A Brief History of the Eastern Rite (Byzantine)

Yes, we are Catholics in union with the Bishop of Rome whom we recognize as the visible Head of the Catholic Church. We are recognized as being "Catholic" by the local Roman Catholic Bishops and the Bishops of the United States and the whole world.

Having said that  we are "Catholics", we must now state that we are not Roman Catholics, but Catholics who are identified as being Eastern Catholics. As Catholics, we eastern and Roman Catholics share the same faith and have the same seven sacraments. The difference is that we, Eastern Catholics, have a different way or rite of expressing our faith in regards to Liturgy and customs.

After the day of Pentecost, the apostles spread out over the world to take the good news (Gospel) of Christ to the world. They went to the major cities of the Roman empire and Christianized the various cultures and traditions of the people they found there and developed liturgies.

One of these metropolitan cities was Constantinople (at that time known as Byzantium) where two Greek missionaries, Cyril and Methodius, brought the Byzantine way of worship to Central and Eastern Europe. From these ethnic groupings (Slavs, Greeks, Hungarians, Croatians, Russians, Ukrainians) many people emigrated to the United States at the end of the 19th century bringing with them the Byzantine Rite and traditions .