By the Very Reverend John W. Fenton
On 31 May 1958, His Beatitude Alexander III, Patriarch of Antioch, replied favorably to Metropolitan Antony Bashir’s request to establish a Western Rite Vicariate in what is now known as the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. That reply was given only after His Beatitude had consulted with “representatives of some other autocephalous Churches.” As the Metropolitan reported to the Archdiocese in its 1958 convention, with his blessing to proceed His Beatitude enclosed an Arabic translation of the 1936 Russian Ukase and authorized the Metropolitan to “take the same action” as the Russians had outlined and taken. His Beatitude further entrusted the Metropolitan to “the right to work out the details in the local situation as you see fit” according to His Eminence’s “Orthodox zeal and good judgment.”
In my mind, the key words from His Beatitude are “take the same action.” These words authorized two intertwined actions. First, they gave the authority to establish not something new, but to erect a Western Rite Vicariate based on the previous work, history, and understanding of what the Russian Church had done and authorized. Therefore, the first part of this essay will be a summary of histories of the Western Rite written by the V. Rev. Edward Hughes and by the Rev. David Abramtsov which are published in the book “With What Zeal” (2023). My summary of their research will provide context and background for the Church of Antioch’s founding of a Vicariate. Hopefully, this summary will also whet your appetite to read these more extensive accounts and, perhaps, encourage original research to flesh out certain details.
Yet the words “take the same action” equally make explicit the liturgical texts and practice that His Beatitude envisioned. Therefore, the history of the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate is not limited to names, dates, and events. The telling of this story also relies heavily on the Rite’s liturgical practices, and the decisions that were made to implement these practices within the scope of both the Patriarch’s direction and the “Orthodox zeal and good judgment” of the Metropolitans under whose omophorion this Vicariate operates. That liturgical history will be the second and larger part of my essay. Like the first part, the second part will necessarily be only an outline with some impressions and preliminary conclusions. Again, the hope is that this synopsis will spur further research where that is possible; or, more likely, that it will encourage dispassionate conversations which are theologically and historically informed concerning the furtherance of the Western Rite in the Orthodox churches. To give context to some of those discussions, in a final section I shall introduce, very preliminarily, some challenges that continue today concerning the implementation of the Patriarch’s direction, and suggest some questions that may aid in untangling these challenges.
I.
To understand the history of the Western Rite Vicariate in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in North Ameria, it is necessary to know that the roots for this Vicariate are first cultivated by a German Roman Catholic priest who, after the briefly trying on Lutheranism, moved to England and subsequently was received into the Orthodox Church in 1865. This man, Joseph Julius Overbeck, argued that
it was “suicidal” to think that the West could be Orientalized, i.e., that Western people could become Eastern in their customs, traditions, and rites while in the process of returning to the primitive Catholic Faith. The Church of SS. Cyprian, Ambrose, Jerome, and others of the Western Saints had to be restored, but it was only the Orthodox Church which could admit such a body into communion, reconcile and absolve it of the sin of schism, and help it in the labor of restoration.
Yet what Overbeck sought was not an artificial turning back of the clock to whatever happened in the Western liturgy, fasting, and other traditions at some magic date; as if the liturgical practices, Western culture, ethos, and phronema from that chosen date were pristine and frozen in time, and could somehow be thawed and reconstituted in the mid-19th century. Overbeck’s program was not liturgical archeology, which seeks to impose liturgical texts ahistorically and without regard to the ever-moving stream of culture. Rather, Overbeck sought to retain not just texts but the entire scope Western liturgical tradition, as it had developed organically, yet devoid of obvious errors. Except for the filioque, as will be explained below, not one of these errors is located in the Latin liturgical texts themselves; rather, they are located in the reinterpretation of these texts in catechesis and doctrinal formulations.
Less than five years after his reception into the Orthodox Church, Overbeck petitioned the Holy Synod of Moscow to consider an Orthodox Western Church. The Russian Synod approved Western Orthodoxy in principle and awaited the views of the other Eastern patriarchs. During this interval, a major schism occurred in the Latin Roman patriarchate which would directly affect the establishment of the Western Rite Vicariate. This schism was due seismic changes in Roman dogma concerning the papal infallibility, which was ratified at the First Vatican Council (1869-70). In my view, the ultramontanism that resulted in the declaration of papal infallibility was certainly the last nail in the coffin of Great Schism that had developed over 1000 years. Even if my view needs adjustment, these events certainly were not accepted by significant numbers of Catholic hierarchs, clergy, and theologians particularly in Northern Europe. In 1870-71, a schism occurred in the Church of Rome which is hardly mentioned these days. These dissenters, who rejected papal infallibility, formed the “Old Catholic Church.” Overbeck tried to convince many of the leaders, whom he knew from previous contacts, to join him in setting Western Orthodoxy on firmer ground. Regrettably, these Old Catholics preferred closer ties with Anglicanism.
In the following years, Overbeck obtained the approval of the Latin Mass and Benedictine Breviary from Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III (in 1882), and in time several other patriarchates followed: Alexandria, Antioch, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Yet in his lifetime Overbeck’s dream did not come to fruition. Nevertheless, the renowned theologian Fr Georges Florovsky remarked that Overbeck’s vision
was not just a fantastic dream. The question raised by Overbeck was pertinent, even if his own answer to it was confusedly conceived. And probably the vision of Overbeck was greater than his personal interpretation.
Without doing too much injustice to the history, we must now take up the stories of two notable Old Catholic bishops who would impact the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate. The first of these was Bishop Arnold Harris Mathew, an Englishman. Mathew broke with the Old Catholics of Utrech—the largest umbrella group—and turned first to the Holy Synod of Russia and, when rebuffed, approached Metropolitan Gerasimos (Messarah) of Beirut, “who acted as agent for the Patriarch of Antioch.” Apparently, in 1911 Metropolitan Gerasimos received Bishop Mathew (and presumably his parishes) into communion on a provisional basis. The Patriarch of Alexandria also formally recognized Bishop Mathew and his diocese. Mathew began referring to his church as the Western Orthodox Church and publicly advocated the restoration of the Orthodox Church of the West. Mathew’s relationship with the Antiochians was soon terminated, but the important detail to emerge from this contact is that Metropolitan Gerasimos had traveled to England, and later America (1922) with his Deacon Antony Bashir. In 1936, Archimandrite Antony Bashir became the Metropolitan of the American Archdiocese and his familiarity with Old Catholics and the Western Rite would be instrumental in establishing the Western Rite Vicariate in 1958.
The Vicariate was erected because a former Old Catholic priest, Alexander Turner, approached Metropolitan Antony Bashir. Turner had converted to Orthodoxy some years before in a group known as the Society of St Basil, which was not recognized by the canonical churches in the U.S. Turner was subsequently consecrated a bishop and became the successor to Bishop Ignatius Nichols, who in 1932 was consecrated and given oversight of Western Rite parishes by Archbishop Aftimios Ofeish. In 1934, Bishop Nicholas was elevated to Archbishop by the Holy Synod of Moscow. Shortly thereafter, “during the tempestuous days following the Bolshevik Revolution” the Western Rite diocese subsequently drifted outside mainstream Orthodoxy when the various ethnic Orthodox groups submitted to their homeland churches. In order to maintain ecclesial semblance, Archbishop Nichols “founded the Society of Saint Basil, a devotional society for clergy and laity based on the daily recitation of the Western Breviary.” Representing this group, Bishop Alexander Turner approached and petitioned Metropolitan Antony Bashir in order to be received back into the Orthodox mainstream while maintaining their Western liturgical tradition and heritage.
In 1953, Bishop Turner, with his three parishes with one monastery, was received “on probation” by Metropolitan Antony Bashir of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese. Five years later, Patriarch Alexander III of Antioch requested Metropolitan Antony to welcome these parishes into the Archdiocese, not by requiring them to convert to Byzantine worship and traditions, but by maintaining the ancient Latin liturgical tradition. In time this Vicariate, founded by the desire of Old Catholics to become Orthodox, would receive other Old Catholics as well as disaffected Episcopalians, Anglo-Catholics, Lutherans, and others. A second Benedictine monastery would be established, and the liturgy and prayer offices would, in some place, include features from the early Church of England reformed rites. The work would be supported by Metropolitan Antony’s successors; and Vicars General familiar with Orthodox Latin traditions, beginning with Fr. Turner, would assist Their Eminences in administering these parishes. That administration would not be in matters of faith but, in large part, would establish a wholesome liturgical practice rooted in the words of Patriarch Alexander III when His Beatitude directed the Archbishop to “take the same action.”
II.
As mentioned above, the words “take the same action” clearly refer to the Ukase promulgated on 16 June 1936 by Metropolitan (later Patriarch) Sergius Stragorodsky who, at the time, was Locum Tenens of the Patriarch. The occasion of this Ukase was the reception of about 1500 French Western Rite faithful into the Orthodox Church under the leadership of Louis-Charles Winnaert. According to the Ukase, these “united parishes, using the Western Rite, shall bear the name ‘Western Orthodox’.”
The Ukase was no doubt the work of Metropolitan Sergius himself and incorporated his ecclesiological and canonical erudition. The late Patriarch considered the restoration of Western Orthodoxy in Western Europe one of the most important acts of his arch-pastoral life and it is truly remarkable that in the second half of the 1930’s, when the Russian Church was at its lowest ebb physically and materially, its hierarchs displayed enough spiritual vigor to realize the consequences and importance of the restoration of Western Orthodoxy.
Concerning doctrine and liturgy, the Western Orthodox parishes were directed to adhere to these four points:
- Regarding doctrine, they must “without deviation follow the form of teaching held by the Orthodox Church.”
- Regarding liturgical texts, they “may preserve the Western Rite” which it had maintained to that point, but “the liturgical texts must be expurgated (even though gradually) of all expressions and thoughts not acceptable to the Orthodox Church.”
- Regarding liturgical calendar, Eastern saints were to be venerated, and only those Western saints “who were canonized before the separation of Rome from the Orthodox Church.”
- Regarding liturgical practice, it was “indispensable” that these parishes adhere to the following details: leavened bread only, the Epiclesis after the words of Institution, communing the laity with both kinds “concurrently by means of the spoon,” celebration of Mass on a properly consecrated antimins, triune immersion for Baptism (unless an exception is given), the use of Sacred Chrism “from the Diocesan Bishop,” and the Sacrament of Holy Unction not only for the dying “but also for the healing of the souls and bodies of the sick.”
It is conceivable that the liturgical texts that had been used by the incoming group were those of the Liberal Catholic Church since that was where Fr Louis-Charles Winnaert had been ordained a bishop. However, given his erudition, it is most likely that, when Metropolitan Sergius mentioned expurgating, or cleansing and purifying these texts, His Eminence had in view the 1882 report from the Ecumenical Patriarch Joachim III and the Synod of Constantinople which approved the use of the Latin Liturgy and the Benedictine offices, as had the Holy Synod of Moscow.
In either case, it is certain that the Antiochian Patriarch’s directive to “take the same action” did not refer to adjusting the liturgy and rites of the Liberal Catholic Church. Rather, one can appropriately conclude that Patriarch Alexander’s reference was to the 1882 report, and most likely the continuing liturgical work among the French Western Orthodox during and after World War II. Much of this liturgical work traces to the efforts of Fr. Denis (Lucien) Chambault, pastor of the Western Orthodox parish of the Ascension in Paris. Fr Denis, with help, restored Western Orthodox monasticism using the ancient Rule of St Benedict. Concurrently, at St Irenaeus Western Orthodox parish, “the restored ancient Roman Mass” was employed. Shortly thereafter, “the Western rite was being celebrated in French, English, German, and Italian” using “the Mass of the Missale Romanum with some modifications.” These Western Orthodox parishes in Paris were, in no small part, supported by the Romanian Patriarchate, under whose omophorion—and thereby tacit approval—they resided for a short while.
It is reasonable to conclude that the ancient Orthodox axiom lex orandi, lex credendi was the animating principle for the approvals and decisions by the 1882 Synod of Constantinople, the 1860s Synod of Moscow’s conversations with J.J. Overbeck, the 1911 determinations by Metropolitan Gerasimos Messara in England with Arnold Harris Mathew, the 1936 Ukase, the post-World War II Western Orthodox in France, and Patriarch Alexander III’s instruction to the Antiochians. The phrase lex orandi, lex credendi is shorthand for ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (the rule of praying establishes the rule of believing), first used by Prosper of Aquitaine, a student of St Augustine. The axiom states that primary and authentic theology is not dogmatics or school-theology. Rather, true theology occurs when we experience Our Lord God in His holy liturgy. Calling the liturgy “the primary theology” does not mean that it is primitive. “Primary theology” refers to the foundation, the imprimis, the “first things,” for any experience or talk about God. To say it another way, the orandi (the prayer) is of greatest importance because it establishes or gives the fertile ground (statuat) for the credendi (the dogma). The liturgy, as we have received it, matters because that is where our faith is located; not just expressed, but fashioned and shaped.
Permit me to illustrate my point by borrowing the words of Pope Pius XI in his encyclical which introduced the Feast of Christ the King:
People are instructed in the truths of faith, and brought to appreciate the inner joys of religion far more effectually, by the annual celebration of our sacred mysteries than by any official pronouncement of the teaching of the Church. Such pronouncements usually reach only a few and the more learned among the faithful; feasts reach them all; the former speak but once, the latter speak every year—in fact, forever. The Church’s teaching affects the mind primarily; her feasts affect both mind and heart, and have a salutary effect upon the whole of man’s nature.
These words convey the Orthodox understanding that the experience of God is more beneficial and pastorally practical than cognitive understanding of God. God comes to us incarnationally in prayer—not chiefly in individual prayer, but in prayer as His Body and within His Body. This practical experience that every human needs to have with God must be driven not by beliefs—whether imposed or self-chosen—nor by values, nor by propositional doctrines. Rather, the practical experience that every human needs to have with God must be rooted in an unchanging pattern of worship which God Himself revealed and established beginning in the days of Adam and which has grown, with increasing clarity, in the Church. God revealing Himself in His Church to His own—that is the true purpose and nature of the Liturgy. And when we need to explain what this event, this experience, this revelation of God to and in His Son’s body is, then that’s the role of doctrine. So, standing before God informs our stammering about who God is, what we believe, and how we explain Him. Why is this? Because “the entire liturgy has the Catholic faith for its content, inasmuch as it bears public witness to the faith of the Church.” That’s lex orandi, lex credendi.
To say it another way, in the Orthodox Church the liturgy, as we have received it, is a living prayer inspired by and flowing from the Holy Spirit. Again, the Orthodox liturgy—in whatever rite—is of the Holy Spirit in the same way that the Scriptural texts are of the Holy Spirit. For not only does the Scripture form most of the liturgy, that Spirit who inspired holy men of God to speak the writings we now call “Scripture” is the same Spirit who inspired similarly holy men of God to offer the prayers we pray. Since this is the case, altering phrases in the liturgy is as troublesome as editing difficult phrases in the Holy Scriptures. For both are canon—both Scripture and liturgy contain the norm or standard of Christian faith and practice.
Permit me to anticipate a rejoinder by offering a brief excursus. Apart from the calendar, which includes some problematic celebrations, the Latin liturgy has not changed in essence since 600 AD. This is certainly true of the Mass or Divine Liturgy, as well as the Benedictine Breviary, and is mostly true of the Ritual. The liturgy, therefore, is not the seedbed for errors that have crept into the Church of Rome in the past 500-1000 years. I assert that those errors post-date the liturgy and, frankly, are a departure from the plain meaning and patristic interpretation of the liturgical texts. What has changed, then, are the explanations or redefinitions of various terms in the liturgy, which have occurred in teaching and have relied on twisting or ignoring the church’s tradition. In other instances, the words of the liturgy have been virtually ignored in dogma or teaching, thereby rendering the liturgy merely an archaic means of prayer which is disconnected from the church’s teaching. In both cases, the fault does not necessarily or inevitably lie within the liturgical texts. Lex orandi, lex credendi remains true. However, the credendi is no longer informed by the orandi; rather, dogma has overrun or overruled the liturgy. Yet when the Orthodox principle that liturgy is “primary theology” is kept intact—that is, when the orandi properly and rightly shapes the credendi—then one can see why the Synods of Moscow, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Serbia, and Romania permitted the retention of the received Latin liturgical texts, which were never rejected prior to the Great Schism.
One might think there are two exceptions. First, the Orthodox patriarchates rightly insisted that the filioque be omitted, in all instances, from the Latin liturgical texts. It is well known that the filioque was unknown in the Roman Latin liturgy prior to the 11th century. Therefore, this insertion was not a liturgical but a canonical error. Furthermore, its addition was an illustration of what I’ve said above; namely, the dogma or credendi overruling the established orandi. Hence the omission of the filioque is nothing more than a return to the Orthodox Latin liturgical text. Secondly, by pastoral provision, the request was made to insert an epiclesis. As several medieval and modern theologians have noted, the addition of an epiclesis does not imply a deficiency in the Latin Canon. Instead, it makes explicit what is already both implied in the Canon and stated explicitly in the Offertory prayers and the required Præparatio ad Missam prayers (the prayers the priest says to prepare to celebrate Mass). Most notably Nicholas Cabásilas, in his Commentary on the Divine Liturgy, points out that the Suuplices te rogamus is contained in the Latin Canon as an “ascending” epiclesis. Furthermore, the question of when the consecration takes place or with what words was not controversial for the first 1000 years when the Latin and Greek churches were united. In summary, the omission of the filioque and the addition of the epiclesis do not violate the axiom lex orandi, lex credendi because dogma was not being used to correct liturgy; rather, the liturgy was discharging a foreign element (filioque) and bringing to the fore what was already present (epiclesis). In the end, then, the Holy Synod of Moscow, together with the Holy Synods of Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Serbia, and Romania have seen and acknowledged the true faith within the Latin liturgy, not by examining doctrinal disputes but by praying the prayers.
Departing from my excursus, I suggest that the phrase “take the same action” is not tied simplistically and literally to the 1936 Ukase. Rather, we should see His Beatitude’s statement within the larger context of the Orthodox principle that the liturgy is “primary theology” which informs and shapes the teaching and confession of the Church. In this light, we can see the instruction to “take the same action” as being in concert with 1000 years of Eastern councils and fathers, as well as the the Synods of Moscow and Constantinople. In no instance do these Holy Synods or Patriarchs blame the Latin orandi; rather, they approve the ancient Latin liturgical texts without correction.
The implementation of Patriarch Alexander’s directive by Metropolitan Antony and his successors supports my conclusion. When the parishes and monastery led by Fr Alexander Turner were received into the Archdiocese, they used exclusively the Missale Romanum (fifth edition, 1920) and the Breviarium Monasticum (1933 edition). Subsequently, when English became the dominant liturgical language, mandated were (a) the 1958 English Missal (Missale Anglicanum) with preference for the pre-schism Holy Week; (b) the translation of the Benedictine Breviary by Winfred Douglas, et al.; and (c) self-published Orthodox Ritual (1952), which was chiefly a translation of the Rituale Romanum used at SS Denis and Seraphim in Paris. The use of these books demonstrate how with “Orthodox zeal and good judgment…the details in the local situation” of the phrase “take the same action” were applied.
III.
The foregoing, I think, adequately describes the liturgical history of the Western Rite Vicariate in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Yet that history would not be complete without indicating challenges that we, and other Western Orthodox vicariates and communities, continue to struggle with chiefly as it relates to liturgical matters.
The greatest challenge is the desire to adjust, edit, or change the Latin liturgical texts to make them “truly Orthodox.” Regrettably, the starting point for this desire is a reversal of the Orthodox principle of lex orandi, lex credendi which results in an attempt to do some anachronistic reverse engineering of the liturgy. What fuels this desire is the following syllogism: Because the Church of Rome is in error about several doctrines, and because it is correct to say that doctrine comes from the liturgy, therefore there must be something in the liturgy—the Mass, the Breviary, the Ritual—that needs to be corrected or fixed in order to eradicate these errors and purify the liturgy. “Since their dogma is wrong,” goes the thinking, “their liturgy must be wrong or at least carry the seeds for their error.” It is a neat syllogism, but the premise is wrong, and therefore the conclusion is wrong.
This incorrect syllogism is certainly the thinking of Protestants vis a vis Rome. And so, the Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans changed the received Latin liturgical texts—Mass, Office, and Ritual—in order to fit their new-found dogmas. Protestants, therefore, expunged references to (i) the intercession and merits of the saints, (ii) Mary as ever-Virgin, (iii) notions of eucharistic sacrifice, (iv) the liturgical use of the deutero-canonical books; (v) the nature and purpose of sacraments, and other things. (Ironically, they kept the filioque.) In a similar way, reverse engineering the errors of Rome based on dogma leads to the suspicion that certain phrases must be altered or corrected in order to purify or “orthodize” the liturgies prayed by St Gregory, St Leo, St Patrick, and St Boniface. Yet in most cases, what some seek to change are phrases that pre-date any thought a Great Schism, and so there is the desire to cut out phrases or terms whose Orthodoxy has never been questioned. What is revealed, regrettably, is that Orthodoxy sometimes is infected with the Protestant virus in order to root out the Roman error.
Based on this desire to cleanse and purify, questions have been raised concerning the phrase “merits of the saints.” Very briefly, references to the merits of the saints are ancient, pre-schism positions, both East and West, which were never questioned liturgically or theologically until after the Protestant revolution. This question is complicated by the wrong-headed medieval catechesis that “merits of the saints” referred to supererogatory or superabundant merits, based on an economic system of treasuring up saintly deeds. Yet, on this latter point, the problem is not the liturgical texts (the orandi), but a misrepresentation of what is meant dogmatically or catechetically (i.e., credendi).
Another example is the phrase from the Easter Vigil Exsultet, a chant which is from the 5th to 7th centuries. The phrase in question reads: “O truly necessary sin of Adam, which by the death of Christ was done away! O happy fault, which was counted worthy to have such and so great a Redeemer.” These words seem to double-down on all the wrong understandings of the Orthodox doctrine on sin, concupiscence, and the incarnation. For example, does the sin of Adam necessitate the death of Christ? In what way is this fault (culpa) happy (felix), and does our fault control our redemption or Christ’s passion? In other words, does Christ come as a consequence of our creation (as St Irenaeus suggests) or as a consequence of our transgression (as the Exsultet suggests)? The easy response is to alter or delete this phrase, but such a move will indicate that one dogmatic emphasis of the atonement overrides an ancient prayer.
What should be the response, then, when the orandi challenges our understanding of the credendi? Borrowing terms from 16th century European theology (both Roman and Protestant), the first response is to recall that the Orthodox phronema employs a ministerial use of reason in regard to the lex orandi. In other words, we submit our notions to the prayer and let the liturgical texts be the ultimate arbiter since the liturgy determines the faith. Our understanding and interpretations bend to the received text. While academic pursuits aid in explaining what is given, they ought not determine or dictate the established liturgical practice. Moreover, altering, changing, or omitting liturgical phrases would be editing texts that not only pre-date the schism, but which also can and have been understood correctly in the church’s tradition and, as stated above, is akin to editing difficult phrases inspired by the same Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures. Likewise, editing liturgical texts to fit current dogmatic understanding reverses the Orthodox rule of prayer establishing creed, making the dogma correct the liturgy rather than letting the prayer establish the creed. Finally, such editing suggests an unorthodox view of the development of doctrine. The Church states that development means simply that we refine our articulation or explanation of the unchanging faith, not that the faith itself can change due to refined understandings of dogmatic formulae, biblical exegesis, and better ressourcement. Based on the axiom that our doctrines are the result of faithful longstanding liturgical texts that precede our current theological hang-ups or crises, permit me to suggest that the best response is to live with the tension the liturgy may create in the mind; that is, to let the prayer stew in our hearts and minds so that these ancient, time-tested, Orthodox phrases may shape and mold our faith and, most importantly, govern our catechesis. Rather than giving into the Protestant notion of changing or deleting the words, the off-putting words need to be retained while the richness of their original meaning is discovered and taught.
Another significant challenge relates to the inclusion of certain later feasts, such as the Trinity Sunday, Christ the King, Sacred Heart, Corpus Christ, the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Maternity of the Theotokos which celebrates the 1500th anniversary of the 3rd Ecumenical Council. The same concern may be raised about certain later devotions, such as the Stations of the Cross, Adoration and Benediction, and the Rosary as practiced in the late Middle Ages until 1917. Some of these feasts and devotions correspond to current or latent Byzantine and Slavic customs, or address in a Latin use an ancient heresy that affected Europe. The challenge, however, is whether and in what way these feasts or devotions ought to be, or may be, incorporated in a Western Orthodox context. Questions that have informed discussion in the Western Rite Vicariate of these and related issues include: (a) Is it legitimate to say that these are not of the Holy Spirit, even if they are outside the canonical boundaries of the Orthodox Church? (b) Is it proper to establish a hard and fast “cut-off” date and, if so, what is that date and how is it determined? (c) In evaluating liturgical texts and practice, what is the difference between schism and heresy? (d) In what way do St Paul’s statements concerning the proclamation of the Gospel out of envy (Phil. 1.15-18), and the acceptance of “whatever is true…just…pure…lovely” (Phil. 4.8) apply to these feasts and devotions? Underlying all these questions are two foundational questions: the proper criteria and the proper authorities for making these judgments. Concerning the former, what are the grounds for proper criteria? Concerning the latter, certainly the judgment is made by the hierarchy. But is a judgment made if a practice is tolerated, or if one bishop or Metropolitan rules, or must one wait for a Patriarchal decision?
It seems to me that Patriarch Alexander III, at least in blessing the establishment of the Western Rite Vicariate in the US Antiochian metropolis, trusted his Metropolitan to do what was good and right. Equally, it seems that His Beatitude offered wholesome guidance on the criteria when he wrote: “take the same action, leaving to your Orthodox zeal and good judgment the right to work out the details in the local situation as you see fit.”
Originally published on 30 March 2024