Eastern Catholic Churches
The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches distinguishes between a patriarchal church's standing synod and a synod of its bishops. The standing synod consists of the patriarch and four bishops appointed for a five-year term. Of these four, three are elected by the patriarchal church's synod of bishops and one is appointed by the patriarch, while another four are designated in the same way to replace any member who is impeded. A synod of all the church's ordained bishops is called when a decision is required on a question that only it is authorized to decide, or when the patriarch, with the agreement of the standing synod, judges it to be necessary, or when at least one third of the bishops request that it be held to consider some specific matter. In addition, the canon law of some patriarchal churches requires that it be convoked at predetermined intervals. Similar rules govern Eastern Catholic Churches headed not by a patriarch but by a major archbishop.
Read more about this topic: Holy Synod
Famous quotes containing the words eastern, catholic and/or churches:
“All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You do not mean by mystery what a Catholic does. You mean an interesting uncertainty: the uncertainty ceasing interest ceases also.... But a Catholic by mystery means an incomprehensible certainty: without certainty, without formulation there is no interest;... the clearer the formulation the greater the interest.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)