RITES IN THE UNITED STATES 227 



resident and three missionary priests, while the number of 

 Gregorian Armenians is given at 20,000 in the United States. 

 There are several Armenian societies and two Armenian news- 

 papers and also Armenian reading-rooms in several places. 



II. — Byzantine or Greek Rite 



This rite, reckoning both the Catholic and Schismatic 

 Churches, comes next in expansion through the Christian 

 world to the Roman Rite. It also ranks next to the Roman 

 Rite in America, there being now (1911) about 156 Greek 

 Catholic churches, and about 149 Greek Orthodox churches in 

 the United States.^ The Eastern Orthodox Churches of Rus- 

 sia, Turkey, Rumania, Servia and Bulgaria and other places 

 where they are found, make up a total of about 120,000,000, 

 while the Uniat Churches of the same rite, the Greek Catholics 

 in Austria, Hungary, Italy, Bulgaria, Asia and elsewhere, 

 amount to upwards of 7,500,000. Unlike the Armenian Rite, 

 it has not been confined to any particular people or language, 

 but has spread over the entire Christian Orient among the 

 Slavic, Rumanian and Greek populations. As regards juris- 

 diction and authority, it has not been united and homogeneous 

 like the Roman Rite, nor has it, like the Latin Church, been 

 uniform in language, calendar, or particular customs, although 

 the same general teaching, ritual and observances have been 

 followed. The principal languages in which the liturgy of 

 the Greek Rite is celebrated are (i) Greek, (2) Slavonic, 

 (3) Arabic, and (4) Rumanian. It is also celebrated in 

 Gregorian by a small and diminishing number of worshippers, 

 and sometimes experimentally in a number of modern tongues 

 for missionary purposes ; but, as this latter use has never been 

 approved, the four languages named above may be considered 

 the official ones of the Byzantine Rite. A portion of the popu- 

 lation of all the nations which use this rite, follow it in union 

 with the Holy See, and these have by their union placed the 

 Byzantine Rite in the position which it occupied before the 

 schism of 1054. Thus, the Russians, Bulgarians and Servians, 

 who are schismatic, use the Old Slavonic in their church books 

 and services ; so likewise do the Catholic Ruthenians, Bul- 

 garians and Servians. Likewise the Rumanians of Rumania 



