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

Just a note. The local OCA parish is growing beyond belief! Our BCC parish should do so well.

That is simply not the overall pattern nationwide. That is why our hierarchs ought to be checking with their Orthodox brother bishops concerning strategies and tactics designed for growth, if they are not already doing so.

I am not talking out of my hat here. I have been in an OCA parish for nearly a decade now, off and on, and now quite regularly. So I am not guessing.

Eli

Alice, thank you for defending me and correcting me.

Everyone else, Goodbye. I am fed up with the endless, acrimonious debates about liturgy, translations, and who's right and who's wrong.

-- John

If you're near the mission in Knoxville, that actually doesn't surprise me. They have three factors very much working in their favor.

1. Demographics (the South is growing).
2. A very good priest.
3. A very good bishop.

Andrew

John,

Right, wrong, or whatever one's opinion may be - what you have described above is pretty much the dominating view of the Antiochians. I would say almost without exception.

The OCA is a different story.

Andrew

Thank you for the clarification, John.

In what specific and particular ways would this American culture manifest itself in ways the BCC currently does not? What forms and shapes and sounds would it take?

What precisely is American culture? Hot dogs? Baseball games? But what do these and similar phenomena have to do with religion? We can eat the hot dogs and play baseball quite regardless of what religion, if any, we adhere to.

There has been considerable work done on the religious elements of American life and history - they include a large dose of Nativism and anti-Catholicism. I'm still recovering from the time that John Paul II first visited the USA and a well-known television commentator bemoaned that he could not find "a respectable anti-Catholic". I won't even ask what could render a bigot respectable while allowing him to go on being a spokesman for bigotry! In any case, that sort of thing has no place either in Orthodoxy or in Catholicism.

Then there is the phenomenon of what Bellah and other scholars have termed "American civil religion". It's not quite what it used to be, but it's still very much around and a part of American culture. It too has no place either in Orthodoxy or in Catholicism (unless we wish to approve the sort of "Orthodoxy" and "Catholicism" which would excuse, for example, support for abortion on the specious argument that we cannot impose our morality on someone else!).

I write all this to suggest that we must think carefully about what it will mean to have a Church that is purely American - and we must make certain that we are not proposing some sort of watered-down religion.

Fr Serge

If baseball is is like Aussie Rules Football then it is a religion all of it's own.

If one lives in the great city of God, Melbourne (ask any Melbourne Greek and they will tell you) where following of the above mentioned game is compulsory regardless if you are the Archbishop (also Metro for the Uks)or a humble something or other. So sometime mixing footy and Orthodox/catholicism is OK. It must be the same at the baseball.

Amen! That is the issue. I think someone important has recently said something about the ""culture" of death."

Actually, I was referring to St. Anne's OCA Church in Oak Ridge. That's about 20 miles from Knoxville. They are doing quite well.

Father, Yale Professor and literary critic Harold Bloom wrote a book called the "American Religion" in which he asserts most of what is called religion in America is essentially gnosticism. It is a cross confessional phenomenon. What he means I believe is that it tends to be highly individualistic, contra authority and focused on the spiritual as opposed to the physical. The Publisher's Review of the book says the following:

Without knowing it, American worshipers have moved away from Christianity and now embrace pre-Christian Gnosticism, asserts Bloom ( The Book of J ). In his most controversial book to date, the Yale professor defines "the American Religion" as a Gnostic creed stressing knowledge of an inner self that leads to freedom from nature, time, history and other selves. Every American, he writes, assumes that God loves her or him in a personal, intimate way, and this trait is the bedrock of our national religion, a debased Gnosticism often tinged with selfishness. The core of this odd, ponderous book focuses on Pentecostals, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists and especially Mormons and Southern Baptists--the two denominations Bloom believes will dominate future American religious life. He argues that mainline Protestants, Jews, Roman Catholics and secularists are also much more Gnostic than they realize.

Many of his conclusions may be wrong (and certainly he has an agenda), but I do think he hits on something. I think it is the kernel of truth in what he is saying that is the potential danger for the church if it somehow gets imbued with these negative aspects of American religious culture. A warning sign to me for instance would be hostility to monasticism.

Once the cultural context of our churches is removed, it is not clear to me what will fill the void.

Andrew

Is this a new book? Is it available? Based on your brief description of it, you have definitely caught my interest...

Although, I think Fr. Kelleher's book must come first.

Chris

John, please don't go!

You are bright and insightful. The community here needs your input and I for one agree with and enjoy reading much of what I have seen from your keyboard.

Michael

In my area the OCA convert-based parishes are faring very well. The Rusyn and Russian based parishes are not on the whole faring so well in membership. But this is not having the same dire consequences as the BCC parishes in the same situation, because the old parishes have their own money in trust.

They survive the lean periods better and can relocate if they find it necessary or desireable. Relocation can give them a good shot in the arm because a new temple in a neighborhood will attract inquirers and inspire the congregation with renewed enthusiasm.

I do believe the practices in the convert parishes are slowly evolving. There is nothing really deliberate about it but when the founding members are from mixed Orthodox backgrounds almost every little detail and procedure is subject to consensus of the most active collaborating participants.

I am no expert on this but I think the way they sing the tones is evolving in some places as well. In other words I don't think they are really good at keeping to a standard in all places. Naturally they will follow the Typicon, but how they do everything called for is subject to the interpretation of those at hand.

If parishes and missions like that have more success spreading into the American-Canadian heartland we might see a North American "recension" develop yet.

+T+
Michael

I honestly don't know.

Part of the problem I have is my limited experience. I know one (1) Byzantine Catholic parish. So, that parish has assumed the status (rightly or wrongly) of "normal" in my mind.

At my parish, ethnicity is not a defining issue. Most of the people are Slovakian (sp?) in ancestry, and they rightly take pride in that. Some of the people even speak Slovakian at home or amongst themselves. And, a little Slovakian is used in the Liturgy. But, otherwise, the Liturgy is in English. And, Slovakian ethnicity is not a quasi litmus test for membership or orthodoxy or orthopraxis. Slovakian ethnicity is just part of who they are.

I'm sorry: I think I am messing up again in my attempt to express this. Let my try it like this. When I visited services at two Greek Orthodox parishes, it was clear that preserving Greek culture and the Greek language were very important --almost as important-- as preserving and living the Gospel. This was evident in the Liturgy (at least half of which was in Greek; the rest was in English) and at the socializing outside of Liturgy. Both practicing the Gospel and preserving Greek culture and language seemed to be equally important goals for those two communities.

Now, I am not faulting that. But, I'm not interested in that. I have nothing against Greeks, but I'm not Greek, and I really don't want to have to adopt Greek culture and language in order to practice Eastern Christianity. In short, it was Eastern Christianity that I was interested in and not any particular ethnicity.

Hence, I was very pleased at what I found at what eventually became my parish. Preserving an ethnicity and practicing the Gospel are not two equally important goals there. Practicing the Gospel is the main goal; preserving ethnicities (Slovak and others) are secondary. Ethnicity is there, but it's no more than a few lines in the Liturgy and four ethnic dinners throughout the year. Otherwise, ethnicity is not the reason they go to church or stay in the parish. The Gospel, according to the Eastern Tradition and as part of the Catholic Church, is why they are part of the parish. And that's what I found attractive and (perhaps mistakenly) that's what I assumed is "normal" in the BCC.

Put another way, it seemed that the BCC was striving to be an Eastern Catholic Church for people who had assimilated into American culture and who were not particualrly interested in preserving the culture and language from their ancestors' homelands. In short, it seemed like the BCC was trying to be an Eastern Catholic church for the American ethnicity.

Perhaps I was wrong in that conclusion, but that was the conclusion I drew. And it was a serious factor in my application to join the BCC instead of one of the more ethnically oriented Eastern Churches. I wanted the Gospel and the Eastern Tradition, and I did not want to have adopt another ethnicity; hence, I joined the BCC.

I genuinely do not want to offend anyone here, and I apologize if I have done so. But while I am trying to understand that preserving an ethnicity is important to some people in the BCC, please try to understand that it doesn�t matter very much to others in the BCC.

-- John