West meets east: ever wonder why we use the term "Roman" Catholic? It's because there are 22 other Catholic churches.

Father Hugo Soutus chants the Sunday liturgy with his back to the congregation. His sons assist him at the altar while his wife and daughter sing in the choir.

In 1994, shortly after becoming pastor at a Phoenix parish, he did away with eucharistic adoration. He removed the Stations of the Cross from the church walls and replaced them with icons and began administering First Communion and Confirmation as a part of the baptismal rite.

Soutus is not Orthodox, nor a Catholic in schism. He is a Ukrainian Greek Catholic who takes seriously Pope John Paul II's directive to recover the traditions of his church.

Contrary to what most Catholics think, the Catholic Church is more than the Roman Catholic Church--it is a communion of 23 churches, each equal in dignity. The Roman--or Latin--tradition is the predominant Western tradition, but in the East a variety of traditions thrive.

Several breaks over the first millennium of Christianity--culminating in the great schism of 1054--split the church into East and West, Orthodox and Catholic. But from the 15th to the 19th centuries portions of Orthodox churches have sought and been granted full communion with Rome. The Holy See urged them to keep their traditions and disciplines, which is why many Eastern Catholic liturgies resemble Orthodox liturgies. Most Eastern Catholic churches have an Orthodox counterpart.

The churches in full communion with the Holy See have a variety of practices but are one in faith, all recognizing the pope as their leader. Worldwide, the largest Eastern church is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church with 4.3 million members, a tiny percentage of the world's 1 billion Catholics. Other Eastern Catholic communities with the largest numbers in the United States include the Syro-Malabar, Chaldean, Maronite, and Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic churches.

Because Eastern Catholics are such a small minority compared to Catholics of the Latin tradition, many have never heard of the Eastern Catholic churches. When they do, they often confuse the Eastern Catholic churches with the Orthodox churches.

Pope John Paul II, in his 1995 apostolic letter Orientale Lumen, said Catholics of the Latin tradition "must also be fully acquainted with this treasure," that is, the traditions of the East. He also said that the Eastern Catholic churches' union with Rome must not imply a diminished awareness of their authenticity and originality.

"The Second Vatican Council has urged them to rediscover their full identity because they have the 'right and duty to govern themselves according to their own special disciplines. For these are guaranteed by ancient tradition and seem to be better suited to the customs of their faithful and to the good of their souls,'" the pope wrote.

A married clergy is one of these disciplines, to the surprise of many Latin-rite Catholics. Married men serve as priests in the Eastern Catholic churches, though you won't find many in the United States. In 1929, at the urging of U.S. Latin bishops who didn't want their flock to be "confused," the Holy See issued a decree prohibiting married priests from serving communities outside the churches' homelands, including all of North America.

Today, however, the status of that decree is questionable, possibly superseded by the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, and many Eastern Catholic churches now have a small number of married priests in ministry in the United States.

According to this code, most Eastern Catholic churches elect their leaders--patriarchs, major archbishops, or metropolitans. The pope confirms the elections and oversees the churches via the Vatican's Congregation for the Eastern Churches.

Ancient rites 

Differences between East and West are perhaps most significant in their liturgies. Roman Catholics who enter an Eastern Catholic church are generally struck by the reverence, mystery, and community.

Icons line the walls of most Eastern churches, and incense and chanting are integral parts of all liturgies. Musical instruments are rarely used. In some traditions, the altar sits behind an iconostasis--a partition with doors and tiers of icons. In some Middle Eastern traditions the priest chants the Eucharistic Prayer in Aramaic.

"These are the words Jesus pronounced," says Father Nabil Mouannes, pastor of St. Ephrem Maronite Church in El Cajon, California. "When you come into a Maronite church, you can still hear the echo, the vibrations of Jesus Christ."

The Maronite Church, one of only two Eastern Catholic churches with no Orthodox counterpart, traces its origin to the fourth century and has always been in full communion with the church of Rome. Long-established traditions are a benchmark of most Eastern Catholic liturgies, which date back to the earliest centuries of Christianity.

"When I'm in church, I can envision this entire choir of angels and saints and heaven, and I'm among them, singing hymns written in the fourth century," says El Nora Rusnak, cantor of Holy Angels Byzantine Catholic Church in San Diego. The walls of Holy Angels are filled with frescoes, a constant reminder of the sanctity of the space.

Rusnak is a lifelong Byzantine Catholic, but many of her fellow parishioners are not. Holy Angels is about half Latin, half Byzantine, according to its pastor, Father Robert Pipta. Like most Eastern Catholic priests, Pipta welcomes Latin-rite Catholics to his parish, provided they are not disgruntled or do not attempt to introduce Western traditions into the parish.

"Generally I find those who come to the Byzantine Church from the West are truly desiring to grow in church life through Byzantine spirituality, and that's a very good thing," says Pipta. "Usually their move to an Eastern Catholic parish represents an enthusiastic vigor in their lives. Most priests I know welcome that."

One of those parishioners is Kim Camplisson, who had intended to visit an Eastern Catholic parish, not join one. Three years ago she attended Divine Liturgy at Holy Angels with her husband and two children.

"We came as visitors and we have never left since that Sunday," she says. "The liturgy was beautiful and the people were friendly. It's a small, small parish. All parishioners know each other, and they come downstairs after liturgy to extend the celebration with coffee and doughnuts."

Eastern Catholic parishes generally count their family membership in tens or hundreds, not thousands as most Roman Catholic parishes do. Even those few with more than a thousand families have a strong sense of community because of ethnic and family bonds. Though some Latin-rite Catholics attend Eastern Catholic parishes, the flow more often goes in the opposite direction, with Eastern Catholics joining Latin-rite parishes, a frustration for many Eastern Catholic clergy.

Some Eastern Catholics find it easier to drive a few miles to their local Latin-rite parish rather than a longer distance to their local Eastern Catholic parish. Some marry into Roman Catholic families. Many join a Latinrite parish because they send their children to the school.

Maintaining authentic traditions and educating members are key to keeping and bringing back members of Eastern Catholic church who have drifted away, say Auxiliary Bishop Nicholas Samra of the Melkite Eparchy of Newton, Massachusetts

"They migrate out of their tradition," Samra says. "The Eastern Catholics go to Roman Catholic schools, then the parishes. After one generation, they're not going to come back."

Some also blame "latinization" for the exodus of Eastern Catholics to Latin Catholic parishes.

Creeping Westernization 

Over the years Latin traditions such as Stations of the Cross and eucharistic adoration have crept into Eastern Catholic churches, blurring the differences among traditions.

At St. Ephrem's in El Cajon, for example, parishioners kneel, Stations of the Cross line the walls of the church, and the rosary and eucharistic adoration are part of weekly parish life. Mouannes says he is taking some of the best traditions from both the East and the West, just as many Latin parishes now use icons.

Maronite Chorbishop John D. Faris, a noted canon lawyer an associate secretary general of Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), agrees but warns against serious latinization.

"Churches are supposed to share gifts. If there are liturgical practices such as Stations of the Cross or eucharistic devotions that don't really hurt the overall rite, then I don't see any sort of problem," he says. "But I'm much more intolerant with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. People don't have the right to play with that."

Father Christopher Zugger, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Byzantine Catholic Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says Orientale Lumen was a big step forward for Eastern Catholics because it called on them to be as Eastern as possible, and it called on Roman Catholics to discover the traditions of the East.

The pope urged Catholics to know the liturgy of the Eastern churches, to deepen their knowledge of the Fathers and Doctors of the Christian East, to encourage dialogue among Catholics and Orthodox, and to meet one another regularly.

"Since, in fact, we believe that the venerable and ancient tradition of the Eastern churches is an integral part of the heritage of Christ's church, the first need for Catholics is to be familiar with that tradition, so as to be nourished by it and to encourage the process of unity in the best way possible for each," the pope wrote.

Expressing his frustration with the work yet to be done--always having to explain who he is and that he is fully Catholic--Zugger has one request for his funeral.

"When I die," he says, "I'm going to have a sign on my casket that says, 'Yes, he's a Catholic priest, and yes, you can go to Communion at his funeral.'"

Photos and text by VINCENT GRAGNANI, a staff writer for The Southern Cross, the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego.