by his birth and heredity. He obeys the Head of the people of his rite.
Probably the first thing that would strike a stranger who goes into a church would be the language in which the prayers are said and the various chants are sung. Because this is so noticeable a point in the service, it is often given an importance which it by no means deserves.
Really this question of language is the least important note of any rite. In theory any rite may be used in any language, without ceasing to be exactly the same rite. If the Pope were to tell us in England to use our present rite in English, the difference thus made would seem enormous to most people; yet it would still be just as much the Roman rite — that is, in origin, the local rite of the city of Rome — as it is now that we use it in Latin. As a matter of fact, the Roman rite is used in old Slavonic in Dalmatia, and there are a few cases of its use in Greek in Italy; but in both cases it is simply the Roman rite in another language.
It is in no way the language which determines the rite, but the complex of prayers, the order of the service, the ceremonies and so on, which, as long as they remain the same, form the same rite. So all kinds of combinations of these two things, rite and language, have taken place, and still do take place, all over Christendom. The same rite occurs in different languages; on the other hand, totally different rites occur in the same language. In general, we may note that in the West it is rare for a rite to be used in different languages. Rome has no principle of uniformity in rite; the Holy See gladly tolerates a great diversity of rites in the Catholic Church. But she does, as a rule, appear to desire that each rite (at any rate in the West) should be used uniformly in the same language.
The Orthodox Church, on the contrary, has shown herself extremely intolerant of different rites. She has crushed the old rite of Alexandria among her members altogether, and has nearly crushed that of Antioch. Everywhere she imposes the much later and far less venerable rite of Constantinople. But she does not seem to mind in what language that rite is used. The Byzantine rite is now used among the Orthodox in about fourteen different languages. But in each of these it is just as much the Byzantine rite as it is in its original Greek.
From this we see that we can never distinguish rites by the languages in which they are used. We should never talk about a Latin rite, a Greek rite, a Syriac rite. There are now three Latin rites, those of Rome, Milan, and the Mozarabic
