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And I'm wondering what the "Low Mass" meant after the Second Vatican Council, when we were ordered to return to our traditional roots.

The Greek Catholics, ever striving to be more "really Catholic", actually developed a "low" Divine Liturgy (thankfully before my time). From what I have heard from people who observed this atrocity, it was recited and severely abridged--no antiphon verses, no propers, , no homily, almost all litanies suppressed. You really could do that in 45 minutes or less. A lot of priests liked it for weekday liturgy, where it probably created a self-fulfilling prophesy (a full liturgy is not needed on weekdays because nobody shows up because a full liturgy is not offered).

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The Liturgical deficiencies as stated by Archimandrite Taft are excellent starting points; they are opined from a trans-Eastern Catholic view. Some are related to the UCC, others to the BCC, and perhaps all to the other Eastern Catholic Churches (and some Orthodox eparchies). The readers, especially our Orthodox brethren should not assume that all issues apply to all Churches. A sterotype does not exist.

Relating to the length of the Divine Liturgy (apart from Matins, Hours, Vespers, Parastas, Mirovanije, etc) it would be difficult, in my opinion to justify this length without thinking that the singing must be droning or the pastor is in love with his homily expertise.

Since the time of St John Chrysostom, the Divine Liturgy has been treated like a Christmas tree. Nice pious additions have been added to the taste and opinions of Emperors, Patriarchs and Archbishops.

I challenge anyone to present information that these additions have been mandated by Ecumenical Councils, other than the Profession of Faith. If I am wrong I humbly accept correction. Methinks that many of the additions have been a practice of "one-upmanship." If I'm correct perhaps someone will affirm that this is correct so that we don't continuously argue over a matter of which we are ignorant.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

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If you celebrate the entire Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom according to the unabridged Ruthenian Recension, taking all the antiphon verses, all the little litanies, all of the propers for the day, and chanting the anaphoral prayers aloud, allowing fifteen minutes for a homily and fifteen more for distribution of communion, singing at a reasonable tempo, it takes between 1 hour twenty and one hour forty minutes (I've timed it). This is not an unreasonable amount of time.

Father Deacon Paul is correct, however, that some people see a correlation between how slow one sings and how holy one is. Most Ruthenian parishes drive me nuts by singing everything as a dirge.

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Greetings, Stuart,

I don't doubt your time estimate at all; but most of the parishes that I'm familiar with don't require 15 minutes for Communion because there aren't that many people. If there are there should be another priest or deacon(s) available.

"All the propers" shouldn't be taken for a diocesan parish. This is more appropriate for monasteries. This has been the tradition for centuries; to mix traditions is to blur the lines between diocesan and monastic. It is somewhat impractical for a parish to sing the propers for Sunday, Festive, Saint(s) of the day and the parish patron. This probably isn't what you meant, but this is an extreme which could be misunderstood.

This is an interesting discussion point and is worthy of serious inter-Church study. The results may be surprising. Is anyone aware of any dissertations or objective published studies relating to the evolution of the Divine Liturgy and how the Divine Liturgy of the late 4th/early 5th Century compares to today? Also, who was responsible for the additions/changes and how they became accepted as proper[ and indisputable?

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Originally Posted by Paul B
Nice pious additions have been added to the taste and opinions of Emperors, Patriarchs and Archbishops.
That's sort of what happened to the Roman Rite over the centuries.
Fr. Keith Pecklers writes about this (regarding the Roman Rite).

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Originally Posted by StuartK
If you celebrate the entire Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom according to the unabridged Ruthenian Recension, taking all the antiphon verses, all the little litanies, all of the propers for the day, and chanting the anaphoral prayers aloud, allowing fifteen minutes for a homily and fifteen more for distribution of communion, singing at a reasonable tempo, it takes between 1 hour twenty and one hour forty minutes (I've timed it). This is not an unreasonable amount of time.

Father Deacon Paul is correct, however, that some people see a correlation between how slow one sings and how holy one is. Most Ruthenian parishes drive me nuts by singing everything as a dirge.

Well, look at the ACROD, judging by a few DLs I've been watching on YouTube from Christ Our Saviour Cathedral, they seem to take nearly 1 1/2 - 2 hours on a Sunday to get through it, although it is pretty much liturgically similar to the BCC. Now, the ACROD has a slower tempo to their chants than we do (at least listening to clips from St. George's in Taylor, PA), even though the melodies and the tones are the same. So there's looking at the Orthodox Counterparts to us for comparison and contrast to how things are done.

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Length in and of itself is not a virtue. Completeness and perfection in the celebration is. Ideally, all parishes should be singing all the Antiphon verses (especially on feasts), all of the little litanies (or at least the one between the first and second antiphons, without which the action of the deacon in moving from the icon of Christ to the icon of the Theotokos makes absolutely no sense),the full Angel of Peace litany including the "Grant it" petitions; all the troparia and kontakia of the day as prescribed by the Typicon, all the Prokimena and the Irmoi. It would be nice if the celebrant would chant the public prayers of the Anaphora, but not something over which I am going to draw a line in the sand.

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Originally Posted by Paul B
Is anyone aware of any dissertations or objective published studies relating to the evolution of the Divine Liturgy and how the Divine Liturgy of the late 4th/early 5th Century compares to today? Also, who was responsible for the additions/changes and how they became accepted as proper[ and indisputable?
On what basis do you conclude that the liturgy as celebrated in the 4th and 5th centuries was more holy and authentic than the liturgy as celebrated in either the 1st century or the 20th century? Exactly what date did the Holy Spirit stop guiding liturgical development?

Why are you so convinced that the Ruthenian bishops are correct to suppress the common usage shared by all and replace with a politically correct version? How do you know the Holy Spirit favors them instead of the Vatican which has called them to return to the official form?

I'm told that the Vatican has upheld the right of individual priests to celebrate the full Liturgy according to the official Ruthenian liturgical books. Why is the Vatican wrong?

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Joe, you grossly misinterpreted my comment. I don't think I implied that the changes weren't good or lacking in inspiration. My question is in relation to the subject topic "standardizing the rite."

So, if prevailing opinion is that ALL the Churches of a Tradition make a change, all of them should (which I don't have a problem with.) However, with all of the changes made in the past 15 centuries, did the Church(es) follow this policy? If there was not an ecumenical council, there should have been a complete synod with a full consensus and implementation of the changes.

If I read the preface for "Ordo Celebrationis" correctly, it was published by the Oriental congregation. I can't accept this as a synod, as it isn't even close to full participation, nor does it constitute a consensus, but rather a mandate from Rome.

My comments aren't intended to provoke disobedience nor controversy, but rather seeking a full understanding in order to arrive at a fair and just suggestion for future revisions, regardless of ritual Tradition.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

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True. You have so many different Churches in the Eastern tradition that forcing them to all change at once would be quite difficult, and to all fall in line with each other. After all, you can tell the differences of, let's say, if you went to a Ruthenian Church one week, then went to a UGCC Church the next week, then went to a Melkite Church the next week, then to a Russian Catholic Church the next, and to a Romanian Catholic Church, etc, etc, etc... You'll find that not one of those holds to the same standard, even though they all did go through their own retranslations at their own respective times after the Second Vatican Council.

Now I can't really imagine how standardizing all the Eastern Churches all at once is really going to work all that easily. There are different country cultural aspects, different interpretations of the Divine Liturgy in terms of how it should work in that particular country's traditions, stuff like that. It's not really rocket science, but...I'm sure there has to be something there that needs to have that call to evangelize, too, I can see where this is going.

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The Slavonic Liturgicon and the Ordo Celebrationis were compiled by Rome at the behest of the Ruthenian (i.e., Ukrainian and Carpatho-Rusyn) Churches, which were divided regarding which recension of the Divine Liturgy to celebrate. The resulting work is quite extraordinary, and captures many of the pre-Nikonian practices of the Kyivan Church. It tracks closely with the 1629 Liturgicon of St. Peter Mogila, and is considered by most liturgists to be an outstanding example of liturgical scholarship (for all that there a typographical errors in the text as published, and sections where Slavonic is replaced by a "churchy" Russian.

In typical Ruthenian fashion, having been given precisely that for which they asked, the bishops here in the states refused to promulgate the new recension, and it has never been officially translated in full, let alone properly celebrated in this country.

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To quote Father Robert Taft again, "The Oriental loves his rite because it is his own, not because it is also yours".

I feel comfortable with the Divine Liturgy, regardless of the usage or language in which it is celebrated. I only get annoyed when it is celebrated badly or carelessly.

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Originally Posted by Paul B
Is anyone aware of any dissertations or objective published studies relating to the evolution of the Divine Liturgy and how the Divine Liturgy of the late 4th/early 5th Century compares to today? Also, who was responsible for the additions/changes and how they became accepted as proper[ and indisputable?

Yes, Father Robert Taft has published an (I believe) 8 volume set describing the evolution of discrete parts of the Liturgy. He also published a much smaller (and cheaper) pamphlet on this, "The Byzantine Rite: a Short History" whose virtue is its conciseness (40 8.5X11 pages) , and whose vice is conciseness (you need to know what he's talking about to understand - he has to assume you know the context). Beyond that, just restricting yourself to his works, J. Figel at Eastern Christian publications, I believe has published a number of his historical explanations. His book on the Liturgy of the Hours is excellent and comparateively cheap. Beyond him, there's all kinds of studies out there, more when you talk about Greek or Russian language texts.

The bottom line, the liturgy celebrated at Hagia Sophia has many differences with the current liturgy. The current liturgy is a synthesis of that liturgy with the liturgy of Jerusalem, a redaction by St Sabbas monastery, St John of Studios and then from St Sabbas again to form the current liturgy. The current liturgy replaced the older Hagia Sophia liturgy after the Latin invasion of Constantinople (requires LESS time and people!), replaced earlier monastic liturgies in the 1300, and finally became standard after the Turkish conquest meant that the big public component of the old liturgy was impossible.

Bottom line, older liturgies are not necessarily simpler, there's a LOT of context from the older liturgies that no longer exists, and the current liturgy is arguably easier to celebrate (I say arguably because I base this on secondary materials - I've never read the original documents, and I don't think it's been celebrated in 600 years).

To hit the OP:

Originally Posted by lcanthony
I am going to throw out this question for my won curiosity. How is it that the Eastern Rites have such wide latitude in the way the faith is presented to the faithful? You have St. Elias in Brampton Ont.(more orthodox than Orthodox) on one hand and the church in my area (keeping the identity quiet for obvious reasons) that is pretty loosey goosey with tradition. I would think that there would be a standard from the Eparchy for all to follow.


I think you can find the answer in this by looking at the Latin Church. Vatican II reaffirms Gregorian Chant in Latin as the standard worship music of the church, saying that everyone should know the basics. To implement this, Pope Paul VI even gave every Latin bishop a book with a "minimum standard repertoire" of Gregorian chant that every Catholic should know, entreating the bishops to use this along with other music for the newly promulgated "Novus Ordo" Mass.

What one's supposed to do liturgically, and what people actually do, is sometimes (often?) not the same. Some places will do things "right", but a lot of places don't. Especially in North America....

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See also Hans Joachim Schulz, The Byzantine Liturgy [amazon.com] , endorsed by Father Robert Taft as the best one-volume history of the development of the Byzantine rite.

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Thank you for the replies.

I have read and will need to review Taft's "Short History." I have also read his book on the Hours.
I located Schulz "The Byzantine Liturgy" and will need to order it.
I know there have been many DL evolutions, what I'm interested in is how there were promulgated -- made official. My sense is that it was Constantinople whose changes were "copied" by other, dare we say "envious" local Churches. But, that is strictly my opinion and has no references.

My point in this conversation is that the DL evolves, and has been evolviig since the Last Supper and people shouldn't get bent out of shape when a change is made. Also, one should not expect that multiple Churches, even if from the same root, will get together for a common text and rubrics.
Regarding DL changes, if it is a good change, it will remain; if it is not, then in time it will be thrown on the bony pile ( yeah, I'm the son and grandson of a coal miner.)

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