‘We are Westerners and Must Remain Westerners’: Orthodoxy and Western Rites in Western Europe

Jean-François Mayer

 

 

Since the nineteenth century, there have been attempts to create Orthodox Christian communities using Western liturgical forms. In some cases, the impetus came from believers who already were Orthodox faithful; in other cases, people or groups joining the Orthodox Church asked for permission to continue to use the liturgies they were accustomed to, with adjustments required to ‘orthodoxise’ them. Most of these undertakings would never have taken place had there not been already the presence of emigrant Orthodox Churches in the West; in addition, in one particularly significant case in France, the initiative was a direct outcome of an encounter with the reflections and aspirations of young Russian émigrés interested in the liturgical revival of the ancient Christian legacy of Western Europe. There are currently two Orthodox jurisdictions having Western rite parishes: the Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR); moreover, a few parishes under the Serbian and Romanian Orthodox Churches occasionally use Western rites, beside the Byzantine one. [1] Most recent developments in the field of Western rite in canonical Orthodox Churches have taken place in North America, but it has not disappeared from Western Europe.

Sometimes rejected by critical voices as ‘uniatism in the reverse’, the use of Western rite adds one more layer to issues of identity discussed across this volume. At an individual level, for a convert to the Orthodox Church, the need to affiliate with a denomination often associated with a national background can create hurdles: the wish of most converts is to embrace the Orthodox faith, and not another, new national identity. A convert with roots in Western Christianity needs also to deal with that legacy, even more so due to the fact that Orthodox claim the pre-schism, first millennium of Christianity in Western Europe as their own and venerate Western saints of that period. Very early after they had to go into exile, some Russian émigrés were keen to develop a knowledge and veneration of such saints. In parishes across Europe, there are Sundays marked for All Saints of England, All Saints of Germany, All Saints of Switzerland, and so forth, and offices have been composed in honour of these saints.

But should the Orthodox legacy of Western Christianity include specific liturgical expressions? And then, some dare to suggest, does 1054 mark a complete break, or could even some elements from post-schism Western Christianity also find their way into Orthodox piety and worship? Ultimately, this leads to a question not without consequences for dialogue with other Christians: should the Orthodox Church be perceived as ‘the Eastern Church’, or as the fullness of the Christian Church? If the second statement is true, why could it not also integrate non-Byzantine liturgical traditions? But immediately another question arises: can the Orthodox ethos as it has developed be properly conveyed through forms which have for centuries been associated with another tradition? Thus, the Western rite raises issues related to the identity of the Orthodox Church, as perceived by itself as well as by outsiders.

This chapter will provide an overview of efforts to find a place for Western rites within (canonical) Orthodox jurisdictions. [2] It is based primarily on the study of written material, but also on observations during visits to some Western rite Orthodox parishes in Europe and North America as well as written exchanges with people active in such parishes. While the focus will be on Europe, developments in North America will need to be briefly summarised, since there have been some reciprocal influences. [3]

Early Converts as Pioneers of the Western Rite

There are two ways to practise a Western rite in the Orthodox Church today: either ‘orthodoxise’ an existing rite or recreate an old, pre-schism rite. Although there were few practical consequences at the time, those two options became clear already in the nineteenth century.

The first approach was promoted by Julian Joseph Overbeck (1821–1905). A German by birth, ordained a Catholic priest in 1845, he became Protestant in 1857, married, settled in England and worked there on the editing of Syriac manuscripts. In 1865, Overbeck decided to join the Orthodox Church, [4] although he was formally received in the Church only in 1869: he had originally planned to take that step only after his request for the restoration of a Western Orthodox Church would be accepted, but later realised he could not make it a precondition (Kahle 1968: 21–2). He would remain a faithful Orthodox until his death.

From the beginning, the project of Western Orthodoxy was at the heart of Overbeck’s vision. He did not believe in a (re)union between the Orthodox Church and other Christian bodies, but foresaw individuals joining the Church. He stressed that the Orthodox Church was the Catholic Church, while all other forms of Christianity were heterodox. [5] Due to historical circumstances, ‘Eastern Church’ and ‘Orthodox Church’ were temporarily overlapping, but it was not meant to remain so. While attending Byzantine services in existing Orthodox parishes as long as there was no other option, Overbeck and those supporting him rejected as a matter of principle any ‘Easternisation’ of Western converts to Orthodoxy and did not favour the creation of Byzantine rite parishes using local languages for them: [6] ‘We are Westerners and must remain Westerners’ (Overbeck 1876: 112). Overbeck felt that the right way was to transform the heterodox, Western tradition into an Orthodox one by setting aside everything that was heterodox in its teachings and liturgical books: the result would be a return to the pre-schism Western Church. The first step would be the revision of the Ordo Missae, and then all the other parts of the Western liturgical books would be revised step by step in the same way; in the meantime, the Eastern rite could be used for dispensing sacraments. Around 1871, he published in Latin and English a Liturgy of the Western Orthodox-Catholic Mass. [7] It follows the ordinary of the Roman Mass, but with a few changes in order to ‘orthodoxise’ it: it includes the Trisagion after the Gloria – ‘in remembrance of our union with the Orthodox Church’; the filioque is removed from the Creed; there is no elevation of the host and chalice after the Words of the Institution; [8] and an epiclesis [9] is introduced.

Overbeck invited Roman Catholics of the West to return to the Orthodox Church and faith. He asked those interested to associate their names to a petition to the Russian Church which he had already sent to the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1868: the purpose was to ask Orthodox hierarchs to restore a Western Orthodox Church with priests celebrating a Western liturgy, since Divine Providence had originally formed a true Western Church congruent with the Western mind (Overbeck 1871b: 30). Moreover, the missionary argument was given, that would reappear later throughout the history of Orthodox attempts at a Western rite: few Westerners had joined the Orthodox Church, but many more would do so if allowed to keep their liturgical inheritance (Overbeck 1871b: 32).

The petition was sent to the Holy Synod of the Russian Church with 122 signatures in September 1869; signatories resided mostly in the United Kingdom, a majority of them with Anglican background plus a few Roman Catholics. ‘Upon reception of the petition, the Metropolitan of St Petersburg, Isidore Nikol’skij (1799–1802), immediately formed a commission to study the question. The Synodal Commission was presided over by the Metropolitan himself. Overbeck was appointed a member by personal letter of the Metropolitan’. Overbeck was then invited to Russia: the Synod approved the principle of Western Orthodoxy (Abramtsov 1961b: 13).

Despite such promising beginnings, the project would never materialise. As Florovsky tells the story, ‘a final decision was postponed in connection with the further development of the Old Catholic movement. The Synod was anxious to ascertain whether there were a sufficient number of people in the West to join the project in question’ (Florovsky 1989: 134). Moreover, the Russians wanted other Orthodox Churches to approve of the plan. It seems to have been positively received in Constantinople, but led to a protest from the Church of Greece. ‘Perhaps Overbeck’s scheme was conceived on too grandiose a scale. He continually emphasised that he was not interested in acquiring a few converts for the Orthodox Church but in restoring a whole Church. If he had spoken of establishing Western Rite parishes within the jurisdiction of the Russian Church the Synod would perhaps not have been so hesitant and not have disturbed the Greeks with the question’ (Abramtsov 1961b: 15). In 1884, the Synod decided not to pursue further. A few people used to gather with Overbeck in London for praying the hours together each week until the early 1880s, but they finally despaired of seeing the realisation of Overbeck’s scheme and so instead were absorbed into existing, Eastern rite Orthodox parishes.

Needless to say, Overbeck’s insistence on conversion to the Orthodox Church irritated those who envisioned other ways for the future of Christianity, such as Anglicans eager to pave the way for communion with the Orthodox Churches. From the start, dreams of a Western rite in the Orthodox Church thus provoked suspicions in circles eager to promote ecumenical relations.

Already in the nineteenth century, the option of resurrecting an older rite (and thus avoiding liturgies tainted by late medieval or post-Tridentine developments) was considered too. Wladimir Guettée (1816–1892) was an erudite Roman Catholic priest of Gallican and Jansenist leanings, who was received as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1861 (Besse 1992). Like Overbeck (1869: 50–51), with whom he had good relations, Guettée had become convinced that the Christian bodies of the West had become heretical and that the Orthodox Church was the true Church of Christ (Guettée 1889: 367–9, 405). But for the very reason that Rome had drifted away from the Orthodox faith, Guettée did not think that the existing Roman Catholic liturgy could just be appropriated by the Orthodox Church with a few minor adjustments. While the Canon of the Mass was pre-schism and should be seen as Orthodox (Guettée 1866: 450), and while the Roman Mass had kept the essential parts of Orthodox liturgy, it had retained ‘neither the beautiful harmony nor the mystical meaning’ of Orthodox liturgy, and had been vitiated by reformers lacking liturgical sense (Guettée 1866: 453–4). The fate of Anglican liturgy had been even worse (Guettée 1866: 431–2, 454, 457–8). Guettée contrasted this with the ancient Gallican liturgy, that had Eastern roots and was much closer to the Eastern rite, and was then Romanised from the ninth century; similarly, the Ambrosian liturgy in Milan or the Mozarabic liturgy in Spain had more affinities with the Eastern one (Guettée 1866: 430). Guettée worked on the restoration of the Gallican liturgy: he celebrated it in 1875 in St Petersburg with the blessing of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. But there were no further efforts in this direction, and apparently Guettée usually celebrated in the Byzantine rite.

Thus there were in the nineteenth century some people who laid the ground for the vision of Western rite Orthodoxy. From that time, two liturgical options were considered, which would continue to accompany subsequent attempts to this day. But no Western rite Orthodox parish was born during that period. There was an interest in Orthodox circles for developments in the Christian West and for dialogue with Western Christians sympathetic to Orthodoxy. But rather than creating an Orthodox Western rite ecclesiastical structure, attention was paid to possibilities of restoring communion with sections of Western Christianity: first, there were philo-Orthodox High Church Anglicans and Episcopalians, who saw themselves as the perpetuation of an authentic local church of the West; then there were hopes raised by the Old Catholic movement. [10] Overbeck’s venture had showed that there were not so many Westerners willing to convert to the Orthodox Church at that time.

Russian Emigration as Cradle of a Restored Gallican Rite

However, the issue of the Western rite would not die: in part because it raised significant questions regarding the identity of Orthodoxy along with its role outside of its traditional geographical areas, but also due to the existence of Western religious seekers with various longings. A few decades later, new impulses came from France, at the crossroads between thinking of Russian émigrés and quests on the fringes of the Roman Catholic Church.

In January 1925, eight young Russians living in exile in France founded in Paris the Confrérie de Saint Photius (Brotherhood of St Photios), originally with the goal of defending the Orthodox faith, but very soon – from 1926 – turning its attention to the restoration of Orthodoxy in the West and proclaiming accordingly that ‘the Orthodox Church is not merely Eastern, but is the Church of all the peoples on earth’ (Bange and Bange 2013: 20–21). The members of the Brotherhood of St Photios were among those Russians who felt that there should be some providential purpose behind the events that forced some many people to leave their country, and that the Russian emigration was meant to bring something to the Western world (Pnevmatikakis 2012). Some members of the Brotherhood, such as the theologian Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), who became a member in 1928, later became well-known figures in the Orthodox Church. Two of the founders, Evgraph Kovalevsky (1905–1970) and his brother Maxime Kovalevsky (1903–1988), would play a key role for the Western rite: the first was to become the charismatic leader and liturgist of the rebirth of Western Orthodoxy in France; the second, a gifted musician who adapted liturgical music for that purpose (and whose musical work had an impact in wider Christian circles).

The Brotherhood was involved in efforts for establishing in Paris an Orthodox parish using French as its liturgical language. However, from the start, it was also interested in the restoration of Western liturgical forms within the Orthodox Church. Thus, during a three-day meeting in April 1929, three liturgies were celebrated: Roman, Gallican (using Guettée’s text) and Byzantine (in Latin!). A majority of the members apparently decided that the Gallican was the best option, but much work remained to be done for building upon what Guettée (who was not really a liturgiologist) had undertaken. [11] Evgraph Kovalevsky attempted to immerse himself in the liturgical tradition of the West – no easy task for one reared fully in the liturgical tradition of the East: ‘I learnt the Roman Mass by heart, I attended ceremonies, I read the breviary, I let Latin penetrate into my soul. Often, the call of the East was so strong that I had to fight psychologically with myself – since in order to love something, one needs to give up something else’ (quoted in Bourne 1975: 101).

In the 1930s, a relation developed with a small independent Catholic group gathered around Louis-Charles (later Irénée) Winnaert (1880–1937), a priest who had left the Roman Catholic Church following the turmoils of the modernist crisis (Bourne 1966). Winnaert had founded in 1922 a ‘Free Catholic Church’, received the episcopacy from James Ingall Wedgwood (1883–1951) of the (Theosophical) Liberal Catholic Church, and had then broken with that group and organised an ‘Evangelical Catholic Church’. Suffering from the isolation of his group, he came in touch with Orthodox circles through Fr Lev Gillet (1893–1980), who was to become famous under the pen name ‘A Monk of the Eastern Church’ (Behr-Siegel 1993: 251–75). Winnaert applied to the Russian Church in 1936, was accepted, and the group was formally received in early February 1937, a month before its founder passed away. In March, Evgraph Kovalevsky was ordained a priest of the Russian Church (Moscow Patriarchate) for the service of Western Orthodoxy.

The decree taken by Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) (1867–1944) of Moscow on 16 June 1936 had recognised Winnaert’s priesthood, but not his episcopate. His parishes were to be considered as ‘Western Orthodox Church’ and were allowed to keep the Western rite, but texts would have to be expurgated from what would not be compatible with Orthodoxy. Priests to be ordained for those parishes would wear Western liturgical vestments, and would be allowed to wear either Western or Eastern vestments when attending an Eastern rite service (translation in Kovalevsky 1990: 395–400).

Not everybody understood the liturgical work ahead the same way. The rector of the Western rite parish in Paris, Fr Denis (Lucien) Chambault (1899–1965), wanted to keep the Roman rite as it was, with minimal adjustments; he had no interest in a Gallican rite. This disagreement would soon lead to a split. In 1939, Metropolitan Sergius agreed that there would be two groups: the former parish of Winnaert under Chambault, and another group with Kovalevsky as priest. The Metropolitan stressed that the reintroduction of the Western rite was still at an experimental stage in the Orthodox Church, that nothing was yet fixed, since there was room for improvements, and that the parallel use of two different types of liturgy was not to be seen as a problem; at the same time, he also encouraged the development of a French-speaking Orthodox parish in Paris, both for new generations of Russians settled in France and for converts who would prefer the Byzantine rite (Kovalevsky 1990: 79–80).

Chambault continued on the same way until his death, remaining faithful to the Moscow Patriarchate. He opened in Paris a small Benedictine priory, but it never managed to become a stable and lasting monastic community. Fr Denis had some success as a healer and exorcist, taking care of visitors from morning to evening, but there were not many parishioners. ‘The Western Eucharistic Rite used by Père Denis … was that of Fr Winnaert’s devising, revised, corrected and “Orthodoxised” by a group of Orthodox scholars of whom Vladimir Lossky was one. It had in it elements of the Catholic rites, some echoes of the Anglican Communion service, but certainly strong echoes of Liberal Catholic practices. To observe it outwardly it was like a Catholic Mass in French and many Catholics came to the chapel for that reason.[12] The offices were those of the Benedictine breviary in French, adapted and arranged and officially approved by the Holy Synod at Moscow. To produce this work Père Jean [Peterfalvi, one of the original members of the community] visited several Benedictine Monasteries’ (Burton 1985: 55). The chapel disappeared few years after Chambault’s death.

Kovalevsky took a quite different route, engaging with other people in very active liturgical recreation work, and also setting up what would become an Orthodox diocese. There were initial experiments of celebration of the restored Western liturgy in Paris as early as 1944; improvements and adjustments were introduced over time. The work was not limited to the Mass: all the other liturgical services needed to be prepared, a labour that would take decades. A French theological institute was also inaugurated in 1944 (Institut Saint-Denis, of which Vladimir Lossky was the first dean). There was also the need to provide the nascent work with a stable place for celebrations. In 1946, such a place was found: the church belonging to the Old Catholic Church in Paris, which was no longer used. It was first rented, and later bought. The group started to use the name ‘Orthodox Church of France’, later ‘Catholic Orthodox Church of France’ (Église Catholique Orthodoxe de France – ECOF), before reverting to the original name.

Fr Evgraph had been looking quite early for an autonomous status for his Western Orthodox parishes, asking the Moscow Patriarchate as early as 1945, at a time the work was still nascent (Bourne 1978: 44). His supporters explain that this was meant to protect the Western Orthodox group from hostile reactions of some other Orthodox not willing to accept such developments. Indeed, Fr Evgraph and his work became quite controversial, although it is difficult to understand clearly what in this controversy was related to the issue of the Western rite itself and what pertained to other issues. Over the years, criticism followed more or less the same line, taking issue not only with the choice of a Western rite and the self-perception of the role of the work as the nucleus of the local Orthodox Church of France, but also accusing the French group of being too lax with church rules and porous to non-Orthodox teachings.

In 1953, the group broke with the Moscow Patriarchate. It briefly joined the Russian Exarchate under the Patriarchate of Constantinople (1953–1954) and then spent several years without any canonical anchoring. In 1959, the Orthodox Church of France was received by Archbishop John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco (1896–1966) – glorified in 1994 and now counted among the saints of the Orthodox Church – in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Fr Evgraph was consecrated as a bishop in 1964 and took the name of Jean-Nectaire de Saint-Denis. But there was again a break in 1966, followed by several years of isolation for the French Church. Bishop Jean passed away in 1970, leaving the group without a bishop. In 1972, it was accepted under the Patriarchate of Romania and a new bishop was consecrated, Germain de Saint-Denis (Gilles Bertrand-Hardy, b. 1930). Not without tensions, [13] this arrangement lasted until 1993, when Bishop Germain was deposed by the Romanian Patriarchate. The Orthodox Church of France has been independent since that time.

While the figure of Evgraph Kovalevsky drew most attention, he was not the only one working at liturgical restoration of pre-schism rites. Alexis van der Mensbrugghe (1899–1980) [14] proposed his own restoration of the Western rite. Born in a Flemish family, he had become a Benedictine monk and ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1925, but then had joined the Orthodox Church in 1929. From 1946, he taught patristics and liturgics at the newly founded French Orthodox Institute Saint-Denis in Paris. In 1948, he published a restoration of the Western rite in Latin and English (Mensbrugghe 1948). In 1960, Mensbrugghe was consecrated as a bishop in the Moscow Patriarchate. From 1968 to 1979, he served as bishop and archbishop in North America. During the 1960s, Bishop Alexis continued to show an active interest in the Western rite. He published in 1962 an ‘Orthodox Missal’ in French, containing both the Gallican and the ‘Pre-Celestinian Italic’ (early fifth century) rites (Mensbrugghe 1962). He celebrated the Western rite himself and had a few Western rite groups in Italy under his supervision. Thus, during a few years in the 1960s, both the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR had approved Western rite liturgies and Western rite parishes.

Both Kovalevsky (1956) and Mensbrugghe used a key witness for their restoration of a Gallican rite, beside other sources: the letters of St Germanus of Paris (496–576), in which there is a description of the liturgical celebration for the purpose of explaining its meaning. This is why the Orthodox Church of France calls its liturgy the ‘Divine Liturgy according to St Germanus of Paris’ (and not ‘of ’), since the saint had no part in establishing that liturgy, but only shared in his letters information that proved crucial for the work of restoration.

Those were years of intense liturgical work, with different paths explored. In the preface to his 1948 restored Western liturgy, Mensbrugghe explained the principles that guided him. The starting point should be the old Roman liturgy, since it was the one of the local Patriarchate: ‘The fundamental principle in liturgical matters is that “the Liturgy follows the Patriarchate.” Once established this Liturgy will continue to nourish the masses. If schisms or heresies happen, it will no doubt suffer from that; but its fundamental crystallisation, made of a nearly 1000-year old Orthodox capital, will remain throughout the following ages. Orthodoxy has the right – and the duty – to ask today’s Westerner to “clean” its rite. But it is impossible, and useless anyway, to ask the masses to orientalise themselves’ (Mensbrugghe 1948: vi–vii). Local uses should also be taken into consideration, for instance those of the Gauls and Spain, through which the Roman rite had come to integrate Byzantinisms. Thus Mensbrugghe had started from the Roman rite as it existed in the twentieth century, but going much further than Overbeck’s corrections. He described his work as threefold:

a. Purify the liturgy from ‘medieval deformations that have obscured the purity of the original line’;

b. Reintroduce or put again in their proper place ‘ancient Roman elements that are more authentic’ but which were dismissed or misplaced during the Middle Ages;

c. Reintroduce those Gallican elements that underline essential values held in common by the entire Christian tradition (Mensbrugghe 1948: ix).

In 1954, some aspects of this restoration attempt came under criticism by Nicholas Uspensky (1900–1987), then professor of liturgy at the Leningrad Theological Academy, according to whom ‘too much of the Archimandrite’s personal tastes’ were showing through (Abramtsov 1961a). Those criticisms were taken into consideration at the time of publishing the 1962 Missal.

In their own work, Kovalevsky and people who cooperated with him claimed that there was ample material available for a restoration of the Gallican rite (Tanazacq 1977), although the full text itself was no longer available. But the restored liturgy included borrowings from the Eastern rite, which members of the Orthodox Church of France prefer to describe as a legitimate ‘compenetration’ of rites as found throughout the history of the Church and as ‘enrichments’ (Saint-Denis 1977: 82–90). ‘Local rites have always practised mutual “borrowings”, as long as form and spirit would not be altered’, wrote Fr Evgraph in his preface to the restoration of the Gallican Mass (Kovalevsky 1956: 32).

The restorers disputed that what they did had anything in common with an ‘archaeological reconstitution’, but claimed that it rather was a ‘resurrection’, the ‘resurgence of a latent tradition of the undivided Church’, ‘fecundated by the encounter with Orthodox tradition’ (Kovalevsky 1984: 29). An English proponent of the Orthodox Western Rite commented in a more nuanced way on Kovalevsky’s approach that ‘one should speak of hybrid vigour. Although Fr Yevgraf was liturgically knowledgeable, when it came to determining the new “Gallican” liturgy he simply did pretty much as his sensibility suggested’ (Coombs 1987: 48). In the preface to his own reconstruction of the Gallican rite, Roman Catholic liturgical scholar Klaus Gamber described Kovalevsky’s version as ‘a form adapted to the Byzantine use’ (Gamber 1984: 5). The efforts went far beyond recreating a Gallican Mass. The considerable liturgical work of the Orthodox Church of France deserves more detailed examination, but this would go beyond the purpose of this chapter and the expertise of the author.

The fact that the (neo-)Gallican rite has been in continuous use for decades should also be kept in mind. The Liturgy according to St Germanus of Paris is not only served in that group. When the break with the Romanian Church took place, some parishes chose to remain under Bucharest; they are mostly using now the Byzantine rite, although the Gallican rite continues to be celebrated from time to time in some of them. Other parishes left in 2001; a few years later, those parishes were received in the Serbian Patriarchate (and one then came under Moscow); their celebrations are mostly in the Byzantine rite, but some of them also use the Gallican rite. In addition, some priests and parishes had left the Orthodox Church of France in 2000 and had come under the jurisdiction of the Coptic Orthodox Church, with the permission to keep the Gallican rite; after their bishop decided to restrict this rite in 2005, they broke with the Coptic Church in 2006 and formed the Orthodox Church of the Gauls, with one of their priests, Michel Mendez (b. 1941), being consecrated as Bishop Grégoire by hierarchs of independent, non-canonical Orthodox Churches. This group has glorified Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis as a saint in 2008; it too continues to use the Gallican rite. [15] Thus, besides the occasional celebrations from time to time in a few canonical Orthodox parishes in Europe, the liturgical legacy of the Orthodox Church of France is kept today mostly as the practice of just two groups, neither of them in communion with historical Orthodox Churches: the Orthodox Church of France (some 20 local parishes or groups in France, plus a few groups in other countries) and the Orthodox Church of the Gauls (about ten places of worship). [16] Unexpectedly, the only canonical Orthodox parishes where the Gallican rite is predominantly celebrated seem to be one in Iowa (USA) under the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia since 2010 and another one in Argentina under the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of South America (Ecumenical Patriarchate). It seems that no Orthodox group today is using one of the two Western rites restored by Archbishop Alexis van der Mensbrugghe.

There is also another legacy of the Orthodox Church of France that should not be overlooked, which has proved at this point more significant for Orthodox life at large: a number of converts (including clergy) currently belonging to various Orthodox parishes in French-speaking countries originally came in touch with the Orthodox faith through the group born from Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis’ vision.

American Impulses and European Echoes

While our focus is on Western Europe, we need to allude briefly to developments in North America, since there has been some interaction. Lack of space will however prevent us from summarising some of the debates around the Western rite that have taken place there, reflected in theological journals.

In 1958, after having paid attention to the issue for years, Metropolitan Antony Bashir (1898–1966) received from the Patriarch of Antioch the blessing to authorise the Western rite in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. Metropolitan Antony had been in touch with the Society of Saint Basil, a group issued from an earlier attempt to start Western rite work in the United States (before the Second World War) and looking for a safe haven in a canonical Orthodox Church. Moreover, one of the priests in the Antiochian Archdiocese, Fr Paul Schneirla, who had converted to the Orthodox Church in the late 1930s and been ordained for the Byzantine rite in 1942, had kept a strong interest in Western liturgical traditions and had been encouraged by contacts with Fr Denis Chambault in France (Andersen, n.d.). In 1961, through Schneirla’s mediation, the first group of Western rite converts was received in the Antiochian Archdiocese. The Western Rite Vicariate has developed since and counts more than 20 parishes across the United States. Beside the Rite of St Gregory (described on a website distributing it as the ‘Antiochian Orthodox version of the traditional Roman Mass’, approved in 1958), it has also allowed since 1977 an ‘Antiochian Orthodox version of the traditional Anglo-Catholic Mass’, [17] the ‘Liturgy of St Tikhon’, [18] after some groups uncomfortable with liberal trends in the Episcopal Church joined the Orthodox Church.

There have also been Western rite groups in ROCOR in North America. A 1953 decree had stated the acceptability of Western liturgical traditions for groups joining the Orthodox Church, while individual converts would have to observe the Eastern liturgical traditions (ROCOR 1953). In 1968, a Western rite deanery was even established under the supervision of Archpriest George Grabbe (1902–1995), but it lasted only for a few years; it used the Roman rite. In 1975, Fr Augustine (Whitfield) (1924–2010), Abbot of Mount-Royal congregation, a group of Old Catholic lineage that had been received in the Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate in 1962, joined ROCOR with the blessing of Archbishop Nikon (Rklitski, 1882–1976). [19] In 1978, the Council of Bishops of ROCOR decided that it was ‘not … possible to allow the Western Rite in the Russian Church’. But Fr Augustine had apparently been forgotten, and thus a barely noticed Western rite presence persisted in ROCOR (ROCOR 2013). In the 1990s, the future Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral, b. 1948) accepted a handful of very small Western rite groups, first in the United States (including the monastic community of Christminster) and subsequently in Australia. In May 2011, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia established a Western Rite Vicariate under the Metropolitan, with Bishop Jerome (John Shaw, b. 1946) as his assistant. Applicant groups were received at a rather rapid pace, reaching some 25 congregations (mostly small ones). Due to serious disagreements with the way Bishop Jerome was administering the Western rite parishes, he was retired in July 2013, without the right to perform ordinations. All the existing communities are directly under the oversight and omophorion of the Metropolitan. A commission was established to take care of the Western rite groups. In August 2013, the commission published a statement affirming that ‘[i]t is not the intention of the Commission nor the Synod of Bishops to dismantle the Western-Rite Community within ROCOR, nor is it the objective to perpetrate some sort of “forced Byzantination”’. [20]

Developments in the United States have also had an impact on the European continent. In the 1990s, a group of Anglican clergy gathered under the name Pilgrimage to Orthodoxy followed a path similar to some of their Episcopalian colleagues and turned to Orthodoxy: led by a priest of Charismatic orientation, Fr Michael Harper (1931–2010), they began to be received in the Antiochian Archdiocese of Europe in 1995. Three priests used the Western rite at the start, but it was abandoned a year later: ‘the communities concerned all abandoned the western rite voluntarily. There was no episcopal edict’. [21]

Regarding the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, there have been in the United Kingdom a handful of small mission groups for several years; Hieromonk Michael (Mansbridge-Wood) first used to take pastoral care of them, then another priest, Fr Thomas Cook, was ordained in 2012 for the Western rite mission. The liturgy ‘is based on the English Missal (therefore broadly Tridentine), with a number of modifications. It is similar to the Antiochian Liturgy of St Gregory’. [22] The group is small, but most participants – including the priest – were already Orthodox before the Western rite was available to them; lay people attend Byzantine rite parishes when there is no Western rite being served in their area.

In Germany, a small Benedictine monastic community (three people) was received in ROCOR in February 2013. The group had been an independent Catholic congregation. The abbot, Fr Thomas (Komossa), had been ordained in the Orthodox Church of France at a time it was still in communion with the Romanian Church: thus his priesthood was recognised, but not the episcopal consecration he had received in 2003 from independent bishops. The two other members of the community were (re)ordained, since their orders were not Orthodox. The small community follows mostly an orthodoxised form of the Roman rite, but also celebrates once a week the Liturgy according to St Germanus of Paris.

Moreover, also in Western Europe, but outside of the Western Rite Vicariate, a few parishes located in Spain, calling themselves the Hispanic Orthodox Church, have been received into the Western European Archdiocese of ROCOR in 2012: while they use the Byzantine rite most of the time, the Mozarabic rite is used twice a year (on the feast of St Isidore of Seville and of St Helen) and occasionally on special feast days. [23]

While this overview covers most of the developments pertaining to the Western rite in (canonical) Orthodox Churches in Western Europe, it should also take into account efforts by various individual Orthodox faithful, although they have not resulted in the creation of parishes. One example was Raymond Winch (1921–2000), who converted to the Orthodox Church from Roman Catholicism, but kept a strong interest for the Western liturgical heritage. ‘His interest in the idea of a Western Orthodox rite originated in his previous dissatisfaction with the reform of the Roman Catholic liturgy following the Second Vatican council’. [24] He founded in Oxford a Gregorian Club ‘for the restoration of Orthodoxy’s Western heritage’, for missionary reasons, but not only, according to its Statement of Principles: ‘Hitherto the great heritage of Latin Christendom has in some measure been preserved by those who are not Orthodox. Now it is being rapidly abandoned. We believe our heritage to be of great intrinsic worth. If it is not to be lost altogether, we Western Orthodox must make it our own once again. We wish to worship and live according to our own traditions – those of our saints’. The Gregorian Club did not envision separate Western Orthodox dioceses, but hoped for unity of the Church, with one bishop in each place, over communities of different rites. The Gregorian Club did not last, but it had a few issues of a bulletin as well as some booklets printed, including what its founder envisioned as the ‘Canonical Mass of the English Orthodox’. [25] A supporter of the Club published a study suggesting that the ‘historical point of departure [for a restoration of a Western Orthodox rite] must be the period just before the schism, about 800–1000 – obvious, one would have said, yet none of the previous Western Orthodox restorers has taken this line’ (Coombs 1987: 60).

Missing from our overview are non-canonical [26] Churches understanding themselves as Orthodox and their efforts of liturgical restoration: one example would be the so-called ‘Celtic Orthodox Church’ (Seraïdari and Leonard 2007) as well as attempts by other groups to recreate a Celtic liturgy; [27] other noncanonical groups have been involved in perseverant efforts to restore uses of ‘Orthodox England’ or other liturgical forms. However, those groups fall beyond the scope of this chapter.

Western Rite: Open Questions for Orthodox Churches

Due to the current status of the Orthodox Church of France, most of the Western rite communities are now found on the other side of the ocean. Between the Antiochian Archdiocese and ROCOR, there were 40 to 50 Western rite communities in canonical Orthodox Churches in North America in summer 2013. A few more were found in other parts of the world, including a handful in Europe. There are also those parishes using occasionally one of the Western rites. Despite considerable work done by some groups or individuals, the numerical results thus remain modest. Not a few priests and faithful who started with a Western rite now serve with the Byzantine rite.

Looking through Orthodox lenses for recovering the fullness of Christianity or the ‘true’ Christian identity of the West can take several routes: either joining a Byzantine rite parish while cultivating the veneration of local saints, or looking for a way to create a space for Western Rite Orthodoxy. It is not surprising that most people willing to embrace the Orthodox faith follow the first option and find their way to the Byzantine rite: not only due to its more general availability, but also because the beauty and attraction of Orthodox liturgy itself is frequently a starting point.

Moreover, which Western rite? There is a surprising variety of liturgical forms compared to the small number of canonical Western rite communities. [28] If we look at the list of ‘currently approved versions of the Divine Liturgy for usein the ROCOR Western Rite’, we find two different versions of the Orthodox Roman rite (named ‘Liturgy of St Gregory’), plus a restoration of the Use of Sarum, [29] and the Gallican liturgy; moreover, as mentioned, a few Spanish parishes sometimes use the Mozarabic liturgy. If we look at the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate, there are two liturgies in use: the Liturgy of St Tikhon and the Liturgy of St Gregory.

Such diversity reveals the different backgrounds of people involved in Western rite efforts: tailor-made solutions have been devised for different Western rite aspirations. In contrast with the Orthodox Church of France and its work of restoration, in which there were interactions with impulses from the Liturgical Movement in Roman Catholic circles, [30] some of the Western rite parishes, mostly in the United States, are the products of reactions against changes (liturgical and otherwise) in the religious bodies they used to belong to. The Orthodox Church is seen as a refuge (Turner 2011: 334–5). It is praised for its steadfast attachment to tradition, and this is why it is seen as a possible way out of chaos, even for people eager to keep their own liturgical traditions, different from Byzantine ones. It is not only for Western rite Orthodox that the Orthodox Church can look like a haven for souls aspiring to escape the turmoils of contemporary Western Christian religious bodies: such feelings are expressed by a number of converts who follow the Byzantine rite as well as by ‘philo-Orthodox’ in other Christian Churches, who are not willing to switch their religious affiliation for a variety of reasons (including the desire to keep their own liturgical tradition), but who admire the Orthodox Church for its alleged ‘conservatism’. In the same way attention is paid to Orthodox perceptions of the West, much could be said about perceptions of Orthodoxy in Western imaginaries.

If Western Orthodox liturgies were more widely available, especially those close to still familiar old Western liturgical forms, some among those philo-Orthodox would certainly convert. But it is unlikely that it would become a mass movement, as experience has taught. Most tradition-minded Catholics or Anglicans can find settings other than Orthodox ones for a liturgical life as they want it: those having the desire to combine it with the confession of the Orthodox faith (and not merely an Orthodox jurisdictional option) are likely to remain a small minority. One of the arguments for using an existing form of Western rite continues to be a missionary one: converts to the Orthodox Church would thus be able to keep liturgical forms they were already familiar with. Except in the case of religiously conservative circles (e.g. ‘continuing Anglicans’), this argument seems to have lost part of its relevance after liturgical reforms: unless they have been participants in traditional Roman Catholic masses, converts from Roman Catholicism would hardly be familiar today with ancient Catholic liturgical forms, and nobody has suggested that the Novus Ordo Missae (what is known today as the ‘ordinary form of the Roman rite’) currently used by most Catholics should be adjusted to Orthodox requirements.

The approach developed by Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis and the Orthodox Church of France as well as by other ‘restorative’ liturgical undertakings has been a different one, that cannot be found elsewhere: it offers both discontinuity with the Western liturgical tradition, since the rites used are different from those practising Western Christians have grown with and borrowings are made from Eastern liturgies, and continuity, due to retention of a number of Western traditions and to the call to a more ancient, pre-schism local legacy.

Ironically, even if the wish to keep or recover tradition leads people to the Western rite, the result cannot avoid being innovative, with different levels of intensity: first, because the existence of Western rite communities creates a new situation in Orthodox Churches and sometimes unease about the way to deal with such communities; second, because – even liturgically – all those groups need to accept at least some adjustments in order to meet Orthodox requirements, when not engaging into daring reconstructions.

But what should be done in order to make a liturgy ‘Orthodox’, not even speaking about the way to perform it? Removing the filioque and making sure a clear epiclesis is present are steps taken by every Western Orthodox project since Overbeck. [31] After that, how far to go with revisions? In a report to the Brotherhood of St Photios in 1937, Vladimir Lossky gave an example to illustrate issues raised by corrections of Winnaert’s ‘evangelical catholic’ liturgy: the doxological formula referring to Jesus Christ who liveth and reigneth with the Father ‘in unitate Spiritus Sancti’ (‘in the unity of the Holy Spirit’) was, according to him, ‘an obvious consequence of filioquism’, that could not be justified dogmatically, since ‘it makes from the Person of the Holy Spirit a mere function of unity of the Father and the Son, their common love, “nexus amoris”’. But as early as the eighth century, this formula was already found in missals. Finally, Lossky explained, looking at critical editions of the oldest sacramentaries, with their variations, the ‘primitive Trinitarian formula of Western liturgies was found’: ‘qui vivit et regnat cum Deo Patre et Spiritu Sancto’ (Lossky 1980, 11). Nevertheless, a number of Western rite advocates disagree with that opinion: several approved liturgies being used in Western Orthodox communities contain ‘in unitate Spiritus Sancti’.

Similarly, there are a number of variations regarding acceptable devotions: for instance, there are Western rite Antiochian parishes that celebrate the feasts of the Sacred Heart or of Corpus Christi, something many Orthodox would object to. The veneration of post-schism saints in some Western rite communities can also become a contentious issue. Statues are another debated topic (especially when they do not follow some neo-Romanesque style, but rather nineteenth-century Sulpician models). Some Western rite communities, however, completely reject post-schism practices in principle and even follow the old (Julian) calendar (no doubt a consistent step for people eager to cultivate tradition, since the Gregorian calendar was not accepted in England before 1752).

Thus, the question of hybridity unavoidably occurs when dealing with the Western rite. ‘What is mostly striking is an intimate entanglement between Eastern and Western elements’ in the Orthodox Church of France (Erny 1983: 231). Hybridity may seem at first sight to be less an issue in communities using the Roman rite, but it appears under other forms, as we have just seen. A priest explained to us how a fellow clergyman was ordained for the Western rite by an Orthodox bishop using the Byzantine rite of ordination, but in Latin. The same priest, resident in an area where Orthodox parishes are few, reported serving in the Byzantine rite for the pastoral care of migrants from Orthodox countries when needed. Without being aware of it, the Orthodox Western rite movement is also a child of a context of globalisation and individualisation. In French-speaking Europe, it is also an outcome of migration: it is unlikely that the modern Gallican liturgy would ever have seen the light of the day if it had not been for the vision of bright young Russians who felt that the personal tragedy of exile should be invested with a meaning and mission.

Despite all hurdles and problems encountered, the Western rite option remains an attractive idea for some Orthodox. The inclusion of the Western rite as a way of affirming ‘the universalist character of Orthodoxy’ was a main argument advanced by Fr Lev Gillet for supporting the reception of Winnaert’s community into the Orthodox Church (Behr-Siegel 1993: 260). Such an affirmation is bound to give rise to debates beyond Orthodox circles: it has obvious implications for ecumenical relations (Turner 2012b). But it may first be a question for the self-understanding of Orthodox Churches in their encounter with ‘the West’.

 

Footnotes

1. There are probably a few additional, isolated cases: one that has come to our knowledge after completing this article is a parish in Argentina, under the (canonical) Ukrainian Orthodox Church of South America.

2. Part of this historical presentation is based on research published in an earlier article on Orthodox Western rite attempts (Mayer 1997). For an overview of existing literature in English, see Turner (2009). Jack Turner (University of South Carolina) has written a doctoral thesis on Western rite Orthodoxy and is preparing a book on the subject, to be published by Northern Illinois University Press.

3. We will not take into consideration the case of communities that joined the Orthodox Church with the Western rite in Central Europe (Poland and Czechoslovakia) between the two world wars and their subsequent histories, since those episodes had no impact on developments in Western Europe that are discussed at the core of this chapter.

4. Overbeck launched in 1867 the Orthodox Catholic Review, which continued to be published until 1891.

5. Nevertheless, Overbeck repeatedly attempted to get his Roman Catholic priestly orders recognised by the Russian Church and petitioned for being reinstated in his holy orders – but his wedding after he had left the ranks of Catholic clergy made such a request problematic from an Orthodox perspective (Kahle 1968: 81–3).

6. Overbeck bitterly opposed Stephen Hatherly (1827–1905), an Oxford graduate who was received in the Orthodox Church through baptism in 1856, was ordained a priest in Constantinople in 1871 and established an English parish using the Byzantine rite. Overbeck did not see both approaches as complementary, but as mutually exclusive (Kahle 1968: 69–73, 285–7).

7. Overbeck’s Liturgy had been approved by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church. It is very hard to find this 24-page brochure, but it has been reproduced in the (also hard-to-find) privately published research volume on the Orthodox Western rite by Thomann (1995).

8. ‘The Roman Catholics here elevate and adore the Host and the Chalice, but this is wrong, because the Consecration is only accomplished by the Invocation of the Holy Ghost’ (Overbeck 1871a). Ironically, despite such an explicit rejection by a respected pioneer, a number of Western rite Orthodox parishes using variations of the Roman liturgy retain the elevation today (Turner 2012a).

9. The epiclesis (‘invocation’) is a prayer asking the Father to send the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine and to make them into the Body and Blood of Christ. While the epiclesis is characteristic of Eastern liturgies, it is not explicitly present in the traditional Roman Canon of the Mass. The fourteenth-century Byzantine theologian Nicholas Cabasilas (canonised as a saint by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1983) was of the opinion that the prayer ‘Supplices te rogamus’ in the Roman canon (in which it is asked that the angel take the offering to God’s heavenly altar, so that the faithful may receive Christ’s body and blood) was in fact an ‘ascending epiclesis’; modern Orthodox uses of Western rites, however, have not generally reflected this understanding, and have usually insisted on the addition of an Eastern-style epiclesis, following either personal convictions or requirements from Orthodox bishops before approval.

10. A few years after Old Catholicism was born, Overbeck (who had originally welcomed the movement) had come to the conclusion that hopes raised by that movement had been misplaced and could not be the way to a rebirth of the Orthodox Church in the West, but was rather inclined to assimilate with Anglicanism, the ‘most dangerous form of Protestantism’ (Overbeck 1876: 106–107, 116). Still, there were some Orthodox who continued to advocate rapprochement with the Old Catholics, such as General Alexander Kireev (1832–1910) (Novikoff 1914, Basil 1991). Eugène Michaud (1839–1917), a French priest and theologian who had been close to Guettée and had joined the Old Catholic movement, played an important role in promoting communion between the Orthodox and the Old Catholic Churches (Dederen 1963: 226–45).

11. The Gallican rite was not seen as the only rite for Western Orthodox: Evgraph Kovalevsky hoped that the Roman Church would someday come back to Orthodoxy, and then it would obviously be with the ‘orthodoxised’ Roman rite (Bourne 1978: 43).

12. At that time, Roman-rite Catholic Masses were said in Latin.

13. In which the Western rite played a role: in 1987, the French Church accepted a demand of the Romanian Church that the Byzantine rite should be celebrated at least on one Sunday every month (see Kovalevsky 1990: 413–59).

14. A biographical notice was prepared by Fr Serge Model (2012).

15. Bishop Grégoire himself is the author of a book on the history and restoration of the Gallican rite (Mendez 2008).

16. Some other groups led by ‘independent bishops’ have also adopted the Gallican rite, but they are not in a direct filiation with the original group around Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis.

17. ‘As it stands, the core of the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon is taken from the classic Anglican Eucharistic Liturgy, with extensive borrowings from the Tridentine Missale Romanum and a modest contribution from the contemporary Byzantine Rite … Before the Antiochian Archdiocese adopted the Liturgy of Saint Tikhon, this hybrid Romano-Anglican Liturgy was very commonly found in High Church, Anglo-Catholic parishes of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States’ (Andersen 2005: 15). ‘The Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate had but little to add … Most of this work had already been accomplished in common Anglo-Catholic practice’ (Andersen 2005: 13).

18. The attribution to St Tikhon does not mean that Patriarch Tikhon (Bellavin, 1865–1925) was the author. However, at the time he was the head of the Orthodox Church in America, he had asked the Holy Synod if, in case an entire Anglican parish and its minister would join the Orthodox Church, they could be allowed to keep the Book of Common Prayer, and what changes should be made. A commission established by the Holy Synod answered in 1904 (Frere 1917); interestingly, one of the members of the commission was the future Patriarch Sergius, who later authorised the use of the Western rite in France. Since Episcopalians who had considered coming under the Russian Church then decided otherwise, the question remained a theoretical one in the early twentieth century. ‘Tikhon authored no Eucharistic Liturgy; but he did play the crucial role in raising the possibility of using corrected Anglican liturgical forms in the North American Orthodox missionary context’ (Andersen 2005: 7).

19. Archbishop Nikon was a ROCOR bishop supportive of Western Rite Orthodoxy: he sent a long and warm message after the passing away of Bishop Jean de Saint-Denis (Jean de Saint-Denis, Eugraph Kovalevsky, 1905–1970, In Memoriam, Paris: Présence Orthodoxe, n.d., 93–4).

20. Published on the official website of ROCOR Western Rite Community (www.rwrv.org).

21. Fr Gregory Hallam, personal communication, 27 August 2013.

22. Fr Thomas Cook, personal communication, 22 August 2013.

23. Fr Pablo M. Alvarez, personal communication, 24 August 2013.

24 Stephen Coombs, personal communication, 2 September 2013.

25. Rev. Anthony Chadwick, a priest of the Anglican Catholic Church, has made this out-of-print text available online (Winch 2007).

26. This is used here in a purely technical, non-polemical way: the borders between what is ‘canonical’ and what is not can change rapidly in some of the cases discussed here (Seraïdari and Léonard 2007: 88).

27. Sometimes with echoes within canonical Orthodox Churches: in the early 2000s, an Orthodox monastery under the Moscow Patriarchate in Belgium translated and used during some time a Celtic liturgy (based on the ‘Lorrha-Stowe Missal’): this was an adaptation of a Missal published in English by Bishop Maelruain (Kristopher Dowling, 1955–2013), founder of a ‘Celtic Orthodox Christian Church’ in Akron (Ohio).

28. Coombs had distinguished three types of Western rites: ‘historical’ (Mensbrugghe), ‘modern-pragmatic’ (pre-Vatican II Roman rite with some adaptations) and ‘personaleclectic’ (Coombs 1987: 59; see Turner 2012c).

29. A different restoration of Sarum had already been blessed by Metropolitan Hilarion and published in 2008.

30. For instance, Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960), also well-known as the founder of Chevetogne Abbey in Belgium, was in touch with Fr Evgraph and gave lectures at the newly-founded Institute Saint-Denis in 1944–1945, before his superiors asked him in early 1946 to suspend his collaboration (Loonbeek and Mortiau 2001: 1257–9).

31. Some bishops have been willing to consider a different approach, as illustrated by a document in Russian, discovered by Bernard Le Caro (whom we thank for sharing it and translating extracts) in the ROCOR archives in New York. The title of the unsigned and undated document is ‘O dopustimosti zapadnago bogoslužebnago čina dlja pravoslavnyh zapadnyh obščin’ (‘On the permissibility of the Western liturgical rite for Orthodox of Western communities’). Internal evidence makes clear that this 15-page-long text was prepared by Bishop (later Archbishop) Nathaniel (Lvov, 1906–1986) and written around 1950. In the late 1930s, in Ceylon, he had accepted a group of former Roman Catholics in the Orthodox Church, and they had been allowed to use the Western rite. In the document, Bishop Nathaniel writes that the epiclesis was absent from several ancient liturgical formularies in the West, such as those of St Gelasius, St Gregory the Great or St Leo of Rome: ‘either we must condemn the liturgical practice of such great saints … or we must acknowledge that the Western liturgy is possible without the epiclesis’ (p. 8). On the other hand, communion under both kinds was mandatory: according to Bishop Nathaniel, depriving the faithful of the Blood of Christ was anyway a later deviation in the Latin Church. Bishop Nathaniel’s approach placed the emphasis on avoiding as much as possible the introduction of arbitrary changes in liturgical traditions.

 

Bibliography

Abramtsov, D.F. 1961a. A Brief History of Western Orthodoxy in Modern Times. Available at: http://www.allmercifulsavior.com/Liturgy/Abramtsov.html [accessed 25 August 2013]. Previously published in three instalments in 1961 in the journal One Church, 15(7–8): 226–36; 15(9–10): 295–305; 15(11–12): 355–65.

Abramtsov, D.F. 1961b. The Western Rite and the Eastern Church: Dr J.J. Overbeck and his Scheme for the Re-Establishment of the Orthodox Church in the West. MA Thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty in the Division of the Social Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 1961. Available at: http://anglicanhistory.org/orthodoxy/abramtsov.pdf [accessed 23 August 2013].

Andersen, B.J. n.d. A Short History of the Western Rite Vicariate. Available at: http://www.antiochian.org/sites/default/files/wrv_history.pdf [accessed 25 August 2013].

Andersen, B.J. 2005. An Anglican Liturgy in the Orthodox Church: The Origins and Development of the Antiochian Orthodox Liturgy of Saint Tikhon. MDiv Thesis, St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary.

Bange, R. and Bange, C. 2013. La Confrérie de Saint-Photius et ses travaux sur la liturgie occidentale (1925–1945). Présence Orthodoxe, 173: 19–40.

Basil, J.D. 1991. Alexander Kireev: Turn-of-the-Century Slavophile and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1890–1910. Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique, 32(3): 337–47.

Behr-Siegel, E. 1993. Une Moine de l’Église d’Orient: Le Père Lev Gillet. Paris: Éditions du Cerf.

Besse, J.-P. 1992. Un précurseur: Wladimir Guettée, du Gallicanisme à l’Orthodoxie. Lavardac: Monastère Orthodoxe Saint-Michel.

Bourne, V. 1966. La Queste de Vérité d’Irénée Winnaert. Geneva: Labor et Fides.

Bourne, V. 1975. La Divine Contradiction: L’avenir catholique orthodoxe de la France. Paris: Librairie des Cinq Continents.

Bourne, V. 1978. La Divine Contradiction: Le chant et la lutte de l’Orthodoxie. Paris: Éditions Présence Orthodoxe.

Burton, B. [Archimandrite Barnabas]. 1985. Strange Pilgrimage. Welshpool: Stylite Publishing.

Coombs, S. 1987. The Eucharistic Prayer in the Orthodox West. Oxford: Gregorian Club.

Dederen, R. 1963. Un Réformateur catholique au XIXe siècle: Eugène Michaud (1839–1917). Vieux-catholicisme – OEcuménisme. Genève: Droz.

Erny, P. 1983. Une nouvelle arrivée dans le paysage religieux de la France de l’Est: L’Église Catholique Orthodoxe de France. Revue des Sciences Sociales de la France de l’Est, 12–12 bis: 225–33.

Florovsky, G. 1989. Russian Orthodox Ecumenism in the Nineteenth Century, in Ecumenism II: A Historical Approach. The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, Vol. XIV, edited by Richard S. Haugh. Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 110–63.

Frere, W.H. 1917. Russian Observations upon the American Prayer Book. London: A.R. Mowbray.

Gamber, K. 1984. Die Messfeier nach altgallikanischem Ritus. Regensburg: Kommissionsverlag F. Pustet.

Guettée, W. 1866. Exposition de la Doctrine de l’Église catholique orthodoxe, accompagnée des différences qui se rencontrent dans les autres Églises chrétiennes. Paris: Librairie de l’Union Chrétienne.

Guettée, W. 1889. Souvenirs d’un prêtre romain devenu prêtre orthodoxe. Paris: Fischbacher.

Kahle, W. 1968. Westliche Orthodoxie: Leben und Ziele Julian Joseph Overbecks. Leiden and Cologne: Brill.

Kovalevsky, E. 1956. La Sainte Messe selon l’Ancien Rite des Gaules ou Liturgie selon S. Germain de Paris. Paris: Éditions Orthodoxes Saint-Irénée.

Kovalevsky, M. 1984. Retrouver la Source oubliée: Paroles sur la Liturgie d’un Homme qui chante Dieu. Paris: Éditions Présence Orthodoxe.

Kovalevsky, M. 1990. Orthodoxie et Occident: Renaissance d’une Église locale. Paris: Carbonnel.

Loonbeek, R. and Mortiau, J. 2001. Un Pionnier, Dom Lambert Beauduin (1873–1960): Liturgie et Unité des Chrétiens. Vol. II. Louvain-la-Neuve: Collège Erasme.

Lossky, V. 1980. Pour une Orthodoxie occidentale: Arguments historiques. Présence Orthodoxe, 44: 5–12.

Mayer, J.-F. 1997. L’Orthodoxie doit-elle être byzantine? Les tentatives de création d’un rite orthodoxe occidental, in Regards sur l’Orthodoxie: Mélanges offerts à Jacques Goudet, edited by G. Ivanoff-Trinadtzaty. Lausanne: L’Âge d’Homme, 191–213.

Mendez, M. 2008. La Messe de l’Ancien Rite des Gaules: Origine et Restauration. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Mensbrugghe, A. van der. 1948. La Liturgie orthodoxe de Rite occidental: Essai de restauration. Paris: Éditions OEcuméniques Setor.

Mensbrugghe, A. van der. 1962. Missel ou Livre de la Synaxe liturgique approuvé et autorisé pour les Églises Orthodoxes de Rit occidental relevant du Patriarcat de Moscou. Paris: Contacts.

Model, S. 2012. Mgr Alexis van der Mensbrugghe: Évêque orthodoxe en France, Amérique et Allemagne; Théologien, spécialiste reconnu des liturgies anciennes!. Available at: http://www.egliserusse.eu/blogdiscussion/Mgr-Alexis-van-der-Mensbrugghe-eveque-orthodoxe-en-France-Amerique-et-Allemagne-theologien-specialiste-reconnu-des_a2366.html [accessed 24 August 2013].

Novikoff, O. 1914. Le Général Alexandre Kiréeff et l’ancien-catholicisme (new augmented edition). Bern: Librairie Staempfli.

Overbeck, J.J. 1869. Die providentielle Stellung des Orthodoxen Russland und sein Beruf zur Wiederherstellung der rechtgläubigen katholischen Kirche des Abendlands. Halle: W. Schmidt.

Overbeck, J.J. n.d. [c. 1871a]. Liturgia Missæ Orthodoxo-catholicæ occidentalis [The Liturgy of the Western Orthodox-Catholic Mass]. London: Taylor.

Overbeck, J.J. 1871b. Libellus Invitatorius ad Clerum Laicosque Romano-Catholicos, qui antiquam Occidentis Ecclesiam Catholicam ad pristinam puritatem et gloriam restauratam videre cupiunt. Halle: W. Schmidt.

Overbeck, J.J. 1876. Die Bonner Unions-Conferenzen, oder Altkatholicismus und Anglikanismus in ihrem Verhältnis zur Orthodoxie. Eine Appellation an die Patriarchen und Heiligen Synoden der orthodox-katholischen Kirche. Halle: W. Schmidt.

Pnevmatikakis, V. 2012. L’émigration russe et la naissance d’une orthodoxie française 1925–1953. Slavica bruxellensia, 8. Available at: http://slavica.revues.org/1068 [accessed 24 August 2013].

ROCOR. 1953. Decree of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Available at: http://www.rocorstudies.org/documents/2013/06/16/on-the-western-liturgical-tradition [accessed 26 August 2013].

ROCOR. 2013. His Grace Bishop Jerome of Manhattan on the Western Rite in ROCOR. Available at: http://www.rocorstudies.org/interviews/2013/06/17/bishop-jerome-of-manhatan-on-western-rite-inthe-rocor/ [accessed 25 August 2013].

Saint-Denis, G. de. 1977. Sur l’histoire de l’étude et de la restauration dans l’Orthodoxie de la Liturgie de l’ancien Rite des Gaules dite ‘Liturgie selon Saint Germain de Paris’. Présence Orthodoxe, 36: 5–91.

Seraïdari, K. and Léonard, A. 2007. Quand les Celtes deviennent Orthodoxes: De l’exaltation du passé à la modernité religieuse. Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 139: 79–99.

Tanazacq, N. 1977. Bibliographie de l’ancien rite des Gaules et de sa restauration. Présence Orthodoxe, 36(3): 4–49.

Thomann, G.H. 1995. The Western Rite in Orthodoxy: Union and Reunion Schemes of Western and Eastern Churches with Eastern Orthodoxy. A Brief Historical Outline, 2nd edition. Nuremberg: G.H. Thomann.

Turner, J. 2009. The Journey Thus Far: A Review of the Literature on Western-Rite Orthodoxy. St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 53(4): 477–505.

Turner, J. 2011.Western Rite Orthodoxy as a Liturgical Problem. Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, 63(3–4): 333–52.

Turner, J. 2012a. O Salutaris Hostia: The Challenge of Eucharistic Adoration in Western Rite Orthodoxy. Religious Studies and Theology, 31(1): 41–54.

Turner, J. 2012b. Western Rite Orthodoxy as an Ecumenical Problem. Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 47(4): 541–54.

Turner, J. 2012c. Journeying Onwards: An Overview of the Liturgical Books in Western-Rite Orthodoxy. St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly, 56(1): 93–112.

Winch, R. 2007. The Canonical Mass of the English Orthodox, 3rd edition. Available at: http://civitas-dei.eu/winch.pdf  [accessed 26 August 2013].

 

Source: Orthodox Identities in Western Europe: Migration, Settlement and Innovation, edited By Maria Hämmerli, Jean-François Mayer, Ashgate, 2014, pp. 267-289.