By Benjamin Dixon, a conservative political operative and commentator from North Carolina. Benjamin is a member of ROCOR. He currently serves as the Veterans Committee Chairman for the Young Republican National Federation. You can follow Ben on Substack at Where the Wasteland Ends. Reprinted by permission.
I recently read an article posted on Orthodox Reflections by Fr. James Krueger entitled “Why Venerate Saints of the West and Reject the Liturgies They Celebrated?” What was so confusing about this article was that it claimed the broad opposition to the Western Rite was caused by their adherence to the liturgy and patterns of the pre-Schism Orthodox West… But this is patently false. The Western Rite has not resurrected these liturgies but instead adopted a very slightly modified form of liturgics from modern High Anglican/Catholic practices.
While this is not a commentary on the piety or Orthodoxy of those following the Western Rite (many of whom I know to be deeply pious and defenders of the faith) I believe that Fr. James and proponents of the Western Rite have vastly overestimated the cultural value of Western liturgics, the ability to truly resurrect the ancient liturgies and practices of the Orthodox West – much less use them as an effective tool to convert Americans – and have, seemingly, forgotten exactly how Orthodox Tradition is transmitted.
Supposed Supporters & Origins of the WR Liturgy
People in the Western Rite often try to use the words and actions of St. Tikhon of Moscow or St. John of Shanghai to show that the Church “used to understand” that Orthodoxy was “too foreign” and in need of a Western style liturgy. They will note the approval of the Liturgy of St. Tikhon as proof, claiming that he personally put together this liturgy to help convert Westerners. But St. Tikhon did not have an in-depth role in the actual editing and approval of the WR liturgy – which is little more than a slightly modified Anglican High Mass. Nor was it done for general missionary purposes, but as an act of economia. There was, in the early twentieth century, hope for a legitimate union with the Episcopalians in America.1
Sts. Tikhon of Moscow, Sabastian of Jackson, and John (Kochurov) of Chicago in New York for the elevation of an Anglican Bishop – they did not participate in the consecration.
In Western Europe, a number of Catholic parishes went into schism with Rome and sought shelter under the omophorion of the Russian Church, forming the Western Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate (then under Metropolitan Sergius). Sometime later, they were received into ROCOR; in 1966, a Russian priest was tonsured a monk by St. John of Shanghai and shortly thereafter consecrated Bishop Jean-Nectaire of Saint-Denis. Bishop Jean-Nectaire worked hard to correct the Mass and hymnals of the community under his care, and while these were conformed to Orthodox teaching in word, they still carried the modern Roman Catholic spirit and differed in form very little from the mass as it had been celebrated since the time of the Catholic counter-reformation. After the death of Bp. Jean-Nectaire, the group went into schism and fragmented.2
We can see then that this was an act of compassion, of economia, not a campaign to revive a Western Orthodox Church on an earlier model. Those who attempt to use St. John of Shanghai’s “don’t let anyone tell you that you have to be Eastern to be Orthodox,” as a call to revive the Western Rite are mistaken. Saint John is making the point that one doesn’t have to become Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc.. to become Orthodox, not that Orthodoxy is “eastern” and must be modified to be accepted in the West.
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Too Foreign for Americans?
Fr. James is essentially making the argument that Orthodoxy is too foreign for Americans. Where is this coming from? The only people I see making the argument that Americans can’t convert because the Orthodox liturgy is too “foreign” to American culture are the Protestant pastors trying to explain to their congregation why they need to stop converting to Orthodoxy. The entire premise has been disproven over the last century – and in the midst of the current surge of conversions. As large waves of inquirers and catechumens come into the Church, none of them are saying “you know, I’d be much more willing to convert if this looked more like the Catholic Church up the road.” My job affords me the opportunity to attend parishes across the country, so I’m not saying this as someone who doesn’t get around to other parishes – I’ll touch on my experiences visiting WR parishes here shortly.3
The primary obstacle for many Americans is linguistic, not liturgical. In immigrant parishes where there is a lack of English or resistance to implementing English, it can be a bit more difficult to retain converts – they will find an English liturgy.4 This is why St. Tikhon of Moscow said that the single most important task for the health and growth of Orthodoxy in America was the translation of the service texts into English.5
Any time the question of whether or not Orthodoxy is too foreign for Americans is raised, I can only wonder if we are to likewise believe that Orthodoxy was too foreign when the Apostles went to Egypt or Ethiopia? What about Galatia? Georgia? Persia? Italy? Britain? What about China?
Of course not, nor is that the case in America today.
It’s not like the Apostles arrived in Gaul, looked around and said “Okay, how do we invent a liturgy which speaks to their local pagan customs?” They certainly didn’t try to resurrect practices from a thousand years before their arrival to make the liturgy “relevant” to the people they were converting. But this is precisely what Fr. James is insisting we do. He tries to use St. Gregory the Great’s instruction to St. Augustine of Canterbury to show that there is precedence for this. But even a cursory glance at the text shows this is not the case.
St. Gregory suggests that St. Augustine repurpose the pagan temples, tearing down the altars and idols, and replacing them with an altar of God and the relics of saints.6 Because the locals sacrificed oxen (sacrifices involves eating) that he should institute a parish feast day on the anniversary of its establishment, dedicating the food to God – a normative Christian practice. Thus, the experienced St. Gregory instructs the less experienced St. Augustine on how to show the Christian religion as the fulfilment of what the Britons already believed.7
Thus, Fr. James’ argument, as genuine as it may have been, simply doesn’t follow. The Liturgy which St. Augustine, like Sts. Cyril and Methodius, taught to the people of the British Isles was the same he had served for years beforehand. Nor was an “authentic Gallic/Anglo-Saxon Rite” something which appeared overnight. Instead, the Anglo-Saxons received the Tradition passed to them from the missionaries who baptized them, and over time local practices began to differ.8 This is the Orthodox model.9
The Question of Culture & Roots?
“As a convert to Orthodoxy and a canonical Orthodox priest with a blessing to celebrate the ancient Roman Liturgy, I am often struck by the sheer lack of regard that some Orthodox folks show toward these cultural roots.” – From the article
If Fr. James is struck by the sheer lack of regard that some Orthodox show towards these “cultural roots,” just wait until he sees the lack of regard most Americans have for these supposed roots. Fr. James is arguing that Americans feel some cultural connection to the ancient English, Scottish, or Irish Church, but this is virtually never the case. Most don’t know their own family history beyond their grandparents, and don’t really care to.
Culture is not exactly a storehouse from which you can draw out whatever you want so long as it existed once upon a time. Culture is a living societal consciousness, and American culture today, at its very best, is fighting for the “traditional values” of Evangelical Protestantism and the Nuclear Family – in other words, fighting for the world of the 1950s/1960s. In the instances in which Americans do feel some connection with Europe, it is 18-19th century Europe during the Imperial-Revolutionary Age towards which they look.
The Western Rite in Reality
And this is precisely why the only place the Western Rite seems to have taken root in any measurable way is in places like the upper Midwest – strongholds of more “traditional” (ie., Vatican I/pre-Vatican II) Catholicism. Visiting WR parishes in the Midwest over the last two years, most of those I’ve met were, frankly, still very much Roman Catholics.10
By and large, they ended up in these parishes not because they saw the errors of Roman Catholicism and were actively, consciously rejecting them but because they felt Pope Francis was a heretic and Vatican II was a mistake; because Roman Catholics believe Orthodox Christians are merely “separated brethren with valid sacraments,” they came to a Western Rite parish. It appears that the Western Rite is less popular as a return to some Western Orthodox roots than as a rejection of the Vatican II Papacy and more acceptable landing than Sedevacantism.
Midwestern Western Rite Parish (Pat. of Antioch). Notice the statuary on the left, surrounded by votive and vigil lamps.
The Western Rite liturgy is not, nor was it ever a return to the ancient rites of the Church, but rather a modification of modern Roman Catholic-Anglican practice – practices born of the West’s abandonment of Orthodoxy.
If the Western Rite were truly seeking to an authentic and legitimate return to the ancient Western Orthodox Rite, they would stop wearing 18th century Gothic vestments and Anglican collars, instead wearing vestments similar to those worn by the Greeks and Balkan churches today – which are closer to historical Orthodox vestments in the West than what is used today; they would put a hard stop to eucharistic adoration; they would set up an iconostasis, the presence of which was, according to archeologists, nearly universal (contrary to the myths pushed on seemingly every Western Rite parish’s about us page), or at the very least set up a rood screen; toss out the organs and take down the statues and other depictions which contradict the canons of the Ecumenical Councils11 – instead filling their churches with icons and vigil lamps as was the standard practice during the first 800 years in the Western churches.
As noble as it may seem to attempt the resurrection of the ancient Western Rite, simply having service books and archeological evidence of how temples may have been structured is not enough to resurrect these ancient liturgies.12 If you don’t believe me, give an Evangelical a Hieratikon and tell him to celebrate the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.
I want to be clear; I understand the evangelistic motivations of Fr. James and others who are supportive of the Western Rite. These motivations are noble, it’s the methodology that is flawed. Simply put, the Western Rite is inauthentic as an expression of ancient Western piety, it is culturally irrelevant to Americans and as such has no worth as a missionary tool. But beyond these two important considerations is a far more important question, and that question is this: Do we have the right or authority to introduce a set of liturgical practices which are wholly unknown to the faithful and foreign to the living expression of Orthodox piety?
The answer is a resounding NO.
Holy Tradition & Liturgical Reformationism
Holy Tradition does not belong to us, it belongs to the whole of the Church. Our duty is to receive the Tradition which has been delivered to us, to preserve and pass it on unmolested to those who come after us – not to invent our own based on personal preference.
The Church is not a human organization whose rules and operational models can simply be upended at will. She is a living organism, the union of all in Christ and it is He who determines her direction – not the whims of these or those. This isn’t a problem exclusive to the Western Rite either but seems to be infecting those Orthodox Christians most zealous for an “American Orthodoxy.”
It has become far too common for individual clergy or parishes to introduce liturgical innovations, to arbitrarily “resurrect” some practice out of personal preference. And this is really the bottom line: we do not just make up practices; nor do we say “well, this was done in (place) in (year), so, it’s Orthodox and we can do it now.” No!
I frequently see this in OCA parishes when I’m traveling. Individual parishes will adopt some novel practice simply because the priest (a scholar involved in translations) has translated a manuscript fragment. Seemingly every OCA parish in the South has adopted a practice of the entire parish making prostrations on Sunday during the Anaphora. I asked a priest about it and was told “this used to be a common practice in ____.” … Maybe it was, but that’s not our practice now, that’s not what we received, and perhaps it was done away with because it violates the good order of the Church – such as the rule that we don’t make prostrations on Sundays.
The heart of the issue is this: when you try to resurrect practices which have fallen out of the living witness of Tradition, there is always the risk (regardless of one’s intentions) of misunderstanding the purpose, intent, and execution of that practice and bringing dangerous innovations into the Church.13
When we seek to uproot one of the landmarks set by our fathers, we quickly find that everything becomes relative. Our position then, is not a demand for uniformity in liturgical expression but for organic expressions. And frankly the Western Rite is artificial and foreign to the mind of the Church.
Conclusion
The Orthodoxy of Byzantium was foreign to the Nordic-Slavic paganism of Rus’ when St. Vladimir was baptized. In spite of that his emissaries returned with this message, “we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, but we know this: God dwells there in the midst of men.” And this is the experience of converts generation after generation, century after century, nation after nation. People are not looking for something culturally relevant, they are looking for Christ – and that is precisely what we have to offer them.
After the Baptism of Rus, it took several hundred years for a uniquely Russian Orthodoxy to emerge. Authentically American or Western expressions of the liturgy,14 festal celebrations and practices, et al are coming; but these must come organically and doesn’t happen overnight. It requires time and patience, and more than anything it requires sanctity. For a genuine American Orthodoxy to emerge, we must first cultivate saints, as it is the saints of a nation which shape its character. This is not something we can force, and if we do try to force it, we will fall into error.
This truth, so clearly missed by our friends in the Western Rite and elsewhere, is summed up concisely in the Editor’s Preface from I.M. Kontzevitch’s Acquisition of the Holy Spirit:
“At various stages in the history of Western civilization, Christianity has made inroads and created saints who have become national heroes; and these heroes have set the tone for the specific characteristics of their respective nations. In one way or another these nations, becoming infused with holiness, have developed indigenous qualities of sanctity which have colored the essence of their arts, literature and customs.
Christian ethnic characteristics are valid only if they stem from the genuine acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This unites all in Christ, and thus to the state of Adam before the Fall, to the paradisiacal state for which man was made. But if there is no link and there is estrangement from that initial source – the traditional, historical path of acquiring the Holy Spirit – then the result is separation, peculiarity and oddity, a source of strife and discord. The historical acquisition of the Holy Spirit as reflected in local, national churches has created a heavenly choir composed of earthly men and women who have transfigured themselves into saints – friends of God.” – Acquisition of the Holy Spirit: Orthodox Ascetic Theology, P. 11; St. Herman’s Brotherhood Press15
Our job is to be faithful to that which we have received. We absolutely should revere the Western Saints, ask for their intercessions, and emulate their virtue. But we should also emulate their zealous adherence to the tradition which they received. Only by safeguarding our tradition, which the Russians, Greeks, et al.. have passed to us can we hope to see an authentic Western piety come into being.
1 The friendly dialogue between the Russian and Anglican churches in America was largely of the Anglican bishops intentionally misleading the Orthodox bishops to believe that the differences in their beliefs were minimal and could be easily overcome. Removing any errors from the existing Anglican liturgy was part of the effort to see if a union were possible. Many, like St. Raphael of Brooklyn had allowed for their parishioners to attend Anglican parishes if an Orthodox parish wasn’t available, and even to be communed in an emergency situation where an Orthodox priest was not available. Once it became clear just how far the Anglicans were far from Orthodoxy, this all came to an abrupt halt. Saint Raphael issued a letter to the Anglican communion at the conclusion of this ordeal, which was quite spicy.
2 Saint John was a big proponent of restoring the veneration of Western saints. It’s a stretch to say that he was a “proponent” of the Western Rite, so much as wanting to provide a home for Catholic communities in Western Europe who wished to come into the Church. An act of compassion upon this group, and a recognition that pre-schism saints deserve to be known and commemorated is different than saying we should invent new rites to evangelize a specific land – a move which would be wholly at odds with Orthodox tradition, its history of missionary work, and St. John’s own received theology.
3 Last year the number of parishes I attended was higher than the number of times I could attend my home parish.
4 Granted, foreign language parishes have an at least equally hard time keeping second generation cradles in the Church; but that is, again, a language issue.
5 see intro to Hapgood Service Book, Antiochian Archdiocese of America
6 Precisely as had been done with the Parthenon and innumerable Roman Basilicas
7 Someone might point to St. Gregory’s allowing the locals to build huts around the temple during the feast as proof of something more going on, but that is not the case. Most Christian feasts are celebrated for not one day, but several. For a newly planted church in an unchurched land, many would be traveling from days away, it makes sense for them to build temporary shelters to be near and fully participate in the festal occasion. We see the Jews doing precisely this in Ezra, building tents around the temple complex during the feast.
8 We often forget how much more isolated people were in the ancient world compared to our own – although not as isolated as we often like to imagine. Put another way, we fail to understand just how revolutionary planes, trains, automobiles, radio, television, and the internet have been. Just look at the variety of local accents across America even a century ago. Someone in New York City could tell who was from Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx simply by the way they spoke, and this was in the same city. People from Boston, depending on class, had different accents. What we call a Southern accent today is a charecterization, in reality there were innumerable Southern accents. The Virginia Tidewater accent differed from that of the Piedmont Region, which differed from those in the Shenandoah Valley or Southwest near Bristol. These differed from Charleston, which differed from Atlanta, Louisiana, Alabama, etc… The television and internet have resulted in a more general American accent. And that’s just local variation in language! Just like language, the liturgy of Wessex differed in little ways from those of Essex, and the practices of the two were more similar than not once compared to the practices of the Irish or Frankish Churches. Across the vast breadth of the ancient world these local variations were always accepted so long as they were doctrinally sound, pilgrims and other travelers would often comment on the “curious practices” of a certain land they passed through. We also see throughout the Church’s history where variations in some local churches had to be corrected by a larger regional/national or ecumenical council (See the Council of Trullo for examples).
9 There are many great books now available in English on what we might call Orthodox Missiology. See, for example, Fr. Michael Oleksa; Orthodox Alaska: A Theology of Mission, SVS Press, New York 1992
10 This is not true universally of WR Orthodox, I know several who are very pious and fiercely Orthodox. What I have noticed is that the WR Parishes of the Antiochian Archdiocese are basically the Wild West, while there’s a bit more continuity in the WR ROCOR parishes.
11 Not only were Iconostasis fairly standard in the West in larger churches, but those only able to afford a Rood Screen would place a large curtain behind it to fully obscure the altar outside of key moments (those which elsewhere would see the opening of the curtain and doors). Many surviving screens in England have evidence of having previously housed images in between their pillars and lattice work. Style and decoration varied by region, but this is the standard pattern according to the sources and recent research, a sampling of which is below.
Eamon Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, p. 110-112, 292-293 (inset), among others; Yale University Press | Vladimir Moss, Saints of England’s Golden Age; Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies | St. Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum, p. 72-73; Saint Herman of Alaska Brotherhood Press | St. Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, Introduction by O.M Dalton; Oxford Press, 1927 | Eusebius of Caesarea; History of the Church, Book X, 4; Penguin Books
12 See, for example Canon 82 of the Council of Trullo
13 And I’d like to remind our WR friends that the Sarum Rite is not a pre-schism rite, but a pre-Reformation rite – ie., still a Papist rite.
14 For example: there were instances in the ancient Western Church where (because of plague and ecclesial chaos) mass ordinations were carried out to quickly repopulate the ranks of the clergy. Because there was “precedence,” a number of WR clergymen were ordained en masse here in America. While I won’t get into the many scandals these have been involved in, it should suffice to say that the results of this action have ensured another mass ordination will never occur in the American churches.
Being charitable, we could say that a well-intentioned desire to restore the “deaconess,” has resulted in Alexandria’s establishment of a female diaconate – a novelty foreign to the Church. We also see this in some scholars’ desire to use the ancient practice of “brother-making” in parts of Byzantium as a means of justifying sodomy and homosexual unions in the Church.
15 Let’s not forget that only the “Eastern” Orthodox Church has maintained the ancient Liturgy of St. Gregory the Great (or the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts)
16 Excerpt from Editors Preface, by Herman Podmoshensky
“Our duty is to receive the Tradition which has been delivered to us, to preserve and pass it on unmolested to those who come after us – not to invent our own based on personal preference.”
I want to challenge this point a little bit. Liturgics are always in flux. There’s not a golden age where the liturgy was at its most perfect and then never changed. Even our holy week rubrics, as I understand it, are a combination of three different sets and only go back about 200 years.
I’m not saying the Church needs to always be taking a critical, academic approach to liturgics. That gets out of hand quickly. But things are always being readjusted, rolled back or moved forward.
Western Rite has existed in some form continuously for 150 years. If anything, to get rid of it now would be this very “molestation.”
Effectively the writer is taking Florovsky’s “pseudo-morphosis” historiography and applying it to liturgics. But Florovsky was simply wrong. The Church has to re-express itself for every generation. The Church isn’t a museum of artifacts for dead empires. It’s not the “ancient faith”. It’s the truth for our own times and our own people.
Orthodox Western Rite will never match what our ancestors were doing, even aside from the absence of Latin (an obvious criticism I never see anyone make). But it can be adapted for a contemporary Orthodox context that speaks to us in a way that the Chrysostom liturgy doesn’t.
And anyway, the Russian choral music is terrible, and I’ll do anything to avoid it. That’s the true pseudo-morphosis. It’s Enlightenment philosophy applied to the liturgy, and the Old Believers were correct to reject it.
Speaking of music, that is a point concerning WR that also gets skipped over in most discussions. Even Pentecostalists Gen X and older (some younger, depending on whether they attended a local, small church or a mega church) grew up with a hymnal. Congregational singing is a part of most American Christians from pretty much any background. The mega churches even do it, though instead of a hymnal they have a Jumbotron projecting the words to some insipid, Contemporary “Christian” song. While the ER does not have participation in the Liturgy at various points and with various liturgical hymns, the robust “turn to hymn 172 and let’s belt it out” that American Christians are accustomed to does not exist.
Is congregational singing from a hymnbook “not Orthodox”? Is congregational singing bad? The WR does a lot of congregational singing, which is appreciated by even those who sing quietly so as not to disturb their neighbors with their horrible voices. Could you take the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and add in a hymnal? These are simply questions to ponder at this point. While not all Americans have a background in liturgics (though surely Lutherans, Episcopalians, continuing Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and others certainly do), the singing of hymns by the congregation is one feature we almost universally share.
Plainchant is the clear tradition of the Church.
The GOA and ROEA used to have pew hymnbooks with Byzantine melodies. But overall I don’t think that congregational singing is very important, and the pressure can be burdensome.
Congregational singing is not important to you. That does not mean it is not important to others. This, by the way, does not require instruments.
I think that this is framed wrong. How important is congregational singing for spiritual growth or parish life? I think very low. It gives the liturgy a performative feel and hurts the sense of mystery.
Congregational singing is, to many Antiochian WR Christians, the opposite of performative. The Choir is not singing for us. The chanters are not singing for us. Rather, the laos (λαός / people) are actively participating in the Leitourgia (λειτουργία) which truly becomes a joint “work of the people”. Many times after Liturgy you will find parishioners and families discussing a particular hymn. Many Antiochian WR testify to having hymns “stick” with them, continuing to go over the meanings during the week long after the service has concluded. Must Orthodoxy have congregational singing? Clearly not. But when spreading Orthodoxy in a nation with “Christianish” traditions that include congregational singing from a hymnbook, do we want to so easily dismiss the spiritual meaning of such practices?
To your point, at one ROCOR WR parish I used to attend, there was a point where we would all sing the “Let all mortal flesh” song while the priest was doing the “Lord I am not worthy” drama, and it was the best part of the mass. And that’s not part of historic WR at all. This song is an Anglican reworking of a piece from the Liturgy of St James.
I can’t help but notice that your statement of the Church redefining herself in every generation seems to contradict your position on Russian chant, but I digress. The Church does not “redefine herself” in every generation, if by that you mean it judges its practices and “adjusts them.” What is meant by Evdokimov”s statement that the Church “redefines herself” (I credit Evdokimov because it is from he that Ware, Stanilou, and others picked it up, with varying faithfulness to his intent) in the sense of speaking the truths of the Gospel in a way which is both faithful to the fathers, but digestible by our contemporaries. This does not mean that we reinvent the liturgy to fit contemporary taste. While the tradition lives in us, it does not belong to us, but to our fathers and our children. That doesn’t mean that we cant engage with modern thought and answer the questions of the day – we absolutely should – but this must always be faithful to the tradition we’ve received, as it is the fullness of the Truth.
I have not called for a calcification of Orthodox Rites – this would be a monophysite ecclesiology much like the Old Believers fell into – the Church’s rites gradually, organically change over time, largely based on local practice. This is why the Sinaite typikon looks different than the typikon in Constantinople, or Jerusalem. Contemporary practice, such as our Holy Week services, are not something which was made up 200 years ago. Instead, the various hymns used were produced over ten centuries and contained in books based on their topic. Individual church’s appointed which hymns were used based on the theme of the commemeration and over time this became the normal arrangement in those churches – most often the cathedral or patriarchal cathedra. These arrangements were then recorded in their own books – forming the Triodia and Pentecostarion. This process, occuring over many centuries, produced four primary Triodia, taking their current form no later than the 14th century. See The Typikon: Decoded, by Abp Job. Getcha.
We should note that these arrangements were already the normative practices in the major churches, they were simply organized into more managable (and affordable) volumes for subordinate churches. In many cathedral’s today, you will still find in the Kliros books and binders of hymns which are substituted into the services, being favored locally over the arrangement in the service books themselves. But these, like the variations in commemorations across local Churches, are all variations on already established liturgical practices, not an import from heterodox practices – as is the case with the totality of the Western Rite..
It’s not accurate to say the WR has been practiced for 150 years – and certainly not continuously. We can say, at most, it has existed for 100-110 years. While there were Old Catholic communities which *considered* communion with the Russian Church after Vatican I, this never took place. It is not proper to call the WR an Orthodox Rite, period. It is a mechanism of economia for the conversion of communities – ie., parishes and diocese of the Catholic and Anglican churches – not individuals. An act of economia is a selective exception and does not become a rule onto itself.
Frankly, aside from being a liturgy, the WR has virtually nothing in common with the rites our ancestors practiced – which looked much more like contemporary Orthodox practice than it does the modern WR. But people’s obsession with it, their feverish desire to deem it “orthodox,” reveals just how very far American Orthodoxy is from having truly appropriated the fullness of the faith. We are several hundred years from being a unique local Church.
In closing, Plainchant is not the “clear tradition of the church.” It has rarely been seen outside of very localized contexts (such as the Carpatho-Russian Church). The Council of Laodicea, Canon 15, forbids congregational singing in the context of the liturgy. That it became popular in the West is only a witness of their own abandonment of the faith. I don’t think that exceptions to this rule are a bad thing – the Creed and Our Father being an example, processions and blessings, but as a normative practice it is far from edifying, very distracting, and a barrier to prayer.
I address some of this in my article on WR. WR will always be tainted with arbitrariness. There’s not a way around that. There are things I don’t like about the Russian liturgy, but you can say, “That’s how the Russians do it,” and I don’t have a great argument against that. But that can never happen with WR. Every WR parish does something different.
I don’t think that WR should be used for conversion. And I say this in my article, that there’s not a singular WR movement. There are a wide variety of movements that happen to use the same liturgy.
In my opinion, the purpose of WR is to testify to the world that this liturgy is properly Orthodox and that the Catholics and protestants have appropriated it from us. We make a similar argument with the Bible — it’s our book, and they have no right to tell us how to misinterpret it. Likewise with the Western mass.
What convinced me most of WR’s validity and viability was something highly experiential. There was a 19 year old new convert at the first church I went to. He had recently come out of a very bleak nihilism. During the mass his face lit up like a Christmas tree. This was Orthodoxy for him. It was him coming out of darkness and into the light. And it seemed so cruel to suddenly rip that from him and say, “No, you’re not allowed to have this. You don’t count.”
I would generally agree with this. Some WR communities are so Western to the point of not being Orthodox. Other WR communities are so Orthodox ritualistically that they aren’t really Western. The balance is difficult to strike, but without that balance, it’s just role play. Just as many Antiochian communities are reverse Uniatism, many ROCOR communities are doing a Frankenstein liturgy. A proper WR has to be both authentically Orthodox and faithfully Western, and I get the impression that that very rarely happens.
But I would also challenge the assertion that WR has to look like exactly what our ancestors did. It has to be adapted for contemporary Orthodox usage. We aren’t 8th century Britons.
And as critical as I am of the Antiochians, they have a valid point that these post-schism practices are so baked into the rite that they can’t be just deleted. Otherwise you no longer have human tradition, and it’s just academic reconstruction from books.
So how and why of WR is a difficult question. I think that a lot of WR people want to pretend that it’s very simple. Often these former Anglican priests that are hastily ordained are misled about how straightforward it will be.
It’s hard to express how much I cringe when these are sung. They should be recited in triumph and meditated upon.
This just isn’t true. Maybe we’re using the term differently.
Until the late 1600s, the Church always used monophonic chant. At the most, there may have been a drone note (the Greek ison, and something similar at Valaam), but as I understand it, this did not become common until the Ottoman conquest.
Harmony is foreign to the Church tradition. Find me an example before the Nikonian reforms.
After ten years in normal Orthodoxy, I came to really love the Western Rite for its beautiful simplicity, to my great surprise. I think it’s important to preserve it as a testimony that this liturgy is properly Orthodox and not Catholic or Lutheran.
However, I agree with almost everything in this article. Tradition is the things that are handed down, and WR can never be that. To do WR properly in a way that is both authentically Western and faithfully Orthodox requires a special sense of vision and balance which very few priests have, even with the best of intentions.
It’s absolutely true that a lot of these Antiochian WR churches are reverse uniatism, and that’s not okay. ROCOR runs its WR about exactly as you would expect ROCOR to run something.
But I’m pretty sure that St John Maximovitch served the WR himself and edited the ancient Gallican liturgy based on manuscript fragments. So you can’t say that it was mere economia for new converts.
I’m going to go against the conventional wisdom and say that WR should not be used for evangelism. Generally speaking, and with definite exceptions, people shouldn’t convert into WR. The Chrysostom liturgical cycle is the voice of the Church, and WR is best to approach if you’ve already been Orthodox for several years.
Regarding the iconostasis, I’ve seen this done with the Western mass, and it doesn’t work. Maybe they did it in the ancient church, and maybe that says something about how they related to liturgy differently than we did. Regardless, the Western mass needs to have an open-air feel.
The standard Eastern liturgy of the Church is like a field of wildflowers. Western Rite belongs in a climate-controlled greenhouse. It’s not organic, and it requires careful cultivation. It’s something exotic that can’t thrive naturally in this environment But it’s worth preserving because of its special beauty and what it teaches us about life.
The following quote is from the Edict on the Western Rite, promulgated by Metropolitan Anthony Bashir at the General Convention of the Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese on August 14th, 1958:
“It occurred to us that the use of a Western Rite in the Orthodox Church in America might serve the double purpose of facilitating the conversion of groups of non-Orthodox Western Christians to the Church, and of indicating in the simplest and most direct manner to all concerned with Christian union the true basis on which the Orthodox Church is prepared and is able to consider the reunion of Christendom.
We applied to His Beatitude of eternal memory, Alexander III, Patriarch of Antioch and all the East for guidance, and on May 31st, 1958, after consultation with representatives of some other autocephalous Churches, His Beatitude replied. His Beatitude of blessed memory, enclosed for our information an Arabic translation of a Ukase issued by the Russian Church in a similar instance, and authorized us to “take the same action, leaving to your Orthodox zeal and good judgment the right to work out the details in the local situation as you see fit.” (from the Patriarchal Brief, May 31, 1958)”
Metropolitan Anthony not only wanted to bring Old Catholics (who went into schism from Rome over papal infallibility) back into Orthodoxy but to show that the Orthodox Church desired reunion with all Christendom based on the Orthodox Christian faith – which includes the Western Rite, a daughter lost to the Church and now found again, battered and beaten by heresy though she has been. Rather than shunning her, the Mother Church is caring for her daughter so that she may grow strong and produce saints again by God’s grace.
The Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate is now almost 67 years old, and it has grown from its original 3 parishes and 1 monastery into 28 parishes and 1 monastery. For a long time, the Antiochian Archdiocese has had more Western rite monastics than Eastern rite monastics (thanks be to God, we are gaining more monastics now thanks to the efforts of Metropolitan Saba).
I write all of this as an Eastern Rite Antiochian Orthodox Christian (what a mouthful of a title) who has attended the Western Rite when traveling, much like you (special shoutout to St. Paul in Katy, Texas, love you guys). All rites matter, and they belong to Christ’s Orthodox-Catholic Church. While you are right to call out errors wherever you see them, it’s wrong to imply that an entire Orthodox rite is deficient or unrecoverable. Don’t turn a prodigal daughter away, but accept her repentance and help her to be grafted back into the Tree of Life. It wasn’t so long ago that you were a prodigal son.
This lost daughter metaphor the Antiochians use is extremely facile.
The quote basically proves that Antiochian WR is about ecumenism.
If you talk with the fathers who lead the western rite, ecumenistic kumbaya unity is the last thing they want. To be “reunified” with Rome in such an abominable manner would mean the destruction of their life’s work. The quote proves only that Metropolitan Anthony desired “Christian union” according to the truth of the Orthodox Christian faith – “the true basis”, with no filioque among many other corrections.
I appreciate the zeal you converts bring to the Church, but you tend to complain about everything and are afraid of every shadow. I have good news for you: The Church cannot be stopped, for She is God’s, and God is good. Take comfort in that, and rest in Him (but remain aware, that is good so long as you don’t let it drive you restless).
Not that I know a thing about this… because I don’t… but this really resonates with me. My ancestors are from the British Isles, so I love the fact that the Church was there so early on…
Having said that, I do not like the feel of so-called Western Rite liturgy and worship. It feels OFF to me. It feels Catholic, to be blunt.
I am a convert. I have spent most of my convert life in OCA parishes, and I LOVE the liturgy and worship in the OCA. I am now in an Antiochian parish and it is definitely lacking the beauty and richness that my ear heard in the OCA. I do love the Middle Eastern sound, but…
I’m rambling. I just think this post hits the nail on the head. Thank you!
You keep misspelling “Eastern” and you apparently haven’t seen those pictures of St. John Maximovitch celebrating the Gallican Rite in Western style vestments. Bishop Enoch and Fr. Joseph Suaiden would be more than happy to show you how wrong you are about their Western Rite not being that of the preschism west.
Given that this is a discussion, can you post anything by Bishop Enoch or Fr. Joseph Suaiden that would add to it?
Sorry buddy, but it’s an irrefutable historical reality that the modern WR has absolutely nothing in common with the ancient Western Rite – regardless of what one or two people want to say. The archeological and historical data flat out refute such a position. You’re welcome to explore the sources I’ve placed in the notes. You may not have read the article, because I clearly state that St. John consecrated a bishop for the Orthodox Church of France (Bishop Jean-Nectaire, himself a Russian from St. Petersburg, selected because he was fluent in french, a respected scholar, and capable of removing the glaring errors from Western service books) which, being a former catholic diocese, served the “liturgy of St. Germanus.
However, I’ve seen every picture of St. John celebrating in that church, and he never wears western vestments. In every photo, he is wearing his normal vestments – omophor, mitre, and all, with the exception of holding a western style staff, which is about the only thing which goes back to the pre-schism west.
I don’t know why WR fanboys feel the need to lie about easily disprovable things. Not a good look Kevin.
The WR parishes are full of real people, including lots of catechumens and newly Orthodox. Unless the bishops decide otherwise, the WR parishes are fully canonical. Let us have charity.
Ubi cáritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregávit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exsultémus et in ipso iucundémur.
Timeámus et amémus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligámus nos sincéro.
Ubi cáritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregávit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exsultémus et in ipso iucundémur.
Timeámus et amémus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligámus nos sincéro.
Ubi cáritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
St John Maximovitch served the Gallican Rite, which had to have the Chrysostom anaphora transplanted into it. That doesn’t mean it is okay to do that regularly or that we can freely restore any ancient liturgy. The saints aren’t always right. But it’s worth noting that it happened.
http://arhiva.spc.rs/eng/our_father_among_saints_john_maximovitch_archbishop_shanghai_and_san_francisco.html
I’m not endorsing this article, but it has pictures of him serving the Western liturgy.
https://orthochristian.com/91138.html