I have heard that in Orthodox missions over the ages the local languages were adopted into the Liturgy. Is there any truth in this? If so, and if there was an insistence to maintain a liturgical language, how were these two apparently conflicting positions reconciled?
Which would be considered “dead languages”? If any “dead languages” are used, is there an insistence to keep them?
A living language is learned from the parents in the nursery, is spoken at the dinner table/breakfast table and by the children in the street. It is prone to adaptation and change, developing idioms and slang and borrowing words from other languages through use.
I think it can be said that koine Greek and old church Slavonic do not fit this description (I hesitate to use the term ‘dead’), however they are at the root of modern languages and can be understood with some difficulty by native speakers of the modern descendant languages.
One has to remember that until nearly modern times many (or most) people were not very literate. In rural parts of the America, eastern Europe, Asia and Africa this situation persisted for most of Christian history. The people would be catechized in person with the spoken voice. Even assuming the prayers matched the beliefs of the church a parallel translation missal does not help the illiterate.
One of the best benefits of having an accurate modern translation of the liturgy is it’s catechetical value. This is specifically why Ss Cyril and Methodios used Slavonic originally, they were not trying to establish a liturgical language which should not change, but one which was well understood by the present population. (I don’t think they actually anticipated that the widely spread out Slavic population would develop so many different languages in a few hundred years.)
One of the most serious drawbacks to keeping an old translation is that the community may not fully understand what is prayed, and the faith may therefore be subject to distortion by those who undertake to “teach” the faith but are themselves not qualified, or influenced by ideas outside the received teachings.
In the east, the church is notoriously conservative, so I think one can say that a prevailing attitude is “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it”. Thus there may be a tendency to hang on to an old (but certifiably correct) translation far too long. One legitimate concern is over the incorrect choice of replacement words and phrases. Rather than update a text many churchmen, even whole synods, would be more comfortable dealing with it as it is, but of course the language can become more and more obscure with passing generations.
But the concept that the liturgy should be clearly understood by the population is well established in the tradition.
I don’t think there is the same emphasis in the east of the liturgical language itself being somehow ‘sacred’, although I have met several people from the western church who carry that idea forward.
From my experience in North America among Byzantine Catholics old church Slavonic is very fondly regarded by those who grew up with it in their liturgy, but most of these people are native English speakers, not Slovak or Polish or Ukrainian speakers, their families having assimilated as Anglophone Americans several generations earlier. The attachment to old church Slavonic (it sounds very nice, of course) is more of a nostalgic reaction to change on the part of the participants.
This reminds me of an amusing (to me, anyway) incident when I was attending a Byzantine Catholic parish:
We had a lovely choir and the the congregation could really chant too. We had six cantors who would rotate responsibility, the singing was awesome. The liturgy was not only beautiful, it was in English!
There was a young and very devout young man from the Latin church (also a member of Opus Dei) who had become a regular parishioner. He was very zealous, but he had not attended for a few weeks. One Sunday I saw him and inquired about his well being, and he told me he attended the Ukrainian Catholic parish church nearby (I was already familiar with the place) and he liked the liturgy there much more, it seemed to him more mystical and sacred… they still used the “old language” from the “old world”.
It so happens that this parish was not using Old Church Slavonic, but modern Ukrainian.
