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"I submit that the mandatory taking aloud of the prayers of the Anaphora is the verbal equivalent of removing the icon screen so that the people can see the action of the clergy in the sanctuary."


I totally disagree and I would say that this is a very poor analogy, indeed. While the place of worship has always treated the gifts with reverence and mystery by enclosing them or keeping them apart from the people (behind a chancel, iconostasis, curtain, separate room, etc) the Anaphora was never meant to be a silent prayer. Eucharistic Prayers were always taken aloud. Only later did we begin to silence them, and usually for the wrong reasons. To make up for the 'quiet time' we lengthened our 'responses' - to what, I don't know since things were taken silently. No longer did the notes serve the text, but the text became submissive to the melody. Liturgy became a dual service - one done 'secretly' by the priest and another thing done by the people (the hymn-ization of simple responses). Priests 'sum up' what they said silently with "and ..." And what? This makes as much sense as watching only the ending of a mystery without understanding the full story.

The Anaphora, especially Basil's, gives us salvation history in a nutshell. We have a right to hear it since we are not a mystery religion with secrets only a certain class of members are privy to. In fact, the anaphora is the core of the liturgy. Doing it secretly is like attending a graduation ceremony and the guest speaker mumbling his/her speech to only those on the stage while the people draw out the songs to cover the dead air-space. The desire for secret anaphoras is definitely a previous Latinization carried on in some quarters of our church for unjustified reasons other than it gives cantors more work to cover it up.


"Only when our Church has restored a more full and complete cycle of Divine Services will be begin to understand the richness of our inheritance."

Only when we begin to appreciate the deep rich theology of those prayers, especially the anaphoras, will we come to realize the meaning of what is happening at liturgy. We will never understand the richness of our inheritance if we keep such prayers hidden under a bushel basket. The laity has to stop doing their own thing while priests are doing their secretive thing and someday collaborate to make liturgy happen like it was supposed to happen - a work of the people rather than the job of the clergy done behind closed doors for people on a need to know basis. Otherwise, gnosticism will continue to survive.

[ 07-12-2002: Message edited by: J Thur ]

Admin. states:

1. "...because the proposed changes to the rubrics do not appear to be merely a restoration to a more perfect Ruthenian usage but rather a wholesale undoing of a thousand years of liturgical development that has been accepted as valid by the entire Byzantine Christian world."

2. "Because one of the most obvious revisions to the liturgy is the taking aloud of many of the prayers of the priest which are now (in all of the other Byzantine Churches) generally taken quietly by the priests. I submit that the mandatory taking aloud of the prayers of the Anaphora is the verbal equivalent of removing the icon screen so that the people can see the action of the clergy in the sanctuary. If one begins to take all of the secret prayers aloud in order that the people may hear and better understand the Mystery than it logically follows that one should also remove the icon screens so that they can see and better understand. This is nothing less than yet another major latinization!"

3. "We need to restore a fuller and more complete cycle of Divine Services before we can begin to understand the richness of our inheritance and the wisdom of our Byzantine fathers. Only when our Church has restored a more full and complete cycle of Divine Services will be begin to understand the richness of our inheritance. We should be allowing the Divine Liturgy to reform our lives rather than allowing ourselves to reform the Divine Liturgy."

Lance replies:

1. "wholesale undoing"? Pretty strong words for the taking aloud of prayers that originally were taken aloud. How is the Ruthenian usage disturbed by this?

2. I could understand your point if the intent of the iconostasis was to obscure the view of the altar. The original intent of the iconostasis was simply to keep people from crowding the altar. It was open and people could see clearly. It wasn't until the 17th century Novgorodians produced the first floor to ceiling completely enclosed altars. Seen properly the iconostasis is a point of connection, not seperation, as the icons let us see truly and contemplate the heavenly liturgy. Taking the prayers aloud isn't about removing the Mystery but about proclaiming the very message of the Gospel, the awesome things our God has done for us.

3. The Metropolia seems serious about restoring Vespers on Saturday and Feastday Vigils, as official texts and books with music have been prepared and will soon be avilable.

Does these changes effect the Byzantine Ruthenian Catholic Church?

God Bless!

1. "wholesale undoing"? Pretty strong words for the taking aloud of prayers that originally were taken aloud. How is the Ruthenian usage disturbed by this?

Yes, �wholesale undoing� is correct. How else can one describe the removal of 1,000 years of liturgical development? How can we justify such radical changes to the liturgy that put us out of step with the rest of Orthodoxy? How dare we, who are only beginning to recover our authentic Byzantine patrimony, take upon ourselves the responsibility of revising our inheritance to make it fit our current Western mindset! How dare we revise the liturgy with the confidence that none of the codification that occurred during the later part of the Byzantine Empire was divinely inspired! The Ruthenian usage is greatly disturbed by this wholesale revision. The whole flow of the liturgy is disturbed with the revisions and it becomes much more like a Roman Catholic Mass than an authentic Byzantine liturgy. Perhaps this is welcomed by those with a Western mindset but it is wrong, pure and simple.


2. I could understand your point if the intent of the iconostasis was to obscure the view of the altar. The original intent of the iconostasis was simply to keep people from crowding the altar. It was open and people could see clearly. It wasn't until the 17th century Novgorodians produced the first floor to ceiling completely enclosed altars. Seen properly the iconostasis is a point of connection, not seperation, as the icons let us see truly and contemplate the heavenly liturgy. Taking the prayers aloud isn't about removing the Mystery but about proclaiming the very message of the Gospel, the awesome things our God has done for us.

Using this logic it would follow that the icon screens should be totally removed merely because we no longer have a problem with crowding at the altar? Has not the development of the use of icon screens in our Church been blessed by the Lord? Has not the Lord blessed the liturgy we use? Can anyone state with confidence that it was all a mistake based upon a practical step to allow working room for the clergy? Who can state the specific time when the Byzantine liturgy was perfect (after all, it was quite fluid until the latter part of Byzantine Empire)? With all due respect, this is a very simplistic understanding of our Byzantine liturgical inheritance. How can we be so confident that all of the liturgical developments are so out of step with the way the Lord wants us to celebrate the liturgy that we have a responsibility to edit it without benefit of consultation with the rest or Orthodoxy, or at least in union with the rest of the Catholic Byzantine Christians? We simply cannot allow a wholesale revision of our liturgy based upon the personal preferences of a few.


3. The Metropolia seems serious about restoring Vespers on Saturday and Feastday Vigils, as official texts and books with music have been prepared and will soon be avilable.

Sadly, they are interested in marrying Vespers with the Divine Liturgy, again reflecting a lack of understanding of our inheritance as well as the current Roman mindset that only services including the distribution of the Eucharist are important. The ancient Church married vespers with liturgy only on certain occasions. We are wrong to make this the norm or to make any revision before we, as a Church, fully understand what we are revising. Even the Vatican II statement on the Eastern Churches and the other official documents uniformly ask us to restore, not revise, our authentic Byzantine patrimony.

I welcome the restoration of Vespers and Matins to our parishes and have been the primary person providing the books with music that are currently in use and have done so for over 20 years. I do not speak lightly when I state that our tradition should not be altered but I speak as one who has spent great amounts of time praying and studying these services.

Perhaps the revisionists would like to go even one step further and abandon our inheritance and start over by adopting the current Roman Mass? After all, the current Roman Mass is much more like that of the early Christians than even the Revisionist Liturgy. Maybe they would seek to scrap all of our liturgical development and return it to such a pristine state?

Again, we should not be reforming the Divine Liturgy but should be allowing the Divine Liturgy to reform our lives.

I don't have a problem with some prayers being taken out loud and I've seen that in various Orthodox parishes I've visited. I do have a problem with truncating the Liturgy to the extent suggested. I realize that there are differing uses in Orthodoxy (and I reliaze also that the Ruthenian tradition has a special heritage) but we should not be blazing a new trail in this regard. Didn't the Liturgical Instruction call us on to keep differences from our Orthodox brothers and sisters to a minimum?

For example, I know many parishes do not use the "Grant it, O Lord" petitions. But, some of those petitions are very important (such as the petition for the guardian angel, the petition re: the awesome judgement seat of Christ, etc.)

Liturgical scholarship is a wonderful thing. But, if it leads us away from our Orthodox brothers and sisters then that is not good. Our liturgical scholars should work within the tradition and not create a new one.

Dave Ignatius DTBrown@aol.com

"We simply cannot allow a wholesale revision of our liturgy based upon the personal preferences of a few."


But we allowed personal preferences to tamper the integrity of our liturgical tradition too many times. The Church has the right to re-evaluate its liturgy and make amends it sees fit. The difference is between making changes based on poor taste and Latinization and making changes on a careful study.

Organic development is one thing, but corruption is another. What exactly IS the purpose of a silent anaphora? What mindset does it reflect? At one time symbolic interpretation drove our understanding of what liturgy is. But would we really be comfortable with a liturgy that was nothing but a passion play? Is this the essence of liturgy? Corrections have to be made at times. A silent anaphora makes just as much sense as people not singing in church (due to choirs monopolizing the "people's" responses). Most of my boyhood days were spent attending Old Slavonic liturgies with choirs and silent anaphoras. Nothing made sense. The first time I heard one of our priests take the anaphora out loud I was struck by the beauty of what was being said and, of course, what was happening. It was in English and I was able to sing the responses! I knew what I was responding to.

I am still not sure whats going on. Will someone be so kind as to explain it to me. I have an idea of what is going on but I don't want to jump to conclusions.

God Bless!

RC,

The two main changes are:

1. Many prayers previously said silently by the priest will be required to be said aloud.

2. The petitions with the response: "Grant it O Lord" are suppressed.

In Christ,
Lance

Admin.,

I respect your point of view but I totally disagree.

1. "How can we justify such radical changes to the liturgy that put us out of step with the rest of Orthodoxy? How dare we, who are only beginning to recover our authentic Byzantine patrimony, take upon ourselves the responsibility of revising our inheritance to make it fit our current Western mindset!"

Again I don't see simply taking prayers aloud as radical change. Many OCA and AA parishes do the same. I alos think blaming the revision on a "Western" mindset is a cop-out. A perfectly Eastern mindset can come to the conclusion that saying prayers silently is an abuse. The Ordo you praise nowhere commands many of the prayers currently said silently to be done so. The revised Liturgy on the otherhand only requires silent prayers where the Ordo specifically demands it. You state it is wrong to go against the last 1000 years. What about those who 1000 years ago changed what had been done for 600 years before them. Saying prayers silently does not add to the Mystery of the Liturgy, but only clericalizes it in my opinion.

2. "Using this logic it would follow that the icon screens should be totally removed merely because we no longer have a problem with crowding at the altar?"

My point is the icon screens purpose isn't to block out the view of the altar but to support the Holy Icons which allow us to see through to the heavenly reality. I am more concerned with there being icons than whether the screen is one row or five rows or solid or see through.

3. "Sadly, they are interested in marrying Vespers with the Divine Liturgy, again reflecting a lack of understanding of our inheritance as well as the current Roman mindset that only services including the distribution of the Eucharist are important."

The books about to be made available are for Great Vespers period, not Vesperal Divine Liturgy. Although I do think this may be a way to reintroduce people to weekly Great Vespers.

In Christ,
Lance

Lance,

You forgot one:

The suppression of all but the first verse of the three antiphons. That may be a "restoration of the third antiphon" in some liturgically impoverished parishes, but it needlessly does violence to the Liturgy as celebrated in others.


Sharon

Sharon Mech, SFO
Cantor & sinner
sharon@cmhc.com

Dear Joe,

Are you saying that the "hymnisation" of responses is a later development, and that previously, these responses were just responses to be recited/proclaimed/etc.? In our Church, the responses are by and large sung, but on a single note, or something simple like that. For the most part, only changeable parts and a few other things are actually sung as a hymn. I often wondered why we did this (something which, if a few people are off key, and a few people sing too slow, and others too fast, sounds like a nightmare), rather than just "hymnise" everything so hopefully people sang normally. Is this "non-hymnisation" actually an older tradition, before hymnisation became the norm?

Lance,

1. The mandating of which prayers can be said aloud and which can be taken silently is a radical change to our liturgy.

In the AA and the OCA those priests who are taking things aloud or silent are doing so because they currently have the freedom to do so (as do our priests). The revised rubrics officially remove the freedom of an individual priest or parish to do this. This is wrong. Why should a priest be mandated to take one particular prayer aloud and mandated to take another silently? It is much better to leave the traditional liturgy alone and allow each celebrant to do as he pleases, with only a requirement on what he may not omit altogether. Such mandated uniformity is a Latin thing, not a Byzantine one.

2. I disagree with your logic. If one followed your logic it would make sense to move the icons from the icon screen to the side walls so that the people may more easily see the action at the Holy Table. Maybe having the priest face the people would be next? Our more recent bishops restored the icon screens in parishes that lacked them because they knew in their hearts that there belonged. Likewise, we need to restore the deacons to every parish before our people understand that they are essential to the normative and proper celebration of the liturgy. Likewise, we need to restore the celebration of the Divine Liturgy to what it was before the latinizations for several generations before we can really understand what we are messing with.

3. There are many rumors as to what may and may not be published. I am working on updating and reprinting the Great Vespers books for Saturday Evenings and Feast Days. Maybe some has referred to these?

Admin

Dear Joe,

You said:

The Church has the right to re-evaluate its liturgy and make amends it sees fit.

In fact I question this statement. One cannot "change" or "ammend" the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. It is part of our inheritance, and we do not have "rights" over it.

It belongs to the whole Church. It is a Latin idea that the Liturgy belongs to the Church (that means the bishops and hierarchy), and Popes or Patriarchs can issue new books.

In Othodoxy such attempts have always run into resistance, and it leads to sad schisms which persist to this day. Any such wholesale revision is misguided, and utterly Latin.

The Orthodox attitude is that the Liturgy in its entirety belongs to the whole Church, and the whole Church (the laity, the monks, the clergy) are its guardians. Bishops who try to direct changes will always run into trouble.

Does this mean that the Liturgy does not change and evolve? Of course not. It will always grow, change, evolve. But this is part of an organic development. It is part of a process of slow, cautious and careful evolution.

It should never be entrusted to "Liturgists" or "experts" or people with theories about history.

The Liturgy is safe in the hands of the whole Church.

Elias

I think that the critical element was mentioned by DTBrown: we are to look to our Orthodox brethren for a true interpretation of the legitimate development of our liturgies. Anything that Byzantine Catholics do should be in harmony with our Orthodox brethren.

Scholarship is fine; but the problem with it is finding the appropriate "time-frame" from which to draw our model. Hence, stay with our contemporary Orthodox brethren. (Unity is a significantly more important parameter than historicity.)

As a Greek, I go to Greek Orthodox services from time to time. Except for a few hymns where the people sing out (but not with much gusto), the liturgy is a dialogue between the priest and the psalti. The Ruthenians have a true gem in prostupenia. Why? Because the full participation of the people in the liturgy is the most wonderful didactic/educational exercise one could create for educating people in our spirituality.

As for the 'out-loud' recitation of the anaphora, I don't think it's a good idea all the time. Why? Because the recitation of the same text, week in and week out, becomes boring and one's attention will wander. It's just normal. (For those who say: "well, we SING the same thing week after week", the difference is critical: WE are the ones who are commiting an action, not just listening to someone else. It's the participation that is key to boredom or attention.)

I agree with the administrator on this one. We must be very careful of what we do with our liturgies because they are the key to the spiritual development and strengthening of our spiritual patrimony. And to do things that are different from our Roman brethren, while eschewing the practices of our Orthodox brethren will convert the Byzantine (and other Eastern Catholic communities) into a 'tertium quid', i.e., a third entity that has only tenuous relationships with the other two. And this is a baddie.

Blessings!

Dear Lance,

I would agree with our esteemed Administrator. We have so much to do to grow to understand our Liturgy.

No attempt to revise the Liturgy should be made in our Archeparchy, until the ministry of the diaconate is restored to our parishes, until the offices and hours are restored among us.

It is not necessary to hear every word, for it to be mine. There are lots of things that happen at the Liturgy which are not heard, yet I know they happen, I understand them, and so I am not excluded. I do not accept that it must be heard aloud for it to be appreciated or prayed.

We must not be ignorant of the Liturgy, and if I have never read the anaphora, or appreciated the beauty of the silent parts of the Liturgy, the fault is partly mine. Take up a prayer book and read it, study it!

But I don't want to hear it aloud. A priest reading the anaphora outloud, adds his emphasis, his voice, his dramatic diction. I do not want that. I do not want him imposing his person, his voice, his devotion, on this most sacred moment for me. He is intruding! Leave it alone.

I do not want spoken and recited presidential prayers. This is utterly alien to the Byzantine tradition, and proof that these revisions are essentially a Latinization. If it is admitted or not, it is a Latinization disguised as well meaning scholarship. But all Latinizations of the past were disguised and well intentioned at the time. Buy they proved to be disasters.

Essentially, the Liturgy is a beautiful and delicate balance between the ministry of the priest and his prayers, the ministry of the deacon, and the ministry of the congregation. These are in proportion and given by tradition.

Before the restoration of the diaconate in our parishes, we do not fully appreciate the careful balance and which makes the parts harmonious and beautiful.

To alter its balance, and change its structure is seriously misguided. To arbitrarily cut diaconal prayers and people's responses, while at the same time lengthening and expanding prayers recited by the priest is unwise, and speaks of clericalism in 'celebrant' directed Liturgy. This is not the Byzantine tradition, and it is another Latinization.

There are many serious flaws in the Liturgy that has been sent to me for comment. I do not know whether to begin by picking out point by point, and offering criticism, or whether it is better to question the whole philosophical assumptions made by the revisionists.

One approach (not already mentioned) would be to carefully read the Roman document "Authenticam Liturgicam" recently sent by Rome. Of course, it is a Latin document addressed primarily to the Latin Church. However it addresses a number of mistakes made by the Latin Church, and by translators who overstepped their "brief" translating texts, and who took it upon themselves to "improve" the Liturgy. This approach is soundly condemned by Rome, who have sent the translators and Liturgists back to "think again".

I am not proposing following the Latin Church. But I would not be against learning from their mistakes, reading this document with an open mind, and trying not to repeat the errors made by the Latin translators in our Metropolia.

The fundamental problem I have with the Liturgical revision, is that however well meaning, it will further distinguish our Church from the other Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Some remember the split in the "Greek Catholic" Church in this country, between the Ukrainian and Ruthenians. The words were the same, and it was about the way they sang, it was about the melody!

Such was sufficient to divide the Church and establish separate juristictions, now called "rites"!

Surely we must be working together, to find a more common future. We must have a common translation, and work toward a single text. What an advantage that would be, what a witness to our common heritage from Constantinople.

We will always have our melodies and our songs. But the more we divide and the more our "use" becomes distinctive the more we divide. What we will 'in effect' bring about, is the final abandoning of the "ruthenian recension".

The Liturgy will unite our Church, or divide it. Let us move carefully and cautiously, and think through all the consequences.

In the past, Rome has always prevented us from abandoning the Liturgicon, and setting up divergent usage. Now it seems, it has given approval for this radical departure. I wonder why it has abandoned its cautious, traditional, and mor Orthodox position?

It is not too late for us to think again.

Elias