From the Earlier History of the ROCOR's Missionary Work: Western Rite & New Calendar

September 19

Bishop Jacob (Akkersdijk) was consecrated Bishop of the Hague, a vicar ROCOR Bishop of the Diocese of Western Europe on that day in 1965.

Bishop Jacob (Akkersdijk)

Most of the people I interact with are Church people – to be more precise, people in the Russian Church Abroad. I know almost none of them who would likely be enthusiastic about the Western liturgical rite within the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

Most Orthodox churches in North America do not follow any Western rites, and the vast majority of prospective converts have no choice but the Byzantine one. Only, the ROCOR, as does the Antiochian Archdiocese, offers such a choice. It is also significant that such spiritual giants as St. John of Shanghai and Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral), of blessed memory, the first hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, actively supported the development of the Western Rite.

So, what is the “Western Rite”? This is an attempt to reconstruct the Western liturgical tradition of the first millennium when both churches in the East and in the West existed in unity.

I admit that I do not know much about Western rite in the ROCOR due to my lack of direct experience with it. There are conferences about it and even an online seminary specifically for it. At the Council of Bishops in September 2022, Fr. Mark Rowe, Vicar-General of the Western Rite Communities, reported on the current status of Western Rite communities. We also had an excellent seminary field trip to a Western Rite community in Central New York this May.

Both St. John and Vladyka Hilarion wished for everyone to be saved, and because of that, they were very patient with those who joined Orthodoxy through this “door.”

Bishop Evgraph (Kovalevsky) was consecrated on this day in San Francisco in 1964.

A while ago, I interviewed Dr. Dana Miller, a Jordanville seminary classmate of the future Metropolitan Hilarion and Mitered Archpriest Victor Potapov. Dr. Miller’s first encounter with Orthodoxy was in the 1960s through the Orthodox Church of France. This is what he shared about visiting the Church of Bishop Jean-Nectaire (Kovalevsky) of Saint-Denis: