I received an Email with these very interesting (and for me CORRECT) thoughts about "Western Rite":
To all: (& please forgive any spelling or typo errors)-
I have been resisting making this collection & declaration of some of my own beliefs and impressions and of what all, I know, on this very current and very contentious subject,...i.e. so-called, 'Western Rite Orthodoxy',
which is causing much confusion and arguments among Orthodox, especially precipitated by the Moscow-dependent ROCOR/MP's on-going and triumphalistic & 'missionary' excuses for their reception of many such 'Western Rite' clergy and advocates, while their Mother Church, the KGB run MP is engaged in more and more outrageous ecumenist betrayal, especially towards Rome..( the very epi- center of the real historic, 'Roman Rite', Western Rite),.. which, they clearly are rapidly moving towards, union with, as is also EP Bartholomew.
I do not pretend to be an expert on all things Orthodox. But, for most of my 67 years, I have been a sincere Orthodox Christian layman. My only qualifications, to write down and to share these observations and opinions of mine, are that I have been a sincere Orthodox Christian since age 17, I have studied and read much & discussed with others, on most aspects of our ancient and complicated faith, I have personally spoken with various historical figures or those who directly knew them, and I have myself, witnessed many things, good and bad, in present day Orthodox church life. And, I am not stupid! I use the mind that the Good Lord gave me!
And, I CARE about the truth of things and what is good or harmful to our church and people, ...i.e. what works or DOES NOT WORK, pastorally, on the local level, so to speak
Thus too, I care about genuine missionary outreach and serious efforts to bring more souls to Orthodoxy and to God.. I believe in true Orthodox missionary work.
So, in as a concise manner as I can, here are some of my main thoughts on this difficult subject:
1) all Orthodox liturgical worship, began in Jerusalem, and what they did there in the first century or thereabouts, where they weekly went physically to each PLACE where Jesus had walked and suffered and died and rose, and re-enacted those sacred events. the Holy Week agenda.
This basic, Jerusalem worship, was copied and spread throughout the whole Christian world, east and west and south and north, it was UNIVERSAL.
It was mostly done in Greek or Latin, but in the later monastic movement, the Coptic language was also used in those monasteries with mixed ethnic members, etc. And gradually, it began to be performed in some local languages, east and west.
2) gradually, in each local region or nation, local differences in calendar, rituals, church disciplines and simply CUSTOMS connected to the worship or the local application of Orthodox life-principals, became...varied. Much of those differences, depended on the exact pre-Christian local pagan cultures.
3) and, gradually, east and west, there....naturally developed.....an amalgamation/unification/simplification process.... liturgically, a natural CENTRALIZATION .
In the west, the Roman Rite ( how things were done in the Holy City of Old Rome), gradually replaced virtually all the local 'rites', and was often FORCED upon the locals. That development occured, before 1054, but continued after the Latin Schism.
In the east, Byzantium, the Constantinopolitan Rite (what was done in the capital city and in the Emperor's St. Sophia Cathedral) gradually supplanted and replaced most local eastern diocesan rituals of worship, and became the norm for liturgical worship in the Eastern Roman Empire. But it was not 'Eastern' , it was simply, what was done in the Emperor's Church, and was a compendium of all the earlier Christian worship-mainly from Jerusalem, plus taking heavily from the monastic worship practices.
4) these liturgical ...developments...according to what our church teaches,( the same as for the doctrinal expressions and the iconography and other aspects of our faith), was....guided by the Holy Spirit, BECAUSE WE ORTHODOX firmly believe that our Holy religion is a divinely revealed religion, and not man-made! ...& they expressed 'The Mind of The Church', and were a blessed and totally natural development.......So this amalgamation of the liturgical worship, was seen as BLESSED and not in any way, some sort of wrong or evil suppression of local or quaint folk-customs, etc. ....as now many advocates of the Western Rite, seem to suggest. Nor as some 'layering' of novel additions to the Early PURE Church worship'...which the mistaken later Protestants felt that THEY alone, had 'recovered'...i.e. by throwing out most of the rituals and worship of centuries!
5) also, as gradually occurred, there was a ...liturgical expanding...of the worship, from the earliest Christian worship which was mostly a Hebraic style of worship, chanting of the Psalms, to the addition of the poetic Kontakia of St. Romanus the Sweetsinger...i.e. our Orthodox liturgical worship was always expanding and developing and was ALIVE and in movement., and centered in the monastery worship.
6) as time went on, with the great growth and wide accepting of the Monastic Institution, what was liturgically done in famous old coenobitic monasteries, became the norm for each national Orthodox Church, which used that 'Typicon' of a particular monastery. That was what happened in the east, but in the west, I am not certain.
7) worship expresses belief/doctrine. That is very Orthodox. That is exactly why, we should fear, to change our worship. This Western Rite three-ring circus, does change it. Isn't that what the ecumenist betrayers of our faith, want? I really think so.
then came the ...process...of the splitting of the west away from the Universal Church, culminating in the official separation date of 1054 AD.
9) we Orthodox, believe that at that event, the west ...lost grace, and it...gradually became debased and disfigured in all aspects of it's church life, including it's worship. It had fallen into many heresies, papal-supremacy among it's chief sins. It's worship reflects these heresies.
10) over the long sad centuries since that western schism, the Latin Roman-Rite, west has attacked our Orthodox people and church, by many vile and evil means: wars of invasion and occupation, destruction of Orthodox churches and holy places and holy things, and finally by their trickery of their satanic, 'Unia'..i.e. allowing (conquered and suppressed), Orthodox populations to keep our peculiar and strange 'Eastern Rites',& even our married priests keeping their wives, ( for awhile anyway!), while being 100% submitted to their despicable Pope, 'The Vicar of Christ', and all their Romish skullduggery and power machinations, and being gradually Latinized, bit by bit, removing/changing/CORRUPTING our peculiar 'Eastern' worship (in reality, our
UNIVERSAL Christian worship of the ages before the Latin Schism!) in favour of their, debased, pure Roman Rite...i.e. the process of ..becoming 'good Roman Catholics.'
11) so, why, today, long after all that has transpired since 1054, should we Orthodox accept as somehow normal or right, this 'Western Rite' experiment?...this foreign invasion of our sacred temples and worship?
In 1962, I met and spoke with Fr. Alexander Turner, the head of the Antiochean Western Rite endeavour, blessed by Met. Anthony-Bashir, who gave me THE
main theoretical underpinning as to, why have a Western Rite?, in Orthodoxy:
He said: "The western mind cannot comprehend the Eastern Rituals. The Western mind, needs a Western Rite!"To me, who came from mainstream American Protestantism, I had a hard time translating his message. He clearly was referring to former Roman Catholics or high church Episcopalian converts to Orthodoxy, I suppose...who were used to the R.C. Roman rite or variations of it. But to me, a converted Protestant, who was taught from early Sunday school, that ALL connected to the hated & evil church of Rome, was of the devil, and most especially their ritualistic worship. What Fr. A. Turner said, was gibberish, and nonsense, back in 1962, and it is still nonsense NOW.
To the Protestant mind, rituals separate men from God!
And, it didn't help his arguments, when I viewed his very barren, iconoclastic church, a sea of pews, but which was exactly, like a stark and drab life-less Presbyterian church...no icons (or statues) or any religious art, and NO parishioners., and no real ALTAR EITHER. The man was a heretic!!..and this was what Met. Anthony Bashir blessed, to steal back people from the Pope, etc.(!!!)...his deplorable, reverse-uniatism.
And, by the way, when Met. Anthony had his Western Rite priests perform their strange liturgy at his Antiochean convention for his Arab flock to see it, when an Arab woman was given the communion in her mouth by 'intinction' by the fingers of the priest, she then SPAT it out onto the floor, exclaiming, 'THAT! is NOT communion!"
Most Orthodox Arabs, as with most born Orthodox, utterly reject this monstrosity called, 'The Western Rite'. And, we converts to Orthodoxy, also, by-in-large also, reject it.
Former Protestants,...most raised to be essentially, anti-ritual anyway!, are NOT attracted to anything Orthodox, because it resembles...anything...Catholic!!!12) Now, I come to a big pro-
Western Rite argument: that a saint, St. John Maximovitch blessed it, so how can anything that a saint blessed, be...wrong?..i.e. and if anyone now, speaks against any Western Rite, he is going against a saint, and thus against God Himself!!!Folks, fellow Orthodox: ONLY GOD IS PERFECT and makes no errors!
Every saint in our church's history, did and said SOME things amiss, he or she made...mistakes ,& also sinned, some of which had to later be condemned by church councils.
In our Orthodox Church, the phrase, 'The Mind of the Church' is a paramount reality, in determining, long-term, what is correct or in error.
I submit, that that 1978 Synodal condemnation of the Western Rite, did exactly...not condemn St. John himself, but it DID condemn his Western Rite experiment....which was a failure. Such liturgical experiments today, continue to be, FAILURES, except for the enemies of our faith, who only wish to divide and destroy us. Our Orthodox Worship, which is UNIVERSAL! is one of the few realities that bind us. WHY dump it, in favour of these strange exotic rituals, dug up and re-constructed according to various unbalanced peoples' whims???
And for anyone today, to MISUSE a saint, to provide underpinning for their unOrthodox practices, which only divide the faithful, and which give joy to our enemies, and help the pro-ecumenist cause, ...is in itself an abomination.
OH, Our Holy St. John Maximovitch, PRAY TO GOD FOR US!...and enlighten us by your holy prayers, to know and to do what pleases God and not man.
SHAME on all who continue to defend this unOrthodox 'Western Rite' invasion of our Holy Church and it's Holy UNIVERSAL worship.!
St. John was a great missionary,and he wanted to save souls!, and it appears that his main thrust in blessing that French Gallican church, was in response to those French people's request and appeal to him. His intentions were pure and saintly, without any doubt! But, I believe that St. John mainly blessed that French experiment for FRANCE, with it's ancient history of it's own native Catholic worship and customs, etc.and that he did not expect it to be world wide.
St. John blessed some theories, and past things in past centuries....which today, do NOT work! He made a mistake, he was wrong in his blessing something which now, has come to be a major harm to Orthodox people, world-wide. But. St. John's antiquarian liturgical experiment, did not, and cannot have universal appeal or missionary usefulness, today, in this modern utterly chaotic world situation, when we verge on total world-wide apostasy from our Apostolic Faith. It is just no good here in America, for one place. I have witnessed how much harm it does, and how much delusion it causes.
But, of course, we Orthodox accept as true saints,...as did St. John, those pre-schism western saints, as those saints are OUR saints, not fallen-away Rome's!
13) just look at WHO, today, is now promoting this Western Rite (which, by the way, there is no ONE Western Rite, but as many different mishmash & fantastic rituals as there are those who in their personal whims, perform such bizarre rituals!)...and just see what are their true motives...such as the KGB controlled MP in Moscow, or the EP, or whomever. Their aims, are not holy and not Orthodox!
14) As a convert to Orthodoxy, I declare: NO ONE! 'needs' any other rite or worship ustav, but our standard universal ORTHODOX RITE, but yes, we need our worship to be in our own native languages. And, contrary to Western Rite critics of our Orthodox worship, it DOES have many natural local variations already, from country to country and from national ustavs, the chants used, and customs connected to the church life, etc. We HAVE variety!!!
Our Orthodox Worship is THE universal Christian worship, of east and west and of all ages, and we DARE not adopt long disused or dead & concocted or contrived western forms of ritual or prayers, of those who long ago departed from our church and have made war on us, for many many centuries now.
15) Any Orthodox who have been beguiled by 'Western Rites,'... they need to flee from them and the bishops & clergy who perform or who permit them, and renounce them, and just HUMBLY read and study and USE our HOLY Standard Orthodox worship, but only in their understandable native tongues.
16) for prospective converts to Orthodoxy, to come to our church's door, demanding WE change things in our HOLY religion, to suit their heterodox or pagan tastes, is IMPOSSIBLE!
Fellow Orthodox! I could go on and on, but I will stop here on this subject.
The so-called, 'Western Rites-S!" are an abomination TODAY, and are a Trojan Horse, meant to destroy our religion, from within.
Let those who want such strange, NOW in this present day, unOrthodox rituals, stay outside our church, and be honest about it.
Because, in many cases, such people do not accept our dogmas or doctrines or our ecclesiology. They have made up their own private versionS, of their-personal-'Orthodoxy'.
So, how? can they be fellow, 'Orthodox' believers???Just my thoughts.....
An Orthodox Layman
