I have a question on the differences between the pre-Nikon liturgy and the post-Nikon liturgy. As a Greek Catholic it is my understanding that we use the pre-Nikon liturgy, but I have attended my Orthodox liturgies and can't tell the differences between our liturgy and theirs? I know that there are differences in how the sign of the cross is done and how many alleluias are said, but apart from that I haven't been able to find an explanation of the differences in the divine liturgy itself. Could someone point out the differences to me? Thanks.

Jesse

Not all Greek Catholics, only the Ruthenians (i.e., the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church). The Russian Greek Catholic Church uses the same post-reform liturgy as the Russian Orthodox, while the Melkites use the same liturgy as the Antiochian Orthodox Church; the Hellenic Catholic and the Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic Churches the same liturgy as the Greek Orthodox Church; the Romanian Greek Catholic Church the same liturgy as the Romanian Orthodox Church, and so forth among the Catholic Churches using the Byzantine rite.

The Ruthenians do NOT use the pre-Nikonian Liturgy. There were a handful of pre-Nikonian elements used in the Ruthenian churches before and after the Unia--some translations, some rubrics--but overall the Ruthenian churches used the same Liturgy as the Greek and "Great Russian" churches. The current Roman Ruthenian editions are pretty darn close to the Nikonian recension. So, today, there is almost no difference between the text of the Liturgy as used in the Russian Orthodox Church and the official Ruthenian Recension books.

Fr. David

Considering the dates of the Unia (1596 and 1646), and the date of the Nikonian Reforms (post 1650), that's a little hard to sustain. A comparison of the Slavonic Recension and the 1629 Peter Moghila Liturgicon shows more than a handful of common elements. Also, it's really impossible to speak of "the" Pre-Nikonian Liturgy", because there were different pre-Nikonian Liturgies, each dependent on regional variations among manuscripts.