Local language vs. the language of our fathers

[Matthew Namee]

If I may...

On a visit to Holy Archangels Greek Orthodox Monastery in Texas (one of the Elder Ephrem monasteries), I asked the abbot, Fr. Dositheos, whether the monastery might eventually introduce English into the services. He said he did not think so. Why, I asked? Because of the inherent flaws in the English language, he replied. English didn't have the precision of Greek; it is not good for theological terms. And so forth.

To me, this is not an acceptable answer. If he were to say, "Well, gradually, as the monks and visitors become more proficient in English than in Greek, we might introduce English," that would be okay. But he's saying that English is inferior to Greek, and therefore Greek should be the language. It is this attitude, I think, to which Eric is responding. We Orthodox have a long tradition of worship in the language of the people. As early as St. Paul (and even before, with the translators of the Septuagint), the Church has a tradition of using the language of those to whom it is ministering. This tradition can be seen in such great saints as Cyril and Methodius and Innocent of Alaska (among many others).

If these monasteries are filled with Greek-speaking monks and are visited by Greek-speaking faithful, then by all means they should use Greek. But if the monks are Americans, or the visitors understand only English and not Greek, then they should correspondingly use English. No, English is not as precise as Greek; neither is Slavonic or Arabic, but those have long traditions. Indeed, the Gospels were written in Greek despite the fact that the Lord spoke Aramaic. Would not the Aramaic better convey what he had to say? Yet the Empire spoke Greek, so the Gospels were written in Greek.

There is nothing inherently "holy" about Greek. It has an impressive pedigree, and it is unusually well-suited to theology. But for the sake of mission, even it has given way in many places and times to local languages. It is NOTHING against Greek or Greeks! It is a question of whether the people understand; this is my only concern. I do not understand Greek, and my experience when visiting such monasteries is hampered by that. Should I be punished for my lack of linguistic ability? Or should there be a middle ground, an attempt to meet the needs of the people? As the generations pass and the immigrants' children and grandchildren are further and further from the old country, the language will naturally become more and more obsolete. To resist this would create an unfortunate disconnect between the faithful and the Church.

[Father David Moser]

Matthew,

You have tapped into a question that has nipped at the heels of the Orthodox Church in North America since almost the very first days. The language of the services has been a consistent "bone of contention" - and it doesn't matter which "mother tongue" we are talking about. I really don't know and can't say what was behind the conversation you had at Holy Archangels, however, I do know that for many of the Russians, they too would say that Slavonic is a more holy language - however, I think that this is more often a way for them to say that they can pray more easily in Slavonic than in English. (just as I will always pray more easily in English, I suppose).

OTOH, I will also say that there are some things in the service that just sound better in Slavonic. (Milost Mira..., Svat Svat Svat..., Mnogaya Lyeta, Vechnaya Pamyat for example) than in English (A mercy of peace..., Holy holy holy..., Many Years, Memory Eternal) In Slavonic these things sound absolutely gorgeous and touch the heart even if you don't understand the words - in English they grate and strain against the music.

I think that we have to have some sense of balance between old language and new. Yes we need to have the services in a language that speaks to the mind, but we also need to have services in a language that speaks to the heart as well - sometimes those are not the same language.

Your most compelling argument comes at the end of your post:


As the generations pass and the immigrants' children and grandchildren are further and further from the old country, the language will naturally become more and more obsolete. To resist this would create an unfortunate disconnect between the faithful and the Church.

This is the one I use most effectively with Russians from my bishop to the immigrant mothers with small children. Americans seem to be in a rush to push out the old language and replace it wholesale with the new - I think it is more important to bring English in and let it be changed and enriched by the old and eventually that beautiful rich blend will supplant either.

Fr David Moser

[Matthew Namee]

As the generations pass and the immigrants' children and grandchildren are further and further from the old country, the language will naturally become more and more obsolete. To resist this would create an unfortunate disconnect between the faithful and the Church.
On this subject, I can recommend St. Nikolai Velimirovich's sermon "The Orthodox Church in America and Its Future," which may be found here: http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/general/stnikolai_america.aspx

Among the many good things St. Nikolai says is this:


They [the American-born Orthodox] want English to replace national languages in church services. They desire to hear sermons in English. This is a legitimate desire. Our wise priests of every national Orthodox Church in this country are already preaching in both English and in their respective national tongue. They are in a difficult position at present, for they have on one hand to be considerate of the elderly (elderly generations of Moms and Pops) who do not understand English well, and on the other hand they are willing to respond to the desire and need of the younger generations. In this matter I think evolution is better than revolution, for the Church is the mother of both the old and the young.Personally, I can trace my entire lineage to a small area in what is now Lebanon; however, neither my parents nor I understand Arabic, and all of my grandparents and some of my great-grandparents were born and raised in America. Yet until the late 1970s, our home parish continued to use Arabic as the language of the church services. Many young people, among them a large number of my relatives, left the Church during these years. They went to Protestant youth groups and so forth where they felt more at home. Thankfully, most of them have returned to Orthodoxy, but some have not. In my own lifetime, I have been blessed to always hear the services in English, and because of this, I have from childhood been able to appreciate and learn from them. To this day, I will hear something in the liturgy and be struck by some new, deeper realization. Without being able to comprehend the language, those opportunities would be lost.

I am very much in favor of the gradual approach with regard to the introduction of English, especially in communities which have recent immigrants. As St. Nikolai says, "evolution is better than revolution." But if, because of sentiment or nostalgia or any other motivation, such an organic process is halted, I fear that other parishes might witness something of the exodus which my home parish witnessed three decades ago.

[Andreas Moran]

You have tapped into a question that has nipped at the heels of the Orthodox Church in North America

And to an extent in Britain. Greek parishes I used to attend up north had all services in Greek and the only bits in English were the few bits that non-Greeks knew anyway (the Creed and Lord's Prayer) though the epistle and Gospel were generally repeated in English. The monastery here uses a lot of English with sections of many services in Greek and Slavonic.


OTOH, I will also say that there are some things in the service that just sound better in Slavonic

At vespers, Svate tikhii/phos ilaron are never sung in English, but weekdays and Saturdays the Divine Liturgy is entirely in English using the monstery's own traditional text approved by Staretz Sophrony and using Russian music. I don't think anyone who attended the Liturgy in English at the monastery would think it lacking in any way in grace and power to affect the soul. That's what I have heard over many years from visitors from many different countries and traditions. Of course, Slavs like to hear Church Slavonic and Greeks like to hear Greek, and singing as we have heard it at Holy Trinity St Serguis Lavra and at Aghiou Stephanou at Meteora can move to tears.

[Nina]

It seems to me Matthew that there is a big leap in what you discuss. You bring the example of the monastery and elder's words and then conclude with what needs to be in parishes. I am sure these elders have discernment and can see things which we do not when they decide to use one language, or another. We all here can attest that there is an abundance of parishes and Orthodox churches and monasteries where English is spoken in US. Such monasteries as that of the Archangels exist because there are different callings in our faith sometime. The beauty of Orthodoxy is diversity.

[Matthew Namee]

It seems to me Matthew that there is a big leap in what you discuss. You bring the example of the monastery and elder's words and then conclude with what needs to be in parishes. I am sure these elders have discernment and can see things which we do not when they decide to use one language, or another. We all here can attest that there is an abundance of parishes and Orthodox churches and monasteries where English is spoken in US. Such monasteries as that of the Archangels exist because there are different callings in our faith sometime. The beauty of Orthodoxy is diversity.
You are right that there is a difference between monasteries and parishes. I should have acknowledged that distinction.

There is indeed an abundance of parishes which use English in the US. I disagree, though, about monasteries -- there is most certainly not an abundance of English-speaking monasteries. Elder Ephrem's monasteries make up a large proportion of the monasteries in America, and they are also extremely wealthy and opulent, thus indicating the desire to attract visitors. (If you don't want lots of visitors, the best thing to do is what they do at St. Herman's in Platina -- no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, and access to the monastery via a winding mountain road. If you build multi-million dollar facilities and have great food and comfortable guesthouses and gorgeous landscaping, I assume you want guests.) And if you're trying to attract visitors in America and they arrive to find services in a foreign tongue, and the only explanation is that Greek is "better"... I just think that's inadequate. Who are you trying to reach? Only Greeks? People who don't care if they understand the services?

Look, I'm not trying to bash anyone. Holy Archangels is a beautiful place and the monks are serious about their faith. All I am saying is that they have consiously put themselves in a position to attract guests. Had I been an inquirer and not cradle Orthodox myself, I would have been very put off by Fr. Dositheos' response to my query. It would have been better for him to say, "As the abbot, I feel that Greek is the best for my monks." That's his prerogative, and I respect that. I'd think such an approach would be better suited to a less welcoming monastery, but so be it. But that's not what he said. He made a statement of overall value, and that is what I don't like. It's an attitude I've encountered not only in monasteries but in parishes as well. And it is that sort of attitude -- an unwillingness to allow for the organic evolution of linguistic changes -- which ultimately can drive young people away from the Church.

[Nina]

Matthew again I think there is some flaw in the above because I do not think there is a conspiracy to attract people and entrap them in Greek services. It is not like they are calculating. Of course many monasteries have a duty to offer philoxenia (hospitality) to pilgrims and part of that is to offer some commodities to those guests. Actually where I have stayed I have found these commodities to be very spartan. The words of the elder should not be cause for you to feel the way you feel. Approach them with a spiritual attitude.

About parishes, please tell me where have you seen a parish that is not using English also here in our times. I would like to visit it if I will be in the area.

Wherever I have visited, or attended here in USA, English has been the language of worship, or one of the languages.

[Father David Moser]

About parishes, please tell me where have you seen a parish that is not using English also here in our times. I would like to visit it if I will be in the area.


Well, I don't know about Greek, but I can give you an example in Russian. The majority of the Russian parishes in San Francisco (regardless of jurisdiction or calendar) are Slavonic parishes. You might encounter a minimal amount of English - if you happened to catch a visiting priest or deacon who couldn't serve in Slavonic - but for the most part they are almost all (ROCOR, MP, OCA) Slavonic. The only one that "attempts" (to my knowledge) to bring in English services is Old Holy Virgin Cathedral and even that is not all English. This is not, btw, the "fault" of the clergy, but of the people who do not support English services. There have been a number of attempts to have English liturgies at the new Holy Virgin Cathedral - but after the initial wave of enthusiastic support, many of those who demanded English end up going back to the Slavonic liturgies.

Fr David Moser

[Kris]

In UK - at least in the London area - most Greek parishes use very little English, if any at all.

There are a few parishes that have begun providing English liturgies - priests wanting to adress the concerns of those for whom language is a problem. Yet when I attend these liturgies, the only people who'll normally show up are old Greek ladies who barely speak English or people of other nationalities (Russian, Romanian, etc.) who are only there to support the venture, but have no need English services themselves.

As for the English-speakers these priests are trying to reach out to, I only see them at liturgies where Greek is used.

[Matthew Namee]

About parishes, please tell me where have you seen a parish that is not using English also here in our times. I would like to visit it if I will be in the area.
Well, one example from my area that immediately comes to mind is St. George Serbian church in Kansas City.

I was not suggesting that Holy Archangels or any other monastery was "calculating" and seeking to "entrap" visitors. I merely am saying that if you spend millions to create a beautiful monastery with comfortable quarters and great food, it certainly seems like you're making yourself open and attractive to guests. It's not like these monks are going into the wilderness and living in primitive conditions, in which case they would attract only the most austere visitors. Monasteries like Holy Archangels attract families and others (like myself) who are less physically rigorous. As such, cannot as easily use the (hypothetical) excuse that they are far from the world and not in the business of ministering to outsiders. But then, they don't use that excuse, so it's kind of a moot point.

And what do you mean by a "spiritual attitude"? Was I approaching him with a material or worldly attitude? In what way is it un-spiritual to wish to hear the Gospel in my native tongue?

As I said, if the abbot had simply said that he made a decision for the well-being of the monks in his care, that would have been okay. But he said that Greek was better than English, more precise, etc., and that does not seem to me to be an appropriate answer. Should we all, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, switch to Greek because it is more precise? Were Ss. Cyril and Methodius wrong to translate the services from Greek to a Slavonic tongue? Or is it acceptable to serve in languages other than Greek? If so, I don't see how the abbot's argument stands.

[Nina]

Yes it is a moot point and a stretch. What those monasteries will do is their business and they have a calling from God and are children of God too.


And what do you mean by a "spiritual attitude"? Was I approaching him with a material or worldly attitude? In what way is it un-spiritual to wish to hear the Gospel in my native tongue?

I said approach now those words with a spiritual attitude.

It is not un-spiritual to wish to hear the Gospel in your native tongue. That is your right. And it seems to me that you do exercise that right, since you did not list your parish as Greek speaking, or Serbian speaking. I never said that the language of worship in US should not be English. What I am saying is that there is no reason to be so strong about those places who hear the Gospel not in your native tongue. That is their right as well. If you were dependent only on that monastery to hear the Gospel in your native tongue I would have sympathized with you very much.



As I said, if the abbot had simply said that he made a decision for the well-being of the monks in his care, that would have been okay. But he said that Greek was better than English, more precise, etc.,

These are not the words I read in your first post. And since I was not there to hear those words myself I can't say which ones were said. Plus I do not see sinful words involved. Additionally Emperor Constantine the Great said that if he will see a man of the robe (clergy) sin, he will divest himself from his royal robe and cover the sin of that person.


Should we all, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, switch to Greek because it is more precise?

You keep mentioning Greeks like in your first post of this thread and on the other hand the only church you provided does not even liturgize in Greek.


Were Ss. Cyril and Methodius wrong to translate the services from Greek to a Slavonic tongue?

Sts. Cyril and Methodius not only translated them, but they invented even the alphabet for them. Who said that this is not correct? You are reading different things from what I write.

I am closing with words (from another thread) of Fr. Raphael on the matter:



From experience I would say that much of our sense of language within the Church comes from personal encounter and then gets projected outwards becoming part of the 'language question'. In essence what began as an issue which touches personal relationships within parish life is turned into a theoretical issue about the place of language within the Church as a whole. Not that these two do not connect with each other- they do. It is just that when we follow the above dynamic- the personal shifting into the theoretical- we follow that time worn path of more personal issues being completely overlooked.

In truth what drives most of us in this issue is fear, embarrassment and frustration. It is difficult to cut oneself off from that prime vehicle through which we attain acceptance & validation in our society. If some question my use of such contemporary words- especially 'validation'- I do it for a reason, admitting its negative & largely selfish meaning. After all there is a reason why we, especially in North America, treasure being a one-language society.

Being within the Orthodox Church however directly challenges this. Which is especially challenging since we are the heart land of defining everything by the criterion of ourselves; and also because it could be correct that we are the first Orthodox who have to face a multi-language environment in order to more deeply enter into the Church's reality. This last fact, considering who we are and where we are, is almost ironic. Or at least it provides a very important lesson.

The lesson I think is that unless we absolutely insist on denying the reality of those whom God puts before us we are basically put into a situation that asks us to continually go beyond ourselves. This especially touches those areas fundamental to our culture in which language is a marker of the right of self characterization and self-determination.

So far Fr Ephraim's policy on language within his monasteries has been either criticized or accepted. Little effort though has been made to spiritually comprehend why an Elder would ask his spiritual children to half abandon their own language for that which he surely knows is very foreign. Why spiritually would he ask this of these particular people of this particular time & place?

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Matthew Namee]

I certainly meant no disrespect to anyone, much less an abbot. Perhaps I should have said "a Greek monastery" and "the abbot" rather than using the specific names.

Reviewing my posts on this thread, I find them largely unsatisfactory. I have discussed both monasteries and parishes, but they are two very different entities. I have discussed the problems of language in general and also the specific issue of Greek vs. English, but these really are different discussions. In general, I have spoken in a convoluted manner, and I've probably hindered the discussion because of it.

Let me try to just make a series of points, some of which are only tangentially related:

1) I believe that people should be able to understand the services. If a parish has mostly English-speakers, then most of the service should be in English. If the parish has people whose primary language is something other than English, then they should be accomodated as well. Multilingual services in multilingual parishes are very appropriate. Monolingual services in places where a sizeable percentage of the parish does not understand the language in question are, I would argue, not sufficient to meet the needs of the people.

2) The chief reason for maintaining exclusively (or near-exclusively) foreign-language services in America should not be that the language is holier than or superior to English, since such a principle contradicts the tradition of the Church as evidenced by the Septuagint, St. Paul, Ss. Cyril & Methodius, St. Innocent, and many others.

3) I agree that a monastery is different than a parish. But monasteries too have some degree of responsibility in the matter of language. How can I say this without sounding offensive? I think there are a few considerations. In this point I am, for all pratical purposes, speaking of the Elder Ephrem monasteries in America.

The great proliferation of Greek-speaking monasteries in America is of little benefit to the aspiring monastic who does not speak Greek. He (or she) cannot join one of these monasteries unless he is willing to learn a foreign language. This effectively limits the pool of future monastics in such monasteries to those people who know Greek. This is fine, but it does send the message that, "We want Greeks." Am I making a judgmental jump to this conclusion? Yes, probably so. But I don't think it's a terribly unreasonable jump: do any non-Greek speakers join monasteries which use only Greek in the services? Or, to put it another way, is it reasonable to expect an American English-speaker to join a monastery in which he cannot worship in his own language? (This was one of my concerns when I was younger: If I were to become a monastic, where would I go? The choices of English-speaking monasteries with, say, half a dozen or more monks are very few.)

There is also the issue of visitors who do not understand the language. I said more than once that these monasteries, with their facilities and so forth, make themselves particularly open to visitors. When these visitors inevitably arrive, they will not (unless they know Greek) understand the services. This is fine, I suppose -- if I visit the house of a foreigner, that person is well within their rights to speak their own language. But I would think that hospitality would prevail and at least some English would be used. I have read that Fr. Daniel Byantoro's parishes in Indonesia use local languages, some Greek, and even a bit of English if there is an English-speaking visitor. When I visited an all-Arabic-speaking parish (full of Syrian/Lebanese immigrants) in London on Pentecost two years ago, the priest made a point of singing one litany and reading one of the kneeling prayers in English because he knew that my wife and I did not understand Arabic. I was touched by the courtesy. No, I should not necessarily have expected such accomodation, but it was much appreciated nonetheless.

---

As I said above, I probably should not have given the specific name of the monastery and abbot which I criticized. I do not think I should be forbidden to question or critique an assertion simply because it was made by a member of the clergy, though. As for covering the sin of a priest or bishop... There are patristic sayings which encourage this, but I think such sentiments can be abused. Here I am speaking not of the present discussion but in a much more general sense. Clergy cannot engage in vice and expect to "get away with it" because they are clergy. Small sins should be covered; this is true. But if anyone -- clergyman or otherwise -- is guilty of abuse, theft, or any other serious offense, they should be held accountable.

[Nina]

Matthew,



1) I believe that people should be able to understand the services. If a parish has mostly English-speakers, then most of the service should be in English. If the parish has people whose primary language is something other than English, then they should be accomodated as well. Multilingual services in multilingual parishes are very appropriate. Monolingual services in places where a sizeable percentage of the parish does not understand the language in question are, I would argue, not sufficient to meet the needs of the people.

Agreed.

As you see we both are saying the same things. I am just saying we need to be considerate of all.

About the issue as you call it: "specific issue of Greek vs. English" - this, as you also recognize, is not an issue to be discussed under the heading: "Local language vs. the language of our fathers", but under "Languages of the Fathers". Since Greek it is indeed a language of the Fathers. Much Orthodox theology and dogma are pronounced, articulated and developed in Greek. This does not mean that English is not a language of the Fathers. This does not mean that other languages are not languages of the Fathers. There are many other languages used by Fathers to articulate our Truth, (even when just saying "I am a Christian" and being led to martyrdom). But since you mention the Greek language, I would like to repost here the words of Fr. Matthew which were in response to your first post that was transfered here from that other thread:


I do think there is a real question behind the issue of terminology. The simple fact of the matter is that English is a relatively 'new' language in terms of its usage in Christian doctrinal expression, which for the bulk of its history (at least in an Orthodox context) has employed Greek as its principal lingua sacra. This is, of itself, not to assign some precedence to Hellenism, but simply to admit a fact of history. And as an effect of this history, certain terms central to theological expression have had the advantage of centuries of exposition, reflection, nuance and definition in an Orthodox context. A few examples are nous, hypostasis, ousia, physis. I don't believe many would suggest that it is not possible to translate such terms into English; the question is whether such translations have the innate ability to convey a meaning implied in a term that has been thoroughly 'Christianised' in the Greek-language expression of doctrine, in a language where the translated term does not.

Nous is an excellent example. How should this be translated into English? The editors of the Philokalia in English used 'intellect', but were immediately criticised. In English, the 'organ' one would most immediately associate with the term 'intellect' is the brain, the centre of rationality; but in the ascetical writings of the fathers, the 'organ' always associated with the nous is not the brain, but the heart. This is a critical difference. If the Greek term nous is used in the Church's spiritual writings to reflect to the activity of the heart, is a translation into the English 'intellect' really transmitting the same sense? Does not 'intellect' have the potential, given the term's meaning in common English usage, in fact to paint a rather different image of the power of the soul the nous represents?

Clearly, the Orthodox faith can be articulated in English, just as it has been articulated in many other languages. But each language has its challenges; and English has a set of challenges faced less by, for example, Slavonic, which is much closer to Greek in form. In many contexts, these challenges can be overcome by careful and effective glosses -- for example, glossing 'Trinity' so that it is not taken to mean 'triune God' (the latter being a thoroughly non-patristic concept). But with some terms right at the heart of the faith, there is a real question, to my mind, as to whether English indeed has any equivalent that will successfully convey the meaning of the Greek without distorting it. I know of no satisfactory term to use for nous; and in my own writings, I am extremely uncomfortable translating either ousia or hypostasis, since 'substance/essence' and 'person' are in fact not what the Greek means. This is not to admit of Hellenism, but simply to question the nuance of language. Of course, the terms were not originally Christianised when they were taken by in Greek by the Church; but the Church has had some 2,000 years to Christianise their nuance. If something similar is to be done in English, we must think carefully about the terms we are to use -- and perhaps, yes, question whether leaving some terms 'foreign' to common English might not be of use, in ensuring that we treat them as other-than-ordinary when considering how to articulate the faith.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Nina]

3) I agree that a monastery is different than a parish. But monasteries too have some degree of responsibility in the matter of language. How can I say this without sounding offensive? I think there are a few considerations. In this point I am, for all pratical purposes, speaking of the Elder Ephrem monasteries in America.

The great proliferation of Greek-speaking monasteries in America is of little benefit to the aspiring monastic who does not speak Greek. He (or she) cannot join one of these monasteries unless he is willing to learn a foreign language. This effectively limits the pool of future monastics in such monasteries to those people who know Greek. This is fine, but it does send the message that, "We want Greeks." Am I making a judgmental jump to this conclusion? Yes, probably so. But I don't think it's a terribly unreasonable jump: do any non-Greek speakers join monasteries which use only Greek in the services? Or, to put it another way, is it reasonable to expect an American English-speaker to join a monastery in which he cannot worship in his own language? (This was one of my concerns when I was younger: If I were to become a monastic, where would I go? The choices of English-speaking monasteries with, say, half a dozen or more monks are very few.)

First, you are not a monk as you mention. Second, you speak like the only monasteries here are those of Geronda Ephraim and there is no other possibility to start new monasteries which speak only English. As we know there are monasteries which use only English here.


There is also the issue of visitors who do not understand the language. I said more than once that these monasteries, with their facilities and so forth, make themselves particularly open to visitors. When these visitors inevitably arrive, they will not (unless they know Greek) understand the services. This is fine, I suppose -- if I visit the house of a foreigner, that person is well within their rights to speak their own language. But I would think that hospitality would prevail and at least some English would be used.

You know... we have always the opportunity to be larger.


I have read that Fr. Daniel Byantoro's parishes in Indonesia use local languages, some Greek, and even a bit of English if there is an English-speaking visitor. When I visited an all-Arabic-speaking parish (full of Syrian/Lebanese immigrants) in London on Pentecost two years ago, the priest made a point of singing one litany and reading one of the kneeling prayers in English because he knew that my wife and I did not understand Arabic. I was touched by the courtesy. No, I should not necessarily have expected such accomodation, but it was much appreciated nonetheless.

Yes this has happened to me too, but again you are juxtaposing a parish to a monastery. There are stricter rules in a monastery. Yes, there are books of etiquette about gracious hosts, but there are books of etiquette about being a gracious guest also.



As I said above, I probably should not have given the specific name of the monastery and abbot which I criticized. I do not think I should be forbidden to question or critique an assertion simply because it was made by a member of the clergy, though.

Yes, we are not forbidden. But we must be careful since here is a public forum and while you and I might have honest disposition, there might be other people who might be scandalized by us, or others who for the lack of full knowledge might take those words and perpetrate cheap gossip.


As for covering the sin of a priest or bishop... There are patristic sayings which encourage this, but I think such sentiments can be abused. Here I am speaking not of the present discussion but in a much more general sense. Clergy cannot engage in vice and expect to "get away with it" because they are clergy. Small sins should be covered; this is true. But if anyone -- clergyman or otherwise -- is guilty of abuse, theft, or any other serious offense, they should be held accountable.

I guess this is a matter of personal choice... Like a movie director, or a script choose to allow the main character to decide. I am sure God will use our decisions for good. For me I tend to agree with St. Constantine the Great and btw I have had no blessing to have a priest, monastic in my family so I have no personal interest involved.

[Father David Moser]

Let me try to just make a series of points, some of which are only tangentially related:

1) I believe that people should be able to understand the services. If a parish has mostly English-speakers, then most of the service should be in English. If the parish has people whose primary language is something other than English, then they should be accomodated as well. Multilingual services in multilingual parishes are very appropriate. Monolingual services in places where a sizeable percentage of the parish does not understand the language in question are, I would argue, not sufficient to meet the needs of the people.

2) The chief reason for maintaining exclusively (or near-exclusively) foreign-language services in America should not be that the language is holier than or superior to English, since such a principle contradicts the tradition of the Church as evidenced by the Septuagint, St. Paul, Ss. Cyril & Methodius, St. Innocent, and many others.

3) I agree that a monastery is different than a parish. But monasteries too have some degree of responsibility in the matter of language. How can I say this without sounding offensive? I think there are a few considerations. In this point I am, for all pratical purposes, speaking of the Elder Ephrem monasteries in America.


Thank you for pulling out these points so that the discussion can continue in a more productive manner.

I would like to engage, at least the first point. This is a very tricky situation. What if a parish is founded by elders of the WWII immigration who spent their own blood, sweat, tears and hard earned money to build their parish. By now many of those elders are gone but some remain, as well as their children who also sacrificed to maintain the parish through many lean and difficult years. All of a sudden, in the last 20 years there has been an influx of English-speaking convert Orthodox who decide its time to do away with the old Slavonic ways (having been raised during the cold war they are fully indoctrinated with "Russian = bad; American = good" mentality). They outnumber the older founding families, get themselves elected to the parish council and then pressure the priest to change the language of the services. The older families are want to keep their dearly bought treasure - the opportunity to pray in the language of their heart - but because it is now a majority of Americans, well its time to switch over (after all we live in the USA and we speak English here!).

Conversely how about an American mission parish established with lots of zeal and fervor by a group of English - speaking converts. They want to pray, of course, but they are also full of evangelistic zeal to bring their new-found Orthodox faith to the world. But with modern life the way it is, after about 10 years 90% of the founding families have moved away but the Church has remained, barely surviving on the (sometimes sacrificial) contributions of the sorely decreased membership. Then, all of a sudden, new Russian immigrants (since I'm in the Russian Church this is what I know) arrive, see that there is an "American mission of the Russian Orthodox Church" in town and begin to come. They donate their money, their labor, their love and as the Russian community grows a great deal of evangelization takes place so that the majority of the membership is now Russian speaking. While the new Russians were at first just thankful to have a place to pray - no matter the language - now they too would like some of their own language in the service. They even point out that services with more Slavonic would bring in more of the new Russian immigrants thereby fulfilling the strong missionary mandate of the parish. This is opposed severely by the remaining Americans who complain at even a word of Slavonic.

In the above examples which language "serves the needs of the people"

I wanted to bring out here what has been and remains one of the thorniest, most sensitive issues in Orthodox parish life today.

Fr David Moser

[Matthew Namee]

Fr. David,

Your examples are very illustrative of the practical challenges with regard to language in America. Obviously, in both cases, one group cannot be wholly satisfied while the other is wholly unsatisfied. Both must be ministered to as best as possible. Compromise is essential, and both groups should be sympathetic to this. St. Nikolai Velimirovich said regarding this issue, "evolution not revolution." Sweeping, unilateral changes, even when "correct," almost always are disastrous (e.g. Patriarch Nikon's reforms). But it's easy for me to say "compromise"; I'm sure it's far more challenging if you're actually in the situation.

What I would hope is that all parties involved in such a situation would have the goodwill and sympathy to understand the needs of the other. The new converts need to respect their elderly ethnic Orthodox brethren; I've met too many converts who write off older cradle Orthodox as "ethno-centric." Likewise the new immigrants (or the old ethnic Orthodox) should be willing to accomodate, at least to a reasonable degree, the needs of their English-speaking fellow parishioners. Mutual love and respect is the answer, however utopian that sounds.

[Andreas Moran]

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations: Matthew 28:19

. . . we do hear them speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God: Acts 2:11

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus: Galatians 3:28

[Father David Moser]

First, you are not a monk as you mention. Second, you speak like the only monasteries here are those of Geronda Ephraim and there is no other possibility to start new monasteries which speak only English. As we know there are monasteries which use only English here.

Lets bring in a parallel example here - that of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville NY and its dependency Holy Cross Skete in Wayne, WVa. Holy Trinity is a very Russian place being the main monastery and seminary of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. When you go to Holy Trinity, you will find that the services are, for the most part, all in Slavonic, whether they are in the main cathedral or the monastic chapel. There is a separate church in the lower level of the Cathedral building where English services are now given. When you are at the monastery you will hear mostly Russian conversation and you see someone outside, chances are they will address you first in Russian and only switch to English after it becomes apparent that you don't understand.

Holy Cross is an English-speaking skete of Holy Trinity. Without boring you all with the story of how they were founded and eventually ended up where they are, let it be sufficient to say that as an "American monastery" they were struggling. It was only after coming under the shelter of the monastic tradition of Holy Trinity that they actually gained stability and now are full to overflowing with monks and aspirants.

The above two examples demonstrate a couple of things. One is how a primarily foreign language monastic institution can exist in an English language country without compromising its own ethnic/linguistic heritage. The other is an example of the importance of the new convert/English foundations having a living dynamic link to "old world" monastic roots.

Fr David Moser

[Nina]

Mutual love and respect is the answer, however utopian that sounds.

No, Matthew. That does not sound utopian to me! That's the answer. If we are to behave like the Orthodox faith urges us to. We can even be more extreme and behave like saints, but that's another story. We at least need an Orthodox basic behavior. I read that one of the fathers said that we must love others as brothers, and we must love the Orthodox twice as such since they are twice related to us.

[Andreas Moran]

A further problem is that where it is decided to use English, there is then the question, what kind of English? That question has been hotly debated in England. I'm blessed in that I worship where there is, obviously, no debate about this and traditional English is used, as prescribed by Elder Sophrony who loved this usage.

[Anthony Stokes]

Matthew, et al., if I may chime in here a little late...




The great proliferation of Greek-speaking monasteries in America is of little benefit to the aspiring monastic who does not speak Greek. He (or she) cannot join one of these monasteries unless he is willing to learn a foreign language. This effectively limits the pool of future monastics in such monasteries to those people who know Greek. This is fine, but it does send the message that, "We want Greeks." Am I making a judgmental jump to this conclusion? Yes, probably so. But I don't think it's a terribly unreasonable jump: do any non-Greek speakers join monasteries which use only Greek in the services?


I can answer this one, and that is yes. I have known several non-Greek speaking people join Greek monasteries here in America. And, they do end up learning Greek.



There is also the issue of visitors who do not understand the language. I said more than once that these monasteries, with their facilities and so forth, make themselves particularly open to visitors.

Speaking for myself here, as a non-Greek speaking person, one of the main I reasons that I visit the Greek monasteries is to hear the services in Greek. I visited St. Anthony's for my nameday a few years ago. Now, I grew up in the GOA, so I can understand a tiny bit of Greek, mainly the liturgy. But a 5 hour vigil, I definitely cannot understand that. But I loved it. Byzantine chant is at its best in Greek. It just doesn't fit well into English because of the rules of the melodies, and the fact that they were written for Greek. Similar to what was mentioned in an earlier post on this thread with the anaphora in Slavonic. "Svyat" is one syllable, while "Holy" is obviosly two. The music has to be changed to fit the English words. This is the same with Byzantine chant.

Well, why is that important, you might ask? The monks at these monasteries that do the chanting, mainly only have the Byzantine notation in Greek. Now, Fr. Ephraim (not the elder) is working very hard to make English settings of Byzantine chant, but it is a very long project, and it will take many more years to do everything.

It is also important to note that many of the monks, especially Elder Ephraim, are not fluent in English.

But, again, for me, I would never want them to switch to English in the monasteries, since to me, they are little bits of Athos. I would feel the same in Jordanville. I have never been to a service there (I visited once in high school, but the monks were all in SF for the canonization of St. John), but I would love to go to hear the service in Slavonic sung by a monastic choir.

Just my thoughts.

Thanks,
Subdeacon Anthony

[Denys Kosovsky]

But he said that Greek was better than English, more precise, etc., and that does not seem to me to be an appropriate answer. Should we all, Greeks and non-Greeks alike, switch to Greek because it is more precise? Were Ss. Cyril and Methodius wrong to translate the services from Greek to a Slavonic tongue? Or is it acceptable to serve in languages other than Greek? If so, I don't see how the abbot's argument stands.

Hey everyone,

To start with I would like to say that the services in America should be performed in English if the audience is also English-speaking. It should also be done in both languages if the audience is split, as it is done in my parish, London All Saints Cathedral. After all, if the Church is to serve and attract Americans it must at least speak to them in their own language. The apostles had the gift of the tongues, and so should any modern preachers.

However! English can never be the language of the Church! The reason for Greek and Slavonic as the languages of choice by the Church is that they are highly suited for theology, just trust me that their grammar makes them so. We should all really be praying in Hebrew, but Greek and Slavonic are the next best thing. The question of languages is not new! In every country they want to update the language. This is strictly forbidden for two reasons, first, prayer is preferable in a dead language because it is not used for swearing, and more importantly, because ONLY Greek and Slav languages can be used to calculate the number of the antichrist correctly!!!

Also it would be good to understand that Cyril and Methodius knew both languages and designed Slavonic with a purpose in mind - worshiping God. Slavonic is so highly sophisticated, for example, that ONE word can be enough to express the whole of the Christian theology.

Dennis

[Matthew Namee]

The question of languages is not new! In every country they want to update the language. This is strictly forbidden for two reasons, first, prayer is preferable in a dead language because it is not used for swearing, and more importantly, because ONLY Greek and Slav languages can be used to calculate the number of the antichrist correctly!!!

Also it would be good to understand that Cyril and Methodius knew both languages and designed Slavonic with a purpose in mind - worshiping God. Slavonic is so highly sophisticated, for example, that ONE word can be enough to express the whole of the Christian theology.
Regarding the point about Antichrist -- Are you serious? One of the two major reasons why a dead language is preferable to a living one is that you can calculate an end times number? I don't agree with this at all.

As for dead languages in general, they were not always dead. When St. Paul wrote in Greek, he did so because the people to whom he ministered spoke Greek. The Greek used in church services was not always a dead Greek. In the Byzantine Empire, it was the language of the people, and yes, people cursed in it.

Ss. Cyril and Methodius did not create a Slavonic alphabet. They created Glagolitic, a precursor to Slavonic. It doesn't even look much like Slavonic at all. And the reason they created it was to minister to the Slavs in a language they could understand.

What is the purpose of words and languages? Words are symbols which represent concepts. If the hearer does not understand the word, the intended concept will not be properly conveyed. The Apostles made sure to use words which their flocks understood. Likewise the great evangelists in Church history translated liturgical and theological texts into the living language of their people. The idea that a dead language is preferable to a living one is not consistent with the command to preach the Gospel to all nations. I am not saying that old Slavonic and Greek need to be immediately discarded; still, we should consider whether they are fulfilling their intended function.

Finally, Mr. Kosovsky, what Slavonic word represents "the whole of Christian theology"? I know that Greek lends itself particularly well to philosophical and theological discourse, but even Greek is not so perfect that a single word can serve as the sum of all truth.

[Andrew]

I spend quite a bit of time at the monastery that Matthew was talking about earlier. Geronda Ephraim's monasteries use Greek, and will continue to do so in the future. I do not speak Greek, but I have no problems following the services, and I actually prefer Greek to English. Every English speaking parish I have gone to has a different translation in use, some that I really like, others that distract and irritate me. I have no such problems with Greek or Slavonic! In addition, the monasteries are not xenophobic in the least. At the one I go to, there are a lot of Americans, along with Russians, Greeks, Romanians, Arabs, and such. All are included and treated the same.

It is good to have the Liturgy in every language! It is also good to preserve the traditions of our fathers, one being liturgical languages.

In addition, Geronda Ephraim's monasteries are international. The monks are from all over the world. People visit from all over the world - from Greece, South Africa, Australia, Europe, Russia, etc. In addition, you have monks passing through the monasteries visiting from Palestine, Agion Oros, and other places. I think it is very fair for the monasteries to use Greek in the Liturgy.

In addition, Geronda Ephraim's monasteries act in a way that stabilizes and aids English speaking monasteries and parishes, especially the English Serbian monasteries.

The monasteries attract all types of people, including Americans who don't know Greek. I am one of them!

[Herman Blaydoe]

I spend quite a bit of time at the monastery that Matthew was talking about earlier. Geronda Ephraim's monasteries use Greek, and will continue to do so in the future. I do not speak Greek, but I have no problems following the services, and I actually prefer Greek to English. Every English speaking parish I have gone to has a different translation in use, some that I really like, others that distract and irritate me. I have no such problems with Greek or Slavonic! In addition, the monasteries are not xenophobic in the least. At the one I go to, there are a lot of Americans, along with Russians, Greeks, Romanians, Arabs, and such. All are included and treated the same.

As much as I admire the efforts of Geronda Ephraim, I admire the Holy Apostle Paul more.


1 Corinthians 14:13-19 Therefore let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is the conclusion then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the understanding. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding. Otherwise, if you bless with the spirit, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say “Amen” at your giving of thanks, since he does not understand what you say? For you indeed give thanks well, but the other is not edified. I thank my God I speak with tongues more than you all; yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I may teach others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.

You may be able to follow the structure of the service, but you still miss out on the TEACHING of the service. There are prokimena, troparia, kontakia, stikeria that are filled with the teachings of the Holy Church. They are there to be heard and to be understood! I have been in more than one situation where the person standing near me who was raised in the Church, but only hearing the services in Slavonic or Greek, who had NO IDEA of the teachings of the Church. One horrified woman actually turned to me and asked: "Do we REALLY believe that?" upon hearing the tropar and kontak for the first time in English.


It is good to have the Liturgy in every language! It is also good to preserve the traditions of our fathers, one being liturgical languages.

It is good to preserve the WORDS of our fathers. their thoughts and ideas, and convey them to the present and future generations, so that they can be understood and acted upon, not merely dusted off and looked at like in a museum. Having the original writing in the original language is, of course, a good thing to ensure that what is being taught in the local language actually corresponds to the original author's thoughts, but God does not demand that everyone learn Hebrew to be a Christian. God is bigger than language.

Here I step into controversial territory, but I fear that this concept of "holy languages" is merely an attempt to put God in a box, to try and contain the Uncontainable. It is so much easier to simply hear the pretty Slavonic and admire the artistry of the music and overlook the meaning of the words! If we understand, then we are FORCED to act! We must choose, to acknowledge the words and act accordingly, or ignore the words, not change our lives and acknowledge the conflict!


In addition, Geronda Ephraim's monasteries are international. The monks are from all over the world. People visit from all over the world - from Greece, South Africa, Australia, Europe, Russia, etc. In addition, you have monks passing through the monasteries visiting from Palestine, Agion Oros, and other places. I think it is very fair for the monasteries to use Greek in the Liturgy.

It may be "fair", but I still question the edification. I know of one very sweet, very "spiritual" young lady who loves to go to St. Anthony Monastery. She is not Orthodox, not even Christian, but she really "gets off" on the "spirituality" and atmosphere. Not understanding the words means she does not have to deal with them. She can get her spiritual "high" and walk away totally unaffected. Whadupwidat?


In addition, Geronda Ephraim's monasteries act in a way that stabilizes and aids English speaking monasteries and parishes, especially the English Serbian monasteries.

The monasteries attract all types of people, including Americans who don't know Greek. I am one of them!

This I do agree with, but it is the uncompromising Athonite spirit that attracts and "stabilizes", not necessarily the use of a specific "liturgical language". But I think the mission of an Orthodox monastery in some ways is very different from the mission of the parish. You can get away with forcing a "liturgical language" upon people who seek you out. But if you are trying to actively bring the world in, making them learn a whole new (dead?) language first is not going to grow the Church very much. That is not how the Apostles did it. The miracle of Pentecost was not that everybody suddenly understood one language, it was that the Gospel was being proclaimed in many languages!

One way to "preserve" something is to kill it, put it in a preserving solution and keep it in a dark cool place. But He is the God of the living, not of the dead (languages?)!

[Nina]

But He is the God of the living, not of the dead (languages?)!

Ummm... Liturgical/Patristic Greek dead???!!!! It is as much dead as are our Fathers/Saints who spoke it and left endless spiritual treasuries to us.

But Herman do not worry, when I meet you I will only speak in modern Greek. :P

P.S Thinking about it... some people tried to come up with Esperanto... which can be classified as modern... and thinking more about it... Antichrist will speak/reach masses in modern languages also. Uffffff in religious matters it is wise to stay away from the dichotomy dead vs. modern of linguistics.

[Father David Moser]

Between Herman and Andrew, there is certainly a great deal of middle ground. One thing that must be recognized in this discussion is that a monastery is not a parish - it does not necessarily exist as a "missionary venture". If the services in the monastery meet the needs of the monastics (whether in Greek, Slavonic, English or some other language) then it is of little importance whether they cater to the prevailing culture of the visitors.

OTOH, a parish is a whole different animal. The parish is the visible extension of the Church into the world and thus should strive to address the prevailing culture (especially in terms of language) Thus in this county, while I am not scandalized or upset at the use of non-English in a monastic setting, I do believe that each and every parish should strive to use at least some (if not all) English. In my own parish there are lots of "new arrivals" who have very limited English and yet the services are primarily in English (for a variety of reasons). But we do add in some Slavonic to address the needs of those for whom it is their language of prayer. The "mix" of languages in a parish is dependent on the make up and purpose of the parish, but it should never be completely out of reach of the visitor who comes in - because we are all missionaries to the world around us.

Fr David Moser

[Herman Blaydoe]

Ummm... Liturgical/Patristic Greek dead???!!!! It is as much dead as are our Fathers/Saints who spoke it and left endless spiritual treasuries to us.

But Herman do not worry, when I meet you I will only speak in modern Greek. :P


but those that understood him smiled at one another and
shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me
(William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar)


P.S Thinking about it... some people tried to come up with Esperanto... which can be classified as modern... and thinking more about it... Antichrist will speak/reach masses in modern languages also. Uffffff in religious matters it is wise to stay away from the dichotomy dead vs. modern of linguistics.

A "lving" language changes over time. New words are added, some words change meanings, and other words drop out of popular usage. Change over time happens to living things. Time does not cause change, it is change that causes time! The value of a "dead" language, one that is NOT used day-to-day is that it does NOT change. Deriving and understanding the meaning of a particular word is made easier because that meaning does not change. It helps us bring the past into the present. But that is what we are meant to do, I think, not merely "preserve" the past, but bring that past into the present, not drag the present back into the past.

Or so it seems to this bear of little brain.

Herman the Pooh

[Nina]

When we got married, 90% of the service and the entire sermon was in the mother tongue of my husband. Why? Because we the Orthodox did not have a problem being gracious and allow those who were guests in this Orthodox Sacrament understand and comprehend everything. The priest could speak superbly Greek but when we were asked I said that I rather have the service in the language of the people who were not familiar with an Orthodox wedding, since we the Orthodox clan know by heart almost the entire service. The sermon was also explaining to the guests what just happened and what everything symbolizes in an Orthodox wedding. So it was beautiful and all were happy. Especially those who would not have understood Greek, or an Orthodox service - who were actually the majority. They profusely and fervently for many days commented on the Orthodox wedding they attended. And when we got back from the honeymoon we got lots of great feedback.

But I would never bid adieu to the Liturgical/Patristic Greek for spiritual reasons. Yes there is a time to be gracious and there is a time to think more selfishly about one's spiritual needs. I do not know what I would give up just to have one of the monasteries of Geronda Ephraim nearby, or at least in my state. My experience like that of Andrew's is that it is actually a blessing to have such monasteries in the nearby.

[Andrew James]

It seems that these monasteries are choosing to restrict themselves from wider missionary work. However this is their decision, and I can reluctantly live with it.

I would like to mention the following quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann that this thread to some extent reminded me of.
“To recover the missionary dimension of the Church is today’s greatest imperative. We have to recover a very basic truth: that the Church is essentially Mission, that the very roots of her life are in the commandment of Christ: ‘Go Ye therefore and teach all nations’ (Matt. 28:19). A Christian community that would lose this missionary zeal and purpose, that would become selfish and self-centered, that would limit itself to ’satisfying the spiritual needs of its members’, that would identify itself completely with a nation, a society, a social or ethnic group – is on its way to spiritual decadence and death, because the essential spiritual need of a Christian is precisely that of sharing the life and the Truth with as many men as possible and ultimately with the whole world. Mission thus is the organic need and task of the Church in the world, the real meaning of Church’s presence in history between the first and the second advents of her Lord, or, in other terms, the meaning of Christian history. Obviously not all members of the Church can go and preach in the literal sense of the word. But all can have a concern for the missionary function of the Church, feel responsible for it, help and support it. In this respect each diocese, each parish and each member of the Church are involved in the missionary ministry.”

[Matthew Namee]

In response to Nina's posts, I would respectfully refer back to some things I said earlier -- words are symbols, nothing more and nothing less. There is nothing inherently holy about any language. Greek was the tongue of the Gentiles, pagans, until Jews of the Diaspora and then the Apostles co-opted it and made it their own.

If a language can be holy, then why are we not speaking Aramaic? Why is the liturgy not sung in Hebrew? The precedent of the Apostles and saints overwhelmingly testifies to the preference for a language which the people can understand. For if they do not understand, does it not sound like nonsense?

There are no holy words or magic words. It is the meaning behind the words that is holy. Our English pronunciation of "Jesus Christ" is not at all the way that it would have been pronounced in the Lord's day. And even the Greek form of the Lord's name has been modified -- deliberately, by the Apostle Paul -- to conform to Greek. The word "Christ" does not exist in Aramaic or Hebrew; it is another word entirely. I cannot see how we can on the one hand use Greek or Slavonic or what have you -- languages into which the Gospel was translated -- and on the other hand argue that these languages themselves have a value beyond being simply means to convey concepts.

One of the most beautiful services of the church year is the Agape Vespers on Pascha. To hear the Gospel preached in so many languages is a joy, because it bears witness to the universality of the message; it is proclaimed to everyone, regardless of what language they happen to speak. I think this is one of the defining aspects of Christianity, and of Orthodoxy in particular.

[Andreas Moran]

these languages themselves have a value beyond being simply means to convey concepts.

Some means are better than others, and those who I know who know about these things tell me persuasively that Greek and Slavonic are the best means to convey theological concepts. English is relatively poor at doing so, French, I'm told, rather poorer than English. Church Slavonic, my wife tells me, was specifically designed for its purpose and conveys depths of meaning with beauty in ways beyond what modern Russian can do. I believe the same is true of Church Greek. If these qualities in Greek and Slavonic are accepted, does this mean that they are 'holy'? It's worth bearing in mind the meaning and etymology of 'holy'. It's from OE for 'whole', and it can correspond in meaning to the Latin 'sanctus' in meaning 'set aside'. If these languages are set aside for religious use, as they are, are they not then necessarily holy?


It is the meaning behind the words that is holy.


Yes, but it seems that these two languages are apt to express and convey meaning more profoundly than others.

None of this means that we who are not proficient in these languages are somehow second-class Orthodox or that our salvation depends upon learning them- of course not. But we should not be in a hurry to assume that 'understanding the words' of services is what is necessary to know what the divine services are about. Engagement with the content of the divine services can operate at a mystical level beyond simple comprehension. Understanding the words of the services at the level of dictionary definition does not lead to real, deep, spiritual understanding; that can only come from exegesis, not the dictionary.

[Nina]

To Matthew Namee: What you say in your post is irrelevant in connection to my posts. Since I replied to Herman's saying about God being the God of living languages. I was just reminding about the bigger picture and not a narrow view of creating antagonism in languages which have been/are used to glorify God. Actually this is so strange for me that then I get amused.

So Matthew please do not say things to me which I know already and which are common sense. Do not get defensive since I did not mean to put down any languages. I just tried to remind us to be more careful when we speak about Patristic Greek since that is what Herman was discussing in his post. Ok?

To all: There is no reason to compare and elevate or denigrate languages in Orthodoxy. Also there is no reason to judge Geronda Ephraim so publicly. It is not polite, it is not Christian and it is not charitable to juxtapose the Apostle to Geronda. Heavenly things are not caustic to each other, but work in concordance for the glory of God. Since our judgment differs from God's judgment maybe we should refrain from judging Geronda's work here. Gratitude is also a lesson Christ reminded us of.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Some personal thoughts on this subject.

I believe that it is essential that the Orthodox services be held in the language of the country in which they are being held.

It is simple logic that you have to be able to understand something in order to appreciate it.

Having said that I would like to say that the Greek language is a truly beautiful language. It is very expressive and most of the non-Greek members of this forum know it anyway because of the enormous number of English words that are really Greek.

If my parents were not Greek and I were a convert Orthodox I believe that the first thing I would do is start to learn Greek. Why?

In order to hear and understand the Liturgy that was written in Greek and to be able to enjoy the beauty of it.

"Except those of the Armenians, Nestorians, and Abyssinians, all Eastern liturgies were originally written in Greek."



There is really no comparison. English or whichever native language is applicable in order to understand better but Greek for the beauty and for the hidden meanings that make everything crystal clear.

A little secret : once you start to learn Greek you will continue all your life. It is like a hidden treasure that you dig up, nugget by nugget. Just when it seems that I have some understanding of it, I discover something else, and realize that after 30 odd years I am still just at the beginning.


Effie

p.s. Once upon a time it was common practice to learn the Greek language in university, but sadly this is no longer true. Thomas Jefferson was a Greek scholar. Just one example.

[Olga]

May I offer the following, from my many years of experience of both Greek and Slavonic services, and, in more recent years, English as well:



Some means are better than others, and those who I know who know about these things tell me persuasively that Greek and Slavonic are the best means to convey theological concepts. English is relatively poor at doing so, French, I'm told, rather poorer than English. Church Slavonic, my wife tells me, was specifically designed for its purpose and conveys depths of meaning with beauty in ways beyond what modern Russian can do. I believe the same is true of Church Greek. If these qualities in Greek and Slavonic are accepted, does this mean that they are 'holy'? It's worth bearing in mind the meaning and etymology of 'holy'. It's from OE for 'whole', and it can correspond in meaning to the Latin 'sanctus' in meaning 'set aside'. If these languages are set aside for religious use, as they are, are they not then necessarily holy?


A language is not, in and of itself, holy. It is what is expressed in that language which is holy, as well as how it is expressed. To take some negative examples: It is common, if not all too frequent, to attend a Greek service where the Byzantine chant is spoilt by one chanter who insists on singing through his nose during solo melismatic pieces; to attend a Slavonic service where the choir is off-key, or sings in a baroque, operatic style devoid of compunction and reverence; to attend an English service where the readers stumble over the archaicisms of full Tudor English. Yet there are countless times I have attended services conducted in either of these languages, and had my hair stand on end for all the right reasons.

What is my point? In all cases, it is not the language itself which inherently makes the service good or otherwise for the soul , it is not the mere "aesthetics" of the sound produced by the singing and reading, it is the whole "package deal". Orthodoxy involves all the senses, not just our hearing. Sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. All are, or should be, participating.



Yes, but it seems that these two languages are apt to express and convey meaning more profoundly than others.


The comparatively late entry of English as a liturgical language used by the Orthodox Church, and the inherent mutability of English has led to a wide range of translations, ranging from the full Tudor of Isaac Lambertsen, through to versions which border on the undignified. By contrast, Greek and Slavonic texts are essentially immutable: Firstly, these languages, as is Latin, are no longer spoken, vernacular languages, so these languages themselves have become "standardised" and do not suffer from the fluid nature of modern English, or the vagaries of any other "living" language. Greek, being the language of the Septuagint and of the New Testament, and the dominant language of the Patristic period, became the "default" language for liturgical use, as much because for some centuries it was the lingua franca of the Christian world, before Latin overtook it. Is it any wonder, then, that so many doctrinal and theological concepts were originally, and continue to be expressed in Greek terms?

Ironically, the very mutability of English makes it even easier for such ideas to be expressed, whether Greek terms (such as Theotokos) or "native" English alternatives are used. English, perhaps more than any other language on earth, is renowned for its wholesale appropriation of words and ideas from all over the place. Is it truly so difficult for such a mongrel language to be incapable of expressing Orthodox concepts in a comprehensible, beautiful and reverent way? If it can be done for a language like German or Japanese, why not for English?



None of this means that we who are not proficient in these languages are somehow second-class Orthodox or that our salvation depends upon learning them- of course not. But we should not be in a hurry to assume that 'understanding the words' of services is what is necessary to know what the divine services are about. Engagement with the content of the divine services can operate at a mystical level beyond simple comprehension. Understanding the words of the services at the level of dictionary definition does not lead to real, deep, spiritual understanding; that can only come from exegesis, not the dictionary.


I sense a tautology here. Was not the commission of the Apostles to go out and preach to all, in their own languages? Were they not given the gift of speaking in languages not their own, but completely comprehensible to the peoples in Jerusalem gathered there at Pentecost? If comprehension of what is read, said and sung is not essential, then what is the point?

[Effie Ganatsios]

As for dead languages in general, they were not always dead. When St. Paul wrote in Greek, he did so because the people to whom he ministered spoke Greek. The Greek used in church services was not always a dead Greek. In the Byzantine Empire, it was the language of the people, and yes, people cursed in it.

Ss. Cyril and Methodius did not create a Slavonic alphabet. They created Glagolitic, a precursor to Slavonic. It doesn't even look much like Slavonic at all. And the reason they created it was to minister to the Slavs in a language they could understand.

What is the purpose of words and languages? Words are symbols which represent concepts. If the hearer does not understand the word, the intended concept will not be properly conveyed. The Apostles made sure to use words which their flocks understood. Likewise the great evangelists in Church history translated liturgical and theological texts into the living language of their people. The idea that a dead language is preferable to a living one is not consistent with the command to preach the Gospel to all nations. I am not saying that old Slavonic and Greek need to be immediately discarded; still, we should consider whether they are fulfilling their intended function.

Finally, Mr. Kosovsky, what Slavonic word represents "the whole of Christian theology"? I know that Greek lends itself particularly well to philosophical and theological discourse, but even Greek is not so perfect that a single word can serve as the sum of all truth.

Greek is a "dead language"???

I believe that if you were to start studying Greek you would find that this is absolutely untrue.

A language develops over time. A negative comparison between the Greek and English languages is not helpful here but you have to admit that even the English language has developed and subsequently changed over the years. Can you read a book by Chaucer? Chaucer died in 1400 - 600 odd years ago. Is English a dead language? Think of the thousands of years of the Greek language..... it is anything but dead. Depending on which school they attend, our children learn Ancient Greek from an early age. At the same time they learn Modern Greek. It is the same language, just as Modern English is the same language as Middle English.

An example of the English of the 14th century :

So faren we, if I shal seye the sothe."

Another reason to learn Greek : Not only the liturgies but the gospels were originally written in Greek - not Aramaic.

"Christianity was born in Israel. By the end of the first century, it had spread throughout the Roman Empire and was armed with a new holy book: the New Testament. This collection of inspired Scriptures had been added to the Hebrew Scriptures, the Tenach, which Christians call the Old Testament. The new writings, composed primarily of the Gospels and the Epistles, were distributed widely in the Greek language. It seems fairly certain that the Gospels of Luke and John, the Book of Acts, the Epistles, and the Book of Revelation were originally written in Greek, but what about the Gospels of Matthew and Mark?

The oldest known manuscripts of Matthew and Mark are in Greek. According to recent scholarship, Greek fragments of these two Gospels have been verified as dating from as early as the 60s A.D. Some scholars have argued that these Gospels were originally written in Aramaic and later translated into Greek. If that is the case, no extant copies or fragments of the Aramaic text have been found. The only evidence we have is that the original text of Matthew and Mark was in Greek."

In my opinion, there are two good reasons to learn Greek when someone adopts the Orthodox religion -firstly, the fact that nothing has changed from the original texts, and secondly, the beauty of this language.

You cannot trust some recent translations of the New Testament. One translation I have (I bought it in 1970) refers to the Turks of Asia Minor at the time of St. Paul. There were no "Turks" in Asia Minor at that time but the translators of this particular edition thought that they were "correcting" the original text in light of the reality of the present time.

"10th - 15th century: Turks migrate into parts of Asia Minor and later on into Southeast Europe."

"The name first enters the European vocabulary through Byzantine sources, which called Turks a number of barbarian tribes migrating from the Asian steppes to Asia Minor, the Crimea and the Balkans - the Avars, Pechenegs, Huns and Khazars. Those invaders spoke dialects of language very close to modern Turkish."

Think how wonderful it would be to read what was originally written and not something that originated in some translator's mind.

[Andreas Moran]

Orthodoxy involves all the senses, not just our hearing. Sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing. All are, or should be, participating.

I had something of the sort in mind in when I wrote my post (too early in the morning!). Yes, of course there's far more to participating in a service than following the words, which is why many of us can stand and feel grace (occasionally) even if we understand little of the words.


Firstly, these languages, as is Latin, are no longer spoken

I understood (from my wife) that Church Slavonic was never a spoken vernacular but deliberately composed for the Church - is that right?


Is it truly so difficult for such a mongrel language to be incapable of expressing Orthodox concepts in a comprehensible, beautiful and reverent way?

I think English can be made so, more or less; in my opinion, the texts used as the monastery here do so.


If comprehension of what is read, said and sung is not essential, then what is the point?

I was hoping to put across the notion that knowing the meaning of words and phrases can be on different levels. I hesitate to give an example off the top of my head but take 'Do good O Lord in Thy good pleasure unto Sion and let the walls of Jerusalem be builded' from Ps 50/51. A person will know what the words mean but wouldn't understanding the spiritual meaning behind the verses mean going further than plain dictionary meaning?

[Father David Moser]

I understood (from my wife) that Church Slavonic was never a spoken vernacular but deliberately composed for the Church - is that right?

This is the same as I was taught by Archbishop Alypy of Chicago (ROCOR) who is a highly respected scholar of Church Slavonic (he wrote the Slavonic textbook which is still used today at Holy Trinity Monastery and which has now also available in English) He maintains that Church Slavonic is the only language that was created for the sole purpose of glorifying God and was never a vernacular used for "common" purposes.

Fr David Moser

[Eric Peterson]

There are several languages used liturgically for several reasons in America, where I live. I understand the arguments for keeping Greek, Slavonic, Arabic, etc. But, I think it comes down to how we want or expect people to understand the faith expressed through liturgy. It really is only a matter of opinion how important it is for one to be able to understand the words of the liturgy to understand the faith--understanding being interpreted more broadly, and not in the strict intellectual sense, but in the more fundamental sense of spiritual understanding.

In my view, as much as an unknown language like Slavonic or Greek might be able to convey certain things, there is only so much I can take before I lose the ability to concentrate on the liturgy if it's in a language I don't understand. (Personally, I can deal with liturgical Greek fairly well up to a point, but things which aren't repeated as often like stichera are totally unfamiliar to me, and so I lose the meaning and the teaching). I think that's the case for a lot of people, especially people who might be attending church for the first time--even many "cradle" Orthodox have left the Church and gone to non-Orthodox churches because they never understood the liturgy, and thus did not gain a very deep understanding of their faith.

I think the question we need to ask is, just how many barriers do we want to erect for people? Is Orthodoxy for everyone, or only for those who can make the extra effort--beyond acquiring a change of heart and faith--to learn a new language (and even culture).

Perhaps it would be easier to take for those who want everything in Greek and Slavonic if English translations were all of the same quality--majestic, liturgical, accurate, etc. But even if they're not, it's easier to further explain an English word to English speakers than a non-English word to those who may not have the same interest in languages.

[Andreas Moran]

Fr David wrote:
He maintains that Church Slavonic is the only language that was created for the sole purpose of glorifying God and was never a vernacular used for "common" purposes.

Does that make it holy?

[Matthew Namee]

Greek is a "dead language"???
Obviously modern Greek isn't a dead language, but isn't modern Greek a good bit different than Byzantine, Koine, Attic, Ionic, Homeric, and other manifestations of the Greek language? I took a year of Attic Greek in college, and I was told that it wouldn't do me any good if I actually went to Greece and tried to communicate. I'm not sure how parallel this would be to modern English versus Shakespearean English, King James English, Middle (Chaucer) English, Old English, etc., but I gather that almost all languages have "living" forms and "dead" (i.e. no longer actively spoken, no longer evolving) antecedents.

[Herman Blaydoe]

Does that make it holy?

Can one become holy without learning a "holy" language? Is it essential or "nice to have", or even necessary?

Little incomplete thoughts from a little incomplete brain.

Herman the Pooh

[Nina]

Can one become holy without learning a "holy" language? Is it essential or "nice to have", or even necessary?

Little incomplete thoughts from a little incomplete brain.

Herman the Pooh

No dear Herman it does not hinder your aim to theosis not knowing a language, or another. You do not understand what I am trying to say and my point. That is the point also I was trying to make because there is no reason to classify languages as dead or alive. Because if you ask linguists they would say to you that at least one of the modern language we speak today is formed by at least one of those "dead" languages. Take English for instance (since we are communicating in English here)
English = Old German, Latin, Greek and some more. So does that make English dead also? This is why I find this idea of God being the God of "living" languages totally absurd because does not make sense. And it is even more absurd to classify languages which have been/are being used to glorify God as "dead"!!!!!!!!! That goes for more newer, or older languages. Exasperately I beg that you (all) see the point that you can not put down languages in name of patriotism. Patriotism is very good but does not have to impact our Orthodox mindset since then we may fall into the heresy of philetism. It is really just some centimeters away.

[Andreas Moran]

The Greek of NT times and the Apostolic age is like water that flows in a stream. It started a long way away but it is the same water that comes to us. It is living water.


I'm not sure how parallel this would be to modern English versus Shakespearean English, King James English, Middle (Chaucer) English, Old English, etc.,

There's really not that much difference between late 16th century and early 17th century English and formal modern English; nothing like the difference between classical/koine Greek and modern demotic Greek, or between Church Slavonic and modern Russian (which got corrupted under communism). After all, kids in school in England read Shakespeare whose language can be more difficult than KJV. Chaucer I struggle with and really need a modernised text. Old English - no chance. But then church services before the Reformation were in Latin, so if we wanted to go back to 'Orthodox England' we'd have to have services in Latin!

[Effie Ganatsios]

Obviously modern Greek isn't a dead language, but isn't modern Greek a good bit different than Byzantine, Koine, Attic, Ionic, Homeric, and other manifestations of the Greek language? I took a year of Attic Greek in college, and I was told that it wouldn't do me any good if I actually went to Greece and tried to communicate. I'm not sure how parallel this would be to modern English versus Shakespearean English, King James English, Middle (Chaucer) English, Old English, etc., but I gather that almost all languages have "living" forms and "dead" (i.e. no longer actively spoken, no longer evolving) antecedents.

Mathew, liturgical Greek - the Greek that is used in church- is easily understood by all Greeks. Up until about 20- 30 years ago Katharevousa Greek was taught in all schools - it can be likened to High German if you will.

"Katharevousa (purified form) was set at a midpoint between Ancient Greek and the Modern Greek of the time. It stressed both a more ancient vocabulary and a simplified form of the archaic grammar. The first known use of katharevousa is in a work by the Greek polymath Nikephoros Theotokis, in 1796.[1]"

Even I understand it easily even though I started studying Greek when I was 22. When I say study I mean I taught myself.......

I have heard it said many times - especially on this forum - that Greeks do not understand the formal Greek that is used in church. This is completely erroneous. Today's young people learn a more modern form of Greek but it is still the same language.

I just wanted to add that there is a big difference between Shakespeare and Chaucer. Shakespeare is easily read by all English speaking people whereas the English Chaucer uses is quite difficult. I gave an example of Middle English in my last post.


An example of "Shakespeare's English" which term has come to mean, as you know, both the state of English around 1600 and Shakespeare's use of it.

"For that our kingdomes earth should not be soild
With that deare blood which it hath fostered: "


Now Chaucer's :

"is this the verray mede of youre byheeste?
Is al this paynted proces seyd - allas! -
Right for this fyn? O lady myn, Pallas!

It's understandable of course, but more difficult than Shakespeare's English.

Attic Greek is Ancient Greek and even though many words are the same, someone would need to have studied it to understand it fully.

This is probably why you were told that no-one would understand you in Greece. If I started speaking as Chaucer wrote I doubt anyone would understand me in England.

As I have already said, perhaps comparisons between languages are not helpful but I made them in order to make it easier to understand the evolution of the Greek language.



As you have already studied Ancient Greek, why not decide to study liturgical Greek. It would be very easy for you and it might open a doorway to a unique experience when you hear the liturgy in Greek and are able to understand it.

I confess that on Sunday I usually use my little book with English on the left and Greek on the right...... but sometimes I just listen and surrender to the beauty.....

Effie

[Herman Blaydoe]

Before people start becoming apoplectic, I think it worth noting that a "dead language" is simply a term used to describe a language or dialect which is no longer spoken by anyone as their main language. Perhaps some might prefer to strongly object to the term "extinct language" which, according to Wikipedia at least, is the more correct term applied to language which remains in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Old Tibetan and Ge'ez are among the many extinct languages used as sacred languages according to this useage.

Take it up with the linguists if you feel strongly about it, these are their terms.

We certainly must not forget our past. It is important to bring the past into the present to help us move into the future. I think we need to make sure that we are not simply trying to drag the present into the past, however. That doesn't get you anywhere at all.

Just a little thought from a little brain, don't get too worked up over it. Feel free to disregard if it disturbs your concepts of reality.


GENIAL IMPULSE
THUS roll I, never taking ease,
My tub, like Saint Diogenes,
Now serious am, now seek to please;
Now love and hate in turn one sees;
The motives now are those, now these;
Now nothings, now realities.
Thus roll I, never taking ease,
My tub, like Saint Diogenes.
Goethe 1810

Herman the troublesome Pooh

[Kris]

I'm sure most of us are familiar with the story of the three monks on the little island, whose only prayer was "three are we, three are Ye, have mercy upon us" and nevertheless attained great holiness. Indeed, very little is needed (at least for some) to attain salvation, but that doesn't mean everything else is superfluous.

Greek is the language of the Church's Old Testament, the New Testament, our Liturgy, our hymns, the Fathers, etc. and while it makes sense to make use of local languages to bring people to the faith, it seems rather silly, if not dangerous to completely ignore the original language.

Countless non-Greek saints and elders (St. Nikolai Velimirovich for example) stressed the importance of returning to the original Greek for those wishing to have a better understanding of the faith. Andreas mentioned Elder Sophrony - he certainly approved of English, but also noted the 'superiority' of Greek (I'm afraid I don't have a reference. This was related to me by someone who knew him), and even wrote one of his works in Greek.

Personally, while I am in favour of using the local language (where needed) for the sake of comprehension, I think Christians should regard the Greek language as being part of their religious heritage and not simply dismiss it as something cultural.

[Anthony]

Before people start becoming apoplectic, I think it worth noting that a "dead language" is simply a term used to describe a language or dialect which is no longer spoken by anyone as their main language. Perhaps some might prefer to strongly object to the term "extinct language" which, according to Wikipedia at least, is the more correct term applied to language which remains in use for scientific, legal, or ecclesiastical functions. Old Church Slavonic, Avestan, Coptic, Old Tibetan and Ge'ez are among the many extinct languages used as sacred languages according to this useage.

Take it up with the linguists if you feel strongly about it, these are their terms.


But first please pick your linguists. This is not any standard terminology that I am aware of.

[Nina]

But first please pick your linguists. This is not any standard terminology that I am aware of.

I second this.

Time for some acknowledgment: Our dear Anthony is a Dr. in Linguistics and a very accomplished one and I guess that makes him our monachos' expert in Linguistics. :)

P.S To Herman in regards to the private comment: Do not worry, I am as calm as a lamb, but a perplexed one since you called Greek "my holy language". Is my English this bad? Or am I murdering English as you "murder Greek" (as you commented) that you do not understand me? Poor I! I guess I should repeat: there are no languages holy for me, only people are holy. There are no dead and alive languages. If Latin is not used as widely as during the Roman Empire it maybe served its purpose God intended it to and retired. But that does not mean we should discard the Vulgate!!!!!!!! As it does not mean that a person after retiring looses value! Anyway... There are so many more arguments I can bring in the discussion (I think I just hired myself to defend the languages of the world) but just for some relief, have you by any chance youtubed the song that is blasting Friday nights from the clubs in my neighborhood? It is the song Ayer by Flo-Rida or something like that. They really do party until the AM, but I just hope we do not have to adjust our Liturgical language for this type of outreach... or I hope that our Vigils' name is not changed into 'pray until the AM'.

P.P.S Kris, yes! The story from Tolstoy's book with the three holy men! I have laughed and cried at the same time when I first read that story. The humility of those men!!! This is one of my favorite fiction pieces in the world, but as much as I try to replicate 0.0000000001% of that humility, I understand that I am in the minus area and the 0 is far away.

[Eric Peterson]

You can pry my liturgical English from my cold, dead fingers.

[Nina]

You can pry my liturgical English from my cold, dead fingers.

:) No need to be martyred for languages. :)

But really, your (and mine) liturgical English is already outdated (Att. I am not using dead) for the people we need to missionarize in my neighborhood.

[Michael Stickles]

But really, your (and mine) liturgical English is already outdated (Att. I am not using dead) for the people we need to missionarize in my neighborhood.

I just hope that doesn't mean we'll eventually have the liturgy in chat-speak:

Deacon: A&A n peace pray 2 Lord
People: LHM
Deacon: Help/save/HMOU & keep us Lord BTG
People: LHM
... etc ...
In Christ,
Michael

P.S. - NII (No irreverence intended)

[Olga]

I have heard it said many times - especially on this forum - that Greeks do not understand the formal Greek that is used in church. This is completely erroneous.


With all respect and love, Effie, this is quite untrue in my experience, both with regard to liturgical Greek among Greeks, and to Church Slavonic among Russians and other Slavs. The situation would well be as you describe it in Greece or Russia, but it is certainly not so where Greeks and Slavs have emigrated and set up their churches using their traditional languages.

It is not only the children of emigrants who have problems with liturgical languages, as, all too often, they have had only a basic education in their ancestral vernacular language (often only from absorbing the language from their parents), let alone any teaching of liturgical forms of these languages. In my experience, I have also come across many good and pious emigrant Greeks and Slavs now in their fifties, sixties and seventies who have the same problem, where, for many years, they have simply stood or sat in church during vigils and in Liturgy, and tried to let the service "wash over" them, even though it was largely unintelligible to them. Can this be right or tolerated?

I know also of church singers and readers who are fluent in their ease of singing and reading the words, yet their level of comprehension is, by their own admission, quite lacking. One fellow in particular, who has been singing and reading for nearly 30 years, freely admits to being "a parrot". Beautiful, rich voice, fluid and clear intonation, yet he struggles to understand what he reads and sings. This man is not an isolated example.

[Olga]

Regarding the view that liturgical Greek and Church Slavonic are “holy” languages:

Do not think for a moment that I wish to denigrate or diminish these languages, or that I am advocating their abolition. God forbid! These are the liturgical languages with which I am most familiar, and I truly love their majesty, beauty and brilliance. However, the notion that these are somehow “blessed” languages, “set apart” from all others, and the only ones capable of fully expressing and transmitting the truths of the Orthodox faith is not only absurd, but bordering on heretical and contrary to the Apostolic tradition.

We are not Moslems who insist only Arabic be used for their scripture, as, according to their clear espousal, it is the only language which can properly express their faith and doctrines. We are not Roman Catholics of the pre-Second Vatican Council era, who, for centuries, insisted only Latin was suitable and worthy, even centuries after it had ceased to be the lingua franca of western Europe. No. We are Orthodox Christians, who should be continuing the Apostolic tradition of that first Pentecost, of proclaiming the Gospel in every language to the ends of the earth.

From the Vigil for Pentecost:

When you sent down Your Spirit, Lord, to the Apostles as they were sitting, then the children of the Hebrews saw it and were beside themselves with amazement; for they were hearing them speaking in other, strange tongues, as the Spirit gave them; for though simple men, they had been made wise; and having caught the nations for the faith, were preaching things divine; and we also cry out to You: You appeared on earth and saved us; Lord, glory to You.

When from on high the mighty, living wind of the All-holy Spirit came to the fishermen with sound in the form of fiery tongues, they began with eloquence to proclaim the mighty works of God: All you works of the Lord, praise the Lord, and highly exalt Him to all the ages.

A strange thing, outside the law of nature, has been heard: for when the one voice of the Disciples rang out, by the grace of the Spirit peoples, tribes and tongues were diversely instructed in the mighty works of God and were initiated into knowledge of the Trinity.

The “logic” of a “holy language” simply fails me. What of the works of so many missionaries to non-Christian lands, many of whom rightly are glorified as saints? Of Sts Cyril and Methodius (Greeks), Nicholas of Japan, Herman of Alaska (both Russians)? All these made the great effort to learn the local language, then carefully translate and transmit scripture and liturgy. In more recent years, the great St John of Shanghai and San Francisco soon learned to serve in several languages, all quite alien to his ancestral Church Slavonic. There is encouraging missionary work being done in Indonesia, the most populous Moslem nation in the world. This fledgling Church uses Bahasa as its liturgical language. These are but a few examples which expose the absurdity of this notion.

It is imperative that anyone who is charged with preaching or proclaiming the Orthodox faith, or with translating scripture or liturgical texts to be as scrupulous and as accurate as possible.

[Effie Ganatsios]

With all respect and love, Effie, this is quite untrue in my experience, both with regard to liturgical Greek among Greeks, and to Church Slavonic among Russians and other Slavs. The situation would well be as you describe it in Greece or Russia, but it is certainly not so where Greeks and Slavs have emigrated and set up their churches using their traditional languages.

It is not only the children of emigrants who have problems with liturgical languages, as, all too often, they have had only a basic education in their ancestral vernacular language (often only from absorbing the language from their parents), let alone any teaching of liturgical forms of these languages. In my experience, I have also come across many good and pious emigrant Greeks and Slavs now in their fifties, sixties and seventies who have the same problem, where, for many years, they have simply stood or sat in church during vigils and in Liturgy, and tried to let the service "wash over" them, even though it was largely unintelligible to them. Can this be right or tolerated?

I know also of church singers and readers who are fluent in their ease of singing and reading the words, yet their level of comprehension is, by their own admission, quite lacking. One fellow in particular, who has been singing and reading for nearly 30 years, freely admits to being "a parrot". Beautiful, rich voice, fluid and clear intonation, yet he struggles to understand what he reads and sings. This man is not an isolated example.

Olga, I was referring to Greeks here in Greece. You are absolutely right concerning those of Greek descent who live in other countries and for whom Greek is really a second language.

I had to come here to realize that I did not know Greek - in Australia I thought I knew Greek. The bank I was working for also had this totally erroneous belief and sent me to an area with a high Greek population. I still cringe when I remember the absolutely embarrassing situations I sometimes found myself in. (smile) One concerned a giant Greek from Crete (he was also young and extremely good looking - don't know if that helped or made my pitiful Greek even worse!!!) who stormed out of the bank and left me crying. (Thank God I couldn't understand what he was shouting as he left............). The Bank Manager ended up patting me on the back and telling me not to worry - the man would be back because his money was in our bank......... I should explain here that Cretans have their own special accent that even normal Greeks have difficulty understanding sometimes.

Just a light note.

Thanks for the clarification Olga.

Love
Effie

[Paul Cowan]

Olga, I was referring to Greeks here in Greece. You are absolutely right concerning those of Greek descent who live in other countries and for whom Greek is really a second language.

I had to come here to realize that I did not know Greek - in Australia I thought I knew Greek. The bank I was working for also had this totally erroneous belief and sent me to an area with a high Greek population. I still cringe when I remember the absolutely embarrassing situations I sometimes found myself in. (smile) One concerned a giant Greek from Crete (he was also young and extremely good looking - don't know if that helped or made my pitiful Greek even worse!!!) who stormed out of the bank and left me crying. (Thank God I couldn't understand what he was shouting as he left............). The Bank Manager ended up patting me on the back and telling me not to worry - the man would be back because his money was in our bank......... I should explain here that Cretans have their own special accent that even normal Greeks have difficulty understanding sometimes.

Just a light note.

Thanks for the clarification Olga.

Love
Effie

Dear Effie,

In America, to be called a Cretan is to be mildly insulted. So for a whole population to be Cretans (yes, I know they are from Crete) They must all be jerks.

[Olga]

Dear Effie,

In America, to be called a Cretan is to be mildly insulted. So for a whole population to be Cretans (yes, I know they are from Crete) They must all be jerks.

Cretans, or cretins, Paul? :D

... and I wouldn't recommend calling a Cretan a cretin. Could get rather messy. :o

[Effie Ganatsios]

Dear Effie,

In America, to be called a Cretan is to be mildly insulted. So for a whole population to be Cretans (yes, I know they are from Crete) They must all be jerks.

Paul, the word you are thinking of is "cretin".

And the origin of this Swiss word is very interesting.

"Cretinism is a condition of severely stunted physical and mental growth due to untreated congenital deficiency of thyroid hormones (hypothyroidism).

The term cretin was brought into medical use in the 18th century from an Alpine French dialect prevalent in a region where persons with such a condition were especially common . It was used widely as a medical term in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but in recent decades has spread more widely in popular English as a markedly derogatory term for a person who exhibits stupid behaviour.

The etymology of the word cretin is not known with certainty. Several hypotheses have been proposed. The most common derivation provided in English dictionaries is from the Alpine French dialect pronunciation of the word Chrétien - (a) Christian, which functioned as a form of greeting in those parts. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the translation of the Latin term into "human creature" implies that the label "Christian" is a reminder of the humanity of the afflicted, in contrast to brute beasts.[1] Other sources have suggested "Christian" refers to the "Christ-like" inability of such a person to commit sin, because of an incapacity to distinguish right from wrong.[2]"

Paul, Cretans are famous for their manner of "correcting" anyone who insults them. Their blood feuds continue for generations. Somewhat similar to the Hatfields and the McCoys! Just thought you should know...................

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

Cretans, or cretins, Paul? :D

... and I wouldn't recommend calling a Cretan a cretin. Could get rather messy. :o


Olga, we think alike! Your post wasn't here when I started writing my reply.

Effie

[Andreas Moran]

There are several questions here. The first concerns the language to be used in Russia and Greece. I'm not aware of strong opinions there in favour of using modern Russian/Greek but as is well known, modern versions are not permitted anyway. Secondly, there is the issue of Greek/Russian emigrants. This is complex because there may be both first and thrid generation emigrants in the same community with differing wishes. Then there are the converts in any given country. So far as English is concerned, there is the further problem of deciding which type of English to use. I can't see any solution answering all these questions. In what way can Church Slavonic and Greek continue outside Russian and Greece if the local language is to be used? What about parishes being left to decide for themselves which language to use? They may decide to alternate languages or mix them.

[Nina]

Cretin is indeed a derivative of the word 'Christian' which pagans used it in a derogatory form.

I am not from Crete, but I have heard a lot of talk about Cretans. In their defense and for fairness' sake these talks are generalizations and of course people like to joke sometime and it does not mean that it is a reality. I know that Cretans are very brave souls and that was actually a gift from God since they always fought against the occupants to protect their religion (Orthodoxy) and their honor. There are many martyrs and neo-martyrs in Orthodoxy from Crete. Often the Turks had many problems in Crete and that kept them distracted during the reign of the Ottoman Empire.

On the other hand at least one of the most meek souls and a walk-the-talk Orthodox, that I have met in my life is from/lives in Crete.

[Anthony Stokes]

So far as English is concerned, there is the further problem of deciding which type of English to use. I can't see any solution answering all these questions. In what way can Church Slavonic and Greek continue outside Russian and Greece if the local language is to be used? What about parishes being left to decide for themselves which language to use? They may decide to alternate languages or mix them.


I have been discussing the English problem with someone else lately, and I just think that the main churches using English in the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, etc., need to get together and decide on one English translation. We don't have multiple translations of the services in other languages. Why should English be different?

Sbdn. Anthony

[Effie Ganatsios]

There are several questions here. The first concerns the language to be used in Russia and Greece. I'm not aware of strong opinions there in favour of using modern Russian/Greek but as is well known, modern versions are not permitted anyway.


. In what way can Church Slavonic and Greek continue outside Russian and Greece if the local language is to be used? What about parishes being left to decide for themselves which language to use? They may decide to alternate languages or mix them.

Andreas, as the Greek used in church services is perfectly understandable why change it? Languages change over time. If we wanted a "modern" language, would this mean that we would have to change the language used every 50 years or so.



At my youngest sister's wedding a few years ago in Australia both Greek and English were used in the wedding ceremony.

I wasn't present but I watched the video and have to admit that I liked what I saw. This compromise ensured that our young people, for whom Greek is difficult, understood everything that was said, and it was also a form of respect for all the non-Greeks present because people go to weddings to support and honour two people who are uniting for life. It's hard to do this when you can't understand what is happening.

[Mary]

.... and decide on one English translation. We don't have multiple translations of the services in other languages. Why should English be different?



I haven't read most of the posts in this thread, so this may be way off. It's interesting that we have so many old and new languages, with so many infinite words to convey every thought conceivable. We can say the same thing in so many different ways and mean the same things.

I just got a letter from a friend who is working in Sudan. She opened the letter with the local greeting:


Wey paatch mithizonagaar. Yin piel goop?
Achin karaatch. It means, "Good morning students. How are you?" The reply means: "No problem." But the literal meaning of "Achin karaatch" is "There is no snake!"

Sometimes, I wonder if it's enough to just understand the gist of what's being said instead of getting hung up on details. The details could take us down interesting trails.

That being said, I've been trying to memorize scripture, and i can't decide what translation to use! =) I just remembered that the reason I used to avoid memorizing scripture is because there were too many versions to choose from. And sometimes I liked one version and sometimes another. But someone told me once, that I had to stick to one. I don't know who, and I don't know why. So, rather than find one that I liked from Genesis to Revelation, I chose to not memorize at all.

Is it ok to memorize in different versions? I'm guessing it's ok. How about mixing and matching within the same? Like Ps 51, which I'm working on right now... i like different verses from different versions. It can get quite confusing at times! I decided to stick to one version for that. Because, in the end, it doesn't really matter. When I hear any part of it, I know which psalm is being chanted, even if it's just a tiny phrase, even if it's a phrase that's not in the version I'm memorizing. I dont' know how that happens. Perhaps, I've memorized all versions through one!

in Christ,
muddled Mary.

[Olga]

I have been discussing the English problem with someone else lately, and I just think that the main churches using English in the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, etc., need to get together and decide on one English translation. We don't have multiple translations of the services in other languages. Why should English be different?

Sbdn. Anthony

I quite agree that the ideal would be a single English translation would be ideal, as it is for other languages, ancient and modern. The problem is coming to an agreement as to which form of English is adopted as the standard: Should it be the full Tudor English such as that used by Isaac Lambertsen? Should it be a modern form without archaic spellings and usages? Or a hybrid, retaining Thee and Thou only for God and the Persons of the Holy Trinity, but modern in all other respects?

[Paul Cowan]

Dear Effie,

In America, to be called a Cretan is to be mildly insulted. So for a whole population to be Cretans (yes, I know they are from Crete) They must all be jerks.

ok, people. Think tongue in cheek or is Owen the only one allowed to get away with this? Sheesh.

[Andreas Moran]

Andreas, as the Greek used in church services is perfectly understandable why change it?

No reason at all - I agree, keep it in Greece, and keep Slavonic in Russia.


Or a hybrid, retaining Thee and Thou only for God and the Persons of the Holy Trinity, but modern in all other respects?

Definitely not! I've thought long and hard for years about the type of English that ought to be used in Church. It's not 'Lambertsen' English but the best English for the purpose which is KJV -style English. We've debated this, and I've already stated my view which is that we ought to be guided by the opinion of Elder Sophrony. Key English texts are to be found in the publications of St John the Baptist Monastery in Essex, HTM, St Tikhon's, and Jordanville as well as St John of Kronstadt Press.

[Effie Ganatsios]

ok, people. Think tongue in cheek or is Owen the only one allowed to get away with this? Sheesh.


We knew you were just kidding Paul............... I was having a little bit of fun as well.

The Hatfields and the McCoys???????????????????????

[Effie Ganatsios]

No reason at all - I agree, keep it in Greece, and keep Slavonic in Russia.



Definitely not! I've thought long and hard for years about the type of English that ought to be used in Church. It's not 'Lambertsen' English but the best English for the purpose which is KJV -style English. We've debated this, and I've already stated my view which is that we ought to be guided by the opinion of Elder Sophrony. Key English texts are to be found in the publications of St John the Baptist Monastery in Essex, HTM, St Tikhon's, and Jordanville as well as St John of Kronstadt Press.

Andreas, I learnt the Lord's Prayer when I was a child like this.

1928 BCP[5]

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
[For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.]




No matter how many other versions I read, this is the one that seems real to me somehow.

I think that whatever we learn when we are young stays with us.

Effie

[Andreas Moran]

Andreas, I learnt the Lord's Prayer when I was a child like this.

Which is how I learnt it (save it was with 'which' instead of 'who' art in heaven). There's a strong case for saying 'debts' instead of 'trespassers' but the latter is so well known. There's no way we are going to get a satisfactory version of the Lord's Prayer which properly translates the word, 'epiousion', which is why I was saying earlier that exegesis is needed to fulfil understanding of words, particularly where, as in this example, no translation from the original is adequate. What I find is that I can say the BCP version of the Lord's Prayer (save that I do say 'evil one' and not just 'evil') but having pondered on the meaning of the original Greek text, I can hold these meanings in my mind while saying the BCP version. That's not as cumbersome as it sounds, and I get the beauty and poetry of the KJV-style English plus the resonance of the meaning in the original Greek.

[Alice]

Andreas, I learnt the Lord's Prayer when I was a child like this.

1928 BCP[5]

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
[For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.]




No matter how many other versions I read, this is the one that seems real to me somehow.

I think that whatever we learn when we are young stays with us.

Effie

Yes, Effie, I learned this version as well...and it is the one I hear in the U.S.

My priest in the U.S. has recently added: 'deliver us from the evil ONE'...being more closely understood to the Greek, and if you think about it, it does make a big difference.

In Christ,
Alice

[Andreas Moran]

Consistency of English really does matter, I think. I have, in the past, been at gatherings of English Orthodox where the Lord's Prayer was sung (to the melody by Rimsky-Korsakov) but the thing was a shameful shambles because people were singing different versions. I could imagine God stopping up His ears! I have been in churches of English Orthodox where the Creed was said by everyone but again it sounded bad because people were faltering over different wordings and everyone became hesitant about what to say. In one parish, the English reader was using the old Archbishop Athenagoras text of the liturgy together with the Epistle from the KJV, and the Greek priest was using a modern English text for those parts he said in English. This sort of thing is not the best we can offer to God. At least the Sourozh diocese here is consistent in its texts but the Greek jurisdictions here are all over the place linguistically.

[Paul Cowan]

Yes, Effie, I learned this version as well...and it is the one I hear in the U.S.

My priest in the U.S. has recently added: 'deliver us from the evil ONE'...being more closely understood to the Greek, and if you think about it, it does make a big difference.

In Christ,
Alice

Would it not be appropriate also to say "deliver us from the evil ONEs" since we are constantly attacked by 'them' and doubtfully from satan solely himself? Or even him at all?

[Matthew Namee]

Would it not be appropriate also to say "deliver us from the evil ONEs" since we are constantly attacked by 'them' and doubtfully from satan solely himself? Or even him at all?
Well, from my limited understanding of Greek, I believe "evil one" is the most literal translation of the original text.


What I find is that I can say the BCP version of the Lord's Prayer (save that I do say 'evil one' and not just 'evil') but having pondered on the meaning of the original Greek text, I can hold these meanings in my mind while saying the BCP version. That's not as cumbersome as it sounds, and I get the beauty and poetry of the KJV-style English plus the resonance of the meaning in the original Greek.

Andreas, I'm in complete accord with this.

[Mary]

Which is how I learnt it (save it was with 'which' instead of 'who' art in heaven). There's a strong case for saying 'debts' instead of 'trespassers' but the latter is so well known. There's no way we are going to get a satisfactory version of the Lord's Prayer which properly translates the word, 'epiousion'.....

So, what exactly does the original word mean?

I like trespasses better than debts, because to me, a debt is not a negative thing that I need to forgive someone for. I don't feel the need to repent or confess, if I owe somebody something, even my life, because I haven't done anything wrong - I just needed helped, asked for help, and received help, therefore I owe.

OTOH, a trespass is an invasion of private space, a disrespect of someone's boundaries, and therefore, it is an offense, and it needs to be forgiven. And it's not just property that can be trespassed, my kids trespass my silence all the time, and boy does that get me worked up! =)

So, if a common English translation ever got agreed upon, I for one, would be very upset if Debts got chosen over trespasses, and I will stubbornly continue to use trespasses.

In Christ,
Porcupine.

[Effie Ganatsios]

Yes, Effie, I learned this version as well...and it is the one I hear in the U.S.

My priest in the U.S. has recently added: 'deliver us from the evil ONE'...being more closely understood to the Greek, and if you think about it, it does make a big difference.

In Christ,
Alice

Alice, this might be correct because people here don't refer to the devil as the "devil" but as either "the evil one" or just "evil", so the above makes sense.

I just wanted to add something about the liturgical Greek in our churches here in Greece.

Yesterday, the service was so beautiful and as our discussion here was so recent I paid particular attention to the language. So, so beautiful and so simple. I noticed that a lot of the women around me (the church was packed as usual and everyone was in their Sunday best) were quietly saying the words the 2 priests were chanting and everyone was quietly singing away with the choir. Something then happened to me, and I closed my eyes and was so deeply uplifted (is this a contradiction in terms? ) by the service itself that I felt very ashamed of all my stupid sins and by my betrayal of our dear Lord. The meaning of the words I was listening to seemed to enter deep into my soul and everything seemed so clear.

How could we ever think of changing even one word of this beauty?

In our ignorance and arrogance we think that we know what the reality is in other countries because we have read or have heard something. You have to live in a country before you can have an opinion, and to all those who claim that today's Greeks do not understand their language, I can only recommend that they attend a church service in Greece. Most know the whole service by heart! I only wish that I were capable of this. What a blessing it would be. I remember reading that one of the fathers said that it is very beneficial for our souls to memorize verses from the bible and the liturgy. Imagine knowing all the liturgy as these people do.

Yesterday was a wonderful day for me. Thank You, Lord.

Effie

[Andreas Moran]

Debts vs trespasses

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by Andreas Moran
Which is how I learnt it (save it was with 'which' instead of 'who' art in heaven). There's a strong case for saying 'debts' instead of 'trespassers' but the latter is so well known. There's no way we are going to get a satisfactory version of the Lord's Prayer which properly translates the word, 'epiousion'.....

So, what exactly does the original word mean?

I'm no Greek scholar but I've read that 'epiousion' means something like 'super-essential', really the Bread of Life. We need it daily but epiousion certainly doesn't mean 'daily'.


I like trespasses better than debts, because to me, a debt is not a negative thing that I need to forgive someone for. I don't feel the need to repent or confess, if I owe somebody something, even my life, because I haven't done anything wrong - I just needed helped, asked for help, and received help, therefore I owe.

OTOH, a trespass is an invasion of private space, a disrespect of someone's boundaries, and therefore, it is an offense, and it needs to be forgiven. And it's not just property that can be trespassed, my kids trespass my silence all the time, and boy does that get me worked up! =)

So, if a common English translation ever got agreed upon, I for one, would be very upset if Debts got chosen over trespasses, and I will stubbornly continue to use trespasses.

Nothing prickly about your view, Mary - I agree with you. In the OED, 'debt' in the biblical sense is defined as the type of an offence, and such offence needs forgiveness. 'Trespass' means much more than its narrow meaning of going onto someone's land without permission. It mean a transgression, a breach of law or duty, an offence, sin, fault or wrong. In this sense, 'trespass' has a lineage in English literature going back to the 13th century and continuing until the 19th. In the context of the Lord's Prayer, it is the word used in Wycliffe (1382) and Tyndale (1526) well before the KJV which uses 'debts' unfortunately. Shakespeare also used it in this sense. So I think 'trespasses' is a far richer word and is to be preferred.

[Nina]

I'm no Greek scholar but I've read that 'epiousion' means something like 'super-essential', really the Bread of Life. We need it daily but epiousion certainly doesn't mean 'daily'.


'Epiousion' means also the Holy Communion as St. Nikodemos the Agioritis states.




In our ignorance and arrogance we think that we know what the reality is in other countries because we have read or have heard something. You have to live in a country before you can have an opinion, and to all those who claim that today's Greeks do not understand their language, I can only recommend that they attend a church service in Greece. Most know the whole service by heart! I only wish that I were capable of this. What a blessing it would be. I remember reading that one of the fathers said that it is very beneficial for our souls to memorize verses from the bible and the liturgy. Imagine knowing all the liturgy as these people do.

Effie

Effie, I was visiting the house of Thomas Jefferson (Monticello) this past weekend and I thought of your words about Greek. You are very right to point this out and he was indeed a bright man and such an intellectual who loved classical languages. It is refreshing to learn about such people with such wide horizons who were not even Orthodox. On the other hand we have our beloved saints, who were not schooled like the great Saint Spyridon, but who possessed the Sophia tou Theou (Wisdom of God). Therefore being unschooled or educated does not mean anything to our salvation because it is the Wisdom of God we need to possess about it. It is good to know though that people like Thomas Jefferson were so receiving to traditions which are part of our Orthodox heritage like Kris said above.

[Alice]

Alice, this might be correct because people here don't refer to the devil as the "devil" but as either "the evil one" or just "evil", so the above makes sense.

I just wanted to add something about the liturgical Greek in our churches here in Greece.

Yesterday, the service was so beautiful and as our discussion here was so recent I paid particular attention to the language. So, so beautiful and so simple. I noticed that a lot of the women around me (the church was packed as usual and everyone was in their Sunday best) were quietly saying the words the 2 priests were chanting and everyone was quietly singing away with the choir. Something then happened to me, and I closed my eyes and was so deeply uplifted (is this a contradiction in terms? ) by the service itself that I felt very ashamed of all my stupid sins and by my betrayal of our dear Lord. The meaning of the words I was listening to seemed to enter deep into my soul and everything seemed so clear.

How could we ever think of changing even one word of this beauty?

In our ignorance and arrogance we think that we know what the reality is in other countries because we have read or have heard something. You have to live in a country before you can have an opinion, and to all those who claim that today's Greeks do not understand their language, I can only recommend that they attend a church service in Greece. Most know the whole service by heart! I only wish that I were capable of this. What a blessing it would be. I remember reading that one of the fathers said that it is very beneficial for our souls to memorize verses from the bible and the liturgy. Imagine knowing all the liturgy as these people do.

Yesterday was a wonderful day for me. Thank You, Lord.

Effie


Dear Effie,

It sounds like you had one of those beautiful spiritual moments which our Divine Liturgy can imbue in any language!

My priest in New York does most of the DL in English, and his voice is so resonant, his feeling so genuine, that he has a reputation for offering a beautiful service. I have often been brought to tears by his services...Between his beautiful voice and our deacon's beautiful voice, who also is one of the few English chanters in the Greek Orthodox church in the U.S., one thinks they are in Heaven. I have also felt ths way when hearing, in person, the St. Vladimir (Orthodox Church in America) Seminary choir at liturgies which are also in English...as if I had died and gone to heaven.

The Greeks in Greece are fortunate because they are taught the Divine Liturgy in school, so they know it inside out, like my husband who was not born in Greece but was schooled there. I am glad that the ministry has decided that all Orthodox MUST continue religion classes in school...that was recently almost done away with I think.

In Christ,
Alice

[Anthony]

There seem to be several discussions going on here concurrently - all of them interesting. I will get back on the business of normal English vs Cranmerian a bit later (though perhaps I would rather see that on a different thread) - and say a bit about Greek being a "dead" or "extinct" language.

Despite Nina's kind comments a few days ago, this is not an area where I have any specialist knowledge (it is in any case a long way from the stuff I get upto professionally). But that doesn't stop me taking an interest, I hope.

Calling languages like Ancient Greek "extinct" does not make any kind of sense to me at all. It is really a biological metaphor, and has its place, perhaps, in the context of efforts (which I completely support), to research endangered languages before they die out without trace, without descendants and otherwise without records. It is a kind of issue of linguistic "biodiversity", apart from the intrinsic interest of all languages to linguists.

This does not seem applicable to languages like Greek and Latin, which (a) have descendants (conventionally only one in the case of Greek), and (b) are themselves still around, though not "spoken by native speakers" in the same way. So how to categorize them? Well, I don't have a "theory" about this, but at a common-sense level it seems to me that there is nothing wrong with the old term "classical languages". They are languages that crystallized in a certain form and continued to be cherished by a linguistic community because of the texts and traditions they were used to convey. In this form they are still active, because people still engage with them (and not only their linguistic descendants, as evidenced by the continued use of Greek in the West as a quarry for new technical terms - among modern linguists as much as anybody).

I take it that a "sacred language" is a particular case of a "classical language", so that the same remarks apply only more so, because of the particular importance of religion, and to an entire community not just to an elite with a particular kind of education.

What results in these cases is of course (nothing new here) a divergence between the vernacular(s) that are spoken as native languages and the language which is referred to as a cultural standard - a situation which sociolinguists call diglossia, another term taken from Greek and quite a useful one. It seems illogical, however, to draw attention on the one hand to classical languages as a major factor in the contemporary reality of a linguistic community, and on the other hand to classify them as "extinct".

Once again surely this is particularly true of the traditional languages used by Orthodoxy. I would suggest that they are alive in much the same way as the saints who spoke them are alive as "living contemporaries". (Think perhaps of an icon of St Cyril with a scroll of the first Slavonic translation.)

Much has been written about the situation of diglossia within Greek Orthodoxy, and I imagine that of Russian Orthodoxy with respect to Slavonic. That is for them to resolve in their own way, though I can't imagine and certainly wouldn't wish that they would resolve it by abandoning the traditional languages. But the same situation of diglossia exists in the Orthodoxy of converts (at least I think that is the appropriate linguistic term to use here). The faith has to be appropriated and nurtured in each local language, as has always been the Orthodox tradition, but that does not mean ceasing to engage with Church Greek and Church Slavonic as part of our living heritage. (And not forgetting the equally mature Orthodox traditions of Romania and Georgia - a favourite gripe of mine - though they may be less visible in the West.)

As for languages being intrinsically better suited than others to express Orthodox truths - I don't know about this. It seems that stucturally, each language has the resources to express pretty much anything that any other language can. (There has been one possible extreme exception reported recently from the Amazon forest, but the facts are not yet clear.) With vocabulary we seem to be faced with an old chicken-and-egg question - does the vocabulary determine the concepts that are available to a society, or does the society forge a vocabulary that is useful to it? From the little I know (based on the early history of Ancient Greek) I would go more for the second alternative; Greek developed a philosophical vocabulary because the Greeks did a lot of philosophizing, more than the other way round; and later similarly with theologizing and the theological vocabulary. If that is right (of course it may not be) I would expect that English, Aleut, Japanese or whatever can be made into suitable vehicles of Orthodox thought and worship. (Funny that, you would almost think somebody designed things that way.)

I think I will pass on the aesthetics of languages, except to quote the saying, "Italian is the perfect language for singing; Portuguese is the perfect language for making love; German is the perfect language for talking to your dog".

Please forgive the long post, but I hope it will prod the discussion along. I will be interested to hear any further thoughts.

- Anthony, Platz!
- Woof!

[Anthony]

For a rather contrasting proposed translation of the Our Father and related discussion, members might like to have a look at this paper by Fr Ephrem Lash (http://www.ephrem.plus.com/anastasis/lord%27s_prayer.htm). It is based on the deliberations of the translation committee of the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain.

[Andreas Moran]

For a rather contrasting proposed translation of the Our Father and related discussion, members might like to have a look at this paper by Fr Ephrem Lash .

This is an invitation I can very easily resist.

[Michael Stickles]

With vocabulary we seem to be faced with an old chicken-and-egg question - does the vocabulary determine the concepts that are available to a society, or does the society forge a vocabulary that is useful to it? From the little I know (based on the early history of Ancient Greek) I would go more for the second alternative; Greek developed a philosophical vocabulary because the Greeks did a lot of philosophizing, more than the other way round; and later similarly with theologizing and the theological vocabulary.

I would tend to agree with this. I think the reason English (at least American English, which is the version I know) right now seems to be a poor medium for conveying spiritual concepts (let alone Orthodox truth) is that the language has adapted to reflect the philosophical materialism of American culture. As just one example, we used to have the words "material" and "immaterial" to refer to physical and non-physical modes of being, but now those words have shifted to mean "important/relevant" and "unimportant/irrelevant", respectively. "Spiritual" has become a catch-all for everything from Christian belief to nature worship, and even agnostics who meditate. Not very useful. We'd probably have to develop a new dialect to get the job done.

In Christ,
Michael

[Nina]

Once again surely this is particularly true of the traditional languages used by Orthodoxy. I would suggest that they are alive in much the same way as the saints who spoke them are alive as "living contemporaries". (Think perhaps of an icon of St Cyril with a scroll of the first Slavonic translation.)

Finally, some similar thoughts!



I think I will pass on the aesthetics of languages, except to quote the saying, "Italian is the perfect language for singing; Portuguese is the perfect language for making love; German is the perfect language for talking to your dog".So unfair! :( I will make my own list.


- Anthony, Platz!
- Woof!Maybe it will sound better: Schnell, schnell hin sitzen! ;)
Or like they say in non-German movies: Sitzen machen! Zack, zack!

[Effie Ganatsios]

There seem to be several discussions going on here concurrently and say a bit about Greek being a "dead" or "extinct" language.


Please forgive the long post, but I hope it will prod the discussion along. I will be interested to hear any further thoughts.



Greek is not a holy language. It happened to be the common language spoken in lots of countries that the gospel was preached in. No language is holy.

Again I need to say that the liturgy should be in the language of the country it is being celebrated in. People are not Orthodox because the various liturgies were written in Greek and therefore need to be celebrated in Greek. They are Orthodox because of the actual words and the meaning behind the words in the Liturgy. I don't think that came out right. The liturgy is a celebration of praise to God. The language is not important.

In my previous messages I just wanted to underline the absolute beauty of the Greek the liturgy is celebrated in.

I have listened to Russian choirs singing in Slavonic. Is there anything more wonderful? We don't have these choirs in the Greek Orthodox church. I couldn't understand a word of course, except for those words that are actually Greek Kyrie Eleison etc., but my mind seemed to automatically connect what I was hearing with what I knew of the service in Greek and the same feeling of being in the presence of holiness came upon me.

I imagine that the same is applicable no matter what language you are used to hearing the liturgy in.

As for Latin, to my mind it is a "dead" language. I did 4 years of it and can only remember a couple of words................... the Latin is to blame of course, not my brain......................

Is the Italian spoken today in the same category as today's Greek is to Ancient Greek. Can today's Italians understand Latin without studying it? It seems to me that the Latin I learnt at school is nothing like the Italian I hear on Rai 1.

Effie

"In linguistics, diglossia is a situation where, in a given society, there are two (often closely-related) languages, one of high prestige, which is generally used by the government and in formal texts, and one of low prestige, which is usually the spoken vernacular tongue. The high-prestige language tends to be the more formalised, and its forms and vocabulary often 'filter down' into the vernacular, though often in a changed form."

Substitute the "government and formal texts" with the Church liturgy and you have a perfect explanation of the situation.

Thank you Anthony.

[Anthony]

So unfair! :( I will make my own list.

It is, of course, and I apologize to any Germans around (or who may be reading over your shoulder). Of course I don't really mean it, otherwise I wouldn't say it. (?) <confused />

The list can be varied quite a lot, I guess. For a start, much as I love Italian, I think it has stern competition from Welsh. Those who like a capella music could do worse than pray for the conversion of Wales.



Maybe it will sound better: Schnell, schnell hin sitzen! ;)
Or like they say in non-German movies: Sitzen machen! Zack, zack!

Also German dogs say "wau" rather than "woof". But I don't have to speak German all the time.

[Nina]

It is, of course, and I apologize to any Germans around (or who may be reading over your shoulder). Of course I don't really mean it, otherwise I wouldn't say it. (?) <confused />

Yes the numbers are growing :) but I did not mean it for that, I meant it for Italian.


The list can be varied quite a lot, I guess. For a start, much as I love Italian, I think it has stern competition from Welsh. Those who like a capella music could do worse than pray for the conversion of Wales.:) The rivalry between Italian and Portuguese is a bit unsettling.


Also German dogs say "wau" rather than "woof". But I don't have to speak German all the time.I was upgrading you to a 1st grade student... because you are too humble. :)

[Father David Moser]

It is, of course, and I apologize to any Germans around (or who may be reading over your shoulder). Of course I don't really mean it, otherwise I wouldn't say it.

Well, as I was reading, I decided to test this proposition and began speaking to my dog in German - and although some of it she missed, she did seem to understand "nein!" pretty well. (but she completely ignored "kommen Sie hier!"

Fr David Moser

[Andreas Moran]

(but she completely ignored "kommen Sie hier!"

Fr David Moser

That, Father, is probably because she took offence at being addressed in the formal; she might have responded if you'd said, 'kommst du hier'!

My wife is in Moscow and told me on the phone yesterday that she spoke to the family dog in English. He looked very surprised and curious but clearly needed simultaneous translation.

PS I just noticed the Google ad. at the bottom of the page; the ad. invites me to meet beautiful Muslim girls with whom I can chat right now. Is this a provocative way of encouraging one to become a Discussion Community Supporter?

[Nina]

This love song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF4Xn_G7x6Y&feature=related) is in German and sounds good to me... I even used it for part of the wedding photoshow :) ...ok I have to admit that the music sweetens it also. ;)

[Michael Stickles]

PS I just noticed the Google ad. at the bottom of the page; the ad. invites me to meet beautiful Muslim girls with whom I can chat right now. Is this a provocative way of encouraging one to become a Discussion Community Supporter?

That's worse than the "How I Lost 35 Lbs Fast" and "Chocolate Dessert Recipes" ads Richard noted in the "Equality in the Church" thread. Methinks Google needs to tweak their ad-selection algorithms. Y'think maybe if we conducted the thread discussions in a "holy language", these things wouldn't happen? ;-)

[Paul Cowan]

Y'think maybe if we conducted the thread discussions in a "holy language", these things wouldn't happen? ;-)

That'll never happen.

[Nina]

[QUOTE]One day Abba Arsenius consulted an old Egyptian monk about his own thoughts. Someone noticed this and said to him, “Abba Arsenius, how is it that you, with such a good Latin and Greek education, ask this
peasant about your own thoughts?” He replied, “I have indeed been taught Latin and Greek, but I do not know even the alphabet of this peasant.”

[Anthony]

A good quote, thank you Nina.

"The language of God is silence." (Mother Gavriilia)

[Effie Ganatsios]

My new puppy understands German!!!!

I tried Nein, Nein on him and it worked.

I also tried "come here" "die hierher kommen"

(the translation is from the Google translation service so if it is wrong, this service is to blame!)

or just "kommen hier" (my translation..........)

This also worked with the help of a little titbit I had ready for him in my hand.........................

What a smart little dog!

His mother is a pure bred fox terrier and his mother only knows what his father is, but he was born with a very strong character. In fact, I am thinking of naming him "drama queen" (dramaking???) because of his daily theatrics.

He is also an expert in English and in Greek. Multilingual???

He is however, nothing like the angel my previous dog was. Isn't it fascinating that each dog has it's own character, or rather is born with it's own character?

His mother is in disgrace at the moment as she was imported together with a male fox terrier to breed but she was a little hasty and I now have one of the results of that hastiness........

Effie

[Effie Ganatsios]

A good quote, thank you Nina.

"The language of God is silence." (Mother Gavriilia)

Anthony I am sure you also know the story of the 5 languages.

"Once, when I was in India, I came across a Missionary who said to me :"you may be a good woman but you are not a Christian"!

I asked : "Why"? "Because you have been here for quite some time and you go about speaking only english. What local languages have you learned"?

I answered : "I don't have the time to learn any, because I move from place to place and before I can manage to learn a dialect, I am called somewhere else. I just learn to say "good morning" and "good evening". Nothing else".

"Well, you are not a good Christian! Nor can you be a Missionary"!

You know, of course that Catholics and Protestants always learn the local dialects so that........

Then I prayed : "Lord! Give me an answer to this"! I asked it with all my heart!

And then I said : "Ah! I forgot to tell you. I use five languages"!

"Indeed? Which five"?

"The first is smile.. The second, tears... The third, touch... The fourth, prayer.. The fifth, love... With these five languages I travel in the whole world".

..............With these five languages you can travel around the world and the whole world is yours. You love everyone alike - irrespective of Religion or Nationality, irrespective of anything. God's people are everywhere. And you can never know if the person you meet today will not be tomorrow's Saint..."

The above is from p. 207 of The Ascetic of Love

Effie

[Anthony]

Thank you for reminding me of that story - it is a good one.


My new puppy understands German!!!!

I tried Nein, Nein on him and it worked.

I also tried "come here" "die hierher kommen"

(the translation is from the Google translation service so if it is wrong, this service is to blame!)

or just "kommen hier" (my translation..........)

So it is obviously true. (Sorry, Nina) :)

I have noticed with Russian friends that nel'z'a seems to work pretty effectively as well. Maybe it is just that authoritative tone of voice that Russian women have.

By the way I have very little reliance on machine translation sites. I recently got an e-mail from a Russian girlfriend and put it through the translator on the mailer site just for fun. She had signed it off "I kiss you, Anya", and I got the translation "the whole Anya".

At least it is nice to know she is still in one piece.



His mother is in disgrace at the moment as she was imported together with a male fox terrier to breed but she was a little hasty and I now have one of the results of that hastiness........

I hope she has been to confession.

[Nina]

So it is obviously true. (Sorry, Nina) :)


I find German fascinating! I love it (can you blame me? I need to know it for survival purposes... lol)! And if dogs love it too even better. The circle can use more admirers.

But I love languages I understand so I guess it is purely selfish.

[Nina]

"The language of God is silence." (Mother Gavriilia)

:( This is so great (although I fail here all the time). There is another quote from a Father (I can't recall who). I paraphrase: If someone seems silent but in his heart he is talking and judging etc he is not silent.

Patristic wisdom is so vast and amazing (of course it can not be different because it is inspired by the Holy Spirit!) What fascinates me is the fact that it is never static. But like Living Water. Where one Patristic thought seems to end, another one takes it further and elaborates the hidden meanings of the previous one. It is like exegesis and revelations that God brings in front of our eyes through the words of wisdom of His saints.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear friends,

I have been fascinated by - and thoroughly enjoyed - this discussion. Leaving to one side the question of whether dogs speak German, there seem two be two interconnected strands in this conversation: the question of whether there is such a thing as a 'holy language', and the question of whether (and how) a common English translation of the services and scriptures might come about.

The two issues are not unrelated. All the way back in post #24, Andrew noted that the question often comes up in the context of a contrast between the stability of a single Greek or Slavonic edition, compared with the enormous variety of liturgical translations in English. He wrote:


Every English speaking parish I have gone to has a different translation in use, some that I really like, others that distract and irritate me. I have no such problems with Greek or Slavonic!

One of the most fundamental advantages to Greek or Slavonic is that there is essentially only one version of each (a few notable, technical variations, but these are slight) - so whether one attends a Slavonic service in Russia, Ukraine, London or New York, one encounters the same Slavonic text; and so if one knows it, it is familiar. Similarly with Greek. But with English this is not so. My diocese is an excellent example of these two extremes meeting: when we sing in Slavonic, we can all sing together, since the hymns are identical everywhere; but I cannot think of even two parishes in the diocese that use identical English editions throughout the whole of the Liturgy. So, oddly enough, it is when singing in English - the first language of the majority of most churchgoers in our parishes - that we are the least united in language. There is something deeply scandalous in this; and I find it personally quite painful, when I go to another parish in my own diocese, and find that even the opening prayers of the trisagion ('O heavenly king...') are different and unknown to me in English, my own native tongue.

The extreme response to this, which is far from unheard of, is to insist, then, on using those older langauges in which there is a unified text. And it never falls far behind this practical justification, to note also the matter of holiness - and thus the whole question of a 'holy language', as it's been described in this thread. But there are challenges here, too. This from Herman:


It is good to preserve the WORDS of our fathers. their thoughts and ideas, and convey them to the present and future generations, so that they can be understood and acted upon, not merely dusted off and looked at like in a museum. Having the original writing in the original language is, of course, a good thing to ensure that what is being taught in the local language actually corresponds to the original author's thoughts, but God does not demand that everyone learn Hebrew to be a Christian. God is bigger than language.

Here I step into controversial territory, but I fear that this concept of "holy languages" is merely an attempt to put God in a box, to try and contain the Uncontainable. It is so much easier to simply hear the pretty Slavonic and admire the artistry of the music and overlook the meaning of the words! If we understand, then we are FORCED to act! We must choose, to acknowledge the words and act accordingly, or ignore the words, not change our lives and acknowledge the conflict!

This position notes that there may indeed be sanctity to a language; but language fundamentally exists to convey experience from one person to another, from one era to another - and if there is no genuine conveyance of that experience, then language fails in its practical aim, even if it is holy and exposes that holiness.

These two extremes launched an interesting discussion. Few key passages in the above posts struck me. First, from Matthew Namee:


I said earlier -- words are symbols, nothing more and nothing less. There is nothing inherently holy about any language. Greek was the tongue of the Gentiles, pagans, until Jews of the Diaspora and then the Apostles co-opted it and made it their own.

If a language can be holy, then why are we not speaking Aramaic? Why is the liturgy not sung in Hebrew? The precedent of the Apostles and saints overwhelmingly testifies to the preference for a language which the people can understand. For if they do not understand, does it not sound like nonsense?

The apostolic precedent of making the divine Word available to all peoples and all tongues is certainly worth remembering; and yes, the specific languages involved do seem a far second in that Pentecostal testimony to the encounter with the divine Word that they enabled. And yet, we must also remember that this was the very beginning. The usage of language over time alters the language in its specific contexts. Might there also be room for, not so much the 'holiness of a language' per se, but the sanctification of language through its being drawn up into holy use over time?

This was brought out to me in a comment, not quite on the same point, made by Olga:

Olga #35:

The comparatively late entry of English as a liturgical language used by the Orthodox Church, and the inherent mutability of English has led to a wide range of translations, ranging from the full Tudor of Isaac Lambertsen, through to versions which border on the undignified. By contrast, Greek and Slavonic texts are essentially immutable: Firstly, these languages, as is Latin, are no longer spoken, vernacular languages, so these languages themselves have become "standardised" and do not suffer from the fluid nature of modern English, or the vagaries of any other "living" language. Greek, being the language of the Septuagint and of the New Testament, and the dominant language of the Patristic period, became the "default" language for liturgical use, as much because for some centuries it was the lingua franca of the Christian world, before Latin overtook it. Is it any wonder, then, that so many doctrinal and theological concepts were originally, and continue to be expressed in Greek terms?

Ironically, the very mutability of English makes it even easier for such ideas to be expressed, whether Greek terms (such as Theotokos) or "native" English alternatives are used. English, perhaps more than any other language on earth, is renowned for its wholesale appropriation of words and ideas from all over the place. Is it truly so difficult for such a mongrel language to be incapable of expressing Orthodox concepts in a comprehensible, beautiful and reverent way? If it can be done for a language like German or Japanese, why not for English?

Out of these words, a few points emerged to me. First, the fact that the Greek of the fathers became a standard lingua franca for most of the Christian world, does lie behind the common stock of Greek versions. And here I do, personally, strongly believe in the sanctification of language by use and dedication. The Greek langauge is not holy in and of itself; it is just words and symbols, as Matthew noted. But the iconographic nature of Orthodox thought does not apply only to painted and physical matter. We acknowledge wood, dirt and egg as becoming holy, sanctified, through the prayer of their formation into an icon, and the prayer offered with and through them in the ascetical life of the Church. If wood and paint can be sanctified through holy use, cannot words? Surely language, as part of the created order, can (and must) be sanctified and redeemed, just as all else.

But Olga also opened up the discussion as to the ability of other languages to express the truths of divine revelation. This has had its core in Greek; but ecclesiastical Greek has attained a sanctification through its usage in and for the Church; not the other way around. As such, the doorway is open to other languages for precisely the same usage, and precisely the same sanctification. We ought not think of 'a holy language', but of the 'making holy of language' that the Church can effect: and in this, the Church can sanctify others as well.

But there is a necessary symphonia between sanctification through usage, and the usage itself; i.e., the ability to convey divine revelation and truth authentically. On this, Andreas wrote:


Some means are better than others, and those who I know who know about these things tell me persuasively that Greek and Slavonic are the best means to convey theological concepts. English is relatively poor at doing so, French, I'm told, rather poorer than English. Church Slavonic, my wife tells me, was specifically designed for its purpose and conveys depths of meaning with beauty in ways beyond what modern Russian can do. I believe the same is true of Church Greek. If these qualities in Greek and Slavonic are accepted, does this mean that they are 'holy'?

Again, a number of interesting points arise. Firstly is the fact that Church Slavonic, unlike other languages (including, we ought to remember, ecclesiastical Greek) is a language fashioned solely and precisely for conveying the Church's teaching - as Andreas notes, never a vernacular. This was expanded on by Fr David:


This is the same as I was taught by Archbishop Alypy of Chicago (ROCOR) who is a highly respected scholar of Church Slavonic (he wrote the Slavonic textbook which is still used today at Holy Trinity Monastery and which has now also available in English) He maintains that Church Slavonic is the only language that was created for the sole purpose of glorifying God and was never a vernacular used for "common" purposes.

So clearly there is something in this language that is different: it is a language 'set apart' (lit., 'ordained') for sacred usage. But this, in and of itself, does not equate to its holiness (I'm not at all certain of your application of the etymology on this, Andreas). Holiness again comes through sanctification; and certainly, Slavonic has been sanctified in the holiness of its usage over the centuries.

But again, what grounds this? Not the words and symbols themselves, but the ascetical work they do: bringing about authentic experience of divine reality in a liturgical context. Greek, Slavonic, both are sacred, are sanctified, not by some intrinsic quality or right, but by the authenticity of experience born of their usage and application. There is a potency to their vocabulary, grammar and structure that enables this -- in Slavonic, crafted deliberately for it -- but the genuine holiness encountered is that of the transfiguration these languges enable in their usage.

Which brings us back to conveying divine experience, the necessary work of any language in an ecclesiastical context. Andreas noted that 'some means are better than others', and surely this is true; but it is true of any language, and there are foul ways of attempting it in Slavonic, and foul ways of attempting it in Greek. The permanent texts in these languages have been determined by their being good, effective, useful means. But they are means. This seems to resonate in something Olga wrote in another post:


We are not Moslems who insist only Arabic be used for their scripture, as, according to their clear espousal, it is the only language which can properly express their faith and doctrines. We are not Roman Catholics of the pre-Second Vatican Council era, who, for centuries, insisted only Latin was suitable and worthy, even centuries after it had ceased to be the lingua franca of western Europe. No. We are Orthodox Christians, who should be continuing the Apostolic tradition of that first Pentecost, of proclaiming the Gospel in every language to the ends of the earth.

The “logic” of a “holy language” simply fails me. What of the works of so many missionaries to non-Christian lands, many of whom rightly are glorified as saints? Of Sts Cyril and Methodius (Greeks), Nicholas of Japan, Herman of Alaska (both Russians)? All these made the great effort to learn the local language, then carefully translate and transmit scripture and liturgy. In more recent years, the great St John of Shanghai and San Francisco soon learned to serve in several languages, all quite alien to his ancestral Church Slavonic. There is encouraging missionary work being done in Indonesia, the most populous Moslem nation in the world. This fledgling Church uses Bahasa as its liturgical language. These are but a few examples which expose the absurdity of this notion.

I agree very much with the first part of these comments. Linguistic fundamentalism is essentially idolatry. The moment I say 'Slavonic is the only holy language', I have made it an idol.

Yet does this mean there is no such thing as 'a holy language'. I would agree with this only if that concept was defined wrongly, as if some langauge contained intrinsically holy qualities. But I do not think it right to define the holiness of language in this way. Languages are sanctified by their dedication to God. The primary testimony of the tongues at Pentecost is not that every language is holy, nor that none is holy, but that any language can be made holy if and when it bears authentic testimony to God's truth - Jesus Christ.

I was grateful for Anthony's comments here:


As for languages being intrinsically better suited than others to express Orthodox truths - I don't know about this. It seems that stucturally, each language has the resources to express pretty much anything that any other language can. (There has been one possible extreme exception reported recently from the Amazon forest, but the facts are not yet clear.) With vocabulary we seem to be faced with an old chicken-and-egg question - does the vocabulary determine the concepts that are available to a society, or does the society forge a vocabulary that is useful to it? From the little I know (based on the early history of Ancient Greek) I would go more for the second alternative; Greek developed a philosophical vocabulary because the Greeks did a lot of philosophizing, more than the other way round; and later similarly with theologizing and the theological vocabulary. If that is right (of course it may not be) I would expect that English, Aleut, Japanese or whatever can be made into suitable vehicles of Orthodox thought and worship. (Funny that, you would almost think somebody designed things that way.)

This seems to me to be getting to the heart of things. There can be a sanctification of language - including English - when it is dedicated to the work of conveying and representing the divine authentically, which means taking up what is best in the language, as well as contributing to it new forms of expression and meaning. Language - any language - is a tool the Church may use and shape.

A single English translation?

The second main theme in the thread has centred on whether, if English be used, a single translation might be produced. There is a manifest problem with the enormous number of English translations available today (hundreds of them), namely that they make it impossible to pray together, of one voice, in this language, since everyone knows it slightly differently.

If I can share my personal opinion on this, which is just that: one of the fundamental issues here is that, given the lack of a longstanding 'core version' in English (such as there is in Greek, Slavonic, and other languages), the Christian is confronted with a wide variety of choice, and so the language issue becomes largely one of preference and selectivity. Read, an act of will. And so we are confronted with the spiritual challenge of combatting the will, as 'preference' of style and form can quickly become spiritual arrogance.

But we're also faced with the fact that there is simply no consensus amongst Orthodox translators in English on some of the most fundamental questions - such as versions of names to use, styles of English to employ, etc. Subdeacon Anthony wrote:

Subdeacon Anthony #62:

I have been discussing the English problem with someone else lately, and I just think that the main churches using English in the U.S., Canada, England, Australia, etc., need to get together and decide on one English translation. We don't have multiple translations of the services in other languages. Why should English be different?

Yet Olga immediately noted the problem:


I quite agree that the ideal would be a single English translation would be ideal, as it is for other languages, ancient and modern. The problem is coming to an agreement as to which form of English is adopted as the standard: Should it be the full Tudor English such as that used by Isaac Lambertsen? Should it be a modern form without archaic spellings and usages? Or a hybrid, retaining Thee and Thou only for God and the Persons of the Holy Trinity, but modern in all other respects?

Because there is no common standard on such fundamental issues, arguing for a common standard more broadly becomes almost impossible. Let me take as an example this comment by Andreas:


I've thought long and hard for years about the type of English that ought to be used in Church. It's not 'Lambertsen' English but the best English for the purpose which is KJV -style English. We've debated this, and I've already stated my view which is that we ought to be guided by the opinion of Elder Sophrony. Key English texts are to be found in the publications of St John the Baptist Monastery in Essex, HTM, St Tikhon's, and Jordanville as well as St John of Kronstadt Press.

The problem is that for every person that argues one should follow the examples of Fr Sophrony, there are others that argue one should follow the examples of Fr Ephrem (Lash) - two approaches to English renderings that couldn't be more opposed. While my own personal preference (note, 'preference' again) leans in the most general of terms more towards Fr Sophrony's approach than Fr Ephrem's, there are a number of English stylings used at his monastery in Essex which I find (again, preference!) utterly unsuitable. And on, and on. It does little good to suggest a concrete absolute. English-speakers in England time and time again refer to the Book of Common Prayer as a kind of centre-point, speaking in terms of similarity or difference to it, to popular familiarity with its language, etc. - seeming altogether oblivious to the fact that outside England (or perhaps Britain) it is no more or less familiar, no more a guage-point, than the English of a Morrisons discount catalogue.

I don't know of a concrete answer. The sanctification of English for the Church is still in progress, and I don't think has reached an absolute. But I have two suggestions:

Firstly, it seems critical to me that dioceses find a common edition. It is scandalous for parishes of the same 'household' not to be able to pray together. Whatever English version a bishop may select, should be common throughout his diocese. It seems to me an act of pride that visible, painfully divides the Church, when individual parishes 'choose' to use a different English version, for whatever reason. While this does not solve the problem on a broader scope, it at least keeps together the integrity of the prayer life of a diocese.

Secondly, and more fundamentally, I believe we need to regain a sense in which language is an ascetical walk for the Orthodox Christian. To be dominated by the style which 'suits me', which I believe is most fitting, which I find most comfortable, is a dangerous walk of spiritual pride. We must regain a sense in which obedience is transformative, even here. While this is thrust upon clergy by obligation (it would be a grave disobedience and act of prelest for a priest to use a translation other than that he had been blessed to use by his bishop), it seems something we are all called to remember. For unity in the Church's expression, I will often find that the specific translation, the specific style used, might not be ideally to my liking; but here the opportunity for an obedience that sets my will to one side.

INXC, Deacon Matthew

[Anna Stickles]

I can very much appreciate what Dcn Matthew said about the sanctification of language. This in particular hit me.


This seems to me to be getting to the heart of things. There can be a sanctification of language - including English - when it is dedicated to the work of conveying and representing the divine authentically, which means taking up what is best in the language, as well as contributing to it new forms of expression and meaning. Language - any language - is a tool the Church may use and shape.

Not since the Patristic era when Christianity was first trying to find her own among the Greek philosophers has Orthodoxy been confronted with a culture wherein a highly developed philosophical and relgious language and thought are already in use, and maybe we can learn some lessons from them. Christianity did not at that time try to impose Hebrew thought and language on the Greeks. Rather God raised up apologists and theologians in the Church, trained in Greek philosophy, that then took those pagan Greek forms and Christianized them. The process took a long time and went through a lot of trial and error. Origen was one of the first, but he had to be corrected by others. In our day too, I think it will fail utterly to try to impose Greek forms of thought on the West. We must trust that God will raise up those who can do for English what the Fathers did for Greek.

Even in the Greek language is the process of an integrated, sanctified expression really complete? Well words like hypostasis and homoiousios have been very precisely defined. But what about words like heart, will and intellect which often seem to me to be used interchangeably among the ascetical writers?

The arguments in the Patristic era were primarily about the nature of God. Most of those arguments were settled and even now the Christian west accepts those definitions whether unconsciously or consciously- what is at issue is not how we shall talk about the Trinity, but how we shall understand what it means for us to be in a right relationship with the Trinity. I assume my Parish is pretty typical but it is not the theological literature but the ascetical literature and the lives of the Holy Elders that is by far the most popular reading and I believe it is because what most people are seeking to get reconnected with is what it means - in real experience, not as an intellectual definition- to be sanctified and to be in a right relationship with God.



but language fundamentally exists to convey experience from one person to another, from one era to another - and if there is no genuine conveyance of that experience, then language fails in its practical aim, even if it is holy and exposes that holiness.



Here I think lies one of the major issues at stake. Rationalism and scientific materialism have stripped the West of any knowledge of ourselves. Cartesian modes of thinking have completely separated our intellection from our experience. The split that occured in the Catholic Church left a contemplative tradition having it's roots in experience alone, and a theological tradition wholly left to rational intellection. In the PC reformation theology has grown more and more objective and separated from any real human experience (Salvation at a point, imputed righteousness and many other errors perpetuated in the PC can be traced directly back to this problem) while Post modern theology is growing more and more subjective and dependent on personal experience rather then the common experience and theology of the Church.

Yes, the communication of experience, and the communication of it in such a way as to mesh with the already established theological language so that our intellection and experience can be reintegrated in Christ. Simply communication of experience as such, apart from its integration with theological language, will merely leave us in the Zen or Postmodern camps.

[Andreas Moran]

Taking the second theme in Fr Dcn Matthew's post (Single English Translation?), I should like to comment on a few of the points made there.

First, the point is made that, given the variety of choice of English translations, the issue becomes one of 'preference and selectivity' and this involves 'an act of will' which may be 'spiritual arrogance' and 'a dangerous walk of spiritual pride'. I'm not sure that this necessarily follows from preferring some version. That might be so of the unsupported personal opinion of one person. If, however, preference is based on a fully-reasoned and argued opinion which is shared by a substantial number of faithful, then the expression of that preference by one person may be rather the articulation of that very widely-held view. I would argue that this is not then a sign of will, pride or arrogance. It is not necessarily arrogant to have a view if that view is shared by many. (Expressing a view arrogantly is a different matter.)

Secondly, the point is made 'for every person that argues one should follow the examples of Fr Sophrony, there are others that argue one should follow the examples of Fr Ephrem (Lash)'. A reading of this might give the impression - which I'm sure was not intended - that more people favour Fr Ephrem's example than that of Fr Sophrony. One must be careful not to personalise the matter here but my impression is that many more people prefer traditional liturgical English to the modern style of Fr Ephrem. The texts actually used at Tolleshunt Knights are not intended for use anywhere else, but they form part of a very large corpus of liturgical material written in traditional liturgical English produced in such centres as Holy Transfiguration Monastery and Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville) and elsewhere which as a whole are intended for use in monasteries and parishes around the English-speaking world. I'm surprised to hear of the variety of texts used in the diocese of Sourozh, but in general it uses, and publishes, texts modelled (not always consistently) on traditional liturgical English. The traditional text of the liturgy of Archbishop Athenagoras used for many years in the diocese of Thyateira and Great Britain is still, I understand, popular despite efforts to encourage use of Fr Ephrem's text of the liturgy. As for the other texts prepared by Fr Ephrem, I do not know his mandate for producing these.

Thirdly, the suggestion is made that the language of the Book of Common Prayer is likely to be unfamiliar to English speakers outside England (Morrisons being an English, northern-based supermarket company). But was not BCP language used in the countries of the former British empire? It must have been very familiar to generations of English-speaking (and not merely ethnic English abroad) faithful. We have heard from members who grew up with this language in Australia, for example. A traditionalist Jamaican priest I know serves in Essex using BCP language which he knew as a child and young man in Jamaica.

Fourthly, Fr Dcn Matthew says that a bishop may select the English to be used and this ought then to be common throughout his diocese. How is any ruling bishop in Britain to select the most suitable version of English? None of the ruling bishops is English, and will not have the background in English to enable them properly to make such a decision; English is not the native tongue of any bishop in Britain save Metropolitan Kallistos. And must not a bishop (and his clergy) have close regard for the views and feelings of his flock? I know of one parish where the faithful had used traditional liturgical English for years. Without prior consultation or warning, their priest started using modern English. Unmoved by requests to cease this, the parish fractured. In a country as small as England, ought not the bishops of all the jurisdictions to get together to try to come to a consensus on English, taking full account of the views of the clergy and people who use the language? Even so, a decision made on such a consensus would not meet the views of perhaps a substantial minority of faithful and would it be right to accuse them of pride and disobedience if their sincerely-held views were not accommodated? Majorities are not necessarily always right nor minorities necessarily always wrong. But in thus issue both views will be deeply and sincerely held.

[M.C. Steenberg]

My thanks to Andreas for some thoughtful reactions to my own comments, and to all for the ongoing discussion.

Andreas, you wrote:


First, the point is made that, given the variety of choice of English translations, the issue becomes one of 'preference and selectivity' and this involves 'an act of will' which may be 'spiritual arrogance' and 'a dangerous walk of spiritual pride'. I'm not sure that this necessarily follows from preferring some version. That might be so of the unsupported personal opinion of one person. If, however, preference is based on a fully-reasoned and argued opinion which is shared by a substantial number of faithful, then the expression of that preference by one person may be rather the articulation of that very widely-held view. I would argue that this is not then a sign of will, pride or arrogance. It is not necessarily arrogant to have a view if that view is shared by many. (Expressing a view arrogantly is a different matter.)

I take entirely on board your point here, and do rather agree with it. However, it is not precisely what I was getting at. Certainly, having a view on such matters - particularly if that view reflects a particular knowledge of language, of translation, of liturgical engagement, etc. - is not a negative thing, nor in and of itself a matter of spiritual arrogance. The point I was looking to emphasise is that there is another aspect to the question of language preference, and one which perhaps does not get considered as regularly, and this is that the question of will and spiritual arrogance can be, and regularly is, involved in our approach to language and language styles. Yes, of course, forming an educated position is useful; but very often (in my experience, in a vast majority of cases), this is at least partially bound up with a mere personal preference, however that may have come about (and for a great many people, I would think the majority, has no substantive basis apart from such preference). Here the distinction between constructive preference and views, and mere comfort and opinion, becomes blurry. Not that it immediately becomes obscured; but this are multiple dimensions to this question - and the ascetical aspect is often one we find left out of discussions on the matter.

You also wrote:


Secondly, the point is made 'for every person that argues one should follow the examples of Fr Sophrony, there are others that argue one should follow the examples of Fr Ephrem (Lash)'. A reading of this might give the impression - which I'm sure was not intended - that more people favour Fr Ephrem's example than that of Fr Sophrony. One must be careful not to personalise the matter here but my impression is that many more people prefer traditional liturgical English to the modern style of Fr Ephrem.

While I do take your point, I don't see any way in which the impression you convey could be garnered from my comment; my point was to show that there is no unanymity of voice. Certainly there are a vast quantity who prefer what you haved called 'traditional liturgical English' to a 'modern style' - yet I would hasten caution in questioning whether it is 'many more'. It depends on one's circles and contexts. And there is the very real question of precisely what 'traditional liturgical English' you are talking about. Despite the truth in your comments on the spread of the Book of Common Prayer, I would re-iterate that this language specifically is not 'traditional' to a vast number of English speaking contexts.

I state these things more to make a point that to express my own convictions on the style of language. For my own person, I am utterly accustomed to what most would call a 'traditional liturgical English', and find modern English translations extremely jarring when I encounter them in practice. But I become extremely wary - perhaps from my own background in translation - of arguments that presume a common tradition of form where one does not exist.

I was interested in your comments here:


Fourthly, Fr Dcn Matthew says that a bishop may select the English to be used and this ought then to be common throughout his diocese. How is any ruling bishop in Britain to select the most suitable version of English? None of the ruling bishops is English, and will not have the background in English to enable them properly to make such a decision; English is not the native tongue of any bishop in Britain save Metropolitan Kallistos. And must not a bishop (and his clergy) have close regard for the views and feelings of his flock? I know of one parish where the faithful had used traditional liturgical English for years. Without prior consultation or warning, their priest started using modern English. Unmoved by requests to cease this, the parish fractured. In a country as small as England, ought not the bishops of all the jurisdictions to get together to try to come to a consensus on English, taking full account of the views of the clergy and people who use the language? Even so, a decision made on such a consensus would not meet the views of perhaps a substantial minority of faithful and would it be right to accuse them of pride and disobedience if their sincerely-held views were not accommodated? Majorities are not necessarily always right nor minorities necessarily always wrong. But in thus issue both views will be deeply and sincerely held.

There are a number of good and interesting points. I would just note this: which bishops will select which versions, and what their backgrounds might be in that context, was not really my point. My comments were addressed to a pastoral concern; namely, that within a single diocese, the piecemeal appropriation of various English versions from parish to parish is a pastoral scandal. In this scope, I agree that great sensitivity must be exercised by the bishop when and where the matter of language is concerned (my comments actually didn't include the process of how they might make their selection; that is another matter, and an important one); but none of what you have offered would cause me to phrase any differently my remark in this area, which was:

"it seems critical to me that dioceses find a common edition. It is scandalous for parishes of the same 'household' not to be able to pray together. Whatever English version a bishop may select, should be common throughout his diocese. It seems to me an act of pride that visible, painfully divides the Church, when individual parishes 'choose' to use a different English version, for whatever reason. While this does not solve the problem on a broader scope, it at least keeps together the integrity of the prayer life of a diocese."
No harmony to the English of the Church will ever come about if each parish obstinently insists that it will use its own form, whatever may be done elsewhere. The suggestion you offer, that the various bishops and representatives (including talented translators) from the various jurisdictions come together to produce a solid and good translation, was tried here in England some years back, with the end result that parishes in every diocese involved rather vocally noted, from the outset, that they had no intention of altering their English, no matter what the committee produced. Internally to individually dioceses, this has been mirrored. The Greek Archdiocese produced its translation in 'modern' English, and immediately various members said they would not use it (including Metropolitan Kallistos). In the Diocese of Sourozh (the MP diocese in the UK), a translation committee produced a number of translations in an English that attempted a middle way between 'traditional' and 'modern', and even before it had produced its first text, parishes had quite dramatically indicated that they had no intention of using it.

I do not cite any of these as examples of particular editions that should have been adopted but haven't (with my translator's cap on, I have serious problems with both the Thyateira and Sourozh editions), but rather as an example of the fact that there is more to the matter than simply producing an edition. There is a mindset amongst individuals, amonst parishes, that also needs addressing - one in which a notion of obedience for pastoral reasons is often diminished, so that what feels 'most comfortable' in a given parish is retained, to the effect that no common tongue emerges in a diocese.

INXC, Deacon Matthew

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Some jurisdictions already have greater unity of liturgical language than others.

In Rocor for example there is great unity because most parishes/monasteries use the translations of Isaac Lambertsen & Fr Lawrence Campbell. These have been blessed for usage by our bishops. But also there is a loyalty to these two translators to the point that we would rather use revisions of these than switch to other entirely different versions.

This last point I think is very important in how it relates to Andreas' post above. Truly, as Fr Dn Matthew pointed out it will be almost impossible to come up with a common liturgical translation if personal taste is the main criterion. But if the underlying principle of a translation is its ascetic ideal- which I think Isaac's & Fr Lawrence's efforts really are- then I would say it has much more capability of 'staying power' simply because it reflects the common ascetic effort of the faithful which is already occurring. ie the translation reflects and inspires the ascetic reality of their actual lives.

On the other hand though I have seen 'blessed' versions which withered away almost as soon as they appeared because they made so little effort to fulfill this ascetic sense. The faithful react to these versions in different ways. But to my knowledge no such version still remains as a commonly used version.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

I think one way forward - though it may already have been tried - might be to attempt to compare all the reasons given for either form of English (traditional or modern) to be used. The point of such an exercise would be to take, so far as possible, mere preference (at the 'comfort level') out of the debate and identify sound theological and pastoral reasons for selecting one version or another. But it would have to be agreed that 'half-way house' styles are not acceptable.



I don't see any way in which the impression you convey could be garnered from my comment

'for every person . . . there are others' - singular then plural. Sorry - probably a very pedantic way of reading that comment!

[Andreas Moran]

Dear Fr Raphael - sorry, but can I be clear? You do mean 'ascetic' and not 'aesthetic'?

[Anna Stickles]

Mike and I visited a Greek parish last weekend and a sad sigh went through my heart that even the Creed was in a different form. This, I thought, was universal.

I can relate to the differences in worship being jarring, but maybe in absence of any group willingness to practice asceticism, a personal asceticism is called for.



No harmony to the English of the Church will ever come about if each parish obstinently insists that it will use its own form, whatever may be done elsewhere.

No institutional harmony will ever come about, but there are other kinds of harmony. There is the harmony of each indiviual person being willing to enter into the differences they find when they go to another parish, putting aside their own personal preferrences for the sake of unity. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." It may disrupt our ability to focus on God when there is different music, a different rhythm of movement (the different parishes I have visited all have different times when the kneel, stand or sit) and different words, but maybe this is simply the time to focus on loving our brother by as full a participation in their music, their movement, their words, as we can.



"It is scandalous for parishes of the same 'household' not to be able to pray together."


If using the same words is the requisite for praying together then we cannot pray together with the Greeks or Russians or Serbs, etc. Like most Greek parishes, the parish Mike and I went to had half the service in Greek and the other half in English. Does the fact that I can't understand Greek prevent me from praying with them half the time or does it just require a communion at another level? Isn't participation itself a communion?

Maybe all these problems are God's way of teaching us not to be so attached to perfectionism.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Fr Raphael - sorry, but can I be clear? You do mean 'ascetic' and not 'aesthetic'?

I meant 'ascetic' which is crucial to the main point I was trying to make.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

I meant 'ascetic' which is crucial to the main point I was trying to make.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Sorry to be dense, Father. I'm trying to understand your point that a translation may have an ascetic ideal. Do you mean that the effort people put into prayer and worship is an ascetic exercise which may be aided and propelled by translations of the Lambertsen kind?

[Andreas Moran]

If using the same words is the requisite for praying together then we cannot pray together with the Greeks or Russians or Serbs, etc. Like most Greek parishes, the parish Mike and I went to had half the service in Greek and the other half in English. Does the fact that I can't understand Greek prevent me from praying with them half the time or does it just require a communion at another level? Isn't participation itself a communion?

Fr Dcn Matthew can answer this for himself and better than I can but my own view is that the clue is in the word 'household'. True we are all in the same household in so far as we are all in the Church. Being Orthodox in this country is difficult enough, and linguistic unity within the English-speaking community of one jurisdiction would be a way of putting the 'unity' into 'community'. I've tried to make the point before that one can pray in communion with others at another level, and Anna makes that point, but that should not deflect from the effort of trying for linguistic unity in the way I have tried to describe.

[Anna Stickles]

You know Andreas, I think what bugs me is not striving for linguistic unity --this is a should and a must -- but our attitude within the stiving of expecting that "this should not be" as if the Church should somehow be immune to the problems of our age. Our culture is deathly ill with an empidemic of virulent individualism and an agressive disposition of defending our personal rights. But what other Way has Christ ever had then to take what ails the human race upon Himself? Only then can the Life in Him overcome death. What after all is com-passion except to 'suffer with'. And certainly the Church is suffering.

The cure for individualism can't be had by top down fiat but rather by each individual willingly giving way before the other. The differences just give us more opportunity for this. To me an institutional unity that doesn't grow out of the changed hearts of the membership seems like putting a bandaid on a wound before cleaning it. When the hearts of the people change, then the rest will fall into place.

Unfortunately our hearts our hard and often we have to suffer the full consequences of our rebellion before bending the knee.

[Nina]

Unfortunately our hearts our hard and often we have to suffer the full consequences of our rebellion before bending the knee.

Beautiful post dear Anna! As are the rest of your posts which we enjoy so much. This sentence reminded me of a saying "the knee that does not bend, breaks".

P.S Happy nameday to Michael and may God grant you many years!

[Anthony]

As for the other texts prepared by Fr Ephrem, I do not know his mandate for producing these.



What mandate does he need, exactly? As far as I know, most of these materials were developed in the first instance for use in his own monastery.

One thing I am sure of is that as a layman, I don't have a mandate to go around questioning the business of Archimandrites to be involved in the Church.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Sorry to be dense, Father. I'm trying to understand your point that a translation may have an ascetic ideal. Do you mean that the effort people put into prayer and worship is an ascetic exercise which may be aided and propelled by translations of the Lambertsen kind?

No, what I mean by using the word 'ascetic' for these translations is that their tone is marked by an effort not only to be obedient to the text itself but also to the spirit of the text which is ascetic.

This comes out in these particular translations for all the improvements that can be made to them over time in how particular words are translated or in the grammar.

Plus, at least to my knowledge, these are the first complete set of English translations of all of the services that are needed; ie a full horologion (which covers the immovable parts of the services); the Vigil & Liturgy (two sets of books one the sluzhebnik for the clergy- the other for the choir, singers, readers); Sunday Octoechos with the full cycle from Small Vespers through Great Vespers, Matins, Midnight Office and the appropriate stichiri on the Beatitudes at Liturgy; weekly Octoechos; 12 volumes of the Menaion; entire first week of Great Lent; Pentecostarion; and various services from the Trebnik.

Except for the Lenten Triodion and a complete Trebnik then this represents almost the complete set of books required for doing the services. This is an extraordinary effort by any standard.

Lastly as to the kind of English used in these translations, personally I think that the style of English they use is closer to RSV than KJV.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

You know Andreas, I think what bugs me is not striving for linguistic unity --this is a should and a must -- but our attitude within the stiving of expecting that "this should not be" as if the Church should somehow be immune to the problems of our age. Our culture is deathly ill with an empidemic of virulent individualism and an agressive disposition of defending our personal rights. But what other Way has Christ ever had then to take what ails the human race upon Himself? Only then can the Life in Him overcome death. What after all is com-passion except to 'suffer with'. And certainly the Church is suffering.

The cure for individualism can't be had by top down fiat but rather by each individual willingly giving way before the other. The differences just give us more opportunity for this. To me an institutional unity that doesn't grow out of the changed hearts of the membership seems like putting a bandaid on a wound before cleaning it. When the hearts of the people change, then the rest will fall into place.

Unfortunately our hearts our hard and often we have to suffer the full consequences of our rebellion before bending the knee.

Actually this is exactly what I had in mind in my post yesterday.

My experience is that a common translation must be grounded in a situation wherein priority is given to a spirit of ascetic unity. Otherwise individualism keeps breaking down the basic effort.

It's like watching someone try to build a house who keeps removing the foundations as the walls begin to go up. This has become the almost predictable way in which we try to 'build up the Church' nowadays reaching out for administrative solutions instead of a true renewal of the Body in Christ.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

The last posts from Fr Raphael and Anna open up approaches to thinking about this issue which are, if I may say so, very valuable, and I for one am grateful to them. The only Lambertsen text I have (to my knowledge) is the translation of the Akathist hymn to St Sergius of Radonezh. This is notoriously difficult in Slavonic. The English translation does indeed have qualities of restraint and modesty which I can see now do reflect the spirit of ascesis which Fr Raphael has explained.

Anthony:
Originally Posted by Andreas Moran
As for the other texts prepared by Fr Ephrem, I do not know his mandate for producing these.


What mandate does he need, exactly? As far as I know, most of these materials were developed in the first instance for use in his own monastery.

If a person, any person, produces texts to his own liking for his own use then that is no one else's business. A person's finding no texts acceptable save his own may be a spiritual matter for that person and so again no one's business. If a person produces his own texts and publishes them in the hope and the expectation that they will be adopted I don't see that it is entirely misplaced to wonder upon what basis this is done, whether it is on that person's own initiative (which might carry with it spiritual risks), or whether it were part of some diocesan programme for the dissemination of such texts. If the latter, one would be justified in wondering whether there had been such consultation by the bishop as would demonstrate the exercise of pastoral sensitivity as mentioned by Fr Dcn Matthew.

[Anthony]

The last posts from Fr Raphael and Anna open up approaches to thinking about this issue which are, if I may say so, very valuable, and I for one am grateful to them. The only Lambertsen text I have (to my knowledge) is the translation of the Akathist hymn to St Sergius of Radonezh. This is notoriously difficult in Slavonic. The English translation does indeed have qualities of restraint and modesty which I can see now do reflect the spirit of ascesis which Fr Raphael has explained.

Anthony:

If a person, any person, produces texts to his own liking for his own use then that is no one else's business. A person's finding no texts acceptable save his own may be a spiritual matter for that person and so again no one's business. If a person produces his own texts and publishes them in the hope and the expectation that they will be adopted I don't see that it is entirely misplaced to wonder upon what basis this is done, whether it is on that person's own initiative (which might carry with it spiritual risks), or whether it were part of some diocesan programme for the dissemination of such texts. If the latter, one would be justified in wondering whether there had been such consultation by the bishop as would demonstrate the exercise of pastoral sensitivity as mentioned by Fr Dcn Matthew.

That of course is not a matter for me, and I suspect not for you. All I can see behind your post, to be blunt, is a use of personal insinuation (of quite a presumptious kind) to undermine the standing of people in the church who take a different line from you on this topic. It is not an atmosphere in which the reasoned discussion which you occasionally claim to want, can easily take place.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Andreas wrote:


If a person, any person, produces texts to his own liking for his own use then that is no one else's business. A person's finding no texts acceptable save his own may be a spiritual matter for that person and so again no one's business. If a person produces his own texts and publishes them in the hope and the expectation that they will be adopted I don't see that it is entirely misplaced to wonder upon what basis this is done, whether it is on that person's own initiative (which might carry with it spiritual risks), or whether it were part of some diocesan programme for the dissemination of such texts. If the latter, one would be justified in wondering whether there had been such consultation by the bishop as would demonstrate the exercise of pastoral sensitivity as mentioned by Fr Dcn Matthew.

I hadn't thought too much about this until you brought it up. One very positive aspect of the translations of Isaac Lambersen & Fr Lawrence is the way in which they so much come from within the Church. They are by two individuals but the way in which they arrive to us and are used is in a church-wide way. This must be from the spirit in which these two have over the years engaged with their work not as an individualistic effort but rather as true servants of the Church in every sense.

Of course though as part of this we still reflect the jurisdiction we are part of and this comes through in the translations of each particular jurisdiction and church. The very thing which can make a particular translation faithful can also make it difficult to use for another jurisdiction or church. Perhaps then we have to begin with our own local translations where these are available. Only much later if greater canonical unity and unity of spirit are achieved will we be able to arrive at a real common translation for all of the Orthodox on one continent.

In Christ- Fr Raphael
PS: I forgot to mention the Psalter which we use.

[Anna Stickles]

One very positive aspect of the translations of Isaac Lambersen & Fr Lawrence is the way in which they so much come from within the Church. They are by two individuals but the way in which they arrive to us and are used is in a church-wide way.

Father Raphael,

Maybe you could be more specific as to what the history is of these two men and how these translations grew to be used. Was it simply that at the time they were made ROCOR was a small and very tight knit group or were there other factors involved that might be useful for others to learn from?

Often it is much easier to come to consensus in a small group of like-minded people who are striving together. However, this kind of thing usually only exists under an external hostility that causes the group to more deeply bond with one another. Once something is established and habitual then it kind of grows on its own because those coming into the group naturally adapt to the group they are part of. The bigger the group and the less self-contained it is the harder it is to come to a consensus.

[Anthony]

While I appreciate that there is a need for unity, and rather a pressing one, I also wonder how long it took for this to be achieved in the Greek and Slavonic worlds. I don't know the facts here, but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't happen overnight. Just a thought.

On the other hand the greater mobility of our own culture may make the present disunity more immediately obvious and less tolerable.

[Andreas Moran]

While I appreciate that there is a need for unity, and rather a pressing one, I also wonder how long it took for this to be achieved in the Greek and Slavonic worlds. I don't know the facts here, but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't happen overnight. Just a thought.

I can't say as to Greek but as to Church Slavonic, it was not quite overnight but it was in, say, a generation. SS Cyril and Methodius composed scriptural and liturgical texts for the Slavs of Bulgaria in the later 9th century and these texts were straightaway in use. Certainly, the pope objected to them in 885 AD. The texts were adopted by the Russians a century later when they became Orthodox and so then it was pretty well overnight there.


On the other hand the greater mobility of our own culture may make the present disunity more immediately obvious and less tolerable.

This is an important point. Many of us can drive and fly here there and everywhere or browse material on the 'net, and surely this does accentuate differences which not long ago no one would have been aware of.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Anna Stickles wrote:




Father Raphael,

Maybe you could be more specific as to what the history is of these two men and how these translations grew to be used. Was it simply that at the time they were made ROCOR was a small and very tight knit group or were there other factors involved that might be useful for others to learn from?

Often it is much easier to come to consensus in a small group of like-minded people who are striving together. However, this kind of thing usually only exists under an external hostility that causes the group to more deeply bond with one another. Once something is established and habitual then it kind of grows on its own because those coming into the group naturally adapt to the group they are part of. The bigger the group and the less self-contained it is the harder it is to come to a consensus.

I'm sorry- I don't know the early history of these two translators except that I had heard of them from at least the 1980s I think. (I have an early copy of the Liturgy from 1979 in which Fr Lawrence has hand written at the back "This is not an official version of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad").

Probably to some degree how these translations have been received could go back to the psychology of 'being apart'. But other efforts that were also 'in house' didn't have the success of these two. To keep to the theme of this thread I really do ascribe this success to the spirit in which the translations were done; in a very special way the texts reflect the spirit we try to embody; and so are easily accepted; and in so doing they promote a liturgical unity of mind. Translators, bishops, clergy , faithful - in this positive sense these translations manifest for us a coherent Church.

Whatever is behind this then could perhaps be looked at on a wider level.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Father David Moser]

Maybe you could be more specific as to what the history is of these two men and how these translations grew to be used. Was it simply that at the time they were made ROCOR was a small and very tight knit group or were there other factors involved that might be useful for others to learn from?

Often it is much easier to come to consensus in a small group of like-minded people who are striving together.

Br Isaac and Fr Lawrence do not work together - each works independently of the other and in some cases disagree quite strongly on translational issues. They do not live in the same place (Br Isaac is at Synod in NYC and Fr Lawrence is at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville) and do not consult. If then, they seem to be of one mind and producing translations that work together as though they were coordinated, this can only be explained by the oneness of mind and heart that is the result of the Holy Spirit working in them.

Fr David Moser

[Anthony]

I can't say as to Greek but as to Church Slavonic, it was not quite overnight but it was in, say, a generation. SS Cyril and Methodius composed scriptural and liturgical texts for the Slavs of Bulgaria in the later 9th century and these texts were straightaway in use. Certainly, the pope objected to them in 885 AD. The texts were adopted by the Russians a century later when they became Orthodox and so then it was pretty well overnight there.


Yes, that sounds right in the case of Slavonic - thank you.

[Father David Moser]

Please note the prayer request (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=70948&postcount=1) for Br. Isaac Lambertson.

Fr David Moser

[Michael Astley]

Does anybody know where I might be able to find a good transliteration of the Litany of Peace, or, indeed, other litanies? I do not (yet?) read the cyrillic alphabet. Thank you.

In Christ,
the unworthy Reader Michael

[Nicolaj]

Does anybody know where I might be able to find a good transliteration of the Litany of Peace, or, indeed, other litanies? I do not (yet?) read the cyrillic alphabet. Thank you.

In Christ,
the unworthy Reader Michael

I suggest you look here: http://www.saintjonah.org/services/resources.htm

Nicolaj, the sinner

[Michael Astley]

Thank you, Nicolaj.

Sadly, having scoured those links, I haven't been able to come up with what I'm after. Me sad now.

Michael

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Reader Michael, you wrote:


Does anybody know where I might be able to find a good transliteration of the Litany of Peace, or, indeed, other litanies? I do not (yet?) read the cyrillic alphabet.

Given that a 'good transliteration' is almost oxymoronic, and with the caveat that transliteration of Slavonic into English is almost impossible without so many diacritical marks that it becomes even less straight-forward than staring at a script you do not know, here you are. Throughout, please read î as a long 'ee' sound: e.g. Gospodî = "gos-poh-dee". Two in a row are pronounced distinctly: e.g. Bozhîîm = "Bozh-ee-eem." An 'h' at the end of a word is pronounced slightly gutterally (the Slavonic х). At times I've separated syllables with a dash where the pronunciation might be unclear without. Underscored syllables are stressed.
Mîrom, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O svishnyem mîrye i cpasenîî doosh nashih, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O mîrye vsyego mîra, blagostoyanîî svyatih Bozhîîh Tserkvyey î soyedînyenîî vsyeh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O svyatyem hramye cyem î vyerooyoo, blagogovyenîyem î strahom Bozhîîm vhodyaschîh v'on, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O vyelîkom Gospodînye î Otsye nashem Svyatyayshem Patrîarsye Kîrîlye, î o Gospodînye nashem vîsokoprayosvyaschenyayshem arhîepîskopye Marka*, chestnyem presvîterstvye, vo Hrîstye dîakonstvye, o vsyem prîchte î lyoodyeh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O bogo-hranîmye stranye nashey, vlastyeh î vo-înstvye yeh-yah, Gospodoo pomolimsya.**

O grahdye syem, vsyakom grahdye, stranye, î vyeroyoo zhîvooschih v'nîh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O blagorastvoryenîî vozdoohov, o îzobîlîî plodov zyemnih î vryemyenyeh mîrnih, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O plavayooschîh, pootyeshestvooyooschîh, nyedoogooyooschîh, strazhdooschîh, plyenyenih, î o spasyenîî îh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

O îzbavîtîsya nam ot vsyakîya skorbî, gnyeva î noozhdî, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

Zastoopî, spasî, pomîlooy î so-hranî nas, Bozhe, tvoyeyoo blagodatîyoo.

Prîsvyatooyoo, prîchîstooyoo, prîblagoslovyenooyoo, slavnooyoo vladîchîtsoo nashoo Bogorodîtsoo î prîsnodyevoo Marîyoo, so vsyemî svyatîmî pomyanoovshe, samî syebye, î droog drooga, î vyes zhîvot nash, Xrîstoo Bogoo prîdadîm.***


* As you are of the ROCOR in the UK, I've indicated here your archbishop Mark, following patriarch Kyrill.
** If it is the custom in your parish to commemorate the Queen and Royal Household, rather than just 'this God-preserved land', then this petition reads: O korolyevye Elizavyetye î korolyevskom domye yeh-yah, o vlastyeh î narodye yeh-yah, Gospodoo pomolimsya.
***I've tried to emulate the actual, rather than the technically-correct pronunciation in this petition. Throughout, most of the î sounds (e.g. in Prîsvyatooyoo) are actually 'yeh' (the Slavonic letter е); but when shortened with the stress elsewhere, take on a weak î sound.
That's about got my eyes all out of kilter for the evening, and it looks quite silly on the screen! But may it be of some help.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Michael Astley]

Dear Father Matthew,

I think I'm one step away from asking you to be my new best friend.

Thank you so very much for this. I understand about pronunciation not being rendered properly in English but just a general idea will be fine. I learnt some of the Trisagion prayers and the "Come, let us worship" by looking at transliterations and mimicking Youtube videos and CD recordings to get the pronunciation right, and our local polyglot says that it sounds passably authentic.

As for the ROCOR-specific texts, there is a petition that the ROCOR synod has added for the Russian land. We also commemorate Metropolitan Hilarion. Here is the English-language text for the deacon's portions as we use it, if it helps.


Deacon: In peace let us pray to the Lord.
People: Lord, have mercy. (And after each petition)
Deacon: For the peace from on high and for the salvation of our souls, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For the peace of the whole world, the good estate of the holy churches of God, and for the union of all, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For this holy house and for those who with faith, reverence, and the fear of God enter herein, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For our great lord and father, His Holiness Patriarch N.; for our lord the Very Most Reverend Metropolitan N., First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad; for our lord the Most/Right Reverend (Arch)bishop N.; for the venerable priesthood, the diaconate in Christ, for all the clergy and people, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For our Sovereign Lord/Lady, King/Queen N. and all his/her royal house; for his/her government and armed forces; for this land and all who in faith and piety dwell herein; and for every land, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For the God-preserved Russian land and its Orthodox people both in the homeland and in the diaspora, and for their salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: That He may deliver His people from enemies both visible and invisible, and confirm in us oneness of mind, brotherly love, and piety, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For this city/town/holy monastery, for every city and country, and the faithful who dwell therein, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For seasonable weather, the abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful times, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For those who travel by sea, land, and air; for the sick, the suffering, captives, and for their salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: For our deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, and need, let us pray to the Lord.
Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by thy grace.
Deacon: Calling to remembrance our all-holy, immaculate, exceedingly blessed, and glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary with all the Saints, let us commend ourselves and each other, and our whole life unto Christ our God.

If you or anybody else could make alterations for those differences, I'd be very grateful indeed. Thank you, again.

In Christ,
the very appreciative Reader Michael

[Andreas Moran]

To hear it for real, Michael, you could just nip down to the monastery here for a vigil service. Hieromonk Nikolai officiated at the vigil for the Dormition this evening, and you would have heard all this in Slavonic - several times! Actually it was, as my wife said afterwards, 'прекрасная служба'.

Reader Andreas (since I read the Six Psalms this evening.)

[Michael Astley]

To hear it for real, Michael, you could just nip down to the monastery here for a vigil service. Hieromonk Nikolai officiated at the vigil for the Dormition this evening, and you would have heard all this in Slavonic - several times! Actually it was, as my wife said afterwards, 'прекрасная служба'.

:-) Thank you for the open invitation. I must visit soon.

My own parish priest does this litany and other portions in Slavonic or English, depending on who is present, so I hear it a few times, and he was taught by the same lady I mentioned above, who speaks about 7 languages and is Russian, so his pronunciation I'm sure is fairly close to what it should be. It's just useful to be able to pause, and repeat certain lines over and over until such time as it sticks.

In Christ,
Michael

[Father David Moser]

... It's just useful to be able to pause, and repeat certain lines over and over until such time as it sticks.

Michael, it only takes about an hour to learn the Slavonic alphabet. Once learned it is a simple matter to spend about 15 min a day phonetically reading (The Gospel is good, the Psalter is best). Slavonic is very phonetic and so flat out reading from rote is pretty accurate. You might then have someone who can read it well listen to your pronounciation to make corrections.

All of the above to say that reading Slavonic is infinitely superior to reading transliterations. I cannot follow a transliteration but can read the Slavonic characters with ease (not that I understand 90% of what I'm reading). Its just a matter of practice. Also, as has been mentioned, transliterations are never ever accurate.

Fr David Moser

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

One further point about Slavonic to encourage learning it.

For modern languages a common accent is important. If we speak English for example with a strong Russian accent we say, "he's speaking English with a foreign accent." All modern languages follow this pattern.

However with Slavonic each Slavic country that used it followed their own accent. Thus Russians, Ukrainians & Serbs for example all tend to use Slavonic according to their own national or even regional accent.

Thus there is real precedent for Slavonic according to local accent and although it may be hard for the Slavic ear to adjust to this means that our local accents could very well be acceptable also with Slavonic (in moderation- I once heard Slavonic with a strong Texas accent- interesting).

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Michael Astley]

Michael, it only takes about an hour to learn the Slavonic alphabet.

You're very optimistic, Father David. :-) Reading things like this is very good for my humility.

I haven't yet tried to learn the Slavonic alphabet but I did once try one of those "teach yourself Russian" book & CD courses and I couldn't get past stage one because I simply couldn't grasp the alphabet, which is essential for the rest of the course. I looked at the letters and made the sounds the book told me they should make. I listened to them on the CD. I even got myself an exercise book and made my own notes of the full alphabet with pronunciation tips for myself, and I tried to study that. After about a week of this, very little had stuck. I picked up my English-Russian dictionary and tried to pronounce some of the Russian words, and I just couldn't recall the sounds of more than 2 or 3 of the letters. I doubt that the Slavonic alphabet would be much different and when I read that it can be learnt in about an hour, I feel really quite inadequate, to be honest.

The thing is that, having been through a phase of frivolity last year, I made the beginnings of an attempt to learn Esperanto and, within a week, had learnt the basic grammar, conjugation, and formation of words, and was translating prayers into Esperanto with the aid of a dictionary for vocabulary. I was rather good at French and Spanish at school, so my problem isn't with learning languages. I just don't seem to have the same propensity for learning "new" alphabets - I don't know how to make it stick.

That isn't to say that I'm unconvinced by the arguments in favour of learning to read the Slavonic rather than relying on transliterations, and it isn't to say that I'm not willing to try, but, unless there's a particularly effective learning technique that I have not grasped, I'm afraid that for me it is not a simple task. :-(

In Christ,
the humbled Reader Michael

[Olga]

Reader Michael

Perhaps the best way of mastering Slavonic is by immersing yourself in listening to it, either by attending Slavonic services, and/or listening to recordings of services, along with, initially, following along with good transliterations of texts (some translierations are better than others!), so that recognisable patterns emerge of what first sounds like gibberish. Once the "sounds" of words and phrases (indeed, often whole hymns) become familiar, then it should be easier to tackle the Cyrillic alphabet.

Are you familiar with the Greek alphabet? Even better, can you read Greek? If so, then picking up the Cyrillic should be much easier. Having a good "ear" is also a huge help in picking up fine points of diction and inflection.

(What I have expressed above holds just as much for those familiar with Slavonic who wish to master Greek.)

[Paul Cowan]

I have only learned one word.

Ameen.

[Olga]

I have only learned one word.

Ameen.

WHAT?? (puts on grumpy old woman hat) You mean, not even Kyrie eleison or Gospodi pomiluy? :)))

On a more serious note, like with any interest or discipline, if one is truly keen on learning more, one is capable of learning, be it a liturgical language (or, at least, some understanding of it), or a different alphabet. Application and dedication. And it certainly doesn't need to take up every waking hour, believe me.

[Paul Cowan]

I thought we were talking Slavonic here. Though I think Ameen is across most language borders.

PC

[Andrew Kisliakov]

Dear Fr Matthew, Michael,

If I may make a couple of minor corrections (I've put my modified syllables in bold):



O vyelîkom Gospodînye î Otsye nashem Svyatyayshem Patrîarsye Kîrîlye, î o Gospodînye nashem vîsokoprayosvyaschenyayshem arhîepîskopye Marka*, chestnyem presvîterstvye, vo Hrîstye dîakonstvye, o vsyem prîchte î lyoodyeh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.



O vyelîkom Gospodînye î Otse [ 'ye' after 'ts' loses its palatised sound ] nashem Svyatyeyshem Patrîarsye Kîrîlye, î o Gospodînye nashem vîsokopryeosvyaschenyeyshem arhîepîskopye Markye* [ Archbishop's name is in the prepositional case ], chestnyem presvîterstvye, vo Hrîstye dîakonstvye, o vsyem prîchte î lyoodyeh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.



***I've tried to emulate the actual, rather than the technically-correct pronunciation in this petition. Throughout, most of the î sounds (e.g. in Prîsvyatooyoo) are actually 'yeh' (the Slavonic letter ?); but when shortened with the stress elsewhere, take on a weak î sound.


In my experience, I've always been directed to pronounce Slavonic letters using what you call the technically-correct pronunciation, as opposed to the modern colloquial pronunciation - thus, 'E' and 'O' are always pronounced 'ye' and 'o', rather then 'i' or 'a'.

Andrew

[Anthony]

Dear Michael,

I don't know whether this will help at all, but here is a method I often use when learning new alphabets (and I certainly have no particular gift for learning languages).

(i) Learn the vowels, and read a text simply picking out the vowel sounds, without worrying about meaning. (Slavonic has quite a lot of vowels, so this might be split up.)

(ii) Learn some of the most frequent and / or distinctive consonants, and do the same, again without worrying about words, though some of them may fall into place.

(iii) Now see if you can make out the words, filling in the remaining consonants as you go.





In my experience, I've always been directed to pronounce Slavonic letters using what you call the technically-correct pronunciation, as opposed to the modern colloquial pronunciation - thus, '?' and '?' are always pronounced 'ye' and 'o', rather then 'i' or 'a'.


I have also always been taught this, though it seems to more often honoured in the breach than in the observance.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for the various notes. You wrote:



In my experience, I've always been directed to pronounce Slavonic letters using what you call the technically-correct pronunciation, as opposed to the modern colloquial pronunciation - thus, 'E' and 'O' are always pronounced 'ye' and 'o', rather then 'i' or 'a'.

This is quite true indeed; however, there is a distinction to be made between modern pronunciation (which involves quite a lot of vowel transformations - most notably the unstressed 'o' becoming 'ah') a well as other changes (such as the suffix -??? coming to be pronounced '-evo', etc.), which aren't appropriate to Church Slavonic, and the changes in vowel stress that are part of Slavonic as well.

Namely, the -e- taking on the characteristics of -?- when unstressed: this isn't a modern colloquialism, rather a fact of stress emphasis upon the vowel (since if you halve the stress length of -e- , you are left with a sound almost indistinguishable from -?-).

INXC, [I]Dcn Matthew

[Father David Moser]

O vyelîkom Gospodînye î Otsye nashem Svyatyayshem Patrîarsye Kîrîlye, î o Gospodînye nashem vîsokoprayosvyaschenyayshem arhîepîskopye Marka*, chestnyem presvîterstvye, vo Hrîstye dîakonstvye, o vsyem prîchte î lyoodyeh, Gospodoo pomolimsya.

[B]* As you are of the ROCOR in the UK, I've indicated here your archbishop Mark, following patriarch Kyrill.

Just a note here on content (God forbid I should try and correct anyone's pronunciation). In ROCOR the commemoration includes "the very most reverend Metropolitan Hilarion, first hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia" immediately following the Patiarch and before the diocesan bishop.

Fr David Moser

[Andrew Kisliakov]

Dear Fr Matthew,




Namely, the -e- taking on the characteristics of -?- when unstressed: this isn't a modern colloquialism, rather a fact of stress emphasis upon the vowel (since if you halve the stress length of -e- [i.e. de-stress it], you are left with a sound almost indistinguishable from -?-).



It looks like the forum has mangled your cyrillic characters as well - perhaps this is a technical issue that could be looked at in the future?

I actually disagree that an unstressed -e- always becomes almost indistinguishable from -i-. I've been taught to pay particular attention in this case and that of the letter -o-, to always pronounce the vowel clearly, avoiding this kind of drift. When pronounced properly, the different sounds are quite distinguishable.

I wouldn't know whether it is a modern colloquialism, but I suspect that it is - otherwise the words would themselves have been written with one of the existing Slavonic 'i's. I think it's definitely more of a regional variation, as Ukrainians and Belarussians also tend towards such pronunciations.

Anyway, it's a particular pet peeve of mine to see Slavonic (or even modern Russian) texts transliterated in this way. I think that it only adds to the confusion.

Andrew

[Michael Astley]

Thank you for your help and tips, everyone. What I am currently finding useful is sitting here with this (http://www.orthodoxepubsoc.org/alphabetprint.htm) open and online Slavonic texts of prayers that I already know in Slavonic, (and have learnt through imitation on Slavonic e-tutor), such as the Gloria Patri, the Trisagion, Gospodi pomilui, and so forth. It is helping me to match the sounds I already know with the symbols that represent them. I had never considered doing this before.

I have only been going for about ten minutes but I am already finding it much easier than trying to learn new letters and sounds at the same time.

In Christ,
Michael

[Michael Astley]

Actually, I have one or two questions already but I don't want to completely derail this thread. I wonder whether it might be possible to divide this thread so that there can be a new one, containing the very helpful replies thus far and which can be specifically about the practical side of church Slavonic. Does that sound like something we would like to have? I would certainly appreciate it.

Thank you.

[Andrew Kisliakov]

Thank you for your help and tips, everyone. What I am currently finding useful is sitting here with this (http://www.orthodoxepubsoc.org/alphabetprint.htm) open and online Slavonic texts of prayers that I already know in Slavonic, (and have learnt through imitation on Slavonic e-tutor), such as the Gloria Patri, the Trisagion, Gospodi pomilui, and so forth. It is helping me to match the sounds I already know with the symbols that represent them. I had never considered doing this before.

I have only been going for about ten minutes but I am already finding it much easier than trying to learn new letters and sounds at the same time.

In Christ,
Michael

Dear Michael,

I think that the chart you linked has several inaccuracies and wouldn't advise using it.

I found a better phonetic table at the following URL:

http://www.halfwayproductions.com/slavonic/alphabet/pronunciation.html

My only changes there would be for the following letters:

http://www.halfwayproductions.com/slavonic/alphabet/images/uk-2.gif
should be pronounced as in 'book' rather than 'zoo'

http://www.halfwayproductions.com/slavonic/alphabet/images/izhe.gif http://www.halfwayproductions.com/slavonic/alphabet/images/i.gif http://www.halfwayproductions.com/slavonic/alphabet/images/izhica.gif

Although a lot of systems seem to use it, I never understood why these are transliterated as 'ee' rather than the more accurate and obvious 'i'.

Note that both of the linked tables are phonetic guides and not are not indicative of any kinds of standards used for transliteration into Latin letters.

Regards,
Andrew

P.S. I was likewise thinking that this is a different topic and should be moved to a different thread.

[Michael Astley]

Thank you, Andrew. That has been really helpful as I've been rying to read some words.

I have been using the Old Rite prayer book, (the only Slavonic text I have at home), and have thought I have misremembered the letters because I encountered what I thought was a string of four consonants, and thought that couldn't possibly be right. Then I looked at the trisagion prayers and realised that what I was saying was not what I'm accustomed to saying when I do them at church from memory. That's when I realised I wasn't misremembering the letters at all. Many of the vowels and sometimes entire groups of syllables are omitted in some of the more common words. Is this normal in prayer books? If so, I'll struggle.

In Christ,
Michael

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Andrew, you wrote:




http://www.halfwayproductions.com/slavonic/alphabet/images/uk-2.gif
should be pronounced as in 'book' rather than 'zoo'

I'm uncertain of this. I was certainly taught that this combination is a cross between 'zoo' and 'toe'. This may in effect be similar to the sound you are describing as 'book'; though that strikes me as too short for the actual sound.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Dear Andrew, you wrote:



I'm uncertain of this. I was certainly taught that this combination is a cross between 'zoo' and 'toe'. This may in effect be similar to the sound you are describing as 'book'; though that strikes me as too short for the actual sound.

INXC, Dcn Matthew

The y sound corresponds to 'oo' in zoo not in book.

Part of the confusion here could arise from how we hear other languages.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andrew Kisliakov]

Thank you, Andrew. That has been really helpful as I've been rying to read some words.

I have been using the Old Rite prayer book, (the only Slavonic text I have at home), and have thought I have misremembered the letters because I encountered what I thought was a string of four consonants, and thought that couldn't possibly be right. Then I looked at the trisagion prayers and realised that what I was saying was not what I'm accustomed to saying when I do them at church from memory. That's when I realised I wasn't misremembering the letters at all. Many of the vowels and sometimes entire groups of syllables are omitted in some of the more common words. Is this normal in prayer books? If so, I'll struggle.

In Christ,
Michael

Dear Michael,

Yes, there are abbreviated words in Slavonic texts. You can tell if a word is abbreviated because it'll have a little zigzag-like mark (called a 'titlo') above it. Additionally, some titlos are accompanied by an additional letter which corresponds to one of the omitted letters.

There is a limited number of abbreviated words, and all of them (I think) generally depict 'holy' names or attributes (e.g. 'God', 'Theotokos', 'king', 'angel', 'blessed', 'holy' etc.) The good thing about this is that you've probably heard a good many of these already.

The words themselves are usually quite easy to figure out for any native speaker of a Slavic language. In your case, it would probably be easier to start out by finding texts printed in more modern Cyrillic letters (although ideally using pre-1918 orthography). I have never seen such a text that also contained abbreviations.

Andrew

[Father David Moser]

Yes, there are abbreviated words in Slavonic texts. ...
There is a limited number of abbreviated words,

The Slavonic grammar written by Archbishop Alypy of Chicago (and which has been used as the standard text for teaching Slavonic at Holy Trinity - it has also been translated into English and so is quite useful to non-Russian speakers wishing to learn Slavonic) has a list of all the abbreviated words (There are about 50 of them). This list takes up about half a page. I simply photocopied that list and keep it tucked inside the cover of the Slavonic Psalter and Slavonic Gospel so that it is handy for when I have a word I can't recognize or figure out.

Fr David Moser

[Andrew Kisliakov]

Dear Andrew, you wrote:

I'm uncertain of this. I was certainly taught that this combination is a cross between 'zoo' and 'toe'. This may in effect be similar to the sound you are describing as 'book'; though that strikes me as too short for the actual sound.

INXC, Dcn Matthew


The y sound corresponds to 'oo' in zoo not in book.

Part of the confusion here could arise from how we hear other languages.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

I'm sure that my own perception of sounds, and my own pronunciation of English, affect my judgment here. I speak with an Australian accent, although I'm trying to take into account American and British pronunciations here.

However, I'd still maintain my original contention that the Russian 'y' sounds:
- quite unlike the vowel in zoo (which to me sounds like mood, you, soon, crew, clue)
- almost identically to the vowel in the book (which to me sounds like good, full, should)

On deeper thought, it seems to me that it corresponds more closely to the sounds in fool or cool, although the sound is still not as long as in those words.

Although perhaps it originated that way, I don't see the Slavonic letter as a diphthong either. To my ear, the sound is relatively short - perhaps not quite as short as book, as Fr Matthew points out - and uniform.

Andrew

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Andrew Kisliakov wrote:



However, I'd still maintain my original contention that the Russian 'y' sounds:
- quite unlike the vowel in zoo (which to me sounds like mood, you, soon, crew, clue)
- almost identically to the vowel in the book (which to me sounds like good, full, should)

On deeper thought, it seems to me that it corresponds more closely to the sounds in fool or cool, although the sound is still not as long as in those words.


This is actually very interesting. When my Russian people say y, I hear them say a sound quite close to the oo in zoo, but more tight than in English. This sound actually has no equivalent in English (or at least Canadian English). This pronunciation goes both for those who of the older and as well as the new emigration.

In any case that is why it is my thought that Slavonic actually has no absolute pronunciation- ask a Russian from Moscow, a Russian from the older emigration, a Canadian or Englishman or American to say this one sound y- and slighter or greater differences result. Which is an example I think of the particular way in which Slavonic is a universal Church language.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Olga]

This is actually very interesting. When my Russian people say y, I hear them say a sound quite close to the oo in zoo, but more tight than in English. This sound actually has no equivalent in English (or at least Canadian English). This pronunciation goes both for those who of the older and as well as the new emigration.

In any case that is why it is my thought that Slavonic actually has no absolute pronunciation- ask a Russian from Moscow, a Russian from the older emigration, a Canadian or Englishman or American to say this one sound y- and slighter or greater differences result. Which is an example I think of the particular way in which Slavonic is a universal Church language.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Fr Raphael, what you have described is common to all languages, be they currently spoken languages, or historic ones used for a specific purpose, such as Church Slavonic and liturgical Greek. Church Slavonic is a language used for a specific purpose, and is not a "vernacular" spoken language, therefore one may expect that its pronunciation would be uniform and standardised. However, in my experience, this is not the case, any more than liturgical Greek is standardised in its pronunciation.

Someone who is of Greek or Slavic stock who sings or chants in their respective liturgical language almost always brings into their enunciation elements of regional pronunciation, be it from their ancestral dialect, or the form to which they have been most exposed. This, of course, is utterly frustrating to people who wish to pronounce a liturgical language "correctly", but are given a variety of answers by "native" or "culturally native" speakers. Ukrainian pronunciation is particularly distinctive, as others have pointed out. E becomes i, g becomes h, etc.

A possible solution: Listen to as many recordings of Slavonic services as possible, as well as attend as many actual church services in Slavonic as you can. A good ear will gradually be able to distinguish between "standard" and "regional" pronunciations and inflections.

[David Lanier]

I've been skimming through and reading this lengthy thread but I did not see any reference to what the Church Fathers may have had to say about the use of language in the Church. Did the issue of language (other than the controversies between translation of Latin and Greek languages of West and East respectively) ever come up as an issue such that the Holy Fathers wrote about it?

Is there a lesson in the Acts of the Apostles when after receiving the Holy Spirit, they went out and preached the Gospel and Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ to the multitudes in their languages by the Grace of the Holy Spirit?

Is language an issue for the Orthodox presence we have in Mexico and Cuba or do they use Spanish there?

The point was made early on in this thread (a couple of years ago now) that most cradle Orthodox are now 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th generations since their ancestors came to America and pointed out that many of those later generations ending up leaving the Church because of it (or at least in part because of it). So it almost raises the question of what is the mission of the Orthodox Church in the United States? Is it better to use a language people don't understand simply because we think it sounds better or is it better to use a language that everyone understands so that everyone can participate?

Perhaps I'm biased because I converted to Orthodoxy in an all English parish, but it would seem that the evolutionary process should have us all using at least mostly English by now but I am really curious to know what the Church Fathers may have had to say about this subject and what the Church has done Traditionally and historically when expanding into new lands where the native peoples spoke a different language.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

This issue is more complex than at times presented. The first Orthodox to these countries in the west were 'ethnic'. And following the time tested principle of the Church the local language of worship which these people already knew for centuries was used: eg Slavonic for east Slavs, Byzantine Greek for Greeks, etc. However over time as a matter of course later generations from the original one began to assimilate. Then the need arose for the local language of the new country which the original immigrants had moved to: eg English, French, etc. In other words there is some confusion in our understanding of what happened in regards to the original 'ethnic' generation to arrive in the west. We are under the impression that by the principles of the Church the language of the new country should have been used. Whereas in truth in complete consistency with Church principles from centuries past, it was the Church language which these people already understood which was used. This was entirely consistent with established Church practice and not at all wrong as often portrayed by us.

However from here things get more complex. What do you do for example in a parish where the older generation is more familiar with the older Church language while the younger only understands the local? Keep in mind that by now if we look dispassionately at the statistics we see that the younger generation falls away from the Faith at a greater rate (sometimes much greater) than the older founding generations. And this is due to cultural assimilation much more than to the question of using the local language. What also to do in relation to new generations of immigrants who use the older Church language? 'Ethnic' churches still have a responsibility to these people although tension may result from the fact that there are present those of the assimilated third generation along with converts.

Anyway- my point here is only to show that the real question is actually complex. It has no easy solution such as 'just use the local language'. Unless we adopt a most uncharitable attitude towards the founding generations and new immigrants; and contradict the very principle of use of the understood language which we claim we believe in. Or to say it more clearly from the actual situation on the ground nowadays: in many actual parish situations it is a bilingual presentation which is needed and not just uni lingual either the older Church language or the local one. Thus the actual situation is much more challenging and needs a constant balancing act along with continual charity and patience on all sides.

Lastly there is the question of the support which a jurisdiction gives to the use of the local language. There are now increasing situations after all where a uni lingual parish is what is needed using the local language. Here I think that the evidence shows that this is gaining ground over time. Planting a parish takes time and patience. It isn't easy due to the hard work involved. And sometimes as already pointed out it is precisely our generation- the local one- which finds a harder time with this.

So then let us not blame (I mean this in general; I don't mean the post above was blaming) but let us devote ourselves to the place and parish where God has put us.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Herman Blaydoe]

Sts. Cyril & Methodios created the Cyrillic alphabet so that they could translate the Scriptures and services into the local language which did not have a written form. It created quite a stir at the time since many thought the only languages proper for Holy Scripture were the one used on the Cross: Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

The Russian monastics in Alaska translated the service books into the local languages as well. More recently, ROCOR has been a leading producer of service books in English and Spanish and Chinese as well I believe.

I have to ask, what do you mean by "us"? "We" are an international Church, consisting of many cultures and many languages. Many participants in this forum speak English as a second language, so many of "us" don't use English for worship to begin with, so I think we need to qualify "us all" a bit, or at least acknowledge that we don't "all" worship in English (or 'mericun for that matter).

We (the British and Americans) are two countries separated by a common language. George Bernard Shaw

Herman

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Herman wrote:


I have to ask, what do you mean by "us"?

Do you mean me?

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[David Lanier]

This issue is more complex than at times presented. The first Orthodox to these countries in the west were 'ethnic'. And following the time tested principle of the Church the local language of worship which these people already knew for centuries was used: eg Slavonic for east Slavs, Byzantine Greek for Greeks, etc. However over time as a matter of course later generations from the original one began to assimilate. Then the need arose for the local language of the new country which the original immigrants had moved to: eg English, French, etc. In other words there is some confusion in our understanding of what happened in regards to the original 'ethnic' generation to arrive in the west. We are under the impression that by the principles of the Church the language of the new country should have been used. Whereas in truth in complete consistency with Church principles from centuries past, it was the Church language which these people already understood which was used. This was entirely consistent with established Church practice and not at all wrong as often portrayed by us.

However from here things get more complex. What do you do for example in a parish where the older generation is more familiar with the older Church language while the younger only understands the local? Keep in mind that by now if we look dispassionately at the statistics we see that the younger generation falls away from the Faith at a greater rate (sometimes much greater) than the older founding generations. And this is due to cultural assimilation much more than to the question of using the local language. What also to do in relation to new generations of immigrants who use the older Church language? 'Ethnic' churches still have a responsibility to these people although tension may result from the fact that there are present those of the assimilated third generation along with converts.

Anyway- my point here is only to show that the real question is actually complex. It has no easy solution such as 'just use the local language'. Unless we adopt a most uncharitable attitude towards the founding generations and new immigrants; and contradict the very principle of use of the understood language which we claim we believe in. Or to say it more clearly from the actual situation on the ground nowadays: in many actual parish situations it is a bilingual presentation which is needed and not just uni lingual either the older Church language or the local one. Thus the actual situation is much more challenging and needs a constant balancing act along with continual charity and patience on all sides.

Lastly there is the question of the support which a jurisdiction gives to the use of the local language. There are now increasing situations after all where a uni lingual parish is what is needed using the local language. Here I think that the evidence shows that this is gaining ground over time. Planting a parish takes time and patience. It isn't easy due to the hard work involved. And sometimes as already pointed out it is precisely our generation- the local one- which finds a harder time with this.

So then let us not blame (I mean this in general; I don't mean the post above was blaming) but let us devote ourselves to the place and parish where God has put us.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Thank you Fr. Raphael. That is very well said. I apologize if I was scathing in my post or was trying to find fault, but it comes from my passion for the Holy Orthodox Faith and my desire to see the Church grow and become prosperous here in the states.

The Church I attend now in High Point, NC was founded only just a few years ago as an Orthodox Mission and has quickly grown from holding services inside of a Protestant Church to having its own building with a vibrant and dynamic parish comprised of many cradle Orthodox of Russian and Greek descent as well as many converts and we are an all English parish. Curiously we also have one Ethiopian member and he chooses our Church over the Greek or Serbian Church in this area. I suppose (only a guess) that the reason is because he understands English and not Greek or Slavonic.

Language is a powerful unifying force for peoples and nations and nations have used language as a means to unify a people and culture (sometimes unjustly by forbidding use of a different language). And so I believe that if we can ever unite around language, then perhaps this will lead (or at least contribute to) to the union of the Orthodox in this country which is ordered by the Church Canons (if I remember correctly) and then one day we won't be the Orthodox in America, or the Russian Orthodox Outside Russia, or the Greek Orthodox, or Serbian, Antiochian, et al, but simply the Orthodox Church in America and yet still preserve the little traditions and differences that make one parish Greek or another Russian and so on and I pray that God will give us the Grace and Wisdom to accomplish it.

[David Lanier]

Sts. Cyril & Methodios created the Cyrillic alphabet so that they could translate the Scriptures and services into the local language which did not have a written form. It created quite a stir at the time since many thought the only languages proper for Holy Scripture were the one used on the Cross: Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

The Russian monastics in Alaska translated the service books into the local languages as well. More recently, ROCOR has been a leading producer of service books in English and Spanish and Chinese as well I believe.

I have to ask, what do you mean by "us"? "We" are an international Church, consisting of many cultures and many languages. Many participants in this forum speak English as a second language, so many of "us" don't use English for worship to begin with, so I think we need to qualify "us all" a bit, or at least acknowledge that we don't "all" worship in English (or 'mericun for that matter).

We (the British and Americans) are two countries separated by a common language. George Bernard Shaw

Herman

Bu us I mean we the Orthodox Faithful in the United States.

[Father David Moser]

As Fr Raphael noted, this is a much more complex issue than it appears. As a pastor I have to look at the needs of the whole parish not just this or that group within the parish. A very important aspect to this is that I need not only to look at the parish as it exists at this moment in time but also to the past (wherein is its heritage) and to the future. Because of this it is my opinion that it is important to celebrate the service in a combination of the language of the past and the language of the present (thus in my parish it is mostly English - the present - with some Slavonic - the past). I present this situation to the older generation as one that is necessary for the children. Fr Raphael points out that many Orthodox parishes, founded by immigrants and refugees, lost whole generations due to assimilation. That is, in my opinion, only part of the story. Yes, there is a certain portion of the youth that will be lost to assimilation, however that rate of loss can be lessened by attention to the future of the parish. Language is a part of that attention. Thus when I insist on more English than Slavonic in the services, my primary reason is not about "the converts" but rather about the children. If the children come to Church and hear the services in a foreign language (and any language that is not the language on TV and in school is a foreign language - no matter what the parents speak at home) they will develop the idea that Church is not a part of the "real world" - it is a fantasy place that they visit from time to time (even many times a week in some families) but always return the "real world". As they grow older and begin to question the parental values they will look for their own value in the Church. If we do not give them that kind of value they will abandon the Church as useless (thus the importance of Church school and of parents instructing their children at home not only in the rituals of prayer and so on, but in the meaning and doctrines of the Church). An important tool for this, in my opinion, is language. By having services in (in my case) English, we bring the world of the Church into the "real world" of the children. This does not cure the possible alienation of youth from the Church by itself, but it is one step in that direction - it makes it easier. There are many many other things that must be done to communicate the importance and value of religious belief to our children than just language - but the use of the language of their "real world" is a start. Thus, the parents of the first generation will more often agree to set aside their own preference for Slavonic in favor of the local language for their children's benefit. This goes back to looking at the whole parish, not just the parish of the present, but the parish of the future as well - for without today's children in the parish of the present, the parish of the future will not survive.


Fr David Moser

[Herman Blaydoe]

Bu us I mean we the Orthodox Faithful in the United States.

I understand, but do be aware that "us" here in this particular forum has a much bigger meaning. This is a truly international forum and "we" 'mericuns should keep that in mind. It is good to remember that America is NOT the center of the universe, that is all I'm sayin'.

Herman the 'mericun Pooh

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

David Lanier wrote:


I apologize if I was scathing in my post or was trying to find fault, but it comes from my passion for the Holy Orthodox Faith and my desire to see the Church grow and become prosperous here in the states.

That's alright. I didn't take your post as too critical.

My only point really is to that we have adopted a certain attitude towards language in the Church which adds to our frustration when it needn't.

Again I am quite sure that we misunderstand what Sts Cyril and Methodius were doing when they translated the texts into the local Moravian language. Were they translating for the people whom they were called to serve? Or were they translating according to a principle: Orthodoxy always worships in the local language? These two actually are not the same for one is a pastoral response with two millenia of precedent while the second is an abstract principle- which like all abstract principles ends up not really dealing in a pastoral way with the very people one is called to serve. For example I cannot see anything more wrong and unproductive than have demanded that all Russian parishes from the late 19thc - the 1960s use English as their main language. (from this point on you begin to see real mass assimilation accompanied by real desire for English and the appearance of the first few converts.)

But of course as the situation changes to what we are getting now then for sure we begin to use our local languages. This is absolutely correct.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Nina]

Plus, isn't being forceful coming from pride? Let God do His work as He wills it. And let people free as God has allowed them to be. I mean this for both sides. And thank God here in US we have such diversity and choice (parishes with bilingual, or only English worship and bilingual DL books). I can totally understand though when people complain about the use of foreign language. When I attend the parish of my SF and they say some prayers in Slavonic that I can't understand I get bored, but try to do my komboskini and try to concentrate as much as I can and when they switch in English I can resume to follow the community prayer. But I know how that feels when one can't understand, or follow (and they do not have bilingual books there because they are poor parish). However I can't go there and force them to change the bilingual worship since it is not fair. There is some good out of that. Also it is more frustrating to me when the readers mumble their words in English so much and say it so fast that I can't understand what they say in English there (same parish) LOL so that is something we must address too. :)

[David Lanier]

Everyone makes great points. Herman I never meant to imply that America is the center of the universe and don't believe I did? I've been in Europe and Asia so I'm not some hillbilly convert from the south that thinks somehow that America is the center of the universe or that we're better than everyone else.

Fr. David and Fr. Raphael put it best and it is right that it should be addressed on a local parish level or perhaps by decree of the bishop for each diocese? It would seem to make sense though that if a particular parish is predominately first generation immigrants then the service should be predominately in the language used from the old country and of course, vice-versa (predominately {if not all} English for the children and for the future).

I was of course making my original inquiry to find out if the Church Fathers left us with any encyclicals or texts on the subject. Other than Cyril and Methodius I suppose we only have what Scripture has shown us in the Acts of the Apostles as they went out and preached the Good News of Jesus Christ in the languages of the peoples that were there and the Scripture goes on to point out that many had gathered from all around and each spoke different languages. Then there are the stories of some of the Church Fathers, Saints, and other Holy Ascetics that would speak to pilgrims who came to see them in their language even though they didn't know the language of the pilgrims with whom they were speaking to all by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. If there is precedent for conducting the Liturgical services of the Church in one language or another I suppose this would be it.

Thank you all for taking the time to respond!

Glory to Jesus Christ!

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

David Lanier wrote:


I was of course making my original inquiry to find out if the Church Fathers left us with any encyclicals or texts on the subject.

Dear David,

Some of the exchanges on the mission of Sts Cyril and Methodius come to mind. Apart from this however I think that the main evidence would be what we find has been done as pastoral practice over the centuries. I believe that the evidence shows two approaches: in areas where there were no Orthodox yet the Church would do a major job of translating into the local language. However wherever there was a core Orthodox group already present it would use its traditional Church language first and then after wards begin translating into local languages. This in fact is what happened in Alaska (the evidence is that St Herman read the services in Slavonic and that he spoke Russian to the natives). I would say that we also see this happening here in North America.

Of course though the transition from one stage to another is rarely easy. People have various attachments to what they have sunk their hearts into for so many years. And then language is one of those hot button issues I suppose because it so strongly suggests acceptance. All I know is that we need a lot of patience on this one for it is very easy to misinterpret the use of the older Church languages as a sign that we here are being rejected for who we are. (that too is a worthy discussion. To my knowledge Vladyko Vitaly is the only hierarch that ever openly stated in English print that coming to the Orthodox Church involves an commitment similar to that of Ruth when she left her own people to join the Israelites).

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[David Lanier]

Thanks Fr. Raphael.

As you said, we shouldn't get hung up on language and perhaps I did a little with my posts. Both you and Fr. David Moser make excellent points so again thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Nina]

I was of course making my original inquiry to find out if the Church Fathers left us with any encyclicals or texts on the subject. Other than Cyril and Methodius I suppose we only have what Scripture has shown us in the Acts of the Apostles as they went out and preached the Good News of Jesus Christ in the languages of the peoples that were there and the Scripture goes on to point out that many had gathered from all around and each spoke different languages. Then there are the stories of some of the Church Fathers, Saints, and other Holy Ascetics that would speak to pilgrims who came to see them in their language even though they didn't know the language of the pilgrims with whom they were speaking to all by the Grace of the Holy Spirit.


This is a given since if someone needs to get the message across they need language to communicate it. But in US there is so much diversity (we need not insist on a Babel-like Orthodoxy at the moment in USA) and as you summarized the words of Fathers Raphael and David above this has to depend on the parish.

Also in my unworthy opinion: about this issue it is different in the times of the Pentecost, different in the times of the Apostles, different in the times of the two Greek Saints (Methodius and Cyril) and different for Orthodoxy in the modern USA. Of course what is similar and necessary is the fact that we must communicate the Gospel in the language of the locals. However we must keep in mind that Orthodoxy in America today can not be detached, or exist without the beautiful millenia-old Tradition of Orthodoxy. Actually it needs the 2000 year old Tradition for existing and also for advancing it. Part of that Tradition is also the linguistic side of it. As we mentioned above through those languages our Orthodox Forefathers proclaimed many truths of our Faith.

[Raphael]

Archbishop Alypy of Chicago (ROCOR)... maintains that Church Slavonic is the only language that was created for the sole purpose of glorifying God and was never a vernacular used for "common" purposes.

Father,
Doesn't this mean that it's largely a "foreign" language even for native speakers of modern Slavonic languages? Is a recent immigrant, with little or no church background, able to comprehend Church Slavonic?

I've heard this is similar in Litugical Greek. That it differes enough from modern greek as to be nearly incomprehensible by those not familliar with it.

Not meaning this antagonistically, just curious.

[Raphael]

I've been in Europe and Asia so I'm not some hillbilly convert from the south that thinks somehow that America is the center of the universe or that we're better than everyone else.
Careful now;-)
Some of us are "Hillbilly converts from the South" (always capitalized please!). And for the record, plenty of people who aren't "hillbillies from the South" think America is the center of the Universe.

[Father David Moser]

Father,
Doesn't this mean that it's largely a "foreign" language even for native speakers of modern Slavonic languages? Is a recent immigrant, with little or no church background, able to comprehend Church Slavonic?

No more "foreign" than Elizabethan English is for us today. Slavonic is indeed a constructed "pan slavic" dialect - however it is still quite similar to most slavic languages (and can be generally understood by any reasonably educated person as there is sufficient overlap in vocabulary). Most of the recent immigrants in my parish understand Slavonic sufficiently so that when I make a mistake they will correct me. Reading the old orthography is actually more of a barrier than the spoken language. Also keep in mind that literary Slavonic is used in modern Russian literature to give a certain "gravity" to certain passages. Thus anyone who has read Russian literature in school (in Russian) has already learned one form of Slavonic.

Fr David Moser

[Raphael]

No more "foreign" than Elizabethan English is for us today. ... Thus anyone who has read Russian literature in school (in Russian) has already learned one form of Slavonic.
Ah, I see. Thank you Father.

[Nina]

Careful now;-)
Some of us are "Hillbilly converts from the South" (always capitalized please!). And for the record, plenty of people who aren't "hillbillies from the South" think America is the center of the Universe.

Hillbilly, or not, Orthodoxy has plenty of space for all backgrounds etc. Some of the most beloved Saints in Orthodoxy came from humble backgrounds... Saint Spyridon for instance.

[Etsi JC Brigid W.]

Everyone makes great points. Herman I never meant to imply that America is the center of the universe and don't believe I did? I've been in Europe and Asia so I'm not some hillbilly convert from the south that thinks somehow that America is the center of the universe or that we're better than everyone else.


Forgive me, but I'm going to hope that you don't really understand just how offensive and presuming this is.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

I'm sure that nothing offensive was meant.

In Christ- Fr Raphael
priest from the snow kingdom to the north

[Nina]

In Christ- Fr Raphael
priest from the snow kingdom to the north

So this means you are from Narnia??? :)

[Andreas Moran]

No more "foreign" than Elizabethan English is for us today.

'Elizabethan English' is (or ought to be) much easier for native speakers of English than Church Slavonic for native speakers of modern Slav languages. The English which is sometimes called 'KJV' (King James Version) or 'traditional liturgical English' is properly called Early Modern English. Although the King James Bible was written in a way which was consciously literary and so not quite a reflection of the everyday spoken English of 399 years ago, it was of its time. Whilst there is no doubt that some passages present difficulty for the average modern English reader, for the most part the only obvious contrast with contemporary English is the use of older forms for the second person singular pronouns ('thee' and 'thou') and verbs ('art', 'dost'). Such forms, we should remember, were commonly used in poetry until the mid- and even late-nineteenth century (see, for example, the poetry of Robert Browning, Tennyson, D. G. Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, William Morris). Schoolchildren in English-speaking countries learn English literature including Shakespeare, Marlowe, and later poets such as those mentioned in parentheses. Orthodox services written in KJV-style English (such as Jordanville and HTM texts) are far easier to read than much of Shakespeare. Accordingly, I cannot see why such English should present any difficulty. As to Russian and Church Slavonic, my wife is a native speaker of Russian (and very proficient in Church Slavonic) and has lived in England for seven years but has little or no difficulty with services in KJV-style English. Having said all that, my wife (who has just hovered over me to read this) believes that Russians and other Slavs make out Church Slavonic to be more difficult that it really is (though the old-style typeface does slow things down).

[Etsi JC Brigid W.]

But see there is nothing derogatory in "priest, snow kingdom, or north". "some hillbilly convert from the south, thinks America is the center of the universe, etc"...sorry, but that was very derogatory; the insinuation is that these ppl (my ppl) are ignorant and narrow minded.

[Mary M.]

Fr. Moser, you make an interesting point about language touching the soul, but I think that's only because the music has been made with Slavonic in mind. It would grate if sung in Greek,too.In a few generations, the music will change also to fit English,(and it should) and those phrases will equally touch the soul.

[Nina]

But see there is nothing derogatory in "priest, snow kingdom, or north". "some hillbilly convert from the south, thinks America is the center of the universe, etc"...sorry, but that was very derogatory; the insinuation is that these ppl (my ppl) are ignorant and narrow minded.

Etsiiiiiii! You are so cosmopolitan in soul and so broad-hearted that your heart has space for all people I think. :) I am your people too! :) I totally understand you though :) since I am sensitive too in this aspect, but I also do not think he wished it not-well. Just wrong choice of words. Anyway, we must all remember and reiterate to ourselves that in Orthodoxy there are Saints from all walks of life and backgrounds and there is no need to feel inferior, or superior to others since we are all the same Body of Christ. Ok we are allowed to feel inferior only to God, Panagia and Saints. :)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Andreas Moran wrote:


Russians and other Slavs make out Church Slavonic to be more difficult that it really is (though the old-style typeface does slow things down).

I believe this also to be so. Now that I have been working at Russian translation for the past couple of years I can see clearly that Slavonic and Russian both maintain the same root words. This helps tremendously for although the rule of how to decline nouns can be different (eg slavonic: dushe moya instead of russian: dusha moya) the root is not difficult to spot and understand. The only real difficulty comes with words that truly have no correspondence to modern Russian (no Russian seems able to tell me where the word paki for esche comes from). This then becomes a matter of learning what is being said.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[David Lanier]

Hillbilly, or not, Orthodoxy has plenty of space for all backgrounds etc. Some of the most beloved Saints in Orthodoxy came from humble backgrounds... Saint Spyridon for instance.
Ok no offense was intended for all the Hillbillies out there. :-) My ancestry has been in the South since the 17th century so I guess I'm about as Southern as they get. I agree with Nina t hat you can be American and Orthodox at the same time. You can even be a Hillbilly (Check capitalization correction from Raphael) and be Orthodox, just save the overalls for Vespers only please. :-=)

Someone once joked that if the Church had started in the wild west in the 1800's all the bishops today would wear 10 gallon hats. Heheehee

At least everyone seems to agree that the language of the future (and probably the present), at least for most parishes, ought to be English here in the US, at least for those parishes where the majority of the members are 2nd and 3rd generation and converts and so on. And there are some 1st generation immigrants who also seem to think this is perfectly okay as Rdr. Andreas pointed out with his wife being native to Russia and even in my small humble (all English) parish we have some 1st generation immigrants who could choose to go to the Greek Church or Serbian Church here, but don't.

[Nina]

Andreas Moran wrote:

I believe this also to be so. Now that I have been working at Russian translation for the past couple of years I can see clearly that Slavonic and Russian both maintain the same root words. This helps tremendously for although the rule of how to decline nouns can be different (eg slavonic: dushe moya instead of russian: dusha moya) the root is not difficult to spot and understand. The only real difficulty comes with words that truly have no correspondence to modern Russian (no Russian seems able to tell me where the word paki for esche comes from). This then becomes a matter of learning what is being said.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

Wow Pater! You are translating something? Thank God! Please let us know when you finish it. :)
I totally agree with you and Andreas at this point. I studied Russian in school and it is not that I practice it, or am a native speaker of it, but now when exposed to Slavonic at my SF's parish I understand a good amount, thanks to the Russian language lessons I had.

I would say the same for Greek and Liturgical Greek. Knowing Greek it helps a lot during services.

[Archimandrite Irenei]

Dear all,

May I add one additional point regarding English services: as much depends on the manner in which the language is read and sung, as does on the translation itself. I often hear English services chanted in a kind of lazy enunciation and casual expression, reminiscent of 'street English', which is rather appalling in a liturgical setting; and this is true whether what is being spoken is Elizabethan or any other form of the language itself. Similarly, I have heard 'modern' English chanted piously with careful speech and precision, which was far more prayerful and powerful than fine older translations said in casual styling (and this from someone who far prefers older-style English across the board).

INXC, Fr Irenei

[Andreas Moran]

I believe this also to be so. Now that I have been working at Russian translation for the past couple of years I can see clearly that Slavonic and Russian both maintain the same root words. This helps tremendously for although the rule of how to decline nouns can be different (eg slavonic: dushe moya instead of russian: dusha moya) the root is not difficult to spot and understand. The only real difficulty comes with words that truly have no correspondence to modern Russian (no Russian seems able to tell me where the word paki for esche comes from). This then becomes a matter of learning what is being said.

I'll ask my wife if she can help as regards 'paki'. She has said that Church Slavonic is not so hard, but what causes problems very often for today's Russians is that liturgical texts, especially akathists, were sometimes not well translated from the Greek because the translators had an imperfect knowledge of Greek. Also, a lot of texts were composed in the eighteenth century when the Russian language was at its most 'baroque' and hymnographers went out of their way to construct complicated, long-winded verse.

[Andreas Moran]

My wife has just returned from the monastery here in Essex from the service of the Great Canon (I was too unwell to go and had to read it at home). About 'paki', she says this (and she, in fact, has written the rest of this post). The word is from Ancient Russian, 'пакы'. The word is to be found in all Slav languages but usually as 'пак'. It means 'again' but can also mean 'again from the beginning' and so has shades of meaning. The etymology is the Greek word, 'παλιν' (modern 'παλι'). Somehow, the 'l' became 'k'. It features in the Creed as, 'И паки грядущаго сославою, судити живым и мертвым, Егоже Царствию несть конца' (this being 'proper' Church Slavonic without any modernisation). It corresponds to the Greek, 'Και παλιν ερχομενον . . . '.

Bearing in mind what was said before about Church Slavonic, Lydia says that the Great Canon is actually one of those texts which is extremely opaque (even for her). She wonders whether the text which is used was revised in the eighteenth century, and she will ask our Old Rite priest friend if the pre-Nikonion text is different.

[Andreas Moran]

Dear all,

May I add one additional point regarding English services: as much depends on the manner in which the language is read and sung, as does on the translation itself. I often hear English services chanted in a kind of lazy enunciation and casual expression, reminiscent of 'street English', which is rather appalling in a liturgical setting; and this is true whether what is being spoken is Elizabethan or any other form of the language itself. Similarly, I have heard 'modern' English chanted piously with careful speech and precision, which was far more prayerful and powerful than fine older translations said in casual styling (and this from someone who far prefers older-style English across the board).

INXC, Fr Irenei

So, what we want is traditional liturgical English said or chanted with piety, care and precision (as it is at the monastery here, most notably by Fr Kyrill).

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Andreas Moran wrote:


About 'paki', she says this (and she, in fact, has written the rest of this post). The word is from Ancient Russian, 'пакы'. The word is to be found in all Slav languages but usually as 'пак'. It means 'again' but can also mean 'again from the beginning' and so has shades of meaning. The etymology is the Greek word, 'παλιν' (modern 'παλι'). Somehow, the 'l' became 'k'. It features in the Creed as, 'И паки грядущаго сославою, судити живым и мертвым, Егоже Царствию несть конца' (this being 'proper' Church Slavonic without any modernisation). It corresponds to the Greek, 'Και παλιν ερχομενον . . . '.

This helps a lot. I just typed paki into a Serbian/English online dictionary and sure enough it has 'again'. Thank you.


Bearing in mind what was said before about Church Slavonic, Lydia says that the Great Canon is actually one of those texts which is extremely opaque (even for her). She wonders whether the text which is used was revised in the eighteenth century, and she will ask our Old Rite priest friend if the pre-Nikonion text is different.

I have no knowledge about whether the Slavonic was revised. I find it the most difficult of any text during the year to understand. But then again the English isn't so straight forward. Could the difficulty also arise from the original Greek?

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

Could the difficulty also arise from the original Greek?

Is the original Greek text of the Great Canon difficult? We need a Greeks scholar to answer this.

[Olga]

I've had a quick look at the Great Canon in Greek, and it doesn't seem to me to be any more difficult or opaque than other Greek hymnody. If anything, there is a great economy in the language, not at all flowery, the sparseness having great power, which is quite appropriate to the penitential character of this epic work. The Slavonic version seems to follow this "terseness" as well, a welcome change from some of the often convoluted hymnody of other settings.

St Andrew of Crete wrote hymnody for various feasts, including that of Apostles Peter and Paul (the other major hymnographer for that feast was St John of Damascus, with bits and pieces from others). A comparison of the language used for St Andrew's contribution to this feast and that for the Great Canon could be useful.

[Olga]

For comparison purposes, here is Ode 1 of the Great Canon in three languages for the first Monday of Great Lent:

Βοηθός καί σκεπαστής, εγένετό μοι εις σωτηρίαν, ούτός μου Θεός, καί δοξάσω αυτόν, Θεός τού Πατρός μου, καί υψώσω αυτόν, ενδόξως γάρ δεδόξασται.

Помощник и Покровитель бысть мне во спасение, Сей мой Бог, и прославлю Его, Бог Отца моего, и вознесу Его: славно бо прославися.

A Helper and a Protector has become salvation to me. This is my God, whom I will glorify. God of my fathers, I will exalt Him for in glory was He glorified.

Πόθεν άρξομαι θρηνείν, τάς τού αθλίου μου βίου πράξεις; ποίαν απαρχήν, επιθήσω Χριστέ, τή νύν θρηνωδία; αλλ' ως εύσπλαγχνός μοι δός, παραπτωμάτων άφεσιν.

Откуду начну плакати окаяннаго моего жития деяний? кое ли положу начало, Христе, нынешнему рыданию? но яко благоутробен, даждь ми прегрешений оставление.

How shall I begin to mourn the deeds of my wretched life? What can I offer as first fruits of repentance? In Your compassion, O Christ, forgive my sins.

Δεύρο τάλαινα ψυχή, σύν τή σαρκί σου τώ πάντων Κτίστη, εξομολογού καί απόσχου λοιπόν, τής πρίν αλογίας, καί προσάγαγε Θεόν, εν μετανοία δάκρυα.

Гряди, окаянная душе, с плотию твоею, Зиждителю всех исповеждься, и останися прочее преждняго безсловесия, и принеси Богу в покаянии слезы.

Come, my wretched soul, and confess your sins in the flesh to the Creator of all. From this moment forsake your former foolishness and offer to God tears of repentance.

Τόν πρωτόπλαστον Αδάμ, τή παραβάσει παραζηλώσας, έγνων εμαυτόν, γυμνωθέντα Θεού, καί τής αϊδίου, βασιλείας καί τρυφής, διά τάς αμαρτίας μου.

Первозданнаго Адама преступлению поревновав, познах себе обнажена от Бога и присносущнаго Царствия и сладости, грех ради моих.

My transgressions rival those of first created Adam, and because of my sins I find myself naked of God and of His everlasting kingdom.

Οίμοι τάλαινα ψυχή! τί ωμοιώθης τή πρώτη Εύα; είδες γάρ κακώς, καί ετρώθης πικρώς, καί ήψω τού ξύλου, καί εγεύσω προπετώς, τής παραλόγου βρώσεως.

Увы мне, окаянная душе, что уподобилася еси первей Еве? видела бо еси зле, и уязвилася еси горце, и коснулася еси древа, и вкусила еси дерзостно безсловесныя снеди.

Alas, my wretched soul, why are you so like Eve? You see evil and are grievously wounded by it; you touched the tree and tasted heedlessly of its deceiving fruit.

Αντί Εύας αισθητής, η νοητή μοι κατέστη Εύα, ο εν τή σαρκί, εμπαθής λογισμός, δεικνύς τά ηδέα, καί γευόμενος αεί, τής πικράς καταπόσεως.

Вместо Евы чувственныя мысленная ми бысть Ева, во плоти страстный помысл, показуяй сладкая и вкушаяй присно горькаго напоения.

Instead of the person Eve, I have within my inward being an “Eve” of passionate thoughts which though seemingly sweet never lose their bitter taste.

Επαξίως τής Εδέμ, προεξερρίφη ως μή φυλάξας, μίαν σου Σωτήρ, εντολήν ο Αδάμ, εγώ δέ τί πάθω, αθετών διαπαντός τά ζωηρά σου λόγια;

Достойно из Едема изгнан бысть, яко не сохранив едину Твою, Спасе, заповедь Адам: аз же что постражду, отметая всегда животная Твоя словеса?

For failing to observe just one of Your commandments, O Saviour, Adam was justly exiled from Eden. What then shall I suffer for continually ignoring Your words of life?

[Andreas Moran]

I think there are three points to make here. First is this; we should make a distinction, in terms of difficulty, between the studious reading of the text at home on the one hand and listening to the text being read in church on the other. Clearly, the latter is harder. Secondly, this text is full of Old Testament allusions and OT names which (unless one is a devoted reader of the OT) make hearing in church more difficult because of a lack of familiarity. Thirdly, this text is heard (or read) only twice a year, during Great Lent, and so inevitably it is harder to follow than texts which we hear (or read) regularly.

Lydia has just referred to an article by Fr Maxim Kozlov who is priest at the Moscow State University Church (and a graduate in philology). The article is a response to those at the University who find the text of the Great Canon difficult. He points out that difficulty is caused for Russian speakers by the fact that many words in this text are the same in Church Slavonic (CS) and modern Russian (mR) but with quite different meanings. For example, 'окаянная' does mean 'wretched' in CS but means 'damned', 'without grace' or 'obsessed with the devil' in mR; 'прочее' in CS means 'in future' but in mR means 'others'; 'безсловесия', by contrast, means the same thing in both CS and mR, namely, 'without words' and definitely not 'foolishness'. It could have meant 'foolishness' centuries ago based on the word being similar in construction to the Greek 'αλογια' but that resonance is lost on contemporary Russians. This is only to hint at the problems this text throws up. Fr Maxim comments that if a person thinks they understand this text, he is mistaken; even Fr Maxim with a 12-volume Slavonic-Russian dictionary cannot understand the full and real meaning. So complex is this issue that he suggests a team of philologists should undertake scholarly study of the text to try to unravel it.

Translations into English should, in the light of this, be made from the Greek.

PS Lydia says all the irmoi are easier, and the first ode, though not without problems, is not so bad, but the text gets progressively more difficult.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Andreas Moran wrote:


Fr Maxim comments that if a person thinks they understand this text, he is mistaken

I cannot really comment on the Slavonic of the Great Canon- I simply do not have enough knowledge about this. However the English is clear enough.

Which leads me to the thought- during the last few years I have begun translating sermons from Russian into English. I purposely keep as close as possible to the Russian word meanings and word order in the sentence. This helps me retain the meaning of the original and its feel even when I read it in English.

However there are a number of times when the Russian is perfectly understandable but yet very difficult to convey accurately in English without the latter becoming itself almost incomprehensible. Where this occurs you want to 'clarify' the Russian as you say it in English. But at the same time you are aware that something has been lost from the original. And this important aspect of translating is often lost on the reader.

Recently for example I was translating a sermon of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Luckily for me I found many of his sermons online in English in order to help in this (I am after all only a beginner). I was most struck however by how the translation (which is online for all to read) 'clarifies' the Russian at points, paraphrasing from the original, or even leaving out parts of sentences when these were awkward to convey in English.

This then in terms of local language (no- I haven't completely overlooked what this thread is about!) is a needed reminder. Of course local languages are needed in our worship. There is no argument about that. But we should keep in mind that the 'originals' of the language we worship in- Slavonic, Greek, etc- contain an authentic core of the Faith difficult to entirely convey in the local language. This is why the latter is more an ongoing project and in need of continual revision in comparison with the original- it is not something complete simply in virtue of the fact that it has now been translated. In light of this therefore it is of inestimable blessing to be conversant with one of the original Church languages as well as our own local language.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Nina]

This then in terms of local language (no- I haven't completely overlooked what this thread is about!) is a needed reminder. Of course local languages are needed in our worship. There is no argument about that. But we should keep in mind that the 'originals' of the language we worship in- Slavonic, Greek, etc- contain an authentic core of the Faith difficult to entirely convey in the local language. This is why the latter is more an ongoing project and in need of continual revision in comparison with the original- it is not something complete simply in virtue of the fact that it has now been translated. In light of this therefore it is of inestimable blessing to be conversant with one of the original Church languages as well as our own local language.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

I can not agree more with you, Father Raphael. There is a great quote about this which illustrates your point here from Elder Paisios, but if I am still awake after the Akathist tonight, God willing I will try to post it.

P.S I am no scholar in Greek, or anything for that matter, but I also agree with Olga when she states that the Great Canon is not more difficult than other hymns and prayers. I know the temptation for a meticulous translation and the desire for all things to be perfect philologically, however as my SF says we are imperfect so it is ok when we try our best. The translation in English also conveys the meaning well.

[Andreas Moran]

The translation in English also conveys the meaning well.

Which one?

I think the best one is that by Met. Kallistos in The Lenten Triodion though the monastery here has its own version based on that but, I feel, improved.

It's nice for the Greeks that they have one text which isn't hard!

[Nina]

Which one?

I think the best one is that by Met. Kallistos in The Lenten Triodion though the monastery here has its own version based on that but, I feel, improved.

It's nice for the Greeks that they have one text which isn't hard!

I have to check which translated version I have. But I mean that if someone here comes from the street to an Orthodox church (and even when that person knows nothing from Orthodoxy) when the Great Canon is being chanted, the text is good enough for the meaning to be conveyed. I know you strive for more perfection in translation, but, Andreas, remember, it is the soul of it that matters. And somehow, I have heard from many people here, (and not only from those of traditionally Orthodox families who might be used to it by constant contact), that the Great Canon pierces their soul and brings them to compunction and repentance. I think that God works also through His Grace and not only through the words which are translated. The Word became Man. :) But of course we must strive to ameliorate what we think is not translated properly.

Andreas, there is no hard text, or easy text...remember the Saints with no education understood very deep truths of dogma (St. Spyridon) when they had the most minimal civil education let alone theological one... but what makes a theologian a theologian? Elder Paisios has said that the real theologian is the one who prays and God reveals to him truths of the Uncreated Light and reaches theosis, and these can be people who never stepped into a school ever. Therefore enlightenment too I think plays a big role. I think that translation of religious texts, as icon writing should be undertaken with lots of prayers, and incense burning and with blessing from the SF. I also think that even if one person is well educated in the original language, or is a theologian by training, and knows the original language as the mother's tongue, there is still need for enlightenment from God. I do not have any of these qualities as also I stated above I am not a scholar of anything, and the way I look at the text is very casual... like with the Bible since I do not want to get into deep thinking myself. I let the Fathers do that for me. :) Also with hymns, if I do not understand something, I let go and do not think much about it since I have no professional obligation to fully understand it for translation, or other motives. Also I think that a good translation is achieved if the person who is translating is native to one language (to both would be perfect if for instance someone was born in Russia to a Greek mother who taught him/her Greek) and has the possibility to immerse one's self in the culture of the target language for translation, or at least be in constant contact with the target language and culture. Maybe these translators you mention above should move to Greece for sometime and take courses and immerse in the Liturgical Greek language if they are not so pleased with the translation of the Great Canon that exists currently in Russian.

[Andreas Moran]

It seems that the problem in Russia, for centuries, has been that the Slavonic texts have been revered - possibly even idolised - even though they contain errors in translation from the Greek. One has only to think of how St Maxim Grek suffered from this; he was invited to Russia to check and correct the Slavonic texts, and when he pointed out errors in them, was accused of heresy, bound in chains and kept prisoner without holy communion for years! Part of the reform programme of Patriarch Nikon was to correct the texts, and we know what happened then.

Nina, it is, of course, true that saints and holy people with little education and no theological learning have been enlightened (literally). In addition to those you mention, we have also the example of St Silouan the Athonite who, though he had hardly any education at all, guided the highly educated Fr Sophrony. We are told, though, that St Silouan loved the long church services.

We should also keep in mind that, as Olga often reminds us, liturgical texts contain and express the Church's theology, and that is one reason why the utmost care is needed in the rendering of texts from the original Greek. We had the example in one thread where it was noted that the version of the liturgy produced by the Exarchate group, in the cherubic hymn, has 'icons of the cherubim' instead of 'representing the cherubim', and it was explained (by Olga, I think) why that is both linguistically and theologically wrong.

[Olga]

We should also keep in mind that, as Olga often reminds us, liturgical texts contain and express the Church's theology, and that is one reason why the utmost care is needed in the rendering of texts from the original Greek. We had the example in one thread where it was noted that the version of the liturgy produced by the Exarchate group, in the cherubic hymn, has 'icons of the cherubim' instead of 'representing the cherubim', and it was explained (by Olga, I think) why that is both linguistically and theologically wrong.

It wasn't just me, Andreas, I must give credit where it's due. Fr Raphael and Fr Irenei (then known as Dcn Matthew for those who've come in late) also objected to this strange version of the Cherubic Hymn, and both gave good explanations. Here are the posts in question:

http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?5287-Liturgy-of-St-Basil-Holy-Thursday-and-Saturday-changes-to-Cherubic-hymn&p=69180&viewfull=1#post69180

[Nina]

We should also keep in mind that, as Olga often reminds us, liturgical texts contain and express the Church's theology, and that is one reason why the utmost care is needed in the rendering of texts from the original Greek. We had the example in one thread where it was noted that the version of the liturgy produced by the Exarchate group, in the cherubic hymn, has 'icons of the cherubim' instead of 'representing the cherubim', and it was explained (by Olga, I think) why that is both linguistically and theologically wrong.

I so agree with you, Andreas. This is very important! And this is what the quote (which I promised above to post as an illustration/support for Fr. Raphael's great points in post #194) from Elder Paisios emphasizes too. Not about the translation exactly, but about the preservation of education in New Testament/Patristic Greek (or we can apply his idea to the languages used traditionally in the Church in general) and why is it crucial and theologically vital. Here:

Elder Paisios, With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, pp.322-325


There are some people who are trying to create a new language. But Greek is not just a language! It is a tongue shaped by the fiery Tongues of Holy Pentecost! It bears the "flame" of Pentecost. No other language can render adequately the dogma of our faith. This is why the Good Lord even provided for the Old Testament to be translated into Greek by the Seventy (Septuagint), and for the New Testament to be first written in Greek. Anyone seeking to study the Christian doctrines without the knowledge of ancient Greek is very likely to fall into serious error. And we have abolished the teaching of ancient Greek in our schools! Soon, we'll have Germans teaching ancient Greek in our universities. That's what it will probably take for some people to realize the value of this language. But I suppose, someone will have to embarrass them first before they figure it out. And then you will hear them marvel, "See, how the Church has been preserving ancient Greek all along!
[...]
They [Greek students of Orthodox theology who go to study abroad] study the Greek Fathers in translations from our own language prepared by the foreigners, who either because they could not render the meanings correctly or by design, they added their own erroneous notions."

[David Lanier]

I so agree with you, Andreas. This is very important! And this is what the quote (which I promised above to post as an illustration/support for Fr. Raphael's great points in post #194) from Elder Paisios emphasizes too. Not about the translation exactly, but about the preservation of education in New Testament/Patristic Greek (or we can apply his idea to the languages used traditionally in the Church in general) and why is it crucial and theologically vital. Here:

Elder Paisios, With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man, pp.322-325
I disagree that Koine Greek is holy and bears the flame of Pentecost. The very story of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles at Pentecost makes clear (enough to me) that the Word of God is to be spread to the world in the language of the local people. There is no arguing that sometimes things get lost in translation, but we can save the intensive comparison of Greek meaning of words in Scripture to whatever other language is the one spoken by the indigenous population for Bible study and the like. The Liturgical services must be done in a language that is understood by the parishioners. I read through the closed thread (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showthread.php?2521-Orthodox-Church-bans-modern-Greek-in-Liturgy) how a bishop in Greece was chastised for wanting to have the Churches of his diocese use modern Greek instead of the Koine Greek so that the people would understand and to stave off the dwindling numbers in his Churches there. We have our own stories here in the US about losing numbers in Church due to refusal to change from Slavonic to English or Greek to Engilsh.

Peace and Love in Christ to all,

David

[Richard A. Downing]

Forgive another 'new boy' intervention.

If our mission is to preach the Gospel to all nations, sure, to do that we have to make sure we have it right first, and thus preserve somehow the ful tradition.

But then don't we need, like Sts Cyril and Methodius, to be able to reach the nations in their own languages?

In Christ, Richard.

[Andreas Moran]

I think we need to avoid conflating separate issues. Whether modern Greek and modern Russian can be used for divine services in Greece (and Cyprus) and Russia respectively is a different concern from the use of Church Greek/Church Slavonic or English in English-speaking countries.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

David Lanier wrote:


We have our own stories here in the US about losing numbers in Church due to refusal to change from Slavonic to English or Greek to Engilsh.

There is no need to contest accounts of people staying away due to language. In our parish for example we have attracted some of the younger generation through the steady use of English.

But we should not go too far in this line of thought that language attracts people. Those whom we have attracted actually amount to only 10 or so at most although we are most thankful for those whom God has sent us. And the two English missions here have only about 20 or 30 people in a city of 650,000 which is sobering to say the least.

The local language then should be used where and how it is needed. However as we do this the main thought should be simply to minister to the people whom God sends us regardless of how many or few these may be. This is called a pastoral response.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Andreas Moran]

The monastery here in Essex uses Church Greek, Church Slavonic and English (and French occasionally). There is no set pattern as to which is used when, save that week-day and Saturday liturgies are normally in English (using their own text - that published by Oxford University Press). All three languages are used in the vigil services but the proportion can vary; the priest will often have a quick look at the congregation, gain an impression of the numbers of Slavs, Greeks or others, and vary the proportions accordingly. This is considerate given that it is a monastery and not a parish church. Elder Sophrony was at pains to avoid ethnicity, saying there was no Greek, Russian, Arabic or English Christ, and aiming for a Pan-Orthodox approach.

[Sophia C.]

I have heard it said that there is nothing as divisive as language, music and jurisdiction

[Aidan Kimel]

What an interesting thread!

Sadly, I am language-challenged. I have tried to learn foreign languages, but something in my brain does not allow me to learn. I took five years of Spanish in Jr High and High School and learned nothing. I tried again with French in college, because I wanted to read Racine in the original. Again I failed. I tried to learn Koine Greek in seminary and fell flat on my face. I admire and envy those who are able to learn different languages.

I have only one thought to contribute to the discussion:

Christianity is a missionary faith: it seeks to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to all people around the world. As the gospel has moved into different cultures, the Church has always proclaimed her faith in the native language of her prospective converts. That she has done so, that she continues to do so, presumes the essential translatability of the divine revelation bequeathed by God to the Apostles. The attitude of the Church to her Scriptures has always been different than the attitude of, say, Islam to the Koran. The Church, of course, needs to maintain access to the sacred texts in the languages in which they were originally composed--the work of translation is always precisely that, translation--but when the Church begins to speak of Greek or Hebrew or Slavonic or Latin as the preferred language of God, then something is very wrong. Such an attitude betrays, IMHO, the miracle of Pentecost: "How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? ... we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God" (Acts 2:8, 11).

The experience of the Catholic Church in this country may have some lessons, both good and bad, to teach. In the early 2000s I lived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. If you go over to the West End you will find at least a half-dozen Catholic Churches, perhaps more, all on one street, each of them originally built for a single ethnic group. At that time, of course, Catholics shared an identical Latin liturgy; but still Catholics preferred to worship in their ethnic enclaves.

After Johnstown we moved to a poor multi-cultural neighborhood in Hillside, New Jersey, populated by Filipinos, Hispanics, Brazilians, Portuguese, and other immigrant groups. English was not the primary language of this neighborhood. All of these immigrant groups were represented at the Sunday Mass, which was celebrated in English. The international character of the congregation was impressive.

I am not suggesting that the Catholic Church's move from ethnic parishes to American parishes has been a great success in all respects. I am a strong critic of the colloquial English translation of the Novus Ordo that has been used for the past forty years, for example. But I do think that the Catholic Church in the U.S. has ceased to be an Irish church or Italian church or Polish church or whatever church. It has moved out of the ghetto and become an American church. It is now in a position to effectively evangelize the culture, make disciples, and build new parishes.

At some point, it seems to me, Orthodoxy in the U.S. must find a way to move beyond its immigrant identities and create an American Orthodoxy that worships in the language that is spoken by the majority of our country, which at the present time is still English. It must do so not just in order to thrive and grow, though that, I think, is a given. It must do so because of the gospel mandate: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Matt 28:19). America desperately needs a vital, evangelistic, missionary Orthodoxy.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Orthodoxy has its own very distinct character being a light to the world but often unknown to it.

I suppose though the question that has been raised is about Orthodoxy not just as the Church, but now accepted and taken on by society.

However I have always doubted that this is the place of Orthodoxy within the present world- and especially within the North American world.

For example to refer back to what I mentioned before, and have on this Forum previously, does it not speak to us that all of our largest parishes taken together, make up barely a fraction of a percent of the total population of any normal N American city? And that even though for many years English has in fact been used in our worship that there are many more people who live in a given city block than the Orthodox of a particular jurisdiction within that entire city?

The use of English is most proper and good within the Church. However, its use is for directly pastoral reasons- for whom God personally sends to us. Not in hopes of a position for the Church which may in fact be destructive to its spirit.

And should we be distressed at such apparent failure to not have conquered North America? Again, we must be sensitive to what God is actually asking of the Church here- which by any measure is to endure in trying circumstances (no less in English than in Slavonic or liturgical Greek) but yet to be a light of resurrection to those who approach Her.

Personally then having lived within the Orthodox Church for 30 years or so I do not see that God is calling North America to Orthodoxy in the sense often referred to. Frankly I even see this as a needless distraction to the true work of the Church. Maybe it is best then that we who are most prone to pride and plans and hopes of worldly acceptance be found almost perpetually in conditions of fragility, trial and semi obscurity. If we truly believe that God is at work in how He guides His Church then maybe there is a powerful message here for us to pay heed to.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Nina]

Maybe the words of Elder Paisos should be re-read and understood in the spirit they are told. He did not mean those words to say that the Gospel should not be preached in the local language. Do not allow issues to interfere with clear words which speak about the fact that we must not expel these languages from the Church. Father Raphael articulates it correctly.

And yes I also think that Greek (like Arabic, Slavonic etc.) has its place in the history of Orthodoxy, like Elder Paisios says. This does not mean that we are not for use of other languages in the Church. Please read it carefully. But emphasizing the importance of these languages is important too since we must preserve them. It is like expelling your grandmother from your home if she does not speak English. You would not do that? Would you?

[Andreas Moran]

Greek has not only a place in the history of Orthodoxy but in its ever present. Anywhere that Greek is not the local liturgical language, it will remain the reference and the touchstone for those languages into which church services are translated; and also the writings of the Holy Fathers.

[Nina]

Andreas, God willing I will post later some things Elder Paisios said in the same book about colloquial Greek usage in the Church (services). It is very interesting and illustrates also points made in the other thread about which version of language we need to use in the services.

And now something for easing the tension this subject creates but before it, again I must say: We are not against the preaching of Gospel in local languages so it is in vain (or mute point) to continue in that note since there is no one here who opposes the preaching of Gospel in local language (and for US I must say that local language is not only English, but also Spanish in some areas - in Tampa even the airport has their notification in Spanish and many airports have them bilingual).

But now the funny thing which happened last night and why is it important for us Orthodox to know at least a couple of words in the languages which are traditionally used in Orthodoxy. I met this guy who was Protestant, African-American (to be politically correct since he was not really from Africa, but from Philadelphia) who told me when we were introduced that his name is Stefano. I was so surprised to hear this pronunciation here in US by someone who is a native here, and asked him (with the ultimate motive of discovering if he is Orthodox!) if he knew what his name meant. He was a wonderful person and I feel bad that I placed him in that position but he said: Yes, my name is French[!] and it means Steven in English [!]. I did not laugh so not to offend him, but got stunned at this misinformation, well semi-misinformation. And gladly started telling him about Orthodoxy! ;) So I told him his name is Greek and it means "Crown" and it is of course rendered also as Steven in English, and then proceeded to tell him the whole story of ProtoMartyr Stephan. He was so grateful actually to hear about his name that it was so not comfortable to hear his thanks. :) And I said it all in English of course :) but with crucial Greek knowledge (which in my case is a poor knowledge) here and there to make him more interested to ask about this Saint and to give me a the chance to do some mission (although poor and unworthy). :) So please see the situation for what it is. Should this guy who does not know any foreign word, choose to go to an Orthodox church there are many options with English-solely services in Orthodox churches here.

[David Lanier]

Maybe the words of Elder Paisos should be re-read and understood in the spirit they are told. He did not mean those words to say that the Gospel should not be preached in the local language. Do not allow issues to interfere with clear words which speak about the fact that we must not expel these languages from the Church. Father Raphael articulates it correctly.

And yes I also think that Greek (like Arabic, Slavonic etc.) has its place in the history of Orthodoxy, like Elder Paisios says. This does not mean that we are not for use of other languages in the Church. Please read it carefully. But emphasizing the importance of these languages is important too since we must preserve them. It is like expelling your grandmother from your home if she does not speak English. You would not do that? Would you?
I have not read Elder Paisios so I am not familiar with his writing. Hopefully one day I will, but I did not say, or mean to suggest that the historic languages of Christianity should be "expelled". I only meant to stress the importance of the language used for the liturgical services and the emphasis is on using a language the allows the members of the parish to understand those services, not on a particular language. In the United States, the language of most happens to be English. In Montreal I would expect French. In Veracruz I would expect Spanish, and so on.

Still, I would have to have a much deeper understanding of what elder Paisios meant to be convinced of his belief that Koine Greek is a holy language and likened to Pentecost itself and even then I think I would be skeptical. He is apparently not canonized as a saint since nobody has referred to him as such, and even if he were, he still would not be infallible. No disrespect intended; I'm sure he was a very holy man and much blessed by the Grace of God.

[David Lanier]

Orthodoxy has its own very distinct character being a light to the world but often unknown to it.

I suppose though the question that has been raised is about Orthodoxy not just as the Church, but now accepted and taken on by society.

However I have always doubted that this is the place of Orthodoxy within the present world- and especially within the North American world.

For example to refer back to what I mentioned before, and have on this Forum previously, does it not speak to us that all of our largest parishes taken together, make up barely a fraction of a percent of the total population of any normal N American city? And that even though for many years English has in fact been used in our worship that there are many more people who live in a given city block than the Orthodox of a particular jurisdiction within that entire city?

The use of English is most proper and good within the Church. However, its use is for directly pastoral reasons- for whom God personally sends to us. Not in hopes of a position for the Church which may in fact be destructive to its spirit.

And should we be distressed at such apparent failure to not have conquered North America? Again, we must be sensitive to what God is actually asking of the Church here- which by any measure is to endure in trying circumstances (no less in English than in Slavonic or liturgical Greek) but yet to be a light of resurrection to those who approach Her.

Personally then having lived within the Orthodox Church for 30 years or so I do not see that God is calling North America to Orthodoxy in the sense often referred to. Frankly I even see this as a needless distraction to the true work of the Church. Maybe it is best then that we who are most prone to pride and plans and hopes of worldly acceptance be found almost perpetually in conditions of fragility, trial and semi obscurity. If we truly believe that God is at work in how He guides His Church then maybe there is a powerful message here for us to pay heed to.

In Christ- Fr Raphael
Fr. Raphael this lends itself to another topic altogether that maybe would be called the "mission of the Orthodox Church in America" or something along those lines.

I really should focus more on my own shortcomings rather than get into these kinds of discussions but curiosity and a desire to learn will probably lend itself to my further participation in this forum.

Thank you and God Bless,

David

[Nina]

I have not read Elder Paisios so I am not familiar with his writing. Hopefully one day I will, but I did not say, or mean to suggest that the historic languages of Christianity should be "expelled". I only meant to stress the importance of the language used for the liturgical services and the emphasis is on using a language the allows the members of the parish to understand those services, not on a particular language. In the United States, the language of most happens to be English. In Montreal I would expect French. In Veracruz I would expect Spanish, and so on.

Still, I would have to have a much deeper understanding of what elder Paisios meant to be convinced of his belief that Koine Greek is a holy language and likened to Pentecost itself and even then I think I would be skeptical. He is apparently not canonized as a saint since nobody has referred to him as such, and even if he were, he still would not be infallible. No disrespect intended; I'm sure he was a very holy man and much blessed by the Grace of God.

Why do you go to this extent, my dear brother in Christ, David, as to discuss about the holiness of another person so you can make your point? What will happen when he will be canonized? We should be happy about other people reaching theosis.

What the Elder says about the Greek language is true since God's Will was (I hope you agree with) 1. for the New Testament is written in New Testament Greek (so this is the name for the kind of Greek he says) and 2. the Patristic/Liturgical Greek in which many Patristic texts, hymns and Liturgy was written. So this is a huge blessing. And they spoke *also* Greek when the Pentecost happened (well how do you explain that you use a Greek word for the Pentecost?) Whether we like it or not God willed these things and this is what Elder points to what happened and he is not making things up. The Elder like all people is fallible of course. But he is just pointing to a fact which is permitted by God's Will. Are you saying that God's Will is fallible in this case just because you do not agree with this history?

In any case I did not write the reply for you, but for the vibe from several posts that were as response to the Elder's quote. And since it is a matter about English: do you understand my English, Elder's English translation? No one is saying the Gospel should not be preached in local language. He had too much love for all people to be the opposite.

Also how come the people you mention who were lost to Orthodoxy because of language, became Orthodox in the first place? How did they convert without understanding the Gospel, Orthodoxy? - if as you say they left afterward because of language.

[Olga]

Also how come the people you mention who were lost to Orthodoxy because of language, became Orthodox in the first place? How did they convert without understanding the Gospel, Orthodoxy? - if as you say they left afterward because of language.


Nina, it is quite possible David is referring to those baptised as babies, and whose understanding of their ancestral language is limited or non-existent.

[Nina]

Nina, it is quite possible David is referring to those baptised as babies, and whose understanding of their ancestral language is limited or non-existent.

But in this case there are many factors that might be the reason of these people leaving the Church.

[Marie-Duquette]

Divergent factors, yes. Where is the Holy Spirit in these different tongues? We need to go back to the ACTS of the Apostles 2:1-47 Babel brings "confusion of tongues" while Pentecost and the Fire of the Holy Spirit brings the convergence of tongues. Peter and the Apostles spoke in their own Galilean tongue at Pentecost, but peoples from the whole known world of the times heard the Message of the Word of God in their own tongues/language, be they Aramaic, Greek, Latin or all the others stated. each heard in their own understanding; and that is the marvel; not that one or the other was of any great importance, it was the action of the Holy Spirit, as far as I can understand that brought understanding of the heart and mind in each person, as well as commitment to the New Way that was being proclaimed! The listeners were amazed and wondered among themselves, "What does this mean?" ... "We hear them speak in our own tongues of the Wonderful Works of God!" Acts. 2: 11-12

For me French is the language of my soul. It is there that the Word is most alive and true! "Faites ca, et vous vivrey!" It is there that the Lord God is most truly alive, teaching me His Ways.
"Therefore my heart is comforted and my glory is exalted: even my body shall rest in hope, Because you will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will you suffer your Holy One to see corruption. You have revealed to me the Way of Life; you will fill me with joy with your presence. Acts. 2:26-28

[Herman Blaydoe]

But in this case there are many factors that might be the reason of these people leaving the Church.

Indeed, but an ignorance of the basic teachings of the Church because the 3rd-4th gen people no longer understand the language the hymnody is certainly one of them.

Herman

[Nina]

Herman, but why didn't these supposed 1-2-3-4 Orthodox generation go to a church which has all English service if they loved Orthodoxy and not abandon it altogether? Here in USA we have such services. Plus in the churches I attend the Liturgy is 90% in English and the sermon is in English (only one church has *bilingual* sermon). Are you sure this is the reason? I can imagine people who live in a very remote area and with access to a church which has services not in English to leave Orthodoxy because of this temptation. But as far as I know -and I have visited many churches where I have been in US- the services are totally understandable by someone who does not speak these languages because the services are in English or mainly in English. Also the Sunday School is in English, the Bible studies are in English, the instructions by the priests and teachers are in English, we speak in English with one another ... I do not understand in which America these people saw the kind of churches they say... because if we live in the same USA I am here and I see them and attend them myself.

Marie, God bless you and your soul in the language which speaks to your soul. And this is what matters that we all find these wonderful callings in our hearts in the Orthodox way and to love God no matter the language and in what tongue we speak with Him.

Of course Elder Paisios is right when he says that languages of Pentecost are languages blessed with the flame of the Holy Spirit. And in our mind we must not oppose this opinion of the blessed Elder and say "oh this Elder says this for Greek, Arabic, Hebrew etc. but the language I love and speak was not in the time of the Pentecost". We must create Heaven with our thoughts in all instances (this is lesson for me first); and think since many languages afterwards were born, or borrowed words from languages which were in the Pentecost it means that all languages are blessed by the flame of the Holy Spirit during Pentecost. Plus all was a mystical process during Pentecost and we do not know how the Holy Spirit might have blessed all things in the world. Like when Christ descended in Jordan, all the waters of the world the Church says were blessed and demonic forces were expelled from water in that moment.

[David Lanier]

Nina, it is quite possible David is referring to those baptised as babies, and whose understanding of their ancestral language is limited or non-existent.
I wasn't referring to any specific group although I did make mention of a post in another thread regarding language in the Churches in Greece where someone had said that one of the reason they are losing members there is due to lack of understanding of the liturgical language used, but as for here in the US, I suspect there are and have been many contributing factors as to why and for each person who has left I expect the actual explanation will vary as everyone probably had their own reasons.

Nina, I mean no disrespect to Elder Paisios and certainly am not unhappy that he attained that level of Theosis I can only hope and pray for. Nevertheless, saints are still not infallible (or so I have been taught) and the elder's mission was in Greece for the people of Greece, not here in the US.

I think Fr.Alvin Kimel hit on something and we could learn from in his accounting of the Roman Catholic experience of ethnic migration from the old country to the new insomuch as people want to hang on to their culture and identity. Here in NC we have a large first generation immigrant population from Mexico and parts of Central America and I know some who have been here for almost a decade now still do not know very much English and have really no desire to learn it because they are proud of their national identity and culture (and perhaps rightly so). So I understand it takes time for the national pride to fade and usually occurs with the 2nd and 3rd generations.

So perhaps aside from language, part of the reason some may leave is the ethnicity in the Church and the fact that many have to put their ethnicity before the name of the Church on the sign they put up outside for everyone to see, and then that ethnicity can be carried over on the inside in the way that some cradle Orthodox see new comers and people who weren't born into the faith. I don't mean that this is the norm and is everywhere but I think we all know it exists, or has existed.

I have been in OCA Churches that were 100% Old Church Slavonic and Greek Churches that were predominately Greek, but I've also been in Greek Churches that were mostly English. Just yesterday i was talking to a co-worker and was telling her a little about the history of the Church and how the Orthodox Church is the original Church of Christianity and started the conversation by asking her if she had ever heard of the Orthodox Church to which she shook her head and said no. So after explaining how the Church spread from its roots in the Byzantine Empire northward into Eastern Europe up through Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and so on, and up into Russia she said: "Oh! You mean Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox, right?". To which I said yes but then she said: "But don't they tend to be a little too Russian or a little too Greek?", and after asking what she meant by that she said: "I mean in the language they use in Church". I explained to her as best I could that most Churches are predominately English and our humble little Church here in Greensboro is an all English parish.

But I think this speaks to how we may be perceived in this country. We're perceived as being an ethnic Church. I know the OCA Churches leave out (for the most part anyway) the ethnic declaration in their names, such as Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, or Nativity of the Holy Theotokos Orthodox Church, or St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Monastery, and so on, but I have yet to see a Greek Church that didn't put the name "Greek" in front of the rest of the name and likewise with ROCOR Churches. Perhaps it's enough for us to simply be just Orthodox Christians worshiping in Orthodox Churches? We can still have our ethnic traditions and styles without having to put our ethnicity on our signs can't we?

In Christ and with Love,

David

[Herman Blaydoe]

Herman, but why didn't these supposed 1-2-3-4 Orthodox generation go to a church which has all English service if they loved Orthodoxy and not abandon it altogether?

Do you really need to ask or is this a rhetorical question? Either way, how can they "love" something they don't even know? Why would they go to another Orthodox Church regardless of language? They drift about and either fall into another religion or fall away completely. Is that so hard to understand?


Here in USA we have such services. Plus in the churches I attend the Liturgy is 90% in English and the sermon is in English (only one church has *bilingual* sermon). Are you sure this is the reason?

THE reason? How about A reason, like I said in my earlier post. And yes, I do believe it is A reason.


I can imagine people who live in a very remote area and with access to a church which has services not in English to leave Orthodoxy because of this temptation. But as far as I know -and I have visited many churches where I have been in US- the services are totally understandable by someone who does not speak these languages because the services are in English or mainly in English. Also the Sunday School is in English, the Bible studies are in English, the instructions by the priests and teachers are in English, we speak in English with one another ... I do not understand in which America these people saw the kind of churches they say... because if we live in the same USA I am here and I see them and attend them myself.

Maybe you don't see it or you don't want to see it. I've seen it and so have others. There is also the element of if being Orthodox is endemic to being Greek and a person prefers not to see themselves as "Greek", then perhaps they won't go to ANY Orthodox Church because they obviously aren't Russian or Antiochian or Serbian either. They don't really know or appreciate what they are leaving behind so they don't see the loss. It is like having a priceless family heirloom that is all covered with dust and selling it in the yard sale for $5 when it is worth thousands because they don't know what they have.

You may not have stood behind the same ladies that I did, who, when hearing the hymnody in English for the first time, one said to the other, "do we actually BELIEVE that?!" For some people, having Church in a language you don't really understand anyway means you can pretty much believe whatever you want, since you don't know what the Church actually teaches. Once you do learn, you actually have to accept it and that can be sooo inconvenient.

[Nina]

I wasn't referring to any specific group although I did make mention of a post in another thread regarding language in the Churches in Greece where someone had said that one of the reason they are losing members there is due to lack of understanding of the liturgical language used, but as for here in the US, I suspect there are and have been many contributing factors as to why and for each person who has left I expect the actual explanation will vary as everyone probably had their own reasons.

Nina, I mean no disrespect to Elder Paisios and certainly am not unhappy that he attained that level of Theosis I can only hope and pray for. Nevertheless, saints are still not infallible (or so I have been taught) and the elder's mission was in Greece for the people of Greece, not here in the US.

I think Fr.Alvin Kimel hit on something and we could learn from in his accounting of the Roman Catholic experience of ethnic migration from the old country to the new insomuch as people want to hang on to their culture and identity. Here in NC we have a large first generation immigrant population from Mexico and parts of Central America and I know some who have been here for almost a decade now still do not know very much English and have really no desire to learn it because they are proud of their national identity and culture (and perhaps rightly so). So I understand it takes time for the national pride to fade and usually occurs with the 2nd and 3rd generations.

So perhaps aside from language, part of the reason some may leave is the ethnicity in the Church and the fact that many have to put their ethnicity before the name of the Church on the sign they put up outside for everyone to see, and then that ethnicity can be carried over on the inside in the way that some cradle Orthodox see new comers and people who weren't born into the faith. I don't mean that this is the norm and is everywhere but I think we all know it exists, or has existed.

I have been in OCA Churches that were 100% Old Church Slavonic and Greek Churches that were predominately Greek, but I've also been in Greek Churches that were mostly English. Just yesterday i was talking to a co-worker and was telling her a little about the history of the Church and how the Orthodox Church is the original Church of Christianity and started the conversation by asking her if she had ever heard of the Orthodox Church to which she shook her head and said no. So after explaining how the Church spread from its roots in the Byzantine Empire northward into Eastern Europe up through Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and so on, and up into Russia she said: "Oh! You mean Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox, right?". To which I said yes but then she said: "But don't they tend to be a little too Russian or a little too Greek?", and after asking what she meant by that she said: "I mean in the language they use in Church". I explained to her as best I could that most Churches are predominately English and our humble little Church here in Greensboro is an all English parish.

But I think this speaks to how we may be perceived in this country. We're perceived as being an ethnic Church. I know the OCA Churches leave out (for the most part anyway) the ethnic declaration in their names, such as Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, or Nativity of the Holy Theotokos Orthodox Church, or St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Monastery, and so on, but I have yet to see a Greek Church that didn't put the name "Greek" in front of the rest of the name and likewise with ROCOR Churches. Perhaps it's enough for us to simply be just Orthodox Christians worshiping in Orthodox Churches? We can still have our ethnic traditions and styles without having to put our ethnicity on our signs can't we?

In Christ and with Love,

David

David, I see you criticize a lot others for their national pride, but it is national pride that drives you too to think the way you think. Otherwise you would not be bothered by the fact that people should be free wherever they are to worship in the language they can worship. You yourself mention the fact that there are many foreigners in the US who do not know English so why force them to worship in a language they can't? Our Church is not a trampoline for forcing all people to be uniform and force them speak English when they can't - I have no personal interest in this case since in my home we communicate in English because we live in the US, but forcing others to do what I do, is not Orthodox.

About Elder Paisios' mission it was for Greeks, and for all who visited him from all over the world, therefore for the Orthodox all over the world. You are not deciding where people have their mission. Also Mount Athos is the center of monasticism for Orthodoxy. And if we go by this standard as you say, we have to start saying about all the Saints who are not from the country we are born in, that their mission is not for us. This is not the Orthodox way.

And how was your co-worker going from not knowing about Orthodoxy to knowing what language is used in the Church? It seems to me a long stretch of time that it took her to realize what you were talking about given the fact that she knew these people and what language they worship in!

Why can't people say Greek Orthodox? I see that you have no problem with the title 'Roman Catholic' (although these Romans maybe never stepped in Rome and are fully Americans) as you use it. Yes, they are Russian and Greek Orthodox because they were the ones who were Orthodox, whom God chose to bring Orthodoxy in USA, and died Orthodox. Also let's not forget this is to distinguish between the Orthodox Jewish and the Christians at a time when Orthodoxy was not known in US.

[Herman Blaydoe]

David, I see you criticize a lot others for their national pride, but it is national pride that drives you too to think the way you think.

Judgmentalism is a two-edged sword, be careful how you use it.


Otherwise you would not be bothered by the fact that people should be free wherever they are to worship in the language they can worship. You yourself mention the fact that there are many foreigners in the US who do not know English so why force them to worship in a language they can't?

Who is "forcing"? But if I were to go to Greece, I wouldn't demand to worship in English.


Our Church is not a trampoline for forcing all people to be uniform and force them speak English when they can't - I have no personal interest in this case since in my home we communicate in English because we live in the US, but forcing others to do what I do, is not Orthodox.

Yes, in the US, you expect people to speak English, or" American" if you prefer, since many English are not fond of what we have done to "their" language... But nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. That is not halting the exodus of young people from the "ethnic" churches however, because we cannot force them to stay (that wouldn't be Orthodox yes?)


About Elder Paisios' mission it was for Greeks, and for all who visited him from all over the world, therefore for the Orthodox all over the world. You are not deciding where people have their mission. Also Mount Athos is the center of monasticism for Orthodoxy. And if we go by this standard as you say, we have to start saying about all the Saints who are not from the country we are born in, that their mission is not for us. This is not the Orthodox way.

I think somebody needs to settle down a bit. This is not Orthodox and that is not Orthodox therefore YOU are not Orthodox (hey, it seems like a reasonable conclusion).


And how was your co-worker going from not knowing about Orthodoxy to knowing what language is used in the Church? It seems to me a long stretch of time that it took her to realize what you were talking about given the fact that she knew these people and what language they worship in!

Very simple. "Greek Orthodox" is obviously only for "Greeks" in the minds of many people who are not Greek, and what other language would be used in a Greek Church than Greek? How hard is that to figure out, really?


Why can't people say Greek Orthodox? I see that you have no problem with the title 'Roman Catholic' (although these Romans maybe never stepped in Rome) as you use it. Yes, they are Russian and Greek Orthodox because they were the ones who were Orthodox, whom God chose to bring Orthodoxy in USA, and died Orthodox. Also let's not forget this is to distinguish between the Orthodox Jewish and the Christians at a time when Orthodoxy was not known in US.

Why say Greek Orthodox? I don't because I'm not, and if I say I'm Carpatho-Russian Orthodox I get an even more intense stare of incomprehension. And it really is not the same as "Roman Catholic". Like humor if you have to explain it then it just isn't worth it. Orthodox Christian works just as well BTW...

Herman the obstreperous Pooh

[Nina]

Do you really need to ask or is this a rhetorical question? Either way, how can they "love" something they don't even know? Why would they go to another Orthodox Church regardless of language? They drift about and either fall into another religion or fall away completely. Is that so hard to understand?

No, it is not difficult to understand. But then the Gordian knot becomes more complex for you to untie for me, since what you say raises other questions for me. I do not mean this in an antagonizing/argumentative way, I am just trying to understand what is going on. How are they Orthodox when they do not understand, beleive, love Orthodoxy? - not taking into account their Orthodox blood and the Baptism since cradle Baptism makes a baby Orthodox, but as adults we have to cooperate in a level with the Grace of God to be called Orthodox - they are not even nominal Orthodox as I gather from your explanation. Are these people leaving in hordes the Church, or it is just a number who will leave in each religion and which is usually due to teenage rebellion, or love outside the Church etc.? Do you know statistics/numbers/extent of this tragedy (due to language) in the Church? Or can you tell if it is in the 10s, 100s, or 1000s?



Maybe you don't see it or you don't want to see it. I've seen it and so have others. There is also the element of if being Orthodox is endemic to being Greek and a person prefers not to see themselves as "Greek", then perhaps they won't go to ANY Orthodox Church because they obviously aren't Russian or Antiochian or Serbian either. They don't really know or appreciate what they are leaving behind so they don't see the loss. It is like having a priceless family heirloom that is all covered with dust and selling it in the yard sale for $5 when it is worth thousands because they don't know what they have.

Hmm No. I do not know this. This is not the Orthodoxy I was taught in my tradition. As you all know I am GO, I attend also an MP church and I have gone to any other church because it is Orthodox. I do not mind what is the nationality in front of the name. What I mind is to know if it is an Orthodox church that I go to as the House of God and who is the Saint the church is dedicated to so basically who is the Saint I am going to visit. And who are the saints depicted in the iconography that I am going to greet. This is the Orthodoxy I have been taught.

[Nina]

Judgmentalism is a two-edged sword, be careful how you use it.



Who is "forcing"? But if I were to go to Greece, I wouldn't demand to worship in English.



Yes, in the US, you expect people to speak English, or" American" if you prefer, since many English are not fond of what we have done to "their" language... But nobody is forcing anybody to do anything. That is not halting the exodus of young people from the "ethnic" churches however, because we cannot force them to stay (that wouldn't be Orthodox yes?)



I think somebody needs to settle down a bit. This is not Orthodox and that is not Orthodox therefore YOU are not Orthodox (hey, it seems like a reasonable conclusion).



Very simple. "Greek Orthodox" is obviously only for "Greeks" in the minds of many people who are not Greek, and what other language would be used in a Greek Church than Greek? How hard is that to figure out, really?

Why can't people say Greek Orthodox? I see that you have no problem with the title 'Roman Catholic' (although these Romans maybe never stepped in Rome) as you use it. Yes, they are Russian and Greek Orthodox because they were the ones who were Orthodox, whom God chose to bring Orthodoxy in USA, and died Orthodox. Also let's not forget this is to distinguish between the Orthodox Jewish and the Christians at a time when Orthodoxy was not known in US
Why say Greek Orthodox? I don't because I'm not, and if I say I'm Carpatho-Russian Orthodox I get an even more intense stare of incomprehension. And it really is not the same as "Roman Catholic". Like humor if you have to explain it then it just isn't worth it. Orthodox Christian works just as well BTW...

Herman the obstreperous Pooh.

This reply does not do it for me. Sorry.

[Andrew D. Morrell]

To whom this may concern:

I now attend services at two monasteries here in FL. At both monasteries, services are all in Greek. Though I wish I understood more than "Kyrie Eleison", "Aleluia" and once a few weeks ago, "Martha, Martha", it doesn't bother me... I'm in a monastery that lives it's way and I am deeply, deeply blessed by it. I may learn Greek, may not. Always wanted to... but que sera, sera.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend drove down from Phoenix to help me on a project. Years ago, he worked in a non-denom evangelical ministry with me in Alaska, we've been friends all along and he trusts my opinion. He attends a Vineyard in Phoenix but he is now interested in Orthodoxy. He's now attended a few Great Complines with me and we've had some excellent conversations with the Priest-monk at the men's monastery as well as many hours talking here in my shack.

I'm going to find an English/American speaking church in the area... that is what he needs to better understand, feel, engage. That's just the way it is.

Just sayin'.

Peace - Andrew

[Nina]

To whom this may concern:

I now attend services at two monasteries here in FL. At both monasteries, services are all in Greek. Though I wish I understood more than "Kyrie Eleison", "Aleluia" and once a few weeks ago, "Martha, Martha", it doesn't bother me... I'm in a monastery that lives it's way and I am deeply, deeply blessed by it. I may learn Greek, may not. Always wanted to... but que sera, sera.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend drove down from Phoenix to help me on a project. Years ago, he worked in a non-denom evangelical ministry with me in Alaska, we've been friends all along and he trusts my opinion. He attends a Vineyard in Phoenix but he is now interested in Orthodoxy. He's now attended a few Great Complines with me and we've had some excellent conversations with the Priest-monk at the men's monastery as well as many hours talking here in my shack.

I'm going to find an English/American speaking church in the area... that is what he needs to better understand, feel, engage. That's just the way it is.

Just sayin'.

Peace - Andrew

I like what Andrew says because I also mean the same that there is enough space for all of us to be here and worship in the way God has given in our heart to.

[Herman Blaydoe]

No, it is not difficult to understand. But then the Gordian knot becomes more complex for you to untie for me, since what you say raises other questions for me. I do not mean this in an antagonizing/argumentative way, I am just trying to understand what is going on. How are they Orthodox when they do not understand, beleive, love Orthodoxy? - not taking into account their Orthodox blood and the Baptism since cradle Baptism makes a baby Orthodox, but as adults we have to cooperate in a level with the Grace of God to be called Orthodox - they are not even nominal Orthodox as I gather from your explanation.

Sorry, but it begins to sound like you are saying you can't be Orthodox unless you are Orthodox... and that sounds like one step away from predestination to me (YMMV).


Are these people leaving in hordes the Church, or it is just a number who will leave in each religion and which is usually due to teenage rebellion, or love outside the Church etc.? Do you know statistics/numbers/extent of this tragedy (due to language) in the Church? Or can you tell if it is in the 10s, 100s, or 1000s?

Nobody wants to hear or believe it, but Orthodoxy in America is shrinking, not growing. Yes there are some vibrant ethnic communities in the US due to a continued influx of immigrants in some places, but in other places churches are closing, parishes are dying. Figures are hard to come by because people don't want to have to face the truth and there are so many ways to disguise the figures. Avoiding the painful truth is so much easier than confronting it. Human nature.


Hmm No. I do not know this. This is not the Orthodoxy I was taught in my tradition. As you all know I am GO, I attend also an MP church and I have gone to any other church because it is Orthodox. I do not mind what is the nationality in front of the name. What I mind is to know if it is an Orthodox church that I go to as the House of God and who is the Saint the church is dedicated to so basically who is the Saint I am going to visit. And who are the saints depicted in the iconography that I am going to greet. This is the Orthodoxy I have been taught.

Well, all fine and good, but believe it or not, you are not everybody. You have shared your experience, others have shared theirs. it is good to face the fact that there are, in fact, different experiences and we do well to be aware of all of them, not just the ones that reinforce our own preconceptions.

Herman the not quite everyman Pooh

[Herman Blaydoe]

.

This reply does not do it for me. Sorry.

Well, perhaps someone else will benefit from another viewpoint.

Herman the different Pooh

[Nina]

Sorry, but it begins to sound like you are saying you can't be Orthodox unless you are Orthodox... and that sounds like one step away from predestination to me (YMMV).

I see you have lost your patience with me, but one is not Orthodox if one does not beleive in the teachings of the Orthodox Church. Being Orthodox entails personal choice. I hope you know that. They may have been baptized Orthodox as babies, but if they have walked away as adults they are not Orthodox by choice.

Sorry, but I am not infected by other religions, thank God, since my entire life I have been either nothing, or Orthodox, so I do not beleive in predestination. Therefore no need to offend me that way.



Nobody wants to hear or believe it, but Orthodoxy in America is shrinking, not growing. Wow this is a pessimistic outlook. I do not beleive it. But that is just me maybe, since I tend to not deal with statistics, or polls. We are not numbers. We are all individuals and precious souls created by God. If you tell about all these dark, gloomy things that are going on in Orthodoxy and this exodus of people from the Church please support it with some facts since I can also come here and make unsupported claims any day but that does not make them true.

I tried to share my experience which I was taught when I was taught Orthodoxy: to love all people regardless of nationality. Obviously you like to see all the dark experiences and concentrate on them. In regards to personal experiences that is all well and good, but we are here for the Patristic thought mainly and not for gossiping what once upon a time a mean, old, GO lady did to this convert, or that one and made them feel unwelcome. Such sensitivity was making me feel pity at first and feel bad, but now it is getting tiresome all these old, stale anecdotes that are like a couple of them that are recycled continuously and look very fiction-like since different persons may be recounting as their own something which happened to one person and about which they read on line. And it is not *all* converts who tell this story. Obviously everyone who is hurt in a GO church has met the same mean, old lady. It is time to stop judging this mean, old lady although she is so omnipresent. As you said above judgment is a double-edged sword.

[Nina]

Well, perhaps someone else will benefit from another viewpoint.

Herman the different Pooh

Ah from a double standard view point which has no problem with the term Roman Catholic, but has a big problem if someone says Greek, Russian etc. Orthodox?


I think somebody needs to settle down a bit. This is not Orthodox and that is not Orthodox therefore YOU are not Orthodox (hey, it seems like a reasonable conclusion).The conclusion is what you read from it and that may very well be that I said you are Chinese. But I did not mean these things. I said: It is not the Orthodox to the saying that since a Saint is not from US we can not hear his words since his mission is for another country. This is wrong and if now you will attack me and offend me just because I said that so be it. Saying it is not Orthodox phronema it does not mean that the person is not Orthodox.


But if I were to go to Greece, I wouldn't demand to worship in English.If you were to live and work in Greece and there was a number of English speaking Orthodox emigrants near you, why not? Greeks have high esteem and are renowned for philoxenia. And philoxenia is also God-ordered too.

And do you understand? These people came here with nothing. Build their own churches, gave so much from their meager incomes to the Church, suffered so much in the society and for the Church here to start it and now suddenly you (not personal, but whoever) want to impose certain things because suddenly you found Orthodoxy and you say 'my way'? No, this is not right. Let the people be.

[Nina]

But I think this speaks to how we may be perceived in this country. We're perceived as being an ethnic Church. I know the OCA Churches leave out (for the most part anyway) the ethnic declaration in their names, such as Holy Trinity Orthodox Church, or Nativity of the Holy Theotokos Orthodox Church, or St. Mary of Egypt Orthodox Monastery, and so on, but I have yet to see a Greek Church that didn't put the name "Greek" in front of the rest of the name and likewise with ROCOR Churches. Perhaps it's enough for us to simply be just Orthodox Christians worshiping in Orthodox Churches? We can still have our ethnic traditions and styles without having to put our ethnicity on our signs can't we?


David, does this mean OCA is better than GO and ROCOR because of the non-ethnic association? However do not rush, I just recalled something. I was walking yesterday in Philadelphia and came upon an Orthodox church which was under OCA, and had written in 2 places: Albanian Orthodox Church and then it indicated that it is under OCA, and that all services are in English. I noticed these all when I was looking for a way to get in the church to light a candle since I came upon it by chance and had no idea this church was there. I wanted to light a candle for St. Chrysostom to whom the church was dedicated, but there was no one there to let me in and the door was locked. Wanted to take a photo from outside, but it was raining. I have never noticed these things since I try not to compare churches where I go (this is who I am) since for me things are Orthodox and that is sufficient, but I am sure if we look we can find such examples and that does not indicate that the OCA has a flaw, or that is better than the rest of the Orthodox churches here.

[David Lanier]

David, I see you criticize a lot others for their national pride, but it is national pride that drives you too to think the way you think. Otherwise you would not be bothered by the fact that people should be free wherever they are to worship in the language they can worship. You yourself mention the fact that there are many foreigners in the US who do not know English so why force them to worship in a language they can't? Our Church is not a trampoline for forcing all people to be uniform and force them speak English when they can't - I have no personal interest in this case since in my home we communicate in English because we live in the US, but forcing others to do what I do, is not Orthodox.

About Elder Paisios' mission it was for Greeks, and for all who visited him from all over the world, therefore for the Orthodox all over the world. You are not deciding where people have their mission. Also Mount Athos is the center of monasticism for Orthodoxy. And if we go by this standard as you say, we have to start saying about all the Saints who are not from the country we are born in, that their mission is not for us. This is not the Orthodox way.

And how was your co-worker going from not knowing about Orthodoxy to knowing what language is used in the Church? It seems to me a long stretch of time that it took her to realize what you were talking about given the fact that she knew these people and what language they worship in!

Why can't people say Greek Orthodox? I see that you have no problem with the title 'Roman Catholic' (although these Romans maybe never stepped in Rome and are fully Americans) as you use it. Yes, they are Russian and Greek Orthodox because they were the ones who were Orthodox, whom God chose to bring Orthodoxy in USA, and died Orthodox. Also let's not forget this is to distinguish between the Orthodox Jewish and the Christians at a time when Orthodoxy was not known in US.
Nina, I think you have been reading into things in my posts that simply aren't there. It's easy enough to do with this kind of medium and we have had similar issues at work where emails and instant messages (written text) used to communicate has it's limits as it doesn't convey the connotations, inflections, and tone of the one who wrote it and therefore we are left to make our own connotation out of the text and then it becomes something other than what the author intended. I feel this is the case with your "reading between the lines" (if you will) of what I'm saying (typing to be more precise).

The example I used of the Mexican immigrants was not meant to be critical or to criticize, but if I was being critical for people being proud of their national heritage, it is only to those who are holding on to something that has perhaps only a faded memory from when they were kids and their parents were from the old country, and the vast majority of their daily life no longer represents or resembles that culture or lifestyle because they have more or less become assimilated into the culture of the land in which they now live. At this point it becomes more theatrical than genuine. Now having said that, I am not criticizing people for being one ethnicity or another (this again is where you're taking what I said out of context and trying to read between the lines something that just simply isn't there). In fact I mentioned the Hispanics living here in NC as an example not to criticize them, but to use them to show how it is perfectly natural for 1st generation immigrants to hold on as much as they can to their culture and heritage and hoped that would serve to express my understanding and compassion for the Russians, Greeks, Serbians, and so on that have come over from the old country and of course having a church that looks, feels, smells, and sounds like the church from home invigorates their cultural identity. So I was using the Mexican population as an example to show how I understand how we ended up being Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox and so on in this country and have compassion for them.

You again take what I say about Elder Paisios out of context. I meant that his primary focus was on the people of Greece and from that basis much of his work relates to that and should be taken in that context.

It wasn't a long time (as you put it) before my co-worker made the connection of my speaking of the Orthodox Church to equating that with the Greek and Russian Orthodox as the conversation went fairly quickly. Why she wasn't able to make the connection sooner I don't know. Perhaps because I started by telling her the very early history of the Church and used only the word Orthodox?

I used Roman Catholic only to differentiate between the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church because we are (or at least proclaim to be) just as Catholic (Universal) so that was not a reference to any ethnic group and Roman Catholic doesn't make the ethnic reference that Greek Catholic or Serbian Orthodox does.

And here you go again putting words in my mouth that just simply aren't there. You said that I alluded to the OCA being better than the Greek or ROCOR Churches, but that isn't what I meant at all. I simply wanted to point out that the vast majority of OCA Churches leave out the ethnicity in the names they give to their Churches, yet they preserve the traditions of the old country with the style of chant, and other traditions that are practiced in some locales, but not others.

From very early on, saints (such as Tikhon) and other holy men in the Orthodox Church strived to create in America one Orthodox Church so that we didn't have overlapping dioceses and bishops and wouldn't end up being enclaves of ethnicity divided even amongst ourselves like we are now. I believe there is movement within SCOBA to begin the process of bringing this about and pray that God will make it happen. This is how we should be according to the canons of the Church (from what I'm told), and we should strive for unity amongst ourselves here in the US. From there then perhaps we can begin to improve how we are perceived.

Another thread is needed for this IMHO.

May the Blessings of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ be with you.

David

[Nina]

I meant that his primary focus was on the people of Greece and from that basis much of his work relates to that and should be taken in that context.

I would say that Elder's (like all Saints') primary focus was the salvation of his own soul and then he actually cared for the people of all the world. It is well known that Elder Paisios had appointed certain hours to pray for the children of the whole world, the families, those who commuted to work and so on. And he did not discriminate between Orthodox, or non-Orthodox. The love these people have has its origins from the Holy Spirit and this love encompasses the entire world. However if he had to give spiritual advise that would be to all Orthodox since in this world there are no particular sins to particular nationalities.


but if I was being critical for people being proud of their national heritage, it is only to those who are holding on to something that has perhaps only a faded memory from when they were kids and their parents were from the old country, and the vast majority of their daily life no longer represents or resembles that culture or lifestyle because they have more or less become assimilated into the culture of the land in which they now live.

So what is the culture and lifestyle in US? I do not know what you know, but in my opinion is very diverse. And the Orthodox teaching is actually to go against the flow in case when culture and lifestyle is not in accordance with Orthodoxy (remember the preaching of St. Chrysostom in Constantinople for instance which was the City of the Orthodox Empire and still Orthodoxy was not something which totally fitted in the lifestyle and culture of the day). Also it is not wrong for people to be proud of who they are and to be free to be who they are if they feel like keeping their family's traditions. Why should they try to be someone else? When we even indicate restaurants with names of the origin of the cuisine they have, why can't we keep our own values and culture of our families? For instance in my tradition family is important and we respect and keep values which are precious to us and which happen to be Orthodox too, we keep our culinary tradition etc. Why should people be cut with a cookie cutter like communists tried to? We are not dictators to make a uniform people, when God has gifted us with diversity and freedom. America is such a mix and blend of so many cultures and nationalities; and this is a blessing and not something to fight against. We are talking about a country and time when things are not as static as in the past so if you think that one day you will arrange all people in this big box and have all assimilated and settled, the same day there will be more diversity coming in. Plus we must let go of this desire to control things, we can not even control our own children more often than not, let alone to have control over the entire nation. God's will it is thus and it will be done as He wills it whether we like it or not.


I used Roman Catholic only to differentiate between the Roman Church and the Orthodox Church because we are (or at least proclaim to be) just as Catholic (Universal) so that was not a reference to any ethnic group and Roman Catholic doesn't make the ethnic reference that Greek Catholic or Serbian Orthodox does.

Well there are countries where they call RC simply the Catholic Church and that does not confuse people since they know. The Orthodox Church does not claim. It is Catholic - remember the Creed? And of course RC makes a huge and even more difference than the titles we use, since it is the same as calling all Orthodox Churches as the Constantinopolite Orthodox Church (let's say) regardless of country.


And here you go again putting words in my mouth that just simply aren't there. You said that I alluded to the OCA being better than the Greek or ROCOR Churches, but that isn't what I meant at all. I simply wanted to point out that the vast majority of OCA Churches leave out the ethnicity in the names they give to their Churches

I did not say. I asked if you mean it that way. Since you singled churches out and compared pointing out that OCA does not do that. But it does. And I do not think it is wrong even when the Church will be one here, God willing. It is not bad to have the history and lineage and who and how built the church. Same as with family tree and people tracing back their roots. It is out of respect and honor and it is indeed part of history.



From very early on, saints (such as Tikhon) and other holy men in the Orthodox Church strived to create in America one Orthodox Church so that we didn't have overlapping dioceses and bishops.

With this I totally agree. We are not canonical as we are and yes, that should be one city, one bishop. Not like it is now. So God willing we should pray to have this happen. If you did all this debate to arrive here, know that it is not necessary since this is something that is not even up for discussion. We need one Church here.

[Marie-Duquette]

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on us sinners!" Again we have come full circle, haven't we as Orthodox Christians? We are one the brink of Holy Week!
Holy Week is Holy Week, the Holiest week of the year when Our Lord Jesus Christ says to his often squabbling disciples, "Let us go up to Jerusalem!" Why Jerusalem? It is the city of PEACE, not that peace reigns there, no! May Peace reign in our heart! that is the place!

It is time to get back to the essentials of what it means to be a follower of Christ Jesus, who endured His Passion and death, and then rose from the dead on the Third Day! WHY? He, himself asked, "Why do you argue among yourselves as to who will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" It is not given to you to sit at my right hand or left hand; these places are already prepared by my Father in heaven."

In the Kingdom of God there is no Greek or Jew or Roman or American or English or anything else! There is only Christ, the Holy one of God! As Jesus prepares His disciples for the ultimate sacrifice, he pleads with them to let all these "earthly cares go" and to focus on the one Truth! We are, like the disciples so far away from this Truth, that we need to be constantly reminded of the Truth.

Unity of the Orthodox Church comes about and will come about in Christ not in any form of ethnic pride or language. The Gospel of John tells us so beautifully ... read it prayerfully with the mind in the heart, i.e. with attention and love, especially the last Chapters that refer to the coming Holy Week -- chapters 12 to the end !

It is the Word of God that sets us free, Christ Jesus, Himself who unifies us in the Truth, through the Holy Spirit who is Love!

A blessed Holy Week to us all!

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

David Lanier wrote:


From very early on, saints (such as Tikhon) and other holy men in the Orthodox Church strived to create in America one Orthodox Church so that we didn't have overlapping dioceses and bishops and wouldn't end up being enclaves of ethnicity divided even amongst ourselves like we are now. I believe there is movement within SCOBA to begin the process of bringing this about and pray that God will make it happen. This is how we should be according to the canons of the Church (from what I'm told), and we should strive for unity amongst ourselves here in the US. From there then perhaps we can begin to improve how we are perceived.

SCOBA is being replaced by the new local commissions made up of all canonical members of the Orthodox Church. For the first time this will assume a canonical order of precedence so that the local EP bishop always presides. Then follow in order of precedence all of the other Orthodox churches in the given area whose representatives also sit as members of this commission.

The first order of business to set this up was simply to establish a protocol. And it was a blessing that this was achieved. It is literally the first time that we have seen this. It should be recognized that it was this which always prevented a coherent agenda from being achieved in the past. In other words only if each canonical Orthodox church is properly included according to their canonical precedence can any unity be found in a given area.

After this various important matters such as greater unity among us can be discussed. Obviously this was much of what was behind the establishment of such commissions for they were established for the entire diaspora. (ie the entire world outside of the territory of autocephalous churches was divided into geographical areas). However some sort of precedent has already been set in the official decision already taken that there will be no interference from this body in the fundamental structures of individual churches.

From this I think it is safe to say that the model of generic unity is not the model that is realistically before us. Rather it is the model of unity based on the acceptance of what each of our churches represents. This in turn will allow each of our churches to bring to the table the best of what we represent and the best of our experience.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Nina]

From this I think it is safe to say that the model of generic unity is not the model that is realistically before us. Rather it is the model of unity based on the acceptance of what each of our churches represents. This in turn will allow each of our churches to bring to the table the best of what we represent and the best of our experience.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

You always enlighten me in a very blessed way, dear Father. Also I am grateful to see these last sentences because this is also what I feel.

[Bryan J. Maloney]

The matter is very simple. If a jurisdiction (what an ugly word to describe an ugly, noncanonical situation) in the USA steadfastly refuses to use English to the very last, God will let it wither and die, as it was simply unsuitable for the soil of America. Even if this refusal is restricted to monastaries, the monastaries will ultimately close or be forced to forever import monks from other countries in order to keep up the appearance of life. The time of the great influx of Orthodox immigrants is over. These immigrants will get old and die. Their children might use a little of the old tongue at home, but their grandchildren will abandon it. Human nature being what it is, the Church will then be in the situation of saying "God is more important than nationality." or "Nationality is more important than God." Right now, Greek Archdiocese parishes still think it's just fine to hold patriotic Greek events on the raised platform, before the altar, itself, but nothing American is worthy of this. Greekness is as important as God. Eventually, either God or Greekness will have to come first. When the people no longer see themselves as Greeks (for example) who happen to be in the USA but as Orthodox Christians who happen to be in the USA, there will be no more demand to preserve the Greek language or any other language than what is spoken in that land.

Another way to look at it is that if it is an error to perform Orthodoxy in the USA entirely in the major languages of the USA (that means English and Spanish), then we must immediately cease giving honor to Saints Cyril and Methodius, since they dared replace Greek with Slavonic.

However, I am certain that it will happen in its own time, since any jurisdiction that stubbornly clings to nationalism over mission will be mercifully allowed to die as the nationalists, themselves, grow old and die. Then, when forced to choose between sacrificing Orthodoxy on the altar of race and nation or giving up race and nation for the sake of God, the Orthodox will choose God.

[Bryan J. Maloney]

SCOBA is being replaced by the new local commissions made up of all canonical members of the Orthodox Church. For the first time this will assume a canonical order of precedence so that the local EP bishop always presides. Then follow in order of precedence all of the other Orthodox churches in the given area whose representatives also sit as members of this commission.

So, if this is canonical, will OCA hierarchs be directly present, or will they be required to be represented by hierarchs under Moscow? That is to say, has the MP recognized that OCA is able to even represent itself at all in this new body or does MP still maintain that OCA is an appendage of a non-canonical Russian intrusion?

[Nina]

Dear Bryan, there are many words "die" in your post lol The Orthodox never die, Sunday of Orthodoxy attests to that since we pray for the present and departed Orthodox because whether we like it or not we are all One Family in Christ. :) Also they have left the mark here so when they depart the next generations without discrimination will profit from them.


Right now, Greek Archdiocese parishes still think it's just fine to hold patriotic Greek events on the raised platform, before the altar, itself, but nothing American is worthy of this.

Since I have attended churches from the Greek Archdiocese I can tell you that we have lots of American patriotic activities and extended prayers such as on occasion of the 4th of July, President Day, Martin Luther, Thanksgiving etc. :)

However if you were trying to make a point against nationalism and Orthodoxy, the latter part of the sentence kind of defeats the purpose. :)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

So, if this is canonical, will OCA hierarchs be directly present, or will they be required to be represented by hierarchs under Moscow? That is to say, has the MP recognized that OCA is able to even represent itself at all in this new body or does MP still maintain that OCA is an appendage of a non-canonical Russian intrusion?

That is what the new body will have to resolve. But it was my impression that it already had with a recognition of all of the jurisdictions.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Bryan J. Maloney]

Dear Bryan, there are many words "die" in your post lol The Orthodox never die,

True that the Orthodox and Orthodoxy never die, but individual shoots that alienate themselves from the Vine do wither.



Since I have attended churches from the Greek Archdiocese I can tell you that we have lots of American patriotic activities and extended prayers such as on occasion of the 4th of July, President Day, Martin Luther, Thanksgiving etc. :)

However if you were trying to make a point against nationalism and Orthodoxy, the latter part of the sentence kind of defeats the purpose. :)

Actually, the point I was trying to make was that it was deemed appropriate to use the nave as a celebration of Greekness, yet the country in which they now live and which gave them the peace to practice Orthodoxy was not deemed appropriate for any celebration. I've no problem with celebrating Greekness in and of itself, its using the nave, right before the altar to do it. I know enough modern Greek history to know that there is nothing particularly holy about the post-Ottoman state of Greece, any more than any other country. I was also put off by the slideshow of marching soldiers and waving American flags that was put on in my mother-in-law to be's Baptist parish. In the community center or down the street, I'll be happy to march in a parade for American spirit, but I get rather nervous when it looks like we are being told to not only be in this world but to be very consciously of this world.

[Nina]

True that the Orthodox and Orthodoxy never die, but individual shoots that alienate themselves from the Vine do wither.

Wow so all the immigrants that you mention in your previous post are individual shoots that alienated themselves from the Vine? How do you know that? You know with all those "die" words you used in your previous posts about immigrants, I was afraid the next sentence was going to be the words of that politician who very recently said that immigrants should be shot like pigs in this country. Such a pitiful mindset. Last time I checked everyone is an immigrant in USA. And if you have been in this country for 100 years that does not make you more of an American than I, who am here for 10 years. Actually I am an American by choice and not by accident.


Actually, the point I was trying to make was that it was deemed appropriate to use the nave as a celebration of Greekness, yet the country in which they now live and which gave them the peace to practice Orthodoxy was not deemed appropriate for any celebration. I've no problem with celebrating Greekness in and of itself, its using the nave, right before the altar to do it. I know enough modern Greek history to know that there is nothing particularly holy about the post-Ottoman state of Greece, any more than any other country. I was also put off by the slideshow of marching soldiers and waving American flags that was put on in my mother-in-law to be's Baptist parish. In the community center or down the street, I'll be happy to march in a parade for American spirit, but I get rather nervous when it looks like we are being told to not only be in this world but to be very consciously of this world.Greeks were occupied and many liberties were taken away from them so their motto in war was "For the Orthodoxy and Homeland" so 25 of March is the day of the victory and freedom from the Turks which is worthy to be celebrated because it is closely related to Orthodoxy - also they connect their victory to Panagia since she gave them freedom on that very special day for our Faith. Occupation gave us many martyrs in Orthodoxy and for this reason Greeks did not detach their Greekness from their Orthodoxy. But these facts aside, in the Greek churches I told you although you ignore it, we have all the American festivities (we have even food in colors of American flag and only American food for 4th of July for instance). And there is no way you can tell me that Thanksgiving and 4th of July etc. are Orthodox in some way, but we still celebrate them in our Church here and have prayers and Liturgy on those occasions. So please before making false and so generalized accusations about an entire people it is better to check your sources. It seems to me that you have something with the Greeks... maybe because they are immigrants, maybe because they are not white enough for you, but please do not try to play the Orthodox card in this which is solely something personal against some people.

Yes we are taught to be not of this world. But Saints did not prohibit any one to celebrate freedom. Many of these Saints or their families were actually persecuted during occupations. If I want to renounce things of this world, I should start from me, and not from the people who celebrate down the street or in the church.

[Bryan J. Maloney]

What do the Patristic texts say about what languages to use in Liturgy? Do the Fathers of the Church insist that some specific language is automatically unsuitable or less suitable for teaching, for Scripture, and for the Liturgy? It has been my experience that none of the Fathers have said this. So, for those who claim that Greek has some special place, like Arabic does for Muslims, where is the Patristic witness?

Likewise, what is the Patristic witness in favor of using the front of the Altar as a place to hold nationalistic celebrations? I have yet to find any. Again, is this practice like the pan-Arabism of Sunni Muslims?

Finally, what does anyone here know of my "whiteness" or lack of "whiteness"? (Hint--before the 1960s, I wouldn't have been legally "white" in several US states, and my father refused to accept a promotion at GM because it would have sent us to South Africa, where we would have had to rely on an "honorary white" status from being Americans.) I find it very revealing that, knowing nothing at all about my actual ancestry, someone decides, more than once, to claim that I hate people for being "insufficiently white"? Why is that acceptable here? In any case, I claim the following:

There is no Patristic witness specifically in favor of one language over another in the Liturgical life of the Orthodox Church.
There is no Patristic witness specifically in favor of using the front of the Altar as a place to hold nationalistic celebrations.

I Invite some Patristic evidence to the contrary.

[Nina]

Never say never.

[Dova Nisavic]

Bryan J. Maloney:
So, if this is canonical, will OCA hierarchs be directly present, or will they be required to be represented by hierarchs under Moscow? That is to say, has the MP recognized that OCA is able to even represent itself at all in this new body or does MP still maintain that OCA is an appendage of a non-canonical Russian intrusion?

Sorry, but I do not understand what are you talking about. What is the problem with OCA?


Bryan J. Maloney
True that the Orthodox and Orthodoxy never die, but individual shoots that alienate themselves from the Vine do wither.

Beautiful...are these the words of a holy father....some "holy father from Texas and Western movies"?

[Herman Blaydoe]

Individual shoots: could be individual people, or individual parishes or individual churches. Anybody hear from the Church of Ephesus lately?

Herman the individual Pooh

[Nina]

Anybody hear from the Church of Ephesus lately?


What are you hinting at about the Orthodox Church persecuted by the Turks?

Last time I heard was that there the Council was held that condemned Nestorius. Nestorius was a very harsh, hard-hearted, proud person, and who thought was such a good Orthodox; and with evil ways condemned and persecuted Arians in the name of what he thought was the truth; thinking he was the savior of Orthodoxy and that he was doing a favor to Orthodoxy. And God allowed that he fell into a grave heresy himself because of his harshness and lack of heart (not to mention lack of love and compassion even for the heretics...). Elder Paisios says a lot about people who have no heart, and no philotimo. And another Saint said: "If you have a heart you will be saved."

Also last time I heard from the Church of Ephesus it was the See of Saint Mark of Ephesus.

I wonder... A Muslim, a Nestorian, or a RC?

[Christina M.]

I could be wrong, but I think Herman is referring to Rev 2:5, where the Lord threatens to remove the lampstand of the Church of Ephesus:

Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lamp stand from its place - unless you repent."

[Nina]

I could be wrong, but I think Herman is referring to Rev 2:5, where the Lord threatens to remove the lampstand of the Church of Ephesus:

I can not beleive he is referring to what happened there with the Nicolaites, since why God would make the place worthy after that (writing of the Revelation) for the Third Ecumenical Council?