An Introduction to Western Rite Orthodoxy

An Introduction

By Fr. Alexey Young, Formerly Curate of St. Augustine’s Orthodox Church in Denver, Colorado, now serving All Saints of Russia Orthodox Church in Denver.

Originally published by Conciliar Press.

The Light of Orthodoxy is not lit for a small circle of people. No, the Orthodox Faith is catholic; it is a commandment of its founder, Go into all the world… (Mark 16:15). It is our obligation, therefore, to share our spiritual treasure, our truth, our light, and our joy with those who do not have these gifts…

Saint Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, in his Farewell Address to America, where he had served as both Archbishop and evangelizer.

Western Rite Orthodoxy? Impossible! To be Orthodox you must be Eastern or Byzantine Rite. This is a common reaction to the idea of Western Rite Orthodoxy. The assumption, generally based upon lack of information, is that Orthodoxy is always Byzantine, and that the Western Rite belongs to Roman Catholicism.

I converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1970, and gratefull spent the next eighteen years being formed in the Eastern Rite. To this day I greatly venerate and respect the Eastern or Byzantine Rite. It gave me both an attitude of prayer and a holy mode of worship. It exposed me to the incredible world of Orthodox saints, holy fathers, and spiritual guides, without which my soul would have far less religious content. In the mid-1980s I began to be especially interested in the larger question of missionary work in North America. I knew that there were many well-established ethnic parishes—Greek, Russian, Antiochian, Serbian—and I saw that some Western converts are able to adapt to the Eastern Rite after an initial adjustment. After all, I and my family had done so. But as a priest I also encountered former Roman Catholics and Episcopalians who were clearly searching for Christ’s True Church but were often bewildered and confused by what appeared as complexities in the Eastern Rite. And if the parish with which they came into contact also used very little English in the Liturgy, and emphasized old-world foods and customs, it was even more difficult for them to make the leap into Orthodoxy. I began to wonder what, if anything, could be done to bring Orthodoxy closer to the mind and heritage of Western people. It wasn’t until I heard about the Western Rite movement in the Antiochian Arcdiocese that I began to see other possibilities. It was, for me, an astonishing discovery.

Whence the Western Rite?

It all began several years ago.

One afternoon, Archpriest Paul Schneirla, the Vicar-General of the Western Rite in the Antiochian Archdiocese, phoned from Brooklyn to invite me to examine the viability of Western Rite missionary work in Orthodoxy. He sent me a good deal of material to read and study, for I wanted to prove to myself that there really could be such a thing as Western Rite Orthodoxy. I also did some independent research. Thus was launched a fascinating journey through time, into a little-known and rarely discussed aspect of Orthodox liturgical history and development—the Orthodox Western Rite—which is only now coming into its own, demonstrating both its functionality and its rightful and fruitful place in the Church.

Of course the whole subject of worship itself is rooted in the universal and One Church of the first thousand years of Christianity. As Father David Abramtsov wrote in his clasic study, A Brief History of Western Orthodoxy:

From the earliest beginnings of the Christian Church there were divergences in the manner in which the Eucharist was celebrated in the various regional Churches. Within these Churches, with their mixed populations, differing historical development, local traditions, diverse racial temperaments, and the like, it was inevitable that a large number of varying types of Eucharistic prayers or anaphoras should emerge. The unity of the Church of Christ and the unity of the Eucharistic Sacrifice did not require a uniformity in the celebration of that Sacrifice. The liturgical liberty, the variations and local differences were not only tolerated, but were constantly being elaborated upon. What is more important, they manifested the Catholic nature of the Church.

Unity in Diversity

In the first Christian centuries a family of Eastern Rites evolved in the Middle East and in what later became Byzantium, Russia, and the countries of Eastern Europe. Similarly, a family of Western Rites arose in Europe, Britain, and parts of North Africa. Although these Western Rites apparently came originally from Antioch, they soon expressed the legitimate mind-set and culture of Western Orthodox Christians.

Both liturgical families developed under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the one undivided Church. Each family of rites fully recognized the other, clergy concelebrated when in each other’s lands, as opportunities presented themselves. No one thought this odd or unusual, for the Faith was exactly the same and was fully expressed in each rite. Thus, whether in the Eastern or Western parts of the Christian world, Orthodoxy still meant both right-worship and right-belief.

The ancient patristic dictum, unity in diversity, was a living part of the Church’s witness (today, as the movement toward reunion between the Orthodox and the so-called Monophysite Churches, such as the Copts, porgresses, the Church may soon absorb into her bosom still another family of rites, cut off from the living experience of the Church for more than a thousand years—just as the Western Rite had been until recently).

In my reading I discovered that, at least from the 17th century on, the Eastern Orthodox patriarchs had a renewed awareness of the diversity of rites in Orthodoxy.

Although the average Orthodox Christian today thinks of the contemporary Eastern Rite as fairly standardized, this is not, strictly speaking, true. There are legitimate and sometimes great variations between the so-called Greek and Russian styles of serving the Liturgy. In addition, the Russian Church, both in Russia and abroad, has now restored the use of what is called the Old Rite—the unique liturgical style and text used in Russia for more tha five hundred years before the reforms of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow in the 17th century. The Old and the so-called New Rites now exist side by side and in harmony in the Russian Church. In addition, there are many other variations in the Byzantine Rite, sometimes even within the same Orthodox jurisdictions.

Modern Efforts at Establishing a Western Rite

In the mid-nineteenth century there were new efforts to bring Western Christianity into the Orthodox fold via the Western Rite. Alexis Khomiakov, the renowned Russian philosopher and theologian, and General Alexander Kireev, a prominent Russian layman, were among those that inspired a critical yet appreciative study of Western Rites among the Orthodox. In fact, in 1870 the holy Synod of Moscow established a permanent commission to examine the rites of Western Christianity for ex-Roman Catholics and Anglicans/Episcopalians.

In 1904 this commission was asked by Archbishop Tikhon Belavin of North America (the future Patriarch of Moscow and now a canonized saint)—a man of immense spiritual gifts and great missionary heart—to examine the American edition of the Book of Common Prayer, used by Episcopalians. After corrections to bring it into conformity with the Orthodox Faith, the Holy Synod gave approval for its use. Because of his interest in Western Rite missionary outreach, Saint Tikhon is today known as the Patron of the Western Rite, and the corrected eucharistic liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer now bears the additional distinction of being called the Rite of Saint Tikhon.

Along a similar line, in the 1920s, former Roman Catholic parishes in Poland were received into the Russian Orthodox Church. They were permitted to use the Gregorian Western Rite (named for the seventh-century Orthodox saint and Bishop of Rome, Saint Gregory the Great, called the Dialogist on the Orthodox calendar). At this same time Constantinople concurred in principle with the idea of restored Western Rite Orthodoxy. Then, in the 1930s, the Moscow Patriarchate accepted a Western Rite group in France, about ten parishes, with the wise proviso that clergy of Western and Eastern Rites be able to serve in both rites. This inter-participation in rites, Father Abramtsov explains, is exactly what shows in concrete terms that individual clergy as well as Churches are in communion with each other.

Because of dangerous political developments for the Russian Church in the Soviet Union, these French Western Rite clergy came under the jurisdiction of Constantinople in 1953. By 1960 they had been received under the protection of a most remarkable man, Archbishop John Maximovitch (†1966) of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile. Well known to Orthodox Christians throughout the world and in every jurisdiction as a miracle-worker and great ascetic, he is called Blessed John by his venerators today. His tomb in the crypt of the Cathedral of Our Lady, Joy of All Who Sorrow, in San Francisco, is an object of pilgrimage for thousands each year; he will soon be canonized [ed.: St. John Maximovitch was canonized in 1994; at the time, his relics were unearthed and found to be miraculously incorrupt].

While Archbishop in Europe, John Maximovitch was also the first Orthodox hierarch of modern times to restore to the consciousness of Orthodoxy the previously forgotten saints of the preschismatic West—such as Saint Patrick, Enlightener of Ireland, Saint Martin of Tours, and many others.

For us in the Antiochian Archdiocese, however, another historic year was 1958 when, after approval from Patriarch Alexander III of Antioch, Metropolitan Antony Bashir, of blessed memory, issued an edict authorizing the use of the Western Rite in North America. He observed that he had met innumerable non-Orthodox Christians in the United States and Canada who were attracted by our Orthodox Faith, but could not find a congenial home in the liturgical world of Eastern Christendom.

Thus began a new chapter in the history of the Western Rite movement, which today numbers in excess of 10,000 souls, according to Father Paul Schneirla. In addition, there are a smaller number of Western Rite groups under the Moscow Patriarchate in this country, in the Russian Church in Exile, and under the Patriarch of Romania.

Coming Home to my Western Heritage

Following a period of personal study and prayer, I was moved to ask for reception into the Western Rite Vicariate of the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1989. The missionary possibilities were, of course, self-evident. But for me personally, this move also meant regaining the rich legacy of my own Western heritage, which—as much as Byzantium is for Greeks—was soul of my soul. When His Eminence, Metropolitan Philip Saliba, had received the former Evangelical Orthodox Church into the bosom of Eastern Rite Orthodoxy, he had warmly exclaimed, Weclome home! Now I, too, had come home—home to the Orthodoxy of my own Western forefathers!

I have been privileged to be part of the movement into Orthodoxy of two large and thriving Western Rite parishes in Denver, Colorado. Saint Augustine’s, composed primarily of former Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, was received into the Church by His Grace, Bishop Antoun, in August of 1990. The following year, in October 1991, Saint Mark’s, a century-old parish of the Episcopal Church, was also received by Bishop Antoun. Because of the ongoing and deepening apostasy of the Anglican/Episcopal Church, several more parishes around the country were received the following year, and more are on the way.

Building a workable Western Orthodox witness in the large Orthodox community of Denver has required prayer and creative outreach to the four Eastern Rite parishes of other jurisdictions in our metropolitan area. We have built bridges and strong friendships—to such an extent that all of the Eastern Rite clergy of Denver not only accept the Western Rite, but invite us to concelebrate with them, and accept our invitations to concelebrate with us in the Western Rite.

Much of the leadership for unity was provided by the late Bishop Kallistos of the Greek Archdiocese here in Denver. By his own request he twice presided over a Solemn High Mass at Saint Augustine’s before his sudden and untimely death.

Truly, we have lived to see the ancient principle of unity in diversity restored in the Orthodox Church on this continent as the Holy Spirit is moving to bring as many souls as possible into the Ark of Salvation, Christ’s True Church.