Latinization: Canonical Aspects

LATINIZATION: CANONICAL ASPECTS. The phenomenon of L. of the Churches derives from that juridical and hierarchical conception of the Church (*Ecclesiology) according to which the universal Church and the Latin rite somehow coincide in view of the fact that the Supreme Pontiff is the bishop of Rome (*Primacy) After 1054, the Church came to be more and more exclusively identified with the Latin rite. L. thus resulted from a restrictive vision of the Roman and Latin dimensions of the Church which came to be identified with the Church as a whole and led to an incomplete view of unity and universality, with a pronounced ultramontane bias. As a policy towards the Eastern Churches of the Catholic Church, L. forced these Churches to change their own traditions in the liturgy, theology, spirituality and canonical discipline in spite of the fact that they had the same faith and sacraments as Rome. Latin missionaries were sent to territories where Catholic and Orthodox Eastern Churches existed side by side. Though their efforts aimed primarily at aiding *Eastern Catholic Churches in their need while at the same time imposing Latin discipline, they also aspired to bring back the Orthodox Churches to the Catholic Church. Such a L. implied a shift and a change in the liturgical, theological, spiritual and canonical traditions of the Eastern Catholic Churches, which, in order to safeguard their own Eastern identity and avoid being absorbed by and incorporated into the Latin Church, half-heartedly accepted these impositions. The Eastern Catholic Churches had to change many traditional institutions established in the Christian East, such as the insertion into the liturgy of some typical Latin devotions, and the introduction of compulsory celibacy for candidates to sacred orders. however, the Eastern Catholic Churches retained their strong attachment to tradition and to liturgical customs, even while they assimilated elements of Latin provenance, especially in the area of non-sacramental liturgy. At the root of L.

was the concept of the *praestantia ritus latini, as well as the numerical superiority of the Latin faithful over the relatively few Eastern Catholics. As late as 1847, *Pius IX cited the Benedict XIV’s apostolic constitution Etsi pastoralis (1742) which says: ‘The Latin rite for the very reason that it is the rite of the holy Roman Church, mother and teacher of all the Churches, enjoys precedence over the Greek rite’ Only with *Leo XIII and his 1894 apostolic letter *Orientalium dignitas, did an attitudinal shift begin which led to the abandonment of L., thereby building a bridge to the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Churches. texts: Benedict XV, Allatae sunt (1755); Leo XIII, Orientalium dignitas (1894); English texts in Vatican and the Eastern Churches: Papal Encyclicals and Documents concerning the Eastern Churches, Fairfax VA 1996, 1:3–46, 179–188. studies: A. Petrani, De relatione iuridica inter diversos ritus in Ecclesia catholica, Turin 1920; A. herman, ‘De Conceptu situs’, Jurist 2 (1942) 333–345; Catholic Eastern Churches: Heritage and Identity, P. Pallath (ed.), Rome 1994; V. Peri, Orientalis Varietas: Roma e le Chiese d’Oriente – Storia e Diritto canonico, Rome 1994. N. Loda.

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Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Christian East

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