The Universal Roman Rite

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ProVobis said:
What do you mean by that? The Roman Canon (starting with “Te igitur clementissime Pater”) was supposedly written in Latin and a Missal of, say 750 A.D., would be recognizeable (save for the fonts) to someone who attends either the Latin OF or EF. Why doesn’t it make sense? Latin had been the administrative language of the Roman Empire and Church documents, Scripture, etc. were preserved in Latin going forward, many by Greeks themselves. It only made sense the liturgy (or at least most of it) be said in a language that was also immutable and provide some continuity in the expanding Roman world.
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Well actually Greek was the official language of the Roman Empire for about 800 years. All of the Ecumenical Councils were held in Greek and their acts were promulgated in Greek. For quite a few centuries territories and populations that had the liturgy in Latin were smaller than Greek. There are still many places in the world where Latin has never been the predominant language for the liturgy. Considering that I don’t know how Latin was a universal language.
 
Seraphim73 said:
Considering that I don’t know how Latin was a universal language.
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Some good books on the matter:

“Latin Alive: The Survival of Latin in English and the Romance Languages” by Joseph Solodow

“A Natural History of Latin” by Tore Janson

“Story of a World Language Latin” by Jurgen Leonhardt

(The latter two have been translated into English, btw.)
 
Nanotwerp said:
I don’t think you understand me. What I stated was that the Roman Rite is universal, because it isn’t based on ethnicity like many other rites are, supported by Rome’s location and history.
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How is a rite based on ethnicity or culture? If rites were based on ethnicity, then the Greeks and Slavs would use a different Rite, as their ethnicity and culture are certainly different. The Romanians, who are a Latin people, would use their own. The Japanese Orthodox church would certainly not be able to use the same rite as used by the Russians, even though they were evangelized and established by the Russian church. Certainly, there are cultural traditions that are present in each national church, that are not necessarily shared in others. Even though all Byzantine Churches share the same rite, their celebration of the rite is not identical. The same is true of the Roman Rite.
 
Nanotwerp said:
Take the Maronite Church for the Lebanese for an example.
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The Maronite church is a bad example because they are a church with their own rite.

But a better example would be the Byzantine rite. It’s not tied to ethnicities. As already stated above, various ethnicities use the Byzantine rite, such as Russians, Greeks and Ukrainians.

This shows that ethnicities are not tied to rites. They are, however, tied to churches. The exception, of course, being the Latin church, which has been for the longest time, multi-ethnic.
 
Nanotwerp said:
The Roman Rite of the Church seems to have been an attempt at a ‘general’ rite for all people; what alludes to this theory is that Roman Rite is quite literally everywhere.

While other rites seem to be culturally and ethnicity-bound, the Roman Rite seems to be able to somehow ‘adapt’ to every culture, if you will.

The location of Rome attests to that, too, having a type of ‘unification’ culture that accepted people from all over the world.

What are your opinions on this?
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Quite far off-base, I think. The Latin Rite derives from the ancient Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, here: ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/liturgy/liturgy.html – it is a very cut-down version of it, but the major sections and order of worship is virtually the same: Prayers of different types, the reading of Scripture, the preparation of Eucharistic elements, the Eucharist, and final prayers of thanksgiving. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of, especially as this Liturgy is often heard in the US in Greek, sometimes Russian or Arabic. However it is the same Liturgy, just different translations. And of course it is sung in English in many Orthodox churches as well. (You can find many different examples on Youtube. So 1) the Byzantine Rite is just as well-adapted to other cultures, from Japan to America, and 2) the “unification” culture you mention is NOT necessarily a good thing; read up on how the Roman Empire fell…
 
thegreypiper said:
Quite far off-base, I think. The Latin Rite derives from the ancient Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, here: ocf.org/OrthodoxPage/liturgy/liturgy.html – it is a very cut-down version of it, but the major sections and order of worship is virtually the same: Prayers of different types, the reading of Scripture, the preparation of Eucharistic elements, the Eucharist, and final prayers of thanksgiving. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of, especially as this Liturgy is often heard in the US in Greek, sometimes Russian or Arabic. However it is the same Liturgy, just different translations. And of course it is sung in English in many Orthodox churches as well. (You can find many different examples on Youtube. So 1) the Byzantine Rite is just as well-adapted to other cultures, from Japan to America, and 2) the “unification” culture you mention is NOT necessarily a good thing; read up on how the Roman Empire fell…
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Have you seen this interesting chart?
 
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