Catholic Vitamin B2: Brotherhood

Dear Friends of Catholic Vitamins. This handsome gentleman in beautiful gold vestments is Deacon Craig Anderson. He’s a fire investigator for the San Jose Fire Department. In fact – his family roots go back 100 years to this beautiful part of the Bay Area.

Craig was born a Roman Rite Catholic but later ‘converted’ or more formally said, he petitioned to transfer to the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church. Once entered into the Ruthenian Church, Craig completed studies and formation to become a deacon. Don’t his vestments look beautiful?

I didn’t know until Craig shared word with me that this Rite is one of at least four of the Eastern Catholic Churches which are part of the Byzantine family.

* BYZANTINE CATHOLIC CHURCHWhat is an Eastern Catholic Church? The Catholic Church is a communion of churches. It is made up of churches from the Eastern Tradition and the Western Tradition. Eastern Catholics are in union with Rome. They share the same basic faith and the same mysteries (sacraments), however, their way of expressing them follows the same tradition as the Orthodox churches. In reality, there are many Eastern churches, each with its own heritage and theology, liturgy and discipline.Jesus sent his disciples to the four corners of the world to spread the Gospel. Eventually, four great centers of Christianity emerged with distinctive Christian customs, but the same faith. These centers were Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome and Alexandria. A few centuries later when the capital of the Roman Empire was moved to the Eastern city of Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople, an adaptation of the Antioch celebration of the liturgy was made.

From this powerful cultural center the Byzantine church emerged (Radvansky, Joseph. A Brief Explanation of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Introduction).

Our diocesan website is www.eparchyofphoenix.org

The Ruthenian faith-journey begins in the homeland of our ancestors, “the old country,” central Europe. Envision a map of the European continent. Our ancestral homeland known variously as Carpathian Rus’, Transcarpathia, Carpatho-Ruthenia, Carpatho-Russia, and Carpatho-Ukraine is the very heart of the picture, presently eastern Slovakia, southwest Ukraine, northeast Hungary and northwest Romania.The religious life of these people came from the East. Like the other East Slavs, the Carpatho-Rusins received Christianity from the Byzantine Empire.In the year 863, two Byzantine Greek missionaries, the brothers Cyril and Methodius – “The Apostles to the Slavs” – introduced Christianity and the new Slavonic alphabet to Greater Moravia, the present Czech Republic and Western Slovakia.Thereafter, the followers of these Byzantine missionaries moved eastward, eventually converting the Ruthenian people.