Latin Rite

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The Latin Rite designates the particular Church, within the Catholic Church, which developed in western Europe and northern Africa, when Latin was the language of education and culture, and so also of the liturgy. It is now present in all continents and is the majority Rite or particular Church within the Catholic Church, composing roughly 98% of the Catholic Communion.^[1] It is also called the Western Church, distinct from the Eastern Catholic Churches, whose liturgies use the languages dominant in their areas at the time of their formation or a modern language such as Arabic.^[2] The Latin Church is a third term, used, for instance in the opening canon of both the 1917 and the 1983 editions of the Code of Canon Law.^[3]

The term Latin rite is used also, in singular or plural ("a Latin rite" or "(the) Latin rites"), to refer to one or more of the forms of sacred liturgy used in different parts of this Latin Church.^[4] (See Latin liturgical rites.) They include the widely used Roman Rite, the Ambrosian Rite of Milan and neighbouring areas, and the Mozarabic Rite, in limited use in Spain, above all at Toledo. The Roman Rite replaced other Latin liturgical rites at various times: the Carolingian emperors favoured it in their territory; Pope Pius V in 1570 suppressed those with an antiquity of less than two centuries; and several religious orders abandoned theirs after the Second Vatican Council, when languages other than Latin began to be generally used in the Latin-Rite liturgies.

Some treat the term "Roman Catholic" as synonymous with "Latin Rite", a usage not found in official documents of the Catholic Church itself, such as the encyclicals Divini illius Magistri and Humani generis, in which "Roman Catholic Church" means the whole Catholic Church without distinction. Pope John Paul II too treated "Roman Catholic Church " as equivalent to "Catholic Church" in his talk at the general audience of 26 June 1985.^[5]

1 Distinctiveness of the Latin Rite or Church
2 References
3 See also
4 External link

[edit] Distinctiveness of the Latin Rite or Church

The Latin Rite (in the first-mentioned sense) is distinguished from others not only by the use of the aforementioned liturgies, but also by customs, practices and Canon law distinct from those of the Eastern Churches. In these, Confirmation and Eucharist are conferred immediately after the baptism of an infant, but in the Latin or Western Church both these sacraments are normally administered only to people who have reached the age of reason. Celibacy is obligatory for Latin-Rite priests, though in the Eastern Catholic Churches ordination to priesthood (but not to the episcopate) may be conferred on married men. Bishops are appointed directly by the Pope, while the synods of Eastern patriarchal and major archiepiscopal Churches elect bishops for their own territory (though not outside it), receiving from the Pope only letters of acknowledgement.

Canon law for the Latin-Rite Church was codified in the Code of Canon Law, of which there have been two edition, the first promulgated by Pope Benedict XV in 1917, and the second by Pope John Paul II in 1983. The canon law that the Eastern Catholic Churches have in common has been codified in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches" of 1990.

[edit] References

^ "Latin Rite" is used in this sense in, for example, the decree Orientalium Ecclesiarum of the Second Vatican Council.
^ Encyclopaedia Britannica Online
^ 1917 edition and 1983 edition
^ For an instance of the use of "Latin rites" to cover "the Roman rite, the Ambrosian rite, the Mozarabic rite of Toledo, the rite of Braga, the Carthusian rite, the Carmelite rite, and best known of all, the Dominican rite, and perhaps still other rites of which I am not aware", see Cardinal Ratzinger on the Old and New Mass
^ actual text in Italian, Spanish translation