The third part of this series should be going live this coming week and will be on the Alexandrian Rite. This is a liturgical tradition many in the West might not have too much interaction with, outside of the occasional Coptic Orthodox Church, which dwarfs the Coptic Catholic Church in size. Here's a preview of that essay for you to check out now, and I'll post the link to the full article once it's live this coming week.
The universal Catholic Church has many different ways
of expressing the fullness of the Truth handed down by Christ to His Apostles
and their successors. We see these different ways of expressing our Catholic
faith manifested in the Churches of the West and the East, in which, as the
Fathers of the Second Vatican Council proclaimed, “exists an admirable bond of
union, such that the variety within the Church in no way harms its unity;
rather it manifests it, for it is the mind of the Catholic Church that each
individual Church or Rite should retain its traditions whole and entire…”
As detailed in the first part of this series of
essays, there are no less than six different ways of expressing the One, Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic faith, and we call these expressions “Rites”, which are
further subdivided into 24 sui iuris,
or self-governing, Churches. All 24 of these sui iuris Churches are in communion with the Pope in Rome and
recognize him as the Vicar of Christ. One of these six Rites is the Latin Rite
of the West, which contains the Roman Catholic Church. The other five Rites are
from the East, which contain the other 23 sui
iuris Churches. In the second part of this series, we delved into the rich
patrimony of the Armenian Rite, which houses the Armenian Catholic Church. In
this essay, we will explore a part of the Church many in the West are not
familiar with as most of these Catholics still reside in the Eastern part of
Africa. We focus now on the Catholic Churches which express themselves
according to the Alexandrian Rite. There are three Churches which use the
Alexandrian Rite in their liturgies: the Coptic Catholic Church, the Ethiopian
Catholic Church and the Eritrean Catholic Church. Sometimes, the Alexandrian
Rite is also called the Ge’ez Rite when referring to the Ethiopian and Eritrean
Catholic Churches, as these two Churches say the Divine Liturgy in the Ge’ez
language, while the Coptic Catholic Church traditionally utilizes the Coptic
language in its liturgies. We will briefly explore the traditions, history,
liturgical practices and great figures of these three particular Churches so we
may, as Pope St. John Paul II has exhorted us, “be familiar with that tradition
[of the Eastern Churches], so as to be nourished by it…”
History
Coptic
Catholic Church
According to tradition, the Alexandrian Church was
founded by St. Mark the Evangelist. Most Coptic Christians today are members of
the Coptic (Oriental) Orthodox Church of Alexandria, which broke away from the
Catholic Church following the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon following
disagreements on Christological doctrines. There were many Christians who
remained in the Egyptian region that were never out of communion with the
Catholic Church, as there were many Latin Catholic bishops who served over the
region before full reunion was made. Over the centuries, there were some
attempts at a restoration of communion with the Holy See which unfortunately
produced few results. Most notable among these attempts, was the signing of the
Cantate Domino by a delegation of
Coptic Orthodox bishops at the Ecumenical Council of Florence in 1442, asking
for communion with the pope in Rome. It wasn’t until the middle of the 18th
century when reunion was officially recognized.
In 1741, Coptic bishop Anba Athanasius became
Catholic, and in that same year he was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV as the
Apostolic Vicar of the nearly 2,000 Coptic Catholics in the region. Bishop
Athanasius later returned to the Coptic Orthodox after a few years, but a line
of bishops succeeded him in his apostolic vicariate through the 19th
century. In 1824, Pope Leo XII established the patriarchate of Alexandria (thus
restoring one of the five original patriarchal episcopal sees that existed
before the Great Schism in 1054) with Bishop Maximos Jouwed as Patriarch, but
this basically only existed on paper as the Ottoman Empire did not allow the
Coptic Catholic Church to even build churches until 1829. As the population of
Coptic Catholics increased over the next few decades, Pope Leo XIII finally
re-established the patriarchate by appointing Bishop Cyril Makarios as Coptic
Catholic patriarch of Alexandria. After Patriarch Cyril’s resignation in 1908,
the office of Patriarch remained vacant until 1947 when Bishop Markos II
Khouzam was elected Patriarch.
Ethiopian
Catholic Church
Tradition holds that the first people to spread the
Gospel in the Ethiopian region were two of the Apostles, Ss. Matthew and
Bartholomew. Like the Copts, most Ethiopian Christians today are Orthodox and
belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which also broke from the
Catholic Church following the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th
century. And just like with the Coptic Catholic Church, there were many
attempts at reconciliation between the Catholic and Orthodox Church in
Ethiopia. In 1439, Pope Eugene IV tried to get through to the Ethiopian emperor,
but his message fell on deaf ears. Nearly 100 years later, attacks from Muslim
insurgents ravaged the region, and many Christians were being forced to decide
between submission to Islam or death. The emperor appealed to Portugal for
help, and with the navy came a swift defeat of the Muslim attackers, as well as
Jesuit missionaries, hoping to unite the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. In
1622, their efforts seemed to find success when the Ethiopian emperor Susenyos
converted and made Catholicism the state religion. However, trouble was soon on
the horizon.
In 1623, Pope Gregory XV named Jesuit Afonso Mendes
the Patriarch of the Ethiopian Church. Mendes’ episcopacy did not last long. He
brought sweeping reforms to the Ethiopian Church, and imposed several
Latinizations which angered the Christians there who had been following the
Alexandrian Rite for several centuries beforehand. Mendes also imposed many
Western customs on his flock, and changed the Ethiopian liturgical calendar to
the Latin calendar. Emperor Susenyos implemented these Latinizations with
force. Following this implementation, civil war broke out and lasted for around
five years amidst much bloodshed, and in the end, Susenyos abdicated the
throne, saying that both the Ethiopian Orthodox and Latin Catholic traditions
would be tolerated. The next emperor, Susenyos’s son, dissolved the union between
Rome and Ethiopia in 1636, and Mendes was expelled from the Ethiopian region,
as were the rest of the missionaries that remained alive. Many missionaries
were martyred and Catholic books and missals were burned following the Jesuit
missionaries’ expulsion. 200 years would pass before any Catholic missionaries
came back to the region.
 |
| Cardinal Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, Metropolitan of the Ethiopian Catholic Church |
In 1839, Italian Lazarist and Capuchin friars were
allowed to come into the region on a limited basis. This time, the missionary
envoy did much better. St. Justin de Jacobis led these efforts, and instead of
imposing Latinizations, he adapted to the liturgical traditions of the
Ethiopian Christians there, and won many converts from the Orthodox Church. St.
Justin was ordained a bishop and was given the faculties to administer the
sacraments in the Alexandrian Rite and in 1849 was named the Apostolic Vicar of
Abyssinia, thus establishing the Ethiopian Catholic Church in full communion
with Rome. In 1961, the Ethiopian Catholic Church was raised to a
Metropolitanate when the city of Addis Abba became Metropolitan Archeparchy. A
metropolitan sui iuris Church differs
from a patriarchal sui iuris Church
in that it is “presided over by the Metropolitan of a determined see who has
been appointed by the Roman Pontiff and is assisted by a council of hierarchs
according to the norm of law" (CCEO. 155§1). The Ethiopian Catholic Church
is one of five Eastern Catholic Churches that are Metropolitan Churches.
Eritrean
Catholic Church
The Eritrean Catholic Church is the newest sui iuris Church established. Pope
Francis separated it from the Ethiopian Catholic Church in January 2015. This
is a direct result of the Eritrean War of Independence which ended in 1991. In
1993, the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church was established, and it was only a
matter of time until the same happened in the Catholic Church. This was
foreseen when Pope St. John Paul II created two new eparchies in Keren and
Barentu, Eritrea in 1993.
Therefore, the Eritrean Catholic Church shares much of
its history with the Ethiopian Catholic Church. The current Archeparchy of Asmara
was established in 1961.
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