[jecIIny]

Given the TAC's obvious moves to reconcile with Rome those in the Anglo Catholic Tradition who have no problem with the papacy will likely go in that direction. And of course there will be some who will try to cling in some way to the concept of traditional Anglicanism even though I think thats pretty much dead. But for many who are not prepared to go to Rome and yet who can grasp that Canterbury and the CoE is very nearly as bad as ECUSA I would think that Western Rite Orthodoxy (WRO) should be an available option.

The weird thing is that WRO seems to be greeted with more suspicion by rank and file Orthodox then by those who are willing to embrace the faith while trying to maintain their western spiritual heritage. WRO has been strongly endorsed by many Orthodox saints including St. Tikhon and St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. And yet in the United States it's only the Antiochans who seem to have grasped at this as a way to bring people to the faith who might otherwise be unable to adapt to the Byzantine Rite. I know more than one person who has said they have no serious theological issues with Orthodoxy, but the Byzantine Rite is as culturally alien to them as Buddhism.. And no serious effort seems to be thought of at least here in the United States for these people.

ROCOR has been supportive of WRO but mostly overseas. The Serbian Church has also shown strong support for it (again in Europe mostly). But in the United States (an obvious place to promote it IMO), the Greeks, OCA, and pretty mush everyone outside of the AOCA have shown something between a cool indifference to outright hostility to the idea. This baffles me.

[Agrarian]

It shouldn't baffle you. The primary objection to WRO is that it is not a living tradition, but a reconstruction. The question is whether it is possible for Orthodoxy to create an Orthodox Western rite out of whole cloth and theories. Experience has shown that the majority of Western Rite Orthodox end up going to the Eastern rite, primarily because it is a living, full tradition next to which WRO pales -- especially in its tepid Antiochian form (with all due respect to the great St. Tikhon, after whom their BCP-based liturgy is named.)

I readily admit that I had no problem transitioning to the Eastern liturgical and spiritual world, so I don't understand the "foreign-ness" argument.

I would submit that in today's day and age, a Western Rite Orthodoxy that was the liturgical, theological, and ascetic equivalent of Eastern Orthodoxy would be every bit as foreign as is Eastern Orthodoxy. An Orthodox Christian of today transported back to, say 7th century services and Christian life in Rome, would be find it quite familiar, whereas I would wager that modern Anglicans and Roman Catholics would find it at least as foreign as their neighborhood OCA parish...

My own feeling is that there will someday be a viable and living Western Rite Orthodoxy, but it will be in the form of a Roman Catholicism that reforms itself and returns to Orthodoxy.

As a practical matter, it is also difficult for Orthodoxy to protest the techniques of Uniatism when WRO is arguably a form of the same principle in reverse.

A properly done WRO would actually *not* be the same principle in reverse, since it would be unlike any existing form of Western Christianity -- whereas Uniatism was built around the explicit principle of appearing to be exactly the same as the Orthodoxy it was imitating and attempting to displace.

But it is still a problematic charge, and does much to dampen enthusiasm for a Western Rite amongst Orthodox hierarchs.

[Kolokotronis]

"But in the United States (an obvious place to promote it IMO), the Greeks, OCA, and pretty mush everyone outside of the AOCA have shown something between a cool indifference to outright hostility to the idea. This baffles me."

Agrarian beat me to it, but I'll add lex orandi, lex credendi. Our Orthodox phronema is carried in greatest measure by our liturgical practices.