www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall What Were Byzantine Catholic Bishops Thinking!?.

Unity with Western Bishops who wish to destroy the rich traditions and liturgical beauty of the Roman Rite. And replace them with secular and liberal worship styles.

An "Iconoclast" of the Roman Liturgy!!, is a good analogy.

Maybe know I should re-think my unity with the Holy Orthodox Church. Full Unity!.

Jaya,

Welcome to the Forum!

I am so happy to hear that there was a Divine Liturgy celebrated at this year's REC.

I actually served at the last Divine Liturgy at REC many years ago. I believe it took place at the same hotel ballroom. The liturgy was celebrated by Father Alexei Smith from Saint Andrew's Russian Catholic parish and con-celebrated by Byzantine Catholic priests from different eparchies. His Eminence Cardinal Mahony was present, standing at the spot in the sanctuary reserved for the bishop. No other bishop, Byzantine or Roman was present. Attendance was full.

Jaya,

Welcome to the forum and thank you for that post explaining the Byzantine presence and involvement at the conference.

Many years,

Neil

Here is a good point brought up by someone at CAF about this spectacle.

Quote: “Saddening. This Mass was a purposeful and direct smack in the face to the Vatican and Catholic Liturgy. The Archdiocese chose to celebrate the closing liturgy of its big RE conference illicitly.

For starters, the sacred vessels were glass and wicker.

Yet, Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum explicitly states that,

“”Reprobated, therefore, is any practice of using for the celebration of Mass common vessels, or others lacking in quality, or devoid of all artistic merit or which are mere containers, as also other vessels made from glass, earthenware, clay, or other materials that break easily.”

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/co…ml#Chapter%20V ”

GC-

Deacon John Bradley (St Anne's, SLO) and I served the DL @ the REC with Bishop Gerald. Fr Alexei was a concelebrant, there was one RC priest and the rest were BC priests of the Eparchy of Phoenix. Bishop Ken of the Ukranian Eparchy of New Westminister, BC also concelebrated. All the people to whom I spoke after the DL were quite taken with our "mass". A number of RC deacons and their wives commented on the service the BC deacons provide during the DL, "you sure do more than we do."

On Sunday, I served Bishop Gerald as he celebrated the DL at Annunciation in Anaheim, CA.

Does anyone know if the Byzantine Divine Liturgy at the conference was recorded and/or placed on youtube?

Elizabeth

No doubt the Prince would think the same thing he thought about the Mass in his own day... He did, after all, choose the Divine Liturgy as celebrated in the Great Church of Hagia Sophia over all other religious expressions.

My Director of Religious Education, my "boss" for RCIA at my Latin Parish, looks forward to "the LA Congress" every year. She is very taken with the liturgies there. She told me they were podcasting this year so I looked up the videos and I wasn't surprised to find that to me what I saw was very troubling, totally the opposite direction from where I "go" when I seek worship. I noticed the EC bishops processing in during the Closing Liturgy and wondered what they must have been thinking at that moment.

Different comment: My DRE sent me a very excited email the day she returned -- "Went to a Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgy Friday night. Wonderful! Talk to you about it tonight." She was very excited about having attended a DL, her first, when we did finally get a chance to talk. I asked if many were there and she said the ballroom where it was held was packed.

She said a priest (?) had given a very helpful explanation before the DL. She met the same priest/deacon at their literature booth later and talked at some length with him. (Was that you Fr Deacon John?) I understood from her that he said it had been a number of years since the ECs last participated. (She tried to find my Russian parish on the list there of Byz Caths but we weren't on it. I said that was probably because we aren't in their eparchy, in fact we haven't got a heirarch and are under Latin bishops.)

As might be expected participating in the Divine Liturgy impacted her in a way any bits and pieces I've shared about ECs has not. I have to wonder what she would have thought had she been in an actual temple with an iconostasis etc.

So, I'm very grateful you had a presence there. I'm grateful my DRE has a much better idea of who I, her catechist, am now from that experience, who we ECs are, and as Fr Deacon John Montalvo indicates my DRE wasn't the only one who was very taken by the experience.

As I said about the presence of Fr. Abbot Nicholas and Fr Tom Loya at the installation of our bishop last year in Oakland, their presence in ECC garb [tinyurl.com] had more impact than anything I'd been saying about Eastern and Oriental Catholics. So many people came up to me there and after asking me about them. At the Chrism Mass last week someone came up to me and was talking about wanting to come to Divine Liturgy again. (She came once after meeting Fr Loya at the installation.)

It was clear my DRE is not "drawn" to the East, but what was just a remote intellectual concept about the ECCs up to now for her is very much altered by her experience of the DL at the LA Congress. !

I couldn't find it. www.recongress.org/live/default.htm [recongress.org]

I see now Jaya said it was Fr Rankin.

Allow me to throw my own "monkey wrench" into the conversation. For years, I've been reading lay-run "conservative" Catholic newspapers with a national circulation. Whenever they have commented upon these LA Catechetical Congresses, they always have mentioned that the list of speakers constitutes a "Who's Who" of prominent dissidents against official teachings of the Church, i.e., those who promote "women's ordination", those who want the Church to change her teachings on homosexual behavior, etc. They may allow one or two orthodox speakers to provide cover, etc. If this is still the case, no orthodox Catholic bishop should be seen anywhere near such a conference. The current Archbishop of Los Angeles does not exactly have a stellar reputation for promoting and defending orthodoxy.

Dn. Robert

It appears that in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles the sheep are leading the shepherds. I find this sad and I do not know what's to be done. That this kind of liturgical abuse went on in individual parishes and assemblies I was aware. That it was done in the presence and with the apparent collaboration of bishops constitutes acquiesence of the worst kind. Forgive me, but I wanted to trip that dancing deacon and rescue the book of Gospels. I'm sure the same bishops will visit Rome on their "ad limina" visits and pay lip service to good Pope Benedict.

Sadly, this is not the case in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Cardinal Mahoney's vision for Liturgy is outlined in his pastoral letter "Gather Faithfully Together", which has dictated Liturgy in Los Angeles for several trying years. Gather Faithfully Together [books.google.com]