www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy I have never.... (A discussion regarding BCA and Orthodox practice and behavior

There seems to be an underlining theme by some here that the New Liturgy and the BCA practice in general is very normative and in line with mainstream Orthodoxy and Tradition. What I've seen couldn't be farther from this.

After a lot of reflection, the New Liturgy is not a surprise after a long line of independent and unique behavior.

The following statements are from my personal experience and exceptions may exist.

-I have never been to an OCA church (or any Orthodox church with Slav roots) that didn't have a litugical curtain.

However ~98% of the Byzantine Church of America (BCA) churches I have been to do not have a liturgical curtain.

-I have never been to an OCA (or Orthodox Church with Slav roots) that didn't practice the opening and closing of the royal doors during Divine Liturgy

98% of the BCA parishes I have been to open at the beginning and close at the end, at that's it.

-I have never been to an Orthdox Church that didn't have Vespers

95% of the BCA churches that I know of don't have Vespers

-I have never been to an Orthodox church that didn't have Matins

95% of the BCA churches that I know of don't have Matins

-I have never been to an Orthodox church that had a Liturgy in under 50 minutes.

95% of the BCA parishes that I have attended are in and out in 50-55 minutes.

-I have never been to an Orthodox church that has Saturday evening Liturgy and considers this Sunday Liturgy.

90% of BCA churches I know have a Saturday evening liturgy (the ones that don't share a priest)

-I have never been to an Orthodox church where Great Friday(Good Friday) has NOT been a solemn service. Lights turned down, etc. where you get the feeling that your at a funeral.

90% of the BCA parishes I have been to have the lights on and unless you checked the calendar you'd wouldn't know that this is a solemn service.

-I have never been to an Orthodox church where the laity did NOT venerate the icon on the Tetrapod and show reverence to other icons in the church.

95% of the BCA parishes, people walk in to church and just sit down like it's a movie theater or something and don't even acknowledge the icon on the Tetrapod, and forget about other icons on pedastals to reverence because they are not there.

-I have never been to a Slav rooted Orthodox church that didn't do at least three antiphons and the little litanies.

95% of BCA parishes do not do this practice.

-I have never been to an Orthodx church without an icon screen

Any church I have ever seen without an icon screen has been a BCA parish.

-I have never been to an Orthodox church, where on Pascha (Easter), the priest and laity did not process out and then the priest bangs on the door with the hand cross and then everyone proceeds in.

any church that I have been to that has deviated from the above has been a BCA parish.

-I have never been to an Orthodox Church where the priest gave the final blessing and then darted to the front door to shake hands. Instead, the faithful proceed forward, kiss the hand cross, venerate icons, etc.

Any church that I have been to that deviates from the following has been a BCA parish

-I have never been to an Orthodox church that didn't do prostrations during The Great Fast during presantified Liturgy.

Any BCA parish I have been to, I have NEVER seen a single person do a prostration during Presantified Liturgy (other than myself and my family) and most of the other people look like, 'I never knew that Mecca was in that direction'?

I'll think of some more, can you?

This topic is interesting regarding the New Liturgy.

I think that the underlying theme that came out of the first post was that whenever there has bee a shortcut, liberalization, chopped up, whatever, the BCA is the one that goes that route.

Pope JPII and Benedict continue to tell us to return to our roots, and yet we continue to hoe the path that takes us away from our Orthodox brethern and in the case of the New Liturgy, our Greek Catholic brethern as well.

Just on principle I would be against these tendencies, but can someone point to one piece of success that they have brought. They have not brought anything productive. I would even argue that they have caused further divisions. Does anyone who can think for themself think that the New Liturgy is going to be any different.

With all due respect, Father David can come on here and tell us until he's blue in the face that the Orthodox are comfortable with the New Liturgy, but if they think it's so great, why don't they adapt the New Liturgy and other liberal practices that we have?

Is the implementing the New Liturgy help the BCA meet their continued goal of not being Orthodox in Union With Rome, but Watered-Down Orthodoxy?

Monomakh

ByzKat posted on another thread:

'..."Theotokos" is a term I hear every week at our OCA parish (which does NOT have Matins, by the way...),...'

As soon as I read the inital post, I knew that somebody would dig out examples that would point out the few OCA churches that deviate from the majority of their churches.

Let me ask you this.

Which church has a higher percentage of parishes that celebrate Matins and/or Vespers?

a) Byzantine Catholic Church
b) Orthodox Church of America

Monomakh

Dear Michael Ceralarius,

The Greek Orthodox Church in America, the largest Orthodox jurisdiction, with a few exceptions like my parish, does not do alot of the things you mention.

Call it Americanization, Protestantization, Modernization, or whatever else you like.

So, don't be so hard on the Byzantine Catholic churches.

In Christ,
Alice

Unfortunately, I am going to have to disagree here. In carefully reviewing the list from the point of Matins down is representational of most parishes of the Greek Archdiocese with the exception of the tetrapod. Instead, icons of the patronal saint and feast are set at the entrance to the church, where they are venerated and also candles are lit.

Prostrations are also re-entering into the praxis of many communities, especially during the Presanctified Liturgy.

The use of the hand cross on the doors is a purely Slavic rubric for the Paschal Procession.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Dear Father Anthony,

Suffice it to say that Archbishop Spyridon brought alot of changes back to traditional Orthodoxy. I had never seen a prostration until he sent out a mandate to all the churches about reinstating their practice. I still remember my parish priest showing all the Sunday School teachers at our monthly meeting how to do one, and when to do one, because the 'new Archbishop' wants us to.

Another mandate that was given, (my husband was on the Parish Council at the time) by Archbishop Spyridon was that icon of the feast day should be set in the middle of the entrance to the church. Until then, they generally were not.

He got crucified for it, but fortunately, they seem to be sticking.

The GOA was notorious for the liberal changes it made during the years of the long time administration...perhaps not as bad as the ones that Michael is describing in the Byzantine Catholic Church, but close. Most Greeks visiting from Greece didn't recognize the church as being the same one they knew at the time. Even fasting and confession had become passe for a few decades.

Regards in Christ,
Alice

P.S. Many of our churches still do not offer vespers. I still remember this being a sore point that a former Orthodox poster (who grew up in the GOA but moved to another jurisdiction) here used to bring to my attention privately.

One practice that has been universal to all Eastern Catholic AND Orthodox churches I have visited has been that of anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of the people arriving after (usually well after) the start of Divine Liturgy.

The things that draw us together�


~Isaac

Ah!

The universality of the church. Late to arrive and early to leave.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Michael,

You obviously have not been to a BC liturgy in Phoenix.

During Lent many of the parishioners who are physically able do the prostrations, and have been doing them for at least the 7 years I have been here.

Many, though not all, of the parishioners venerate the icon on the tetrapod prior to liturgy; others venerate it when they come up for communion and/or mirovanije.

We have a candlelight procession around the church at the beginning of Easter Matins and the priest bangs on the door before we come back in.

We have an iconostatis, though not a liturgical curtain. I have heard, though I cannot verify it, that the liturgical curtain was a late import for our church and thus not necessarily part of returning to our roots.

Great Friday is a very solemn event and the lights are dimmed; indeed, I have heard some parishioners complain that they can't read the service booklets in the dim lights.

Sophia

I thought I would add my experiences for whatever they may help to illuminate (which I'm guessing ain't much!).

The OCA churches I've been in do. The one ACROD church I've been to does not.

That's my experience.

For whatever reason, none of the Greek churches around me do. The ACROD parish doesn't either. All of the AOA and OCA parishes do though.

I will say as a side note, the Greek churches in my experience hold the most services during Lent and Holy Week.

The Greeks and Antiochians do Orthros and in the OCA parishes I've been to they do third hour (not matins).

An hour and fifteen minutes I think is the shortest I've ever experienced, and that was at a lightly attended Soul Saturday (i.e. a short communion line). I'm not counting Orthros or the Proskomedia, just the liturgy itself.

Never heard of such a thing. I had no idea EC's did this. Is the BCC the only one? Do you mean people would go on Saturday but not Sunday?

Again I have a hard time understanding how this wouldn't be the norm.

Not all parishes have a Tetrapod. In my experience Greek and Antiochian parishes will have an icon stand near the entrance or in the narthex by the candles. People will venerate the icons here and light candles. Usually there will be some icons that rotate (like for feasts) and some that are always there. The Tetrapod is a fixture in Slavic churches though in my experience.

The ACROD parish I have been to doesn't do the little litanies IIRC.

I would think that goes without saying!

Yep, that sounds normal.

I've only seen slight variance. Some priests will hold the cross and pass out antidoron. Some will hold the cross only and an altar server will distribute the antidoron. I've also seen a priest who instead of standing up front took the cross around, and then everybody went up front before going out.

I have been to one where they didn't. They knelt instead.

Andrew

Michael,
Have you ever been to Anunnciation in Homer Glen?

-Katie g

Katie,

We just need our curtain!

In Christ,

John

Ilian wrote:

"Never heard of such a thing. I had no idea EC's did this. Is the BCC the only one? Do you mean people would go on Saturday but not Sunday?"

I think what is meant is the same practice that the Roman Catholics now have, that one can fulfill their Sunday obligation by going on a Saturday evening liturgy at say 5pm.

Monomakh......
The Carpatho-Russian small traditions vary from Russian traditions. In various ways...
Different antiphons
no curtain
we had an excellent list here as of recent...
We even noted the different prayers and commerations and such.
So it's hard to assume that there is a "norm," especially when you are dealing with different small traditions.

Well one has to recall the UGCC abd the Trans Carpathians Catholics were the most Latinised of all the Byzantine Catholic Churches. They had lost huge slabs of their tradition and are still on the road to rediscovery of what a treasury they have.

If you think things are bad now you should see what they used to get up to when immitation of their 'betters' in the Latins Rite was supposed to impress them and show how truly Catholic they were.

It is not so long ago that their bishops stopped dressing completely as Latins with all the purple, Lace and rings and of course clean shaven. Notice the bishops reluctance still to wear the klobuk and and a proper mandias prefering to use an RC street cloak and put stripes on that. Metropolitan Judson wore the white klobuk of a Metroplitan but you wont see too much of that today with any of the North American Metropolitans of either UGCC or Ruthenian camps.

There wasa plan some eyars ago to merge the Russian, Bielorussian and Ruthenians (before the Galich church used Ukrainian) but the smaller groups did not want to join up with the Latinised, so it was not followed up with.

It can only get better in my view but a major problem as I see it is the apointment of bishops who are not monks and know nothing of monastic life. The apointment of diocesan clergy has contributed in my view to the 'Low Mass' mentality which is still alive and well all these years after Vatican II in many places (Dublin is not one of them).