Two questions about the EC & EO

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EphelDuath

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Hello all, my first question is that I’m deeply interested in very ancient liturgies, so I was wondering what Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have “reformed” liturgies in the past few centuries and which have extremely traditional ones (for the sake of being specific, I will say have had no substantial changes since the 1000s). I have heard that the Maronite Catholics have undergone a recent “Novus Ordo”-ization but I don’t know anything about it. I also know the Russian Orthodox underwent a reform in the 17th century to put them more in line with Byzantine practices, and the “Old Believers” resisted this schism and so have the same liturgy that Russia did in the early 1600s. Beyond those two churches, I know literally nothing. When was the last (if ever in the past millennium?) reforms in the Byzantine Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Ruthenian Catholic, etc. churches? Could I perhaps be pointed to some resource that gives me a breakdown for all of the EC and EO churches?

Secondly, do you think in general I would be welcomed to an Eastern Catholic parish that’s known to be “ethnic”, i.e. is mostly comprised of immigrants or sons of immigrants? Say out of I blue I wanted to be Syriac Catholic – could I just go to a Syriac Catholic parish, learn the customs, and it would be perfectly fine that I don’t speak any language but English and have no familial or historical connections to Syria? Might be a silly question, but it’s something I worry about. :o

God bless!
 
EphelDuath said:
Secondly, do you think in general I would be welcomed to an Eastern Catholic parish that’s known to be “ethnic”, i.e. is mostly comprised of immigrants or sons of immigrants? Say out of I blue I wanted to be Syriac Catholic – could I just go to a Syriac Catholic parish, learn the customs, and it would be perfectly fine that I don’t speak any language but English and have no familial or historical connections to Syria? Might be a silly question, but it’s something I worry about. :o

God bless!
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Yes, you should be welcomed in the parish. You can certainly attend an Eastern Catholic parish and follow their customs. It does not matter what your ethnicity is. 👍

“Attending” and “being” are two different things. To become an official Eastern (Syriac, Melkite, etc) Catholic, you would have to discuss it with with your Eastern Catholic pastor. If, after a period of time, you desired to switch from being enrolled as a Latin Catholic to being enrolled as a Eastern Catholic, you would have to get approval from your Latin bishop and the Eastern bishop who you would be transferring under.

As long as you are technically still Latin Catholic, you would still be obligated to follow the minimum requirements of the Latin Catholic Church (holy days of obligation and such). However, you may attend the Eastern Catholic parish and practice Eastern Catholic customs.

All Catholic may attend any Catholic parish that they desire. The first step to becoming Eastern Catholic is to become immersed in the Syriac Catholic services and practice the Eastern Catholic customs. 🙂
 
EphelDuath said:
Hello all, my first question is that I’m deeply interested in very ancient liturgies, so I was wondering what Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have “reformed” liturgies in the past few centuries and which have extremely traditional ones (for the sake of being specific, I will say have had no substantial changes since the 1000s). I have heard that the Maronite Catholics have undergone a recent “Novus Ordo”-ization but I don’t know anything about it. I also know the Russian Orthodox underwent a reform in the 17th century to put them more in line with Byzantine practices, and the “Old Believers” resisted this schism and so have the same liturgy that Russia did in the early 1600s. Beyond those two churches, I know literally nothing. When was the last (if ever in the past millennium?) reforms in the Byzantine Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Ruthenian Catholic, etc. churches? Could I perhaps be pointed to some resource that gives me a breakdown for all of the EC and EO churches?

Secondly, do you think in general I would be welcomed to an Eastern Catholic parish that’s known to be “ethnic”, i.e. is mostly comprised of immigrants or sons of immigrants? Say out of I blue I wanted to be Syriac Catholic – could I just go to a Syriac Catholic parish, learn the customs, and it would be perfectly fine that I don’t speak any language but English and have no familial or historical connections to Syria? Might be a silly question, but it’s something I worry about. :o

God bless!
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You might have researched this already, but I’d look for a Traditional Latin Mass (extraordinary form) before going eastern, not that there is anything wrong with eastern liturgies (as long as they are in communion with Rome they are as Catholic as any of us) but because the Traditional Latin rite is your birthright as a Latin catholic and because we need more Latin Catholics who love the old rite
 
I regularly attend a TLM, thank you. I have no intention of abandoning the Latin rite. But I would like to learn other rites of worship because of my scholarly interest in liturgy.
 
I’m a little confused as to why you might want to become anything out of the blue, but as to your first question, with regard to the Coptic Orthodox Church, the last major changes that significantly affected the practice of the liturgy (as opposed to disciplinary changes re: fasting, etc.) was when HH Pope Gabriel II (1131-1145) ordered readings during the liturgy to be done in Arabic alongside Coptic, or maybe the introduction of the cymbal into Coptic chant as a time-keeping/rhythm establishing device at some later point (this was also tied to the loss of the Coptic language among the people, but if I recall correctly it happened a little bit later, c.12th century; we know it wasn’t used in the early Alexandrian Church as there are writings from Alexandrian saints criticizing the use of the cymbal by the pagans as an instrument of war or some such…um…oops).

Other changes are relatively minor, and/or disputed and incomplete (e.g., the adoption of some Greek hymns; the standardization of the pronunciation of Coptic in the 1850s by Erian Moftah, which to this day is not found everywhere). The core of the Liturgy has remained essentially the same since the 4th century or thereabouts. Like the liturgy of St. Cyril which reformed/abbreviated the original liturgy established in Egypt by St. Mark himself, the Liturgy of St. Basil is a recension of an earlier, no longer available liturgy (see, for instance, Archbishop Proclus of Constantinople’s comments on it in the 5th century; this testifies as to its antiquity, even though apparently the earliest extant manuscripts of it are perhaps a little bit younger than that). So I suppose those were technically “reforms”, too, but very, very early.
EphelDuath said:
Hello all, my first question is that I’m deeply interested in very ancient liturgies, so I was wondering what Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have “reformed” liturgies in the past few centuries and which have extremely traditional ones (for the sake of being specific, I will say have had no substantial changes since the 1000s). I have heard that the Maronite Catholics have undergone a recent “Novus Ordo”-ization but I don’t know anything about it. I also know the Russian Orthodox underwent a reform in the 17th century to put them more in line with Byzantine practices, and the “Old Believers” resisted this schism and so have the same liturgy that Russia did in the early 1600s. Beyond those two churches, I know literally nothing. When was the last (if ever in the past millennium?) reforms in the Byzantine Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Catholic, Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Ruthenian Catholic, etc. churches? Could I perhaps be pointed to some resource that gives me a breakdown for all of the EC and EO churches?

Secondly, do you think in general I would be welcomed to an Eastern Catholic parish that’s known to be “ethnic”, i.e. is mostly comprised of immigrants or sons of immigrants? Say out of I blue I wanted to be Syriac Catholic – could I just go to a Syriac Catholic parish, learn the customs, and it would be perfectly fine that I don’t speak any language but English and have no familial or historical connections to Syria? Might be a silly question, but it’s something I worry about. :o

God bless!
Click to expand...
 
dzheremi said:
I’m a little confused as to why you might want to become anything out of the blue, but as to your first question, with regard to the Coptic Orthodox Church, the last major changes that significantly affected the practice of the liturgy (as opposed to disciplinary changes re: fasting, etc.) was when HH Pope Gabriel II (1131-1145) ordered readings during the liturgy to be done in Arabic alongside Coptic, or maybe the introduction of the cymbal into Coptic chant as a time-keeping/rhythm establishing device at some later point (this was also tied to the loss of the Coptic language among the people, but if I recall correctly it happened a little bit later, c.12th century; we know it wasn’t used in the early Alexandrian Church as there are writings from Alexandrian saints criticizing the use of the cymbal by the pagans as an instrument of war or some such…um…oops).

Other changes are relatively minor, and/or disputed and incomplete (e.g., the adoption of some Greek hymns; the standardization of the pronunciation of Coptic in the 1850s by Erian Moftah, which to this day is not found everywhere). The core of the Liturgy has remained essentially the same since the 4th century or thereabouts. Like the liturgy of St. Cyril which reformed/abbreviated the original liturgy established in Egypt by St. Mark himself, the Liturgy of St. Basil is a recension of an earlier, no longer available liturgy (see, for instance, Archbishop Proclus of Constantinople’s comments on it in the 5th century; this testifies as to its antiquity, even though apparently the earliest extant manuscripts of it are perhaps a little bit younger than that). So I suppose those were technically “reforms”, too, but very, very early.
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Thank you for the information! Very helpful 🙂
 
PietroPaolo said:
You might have researched this already, but I’d look for a Traditional Latin Mass (extraordinary form) before going eastern, not that there is anything wrong with eastern liturgies (as long as they are in communion with Rome they are as Catholic as any of us) but because the Traditional Latin rite is your birthright as a Latin catholic and because we need more Latin Catholics who love the old rite
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I don’t disagree about birthrite, but I find that giving advice on this is a delicate balancing act. I mean as a matter of emphasizing that it’s good to be loyal to one’s own heritage, but also emphasizing that it’s fine to become interested in a different rite. (In my humble opinion, your post only stressed the former.)
 
The Byzantine Liturgy pretty much reached its present form in the 8th or 9th century. Originally there were major differences between monastic and parish, or more correctly, Cathedral practice. However, the Monastery of St. John the Studite combined the best of both monastic and Cathedral practice to produce the Byzantine synthesis. That does not mean that there have not been relatively minor changes. I do not know that much about Byzantine Rite Eastern Catholics, except that the texts that they use are identical with the texts used by the Eastern Orthodox Church, at least the Melkite ones are. Perhaps the most important change is that many Byzantine Rite Priests, at least in the Eastern Orthodox Church say prayers out loud that even a few years ago were said quietly by the Priest while the choir or chanters were singing. In the North American Antiochian Orthodox Church, we also keep the Holy Doors and curtain open the entire service.
The Byzantine Rite is a growth out of the West Syrian Rite which St. John Chrysostom took to Constantinople when he became Patriarch. The original West Syrian Liturgy is the Liturgy of St. James which is traced back to St. James, the brother or Our Lord and the first Bishop of Jerusalem. In this case “brother” means cousin or step brother, the son of St. Joseph by his first wife who died before he married Our Lady, because as we know Our Lady was ever virgin. The Byzantine Rite serves the Liturgy of St. James in few places on the feast of St. James on October 23 and the Sunday after Christmas. According to tradition, St. Basil shortened the Liturgy of St. James and St. John Chrysostom shortened the Liturgy of St. Basil. The main difference between the Liturgies of St. Basil and St. John is the Anaphora (Canon of the Mass). I believe that the Liturgy of St. James is still the normal Liturgy in the Syriac Rite Churches, Syriac or Jacobite Church, Syrian Catholic, Maronite and Indian Churches.
I would like to ask for your prayers. I am scheduled to have kidney stone zapped at the hospital tomorrow. I have suffered terrible pain since Thanksgiving, the worst pain in my entire life.
Fr. John W. Morris
 
frjohnmorris said:
I would like to ask for your prayers. I am scheduled to have kidney stone zapped at the hospital tomorrow. I have suffered terrible pain since Thanksgiving, the worst pain in my entire life.
Fr. John W. Morris
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😦

Will do. 🙂
 
Lord have mercy upon your servant, Fr. John Morris.

May He guide the hands of the surgeons and bring you to a quick and complete recovery, Father.
 
dzheremi said:
Lord have mercy upon your servant, Fr. John Morris.

May He guide the hands of the surgeons and bring you to a quick and complete recovery, Father.
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I’d like to pray in agreement with Jeremy.

May the peace of Christ, which surpasses all understanding be with you, Father.

On a separate note, I have received Runciman’s 3 volumes on the Crusades, but also received Blessed John Paul II’s biography “Witness to Hope”. Too many books, too little time.
 
frjohnmorris said:
I would like to ask for your prayers. I am scheduled to have kidney stone zapped at the hospital tomorrow. I have suffered terrible pain since Thanksgiving, the worst pain in my entire life.
Fr. John W. Morris
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Lord, have mercy!

P.S. The Melkite Eparchy of Newton has the Anaphora (epiclesis and all) prayed out loud as well. My parish only closes the curtain during the Divine Liturgy for the communing of the clergy. 🙂
 
Praying for Fr. John for healing and that all goes well with his Kidney stone zapping today.
I also know the Russian Orthodox underwent a reform in the 17th century to put them more in line with Byzantine practices, and the “Old Believers” resisted this schism and so have the same liturgy that Russia did in the early 1600s
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Well, the Nikonian reform wasn’t exactly a schism itself - except that it precipitated a schism.

Anyway, this is a small Russian Greek-Catholic Church. I’ve read that some of the original parishes were Old-Believer parishes and thus had the pre-Nikonian liturgy. But I believe most if not all Russian Catholic parishes today use the reformed Nikonian liturgy.
 
Symeon said:
Praying for Fr. John for healing and that all goes well with his Kidney stone zapping today.

Well, the Nikonian reform wasn’t exactly a schism itself - except that it precipitated a schism.

Anyway, this is a small Russian Greek-Catholic Church. I’ve read that some of the original parishes were Old-Believer parishes and thus had the pre-Nikonian liturgy. But I believe most if not all Russian Catholic parishes today use the reformed Nikonian liturgy.
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Thank you for your prayers. All went well. I am home and already feel better. Believe me you do not want to have kidney stone.
There are some Old Ritualist Russian Churches that have returned to Orthodoxy and have retained their pre-Nikon practices.
Do you know that Patriarch Nikon was eventually condemned by a Pan-Orthodox Council because he began to claim higher authority to the Tsar?

Fr. John W. Morris
 
Many Byzantine Rite churches (both Catholic and Orthodox) have ellisions from the full version of the praxis. A few have minor accretions, as well.

The Ruthenian version is noted for both. A litany missing, but an extra 4 lines on the prayer before communion, and the use of Matins and/or 3rd hour prior to liturgy being absent in many parishes. But it’s still recognizable as the same core liturgical text, despite the shortenings and additions.

Also, for fairness sake, the Melkites and Antiochians are VERY close because they’re not quite 300 years separated from each other, and both liturgically conservative.
 
Aren’t the Ruthenians and ACROD/OCA merely 50yrs separated from each other, at least in the US?
 
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