The Eastern Catholic Churches

The Eastern Catholic Churches largely only came into being in the second millennium of the Christian era, when individual Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches or parts of their faithful and hierarchs concluded a union with the Roman See. The aim of these unions was to re-establish church communion between East and West, although in many cases church politics were behind the union efforts. However, most of the unions were not able to restore unity between Christians in East and West, but on the contrary led to new divisions, insofar as only a part of the respective local churches joined the Catholic Church, while another part remained Orthodox. One exception is the Maronite Church, which according to its self-image, was never separated from Rome. It resumed communion with Rome in the 12th century, making it the oldest of the Eastern Catholic Churches. At the same time, it is the only one to have succeeded in bringing an existing local church completely into communion with Rome, so that today there is no parallel Eastern church separated from Rome.

Among the Eastern Catholic churches, there are churches from all five Eastern rite families. As they are all in communion with the Bishop of Rome, they have full communion with each other as well as with the (Latin-rite) Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Catholic churches are churches under their own law (“ecclesiae sui iuris”), which have their own ecclesiastical code, the “Codex Canonum Ecclesiarum Orientalium” (CCEO). As a description of the individual Eastern Catholic churches would go beyond the scope of this article, they are presented collectively in two groups: on the one hand, the Eastern Catholic churches of the Byzantine rite, which have been referred to as “Greek Catholic” since the time of the Habsburg Empire, and on the other hand, the Eastern Catholic churches of the four other Eastern rite families, which are summarized under the term “Oriental Catholic”.