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Orthodox ikon of St. Columba of Iona (source HERE)

I wonder how many of my Orthodox friends in Romania are aware of the existence of an Orthodox Western Rite. Here are some basic information about this less known subject.

This particular rite was used in the West mostly by the Celtic Church, until the Synod of Whitby, in 664, which marked the triumph of Roman Catholicism over the Celtic traditions, established by St. Columba of Iona, which were similar to those of Eastern Orthodoxy. The differences did not consist only in the date of Easter, as it is usually suggested, or in the rejection of filioque, but also in a spirit of independence in relation to the imperial claims of Rome. I also need to add that, unlike the Roman Catholic tradition, the Celts had no interest in the Augustinian tradition of misogyny and no respect for the Roman obsession with power and hierarchy.

Things, of course, became even more complicated after the Great Schism, in 1054, when the Christian West separated from the Christian East.

I paste below, for those who are interested a few quotes from relevant web sites about the recent history of the Western Rite in Orthodoxy. For the sake of fairness and ecumenism, I will edit, wherever necessary, the more edgy anti-Catholic statements that appear sometimes on this site, in the usual Orthodox manner, towards those they call, in ’Christian’ love, of course, the ‘Papists’.

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Before the year 1054 there would have been no difficulty in declaring that the Western Rite of the Undivided Church was simply the use of Latin speaking Churches. The Rite used by Christians in Scotland, Ireland and England, was as Orthodox as that used in Constantinople. In the first thousand years of Christendom all the far flung churches that were in communion with the Five Patriarchates (Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome) were Orthodox. After 1054, and more precisely, after the Norman Conquest (1066) of England, the Churches of the West were drawn into the Great Schism of the Roman Patriarchate away from the Unity of the Orthodox Church. The Western Liturgy came to reflect the Papal errors…

The restoration of a corrected, and truly Orthodox, Western Rite to Holy Orthodoxy in the United States was not originated by laity or by ordinary clergy. The vision of the Western Rite as an essential part of the Orthodox Mission in America belonged to Archbishop Tikhon of the American Archdiocese under the Moscow Patriarchate. About ninety years ago he examined the existing Anglican Book of Common Prayer and sent it to the Holy Synod of Moscow. That Liturgy, derived from the ancient use of the Orthodox West, and first expressed in English in the edition of 1549 by authority of King Edward the Sixth of England, was corrected and approved by the Holy Synod for Orthodox Church use.

In the years following, blessed Tikhon was himself elevated to Patriarch of Moscow, martyred by the communists in 1925, since declared a Saint of the Church, and thus known to Orthodox faithful throughout the world as St. Tikhon, Enlightener of America. This is the same Saint Tikhon who, about the time he obtained approval for the restoration of the Western Rite in America, also consecrated (in 1904) Raphael Hawaweeny to the episcopate of the Orthodox Church of North America, from which the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese descends.

As the Orthodox Mission in America grew in numbers and in maturity, further authorization of the Western Rite was given by the Patriarchs and Holy Synod of Antioch. Metropolitan Anthony (Bashir) founded the Western Rite Vicariate for the creation of Western Rite Missions and Parishes in the Archdiocese. Metropolitan Philip (Saliba) has promoted an increasing number of Western Rite Parishes throughout North America; and new additions of Clergy and Laity to this world have more than doubled its size in a few years. Western Rite Orthodoxy is now a rapidly growing dimension of the Church’s Mission in America.

The Western Rite Parishes represent a restoration of the legitimate Western Liturgy of the Undivided Church of the first 1,000 years, by Patriarchal authority, for the benefit of all Orthodox people.

(Source of the above, Introduction to the Orthodox Western Rite)

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Not all Orthodox Christians use the Eastern or Byzantine liturgical forms. At least two branches of Orthodoxy in America also include congregations that use Western liturgies. The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese is the larger body that sanctions the use of forms of worship that most Americans and Canadians would perhaps find more familiar.

This liturgical form is known as the Western Rite. More specifically, the Western Rite is a specified form of worship that was used by Christians in Western Europe before the Roman Catholic Church broke with the Orthodox Church.

The Western Rite, when compared to Byzantine liturgical forms, is simpler, less redundant, obviously shorter, and employs a hymnody (the hymns used) that are familiar to a great many American Christians. More precisely, the Western Rite, as approved by the Antiochian Archdiocese is a theologically corrected form of worship formerly used by either the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Communion.

In most Western-Rite Orthodox parishes, this means the liturgy is based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. In other Western-Rite congregations, the liturgy may be a Latin or English form of pre-Vatican-II Roman Catholic worship. In fact, all native French Orthodox Christians, who number in the thousands, use this form in Orthodox Churches in France.

For those Western-Rite Christians who use a theologically corrected Anglican liturgy, the modifications, while important, would not be terribly noticeable to even the most regular worshippers from a traditional Episcopal congregation. Two of these alterations include the deletion of the filioque clause in the Nicene Creed and the addition of a stronger epiclesis in the eucharistic prayer said by the priest at the consecration of the bread and wine as the Body and Blood of Christ.

(Source of the text in this section, Fr. Patrick McCauley, ‘What Is Western-Rite Orthodoxy?‘

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You may find more details about this topic on the Western Orthodoxy website.

 

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