(A brief word from Fr. Rector…) Pt. 3/3
The Western Rite* has its roots in the second half of the 19th century, when a British former Roman Catholic priest, Julian Joseph Overbeck, a convert from the Lutheran Church, converted to Orthodoxy and presented the Russian Synod with his own Western Rite Liturgy, which was allowed to be used in the British Isles. His ultimate goal was the creation of a Western Orthodox Church. Due to very limited public interest in the idea within the West, Overbeck died without seeing his labors come to fruition.
At the end of the 19th and during the first half of the 20th centuries, there were sporadic attempts to create Western Rite Orthodoxy, but its supporters were very few in number, and for some of them, Orthodoxy was just another phase in their tumultuous religious life.
By the mid-20th century, some individuals were determined to revive the idea of Western Rite Orthodoxy. The moving force behind this endeavor was the priest Evgraph Kovalevsky. An unquestionably talented man, he concocted his own Gallican, i.e. French, Rite by drawing from various Western and Byzantine sources. Kovalevsky and his activities serve as the foundation of the Western Rite in modern American Orthodoxy, and therefore it is worth focusing on him in our glance at the phenomenon.
Kovalevsky (1905-1970) was possessed by a restless spirit, thought himself smarter than others, including his superiors, and was a good illustration of the phrase “the end justifies the means.” He tricked the hierarchy into believing that there was already a vast movement of Christians in the West, mostly in France, who were only waiting to be received into the Orthodox Church and were ready to establish their own “Orthodox Church of France.”
Here is how a Western Rite Liturgy served by Kovalevsky was described by one who saw it, Archbishop Photios (Topiro), in 1946: “The liturgical part of the French Orthodox parishes leaves much to be desired. This must be said especially about Archpriest E. Kovalevsky. More often he is not serving, but improvising, and he is not always doing it successfully. This leaves the faithful with a negative impression. One is left to regret the absence of the established liturgical text, as well as the superficial attitude in serving according to the Western Rite.”
The Western Rite communities soon became known for communing non-Orthodox, uncanonical weddings, the use of esoteric practices, and unaccountable financial activities by Kovalevsky. Vladimir Lossky, a well-known theologian, historian, and Kovalevsky’s friend and early supporter, later remarked: “It is too bad that Evgraph got ordained. Because to give priesthood to Kovalevsky is like giving a gun to a psychologically unstable person.” This resulted in the Moscow Patriarchate withdrawing its blessing from the Western Rite communities in March of 1953.
In May of 1954, the “Orthodox Church of France” found her new home with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. However, already in November of the same year, after examining the Gallican Rite, Constantinople refused to allow its use and suspended Kovalevsky “for disobedience to the authority of the Church.”
In 1960, the “Orthodox Church of France” was incorporated into ROCOR. The bishop of Brussels and Western Europe, John, the future St John of Shanghai and San Francisco, gave his blessing to the marginal movement, which he hoped would strengthen the Orthodox presence in France. St John believed that pre-Schism Christianity, once brought to light, would be a great missionary tool for bringing western people to Orthodoxy. In 1964, Evgraph Kovalevsky was consecrated as Bishop Jean of Saint-Denis, “Jean,” which is French for John, being his monastic name.
Desiring to elevate his position in the church hierarchy, Kovalevsky petitioned the Synod of Bishops to allow him to have vicar bishops. In response to this, in the fall of 1966, the Synod sent His Eminence Vitaly, Archbishop of Canada, to France to take a closer look at the Western Rite. Archbishop Vitaly quickly discovered that Bishop Jean’s flock was much smaller than what he had claimed. On October 9, the Archbishop participated in the extraordinary General Meeting of the “Orthodox Church of France.” During the meeting, he was surprised to find out that Kovalevsky allowed one subdeacon to commune the faithful not in the context of the Divine Liturgy, and even outside of his diocese, in Germany; that one of the clergymen of the “Orthodox Church of France” was not even Orthodox, and that this man was giving “instruction concerning the possibility of extra-marital cohabitation”; and that Kovalevsky was inventing new divine services and had even allowed a Masonic service in his church.
Only a couple of weeks after this meeting, sensing that he and his group would soon be subjected to strict disciplinary measures, Kovalevsky sent the following communique to the Synod of Bishops: “The bishop and all the clergy of the ‘Orthodox Catholic Church of France’ notify the Synod about their decision to no longer consider the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad as their highest authority.” On the day this communique was received at the Synod, Metropolitan Philaret responded to Kovalevsky: “In view of your report, that you and some of your clergy refuse canonical obedience to the Synod of Bishops, you are suspended from your ministry and your case is to be decided by the ecclesiastical court.” However, some of his communities remained faithful to ROCOR: they were incorporated into the Diocese of Geneva and Western Europe and allowed to serve some of the services according to the Western Rite, on the condition that most of the Divine Services would be celebrated in accordance with the Orthodox tradition.
Kovalevsky once again began his search for a Local Orthodox Church that would accept him. The Moscow Patriarchate was on his list. Metropolitan Anthony (Blum), the Patriarchal Exarch in Western Europe, recalled Kovalevsky doing this in his usual way.
“I told him: ‘Fine. Make a list of your clergy and the list of your parishes, who is serving where and how many faithful they have in each parish.’ He produced a list with a colossal number of people. I was not ready to take him at his word and decided to check. It turned out that he listed all of the parishioners as members of each parish. So, he made a list of all his parishioners, and those parishioners would migrate from one parish to another, thus creating a truly large number. I turned this down. I was against this, and many others were also against this.”
In February of 1967, Bishop John (Kovalevsky) was defrocked by the decision of the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR and was demoted to the rank of a simple monk. The man of pompous ideas and a restless, disobedient spirit died in Paris in 1970.
* Do not be misled by the title phrasing to mean Kovalesky himself is being named as the origin/originator of the Western Rite, but rather he has been named historically as “the brightest star” thereof, i.e. of the origins of the WR. We are certainly aware of and do not in the foregoing refer to the much more recent WR effort of the last fifty years, which may or may not constitute something St. John blessed (to some who knew him, much of it has not if anything) -editor.