www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Neo-Latinization Movement with the Eastern Catholic Churches

Mexican, that photo is frightening. Looks like a "Spirit of V2" mock-Mass with Eastern vestments. Getting rid of the beards also gives the neo-Latinizers an even more creepy look.

They are celebrating outdoors in a grotto with a trellis functioning as an icon screen and a curtain drawn between the royal doors. The sunlight is clearly coming from behind them. And they wouldn't be outdoors if the Orthodox would return their churches. So much for Latinization. And those "creepy" beardless priests are confessors of the faith having suffered under the Communist regime. You people need to start thinking before you post.

It's hard to tell, but is there an antimens on the "altar"?

You can see the Gospel is resting on the folded antimens. Again they would not need a makeshift "altar" if the Orthodox would give their churches with the their real altars back.

If they lose all the Latinizations, and act more Orthodox, something might happen.

Looks can be deceptive. There are other photos on the website that do show better perspectives than this, but the website photos seem to have problems loading the correct selected image.

http://www.bru.ro/blaj/foto-sfintire-temelie-pesceana/

Fr. Serge,

Bless.

One thing about the Syro-Malabar Qurbana - they have restored the proper position of facing the East. What they still have to implement is removing the vestiges of forced latinization. The chants are somewhat lacking - at least *some* - in that they are 'tuned' incorrectly. They have a latin 'ring' to it, which just doesn't fit. Also, altar girls are not uncommon. Sadly, leavened bread is not used - although I can't figure out why for the life of me - this is a common problem in many Eastern Catholic parishes.
What the Malabar Liturgy does today is - the first part of the Qurbana faces the people until the Gospel is proclaimed and homily given, then the priest faces East with the people and continues the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
Another couple of issues is the creation of a 'low' Mass - I personally don't think it should exist. And some choirs doing 'performances' instead of truly *leading* the congregation.

p.s. Thanks for the compliment to the Syro-Malankara Church! (although I wish we would universally use leavened bread)

Regarding the picture I posted, eventhough it's true that many of their churches are still used by the Orthodox who have refused to return them to their legitimate owners, some of the new churches which have been built after the 1989 revolution are unfortunately in Vatican II Western style.

Regarding the Chaldean Church, the Holy Synod recently approved a liturgical reform that accomodates the liturgy more according to the Assyrian practice, they have removed many Tridentinizations (the words "mystery of faith" in the consecration) and have restored the traditional possition of the priest facing the altar when celebrating the liturgy, at least during the second part of the liturgy.

http://www.kaldu.org/14_Reformed_ChaldeanMass/ReformEssay.html

Making an assesment of photographs... My first best guess is that - given what you have to judge them by - they are just too clean shaven?

So if they are vostochnik enough they will derserve to get back what is rightfully theirs? Grow some beards and then we can talk about giving them back what is theirs?

I think all will applaud the removal of Tridentinizations. However, it is also clear from the presentation of the Chaldean "liturgical reform" -- which, according to the essay quoted, is only in the first of three projected stages -- that the Chaldean Divine Liturgy has had some of its "inconsistencies" and "redundancies" eliminated, including supposedly repetitive prayers and merely "devotional" prayers (such as the the prayers before Communion and the "Kushape", which is reminiscent of the Franco-German "Apologiae" which existed in medieval Latin Missals). Many very old liturgical rites -- many of them apparently more than a millenia old -- were removed in order to "conform" to the writings of certain Syriac commentators.

Meanwhile, the Assyrians continue to use the "unreformed" liturgy, neither "Tridentinized" nor "Reformed and Purified":

www.cired.org/liturgy/apostles.html [cired.org]

Compare this with the Reformed Chaldean Mass:

www.faswebdesign.com/ECPA/Worship/ChaldeanMass.html [faswebdesign.com]

All of this might seem innocuous at first, but for Latin-rite Catholics like me, this rings alarm bells. The reform of the Chaldean Mass proceeds along principles directly borrowed from the Roman liturgical reforms of the 1950's and 1960's.

The principles being used to reform the Chaldean Mass are exactly the same as those which were used to begin the reform of the Roman Liturgy in the late 40's and early 50's, leading to the 1955 Reform of Holy Week (further "reformed" in 1957, 1959 and 1960 and now embodied in the 1962 Missal) which even traditionalist liturgists loyal to Rome consider to be a liturgical disaster, hence the increasing number of requests for indult to celebrate according to the pre-1955 and not the 1962 Holy Week. Of course, it didn't end there, but led onwards to the 1969 Novus Ordo.

But what are these principles? These are:

1) Archaeologism / "Repristination" -- rites that are themselves already ancient are removed in order to conform to what was said to have been in place in the first centuries of Christian antiquity.

2) The removal of "accretions" and "redundancies" which are supposed to have no value. Much of the Chaldean reform consists of the elimination of these. Frankly, is the threefold repetition of the Our Father -- which existed in the old Chaldean liturgy but now removed -- such a bad thing? And is the removal of the remnants of the ancient monastic psalmody from the beginning of the liturgy -- as has now been accomplished in the new Chaldean liturgy -- really necessary?

3) "Rationalizations" of the Rite -- removal or rearrangement of ceremonies that are said to have little or no meaning in their current assignations.

4) Simplification and shortening of rites

Roman Catholics have had the hard and painful lesson in the past 40 years of knowing that these principles can, in the end, cause great harm for the liturgy of the Church. Much of the best liturgical scholarship of the past decade has shown that many "redundancies" and "irrational" elements in the old liturgies -- Eastern and Western -- actually have very rich meanings and are of great value. And here are the Chaldeans imitating the Roman reform... albeit without the "ad populum".

Eastern Christians, please, think LONG AND HARD before you imitate us Romans!

Just imagine what would happen if the principles of the Roman and Chaldean reforms were to be applied to the Byzantine liturgy....

At the very least, I hope that the CHaldean liturgical reform commission is dead-on accurate about all their info on the ancient East Syrian liturgy. Please remember that many of the Latin-rite liturgical reforms of the 1950's and 1960's purported to revive ancient patristic features in the liturgy -- features that, in the 1980's and 1990's, were proven to have existed only in the imagination of the liturgical reformers themselves.

I also can't help but wonder if the Chaldean Reform will help the cause of dialogue with the Assyrian Church.