Apostolic Origins

One Holy, Catholic & Apostolic Church

Thanks to the Holy Spirit working through Apostles, the Church quickly spread from Jerusalem throughout the entire Roman Empire and beyond. From five major port cities grew the five Apostolic Sees or Patriarchates, three of which gave rise to the various Eastern Christian traditions:

The Catholic Church is a communion of 24 “Sister Churches. There are nearly 18,000,000 Eastern Catholics world-wide, from the Holy Land, Eastern Europe and beyond. Each country and each culture add to the richness of expression of the rite that they adopt as their own.

The Catholic Church is a communion of churches. It is made up of churches from the Eastern Tradition and the Western Tradition. Eastern Catholics are in union with Rome. We share the same basic faith and the same mysteries (sacraments), however, our way of expressing them follows the same tradition as the Orthodox churches. In reality, there are many Eastern churches, each with its own heritage and theology, liturgy and discipline.

Jesus sent his disciples to the four corners of the world to spread the Gospel. Eventually, four great centers of Christianity emerged with distinctive Christian customs, but the same faith. These centers were Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome and Alexandria. A few centuries later when the capital of the Roman Empire was moved to the Eastern city of Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople, an adaptation of the Antioch celebration of the liturgy was made.

From this powerful cultural center the Byzantine church emerged.

(Radvansky, Joseph.
A Brief Explanation of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Introduction)

The first seven councils, which gathered bishops from around the universal Church, were all held in the East. They drew from scripture and Tradition to express the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Son of God clearly and pricisely.