Bishops Meet With Patriarch About America

Father,

Why is it that when people talk about bringing back ancient practices, they never talk about bringing back the tough ones? You'll never hear a chipper Sunday announcement that from now on, just like the ancient Christians , we're going to have serious sinners spend weeks kneeling in the back of the church weeping.

On a different topic: the the interplay between Jewish law and the early canons is not something I know very much about, but it seems to me that the passage is addressed specifically to those backsliding into the Law. On the other hand, the rationale for later Christian practices regarding conjugal relations and nocturnal emissions is quite different: it isn't a matter of being ritually unclean, but of ascetic abstention for the sake of prayerful concentration on the Mysteries. Similarly with nocturnal emissions — uncleanliness as such isn't at issue. (If it were, one would be restricted not only from the Eucharist, but from entering a church, touching a Bible, and so on.) The focus seems to be on a diagnosis of the passions and on involuntary sin. For this reason (if I recall) there are some fathers who explicitly single out, as a barrier to communion, emissions preceded by lewd fantasy or drunkenness during the day. Not that I consider this to be quite the most crucial pastoral question of our age — but I would find it incredible if we were the first in hundreds of years to read the Apostolic Constitutions and really "get it."

Finally, I really do not know what you and Mark have in mind, associating the Western Rite as normally practiced today with the ancient Western Churches. I would love to see a Western Rite built up from the actual divine service of our Orthodox forbearers. But what we seem to have now is the BCP and the Tridentine Mass with a couple of aftermarket modifications.

Fr. Schmemann's skeptical comments about this (there are two papers, I think) seem right on the mark to me. These rites (especially the BCP) are the product of a complex development of heresies, and in some cases the modern liturgical reforms so despised by their devotees must, from an Orthodox perspective, be classed as improvements . Liturgy is an organic thing — these rites can't be "made Orthodox" by scratching out some filioques and stapling on a good epiklisis. It's as though we took an urban latchkey kid and put him in the middle of a Brazilian rainforest. Humans live there, and he's a human, right? — so just swap out the iPod for a bowie knife and he'll be good to go! Doubtful.

On the other hand, the French Church St. John of San Francisco helped to found was very particular about using a genuine rite of the Orthodox West, and a great deal of study seems to have gone into reconstructing a "Liturgy of St. Germanus." Whatever their later troubles, this at least seems to me to be a model for what we might accomplish here.

Ha! Yes, while re-reading my posts, I sometimes catch myself using more than one "finally." ("Again and again...," you know.)

I wasn't clear — I'm not into toughness as such. It's just that most of the arguments in favor of this change in the fasting typicon begin and end with its antiquity, this acting a sort of trump-card justification. It seems to me that there is always a bit of cherry-picking going on in such appeals. (Certainly, for example, I have on many occasions heard the importance of frequent Communion emphasized while the importance of proper preparation, which you also emphasized, is discussed barely at all.)

But the real problem is with the principle, of course. As you point out, the only Christian measure of an ascetical practice is its practical spiritual benefit, and not "toughness," antiquity, or any other external quality. Further, it is just not the case that our Orthodox ancestors were practicing a basically decadent faith, encrusted over the years with who-knows-what, which we are only now doing sensibly and right. (Even setting aside God's promises to the Church, surely the proof of that pudding is in the Synaxarion?) But this is not directed at you; and, anyhow, enough of my ranting.

As to the issue of a Western rite — I agree. My sense is that most hostility toward "the Western rite" comes from a negative impression of what it is currently.

Thanks for your reply! You're right — I should have gone far easier on the "Tridentine" end of things. (incidentally, how would you have it referred to?)

Nonetheless, I am uncomfortable with our picking up a heterodox form that post-dates the Schism by half a century. I don't question the general conclusions of the scholars you cite, but it may be that those who are Catholics are not tuned-in to concerns an Orthodox might have. Is there not in fact an earlier rite that could be adopted? (I would think that there would have to be, if we know enough to speak so confidently on its lineage.) Would there be any reason not to do so?

After all — although your point about what St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory would have recognized of the liturgies named for them is useful — I think it crucial that the development of St. John's liturgy took place in the context of the Church. That it differs from what was done in St. John's day is no more problematic than the fact that in the early Church there was a difference between rites in different places.

(I might in any event have more confidence in the Gregorian-based AOCA rites if I believed that they were actually carried out in a reliable Gregorian manner. For example, I was at a vespers service one at a Western Rite AOCA parish that used St. Gregory's name right and left. There was a very Anglican Verger, some Gregorian chant, a reference or two to the merits of Christ, and a nice hymn by John Wesley. Such a pastiche is, of course, not the rite of the Orthodox Church of England, Rome, or anywhere else.)