www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Implementing the New Liturgy: how we are doing it.

I just wish there was more I could do. At this point, I do feel like a whiner.

There is more than prayer?

You know that your words are heard. So use them prudentially and pray. And trust that your prayers will be answered in due course and it is His will that will be done. Hold fast for the time and use that internal suffering as a gift to be used for the good of the Church and her people.

There is nothing "more" or more important than that.

Mary

The Revised Liturgy will fail. It is already crashing and burning in the parishes that are doing it.

The new request for feedback about what people don�t like is insincere. The books are already printed. Change will not be allowed. Those who have tried to give feedback to Petras and Thompson are ridiculed to their faces for not having the degrees they have and for not appreciating their hard work. They are unwilling to hear any opinion other then their own. You can give them countless examples and they pretend they have not heard them.

The new Liturgy is nothing more than 1970s Roman Catholicism. The new music is nothing more than what a Roman Catholic thinks prostopinije should sound like. Let�s hope it doesn�t take out too many people as it crashes and burns.

Dear Dostojno Jest,

Actually, my requests for feedback over the past year or two have been entirely sincere. I hear "The music is bad! There are bad accents! It is nothing like real authentic (tm) prostopinije!" I would like to know exactly what people mean, in detail, but the debate keeps turning to "They don't mean it - they are foreigners - it's ALL bad - etc.". That hardly furthers any discussion or understanding.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

Jeff,

Thanks for not including me among the whiners. I am not sure where my pastor or Bishop includes me, but I would say among the disobedient. Sometime after I had begun posting on this forum, I had been asked (by my Bishop via my pastor) to keep my mouth shut (ie don�t post on this forum anymore) regarding my observations about inclusive language.

At first I had agreed to keep quiet. Then my conscience began to bother me. After posting a few times, I wrote my Bishop an email, through my pastor, why I couldn�t be quiet. This happened after several discussions with others (including several priests) and much prayer. This was long after my initial letter to my Bishop about my objection to the new translation.

I have been directly involved in an outreach and also principally responsible for hosting a vocation retreat for young men, boys and their fathers. Last year we had over 100 attendees with over 65 young men and boys. The retreat was in wilderness of New Mexico on 460 acres of privately owned land and for three and half days this group lived a full liturgical life according to the mind of the Eastern Church. This was not a summer �camp�, it was a mini-monastic retreat. The young men and boys loved it. As did all the dads. At the retreat site, we built an outdoor iconostasis and a chapel which is yet unfinished but well along the way. One of the members of the liturgical commission was officially responsible for the retreat from the ecclesiastical side.

Then came the promulgation of the RDL. Although the outreach might have failed anyways, nonetheless, the individuals involved in the outreach were the ones hosting the retreat. And it involved an enormous amount of their time and energy in the planning and execution of the event. None of this exists here now. Now the Bishop and priests will blame the failure on �us.�

With the background, I set forth a response to CDL. How, with the new liturgy can you bring in new members to the Church? How with the new liturgy will you develop vocations? I can�t see how it will be done.

When the new liturgy was promulgated, I no longer, in good faith, could convince my friends (mostly Catholic) to join our Ruthenian Church officially and thus make the outreach here into a viable mission. Now these were a group of people (with lots of children) who would regularly travel 260 miles round-trip to attend a Divine Liturgy. Some would say they were simply fleeing the chaos of the Roman Rite here, but that does not make sense of the fact that they were hosting a retreat to develop vocations for the Byzantine Church or building a chapel. Furthermore, if these folks were just fleeing the chaos of the Roman Rite, one cannot blame them for not wanting to flee from chaos to chaos.

With the new liturgy, I could no longer think of developing vocations for my Church. Why? Because I think faith and reason are in fact complimentary and not at odds with one another. Inclusive language in the Creed and the Liturgy says that they are at odds. One argument I have been presented with says inclusive language is a good thing because that is the way people speak today. Sort of. They do in academia and in the law. But real people don�t, unless they are trained to speak that way by the so called �experts,� so as not to offend others who have been trained that way. Furthermore, there are a lot of things people do today that are wrong, so why worry about what the world is doing?

What I set forth above is the superficial argument that has been given for the defense of inclusive language. The more serious one is that terms like �men� and �mankind� are sexist. I respond, �Says who?� Not Benedict XVI, not John Paul II, not the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and not any real expert on language like Fr. Mankowski, S.J. The world says it. The two-bit theologians in the Catholic Church say it, but not anyone of real repute. And the reason the real teachers in the Church don�t say that such language is sexist is because it is not true. In fact, it�s so seriously flawed that the teaching Church has rejected it. When I see that our Bishops issue a public letter which explains why inclusive language is true, then I�ll have to take it more seriously. [Let�s start a petition asking them to do just that]. But of course they won�t because that would be to contradict Rome. Finally, I can�t look my children in the eye with a straight face and say this inclusive language and the liturgy which has adopted it really is a good thing.

Since those who have fashioned the new liturgy and who are in power say it�s a good thing either directly and publically by defending it (these are very few) or by their silence (remember St. Thomas More maintained that silence means consent), there must be more changes of the same kind coming. If it is truly good, they must in fact make more changes in future translations of other liturgical texts and in the translation of Scripture as well. [While the term �children� has been an accepted translation in the beatitudes, it should have been corrected. The theology behind a correct translation in this day and age, is too important not to correct it.]

With Benedict XVI at the helm, there is no doubt in my mind that he is preaching that faith and reason go hand in hand. A Liturgy, a Creed and a Church that severs that relationship between faith and reason, by a purposefully false translation, is doomed to failure.

The gauntlet on inclusive language has been thrown down. It began at least in 1998 in Connecticut and should have been dealt with then. Our Church, if it really wants to be obedient to Rome on this issue, and if it wants to flourish, needs to do the right thing, even if those in authority have to eat some humble pie.

I note that Fr. Loya welcomes the �dissent� in his Church--true liberality at work. But orthodox dissent won�t be tolerated by many. There is a lesson in that. Fr. Loya has the right attitude about it because he sees it affects the truth, and being blind to the truth will only mean a loss of members�important ones. I dare say I have yet met a mother with lots of children who was demanding inclusive language in the Creed and Divine Liturgy. At best they can�t believe that princes of the Church fell for that one.

Would that Fr. Loya�s approach to the matter was the prevalent one. Then there would not be a loss of membership and there could be real organic change.

So how do priests implement the RDL? I would suggest that Father Loya is doing it the right way. He is not chasing the dissent away, he is welcoming it.

PS - One can do more than pray. Every laymen, male and female, young and old, can chant the real Creed (which is not the property of priests or Bishops) in the Liturgy as it should be chanted. That will speak volumes!

Jeff,

What do you think you can do about the bad music?

One priest said he marked up over 300 bad accents in the new pew book and gave it personally to both Bishop John and Archbishop Basil. If the bishops will not hear their priests what do you think you can do?

I�ve spoken to both Father David and to Mr. Thompson directly. Both treat any and all suggestions to improve their work as personal insult. What power do you have over them if the bishops will not direct them?

People have discussed the problems here. You and Thompson have treated all criticism as personal insult. You have labeled everyone who disagrees with the RDL as a whiner.

Our new music makes us sound like we just got off the boat. It is not a product of people who know English well.

We treat Boksaj as if it were canonical chant and the Liturgy as if we can do with it as we please. That is why it is crashing and burning.

DJ

Dear Dostojno Jest,

I beg your pardon, but I've never felt insulted by any comments about the music, here or elsewhere. I have asked repeatedly for specifics, back when the music was still being worked on; I'm continuing to ask since instructional material and so on is still in preparation. So far, all the accounts of "bad music" have been hearsay, such as the 300 bad accents you just mentioned.

I have never labelled ANYONE as a "whiner", and I was certainly happy to spend time at our two local parishes hearing people's comments, questions and complaints, as fielded by our pastor. I do know there are people who really feel that the ruthlessly simplified, 1960's settings of our chant are the only acceptable ones in English, but there have certainly been others side-by-side over the years that better maintained the old melodies.

If you have details, please send them to me. I'm interested.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Yes. How silly of me.

Dear Dostojno Jest,

You have mistaken CDL's comments for ByzKat's.

Now, could you give an example of bad accents, as you see them? I'm interested, too.

"Everybody hates it" comments aren't helpful. And they certainly aren't true. Not everyone hates it.

I had stopped reading the Revised Liturgy posts because nothing new was being said. Then I saw this topic, which was supposed to be about "Implementing the New Liturgy: how we are doing it." Unfortuantely, like all the other topics under Revised Liturgy, it's turned back to the same old discussion about what's wrong or bad about the new liturgy and how to get rid of it.

Once again a possibly constructive thread has been hijacked by the same few people who have their heals dug in. I have read their posts and they're not saying anything that they haven't said over and over, ad nauseum.

PLEASE ... let's get back on topic -- how ARE we implementing the New Liturgy as it was promulgated? If your parish is implementing the new liturgy, and there are problems, what are you doing to resolve them -- other than dump the new liturgy. What steps are you taking to help the transition? Are any parishes offering on-going instruction or classes for the parishioners who want to learn the new music? Are any priests or deacons including discussion of the textual changes that bring the liturgy into conformity with the original Greek and Slavonic?

If you want to keep complaining, do it on the myriad other negative threads! Let those of us who are trying to implement the New Liturgy have ONE constructive thread!

Yes. I will always chant the Creed in the language in which it was intended to be chanted.

Only as a side note: I heard these kind of comments before the RDL. It got even to the ridicolous part that holding a candle at a Panahida was too Orthodox.

My way into Orthodoxy was paved by such anti-orthodox behaviours and comments. It was wearing me out because my main purpose in a church is not that I have to guard myself constantly because I appear to be too orthodox. So I finally left and I am at peace now.

Sorry if you thought I was hijacking the thread. I did not mean to. I was arguing that Fr. Loya was implementing the RDL in a way that was unique. He was welcoming dissent. He has publically encouraged people to write to their Bishops. That seemed to be a really positive and important part of the overall game plan of the implementation of the RDL. It means that there can be DIALOGUE within the community.

My apologies, and thanks Sophia.

Our two parishes in the Binghamton area began using the new books about two weeks into the Great Fast, with a minimal amount of preparation of the part of the people, and about 3 weeks preparatio n and coordination by the cantors involved.

We chose the settings closest to our "ordinary" melodies (we actually rotated through several in the past) and decided to stick to those for at least eight weeks. We used the same melodies at both parishes because many families attend both from time to time.

The pastor explained a little about the new books; for the first two weeks, the cantors announced more page numbers than we would have liked, but we could see from the choir loft that the number of people using the new books (about the same fraction as used the Levkulic pew books) were almost always on the correct page, at least for the ordinary parts of the Liturgy, by the third week, and we cut way down on announcements. In particular, we did NOT announce the page for the prokeimenon / Alleluia, since the page turns come very close together.

Many of those using the Byzantine Book of Prayer rather continued to do so; we heard later that they complained that there we no daily prayers, priests' prayers, etc. in the new People's Book, and seemed mollified to hear than a new edition of the prayer book was being prepared.

We continued to use the "old" Saint Basil melodies, but since those were usually sung only by the cantors, that didn't make a great deal of difference. By Holy Week, we actually started using the new Basil melodies and several people were singing them by the last time we used them; we'll return to them at Christmas.

Our priest announced that he was not pleased with everything in the new books, but reminded the faithful that the same sort of bobbles (and complaints) occured the previous five times we had switched to new texts and music over the past fifty years, and invited anyone with specific complaints to write to the bishop. He listened to all the complaints people made, and after Pascha held a question and answer session after EVERY Liturgy on a given Sunday; most of the complaints were about the physical use of the book (esp from people who did not realize what the page turn markers were), and about problems on the part of people who were hard of hearing. The pastor agreed to start putting page numbers for the current tone and propers in the weekly parish bulletin so people can find their places in advance.

Our pastor came back from the Passaic presbyteral meetings prepared to answer most of the questions people had about text changes; no one asked about inclusive language, but mostly about "Theotokos"; our pastor quoted the liturgy in Slavonic (from memory) to point out where the word was used and why.

We do continue to use a fair bit of Slavonic (as before) and hymns before the Liturgy and during Communion; several people asked when a complete hymnal would be available, and whether it would include Slavonic, especially for newcomers and children who don't have it memorized.

The cantors at our parish have talked about how to choose the next set of Sunday music; in the meantime, at our Binghamton parish, the cantor is starting to use other settings on weekdays. In particular, he says some of the music in the new book are from his old favorites in Slavonic, which before he was adapting to English from memory, and that he was glad to see them in print.

After about 4 weeks, people were regularly harmonizing at both our parishes, though the volume is only about 75% of what it was before. Honestly, some of that may be do the fact that the cantors are still a little more tentative, especially starting, than they were before. At both parishes, cantors have been downloading materials from the MCI website and using them - particularly for Sundays that mix several sets of propers, and for the Glory / Now and ever at the kontakia, to avoid several quick page flips.

We are talking about putting a bookmark in the books (colored card stock) noting which settings of the major Divine Liturgy hymns we are using on Sundays; we may try to implement this after Pentecost when we start using some new musical settings.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

I do not see the negativity. I see parishes beginning to question the "experts" as they become familiar with the implementation of the reformed Liturgy. I see a Church divided as the implementation takes hold. I pray that I can hold out for the rising phoenix.