Metropolitan Church sui iuris

The Eastern code distinguishes patriarchal, major archiepiscopal, metropolitan, and other Churches sui iuris. A metropolitan Church sui iuris is a stable grouping of faithful and eparchies recognized as self-governing by the supreme authority of the Church. It is more than an ecclesiastical province of the Latin type, because the metropolitan and council govern a whole Church sui iuris under common and particular law.^[1]

Only the supreme authority of the Church erects, alters, or suppresses such a Church and defines its territory. The Roman Pontiff appoints the metropolitan to a designated see. The metropolitan requests the pallium, which signifies his metropolitan power and the Church's full communion with the Roman Pontiff; before its imposition he may not convoke the council of hierarchs or ordain bishops.^[2]

The metropolitan's power is ordinary and proper but personal, and under the code it is validly exercised with the council only within the territorial boundaries of the metropolitan Church. He ordains and enthrones its bishops, convokes and presides over the council, erects the metropolitan tribunal, watches over faith and discipline, and performs other acts assigned by law.

All and only the ordained bishops of the Church are called to the council of hierarchs, subject to the canonical exclusions; eparchial and coadjutor bishops have deliberative vote, while particular law can grant it to other bishops. The council legislates where the law gives competence, proposes at least three candidates for appointments of metropolitan or bishops, and coordinates common pastoral needs. Its laws cannot be validly promulgated until the Apostolic See has acknowledged receipt of its acts in writing.

A metropolitan Church sui iuris has genuine authority to preserve its rite, discipline, and common mission. Its mode of selecting hierarchs and enacting law is nevertheless more directly dependent on the Roman Pontiff than that of a patriarchal or major archiepiscopal Church. Calling all Eastern Catholic structures patriarchates obscures these real canonical distinctions.