www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Spanish and Slavonic in Byzantine Worship in America

Fr Ihar,

Anytime, you can use one of our admin expressions if it helps. It's nice to know that we are not always equated with the devil by our posters.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Would it be simpler and better just to preach Good News?
By the way, Slovak version of golubci and vareniky happily co-exists in the former Slovak RC St Cyril's Church 5 blocks from our church with Mexican whatever-food-they-have.
Now, let me express my private view on the following. I think, that white Americans (surprise - Slavs included) betrayed and abandoned their cities not in order to preserve their traditions, but to avoid "coloured" and poor people - and don't try to persuade me that it isn't true.

That along with all the break ins, robberies, drive by shootings, drug dealing. gangs. etc.

If you, Lawrence, will not go out to evengelise them - they come and get you. So, what do you prefer - to do God's work, or to hide and eventually perish?

I prefer to see the law enforced against criminals instead of pandering to every self proclaimed community leader who hollers "racism" or the latest findings of some Marxist professor regarding the socio economic explanation for the reasons some people commit crimes. Other than that I've got no problem sharing my faith with anyone, and the Latin Mass I attend includes Haitians, Nigerians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Filipinos, you name it.

Good for you. Maybe.

At the risk of appearing dense, I fail to grasp why one would expect English people to speak Irish, and what that could possibly have to do with a celebration of the Divine Liturgy in Spanish in Ohio.

I speak Irish (imperfectly, to my shame), but then I'm not English. I don't speak Spanish, unfortunately - I wanted to go on an 8 week intensive course a dozen or so years ago, but it proved impossible to take that much time.

Not so incidentally, the Spanish-speaking countries have had the good sense to realize that Castilian Spanish and New World Spanish are sufficiently diverse as to make it appropriate to use different translation of the Mass. Perhaps they learned from ICEL's mistake.

Fr. Serge

"Go ye into the world and preach the gospel to all Slavs, Greeks and Arabs..." no, wait! It doesn't say that!!! - It says "preach the gospel to every creature!"

Etnik, we do not have to disparage or reject our ethnic heritage. But, Jesus says that if a seed falls into the ground and dies, it bears much fruit; otherwise, it remains alone. Perhaps we need to die a little bit to some of our heritage in order to reach out!

You are in an Orthodox jurisdiction, perhaps your demographic outlook is brighter. But we in the Byzantine Catholic Churches could face extinction through atrition some day. We need to bring the gospel to people. Yes, bring them all in- again, in the words of Christ "go out in the byways and compell them to come in."

I once had a fellow parishioner say to me- "the only reason for us to be here is our Rusyn heritage." I could not disagree more strongly! Our reason to be here is to preach Christ, and lead others to him; and to fulfill a unique ministry is to offer the Byzantine Liturgy and Spirituality as one path to following Christ within the Universal Church.

I frankly get excited about the prospect of inviting neighbors and immigrant to "come and see" our Divine Liturgy, and to offer Christ.

The smartest thing that the Byzantine Church in America could do is promote extensive out reach to Hispanics and other immigrants, we could bring people to Christ and renew our churches.

Blessings,

Lance

This topic and related topics always crack me up.

I've seen people write on this thread that the BCA should reach out to immigrants. Thus have Spanish. All in all not a bad idea seeing that the Spanish speaking population is growing here and actually reproducing rather than birth controlling themselves out of existence like Western cultures do. But having a Spanish Liturgy in Burton, OH. Hello, is anybody out there. The West Side of Cleveland, specifically near Detroit Ave and Lorain Ave. between Clark and Downtown would have been a great place to have a Spanish Liturgy because Spanish speaking people actually live in the area. Here's a crazy idea, Holy Ghost BCA is dying on the vine on West 14th smack dab in the middle of a Spanish speaking population. In Burton it would make more sense to have the Liturgy in Deitch, the language of the Amish, because there is more Amish than Hispanic in that area.

I never understand why those who speak of catering to immigrants don't factor in East European immigrants that might want Slavonic or Ukrainian, etc. How many BCA churches cater to those? I now attend Pokrova UGCC in Parma OH. They are 100% Ukrainian, even the sermon, and they even correctly know that Christmas is on January 7th. On Easter there are 1000+ people there for Liturgy and to get their baskets blessed. You see, it seems that Greek Catholics from Eastern Europe attend church more than those born in the West. It might not be a bad idea to have a church in the BCA with some Slavic customs and their languages instead of considering them anathema. In the Cleveland area, 99% of Slav Greek Catholic immigrants go to Pokrova, virtually none (<1%) go to the BCA. It isn't hard to figure out why is it?

There is no reason why the BCA shouldn't have some Spanish speaking churches in areas where there is a heavy Spanish population just as much as there is no reason why at least Cleveland and Pittsburgh shouldn't have at least one church respectively serving the needs of Rusyns and Ukrainians (remember our ancestors?). Obviously the overwhelmingly majority should be English based (without the feminized inclusive language) with a serious and proactive evangelization program.

There's room for all languages in the BCA because the full Ruthenian Rescension translates well into any language (excluding liberal agendas attached to the translation)!


Monomakh

I think if the Ruthenian Metropolia really cared about evangelization, they would first make concrete efforts to "regain" the thousands of fallen away (now Roman Catholic, Protestant, or no longer church-going) Byzantine Catholics who left over the last 35-40 years. The concensus seems to be that no one is trying to bring these lost souls back to their Ruthenian Metropolia home.

Why?

Ungcsertezs

Actually it would be to return to our true Traditions liturgically and celebrate the full Ruthenian Rescension, implement Matins and Vespers, teach and actually enforce confession which is non existent, teach about our fasting cylces which have disappeared, spend our money, time, and resources on evangelizing rather than revising and liberalizing, etc.

Father, there's no reason why we shouldn't be reaching out to those in the inner city with Spanish, and just as well there's no reason why here in Cleveland we can't have one parish that reaches out to those Greek Catholics from Europe in Slavonic and/or Ukrainian or are we no longer concerned about those from the Carpathian region?


My five year old does perfectly fine with it every Sunday, maybe he could help


Monomakh

Send 'im 'ere - we need servers in Minneapolis.

Father Ihar, I attended your DL in Old Church Slavonic, precisely because I had never heard the language. It was beautiful.

It seems, that since the scandal of the division between Galician and Carpathian Ukrainians-Rusyns, which cannot be justified anymore in XXI century, is still a reality we have to cope with, there's a certain kind of division of labour among Greek-Catholic jurisdictions in America. I am sure, that most of the people in the Mukachevo eparchy learn literary Ukrainian nowadays in their school and happy to attend services in the UGCC. I, personally, would be glad to have services in Ukrainian, Belarusian (especially in my case), Polish (if you find any Eastern rite Poles around here) and even (!) Slavonic providing there's a real need for it and we don't snatch people from our "competitors" in Christ (i.e. UGCC, Melkite, Romanians, etc.)

Concerning what you said about Vespers, Matins, etc. - we do try to pray correctly here in Minneapolis. Come and see, as Jesus said.

Thank you. I'm glad to hear it. I should say that my expectations of that particular event were unjustifiably much higher...