The Catholic Church has numerous rites…I see no reason why the Orthodox would not be allowed to retain their form of liturgy, do you?
“Innovations” is a word that would need definition. Doctrines develop. Disciplines change. Devotions vary by locale.
You did the right thing.
And I am constantly being called on the carpet?With all due respect, truth is not a “grand bargain”.How about Rome returns to proclaiming the Orthodox faith, and then She may intercommune with us. In the meantime, getting Her own liturgical house in order might be a good first baby step.
That is probably right. The more that I read explanations of Catholic doctrine on this discussion the more I realize what we have in common. When your really get down to it most of our disagreements seem to be semantic and not really dogmatic. When you have one side speaking Greek and the other speaking Latin, it is difficult to arrive at a common understanding. We have the advantage of all speaking the same language.
Fr. John-
The Holy Synods take care of this already, within each Church. It is not necessary for an outsider from Rome to unilaterally, individually hand down mandates. And if an entire Church decided to ordain women (for example) the other Churches would break off communion until the wayward Church repented and returned to Orthodoxy. There is no need for the Pope (nor the Curia) to handle matters within any Orthodox Church.
First, what “is” a marriage. In Orthodoxy, the priest confers the mystery (sacrament) so there’s no doubt that the couple is married. This innovation of spouses “conferring upon one another” is how Rome has danced around the issue of why this sacrament is not actually a sacrament on an individual basis…if a Church lets the couple confer, rather than a priest, there’s room to later argue that the couple “couldn’t” or “didn’t” confer. It makes me dizzy. (As an aside, this is how Rome justifies the annulment process for non-Catholics, claiming that the non-Catholic folks “conferred” something not-quite-sacramental-but-still-indissoluble. As an irony, the Catholic who confers this “non-sacrament” , eg without a dispensation/permission, merely has to fill out some paperwork to get their “get out of marriage free” card even if it’s decades later. To my knowledge, there is no additional penalty/penance beyond one confession. Talk about a double standard.)
I completely disagree. Marriage is marriage - if they made a bad choice, then allow them to repent the sin and perhaps they may be allowed another chance, for the benefit of their soul, according to their Church. Society’s warped view on marriage ought have little to no bearing on whether a couple is married in the eyes of their Church or not.
One very big reason; the Latin Church had its traditional Liturgy (with many parts dating back to the 300’s) basically taken away for 30 years.
Concur fully.
I’ll omit the marriage discussion if you fear it will derail the thread.
Thank you for the referenced thread, Randy Carson. I will try to read it this evening.
There is.
The Roman Church isn’t demonstrating the kind of discipline you suggest within its own communion…I’m not exactly seeing any whips cracking with the SSPX after decades of disobedience & strife (and the anguish of thousands of souls who’ve been dragged into the dispute)? The Orthodox Synods are not afraid of bold action in our Churches - a cursory search will produce lots of examples to support this. This is why I suggest that Rome use the energy to deal with the issues within her own communion, rather than look for trouble elsewhere. I dunno, it’s a troubling issue.
I do not think that the two analogies work. I council couples considering marriage that marriage is a partnership between equals and that they must arrive at decisions together. I believe that a marriage dominated by either the husband or the wife is an unhealthy marriage. During the Orthodox marriage service the couple are crowned with the crown of martyrdom because each give of themselves for the other.Fr. John-
I mentioned previously my preference for “big picture” principles. Here I go again.
Do you counsel couples who are preparing for marriage? If so, what do you say about the “wives submit to your husbands” issue? The husband and the wife are both equal, but scripture teaches that the husband is the head of the family who listens to his wife, loves her as his own body, and seeks to please her.
Similarly, aren’t the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church equal? The have different charisms and spiritualties but a common faith. And yet, in order for the “marriage” to work, doesn’t one have to submit to the other? If Peter is the “first among equals” doesn’t this seem to suggest some sort of submission of the others to a loving head of the Church?
(And please, you already conceded previously that a re-hashing of history is not likely to bear much fruit, so let’s not question the lack or perceived lack of love demonstrated in the past.)
People never quote the whole thing.
Are you referring to Vat II? Did Vat II, change the liturgy for Eastern Catholics?
I believe that *is *what Rome does – that’s probably one of the reasons that Rome doesn’t post on this thread.
I can do the same thing with the Orthodox Liturgy. I watched a Divine Liturgy in Arabic that was part of the funeral rites for Patriarch Ignatius IV in Beirut on the internet last year. When His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI visited the Ecumenical Patriarch, I watched the Divine Liturgy, which was all in Greek. Both times, I knew exactly where they were because I know the ceremony and order which is the same regardless of what language is used. However, Orthodoxy has always used the language of the people.
You are bringing up some interesting questions which deserve further discussion.
Just for some comic relief perhaps, we have a newly ordained priest in the local Greek Orthodox Cathedral parish here and he is by custom celebrating Orthros and Divine Liturgy for these 40 days following his ordination, which I’ve been blessed to be able to attend about half the days so far. After Liturgy one day the first week of these services a woman who had been chanting in the kliros early in the service laughed and said “I told them ‘We have a Greek lady here we should use Greek’. I would have chanted in English if I’d known you were English speaking” she apologized with a laugh. I might have been the only person in the pews that day at that time. (A mystery to me because they always do chant mainly in Greek there in my experience, LOL) I can’t imagine what made her think I was Greek, except I was dressed all in black so maybe I looked like her yiayia.
I live in an area that is very diverse (various parishes in the Latin Church in this diocese offer Mass on a regular basis in 40 languages) and I’ve worshiped in a fair number of Orthodox parishes here. There are in some cases a significant number of parishioners in these parishes who are not speakers of the language in which much or most of the Liturgy is sung. Apart from converts, there are around here a number of Eritreans in ROCOR, Greek and OCA Orthodox parishes, probably in others as well but those are the three Churches I am most familiar with here. Of those only the OCA here has a significant amount of English, The two Greek Orthodox parishes, the Cathedral and the proto-cathedral, I’ve been in here have a mixture usually, part chanted in Greek, part chanted in English, Gospel in both. (Caveat: in the Greek Church this is not on Sundays, I am really never in a Greek Church on a Sunday, so Sundays may have more English, tho I doubt they use Tigrinya or Arabic then either.) The ROCOR Cathedral is now celebrating a 7:30AM Divine Liturgy in English the last Sunday of every month. And there are plenty of Orthodox who do argue that many Russians in the Russian Churches using Slavonic don’t understand the Slavonic, and Greeks in the Greek Church don’t understand the Greek. I heard a ROCOR nun say it made her cry the first time she was in the Liturgy in English because she understood it in such a different way. But that is another topic. No, Vatican II reaffirmed the primacy of Latin in the Latin Rite.