www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy What Does Uzhhorod Think of the RDL ?

Valoban Foltamadt!

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear in my question...why would we have needed Rome to approve something which was clearly in our tradition...worship in the language of the people...it would have been "organic" to the 10% that were ethnically hungarian...The ethnically hungarian parishes in the USA were utilizing english in the DL long before the Slavs did (at least that has been the understanding that has been brought to my attention...anyway don't want to take this thread too far off the path...

Valoban Foldamatt!!!

Chris

The Eparchy was Slavic speaking, so Church Slavonic was a close enough vernacular.

Xpucmoc Bockpece!

U-C

U-C,

You forget that some members of the Eparchy were former Calvinist Hungarians so the Eparchy was Slavic and Hungarian.

Fr. Deacon Lance

I doubt that the number of "Calvinists" was the great in Uzh, Bereg and Ugocha counties. Now in Spis, Saris and Zemplen counties, there were ethnic Roman Catholic Slovaks who became Calvinist but then decided the wanted to come back to the Catholic Church. They weren't accepted back by the Slovak Roman Catholics so they became Greek Catholic. Their descendants are really the only true Slovak Greek Catholics.

Xpucmoc Bockpece!

Ungcsertezs

Ung Certez,
Valoban F�ltam�dt!

Thank you for your comments.

I had understood that the reason the Rusyn people in the Hungarian section of the Austria-Hungarian Empire introduced Hungarian into the Divine Liturgy was the edict in 1868 (from the Emperor in Vienna) which "Magyar-ized" Hungary.

The Carpatho-Rusyn language was forbidden by the legal authorities, and the liturgy and other divine services were required to be translated into Hungarian. I believe the Rusyn texts were ordered to be destroyed.

My grandfather was born in Zemplen County in 1876, and grew up with the Hungarian liturgy. As many people living in lands closly boardering other countries, he was also fluent in Ukranian, Slovak, Polish and German.

From that point forward it was illegal to own/use books in Rusyn.
You seem to place this event much later, in the early 1900's.
I would appreciate any information you have to clarify this.

Deacon El

Hungarianized parishes began to appear in the 1870's.
Here's a quote from Fr. Pekar's book "The History of the Church in Carpathian Rus' pgs.91-92.

{3. The Introduction of Hungarian into the Liturgy

As mentioned earlier, the bulwark of religious and cultural life of the Carpatho-Rusyns were their Church with its national traditions-the Slavonic language and the Cyrillic alphabet. For this reason, in their determination to magyarize all of Carpathian Rus', the Hungarians did not hesitate to undermine these bastions of Carpatho-Rusyn identity. In short, they decided to liquidate the Slavonic alphabet and inroduce Hungarian into the liturgy.

Attempts to introduce Hungarian as the language of the liturgy date from the 1860's. In 1863, a group so-called Hungarian Greek Catholics gathered in Hajdugorog under the leadership of the magyarized army lieutant, Lajos Farkas. They sent a memorandum to Bishop Vasylij Popovich (1873-1864) demanding that Hungarian be used in the liturgy. Bishop Popovich had been persecuted ealier by the government for his "populist convictions," and in order to avoid new difficulties with authorities, he sent this memorandum on to Rome. In the meantime, on November 11, 1863, he strictly forbade the use of the Hungarian language in the liturgy until such time as the Apostolic See gave its unequivocal approval. The Hungarian patriots were not satisfied with the bishop's decision. They were well aware that under the circumstances the Apostolic See would never agree to the magyarization of the Church, despite the vigorous support this measure had from the Hungarian government and press. But even though Hungary's ruling circles paid little heed to Carpatho-Rusyn feelings, Rome could not allow the Hungarians to use the Church for their purely political ends. And so, on December 7, 1866, the Apostolic See issused a resolution "strictly forbidding the Hungarian liturgy."}

I suggest reading Fr. Pekar's book, as he documents well the way Hungarian was instroduced, leading to the creation of Hungarianized Greek Catholic parishes in Carpathian-Rus'.

Xpucmoc Bockpece!

Ungcsertezs

U-C,

Fr Ron Roberson reports:

"In the 18th century a number of Hungarian Protestants became Catholic and chose the Byzantine rite, again adding to the number of Byzantine Catholics in Hungary. They were placed under the jurisdiction of non-Hungarian Byzantine bishops.

Once this community of Greek Catholics was integrated into Hungarian society, some began to press for the use of the Hungarian language in the liturgy. But such a proposal was resisted by the church authorities. For this reason, the first Hungarian translation of the liturgy of John Chrysostom had to be published privately in 1795. In the 19th century several other liturgical books were published in Hungarian, but their use was still not approved by the ecclesiastical authorities.

A watershed in the history of this community took place in 1900, when a large group of Greek Catholic Hungarians went to Rome on pilgrimage for the Holy Year. They presented Pope Leo XIII with a petition asking him to approve the use of Hungarian in the liturgy and to create a distinct diocese for them. The question was discussed at length both at the Holy See and in Budapest, and finally on June 18, 1912, Pope Pius X erected the diocese of Hajd�dorog for the 162 Hungarian-speaking Greek Catholic parishes. But the use of Hungarian was limited to non-liturgical functions: the liturgy was to be celebrated in Greek and the clergy were given three years to learn it. World War I intervened, however, and the requirement to use Greek was never enforced. In the 1930s the rest of the necessary liturgical books were published in Hungarian."
http://www.cnewa.org/ecc-bodypg-us.aspx?eccpageID=76&IndexView=toc

Fr. Deacon Lance

Any figures on how many "Reformatus Magyars" became Greek Catholic? What villages were they from? Pocs,Hajdudorog,Berehovo, Nyiregyhaza?

Another quotefrom Fr. Pekar's "The History of The Church in Carpathian Rus'"

p.93-94

"On the advice of the papal nuncio in Vienna, The Apostolic See did not respond to the Central Committee's memorandum of 1900. At the same time, the nuncio informed the confused bishops that although the Apostolic See continued to prohibt the use of Hungarian in the liturgy, it would 'not insist' on the strict adherence to this ban.

Knowing that Rome was willing to tolerate the use of Hungarian in the liturgy the Hungarians began a campaign to magyarize the rite as well. The Carpatho-Rusyns, citing the resolution of Rome, decided to fight:'We will die before we give up our Slavonic liturgy,' they wrote in their protest. However, both Carpatho-Rusyn bishops remained on the sidelines of the struggle. It was the faithful who protested to the Hungarian primate, to the government, to Rome, and they even appealed to the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Andrej Sheptyc'kyj of Galicia. Finally, in 1909, Rome ordered Hungary's primate, Kolos Vaszary (1891-1912),'to respect the earlier decrees'of the Apostolic See concerning the Hungarian liturgy. However, not only did the primate fail to put a stop to the magyarization of the liturgy, he actually encouraged the use of Hungarian in the liturgy."

Xpucmoc Bockpece!

U-C