The Western Rite Orthodox concept has been around for about 100 years. Not to be confused with the Eastern notion that the west “used to be” Orthodox prior to 1054 (but no longer is) when I speak of WRO, I mean to discuss the movement to create parishes worshipping according to traditional western styles under Eastern Orthodox bishops.
Like Eastern Catholics who are Easterners in communion with the Roman See, the broad idea here was that these folks would be Latins in communion with Orthodoxy. The main reason and focus for this sort of effort has often been to accommodate Anglicans and Ultrajectines and Catholics.
The history of WRO has been an interesting one. A good deal of the finer points of its creation and authorization have been hotly disputed by the concept’s defenders and detractors. Opinions vary on the wisdom. indeed the very “Orthodoxy” of this movement both by non-Orthodox and Orthodox, Easterners and Westerners alike…
Debates have raged over whether their should be any attempt at a Western rite, (some feeling it is devisive in creating an additional subset in the west among Orthodox who are already divided by jurisdictionalism, others feeling it is a legitimate way to “grow Orthodoxy”. Others have raised issue with the most commonly celebrated liturgy – a version of Cramner’s BCP….
In the past decade there has been a rise in interest in the idea of WRO – especially among Anglicans, Continuing Anglicans and some ex-CEC folks. Some have decided to pursue Orthodoxy through the Western Rite…
My thinking on the matter?
Some speak emphatically of “The Church has said the Western rite is Orthodox” as though a universally accepted mechanism is in place to validate, promulgate and receive this modern expression. I ask, how does one feel comfortable asserting “the church” has roundly endorsed this liturgical expression as being fully Orthodox?
That a few bishops in a few jurisdictions have recieved a few rather small parishes practicing different particular variations of western-style liturgies.. Can that be said to constitute evidence that “The Church has said the Western rite is Orthodox”? On this last question I am prone to believe the answer is “no” and I do so for a number of reasons:
1) I am not sure that the majority of Orthodox bishops in the majority of Orthodox Churches have ever dealt with this let alone studied the question. Have the bishops of Romania, Greece, Ukraine, Byelorussia, taken to study of the issue to make pronouncement? Even here in the US, short of most of the very busy bishops being directly confronted with the matter, I don’t know how many have taken to studying it to make any pronouncement. Has SCOBA – for example – issued
a pan-jurisdictional statement on the matter of Metropolitan Phillip’s authorization and support of thee rites? There seems to be mostly official silence leading me to then wonder…
2) Does silence assume assent? But then again there was one
Greek Orthodox bishop who was rather critical of the WR going so far as to disallow his priests to have any involvement or concelebration So it can be established that at least some in the dignity of the episcopate have not been favorable. Which leads me to wonder…
3) How are the faithful to decide between the competing claims of hierarchs? It could be offered by some perhaps that the faithful are to generally defer to the decision of their own hierarch, because this will allow for will allow for greater obedience but that sort of also allows for a sort of parochialism in that could cause some amount of disunity among the entire
faithful. Two Orthodox neighbors living side by side take two different positions on the Orthodoxy of a Eucharistic expression by virtue of who their bishop is? I guess this begs my last and most strenuous concearn:
4) As I can’t imagine it being accepted that a local hierarch, or a single hiearchichal structure of a jurisdiction would be accepted to be authorized to radically change the Divine Liturgy unilaterally, I simply cannot see how it is accepted that they may introduce these innovations, pronounce them orthodox motu proprio :), and have it be accepted that world Orthodoxy stands behind them. Looking back on the decisions to adopt the
Gregorian Calendar or
Nikonian rites, (Not half the leap of faith!) I am left scratching my head how it can be asserted that the introduction of these various rites, can be seen as Orthodox …
I wish these folks well in their struggle to work out their salvation in fear and trembling in
this context. But my misgivings and concerns about this movement remain.
Despite the very vocal and near-omnipresent internet presence of its most erstwhile supporters, I see much evidence that it is an inorganic, much isolated movement that may not be sustainable and is certainly prone to the manipulations of persons with strong agendas.
The beauty of Orthodoxy as a place to find holiness that made it so very different from different non-Catholic western traditions was and is its organic reality of prayer, fasting, and the reality of local living parishes practicing a living tradition handed down to them with a level of continuity.
The faith of the people – the babbas, the yayas, the peasants, the czar and the shipping magnate, the restraunteur – is/was simple yet complex, unchanged but evolving, and if not uniform down to the last local expression, at least recognized as sharing a singular patrimony in Byzantium.
This neo-Anglicanism under local Orthodox patronage, I just don’t see it.
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August 6, 2007 at 9:23 am |
The idea of parallel, but quite different, Orthodox Rites in the same geographical & cultural milieu is troubling but no more so than the ethnic-based parallel hierarchy phenomena in the New World.
To my mind, if “WRO” is theoretically possible — and we had it for a millennium — then, in the West, all Orthodoxy should be WRO (with narrow exemptions for embassy and consulate chapels, as was the case in the very Cosmopolitan Constantinople). Indeed, historically, speaking, before the schism, when an East Rome relocated to West Rome, he had to follow local practices and customs in all things.
But, as you note, we also haven’t had legitimate WRO for a millennium now. So what should or would it look like if authentic?
In the North American Antiochian Archdiocese, the answer is that is should look like the Tridentine, Counter Reformation, Roman Catholicism. Indeed, the liturgical standards for the AWRO are publicly and expressly those of the of the Anglican Missal & Ritual Notes or the 1962 Latin Missal (translated to English) and Fortesque’s Ceremonial.
Personally, I find this bizarre, to say the least, because Tridentine Catholic Doctrine (whether Anglo- or Roman) and the Liturgics that embody it (which the AWRO does to the nth) has little or nothing in common with the Western Orthodoxy of the First Millennium. To the contrary, Tridentine Counter-Reformation Catholicism (and its later aping by Victorian Anglo-Catholics) represents the fully developed embodiment of everything sectarian (that is herterodox) and wrong about Western Christianity since the Great Schism!!
In other words, regardless of pragmatic concerns, AWRO is in kind if not degree as egregious as slapping an icon on the wall of your local Universalist Unitarian church and relabeling it “Orthodox.” And, this simply won’t do. As we say in the South, you can put lipstick and a dress on a sow and call her Peggy Sue, but she still ain’t nothin’ but a big fat pig. Indeed, at a minimum, the revival of WRO must actually involve the use of liturgical practices at least based on pre-schism, Western Orthodox doctrine, spirituality and piety. In this regard, I do believe that ROCOR’s version of WRO is much more closer to be authentic.
August 6, 2007 at 5:11 pm |
I have a problem with the kind of WRO that lies about/steals Western Catholic history. For example, doing the (modified) Tridentine Mass or (modified) Book of Common Prayer and then claiming to do pre-schism Western Catholic worship. And denying the churchness, grace etc. of Western Catholics whilst using most of their practices.
Of course there are WRO who don’t talk like that. Most don’t pretend to be doing pre-schism worship but rather take much of what they acknowledge as a living tradition of other churches that is compatible with their church’s teachings and use it.
I have a similar problem with the kind of Roman Catholic who claims the small (token), hybridised Byzantine Catholic churches in his communion are the legitimate representatives of the Orthodox tradition and the big Orthodox churches are not. There are educated conservative RCs who don’t do that.
RC Fr Ernest Skublics has written that having churches of the other rite in your communion is the ultimate nasty statement about the other church, which is certainly how the Orthodox usually see the Byzantine Catholics.
I don’t speak for the Orthodox but if the WRO, Tridentine or ‘Anglican’, believe something less than the Roman Catholic required belief that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth by divine institution, I don’t see the problem.
As I wrote in my com-box, other than the Pope the East-West rows either go over my head or really aren’t that important/are not insurmountable.
What I read here is there are ethnic/nationalist/phyletist bigots among the Eastern Orthodox, such as that Greek Orthodox bishop, who hate Western Catholicism and see many/most of its opinions and practices as a completely different religion to theirs.
Which fits DB’s hatred of Tridentine Anglo- and Roman Catholicism. (How would you like it if I compared your tradition to a pig?)
But as has been blogged here, since the beginning of WRO the Orthodox usually have seen Western Catholicism as largely compatible with themselves, the Russians having approved a slightly modified Tridentine Mass as far back as the late 1800s: no filioque and a Byzantine epiklesis added to the consecration. (ROCOR’s few Benedictines use this Mass and the traditional Monastic Breviary.) I understand there were versions of the Roman Canon with an epiklesis but there are WRO who say this isn’t necessary. That the prayer as handed down doesn’t have one suggests it’s OLDER than the Byzantine Rite consecration prayers. (Much that is Eastern is older than Roman practice but not everything.)
St Tikhon when he was Russian archbishop for America had the idea of a converted Anglican Communion retaining its rite (he was genuinely friendly with the Episcopalians) and so sent an American Book of Common Prayer to the Russian Church’s Holy Synod for study. The resulting report said much more had to be done to make the Communion service suitable than the Roman services needed: deprotestantise it as well as slightly byzantinise it.
I’ve never been to an WRO service but I imagine the ‘Anglican’ Mass is much like the American Missal that some Episcopalians used to use: the Book of Common Prayer with traditional Roman Rite prayers and ceremonial added.
Important historical difference: many of the Eastern Catholic churches were started by Rome as vehicles to try and convert the Orthodox, Orientals and Assyrians (which mostly didn’t work); in the case of the WRO the converts approached the Orthodox first. St Tikhon wasn’t planning to proselytise either AFAIK; he was imagining if the Anglican Communion became Orthodox.
The only WRO today are in Antioch and ROCOR; most are in Antioch and use ‘Anglican’ services.
To my mind, if “WRO” is theoretically possible — and we had it for a millennium — then, in the West, all Orthodoxy should be WRO (with narrow exemptions for embassy and consulate chapels, as was the case in the very Cosmopolitan Constantinople). Indeed, historically, speaking, before the schism, when an East Rome relocated to West Rome, he had to follow local practices and customs in all things.
I rather like the sound of that – rationalising jurisdiction and rite geographically. One bishop per see and the West has its native rite(s). The way it should be in theory.
And historically this is what happened with Theodore, one of the early Archbishops of Canterbury. He was an old Greek monk who retooled for the Roman Rite.
August 6, 2007 at 6:53 pm |
P.S. Given what has happened to the Eastern Catholic churches – self-hybridisation/latinisation almost beyond recognition in a lot of cases – as only 2 per cent of the Pope’s church, I too wonder what about the survival of WRO in a Byzantine Rite sea. A sometimes choppy, hostile one as indeed the Eastern Catholics have experienced in their church.
That said I must give the Antiochians credit for trying though. Unlike the chilly reception the Romans have given ex-Episcopalians – no new priests are trained to do Anglican Use; they make do with priests skimmed off the Episcopal Church until those priests retire or die – they train new priests to do these services as needed and so there are something like four times as many WRO parishes as AU RC ones. Even though Anglicans were never in the Eastern Orthodox churches as we now know them and, before the unpleasantness under the Tudors, Anglicans WERE Roman Catholics!
(ROCOR has a handful of WRO people – some Benedictines who began as sort of Episcopal, sort of Old Catholic around 1911 and were vagantes for decades, and some ex-Anglicans trying to revive the Sarum Use.)
BTW, and this includes a reunited, rationalised (by rite and place) church, whether one accepts the current Roman claims or not the Pope IS Anglicans’ rightful patriarch.
August 7, 2007 at 12:27 am |
WRO is an effort on the part of a few Eastern Orthodox heirarchs to create a hospitable destination for (mostly) Protestants seeking a less “ethnic” form of Eastern Orthodoxy. In the process they have constructed a Roman ritual helenized for their protection as well as a Western jurisdiction subject to an Eastern (and foreign) Patriarch.
This kind of juridical generation from wholecloth (subject to a foreign Patriarch, no less) as well as liturgical latinization on Rome’s part is precisely what used to cause gnashing of teeth on the part of the Eastern Orthodox. Rightly so.
Is it merely expediency that makes the WRO OK?
August 7, 2007 at 1:34 am |
“WRO is an effort on the part of a few Eastern Orthodox heirarchs to create a hospitable destination for (mostly) Protestants seeking a less “ethnic” form of Eastern Orthodoxy.”
I have heard this before many times. But every time I hear it, it sounds as ironic as the first time to me.
The notion that the Byzantine liturgy in and of itself is “ethnic” is rather disproven IN the Antiochan Archdiocese (Where the most WRO parishes exist) by the parishes that were formed by the Evangelical Orthodox communities. The music, preaching style, and “ethnicity” of the parishes were decidedly homegrown…
As to the idea of the WRO being less ethnic? Hardly. Ever notice WHICH saints are made patrons of the WRO parishes & missions? Ss. Dunstan, Bede, Columba, Aelred and OL of Walsingham weren’t exactly from Carthadge. (Though in fairness St. Augustine was from Hippo.)
But I have to repeat how ironic I think it is that moving from that moving from the Julian to Gregorian calendar caused quite a bit of schism, division and stress, but the Antiochans have felt comfortable declaring these service books “as Orthodox”.
One wonders if they have considereda Maronite, Syriac, or Coptic vicarate as well…
August 7, 2007 at 2:26 am |
Fogey,
1.) I would say simply that I disagree with Counter-Reformation Roman Catholics. But by the same token, of course, you are free to feel versa visa (that anything else is falling short). But those ACs do burn me up because its is so disingenuous. I mean get thee across the Tiber already!
2.) Also, I strongly agree with your point about AWRO using post-schism Western Tradition. It does so in droves and is in NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM a restoration of the pre-Norman, Orthodox-Catholic, Ecclesia Anglicana. That being so, and the premise of AWRO being assumed for the sake of argument, then what is the schism really about these days?
Well, the answer is (a) that Orthodoxy generally has not acknowledged Met Phil’s AWRO as an authentic WRO and (b) that, aside from a few, vocal Latinophrone Orthodox (David Hart for example) the vast majoirty of Orthodox scholars see Roman Catholicism as fundamentally, ontologically, and insurmountably different from Orthodoxy on many basic tenets of the faith: Trinitarian Dogma; Atonement; Ecclesiology, etc. (David Bradshaw for example).
Love your website and your insights!
Xp
August 7, 2007 at 3:29 am |
“RC Fr Ernest Skublics has written that having churches of the other rite in your communion is the ultimate nasty statement about the other church, which is certainly how the Orthodox usually see the Byzantine Catholics.”
When it comes to comparing Western Rite Orthodoxy to Eastern Rite Catholocism, the parallels are there, but the comparison is tricky.
The Unias may have created Greek Catholic Churches, but it was in the framework of an Augustinian concept of recognizing EO mysteries as valid, and the Easterners as “Schismatics”. The theology and ecclesiology of the West made allowance for the wholesale return of seperated easterners.
The East had a bit more of a dillemna – if you have strong and pressing concerns about elements of “heterodoxy” in the west after the “abandonment of Orthodoxy”, well that begins to complicate things I suppose. Essentially Antioch had to determine what an Orthodox westerner in the 1900s.
I guess the question is, “Is that it?” It is hard for me to think that it is. From there I guess the next best question is “Is that which is not heterodox, Orthodox?” (If the answer to the latter question is “yes”, has the window for all sorts of other innovation been opened? I don’t know.)
Whereas Rome created a church (structure) Antioch created a rite… (kinda)
Heck, maybe the Antiochans would have been safer allowing for the DL in Latin at a high Altar with Latin vestments…
Also there is a “3d party” factor here… Namely – at least in the Antiochan WRV the “target” of conversion generally seems to be Anglicans. They haven’t essentially said “bring your sacraments with you to celebrate with us!” As they have said “we will find a way for you to celebrate our sacraments in a way you are more familiar with.”
Just some random thoughts….
August 7, 2007 at 4:02 am |
I have a friend who grew up Western Rite Orthodox. He told me that the WRO is having a difficult time finding its identity and sustaining Orthodox theology. “As the Church prays, so She believes.” Frankly the Anglican-like liturgy within the WRO causes a lot of confusion within.
August 7, 2007 at 11:11 am |
WRO in its biggest form under Antioch has been around long enough to have generational members like Kacy’s friend.
The Eastern Catholics – the Ukrainian Catholic Church for example – have similar problems outside their historic homelands with losing people who choose to assimilate to the larger culture. Many people in the second and third generations after immigration join the dominant rite in their communion. (They may move where there is no church of their rite for example.) IOW many people whose grandparents were Eastern Catholics are Roman Catholics.
The Eastern Orthodox have a similar problem – people drop out, move out and marry out to become Roman Catholics, Protestants or members of no church – but without the added problem of being a small, not necessarily accepted minority in their own communion.
August 7, 2007 at 2:54 pm |
YF,
Indeed, by the third generation, very few “recent Americans” of Orthodox descent are still Orthodox. Only the steady trickle of immigration keeps Orthodoxy in the New World at its present, static level. (Conversion to Orthodoxy is still very rare, contrary to the Orthodox propaganda).
Personally, I believe this is because living in the New World (Gregorian Calendar, etc.) and going to Church in the Old World (Julian or even New Julian Calender, etc.) is extremely jarring psychologically. And since Orthodoxy has failed (or not even tried) to inculterate the lower forty-eight, the great grand children recompense the Church with equal loyalty and understanding (by abandoning it as it has abandoned them). Indeed, de facto, even pan-Orthodox parishes the New World are Sunday ghettos for 1st, 2nd, or 3d generation (at best) Americans.
The great tragedy in all this is that, underneath the externalities, Byzantine theology has soooooooo much to offer the West! I highly recommend Meyendorff’s slim book published by Forham).
August 7, 2007 at 4:24 pm |
DB,
The Orthodox convert boomlet (as I’ve named it) is real but you may be right that it was exaggerated by the Antiochians, the main beneficiary of that unexpected windfall.
And I’ve read it may be on the wane. Converting to Orthodoxy is not as hip among evangelicals as it was five or 10 years ago. I’ve also been told that, boomlet notwithstanding, the main reason outsiders join is the same as it always was – marriage. (For every Peter Gillquist or Franky Schaeffer there are about five Tom Hankses?)
So essentially you’re right – those churches are ethnic enclaves for immigrants through third generation people kept alive by… more immigration.
(You can say something similar is happening with the Romans: Hispanic immigration is keeping them afloat in America and Polish immigration is doing the same in Britain and Ireland!)
Again, the Orthodox don’t solicit – the converts came to them. True, as I mentioned earlier, of WRO. ‘Ultrajectines’ = vagante Western Catholics. The priest in the black-and-white photo celebrating Mass is an example: Fr Alexander Turner, a former vagante bishop who became one of if not the first Antiochian WRO priests, back in the 1950s! He had a real parish church as shown in the photo. WRO seems to consist almost entirely of these types (the more sensible among the vagantes who figure out it’s a dead end, or burn out, and want to join something more substantial) and ex-Anglicans.
I think most of the converts to Eastern Orthodoxy have been ex-fundygelicals… also a goodly number (even a majority?) of ex-Anglicans.
Regarding your point about the difficulty of straddling two cultures, I hear you but that can VERY easily be used for slamming ALL Catholic traditionalists, of any church or rite: ‘give up that artsy-fartsy old-fashioned stuff and go to a normal church’. So IMO it’s hypocritical and ultimately self-defeating for a conservative Western Catholic to pick on the Orthodox for that.
Meyendorff’s cool.
P.S. I understand that this tension, including ‘worship wars’, also goes on in American Lutheranism. You’ve got the high churchmen who want to keep the confessional Lutheran theology and semi-Catholic liturgy they brought with them from Germany and Scandinavia and you’ve got those who ‘want to be American’, which means being just like other Protestants, and which now means believing and acting like the unliturgical megachurches.
August 7, 2007 at 8:43 pm |
“I hear you but that can VERY easily be used for slamming ALL Catholic traditionalists, of any church or rite: ‘give up that artsy-fartsy old-fashioned stuff and go to a normal church’.”
Between the typical N.O. Mass in North America and and Idult Latin Mass or Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy, believe you me that I’d choose the Latin or the Byzantine everytime! Also, I would find both a lesser disconnect between our authentic / high / or deep culture, if you catch my drift. That is, N.O. is only in touch with shallow American pop “McCulture.”
Indeed, give me a (1) Western Sanctoral, (2) Administer communion in “Both Kinds,” not via shoveled intinction, (3) Follow the prevailing local calendar as sign of limited solidarity with local nonOrthodox Christians, who are our neighbors in a way that Old World Orthodox aren’t; and (4) Keep it “All-English, All the Time;” and I would find the Orthodox culture-bar MUCH lower. Indeed, just the SLIGHEST sense that New-World Orthodoxy was reaching out to 10th generation Americans would make a huge difference! But as is, we feel the Indifference, not the Love, which is reserved for those with closer ties to the “Old Country.”
* * * *
You’ve definitely got the “boomlet” nailed. I met a very nice lady from one of the Evangelical convert parishes, and see called the same phenomena “White-Trash Orthodoxy!” All in good fun of course.
As is, marriage and a slow trickle of immigration just about counter-balances the third/fourth generation outflow. Orthodoxy in the New World as a percentage of population has peaked, and will decline with the continued illegal Hispanic influx.
* * * *
So glad we agree on Meyendorff. But it surprises me that you can read him and yet not see his fundamental and ontological differences with Western Catholicism. Odd how an author can positively affect two people, but in different ways!
* * * *
Praying that authentic Orthodoxy can be an even more positive influence in the New World,
DB
Xp
August 8, 2007 at 1:02 am |
Old World Orthodoxy, foreign languages, clannishness and all, is not a problem at all for me. I love it! (I’m not fluent but speak Russian. No problem really with Slavonic services.)
After all the Anglican tradition is extremely ethnic, at least in the Anglosphere. (Worldwide it may be different now: the average Anglican is now a Third World black woman probably not of the theologically liberal persuasion – probably Protestant though.)
No, that doesn’t turn me off. This sort of thing does:
[Claims of] fundamental and ontological differences with Western Catholicism
I’ve heard there can be a kind of anti-Western snobbery among avant-garde Orthodox who may be among Meyendorff’s fans, the kind that looks down on 19th-century Russian incorporation of much that is Western Catholic. Similar to Novus Ordo liberals’ contempt for Tridentine traditionalism.
But I choose not to blame Meyendorff for that.
August 8, 2007 at 12:26 pm |
I understand how the folks get to WRV and who they were…. I wanna know where they go.
Frankly, Kacy is one of the few people I have ever dealt with who has actually met and known a real live “lifer” in the WR.
I have been reading the same stats for some 10 years… “20 parishes, 10,000 members”
The WRO has been kicked around for about 100 years now… The AWRV has been in place for 50. I count about 20 entities – several of them small missions, most of them appearing to be communities not more than 10 years old…
August 8, 2007 at 6:12 pm |
YF,
Just for clarification: In common parlance, Church Slavonic is “ethnic” in England and American (for instance) but not, of course, in Salvic lands, where it is indigenous. Likewise, Anglo-Anglicanism is not “ethnic” in the Angloshepre, where we both reside, but it would in Russia.
* * * *
While you are free to dislike history, the fact of the matter is the claim that Orthodoxy has “fundamental and ontological differences with Western Catholicism” originates with the 19th/20th/21st century Slavophiles & NeoPatristic movement among craddle Orthodox divines such as Lossky, Florovsky, Yannaris, etc. Indeed, the qutoed text is a paraphrase the E.P.’s recent statements on the matter. Finally, the Patristic-Revival (anti-Scholastic) position simply returns to the relatively-short, preWestern-Captivity, perennial, anti-Latinophrone position of Orthodoxy. Rejection of Latinophrones, neo-Latinoprhones or Baralmites & neo-Barlamites is not avant-garde in any way!! Rather, as a matter of historical record, it was Peter the Great’s casearopapism that was exceptional and strongly resented.
August 8, 2007 at 9:54 pm |
“The notion that the Byzantine liturgy in and of itself is “ethnic” is rather disproven IN the Antiochan Archdiocese …by the parishes that were formed by the Evangelical Orthodox communities.”
Well, not disproven at all, and decidedly odd – having experienced it as well, I’d rather go to an ethnic Byzantine rite parish (of almost any ethnicity .) So, yes – the Byzantine liturgy in and of itself is “ethnic” – Hellenic in its usual form, very East Slavic in the Russian recension. In Georgia it takes on an entirely different character, and in Antioch is Middle Eastern enough to differ from the ‘Hellenic’ version. However, in every case the various recensions of the Byzantine rite came by acculturation with pagan cultures – the Western rite came about by the same process with Western cultures.
If you like the EOC parishes, you join them. I’d rather not. That’s the big problem with the perpetual critics – full of advice about things they’d never do themselves. (Or, thinking that everyone’s salvation is dependent upon following the critic’s path.)
“As to the idea of the WRO being less ethnic? Hardly. Ever notice WHICH saints are made patrons of the WRO parishes & missions?”
If you mean ethnic as in the opposite of ‘deracinated’, no. But, yes – lets look at the patrons of WRO parishes and missions:
For the AWRV we have the ‘oh so ethnic’: St. Augustine, St. Peter, St. Mark, St. Paul, St. Michael, St. Andrew, St.Gregory, St. Vincent, St. Nicholas and St. Benedict. Wait, it gets worse! Our Lady of Grace? Holy Trinity? Holy Apostles? Holy Incarnation? Christ the King! (We have only one St. Columba, and one OL of Walsingham, besides an OL of Glastonbury, and Our Lady of Regla.) That’s just in the USA, not counting their NZ parishes (again, the very ethnic): Ss. Simon & Jude, and St. George!
For the Russians, we have Christ the Saviour, Christ on the Mount, Holyrood, St. Stephen, and St. Petroc (ah, here must be the beef.) It is true there are a few WRO communities in the UK with local saints – but, they are in *England*. Ss. Dunstan, Eanswythe, Bertelin, etc. – their relics are just nearby.
I’d like to know who these WRO are named after Bede and St. Aelred, as I’ve never seen or heard of it.
August 8, 2007 at 9:55 pm |
“But I have to repeat how ironic I think it is that moving from that moving from the Julian to Gregorian calendar caused quite a bit of schism, division and stress, but the Antiochans have felt comfortable declaring these service books “as Orthodox”.”
One – no one moved from Julian to Gregorian (except Finland, and that caused no schism, division or stress.) That, and the Antiochians didn’t just ‘declare…service books “as Orthodox”.
“One wonders if they have considereda Maronite, Syriac, or Coptic vicarate as well…”
http://www.roca.org/bishop_john.htm Our Russian church had an Assyrian Orthodox Church, which used East Syriac and the liturgy of the Twelve Apostles (two of my best friends from ORU grew up in this church in northern Iran.) The community had been heavily persecuted, and many that fled to Iraq are now under the Antiochian Patriarch (I believe there they use the Byzantine rite in Syriac.) There was also a mission in North India during the 70s-80s, but I’m not sure what became of it. In any case, I believe that there have not been any Non-Chalcedonians approaching the Orthodox for reception.
“The East had a bit more of a dillemna – if you have strong and pressing concerns about elements of “heterodoxy” in the west after the “abandonment of Orthodoxy”, well that begins to complicate things I suppose.”
There’s the rub – from the outside (or inside a few local cults), there might exist an idea of ‘magic Orthodoxy’. However, with regards to what exactly was heterodox in the West, the East was fully aware as to the particulars. In the evaluation (which originally was not Antioch’s, but began with Russia, and every local Church also evaluated in the late 19th c.), there was a precise list as to what needed purged, what needed clarified, and what needed changed. After all, it had been a matter under theological consideration as to the reception of converts from Western communions previously – what did they have to confess at their baptism/chrismation, what they had to repudiate.
“From there I guess the next best question is “Is that which is not heterodox, Orthodox?” (If the answer to the latter question is “yes”, has the window for all sorts of other innovation been opened? I don’t know.)”
No, because it isn’t a question of innovation. That which is not heretical is allowed, and always has been in *any* rite of Orthodoxy. Only that which creates a problem, by teaching something against the dogma of the Church, is heretical. Both the Russians and Antiochians have taught us that – and surprisingly, every other Church as well (in the majority, there is always a minority that equates their faith with their ethnicity, though officially their ideas are anathema in Orthodoxy.)
August 8, 2007 at 9:56 pm |
“Heck, maybe the Antiochans would have been safer allowing for the DL in Latin at a high Altar with Latin vestments…”
That would have been an innovation though – WRO is a continuity of a tradition which has existed the bulk of its existence inside the Orthodox Church. The Byzantine rite has never been celebrated in Latin vestments (and rarely in Latin, though that has happened in the past – no one is really interested in it.)
“I understand how the folks get to WRV and who they were…. I wanna know where they go.”
They die, some of them have to subsist in Byzantine rite for a period. For the first few decades of the WRV it was primarily monastic in nature (only a handful of small parishes, served by the Clerks Secular of St. Basil out of St. Luke’s Priory.) The first parishes were really the first Tikhonite parishes. It was the same way with our Russian WRO in the US – it was primarily monastic until recently. In Europe, there are still many who are generational (though they now might have mixed use with Romania, Serbia or Moscow, or seek union with ROCOR.)
“I have been reading the same stats for some 10 years… “20 parishes, 10,000 members”
No one has updated that interview – at one period they did. The number has changed, of course, over time. A few missions were too small to survive, or found themselves inundated with confused Eastern immigrants, or lost their clergy (and in a couple of notorious cases, had scandal because a sent priest forcibly Byzantinized them – which their Metropolitan has promised would not happen again.) I think now they are larger than they ever were. 150 years, not just ‘kicked around’, but progressively implemented with all Eastern Orthodox ‘haste’. The Synods have also made some mistakes, and moved on the wiser. I’m guessing you are counting from the incomplete list of 20 on the unofficial St. Mark’s directory? Either way – no problem. There are also Byzantine missions that fluctuate, don’t exist anymore. Whole autocephalous and autonomous churches that are smaller than WRO might be as a whole.
August 8, 2007 at 11:05 pm |
Good point about what’s ‘ethnic’ being relative, I knew what the Patriarch of Constantinople said and I was trying to say I understand about the anti-Westernism of some intellectually hip Orthodox – like the Institut St-Serge and St Vladimir’s school of thought of Meyendorff and Schmemann and their fans. Maybe I see what I want to see – in what little of M and S I’ve read I see simply a Russian version of what the Anglo-Catholic Congresses taught. Maybe that’s what I’m supposed to get out of it.
Anyway…
I mentioned the phenom of Byzantine and other Eastern Catholics swamped in a sea of Latin Catholicism self-latinising, sometimes beyond recognition. The tiny Russian Catholic Church and the Melkites are among the most Orthodox/least latinised in practice; the Ruthenian and Ukrainian Catholic churches heavily latinised (you even see Eucharistic ministers and altar girls in some places) and the Maronite Church, not a Byzantine Rite church but its own thing, distantly related to the Syrian Church, practically Novus Ordo with westward celebrations and lectors.
I’ve never been to a WRO church or service but have met three real live WRO, a former Anglo-Catholic curate (he wrote the Anglican Service Book that Good Shepherd, Rosemont published) who now has a long Byzantine beard, one of his parishioners in metro DC and a nice priest, former RC layman, very keen on Anglo-Catholic traditions who later lived his dream – he’s now a WRO rector doing Anglo-Catholic services!
But on the WRO church websites you see the same thing in reverse – adopt some of the externals of your church’s dominant rite to prove your loyalty.
Rome COMMANDS the Eastern Catholics NOT to do that but they’ve long disobeyed and done it anyway.
That DC area WRO priest’s church IIRC has icons and ripidia (brass liturgical fans) behind the altar – whatever for? They are not used in either of the two approved Antiochian Western rites. St Mark’s, Denver, an old Anglo-Catholic parish reconstituted in a new building, has Byzantine icons as its reredos. Again, why? St Michael’s, Whittier, California now has Byzantine-like murals. (I know mediæval Western churches had murals but here the byzantinisation is obvious.)
The form of Confirmation in WRO has been gutted with the Byzantine form now at the heart of the ceremony.
This ‘cut-and-paste’ approach to rites gives you something that’s still Catholic, that’s still orthodox, but makes what seems on the surface an acceptance of this tradition really look like an ultimate diss of it rather like Fr Skublics said.
August 9, 2007 at 3:18 am |
“…who now has a long Byzantine beard”
What makes it a Byzantine beard? Does he describe it as a Byzantine beard? The West *does* have a tradition of bearded clergy (even untrimmed beards.) And, that even before Vatican II. I’m guessing this is Fr. Nicholas Alford being spoken of? See the 15th photo in this post, under ‘Engelbert Dolfuss’ http://hallowedground.wordpress.com/2007/08/03/where-the-bishop-is/ Beards do not equal Byzantine.
“But on the WRO church websites you see the same thing in reverse – adopt some of the externals of your church’s dominant rite to prove your loyalty.”
No – I know you’ve continued to make that accusation over the years, but it still isn’t happening.
“That DC area WRO priest’s church IIRC has icons and ripidia (brass liturgical fans) behind the altar – whatever for? “
We’ve been through this before. The ripidia are not used at that parish. They have them (and display them) because they were a gift. Icons, again, are not particularly Eastern either. I’ve pointed out that especially in our British tradition, iconography was normative – Daniel Rock DD even made much out of that fact.
As for the iconography in the AWRV parishes – calling them Byzantine doesn’t make them Byzantine. They are Romanesque (and, yes – the mural at St. Michael’s is Romanesque.) The Ordo directs the use of Romanesque iconography. Yes, the Ordo also directs a theology of iconography to be taught to converts – but that was because many Episcopalians did not hold to the 7th council, and were not familiar with iconography. Again – it isn’t a Byzantinization.
“The form of Confirmation in WRO has been gutted with the Byzantine form now at the heart of the ceremony.”
I’m looking at the form we use right now, and I don’t see anything Byzantine. In fact, it looks remarkably like the rite of Confirmation in the 1549 BCP (but with an absolution, and the Pontifical blessing at the end, as it is in the Rubric even for the Roman rite – it is, rather, the Western form used when the priest confirms at the direction of his Bishop.)
“This ‘cut-and-paste’ approach to rites …” … isn’t what we do, and won’t be true after you’ve continued to charge us with it. It isn’t Tridentine Roman rite, and it isn’t High Church BCP – but it isn’t ‘cut-and-paste’ either.
August 9, 2007 at 4:47 am |
RE: “One – no one moved from Julian to Gregorian (except Finland, and that caused no schism, division or stress.) That, and the Antiochians didn’t just ‘declare…service books “as Orthodox”.”
Then let us say Revised Julian calendar. The others seemed to know my meaning on this. Sorry to be confusing.
October 26, 2007 at 11:12 pm |
http://www.geocities.com/thecatholicconvert/easternorthodoxy.htmlSelected Articles Related to Eastern Orthodoxy from Catholic Answers
Eastern Orthodoxy (Overview)http://www.catholic.com/library/eastern_orthodoxy.asp
Why I Am Not Eastern Orthodoxhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0504bt.asp
Wonderful Leo
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9902fea2.asp
HOW THE POPE CAUGHT A ROBBER
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1998/9806eaw.asp
CELESTINE: DEFENDER OF THEOTOKOS
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1998/9804eaw.asp
PELAGIUS AND THE POPEhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1998/9803eaw.asp
STRENGTHENING BRETHRENhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1998/9801eaw.asp
COUNCIL MINUS PAPACY EQUALS CHAOShttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9711eaw.asp
PAPAL PRIMACY AND THE COUNCIL OF NICAEAhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9706eaw.asp
WILL THE REAL ST. CYPRIAN PLEASE STAND?http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9704eaw.asp
THE EPIPHANY OF THE ROMAN PRIMACYhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9702eaw.asp
PETER AND THE ORTHODOX: A REPRISEhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1996/9610eaw.asp
SEEING PETER THROUGH EASTERN EYES http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1996/9604eaw.asp
The Eastern Doctrine of the Catholic Churchhttp://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1995/9510fea1.asp
PAPAL AUTHORITY AT THE EARLIEST COUNCILS
http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9101fea2.asp
Church & Papacy
http://www.catholic.com/library/church_papacy.asp
Contraception
http://www.catholic.com/library/Birth_Control.asp
http://www.catholic.com/library/Contraception_and_Sterilization.asp
Permanence of Matrimony
http://www.catholic.com/library/Permanence_of_Matrimony.asphttp://members.aol.com/johnprh/marriage.html
Western “Eastern Orthodoxy” as Boutique Religion http://sarabitus.blogspot.com/2007/03/western-eastern-orthodoxy-as-boutique.html
THE HOPKO LETTER
http://www.orthodoxnet.com/redirect-oca.php?url=http://www.ocanews.org/news/Hopkoletter319.html
A CATHOLIC VIEW OF ORTHODOXY
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/orthodox.html
CHOOSING A CHURCH-DIALOGUE WITH AN EASTERN BROTHER
http://unasancta.wordpress.com/choosing-a-church-dialogue-with-an-eastern-brother/
WHY I AM NOT EASTERN ORTHODOX
http://www.likelierthings.com/?p=247
January 24, 2008 at 6:32 pm |
A quote from westernritecritic.com: “The practice of putting Eastern liturgical snippets in Anglican prayerbooks, whether as Sunday inserts or with some tape or glue. Beware Anglicans, groups of disgruntled Episcopalians may be going to work on your BCP’s this Saturday night. You could wake up and find yourself (just like the books) . . . Suddenly Orthodox!”
January 25, 2008 at 12:31 am |
I have no beef with Anglicans fleeing to the protection of the Antiochians, per se.
As my mother would say, “Hey, it keeps them of the streets!”
I am, as I explained, at a loss to understand how the Antiochians can wholesale baptize a NEW (to Orthodoxy!) set of services in this fashion, when schisms have wreaked havoc in Orthodoxy over far smaller matters of revisions & reforms in Byzantine usage (Nikonian, Revised Julian, etc.)
The nature of autocephalous polyarchy being what it is, one would suspect adapting and adopting the BCP would generally be frowned upon as most hierarchs tend to not wish to go “too far off the reservation” on matters that an Ecumenical council might be needed to address.
IT isn’t the services themselves that are as problematic to me (I fully support the efforts of Anglican-use communities in the Catholic Church – all 8/9 of em!)
IT is the claim that this usage is rooted in historic “Western Orthodoxy” combined with the assertion of episcopal prerogatives in approving such a right. Even if Saint Tikhon DID bless it in the fashion pro-WRO suggest, dare I offer that even the blessing of a saint doesn’t make it kosher. (Or maybe it does, in which case certain contradistinctive polemicists need to reconsider their thinking on Scholasticism , Ignation Spiritual Exercises and Saint Thomas Aquinas, as different Orthodox saints CAN be found who much admired and approved of all of the above…)
Perhaps ultimately, in the economy of it, it must be decided what will be traded or sacrificed and what will be saved. Mark Wallace (who I believe was just ordained to the priesthood for the Antiochians) showed up on a forum espousing a strongly anti-western, anti-Augustinian view that presupposes the west “went off the rails” almost 1600 years ago and it is only gotten worse. If one takes that position, it seems REALLY incongruent to wish to serve a Western rite liturgy, which is so rooted in “corrupt western patrimony.”
But considering that question, in the light of the relative non-numbers of WRO in world Orthodoxy, it seems fairly moot. I have heard “10,000 adherents” for a decade and a half, and I certainly DO NOT believe that, anymore than I EVER believed the OCA’s (one time) claim of 1,000,000+!!!!
IF there are even 2,000 (and that is very high!) adherents for 30 parishes (I think that is high too) that would give us parishes of 66 people per.
I am not familiar with more than two parishes (maybe)that large. I am not aware of more than one parish over 25 years old. I have not met a second let alone third generation Western Riter online.
To accommodate them in such a fashion while letting go of certain anti-western distinctives prevalent in the voices of modern Orthodoxy, seems like a bigger sacrifice that a group not well known or widely accepted would warrant.
WRC, while I am fairly sympathetic to your viewpoint – I share some of your conclusions, with different arguments – I am not totally certain this very small group warrants this sort of time effort and attention. While certain pro-WRO seem omnipresent on the net (one of which posted here and tends to show up where-ever it is discussed [we all need hobbies]), I don’t believe they are appreciably growing or sustainable. They appeal to a very limited niche market.
Honestly, it is simply too esoteric.
“Join my church, we are Orthodox!”
“Like in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?”
“No, we are western rite”
“Like Catholics”
“Yes, but Orthodox”
“Using the Catholic Mass?”
“A version of it and/or the Anglican BCP”
“So like Anglicans?”
“But corrected of scholastic error & Protestantism!”
“Oh”
It is too kitschy, too esoteric, too limited to ex-Anglicans wanting a few more years of “doing their thing.”
Think about your average unbaptized, unchurched, American heathen. Once you talk them into Christianity and get to the point where they are ready to accept not just some vague “I accept Jesus” but also His church and his grace-giving sacraments…
Well getting them to affirm and believe that the great big Roman Church – 1.1B strong, growing, on all 7 continents, united under a powerful leader who gets his annual “Christmas special” broadcast around the world live… They got it wrong!! (Fair enough, most of the world is non-Catholic, that opinion is legitimate…) and theirs is not the legitimate patrimony of Western Christianity!
The Orthodox (the ones that accept Chalcedon that is, not those non-chalcedonian heterodox!) DID get it right, and now, using rites formulated by the wrong Romans or the Anglicans that broke off from the wrong Romans but were still wrong… Well you can be right! They are the western orthodox!
All 700 of you!
Simpler still? If they (the heathens) are going to go for fiddlebacks and organs, they are going to pick the cool German bishop who has his own country surrounded by Rome.
(Or Anglican if they are gay.)
Dare I say, offering the DL in Gregorian Chant (its been done, I have heard the music in Russia) with organs and icononstasis removed (the modern icon screen is of recent origin anywho) would be a far more legitimate and practical hat-tip to people of Western patrimony?
No, I don’t dare say that!
February 11, 2008 at 12:52 am |
My imperfect comments continue:
Your misunderstanding might be related to this misconception about Orthodoxy as a whole: “autocephalous polyarchy.”
To understand the ‘why’ of Western rite liturgics (and I speak as one in the Russian rather than Antiochian tradition) you would need to read J.J. Overbeck, and the Russian Observations on the Book of Common Prayer to begin with. The St. Tikhon’s (particular to the Antiochians, and which outsiders seem to think all WRO use), is in fact far closer to the traditional Roman rite in form than the Anglican Use of the Roman church. That has much to do with the history of Anglo-Catholicism, admittedly. The process of canonically admitting the rites (done by Synodal action – befitting Orthodoxy’s position as Conciliar Catholicism) was not all that different than the Tridentine reformation of the Roman rite. That is, both processes looked back at the way the rite was done in the past, and then simplified it of accretions (and in some cases, mistakes that had crept in.) That is to say – the Orthodox Western rites are not yet perfect.
Regarding the issue of ‘anti-Westernism’, part of the understanding we Western Orthodox operate under include:
1) The West was never monolithic in praxis, theology, or culture.
2) Not everything done after the schism in the West is heretical, and like everything must be judged foremost by the Faith itself (the same process used with the Byzantine rite.)
3) The faithfulness we have to the Western patrimony includes things that some Roman Catholics also value: Conciliarity (the Conciliar Movement of the 14th/15th c. we assert was in continuity with the Apostolic tradition), Ultra-Realism, the theology of St. John Cassian, and other matters that were and are perfectly Catholic – no matter how much the more recent triumph of the Schoolmen/Thomism, neo/crypto-Jansenism (over emphasis of an understanding of St. Augustine), and Ultramontanism. The existence of Western Rite Orthodox has something to do with the past-1000 years of Western Catholic dissent with the growing claims of Rome against a tradition held in common with the East.
You are right about the question being moot: for numbers (of which I’ve even given up in exasperation – numbers only count for how much attention a given community gets from its diocesan apparatus.) As a matter of fact – I do know a number of second generation WRO, and know of some who are third and forth generation (though, not in the AWRV.) Then again – every AU parish is first generation, as are some other small ‘ritually different’ entities in the Roman communion (Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest is only 18 years old IIRC.)
The question is: why does it garner such interest with certain groups? BTW – “one of which posted here and tends to show up where-ever it is discussed [we all need hobbies]” – it might be simply that a reader you already had was surprised by the topic being brought up on a blog that one would not expect it. “Per Christum” before its WRO post anomaly was an interesting blog with links to Hallowedground, haligweorc, Stony Creek Digest, Shrine of the Holy Whapping, and other long-time favorites. I apologize if de-lurking offended sensibilities.
We Western Rite Orthodox don’t really worry about ‘growth’ – and maybe we are a ‘nice market’. One of our number dubbed us the ‘Orthodox department of waifs and strays’. It reminds me a little of one of the old Byzantine dioceses in the Holy Land ‘Of the Camps’ – which was established for the conversion of those wandering the deserts. For many of us, this was the hope of Western Rite Orthodoxy – and a cure to the Eastern phyletism (which does exist, though officially it should not – both in Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.)
BTW – as someone who has spent years in Antiochian, Greek, and other ‘ethnic parishes’ – it isn’t like ‘Big Fat Greek Wedding’, anymore than ‘Godfather I/II/II/etc.’ is a realistic portrayal of American Catholicism. It is also not at all about ‘doing our thing’ and, as I’ve noted elsewhere – not all that ‘ex-Anglican’. There is an argument that the liberalisation of Old Catholicism is related to the reception of the more traditional into WRO bodies (some admittedly much reduced: WWII did a number on our dioceses in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and France.) A good number of us were never Episcopalians/Anglicans.
As for your idea of a Westernized Byzantine rite – it has already been tried as well, and found wanting. We don’t mix rites. Rome has the same rule. There is also, as I mentioned before, no sense of Romaphobia. If we do the Roman rite, we do it in a sense of being faithful to the universal Church. It isn’t for ‘fiddlebacks’ (in which I’m not interested one bit) or ‘organs’ (which I don’t mind as well as they are played well and without novelty.)
And a side note for WRC. LOL! It’s like Jack Chick, but you’re serious.
March 8, 2008 at 12:16 am |
Aristibule I admire you certitude and good plain common sense (would that it were the case everyone so sensible and confident, eh!) in speaking for Western Rite Orthodoxy in tones that sound authoritative…
That being the case, I am finding it hard to understand how you can have such confidence with an air of “for thus is Holy Orthodoxy!” when a good deal of what you confidently proclaim is still quite up for debate… and I anticipate that will be the case for some time to come…
BTW – as someone who has spent years in Antiochian, Greek, and other ‘ethnic parishes’ – it isn’t like ‘Big Fat Greek Wedding’, anymore than ‘Godfather I/II/II/etc.’
I wouldn’t have thought I would be compelled to really explain this one, the reference was meaning that some people could just as likely go a lifetime never seeing the inside of an Orthodox Church and that would be a pop culture reference… It wasn’t about if all Greeks act like that loveably looney family. I would have thought that obvious – sorry I was not clearer.
Your misunderstanding might be related to this misconception about Orthodoxy as a whole: “autocephalous polyarchy.”
I am trying to understand how this is a misconception on my part. On paper and in praxis the Eastern Orthodox are in fact an autocephalous group of churches and it is a polyarchy with multiple heads of national churches that enjoy autonomy.
“Per Christum” before its WRO post anomaly was an interesting blog with links to Hallowedground, haligweorc, Stony Creek Digest, Shrine of the Holy Whapping, and other long-time favorites. I apologize if de-lurking offended sensibilities.
No apologies needed. Rather we thank you for including us among that venerable list of august bloggers… I hope you have been able to enjoy us since that time.
As a matter of fact – I do know a number of second generation WRO, and know of some who are third and forth generation (though, not in the AWRV.) Then again – every AU parish is first generation, as are some other small ‘ritually different’ entities in the Roman communion (Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest is only 18 years old IIRC.)
On the former, that is an impressive feat. On the latter, given that the AU parishes are no older than 25 years or so, I would expect about that… But Saint Marys the Virgin in Texas does have a thriving parochial school attached, so it can’t rightly be said that there is no second or even possible third generation there. Children attending the school and as a result weekday Masses may well end up attending Anglican-use parishes 2x-3x more than your average Anglican!
On the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, that is a religious order and not a church or even distinctive ritual expression (they use the 1962 books without any special alteration specifically for them…)
We do appreciate your comments.