www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Multiple Jurisdictions - 'One Bishop, One City'

Everybody in Pennsylvania might get Metropolitan Nicholas...

I don't foresee either Latin, Eastern Catholic, or Orthodox bishops resigning their see in a unified Church - what may happen very slowly is that once the presiding hierarch passes to the next life, the empty parallel see may remain vacant until all are empty and a unified vote takes place. But despite all claims to early settlements or otherwise, this hypothetical "solution" (if it should occur in the next 200-400 years, barring some major unforeseen circumstance) would lead to Latin bishops remaining in the majority for much of North, Central and South America eparchies/dioceses. Of course there will be exceptions to this, but very few.

Shlomo Aportheoun,

Well since North America includes all the lands from Panama north, your point is not valid. But if you wish to use only the British Colonial rule as the base you would still be incorrect. Further, I will separate British Colonial rule in Canada from that of the area that became the United States.

The one concesssion that I will ask of you is that we look at only native (ie eparchies/dioceses) that are based in North America. This is from the Orthodox Church in America's website: in 1794, a small group of missionaries landed on Kodiak Island, Alaska, bringing to the New World the Orthodox Faith of the Apostles. Therefore this is baseline for you as stated at the Orthodoxy in America website.

On the Canadaian front, the establishment of the Archdiocese of Montréal, Québec is the oldest in 1658 and became a diocese in 1674. Over a hundred years prior to any Eastern Orthodox presence.

Now on the U.S. front just using the establishment of the nation as our baseline. The very first diocese was the Archdiocese of Baltimore, MD in 1784; a full 10 years before any Eastern Orthodox presence.

Now please explain to me, how you feel that the Eastern Orthodox Bishops have any claim to headup any diocese/eparchies in North America?

Fush BaShlomo,
Yuhannon

Benedicite!

This discussion strikes me as legalistic and pointless. While I am well aware of the dictum "One City -- One Bishop," how is this to work in practice in the modern world? My contention is that it never has and never will.

Should the Bishop always belong to the liturgical tradition of the majority of faithful in each place? In that case, for instance, there will be hardly any Bishop of the Syriac tradition left, since as far as I can tell, Syriac Christians are nowhere in a majority, except perhaps in certain remote areas of Turkey. Without Bishops, how will the ancient and venerable Syriac tradition survive in Europe, the Americas, and elsewhere? And this is only one example!

Similarly, there will not be many places in the Americas or Oceania where there can legitimately be a Bishop of the Byzantine tradition. What is to happen to these minority liturgical traditions without Bishops of their own to minister to them? Will they disappear completely, or will they be confined to minority enclaves? The town of Sitka, perhaps?

On the other hand, if priority is to be given to the oldest community, this will easily lead to absurd situations or insoluble conundrums. What liturgical tradition, for instance, is to take precedence in the Holy City of Jerusalem? Will all of China and India have to have Assyrian/Chaldean Bishops? Will the Orthodox Church of Finland (58,000 members) become subordinate to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Helsinki (9,000 members), given that the Patron of Finland, St. Henry of Uppsala, was a Latin Catholic?

Quite apart from all this, what about titular Bishops (coadjutor, auxiliary, emeriti etc.)? Will there only ever be one Bishop in each See, even if the diocese may have hundreds of thousands of faithful, hundreds of parishes and an infirm or senile Bishop?

Clearly, in order to preserve the liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church, and for the provision of adequate pastoral care of large dioceses, the arbitrary and rigid rule of "One City -- One Bishop" cannot always be adhered to, nor does it have to be since the Petrine ministry of the Bishop of Rome helps to guarantee Catholic unity.

Mission San Gabriel was founded in 1598 in New Mexico and let's not forget that St. Augustine, FL was founded in 1565 and is the oldest continuous city in America.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't most of these bishops whose jurisdictions overlap actually reside in different cities?

There is the Latin bishop of Cleveland, but the Ruthenian bishop of Parma.

Even if they claim the same city, the Cathedrals are often in different cities. The Ruthenian Cathedral is in Munhall, not Pittsburgh.

In fact, the diocese of Baltimore was founded in 1789.

The first diocese in what is now Canada was not Montreal, but Quebec City, founded in 1674,

(Source: Annuario Pontificio 2006)

In practical terms, the suggestion is impossible. Currently there are 177 Latin archdioceses and dioceses in the United States and a further 62 in Canada -- not to mention the 87 in Mexico. I don't know how many Eastern Orthodox bishops there are in North America, but there are surely not enough to fill all these sees?

The rule of "One City -- One Bishop" should be applied to avoid having two or more diocesan bishops in one and the same diocese, i.e. it would be obviously uncanonical to have two Latin archbishops of New York at the same time.

Similarly, no diocese should be established on purely ethnic grounds, i.e. it would be uncanonical to have separate Irish, Italian and Puerto Rican archdioceses of New York all belonging to the Latin tradition.

Where the rule should be modified (by the authority of the Holy See) is where there are two or more distinct liturgical traditions coexisting in the same place. Thus it would be legitimate (again by the authority of the Holy See) to have a Latin archdiocese of New York coexisting with a Byzantine archdiocese of New York, providing neither was based purely on ethnicity, but on legitimate differences in liturgical tradition. The reason why this is acceptable is the need to preserve and promote all the legitimate liturgical traditions of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Eric,

you are not wrong. In fact, there has obviously been a deliberate attempt to avoid the multiplication of episcopal titles, i.e. to avoid having two bishops of Brooklyn or New York or Vancouver. That is why there is a Latin archbishop of New York and an Armenian Catholic bishop of Our Lady of Nareg of New York, a Latin bishop of Brooklyn and a Maronite bishop of St. Maron of Brooklyn, and a Latin archbishop of Vancouver and a Ukrainian Catholic bishop of New Westminster.

Dr. Eric,

À propos of nothing: "The Most Corrupt State" -- that's Rhode Island, surely?

Let's see if anyone can guess.

I know that the 6 Cardinal Bishops have Suburbicarian Sees so as not to overlap the Bishopric of Rome.

There is an interesting case of two Latin jurisdictions overlapping each other in Manitoba:

The original diocese (now, I think, an archdiocese) is that of St. Boniface - which is also the original name of Winnipeg.

Next came the Irish (!), who were not happy with the (Arch)diocese of St. Boniface, primarily for ethno-linguistic reasons. There was serious talk of some sort of "Irish National Catholic" schism, which seems to have gotten as far as an Irish delegation from Manitoba visiting Bishop Francis Hodur (head of the Polish National Catholic Church). Not without reason, Rome did not feel the need to replicate the Polish National Catholic Church for the Irish, and therefore created the Archdiocese of Winnipeg - last time I looked, the Annuario Pontificio still carried a footnote to the effect that the Archdiocese of Winnipeg is "immediately subject to the Holy See.

So yes, it can happen.

Fr. Serge

Fr Serge,

this is very interesting. I knew that the archdiocese of Winnipeg is immediately subject to the Holy See, and also that the metropolitan see of Saint-Boniface has no suffragans, but I did not know the historical background [archwinnipeg.ca] for this.

However, where you seem to be mistaken is in thinking that the dioceses of Winnipeg and Saint-Boniface overlap. As you can see from the map below (from the website of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops [cccb.ca]), they do not.
[Linked Image] [cccb.ca]

The map is interesting - thanks for posting it. But you should look at a much more detailed map; the contortions that the diocesan boundaries go through in order attempt to maintain the principle of "one bishop in one city" make the boundary of "Northern Ireland" (which actually goes through people's houses and shops) look simple. The problem in Manitoba can be defined easily enough: it's a matter of making sure that francophone parishes are not run by the Archdiocese of Winnipeg, and anglophone parishes are not run by the Archdiocese of St. Boniface.

To add to the confusion, there are also parishes on the "Native Canadian" reserves, and some of them retain their own languages.

There is also yet another matter to confuse the issue, although this one has relatively little to do with ethnic conflicts: the suppression of the Jesuits. At the time of the suppression, the Jesuits ran the missions in Canada up to a certain line east of Winnipeg - St. Boniface. I'm not sure of the details of the line, although the information is available and can be found without major difficulty.

Anyway, something had to be done, and quickly, to provide for those missions when the Jesuits were suppressed. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate were recruited into service and took over the (formerly) Jesuit missions, and continued to evangelize in a westerly direction.

Then, some forty years later, the Jesuits were restored. They managed to regain their original missions, but the Oblates of Mary Immaculate retained the missions which they themselves had started in the interim, and both communities tried to continue in the drive to the Pacific.

Then, of course, there are the Ukrainians - but that's still another story! The immediate result, though, is that Winnipeg - St. Boniface is the only place in the Western Hemisphere with THREE residential Catholic Archbishops (even Philadelphia only has two).

Fr. Serge

Fr. Serge