www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Is slavonic dead in your E.C. Church

I have little issue with choirs as I am a member of ours, although I prefer well chanted "prosto". However, liturgy is not a theatrical production nor an exercise in nostalgia. A monthly concert in the hopes of attracting a crowd will not grow an unhealthy community into a vibrant one. Just my opinion.

Rather than an exclusively Slavonic liturgy (the main purpose of which at this point would just be escaping from the banality of the RDL), it is preferably to intersperse Slavonic among the English throughout the Liturgy. The faithful should be expected to know and sing the fixed parts of the liturgy, as well as some of the more common festal hymns in Slavonic, and one way to ensure that is to toss in a few bits every week, varying the mix so that everybody is exposed to everything over time. We're not Roman Catholics: adoption of English does not require us to exile our traditional tongues to the outer darkness, the way the Latins did with, well, Latin. There is room enough for both.

A good number of Latin parishes are doing just what you describe. Some local parishes have gradually reintroduced the Agnus Dei, the Gloria, the Sanctus and the Credo. These parishes have experienced great resistance from some of the faithful and some have left the parishes, but others have flocked to them.

Just watch the daily Mass on EWTN, it is loaded with Latin. With our former priests it seemed any slavonic evoked a louder than normal response from the congregation. I just fear as the older parishioner pass away that the younger generation will have no clue how to respond to slavonic to the point where it will become obsolete.

I first attended a UGCC parish in 2000 (a couple years before I started attending a Melkite parish). I remember thinking that there was a lot of Ukrainian in it (no Slavonic), despite the parish priest telling us that there wasn't.

But before too long I realize that there really wasn't very much Ukrainian, in the sense that it didn't use a lot of different Ukrainian words. So it was really quite easy to get the hang of it.

There's a UGCC parish in driving distance from where I live now, which I go to once in a while. They have a liturgy that's entirely English, and another that's entirely in Ukrainian. I don't doubt that the Ukrainian liturgy is great for those who attend it, but personally I pretty much only go to the English one.

Irish Gaelic having even less connection to Latin than does English, that may be so, but then I wonder how your assertions hold up when it's French-, Portuguese-, and especially Italian-speaking populations praying in Latin, or when you've got American kids whose use of any Slavic language outside the liturgy extends to calling his grandmother "Baba" and calling perogies "pyrohy".

Our current clergy use no Slavonic for any of their prayers, but our choir does, and with the choir the people also do, for various prayers. Our parishioners love to sing in Slavonic, as limited as our knowledge of it is. During Great Lent we often prayed the Our Father in Slavonic. We frequently sing the Trisagion- English, Slavonic, English. Our responses in the litanies are often "Gospodi pomilui". "Memory Eternal" we typically do likewise English and Slavonic, and "Many Years" the same. I'm sure there is more I'm not recalling.

The OCA parish I visited today for Divine Liturgy everything was in English, except the "Christ is risen" greeting from the priest beginning and end of DL which was in about 6 languages.

Do you any belong to parishes that do the readings in Slavonic (or Ukrainian, Aramaic, Arabic, etc)?

The Apostol reading is read first in English and then in Slavonic in our parish.

When someone is there who can do so then the Third Hour is chanted in Slavonic, sometimes Greek and Slavonic. Normally it's done in English because the only person available at that time (myself) can only chant limited parts in Slavonic, mainly the Trisagion and the Lord have mercy.

(I noticed yesterday, the ability to edit is no longer available on the forum. I haven't posted in a long time so that is new to me.)

Our Apostol for a long time was in English, Russian (read from a bible in the Russian language), and Greek. The reading in Greek was eliminated maybe 2 years ago, which disappointed a number of folks. We bought a new Apostol in Slavonic about 8 months ago, for our Russian/Slavonic reader.