The Latin Rite is one of the 23 sui iuris particular Churches within the Catholic Church. This particular Church developed in western Europe and north Africa, where, from antiquity to the Renaissance, Latin was the principal language of education and culture, and so also of the liturgy.[1]
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The term "Latin Rite" was once clearly synonymous with Western Church, a term that some continue to use exclusively of the Church in communion with the see of Rome.[2] In this sense, "Western Church" is opposed to the "Eastern Catholic Churches" (plural), whose liturgies use the languages dominant in their areas at the time of their formation, or modern languages such as Arabic. However, except in the context of the Catholic Church, "Western Church" is most frequently understood as synonymous with "Western Christianity" and as opposed instead to "Eastern Christianity", making it necessary in such contexts to use the more specific term "Western Catholic Church". Latin Church is yet another term used for the particular Church in question. This term appears, for instance, in the opening canon of both the 1917 and the 1983 editions of the Code of Canon Law.[3]
The Latin Church or Rite is now present in all continents and is the majority Rite or particular Church within the Catholic Church, comprising roughly 98% of its membership.
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. Anglican Use is also a liturgy of the Latin Rite. 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.
Certain Catholic[5] and non-Catholic sources use the term "Roman Catholic" to mean "Latin-Rite Catholic", and the Holy See was known in the eighteenth century to use "Roman Church" to refer to the Latin Church and "Greek Church" to refer to what was then considered a single Oriental Church that included not only Byzantine but also Armenian, Coptic and Syrian Catholics: the 1755 papal encyclical Allatae Sunt said: "The Oriental Church is composed of four rites - Greek, Armenian, Syriac, and Coptic; all these rites are referred to by the single name of the Greek or Oriental Church, just as the name of the Latin or Roman Church signifies the Roman, Ambrosian, and Mozarabic rites, as well as the special rites of different Regular Orders".[6]
In more recent times this usage is not found in the Church's official documents, which, on the contrary, have sometimes, though rarely, used the term "Roman Catholic Church" to refer to the Church as a whole, what the documents more commonly call the "Catholic Church". This usage is found in the encyclicals Divini illius Magistri and Humani generis and in curial documents such as Notes on the correct way to present the Jews and Judaism in preaching and catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Latin Church is distinguished from the other sui iuris Churches not only by the use of the aforementioned liturgies, but also by customs, practices and Canon law distinct from those of the Eastern Churches. Canon law for the Latin Church was codified in the Code of Canon Law, of which there have been two editions, 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.
In the Latin Church, Confirmation and Eucharist are normally administered only to people who have reached the age of reason, while in the Eastern Churches they are administered immediately after baptism, even for an infant.[7] Celibacy is obligatory for priests in the Latin Church, though in the Eastern Catholic Churches ordination to priesthood (but not to the episcopate) may be conferred on married men. Bishops in the Latin Church are appointed by the Pope through the various dicasteries of the Roman Curia, 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 recognition.