Modern Latinization Accelerates In Some Eastern Catholic Churches

[Apotheoun]

Pictures of Romanian Greek Catholic priests celebrating the liturgy facing the people. The parish also has no iconostasis contrary to the norms established by the Typikon. The altar boys are also wearing non-traditional vestments, which look a little Latin, but honestly they are not even that accurate a copy of Latin altar boy garb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[arfink]

They look really reverent. Also, just from the pictures, it looks to me like they have absolutely no money for much of anything at all, and are, how shall we say? Making due?

[Apotheoun]

They look really reverent. Also, just from the pictures, it looks to me like they have absolutely no money for much of anything at all, and are, how shall we say? Making due?

It is a fairly new Church building (built within the last 10 years) so they had the money to build a new parish. And lack of funds would still not provide a reason for celebrating the liturgy - contrary to Apostolic Tradition - facing the people.

[penguin31]

Perhaps this is just my ignorance of Eastern traditions or my complete bafflement at someone being bothered by what appears to be a very reverent mass, but I genuinely don't see the problem, at least on glance.

Then again, I fully admit there's a lot I don't know, especially when it comes to the Eastern churches.  In what ways does this differ from the type of Mass you would expect to see offered (I genuinely don't know, and I suspect I'm not the only one), and why do you consider these differentiations towards the Roman rite to be for the worse?

 

[arfink]

Does this violate a law that they have, or is this just something that is never done?

[Apotheoun]

Does this violate a law that they have, or is this just something that is never done?

Facing the people during the celebration of the liturgy violates the Apostolic Tradition, and has never been done in the East, and only started being done in the west in the late 1960s.

[Apotheoun]

Perhaps this is just my ignorance of Eastern traditions or my complete bafflement at someone being bothered by what appears to be a very reverent mass, but I genuinely don't see the problem, at least on glance.

Then again, I fully admit there's a lot I don't know, especially when it comes to the Eastern churches.  In what ways does this differ from the type of Mass you would expect to see offered (I genuinely don't know, and I suspect I'm not the only one), and why do you consider these differentiations towards the Roman rite to be for the worse?

 

The priest and the people, according to the Apostolic Tradition as passed on by the Holy Fathers, is to be done facing East in expectation of Christ's return. This is a divinely inspired Tradition that comes to us from Christ through the Holy Apostles, for as St. John Damascene explained:

 

"And when he was taken up, He [Jesus] ascended to the East, and thus the Apostles worshipped Him and thus He shall come in the same way as they had seen Him going into heaven, as the Lord Himself said: 'As the lightning cometh out of the east and appeareth even into the west: so also shall the coming of the Son of man be.' And so while we are awaiting Him, we worship toward the East. This is more-over, the unwritten tradition of the Apostles, for they have handed many things down to us unwritten." [De Fide Orthodoxa, St. John Damascene, The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 37, (Ed. Dr. Roy Deferrari, CUA University Press, 1958), pages 353-354]

Edited August 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[arfink]

Facing the people during the celebration of the liturgy violates the Apostolic Tradition, and has never been done in the East, and only started being done in the west in the late 1960s.

 

You're gonna need to explain what you mean when you say Apostolic Tradition because it sure as heck doesn't mean what I think it means given this context...

[Apotheoun]

You're gonna need to explain what you mean when you say Apostolic Tradition because it sure as heck doesn't mean what I think it means given this context...

I mean what St. John Damascene means, i.e., that it is a divinely inspired Tradition, an unchanging, and unchangeable, part of the deposit of faith given to the Church from Christ the Lord Himself through His Holy Apostles. That is the belief of the Eastern Churches (both Catholic and Orthodox).

[Apotheoun]

The eastward orientation in prayer was so important - for both Eastern and Western Christians - that in the small number of Churches in Rome that were built with the altar in the west-end, the priest would stand behind the altar facing east, and during the Eucharistic anaphora (and the other prayers) the people would turn (with their backs to the priest and the altar) and face east with the celebrant of the liturgy. 

[arfink]

OK, so basically it's an unwritten, oral tradition which we only have record of thanks to St. John Damascene, but which is otherwise entirely unprovable and otherwise unrecorded. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way, because it just so happens that this is exactly the same as other sources, including much of scripture, where we have no way of closing the gap between the actual events and the eventual writing down of the information.

 

Thanks for explaining it.

 

That said, in the West we have a much longer history of syncretism thanks to Rome, so this is probably why it doesn't phase us at all. ;)

[Apotheoun]

OK, so basically it's an unwritten, oral tradition which we only have record of thanks to St. John Damascene, but which is otherwise entirely unprovable and otherwise unrecorded. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way, because it just so happens that this is exactly the same as other sources, including much of scripture, where we have no way of closing the gap between the actual events and the eventual writing down of the information.

 

Thanks for explaining it.

 

That said, in the West we have a much longer history of syncretism thanks to Rome, so this is probably why it doesn't phase us at all. ;)

St. John Damascene, St. Basil, St. Augustine, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and a number of other Fathers too large to count all attest to praying facing East, and the ancient sacramentaries of the Roman Church (which alone among the major Sees had some Churches built with the altar in the west-end) have the deacon crying out the acclamation to turn East and face the Lord at various points in the liturgy. This is also found in liturgical books from North African cities, which - like the City of Rome - were given pre-existing basilicas that sometimes required putting the altar in the west-end instead of the east-end of the structure.

 

Postscript: I just remember that Pope Benedict touches upon this eastward orientation in prayer in his book "The Spirit of the Liturgy."

Edited August 13, 2013 by Apotheoun

[Seven77]

Facing East is important and I understand your concern. We should be concerned because these types of liturgical innovations in Eastern Catholic parishes scandalize Eastern Orthodox and discourage communion with Rome. However, at the end of the day, the Divine Liturgy pictured above is valid.

[Anastasia13]

My guess is that this probably comes from the Jewish tradition of facing Jerusalem, which in Rome, Greece, or Egypt, is Eastern. Shema Yisrael and all that...

[Aloysius]

the tradition in Christianity wasn't facing Jerusalem, it was facing the east, always connected to the rising of the sun.  maybe in Apostolic times there was some connection to that, but it is in no way conclusive that pre-talmud judaism actually did face Jerusalem in prayer, though it's possible... there are also many scriptures referencing the east, however.   in the West, a concept of the "liturgical east" arose by which, even in churches not built with an eastward orientation, the priest and the people were meant to face the same way.  in the East they don't like that very much, because they insist upon simply building the Churches so that the altar can face east, but personally I've always been okay with a liturgical east, though it would be better to face towards the rising sun as symbolic of watching for Christ's return in addition to the symbolism of the priest and people facing the same way.

 

regardless of any of that, the versus populum position is not permitted in the Eastern Catholic Churches, and this is absolutely wrong.  moreover, building a simple iconostasis would not have cost all that much more that building a new church... honestly, they probably spent some money on pews and it would have been much better to spend that money on an iconostasis and have a bunch of fold-out chairs available for people until they can afford pews (if they must insist on having pews, personally I don't really like pews in churches haha).

 

no matter how reverent they are, turning around the orientation of the prayer takes a large part away from the liturgical spirit.  there is more to the liturgical spirit than a vague notion of "reverence"  the priest facing the same way as the people illustrates that the priest is at the front of the masses offering on their behalf, there is a completely different atmosphere projected by the priest facing the people than the liturgical atmosphere projected by the ad orientem position.  currently a versus populum position is permitted in the Roman Church, but not at all in the Eastern Catholic Churches.  whatever your opinion is of the versus populum in the West, you should not support this in the East; moreover, I think we need to learn from the East about some of the Apostolic traditions we have moved away from in the past few decades.