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Here’s story about a church closure with a happy ending —and a church transformation that you don’t hear about very often: A Yonkers Roman Catholic church shuttered last year in a parish consolidation will celebrate its rebirth Saturday  as an Eastern Rite congregation.The Rev. Sunny Mathew, 43, the new congregation’s pastor, said the move to Yonkers realizes a longtime dream for his parishioners, who began their congregation in 1984 in New York City. Most Holy Trinity Church at 18 Trinity Plaza will be occupied by St. Mary’s Malankara Catholic Church, an Indian congregation that for 17 years worshiped in the chapel at Salesian High School in New Rochelle.“It...

Our Lady’s Maronite Catholic Church I was raised as a Latin Rite Catholic. I did not hear that there was such a thing as the “Eastern Rite” until I was about 20 years of age. I was attending Christian Brothers College (now Christian Brothers University) in Memphis, Tennessee, and I took a concentration of courses in Religion and Culture (one short of a minor). My father, who was not Catholic, and I were talking about religion one day when he mentioned the Eastern Rite.Like many Catholics I have met since then, I asked what is often the question when someone...

I began life in the broad mainstream of American Evangelicalism, a tradition quite similar in many respects to the Baptists, the notable differences being the contemporary worship style of my denomination and the greater freedom of theological speculation enjoyed by local communities. Later in life and late in my search for more authentic religion, which had previously compelled me to examine the early Church Fathers and afterward ushered me through the annals of ecclesiastical history, I encountered a strange assembly of Christians called the Eastern Orthodox. Strange at least to Western eyes, since they are so seldom heard from or...

Father Wissam Akiki with his wife and daughter, Perla, at her first Communion. ST. LOUIS — Surrounded by his wife, daughter and the bishops of his Church, Father Wissam Akiki made history in February as the first married man in 90 years to enter the priesthood for the Maronite Catholic Church in the U.S. Kp> But for Catholics of most Eastern-rite Churches in the U.S., including the Maronites, the fact the priest is a married man isn’t that extraordinary: What’s extraordinary is that they have to ask the Vatican for permission to ordain married men in the first place. snip...

In the Arab countries they are fewer and fewer, driven to exodus by growing hostility. An up-to-date map of how many and who they are, three months before the pope's voyage to the Holy Land by Sandro Magister ROME, February 11, 2014 – Behind the scenes preparations are in full swing for the voyage of Pope Francis to the Holy Land, scheduled for May 24-26. When half a century ago Pope VI went to Jerusalem - the first pope in history to do do so - almost all of the holy places of the city were within the boundaries of...

Ancient Bible in Aramaic dialected Syriac rediscovered in Turkey The relic was ‘rediscovered’ in the depositum of Ankaran Justice Palace, the ancient version of bible is believed to be written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus. Ankara / Turkey – The bible was already in custody of Turkish authorities after having been seized in 2000 in an operation in Mediterranean area in Turkey. The gang of smugglers had been charged with smuggling antiquities, illegal excavations and the possession of explosives and went to trial. Turkish police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript...

The first reaction of visitors to my lovely parish church is generally one of bewilderment, as they anoint themselves with air after reaching out for a holy water font inside the door and coming up empty. No statues, either. No stations of the cross. No confessionals or Rosary group either, for that matter. The first question visitors usually ask is, “Is this a Catholic Church?” Why, yes, it is. But not in the way most Catholics would expect. A young man in my parish once summed up the prevailing assumption when he told me that he hadn’t been able to...

WASHINGTON, February 9, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - One of the Rites in the Catholic Church other than the Roman rite, is the Maronite Rite.  While centered in Lebanon where the Maronite Patriarch resides, it has adherents throughout North America as well.  The Maronite rite is unique for its celebration of central part of the Mass in Aramaic - the language Jesus spoke with his apostles. One of the hundreds of bishops who attended the March for Life Mass in Washington DC last month, was Maronite Bishop Gregory John Mansour who oversees the Maronite rite for all of the Eastern United...

  BackgroundSaint Maroun, born in the middle of the 4th century was a priest who latter became a hermit, retiring to a mountain of Taurus near Antioch. His holiness and miracles attracted many followers, and drew attention throughout the empire. St John of Chrysostom sent him a letter around 405 AD expressing his great love and respect asking St Maroun to pray for him. The Maronite MovementSt Maroun is considered the Father of the spiritual and monastic movement now called the Maronite Church. This movement had a profound influence on Northern Syria and Lebanon. Saint Maroun spent all of...

The Romanian Greek-Catholic Community is facing with a cultural and religious wipe-out: the Greek-Catholic churches are systematically destroyed by the Orthodox Church representatives, whose actions are supported and accepted by the Romanian authorities, the Romanian Greek-Catholic Association accuses in a letter addressed to Hillary Clinton, the US state secretary. Romanian Greek-Catholic Association, Inc. is a non-for-profit association registered in the United States of America, aiming to support the Greek-Catholic communities. Head of the association priest Cristian Terhes argues that "the citizens are harassed and threatened because they declare themselves Greek-Catholic; the rights and freedoms of the Greek-Catholics are systematically infringed,...

I read on another forum that for today's Mass on EWTN, they offered an Eastern-Rite Divine Liturgy. It was either Syro-Malabar or Syro-Malankara Rite.

21st Kelly Lecture, University of St. MichaelÂ’s College Toronto, Canada 1 December 2000 The Very Rev. Archimandrite Robert F. Taft, S.J. Vice-Rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome No one who keeps abreast of the religious news can be unaware that ecumenical relations between the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches are in a period of crisis, worse, perhaps, than at any time since the official international ecumenical dialogue between these two communions began in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council. The Eighth Plenary Session of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox...

B. David Kennedy Protodeacon, Eparchy of Toronto The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the Decree on the Eastern Catholic Churches (Orientalium Ecclesiarum) mention in No.17 that "the holy council wishes the institution of the permanent diaconate to be restored where it has fallen into disuse, in order that the ancient discipline of the Sacrament of Orders may flourish once more in the Eastern Churches." Just as the diaconate in the Latin Rite prior to Vatican II had become little more than a transitional step to the presbyterate, so in the Eastern Catholic Churches a diaconate which could be...

So I had just finished dropping my daughter off at Psychotic-Ex-Wifes house and decided to stop off at my favorite watering hole. One of my favorite bartendresses was there looking very glum: Me: Why so glum? Her: It's Easter and I'm working. Plus, this morning I went to Mass and it was in Arabic. Me: You mean Aramaic? Her: No, in Arabic. I said a prayer and left. I couldn't deal with it. WTF? OK, this is San Francisco (St Thomas More Church for those who know about it...), but if there is ONE day of the year where the...

The most important and the most controversial point in all endeavors for rapprochement of other Churches with the Roman Catholic Church is undoubtedly the question of the Roman Primacy in Christianity. The denial of this prerogative to the Bishop of Rome by the Orthodox is, perhaps, the only serious obstacle on the way to reunion of the Eastern Churches with the Roman Church. The many polemic writings issued in the East and in the West from the eleventh century, denying or defending the primary position of the Roman Bishop, have, so far, failed to produce the desired effect on either...

November 12, 2005Memorial of Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr Psalm: Saturday 48 Reading IWis 18:14-16; 19:6-9 When peaceful stillness compassed everythingand the night in its swift course was half spent,Your all-powerful word, from heaven’s royal thronebounded, a fierce warrior, into the doomed land,bearing the sharp sword of your inexorable decree.And as he alighted, he filled every place with death;he still reached to heaven, while he stood upon the earth. For all creation, in its several kinds, was being made over anew,serving its natural laws,that your children might be preserved unharmed.The cloud overshadowed their camp;and out of what had before been...

Iraqi Christians flourished long before Muslims By Steve Gushee Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Friday, January 28, 2005 The kidnapping of a Catholic bishop in Mosul last week is a sad reminder of the once robust but rapidly diminishing Christian community in Iraq. Insurgents abducted Syrian Catholic Archbishop BasileCasmoussa apparently to frighten Iraqi Christians. They wanted to discourage Christians from voting on Sunday, according to Iraqi bishop, Louis Sako of Kirkuk. Both bishops are members of a branch of the Roman Catholic Church and one of several small, eclectic church groups in the country. Christians flourished in Iraq long before...

November 12, 2004Memorial of Saint Josaphat, bishop and martyr Reading I2 Jn 4-9 [Chosen Lady:]I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truthjust as we were commanded by the Father.But now, Lady, I ask you,not as though I were writing a new commandmentbut the one we have had from the beginning:let us love one another.For this is love, that we walk according to his commandments;this is the commandment, as you heard from the beginning,in which you should walk. Many deceivers have gone out into the world,those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the...

St. Josaphat of Polotsk     Feastday: November 12 Josaphat, an Eastern Rite bishop, is held up as a martyr to church unity because he died trying to bring part of the Orthodox Church into union with Rome. In 1054, a formal split called a schism took place between the Eastern Church centered in Constantinople and the Western Church centered in Rome. Trouble between the two had been brewing for centuries because of cultural, political, and theological differences. In 1054 Cardinal Humbert was sent to Constantinople to try and reconcile the latest flare up and wound up excommunicating the...

Diogenes of Catholic World News' Blog reports Archbishop Francis Zayek, shepherd of the Eastern rite Eparchy of St. Maron in Brooklyn gave $500 to John Kerry back in 1989-- 4 years after Kerry made his first impassioned defense of legalized abortion as a newly elected senator http://www.cwnews.com/offtherecord/offth erecord.cfm?task=singledisplay&recnum=20 26