Our History  

St. Mary’s is a member of a branch of the Catholic Community known as the Byzantine Church. The bishop having responsibility for St. Mary’s supervises a diocese separate from the larger Latin Church, while still reporting to the Pope. A few thoughts as to how this arrangement came about is appropriate. 

We need to discuss the creation of the Byzantine Church, since it is not well-known; some have called it “…the best kept secret in the Catholic Church.” Although more widely known in recent years, the Byzantine Catholic Church is not well understood. Most Christians and even many Catholics have never heard of it and this has inevitably led to confusion. Frequently, Byzantine Catholics have been confused with their fellow Eastern Christians, the Orthodox. On other occasions, Catholics of the Latin Church have erroneously considered the Byzantine branch of Catholicism to be of lesser standing than their own. These misconceptions have robbed many of an exposure to the riches of Byzantine spiritual life. A vast spiritual treasury resides within the Byzantine Church, which is also Catholic, and should not be hidden from view. As Pope Saint John Paul II described it, the Catholic Church must breathe with two lungs, the Byzantine Church of the East as well as the Latin Church of the West. The Second Vatican Council teaches us the following: “The Catholic Church values highly the institutions of the Eastern Churches, their liturgical rites, ecclesiastical traditions, and their ordering of the Christian life.”[i] But, what, specifically, is the Byzantine Church and what is its origin?

After the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the leadership of the Church preached the truth given to them by the Lord and did this within the cultural situation in which they lived. Doing so was natural and practical and it reflected the very Eastern culture they lived in. Growth was rapid in all parts of the Roman Empire and despite fierce persecutions, within several centuries, it became the most vibrant religion in the region. Finally, tolerated by the Empire in the fourth century, Christianity began to eclipse paganism, which was dying. In time, certain large cities were considered major centers of Christianity; they were Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and New Rome or, as it is called, Constantinople, founded in the fourth century. All became the headquarters of spiritual leaders known as Patriarchs.

Currently referred to as Istanbul in western Turkey, our focus will be on the last of those major metropolitan centers, Constantinople, as it is from there that the Byzantine Church has its origins. Also referred to as Byzantium, Constantinople for eleven centuries was the major influence in the Mediterranean region, regarding art, architecture, diplomacy and, especially, with respect to matters of faith. Missionaries from this city evangelized the Middle East as well as the eastern European countries of Russia, Ukraine, Slovakia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania.

For over one thousand years, Christianity, both of the East and the West, remained officially united and with stable borders, despite disagreements and some clashes with outsiders. Two events changed this condition of relative calm. In the year 1054 A.D., a definitive split occurred between Rome and the Church of the East; the Pope of Rome and the Patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other over matters of doctrine, such as the authority of the Pope, the existence of Purgatory, the source of the Holy Spirit and other issues. Christianity is still split between its Catholic West and its Orthodox East after the passing of nearly one thousand years.

Four hundred years later in 1453 A.D., Constantinople was conquered by the Muslim Turks after a prolonged conflict. The mutual excommunications of 1054 A.D. isolated Byzantine Christianity and made it more vulnerable to Muslim assaults. The fall of its capital sapped its vitality and diminished its influence and the size of its membership. Immediately before the calamity of 1453 A.D., a serious attempt was made to reunify the two Churches at the Council of Florence in Italy. Held between 1438 A.D. and 1445 A.D., representatives of both sides agreed to the joining of the two Churches by recognizing the diverse traditions involved within the whole Church. Each Church could keep its spiritual, disciplinary and liturgical heritage, while accepting a single doctrinal system. After Florence, most of the Eastern Churches, which had accepted the agreement, signed there later rejected it; despite this set-back, the Catholic Church eventually entered into unions with certain Eastern Churches, utilizing this Council’s basic principle: spiritual and cultural differences would be accepted, given that there is doctrinal unity.

In 1596 A.D., the Ukrainian Catholic Church came into existence at the Union of Brest in western Ukraine by the agreement of the Orthodox Metropolitan or Archbishop of Kiev and several other bishops to be unified with Rome. Later, in 1646 A.D., a similar agreement was reached with Slovak bishops at the Union of Uzhorod. Following this, attempts at unification in the Middle East ultimately resulted in the creation of the Melkite Catholic Church, one of the Byzantine Church’s largest branches.

In 1698 A.D., at the Synod of Alba, consisting of the local bishop and his priests, a portion of the Orthodox Church in Romania accepted the same conditions in order to join with the Catholic Church, forming what would ultimately be called the Romanian Catholic Church. Over a century ago, immigrants from Romania came to the United States and settled mainly in the Mid-West, forming parishes where they lived. In the late 1980s, Rome organized these parishes into a Romanian Catholic Diocese, of which St. Mary’s is a part. Today, this diocese spans the breadth of the entire United States includes two parishes in Canada.