Eastern Latin Orthodoxy

Eastern Latin Orthodoxy expresses the Eastern Roman ecclesiology and Orthodox faith of the United Roman-Ruthenian Church together with the Latin heritage entrusted to its care. It preserves the Eastern and Western patrimonies of worship, culture, law, and ecclesiastical expression in harmonious unity within the common Apostolic faith and order of the undivided Church, in which East and West formed one communion.

Ecclesial identity

The United Roman-Ruthenian Church describes itself as an autocephalous Apostolic Church—the Eastern Roman Church with Latin heritage. Eastern Latin Orthodoxy names this ecclesial identity. It is not confined to a single liturgical rite; rather, it describes the common Orthodox and Catholic inheritance within which the Church's Eastern and Western rites retain their integrity.

With its Orthodox and Catholic heritage, the Church understands itself as the present institutional expression of an ancient Apostolic inheritance: a custodial Church preserving the faith, order, sacramental life, and cultural patrimonies it has received.

Eastern and Western inheritance

The Church's Apostolic succession comes through the ancient patriarchates of Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem and their historic extensions into Rus' and the Americas. Russian, Greek, Roman, Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, and American lines converge in a derivative patriarchate whose constituent jurisdictions were consolidated in 2023 under the Church's present united institutional structure.

In this inheritance, “Eastern” identifies the Church's Orthodox ecclesiology and its continuity with the Christian East, while “Latin” identifies the Roman, Western, and Petrine heritage placed within its care. Neither element cancels the other. Eastern Latin Orthodoxy therefore presents East and West as complementary dimensions of one Apostolic inheritance.

Relationship to Pontifical Orthodoxy

Within the United Roman-Ruthenian Church, Eastern Latin Orthodoxy is otherwise known as Pontifical Orthodoxy or Pontifical Orthodox Old Catholicism. “Eastern Latin Orthodoxy” emphasizes the Church's identity as the Eastern Roman Church with Latin heritage. “Pontifical Orthodoxy” emphasizes the unified ecclesial order and pontifical inheritance through which that identity is expressed within the Church's jurisdiction.

Both names affirm that Orthodoxy of faith and Catholic fullness belong together, that the Apostolic inheritance precedes later divisions, and that traditional Christian rites may flourish without being forced into a single cultural form.

Pastoral and custodial responsibility

In continuity with its Eastern Latin Orthodox and Apostolic inheritance, the Church understands its pastoral responsibility to extend beyond those formally incorporated within its ecclesiastical structures. This responsibility embraces persons and communities historically or spiritually connected to the traditions, rites, and jurisdictions entrusted to its care, as well as all those whom the Church is called to serve.