The Western Rite in the Orthodox Church is not without its critics. Some argue essentially that there is no liturgical tradition that can be viable within the Church other than the Byzantine ritual tradition, but that argument's main problem is its ignorance of the wide liturgical variety characteristic of the first millennium of the Church's history. For instance, many Orthodox Christians will boast of the Church's liturgical homogeneity, saying that no matter where one might go in the Orthodox world, the liturgy will be familiar, even if it's in another language. Yet those who find comfort in that claim might be surprised to learn that their first millennium counterparts would have been incapable of making such a claim—even if only the Eastern liturgical tradition were taken into account.

The more historically minded criticisms of the Western Rite usually center around the idea that it is untenable to try to revive a liturgical tradition which was lost centuries ago when the West fell away from the [[Orthodox Church]]. This argument essentially states that, because the Western Rite died out in the Church, and because a continuous living tradition is a necessary element of liturgical practice, the Western Rite ought to be abandoned and only developments from the Byzantine Rite ought to be pursued.