Western Rite

The Western Rite is a ministry of the Antiochian Christian Archdiocese of North America, and in full canonical communion and unity of purpose with the several Orthodox jurisdictions of the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America (SCOBA). There are about twenty Western Rite congregations around the country who worship God in the forms which speak to their hearts, rejoicing to be part of the Universal Church.

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A Western Rite parish is to be distinguished from the more usual Eastern or Byzantine Rite parishes. When the Latin Church in the west separated itself from the unity of the Orthodox Church, the venerable and ancient Western liturgy was lost to the Church. In the Nineteenth Century, when the Papal claims of supremacy culminated in the novel doctrine of “papal infallibility,” the Orthodox Church was approached by Westerners seeking the apostolic purity of the ancient, unchanging Orthodox Faith wherein the Bishop of Rome would be considered to have primacy of honor. They would utilize their own familiar and theologically Orthodox liturgical forms, while coincidentally restoring the Western liturgy to the Orthodox Church.

The Holy Synod of Moscow responded by approving the restored form of the Western Liturgy, the ancient Liturgy of St. Gregory the Great. This is the oldest Orthodox liturgy of the undivided Church still in use. The balance was struck involving the Eastern and Western traditions of Orthodoxy. In the Twentieth Century, the Patriarch of Antioch established the Western Rite Vicariate for North America. The Orthodox Church reclaimed what was rightfully hers.

According to the Western Rite Directory promulgated by Metropolitan ANTONY Bashir in 1962, the purpose of the Western Rite is 1.) to provide a home in the Orthodox Church for western people of non-Byzantine cultural and religious backgrounds and 2.) to witness the Catholicity of the Orthodox church to her Byzantine Rite people, priests and theologians.

Although still few in numbers, Western Rite Orthodoxy exists throughout the world, and in the United States the work is blessed by His Eminence, Metropolitan PHILIP Saliba through the work Bishop Basil, his Archepiscopal Vicar, and the Very Rev. Paul W. S. Schneirla, who serves as the Vicar-General of the Vicariate. Western Rite Orthodoxy has proven itself to be an excellent missionary out-reach to those who seek the assurance of the Orthodox Catholic Faith and who find themselves better rooted in their own western spiritual ethos than the Byzantine character of the eastern rites.

Orthodox people of both Rites worship together. The clergy are interchangeable, they share the same hierarchy and the spiritual unity of the faith.

The mission of the Orthodox Church, as the authentic Church of the New Testament, is to make our country and Orthodox nation. Whenever the Church has been given the opportunity to freely teach and live its Faith, it has always won the hearts and the souls of men and woman to the Truth. In our day when so many are worn down by the false claims of so many religious leaders, the Orthodox Church and Faith stand as a beacon of Truth drawing all to her portals of life.

On the Liturgy

Not all Orthodox Christians use the Eastern or Byzantine liturgical forms. The Western Rite, when compared to the Byzantine liturgical forms, is simpler, less redundant, obviously shorter, and employs a hymnody (the hymns used) that is 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 used by the Latin Church (Roman) or the Anglican Communion. In some Western Rite congregations, the Liturgy may be a Latin or English form of pre-Vatican-II Roman Catholic worship. (In France , all native French Orthodox Christians, who number in the thousands, use this form of worship). Other Western Rite parishes use a liturgy based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Modifications, while important, would not be terrible noticeable to even the most regular worshippers. Two of these alterations include the deletion of the filioque (“and the Son”) 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 into the Body and Blood of Christ.

The third section of the Nicene Creed affirms the Church's belief that the Holy Spirit is one of the three Persons of the triune Godhead. History shows that the phrase “and the Son” (or, in Latin, filioque ) in speaking of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father was initially an addition by a local council of Western Bishops that was originally even rejected by the Pope of Rome. The Eastern bishops argued the filioque causes a blurring of the roles of each of the three Divine Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in the Godhead. It is from the Father that the Son is begotten and it is from the Father that the Holy Spirit proceeds, through the Son.

Besides the removal of the filioque in the Creed, the Western Rite Liturgy requires the priest to petition God the Holy Spirit to act in changing the gifts of bread and wine into the life giving Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. The words used in the Liturgy are: “And we beseech thee, O Lord, to send down thy Holy Spirit upon these offerings, that he would make this bread the precious Body of thy Christ, and that which is in this Cup the precious Blood of thy Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, transmuting them by thy Holy Spirit. AMEN, AMEN, AMEN.”

In addition to these two changes, the Western Rite includes other indiscernible changes that Latin Roman Catholics and most Anglo-Catholics (High Church Episcopalians) would find to be either familiar or certainly acceptable. As some Latin Rite Roman Catholic parishes as well as Protestant Churches continue their decline by denial of basic Catholic faith, doctrine and worship by turning to inclusive language liturgies, which refer to God as mother (to name but one example) and promulgate woman “priests,” many traditional Catholic Christians of both the Roman and Anglican backgrounds are turning to the Orthodox Catholic Church.

By doing so, these Christians have retained familiar forms of worship and at the same time insured themselves of remaining within an ecclesiastical communion, and under godly, Orthodox bishops who teach and practice the ancient Gospel of Jesus Christ.