The Western Rite is fully Orthodox worship using ancient Western liturgical forms instead of the Byzantine liturgy most Orthodox parishes use. It’s the same faith, same sacraments, same Church, just a different way of praying.
Think of it this way. If you walked into St. Michael’s on a Sunday morning, you’d experience the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysosantus, chanted in English, with incense and processions and the particular rhythm of Byzantine worship. But if you walked into an Antiochian Western Rite parish, you’d hear something closer to what an English Christian in the year 800 might have recognized. Different ceremonial. Same Orthodox faith.
How It Started
In 1958, Patriarch Alexander III of Antioch authorized Metropolitan Antony Bashir to establish a Western Rite Vicariate in North America. The idea wasn’t new. The Russian Orthodox Church had received some Western Christians in the 1930s and allowed them to keep their traditional liturgical forms after correcting anything that didn’t align with Orthodox theology. The Antiochians did something similar.
Why? Because some Western Christians converting to Orthodoxy felt called to the Orthodox faith but also deeply formed by Western liturgical tradition. The Antiochian Archdiocese recognized that the Church had used Western forms of worship in the first millennium, before the Great Schism. Those ancient Western rites weren’t heretical. They just needed to be restored to their Orthodox roots.
What Gets Changed
Here’s what matters. Western Rite parishes use liturgies like the Divine Liturgy of St. Tikhon (based on Anglican sources) or the Liturgy of St. Gregory (drawn from older Roman and Sarum uses). But these aren’t just copied from Anglican or Catholic books. They’re carefully edited.
The Filioque clause gets removed from the Creed. That’s the “and the Son” phrase that Western churches added and that Orthodox reject as a theological error about the Holy Spirit’s procession. The epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit to transform the bread and wine, gets made explicit, because Orthodox theology requires it. Any prayers or texts that don’t align with Orthodox teaching get corrected or removed entirely.
The Antiochian Archdiocese published a formal Edict and Directory that governs all this. There’s a Western Rite Commission that reviews liturgical texts to make sure they’re Orthodox. Nothing gets used in an Antiochian Western Rite parish without approval.
How It Looks and Sounds
Western Rite services are simpler than Byzantine ones. Shorter. Less repetition. The liturgy is often spoken rather than entirely chanted, though there’s still singing, Western hymnody, Gregorian chant, that sort of thing. You won’t see the elaborate processions of the Great Entrance. The altar preparation happens more directly.
If you grew up Baptist or Methodist here in Southeast Texas, you might find a Western Rite parish less foreign than a Byzantine one. Not because it’s Protestant, it’s fully Orthodox sacramental worship, but because the ceremonial language is closer to what shaped Western Christianity before the Reformation.
Same Church, Different Rite
This is crucial. Western Rite parishes aren’t a separate church. They’re part of the same Antiochian Archdiocese as St. Michael’s. They’re under the same bishops. Their priests are ordained by Orthodox bishops. If you’re received into the Orthodox Church at a Western Rite parish, you’re Orthodox, period. You can receive communion at any Orthodox parish, Byzantine or Western.
The Vicariate exists to provide pastoral oversight for Western Rite communities and to maintain liturgical standards. But canonically, Western Rite parishes belong to their local diocese just like Byzantine ones do.
Why It Matters
The Western Rite is small. Most Orthodox parishes in America use the Byzantine liturgy, and that’s not changing. But the Western Rite witnesses to something important: Orthodoxy isn’t ethnically Greek or Russian or Arab. It’s the faith of the undivided Church, and that Church once worshiped in both East and West.
For some inquirers, especially those with deep roots in Western liturgical tradition, the Western Rite offers a way home. It says you don’t have to become culturally Eastern to become Orthodox. You can bring your Western heritage with you, purified and restored to its Orthodox fullness.
If you’re exploring Orthodoxy and curious about the Western Rite, ask around. There aren’t many Western Rite parishes, but they’re out there. And if Byzantine worship is what you’re encountering at St. Michael’s, that’s good too. The rite isn’t what saves you. Christ does, through His Church, whether you’re praying in Greek or English or Latin, whether you’re chanting Byzantine tones or singing Gregorian chant.
