Yeah, The Letter. It exists. People have seen it, have discussed it in hushed voices. It must have been ugly, since the Bishops refuse to release it.

But you misread what I wrote: the letter informs Their Graces that they were given approval only for the text of the Divine Liturgy. They did not have approval to mandate a particular musical arrangement to go with it.

Here I was commenting on the words of aramis that you quoted:

Ah! My bad. Seems silly, but then silliness has pervaded this whole sorry episode.

That's a matter of Copyright law. The DL promulgation is copyright the metropolia; permission to extract the text must be obtained if that extracted text is to be printed for use.

Permission to use the liturgy texts as promulgated (ie: in the liturgikon and people's book) is included in the instructions for use in the Liturgikon. Producing a text-only people's book is not, and therefore requires permission.

I appreciate the need to secure the text; my point is, why would the bishops deny permission for the church to use the church's text, and that being a text that they have mandated is the sole English text that the church may use.

They need to sell more Teal Terrors in order to amortize the investment in the book. Text only editions of the RDL will cut into the revenue stream.

Also, formally authorizing a text only edition would be tantamount to admitting they made a mistake. Our bishops may not always be right, but they are never wrong.

I think the fruit of the RDL is that so many people have left.

Here's my two cents.

For those who want a "text only" copy.....have you ordered the Liturgikon from the Byzantine Seminary Press? If you want a book void of music it's the ticket for you.

Has anyone been refused when they tried to purchase it?

My opinion is that a non-music book issued in the pews would be detrimental to congregational singing and contrary to our tradition. It would be a mistake.

Fr Deacon Paul

.

Nobody sings now, so what's the loss? At least with a non-musical book, people can sing the (admittedly defective) words to the familiar tones.

Because here is the bottom line:

In those parishes where nobody sang before, nobody sings now.

In the parishes where everyone sang, nobody sings now.

At last! Uniformity has been achieved!

Sorry Stuart, I can't agree with this comment.

This is not true in the two parishes that I attend. People still sing and the regular Sunday hymns are now sung with few mistakes (compared with the old versions).

Fr Deacon Paul

Define "mistakes".

Stuart,

your sarcasm betrays your myopia. Come out West, we sing!!! It may do your perspective some good.

We sang, too--and very well. Now we don't. Our pews were full, now they are not. The story is repeated in parish after parish.

I'm happy for you, but to be honest, for the bulk of the Metropolia, the RDL has been a disaster, the result of an arbitrary, top-down, authoritarian putsch that did not take into consideration the pastoral needs of each parish individually. Beyond that, the music is still awful (and bears little resemblance to what is being sung in Presov or Uzherod), the translation gives mediocrity a bad name and is theologically unsound.

Our God-loving bishops were given a very simple mandate--provide a complete and accurate translation of the Ruthenian recension, cooperating as much as possible with our Orthodox brethren. Nothing was said about abridgments, redactions, amendations, importations from the Greek usage, and particularly nothing was said about mandating one form of chant to the exclusion of all others.

The results are plain for all to see. Will the last person leaving the Metropolia please turn out the lights?

We don't have professional musicians and our cantors are volunteers... so the "mistakes" are missed flats & sharps, tempo, proper value for the notes. Actually, we hold truer to the notes with the RDL than with the old music.

What kind of sampling are you using? Formal statistics or informal gut? The pews haven't been filled for two generations!

....

The Greek Catholics in Slovakia have changed their music (and language) considerable. It can be hard to follow.




You are much more informed than I am Stuart. I wasn't aware that there was a "mandate" at all. Not even the Pope can mandate a change to a "sui jurus" Church. I thought the reason for the revision was to eliminate latinizations and to correct divergent versions of some hymns (like Tone Two troparia).

Were there mistakes and misjudgments? Sure... an example is the hyphen (-) in the pew book, page 315. In the Irmos, it drives me crazy when I start to sing Christ and see too late that the word is a hyphenated Christians (last line.) If it was to be hyphenated it should have been Chris - tians, not Christ - ians.

If I were nitpicking I would criticize both the old AND the new translations of the Communion prayer which reads:
May the partaking of your holy mysteries, O Lord, be not for my judgment OR condemnation but for ......
Proper grammar is either/or or neither/nor.

As far as "turning out the light" our Church will be around long after we are gone (unless they choose to reunite with the Ukrainians....which be wonderful, if not somewhat miraculous.)

Spiritually, I can live with the changes; they don't shake my Faith one bit. Any changes are going to be uncomfortable no matter who makes them or what their content. If one can't live with change then one will go crazy living in America.

I have said it previously, this change, like all the others before it, is transitory. Within one generation it will be replaced.

S'nami Boh!
Fr Deacon Paul