Religion: EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES

Catholic, Religion Catholic, Catholic Religion. EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES:

EASTERN CATHOLIC CHURCHES

These churches, with an estimated total membership of more than 9 million, originated in very diverse circumstances and live in various situations. What they have in common is full communion* of faith* and sacraments* with the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) around the bishop of Rome, while retaining various Eastern liturgical and canonical traditions inherited from the mother churches from which they were separated by their union with the church of Rome. They were disparagingly called Uniates* by the Orthodox or Oriental churches because of negative memories of their origins and of their type of relationship with Rome or with the Orthodox churches of the same traditions.

On the RC side, these union attempts were generally founded on the principle of the union-council of Florence (1438-45): complete respect of the diversity of traditions within the unity of faith. But no Eastern Catholic church in fact traces its origin back to this council. In the context of the Counter-Reformation, the awareness of the ecclesial character of the Orthodox churches became blurred in the RCC, and the attempts to restore unity between the two churches slowly gave way to the “return” of individuals or small groups to the RCC.

In Eastern Europe, the reunion with Rome of certain communities – at times with their bishops – was strongly influenced by the socio-political situation, especially the changes of frontiers between countries with Catholic or Orthodox predominance. The union of the Ukrainians (Brest-Litovsk 1595-96) concluded at a time when these regions were under Polish authority. The union of the Ruthenians (Uzhorod 1646) and that of a group of Romanians ( Transylvania 1700) took place within the Austro-Hungarian empire. Of lesser importance were the Yugoslavian, Bulgarian, Slovak, Hungarian, Belorussian, Albanian, Russian and Greek Catholic churches. All belonged to the Byzantine-Slavonic tradition. The Ukrainian (about 3.7 million members), Ruthenian, Belorussian and Romanian Catholic churches were officially suppressed by force under communist regimes in the late 1940s; they survived only in their homelands underground or outside them, especially in Western Europe and North America.

In the Middle East the circumstances were very different. The Maronite church is a special case. Originating in the territory of Antioch (monastery of Beit-Marun) in the 4th century, it claims no historical consciousness of a formal break with Rome; and it renewed contact at the time of the crusades.* The Maronite church thus has no “Orthodox” counterpart, but belongs totally to the Catholic communion. All the churches of the Middle East lived in very difficult situations within the Ottoman empire . Under its law, as small minorities amid the Muslims they formed ethnic communities with their own separate legal status. Thus these churches readily welcomed the offer of help from Latin missionaries from the West, particularly since most of their members had no vivid awareness of an existing schism* with the RCC. The pastoral, intellectual and social activities of these missionaries slowly created, in different places, groups of laity and pastors who favoured union with Rome; eventually the union was proclaimed officially.

Rather than bringing about the union between the RCC and the respective other partners, the fait accompli was generally refused by the majority of the Orthodox, and new divisions resulted. With some important differences, this was the case with all the churches of the Middle East when some of their members became united with Rome: the Eastern Syrian or Nestorian tradition (Chaldeans, 1553), the Western Syrian tradition (Syrian Catholics, 1662), the Armenian tradition (Armenian Catholics, 1740), the Byzantine tradition (Greek Catholics or Melkites, 1724). Later on, the passage of individuals to the RCC led to the creation of Coptic Catholic (1895) and Ethiopian Catholic (1930) hierarchies.