WESTERN ORTHODOXY

WESTERN ORTHODOXY. This phrase can refer either to Orthodox Christians from Eastern Europe and the Middle East now resident in Western Europe and the Americas, or to a movement, extremely limited in numbers and controversial in execution, to create communities using one or another of the historical liturgies (q.v.) of the West while maintaining communion with the Orthodox Church. The Russian Church (q.v.) was the first to approve such experiments, at least in theory, at the end of the 19th c. At present, Western Orthodoxy, or “Western-rite Orthodoxy,” is represented chiefly by a diocese in France formerly under the jurisdiction of the Church of Romania. Also, some two dozen formerly Episcopalian parishes using this rite have sought the pastoral care of the Antiochian or Syrian Archdiocese (q.v.) in North America. Neither the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese nor the Orthodox Church in America (qq.v.) endorse this action-which is possible in theory-because of the adverse pastoral effects it has on a highly mobile population unable to reproduce its liturgical experience from place to place. In its worst manifestation, the creation of such communities could constitute a type of “reverse Unia” (q.v.).