www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Mandated English Liturgies

My point is...Mandated English Divine Liturgies...may not have taken place until the late 60's...but the Organic development of English DLs in the USA began at least a decade before that...to me this history says the "official mandate" would have been a true "organic development" not a forced imposition...unfortunately, some feel that rather than nudge and encourage organic development...it's better to "force change" and alienate rather than be patient and work in God's time...

Sorry, if this is off the "many years...or else" topic but I believe is the crux of the RDL "issue" which is the overall topic...

Job,

It took over a decade till English overtook Slavonic in many ethnic parishes. I can remember having at least one total Slavonic liturgy a month as late as the 1980's in my home parish. The childern of the immigrants requested the continued use of Church Slavonic and my pastor granted that request.

Ung

I believe Holy Trinity began having English Liturgies in the 1950's...They continued to have seperate DL's 1 in English and 1 in Hungarian right into the 1990's...at which point they began interspersing Hungarian into the English DL then in the late 1990's the only Hungarian that was utilized was Christ is Risen and para-liturgical hymns before the DL...

This is unfortunate; to think that a church mandate is bad.

The Russians were translating the Gospels into Aleut long before Byzantine Catholics arrived in North America with their Old Slavonic. Who imposed that mandate? Isn't evangelization good enough reason without a mandate? Jesus spoke in the language of the people. What is wrong with that? Cyril and Methodius spoke the language of their new converts in Eastern Europe and invented an alphabet too! Who mandated them to do that?

Look back and see that speaking in the tongues of the diverse peoples WAS mandated by God at Pentecost when the disciples spoke in many tongues not on their own accord, but on God's. Did this *alienate* those who came from far away? Isn't the power of the Holy Spirit a good enought *mandate*? And what do you mean by *force change*? Does the Holy Spirit *force* change on you? or do we refuse to invite God's Holy Spirit in and change us?

Hey! What ever happened to the Byzantine doctrine of Theosis? Doesn't cooperation with the Holy Spirit ever play a role in the Church? I believe you Byzantines have a name for this *cooperation* with the Holy Spirit. But so many imply that the Holy Spirit should cooperate with them, nudge them, encourage them, but never tell them what to do. Oh no! Jesus should have *encouraged* the lame to walk again. Telling them to stand up, pick up their mat, and walk was too mandating. Jesus should have suggested, no, asked Lazarus to come from the tomb.

Did the church fathers at Nicaea *nudge and encourage* a softer form of orthodox Christianity? Is declaring *anathemas* a form of nudging and encouraging? In all this I sense a disavowing of church authority and its role in the community.

Ed

Yes, but have the anathemas been positive in the long run...it has left the Church divided for a 1,000 years...

And I'm not sure if I get your posting correctly...no one is saying the Church can never mandate things...Look its mandated that the Ruthenian BCC utilize only the texts of the RDL...but...was that the smartest way to go about it??? Personally I don't think so...What's that old saying, you get more flys with honey than vinegar...the original purpose of my post was that a mandate was not needed...people saw the need for English liturgies in America and were doing them at least a decade before "the mandate"...the priests needed to be educated and in turn educate their people, which would allow things, like an english DL to germinate, rather than stand back and allow things to never change...It's like that old joke...how many Rusians does it to take to screw in a light bulb??? Answer: What are you talking about...we only use candles...none of this modern electricity thingy...

I should have made it apparent that I was discussing the *use of English* per the topic of the thread, not any particular translation or mistranslation.
Ed

EdHash wrote: "Jesus spoke in the language of the people. What is wrong with that? ..."

He may have spoken to the people in their language, but Jews prayed in Hebrew, not the common tongue. Even Slavonic, I understand, was not exactly the common tongue of the Slavs.

I think you have a very idealistic view of Eastern Orthodox Church history. The Russians forced the Finns to celebrate in Church Slavonic as well as the Estonians. It was only after the Russian Revolution that the Finnish Orthodox were able to celebrate the liturgy in their own language. After Eastern Ukraine and Volynia became part of the Russian Empire, Church Slavonic in the Russian recension and sermons in Russian were the norm. Let's not forget about the Romanians who also celebrated in Church Slavonic for many centuries.
I think someone else already mentioned the OCA parishes who joined the ROCOR in the 1980's because they wanted to retain the Old calendar and Church Slavonic.
I will let others mention the liturgical languages of the Coptic Orthodox and the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syrian Orthodox in Kerela, India.

To the best of my knowledge, OLPH B.C. parish in Toms River, N.J. still has a Slavonic Liturgy on the first Sunday of every month. At least they did when I served there (up thru June, 2000). We used to attract some local OCA faithful on that Sunday, because they were no longer hearing that "holy tongue" in prayer at their own Church. As a 1970 refugee from Novus Ordo, I never minded hearing Slavonic in the BC churches I attended. Actually, I rather liked it. The music definitely matches the words, as opposed to English, which always seemed "forced". As a matter of fact, around 1980, I was recruited to become a cantor in the parish I was at (Fords, N.J.) by the elderly, Rusyn-born cantor (Dmitry "Jimmy" Rosko). In addition to the English (which was somewhat of a problem for him), he taught me to cantor in the Slavonic. The only problem with this, is that it can be a "non-starter" for potential converts. So, we should use it "judiciously".

Dn. Robert

There are other instances during the Russificaiton period of Nicholas I and Uvarov. One ironically is that St. Makarii Glukharev was forbidden to translate the Bible in to modern Russian, and was punished for doing so. He lamented that a modern Russian translation of the Qu'ran was already done and available. The are other examples out there. St. Kosmas I believe counseled people not to use Albanian but Greek instead, since Greek was the "language of the church". The language issue I think is still a problematic one in the Orthodox world since the Moscow Patriarchate continues to use Slavonic and the Greek church I believe an older form of Greek. I remember reading that in Greece it was proposed that a few readings be done in modern Greek, but that this idea was shot down. Bishop Hilarion actually said something recently about the increased use of modern Russian - http://www.interfax-religion.com/print.php?act=news&id=4087. It is strange that this struggle goes on, since the same church has the great missionary tradition of St. Stephen of Perm, St. Innocent Alaska and St. Nikolai of Japan.

I'm not for mandated language of any sort, but I do think the language being used should be comprehensible to the people who are participating in it. In the United States and Canada, it means English will and must predominate. I have heard numerous stories from people who grew up Orthodox and couldn't understand what was being said. Many, many people left because of this. I also believe that if the church is serious about evangelization, it will have to use English. I do believe however there is still room to maintain the church languages in some capacity if people desire their continued use.

The music definitely matches the words, as opposed to English, which always seemed "forced".

I couldn't agree more. It just flows so nicely when done in Church Slavonic. Since Rusyn was my first language as a child, it also just sounds "right." I know it's personal and emotional. I don't expect every Liturgy to be entirely in Slavonic. But I would like a few bits in Slavonic. If not weekly, then once per month. I will have to talk to my priest about that.

Thanks for the posts.

TIm

Church-Slavonic was never anyone's vernacular language, but this did not prevent people from being nourished spiritually by its use over many centuries. In bygone days the schools taught as part of the religion curriculum the meaning of the more obscure words in Church-Slavonic (but don't be fooled; I once asked a group of elderly ladies, who could and did converse quite freely in Carpatho-Russian, what "Az" meant - they had no idea. They also thought that "nasushchnyi" meant "daily").

I sympathize with those who love and appreciate Church-Slavonic, and it is not without practical value. But I do wish to offer one absolutely basic requirement to those under retirement age who desire a regular celebration in Church-Slavonic: learn the alphabet! It's not that hard, and it will help to make your request a convincing one.

The situation in the Russian Empire was complicated. The government and the "Holy Governing Synod" were willing to tolerate various languages (including English) in the Liturgy, but these were all languages that the authorities did not consider a threat to Russian nationalism. They would not tolerate Ukrainian or Belarusian. They also would not tolerate modern Russian, probably because they feared that this could encourage sectarianism.

Fr. Serge

Father Serge, just what does "nasushchnyi" mean?

There's no general agreement as to the meaning of epiousion in English; it is, after all, a hapax legomenon in the New Testament. This uncertainty is reflected in Saint Jerome's decision to render it as "supersubstantialem" in Matthew and cotidianum in Luke (which was also the liturgical version, and whence we get our English "daily").

For that matter, do you know what the Aramaic version is, and does that shed any light on the meaning of the Greek?

As to the Cyrillic alphabet, if anyone as dumb at languages as
I am can lean it, anybody can. It ain't all that hard, pre-1917
or post-1917 versions. The only way anyone's going to learn how
to sing Slavonic tropars, etc., is to learn the alphabet according to their Church's pronuciation thereof.

Edmac

This was not the case. How do I know that this was not the case?

It is because the Orthodox of Finland still celebrate according to reproductions of service books and chantbooks that were originally translated and arranged from Slavonic between 1870s and the Revolution, with the money of the Russian Church. Thereupon, the Orthodox Church of Finland has never accomplished the same quality in its translations and music books.

On the other hand, the Estonian Orthodox still sing from Estonian language chantbooks that were printed with the money of Moscow Patriarchate in 1951, well after Estonia had been incorporated into the Soviet Union.

Neither the Finnish nor the Estonian Church, when under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, have ever obtained any notable financial or spiritual support from that church body, since it is totally indigent, and even if it wasn't, it probably wouldn't care.