The acceptance of one of the two Catholic Rites now existing in Russia—Latin and Oriental—is invariably left to the individual choice : converts are

not hindered from adopting any rite they choose, without, however, having the right to make a later change. The only restriction—if it can be called one —being that one is expected (expected, but not commanded) to make one’s Easter Devotions according to one’s adopted Rite, and, in the case of a convert wishing to dedicate his or her life to God, preference is given, in so far as circumstances permit, to a religious house of the Rite followed by the person concerned.

The question of the ‘Rite distinction,’ properly speaking, appears among the Russian converts only since 1917. Thus comparatively little can be said in connection with the progress of the Eastern Rite in the past; its history is too recent, though, embryonic as it is, it has already achieved results of no scanty importance.

How does this question stand at present, and what may be its possible aspects in the future?

The greater number of the recent Russian converts belong to the intellectual classes and have adopted the Latin Rite. It does not lie within my scope to enter here into their individual motives, but there is one obvious economic reason which can explain most of the cases, viz., that the chief workers in the Russo-Catholic field have up to now been priests of either Lithuanian or Polish nationality, and, consequently, of the Latin Rite, and, furthermore, that juridically Russia had been under the supervision of the Latin Archbishops.

But these individual cases, however numerous they may be, have no direct bearing upon the question of the Eastern Rite.