Baltimore Sun, March 29, 2008:

The Archdiocese of Baltimore will celebrate its bicentennial starting next month with work on a new prayer garden near downtown, musical performances in the Basilica of the Assumption and an exhibit of the Catholic community's history at St. Mary's Seminary.

Many events will coincide with Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Washington and New York from April 15 to April 20.

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien said yesterday that the pope is expected to acknowledge the Archdiocese of Baltimore as the nation's first Catholic archdiocese. Benedict did not accept an invitation to visit Baltimore; Pope John Paul II visited Baltimore in 1995.

"During his visit, our Holy Father will commemorate an important date in the history of our local church and the church in the United States: April 8, 1808," O'Brien said at a news conference to outline the events for bicentennial. "The Archdiocese of Baltimore will be represented in Washington and New York when the pope honors this important anniversary."

Congratulations to all Roman Catholic readers of Crablaw Maryland Weekly.

For non-Catholics, the typical structure for Latin Rite Catholics is that major cities will be named archdioceses and other smaller cities will be named dioceses that are "suffragan" to the archdiocese within a "province." Usually in the U.S., a diocese or archdiocese will lie solely within one state. Maryland is notable in that the Bishop of Wilmington serves Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, while the Archdiocese of Washington includes the District and some of the Maryland suburbs, and is actually headquartered barely over the District line in Mount Rainier, Maryland. The Baltimore Archdiocese serves metropolitan Baltimore, Frederick County and western Maryland. Baltimore's suffragan sees are Arlington and Richmond, VA, Wilmington and Charleston-Wheeling, WV. Most U.S. states have at most one Archbishop, though California and Texas and maybe a few other states have more than one.

I mention "Latin Rite" because there are Catholics who are in full communion with Rome and under the ultimate religious guidance and discipline of the Roman Pontiff, but whose churches are not "Roman" in the narrow sense. Byzantine Catholics, Melkite Catholics and other "Eastern Churches" are usually headed by a Patriarch appointed by the Pope, and their administrative structures in the U.S. will overlap those of the Latin Rite hierarchy. An example of a Byzantine Catholic Church would be Patronage Byzantine Catholic Church in Arbutus, which is under the spiritual and administrative jurisdiction of the Byzantine Eparch (Bishop) of Passaic, New Jersey. Many Catholics from largely Orthodox countries, the Middle East or some other countries (e.g. many Slovak and Ruthenian Catholics) are of the Eastern "Rite" or more properly of Eastern Churches. The relationships between the Roman Church, defined narrowly, and the Eastern Churches is complex and beyond my lapsed Catholic memory.

Baltimore is known as the "Premier See" because it was founded as the first diocese in the country as well, in 1789, before later being promoted to Archdiocese ("See" is derived from the Latin "sede", meaning "seat"; the word "cathedral" is similarly derived from the Latin word for "chair," meaning the chair of the bishop.) In some countries, the first or most prominent see's bishop will be known as the "primate" of that nation. The U.S. does not technically follow this custom but sometimes the Archbishop of Baltimore will be known as the "Primate of Honor." In Canada, the Archbishop of Quebec (City) bears the title "Primate of Canada."

What's interesting is that Baltimore's heritage as the Premier See and Maryland's early history as a refuge for Catholic refugees from England makes Maryland appear more Catholic than it really is. Maryland is about 23% Catholic, about the same as the U.S. as a whole. New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have much larger Catholic communities proportional to population, particularly Rhode Island. Maryland is religiously very diverse and has significant history in the development of many religious traditions in the U.S.; a lot of important history in American Judaism, Anglicanism and Methodism took place here. To this day, one can attend Lutheran services in German one block from City Hall on Sunday mornings. Maryland's Jewish and Muslim populations are among the nation's largest proportionally. But no one can deny the Catholic imprint on a significant part of Maryland's early history and its modern cultural and religious profile to this day.