www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy A Letter to Rome

Dear Nathan,

Who has accused the new draft of being heretical? I'm as critical of it as anyone, but I wouldn't go that far. Heresy is just about the worst thing you can accuse someone of. What, in the new draft, is a denial of the faith? What teaches anything contrary to the faith?

I admire the zeal, but think you should pull back and rethink if you really want to say what you just said. And, if you did conclude that there was heresy in the new liturgy (heresy!), the proper thing to do would be to ask your pastor about it, and then go to Bishop John.

One of the problems with the internet, and with this board in particular (since it limits the time you can edit something) is that, once you press "add reply", it's out there. I've regretted many times that I didn't take some time before posting. What's it that James says about the tongue?

Best wishes,
P-A

Nathan,

I have to agree with P-A and a few others here that are expressing their concern. Heresy in itself is that the views and teachings expressed are contrary to the doctrines of the faith and the canons of the Church.

While this may be your view that the implimentation of the Revised Liturgy may be harmful to the faithful of the Eparchy spiritually, any accusation should be well documented as to where it deviates from the teachings, doctrines, and canons of the Church for it to be deemed "heretical". By levelling such a serious accusation, you are accusing in this case the hierarchy to be outside the Church in their teachings and beliefs. I really think that before you go any further with this you carefully explore what you are about accuse the hierarchy and even clergy of. A false accusation may undermine any efforts you make now and in the future.

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+
Administrator

Met. Basil is under no obligation to reply to you. That is why he does not. You are one man expressing one point of view. What do you know of the long arduous hours spent on that translation? And up you pop with some gripe that isn't even on his radar, or is contrary to something that was long since fought over and either won or lost.

What makes you think any bishop in the Catholic Church will engage you in serious discussion over something that he has been already decided by experts?

What Catholic bishop will stand up and answer hard questions from the laity except under duress? It's just not done in this Church.

There are a few I will grant you, and they are good men and will speak directly to you by phone, give you time on their calendar, commiserate with you when on pastoral visitations, but discuss the order of the day in the Church, particularly when you are going to tell THEM what to do? No.

So the best you can expect from a bishop, unless the problem has immediate and direct bearing on your personal spiritual life in the Church, and you have exhausted all other legitimate options, is to know that somebody might have read your letters and taken note, before they threw them out or filed them deep.

To do what most of the dissenters want to do on this list is going to take a concerted and coordinated effort. Which means it will start here or it will start at some conference somewhere between meals, speeches and book sales.

Frankly, from what I've seen here in a week, I don't think that Metropolitan Basil should be loosing any sleep over the laity and the liturgy.

Pretty poor showing and I don't mean that to be nasty. I am disappointed. I think some of the concerns are truly legitimate but there's more interest in carping and pressing favored issues, real or imagined.

There's no will to work together, and no real leadership role emerging and that is what is most surprising because there are some strong voices here but no offer to begin anything systematic. And it would take systematic effort on the part of clergy and laity to even get to the point where one could present a unified case for any of the legitimate concerns expressed here, much less advance convincing arguments that would change anything.

Looks a lot like trying to herd cats. I haven't lost interest entirely but I stopped reading most of the postings.

Eli

Eli,

God works in mysterious ways. I hope that something will be a catalyst to renew our Church and give us a vision of evangelization. I love our Church and I hope we will spread its message with considerably more vigour than during the last two decades. Perhaps the new translation in one way or another will yet be a spark for new life.

No matter what, I love our Church.

CDL

Dear Nathan,

We all share the characteristic of not knowing everything; and improving our critical thinking is a lifetime's work. My question to you was not directed at these issues, it was, sincerely, aimed at understanding what streams of information led you to develop your perspectives on the arsonist bishops - in particular, how much of it might have come from the rhetoric here.

djs,

Now now. The rhetoric may be "inflammatory" but it does make a point. Perhaps before our young friend answers your question about arson what do you think has caused the 2/3 decline in membership? I suppose one might say it is because people die off, or move away, or youth get married to non BCs, etc. All this is true but it really doesn't answer the question. Other Churches and organizations face the same situations and many of them grow anyway. So, why haven't we?

BTW I don't think it has much of anything to do with translations old or new.

CDL

djs,

perhaps by 'rhetoric' you mean posts by Father David who has given reasons for the new liturgy such as explaining that translations needed to be cleaned up:

https://www.byzcath.org/cgibin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=003152;p=3#000042

but conveniently left out using the word 'orthodox' for 'orthodoxis' in our translation, even though the Melkites, Romanian Greek Catholics, and Ukrainian Greek Catholics have accepted it.

I wonder when we as a church will get over our negative animus for this word?

Dan,

The fact is we don't know how many we have lost. Certainly we have lost in double digits but 2/3 may or may not be correct. We simply cannot trust the figures of the 50's-80's. To put this into perspective, the OCA use to claim 1,000,000 at least in one publication on denominations.
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/quick_question17.html
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/tab1b.pdf
http://www.ocanews.org/news/GoodNewsBadNews51506.html
http://www.ocanews.org/news/Hopkoletter319.html

Both an independent researcher and Fr. Thomas Hopko report that membership is really about 30,000.

And if you notice, many of the other problems related by Fr. Thomas are our own. Same problems, same decline, and all with no interference from Rome, the ability to ordain married men, and an unrevised Liturgy. That certainly takes the wind out of the arguement that if only we are true to our Eastern tradition we will grow. (Not that we shouldn't but it is no guarantee we will grow) The truth is Eastern Christianity, despite some high profile defections from the Evangelical and Episcopal Churches, is not growing in America.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Dan, even when not inflammatory, it is often careless. While direct statements that something or another in the translation "is heretical" have been rare, the comment that some item or another "could be seen as heretical" has been made numerous times. Did such comments, however tendentious, misinform the thinking of Nathan and others? I am concerned when a young man has had a wedge driven between him and his bishop.
First let me take Van Nuys as a case in point. When I was attending St. Macrina in San Mateo, the list of official parishioners included every canonical BC for that church was closer than any other BC church. But no one was making the drive from Eureka or Tahoe to weekly services. And many may have decided to go elsewhere. If one were instead to consider, for example, who picks up envelopes, then the number is vastly different. And that - as has been discussed countless times on this forum - is what makes the drop from 1990 to 2000 look so steep. It is as artificial as the overnight drop of OCA numbers from one million to 30,000 remarked upon this year at OCAnews. Given the artificial nature of the the sharp drop, and the fact that since then the rate of loss is far, far less precipitous, why the fixation on this 2/3 since 1990?

I've stipulated before that actual numbers, while not nearly so dire, are still nothing to be relaxed about. But they are comprehensible for the reasons that you state. I come from Cambria county, PA. We have numerous parishes there in little coal towns that are dying. Not just the parishes, but the little towns themselves. Most of the children move away, often to the South or West, often to places far from any BC parish. And often to places where the numbers of other Eastern Catholics are so small that it is dificult to make a start.

On the other hand, we have been working. I mentioned to you before that the 20 parishes and several missions/outreach in Van Nuys represent apart of our efforts to adjust and serve the rediaspora. And the survival and growth of these newer parishes certainly depends in a new way - unlike in the old country, or the old, old country - on reaching out to the broader community. This has necessarily changed us from being - for nearly a millenium - an ethnic church, to being one in which evagelization is vital. And all of these remarks apply to most everything that we've done south of the Mason-Dixon line.

As for the old country - can those parishes also be kept vital and growing through evangelization? Well, the fraction of unchurched people in Cambria county is less that 5%. And I suspect in the small towns it's close to 0. It is a heartbreak, but these churches likely will be gone soon. I am not sure whose fault that is.

Monomakh: Go back to the archives. While it was not included in the list you linked to, this issue has been discussed numerous times.

You do have a way of fighting fire with fire.

Frankly one is not necessarily tendentious to say that a word or a phrase in context distorts or obscures or obliterates orthodox theology. In fact that is what we all are supposed to be aware of in the Church, even the laity is charged with a certain obligation to exercise prudential judgment and discernment. The exercise of that charge as members of the Body is hardly an attack upon any one person at all, but on an idea or the presentation of an idea.

Furthermore one may surely exercise a prudential judgment and discernment about the presentation of an idea without inherently accusing the author of the idea or the generator of the idea of any purposeful act, or act in malicious awareness.

So your ever constant concern here to protect the episcopate, and the one raised in that ordinal state, has stretched a bit far here and you are cutting off the ordinary rights and obligations of the laity in the process, or at least suggesting that their exercise will do a great evil by what driving a wedge between a young man and his bishop.

There are many bishops in this country where only a properly placed wedge could separate him from his young men. In some cases there have been far too few wedges so fortuitously placed.

Not all behaviors of all bishops are deserving of such staunch and boundless defense as you offer here on every possible occasion, whether it makes real sense or not.

Eli

Deacon Lance and djs,

For economy's sake I'll address you both at once. Nathan Hicks is a fine and dedicated young man. I don't think we need to worry about driving irreparable wedges. I'm not as concerned about the liturgy as he is but am more concerned that we crush a young person's enthusiasm than anything else. While I find the concern over the translation sometimes a bit strained, what do I know. I read Greek...a little. I'm almost totally oblivious of Old Slovanic. If this issue of translation is important enough to get the entire archeparchy together at a conference to discuss evangelization and growth I'm all for it. If it is another issue that finally brings us together I'm all for that. I know that involvement is one of the key elements to energizing our vision. So, I pray that it happens.

I'm thankful for the studies about the truer stats than what we have hitherto had. I've contended for months (maybe years) on this very forum that stats are an important part of the evangelization picture. I'm very glad to see some more solid stats even if they are only about the Orthodox not in communion with Rome.

To reiterate, I don't know if married priests or liturgical translations or pews or iconostasis or something else holds the key to our growth. I think rather anyone of them or all together may be a catalyst. What I do think is essential is that we gahter together and are challenged together with a vision.

I pray that our shepherds call such a gathering.

CDL

Elitoft wrote:
Well, I think a wedge is there. I have asked, to avoid presuming, where it comes from.

Is the concern about how words might contribute baseless? How about doing a search to find where the ideas of "heretical" and could-be-considered "heretical" have been raised in the discussion of the revised liturgy, then let's talk about whether such remarks are just an ordinary exercise of rights, or just poor showing and potentially bad example.

Of course, these may discussions may not have informed Nathan's ideas at all. But the fact that they might makes me think it worthwhile to ask. I think it worthwhile for people to understand.

I don't think I've objected to such discussions, and in fact, I welcome them, and IIRC, endorsed them in a previous post to you. There is a huge difference, as P-A has noted, however, in criticizing a phrase for arguably obscuring theology, versus for introducing heresy - or, for that matter, "evil". And the latter kinds of criticisms have, in fact, been made here. And those, I think, should be objected to - just as you have objected to certain uncharitable, gossipy posts.

Based on continued consideration, you and I seem to differ in this manner.

You seem to want to point to the comments that stand out as inappropriate, drag those less than useful comments out one more time, maybe two or three more times, to review them and judge them to be lacking, and to repeat your concerns over and over again.

I seem to be thinking that your "solution" is a real waste of time and wish that we all could focus on those things which have merit because this entire discussion in its various current manifestations is looking more and more like a three ring circus.

As I said earlier there is nothing truly effectual here yet to cause any of our bishops to loose any sleep.

The only real way to make useless or potentially harmful banter and sniping go away is to ignore what is there and not add to it as I am doing her.

I also differ from you in terms of having much greater confidence in our bishops to take very good care of themselves, and our laity to be able to separate wheat from chaff.

Eli

You are probably right on all counts, Elitoft. At least, I certainly hope that you are. More in PM.