate of Antioch, when not terming any of the other patriarchal Orthodox - or Catholic - ecclesia by such?

'American Carpatho-Russian Czech & Slovak' is a most peculiar terminology to use, certainly not consistent with the Church's own usage.

The Serbian Orthodox have a counterpart in the Apostolic Exarchate for Serbian and Montenegron Catholics, not itself a Church sui iuris, but a constituent of the Croatian Catholic Church. Where are the Croats? (Eparchy of Kriveci) - the terminology 'Yugoslavia' is not current or useful (less so, the incredibly awkward Former Republic of Yugoslavia or FROY) and nothing called the Yugoslavian Catholic Church existed in 1611.

From the intro - "But the very recent inroads of Orthodoxy into the traditionally Roman Catholic Hungary are from the Serbian Orthodox communities." There was a significant Serb Orthodox influence/presence in Hungarian Orthodoxy as far back as the 18th century. Today, I believe the Orthodox Churches of Romania and the Czech & Slovak Lands are probably about as influential in Hungary as that of the Serbs.

If one is to allow that there are 3 competing Ukrainian Orthodox Churches (UOC-KP, UOC-MP, and - I presume - intending UOAC to be the 3rd), why wouldn't they be distinguished by separately listing them? To note (as the intro does) that only 1 of the 3 is recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarch smacks of an ecclesio-political statement.

The Italo-Greico-Albanian (and the inclusion of 'Greico' is both purposeful and important, as the faithful include both Italo-Greeks and Italo-Albanians) has no current counterpart as such, but historically has its counterparts in the Greek and, most particularly, the Albanian, Churches (until the Orthodox Albanians fled to Italy and were subsumed into the existing Italo-Byzantine ecclesia, the Byzantine influence there was of Greek origin).

The Georgian Catholic Church, regretably, can no longer be considered to be extant, the last cleric having reposed more than a half-century ago. As much as I admire Father Roberson's text, he really needs to update that entry - which still suggests that there may be a few thousand faithful. Any whose ancestry was Georgian Byzantine Catholic have long since been absorbed into their Orthodox counterpart, into either of the Armenian Churches, or into the Latin Church.

I didn't look closely at dates, but the Russian one caught my eye. Father Nicholas (Tolstoy), of blessed memory, was received into communion at Rome in 1896 and the Russian GC Church is ordinarily dated from that event, albeit 1917 is the date (as memory serves) of the naming of Blessed Leonid as Exarch.

Aramis' suggestion of reordering it by Rite has definite advantages, as it would afford an additional dimension to it.

Many years,

Neil

Thanks for all the notes so far. I'm going to be out most of the next week, so it will probably be next weekend before I sit down to do the research and updates for this.

But I did want to clarify a few points. This is good that I can see where the communication problems are so far.

The list is organized deliberately by orthodox communion and not liturgical rite. There are plenty of people that provide rite based looks at the churches. What I am getting at here is to clarify the relationship of catholic eastern churches to the three different orthodox communion groups.

The list of catholic eastern churches is defined as those having a direct and independent relationship with Rome for their church.

This is in support of history classes that I teach. I've found that most people, both orthodox and catholic, don't know there are three separated communions of orthodox churches. This situation complicates ecumenical efforts and dialogs of individual catholic communions with their counterparts.

The apparent novel church listed next the Ruthenian is a clumsy attempt to list both the ACROD and Orthodox jurisdiction in the former Czech/Slovak republics. This is another of those clumsy developments that will require more footnotes or explanation.

I can also see that I need a much longer clearer description for the complicated crossroads of orthodoxy in Ukraine. This situation gets a full class period in my semester course on eastern church history.

Thanks for the notes so far. And references for sources would help. Ultimately, I want verifiable dates and facts.

Steve Puluka