Eastern Catholic Churches

What "Catholic" really means

The word "Catholic" comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning "universal" or "according to the whole." The Catholic Church is not identical with the Latin (Roman) Rite most Western Catholics are familiar with — the Latin Church is the largest of the Catholic Church's constituent parts, but not the only one. Alongside it stand twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches, each with its own ancient liturgical, spiritual, and canonical traditions, all in full communion with the Pope and fully Catholic.

The 24 sui iuris Churches

Together, the Latin Church and the 23 Eastern Catholic Churches make up the Catholic Church's 24 sui iuris ("of its own right") Churches — each self-governing according to its own tradition and canon law, while sharing the same faith, the same seven sacraments, and the same visible communion with the Bishop of Rome described on the Papacy page. The most recent addition is the youngest of them: Pope Francis erected the Eritrean Catholic Church as its own metropolitan sui iuris Church in 2015, separating it from the Ethiopian Catholic Church. Most Eastern Catholic Churches have a counterpart Orthodox Church that shares the same liturgical tradition but is not in communion with Rome — the historical result of past divisions that these Eastern Catholic communities chose, at various points, to heal.

The major liturgical families

The Eastern Catholic Churches are grouped into several liturgical traditions: the Byzantine tradition (the largest group, shared with the Eastern Orthodox Churches), the Alexandrian tradition (Coptic, Ethiopian, and Eritrean), the Antiochene or West Syriac tradition (Maronite, Syriac, Syro-Malankara), the Chaldean or East Syriac tradition (Chaldean, Syro-Malabar), and the Armenian tradition.

A few examples

• Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church — Byzantine tradition, one of the largest Eastern Catholic Churches.
• Maronite Church — based in Lebanon, one of only two Eastern Catholic Churches with no Orthodox counterpart (along with the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church), having never separated from Rome.
• Melkite Greek Catholic Church — Byzantine tradition, rooted in the Middle East.
• Syro-Malabar Church — India, tracing its origin to the apostolic preaching of St. Thomas the Apostle.
• Chaldean Catholic Church — rooted in Iraq, using a form of Aramaic close to the language Jesus spoke.
• Eritrean Catholic Church — the newest sui iuris Church, established in 2015; Alexandrian (Ge'ez) tradition, rooted in Eritrea.

What's different, what's the same

What differs: the language and style of the Divine Liturgy (their equivalent of the Mass), fasting practices, church architecture and iconography, and — in most Eastern Catholic Churches, within their traditional homelands — the ordination of married men to the priesthood, an ancient practice never lost in the East the way it was set aside in the Latin Church. Bishops, however, are always chosen from celibate or widowed clergy in every Eastern Catholic Church, and married priestly ordination outside those traditional homelands (in the "diaspora," including the United States) was canonically restricted for much of the 20th century; those restrictions have only been eased, unevenly by country, since 2014. What's the same: the same Catholic faith, the same seven sacraments, valid Holy Orders and a real Eucharist, and full communion with the same Pope. A Latin Catholic may fulfill their Sunday obligation at any Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy, and vice versa — they are not "other churches" in the ecumenical sense, but home.

See the Ecumenical Councils that shaped a united Church