www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology In praise of Roman Catholics

Yesterday I had the occasion to take my elderly godmother to Mass at her Roman Catholic parish in the Diocese of Arlington and then out to breakfast. For the second time in the last six months I have now witnessed the �Dismissal of the Catechumens� in the Latin Rite. After the homily and just before the Creed the priest called the group from the front pews (about 30 people), asked the people to pray for them, gave them a blessing and dismissed them. A minister led them out of the church (in procession) and to another place to continue their preparation to be received into the Church.

Throughout the day yesterday I could not help but think that, just as the Latins are beginning to counter the excesses of the liturgical experimentation from the last 40 years with a return to more traditional liturgics, we Byzantine-Ruthenians are just beginning our own round of liturgical experimentation and revisionism. We should learn from the experiences of the Roman Catholics. If we were to faithfully follow the Instruction for Applying the Liturgical Prescriptions of the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches , we should be fully restoring our liturgy as we have received it (and as researched and documented in our official Ruthenian Recension liturgical books published at Rome). The fact that we are embarking upon revising it according to the Mateos / Taft / New Skete model (which is highly influenced by the liberal tendencies in the Latin Church since Vatican II) will place us at odds with the rest of Byzantine Orthodoxy which has, for the most part, now rejected these liturgical revisions.

I often think of the Liturgical Instruction and last night when I looked it over the following (from section 18) jumped out: �We are witness today to the diffusion of a mentality that tends to overvalue efficiency, excessive activism, and the attainment of results with minimum effort and without deep personal involvement. This attitude can also negatively influence the approach towards liturgy, even in the East. The liturgy, rather, continues to be a demanding school which requires an assimilation that is progressive, laborious, and never completely accomplished.�

The proposed revisions to our liturgy are nothing more than a very Western, efficiency-oriented approach to the liturgy. All those litanies take too much time and are very repetitive so let�s cut as many out as is possible. Also, let�s chop the antiphons down to a single verse. [Either the Office of the Three Antiphons is important or not. If it�s important lets restore it in a more complete form. If it�s not important the logical thing is for the revisionists to chuck it altogether.] The mandating of taking the prayers of the Anaphora aloud is yet another example of mandating efficiency over received tradition. I could go on�.

There is much we can learn from the Roman Catholic experiments in liturgy. We ought not to embark upon the course that they are now beginning to abandon.

Admin

Administrator,

Although I hold you in the greatest esteem, I must respectfully disagree with you on a couple of points.

First, while you criticize the "Taft" model, you (rightly) give great praise to the Liturgical Instruction. The Liturgical Instruction is a fabulous document, no question about it. However, Father Giles Dimock, a very respected liturgical scholar, told me that Archimandrite Taft was the primary author of the Liturgical Instruction. Father Giles is very well informed about liturgical matters, and I would bet that he is right about this.

Secondly, regarding the heated controversy over taking the prayers of the Anaphora aloud, I recently asked an Orthodox priest who is also a theologian about this. He told me that this is the trend in Orthodoxy nationwide, and is quickly becoming the norm. He and most of the priests in his generation prefer it this way. I know that you will counter that this shouldn't be "mandated," and maybe it shouldn't. But the point is that this in no way separates us from the rest of Byzantine Christianity, since it is becoming very widespread.

Finally, on a somewhat different note, most of the Roman Catholic parishes that I am familiar with have 10-30 catechumens received into the Church annually. Almost all of the Byzantine Catholic parishes that I am familiar with have none. Something is very, very wrong with this picture. With a few notable exceptions, WE AREN'T EVANGELIZING. We aren't even making an attempt. It's downright pathetic! Twenty years from now we won't be here, unless something changes. Our entire mentality must change. We must stop thinking of ourselves as the caretakers of dying communities, and must become proactive spreaders of the Gospel! In this instance, you are most correct to praise the Roman Catholics.

Anthony

Anthony,

Thanks for your post. I noted that the Liturgical Instruction and the current plans to revise the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom are two entirely different things. I combine Mateos / Taft and New Skete together since Taft embraced much of Mateos� ideas and New Skete revised their liturgical books to address Taft�s criticism of their work. This work is clearly one I consider to be misguided and harmful to our Church. Taft personally celebrates the complete, traditional liturgy (according to the Russian Recension) and has not himself embraced any of the experimentation that some in our Church seek to make mandatory. If you are appealing to his example here then we need to move in the opposite direction of where the liturgical revisionists wish us to go.

I am aware that here in America there are some Orthodox parishes that have started to pray the Anaphora prayers aloud. I do not know of a single Orthodox eparchy that has mandated this practice. If indeed the Spirit is leading Byzantium in this direction then mandates are not needed. Further, the custom of praying the Anaphora aloud is hardly universal within Orthodoxy. A mandate for this, together with the other revisions of the liturgy, certainly does create third way that separates us even further from the rest of Orthodoxy. Any and all alterations to the liturgy need to be accomplished with the other Churches of the Ruthenian Recension (Catholic and Orthodox, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Slovak, Hungarian). Simply put, we do not have the authority to revise the Liturgy ourselves, especially when such revisions are not in accordance with the Liturgical Instruction, which demands that we fully recover our traditions before revising them.

I do agree with some of your comments regarding evangelization. Everything � including evangelical zeal � flows from the liturgy. If we have a good, complete and well-sung liturgy in our parishes we will have people who will be willing to call others to follow Christ and join our parishes.

Admin

What sort of liturgical reforms are we talking about? How is New Skete involved?

Please forgive my ignorace. I have been out of the forum "loop" for some time.

Yours in Christ and the Theotokos -

Gordo

New Skete is just one of the models. They have experimented with liturgical revisions and currently have a liturgical usage that is rather unique within Orthodoxy (and highly criticized by many Orthodox). I am not suggesting that our Ruthenian Church is adopting their specific revisions but rather that our own revisions are done in the same spirit.

There have been several discussions of the proposed revisions on the Forum (most notably beginning last August when the new texts and music were distributed by the bishops to select priests and cantors for review). The changes fall into three areas: 1) translations, 2) rubrics and 3) music. There are numerous occasions where the translations are not faithful to the original Slavonic text. Two small examples are changing �Master, bless� for the deacon�s opening prayer to �Father, bless� (which is something entirely different) and �ecumenical pontiff� to �Holy Father�. The employment of paraphrasing has been soundly denounced by Rome in its own liturgical translations and we could learn from their experiences. Regarding the rubrics, the Office of the Three Antiphons is gutted (the litanies are supposedly omitted from the liturgicon itself and the number of verses mandated to only one). All of the prayers of the doxologies are mandated to be taken aloud as is the Anaphora. Also, the litany prior to the Lord�s prayer is truncated. [This is not an exhaustive list.] The music is a separate issue and I won�t address that here.

This is a topic worthy of a new thread.

Admin

Actually this is a topic worthy of two (or even three) new threads: one on the traditional Liturgy itself (as published by Rome and as found in other sources), one on the many problems of English translation, and (perhaps) one on music though, since I value my life, I would not be apt to contribute the thread on music. A propos of the comment on evangelism - the nineteen-nineties were supposed to be the decade of evangelism, so it would have been an appropriate moment to restore the prayers for the Catechumens and their dismissal. If we don't have any Catechumens in a given parish, we should be embarrassed by this lack (there is no lack of people to evangelize) and perhaps the prayers would summon us to evangelize! Incognitus

I have also noted the dismissal of the Catechumens in one or two parishes of the RC Church. Although it is still not the common practice, a few years ago it was not done at all.

As for the Byzantine Church, to what extent should we simply do what Rome tells us to do? To what extent is Liturgy an unflexible strait jacket? The Liturgical Books published at Rome were necessary when the "old country" was behind the Iron Curtain, but isn't there room for adaptation, based on usage in the "old country" and in the "new country" as well?

Mr. Administrator, we are faced with a question. What is it that we have received? The Liturgy of the Latinized? The Slavonic Liturgy of 1900?

Should we return to the original Greek usage of 988 Kyiv? Using modern languages? Should we conform to Moscow's ways? Pre- or Post-Nikonian?

Should we follow what Rome orders? Last time around, they seemed to want us to become Latin.
What will they think of next?

Or should we be us? Develop our own conciousness of what it means to be Church? Between the Sheptytsky Institute and the Ukrainian Catholic University and the St. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, we can collect our thoughts and develop our understanding of what Ruthenian/ Ukrainian/ Rusyn/ Slavic Christianity is in the 21st Century.

Both Rome and Orthodoxy, according to the Balamand agreement, think we are illegitimate and should be destroyed! Should we play their game? I don't think so. We should make the changes that our Bishops and scholars come to agree upon as reflecting the most authentic expression of Slavic Christianity in the 21st Century.

We are us and we are Church. We should be Our Church!

John
Pilgrim and Odd Duck

John asks some excellent questions (as does Incongitus). I do not have all the answers but I can attempt to provide my perspective.

Two Lungs wrote:
As for the Byzantine Church, to what extent should we simply do what Rome tells us to do? To what extent is Liturgy an unflexible strait jacket? The Liturgical Books published at Rome were necessary when the "old country" was behind the Iron Curtain, but isn't there room for adaptation, based on usage in the "old country" and in the "new country" as well?

What Rome has asked of us is to restore our liturgy, removing any blatant Latinisms, so that it is as identical as possible to that of our corresponding Orthodox Churches. Back in the 1940�s our bishops (in Europe and the USA) asked Rome to do the scholarship for the Ruthenian Recension and Rome produced a magnificent set of liturgical books. To date, most of these books have not been translated into English. The Liturgical Instruction, IMHO, provides excellent guidance by suggesting that until we restore our received liturgical tradition and fully live it (i.e., the regular celebration of Vespers and Matins as well as the traditional Divine Liturgy) we will not be capable of understanding the majesty of our inheritance. Is there room for adaptation? Sure. But we cannot rewrite the liturgy or paraphrase the texts when rendering them into English. Imagine if each national council of bishops in the Latin Church decided to revise the liturgical rubrics and paraphrase the original Latin texts to make them to be what seems to be more meaningful to their people. The result would be liturgical chaos, with huge variations in the liturgy from country to country. Within Byzantine Orthodoxy there are currently no huge differences in practice, even though there are many unique local customs. As Byzantine-Ruthenian Catholics we should not be revising the liturgy apart from the rest of Orthodoxy (in general) and apart from the other Churches that are part of the Ruthenian Recension (in particular).


Two Lungs wrote:
Mr. Administrator, we are faced with a question. What is it that we have received? The Liturgy of the Latinized? The Slavonic Liturgy of 1900?

Should we return to the original Greek usage of 988 Kyiv? Using modern languages? Should we conform to Moscow's ways? Pre- or Post-Nikonian?

What we have received is the Ruthenian Recension liturgical books published by Rome from the 1940 (mostly in the 1940�s). We share it with the other Churches � Catholic and Orthodox � who also follow the Ruthenian Recension. The scholarship is excellent and it serves as a good example of our liturgy without the Latinizations. All we need to do is to render it into English that is as faithful to the original Slavonic text as possible. Changes back to the Greek usage of 988 Kiev, Russian Recension or other Pre & Post Nikonian liturgical practices should be done only by the entire Ruthenian Recension acting as one.

Two Lungs wrote:
Should we follow what Rome orders? Last time around, they seemed to want us to become Latin. What will they think of next?

In this case Rome�s �orders� are to remove latinizations and make our liturgical customs as identical to that of the rest of Byzantine Orthodoxy as is possible. The proposed liturgical revisions are a major step in an entirely different direction.

Two Lungs wrote:
Or should we be us? Develop our own conciousness of what it means to be Church? Between the Sheptytsky Institute and the Ukrainian Catholic University and the St. Cyril and Methodius Seminary, we can collect our thoughts and develop our understanding of what Ruthenian/ Ukrainian/ Rusyn/ Slavic Christianity is in the 21st Century.

That depends on how one defines �us�. It is my considered opinion that we need to continue to strip away the latinizations and restore our liturgical customs according to the received texts published by Rome. They are highly respected by Orthodoxy and it is a logical starting point.

Two Lungs wrote:
Both Rome and Orthodoxy, according to the Balamand agreement, think we are illegitimate and should be destroyed!

That statement is actually incorrect. The Balamand Agreement condemned only the method of creating the union (and rightly so). It also acknowledged our right to exist (something that is a first for the rest of Orthodoxy). It was never ratified by the participating Churches.

Two Lungs wrote:
Should we play their game? I don't think so. We should make the changes that our Bishops and scholars come to agree upon as reflecting the most authentic expression of Slavic Christianity in the 21st Century.

The logical extension of this is that each national bishops� conference with the Latin Church should also be able to adapt the texts and rubrics of the Latin liturgical tradition to reflect a more authentic expression of Latin Christianity. That would be chaos. No, we must restore our inheritance and then learn to act together as the Churches of the Ruthenian Recension.

Two Lungs:

YOu write: I submit that none of the above are acceptable. First, to "be us" means we must know who we are. That requires study of history and of liturgy, and cannot be done in isolation nor can it be done based upon who we think we are today. Secondly, "our own consciousness of what it means to be Church" may not, in fact, be what Church is! Again, we must look to the past, the Church Fathers, to help us to define what Church is. How we live out being Church is, of course, subject to change as the situation changes, but I do nto believe that what Church is ever changes.

After all, Church is Christ present among us acting through the auspices of the Church and her system of mysteries. This was true for the Early Church and is true today. Truth does not change.

As a Melkite I have seen the glory of the Liturgy without the Latinizations -- and I've attended Ruthenian Liturgies where the Latinizations are both glaring and incongruous. I applaud Rome for the order to remove the Latinizations, to restore the Liturgy to what it should be.

If, as the Melkites believe, the Eastern Catholics are the best and most authentic bridge to the Orthodox, we need to be what we were before we were Latinized. And that, of course, means going back to what we had -- not developing some hybrid that is neither Latin nor Eastern.

Edward, deacon and sinner

I would like to add that in the parish I go to in So. Calif. we do this also. So add one more RC parish.

BradM

Two Lungs wrote:
We are faced with a question. What is it that we have received? The Liturgy of the Latinized? The Slavonic Liturgy of 1900?

Should we return to the original Greek usage of 988 Kyiv? Using modern languages? Should we conform to Moscow's ways? Pre- or Post-Nikonian?
And the Administrator replied:
What we have received is the Ruthenian Recension liturgical books published by Rome from the 1940 (mostly in the 1940�s). We share it with the other Churches � Catholic and Orthodox � who also follow the Ruthenian Recension. The scholarship is excellent and it serves as a good example of our liturgy without the Latinizations. All we need to do is to render it into English that is as faithful to the original Slavonic text as possible.
Incognitus would suggest only that translations should be made directly from the Greek (since that's the original language) with, as in cases like this one, close attention to the Church-Slavonic.
The books from Rome are not perfect (though they are a whale of an improvement on what preceded them!). But they are an excellent frame of reference for a new beginning. Nobody can successfully reform what he does not know.
Since right now we're talking about Liturgy, let's leave Balamand for another thread!
I think the Administrator wrote that:
"The logical extension of this is that each national bishops� conference with the Latin Church should also be able to adapt the texts and rubrics of the Latin liturgical tradition to reflect a more authentic expression of Latin Christianity. That would be chaos." That's what happened, and chaos is the result.
Of course further scholarship and study is appropriate. But breakfast is calling, so a discussion of some sources will have to wait! Incognitus

Fr Deacon Edward wrote:

Why is it that the Ruthenian and Melkite Churches have had different responses to the idea of restoring authentic Byzantine tradition and erasing latinizations? There have been some very positive changes in the Ruthenian Church but things have seemingly moved much slower.

The Ruthenian Church seems to have an antagonism to things Orthodox...while the Melkite Church seems to glory in them. Why?

David Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

David,

I suspect part of the reason that the Melkites have moved so fast is that we have a very close relationship with the Antiochian Orthodox -- the other half of us (or are we their other half?). In fact, our Patriarch has said he will step down if there is a reunion between the two Churches.

Further, the Melkites and the Antiochians mix freely in the Middle East -- and that influences both our priests and our bishops. As a result, the liturgical directives tend to keep us very much in step.

Finally, the Melkites have never been willing to simply let Rome dictate to us. At both Vatican I and Vatican II the Melkite patriarchs have been outspoken and have considered themselves to be the voting representatives of the Orthodox.

I am not qualified to speak to the Ruthenian process...

Edward, deacon and sinner

To return to the original topic of this thread...

All the Latin parishes in the Diocese of Orange in California (with one exception) have active an active RCIA and dismiss catechumens from the Mass. In fact, many Latin parishes will bring their catechumens to visit my Melkite parish. When they are present we do the litany for the catechumens, including ordering them to leave (however, we tell them up front that they are to remain so that they may experience the fullness of our liturgy).

Sadly, we have no catechumens of our own. In fact, my parish is about 99% ethnic (Arab) from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. There are only a handful of non-Arabs in the parish (although neither the pastor nor I qualify as being Arabic in origin).

Edward, deacon and sinner

Admin,

I must strongly disagree as well. To say Frs. Mateos and Taft are influenced by post VII liberal tendencies is unfair at best.

They are excellent scholars and devouted priests and deserve better than that kind of comment.

I also think you are not being very objective either. You state we should not do anything our Orthodox brothers aren't doing and when it is shown that we are not doing anything they aren't then you want us to keep doing what we been doing just because it is what we have been doing. If you like the liturgy the way it is that is fine but I don't think it fair to libel the proposed changes bad because they are not what you prefer.

In Christ,
Subdeacon Lance