East Good: West Bad! - In defence of the Western Rite

Below is something I posted in response to the comments of a seemingly ignorant priest on another website. I don't think I would have been quite as bothered by what he said if it weren't for the fact that he proffered no reasoning whatsoever for his dismissal of the WRite, and it just seemed to be born out of fear of the unknown, or the idea often come across in some Orthodox circles that anything west of Byzantium is of the devil.

I doubt of the "western Orthodoxy" and its "western Rites" they are really a great fall for who practice it and this is demonstrated by its serial failures.

Most of those rites are not the true rites that existed before the Great Schism in West but a medley of all kinds of things that they didn't keep any tradition with respect to Western Church previous to the Great Schism.

I doubt of the orthodoxy of these "western orthodox"

With the greatest of respect due another person and a priest, Father, I must disagree with both your sentiment and the (I assume unintentional) misrepresentation of the rites.

You would have been correct if you had said that none of the rites currently in use within WRite Orthodoxy are identical to the rites which existed in the pre-Schism Orthodox West. That is because this was never the intention, but I cannot agree with your statement that they don't keep any tradition of the Western Church prior to the Great Schism.

The point of the WRite is to restore the Orthodox Faith to the peoples of the western world using a litugical form that is accessible to them and faithful to Western Orthodox tradition. It is not about liturgical archaeology - resurrecting rites that died from use 1000 years ago. All liturgy develops and evolves. This has been the case with the ERite as well. The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom as served today is not the same as it would have been 500, 1000 years ago, and that is a living tradition.

What we have in the West today is many different Christian groups who have their liturgical and spiritual roots in developments on the classical Western liturgical shape that has its origins in Orthodoxy. We cannot resurrect the old pre-Schim rites because they are dead rites. They are not part of a living tradition with their own living spirituality and traditions as practised by the faithful. However, many, many elements of these traditions live on. For example, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer has its roots in the Sarum Rite, which is itself a development of the Liturgy of St John the Divine, which was the liturgy used in much of Britain before the Schism. Even this Liturgy of St John the Divine was done differently in various times and places. Different dioceses in England each had their own traditions, and practices, which were different from each other and from those on the continent. In Rome, the Tidentine Rite was used, which is another organic development of the pre-Schism Orthodox Liturgy. Yet all were Orthodox and all were united in the Faith of the Apostles.

What the WRite is doing today, is taking the surviving elements of those traditions - the ones which have remained practised as part of a living faith, and are perfectly consonant with the Orthodox Faith, and using them in the context of rites which are genuine developments of those which were used in the pre-Schism West.

How many Anglicans and Roman Catholics have I heard say that they would like to explore Orthodoxy further, if only it didn't seem so foreign to them, if only the esoteric liturgy were not so far removed from anything they know of Christianity?

I think the ERite is beautiful, but it does not speak to the British psyche in the same way that the WRite does, and if this is an unnecessary barrier to people coming home to the Faith, then there is no reason why we cannot use Orthodox Western Rites.

Rites like the Divine Liturgy of Sarum, the English Liturgy and the Divine Liturgy of St Gregory are all organic developments of the pre-Schism Liturgy of the West, which developed naturally over time, with their own traditions and piety. All we have done is to correct the very few doctrinal errors that had accrued over time.

(I must say that I have reservations about the Liturgy of St Tikhon, because it isn't an organic development but rather a piecemeal mix'n'match of rites with no traditions of its own. It is a valid Liturgy of the Church and so I would have no problem going to such a Liturgy but I wouldn't encourage its use. However, the others are true developments as the Liturgy grew in different places).