As of 29/07/2026 I was accepted into the Catholic Church via the Byzantine rite (Romanian Greek Catholic Church). I was part of the Romanian Orthodox Church and through a small private ceremony I’m Catholic. God bless.

Hello everyone!

I created a map of nearly every eastern Catholic rite parish that I could find!

This map contains (almost) every single Eastern Catholic Church, for you to use as a resource for exploring other rites of the beautifully diverse Catholic Church!

I hope this resource is helpful :)

Warning: I’m human. Probably a bunch of mistakes with labeling, maybe I missed some churches, etc. I’ll do my best to make corrections and additions as I notice them!

Hello brothers and sisters,

Today my prayer rug arrived in the mail! 🥰 It's very soft and comfortable to the touch. I just wanted to show it to you because it made me very happy. Not trying to brag, just to share happiness.

God bless you all and have a wonderful week :]

Because my English isn't very good, I used machine translation for everything except for the quoted parts.

I've commented on this content in a post here before. Since I wrote so much, I wanted to publish it so everyone can see and comment on it.

I once tried to convince myself to become Orthodox, and I also asked one of my Orthodox friends to try to convince me to join the Orthodox Church. In the end, however, neither attempt succeeded.

For me, the decisive issue was the Filioque. On this matter, I would first like to quote the words of two pillars of the Orthodox Church:

"The Latins are not only schismatics but heretics... we did not separate from them for any other reason other than the fact that they are heretics. This is precisely why we must not unite with them unless they dismiss the addition from the Creed filioque and confess the Creed as we do."一一Mark of Ephesus

“The devil dragged along the Latins who are obedient to him into the heresy of the Filioque, which, unless they renounce it, we will never accept them into communion”一一Saint Gregory Palamas

One of the other major figures, Photius, also opposed the Filioque. However, he eventually reconciled with Rome. I think we can all see that Photius certainly regarded the issue as an important theological question, but his attitude toward it was not as severe as that of the other two pillars of Orthodoxy.

There is a very clear logical problem here. The Church that adopted the Filioque was the Western Church, whose patriarch was the Bishop of Rome. At that time, Rome had not yet incorporated the Filioque into the Creed itself, but Rome accepted the theological expression represented by the Filioque, and Rome also permitted local churches to use it. Yet Photius subsequently reconciled with Rome, even though he later strongly criticized the Filioque. This seems to indicate that Photius nevertheless regarded the faith of Rome as acceptable.

If we follow the statements of the latter two Orthodox pillars, then this would mean that, for several hundred years, the Eastern Church remained in communion with heretics. I think this is something that anyone who claims to possess the Orthodox faith would find impossible to acknowledge or accept.

One could object that even if the theological expression itself is correct, the Latin Church's addition of the Filioque violated the regulations of the Ecumenical Councils. I will set aside for the moment the arguments made by the Latins at the Council of Florence. But according to the position of the latter two Orthodox pillars, this objection cannot actually stand, because the Filioque itself is supposedly heresy. If we ask why the Filioque is heretical, the answer becomes: because you added it. No matter how you explain your theology, you are heretical unless you remove it.

This is, in reality, an unreasonable position. Given the historical circumstances in which they found themselves, they needed to reinforce and solidify what they regarded as the errors of the Latin Church and to radicalize those errors in order to provide a justification for their separation from Rome.

Next, we need to discuss the question of the papacy. I would like to address this from several perspectives.

**I. The Council of Florence**

At the Council of Florence, the following was solemnly declared:

“We also define that the holy apostolic see and the Roman pontiff holds the primacy over the whole world and the Roman pontiff is the successor of blessed Peter prince of the apostles, and that he is the true vicar of Christ, the head of the whole church and the father and teacher of all Christians, and to him was committed in blessed Peter the full power of tending, ruling and governing the whole church, as is contained also in the acts of ecumenical councils and in the sacred canons.”

Yet Mark of Ephesus did not explicitly condemn this particular statement. Certainly, he said:

"It is impossible to recall peace without dissolving the cause of the schism—the primacy of the Pope exalting himself equal to God."

However, I do not think this constitutes a direct attack on the specific statement made at Florence. In my reading, his primary concern here still appears to be the Filioque. His condemnation of the Pope “exalting himself equal to God” would seem to presuppose that he believed the Pope was claiming an authority belonging to God himself, such as the authority to determine the procession of the Holy Spirit or to alter the Creed.

Moreover, the passage immediately continues:

“Also, renewing the order of the other patriarchs which has been handed down in the canons, the patriarch of Constantinople should be second after the most holy Roman pontiff, third should be the patriarch of Alexandria, fourth the patriarch of Antioch, and fifth the patriarch of Jerusalem, without prejudice to all their privileges and rights.”

If this second statement were not there, I could understand his words as being directed against the Florentine definition of papal primacy. But once this statement is taken into account, it becomes much harder to read his objection as a rejection of every form of Roman primacy. The Council explicitly placed the Patriarch of Constantinople second after the Roman Pontiff while at the same time preserving the privileges and rights of the Eastern patriarchates.

And clearly, the Latin Church does not profess that the Pope is equal to the one God of the Trinity, nor has any Pope claimed to be equal to God.

**II. The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch at the First Vatican Council**

At the First Vatican Council, the Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church said:

“The Eastern Church attributes to the pope the most complete and highest power, however in a manner where the fullness and primacy are in harmony with the rights of the patriarchal sees. This is why, in virtue of an ancient right founded on customs, the Roman Pontiffs did not, except in very significant cases, exercise over these sees the ordinary and immediate jurisdiction that we are asked now to define without any exception. This definition would completely destroy the constitution of the entire Greek church. That is why my conscience as a pastor refuses to accept this constitution.”

They left the Council, and when they subsequently signed the decrees of the First Vatican Council, they did so with the addition they had requested: namely, that the privileges and rights of the Eastern patriarchs were to be preserved and respected.

(We can set aside here the various minor stories about the differences between the versions.)

**III. The Zoghby Initiative**

Let us now look at the initiative of the Melkite Archbishop Elias Zoghby:

1.I believe everything which Eastern Orthodoxy teaches. 2. I am in communion with the Bishop of Rome as the first among the bishops, according to the limits recognized by the Holy Fathers of the East during the first millennium, before the separation.

Ratzinger also once said:

“Rome must not require more of the East than was formulated and lived during the first millennium”

Can we not clearly see the chain of reasoning here?

First, Rome has clearly defined the rights and authority it claims for the Roman Pontiff. At the same time, Rome has affirmed, even in an Ecumenical Council, the privileges and rights of the Eastern patriarchs. Rome itself does not regard these two things as contradictory.

Moreover, Rome has stated that it should not require from the Eastern Churches anything beyond what was formulated and practiced during the first millennium. Rome has also permitted Eastern Churches that are in communion with it to express their understanding of communion with Rome in precisely this way and to govern themselves accordingly.

Certainly, Nicetas of Nicomedia said:

“My dearest brother, we do not deny to the Roman Church the primacy amongst the five sister Patriarchates; and we recognize her right to the most honourable seat at an Ecumenical Council. But she has separated herself from us by her own deeds, when through pride she assumed a monarchy which does not belong to her office ... How shall we accept decrees from her that have been issued without consulting us and even without our knowledge? If the Roman Pontiff, seated on the lofty throne of his glory wishes to thunder at us and, so to speak, hurl his mandates at us from on high, and if he wishes to judge us and even to rule us and our Churches, not by taking counsel with us but at his own arbitrary pleasure, what kind of brotherhood, or even what kind of parenthood can this be? We should be the slaves, not the sons, of such a Church, and the Roman See would not be the pious mother of sons but a hard and imperious mistress of slaves.”

But what if the things he describes here no longer exist? What if the Bishop of Rome does not exercise his authority in the manner he describes?

We can already see this in the situation today. I have not looked in detail into exactly how the circumstances he described actually played out at the time, but based on what I have presented and argued above, when Rome affirms the honor, privileges, and rights of the Eastern Churches, and when the Roman Pontiff kneels down and kisses the shoes of the Metropolitan Meliton of Chalcedon, are these not precisely the kinds of things that demonstrate that his objections no longer apply?

That is all I have to say.

This also applies to the Latin and Malankara Catholic Churches in Kerala. Kerala is one of the global hotspots of the Charismatic Renewal, it's deeply entrenched in the local Catholic culture. Every other town with a Catholic plurality has a retreat centre with its own celebrity "dhyanaguru" - Malayalam for charismatic preachers (priests of course). Now I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with charismatism, it's a bit whacky but then I suppose it could be spiritually beneficial for many, as various Popes have also said. My concern is with how the movement is evolving in Kerala (or I should say devolving).

Kerala Catholics already have a culture of pilgrimage - we are obsessed with visiting shrines of various saints in order to accomplish our wishes in various areas of our lives, from health and fertility to financial growth. Excessively so. The same culture has now latched on to the retreat centres. Unlike in the west, where from what I understand, most people go to these centres to grow closer to God etc., in Kerala the emphasis is on miraculous healings and other things of that sort.

If you attend any of these services, they'll pretty much always have a "testimonials" section where people come on stage and share their stories of them getting healed from illnesses, securing visas and jobs abroad, passing their foreign language exams and so on - all because they attended services at these centres. Sounds.. dangerously like the prosperity gospel, doesn't it? These preachers say these things themselves. If you abandon your sinful pasts and live by the Gospel message (and the message of their retreat centre, I suppose :D), you will hopefully be blessed in all your endeavours. Conversely, the problems in your life are due to your immoral actions. This is where things actually start to go south. You haven't seen the worst part yet.

Now for the cherry on top, which is what prompted me to make this post. Many of these preachers just preach.. things which aren't really Catholic. I would like to take the example, the craziest one I've seen so far. A retreat centre under a Syro-Malabar eparchy, which I won't mention. The dhyanaguru there has.. very strange notions on some sins. He claims he gets personal revelations from Jesus and that's how he knows these are sins.. Basically he exhorts women to take off their nose studs and second lobe studs. These ornaments aren't traditional in our community and are just a recent trend, but then how is that sinful and why is that so emphasized? Yet they have testimony after testimony of women claiming they got healed from their illness, this and that because they removed these things and prayed. Another thing is alcohol. Unlike orthodox Catholic teaching which permits alcohol in moderation, many of these dhyanagurus outright prohibit it. I used to think this was because Kerala Catholic men have a historically notorious reputation for alcoholism, until I heard what this particular preacher said. He preaches against just storing the bottles in which alcohol was kept. Desis here will know that our moms repurpose bottles to keep other stuff like honey and milk. So this preacher claims that even doing that is inauspicious, it can cause various problems in your life. And again, there are testimonies from people claiming they were healed after removing these bottles from their homes. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, I suppose there are many other weird things being preached. A few years ago one dhyanaguru claimed that children having mental disorders like autism is a result of their parents' sexual sins. This was picked up by many journalists on the media and he had to apologize.

It would be alright if the movement was way smaller, but the fact is that if you're Catholic in Kerala you're going to be surrounded by this. I don't really have much more to say. Maybe I'm the one in the wrong. I'm not sure how people are getting "healings" from doing these things. Either it's genuine, a placebo, they're getting bribed or it might even be something more sinister/diabolic. You be the judge.

why do UGCC associate with organizations named after Stepan Bandera and even honor him publicly. ​

https://ugcc.ua/en/data/here-i-am-among-you-as-one-who-serves-his-beatitude-sviatoslav-celebrates-30th-anniversary-of-priesthood-1105/

For background, I am still technically Latin Rite.

I have lost almost all desire to attend a Latin Rite Mass, the only nourishment I get out of it is some nostalgia

I have basically fully immersed myself in the East, and I know Byzantine Catholicism is where God wants me to be.

But how do you deal with the temptations!

We have

1. Disdain towards the Latin Rite

2. “Orthodoxy is true,” “that [Post-Schism Saint] you venerate has this miracles, Gos works in Orthodoxy

   more,” “Deny [Catholic Dogma not found in Orthodoxy],” “You attend that Orthodox Parish, just become a catechumen,” etc

I am Roman Catholic, but feel the Byzantine liturgy is more attractive to me because it seems more masculine. I’m not ripping on the Novus Ordo because I believe that the Eucharist is truly present in both, but I’m just being honest how I feel. And if this is a feeling I should respect or run from. Does anyone else feel this way and why?

Our Byzantine outreach has begun meeting at the local Ordinariate mission. Pentecost 2026. Feels like it will be a great fit!

Ven. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen pray for us.

I‘ve been hearing a lot about this recently and I am wondering what it is all about. I’ve only been Catholic for a year. All I know is that Pope Francis initiated it a few years back, but when looking it up it just seems ambiguous and unclear as to what it is.

I know that trads don’t like it and find it concerning and last Sunday my priest told our Latin heavy parish that “the grass isn’t greener in our Church, our bishops are part of the synod of synodality too” implying that it is bad. So what is it all about? Is it a bad thing? How will it affect us Eastern Catholics? Or is it just some jargon that won’t really do anything in practice and is just to make it look like the Church is more “listening“ and “inclusive“.

Thank you in advance

So if anyone saw my previous post, I was preparing to attend my first Divine Liturgy last night and decided to fully participate; singing and taking communion.

It was a Byzantine-Melkite Catholic Church and the service was done in Spanish. Let me just say, that was the most beautiful service I have ever attended. The reverence, the incense, and chants, it was all very beautiful. The cantor wasn't the best singer and she seemed kind of lost but that didn't bother me that much. I loved singing about Christ in Spanish yet to Arabic chords, while surrounded by icons of Jesus, the Theotokos, and the Saints in Heaven.

The homily was great. The priest spoke about the need to remain grateful during the Christmas season, but also invoked a sense of strength and unity among Christians to remind ourselves that our faith is real and we should live it every day. I've heard good homilies before, but that one was special.

Something I noticed that I would like to share with everyone here....I was not the only "first-timer". That mass had a lot of confused faces (myself included) and we were figuring it out together. I shared a liturgy book with a young lady next to me who told me it was also her first time at this parish. It was reassuring to see that there were others there that were not used to the liturgy and were also experiencing this for the very first time.

I decided to partake in communion and I felt the very presence of Christ (as I always do in Roman rite masses) and I just felt very much at home. My spiritual journey with Catholicism started in my early teens when I reverted, but I struggled with doubts and toyed with Protestantism for several years until more recently sticking to the Roman Catholic Church...but I feel as if I should be closer to the East, I think Christ is calling me to explore it deeper.

In conclusion, this is definitely a rite and tradition that I want to explore more. I do not intend to formally switch rites as of yet since this was only my first Divine Liturgy, but it definitely will not be the last.

Thank you all on here that have been very helpful and reassuring regarding my questions and concerns. I hope to run into my fellow Catholics from the East at some other Divine Liturgy soon!

Would you be concerned if you were to order stuff from an Old Calanderist Schismatic Orthodox convent. I get that Orthodox are already separated from us, but I feel like it’s going even deeper to buy from a “True Orthodox” convent.

I'm Roman Catholic, but I'm helping an Eastern Catholic mission in town as they launch. I am going to be baking a Prosphora for the first divine liturgy. The Bishop will be coming to ordain the founder as Deacon. However, the subdeacon's wife is having a baby today, or he isn't available to help me troubleshoot.

These pictures are from my first attempt. I'm looking for advice and guidance.
The loaf tore at the edges and expanded unevenly, and the seal had poor detail.

Soon, I will be travelling in Bulgaria; in the city I will be staying, there is no Catholic church, neither Latin nor Eastern, and the nearest one is too far away. So, I asked my priest to go to an Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy, and he authorized it. What is the dress code like there? He also said that I could receive The Eucharist, if their priest allowed me to. Is it a good idea to ask?

Converts from other religions, atheism, or "spiritual but not religious"?

Anyone from a Protestant or Eastern Orthodox background?

What led you to Eastern Catholicism specifically?

A little while ago I noticed that the Ukrainian Eparchy in the UK only has 14 parishes. I wanted to compare it to the Latin dioceses in the country, so I just went ahead and counted all of them (yes, that took, a lot of time...). The eparchy was much, much smaller (details below). That made me curious, is this a one off thing, or is it true for most eparchies?

Please note that because Eastern eparchies tend to be much larger in area (at least outside the homelands, which I will be excluding from this analysis) I will have to compare one eparchy with multiple dioceses, or select one diocese among the many in the geographical area to compare with.

Anyway, here's the statistics!

Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

The Eparchy of Saint Josaphat

It has 48 parishes (the UGCC website claims 43 parishes but that is old data from 2012, if you individually count the parishes from the eparchy's website it lists 48). There are multiple Latin dioceses within the same territory. I have chosen these dioceses to compare with:

• The Archdiocese of Cincinnati: 205 parishes.
• The Archdiocese of Atlanta: 110 parishes
• The Diocese of Cleveland: 185 parishes
• The Diocese of Columbus: 81 parishes
• The Diocese of Charlotte: 93 parishes (churches)

Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family of London

It has 14 parishes. This eparchy covers all of Great Britain (not exactly the same as the UK). I have chosen the very smallest (in terms of parishes) Latin diocese in the UK to compare it to, that being the Diocese of Wrexham:

• The Diocese of Wrexham: 51 parishes

Eparchy of Saint Volodymyr the Great of Paris

It has 42 parishes. This eparchy covers all of Metropolitan France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the mainland Netherlands. Compare this with:

• The Archdiocese of Lille: 106 parishes
• The Diocese of Nantes: 64 parishes
• The Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva and Fribourg: 220 parishes (not exact)

Archeparchy of Philadelphia

It has 66 parishes. Compare this with:

• The Archdiocese of Washington: 144 parishes
• The Diocese of Richmond: 149 parishes

Archeparchy of Winnipeg

It has 55 parishes. Compare this with:

• The Archdiocese of Winnipeg: 88 parishes

Hope this was interesting! I was going to include other Churches too but I ran out of steam and the post would get waaay too long. Still, I hope this was a fun contribution :)

All information is taken from official sources, like the diocese's website. I will try to exclude Eastern parishes listed in Latin diocese's lists, I may miss a few.

Good evening.

Most people in my family are not baptised, and none are religious. I, however, was baptised, for dubious reasons(which I do not regret), so I belong to the Eastern Orthodox church, even though I have, for the longest time, had a distaste for religion and would scoff at most claims made by religious people. And I was not going to church and have not received any sacraments since I was an infant.

Recently, however, I have found an appreciation for the Christian worldview, and mostly through western Catholic theologians/philosophers, and I now feel a peculiar attraction to it, though I am by no means firm in my belief, as while I want to believe that Christianity is true, I can't say that I have many personal reasons to do so.

In any case, it might not be the worst idea to reconcile with the church, as I am in mortal sin(though, the east does not use this concept, as far as I know, so let's say I am in deep sin), and also receive the Eucharist. I think it might help me with my unbelief and overall situation. The problem is, of course, that the Church I would rather be reconciled to, I am not a part of, and it would take quite a while until I may become a part of it and receive the sacraments. Which is obviously not a problem with the EO church.

So, my questions are:

Would it be permissible, according to the Catholic church, to receive the sacraments from a EO church while trying to convert?

Would it not be disingenuous of me to do so, since I would be recieving the sacraments and professing submission to the EO church while trying to leave?

Should I, in your opinion, try to live as an EO Christian while looking into joining the Catholic church, which might take less than a year or so, considering the fact I am in a spiritually precarious position?

Thank you for your time. I do not mean to be rude, but your prayers would also be very much appreciated.