Rites & Liturgy: sources and method
Where the Rites & Liturgy facts come from, how uncertain facts are marked, what is not yet verified, and the public-domain Natural Earth map boundaries.
Sources
- Canon law and the Catechism: the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (CCEO) and the Catechism, at vatican.va.
- Country lists and heads: GCatholic ↗, cited and linked, never copied. Heads are given as listed on the date shown and are re-checked every six months.
- History: CNEWA ↗ (Ronald Roberson's profiles) and the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907 to 1912) at New Advent.
- Historical centres and sees: Wikidata (CC0). They are places, not territories, and are not drawn on the map.
- Texts: public-domain scans at the Internet Archive, and official Church sites, linked only.
How uncertain facts are shown
- Every fact links its source.
- A fact our sources give only at low confidence is never shown as plain fact. It is either marked Unverified with its source, or left out and shown as Not yet verified.
- Dates are ranges or centuries unless a document with a date is cited.
- No population figures are shown.
Not yet verified
- Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church: head
- Greek Byzantine Catholic Church: canonical status
- Greek Byzantine Catholic Church: head
- Italo-Albanian Catholic Church: head
- Macedonian Greek Catholic Church: head
- Greek Catholic Church of Croatia and Serbia: head
- Belarusian Greek Catholic Church: head
- Russian Greek Catholic Church: head
- Albanian Greek Catholic Church: its present see and present country list
- Russian Greek Catholic Church: its historical centre and present see
- Belarusian Greek Catholic Church: its present see (there is no eparchy)
- Current editions of the liturgical books of the Alexandrian, Syriac, Armenian, and Chaldean Churches
- The date of the undated Roman Missal for the laity (badge: Unknown)
- The religious orders' rites, order by order
The map
The map is drawn at build time as plain SVG from Natural Earth ↗ Admin 0 country boundaries (1:110m for the world, 1:50m for the insets and for Guam) and, for the Kerala outline only, Admin 1 boundaries (1:50m). Countries are joined on Natural Earth's ISO_A2_EH code. Natural Earth is in the public domain: "All versions of Natural Earth raster + vector map data found on this website are in the public domain" (terms of use ↗). Made with Natural Earth.
Borders are illustrative (Natural Earth, de facto lines) and imply no position. Shading shows where a Church has its own jurisdiction, not where all its faithful live. Shading is by whole country, so a Church present in one region of a large country shades all of it. There are no pins, no diocesan boundaries, and no layer of a "main" rite per country.
Colours are the Okabe and Ito colour-blind-safe set (jfly.uni-koeln.de) ↗, darkened or lightened to reach 3:1 against the map in each theme, and always paired with a hatch pattern and a text list.
Data
The compiled records, with every source link, are in data/rites.json. Our own wording and structure are CC0; the facts belong to no one, and GCatholic and CNEWA are cited and linked, not copied. See Licensing & credits.