Greek Orthodox Churches

After reading up on the various Catholic Rites, I decided to inform myself more about the Orthodox Churches, since we also visited some while in Syria. The second church we visited in Maalula on Easter, Convent of St. Takla, is part of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch (as is the Convent of Our Lady in Sednaya that Marco and I visited Friday morning). This confirmed my thought that the procession which we saw on Sunday was actually celebrating Palm Sunday, as Easter was the following Sunday for the Orthodox Churches.

The Orthodox, then, are the Christians in the East of Europe, in Egypt and Asia, who accept the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (are therefore neither Nestorians nor Monophysites), but who, as the result of the schisms of Photius (ninth cent.) and Cerularius (eleventh cent.), are not in communion with the Catholic Church. There is no common authority obeyed by all, or rather it is only the authority of "Christ and the seven Ecumenical Synods" (from Nicæa I in 325, to Nicæa II in 787).

These sixteen Churches are: (1) The four Eastern patriarchates — Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem — and the Church of Cyprus, independent since the Council of Ephesus. (2) Since the great schism eleven new Churches have been added, all but one formed at the expense of the one vast Patriarchate of Constantinople. They are the six national churches of Russia, Greece, Servia, Montenegro, Rumania, and Bulgaria, four independent Churches in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, namely Carlovitz, Hermannstadt, Czernovitz, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and lastly the Church of Mount Sinai, consisting of one monastery separated from Jerusalem.

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