As several commenters mentioned, in the Eastern Churches consecration isn’t so tightly confined. That reminded me of a great video I used to show my undergraduates how differently we treat the unconsecrated bread and wine in East and West. This is a Ukrainian Catholic Church, with clergy and assistants preparing for the Great Entrance, before the anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) begins. The title of the video comes from the fact that it’s filmed behind the iconostasis, where laypersons are very rarely able to see. You can see the eucharistic elements here are venerated (bowed to).

This is reflected in Eucharistic theology as well as in practice: in the East language about the Eucharist as symbol, icon, or image of Christ in heaven has been retained (alongside “realistic” language that affirms the Eucharist the assembly eats is the body and blood of Christ) since the patristic era. Both kinds of language can be used before or after the eucharistic prayer. (It’s worth mentioning that symbolic language is much more robust in the East, due to its association with Christology, than it seems to most Western Christians.) Symbolic language was less accepted in the West after the medieval controversies on Eucharistic presence. The West took for its inspiration the work of Ambrose of Milan:

[The Roman Canon] says: “On the day before He suffered, He took bread in his holy hands.” Before it is consecrated, it is bread; but when Christ’s words have been added, it is the body of Christ . . . . And before the words of Christ, the chalice is full of wine and water; when the words of Christ have been added, then blood is effected, which redeemed the people (Ambrose, The Sacraments, 4.23; trans. Roy J. Deferrari, Fathers of the Church vol. 44, p 305).

TOPIC 2 (Eucharist, Eastern):
Patristic and Early Medieval Byzantine Commentaries on the Eucharistic Liturgy

This topic exposes the examinee to four primary early and medieval commentaries (by Theodore of Mopsuestia, Pseudo-Dionysius “the Areopagite,” Maximus Confessor, Germanus of Constantinople and Nicholas Cabasilas) on the Divine Liturgies of the Byzantine rite, attending to what they reveal about the development of the liturgy itself, to the development of mystical commentary in the Byzantine tradition from “mystagogical” to “allegorical” and to the theology of the Eucharistic sacrament (including the topics of presence and sacrifice insofar as they are treated by the commentators).

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Primary Sources

Cabasilas, Nicholas. A Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, tr. J. M. Hussey and P. A. McNulty. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977.

Germanus of Constantinople. On the Divine Liturgy, tr. Paul Meyendorff. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984.

Maximus Confessor. “The Church’s Mystagogy,” 181-225. Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings, tr. George Berthold. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1985.

Pseudo-Dionysius. “The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,” 195-259. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, tr. Colm Lubheid. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1987.

Theodore of Mopsuestia, “Baptismal Homily V” and “Baptismal Homily VI” (= Catechetical Sermons 15-16), 226-250. Edward Yarnold, SJ, The Awe Inspiring Rites of Initiation: The Origins of the R.C.I.A. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2001.

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Secondary Sources

Bornert, René. Les Commentaires byzantins de la divine liturgie du VIIe au XVe siècle (Archives de l’Orient Chrétien 9). Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1966.

Golitzin, Alexander. Et Introibo Ad Altare Dei: The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with Special Reference to Its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition. Thessalonikē: Patriarchikon Idruma Paterikōn Meletōn/George Dedousis, 1994.

Loudovikos, Nikolaos. A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity, tr. Elizabeth Theokritoff. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2010.

Louth, Andrew. “The Reception of Dionysius up to Maximus Confessor,” 43-53. Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite, ed. Sarah Coackley and Charles M. Stang Oxford Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

Reine, Francis Joseph. The Eucharistic Doctrine and Liturgy of the Mystagogical Catecheses of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1942 .

Rorem, Paul. Pseudo-Dionysius: A Commentary on the Texts and an Introduction to their Influence, 91-132. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Schulz, Hans-Joachim. The Byzantine Liturgy, tr. Matthew J. O’Connell. New York: Pueblo, 1986.

Taft, Robert F., “The Liturgy of the Great Church: An initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve of Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34-35 (1980-1981): 45-75.

Tsirpanlis, Constantine N. The Liturgical and Mystical Theology of Nicolas Cabasilas. Athens: Theologia, 1976.

Here are the two important passages in Congar in support of the contention that this dialogue is a prayer between the ordained and the baptized/confirmed (see the previous thread). I have inserted “[NOTE]” at the places where Congar cites Van Unnik’s “Dominus Vobiscum: the Background of a Liturgical Formula,” in New Testament Essays: Studies in Memory of T. W. Mansen 1893–1958, edited by A. J. B. Higgins (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 270–305). UPDATED: I have uploaded a scan of my marked copy of the article.

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I do not wish to speak here about the third ‘sacrament of initiation’, the Eucharist, but would like to observe that the Greek word teleiosis, ‘perfection’, would be more suitable in this context than the Latin word initiare, ‘to begin’. I shall deal with the part played by the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist and the changing of the holy gifts into the body and blood of Christ as well as our communion in the Lord’s body and blood in Volume III of this whole work. Those final chapters are, I believe, extremely important. We have already seen above how a spiritual space or framework for celebration is created by the Spirit by means of an exchange of a promise and a bearing witness to his presence: ‘The Lord be with you’ —’ And with your spirit’. [NOTE] This is a sign of the reciprocity that constitutes the full truth of the relationships between the Christian community and the minister who is the president and the pastor of that community.

This mutual relationship, which expresses the constant aspect of the activity of the Spirit, can also be found in the process of the ordination of ministers. It may even be because of this that it takes place in the celebration. There was also a theological meaning in the early tradition and practice of the Church that we need to recover. The most important moment in the process of ordination was the liturgical act, but, in the early Church, the process in fact began before the celebration. The community took part in an election which, like all the acts that regulated the life of the Church, had to be ‘inspired’. In this election, the talents or charisms of the one elected were recognized. The consecrating bishop took up this intervention on the part of the community. In the consecration of another bishop, all the bishops present were ministers of the Spirit within the epiclesis of the entire assembly. . . .

Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit: VOLUME I: The Experience of the Spirit (New York: Crossroads, 1983), 106–107.

***

. . . The Eastern tradition teaches as firmly as the Western Church that only the priest can do this, but this does not mean that he can do it alone, that is, when he remains alone. He does not, in other words, consecrate the elements by virtue of a power that is inherent in him and which he has, in this sense, within his control. It is rather by virtue of the grace for which he asks God and which is operative, and even ensured, through him in the Church.

It is worth recalling at this point the meaning of the exchange of words between the one who presides over the celebration and the assembled people: ‘The Lord be with you’ – ‘And with your Spirit’. This does not mean simply ‘and with you’. It means ‘with the grace that you received through ordination for the common good; we are asking now for that grace to be made present in this celebration.’ [NOTE] The ‘power’ received at ordination and the making present of the gift of the Spirit, the ordained celebrant and the community or the ecclesiaa are united in the celebration of the Eucharist. In the Eastern rite, the epiclesis is spoken in the plural, indicating clearly that the whole community invokes the Spirit. The Roman canon, however, also has ‘Memores offerimus’ and ‘Supplices te rogamus’ in the plural. We are not so very far apart.

Yves Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit: VOLUME III: The River of Life Flows East and West (New York: Crossroads, 1983), 236.

The people pretty much accept the translation, but there isn’t much apparent gain from its implementation. I suspect that’s what we RCs will be saying in four years.

The 24 members of the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation (which includes the U.S. and Canada) concluded a three-day meeting in Washington on Oct. 2 and issued two statements.

The first statement proposes how the Bishop of Rome would function in a reunited Church. The second statement works toward a common date for Easter so that the Resurrection of our Lord can be proclaimed with one voice.

The “root obstacle” to unity is the Bishop of Rome, the first statement acknowledges. “Despite disagreement on the place of the bishop of Rome in the worldwide cohesion of Christianity, however, it seems to us obvious that what we share, as Orthodox and Catholic Christians, significantly overshadows our differences.”

The ‘filioque,’ which the West added to the Nicene Creed to affirm that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son,’ would be dropped. All would use the profession of faith agreed upon at Nicea.

All members of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches would be able to receive the sacraments of all the Churches. Clergy would be able to concelebrate.

The role of the Bishop of Rome would be renewed and reformed. “In accord with the teaching of both Vatican councils, the bishop of Rome would be understood by all as having authority only within a synodal/collegial context: as member as well as head of the college of bishops, as senior patriarch among the primates of the Churches, and as servant of universal communion.”

Much of the centralism of the Roman Catholic Church developed only in the last century or so. Earlier traditions and practices would be retrieved. “The Roman curia’s relationship to local bishops and episcopal conferences in the Latin Church would become less centralized:  bishops, for instance, would have more control over the agenda and the final documents of synods, and the selection of bishops would again normally become a local process.”

The second statement proposes a common date for Easter/Pascha. Computation would be based on the decrees of Nicea, determining the Equinox from the meridian of Jerusalem. “We have witnessed the growth of secularism and the global effects of tyranny and war.  More than ever, there is a need for a unified Christian proclamation and a witness of the core of our common faith: the Resurrection of Our Lord.”

The dialogue was chaired by Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh and Archbishop Gregory Aymond of New Orleans. The statements do not speak on behalf of either Church, but are offered to the leadership of the Churches for their consideration.

1. The Liturgy is offered in the context of a religious monoculture. The Liturgy is the offering of a whole people, of a place, as well as of the Church. On the island where I was staying, there were no other Christian traditions offering different forms of worship alongside. It would  simply have made no sense. This was an Orthodox community, and Orthodox was what you got.  This meant that the Liturgy was rooted and grounded in its culture in a way which is difficult to appreciate in a pluralistic society like the US, or indeed much of Europe.
2. This close identification of the Liturgy with the local culture was visibly embodied in the person and role of the parish priest, in and out of church. The person who as it were guarded the gate of heaven in the liturgy, as he moved between the people and the holy of holies beyond the iconostasis, was the same person, highly visible in his cassock, who every day walked the streets of the village, stopping to talk to all he met, who sat in its cafes, and was prominent among those who gathered at the police station when an incident arose one day involving a boatload of illegal immigrants.  This kind of highly visible representative role was familiar to many of us ordained in the 60s in England, but has long since gone.
3. Participation in the Divine Liturgy was minimal. People stood, or sat, with great attentiveness, and made the ritual gestures with devotion, but in the main were content to observe the rite and listen to the cantors who sang for them. This is a far cry indeed from the full, conscious and active participation encouraged and expected in the West.
4. Likewise there seemed to be no encounter, no real dialogue, between priest and people. The priest faithfully observed the rite, performed the ritual acts and spoke or sang the ritual words, but there was no direct connection made, no eye contact even. The Liturgy went its own majestic way and the people tagged along. They seemed to need no encouraging word, no little clerical ad libs, no lifting of the spirits with humour. They evidently felt supremely privileged simply to be there.
5. Of the congregation of about 60 or so local people, only 3 received Holy Communion, whereas everyone, visitors included, went forward at the dismissal to receive the blessed bread, or antidoron. Although delighted at this gesture of inclusion not customary in the West, I was saddened to think that here was exhibited that evasion of direct encounter with the Holy, historically common to both West and East. At various periods of our history, Roman Catholic, Anglican and Protestant communions have each found ways of spurning the gracious gift of God with barriers and prevarications of our own making. It was a pity, though  perhaps also a little reassuring, to find that in this respect at least East and West were exactly the same.

The Orthodox (ተዋህዶ, Tewahdo) Church of highland Ethiopia and Eritrea has remained the dominant religion of this part of the Horn of Africa for nearly 1700 years.  This traditional form of Christianity continues to exercise great influence over its 1.5 million adherents in Eritrea even after a 30-year nationalist struggle for independence (1961-1991) from their colonial neighbor: the explicitly Christian empire of Ethiopia. European missionaries arriving in highland Eritrea in the mid-19^th century preferred to penetrate into the more remote and non-Christian areas in the east of present-day Eritrea rather than evangelize those whom they recognized as belonging to a Christendom distinct from and previously out of contact with their own Western patterns of behavior that are often assumed to be synonymous with Christianity. Both Italian and French missionaries did, however, attempt to bring the native Christian population within the fold of the Roman Catholic Church.  Their efforts brought about neither the desired widespread unification nor the feared complete expulsion of Western missionaries (as had been the case with the Portuguese Jesuits in Christian Ethiopia two centuries earlier) but rather gave rise to the hybrid Eritrean Catholic Church.  Today numbering 140,000 the Eritrean Catholic Church maintains much of the outward appearance of the Orthodox Church while having simultaneously adopted centralized education for clergy, world-wide ecclesial connections associated with the Roman Catholic Church, a hybrid liturgical calendar, and other elements characteristic of this new form of Christianity that is distinct from both that of the traditional Orthodox (Tewahdo) Church and that of the Roman Catholic missionaries.  Though emerging as a separate church only in the 19^th century the Eritrean Catholic Church is constituted as a traditional religion both by its adherents as well as by the government of Eritrea. Contrasting the Eritrean Orthodox (Tewahdo) Church and the Eritrean Catholic Church as two parallel forms of Christianity provides a crucial lens through which we can see the integration of an indigenous Christian tradition into a universalizing system and therefore illumine the processes of hybridization that followed reevangelization by missionaries in the highland Eritrean context.

Integration of an Indigenous Christian Tradition into a Universalizing System: the case of the Eritrean Orthodox (ተዋህዶ) Church and the hybrid Eritrean Catholic Church explores the practices of two communities whose differences, I argue, can be explained in terms of different strategies to the question of authenticity.

Looking at the exterior of these exemplar churches, La Catterdale built in the Lombard style by the Italians in Piccola Roma, the capital of their firstborn colony (now Asmara), and the typically circular monastery church built by then Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (Power of the Trinity) at Debre Bizen, Eritrea’s oldest monastery, one might assume that the Eritrean Orthodox and Eritrean Catholic Churches were radically different.

However, it is not so much the style of buildings that distinguishes these two Christian communities. In fact a great deal of hybridization can be observed in the architecture of the two Churches. Depicted above right is an Orthodox church looking very Roman and below left the Catholic seminary beneath a typically Ethiopian church dome.

Nor does their divine worship differ that greatly since the Eritrean Catholic Church began using the liturgical books of the then-Ethiopian Orthodox (Tewahdo) Church completely. In fact the Eritrean Catholic Church (right) occasionally celebrates one of several anaphora that, though conserved in the shared Ge’ez Missal, are not used in the Eritrean Orthodox Church (left).

Even some of the musical elements unique to the Ge’ez Church such as sistras and prayer sticks, drums, and the debtera (a chanter who improvises various sung responses at the conclusion of the liturgy) are found in both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. It should be noted that an Orthodox debtera is still paid to teach music at the Catholic seminary.

Especially on the level of devotional practices, including art, a great deal of hybridized forms have developed. The recognizable Divine Mercy image can be found in at least one Orthodox Church (left) while the Catholic parish of Saint Anthony has depicted their patron, though clad in the familiar Capuchin habit, amid a thoroughly local scene and in an indigenous idiom (right).

Before moving on into what I find are the most structurally significant differences and why these are important for understanding the hybrid nature of the Eritrean Catholic Church, we need to outline the historical processes that gave rise to these differences beginning with an understanding of the normal path taken by Roman Catholic missions in non-Catholic territory as they proceed from

1. a mission with a focus on evangelization,
2. then becoming a prefecture by the development of the infrastructure needed to sustain a Catholic population,
3. which is elevated to a vicariate with more developed Catholic infrastructure and headed by a bishop,
4. to finally become an independent diocese, the self-sustaining Church under a local bishop.

In 1839 St. Justin de Diacobis, CM, an Italian Vincentian (also known as the Lazarists) arrived in the new Catholic mission at Adwa to establish the Apostolic Prefect of Abyssinia (under the auspices of the Congregation of Mission, a French Society of Apostolic Life, not the universal Congregation Propaganda Fidei) having heard that the Holy See wanted to begin a mission in Ethiopia. Catholics were subsequently persecuted, doubtless owing to the memory of the failed Jesuit mission, and Diacobis took refuge along Red Sea and in southern Eritrea though his mission was primarily to the Christian inhabitants of the Kebessa/Hamasein (highlands), in what is now the province of Tigray in Ethiopia and highland Eritrea. Diacobis is nearly unique among his missionary contemporaries for advocating that missionaries dress as Ethiopians, adopt their way of life, use the local liturgy, and so forth not unlike the path advocated by 17^th century Jesuit Roberto de Nobili in his mission among non-Christians in India. Despite the difficulties seven years later the Vicaraiat Apostolique d’Abbyssinie under the direction of the French Lazarists was established in 1846. Shortly thereafter, still in refuge along the Red Sea, Diacobis was secretly ordained bishop in Massawa by the Italian Capuchin, Bishop Massaia, and permitted to celebrate sacraments in the Ethiopian (Ge’ez) Rite. This decisive event in 1848 can without a doubt be looked upon as the genesis of a distinct Ethiopian/Eritrean Catholic Church. In 1853 Diacobis reopened the Catholic college in the Ethiopian province of Gualla (having first been founded in 1841-6) before entering into his eternal rest in 1860.

Three decades after the death of Diacobis Eritrea became the ‘firstborn’ colony of Italy in 1890 following the expansion of shipping interests at the Red Sea port of Massawa. Fearing that the subsequent 1894 Bahta Hagos rebellion against Italian rule was instigated by the French, the Italian governor expelled the French Lazarists and invited the Italian Capuchin Franciscans to assume responsibility for the evangelization of the new Italian colony and dominance over its educational apparatus. The Prefettura Apostolica dell’Eritrea was then established (bypassing any mission status) which was to be elevated to a vicariate in 1911. During this same period of upheaval Ferdinando Martini was made governor of Eritrea in 1897 and, though he tolerated the Capuchins, openly opposed their superstition and established his own secular schools for the Italians in the colonies which, limited in number, resulted in many of the children of Italian colonists coming to Eritrea in increasing numbers joining the native Eritreans in the more numerous Capuchin mission schools. In 1930 an Ordinariate (Ethiopian Rite) of Eritrea was created and the Ethiopian College was founded in Rome where it remains one of only two colleges within the borders of the Vatican. Tekeste Negash has noted that during this period the Capuchin schools, while seemingly in conflict with the nationalism of the colonial government, advanced the colonial mentality of the state. Jonathan Miran records that the rise of the fascists in Italy and the subsequent Lateran Pact (reducing the Holy See to the Vatican City-State enclave within Rome) sealed at a legal level what was already emerging in Eritrea itself, namely, the almost complete dominance of education by the Catholic orders, including the Sisters of Saint Anna and the Capuchins in Eritrea. In 1951 the Ordinariate of Eritrea was elevated to an Apostolic Exarchate (the Eastern Rite equivalent of Vicariate Apostolic) and, ten years later, erected as the full Eparchy of Asmara (as the Latin Vicariate was suppressed in 1959). Following independence, in 1995, the additional Eparchies of Barentu and Keren were erected.

The Eritrean Catholic Church tends toward a historicized, classroom-based model (cathedral school at right) which stands in contrast to the monastic apprenticeships that characterize Orthodox formation (learning chants under an older monk at left), a difference which significantly shaped the development of the Eritrean Catholic Church as a hybrid tradition.

Various elements of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, with its emphasis on the fully conscious and active participation of the faithful, have been incorporated into the worship life of the Eritrean Catholic Church despite the closer similarity of the liturgy of the Eritrean Catholic Church to its Orthodox counterpart than to its Roman Rite affiliate (Orthodox posture, left; Catholic, right).

That the liturgy can be studied developmentally, analyzed, and subsequently adapted within the Eritrean Catholic Church is markedly different than the treatment of the liturgy within the Orthodox context and derives precisely from the differences in the methods of formation outlined above. In the Orthodox tradition a man seeking ordination to the priesthood would ascend a particular monastery and be trained for some years under a single master before, in some cases, returning to the city to be ordained a priest. In this schema all of the learning of the liturgy, the chants, doctrinal formulations, and so forth are personalized to the master and localized to a given monastery. The authenticity of such practices rest unproblematically on their having been faithfully transmitted from one master to another. This is quite different from the critical and historicized treatment such subjects receive in the abstract, classroom-centered model of formation that typifies the formation of seminarians in the Eritrean Catholic context. In this latter model many different voices, each conveying something of the universal tradition, can be dissected and reassembled without being perceived as threatening its authenticity which comes to rest less on the personal and local transmission but more on the universal and abstracted truth being conveyed.

A caricature of this can be set up by juxtaposing the Ethiopian College within the walls of the Vatican (left) and the world-wide associations symbolized and His Holiness the Abune (right), appointed by the (Coptic) Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria through whom the Eritrean Orthodox Church maintains an apostolic pedigree to one of the four ancient sees.

Most of the priests of the Eritrean Catholic Church are biritual, that is, belonging to both the Roman Rite by virtue of being members of religious orders as well as to the Ge’ez Rite. The Franciscan Capuchins of San Antonio, all of whom are Eritrean nationals, celebrate the Latin Rite in their private chapel (right) while still using the Ge’ez Rite as celebrated by both the Eritrean Catholic and Eritrean Orthodox faithful (left).

The present situation of the Eritrean Catholic Church, then, is one that maintains much of the outward appearance of the Orthodox Church while having simultaneously adopted centralized education for clergy that goes hand-in-hand with universal (catholic) ecclesial connections. One of my Eritrean Orthodox informants regarded the fact that the Orthodox (Tewahdo) Church never had a theological academy and that the monasteries are more akin to convents and are not seminaries in any sense as the reason there is a lacuna in the literature concerning Eritrean Christianity which is indeed supported by the fact that nearly all the published literature is from the Pontifical Oriental Institute and the work of Eritrean Catholic clergy. One of my informants in Asmara, the son of an Orthodox priest, was a former Capuchin priest who had studied at the PIO and subsequently taught liturgy in several European universities before returning to Eritrea. Such world-wide ecclesial connections associated with the Roman Catholic Church are not uncommon among the Eritrean Catholic clergy and stand in stark contrast to the Eritrean Orthodox Church that has, especially in the last two decades, become ever more insular. While numerous Capuchins, a small community of Cistercians affiliated with Casamari, and a hand-full of Comboni missionaries (including the present Eritrean bishop) themselves embody this double identity of being simultaneously Roman and Eritrean their experience is paradigmatic of the Eritrean Catholic Church taken as a whole. While the question of hybridity is one that comes up frequently in anthropological studies in a way that seems to assume that persons cannot fully possess two identities at once I prefer to cast the two-naturedness of the Eritrean Catholic Church in theological terms, echoing the full humanity and full divinity of Christ as explicated at the Council of Chalcedon that was never embraced by the Alexandrian Church and, by extension, the Eritrean Orthodox (Tewahdo) Church as well (Tewahdo in fact means something like the Greek miaphysis).

The question of authenticity is then doubly poignant and few clergy with whom I spoke about being Eritrean Catholic did not explicitly mention some way in which they viewed themselves as fully or authentically Eritrean as well as fully or authentically Catholic. One Capuchin friar was in the midst of working out a hybrid liturgical calendar which, despite otherwise sharing liturgical books with the Eritrean Orthodox Church, he saw as necessary in order to include the annual Roman sanctoral as well the monthly calendar used by the Ge’ez Rite. Throughout Eritrea all Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran Christians follow the Ethiopian calendar derived of the Julian calendar while the state of Eritrea uses the Gregorian calendar ironically itself a product of the Roman Catholic Church brought by the secular Italian colonial government. Through such a calendar and other hybridizations the Eritrean Catholic Church has been constituted as a traditional religion both by its adherents as well as by the government of Eritrea. While a simple genetic theory for making sense of this hybrid nature of the Eritrean Catholic Church does not seem to account for the variety of adaptations, taking seriously the concern for authenticity expressed by agents who experience themselves to be simultaneously fully Catholic while also fully Eritrean leads to an understanding of hybridity as itself an authenticating discourse. What is articulated by Eritrean Catholics (and, I would argue, visible in an objectively verifiable way) is not some effaced version of the authentic (pure liturgy that the earliest Roman Catholic missionaries looked for in the Tewahdo liturgy but, of course, didn’t find there any more than in their own Roman Rite) nor some idea of an unchanged substrate glossed by an imposed colonial regime, but rather the experience of persons constituted as subjects with both a national identity that encompasses Ge’ez Christianity in all its richness as well as an additional, universal, meta-discourse that does not efface the local but rather preserves it as it simultaneously brings it into a world-wide scope that is in itself authentic heir to both. This is an incarnate, local, and grounded identity that is taken up into the universal and global tradition that is itself constituent of such a local identity without erasing it. In this I find a rich ground for reflection on the theological truth by means of which my model attempts to account for the hybrid nature of the Eritrean Catholic Church.