What is the difference between a church and a Rite?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic AnswerChurch has several meanings:

i. A place of Christian worship

ii. The whole visible society in communion with the pope, the Church of Christ

iii. The Christians of a patriarchate or other delimitation, e.g. the Western Church, the Maronite Church

iv. the Christians of a particular diocese or, in the days before they were organized, of a single town or province, e.g. the Church of Plymouth, of Corinth.

These are exact meanings; the following uses are also sometimes met:

v. A single family of Christians (Rom xvi, 5)

vi. The pastors of the Church (Matt. xviii, 17).

vii. Those who are in the clerical state and whose lives are devoted to the service of the Church.

viii. the name is properly extended to the ancient non-Catholic churches of the East, as was done by Pope Pius IX in his brief Arcano divinae providentiae of 1868, addressed to "the Bishops of the Churches of the Eastern Rite who are not in communion with the Apostolic See;" but to Protestant religious organizations only by courtesy

Rite

i. The words to be said and actions to be done in performing a given act of religion, e.g.., the rite of burial, of consecrating a bishop.

ii. A whole and complete system of forms, ceremonies and prayers to be used in the worship of God, the administration of the sacraments, and minor ecclesiastical occasions. The Catholic Church recognizes nine rites, each one of which has its own right and proper way of doing things, from celebration the Holy Eucharist downwards; they are: the Latin (including variants), Byzantine, Armenian, Chaldean, Coptic, Ethiopic, Malabar, Maronite, and Syrian rites. All these except the Latin and the Maronite are also used by numbers of Christians who are no longer Catholics. It should be noted that all rites are local in origin; historical events have extended their use to whole churches. Liturgically and scientifically the above rites are classified thus: Latin (or Roman), Byzantine, Alexandrian (Coptic and Ethiopic), Antiochene (Syrian and Maronite), Arementian, Chaldean (Chaldean and Malabarese).

iii. The organized body or bodies, Catholic or not, and their members, who use any one of the above-mentioned rites. In this sense it is equivalent to "church," and includes the manner of organization, proper canon law, customs, etc. To speak therefore of a Catholic of the Armenian rite means more than that he hears Mass said and is absolve in Classical Armenian Every child of Catholic parents belongs de facto and de iure, and every child of baptized non-Catholic parents belongs de fact or de iure, to one or other of the rites.

iv. The word is sometimes used for rank or degree of solemnity of a feast, e.g. the feast of the Presentation is of greater double rite.

v. The word is used with varying degrees of accuracy for certain variant forms of some of the rites name in ii, e.g., Dominican and Ruthenian, whose users, in the sense of iii, belong to the Latin and Byzantine rites respectively. The usage is clumsy and confusing, but usual...