Christ is Born! I have a question I hope someone may answer. I am Eastern Orthodox and interested in Eastern Catholic Church. I have read here about revisions in the Holy Liturgy of the Greek Catholic Church and I am curious what these changes are. I have attended Greek Catholic liturgy here in the Czech Republic before as well as in Austria just this past Summer and I could not notice any real difference between their liturgy and ours. Are these changes only in America? What do these changes entail? I find it sad if bishops are trying to change your liturgy as they did in the 1960s in the Latin rite. Maybe I am mistaken and these changes only concern the translation from Church Slovanik to English or do they concern the actual rite itself? Maybe someone could explain this to me. I always feel that despite the papacy we Orthodox and Greek Catholics are very connected especially because of our common Liturgy. Thank you for any replies. Christos se Narodi! Oslavujete HO!

Cyril,

Welcome to the forum. I'll leave it to others to explain the changes or point you to threads that describe them, but the short answer to your question is 'yes, it only relates to the United States - and, particularly, to the Byzantine (Ruthenian Greek-Catholic) Metropolia of Pittsburgh and its dependent eparchies.'

Many years,

Neil

New musical settings with more melodic variation (especially more use of melismas) than Msgr. Levkulic's 1965 collection, which seems the basis for the tones I've heard in parishes in parishes across the country before it came out.

Blends melodic approaches of at least 4 disparate regional variations.

The english translation is controversial.

The filioque is removed (as it should be).

The ektenie are shortened.

No references to the curtain in the rubrics.

The people's book has the music notated. This makes it big, heavy, and mildly expensive. It also has 2-5 options for many of the melodies.

To be a little less obscure:

1. All Little Litanies are suppressed.

2. All "Grant it" petitions are suppressed.

3. Antiphon verses are suppressed.

4. Tendentious translation relying heavily on the 1950 Greek typical edition, rather than the 1942 Slavonic Liturgicon. "Horizontally inclusive language" is used to bad effect. Some translations are barely paraphrases, others are just wrong.

5. Filioque is suppressed, but then it already had been.

6. Third antiphon is made mandatory (though it was already in the 1964 book).

7. Most of the propers (the Troparia, Kontakia and Irmoi) especially of the feasts, have been rewritten, some of them in a highly unprofessional manner.

8. Rubrics have been modified in a manner that often does not coincide either with the Sluzebnik or with the Ordo Celebrationis.

9. All prayers of the priest are to be said aloud, though this makes no distinction between the prayers the priest says on behalf of himself, those he says on behalf of the people, and those in which he leads the people; rubrics directing certain prayers to be said quietly are ignored.

10. Music is mandated, mainly arranged from Boksaj, in a pretty poor manner that ignores the cadences of normal English speech; also ignores Prostopinje as actually sung in the Carpatho-Rusyn homeland in favor of an obsolescent and largely academic collation of chants from one diocese at one point in time. The result is largely unknown to the people, and generally unsingable.

11. Whole exercise may be academic, as many parishes across the country have either returned to the 1965 text, or use the current text with the familiar Levkulic music, or never adopted the RDL at all. Top-down exercises tend to fall apart in that manner.

At our parish the "grant it" petitions are alive and well. However, much to my annoyance, they seem to be optional at the priest's discretion. One of our former pastors was accustomed to omitting them. I told him I missed them and his response was that I could go to the local Ukrainian parish if I liked them so much.
This is an example of many things priests ought not to say.

Some corrections to Stuart's post

2. The "Grant it O Lord" petitions before the Our Father are not suppressed, they are optional.

9. Not all the priest's prayers are said aloud. Those that are:

The Prayer of the First Antiphon
The Prayer of Preparation for the Anaphora (Access to the Altar)
The Anaphora
The Prayer of the Dyptychs
The Prayer of the Litany of Petition
The Prayer of the Bowing of the Heads
The Prayer of Thanksgiving after Communion

Rubrics do direct that other prayers be said silently.

Father Serge Keleher wrote a very good review of the Revised Divine Liturgy: "Studies on the Byzantine Liturgy - The Draft Translation: A Response to the Proposed Recasting of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom" in 2006 publsihed by Stauropegion Press, P.O. Box 11096, Pittsburgh, PA 15237-9998. It's also available online here: http://www.byzcath.org/etc/Keleher-Studies-Byz-Liturgy-1.pdf

StuartK is correct in his summary.

Deacon Lance is not entirely correct. The litany before the Our Father is condensed (like the Catechumen Litany), and what is left is prohibited in Passaic. Bishop Pataki made his hatred for the Ruthenian Divine Liturgy clear when he said that most parishes did not take that litany and that "we are not going backward."

Among the worst changes are the neutered and stilted language and the atrocious music.

Next up: the Ruined Revised Presanctified. It's just as bad as the RDL. The bishops have said that the hatred for the RDL will quiet down once all the services are ruined. They are incredibly wrong. Deacon Lance does not know how good he has it to be in a parish that does the 1964. The liturgy in his parish - even though severely abbreviated - is far better than any parish with the RDL. But anyone that offers the scholarship to show how bad the RDL is is personally attacked, so everyone keeps quiet.

Unlike the Litany of Catechumens where all the petitions are condensed into one petition, in the Litany before the Our Father only the second and third petitions are joined. As to prohibition, Bishop Andrew is retired and the petitions are in the book, a priest/deacon need only chant them.

Things in Passaic are never that simple.

Thank you for the replies. I suppose the reason I have not picked up on changes in Greek Catholic liturgy is because the only such liturgies I have attended in the past decade have been in Central Europe. As far as I can tell the Ukranian Greek Catholics here have kept their liturgy more or less the same. Thanks again for responding. I have enjoyed to website very much. Slava Isusu Kristu!

Even in Eastern Europe, the Liturgy varies considerably from eparchy to eparchy, and even parish to parish. Nobody makes much of an effort at uniformity. My experience with the Orthodox is similar: you can get very different liturgical experiences at churches of the same jurisdiction separated by a couple of blocks or from one village to the next.

According to my pastor, the "grant it O Lord" petitions and the optional use of "dveri, dveri" at the Creed are still locally supressed in the Passaic Eparchy. I've been told not to use them.

Dn. Robert

If you did, would the world end? Are there stukachi in every pew waiting for your or your priest to slip up, so they can denounce you to the episcopal security service? Is there a GULAG for recalcitrant Passaic priests and deacons?

St John Climacus said:
If we wish to preserve unshaken faith in our superiors, we must write their good deeds indelibly in our hearts and preserve them in our memories so that, when the demons scatter distrust of them among us, we can repel them by what we have retained in our minds. The more faith blossoms in the heart, the more the body is eager to serve. To stumble on distrust is to fall, since "whatever does not spring from faith is sin" (Rom.1:23). When the thought strikes you to judge or condemn your superior, leap away as though from fornication. Give no trust, place, entry, or starting point to that snake. Say this to the viper; "Listen to me, deceiver, I have no right to pass judgment on my superior but he has the authority to be my judge. I do not judge him; he judges me."

To (the Fathers), blessed obedience is a confession of faith, without which no one subject to passions will see the Lord.

The relationship of pastor and deacon is based on trust; to destroy that trust through disobedience is to destroy a parish and possibly destroy two vocations and their souls.

The gulag which we are to fear is Pride, the desire to say "I am right; my pastor is wrong." In this year for priests this ought to be especially dominant in our mind.

Fr Deacon Paul

And yet, the history of the Church is replete with examples of deacons, priests, monastics and even laymen defying the hierarchs when the latter have been in the wrong. They are numbered among the saints, while their bishops are usually unmentioned except during the reading of the Synodikon on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

In other words, you should do what is right, regardless of who tells you otherwise. There is no Nuremberg Defense before the awesome judgment seat.