And what I don't understand, can you help me here, is that the very persons who are into this are also the ones who have had difficulties with our people in the church in the past.
Are you pointing fingers here, Alex? When I speak to people, I usually try to be direct to those I am speaking to and not speak in insinuations or vague language. As Lauro I would quickly ask someone outside who questions the legitimacy of the UGCC and the reality of her martyrs.
But on the other hand when someone is approached for following liturgical prescriptions mandated by the Church, Patriarch Josyp, etc. and is called something negative for doing so, I don't think this automatically reflects on the ability of that person "getting along" but may also reflect on his faithful obedience to the prescriptions of the Church.
I see your mentioning of "problems with our people" rather as positive encounters or as "catechetical moments" to teach them about what they have lost and to charitably explain what direction our leaders would like them to go liturgically. If you are speaking about me, which I don't know if you are or not, "difficulties with our people" are nothing anyone who is in pastoral work or ministry amongst Ukrainian Catholics can't handle, nor are my experiences likely that different from many UGCC clergy if we compared notes.
Unfortunately some of our Ukie people have their own very narrow ideas of how the Church should be. The events precipitating the formation of Sts. Volodymyr and Olha in Chicago is testimony to that. Indeed, one in ministry should always try to work with the people. But there are sometimes realistic limitations as well.
Because the parishes divided, would you say the priests who proudly served V&O and who maintained the Julian Calendar in the face of personal threats, even physical violence as people who "couldn't get along"?. Those who started V&O were called terrible things by those two blocks north, with derogatory use of such terms as "pravoslavniy" or "muskovsky" because their priests had beards, kept the Old Calendar, wore riassas, etc.
I look to the example of my avatar, St. Leonid Federov, and pray for his constant intercession, who took the good and beautiful things from his Tsarist Russian Orthodox Church (i.e. mother church of the ROCOR), left her, and brought those treasures with him into union under the omophor of St. Andrey Sheptytsky.
I'm sure St. Andrey had his difficulties with parishoners as well as I'm sure St. Vasyl Velychkovsky did also, both of whom were faithful to their Ukrainian heritage as well as their Byzantine liturgical tradition. The battles of St. Andrey Sheptytsky against some of his bishops is very well documented in this regard. It appears I am in good company here along with Fr. Lypsky whom I also admire. I'm sure he had his detractors as well.
The priest who taught my oldest son how to serve spent years in Mordovia, yet was extremely vostochnik. Many survival and martyrdom stories have resounded in my living room. I wouldn't have made a pilgrimage to the enshrinement of the relics of St. Vasyl Velychkovsky all the way to Winnipeg if I didn't believe in what he and our Church stood for under severe Soviet persecutions or felt as if I was somehow going to convert to the narrow political agenda of some ROCOR adherents. But I am wasting my time with any personal statements since the judgement appears to have been already passed.
As in the examples here of St. Leonid Federov and your own with Fr. Bohdan Lypsky, in addition to the experience of the lads at the music camp here, we can take what is good and beautiful from the Kyivan tradition (liturgical observance, prayerbooks, etc.) without buying into any political baggage which was not initially part of the discussion at all.
Since we have lost much of our liturgical heritage, we have no choice but to look to the Orthodox for some of this reclamation of our Kyivan liturgical heritage. For me this doesn't mean buying into any ideology which would seek to marginalize or victimize Ukrainians or the UGCC. Nor was this implied or stated in any of the posts.
The tension between the latinizers and the easternizers in our church is unfortunately well known, with the latter often accused as "Russian" or "Muscovite" because of their love of the Byzantine tradition. It can be seen again here, with those who wish to be faithful to tradition being painted as Muscovite politically or somehow not part of the people.
Bishop Khomyshyn in a letter publicly denounced what he called 'Byzantinism' as a heresy on the level of Communism and a direct attack to Ukrainian identity, partly to garner sentiment to try and contradict what St. Andrey Sheptytsky was doing with his work on the Ordo Celebrationis to bring it in line with, yes, the Kyivan tradition which had been badly mangled through latinization by that time. Deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say.
Herb made a beautiful post above. Why anyone would jump down Illya's throat for tapping into the beauty of the Kyivan tradition makes no sense. This thread started off as the description of a positive liturgical music experience. It quickly degenerated into insinuations and polemic.
But with regard to Kiev, I thought that was only used to describe how to make chicken...
