www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Question # 4 on new Translation of Liturgy

Administrator,

I am not proposing anything. I am only questioning it. My post was in response to the idea that the Byzantine Liturgical tradition was/is conservative. Whatever that means. But it wasn't. It was considered innovative, if not too progressive. Whatever that means.

We, as Eastern Christians, and our Latin friends who know us all too well, can state the following liturgical axiom:

WE BYZANTINES ARE LITURGICAL PACK-RATS.

We add, add, and add, and then we realize we have way too much on our plate. So, we abbreviate, abbreviate, and abbreviate until we do a little of each, but nothing in its fullest. Pious customs take priority over core rites and prayers.

OUR LITURGY IS AN ACCORDIAN.

Then like good Eastern brothers and sisters, we point fingers and accuse each other of not being traditional and/or authentic for either wanting to expand a bit here or retract a bit there. We love our liturgical "soft spots", but loathe to spend more time on those things that made liturgy LITURGY in the first place.

WE LOOSE SITE OF (to use one theologian's phrase) THE WELLSPRING OF WORSHIP.

We make a fuss and sometimes have hissy-fits about our Church tampering with its liturgy, but fail to question how most of our liturgical tradition is ALREADY in the dumpster. We can't go the extra yard for vespers or matins, but have no problem with rosary being led by laity. We ignore old ministries in favor of the latest fad borrowed from the Latins.

To be honest, MOST people don't give a hoot about the Office of the Antiphons. But many of us like to give our best, including our time, to the Lord in worship and praise. We take things seriously and that is not all too bad. And this leads me to my last axiom:

PRIESTS WILL DO WHAT THEY WANT TO DO ANYWAY.

So, don't worry, my friend. One of our Ruthenian traditions is not listening to authority on liturgical matters. No one enforces anything anway. Just make sure 10% of everything gets to the chancery. BTW, how long DID it take for our bishops to take the Ordo Celebrationis seriously? If our bishops can't accept it then who would think our clergy will?

If they want all the Psalm verses chanted for the Antiphons, it will happen. If they want to fly thru the liturgy as if there is a fire, then they will take the bare minimum. Personally, I never figured out how stipends work, so I can't speculate if what is holding us back from our full liturgical tradition is money. I mean, if a priest gets paid for just the Divine Liturgy, then why spend an extra hour or two celebrating vespers and/or matins? Dunno. I would like to think that our priests like to celebrate the liturgies of our church if only asked.

Joe

Joe,

Thanks for the post.

I do agree with some of what you have stated. My larger point, however, is that a revision to the Liturgy is something that should be accomplished by the whole Byzantine Church. If we need to wait for reunion between East and West then we wait. There is no hurry.

Admin

Mr. Administrator,

If you do not like the liturgical improvements you are free to leave.

Why don�t you go and join one of those many Orthodox churches you are always defending?

Frank, proud and loyal Byzantine Catholic

Frank,

Many HAVE voted with their feet for greater and lesser reasons. Mr. Administrator, like everyone else, can express his ideas. You don't have to agree with them. If we all agreed on everything, then these forums would be quite boring.

Disagreeing with others can be a noble, if not, enlightening process of education. Telling others to take a hike is not really a proud thing. It might be the Byzantine thing to do, but not a Christian thing to do.

Joe

PS: If you have skeletons in your closet, take them out and dance with them.

Dear Administrator,

The idea of the freedom of the local priest is just the sort of spontaneity that then Cardinal Ratzinger was talking against, ISTM. I think that the Bishop tends to have a great deal of control over the celebration of the liturgy within his diocese; his office is where the freedom ends. And this perspective - not each priest his own typicon - is the Orthodox one.

I think that your vision for a pan-Byzantine English liturgy is beautiful one. But, as discussed in the 1998 symposium, it is not on the horizon. Probably there will emerge a uniform practice and single jursidiction for EO's in the US first, and that is a long way off. In the meantime, one of the things that our church needs to do is live its sui juris status - that also has an ecumencial function - and to work on the vitalitly of its praxis. I find any argument that says we, in effect, have no right ... to be a complete non-starter.

I think the restoration before renovation idea does have merit. Most important: vespers and matins; and in the liturgy: all of the propers and festal variants. But I don't have a problem with a little liturgical "tidying up" to use the phrase of Bishop Kallistos. And what is being done, as ByzKat has doggedly pointed out, is properly considered in just those terms. I think that Fr. Petras, and in recent posts Joe Thur, have spoken, not to theology, but very sensibly to issues of form/function and text/action in the liturgy - in other words to liturgics, appropriately.

ps on caprice:
not on your part, but embedded in you suggestion that the decisions on the liturgy were personal preference - as opposed to a consensus of scholarly opinion within the liturguical commision and the hierarchs.

I was stunned to read this:

Mr. Administrator,

If you do not like the liturgical improvements you are free to leave.

Why don�t you go and join one of those many Orthodox churches you are always defending?

Frank, proud and loyal Byzantine Catholic

Why is there such an antipathy to Orthodox practice in the Ruthenian Metropolia? The very word "orthodox" itself is shunned (in contrast to the Melchite Greek Catholics and the Ukrainian Catholics).

And those who defend Byzantine tradition are encouraged to leave with the implication they are not "loyal"?

Something the new liturgy translation needs to correct is the anti-"orthodox" translation it perpetuates: "Christians of the true faith" instead of "orthodox." It is precisely such euphenisms that encourages comments like the above and separate us from the Melchites and Ukrainian Catholics.

Nec

djs makes a powerful observation.

Can we wait around for the Orthodox Churches to unite and decide on liturgical renewal? Nothing against the Orthodox, Ok. Just an observation. Who will assure a united effort of all Orthodox jurisdictions in the Byzantine tradition? The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople?

Will the Russians cooperate with the Greeks? Will the Ukrainians hob-nob with the Russians? Who has the largest church? Who will rule the roost? Whose cuisine will rule supreme? One can't discuss the merits and practicalities of rearranging the deck furniture of the Titanic when everyone is fighting over the lifeboats and who has the privelege to get in them.

The Catholic Communion of Eastern Churches has a mission to take the lead in Eastern renewal. In fact, most liturgical documents for study are in Rome, not the East. You gotta start where the documents are, no?

Maybe we should just wait around for the two Germans (Pope Benedict and the Moscow Patriarch) to plan a joint strategy?

Joe

Frank C's remarks are indefensible, whatever motivates them. But do they signify Orthodox antipathy? Charges of anti-Orthodox bigotry were leveled a few days ago in a similar discussion. I am certain in that discussion that the charge is baseless. And perhaps here as well.

What might be at work? A hint comes from James's Nec Aliter post. It would be sensible for Russian Catholics to look to, for example, the MP, as setting the gold standard for their ritual patrimony. What about us? Or for that matter what about the Ukrainians? As I suggested to Alex in another thread, there is no Ukrainian Orthodox church to which they could "return". The same is true for us. The MP is not ours and we are not theirs and never have been. ACROD, The EOC of Slovakia are, historically, our daughters, with whom we may, in God's wisdom, reunite - but to whom we inherently could not "return". This is also, in a flesh and blood sense, if not a ritual patrimony, true of the OCA.

For better or worse we are true standard bearers of own particular patrimony. Some among the Orthodox find us wanting (the infamous laugh test), but they are equally catty among themselves: the Onion Dome did not invent the Holy More Orthodox Than Thou jurisdiction out of whole cloth; neither did Dave create ex nihilo the far more pious Old Calendar snakes. I am strongly motivated to have fraternal relations with all EO churches. But I will vociferously reject any suggestion, even the merest hint, by anyone, that we are some second-class, suspect group who are just dressing up and playing Orthodox, and need to watch what others do so that we know what to do in our own church. Confraternity is wonderful; "aping" is the bitterest slander against the "uniates".

We continue a tradition that may have actually received the Byzantine-Slavonic rite from SS. C&M. We have cherished it, and adorned it with highly original beauty, cultivated under very difficult life circumstances. I think our history shows a love of and devotion to patrimony that will see us through this time of restoration.

I don't think that the Administrator's remarks could reasonbly been seen to suggest this line of thinking. But if you see a surprisingly strong reaction to sentiments like them, it may not be antipathy to Orthodoxy per se, but to the suspected hint of some kind of inferiority.

Frank,

Thank you for your post.

You bring up an excellent question, one that has not had a great deal of discussion. I have watched as the current round of liturgical revisions implemented in the Passaic Eparchy have chased people from our parishes. In the parish I belong to the number of people attending the Friday Presanctified Liturgies during the Fast went from about 120 down to about 35-40 once we went to the �new and improved� Presanctified. I was away for Holy Week and Pascha, but several people told me that the crowd for Saturday evening dwindled from 350 for the traditional Pascha Matins / Chrysostom Liturgy that used to be celebrated down to about 100 for the mandated �new and improved� Vespers / Basil Liturgy / Pascha Matins (and few of those missing are going to DLs on Easter Sunday morning). Regular Sunday Divine Liturgies have also declined in attendance since the implementation of the �new and improved� Revised rubrics (one wonders if there is still a pressing need for two Sunday Liturgies).

The faithful who do not like the revisions are not speaking out against them. They are simply walking out and worshipping elsewhere (or nowhere).

When our churches are totally empty will the Revisionists pronounce the Liturgical Revision a total success?

Admin

Wasn't your parish planning to build a new, bigger church building? How will those plans be affected by these disenchanted parishioners absence?

Ungcsertezs

Just a note of clarification on the Administrator's last post. One must be careful not to confuse two issues. One issue is the new translation of the Liturgy, which has been done by the Inter-eparchial Liturgy Commission, reviewed and corrected by both the Council of Hierarchs and the Oriental Congregation and which is in the process of being implemented. This text is not exactly the same as posted by Lance Weakland, and is now being explained, first on the clergy level, then to the faithful.
The second issue, the Presanctified and the Holy Saturday Vespers - Basil Liturgy - Paschal Matins combination are issues in the Passaic Eparchy only. The Inter-eparchial Liturgy Commission has worked on the Presanctified and on Holy Week texts, but these are not yet on the implementation level. It should be noted that many, many people, when they speak of the Presanctified, do not actually know what is in the Textus receptus Church Slavonic text, but are basing themselves on the English text that was put out by the late Msgr. Levkulic, and which contains many significant departures from the original Slavonic text. All of these, therefore, cannot simply be lumped together in what you have chosen to call the "revisionist" Liturgy.

Fr. Dave

Yes, those plans are still in the works and meetings do continue. I don�t know any more details than that.

I agree that a Bishop has a great deal of control over the celebration of the Liturgy within his diocese. I do not question the authority of a Bishop to say �you must take this litany� or �you will omit this litany� or even �you must take this prayer out loud�. I do, however, question the both the authority of a bishop to rewrite the Liturgy and issue a Liturgicon that is different from the standard used by the other Churches of the Ruthenian recension and, indeed, all other Byzantine Churches (Catholic and Orthodox). I believe that it is wrong for us to change the standard and to separate ourselves from both our fellow Byzantine Catholics of the Ruthenian recension (Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Hungarian, etc.) as well as the other Byzantine Churches with whom the Liturgy serves as a point of unity.

Regarding the degree of uniformity that being considered with these revisions is far stricter than even that in the Latin Church. One look at their Liturgicon shows that the Latins have numerous choices for the major parts of their Mass. Why is it so evil to ask that the traditional Byzantine Liturgy be preserved in its fullness for those parishes that wish to pray it?

This revision of the Divine Liturgy may effectively end all possibility of a single, common translation of the Divine Liturgy among all Byzantine Christians. There are changes to the texts and the rubrics that no other Byzantine Church is contemplating.

I agree that Vespers and Matins need to be restored. They should be restored and normative in our parishes long before any revisions to the Divine Liturgy are considered.

I disagree that these changes are �tidying up�. �Tidying up� means correcting errors in translation or improving a translation (like replacing �one in substance� with �one in essence�). A major revision to the rubrics and purposeful changes to the texts that result in the Liturgy being very noticeably different than that in the other Byzantine Churches does not qualify as �tidying up�. This seems to be a purposeful choice of terms to make it appear that the changes are minor, when they are not. When I �tidy up� my house before unexpected company arrives I move the newspapers from the coffee table and make sure there are no dishes in the sink. I don�t �tidy up� by replacing the kitchen cabinets and painting the house.

These decisions are most definitely personal preference of a few. A rigid translation in some instances and a looser one in others is one example. The choice of which litnies to eliminate or condense or which prayer will be mandate to be prayed aloud are others. One can affirm the scholarly ability and intent of the individuals involved while also believing that the choices they are proposing are wrong.

In the industry I work in, we would never proceed with a new design or redesign without getting the input of competent professionals outside our little group of 100. With regard to the Liturgy, I would expect any proposed revisions and text changes to be offered to liturgists, poets and laymen in the other Churches of the Ruthenian recension (Catholic and Orthodox), the other Byzantine Churches outside the Ruthenian recension (Catholic and Orthodox), and to Roman Catholics. This would include a mix of highly degreed specialists (people with advanced degrees in theology (dogma and liturgy), English (language, poetry and literature), and those without such degrees but who are good with Liturgy). Then the proposed working document would be published for all to see and evaluate and to make comments. The Roman Catholics have done much of this with their proposed updates to the texts of the Roman Mass. Why can�t we?

I disagree. We share the Ruthenian recension with not just our fellow Carpatho-Ruthenian Byzantine Catholics in Europe and across the world but also the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox Churches, the Romanian Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and etc. It is not our property to do with as we please.

Yes. The Liturgy as it is has led countless people to salvation. Unity with our sister Orthodox Churches should be important enough to us to wait for before undertaking any changes to our common inheritance.

Renewal and reform are two different things. The Liturgical Instruction is quite clear in directing us to renew and then to reform, but making sure that the reform takes into account what is happening among the respective Orthodox Churches. No single Orthodox Church is contemplating mandating these revisions to the Divine Liturgy. Heck, there is not a single other Byzantine Catholic Church of the Ruthenian recension that is contemplating mandating these revisions. Patience, prudence and wisdom demands that we renew and pray our Liturgical inheritance, and then work as one with the rest of the Byzantine Churches to grow together as one into the future.

I thank Father Dave for his post. I agree that I have not been clear enough in my posts and thank him for his advice here.

I support the issuance of an updated Liturgicon correcting errors and improving translations (such as replacing �one in substance� with �one in essence� as Father David has noted elsewhere and I referenced above).

My disagreements on the text here fall into two categories:

1) the purposeful changing of liturgical texts (if the book says �ecumenical pontiff� the text should say �ecumenical pontiff� and not �holy father�) and

2) the use of inclusive language (�for Christ is good and loves us all� is theologically different that �for He is gracious and loves mankind�; �born of her as a mortal� (in one of the new troparion translations) is theologically different than �born as a man�. My cat is a mortal, but not a man. There is a theological difference.). [The Congregation of Divine Worship has pretty much permits only horizontal inclusive language and even here there are tight restrictions. �Brothers� can be translated as �brothers and sisters� but only where it does not change the meaning. I have not done an exhaustive review of some of the proposed updated translations of the Roman Mass but in the little I have seen I see no examples of changing Christ from �man� to �mortal� and the like. I would really someday like to see a copy of the translation style guide used by the commission that analyzes (among other things) the theology from Rome regarding translations.]

The �revisionist� term applies to the revision of the liturgical rubrics away from those in the official editions of the Ruthenian recension. I believe it is wrong for us to revise the Liturgy, except in cooperation with the other Byzantine Churches of the Ruthenian recension (for those smaller issues at the recension level) and all the Byzantine Churches (Catholic and Orthodox) for those issues at the higher level.

Admin