www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Church Slavonic Questions

I'm becoming interested in the recent history of Church Slavonic, and I was wondering first of all, How many churches in North America offer the liturgy in Church Slavonic, And, is there any movement within the Byzantine churches to restore it's use ?

I'm sure that many OCA, ROCOR, ROC, and some BCC parishes still have divine liturgy in Church Slavonic. As far as the BCC having a movement to to offer more divine liturgies in Church Slavonic; we only have to look at the RDL service books for that answer. The new service books provide no option for Church Slavonic, just english.

The vast majority of the churches in ROCOR serve the liturgical services in Slavonic. I've found that many parishes which were doing up to half the Liturgy in English a few years ago have moved back to almost entirely Slavonic services. This is because of a widespread influx of immigrants from Russia in our parishes. Of course there are some English language parishes (like my own) and a few larger parishes in big cities (New York, Washington, San Francisco, etc) that offer weekly or monthly English Liturgies in addition to the regular Slavonic Liturgies. But Church Slavonic is the liturgical language of ROCOR.

In the Moscow Patriarchate parishes in this country, St Nicolas Cathedral in New York City (and, I think, the MP parish in San Francisco) have the services in Slavonic. The rest of the parishes had been largely English language, though with the influx of Russian immigrants this may be changing too.

Fr David Straut

Here in Washington, DC we are very blessed with St. John the Baptist Cathedral (ROCOR) which serves the full Vigil twice each Saturday. 4 PM is in English and 6:30 PM is in Slavonic (for feasts they only have one Vigil, which is probably about 75% Slavonic and 25% English). All the services are beautiful and rich with prayerfulness, no matter the language. I attend as often as I can.

There are still a few UGCC parishes that have a Slavonic Liturgy or a mixed Slavonic-Ukrainian Liturgy. I attended one at St. Michael's (a Julian Calendar parish) in Yonkers a few years back that was all Slavonic with an English/Ukrainian sermon.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada stopped using Church Slavonic in 1918.

Halia

Is any special permission required to start having liturgies in Church Slavonic. And, does anyone know of a source for Church Slavonic Transliterations ?

I'm just curious. If Lord, Have Mercy is phonetically, Hospodi Pomiluy in Ukrainian, what is it approximately in Church Slavonic ?

Hospodi Pomiluy in Ukrainian and Church-Slavonic are identical.

Fr. Serge

[quote=Serge Keleher]Hospodi Pomiluy in Ukrainian and Church-Slavonic are identical.

Fr. Serge [/quote]

"Hospodi Pomiluy" not "Gospodi Pomiluy", very good! You know your Slavonic!

That depends on how one pronounces the initial consonant of the first word. But "Hospodi" is more wide-spread and less likely to raise hackles.

How Church-Slavonic was originally pronounced is still a matter of controversy among some of the erudite. Since that lovely language has had no native speakers for centuries, the discussion is not particularly important. Nowadays, each ethnic group which uses Church-Slavonic liturgically pronounces it as though it were the national language, with results which sometimes seem bizarre.

Fr. Serge

Are there any good texts/resources that someone can recommend about learning Church Slavonic?

(Lest I digress from a perfectly respectable posting but I am sad to see Slavonic being phased out in the Ruthenian Church!)

Grammar of the Church Slavonic Language [light-n-life.com] by Archbishop Alypy.

From Light & Life Publishing.

Description:
This is perhaps the only book available in English for those who wish to study Church Slavonic. Very thorough. Covers Etymology, Parts of Speech, Syntax, etc.

Mike Lillie

Does the Byzantine Seminary in the USA still instruct their candidates in the fundamentals of Slavonic?

Other than the ROCOR community at Jordanville is there any other Orthodox monastic communities in North America that use Church Slavonic as its litugical language?

Do any of the Greek Catholic monasteries in North America use Slavonic as their liturgical language?

-Predanije

I'm not sure if Church Slavonic is required but it is offered. Fall Courses 2008. [byzcathsem.org]

Mike

Dear Predanije,

Church Slavonic will be used in our Studite monasteries since so many liturgical texts haven't yet been translated into "ecclesiastical Ukrainian."

The best way to learn Church Slavonic is to let it grow on you. If you already speak a living Slavic language and know the Cyrillic alphabet, just spend some time each day reading Slavonic texts out loud.

In time, your facility with it will not only improve, your understanding of the words will as well.

The same is actually true if one wants to learn to read another Slavic language, like Russian.

Alex