www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization "Dismantling "the Byzantine Catholic Church

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Evangelizers,

I have again been so busy "doing" evangelization that I have not had time to write about it on the Forum so I want to catch up a bit.

I have available copies of my interview (East vs. East)that I did on the Orthodox internet radio if you would like one.

I also have available a 20 minute DVD that I did on the subject of "Stewardship for the New Evangelization." This video is available as part of the BEMA effort, the Byzantine Evangelization Movement Association.

I do alot of speaking througout the country in the Theology on Tap venue. Mostly I speak on the Theology of the Body and also on the Eastern Churches.

I invite you to be part of the "movement" that is growing in the hearts of Byzantine Catholics. I hope to FINALLY begin my blog that will be a journey through the spirituality of visioning and evangelization. This spirituality is based very simply on the Scriptures, on the Paschal Mystery, on the "seed that must fall to the ground" in order to become a fruitful plant. This is the call to the Eastern Catholic Churches.

In order to realize the best versions of our selves and make the impact on the world that we can and are CALLED TO, the Eastern Catholic Churches have to be completely dismantled in order to be rebuilt according to their authentic selves. ("Razed to ground and rebuilt" as I always say.)

As Carson mentioned, this language strikes terror in some people's hearts and the reaction to it is sometimes outrage. Actually it is I who am outraged at anyone who would NOT want the "new wineskins" to happen for the Eastern Catholic Churches. It is I who am outraged at the apathy and indifference to the mandates and call given by God through His Church to the Eastern Catholic Churches. I am outraged at the attiude of 'giving up' of just sort of tucking oursevles into bed until we die in our sleep. No one can be outraged at that which is based in Scripture. But we all should be outraged at our reusal to configure ourselves to the Scriptures.

If we are really honest, any resistance to authentic change is pure selifishness. Much of the dysfunction of our Church can actually serve our personal agendas quite well--we can continue to be lazy, Church can continue to be predictable and on OUR terms, we don't have to really sacrifice or put ourselves out. We don't have to expend the energy to be creative, etc. etc.
I call for the dismantling of the Byzantine Catholic Church and its rebuilding because I love this Church and I love what it can be. I believe that anyone who resists the radical change that must happen does NOT love this Church but rather loves their own comfort and complacency above all things. And if they look at themselves deeply enough they will see that to be true.

The Eastern Catholiic Churches need major surgery. As difficult a message as this is for some, it is like the surgeon who prescribes major surgery in order to save a life. Any Church is called to thrive, not just maintain itself or just survive. We are at judgement day and we are being asked to look at everything we are doing and ask ourselves "Why" are we doing this? How are we really SUPPOSED to be according to the mind of the Church and the Scriptures?

Remember one thing--everything I say I am living.
I see and live the fruits of taking the big steps and risks of REAL renewal and I simply want our whole Church to know those fruits. But, we will not know those fruits by simply tweaking and pulling, by superficial change so as not to "offend" or "loose" anyone. We have lost many, many of our best and brightest for decades all in the name of trying not to "loose" or "offend." What we are doing is killing us. But it can be turned around if only we will have the courage, faith, vision and follow-through. We have to "put out into the deep"(Lk 5.)

The movement is happening. It is not just about
"Tom Loya." All you have to do is look into things like Fr. David Petras's recent Commentary on the Divine Liturgy if you want to see this same spirit of "new wineskins." Like myself, Fr. David poses questions like, "Why do we insist on Liturgy only being one hour long?" In his own way Fr. David is aksing,"Why are we doing what we are doing." Is is right? Should it be scraped in favor of something more authentic, more HOLY?"
Now we have to take this same indicting question into every aspect of our Church. This is what I mean by "razing it to the ground."

Remeber, renewal is not about criticizing bishops. It is about encourging and empowering them and encouraging and empowering all of us. It is about constant creativity, vision, forward motion, possibility. It has no use for limitations or "what we did last year" or nonesense like "Oh, we tried that it will never work."

"Newness" in spirituality does not really mean "new." It only means looking at old things in new ways. Join the movement and discover the riches of the Byzantine Catholic Church for the first time!

--Fr. Thomas J. Loya, STB.,MA.

Father, bless me a sinner,

Just when I'm about to get complacent myself I attend an event with you or read your commentary or attend Divine Liturgy and the Spirit uses what you say and your courage in saying it to revive my soul. I'm looking forward to November 6 in Peoria. I humbly bow to all who know the Church more intimately than myself but I also join you in calling for a full blown renewal of Christlikeness. The BC Church is dying but even in its ashes we see a spark. Pray that those who hear the call from God will say "Here am I. Send me" to fan it into flames.

Throughout the Churches history just when we grew complacent champions came along to remind us who we are. You are one of their number.

Dan L

They are ALREADY empowered by the grace of the Holy Spirit and their consecration to the service to which they were elected by Rome. They have all the power they need at their disposal. Church is not a democracy whereby bishops attain their office via popular elections and mandates. Consider our bishops. They were chosen from the outside, I believe. How can we, the simple laity, empower our bishops if our own clergy cannot vote them in? An evaluation must be made first whether we are dealing with external qualifications we don't know about.

Joe

Joe,

Whether you are correct or not is rather irrelavent at this point, unless you think we have another generation to dither away, don't you think? Our bishops who are they are. Of course they have this authority. We must encourage them to use it. What option to we really have? If you can determine the answer to your question about outside qualifications, then go for it. I doubt that you will be able to determine this with any clarity and even if you do, what can we do about it? And even if there is something we can do about it, it is unlikely we will continued to exist by the time you do.

It seems to me that Father Loya is pointing us to the only option we have open to us. Please, know I'm not unsympathetic to your plight.

Dan L

I commend and admire Father Tom for his evangelical zeal and for his hard work in this area. I can agree with him that Father Petras� recommendations to revise the Divine Liturgy are intended in this �same spirit of �new wineskins��. I strongly disagree with Father Tom that these proposed revisions equate to �new wineskins�. Those of us who respect the official Ruthenian Recension believe it should be celebrated in full and without revision. Any recommendations to revise the Divine Liturgy and the other Divine Services better equates to throwing away the wine together with the wineskins and then trying to come up with a new recipe for both the wine and the wineskins, one containing ingredients pleasing to only a few revisionists.

I�ve never suggested or supported on a one hour Divine Liturgy, but I know that there are those in our Church who believe this. In fact, some of those who support the Revisionist Liturgy argue that it can be managed in an hour whereas the traditional Divine Liturgy (which we still share with the rest of Orthodoxy) can take from an hour to an hour and a half (depending on the priest, deacon, singers, and etc.).

Is what we are currently doing right? In many places, no! The goal should to raise the celebration of the Divine Services from (in many places) a skeletal form to a form that embraces the fullness of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy according to the Ruthenian Recension. We need the traditional Divine Liturgy (according to the received rubrics with all the litanies). We need Vespers and Matins.

We don�t need a rewrite of our liturgical services. We don�t need to distance ourselves from the rest of Orthodoxy with these revisions. We don�t need to chase away the people we have left with unnecessary and ill-advised liturgical revisions.

We need to celebrate our inheritance as we have received it (as documented in the official books). Everything in a parish flows from the celebration of the Sunday Divine Liturgy. Our inheritance is not broken and does not need revision. As a Church we Ruthenians have yet to embrace the fullness of our liturgical inheritance. Why are we so quick to reject and revise something we have not tried?

Admin

from what I've been led to understand, the new translation will be longer. In fact, my pastor consistently says it'll be at least 1.5 hours.

We need to remember that at liturgy we're on Chairos, not Chronos.

Father, bless!

I agree with you, to a point.

"Authentic" may be the key word. Either it is an authentic renewal, and authentic rebuilding, or don't bother.

Building a pastiche of some other Church (protestant or R.C.) is a waste of time and effort.

Iconoclasm has been tried and it failed. Latinization has been tried and it failed. These efforts (sincerely advocated at the time) tore down the Church to rebuild it according to an inauthentic model.

The Church doesn't need to be re-invented, it only needs to repent and be cleansed and purified. The Church doesn't need a Savior, it has one. The Church doesn't need to be refounded, the Holy Spirit's foundation upon the apostles and martyrs is adequate and of enduring worth.

This Church must renew itself according to its authentic traditions, or it has no credible message, no effective evangelization, and no worthy witness.

Nick

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Thank you for your responses. It gives me an opportunity to clarify a few things:

My reference to Fr. Petras's commentary on the Divine Liturgy which was the text used in our Adult Education this year in the Eparchy of Parma was not meant to be a comment on the revision of the liturgy. I was using Fr. Petras's remarks as an example of the type of questions our Church and we as individuals must be asking ourselves about EVERY aspect of what we are doing, our attitudes, etc. in our Church today. I was glad to see someone else stating these questions other than myself so I simply cited Fr. Petras.

When I taught the Adult Ed course along with Deacon Tim Tkach using Fr. Petras's commentary
we did so for its enlightening and inspiring insights into the development of the Divine liturgy and not because we were championing revisions or "new translations." In fact, whenever we made reference to "new" translations during the course (which we were required to do) Deacon Tim and I found that the audience saw the "new" words as rather irrelevant and inconsequential so we stuck to the parts of the course that did in fact inspire the audience to a sense of the New Evangelization, (not the "new translation.")

My thoughts in regard to the "new" translation of the Liturgy as it figures in to the "New Evangelization:"

I wrote to our Hierarchs asking them not to release the "new" translation of the Liturgy upon our Church until a draft was first presented to the rank and file of our Church for their input and reaction, for the critical "Sensus Fidelium." Our Liturgy is the meeting point of the whole Church, not just of a few scholars and clergy or religious. Our Liturgy is the one thing that belongs to all of us yet to none of us. It is bigger than all of us and greater than the sum of its parts. I am hoping that our Hierarchs will still consider sending a draft to the rank and file before it is presented to the parishes as final. This should have been done all along. I am not suggesting Liturgy by vote. But I am suggesting that a critical input is necessary. This is the very input expressed by the Administrator of this Forum in his repsonse to my last post. This input is important, necessary, critical. I pray that our Hierarchs do not go a single step forward with this "new translation" until they hear from the rank and file.

Already a change appears to be happening even from the Hierarchs. I believe, if I am not mistaken, that we will not be saying, "Our bishop whom God loves," as originally approved in the "new" translation. I believe this is due to negative input about this phrase either from the Hierarchs or somehow it leaked up through the rank and file. This has to happen for the entire translation. If we do not seek the critical sensus fidelium element I believe we are asking for trouble as many of you already (and understandably)are indicating.

I think a critical mistake has been made in the
"new" translation process by not not keeping the rank and file in lock step with the process all the way. Had the rank and file been included in the process the scholars could have proceeded with their work taking the rank and file input into consideration. Although Fr. Petras has published beautiful explanations in the eparchial newspapers the process has still been one of a few people putting a liturgy together FOR a great mass of other people without the input of the very people for whom this "revision" is being done. Please, note that I am not making any comment one way or the other about the revisions themselves or why we did it, should we be doing, etc. Rather, my comments are about the process.

I believe that what is really needed in our Church is much more than a tweaking of words in our Divine Liturgy and maybe this is why I can't get too up in arms about this "new" translation because basically that is all it really is; tweaking words much of which will actually go unnoticed by most worshippers.

What we need is an entire renewal of our understanding, attitude and approach to our entire liturgical life. Life is liturgy. To renew our lives is to renew our liturgy and vice versa. We need to develop a "liturgical culture." This is precisely what lies behind so much of what we are seeking at my parish. Our parish landscape with its environmental plan, exterior icons, interior icons, yes even the removeal of SOME, repeat, SOME of the (dreaded) pews and everything that we do is all a part of creating a liturgical culture. Maybe this is why I don't get too fired up one way or the other about this so called "new" translation. I am too engrossed in the big picture of Liturgy, of developing a liturgical culture in every aspect of my life personally and the life of my parish. This is why I am a champion of things like the Theology of the Body. This Theology develops a liturgical culture FOR an entire culture! We really must "live the liturgy." But in order to understand how to live it we must understand more deeply what it is.

"Revising," "renewing," anything about our Church does not mean looking outside of our Church. This has been our mistake all along and we can see how devasting this mistake has been to our Latin Rite brethren over the past 50 years. We are always looking to the "isms:" FeminISM, ProtestantISM, secularISM, modernISM, etc. These things lie outside of our best and true selves. They are foreign imports that have hurt our parishes and devasted our monasticism. We never seem to look deep inside our best selves, yet this is precisely where the Church has called us to venture yet we refuse to go there. Then we wonder why our Church is not bearing the fruits that it should and could.

"Newness" means "oldness"--looking at the same tried and true things but in a new way. For the Eastern Catholic Churches this is a journey vertically. Ours is not a horizontal journey looking around at what everyone else is doing and then cheaply aping them. Ours is a journey vertically down into our true and best selves.

I believe (in part because I have experienced it at Annunciation parish) that there will be no substantial renewal of the Eastern Catholic Churches unless it is radical. We have to have a vision of what we want, what we are called to and then devise a master plan to achieve the vision.
Acts 2 must be one of our supreme guides: "They held all things in common." The authentic early Christian community gave and shared according to each other's needs. They "gathered for the breaking of the bread and for prayer." This refers to Eucharist and the liturgical life. We must realign parishes, reappropriate financial resources more equitably and according to a plan, a vision. We have to decide where we want a new parish, a mission, a monastery, special ministry or whatever. If we deem something to be fruiful, that it will yield, than we invest in it, even if it means taking from one unproductive area and reinvesting it in another. We simply MUST do this. All due respect to the emotional attachment to things like "my" parish, or "this is the way we always did it," the time for this is over. We no longer have the luxury.

Why is it so hard for us to simply envision in our minds how a strong, vibrant, radically Christ-like Christian community lived out through Eastern Christian spirituality in full Communion with Rome would look like? Wouldn't it be beautiful? So why not GO for it? Oh, now wait a minute!..No excuses. No, "Oh we can't do that, someone will get angry?" Get angry and then what?---leave? We have been hemorraghing our best and brightest for decades so why persist in what is killing us? "New wineskins" are not "new." They are the rediscovery of what always was and what should have been.

To create "new wineskins' will mean above all a change of heart and THAT is what the "New Evangelization" in the Byzantine Catholic Church is really about. It is not about tweaking words or seemingly safe supeficial changes that delude us into thinking that we are really doing something for our Church. Our Church is entering a period that is not for the spiritually faint of heart. But it can be a glorious period if only we will have the faith and courage.

--Fr. Thomas J. Loya, STB.,MA.

I would just like share something with the forum relating to the negative reaction to change we sometimes experience in our parishes, especially with some of our more senior members.

I recently attended a lecture by Dr. George Simms regarding spirituality issues facing the disabled and aged. Dr. Simms was Chairman of family medicine at Hershey Medical Center for 34 years and in addition to being a physician holds a M.Div. from Harvard Divinity school.

In discussing the psychology of aging, he shared that as people age and short term memory becomes less and less reliable, our long term memory becomes extremely important to our sense of security and maintaining our feeling of being connected to daily life. Change in things that are long familiar can be extremely upsetting. This is particularly true for those who have a strong connection with God through their community of worship. Dr. Simms related a story where, arriving early for church one sunday, he was the only person sitting there. A few moments passed when a very elderly woman approached him and asked him to move because he was sitting in "her seat". I think we can all relate similar experiences in our own parishes.

Now, I'm not saying that the changes Fr. Loya is talking about are not necessary. I applaud his courage and vision. I'm only asking that when we are dealing with our fellow members of the Body of Christ, especially our older friends and neighbors, we handle those situations with patience and Christian charity. I know after listening to Dr. Simms, I will look at future encounters with our older parishoners who object to all this "new stuff" a little differently.

I think you make some excellent points, and I agree that the church should be as sensitive as possible to the needs and concerns of the elderly parishioners (of whatever parish in whatever jurisdiction).

But I must point out that many of these parishes are on life support already, and could be closed before too long (we hear of at least a couple each year and the pace of closures can be expected to accelerate). A traumatic experience indeed.

+T+
Michael

I hope "Orthodox Christians" replaces the uniatISM "Christians of the true faith."

The Ukrainians already use Orthodox Christians, just downt the street from the Ruthenian Parma cathedral.

Joe

Did anyone ever think of those Greek Catholics who had their liturgy bastardized with Latinizations? As an altar server, I often recalled how the babas and old gentlemen often complained about how our Eastern liturgy was rejected by our clergy and Latin practices enforced without sensitivity.

Joe

Dear Joseph,

Ukrainians have always used "Orthodox Christians," except for those at Rome who dropped the "Orthodox" (for some strange reason, they were Basilians! ).

Perhaps they thought that since they also insist on using the "Filioque" in the Creed, that "Orthodox" wasn't appropriate . . .

Alex

Thanks for the info. I was also referring to the recent English text put out by the St. Josaphat eparchy.

Dear Joe,

There's an English Liturgy in the UGCC?

Really!

Alex