It may surprise some people to know that there are many different rites within the Catholic Church. Before discussing these rites it is important to note that a different rite has no split from the Catholic Church, but they are the liturgies said by different cultural centers in the times of the Apostles. A rite represents an ecclesiastical tradition about how the sacraments are to be celebrated. As the early Church grew and spread, it celebrated the sacraments as would be best understood and received in the context of individual cultures, without ever changing their essential form and matter. The early Church sought to evangelize in the major cultural centers of the first centuries A.D. These centers were Rome, Antioch (Syria), and Alexandria (Egypt). All the rites in use today evolved from the liturgical practices and ecclesiastical organization used by the churches in these cities.
The Church of Christ represented in these ecclesiastical traditions is known as a ritual church. The church in a certain territory is known as a particular church. The Catechism lists main seven rites. These rites are listed: Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite, and Chaldean,. These rites are the descendants of the liturgical practices that originated in centers of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. Each rite originates from the authority of the apostles and have developed from a particular region thus integrating the culture of the region.
"Within the Catholic Church ... Canonical rites, which are of equal dignity, enjoy the same rights, and are under the same obligations. Although the particular churches possess their own hierarchy, differ in liturgical and ecclesiastical discipline, and possess their own spiritual heritage, they are all entrusted to the pastoral government of the Roman pontiff, the divinely appointed successor of St. Peter in the Primacy."
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