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Ung-Certez,

This is an excellent idea. Perhaps this first effort will turn into a Sobor.

Dan L

Are the Romanians (Canton Eparchy) not a Byzantine Church?

Unless the said monastics are no longer planning to go with them?

Joe

Joe,

I miswrote. They are leaving the Ruthenian connection. Sorry for the confusion.

Dan L

The Media Group worked together and the three short term goals that we decided on were:

1) A DVD / Video which will explain the divine liturgy for newcomers.

2) A magazine on Eastern Catholic Theology and Thought

3) Working to raise awareness of the Eastern Catholic Church in secular media by working to get PR in place and information in the papers.

4) Get Father Thomas, and Bishop John's messages in format for internet streaming, and get them online.

The long term goals are to get a full fledged media ministry up and running that will use all aspects of media. Internet, Television, Film, and other forms of Media to get our message out.

I will be making a trip down to the Cathedral in Parma, to check out the studio down there that was built for recording for radio broadcast. This will net us content so that we can start capturing Bishop John's messages. I am going to go forward and start capturing Father Tom's Homilies for internet streaming.

All in all it was a great conference, and there were many who were eager to start using media to its fullest.

Christ is Amongst Us!

Since minor orders was brought up...

THE NORMS OF PARTICULAR LAW OF THE BYZANTINE METROPOLITAN CHURCH SURI IURIS OF PITTSBURGH, U.S.A.

Canon 327

�1. Men who are properly prepared can be ordained to the offices of acolyte, lector cantor and subdeacon, who are minor clerics.

�2. Minor clerics will be governed by proper statute issued by competent authority.

-----------------

1.) So, minor orders are already part of the law of our particular sui iuris Church.

2.) Based on the input to the vision meeting, whether in e-mail in advance or in Whiting, there is a great interest by men who want to serve the church via minor orders.

3.) It's great that there is an interest in minor orders. How will we make it happen though? We can't expect the Bishop to do everything. We need to work in the vineyard too.

What is our vision for this? Thoughts?

In Christ,


John

I believe that preparation for minor orders should be done at the local level under the guidance of a parish priest. That is how it is done among our Orthodox brethren. Traditionally, it is bestowed on a man in recognition of what he is already faithfully doing, such as reading the epistle, praying the Hours, or assisting at the proskomedia table and altar, and so forth. It recognizes the committment of the individual to his particular ministry.

That minor orders are conferred on men may have something to do with the reluctance to reintroduce them generally, instead of as a step toward ordination. However, most all traditional minor orders involve setting foot behind the iconostasis at some point, which explains the "men only" tradition. In the OCA a male epistle reader usually goes behind the altar (in the south door, out the north door) to receive a blessing from the priest prior to reading, during the singing of the trisagion; a woman receives a blessing at the foot of the ambon. There may be exceptions for functions within women's monasteries. I don't know for sure.

Once a candidate is believed to be prepared, it would be appropriate for the parish priest to request the conferral of such a minor order by the bishop by submitting his request in writing to His Grace or even informally via phone call, and could be conferred at a parish visit of the bishop, as part of the several activities His Grace might be involved in while at the parish.

Criteria for being prepared should be standardized, however. I suspect it will not take much committee work to arrive at what the criteria are, since all clergy have gone through preparation at some point prior to ordination. Perhaps someone from the seminary or a parish priest can fill us in on that.

To all our friends who are eager to read a full report:

This was our first go at such an event. As a consequence we have much to digest and need a few days to do so. The massive amount of material must be put into a vision statement. We will be doing so in a few days. Pray for us as we produce this report.

Dan Lauffer

Toronto has a specific subdiaconal training program that is of 2-3 years in length. That curricula is certainly available to look at for ideas.

It is difficult enough to put on a diaconal program with the meager resources we currently have, and I think there is perhaps merit to doing a more local level training for tonsuring readers utilizing the pastor and deacon and other parochial resources.

But since it is a minor order there are canonical considerations that will have to be worked out, i.e. they have to belong to the proper church sui iuris and not be Roman, regularity of marriage, etc.

But having been both a tonsured reader and a subdeacon in my past, I am a firm believer in the restoration of the minor orders. The Instruction from Rome is also quite clear about this restoration.

Amen and amen.

A mouse can roar.

-ray

Dan,

Deacon Stan is very interested in reading the happenings. He also said he wished he could have been there.

Pani Rose

Pani,

We wished the same thing. We will be meeting Sunday after DL to begin putting a report together.

Dan L

It all sounds exciting to me. I wish I lived closer and could have come and stirred things up (ahh... I would have been as quiet as a mouse in the corner).

I look forward to the Byzantine Church dumping the Easter habit of timidity and identity crisis.

Go get 'em Dan!

Mount up! we are going to war!

Hurray!!

-ray

Go get 'em John!

Mount up - we are going to war!

(this is all too thrilling!)

-ray

Ray,

Thanks for your encouragement! It is a start.

Next steps are to secure our own server for streaming and IP broadcast.

And getting content together so that we have something to actually show when we hit the Air.

In a perfect world I would love to have a four camera studio with a good character generator, switcher with chroma key, time base corrector that would give me the ability to save everything to a digital format.

So those of you out there with a few thousand to spare... I do have a shopping list

John

Dear Dan...

My God! Dan...

I just had a vision (intuition or whatever) just a flash of what place the Byzantine Church can have in the next years.

The tiny church which is the unity between Orthodox and Latin - East and West - which has been ignored and often called traitor - has been standing on hollowed ground all along � hallowed ground which time has come. The season has come.

The Orthodox world and Latin world will re-unite (no question there at all) as the rest of the world pulls away from Christ (the enemy of my enemy� is now my friend). And our Protestant brothers come closer and we also cease or suspicions of them too.

And as the Orthodox climb that mountain from one side and the Latin climb that mountain from the other � the tiny Byzantine has been standing at the top already for decades.

This mass media move can definitely be the hands that reach down and pull the others to the top of that maintain.

Certainly it is the right of the Byzantine church to say to the others who have only begin the climb � �So what took you so long? Welcome to the top. The view is breathtaking. Fill both your lungs with this fresh air.�

He who is already re-united is the best one to lead others to re-union. What a wonderful thing the tiny Byzantine church is in position to do!

-ray