www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Father Robert Taft, S.J. Rejects Revising the Divine Liturgy

I am sure this is all very true - somewhere. But as I have mentioned before, those standards were not followed in many places - mine being one of those places. And, no one in authority seemed to care.

That being so, how is the RDL a solution?

Does anyone dispute the standard as being the Recension? If yes, who? Then that is where there is a dispute and point of discussion right from the start.

If the standard, however, is acknowledged but not followed, then it is a question of education, obedience and authority. If the 1965 liturgicon and directives concerning it somehow are incapable of being followed, how does the RDL solve the problem?

If "no one in authority seemed to care," does authority now care about the RDL? If not, then what is the purpose of the 12 year labor to produce it? If yes, then why not just have had the same authority acting similarly in behalf of the accepted standard of the Recension and its faithful translation in the 1965 liturgicon?

The situation is like a book that is assigned to be read by a teacher. It happens that while some read the entire book, others do not, and read only excerpts. So the teacher gives directions on what portions of the book are required. But some students still do not follow the directions.

The teacher settles on a solution. He takes only the required excerpts and forms a new book. While he is at it, he also changes the text to adjust for irregularities caused by the abridgment and he also decides to alter the text to make the book more understandable from his point of view. He then requires that all must read the new abridged book and only the new book. He is satisfied with his solution since now the same standard of the altered-abridged book is required of all students.

Those who wanted to read the complete story can no longer do so, they can only read the altered abridgment. The integrity of the original story, in the new abridgment, is inherently lost. And nothing intrinsically has really been done that the students who did not follow directions before should now change their ways.

The reality is that the old standards were not followed, and now the RDL has been mandated. Rumors to the contrary, I see no indication on the part of the bishops that they intend to rescind the RDL. This is where we are at the moment. Where to from here?

The "intend to rescind the RDL" is not the point of my comments per se. My unanswered question is what was accomplished by the RDL? That could go to answering "Where to from here?"

Again, why not just have replaced "RDL has", with "old standards have", i.e.:

The reality is that the old standards were not followed, and now the old standards have been mandated.

The standards with the RDL are still not being followed. I went to a church in the Pittsurgh Metropolia yesterday and the liturgy barely resembled my home parish. We were done in 45-50 minutes. It's sad...very, very sad. The RDL has served no purpose other than to hurt the churches that were doing more.

One fundamental issue with the RDL is its overall approach to liturgy. The Byzantine Tradition establishes certain minima with regard to celebration--this much you must do, but you can do more as you desire or are able. The RDL reverses the formula by setting maxima--you must do this but no more than this. The result is a further narrowing of liturgical practice in the Metropolia, where the liturgy was already rather anemic.

Cliff Notes comes to mind. Or the Reader’s Digest Condensed Bible. The RDL is nothing but a permanent Low Mass. High Mass with good music is verboten.

There is an underlying hatred of the Ruthenian Liturgy. Father Petras has openly admitted that he hates litanies. He’s spent his life trying to excise them from the Liturgy.

The aversion to ektenies seems to have been with the Ruthenians for quite a while. I don't claim to understand the phenomenon - what is there about this particular form of prayer which would arouse such hatred?

Fr. Serge

The other thing is that the current promulgation ONLY APPLIES TO THE ENGLISH. The Slavonic, aside from some promulgated removals of 2 words of the text (i Synu from the creed) and a rubric change (eliminate the kneeling and replace it with standing during the anaphora) is not yet replaced. (At least per the MCI website.)

I doubt it's the ektenie themseves, but the repetiveness of them. Me, I love them.

Without deacons, however, they fall to the concelebrant(s), and without concelebrants, to the celebrant. And they can be up to 1/2 of the clerical verbiage in some uses.

Now, apparently, we are not the speed demons of the Metropolitan Church, as we routinely come in about 65 to 75 minutes for St John, and 90 to 100 for St. Basil. We don't do the "Grant it" (it's optional) and we don't have special petitions at Sunday liturgies except when mandated by the Eparch or Metropolitan. Our pastor's voice gets shaky by the end of his third weekend liturgy*, and he isn't doing the hours publicly. (We take Reader's Third Hour... while he hears confessions.)

Our guest priest hit the same marks today, speed wise, as our pastor does. Different melody for his chant, but same speed. Eparch John for the Slovaks hit the same time frame when he was visiting.

Adding the other ektenie would push Father's voice to strain; Great Lent is hard enough on him...

I can't imagine how fast people are singing, or what they're cutting, to shorten it below what we do.

A deacon could cut 5-10 minutes off, tho', by cutting communion time in half... And the Metropolitan Particular Law does allow for EMHC's. (An additional MHC per 75 communicants. Is that 1+1 for 1-75 communicants, 33-75 communicants, or 75-149 communicants? RPL isn't quite clear as recorded in the documents section here.)

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* Vigil, Morning, and then afternoon at the mission.

One can see how the ektenie could become a burden for the priest celebrating without a deacon, particularly if he is also required to read the Anaphora aloud (especially Basil). This is just one reason why flexibility is required in this area.

For myself, I think it is better to chant the Anaphora aloud (not recite it, as is usually done in the Metropolia), but here the RDL falls into the error of not discerning the difference between prayers the priest says on his own behalf (which should be silent), those which ought to be concurrent with the prayers of the faithful (which should be chanted quietly), and those which are truly "public" prayers which should be chanted audibly.

However, even though a Novella of Justinian instructs the clergy to sing the Anaphora aloud, it is clear that this practice fell out of common use even in his time (otherwise why legislate it?), and it has become enshrined in the common Byzantine usage. If one wants to restore the practice of taking the "silent" prayers aloud, this should be done on a voluntary basis, taking into account the practical situation in each parish, and, of course, making sure that only the appropriate prayers are in fact chanted (not said!) aloud.

"The aversion to ektenies seems to have been with the Ruthenians for quite a while. I don't claim to understand the phenomenon - what is there about this particular form of prayer which would arouse such hatred? "

I have tried to fathom it myself, and have come to a couple of conclusions. First, I believe there has been a fundamental misreading of some modern commentators on the Byzantine liturgy, including Father Alexander Schmemann and Father Robert Taft. Both of them wrote of the accretion of various monastic practices to the liturgy, including the ektenie. I have noticed within the Metropolia a strong antipathy to authentic Byzantine monasticism and monastic practices, and there seems to be a desire to purge most visible reminders of monasticism from the Church and its worship. At a very visible level, too, monastics constitute an alternative center of authority which our bishops do not seem willing to tolerate.

At another level, and running counter to the general thrust of both Schmemann and Taft, the suppression of the ektenie seems to be part and parcel of an overall attempt to de-emphasize the role of the people and elevate the celebrant to an even more exalted level than he presently holds. Side-by-side comparison of the 1965 translation and the RDL (and especially a comparison of the RDL with the original Slavonic) shows the RDL consistently either chooses language, inserts words or omits others in order to make the liturgy more "priest-centered".

Clericalism was always an abiding problem in the Ruthenian Church, from the moment that priests were elevated to a higher social status than their parishoners back in the Hapsburg days. There were priests, there were cantors, and then there were peasants. Apparently there is a lot of nostalgia for those days and a desire to recapture the status that used to come with a pectoral cross.

Christ is risen!

I don't know about all these charges of clericalism. This seems to be a drum beaten by many Greek Catholics and Orthodox descending from them. In my experience, the Divine Liturgy (and all the liturgical services, for that matter) is a symphony. A priest certainly cannot conveniently perform them alone. In my experience (in the Russian Church: with a proper iconastasis, doors, and curtains. which are all fully utilised) the choir and the deacon are far more visible and audible components of this symphony than is the priest. But anyway...

I have been led to believe that those who advocate the omission of certain ektenia/litanies from the Byzantine Liturgy do so for several reasons:

1. Their repetitive character ("How many times are we going to say the same thing?")

2. The theory that certain ektenias were introduced or lengthened to "cover up" the secret prayer of the priest. The Little Litanies between the Antiphons and the Litanies of the Faithful come to mind here. In this view, when one desires to have the priest pray all the prayers in the hearing of the people, these ektenias become unnecessary.

3. A desire to shorten the Liturgy. There are those who think that modern human beings are not capable of, or will not tolerate, a Liturgy that last longer than an hour. Something then has to go.

4. Certain parts of the Liturgy are no longer deemed necessary because of changes in the Church's circumstances. For example, the Litany of the Catechumens is frequently cited as being unnecessary.

All the above reasons for advocating the abolition of certain litanies are found among both Orthodox and Greek Catholics. Among latinised Greek Catholics one might also observe that the Byzantine Liturgy without litanies far more resembles the Roman Mass.

Fr David Straut

Risen Indeed!

Well, let's see. Far too many Greek-Catholics, both in thought and in action, treat the deacon like an ersatz priest.

Repetitiveness is of the nature of an ektene - the chanting of "Kyrie, eleison" a dozen times is not the worst thing one might do with one's time!

No one seems to have proved that the ektenes were either introduced or lengthened to "cover" the time for the hierarchal-hieratic prayers in mystica. To the contrary, what evidence we have would indicate that, for example, the two ektenes before the Cherubicon were reduced (if there is no deacon) without any corresponding move to recite or chant the prayers aloud.

This "desire to shorten the Liturgy" exists, all right, but it is a bit peculiar. Priests (and even hierarchs) are apt to say that "the people", whoever they may be, need this. I know a few people who really do need it (mostly because they have small children who require much attention), but they do not demand that the Divine Liturgy be abridged; they simple arrive late (usually in time to hear the Gospel). They certainly would not maintain that others who do not have their specific time pressure should be deprived of the complete antiphons, for example.

The assertion - which one occasionally hears, usually from the clergy - that the Ektene of the Catechumens is unnecessary is sheer nonsense, and could evidence of downright bad faith. A quick look around us will indicate both the presence of adult children of Christian parents who appear in church once or twice a year, if that. Still more to the point: our towns and cities are filled with unchurched people. A claim that there is no need for prayer, especially when that prayer is already there in the books and mandated, is outrageous. Does a given parish have no catechumens? Well, get busy and start evangelising!

Meanwhile those of us (including Father David and myself) who think that the Holy Fathers knew what they were doing will continue to serve in the unabridged fashion.

Fr. Serge

This one always drives me bonkers. It's like saying that you only need to tell your wife that you love her once.

Christ is Risen!
Dn. Robert