Slavonic : Is It Important?

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Seamus_L

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I confess that I’am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject, but I do know that some Byzantine Rite Churches still use it for Divine Liturgy, and that the Ukrainian Catholic Church used it up until the 1960’s.
For starters, my first question is whether or not it still has a place in Eastern Catholic worship. Also, and now I may really be showing my unfamiliarity with the subject, but is it true that modern Macedonian is the closest language to Slavonic ?
 
Seamus_L said:
I confess that I’am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject, but I do know that some Byzantine Rite Churches still use it for Divine Liturgy, and that the Ukrainian Catholic Church used it up until the 1960’s.
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                    For starters, my first question is whether or not it still has a place in Eastern Catholic worship. Also, and now I may really be showing my unfamiliarity with the subject, but is it true that modern Macedonian is the closest language to Slavonic ?
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I happen to like the liturgical use of staroslavenski, as I do all traditional liturgical languages. I firmly believe they all have a place and should not be abandoned. That said, though, I’m neither Slavic nor Byzantine and so will not comment further on that in this thread.

I do, however, know quite a few native speakers of various Slavic languages, (including quite a few clergy, both Byzantine and Roman), and from what I’ve been told many times by a number of them, Macedonian and Bulgarian are supposed to be the closest to staroslavenski.
 
My husband finds the insertion of Slavonic in the Divine Liturgy extremely distracting. Yes, our Byzantine-Ruthenian tradition means that Slavonic is part of our tradition, but the reality is that the “language of the people” (which the Divine Liturgy should be said in) is English. Probably two people besides the priest at our church even speak Hungarian, let alone know the Slavonic. So when our cantor chants the Trisagion in Slavonic, the rest of us just sit there, because our hymnals do not have the Slavonic.

I think our priest has spoken to the cantor about this, because lately she hasn’t used Slavonic hardly at all. The president of the parish council is the one who’s really big on keeping the Slavonic, I think–he asks everybody if they’re Hungarian or not when they join the church. 🤷
 
Does anyone know how many Byzantine Rite parishes in North America still use Slavonic. Even a rough estimate would be appreciated.
 
samcarter14 said:
My husband finds the insertion of Slavonic in the Divine Liturgy extremely distracting. Yes, our Byzantine-Ruthenian tradition means that Slavonic is part of our tradition, but the reality is that the “language of the people” (which the Divine Liturgy should be said in) is English. Probably two people besides the priest at our church even speak Hungarian, let alone know the Slavonic. So when our cantor chants the Trisagion in Slavonic, the rest of us just sit there, because our hymnals do not have the Slavonic.

I think our priest has spoken to the cantor about this, because lately she hasn’t used Slavonic hardly at all. The president of the parish council is the one who’s really big on keeping the Slavonic, I think–he asks everybody if they’re Hungarian or not when they join the church. 🤷
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Too bad for your husband and BIG CHEERS to the President of the Parish Council:clapping:

I love hearing our Church Slavonic sung! It’s to bad we have to have the DL in English!

These are OUR TRADITIONS and if people don’t like them, they can go elsewhere… why should we have to abondon OUR TRADITIONS because YOU or YOUR HUSBAND doesn’t like them??

Your husband wouldn’t like it if I came to your home and threw out his TV and Bark-o-lounger because I didn’t like…
 
Patchunky said:
Too bad for your husband and BIG CHEERS to the President of the Parish Council:clapping:

I love hearing our Church Slavonic sung! It’s to bad we have to have the DL in English!

These are OUR TRADITIONS and if people don’t like them, they can go elsewhere… why should we have to abondon OUR TRADITIONS because YOU or YOUR HUSBAND doesn’t like them??

Your husband wouldn’t like it if I came to your home and threw out his TV and Bark-o-lounger because I didn’t like…
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Wow. No need to yell. For what it’s worth, my husband doesn’t even have a “bark-o-lounger”, and if you entered his private residence, he’d be within his rights to call the police anyway. :rolleyes:

As for people going elsewhere, yes, they do. because they are confused by the Slavonic parts of the liturgy (the majority of the liturgy is in English), and they feel out of place as it is, when we have Roman-rite visitors who are interested in the Eastern Rite.

Is it any wonder our small Byzantine community has ten households, tops, in its rolls? The Divine Liturgy is foreign to most Roman rite Catholics; many are hungering for something deeper than the Ordinary Form of the mass, so they hesitantly come in, having heard of a different kind of liturgy. The Latin Mass bewilders them because most people do not speak Latin.

But hearing a foreign language inserted into a liturgy that one is trying to follow does not help. Perhaps if there were a note in the bulletin about “some parts of our liturgy are chanted in the old Slavonic”, so people knew what was going on. It doesn’t help that our “wonderful” parish council president is a blowhard who makes people feel as if they need to learn Slavonic to be Eastern Rite. Or dismisses anybody who isn’t Hungarian. :rolleyes:

Traditions are wonderful things. But it’s better if those traditions reach out and help people feel included, not excluded.
 
samcarter14 said:
…The president of the parish council is the one who’s really big on keeping the Slavonic, I think–he asks everybody if they’re Hungarian or not when they join the church. 🤷
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You mention Hungarian and that kind of stirs my curiosity. A good number of years ago, a Ruthenian priest-friend of mind (who is Slavic and is excellent in Old Slavonic and speaks several Slavic languages fluently) was temporarily assigned to fill-in at a Magyar parish. Of course didn’t speak a word of Magyar and I recall him saying he had one heck of a time for the first couple of weeks. He ended up having to do the Liturgy in staroslavenski (which he loves anyway) until the cantor (I think it was) was able to teach him to read and pronounce Magyar. (And in the process he learned to speak a little of it too.)

Yeah, I know :sleep: Anyway, the upshot of that boring little story is that, from what he said, the Old Slavonic was his idea because he couldn’t do it in Magyar and had no other choice. And I always thought that the Hungarians used Magyar for liturgical purposes, so his tale of woe didn’t come as a big surprise. It’s kind of a tangent to the topic, but does anyone know the traditional (as opposed to post-conciliar) Magyar custom?
 
samcarter14 said:
As for people going elsewhere, yes, they do. because they are confused by the Slavonic parts of the liturgy (the majority of the liturgy is in English), and they feel out of place as it is, when we have Roman-rite visitors who are interested in the Eastern Rite.

Is it any wonder our small Byzantine community has ten households, tops, in its rolls? The Divine Liturgy is foreign to most Roman rite Catholics; many are hungering for something deeper than the Ordinary Form of the mass, so they hesitantly come in, having heard of a different kind of liturgy. The Latin Mass bewilders them because most people do not speak Latin.

But hearing a foreign language inserted into a liturgy that one is trying to follow does not help. Perhaps if there were a note in the bulletin about “some parts of our liturgy are chanted in the old Slavonic”, so people knew what was going on. …

Traditions are wonderful things. But it’s better if those traditions reach out and help people feel included, not excluded.
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As I said in my first post in this thread, I am a firm believer in the preservation of the proper, traditional liturgical language in all Churches, whether it’s Coptic, Latin, Old Slavonic, Ge’ez, or whatever.

Some people fear the Latin Rite EF (and even the Latin Rite OF done in Latin) or Eastern and Oriental liturgies (especially when done in the traditional liturgical language), just because of the normal fear of the unknown. It’s something new that they have not seen before. But once they experience the rite and become familiar with it, it often happens that those fears vanish and are replaced with a sense of understanding and appreciation.

IMHO, total abandonment of liturgical language serves to de-nature the Church. In the East and Orient I see it as a form of “Latinization” in that it follows the wrongheaded post-conciliar notion of “vernacular for everything and tradition be damned.”
 
Patchunky said:
Too bad for your husband and BIG CHEERS to the President of the Parish Council:clapping:

I love hearing our Church Slavonic sung! It’s to bad we have to have the DL in English!

These are OUR TRADITIONS and if people don’t like them, they can go elsewhere… why should we have to abondon OUR TRADITIONS because YOU or YOUR HUSBAND doesn’t like them??

Your husband wouldn’t like it if I came to your home and threw out his TV and Bark-o-lounger because I didn’t like…
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I think you missed the most important part of the post that you are replying to.
samcarter14 said:
So when our cantor chants the Trisagion in Slavonic, the rest of us just sit there, because our hymnals do not have the Slavonic.
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If its not printed in the pew books then either get pew books that have it or print out something.

I do not know Slavonic, nor Greek, nor Arabic.

When at home I attend a Melkite parish. The pew books have the Greek and Arabic parts printed for those of us who do not know it.

Every Byzantine (Ruthenian) parish that I have been to that uses Slavonic has it printed in the pew book.

If it is not printed then I think it is wrong to use it.
 
This is like asking a Traditional Catholic if Latin is important.

To a Russian Slavonic is what Latin is to Roman Catholics.
 
but does anyone know the traditional (as opposed to post-conciliar) Magyar custom?
In an attempt to Magyarize the Slavic minorities in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Byzantine Greek Catholic parishes were forced by the government to use Magyar in the Liturgy.

Rome objected, so the Holy See and the Hungarian government agreed on Greek as a compromise, and gave them a three year period to learn it and convert to Greek.

The faithful objected.

(This is a quick summary of a complex issue.)
 
chrisb said:
This is like asking a Traditional Catholic if Latin is important.

To a Russian Slavonic is what Latin is to Roman Catholics.
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No I do not think it is the same.

A Catholic who prefers the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is usually carries a Latin only preference.

I do not know any Byzantines who are Slavonic only.
 
Seamus_L said:
Does anyone know how many Byzantine Rite parishes in North America still use Slavonic. Even a rough estimate would be appreciated.
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I know that Fr. Thomas Loya of Annunciation Byzantine Catholic Church uses it for some of the main responses that the laity sing like The Cherubic Hymn.
 
ByzCath said:
No I do not think it is the same.

A Catholic who prefers the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is usually carries a Latin only preference.

I do not know any Byzantines who are Slavonic only.
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Try saying that to a native Russian.
 
So when our cantor chants the Trisagion in Slavonic, the rest of us just sit there, because our hymnals do not have the Slavonic.
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Trisvjatoje in Slavonic, Trisagion is Greek, Thrice Holy in English just to show that there is already a mixture of language just describing the DL (Divine Liturgy).
Of all the Slavonic insertions that could be done in the DL the Trisagion, Holy God, is the easiest since the Slavonic and English essentially directly translate. If the Cantor would be permitted by the priest to educate the parishioners (a situation which doesn’t happen in my own parish), either by teaching the pronunciation or providing an insert sheet with the Slavonic/ English text (similar to the older parallel text liturgy books used in the Ruthenian Church in past decades) it would simplify matters greatly.
In my own parish we cantors are admonished that we can sing only one verse of a paraliturgical hymn in Slavonic and only after the English verses have been sung. Slavonic essentially gets to ride on the back of the bus.
 
ByzCath said:
No I do not think it is the same.

A Catholic who prefers the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is usually carries a Latin only preference.

I do not know any Byzantines who are Slavonic only.
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I do. And I know some Slav Byzantines who most definitely have a preference for Slavonic. But of course it’s just that: a preference, and it’s rare that their wish is fulfilled, much to their own dismay.

Back in the late 1970s, I was a sort of “regular” for a while at various Byzantine DLs (Ruthenian, Melkite, Ukrainian, GO) and I have to say that when it was all vernacular, none of them “did it” for me.

With the Ruthenians, I remember attending DL in Slovak, which didn’t “do it” for me either. But then there was the Slavonic! Bingo! I was finally able to see the glories of the Slav Byzantine tradition! With the Ukrainians, I only experienced DL in Ukrainian. Better to my ear than the Slovak, but still not like the Slavonic. In the Melkite, it was always a vernacular-Arabic-Greek blend (in that order) which was ok, but no cigar there either. The GO was all in Greek. Another bingo!

Of course the above is merely a reflection of my personal opinion and taste. I haven’t attended a Byzantine DL since those days, but I know me, and I doubt I would see things any differently now.
 
Seamus_L said:
Does anyone know how many Byzantine Rite parishes in North America still use Slavonic. Even a rough estimate would be appreciated.
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Define “use”…

Some parishes use it only on the second repeat of those prayers repeated thrice.

Others have the entire DL in Old Church Slavonic occasionally.
 
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