I've just read Fr. David's second response to Fr. Serge over in the Books forum, and it's very educational. I, for one, am quite happy that this debate is happening. But, as I looked over the list of Fr. Serge's difficulties with the text and Fr. David's responses, I found myself agreeing with Fr. David that not everything is of equal importance. That led to the question: what are the most important difficulties?

Here's my list. I invite you to submit your own.

#1 Inclusive Language in the Creed: "For us and for our salvation" simply does not mean the same as "For us men" or "For us humans." It is inaccurate. It will bug me for sixty years, assuming I live that long.

#2 Inclusive language in "Philanthropos": "Lover of us all" doesn't mean the same thing as "who loves mankind" or "who loves every human being" or "who loves humankind."

Note: "humankind" or "humans" doesn't bother me. I 'm not holding out for "man," even though I think "man" is a perfectly good word to use. Perhaps in the Creed, "men" is most appropriate because we simply must say that Christ "became man."

#3 The abbreviated antiphons

#4 The removed litanies. I want the antiphons and litanies at least printed, so that a parish may take them if desired. Please put the litanies and antiphons back! Let them be optional, but at least put them there.

These are the main concerns. After this, we slide from worries to matters of taste, although I think my taste is theologically formed. I've got good reasons for the following two, I think.

#5 Despota. "Master" would be so much better, since it is an actual translation of the word, and, more importantly, because it establishes very clearly the relationship between Christ and the priest, who are both called by the same title.

#6 Holy gifts to holy people: Is this better than "Holy things to the holy?" It strikes me as being similar to explaining a joke. Over-translation closes off avenues of prayerful reflection. I, for example, often refer myself at that point of the liturgy to all of creation, which is made holy by Christ. With the new translation, I won't be able to do that, since I will hear "holy people" instead of the "the holy." Only one interpretation of the ambiguous Greek phrase will come to mind.

There's my top six. Really, if the first four were dealt with better, I would raise hardly a peep. If the first five were addressed, I would be peepless.

Are my concerns typical?

I would add to your second list:

#7 Royal Doors The Ordo Celebrationis stresses the traditional rubrics for opening and closing the Royal Doors during the Divine Liturgy, and that they should be restored where they have fallen into disuse.

But yes, P-A, your list is otherwise exactly the same as mine.

I would not leave the Church over any of the seven items, but it would certainly make this process a LOT less controversial if they were left unchanged.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

I just wanted to say Ditto.

So read my book!

Fr. Serge

Royal Door rubrics would be nice, but there are many parishes who STILL do not have Icon Screens yet. I think proper church architecture is still an issue in the Ruthenian Metropolia.

Ungcsertezs (The Doors, the doors,...)

I would agree with the other posters here. Since we are talking about genuine liturgical renewal here I would also add that when the revised Liturgy is promulgated that the directions for the proskomedia service be followed as it's written which would mean no pre-cut pieces any longer. It's time those rubics were honored and there be no more symbolic cutting of bread.

Would someone - or some group - care to do a work of serious research and find out what the liturgical situation really is in the various parishes of the Pittsburgh Metropolia? That information could be crucial. And doing this from Dublin is not a practical alternative - which is not to say that I wouldn't be willing to help.

Fr. Serge

After a detailed critique of the new English translation/pastoral adaptation of the 1942 edition, sent directly to our priests, we have a call for a study of the liturgical situation. Better late than never. I would agree that this information crucial - to discerning both appropriate pastoral adaptation, and the best process for restoration - but evidently it does not inform the published and distributed critique of the pastoral adaptation. Is it informing any of this discussion of "biggest difficulties"?

Don't tell me I see here a call to connect all of this with reality, do I?

Next thing we know somebody will be hollering for some Tridentinesque insistence on uniformity!!

Eli

What was I thinking? So much more fun to do bishop-for-a-day.

Nothing like wasting space for a

Well, a recognition that there is a common need to know what, in fact, is happening in the parishes can scarcely be considered a lack of realism!

Fr. Serge

Neither is closing the barn door after the horses have bolted lacking in realism.

I only read the first 10 pages that someone posted on this site in pdf, so that's all I can comment on.

Using inclusive language is always a problem. Back in the early 70s I once read a letter from an 10th grader to the admissions committee of a college for which I worked. The salutation read "Gentle People." How very flower child-like!

For centuries, we heard that "Man was created in the image of God." I never once imagined that I wasn't created in his image just because I was female. I would definitely have voted "no" on the inclusive language if I had been part of the IELC, and would have communicated that to my pastor - who is a member of the commission - had I known it was under consideration.

I did communicate to him my disappointment in "to those in the tombs" rather than "to those in the graves," but that was already a done deal when I learned of it. Here in the U.S. (outside of New Orleans), pretty much only the rich and famous are interred in tombs. The majority of people are buried in graves.

I understand that those who rose from the dead and were seen in Jerusalem after Jesus died did indeed rise from tombs. But to me, the phrase implies the eventual resurrection of us all. The first time I heard "to those in the graves He granted life," I immediately thought of my deceased father, and for the first time I really understood the meaning of Easter.

Tombs may be a more accurate translation, but I don't think it's necessarily better than "graves."

My pastor has been saying "Holy gifts to the holy" for years. I think "holy gifts" is a more reverent and evocative rendering than "holy things."

Sophia

I have done that quite literally and there are some VERY real consequences.

But that is the tradition you know. Local saints, local liturgies. Comes from living in blythe isolation in villages rather than some artificially constructed "communities" of the 20th and 21st century. Personally I still live in a village, and from what I've seen in my travels, so does most of the rest of the world. Why even some of our cities have villages, bergs, dolinas and bottoms. We can forge communities but we live in villages. I guess the folks in Pittsburgh are so out of touch that they can no longer recognize the difference.

All looking at local customaries will show us, in reality, is that there's more than one way to chant the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and in more than one language, some hieratic, some not. Do we really need to have diversity confirmed?

Eli

My only difficulty, is that it is not a careful accurate or faithful translation of our Liturgy into English.

It is an attempt to re-order, re-organize, re-form the Liturgy, under the cloud of a "translation".

It is not a translation, it is a revision, and no revision was asked for, no revision is needed.

Nick

How did "Our God-loving Bishop ______," become "Our Bishop, _____, whom God loves" ???


Obviously two different meanings. What is the story?

~Manoli

That explanation would be helpful. As helpful would be an explanation as to how it got changed back as I understand it has. It shows that at least some changes are being made on some occasions for some reason from some people. Why not an open conference?

In any event I will love my Church no matter what.

CDL

I thought that this was one of the changes that is NOT going to happen. Or am I wrong?

The reference to the monastics seem to be missing as well. Is that because they only have RC orders and congregations?

Substantially that comment is a lousy cheap shot and will never advance a love for eastern traditions. If the latter is what you intended, you failed.

Eli the Stupid

I now see why so many of our people have returned to Holy Orthodoxy over the years.

As an aside, when a lake dries out it will never fill up again wihout rain.

Eli,

I don't understand your reaction. We closed one monastery in Fla., perhaps for good reason (I don't know) and rejected the other in California. We have severed our connection with our own monastics at least officially. How was his comment a "cheap shot"? Did you interpret it as a comment about our bishops' monastic connections?

CDL

Well let us be certain that it is rain that is splattering into the lake and not some other fluid born of internal waste and corruption.

Some Orthodox are learning the hard way that one does not build love for traditions by warping the traditions to suit a current need, or by taking a tire iron to other traditions.

In Christ's love,

Eli the Mensch

Just to clarify. Does this summarize why we care about our liturgy?

"It is a very funny thing about life - if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it."

W. Somerset Maugham

Dan,

Just to clarify:

1. The Monastery in Florida went to the OCA.

2. Holy Resurrection rejected us. It was their decision to go under Bishop John Michael's omophor.

3. Monasteries still remain. Holy Trinity being one. Being Benedictine does not preclude one from being an authnetic Eastern Monastic. Amalfion on Athos used the Rule of St. Benedict (and the Roman Rite) and continued to exist even after the schism.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Dear Father Deacon,

Beginning back with Father Abbott Lawrence and what became the New Skete, there's a history of some monastic efforts "rejecting us".

It is not for this discussion, but it is not a history that ought to be passed off as 'not our problem.'

On the other hand there is the other hand.

Eli

I don't think that's a clarification, I'd call it a confusion. Everyone who knows anything about this sad story knows that it is much more complicated than that.

Like the man at the bottom of the stairs.... Did he fall, or was he pushed?

There is so little support for monasticism in our Church, I think authentic monasticism is a "test" of the true Church, and like a canary in a mine, without the oxygen of life, it is the first to sound the alarm.

"He who has ears..."

Nick

Nicholas,

From what I know from personal conversations I'd have to agree with your assessment.

CDL

Who is this "us" Holy Resurrection is supposed to have "rejected"? And who is this "we" who was supposed to have "rejected" the monastery?

Our transfer was very far from a "rejection" by or of the Pittsburgh Metropolia or the Eparchy of Van Nuys, still less the entire Ruthenian Church. Certainly there did not seem to be a meeting of the minds at the leadership level over the role of a monastery and the proper degree of autonomy required to exercise that role. We said as much in our statement (which I believe is still on our web site). But the transfer was made with good will, and to speak of "rejection" in terms of "us" and "them" is far too harsh.

unworthy hierodeacon Maximos

"Being Benedictine does not preclude one from being an authnetic Eastern Monastic. Amalfion on Athos used the Rule of St. Benedict (and the Roman Rite)"

But why would a Benedictine monastery have used the Roman Rite? One would have expected them to use some variety of the Missale Monasticum.

Fr Serge

However charitable the language of disagreement, there was enough of an unliveable reality to cause a separation, if that's all right to use as a descriptor, and of course your community has not been the only one over time for many the same reasons.

Something is wrong. There is no real caritas in burying one's head. And I am not speaking to you directly there at all, at all!

So using the language of separation and rejection may not necessarily be inaccurate or uncharitable.
For if one refuses to accept a position is that not also a rejection of that very same position? Sometimes language may indeed be merely descriptive.

Eli

Father Maximos,

I stand corrected. It is more complex than the word "rejection" would suggest. In any event we have no purely Eastern Monasteries left unless Trinity be counted as one.

CDL

Could be, then again, the Antiochian Orthodox Church in America might give reason to rethink this idea.

Or it could be another example that verifies it.

Nick

I suppose the truth is that monasticism is, almost by definition, a controversial proposal in both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Always has been. At its core monasticism is a "hard saying", pointing to Last Things.

Even within the institutional structures of monasticism the primitive monastic *ideal* is also controversial. How do we live in the world but not of it?

If different monasteries resolve this irresolvable tension differently can we expect entire churches to do otherwise? The Antiochian solution seems to be to attempt to draw its members to perfection in holiness through the Mysteries and evangelical action. In this work their hierarchy seems to regard monasticism as unnecessary. The majority of Orthodox seem to think that it is dangerous to attempt this work without the radical reminder that monasticism offers of the ultimate futility of a purely human "activism".

I really don't know whether monasticism is necessary for the survival of any Church. I suspect it is, but the only thing I really know is that it is essential for my own salvation.

unworthy hierodeacon Maximos

In the history of the Latin rite after the dissolution of the monasteries in Great Britain and their decline in Europe, there has been an ever increasing humanistic and nominalistic heterodoxy let loose in monastic life and in parish life, that often uses quite orthodox constructions, yet finds expression in exclusion and the superiority of vainglorious pronouncements, and fear tactics used on the ordinary soul.

It is also among the monastic theologians that order and orthodoxy are being restored.

I hope that puts your dear heart and mind at rest, monk Maximos.

Christ's peace,

Eli