Eastern Catholic/Orthodox traditions and customs

  • Thread starter Thread starter rben20
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes, the kneeling issue . . . 🙂

In the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada, 90% of its membership comes from former Ukrainian Catholics who knelt all the time. The UOCC Metropolitan, Ilarion Ohienko, decreed that kneeling twice during the Sunday Liturgy was to be maintained and so they continue to do this.

When Bl. Basil Velichkovsky, CSsR dealt with his converts from Orthodoxy in Volyn, he asked them specifically NOT to kneel on Sundays - but the converts knelt anyway, to his chagrin.

The Old Believer Russian tradition condemns ALL kneeling as bad, but Saint Seraphim of Sarov knelt for 1,000 days and nights on a rock in the woods praying before his icon of the Mother of God etc.

I think the above post is right that suggests different ways in which Latin traditions come into the Eastern Churches. If it is one that is entirely voluntary, and not imposed, is it a true “Latinization?” Historically, that term referred to what was imposed on people “from above.”

I have seen Orthodox stations of the Cross, Sacred Heart images, and even monstrances.

The people using them consider themselves to be 100% Orthodox and would never consider becoming Catholic.

What of them?

Alex
 
Alex, is the kneeling in UGCC churches in Canada a Latinization? I notice our parish majority kneel. In the English DL I’d say more than 50% stand but when we have a combined bilingual service for a special occassion, I estimate about 60% of more knelt.
 
ConstantineTG said:
Alex, is the kneeling in UGCC churches in Canada a Latinization? I notice our parish majority kneel. In the English DL I’d say more than 50% stand but when we have a combined bilingual service for a special occassion, I estimate about 60% of more knelt.
Click to expand...
It would depend on the parish - my parish does not kneel. My old parish now kneels a totaly of five times during a Sunday Divine Liturgy (as a result of the influx of EC’s from Poland).

It’s not something I would get upset about (“stop that, you people. Stop that kneeling, now!” 🙂 ).

The real reason kneeling is inappropriate during the Divine Liturgy in our tradition, especially during the Canon, is the fact that one simply cannot perform the prescribed rubrics from a kneeling position.

For example, as an altar-server, I knew we had to make the Sign of the Cross and do a low bow/metania after the Words of Consecration. You can’t do that when you are kneeling.

On the other hand, those who stand throughout often do so without crossing themselves or bowing, and one must do that throughout the Divine Liturgy. At least when one is kneeling, one is making a definite act of oblation and worship to the Lord.

The Liturgy is work and there is a lot of Crossing of oneself and bows involved. I like the idea that the Old Believers have that one wears a loose-fitting shirt to Church and comes ready with a special pillow to place on the floor so as not to soil one’s hands when one is doing prostrations.

One comes to Church ready to go to work!

Alex
 
mardukm said:
I imagine someone reading the list will automatically presume these were all mandated by “Rome.”

I’d be interested to know which ones were imposed by the Pope, which ones imposed by the Curia, which ones were self-imposed through pressure from the surrounding Latin Catholic culture, and which ones were self-imposed just because there was really nothing disagreeable about that practice.
Click to expand...
Ordered by the Popes:

No Married Clerics in the US.

Most of the rest were imposed by the Eastern Churches upon themselves…

But the idea of Uniatism was that the East could be slowly latinized, and then converted to the Roman Rite; one of the General Councils of the Church decreed that that was a specific goal… That view of the Eastern Churches in Union has explicitly been revoked in Vatican II.
 
Alex
Code: 
                         I had heard of Stations of the Cross in some Orthodox churches in Ukraine, but never the Sacred Heart. Could you please elaborate on that a little.

                       Also, you have-had a Questions & Answers website I believe. What is it called ?
 
Aramis said:
But the idea of Uniatism was that the East could be slowly latinized, and then converted to the Roman Rite; one of the General Councils of the Church decreed that that was a specific goal…
Click to expand...
Which general council was that?
 
dvdjs, this may not exactly answer you question to Aramis, but still I present it.

Pope Nicholas II tried to abolish the Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites 1060 but was unsuccessful. The Council of Trent (1545-63) restrained the proliferation of different rituals to those currently in use for the last 200 years. And later Pope Benedict XIV, in Allatae Sunt, expressed the preference for the Latin, and to keep the faithful in Latin and allow transfer to Latin:
  1. …
    “Even though the rites of the oriental church are praiseworthy, it is not permitted to confuse the rites of the churches. The holy council of Florence never allowed this” (constitution in Bullarii Recenter Romae Editi, vol. 3, part 3, p. 64)." …
“Since the Latin rite is the rite of the holy Roman church and this church is the mother and teacher of the other churches, the latin rite should be preferred to all other rites. It follows that it is not lawful to transfer from the Latin to the Greek rite. Nor may those who have come over to the Latin rite from the Greek or Oriental rite return again to the Greek Rite, unless particular circumstances occasion the giving of a dispensation (constitution Etsi Pastoralis 57, sect. 2, no. 13, in Our Bullarii, vol. 1).”
…
21. We have dealt with transferring from the Latin to the Greek rite. Transferrals in the opposite direction are not forbidden as strictly as the former. Still, a missionary who hopes for the return of a Greek or Oriental to the unity of the Catholic Church may not make him give up his own rite. This can cause great harm.

See sections 20 and 21:
saint-mike.org/library/papal_library/benedictxiv/encyclicals/allatae_sunt.html
 
dvdjs said:
Another question: for those who value antiquity over continuity, does serving divine liturgy with the rite of Holy Matrimony represent a Latinization or a restoration?
Click to expand...
I was always taught that marriage cannot be done on a Saturday (because it’s the day Christ was in the tomb) and that it is best to do it on a Sunday right before Divine Liturgy.
 
There was a follow-on to Florence; it was not approved by the pope, as I recall, but it elucidates further the Florentine call for one direction of movement: from east to west. I lost the cite in a HD crash.

Florence, however, did enough damage on its own: it made all other rites second class.
 
After Mass, I would kneel down and say a few personal prayers. Since I started attending Divine Liturgy, I have trouble getting my mind into that same prayerful state as I try to keep the standing tradition for Sunday. Can I approach the Iconostasis after Divine Liturgy and pray in front of the icon of Christ? Would this be an odd thing in a Byzantine parish?
 
ConstantineTG said:
After Mass, I would kneel down and say a few personal prayers. Since I started attending Divine Liturgy, I have trouble getting my mind into that same prayerful state as I try to keep the standing tradition for Sunday. Can I approach the Iconostasis after Divine Liturgy and pray in front of the icon of Christ? Would this be an odd thing in a Byzantine parish?
Click to expand...
Many of us stand before the great Icons for personal prayer outside the liturgy.
 
Seamus_L said:
Alex
Code: 
                         I had heard of Stations of the Cross in some Orthodox churches in Ukraine, but never the Sacred Heart. Could you please elaborate on that a little.

                       Also, you have-had a Questions & Answers website I believe. What is it called ?
Click to expand...
Yes, it is quite common to find images of the Sacred Hearts even in Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe. It is a popular devotion, even though borrowed from the West.

You refer perhaps to the site “Ukrainian Orthodoxy?” Am still there, though not as often as before . . . 🙂

Alex
 
Vico said:
dvdjs, this may not exactly answer you question to Aramis, but still I present it.

Pope Nicholas II tried to abolish the Mozarabic and Ambrosian Rites 1060 but was unsuccessful. The Council of Trent (1545-63) restrained the proliferation of different rituals to those currently in use for the last 200 years. And later Pope Benedict XIV, in Allatae Sunt, expressed the preference for the Latin, and to keep the faithful in Latin and allow transfer to Latin:
  1. …
    “Even though the rites of the oriental church are praiseworthy, it is not permitted to confuse the rites of the churches. The holy council of Florence never allowed this” (constitution in Bullarii Recenter Romae Editi, vol. 3, part 3, p. 64)." …
“Since the Latin rite is the rite of the holy Roman church and this church is the mother and teacher of the other churches, the latin rite should be preferred to all other rites. It follows that it is not lawful to transfer from the Latin to the Greek rite. Nor may those who have come over to the Latin rite from the Greek or Oriental rite return again to the Greek Rite, unless particular circumstances occasion the giving of a dispensation (constitution Etsi Pastoralis 57, sect. 2, no. 13, in Our Bullarii, vol. 1).”
…
21. We have dealt with transferring from the Latin to the Greek rite. Transferrals in the opposite direction are not forbidden as strictly as the former. Still, a missionary who hopes for the return of a Greek or Oriental to the unity of the Catholic Church may not make him give up his own rite. This can cause great harm.

See sections 20 and 21:
saint-mike.org/library/papal_library/benedictxiv/encyclicals/allatae_sunt.html
Click to expand...
Ah, this was prior to the coming of the Novus Ordo! Can’t imagine anyone preferring that over the other Western and Eastern Rites! 🙂

Alex
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top