www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Implications of Summorum Pontificum for the RDL

Father Deacon Bless!

you are correct in your analysis.

I raised this question and issue in the past.

Professor J. Michael Thompson posted the following:

https://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=234185#Post234185


"Sole liturgical text" and what Professor Thompson passed on from Archbishop Basil are two different things.


Monomakh

I think you mean that *legally* there is nothing to prevent the usage.

In practice, it is far more dangerous than you suggest.

Yes. There is no official Metropolitan proscription for taking a Slavonic liturgy with choral music that is a part of the promulgation letters for the new Byzantine order.

Are liturgies taken entirely in Slavonic proscripted by any of the individual bishops?

Look at the mess that has been created on this Forum with the quasi-official ministrations of Father David and Professor Tompson contradicting the promulgation letters!!

What of mixed liturgies in English and Slavonic?

All pretty dicey as far as I can see.

Keystone Cops!!...if it weren't so damaging...

M.

The letter from Cardinal Tisserant promulgating the Ruthenian Recension liturgical books is readily available and has been right along for those who know where to look; the original Italian was published in Orientalia Christian Periodica in Rome.

But just where is the letter designated "Prot. N. : 99/2001, 31 March, 2001"? How could it have authorized a text which did not exist in March 2001? And how is it possible to "promulgate" a letter while keeping the text a secret?

This resembles the USSR at its worst - secret laws, unavailable to anyone, but enforced by the police. Civilized, intelligent people know perfectly well that people are not bound to obey such phony "laws"; there is a right to have reasonable access to the laws which seek to require this or that form of behaviour, and/or prohibit some other form of behaviour (the only exception involves what is called malum in se: no normal, grown-up person needs to be told that it is unacceptable to commit murder, to steal old ladies' handbags in the street, to abuse children, to burglarize a house, and so forth. But even then open laws are needed to lay down the appropriate penalties, and to determine the various degrees of offences. Murder, for example, is normally dealt with by the laws of the state where the killing took place - but since the assassination of President Kennedy there is a federal law which over-rides the state law and which also prohibits the murder of the President (and, I believe, certain other high federal officials). So someone who assassinates the President and lives to tell the tale will be tried in federal court, unlike most other murderers.

No one is going to argue that serving the Divine Liturgy according to the official books promulgated - in public acts - by the Holy See constitutes malum in se! Nor is the Council of Hierarchs of one Metropolia an authority on the same level of the Holy See. So until the representatives of this Council of Hierarchs produce an oficial letter from the Holy See, specifically abrogating the Ruthenian Recension liturgical books and mandating books produced by the said Council of Hierarchs, it is not and cannot be "forbidden" by legitimate Church authority to serve in accordance with those books.

Fr. Serge

There is a record in this very subsection of the Forum here of Father David responding to a direct question by me saying that there has not been one word changed in the liturgy between the 2001 authorization letter from the Vatican, to the present moment.

Not one word changed.



When the governance is tight and crisp and clear, there is less opportunity to abuse power and authority, than there is when the rules and regulations are unclear and indistinct or hidden in some other manner.


I think that very truth can be turned around on the clergy to their most severe, and in some cases life threatening, detriment, and I think most of them are not in a position to "test" the boundaries with any one of our bishops.

Mary

The assertion that not one word has been changed since 2001 is demonstrably false.

Fr Serge

I wish I could disagree with you Mary, but I think it is true. My pastor said that he was forced to put out the new books. (He had said he wasn't going to.)

He said there was verbal intimidation, and his loyalty and priesthood were called into question. He is very angry about it. There was real bullying. He said he had never seen anything like it in all his years in the priesthood. He is not too far from his retirement, and he didn't want to put that in jeopardy. I've noticed he is taking a different attitude to things, and he doesn't seem happy celebrating the Liturgy any more. I can't bear to be there with him, knowing how he feels about our parish. He used to love the Church, now he certainly has mixed feelings.

He says there is a small group in the Church that really closed ranks around this unwanted revision. He always knew they were there, but he didn't realize how much power they had. They are not afraid of lies and falsehoods, all they care about is getting their own way.

I think he would ask Rome to intervene, but he is afraid that Rome will do nothing, and that the threats against 'disobedient' clergy will be carried out.

We love our pastor, and we can see that this whole thing has taken a terrible toll on him. I think it is disgraceful.

Nick

The Holy Father has just demonstrated that he is not going to do nothing, even in the face of much more powerful opposition than the Pittsburgh Council of Hierarchs could possibly muster. Tell your pastor that he has no reason to be afraid, and good reason to depend on support from Rome.

Fr. Serge

Now there's a potentially amusing idea - serve the complete Divine Liturgy, using the few parts which remain in the RDL in English, and doing everything else in Church-Slavonic! Ah, the joys of creativity!

Fr. Serge

The recent allegation that I said there were no changes since the 2001 regognitio is an incorrect reading of my response (# 229233, April 3, 2007). What I said is that any changes were in conformity with the recognitio:

[Text of my response] "In regard to Elijahmaria's question - five years transpired between the recognitio and the promulgation, most of it due to a change of administration. How many of the "changes decried here" were added after the recognitio? None - zero - nothing - every change made was, in fact, because of the recognitio and in conformity with its recommendations. Nothing was "slipped in" to "water down" the Liturgy."

Perhaps someone on the Forum can provide us with the text of Rome's apporval of the 1965 text?

Fr. David,

Did you not come across this letter when researching your paper "A Survey of the Liturgical Translations of the Byzantine Catholic Metropolia"? In the paper you only mention:

How does one find historical documents in a Church that either closes its records or destroys them?

At least now there is a date...and from the horses mouth...presumably.

Mary

For some of our older priests, Father, all a bishop has to do is remove him, stop health benefits and the man could be dead before help comes.

I know several priests in the past decade who were denied benefits and had to hire a canon lawyer to gain due process. Fortunately most of those men had been able to establish their own cushion, through inheritance or by not having to support their own parishes by putting money back into the parish from their own private funds. Not all of our priests are capable of going it alone, and I don't see too many people stepping up to the plate to fill in the shortfalls. Most of what I see in that regard is denial that anything could possibly be wrong.

This is not for you Father: but I do wish to take the opportunity to point out to those in authority in this Church that putting one's own funds into the Church accounts is not co-mingling of funds. In most places that is called CHARITY!! Priests are very rarely punished for giving in charity, in other Churches that I know well enough to know what priests do with some of their money.

Mary

I happily stand corrected, Father David, in order to point out to people that the excesses of the Novus Ordo were also done in the "spirit" of the documents of Vatican II...and we all know where the various liturgical commission's strict adherence to recommendation has led.

The immediate past Prefect of the OC was a class mate of Bishop Andrew's and so many things have "passed" by the scrutiny of old friendship Father David. And I would venture to say that even you would not claim, in private, that it has all been to the good, though much has been advantageous in the promulgation of the new Byzantine order.

You Father David should be able to provide us with the text of Rome's approval of the 1965 text since you are closest to the history cabinet. But perhaps it does not exist after all, and your reference to it was to a phantasm of your imagination.

Mary

I think this is an excellent proposal.

We have available Card. Tisserant's letter to the Ruthenian Ordinaries that accompanied the printings of the Ruthenian Recension books, but we do not have the text of Rome's correspondence for the 1965 translation; the 1965 liturgicon simply states
Likewise for the 2007 liturgicon we only have

The Oriental Congregation has in the past published its correspondence with our bishops apparently independent of their disseminating the text -- a note added to the translation of Tisserant's letter says
I have wondered if the the letters for the 1965 and 2007 approvals have also been so published. I don't have access now to a good church library to check. I'd bet (hope) that if any library had access to publications containing these letters, if they have been published, it would be St. Cyril & Methodius. If they are so published and found I would be happy to make them available on the web as part of a project to highlight important documents in the life of our Church.

Dn. Anthony