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

Fr. Dcn., there is certainly doubt as to that! How silly a statement.

Alexis

Alexis,

Do you think that Prince Vladimir of Kiev would think highly of the Mass portrayed in these you tube videos?

I doubt his opinion would be favorable.

John

Alexis:

Prince Vladimir's envoys had traveled to Rome and weren't really enamored of the Latin DL, according to tradition. They were, however, simply swept away by their experience of the DL in Hagia Sopia in Contantinople, not knowing whther they were "in Heaven or on earth" and exlcaiming that they knew that "God did, indeed, dwell among men in that place." See The Orthodox Church, by Bishop Kallistos Ware.

The moral of the story is that the Holy Spirit moves men in various cultures to repond in varying ways to express the same entry into the Mystery of Christ, God coming into His creation to re-establish the relationship broken by sin, the sin of our first parents and of us.

Bob

It being Holy Week for all of us, I think it is appropriate for those of us who are Orthodox to stop our speculation and complaining about what another Church should or shouldn't be doing with respect to her liturgical norms or aberrations as the case may be. At first I couldn't understand why the Byzantine Catholic Bishop Gerald was involved, but after re-reading Jaya's post, I can see where His Grace saw an opportunity to expose a large number of western Catholics to the beauty and solemnity of the Liturgical expressions of the Christian East - that is the beloved Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom which we Orthodox honor along with our Eastern Catholic brothers and sisters. God works in strange ways and great indeed are His mysteries. I for one, am grateful that Bishop Gerald used his opportunity to participate in the conference to allow some light to shine in the direction of the Christian East in the face of what we Orthodox, and many others, may regard as an odd, to say the least, celebration as portrayed on the videos in question.

I'd echo my brother's call for an end to this speculation during the approaching Holy Week. I noticed, in a quick visit to our neighboring Orthodox site, that the comments there were - for the most part - ones of 'it really isn't our concern'. I'd suggest that this is as true for ECs as it is for our EO brethren. As to why any of our bishops were present, that's been discussed and explained.

If we believe that the Mass served there was a valid celebration of the Eucharist, albeit not according to the Latin Church's rubrical norms, then one is free to have been appalled by the form of its celebration, but one cannot 'detest' (as I believe someone wrote) the Mass itself. And one can undertand that a bishop was certainly not free to walk off the altar in protest of it - to do so would have been incredibly disrespectful to He Whose Body and Blood was confected on that altar.

As I think the topic has run its course and further diatribes on it are hardly in keeping with the spirit of Holy Week, the thread is closed.

Many years,

Neil