| Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Particular church (sui iuris) |
| Classification | Christian |
| Orientation | Eastern Catholic |
| Theology | Catholic theology |
| Polity | Episcopal |
| Structure | Metropolitanate |
| Pope | Leo XIV |
| Primate | William C. Skurla |
| Associations | Dicastery for the Eastern Churches |
| Region |
|
| Liturgy | Byzantine Rite |
| Headquarters | Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist,Munhall, Pennsylvania 48°37′23″N22°18′8″E / 48.62306°N 22.30222°E /48.62306; 22.30222 |
| Origin | 1646 |
| Merger of | Union of Uzhhorod |
| Congregations | 664 |
| Members | 417,795[2] |
| Ministers | 549 |
| Primary schools | 1 in the United States |
| Other name | Byzantine Catholic Church (U.S. only) |
| Official website | www.archpitt.org |
TheRuthenian Greek Catholic Church,[a] also known in the United States as theByzantine Catholic Church, is asui iuris (autonomous)Eastern Catholicparticular church based in Eastern Europe and North America that is part of the worldwideCatholic Church and is infull communion with theHoly See. It uses theByzantine Rite for its liturgies, laws, and cultural identity. The Church originated at theUnion of Uzhhorod in 1646, whenOrthodoxEast Slavs with aRusyn identity in theCarpathian Mountains returned to communion with thePope.
The Church does not have a unified structure. Its numerically largest jurisdiction is in Europe, theGreek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, which reemerged in Ukraine after having been suppressed by theSoviet Union. There is also theApostolic Exarchate of the Greek Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, founded in 1996. Both of them areexempt territories immediately subject to the Holy See.
TheMetropolis of Pittsburgh is the Church's self-governing jurisdiction in the United States, created in the early 20th century forRusyn immigrants. Today it includes many members of non-Eastern European descent while still continuing Ruthenian traditions. In 1956 the U.S. jurisdiction stopped using Ruthenian Greek Catholic to describe itself, and since 1969 it has called itself the Byzantine Catholic Church, also being reorganized as ametropolitan church byPope Paul VI. This makes the Byzantine Catholic Church the only self-governing Eastern Catholic metropolitan church in the United States. In 2022 theSlovak Greek Catholiceparchy for Canada was changed to anexarchate and was subordinated to the Byzantine Catholic Metropolis of Pittsburgh.
While not directly associated with the formerRuthenian Uniate Church, the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church also derives its name from theRusyn andRuthenian Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe and theircommunion withRome.[3]Ruthenia was originally the Latin term for theRus' people (from whom the nameRussia was alsoderived) but later on, especially after theSchism of 1054 led to the separation of theEast Slavs from Rome withEastern Orthodoxy, its definition was narrowed. It was used for theOrthodox Slavs in the easternPolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that entered communion with thePope at theUnion of Brest in 1595 while continuing to use theByzantine (or Greek) Rite. This was the basis for what later became theUkrainian andBelarusian Greek Catholic churches. In 1646, further to the south inHungary, the Slavs in theEastern Carpathians with a Rusyn identity who entered communion with Rome at theUnion of Uzhhorod were also called Ruthenians. This created the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church. In the 19th century, the term Ruthenian Greek Catholic referred to the Carpatho-Rusyns fromAustria-Hungary, though their membership also included smaller numbers ofHungarians,Slovaks, and others.[4] Today that region is divided betweenUkraine,Slovakia,Hungary, andRomania.[5]
While Ruthenian Catholics are not the onlyEastern Catholics to utilize the Byzantine Rite in the United States, the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church refers to itself as the "Byzantine Catholic Church" for its U.S. jurisdiction.[5] Its full official name is the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh.[6]
The Ruthenian Church originally developed among theRusyn people who lived inCarpathian Ruthenia.[7] Christianity and the Byzantine Rite was brought to theSlavic peoples in the 9th century as a result of the missionary outreach ofSaints Cyril and Methodius, two Greek missionaries from the Byzantine Empire.
Following theGreat Schism of 1054, the Ruthenian Church retained its Orthodox ties[8][9] until the Union of Uzhhorod.
The present structure of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church traces its origins to the 1646Union of Uzhhorod, when Eastern Orthodox clergy were received into communion with the Holy See of Rome. Sixty three Ruthenian clergy were received into the Catholic Church; in 1664 a union reached atMunkács (today Mukachevo, Ukraine) brought additional communities into the Catholic communion.[9][10] In 1771Pope Clement XIV established theGreek Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo as asuffragan of theprimate of Hungary, to give the Ruthenian Greek Catholics a jurisdiction that was separate from theLatin Church.[9]
Initially, the Union only included lands owned or administered by the noble Drugeth family; essentially, most of the modern-dayPresov Region and part ofZakarpattia Oblast:Abov County,Gömör County,Sáros County,Szepes County,Torna County, northernZemplén County, parts ofUng County, and the city ofUzhhorod itself.
The resultingdioceses retained their Byzantine patrimony andliturgical traditions, and theirbishops were elected by a council composed ofBasilian monks andeparchial clergy. In this part of central and eastern Europe, theCarpathian Mountains straddle the borders of the present-day states ofHungary,Poland,Slovakia,Romania andUkraine. Today, the church is multi-ethnic. Members of the metropolitan province of Pittsburgh are predominantly English-speaking. Most are descendants of Rusyns – including sub-groups like theBoikos,Hutsuls andLemkos – but the descendants of other nationalities are also present such as Slovaks, Hungarians and Croats as well as those of non-Slavic and non-Eastern European ancestry. The modern Eparchy of Mukachevo in Ukraine is mostly Ukrainian-speaking but remains part of the greater Ruthenian Church.
After almost a thousand years of Hungarian rule the region became, in part, incorporated inCzechoslovakia afterWorld War I. During the 1920s some Ruthenian Catholics joined Orthodoxy, helping create theOrthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. AfterWorld War II the region was divided between two communist states: theSoviet Union andCzechoslovakia. The political changes after the war led to persecution of the Ruthenian Catholic Church in both countries, and also in the Lemko area ofPoland. This began a period of Ruthenian history that saw deportations, integration with the Orthodox Church, and assimilation into Ukrainian identity.[9][11]
Since the collapse ofCommunism the Ruthenian Catholic Church in Eastern Europe has seen a resurgence in numbers offaithful andpriests.[12] In 1996 theApostolic Exarchate of the Greek Catholic Church in the Czech Republic was established byPope John Paul II in the predominantlySlovak Greek Catholic eparchy of Prešov. There is a Rusyn population there, though another reason for this was because some Roman Catholic priests that had been secretly ordained in Czechoslovakia were married, which limited them to serve as deacons in the Latin Church. In 1997 some of them were received into the Apostolic Exarchate of the Ruthenian Church, where married priests are accepted.[9]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, various Byzantine Catholics fromAustria-Hungary arrived in the United States, particularly in coal mining towns.[8] Members of the predominantLatin Church Catholic hierarchy were sometimes disturbed by what they saw as the innovation, for the United States, of a married Catholic clergy. At their persistent request, theSacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith applied, on 1 May 1897, to the United States[13] rules already set out in a letter of 2 May 1890, toFrançois-Marie-Benjamin Richard, the LatinArchbishop of Paris.[14] These rules stated that onlycelibates and widowed priests coming without their children should be permitted in the United States.
The dissatisfaction of many Ruthenian Catholics had already given rise to some groups placing themselves under the jurisdiction of what is today theOrthodox Church in America (at that time a mission of theRussian Orthodox Church). The leader of this movement was the widowed Ruthenian Catholic priestAlexis Toth, whose mistreatment byArchbishopJohn Ireland ofSaint Paul,Minnesota, led to Toth's transfer to Eastern Orthodoxy. He brought with him many Ruthenian Catholics, around 20,000 by the time of his death with many who followed afterward, and wascanonized a saint by the Orthodox Church in America in 1996.[15]
The situation with Alexis Toth and the Latin Catholic bishops highlighted the need for American Eastern Catholics to have their own bishop. Pope Pius X appointed the Ukrainian bishopSoter Ortynsky in 1907 as bishop for all Slavic Eastern Catholics of the Byzantine rite in America. For this period the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholics were united to theUkrainian Greek Catholics in the same eparchy. Ethnic tensions flared due to cultural differences (mostly of a political nature) between Ukrainians who came from Austrian-ruledGalicia and the Rusyns and other Byzantine Catholics who came from theKingdom of Hungary.
This caused Rome to split the groups after Ortynsky's death, creating two ecclesiastical administrations for Eastern-rite Catholics in the United States, divided along nationality lines: one Ukrainian and the other Carpatho-Rusyn. Each was headed not by a bishop, but by an administrator: Father Peter Poniatyshyn for the Ukrainians and Father Gabriel Martyak for the Carpatho-Rusyns.[16][17] Later, the Rusyn priestBasil Takach was appointed and consecrated in Rome on his way to America as the new eparchy's bishop. Bishop Takach is considered the first bishop of Ruthenian Catholics in America, and his appointment as the official founding of the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh.
Clerical celibacy of American Eastern Catholics was restated with special reference to the Byzantine/Ruthenian Church by 1 March 1929, decreeCum data fuerit, which was renewed for a further 10 years in 1939. Due to this and other similar factors, 37 Ruthenian parishes transferred themselves into the jurisdiction of theGreek OrthodoxEcumenical Patriarch in 1938, creating theAmerican Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese.
In the 1950s the Ruthenian Church in the United States began undergoing a major expansion. Around this time, BishopNicholas Elko, the head of the Pittsburgh Ruthenian Greek Catholic Exarchate and its first American-born bishop, began using "Byzantine Catholic" instead of Greek Catholic to clarify to Americans the ritual identification of the Church. In 1956 Bishop Nicholas Elko established a newspaper calledThe Byzantine Catholic World.[18] TheDivine Liturgy began to be celebrated in English instead ofOld Church Slavonic, a sign of the Church's Americanization. A major point for the growth of the Church was theByzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius opening in 1951 to prepare priests for the exarchate.[19] Due to its growth, in 1963 Pope Paul VI divided the exarchate into two jurisdictions, upgraded toeparchies, one based in Pittsburgh and one based inPassaic, New Jersey.[18]
Pope Paul VI created the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church on 21 February 1969 in his decreeQuando Quidem Christus. The Eparchy of Munhall in Pittsburgh was upgraded to an archeparchy, becoming the Church'smetropolitan see, and the Eparchy of Passaic became itssuffragan diocese, along with a new diocese created for the western regions, the Eparchy of Parma, based inParma, Ohio. The new archbishop,Stephen Kocisko, became the first metropolitan in the Ruthenian Church. In 1977 the Archeparchy of Munhall was renamed the Byzantine Catholic Archeparchy of Pittsburgh. In 1981 another eparchy was created byPope John Paul II, the Eparchy of Van Nuys, which covered the farwestern United States and was based out ofVan Nuys, California.[18][19][20] Since 2010 it has been based out ofPhoenix, Arizona, and renamed to Eparchy of Holy Protection of Mary of Phoenix.[21]
Relations with the Latin Church Catholic hierarchy have improved, especially since theSecond Vatican Council, at which the Ruthenian Church influenced decisions regarding using thevernacular in theliturgy.[22] In its decreeOrientalium Ecclesiarum, the Second Vatican Council declared:
The Catholic Church holds in high esteem the institutions, liturgical rites, ecclesiastical traditions and the established standards of the Christian life of the Eastern Churches, for in them, distinguished as they are for their venerable antiquity, there remains conspicuous the tradition that has been handed down from the Apostles through the Fathers and that forms part of the divinely revealed and undivided heritage of the universal Church.[23]
The Second Vatican Council urged theEastern Rite Churches to eliminateliturgical Latinization and to strengthen their Eastern Christian identity. In June 1999 the Council of Hierarchs of the Byzantine Metropolitan Church Sui Iuris of Pittsburgh USA promulgated the norms of particular law to govern itself. In January 2007, the RevisedDivine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the RevisedDivine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great were promulgated. In December 2013, the Pope approved the request of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches that appropriate Eastern Church authorities be granted the faculty to allow pastoral service of Eastern married clergy also outside the traditional Eastern territory.
Membership within the Ruthenian Catholic Church, like the othersui iuris churches, is not limited to those who trace their heritage to the ethnic groups affiliated with the church.[24] The Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church in North America puts emphasis on its American identity and celebrates the liturgy in English.[9]
As of 2016[update], the membership of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church was estimated at some 419,500 faithful, with seven bishops, 664 parishes, 557 priests, 76 deacons, and 192 men and womenreligious.[25] The Church is not organised as a singlesynod. This is mainly because some of the priests and faithful of the Eparchy of Mukachevo desire that it should be part of theUkrainian Greek Catholic Church.[26] The eparchy is immediately subject to the Holy See and is dependent on theDicastery for the Eastern Churches.[27]
The North American jurisdiction of the Ruthenian Church, formally the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church of Pittsburgh, is the only self-governing Eastern Catholic metropolitan church in the United States. Its governing body is the Council of Hierarchs under the metropolitan archbishop, consisting of bishops from each eparchy.[28] The relationship between the three jurisdictions of the Ruthenian Church has not been clarified.[9]
Metropolitan Archbishop William C. Skurla commissioned a video documentary commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Catholic Church in the United States. Produced by Bob and Diane Grip, "Treasury of Blessings" aired on EWTN and is now available on YouTube.
People
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