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The young Orthodox that I know prefer Greek and Slavonic Divine Services to English Divine Services. It is the "Baby Boomers" that despise the Liturgical Languges (and Liturgical Calendar) of the Saints. (I know there are exceptions, but generally those that are serious enough to attend Vespers and Orthros, keep the Fasts, engage in spiritual reading, etc. understand the value of Liturgical Languages and are willing to learn them. On the other hand those that wish to make spend one hour or less in Church per week seem to prefer Services in all English.

Hmmm....methinks that there be a skunk in the woodpile.....Call it a hunch, but I smell the sulfurous odor of the OCL at work! According to standard Russian bylaws, the priest, who by nature of his authority is president of the parish council, is solely responsible for all decisions regarding liturgical matters.
Your priest needs to put his foot down. I've seen these OCL American Orthodox types before. It is a disease that needs to be stopped before it starts. If your priest can't or won't stop it, the bishop needs to be notified and stop this nonsense once and for all.

Alexandr

Where are you finding use of Glagolitsa in Orthodox services?? I doubt more than a handful of people in this hemisphere can read it. Are you sure that you are not thinking of Tserkovni Slavyanski script?

Glagolitic

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Church Slavonic

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Cyrillic

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Alexandr

Etnick-

That there is a fight in the church is incredibly sad in the first place. That the fight is about language is even sadder.

Of course, some of the variable and difficult to comprehend texts of our liturgies should be in English. But I think in some of the more common and easily remembered texts Slavonic should be OK. I'd mix Slavonic and English (or even all Slavonic!) during, say, the Trisagion and the Litanies (Hospodi Pomiluj).

In our parish, we use all-English service books for all services. For the variable texts of Vespers and Orthros, and the Troparia of the day, there's really no other way to do it since they're rich in meaning and almost no one in the parish can listen to Greek well enough to understand them in Church. During our Litanies and Trisagion we mix English, Arabic and Greek.

Recently, we've been singing "O Only Begotten Son" solely in Arabic. I'm a bit uncomfortable with this - it makes the text basically the province of a few people. It'd be better if it - and similar hymns like the Cherubikon - to be in English in my view or (novel concept) if they switched each week - an Arabic melody one week, English using a similar melody the second week.

I wish your parish the best,

Markos

That Alexandr is always full of knowledge.

Can you read Glagolitic, Alexandr?

Amen Father!

I guess it's time for my parish priest to grab the bull by the horns. (I'll have a cattle prod ready if need be!)

Most of our liturgies are entirely in English anymore. But, we often have one prayer (the Cherbuic huymn, for example, or another prayer) in Slavonic.

Maybe that could be the basis of a compromise: a service mostly in English, but with a prayer or two in Slavonic?

-- John

Then the priest should leave. He should follow our Savior's instructions and shake the dust from his feet and go.

The Orthodox / Catholic Church is not congregational.

The Orthodox / Catholic Church is founded on the Eucharist ! Hence, the Catholic / Orthodox Church is organized around the bishops, and, therefore, around the priests: who are the almoners of the Eucharist ! The entire character of the Orthodox / Catholic Church cannot work if the priest's authority is not duly respected.

So: if a parish refuses to respect its priest, then let it go without a priest. Let them learn what that is like. Perhaps they will prefer it, and perhaps they will choose to become congregational Protestants. Oh well. But let the Orthodox / Catholic Church remain founded on the Eucharist ! And therefore, let the authority of the priest be respected, or let the priest shake the dust from that parish from his feet and go.

-- John

You are pretty quick to assume there, aren't you?

What makes you think it is the Protestant converts? I am a 1970s baby. My dad was "half", I am a "quarter" and my contemporaries with children have kids who are an "eighth"...

(Neverminding my grandmother is Hungarian)

How many more generations are Eastern Christians intrerested in losing?

I find it telling that "the younger crowd" in an OCA parish objects to the use of Slavonic, and "converts", "Protestants", and the implementors of Vatican II ("Bugnini") are blamed. This in spite of the fact that 50 years ago, Orthodox superiority in liturgy was widely claimed on the basis that, UNLIKE western Catholic liturgy, it was "in a language people can understand."

Perhaps the question is, can young people be convinced that they need to understand Church Slavonic? I would very much like to see a GOOD, comprehensive argument in favor - I'd post it on the MCI website, along with the Church Slavonic instructional materials that are already there.

But stigmatizing "the younger crowd" as being not Orthodox enough because they want vernacular liturgy seems (to me) like a bad way to start the argument.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

...whose Byzantine Catholic parish sings far more Slavonic than his wife's Orthodox parish, which has quite a few Russian immigrants and two Russian-speaking priests.

P.S. Etnick - I'm on your side, but we need to find solutions that unite rather than divide.

Jordanville has published an excellent edition - in English - of the Church-Slavonic grammar, which would at least help. The reason why it is helpful to learn Church-Slavonic is that we have yet to have a full translation of the service-books done into English from anything resembling an original language.

Fr. Serge

My parish is has very little ethnic influence. Most of the
people are native-born English-speakers, yet we use quite
a lot of Slavonic at Sunday Liturgy and nobody complains,
including the young people. A lot of the people can sing
along in Slavonic.In fact, I wish we used more Slavonic,
it is such a sonorous language. I didn't find the Cyrillic
alphabet very hard to master and found it a great help in
getting pronounciations correct. Of course, it took a while.
There are things that I wish weren't sung in English, like
"Kretu Tvoiemu" and "Yelitsi".

As for visitors, of whom we get a good number given our small
size, they never seem to question it.

Edmac

Edmac,

You are hands down the winner for post of the year!!!!

This is most unfortunate, particularly in that it surrounds the celebration of the Eucharist. I think conflict is just an unavoidable element of human relations, and part of the infamous phenomenon of "church politics". Generally I try and avoid that whole area, but I have been to parish meetings that have had heated discussion, particularly over which way money will be allocated. I know there were some hard feelings over loyalty to a former priest as well, and some ruffled feathers when there was a "changing of the guard" at our parish which involved a different way of doing things. The voice of our priest has always been clear though, and he is looked to as the leader. I don't know the particulars of your situation entirely, but I do believe your priest should make a stand one way or another. He is the representative of the bishop and the spiritual father of the parish, the parish council is neither of those. Ultimately the two should be working in concert, without either running roughshod over each other or over the parish as a whole. I guess if you want to make lemonade from lemons, at least the choice is for the parish to make, so the door is open to whatever may occur. More Slavonic, no Slavonic, some Slavonic, or later on deciding a change was wrong and doing something else.

I have sort of seen both sides of the language issue, and haven't myself come up with an adequate answer for what I believe the right solution is.

It is amazing isn't it!! I remember in the 60's when Vatican II came out with the mandate to celebrate the liturgy in the vernacular. Our BC priest said that Eastern Churches had already been doing that for centuries, and had (if memory serves) already translated parts of the liturgy from the Old Church Slavonic into the English language. Our priest said we were ahead and the RCs were trying to "catch up." Now the pendulum seems somewhat to have swung the other way. The RC Church is loosening up rules about Mass in the Latin language.
We are debating about how much Old Church Slavonic to keep....

People can learn to sing in both languages, even many languages....but understanding what they are singing is another thing entirely...... Some thoughts for your consideration. Peace to you all! A student