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About Byzantine Catholics
| Yes,
we are Catholics in union with the Bishop of Rome (the Pope)
whom we recognize as the visible Head of the Catholic Church. We
are recognized as being "Catholic" by the local Roman
Catholic Bishops and the Bishops of the United States of America
and the whole world.
Having said that
we are "Catholics", we must now state that we are NOT
Roman Catholics, but Catholics who are identified as being
Eastern Catholics. AS Catholics, we Eastern and Roman Catholics
share the same faith and have the same seven sacraments. The
difference is that we Eastern Catholics have a different way or
rite of expressing our faith in regards to Liturgy and customs.
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At the Last
Supper, after Jesus changed bread and wine into His own Body and
Blood, He told His disciples to "Do this in Memory of
me." This they did. As the disciples brought the Gospel to
different parts of the world, they adapted ceremonies of the
Liturgy to the customs and music of that people. In the end,
four great centers of Christianity emerged with distinctive
Christian customs, but the same faith. These centers were
located in the great cities of Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome and
Alexandria. A couple of centuries later when the capital of the
Roman empire was moved to the Eastern city of Byzantium and
renamed Constantinople, an adaptation of the Antioch way of
celebrating Liturgy was made. Thus a new center of Christianity
arose in Constantinople and her ritual became known as the
Byzantine Rite. From Constantinople the Slavic peoples of
Eastern Europe were converted by Sts. Cyril and Methodius and
naturally followed the Byzantine Rite. Today the Byzantine Rite
is subdivided into ecclesiastical jurisdictions based on ethnic
groupings, such as Greek, Ukrainian, Ruthenian, Russian, etc. |
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