I am 100% Slovak and my wife is 50% Polish. All of my grandparents came from Slovakia. My mother's family was Greek Catholic, my father's Roman. I am in my 40s and was raised Roman in the chaos of the Roman Church. I first experienced beautiful Liturgy (in Latin) at a Roman Catholic College. It was through friends there that I was first introduced to a Russian Catholic Church which touched my soul so deeply. I loved it and would attend when I could and brought other Roman Catholics with me who also went, �Wow!� These were Roman Catholics who experienced beautiful liturgy in Latin! I attended the indult Latin Mass for three years. I learned to appreciate it although I can't say I loved it in the way I loved the Russian Church. Because of where my employment took me, I suffered through the Roman Rite for six years. Through friends who went to the same Roman Catholic College, I came in contact with the Ruthenian Church. I met the Bishop and found out he had baptized one of my cousins and buried my grandmother. He invited me and my family to attend a Ruthenian parish. I again found my home. I changed rites about 8 years ago and started traveling (with my wife and nine children) 260 miles round trip to attend a Byzantine parish. One year we did it every Sunday for over 5 months! My cousins in Pittsburgh who were Catholics were thrilled to see me return to my mother's childhood Church. ( My mother was the youngest of 14. Many of cousins, however, have left the Church.)
About six families (about 30 children)from my little town started doing the same thing. They also fell in love with Divine Liturgy.
I love that my children have been baptized, chrismated and communicated as infants. I have no problems with standing and bowing during consecration on Sundays. When the filioque was removed, it was a little unnerving, but after I read what Rome had to say on the issue and saw that this was an important and valid expression of the faith which did not deny the doctrine, I had no objections. I have no problems with a married clergy. I have often enjoyed hearing my mother�s stories about her priest who had 12 children. I love the Liturgy. We have an icon wall in our home and chant together each morning and night from our Byzantine prayer books. I do get a little testy when Easterners tell me that Roman theology is different than Eastern theology. I understand their emphasis is different, but I see them as complimentary not in opposition. Truth is One. How could they be in opposition? I see that their method is different and I appreciate that�that breathing with both lungs is a very good idea.
I have been educated by studying the Great Books including Eastern Fathers and many Greeks such as Plato and Aristotle. I have read a decent amount Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. Every time a hear that Aquinas is opposed to Eastern theology, I think of what Aquinas says in the Summa Contra Gentiles when he asks whether God can be known in this life and he says no � he can only be �known� (not comprehended) through death or ecstacy. Sounds very Eastern to me. He was mystic himself. It is consistent with the Eastern theology. I think he has the better argument over Palamas, but I can understand that they are wrestling with the same issue. I am happy to celebrate the feast of St. Gregory Palamas. I recognize that saints can be wrong on a point, but that does not keep them from being saints.
As many of you know, I have objected to the �Revised Liturgy� because of the change in the Creed and the �inclusive� language. My professional education has lead me to consider the �feminist� issue from the �inside.� I am a lawyer. In law schools, Christians were often mocked and ridiculed. I have first hand experience with those who have made it a Crusade to change our language. That is not all they want to change, and they are succeeding. The Church is beginning to wake up from its slumber in the last 40 years. If you are rearing children, brace them for persecution (which can be a good thing) in their adult life. The laws are changing and it is unlikely with the modern moral decay, that these downward trends in the law will stop. The failure on the part of those in the Church to see this, and instead invite the language of the "world" into the Liturgy is beyond me. It will not work because the message behind the language is contrary to the Chruch's message. The Papacy is very well aware of what is at stake and has rejected it.
It is on the inclusive language issue where I believe I have the greatest principled difference�one which cannot be ignored�with the translators. Fr. Petras has been kind enough to set forth the reasons (in his own mind�I am not picking on him, it�s just he is the only who has defended the language change) for these changes and has on a few occasions indicated that there a �sociological� reasons for changing the Creed. He states:
In the world today, however, gender roles are changing. This bodes massive sociological realignments. Whenever this happens, there is social displacement, even violence. When America faced the problem of slavery and thus of social realignment in the nineteenth century, it led to one of the most bloody wars in history. This is perhaps the reason for �extreme� emotion. We cannot have a physical war between men and women. In time, I think, things will settle down again. The world has changed, and the �text,� the language by which we govern our relationships, has also changed
The argument he sets forth is the same argument I had heard in law school by those who attack the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, these people would generally equate the slavery issue with the �women�s rights� issues. Remember what their greatest right is--the right to their own body. That thinking gave us wholesale abortion even as a baby is being born. I believe that at the heart of the modern feminist movement is a rejection of the Church�s belief that God made man, male and female and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. This fundamental Catholic teaching means that for most of us who are not called to be celibate, the most important thing we do in our lives will not be our employment, but will be being mothers and fathers. Celibates are called to this same thing, but in a different way. I believe that society is in turmoil because it is rejecting this fundamental truth that motherhood and fatherhood is at the root of who we are, created in His image. I find it no accident that the Crusade to change our language started when our culture accepted abortion and had already bought in to contraception�even in the Church. Perhaps the Eastern Churches are dying because men and women were not seeing the truth about motherhood and fatherhood. Those in the Roman Church who are faithful to Humanae Vitae, and are genuinely attracted to our Liturgy, are scandalized that we would change the Creed.
We have now scandalized the Orthodox and faithful Roman Catholics. In light of the fact that it is neither Eastern nor Catholic, Father Taft�s advocacy of inclusive language which I see goes back to at least 1998, is disturbing.
I would highly recommend that we follow the Ruthenian Recension which was promulgated by Rome in the 40s. From what I am learning, it has never even been tried.
I know that it has been said that Rome has approved the New Liturgy. When that is said, men are speaking more like lawyers than faithful Churchmen.
So how does this affect families?
Mothers and fathers have a duty to pass on the faith to their children. That is their gravest duty. Lex orandi, lex credendi. If your children learn to pray a Creed and Liturgy that is not accurate in translation, what will they learn to believe? Therein lies the greatest problem for those of us with children. If you think I am too radical about the importance of this issue, that�s OK. I think everything I believe and everything I desired when I came into the Eastern Church is radical.
Finally I would state that one of the joys which I had coming into the Eastern Church was the fact that I no longer had to explain to my older children after �Mass�, that even though Father did thus and thus, or said thus and thus, that�s not what the Church wants us to do, or that�s not what the Church teaches. I no longer have that joy. What a shame. What sadness.
The only solution to this problem, which is the solution for unity in the Ruthenian Church (and ultimately this is the same issue for the Orthodox if they truly desire unity), is be faithful to Peter. To quote a Pope who desired unity, �Be not afraid.�
