Now you've gone and done it, watch the Eastern Rite Catholics come out of the woodwork for weeks. Whaddabout Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople, what are they, chopped liver?
Congrats on the new book!
LOLOL! Thank you so much for your encouragements!
Hardly, JerseyHighlander. The Eastern Rite came out of the same place that the Church of Rome did: The holy city of Jerusalem, with the coming of Jesus Christ. To me this makes them kin.
Christianity in any form did not hit the public notice of Rome until fairly well along in the post-republican (that is to say imperial) period. Until Constantine, most emperors at Rome were happy to supply Christians to the public games, or otherwise make their lives as miserable as possible in this life, well before the Church divided into "east" and "west."
Again, the Eastern Church and the Church at Rome are eternal bothers -- by shared experience, by common suffering, all according to the exigencies of a common human history, illuminated by a basic theology, which -- details of doctrinal difference on the "finer points" notwithstanding -- both East and West cherish in common, as brothers under our Father in heaven, by means of our kinship to His Son, Jesus Christ, the Logos.
May God bless us all. Thank you so much for writing, JerseyHighlander.
You've pegged the Eastern-rite Catholics incorrectly, dear one. Jerusalem is all-sufficient to speak of the East's contribution, and for Byzantine Catholics mention of Athens and Rome speaks to a historical reality we all embrace.