Well, after all the belly aching and moaning, I guess I am ready to say this whole "Revised Divine Liturgy" section has lost it's luster. The change has occurred, it's been accepted and I don’t see it being re-canted. If someone left our Faith after a few new words, then their Belief must not be very strong anyway.

They said to, "Wait it out. You'll forget about the old way soon enough" and they are right. Again.

God Bless our Eparchies.

What is interesting about this on a local level (in our parish in SugarCreek, MO) is that few people were upset by the issues discussed in this Forum. The complaints I heard had to do with the elimination of Slavonic texts from the printed services and the new music.

But human beings are REMARKABLY adaptable and under the patient, wise leadership of Fr Stephen (Muth), the changes have been implemented well and the parish is back to singing loudly and participating with fervor in the services.

Those who left have very strong faith. We left a church whose bishops seem to question their own faith by revising what didn't need revising.

How insulting! I did not "leave" your faith.

Indeed.

I give thanks to God that there are parishes who don't use the new RDL pew books and to their priests who have the courage to make a stand against the flawed liturgy.

Ungcsertezs

Here is a perplexing question for the scholars:

With all of the other ridiculous changes, why weren't the words to the Our Father changed?

Shouldn't it be this way as the English Language Liturgical Consultation has it? I mean everything else has been changed, why not this? If we are going for translational accuracy, this should be it, correct? Is it because this version has been the traditional edition that doesn't get changed. Is there a double-standard here with what does or does not get translated?

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as in Heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial and deliver us from evil.

I say they should revisit the RDL to include this change as well! Might as well go for the trifecta, right?

Maybe I can answer that. The same question came up in the Latin Church when the first portions of the new Liturgy began to come out. The first thing was the Gloria.

It was decided at that time that the Our Father would remain the same since it was in common usage among the faithful for so long and because changing it was felt to be soemthing that should only be done in consultation with all English-speaking Christians as an ecumenical gesture.

In Christ,

BOB

Indeed - it is one of the few places where we already HAD a common translation with virtually all English-speaking Orthodox and Catholics.

Jeff

ALthough ... ROCOR has a different translation of the Lord's Prayer than other Orthodox traditions -- "Our Father who art in the heavens ... deliver us from the Evil One."

But ... (I can hear the administrators already) ... that is a discussion for another thread.

That's right! So let's stay on topic.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+
Administrator

And so, it has been added as a new thread...

Matthew's message reminds me of Dimitri Shostakovich's own commentary on his Symphony no. 5. In the mid-1930s DDS was in hot water with the authorities and needed to come up with a piece that would keep him from being sent off to the gulag. That piece was the Fifth. It was described by a state critic at the time as "a Soviet artist's creative answer to justified criticism."

That makes it sound atrocious, but it's actually a big and powerful symphony, often recorded and still in the active repertoire of many orchestras today.

Even so, at times DDS did not understand its popularity. He wrote it, he said, to sound "as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying 'Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing,' and you rise, shakily, and go off muttering 'Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.'"

To the extent that the RDL continues Tradition, it is also big and powerful. But the process of the creation and imposition of the RDL leaves me muttering, Our business is rejoicing.

I for one welcome our new liturgical overlords!

Your post cracks me up, only because you're serious. You must live under a rock. The majority of the people who are upset are the ones who read about liturgy and who want our church to grow -- basically the folks who "get it." They'll just quietly walk off into the Orthodox sunset...thankfully praying for their once beloved Byzantine Catholic Church. (Since with the removal of all the Litanies, we can't even pray for ourselves anymore!)

You want to know what the funny things is?? If this revision had been universally accepted everyone would be saying that this was the work of the Holy Spirit through the works of our hierarchy. But since it isn't universally accepted the thinking is that it is so fatally flawed that one must leave for another church, that in their minds must have never erred.