www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Ukrainian and Ruthenian Catholic churches

DJS,

Thank you for that site. I had just replied to a poster on another forum who asked for some links to EC/EO chant and hymns; I had given him a fairly substantial list of sites, but had to go back and add Podoben (with appropriate credit given to you). If one goes back, from the page to which you linked, to the base site, there is even more available. I was most impressed.

Indigo,

I can truly understand and sympathize with how you feel. As recollection serves me, you are presently attending the St. Basil's Ruthenian Mission in Irving (Am I right? I hope so; thinking that I have an excellent memory keeps me from feeling old :p .) Among most Ruthenians at the parish level, I suspect you'd be very unlikely to encounter this kind of ethnic uproar (as would also be the case in most Melkite parishes). This environment (the Forum), as wonderful as it is, unfortunately lends itself to some parochialism, nationalism, and ethno-centricity which doesn't pervade the parishes. There, interaction between the Churches, ecclesial politicking, and awareness of potentially divisive issues, for better or worse, is more lacking. The focus is on worship, which is where it should be

Many years,

Neil

Dear Indigo,

I too am very sad about the ethnic/nationalist uproar caused here by one of "my own!"

Having followed the threads involved, it is evident to any reasonable person, I believer, that this was completely unnecessary, as well as wrong and unjust.

Not only did it NOT serve the best interests of Christian witness, it did not serve the best interests of the Ukrainians themselves.

One reason why the Eastern Churches are, in fact, connected to cultural/ethnic causes is, as Donald Attwater also affirmed, that these Churches, from Russia and Ukraine to Greece and Coptic Egypt, often became the only surviving institution of their peoples living under differing forms of national repression.

For example, during the years of the Turkish Yoke, the Greek Orthodox CHurch and her New Martyrs, like St Cosmas Aitolos, kept alive the Greek Christian spirit AND the Greek national culture and hope of eventual liberation.

This scenario is repeated in other Orthodox and EC countries (as well as RC countries).

Thus, over time, one's religious and cultural identity became fused and one's Church and liturgical worship became an expression of BOTH.

Separation of church and state (leaving aside the argument about whether the U.S. Constitution really DOES affirm it or not) is something that only came about in North America.

And to this day, one's particular Orthodox or EC church, more often than not, is defined as "my Greek Church" or "my Ukrainian Church" etc.

And if one wishes to use English in the liturgy then this is opposed and one is told to "go to an English church."

The OCA and other EC churches are not of this mind-set, to be sure.

But I'm only trying to explain why there is such a strong connection between religion and culture in churches that also include RC parishes.

And even the Latin Catholic Church, for all its "universalism," isn't free of a southern European ethnocentrism in a number of respects.

Alex

Indigo, your observation is well taken. It doesn't matter what the religion or ethnicity, but when they mix that mixture is often self-combusting. And as this thread illustrates, people sometimes hear things they don't want to, even though they may be true and accurate, but when dealing with ethnic issues they indeed become very emotional topics.

Even amongst English speaking churches one can find ethnocentric insularity and rhetoric. It is not the sole ownership of Slavs by any means.

The bottom line is that we have an evangelical job to do. That job is best accomplished by our living out our mission as Greek Catholics according to the wishes of our Union Fathers and the current Holy Father, by being faithful to our Constantinopolitan roots and ecclesiology.

Dear Diak,

Greetings in the Name of OLGS Jesus Christ!

You are more than correct!

Religion and culture are inseparably joined and Eastern Christian writers saw in our Lord's words "Go and teach all NATIONS" as a justification for "inculturation" of the Christian message and growth of local Churches in accordance with their local cultural norms.

I think that what we need in North America is not a "de-ethnicized" Church but another form of inculturation of the Byzantine Church or Orthodox Church.

We need a "North American Church" which implies more than just the services rendered in the English language.

One could continue to have the Particular Ukrainian and other Churches with English language services and that is what our converts certainly do need.

But the goal is ultimately a North American Eastern Church with the North American mainstream as its cultural reference point.

Alex

It seems to me that, first, one would need to determine what the "North American mainstream" culture IS, and, second, the Christians of North America would need to work on Christianizing or re-Christianizing this culture (which we should be doing anyway). What particular facets of North American culture should be used to enhance the liturgy?

The last is an honest question. If we canonize the "American virtues" of our age, what will we find? "This week's stichera have been voted on, and will be..."?

Liturgy is often COUNTER-cultural, though not necessarily in the way we in the U.S. might think of the term. Any "North American" eastern Catholic Church, I think, would have to confront the dominant culture wherever it needs changing - and I think we need to see where our imported Christian culture challenges our modern failings, and try to keep those challenges, while de-emphasizing conflicts which ave to do solely with countries of origin. (Not to say that the PEOPLE may not remain involved in those conflicts, but that a "North American" church should have its heart and primary efforts here, not elsewhere.)

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Dear Jeff,

Niech bedzie pochwalony Jezus Christus!

Thank you for enriching all of us with your incisive and insightful thoughts on cultural process!

You are absolutely right - the Church lives and works within a cultural context, but it is ABOVE the culture which it is constantly striving to Christianize and transfigure in Christ through the Divine Spirit.

You have also pointed a solid finger at one fault of the Church in history in this respect.

The Church has, in Europe and elsewhere, bent over backwards in its inculturation to the point where it has, in diverse periods, assumed the unacceptable role of being the "servant of national culture" and allowing itself to be transformed into a "national institution" focused on the non-spiritual values of maintaining cultural, versus Christian, ways of life.

The worst form of this is when the Church has become an arm of the state, using its role to legitimate state policy, rather than the Gospel.

Alex

The famine is over!
Winter has passed!

I have missed you my friend. We sheep are not the same without you in the pen.

I am taking my occational break from the board - and Mary Jo told me you were back. I will read your posts when I return. I find takeing regular breaks to be good. No one really changes another's mind in here. The sheep graze amoung themselves. We are all needed.

-ray

Dear Friend,

You are always a great RAY of bright and warm sunshine in all our lives!

A good weekend to you!

Alex

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Hello friend Alex,

I agree with this, we need a two-point program:
1) found out who and where the people are

2) Go to them

In Christ,
Michael, that sinner

Neil, that you remember exactly which church I hope to one day attend regularly (oh where is that ferrari I ordered?!) after literally hundreds of posts is incontrovertible proof of a youthful disposition. And, yes this church is not that ethnocentric. But it s highly possible that I may leave the area and if I do I'll remember to check out a Melkite Church if a Ruethenian one isn't available. Thanks

I know EC's and OC's cultural id is strongly intertwined with religion because of history. but the challenge and must-do task for first generation and beyond is to move the cultural disputes and preservation efforts outside of church and into cultural clubs and (I'm not being facetious here) family reunions.

As mentioned above, the focus has to be on a North American Byzantine church concerned primarily with North American byzantines.

The first step is to squash the arguing. I'm )not sure you realize just how much it makes alienates "others".
Then , go out there and evangelize.

Peace

It has been my understanding that part of the problem for North America was that the clergy were formed in such a way that culturally the 2 groups were very separate from each other. The emigrant clergy from the Austrian Empire were very Polish and the clergy from the kingdom of Hungary were very Hungarian. The Bishops lead the people in their loyalty to each respective state. Even in the troubles among the Ruthenians in the early part of the 20th century in the USA it is noted that when the visting bishop sent to sort it all out spoke to the clergy he did so in Hungarian.

Here in Australia when the former Exachate which had been for Ruthenians and Ukrainians became and Eparch it was 'for Ukrainians' only because the late Bishop Prasko told Rome there were no Ruthenians here (he told me this himself). However there are many people here who are from what was once Hungarian territory once upon a time.

I once wrote to a Ruthenian Monk in the USA who informed that his people originaly came from the Carpathian mountains region but were not Ukrainians. So it is clear that he and his people are very clear what they are not and that is Ukrainian. Bishop Prasko said that eh was aware during WWII when he was studying in Rome that his fellow students who were from territory outside the boundaries of the pre war Soviet Republic of Ukraine did not identify culturally with Ukraine but felt closer to Russia. The bishop said that those who did identify with Ukrainian identity regarded this line of thinking as a joke. They also thought the enforced incorporation of the Trans-Carpathian region into the Soviet Ukraine was the reunification of a Ukrainian territory with its motherland.

Seems there are no easy answers here.

Dear Friends,

At one point in this discussion, I referred to Hritzko and/or Incognitus (but I know believe it was Hritzko) in connection with the issue of Ruthenian/Ukrainian identity and referred to the problems created by "one of our own."

Hritzko was, in fact, shut out of the forum by that time and I should NOT have referred to him or included him in a comment like that as he could not be here to defend himself.

I take this opportunity to apologise to Hritzko for this.

I also take this opportunity to apologise to Incognitus (wherever he is - anyone know?) in the same vein.

Alex

About the Bolhar stichera:

The Bulgarian chant arrived in western Rus' at some unknown time, but before 1600; it may have been introduced by Gregory Tsamblak, who served as Metropolitan of Kiev from 1415 to 1419, but that is a only a hypothesis. In any case, the Bulgarian melodies for troparia were adopted almost universally, because there were really no melodies for them when the Bulgarian chant arrived. Stichera were another issue; they already had melodies, so the Bulgarian chant did not supplant these in most communities. But the simple set of Bulgarian formulary stichera tones did win wide acceptance for some purposes, especially for 1) the litiya at Vespers, and 2) the funeral stichera in eight tones by St John Damascene. In the latter function, they fel out of use in Galicia, but remain to the present in Carpathian Rus'. However, for some reason during the 19th century the Bulgarian stichera for tones 3, 6, 7, and 8 fell out of use. The lack of litiya stichera in tone 7 adequately explains the disappearance of that melody in Galicia, where the Bugarian tones were no longer used for anything else. However, older sources do contain all eight tones; I have posted these to files in the "Podoben" list, if anyone is interested.

As for the Ukrainian/Rusyn situation, the situation in Carpathia Rus' is complicated by several circumstances. It is quite true that the language of this province is in the main a set of dialects of Ukrainian--from a linguistic viewpoint. That does not necessarily mean what Ukrainian patriots take it to mean; from the same linguistic perspective, a) Swedish, Danish, Bokmaal Norwegian, and Nynorsk Norwegian are all closely related dialects of a single language, and b) the language of northern Germany is *not* a dialect of standard German, but a different Germanic language, and the language of southern France is *not* a dialect of standard French, but a different Romance language. Moreover, in the western counties people speak not western dialects of Ukrainian but eastern dialects of Slovak, yet there is (unless competing nationalisms interfere) no real feeling of different ethnicities. If Ukrainians want to include the population of Carpathian Rus, they would do better to regard them as Latvians regard Latgalians; that is, *not* attempt to suppress the local language in favor of a national standard, etc. If Carpatho-Rusyns can be convinced that they can continue to think of themselves as, and to be, Carpatho-Rusyns, and not lose their own culture, language, etc., while being also Ukrainians, they are more likely to go for it.

The border between Ukraine and Slovakia in the Carpathians is wholly artificial, dividing the same population arbitrarily, and resulting in pressures to abandon indigenous culture in favor of a national standard from distant parts of the respective countries. This is not a recipe for happy campers.

Stephen