I write as a priest who reveres the Apostolic Faith and who believes that worship is the surest testimony of what the Church teaches and loves. I have offered the holy mysteries within sanctuaries where the air is heavy with incense and the choir answers heaven with measured chant. I have moved with deliberate economy before the holy table, mindful that every gesture must speak truthfully about God and man. I have felt silence gather like a canopy over the people of God, a silence that instructs as deeply as any homily. These moments have taught me that the lex orandi is not simply a decoration for doctrine, but its living breath. From this place of pastoral and priestly experience, I affirm that the Traditional Latin Mass of the West and the ancient liturgies of the East, such as the Liturgy of Saint James and the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, remain recognisably within the spiritual and theological realm of the ancient Apostolic Faith.
It can not be denied that both families of worship grew organically from the undivided Church. They bear the marks of a shared childhood. When I preside at the Divine Liturgy, I hear the cadences of a theology that does not apologise for mystery, and I embody that theology through the censing of the holy icons, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the offering of the anaphora. When I offer the Tridentine Mass, I encounter the same majesty in a Western idiom that developed its own grammar of reverence, and I enact that grammar through the Roman Canon spoken in hushed confidence, the eastward orientation that draws my eyes and heart toward the altar, and the careful custody of silence that prepares the faithful to behold the Lamb of God. The gestures vary, the languages differ, yet the interior orientation is the same. The worship is directed to the Most Holy Trinity. The Eucharist is confessed as the true and life-giving Body and Blood of Christ. The priest stands as icon of Christ the High Priest, leading the faithful into sacrifice and thanksgiving. I recognise in both rites the Church’s continuity with the apostolic company and the Fathers who guarded the deposit of faith.
I acknowledge that the Western theological vocabulary sometimes proceeds along different lines from the Eastern. I do not ignore that there are dogmatic and ecclesiological differences that must be attended to with seriousness and patience. Yet I also observe that, within the Tridentine Mass, the Western genius does not fracture the Apostolic Faith. It gives it a particular cadence. The Roman sobriety, the disciplined silence, the hieratic Latin, and the priest’s eastward orientation gather the mind and heart toward the altar of sacrifice. In the East, the poetic breadth of the anaphoras, the luminous iconography, and the enveloping chant bring the soul into an unmistakable sense of the Kingdom breaking into time. Both streams flow from the same mountain. I believe they still meet at the same sea.
My conviction is sharpened when I consider the liturgical reforms that followed 1962. I do not doubt that many who celebrate the reformed rites do so with sincerity and devotion. I do not doubt that grace is not bound by my analysis. Yet I must speak plainly about what I have seen and what I have been asked to safeguard as a priest. The characteristic marks of the post-1962 reforms often reflect a Western accommodation to the sensibilities of late modern culture. The focus upon didactic clarity, the insistence upon constant verbal exchange, the replacement of hieratic language with ordinary speech, and the reorientation of the sanctuary into a space of mutual address rather than shared adoration, all of this signals a change of atmosphere. The reform did not so much refine a living inheritance as reframe it within a different set of assumptions. That reframe, in my judgment, is not a continuation of the faith once delivered to the saints.
When I speak of atmosphere, I do not mean an aesthetic preference. I am speaking about theological posture embodied in prayer. The Apostolic tradition teaches us that worship is first the work of God to which we are summoned, and not our creative contribution to a communal event. As a presider, I am obliged to receive, not to invent. The ancient liturgies, Eastern and Western, enact that truth with a subtle firmness. The celebrant prays toward the Lord. The language is elevated, not as a museum relic, but as a pedagogy of transcendence. The movements are measured and symbolic, teaching the body to remember that it stands on holy ground. The priest does not make jokes from the altar. He stands as the very presence of Christ. The choir does not entertain. It answers the Word with offering. The faithful are not an audience. They are a priestly people who stand within the sacrifice of praise. When I measure the post-1962 ethos by that standard, I find that a new centre of gravity has often emerged, one that prizes accessibility over consecration, immediacy over mystery, and participation understood as busy speech over participation understood as deep adoration.
I do not write this to dismiss persons. I write it to describe a pattern that a priest must discern and answer before God. The older Roman rite and the Eastern liturgies do not make me a manager of religious activity. They make me a penitent and a worshipper who offers the dread sacrifice with fear and love. They do not try to hold attention with novelty. They sanctify attention by turning the heart toward the Lamb who was slain. They do not ask me to perform. They ask me to behold and to lead the people to behold. In both, I hear echoes of Isaiah’s temple vision and the hush of Sinai. I sense the memory of Emmaus and the burning heart that follows recognition. I do not find these notes absent from the reformed rites in an absolute way, but I do find them muffled by a pastoral theory that confuses intelligibility with familiarity, and that risks domesticating the holy.
Because I am Eastern/Byzantine in theological sympathy and pastoral duty, I also find it important to say that the Tridentine Mass, when celebrated without later Western innovations that strained the common mind of the first millennium, remains well within the orbit of Apostolic worship. It is a Western expression of the same sacred banquet and sacrifice that the East guards with awe. It was never meant to be a parallel religion. It was the Roman way of praying what the Church believes. If the West and the East are estranged siblings, they are nonetheless siblings. When I offer the ancient rites, whether Eastern or Western, I do not feel that I have stepped outside the household of the Fathers. I feel that I have entered different rooms of the same house, each room ordered to the same Lord and the same mystery.
The question of unity presses upon my conscience as a priest, since I am charged to gather and not to scatter. I do not imagine a unity forged by programmatic compromise or by the erasure of difference. I imagine a unity that grows out of mutual recognition, repentance, and love. I believe the older rites can serve that unity because they keep both sides honest about what worship truly is. When I lead the Great Entrance in the East, or when I recite the Roman Canon in the West, I recognise the same Jesus Christ moving among His people, gathering our offerings into His own self-offering to the Father. When I bow before the holy gifts, I know that my brothers and sisters who bow in another sanctioned rite are honouring the same Lord. There is power in that recognition, a power that does not erase doctrine, but that softens hearts and clarifies priorities.
I wish to speak directly about ecclesial fraternity from the vantage point of the presider. The East and West will not recover communion by debating aesthetics, nor by treating liturgy as a negotiable strategy for outreach. We will move toward each other as we move together toward God. The ancient liturgies are schools of that movement. They train the soul to ascend without pride, to kneel without despair, to sing without self-congratulation, and to receive without presumption. They teach bishops to guard, priests to serve, deacons to assist, choirs to lead in humility, and laity to persevere in prayer. In such schools, unity acquires muscle. It ceases to be a slogan. It becomes a habit of love nourished by the Eucharist.
I take seriously the Lord’s prayer that we all may be one, so that the world may believe (John 17:21). I do not hear in that prayer a summons to the least common denominator. I hear a call to holiness. The more our worship reflects the holiness of God, the more our hearts will be ready to forgive, to listen, and to embrace what is true and good in the other. The ancient rites do not erase the theological differences that remain between East and West. They place those differences within a field of grace where they may be addressed without hostility and without haste. When I cense the icons and the faithful, and when I elevate the sacred species in austere silence, I preside over acts that confess the same reality. Christ is in our midst. Christ is offered. Christ is adored. Such confession is the seedbed of unity.
I must say a word about the Novus Ordo in relation to unity. Where it encourages a horizontal community identity, it does not help us move toward one another in truth. It can encourage a spirit of improvisation that makes the liturgy a mirror of local taste rather than a window into the heavenly liturgy. I do not deny that there are reverent celebrations of the reformed rites, and I am grateful whenever I meet sincerity and devotion. Nevertheless, as a pattern, the reformed ethos appears to draw its energy from modern pastoral theory rather than from the ancient grammar of worship. That difference should matter to each one of us. It shapes what people believe about God, about the priesthood, and about the Church herself. It does not naturally incline the West toward the East, nor the East toward the West. It does not instinctively recognise the other as sibling, because it speaks a different liturgical language that does not readily translate back into the first millennium.
By contrast, the Tridentine Mass and the Orthodox liturgies are bilingual in the deepest sense. Each speaks its own mother tongue, yet each can understand the other because both are grounded in the same sacred worldview. Both affirm the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Both trace their forms to a long inheritance rather than to a recent workshop. Both presume that the priesthood is a divine office ordered to the mysteries of God, and not a functional role ordered to the management of a meeting. Both maintain a vertical orientation of worship in which God is adored and man is transfigured. Because of this shared grammar, these rites can sustain genuine ecumenical conversation. They allow us to see in the other not a rival, but a relative, and not an obstacle, but an ally in the battle against our own sin and the coldness of our age.
Unity, if it is to be more than an aspiration, requires concrete practices of charity that must begin at the altar. The ancient rites cultivate those practices. They slow the soul. They train the senses. They ask for patience and attentiveness. They demand that the presider disappear into the rite so that Christ may be manifest. In such an environment, arguments become less shrill and more careful. Memory improves and gratitude grows. I have witnessed this change in myself and in those entrusted to my care. I am less tempted to judge quickly, more inclined to ask what the Fathers might say, more willing to repent of any flippancy before holy things. When many believers share this schooling, a culture of reverence takes root, and unity actually has space to breathe.
I do not wish to end without hope. My hope is that East and West will cherish the Tridentine Mass and the ancient Eastern liturgies as gifts for one another. My hope is that Western Christians who rediscover the older Roman rite will also discover the beauty of the East, and that Eastern Christians who welcome Roman pilgrims will perceive in them a love for the same Lord. My hope is that bishops will protect these treasures, that priests will celebrate them with care, and that laity will pray them with the humility of those who know that salvation is a mercy. In such a landscape, unity is not a strategy. It is the fruit of shared adoration.
I therefore state my conviction with simplicity. The Traditional Latin Mass is not diametrically opposed to the Apostolic Faith. It is a Western expression of the same apostolic heritage, shaped by the theological vocabulary and culture of Latin Christendom. The ancient liturgies of the East remain its siblings across time and geography. The two differ on important dogmatic definitions and ecclesiological claims, yet they uphold the same sacred mystery of the Eucharist, the continuity of priestly sacrifice, and the transcendent orientation of divine worship. The post-1962 reforms, in the main, represent an accommodation to modern secular sensibilities rather than a faithful continuation of what the saints handed down. By saying this, I am not denying holy things that can be found within the Novus Ordo. I am saying that it no longer represents the one, ancient faith as does the Tridentine Mass.
I will continue to pray that the Lord will draw us back to each other by drawing us deeper into Himself. I will continue to ask that our worship be worthy of the God who gives Himself to us upon the altar. I will continue to believe that estranged siblings can be reconciled, not by novelty, but instead by fidelity. If we hold the ancient forms with purity of heart, if we repent of our pride, and if we take our stand together before the Lamb, then unity will cease to be a distant rumour. It will become an experienced grace among brothers and sisters who have remembered who they are.
May God bless you +
Fr. Charles
14 October 2025
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