#attwater

8.5

An American correspondent recently wrote that “I fear that Eastern rites are becoming vogue [in this country], and therefore many people are missing the main points.  Too many Latin Catholics believe that we are merely tolerating these beautiful and ancient rites of the Church.”  To whatever extent this may be true of North America, it is not surprising, for it is the same in some other lands.  It is perhaps to be expected that Western Catholics, being in so huge a numerical majority and generally knowing nothing of other Catholic traditions, should assume that their own ways are the only “really Catholic ways,” that they are necessarily superior, and that other ways are merely tolerated.  This is especially so when the other ways are not only different from Western practice but contrary of it, e.g., communion in both kinds (species) or the ordination of married men to the priesthood.  But such an attitude is grievously mistaken.  It was Pope Leo XIII, in Orientalium dignitas, who particularly emphasized that all rites are equal; it was Pope Pius XII who again assured Eastern Christians, whether Catholic or other, that “they will never have to exchange their own legitimate rites and ancient institutions for Latin rites and institutions; both are to be regarded with equal esteem and reverence . . .” (Orientalis ecclesiae, 1944).

Especially since Pope Leo XIII, the Holy See has been insistent that the Catholic Eastern churches should observe their proper rites and customs without modification, and has taken great trouble to publish authentic texts.  But to anyone with some little knowledge of these matters, the pictures in this book are clear evidence that . . . the elimination of liturgical hybridism is far from finished yet:  leavened altar-breads that approximate to unleavened wafers, Western altar-linen, such as the corporal and the pall. lacey albs instead of stikharia, stiff gestures and carriage of the hands by celebrant and ministers, and so on.  Small things, apparently, and concerned with minor external matters; but they have significance for the integrity of a rite, which means more than formulas alone, as Pope Pius XII made abundantly clear.  And they are part of a real obstacle to Christian understanding: non-Catholic Easterners are quick to detect and criticize such innovations.