Orthodox Reflections

A Philosophical Dialogue About the Western Rite Question

There have been attempts within the Orthodox Church to incorporate the Western mass since the late 19^th century. Many Orthodox Christians question whether this is appropriate and what reason could there be for doing something other than the standard liturgics. There have been many liturgical scholars and propagandists, but there has never been a philosopher-theologian who could explain why the Western Rite is important and sketch out a singular vision while dealing honestly with the dynamics and inherent weaknesses within the Western Rite Question. I offer this dialogue to answer many of these objections and provide a framework for how Western Rite could be approached and, more importantly, why.

Fr Leo: Thank you for visiting our parish. Is this your first time attending a Western Rite liturgy?

Anthony: Yes, but I have been Orthodox for several years. I am rather adventurous and wanted to see what this Western Rite thing is really about.

Fr Leo: You may speak boldly about any of your concerns. I think it is important to have these questions in the open. You do not need to worry about offending me.

Anthony: Frankly, Father, I am not convinced that Western Rite is actually Orthodox.

Fr Leo: And why would it not be?

Anthony: Because the western mass done today is from the Council of Trent, which is far after the schism. And so the mass is not “perfectly Orthodox” as is often claimed. And liturgics are much more than mere text, even if there are no explicit doctrinal problems in it. And how can there be one singular Western Rite when there have been so many variations? And many churches do the Anglican liturgy! So which Western Rite is the actual Orthodox Western Rite?

Fr Leo: I hear this objection often, and if we simply did the Tridentine mass as the traditionalist Catholics want, then this would be a problem. But the Tridentine mass itself was not invented wholesale. Almost all of it was taken before the schism. Effectively Trent took the mass as done in Rome and made it standard across Europe. It is true that Trent instituted the horrible practice of low mass, where the priest just mumbles the liturgy, but we do not do that here.

As for variations in the mass, this exists in Eastern Rite as well. The Russians do liturgy very differently than the Greeks, and most of these changes are from the late empire. A Russian church sings the beatitudes during the antiphons, but the Greeks do something else entirely. But no one would say that it is an essentially different liturgy.

A Russian of the 1500s would be confused and likely offended at the music commonly sung in ROCOR or the OCA. Likewise, medieval Greeks did not have the microtones in their chant that are so characteristic of Byzantine chant today. Our Eastern Rite liturgical cycle coalesced around the time of the schism. And so any Orthodox bishop of the ecumenical councils who was suddenly thrust into our own century would feel disoriented and overwhelmed at modern Eastern liturgics.

But can we say that there is no continuity? Can we say that Eastern Rite is entirely arbitrary? Or that we must go back to some mythical pure form of the liturgy where they got it right at just a perfect time?

Anthony: That is true.

Fr Leo: Western Europe had various rituals, most of which were similar. The core was the Roman mass of Pope St Gregory the Great, most of which greatly pre-dates him, and gradually many of these alternative rituals died out. In Rome itself, the mass was somewhat shortened and streamlined, but throughout the rest of Europe there were many more variable parts and bits of liturgical poetry.

And you can see this in the Lutheran mass, that the order and text of their liturgy is not significantly different from what we did here today, because the Lutherans were adapting the pre-Tridentine German mass. Luther claimed that he never abolished the mass and only wanted to tidy it up.

Many Western Rite Orthodox churches prefer the Sarum Use from the Salisbury cathedral in England, although this is a little post-schism. It has much more of the ceremony and ritual that is missing in the standard Roman mass. One of the most beautiful parts of the Sarum Use we did today, in which we pass around the icon of Christ for each person to venerate.

Christendom in 1000 A.D.

Anthony: Yes, I found that very beautiful. I wish we could take it into Eastern Rite Orthodoxy.

Fr Leo: As for the Anglican liturgy, allowing this in Orthodox Western Rite is problematic, but this is a minority of churches. The Anglicans took the mass and gave it a thought-for-thought translation, rearranged the order of the mass, and took out some of the more Catholic phrases.

In a sense, there is not one singular Western Rite movement. There are several different movements with different goals, and these movements happen to use a similar liturgy text. That some priests do things that are inappropriate does not delegitimize the text itself or the communities that follow the text in an Orthodox manner.

Anthony: But just because the text itself is not heretical does not mean that it is properly Orthodox. Most Baptist hymns are Orthodox, but that does not mean that we should have a Baptist Western Rite.

Fr Leo: But the text is almost entirely Scripture. I would guess that 90% of it is from the Psalms. Only the Greeks developed extensive liturgical poetry that would take up a bookshelf. No other Christian group – Orthodox, schismatic, heretical or whatever – developed the liturgical density of medieval Greek monks.

I will concede that the Western mass is less theologically rich than Eastern liturgics, but I view it like grades of food. Greek liturgics are A-plus grade, Russian liturgics are A-minus grade, and Western Rite is B grade. All of these are nourishing, but some are better than others. And secularized, lazy or arbitrary liturgics are C and D grade. B grade food is still good for you and can meet your spiritual needs.

But when Greek liturgy is done with baroque counterpoint and an organ, or if Russian liturgy is done with out of tune singing and unrehearsed choirs, or if Western Rite is done based on the priest’s own childhood nostalgia or personal tastes, then these liturgies are much less nourishing and will stifle the life of the parish.

And yet there is still a great theological depth to Western liturgics. Read Amalarius of Metz. He takes each part of the yearly cycle, the sacraments and the mass itself and talks about the symbolism. It is a beautiful book, and no one can read it and say that the Western mass is spiritually impoverished. Had the mass been spiritually dry, then it would have fallen off long ago. But that it has been relatively stable despite all the changes in Western Christianity shows that it has a staying power, that it is something authentic and human that resonates with people.

Although for many people, it does not feel like Orthodoxy without the Octoechos, we see here that for many new converts, the Western mass is their Orthodoxy. You can see it on their faces. It would be cruel to rip it away from them and say, “You are not Orthodox. You do not count.” If promises have been made that certain communities can worship with the Western mass, then should those promises not be honored?

Anthony: But there is no epiclesis in the Western mass. So is there even the eucharist?

Fr Leo: But this is a pre-schism practice, and the Western saints likewise did not have the epiclesis. And so the Palamite St Nicholas Cabasilas, one of the greatest commentators of the Eastern liturgy, defends the absence of the epiclesis, even after the schism. He says that there is an ascending epiclesis when the priest says,

“We humbly beseech Thee, almighty God, to command that these our offerings be borne by the hands of Thine holy angel to Thine altar on high in the presence of Thy divine Majesty; that as many of us as shall receive the most sacred Body and Blood of Thy Son by partaking thereof from this altar may be filled with every heavenly blessing and grace: Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.”

And at the end of the mass, the priest says, in Latin, Ite. Missa est. Which is where we get our term “mass”. Often this is translated as “Go in peace. The mass is ended.” But literally it means, “Go. It is sent.” What is sent? Modern commentators say that the Church is sent out, but the medieval commentators said that it was the oblation that is sent. The priest offers up the gifts to God – which is what the Greek word “anaphora” means – and the people pray with him as a community. Once the sacrifice is sent to God, the mass is over, and we go.

And anyway, there is an epiclesis of sorts before the canon, which is what the Latins call the anaphora. The priest says,

“And do Thou, O God, vouchsafe in all respects to bless, consecrate, and approve this our oblation, to perfect it and render it well-pleasing to Thyself, so that it may become for us the body and blood of Thy most beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

And so that is what is sent, the oblation. The mass is a sacrifice, but a sacrifice must always have someone to whom it is offered. And so it is offered up to the Father, along with our hearts, as we say, “Let us lift our hearts up to the Lord,” in both the East and the West. Of course later on the Latins developed this into a theology of the crucifixion being continued and transposed through time, but this is foreign to Orthodoxy. Orthodox theology does not have a clear notion of what exactly kind of sacrifice it is, but we do it to worship God, and we offer our whole lives to him, which are infused with grace through the Eucharist. And the Eucharist is Christ’s glorified flesh, not his crucified flesh as the Catholics claim. And so in offering the Eucharist, we offer our whole selves to him and abandon the concerns of the world. By eating the Eucharist, we become part of the Body and Blood. In this sense, the oblation is sent, both the Eucharist itself and we ourselves who have been united to it.

But regardless, the Orthodox generally teach that there is not one single moment of the consecration. If the priest intends to call down the Spirit at the moment of the words of institution, then why would the Spirit not come down? If the ritual does not work because the priest got the words wrong, then that is a sorcery mindset. It would be the form for its own sake. But we Orthodox believe that liturgics are dynamic and grace-filled, and the words merely give shape to what the divine energy is already working.

Anthony: But why Western Rite? Why not just do what everyone else is doing?

There are two reasons given for Western Rite. The first is bait-and-switch evangelism, that it will appeal to Catholics and Anglicans. But Orthodoxy has to be accepted on its own terms. Orthodoxy is about obedience. How can someone convert and be promised he can keep what he already has? We are supposed to give up everything in order to follow Christ.

The second reason given is that someone just enjoys Western liturgics. But again, Orthodoxy is not about doing what we want. And this just further divides the Church by ethnicity and perpetuates ethnicism instead of learning how to function within ethnic expressions of Orthodoxy as an ethnic outsider.

And these parishes almost never grow. They are not sustainable. It is a few old Episcopalians who thought that they were changing bishops.

[OR Staff Note: Some WR parishes are reporting extensive growth. So while there are Orthodox Parishes of both rites that are not growing, there are many parishes who are. We have heard from WR parishes who have doubled or more in size in the past two years.]

Fr Leo: I agree that both of these reasons are bad excuses, although there are some thriving parishes anyway. The first reason is at least understandable, but we find that these people are often not Orthodox at all in their minds. Often after several years they feel that they have missed out on something everyone else has. I personally feel like Western Rite would be more appropriate for a monastery or for a context where people have been Orthodox for many years.

But it is not ideal to convert to a Western Rite parish. Liturgics are the life of the Church. At the least, catechumens and new converts should frequently visit other churches to get a broad exposure. One should not be simply Western Rite Orthodox with no connection to the normal Orthodox liturgical tradition.

And some things will always have to be done in the Eastern way. Monastic tonsure rites are very heavy and involve much more than vows of “celibacy, poverty and obedience.” These have to be done with the normal Eastern ritual.

It is also odd that there is so much talk about Catholics and Anglicans, and no one seems to mention the Lutherans. Liturgical Lutherans are the most liturgically conservative out of all Western sects, but rarely do we reach out to them.

But there is yet another reason for the importance of Western Rite that none of the propaganda seems to mention, and this is what keeps me coming here every Sunday. We have to keep the candle going, however small it is, even if there is no real numerical growth, to prove that this is properly Orthodox and belongs to us. The Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans have taken what is ours and used it for their own purposes, but it is ours. We are the true inheritors of this tradition, and they are the imposters.

God gave us this liturgy, and we cannot just bury our talent in the ground. We have to do something with the gifts God gave us and produce fruit. We may be asked on Judgment Day what we did with the Western mass, and we should be able to say more than, “Well, the Catholics stole it from us and muddied it up, so we just let it die and rot in the trash can.” No, this liturgy is a gift from God, but God’s gifts always come with responsibilities.

And so what if there is no numerical growth? The point of liturgy is not to have masses of people coming in. The evangelicals do that, and you can see how spiritually shallow they are. We are told throughout the New Testament that the true believers will be very few, especially in the last times.

Does a mission church need to have a plan for long term growth? Even if the priest will always be part time, that he has brought people to repentance and nurtured their spiritual development, that he has given them a place to belong and feel safe in the chaos of modernity, that he has built a faith community and family, that he has given people something meaningful and authentic to look forward to every week – does that not validate the liturgical community he has established in his garage? And that he is not paid by the church gives him greater freedom to preach what he feels is right instead of worrying about angry parishioners having him fired and or transferred out. It is good to pay one’s priest a full time salary if possible, but this also binds the priests’ hands.

Orthodox Saints of the British Isles and Ireland

Anthony: All of those reasons points make sense, and I will consider it.

Fr Leo: And I think that there is also something epigenetic. The Western mass is inside of us. It sank into our ancestors’ hearts, and they passed that onto us. We often talk about blood as though it is something from those of previous generations. Part of this inheritance of blood is how we worship God, because it is in worship that we most engage the soul. And so, while we do not want to say that Western Rite is for Anglo-Saxon converts and that Greek liturgics is for Greeks, there is in a very real way something about the Western mass that we Anglos yearn for in a way we were unaware of. We never knew we were looking for it until we found it.

The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington, commonly known as Washington National Cathedral or National Cathedral, is an American cathedral of the Episcopal Church.

I converted in normal Orthodoxy, and for many years I was opposed to the Western Rite. And today I am a Western Rite priest. While I love Byzantine liturgics, there is something about the Western mass that hits the soul in a way the Chrysostom’s liturgy cannot.

Anthony: But Orthodoxy means tradition, and tradition is the songs that yiayia sings to you. But Western Rite is formed out of books. And so there will always be something arbitrary about it. I even heard of some churches using communion wafers!

Even if Western Rite is not invalid, it is something far in the past. It was not the Western Rite that evangelized Japan and China. The Kievan ambassadors rejected the Western Rite when they saw the liturgy of Hagia Sophia. It is the Eastern Rite that is the language of the Church. You cannot just say that liturgics is all arbitrary, as though the Byzantine rubrics are an accident of history. It seems cruel to tell an old ethnic priest that everything he does is arbitrary and merely ethnic.

[OR Staff Note: WR parishes often use hymns, particularly Christmas hymns, which are traditional to Western Christians, even those raised in non-liturgical churches. Please see the end of this post for how singing a “traditional” Christmas carol caused one Orthodox Christian to actually cry.]

Fr Leo: Admittedly this is a flaw in the Western Rite movement that we cannot get around, and you are correct that we cannot teach that the Eastern Rite is merely arbitrary and cultural. Western Rite can never be taught as being “just the same” as Eastern Rite.

Some Western Rite communities are effectively reverse Uniate and try to incorporate as much of 1950s Catholicism into Orthodoxy as possible. Their liturgy is what Vatican II and Anglo-Catholicism promised, and while this is a human tradition, it is not the Orthodox tradition. Other communities try to do something mostly pre-schism, which is the tradition but not a tradition, because, as you said, it comes from books and not yiayia. Some priests feel that only the text of liturgy should be different, and so they celebrate Theophany, have the Eastern lectionary readings, and build their church in an Eastern style, and the effect is that the parish never feels like it has a clear identity.

It is a difficult balance between being Western and Orthodox, organic and inspired, and ancient and contemporary. Very few priests have the charisma to strike it right. For our part, while we have a high altar and an altar railing, there are icons over the walls from all different centuries and ethnicities, and we do not allow post-schism devotional practices like the sacred heart, five wounds, stations of the cross or the rosary. We try to make it feel like normal, contemporary Orthodoxy within a Western liturgical aesthetic.

We also do not have any statues, even though there were some pre-schism saints who used them, and occasionally these statues produced miracles. But statues are problematic in themselves, and it is not an accident that the Orthodox tradition coalesced around two-dimensional images only. Even the seventh council only mentions two-dimensional images, and it forbids any kind of addition or subtraction from its theology. [NPNF 2.14, pages 550-551]

But there is no objective answer to this question. You cannot do the math to determine whether we should practice Theophany or Epiphany. We use a chalice and spoon, but there is no objective reason why dipping the bread into the chalice would be wrong. Hymns that rhyme feel un-Orthodox, but they are not wrong, strictly speaking. And our Sarum Use practices are post-schism, although some argue that they are very late from pre-schism Normandy.

The Western Rite Question feels like it should have a simple answer. The text of the mass is pre-schism and perfectly Orthodox, and therefore you just do the text. But you are correct that it has been a thousand years of development. Baggage has accumulated that cannot easily be dropped. The Western Rite movement will always be very complex and diverse, because it is not one singular movement.

But despite all of these problems, we have to keep the candle going. And the candle will keep going. Western Rite will never flourish on a macro-level, but it will never die and cannot die. All attempts to kill it have failed. Even if it only limps along by the grace of God, the Western mass will be in the Church until Kingdom Come.

[OR Staff Note: “Western Rite will never flourish on a macro-level” seems overly pessimistic given the growth we have heard from WR parishes, but it is true that some supporters of the WR have gone too far in promoting it as the “rightful liturgy” of the US. For a very good discussion of WR by a panel of Orthodox clergy, see this video at the 55 minute mark.]

Eventually that which is not really Orthodox will die off, and that which is properly Orthodox will remain. Jesus said, “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up.” Orthodoxy is life and truth. The excessively Easterny parishes will become Eastern Rite, because they do not feel alive with a divided identity. And the Uniate parishes will die out or apostatize because their bait-and-switch promises are false. But the Western Rite Orthodox that feel organically Orthodox and authentically Western, these will remain and endure and bear the witness needed that the first-millennium West is Orthodox and only Orthodox.

Often Catholics claim to have the same shared inheritance of the first-millennium West, and many Orthodox theologians repeat this. But it is just not true. You can see this by going into a Catholic gift store, that there is almost nothing from the first millennium. It feels foreign to them because they are of a different spirit, because they do not have the Holy Spirit, whom they blaspheme in their false Creed. Why would they venerate Leo, Gregory, Jerome or Augustine? They have nothing in common with them. Even St Patrick’s Day is just an excuse to get drunk and sleep with a stranger, but they do not believe in the values that gave St Patrick his drive. Often the Catholic Church teaches that these first-millennium saints and their miracles were myths.

Excerpt from the Prayer of St Patrick

Anthony: But how do you know which Western Rite rubrics to use? Why 10^th century Germany over 8^th century Spain? With our Russian liturgy, there may be things I do not like, but I can at least say, “We do this because it is the tradition of the Russians.” But that can never happen with Western Rite.

Fr Leo: The arbitrariness and personal taste is more of the inherent flaw in the revival of the Orthodox Western Rite. The Sarum Use provides something of an answer. At least with Sarum we have an objective standard to base things on. We can say, “We do this practice because it is the Sarum Use,” which cannot really be done if we do the normal Roman mass. And the Sarum Use has a richness and fullness, whereas the Roman mass is somewhat dry and sparse. So the Sarum Use fits our Orthodox ethos much better, in my opinion, although some have good reason to disagree.

Anthony: Which brings up another point. One thing I noticed today is that it is much more a liturgy of the word. The priest is doing more of his thing up by the altar, and the people are off by themselves spectating. And so the Catholics eventually developed the term “hearing mass”, which is absent in Orthodoxy. Western liturgics just feels colder. It does not have the warmth of Eastern liturgics.

[OR Staff Note:  This point and counter point was something of a surprise to those of us who are in, or at least familiar, with Western Rite. Antiochian WR uses extensive congregational singing from a hymnal, and the liturgies of both St. Tikhon and St. Gregory have more responsive readings done by the congregation than does the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Also, acolytes in the Antiochian practice do many more jobs than acolytes do in the Eastern Rite. They set incense, cense the congregation, help the priest wash his hands, hand him things, ring bells, and more. If you have had sons serve at the altar in both rites, you can appreciate the greater opportunities for involvement the WR brings.]

Fr Leo: The propaganda insists that Western Rite is “equally Orthodox”, but obviously there is a different feel. I think it would be better expressed that Western Rite is “differently Orthodox”. The warmth is there, but it takes a while for it to settle in. At that point you take a great comfort in the mass and enjoy hearing it for its own sake. Then the mass becomes precious to you, and you never want to give it up.

But to your point that it is much more of a clerical service, this developed soon after the schism. Monastic priests began saying mass every day, and they lost the sense that the whole community needs to hear it. So they began saying it alone in their cell and would merely mumble it. This practice then spread to parishes, which is the beginnings of the low mass. And some time in all this they began only censing the images at the front of the church and mumbling the lectionary readings, to the effect that the laity were unengaged from the mass and often went merely from social custom or legal requirement. Soon the mass developed into a sorcery mindset, in which it is done for its own sake as empty ritual or will appease God’s wrath or win some kind of favor. And so the protestant reformers were somewhat correct that the mass is “hocus pocus”, although they had the wrong solutions.

Luther was at least partially correct that mass needs to be adjusted, but the rest of the reformers threw it out altogether. We see this pattern in recent centuries of needing to fix the mass. The Lutheran Reformation, the Tridentine liturgical reforms, the Anglican Oxford Movement, the pre-conciliar Catholic liturgical movement, and our own Western Rite Orthodox – all these sense that there is something broken about the second-millennium mass but that it must be saved. And they try to patch it up, but it never quite works right. Obviously the early 20^th century Catholics were sorely betrayed. Their work was used to justify other purposes they never intended.

But here at our parish at least, we try to engage the laity. We cense all the icons in the church, we pass around the icon of Christ for everyone to venerate, and the laity sing many of the responses. There are a few bits of Latin, and we have Celtic crosses and fleurs-de-lis everywhere to set the context and make us feel historically connected. Nobody is off in the corner praying the rosary by themselves. It feels like Orthodoxy. Maybe a different Orthodoxy, but still an authentic, organic Orthodoxy.

Let me ask you something. Do you believe that the eucharist today is actually the eucharist?

Anthony: Yes, of course.

Fr Leo: Then you cannot say that we are not Orthodox, because that would be a rejection of the Eucharist. You can say that you would prefer not going here because you do not like the liturgy, but you cannot reject us as not really being part of the Church.

Anthony: That is true. But it still feels arbitrary. Why not just do the same thing we have always done? Why do you have to experiment?

Fr Leo: But you could say that to any priest. The Eastern Rite Holy Week rubrics are a combination of three different sets and were glued together in the 1800s, which is why everything is set twelve hours back and feels like such a mess. In the last century, many diaspora bishops and liturgical scholars combined services or shortened them or did all kinds of copy-pasting. Fr Schmemann wanted an Orthodox Vatican II and novus ordo, writing that this was a “crisis” and that those who want to keep doing the same liturgics as always lack faith.

But even before this, the Russian choral chant was an experiment of the late empire to feel more western, and the actual Russian tradition is Znamenny chant, which today is almost lost. Traditional Russian icons look little different from Greek icons, but instead the Russians wanted shiny westernized images. In the 17^th century there were also changes to how the Russians performed the presanctified liturgy, and this mostly continues today.

COVID was a massive liturgical experiment. When in the history of the Church did people cover their faces in church because they thought the air in the church would be poisonous and kill them? When have there ever been multiple or disposable spoons? When did we ever forbid people from venerating icons or make them make reservations to come to liturgy?

All of canonical Orthodoxy in the diaspora has had its hands in the liturgical experiment cookie jar. If you reject Western Rite as being a liturgical experiment, then you should be consistent and reject the rest of the Church too.

Anthony: I cannot think of an objection.

Fr Leo: The priest across town teaches liberation theology and higher criticism. Some people call him a heretic, but no one says that his parish does not count as an Orthodox church. And yet we Western Rite Orthodox are endlessly doubted and treated as though we do not exist. Why? Because of superficial ritualism.

Anthony: This is true.

Fr Leo: It is often said by the Orthodox that it is a tragedy that the Catholic Church abandoned the traditional mass for the novus ordo, although we have no reason to care what the Catholics do. And the Anglo-Catholic movement is considered to be a positive reaction to Anglo-Protestantism. And yet when we want to do the same liturgy but in a more Orthodox manner, people say that this should not be allowed. So which is it? Was the pre-conciliar Catholic mass and the Anglo-Catholic liturgy a good thing or not? People should be consistent.

Anthony: All of that is a valid point. I will take what you say and consider it. Thank you for answering my questions.

Fr Leo: No, Anthony. Rather, thank you for asking them. The Western Rite Question is worth thinking about and wrestling through. We should not be quick to dismiss Western Rite, but neither should we uncritically accept it. St Paul said, “Let everything be done decently in order,” and the Apostle John said, “Test the spirits, whether they are from God.” And so I always welcome these kinds of questions and do not get offended at them. It shows that you take your faith seriously and expect the same from others.

— Augustine Martin