www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Young people and integrity in oppressed Church in Ukraine

This is an important message about living the life of integrity in our Churches. We cannot compromise our liturgical life as many do and expect young people to come. If we act with integrity the young will more likely stay with us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=abJkz1qmfJQ

Did you watch the same video I did? Patriarch Sviatoslav was saying that UGCC was accepted by the youth as having integrity for not collaborating with the Communists. This had nothing to do the with the Liturgy. In fact, it is ironic you would try to make that point with this video because the Russian Orthodox Church and their uncompromised Liturgy were rejected by many because of their collaboration. On the otherhand the UGCC had a very compromised Liturgy both in the catacombs and emerging from the Iron Curtain. I am not saying we shoud compromise our Liturgy but this was a poor example to use.

Are you suggesting that there is no connection between the life of the liturgy and everything else we do?

No. I am saying you used a poor example to make your point because the young people flocked to the UGCC despite their compromised(read as Latinized) Liturgy and stayed away from the ROC despite their integral Liturgy.

Fr. Deacon is right. During the Russian Golgotha, the Catacomb Churches thrived, worshiping in caves, kitchens and forest clearings, while the open Churches mostly remained empty. Persecution brings out the best in the Church. When the MP was regularized by joining with ROCOR, it was because of the integrity, prayers and efforts of the Catacombniks and the New Martyrs of the Bolshevik Yoke.

You have that quite backwards.

No, he has it quite right. At least that is what was told to the ROCOR.

Many in ROCOR have a rather inventive spin on the matter, with a difficulty distinguishing what was told them and what they wanted to hear.

One can read Ukaze 362 the Act of Canonical Communion
http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/synod/engdocuments/enmat_akt.html
http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/synod/engdocuments/enuk_ukaz362.html

This is a gross oversimplification; for example amongst the Studites a full liturgical usage is celebrated and the Studite monasteries are a very popular place for youth pilgrimages in Ukraine. The Synod has upheld the full celebration of the rescension as normative. While certainly latinizations were and are present, a mandated "compromise" of the liturgical books never happened along the lines of what occurred with the RDL in the US.

The 1905 Lviv Liturgicon isn't compromised? Stations and Rosary aren't compromised? These were staples of the catacomb UGCC. Don't get me wrong, I am not criticizing they did the best with what they had. And the young people still came. The UGCC didn't compromise with the Soviets, that is what the young cared about not that they served a perfect 1942 Liturgicon Liturgy.

I agree with Father Deacon Lance. But, to be fair, during the Communist days the fight was one for survival. You can't compare what was necessary because of conditions with what is normal.

As one who was actively involved in the process, I can assure you that while the MP held the benefit of numbers of faithful, and Church properties, ROCOR help the spiritual authority, liturgical purity, and moral and ethical high ground, and the MP knew and accepted this. And since being regularized by joining with ROCOR, the Church in the motherland has been cleansing itself of spiritual rot and decay.
My friend IAlmisry, I can assure you, we did not go into this reunion blind or with pipe dreams. Those who envisioned the restoration of the Orthodox Emperor on a white horse have drifted off into vagante organizations. More sober minded individuals you will not find anywhere than the episcopacy and priests of ROCOR under the omophor of our beloved Vladika Metropolitan +Laurus of Blessed Memory.

+Alexandr

Thank you Fr. Deacon Lance and Administrator John.

To be fair these were staples with not just the UGCC but most Greek Catholics and other non-Greek Eastern Catholics of the time worldwide. All would be "compromised" to various degrees to use that yardstick. As I stated no doubt there were latinizations. The outcome of the Synods of L'viv and Zamosc as reflected in some of the local liturgikons like the 1905 are examples of this. I would also say some of these are not just limited to Greek Catholics - i.e. the "strasni khrestny khid" you can find in some Orthodox parishes.

Point taken. But as I mentioned the Studites and some others even in the catacomb days (and before that) were trying to celebrate a more "full" liturgy. The young people wanted their Church to be free and legal, and respected the resistence of the hierarchy to the Soviets, but to say that liturgical considerations were never any part of that is, as I said, an oversimplification. The Studites have always been very popular places of pilgrimage (and continue to be) with the young people. If they only wanted latinizations, they wouldn't go there. The two Studite pilgrimages in Zarvanytsia and Univ are the largest two in the country and largely populated by young people.


Well said, and certainly Korolevsky and others have written about the situation in the early 20th century. Blessed +Vasyl Velychkovsky in his autobiography while detailing how the Church was surviving in the underground, was also adamant about a full celebration of the liturgical tradition as the best means of moving forward, not only in terms of our identity as a particular UGCC Church but in working towards larger unity. In the later "catacomb" days of the Brezhnev era, while in exile in Rome Patriarch +Josyp managed to have the 1940s Slavonic books translated into Ukrainian and shipped/smuggled back into the country for use.



The example for us in the UGCC has been set from Metropolitan +Andrey getting the books published in Rome, Patriarch +Josyp who had the Slavonic books translated into vernacular Ukrainian, Patriarch +Myroslav Ivan who oversaw the Liturgikon translated into English, Patriarch +Lubmoyr who blessed several Synods which declared Metropolitan +Andrey's Rome editions normative, and finally Patriarch +Sviatoslav who celebrated the full Liturgy at his enthronement with all the antiphons, litanies, and everything beautifully sung mostly by young people making up the choir.

because the MP also had the magnanimity not to insist on akrivia.

I've aware of the Neo-Donatists. The Orthodox Church, however, hasn't embraced Donatism as her praxis nor as her taxis.

I remember arguing with someone on the merits of Pat. Pimen over Met. Vitaly. I might not approve of some things that Pat. Pimen did, but then I didn't bear the weight of 50-100 million or more souls. And neither did Met. Vitaly, away in safety, like most of ROCOR, most of his life. Pat. Pimen, like the majority of his Faithful-and of the country: Stalin was furious to find out that when he personally inserted a question on religion in the census questionnaire of 1937 (and conducted it on Christmas Eve that year), 56.7% of those over 16 who answered (over a million refused to answer) said they were religious (the question was never asked again by a Soviet census)-stayed and fought the good fight against the devil himself.

Solzhenitsyn pointed this out to the 1974 ROCOR All Diaspora Sobor for refusing communion with the Patriarchate of Moscow (which ROCOR claimed to form an inseparable part) for communion "with a mysterious, sinless, but also bodiless catacomb."

ROCOR was driven to conclude the terms of Ukaze 362 by the incongruence of their spurning of any hierarchs and clergy ordained by the bodiless catacomb and the sight of the farce of setting up parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia inside Russia.

The trials by Bolshevik fire-no flame of which lapped at ROCOR-did that. In some ways ROCOR continued that ilk of spiritual rot and decay at the head of Petrograd society-Rasputin didn't appear in a vacuum-which fully embraced that abomination, the Spiritual Regulations of the Holy Governing Synod. And how well has ROCOR kept its children in the land of freedom, well as the Patriarch of Moscow, being ground down by the Bolshevik boot, kept his?

The Patriarchate of Moscow was regularized at the Synod of 1917, which much of ROCOR seems to have bypassed, idolizing the tyranny of the Holy Governing Synod.

I have no argument with ROCOR that has joined the authority of the Russian Church, the Patriarch of Moscow. Just when it tries to uncover their Father's nakedness.

Speaking of that, the silly notion of the UGCC not collaborating with the Soviets has been expressed. Silly, because those who often make that statement dismiss those who returned to Orthodoxy as politically motivated. Were they any less UGCC? Not to mention, ignoring that the return had begun long before they were making martyrs at Talerhof, before the Bolsheviks killed their first Orthodox. Silly, because the Soviets never offered compromise, hence the boast has no meaning: the UGCC took up the offer of collaboration with the First and Second Polish Republics, and the Austrians and Hungarians in between.