How many Western Rite Orthodox are there exactly?

[Isaiah53IsMessiah]

Curious to know, how many Western Rite Orthodox are there in the Orthodox Church? Has there been any surveys?

 

[Ainnir]

This is all I found. The OrthodoxWiki article and the Antiochian page, which says there are 20 churches/missions in the U.S. To find
all of them, I think one would have to do separate searches for ROCOR and the others.

Western Rite - OrthodoxWiki

orthodoxwiki.org

Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America

www.antiochian.org

 

[Pater Cyprianus]

On the homepage, the thread title is abbreviated to "How many Western Rite Orthodox..."

I came here in the genuine hope of finding a lightbulb joke. I have to admit I'm a little disappointed.

More seriouisly...

The ROCOR communities may be viewed here.

Additionally, of those that might not universally be accepted as canonical, there are some communities of this jurisdiction (formerly part of the Milan Synod), as well as the Western Orthodox Communion.

There is no single online directory of all of the communities of the latter, but each member jurisdiction has a directory on its own website, and they are all linked to from this page.

 

[Saxon]

No parishes in Canada it seems. No surprises there. I spoke to a ROCOR priest from the Toronto area years back and he said that he and most of the clergy he knows are opposed to the Western Rite essentially as Roman LARPing, and that their parishes should only exist as a "stepping stone" to Byzantine/Slavonic liturgy, if they do at all.

 

[Alpo2]

their parishes should only exist as a "stepping stone" to Byzantine/Slavonic liturgy, if they do at all.

IMO this makes even less sense than opposing WRO altogether. If WR is somehow wrong why to allow it at all.

 

[Orest]

I agree with your comments about the ROCOR. For example, in 2011 Bishop Jerome was appointed bishop for the ROCOR Russia Western Rite parishes. Then in 2013 he was suddenly removed.

In 2011, the ROCOR established a special Vicariate in the USA for such parishes, headed by Bishop Jerome of Manhattan. Fr Georgi said, “Unfortunately, it became apparent that this form of mission didn’t bring the desired results, often, it was an obstacle to believers who adhere to the ancient Orthodox liturgical tradition”. Besides that, he pointed up that the ROCOR isn’t the only group that practised this kind of concession in Orthodoxy. Until now, most of such parishes in the USA were under the omophor of the Local Church of Antioch and all the East. Fr Georgi stated, “However, in the case of the vicariate under the ROCOR, ordained priests were permitted to use Western formularies, that is, these converts perceived the Western Rite not as a vehicle for the confession of Orthodoxy using their familiar liturgical order, but as something self-contained, having a legal right to existence and development within the Orthodox tradition. Naturally, that caused confusion on the part of believers”. Due to this, the ROCOR Holy Synod decided, in his words, “to use a very strict interpretation [of the concession]”. As a result, it removed Bishop Jerome from the post of vicar overseeing parishes of the Western liturgical tradition.

18 July 2013

Interfax-Religion

http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=51999

See also:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171201032950/http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/synod/eng2013/20130712_ensynodmeeting.html

http://orthodoxmetropolia.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/AN-OPEN-LETTER-TO-THE-CLERGY-AND-LAITY-OF-THE-ROCOR-WESTERN-RITE.pdf

AS for Canada someone posted a thread a while back that the OCA had a western-rite mission housed in St. Herman's in Edmonton. The odd thing was that the OCA priest in charge of it was a former Ukrainian-Catholic deacon whose family was well known in the Ukrainian Catholic community. I can't figure out his connection with the Western rite? After that original thread I never heard anything more about this mission.
As for me-I think the attitude of the ROCOR is the right one.

 

[Saxon]

Indeed. I've always been curious about Bishop Jerome's fate with respect to the WR. It's worth noting that St. John Maximovitch was a staunch proponent of the WR and celebrated the WR mass in France. I wonder how ROCOR reconciles that history with their current ambivalence.

 

[Pater Cyprianus]

Indeed. I've always been curious about Bishop Jerome's fate with respect to the WR. It's worth noting that St. John Maximovitch was a staunch proponent of the WR and celebrated the WR mass in France. I wonder how ROCOR reconciles that history with their current ambivalence.

Support for the Western Rite has always been a minority position on the ROCOR synod of bishops. St John Maximovitch was barely cold in his tomb before they tried to undo his work - and this was Archbishop Vitaly, the future Metropolitan Vitaly.

I doubt that it is any coincidence that, only a few years earlier, apart from St John Maximovitch, none of the other Russian bishops took part in the episcopal consecration of St John of Saint-Denis (Eugraph Kovalevsky), and that only Bishop Theophilus of Sevres (a Romanian bishop under ROCOR at the time) would act as co-consecrator.

Then there was the unpleasantness of 2013 and the July statement.

Although Metropolitan Hilarion is clearly an ardent supporter and has the respect of his brother bishops, I understand that, apart from him, there is not much else standing between the ROCOR Western Rite faithful and some fierce to moderate voices of opposition on the ROCOR Synod. I imagine any Western Rite Orthodox communities looking towards ROCOR for a stable home would be wise not to put too many of their eggs in that particular basket.

 

[RaphaCam]

Probably a few thousand, but that's just an educated guess.

I think more support could let them grow further. The lack of a central supportive authority seems to be a big obstacle for any group of Orthodox Christians distinctive enough (which is why we're losing Assyrian Orthodox Christians to Nestorianism en masse, for example), but the idea has a lot of appeal. Personally I don't think I'd be better off in a Western-rite church, but that's because I became anything more than a lukewarm Christian through the Byzantine rite.