IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD...

Paul,

I was baptized into the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church on Theophany Sunday 1996. That was nigh on 13 years ago. So how long DO I have to hang around before my opinion counts for something?

On the scandalous divisions between us and our Orthodox brethren, I note among many of the Ruthenian faithful a very deep commitment to reconciliation and Christian unity. My own life in the Church has been focused on that objective, and much grief it has caused me, too. I note that this desire for unity does not seem to be reciprocated by our leaders, none of whom (save Metropolitan Judson, may his memory be eternal) has ever gone out of his way to make a gesture towards even our Orthodox Rusyn brothers. In fact, under Bishop Andrew, many obstacles were thrown in the path of those of us who wished to engage in more visible ecumenical outreach (for that matter, I did not get too much assistance or moral support when I tried to encourage greater cooperation among the various Eastern Catholic jurisdictions in our area).

I think I have said enough on this subject until after Pascha. Now is the time to put aside all earthly cares.

This post is unfortunate coming from someone who is a moderator.

Why are you baiting people into naming names, so that their posts can be deleted and perhaps their posting privileges taken away?


Monomakh

Monomakh's post is unfortunate because it takes one sentence out of Fr. Dcn. John's post and attributes a malicious intention to Fr. Dcn. John which is not at all clear from a reading of the entire post itself.

Ryan

Stuart: one quibble. The instruction wasn't to translate from the Slavonic, but to restore the liturgy from the authentic sources. Our Ruthenian-American Metropolitan bishops opted to be apparently antiquarian, and work from the Greek, rather than the Ordo or the Slavonic.

I may not, personally, agree with that decision... but it's not in violation.

The wording choices? Not nearly as bad as the ICEL Roman.

Could be far worse.

And many of the Byzantine churches are doing new translations. The Melkite revised DL of St John is on the web... just different enough to throw me off. Each synod is responsible for its own liturgy, and for following the orders to restore and renew in an organic manner.

"Stuart: one quibble. The instruction wasn't to translate from the Slavonic, but to restore the liturgy from the authentic sources. Our Ruthenian-American Metropolitan bishops opted to be apparently antiquarian, and work from the Greek, rather than the Ordo or the Slavonic."

That's the kind of tendentious reasoning that landed the bishops in the mess they are in. The "authentic sources" for the Ruthenian Churches (i.e., the Ruthenian Metropolitan Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church) is the 1942 Slavonic Recension issued by the Congregation for the Oriental Churches--at the express request of the Greek Catholics themselves! The Council of Bishops has no authority to elevate another normative source.

Furthermore, from a methodological standpoint, relying on the Greek is fatally flawed: the Greek sources are newer than the Slavonic ones. Either way, it's a shoddy piece of workmanship, in which there are manifest errors that cannot be explained by recourse to the Greek, wild swings between excessive literalness and broad paraphrase, and a general selection of language that is flat, uninspirational, and in places, downright ugly.

That this is "better" than previous efforts by ICEL in the Latin rite is damning with faint praise indeed. As I have said before, one should not take Chesterton's aphorism that "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" as the threshold for quality control in liturgical translations. "Close enough for liturgy" ought to be purged from our minds.

This is a point that needs to be said, repeated, and then said yet again -- and it has been. It seems one cannot say it enough. One question then is what was the mandate and rationale for the RDL process?

The other question is, have the bishops determined they do have the authority to do so? Another question is, do the bishops, and other supporters of the RDL, realize and acknowledge they have done so?

"The other question is, have the bishops determined they do have the authority to do so? Another question is, do the bishops, and other supporters of the RDL, realize and acknowledge they have done so? "

If they have, it is interesting that they would choose an area as fundamental as the liturgy in which to declare their independence of Rome, while simultaneously deferring to Rome on mundane matters of discipline such as the ordination of married men to the presbyterate.

The RDL is in direct violation of the Liturgical Instruction in several ways.

The Instruction directs that rediscovering and living the liturgical tradition precedes updating (section 18). For Ruthenians this means finally promulgating and celebrating according the books our earlier bishops asked Rome to prepare and letting that worship form the Church anew.

In Sections 21 & 25 the Instruction directs working with the Orthodox "distancing from [them] as little as is possible." The expectation is that Ruthenian Catholics would work with others (Catholics and Orthodox) to keep the same standard Liturgy.

Section 25 directs common translations of common liturgical books. The Ecumenical Directory (n. 187) exhorts the same. Difficult at present, yet steps could have been taken to do so and certainly the structure of the Liturgy could have been left alone. [And Metropolitan Nicholas of Johnstown is on record as seeking common books and willing to work towards them.]

The RDL violates Liturgiam Authenticam in that the translation is not from the official liturgical books promulgated by Rome (in Church Slavonic), in that the books and translation are incomplete, in that the translation is in many places inaccurate and doctrinally problematic, and that it uses a style of translation (gender neutral) that is forbidden by LA (we see this in the removal of the word "man" from the Creed and the replacement of the inclusive term "mankind" with the potentially exclusive "all of us").

The RDL violates Canon Law (Canon 40-1) in that it does not "most carefully to the faithful protection and accurate observance of their own rite, and not admit changes in it except by reason of its organic progress, keeping in mind, however, mutual goodwill and the unity of Christians."

The authentic forms described in the Instruction in Section 16 are the authentic and official forms and texts promulgated by Rome for the Ruthenian recension. The reference to "eliminating that which has altered them" is one to eliminating latinizaton, not the official, normative liturgical books.

The restoration directed and expected in Section 16 is not to some debatable ancient form but rather to official forms.


That's sort of like saying that Burger King is not so nearly as bad as McDonalds. But some of the the wording choices are in violation of the Vatican directives. And we see the Romans moving to correct their translations to make them as literally accurate as is possible.

There are numerous threads in this forum that explore the various problems with the RDL that you may want to study (and check out Father Serge Keleher's excellent book book on the topic). The worst problems with the RDL, of course, are the ones that are doctrinally problematic ("theologically grave" to use the exact words of Jorge A. Cardinal Medina Estévez, Prefect, Congregation of Divine Worship (now retired) when he spoke to these same issues in the Latin Church).

We see in "Summorum Pontificum" that the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has guaranteed the right of the faithful to have access to and the priests to celebrate the Mass according to he 1962 Missal (an older, extraordinary form). It may take a bit for appeals to reach him but I have no doubt that he will uphold the right of the faithful to have access to and the right the priests to celebrate the normative, ordinary form of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy (the books promulgated by Rome).

Burger King is marginally better than MacDonald's. But I still wouldn't "honor" anyone with an invitation to eat at Burger King!

Fr. Serge