The Western Rite

A Western Rite parish is to be distinguished from the more usual Eastern or Byzantine Rite parishes by its liturgy or worship service. Before the year 1054 A.D. there would have been no difficulty in declaring that the Western liturgy of the Undivided Church was simply the use of Latin speaking Churches. The Liturgy or worship service, used by Christians in Scotland, Ireland and England, and Continental Europe 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 Historic Patriarchates (Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome) were Orthodox. When the Latin or Roman Church in, 1054 A.D. separated itself from the unity of the Orthodox Church, the ancient Western liturgy that was being used in England and the Western Europe was lost to the Church.

Later such people as Thomas Cranmer the Archbishop of Canterbury would draw upon ancient Christian resources in order to reestablish the authentic liturgy of the West.

In the Nineteenth Century, the Orthodox Church was approached by Westerners seeking the apostolic purity of the ancient, unchanging Orthodox Faith and Liturgy. They sought to restore their own familiar and theologically Orthodox liturgical forms and hymnody which had once been in use in the British Isles and Continental Europe.

The Holy Synod of Moscow in, 1903, 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. Another liturgy now known as, St. Tikhon, but largely based on the work of Thomas Cranmer is also in use.

Later the Patriarch of Antioch established the Western Rite Vicariate for North America. The purpose of the Western Rite is to provide a home in the Orthodox Church for western people of non-Byzantine cultural and religious backgrounds and to be a witness to the Catholicity of the Orthodox Church to her Byzantine Rite people, priests and theologians.

Although still few in numbers, Western Rite Orthodoxy now exists throughout the world, in Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States. The work of the Western Rite is blessed by His Eminence, Metropolitan PHILIP Saliba of the Antiochian Archdiocese 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 rooted in their own western spiritual ethos and stands as a beacon to the unchanging and eternal truth of Jesus Christ.