www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy The rest of the story

Many Thanks, Fr. Anthony. There it was, clear as day, all 134 posts-and I missed it, LOL!
Sam

That's very sad, what a missed opportunity.

This actually reminds me of something I heard recently. I was at liturgy a couple of weeks ago at an ACROD parish and I was talking to a guy who is on the parish council. There is a building on their property which I assumed they owned (it's right in front of the church) and I asked him what it was used for. He said it's owned by an insurance agency. He said there used to be an order of nuns that lived in the house (there are a couple of Latin and one BCC churches really close by) and that they got along really well with the nuns. For whatever reason the nuns moved or disbanded, and the property came up for sale. The church assumed they would be able to buy it. They were not able to, and they came under the impression there were people behind the scenes who prevented the parish from buying the building which is how it ended up being owned by this insurance agency.

May have nothing to do with this topic, but it reminded me of that story.

Andrew

Dear Father Serge,

I am very glad to see this posting from you. I have your book finally, and am reading it with a priest who was in California at the time of the establishment of the cathedral parish there, and so it is clear to us that you did handle this situation gracefully in your telling.

As it turns out I didn't really need to read your book in many of its parts. All I had to do was listen to our clergy tell their stories. They are all in your book, and more. There were no surprises.

And I do so like surprises!

It is a shame that the Metropolia has not done the same job of listening, don't you think?

There are the issues of temperament and personality. There is also the issue of ethnicity and the perceptions of and fears of encroachment, many of which are merely perceptions, too many of which are actual observations and so they too take a toll on a people and their willingness to "go along."

The one way NOT to deal with this historical issues is not to deal with them.

Part of our problem is this tendency to paper over the past and not look at the realities, not teach the next generation what happens when one or two men do THIS, or when whole parishes do THAT.

The loss of institutional memory, or the purposeful expunging of those records and that history is never a good way to "fix" a problem.

But then we see the few reactions to this thread and we see people ready to cut and run as shadows of the old realities are brought to light. What kind of fidelity is that?

Why run? Did the Christ turn on his heel when he was confronted with the weak and the sinful? No!!

He called them. And we call them Apostles. The Apostles taught bishops how to be bishops and it wasn't a pretty sight even in retrospect, in the very little bit we have left of the story in Scripture. I think we forget that when we look at who we are and how we got here.

At any rate, your book has done a service if it gets the Church to talking openly and who knows how it might inspire our clergy, inspire our despots.

But the worst thing to do is to seek the quick fix, to slam the door closed on the realities of our history, or to run when the going gets rough.

God bless you and your work, Father.

Eli

Fr. Serge,

Let me put in another part of the puzzle (a new part) and ask how it fits into the history of the Greek Church which has been set forth in this thread. In the Eparchy of Van Nuys, the Byzantine or Greek Catholic churhces (either term is acceptable to me) are filled with Roman Catholics who (like myself) were attracted to this Church by its tradition, orthodoxy and beauty. Perhaps we might say, the good, the true and the beautiful. Being part of this Church has been a journey to orthodoxy - in the Chestertonian sense - a romantic journey.

I have no angst against anyone (Orthodox, Ukranian, etc.). I think it's great that the vision Rome has given us (I say us because I formally returned to my mother's Church --Greek Catholic (Ruthenian) --she was the youngest of 14 children -- seven years ago) is to return to our orthodox heritage. By this I mean not only the worship, but I also mean orthodoxy in belief, i.e. of one mind with Peter. Hence, e.g., although I have no trouble with leaving the filioque out of the Creed, I believe it is necessary to believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father through the Son and that the failure to believe that, leads one to reject the visible head of the Church who is now Benedict XVI. (It is this sense of orthodoxy which makes me, without any hesitation, reject inclusive language which I see as destructive of the natural (ie horizontal) order -- which seems to be the paticular "heresy" of the modern world.) I believe that the early Church in the East was united with Rome in mind and heart.) Of course, I say this with the caveat that most of the great heresies come from the East.

Our parish in New Mexico is filled with lots of people like myself (welcomed by the ethnic Greek Catholics who started the Church some 25 years ago) and it is alive and well. We have a recent vocation from our parish. We have children - which means at least a good number of my fellow parishoners are following Peter in his instruction on human life. We are building a pilgrimage chapel to Blessed Theodore Romzha, we host an annual vocations retreat for boys and young men--we call it a Byzantine ascetical boot camp--in the mountains of New Mexico.

My experience is not unique. There are many here in the southwest who have come to apprecitate and love this Church for its faithfulness to tradition, truth and beauty.

Now I compare this with some of my relatives who grew up in the Greek Catholic Church back east and I understand that there are churches which are closing. I notice one aspect of the those my age or older, they have not had many children or are not having many children. The church is shrinking not simply because of the diaspora which occurred but because one no longer sees many families of fourteen like my mother's family.


I look forward to your response.

lm

LM,

A quick ramble over lunch ...

You mention a key element that is missing from the mix. We are really the future of the Rusyn Greek Catholic Church here stateside.

We must make up a growing if not key part of the Church today ... especially in the few really thriving parishes.

In a few short years our older members will be gone. Most of their kids long ago left the old Latinized Greek Catholic Church, which no longer exists (or does it?). Most of our parishes will die.

Now, that leaves those of us who came to the Church on our own as converts, to return to our roots, or the native Greek Catholics committed to growing the church (and there are quite a few). And what happens to all our Byzanteens? The church we will leave them is sinking on our watch.

I suspect a fair amount of folks who are keeping the lights on in Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Van Nuys with their donations and toil did not trek east for a new Divine Liturgy. And the native Byzantines have not sacrificed everything to see the church flounder either!

It seems that those who really want to live the Rusyn Greek Catholic vocation are invisible to the Church.

Oh!!

Quite the contrary. In fact all this new spate of parish closings and new liturgical texts and cantor training and emphasis on the diaconate rather than on the presbyteral priesthood, the abbreviations, the inclusive language the ethnic cleansing is ALL being done with the imports clearly in mind.

One might say that you are the real inspiration for all of this frenetic housekeeping.

After all it tends NOT to be your parishes whose priests are being persecuted, and/or who are being closed out of hand.

I think you are not only visible but you are being offered as the principle cause for our great renewal.

What can I say, but "Thanks."

Eli

Well, the plan is backfiring and the demographical drivers are misunderstood.

The widest possible net of Byzantines -- native and newcomer -- are being alienated from the Church.

There is that.

Eli

Dear Father Keleher,

Thank you for those nice words about our pastor. He is a good priest, and he has helped me a lot over the years!

We had a very good talk about your book, but he didn't say if he knew you.

I feel bad that it sounds like our priest put all the responsibility for the New Liturgy on only one bishop. He didn't. I just didn't write down everything he said.

I asked him about the history of the Liturgy book, and where these ideas new came from.

He told me that the Archbishop is the only one who can issue a new Liturgy. It isn't up to the Bishops' Council, or any of the other bishops really. The Code of Canon Law says that it is the responsibility of the Archbishop, so we can't really just point to somebody else.

He said that most of these ideas were invented by the Franciscans at Sybertsville Pa., when the Archbishop was there. They invented most of these fights about the Liturgy, and they were experimenting even when some of the bishops we have now were there in the Franciscan Monastery. There were bitter fights about all this in the Byzantine Franciscans, and so much damage was done, that in the end it split them in two, and lead to the death of that community. Now the community has been taken over by a Roman Catholic province.

My priest thought it was a Franciscan thing. It is the Franciscan bishops that have brought that experimentation and fights to our Church. They've lived their whole life with it I guess, and so they think its normal!

Helen

Helen,

I believe you mean New Canaan, CO Friary. The Byzantine Friary at Sybertsville still exists although they have affiliated with a Latin Province of their Order. New Canaan split, but the experimenters are those who left and formed New Skete eventually joining the OCA.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Also one would have to take a very very careful look at what "experimenters" means in the context of this discussion on the currant Byzantine liturgical revisions. It certainly does not mean abbreviated liturgies and inclusive language or any other tortured constructions. And it certainly was not a movement adverse to Orthodoxy.

What we have left here in our Metropolia then are the "conservatives" from that time period.



Eli

Dear Friends,

I too have come across people who don't like Ukrainians! Go figure!

There are, it is readily admitted, Ukrainians who don't make it easy for others to like them . . . although who they are exactly is beyond me . . .

And I'd like to thank Helen for presenting such a fascinating thread!

It's always a shock to learn there are people, even bishops, who don't like you on the basis of where your parents come from.

So, what you are all telling me is if I ever should meet Vladyka Andrew - I should definitely not joke about Rusyns being "Ukrainians after all," right?

We also have clergy who just don't like Orthodox, unless they're as Latinized as we are!

Fr. Ireney Nazarko, OSBM once wrote an article on devotion to the Sacred Heart where he quotes St Dmitry of Rostov's statements about veneration of the Sacred Wound of the Side of Christ.

"Now that must truly have been a saint!" Fr. Nazarko exclaimed.

Ultimately, the dynamic among the Ukies is slightly different insofar as their cultural identity tends to override even religious differences.

And the fact that there are non-Ukrainians seeking to become integral members of the UGCC (and there are many already) is a kind of compliment to the Ukies that they actually are starting to warm to the idea.

For us, it is part of the realization that the Kyivan Church isn't only OUR property to the exclusion of others.

This is illustrated, for me, by a poignant moment in a movie about Christmas where the Three Magi come before the Holy Family.

In that interpretation, Mary is seen turning slightly away to protect the Baby Jesus from the strangers who are holding out their hands to touch Him.

But then St Joseph gently knudges her and says, ever so tenderly, "He doesn't just belong to us . . ."

And then one of the Magi puts out his finger and the Baby Jesus takes hold of it with His tiny hand.

I need to go blow my nose . . .


Alex

Yea. It's a strange world all right. Always something clogging up the sinuses.

I was thinking as I read your note that sometimes it is a lot better if people are given the opportunity to take out their own splinters.

When my ma used to dig out my splinters there was always a lot more blood and noise and very often the whole chunk never did come out and later it festered and got all full of pus and stuff.

It always seemed to be a better time of it when I took them out by myself.

Eli

Eli,

"Also one would have to take a very very careful look at what "experimenters" means in the context of this discussion on the currant Byzantine liturgical revisions. It certainly does not mean abbreviated liturgies and inclusive language or any other tortured constructions. And it certainly was not a movement adverse to Orthodoxy."

New Skete's reforms do include abbreviations, small amounts of inclusive language, and restoration/innovation depending on one's point of view. And many Orthodox look at New Skete disapprovingly.

Fr. Deacon Lance

An Orthodox bishop of my acquaintance visited New Skete a number of years ago. When I asked him what his impressions were, His Grace replied, succinctly but sufficiently: "They are very Uniate, and very Franciscan!"

Fr Serge