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Journal The Orthodox West Journal Menu The Orthodox West Journal Home About Scroll down to content Posts Posted on March 12, 2021 March 17, 2021 Why the Eastern Orthodox Church Needs the Western Rite Moving Past Polemics, Restoring the Whole Tradition, and Fulfilling our Mission in the West By the Very Rev. Fr. Patrick Cardine St. Patrick Orthodox Church, Bealeton, Virginia Originally published in The Basilian Journal V. 2.n.1 Fall 2020 #3 As a companion discussion, listen to the Gazette Podcast episode,Moving Past Polemics .” Continue reading Why the Eastern Orthodox Church Needs the Western Rite” Posted on October 13, 2020 March 12, 2021 Reflections on the Eucharist By Fr. David McCready Introduction When Our Lord Jesus Christ established the mystery of the holy Eucharist, He took bread saying, ‘This is My Body,’ and then took the cup saying, ‘This is My Blood’ (Matthew 26, 26-28; Mark 14, 22-24; Luke 22, 19-20; 1 Corinthians 11, 22-25). For this reason, as well as on account of the Lord’s teaching in the discourse on the Bread of Life (John 6, 22-59), the church has from the very beginning confessed the eucharist ‘to be (εἶναι) the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, that flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father of His goodness raised . ’ [1] And this is what we confess today. As we say prior to Communion: ‘I believe, O Lord, and I confess … that Thou art truly the Christ … and that this is truly Thine own immaculate Body, and that this is truly Thine own precious Blood.’ Continue reading Reflections on the Eucharist” Posted on August 1, 2020 March 12, 2021 Western Rite Orthodoxy: An Apologia — Part 2 By Fr. David McCready In the first part of this article we saw that the Fathers, who are the teachers of our holy Orthodox faith, not only recognized the variety of different rites which prevailed in the early church, but actively extolled this diversity. Our conclusion, therefore, was that of Fr Schmemann: ‘Orthodoxy has no objection to the Western Rite as such.’ 1 In this part, I want to look at the question as to whether or not the rites actually practiced today in the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate are Orthodox. Continue reading Western Rite Orthodoxy: An Apologia — Part 2” Posted on March 18, 2020 March 12, 2021 Western Rite Orthodoxy: An Apologia — Part 1 By Fr. David McCready Part 1: The Witness of Tradition Cet animal est très méchant. Quand on l’attaque, il se défend. I was reminded of this old French saying the other day, when, in what was quite a stark critique of the western rite, a certain priest-blogger accused those who questioned his theses of being overly defensive! In his hostility to the western rite, this blogger represents, I believe, only a small minority of Orthodox; as a western-rite priest, and, before that, as a western-rite seminarian, I have in general encountered nothing but warmth and welcome from hierarchs, clergy, and lay-people alike, both in the Antiochian Archdiocese, and in other jurisdictions as well. This said, there are some folk who do have honest concerns and questions about the western rite, and it is them especially that I want to address. I shall begin by looking at how Tradition vindicates the principle of a western rite, looking at the witness of the Fathers, at the post-patristic period, and at the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Continue reading Western Rite Orthodoxy: An Apologia — Part 1” Posted on December 18, 2019 December 18, 2019 Reclaiming All Paul’s Rs: Apostolic Atonement by Way of Some Eastern Fathers In this essay, Edith M. Humphrey, seeking to recapture a holistic view of the atonement, focuses on the way that key Pauline texts (especially Colossians 1, Galatians 3 and 2 Cor 5) were read by fourth- and fifth-century interpreters. She argues that a full picture of the atonement needs to emerge that incorporates redemption, reparation, representation, righteousness, rescue, recapitulation, reconciliation, and revolutionary recreation. This full picture is drawn from the entirety of what Christ was, is, and did pro nobis , and with some surprises for those who draw too strict a line between Western” and Eastern” interpretations of Paul. Over against N. T. Wright’s insistence that atonement needs to be reimagined , Humphrey argues rather that it needs to be retrieved . In the patristic commentators, Humphrey demonstrates, we can find such a vision of the atonement. Continue reading Reclaiming All Paul’s Rs: Apostolic Atonement by Way of Some Eastern Fathers” Posted on October 2, 2019 January 3, 2020 Forming the Soul With Western Culture This essay is an edited version of Forming the Soul”, which appeared in The Orthodox Word Vol. 19 #1-2, 1983, St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, CA. By the Sisters of St. Xenia Skete To come to Orthodoxy from the world of today is to come from emptiness to riches, from shallowness to depth, from shams to a reality so all-encompassing that it can, at times, leave one quite uncertain as to the possibility of existing both in the Church and in the real” world. Continue reading Forming the Soul With Western Culture” Posted on February 21, 2019 2018 AWRV Conference Keynote Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi. If you are at Rome, live in the Roman manner; if elsewhere, live as they do there.” When St. Augustine arrived in Milan, c. 387 A.D., he observed that the Church did not fast on Saturday as did the Church at Rome. He consulted St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who replied: When I am at Rome, I fast on a Saturday; when I am at Milan, I do not. Follow the custom of the Church where you are.” I would like to argue that we live in the West, in Rome” as it were, and should follow the customs of the ancient Christian West, of Rome. Continue reading 2018 AWRV Conference Keynote” Posted on January 24, 2019 Original and Ancestral Sin: A Church Dividing Issue? When asked about the topic of Original Sin, many Orthodox Christians will proudly claim the Orthodox Church does not believe in Original Sin. They explain they believe in Ancestral Sin,” instead. Some even go so far as to call Original Sin, as understood by the Roman Catholic Church, a heresy.” This, again, is a typical response from many Orthodox Christians, especially those who have a negative attitude towards anything western.” But is this the official teaching of the Orthodox Church, and do all subscribe to that understanding? Has the Orthodox Church ever condemned or denied Original sin in favor of Ancestral Sin? Continue reading Original and Ancestral Sin: A Church Dividing Issue?” Posted on January 16, 2019 January 16, 2019 The Second Naiveté? A transcription of a talk by David Bentley Hart on the Intersections of Scripture and Theology at Pepperdine University, June 2011 Continue reading The Second Naiveté?” Posted on January 10, 2019 Aquinas in the Orthodox Tradition A talk given at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota on October 2, 2014. By Marcus Plested I’m going to begin by taking you back in time to the 12th of December 1452, to Constantinople, and to the great Church of The Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople. These were dark days for the Byzantine Empire. Little remained of the Byzantine Empire apart from the city of Constantinople itself, held in a strangle-hold by the Turks. It seemed inevitable that the city would fall, sooner or later, despite its great wall. For one thing, the Byzantines were lacking the men to man the wall, and in desperation, the emperor, the last emperor of Rome — (the Byzantines never called themselves Byzantines, you know; they were always Romans living in New Rome” which is Constantinople) — the Byzantines were desperate for help, desperate for help even from the wicked West with all its theological errors, and in a sort of last-ditch attempt, on the 12th of December 1452 they formally proclaimed the union that had been established, at least at a formal level, between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic...