Eastern Catholic Studies and Texts

Pentecost. Mosaic from the Greek Abbey of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata near Rome, 12th cent. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.  

Edited by Yury P. Avvakumov (University of Notre Dame, USA) and Charles C. Yost (Hillsdale College, USA)

Arising from the church unions of the medieval and early modern periods, Eastern Catholic (or Uniate) Churches represent various ecclesiastical traditions of the Christian East, from the Byzantine and Byzantine-Slavic to Armenian, Coptic, Maronite, West Syrian, and East Syrian or Chaldean, spreading over Eastern Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, and a worldwide diaspora. Eastern Catholic Churches aspire to combine loyalty to the pope with Eastern liturgical worship, spirituality, and theology, and thus resist being captured under a single denominational category. The relations of Eastern Catholic Churches with Rome have not always been easy. Faced with the Roman centralism and subjected to expansive Latinizations in the past, these Churches began their way towards a greater autonomy and a revival of the authentic Eastern traditions in the course of the last hundred years. Due to the position of Eastern Catholic Christianity at cultural crossroads, its unbiased study contributes to ecumenical understanding between Christians of the East and West and to the full richness of the universal Catholic Church. The unique historical legacy of Eastern Catholicism, examined in all its complexity, provides much riveting material for ecclesiological, dogmatic, liturgical, canonistic study as well as for the exploration of such research topics as religion and modernity, religion and politics, religion and totalitarianism, and religion and civil society.

Today, we are witnessing a renaissance of Eastern Catholic communities in Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Communist bloc, in which these communities had been made illegal and brutally persecuted for almost half a century. At the same time the Eastern Catholics Churches originating in pre-Ephesian and pre-Chalcedonian traditions are struggling under dramatic, sometimes catastrophic political and military conditions in West Asia and North and East Africa. Meanwhile, the worldwide Eastern Catholic diaspora faces enormous challenges in a contemporary globalized world full of risks and opportunities for a new evangelization. In light of the scholarly and Catholic mission of its parent institution, The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to announce the first series dedicated to the study of Eastern Catholic Christianity, edited by Yury P. Avvakumov of the University of Notre Dame and Charles C. Yost of Hillsdale College. ECST will explore various facts of the history and the present situation of Eastern Catholic Churches through focused studies and collected volumes utilizing a variety of methodologies, as well as scholarly translations of key texts. It will be of interest to scholars in various fields including history, theology, religious studies, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and political science. We are now taking submissions of proposals (see guidelines).

Research areas of interest include but are not limited to:
  • Relations between the Papacy and Eastern Christians starting with the medieval period
  • Byzantine and medieval Latin theologians debating church union with Rome
  • Church unions of the 16th to 18th centuries and their protagonists
  • The role of Eastern Catholics in the confessionalization and modernization processes in early modern and modern Central and Eastern Europe
  • Eastern Catholics in the Habsburg and the Russian Empires, 18th to early 20th centuries
  • Eastern Orthodox thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries who debated the idea of union with Rome
  • Eastern Catholics under the twentieth-century totalitarianism
  • Public and political role of Eastern Catholic Christians in post-totalitarian societies
  • History of Eastern Catholics in West Asia and North and East Africa
  • History of the Syriac Catholic communities in India in the missionary, ecumenical, and interreligious context
  • Dogmatic, liturgical, and canonical aspects of the Eastern Catholic Churches
  • Eastern Catholic Christianity as a factor in Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical relations
  • Eastern Catholic diaspora in both Americas, its past and present

EDITORIAL BOARD:

  • Edward J. Alam (Notre Dame University, Beirut, Lebanon)
  • Katrin Boeckh (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich / Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany)
  • Thomas Kollamparampil (Christ University, Bangalore, India)
  • Mark Morozowich (The Catholic University of America, Washington DC, USA)
  • Thomas Mark Németh (University of Vienna, Austria)
  • Oleh Turiy (Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv, Ukraine)