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

Brad,

Yes, I'm at Holy Cross. I look forward to seeing you this Sunday. I warn you, however, that you will have to hear me preaching (I preach on the 1st and 3rd Sundays).

Edward, deacon and sinner

Admin,

You state: "With all due respect to you, the deacons and deacon candidates and many of our younger priests (all of whom I admire greatly), all of you have been formed in a seminary where liturgical revisionism has been taught as something sorely needed by our Ruthenian Church."

I can honestly say I was never taught that revision was something sorely needed. I think the most promoted thing is unity: one Liturgy, one text, one version of music, one set of rubrics for the entire Metropolia. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is to mandate it.

In Christ,
Subdeacon Lance

Wonderfully stated! The liturgy is and will be our source of unity with the rest of Byzantine Orthodoxy. There is no justification for revising it along the lines of the personal preference of some of our clergy. Hieromonk Elias also correctly points out that we, as a tiny Church in the USA, do not have the authority to take such a revision upon ourselves.

--

Subdeacon Lance,

Thank you for your clarification regarding the typo. That statement now makes more sense.

The 1964 Liturgicon is amazingly faithful to the official Slavonic texts published at Rome, even so far as layout of the page. Bishop Elko was responsible for publishing this text. It is well known that he was a latinizer yet the liturgicon he promulgated contained no latinizations. As latinizing as he was he knew that he did not have the authority to unilaterally revise the Divine Liturgy.

Anyone claiming that the revision of the liturgy is needed for the sake of unity is making a claim that cannot be supported. The 1964 liturgicon already provides a uniform text for our Church in this country and is used in all but a few parishes. It also provides rubrics that are faithful to our received inheritance and which are common throughout Byzantine Orthodoxy. If our Church has not been able to get our priests to celebrate these rubrics (which have never actually been mandated or exampled at our seminary) then it is highly unlikely that they will be able to get them to follow the revisionist liturgy. Also, there has only been one common version of the various melodies for the Divine Liturgy (published in the 1960s) and they are well known throughout our country. Again the idea of these revisions being required for the purpose of unity cannot be supported.

If there is to be a mandate how about a mandate to implement the Ordo that was already promulgated and is common to all of the Catholic Byzantines (Ruthenian, Ukrainian and Romanian)? The liturgical unity we need to seek is that with other Byzantines and especially those of the Ruthenian recension. There is simply no justification for the proposed liturgical revisions except the personal preference of those proposing them.

Admin

Ugh. This is completely contrary to our entire historical experience. It's one thing to teach something completely new using the same source material; it's another thing entirely to mandate uniformity across the board for something like prostopinije.

To return to my experience in Presov, Slovakia a few weeks ago -- the little bit of prostopinije that was used at the Cathedral's Sunday morning Slavonic liturgy was somewhat different than what we sing here. And it also differed substantially from the prostopinije sung just a few blocks away at the Basilian Fathers' monastery. If my observations are correct, the monastery was mostly attended by people who were born & raised in the villages (and one region in particular), and are more recent city residents. The cathedral, on the other hand, was attended mostly by the true city dwellers, the people born and raised in Presov or who have lived most of their lives there. So not just the melodies are different, but the style of singing is too.

Some of our parishes in the USA are like that. The local parish where I live is mostly people from the hustle & bustle of this metro area and the singing is so fast you can't possibly keep up with it; it's almost inhuman. In the country, the singing is more relaxed, spiritual, and yes, a little slow(er). I can't wait for the chant police to start cracking the whip to force the country parishes to sing like this insane suburbia parish does. (We all know that no matter how fast prostopinije is sung, it's not fast enough for the powers-that-be. Cantors have lost their jobs over this issue.)

Father Deacon Ed,

Just to let you know, I tried accessing the website for your Melkite parish recently, and it took me to a XXX porno site! Is it possible that, while you are between providers, a porn peddler has coopted the domain name?

I tried it again just now, and the same thing happened.

It was reported to me that porn distributers have been stealing domain names from Christian organizations and churches all over the country. Perhaps this is another case of that.

Anthony

Dear Anthony,

A bad illustration of "naked faith?"

Alex

What I think has happened is that our domain name still points to the original host. He has, in turn, simply put up a porno site where our site was. As a result you get the porno site. I'm working on moving our domain name to point to a different server and that should happen within the week.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Edward, deacon and sinner