Posted by rjklancko
on 9/6/2009, 7:30 pm, in reply to "Re: The real reason why Carpatho-Russians are 'under Constantinople'"
I leo, I recently gave a series of lectures on the history of the eastern churches of connecticut and as part of it spoke about these eastern churches united with rome.
as an aside there is a galicia in poland - where my roots lie and a galicia between spain and france
first question - in the early part of the 20th century, in america, all of the slavic uniate ( now considered a bad word) or eastern rite ( now also considered out of favor) eastern catholics were under one administration - one bishop. However there was a lack of harmony ( i am being kind) between those from galicia ( then in poland)and those from what was then czechoslovakia - the languages differed, the customs differed and the alphabets differed -- to create order the pope issued a bull -circa 1917 - essentially stating that those from the north western slope of the carpathian mountains - galicia - were to be considered ukrainian and such an administration was erected and then for those from czechoslovakia and hungary - south western slope - were ruthenian. that is why for example here in the usa, there is a ukrainian jurisdiction with perhaps some 300 parishes and a ruthenian with some 250. Most of the OCA came from splits in the galician/ukrainian group and those of the carpatho-russian orthodox came from splits in the ruthenian ( very simplistic overview)
now for question 2 - there are those in communion with rome who are from the middle east ( chaldeans, syriacs, copts, armenians, melkite, maronite etc) simplistically many formed a relationship with rome about, during or slightly after the period of the crusades. Except the melkites who joined in then latter half of the 1700's ( my notes with the exact times are in storage) the melkites joined - a major reason - because they wanted arab bishops and not greek and rome gave them arab bishops - about 100 years later the antiochians got their arab bishops ( similiar to the situation in jerusalem today with greek bishops over arab laity - this does not breeed for harmony)
on the slavic side there were two unions Uzhorod and Brest-Litvosk - these were in the 15th and 16th centuries and essentially due to eastern churches being in latin dominated areas and for survival and to keep from being completely latinized compromised and accepted the leadership of rome while preserving their liturgical practices. ( again a very simplistic explanation)
however our eastern catholic bretheren may see it a tad differently - unfortunately the polemics are age old and very confusing.
what we see is that, especially in america, the eastern rites are dying with most of their youth going to latin rite churches or elsewhere - this is partly due to ethnocentricity and partly due to latin rite polices that favor the latin over the eastern rite.
I truly hope this simplistic explanation is helpful
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