Catholic Family Tree
Last Thursday I celebrated the Feast of Theophany at Holy Angels Byzantine Catholic Parish with four of my Roman Rite friends. While we were there I attempted to explain how all the different rites of the Catholic Church relate to one another. I don’t think I did a very good job at explaining it, so I’m going to have another go now…
The Church began in Jerusalem (Acts 2) and, over time, major Christian centres developed in the cities of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria. It was from these cities that the major rites of the Church developed. This can be seen more clearly from the following diagram I found on a friend’s Facebook page:
The Second Vatican Council had this to say concerning the different rites of the Church:
“[In] faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully recognized rites to be of equal right and dignity, and that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way”
– Sacrosanctum Concilium
So, although the Catholic Church is one Church, it is also a communion of Churches.
It was pointed out to me that this diagram is somewhat incomplete:
“Eritrean under Alexandrian, under byzantine the 1) Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro( this might be the Church of the Byzantines since it formal name is Byzantine Church of Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro), 2) the Macedonian is missing out right. The Rome tree all those are under the same ritual church.”
This is siq