Here is the link and the conversation about the RDL is about half way down.

http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2007/04/calling_time.html

Interesting article, though not a lot of discussion - I did notice that once of the claimed "awful translations" ("As smoke disappears") is simply not the text in the new book...

This off-the-cuff essay by Stuart Koehl has been making the rounds among on-line Anglo-Catholics for a while with many salutary groans of commiseration in attendance.

I am not sure that Stuart and his high-brow buddies are really good spokesmen for the ordinary old Slav-in-the-Pew who doesn't have the luxury of being quite so sanguine about the manipulations of their traditions, or quite so disdainful either.

And in this quote below he turns a teaching opportunity in something ludicrous like suggesting that in the Slavic tradition we offer a Holy Oblation in peace, while in the Greek we pray the Anaphora, the holy prayer, prayerfully.

That may not be what he intended but it certainly is what it looks like from outside, and puts him distinctly out of touch with both the liturgical designers of the RDL, and those who oppose elements of the revision on sober theological grounds....Mary

Stuart Koehl says:

True. But nonetheless, some of the other translations make my spirit droop within me.

"Many of the changes are needless and invariably result in an inferior English rendition."

How true.

Xpucmoc Bockpece!

Ungcsertezs

If you can say "He is gracious and loves us all" without gagging, you have a stronger stomach than I do.

Even though this was written "tongue in cheek", it is exactly how I feel! When I hear this, I get a nauseous feeling in my stomach.

http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2007/04/calling_time.html


">>>Stuart, this is off topic but I have been wondering what your reaction is to the changes in the DL of the ByzCath churches in the Pittsburgh diocese recently? Adopting "inclusive language" in the Nicene Creed, etc.?<<<

It sucks. My wife (professional translator who speaks Slavonic, Russian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and half a dozen other Slavic languages) and I are preparing an article on the subject for Eastern Churches Journal. In the interim, you can perhaps get a copy of Fr. Serge Kelleher's scathing review "Studies on the Byzantine Liturgy-The Draft Translation: A response to the proposed recasting of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom". This can be ordered from:

Stauropegion Press
PO Box 14096
Pittsburgh, PA 15237-9998

The price is $20.00 + $4.00 per book shipping and handling ($24.00 total per book).

You would not believe how truly awful this "translation" is--my wife says it is semi-literate at best. Many of the changes are needless and invariably result in an inferior English rendition. Examples:

"May our lips be filled with your praise, O Lord" becomes "May our mouth be filled with your praise, O Lord" (the Slavonic word can me either, but generally is used metaphorically, while a separate word is used for mouth as an organ of the body, as in Psalm 50: O Lord, you will open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise").

"As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish, as wax melts before a fire" becomes, "As smoke disappears, so let them disappear, as wax melts before a fire". Obviously, the people who wrote this drivel have a tin ear.

"Holy Gifts for the Holy" now becomes "Holy gifts for holy people"--as if we could not figure that out. A much better translation, going back to the Greek through the Slavonic, would be "Holies for the holy", which has a nice, mystically ambiguous ring to it.

But it is when we get to the "horizontally inclusive" language that the dissonances really become impossible to ignore. For instance, one of the oldest and most revered titles for Christ in Eastern spirituality is "Philanthropos", the "Lover of Mankind" (the Slavonic equivalent is "Cheloviklubjets"). This has been rendered to "Lover of us all", while the ekphonesis (ending of a prayer string) "For He is gracious and loves mankind" has been changed to "He is gracious and loves us all".

Not only is this hard on the ears, it is theologically suspect at best, and downright heretical at worst. "He is gracious and loves us all"? Who are the "all"? The people at the Liturgy? The members of the Ruthenian Church? Everyone on earth, the doggies and kitties and dolphins and chimps, and even the liturgists?

Ostensibly, this is being done to "eliminate vestiges of sexism" in the language of the Church, but in fact this is a solution in search of a problem, since nobody--and I mean nobody--has ever muttered a complaint about this in the past. This is not an issue for us (indeed, the use of the inclusive language is found offensive by a number of women in the parish, including my wife, who wonder if our "God-loving bishops" have such a low opinion of women that they believe the poor things don't know that they are included in the word "mankind").

So why do it?

Because they can. Because there has always been a streak of self-loathing within the clergy of the Ruthenian Church going back to the arrival of the Church in the New World, a desire to be accepted as "real Catholics" by the Roman Catholic clergy, right down to mindless aping of the intellectual and theological fads of their Latin confreres. This, combined with a real lack of respect for the intelligence of the laity (in the Old Country, the priest was usually the only literate man in the village, but this is America, dammit!) has produced a liturgy which is condescending and bowdlerized, a Byzantine attempt to make all the same mistakes as were made by ICEL after Vatican II. Perhaps it is also the last hurrah for a group of long-haired (in the worst way) hippie priests to whom the sixties just weren't good enough.

Those of us with deep conspiratorial minds call this "Elkoism with a human face", after Archbishop Nicholas Elko, who was Metropolitan of Pittsburgh in the early 1960s. He tried to accelerate and complete the latinization of the Ruthenian Church by gutting the liturgy, removing the iconostases and icons from the churches, and purging the ranks of the clergy of anyone who objected (it was said his desire was to squeeze the grease out of the Greeks, and remove the stink from the onion dome). This prompted a revolt of the clergy that saw him kicked upstairs to the Oriental Congregation in Rome, and ultimately to a post of true disgrace--auxiliary Latin bishop of Cinncinati. He ended his days a bitter man, convinced he had been done in by communists.

But Elko left a lot of followers in parishes across the Church, and many of these have now risen to positions of power and influence. They are wiser than their master, for they do not attempt to make a clean break with the Byzantine Tradition, but rather to use "aggiorniamento" to make it comply with the spirituality of the postconciliar Roman Church. Rather than a latinization of ritual, they seek a latinization of the soul and the intellect. For instance, the new people's books lack any Slavonic text for the Liturgy or the hymns. It's as if they want to forget the ethnic heritage of their forefathers. I'm not a Ruthenian at all, and am I convinced vernacularist, but I find great delight in the Slavonic text of Liturgy. As someone who as evangelized by the Ruthenian Church as an adult, who was baptized directly into the Church, I am in fact the kind of person they need to attract if the Church is to survive. Apparently, though, my opinions are not worth a stale piroghi.

(From a purely practical standpoint, the new book is also impossible to use, being some 400 pages long with a table of contents that has only fifteen entries. It's exceedingly hard to find something like the common tones for Sundays, let alone for festal days. For instance, to find the Troparion and Kontakion for Palm Sunday, you have to know that Palm Sunday is the last Sunday of the Lenten Triodion, though some might think it's the first Sunday in the Paschalion or Pentecostarion. Confused? Join the club. There are, however, four brightly colored ribbons which can be used to mark your place (if you can find it), though on major feasts you may have to pray that the bulletin has the requisite number of loose pages to supplement the ribbons. We altar boys joke that we will soon have a new duty--at the appropriate place in the liturgy, we will raise a placard of the appropriate color above the iconostasis so that the people will know which ribbon to pull. Speaking of pulling ribbons, how long do you think those bright red, green, blue and yellow ribboons will survive contact with curious four-year-olds?

What really makes this stick in the craw is the injunction that this translation supersedes all others, and that after 29 June NO OTHER TRANSLATION CAN BE USED IN THE METROPOLIA.

I have several problems with this. The first is that there is no such thing as a "typical edition" in the Byzantine Tradition. Within the rite, there are literally dozens of individual usages, within Churches, withiin eparchies and dioceses, and even within parishes. As the Liturgy is the property of the people, who hold it in trust for God, it is a living, dynamic organism that reflects the true genius of the people who celebrate it. Moreover, it has to be understood that the Byzantine Liturgy follows a monastic ordo (it would require twenty five separate books and about three hours to celebrate a Sunday Divine Liturgy in its fullness). This normative monastic form is redacted for cathedral and parochial usage according to local custom. Put bluntly, Tradition sets the MINIMUM that MUST be done on a given day, but the new translation, by OMITTING most of the optional material and then MANDATING the use of ONLY THAT TRANSLATION, have effectively defined the MAXIMUM that may be done in any parish. Want to sing all the antiphon verses? Sorry. Include all the little litanies? Out of luck! Include the "Grant it" petitions after Communion? No way! Thus, the new translation dumbs down the Liturgy and causes a spiritual atrophy among the faithful, who will never be able to learn about these wonderful parts of our worship.

And, to add insult to injury, this liturgical commission, which was originally tasked only to make a full and accurate translation of the Ruthenian Recension published in Rome in the 1940s (widely regarded as one of the best examples of liturgical scholarship of its time, and widely used even by Orthodox scholars and Churches) have turned away from the Slavonic text and are using the Greek text for their source material. When one understands that the Ruthenian recension is a pre-Nikonian usage much older than the current Greek texts, one wonders what they were thinking. Some people who reviewed the earlier drafts of the translation, as well as the current version, believe that the translators just didn't have the facility in Slavonic to do the job, so turned to Greek, where there are far more published glossaries and other study aids.

Thus, in one stroke, our God-loving bishops have managed to repeat both the errors of Vatican II and the errors of the Nikonian Reform. I take it as proof positive that Darwin had to be wrong.

If our God-loving bishops and their cohorts succeed, the new liturgy will make it impossible for the Ruthanian Church to cooperate with any Orthodox Church, not even (perhaps I should say, especially) the Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Church, and even with other Greek Catholic Churches--the Ukrainians, Romanians and Melkites. The Ruthenians thus would be neither fish nor fowl, but would remain something apart, the "tertium quid", and the small (and ever shrinking) circle of Ruthenian priests will be free to be big fish in a very small pond, third rate academics playing around with something that is rightly the patrimony of the entire People of God.

I was going to write to Tony Esolen privately about this, since he is well atuned to the problems endemic in the Latin Church, but since this is out in the open, I wonder if he might not consider a separate thread for it. Perhaps we could call it, "When Bad Liturgy Happens to Good Churches"?

Posted by: Stuart Koehl | Apr 15, 2007 3:40:37 PM

>>>For meself, it doesn't seem to be the ugly, gratuitous kind of "inclusiveness" I usually despise. From what I understand of the Greek, it seems to be more in the spirit of the original.

How 'bout you?<<<

1. We're not Greeks, we're Slavs. We have a beautiful, pre-Nikonian Slavonic recension that calls out for a beautiful English translation.

2. We don't speak Greek, we speak English, and English does not have inclusive pronouns, nor does it have a neuter word for the collective of humanity.

3. If you can say "He is gracious and loves us all" without gagging, you have a stronger stomach than I do."

I'd like to buy this Man a pitcher of beer. Now....what to get his wife....

Bottle of wine?

You would gag at a Divine Liturgy, where we gather as a parish family to worship our God???

Wow!!

[quote=May our lips be filled with your praise, O Lord" becomes "May our mouth be filled with your praise, O Lord" (the Slavonic word can me either, but generally is used metaphorically, while a separate word is used for mouth as an organ of the body, as in Psalm 50: O Lord, you will open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise")[/quote]

Apparently you don't remember the early English version of this hymn which was included in a mimeographed booklet (as I recall) back in the late 50's, early 60's. Perhaps you stayed away from the English Liturgy like many others who felt that only the Slavonic was appropriate, or you are too young? It reminds me of the saying "the more things change, the more they remain the same."

As for union, do you really believe that our DL is holding it up? Would the Orthodox bishops really refuse to accept our parishes because of our books?? Do you really believe that? In my town the Orthodox parish would love to worship in our church building and it would strengthen the Eastern presence in our community. I keep reading this on this forum but reality doesn't really support the notion that union has become impossible because of the new books. Think about it! I have four different Orthodox prayer books; why aren't they all the same? The argument is for uniformity; yet I hear the complaint because every has to use the same book. This sounds very contradictory to me.

I would love to have both of our parishes worshipping together in one building. When the Orthodox finally get serious about union they will have a Ecumenical Council to discuss it. The Russian Patriarch won't even think about it. If one really wants union he would be more productive to lobby His Eminence Patriarch Alexius than our Bishops.

Your brother in Christ,
Father Deacon Paul

Of course not. But when I hear, "He is good and He loves us all", where all the beauty and poetry has been deleted from the ancient title of Christ as "the Lover of Mankind", it makes my stomach turn a bit.

It feels to me as if the Liturgy has been protestantized (kumbaya).

But that's just my opinion.

Yes. Gag. The politics of secular feminism have no place in the Divine Liturgy. It is wrong of the bishops to force it on us after Rome clearly said no. Inclusive language makes me gag. It should make every faithful and educated Catholic gag.

Gag is an understatement! I can learn new music, but saying the inclusive language throws me over the edge. Shame, shame, shame.

Yes. And I am still attempting to locate someone (anyone) who was offended by the language of the former Liturgy--who felt that the words were sexist. I have been asking male and female, young and old--no one seems to have been offended. I am increasingly convinced that the only ones who were offended, were the reformers themselves.

Fr. Deacon Paul,

You are chastising some for gagging at the Divine Liturgy and perhaps rightfully so.

I note the definition of gag:



The real gagging in the Creed and elsewhere has been done by the reformers to make the Creed and the Divine Liturgy comport with the gagging of the English langugage by the media and modern academia.

Such gagging has no place in the Creed, the Divine Liturgy or our Catholic faith. When faithful Orthodox see our weak-kneed response to modern feminism and the culture of death of course they will be scandalized and ask why bother working towards unity with that.

When we fail to express the splendor of truth as has been handed on to us by the Fathers of the Church and allow our Creed to be gagged by the modernists (and especially when Rome has made it perfectly clear that this is not right), we ought to be crying out to God for mercy in sack cloth and ashes.

Father Deacon Paul,

Christos Voskrese!

Please watch this video and then tell me that it is Patriarch Alexi that needs to 'get serious' about reunion between the Catholic and Orthodox Faiths.

http://www.qdomine.com/Morality%20pages/lareledcongress06-1.htm

Keep in mind that a Prince of the Church (Cardinal Mahoney) is presiding over this.

I wonder why Patriarch Alexi would even think of it after watching this, do you agree?

Note: you may have to scroll down to watch this.

Monomakh

Ouch. That was painful.

Even with the shorter windows media file version of the video I couldn't bring myself to watch it to the end. no comment ...

I'm speechless... What a joke!

Barefoot women in toga outfits spinning around on the altar with the Gospel and incense bowls in hand, liturgical dancing (if that's what that was supposed to be) and Patriarch Alexi is the one who needs to get serious about reunion? Wow!

Monomakh

To all,

I agree with all, this doesn't belong in the Catholic Church; if it didn't have scripture and liturgical vestments, it probably would pass a a decent assembly for students. I was looking for the applause signs, like they have with live TV audiences.

The Roman Church really doesn't practice sexual equality. I've noticed that if there are male and female servers or readers, they usually give preference to the female for the special honors. They even do usually do this even in the "conservative" areas.

My personal opinion is that the BC "gender neutral" changes are uncalled for, I too hear that no regular members were insulted. But that's beyond my control. Either this fad will end or we'll get used to it. I'm not going to gag while praying; my faith is strong enough that the Holy Spirit will allow me to spiritually offer the praise to my God as the prayers generally intend.

Regarding union of the Orthodox/Catholic union, we Byzantine Catholics co-exist in union with the Romans. Their "showiness" or ritual is different but the theology is basically the same.
Indeed He is risen!

It's easier to lead a blind man by walking beside him than it is by avoiding him and staying on the other side of the street. I'm sure that Pope Benedict would be grateful to have all the Eastern Churches within a universal church as allies to fight off these western abuses.

Think of this delight -- If we were in union with the Orthodox our liturgical changes would never have happened with the same results. It would have happened in a united effort.

That is an added reason that this division is a "scandal" as Pope John Paul correctly termed it.

Father Deacon Paul

Dear Fr Deacon,

I too have heard that there are many clergy who are not pleased with the RDL--in particular the neutralization. Do you know if our clergy has protested to the Metropolitan? To Rome? Do you think that something could be done if our clergy collectively express their disapproval?

R

Once something like the RDL is in place, it takes time to undo what has been done.

For a priest to refuse to promulgate the liturgy could, without any due process at all, result in his being removed from his present ministry for contumascious disobedience.

Whether or not that would happen is not mine to speculate, but certainly the bishop's power and authority includes that as a possible course of action, and priests are very much aware of those possibilities, and are in better positions than we are to judge the likelihood.

So in order to resist the promulgation of the RDL there would have to be a large majority of our priests willing to work together in an effort to persuade the bishops that there are legitimate reasons not to promulgate that effect the salvation of the people and their priest.

I cannot tell you what a huge job that would be.

Some of the changes in the liturgy may be annoying but are essentially harmless. Others are not at all harmless, but they are not as annoying to some so they don't get the same attention as other things. Who decides?

Look at what has gone on here over the past year or more. We're a fine example for our priests...no?....No.

So that is what you are up agianst.

I do not suggest that it is impossible at all. I simply suggest that it takes much more time and far longer a commitment than many here seem to be willing or able to give.

I have friends in the Latin rite who have quietly and legitimately worked all these years for an expansion of the indult and a reform of the liturgical reforms enforced against the express wishes of the Second Vatican Council's documents on the liturgy. They gave much of their lives and may never see the changes that will indeed come. They got no press, made no grand declarations, will infrequently, if ever, be thanked by anyone, and have been mocked by many.

That's what it takes.

Mary

I am not proposing en mass disobedience by our clergy. I am only curious if any have expressed their displeasure. I am aware of the time, effort, and pain that would be involved with the retraction of this reformation.

Any crusaders out there?


BTW-- Someone told me that if a person is scandalized by this revision and believe that their faith has been compromised, they can find a good canon lawyer, and in essence, sue the Metropolia in canonical court. He told me there is a time limit and showed me the relevant canon. Of course, I am not going to do this--but does he speak the truth regarding this issue?

What I was trying to indicate was that an appeal of one is not going to turn things in a different direction with the RDL. Nor would many singular appeals, actually, do much to effect change in the short run.

Many would have to move as one, and we've pretty well proven, right here on the Forum, just how difficult that would be.

Frankly I do not know how closely the bishops are going to "watch" what goes on from parish to parish or how much room there will be for individual decisions on the part of pastors, or priests in parishes to make independent choices concerning the rate of change, or whether or not to make a given change in the public liturgy of the parish. There may be some room or there may be no room at all, and that will depend on each individual bishop.

I am sure that there will be people selected, trained and charged in some parishes in the Metropolia with doing the catechesis and making sure the changes actually happen, and those people will not be the parish priests, oddly enough. Will those people be charged with reporting what might be considered resistance to change? I don't know yet. But we surely will find out.

How nasty will it get? Only God knows.

But to make a real difference would take an action of the many moving as one.

Mary

It takes a much stronger faith to speak out against what is wrong than it does to go along with what is wrong.


But you are not leading the blind man. The blind man is leading you. Or is that the blind �human�? Or the blind �one�? Or �blind one who is like us�?

Yes. We should pray for the intercession of St Athanasius!

I think it would be "blind person".

I would add to 1 Th's comments above, when you aren't saying the Creed as has been handed down by the Fathers, you are gagging at the RDL by being gagged.

I know there is one Deanery which hasn't even purchased the RDL books. They don't have regular cantors and don't want to spend the money, as they are trying to keep their doors from closing.
Can you blame them for not wanting to spend their dwindling resources?

Xpucmoc Bockpece!

Ungcsertezs

.

Christ is Risen!
If they actually view themselves as a Deanery, then they may have more problems than a book translating the Divine Liturgy will solve.
In the Metropolia, the normal reference is to Syncellates.
However, if the dwindling resources are the overreaching problem, then my prayers are with these people as they express the liturgy to the best of their abilities.
Deacon El

What are you talking about here?

Mary

I suppose I could surmise safely here.

Let me ease your mind, Deacon, concerning the ignorance of the folk.

In the 75th Anniversary Directory, in the Administrative Index for each Eparchy one finds a whole list of priests under the heading: Elected DEANERY Representatives. [emphasis mine]

Do you happen to know when that changed?

Mary

1990 and the Code of Canon of the Eastern Churches. Although the equivalent eastern term for deanery is protopresbytery not a syncellate. The difference is protopresbyteries are geographic, syncellates are for specific groups: religous, clergy, laity of a specific nationality, etc. It is one of the useless Easternizations found in the Code: Eparchy=Diocese, Vicar General=Protosyncellus, Deanery=Protopresbytery

See Deacon El's comments below. He apparently was unaware.

I was puzzled by his somewhat caustic comments when he apparently did not, in fact, know better.

One should be sparing with snide criticism until one checks the facts. I ought to know. Now I double check.

That is a part of what makes me such a colossal pain in the nether regions.

Although Jeff did catch me in one last week or the week before...hmmmm.

Mary

Christ is Risen!
I did not mean any offense to anyone. I was somewhat surprised by the original comment.
If the manner in which I expressed my surprise offended anyone, I humbly apologise.
I will withdraw in prayer to contemplate the time of Pentecost.
Deacon El

Please accept my apologies as well for any detraction or discomfort that I have caused you.

I was too hasty in my retort and will now repent in leisure.

Pray for me.

Mary

More comments from Mere Comments, but from a slightly differenct angle:

Dear Father Deacon Lance. I found "useless Easternizations" rather strange. what exactly IS a "useless Easternization? Is there a more useful "-----ation" available that byzcaths should use?

Eddie

Eddie,

What I mean by that is the CCEO was careful to Easternize the terminology while leaving us with Latinized ecclesial law, like limiting the jurisdiction of patriarchs in the diaspora or creating multiplr levels of autonomy based on unknown criteria rather than following the Eastern model.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Fr. Deacon Lance. Thank you for clarifying. it seems that you are Eastern in name only. all icing and no cake.

Eddie

Eddie,

Please don't over generalize. It is our spirituality, Liturgy, and heritage that makes us Eastern. It would be nice if the all our laws fell into place with that but it is does not determine our Easterness.

Fr. Deacon Lance