HieromonkIrineos wrote:NotChrysostomYet wrote:
Hmm, well to be honest I can't take your word for it since this does not line up with what I've read so far. I'll have to do more research, and quite frankly researching the Western Rite is not the first thing on my priority list. I hope you'll understand.
FYI, I don't think anyone is arguing that the Liturgy of St. Tikhon is itself a historic liturgy. Saint Tikhon did have a had it its creation though, and the Anglican BCP Liturgy (with innovations removed) does have a lot in common with the liturgy of Orthodox England. I won't claim that it is the same, of course, but the similarities are nonetheless there.
I'm not asking you to take my word for anything. But you made incorrect statements (which by your own admission you have not researched) and I have corrected them. You are free to believe as you wish, but you will find no synodal approval of the "Liturgy of St. Tikhon" by the Moscow Patriarchate. Tikhon never presented it for approval. You will find no reversal of the abolishment of the WRV in ROCOR. Regarding the "liturgy," regardless of similarities, I would simply ask why pre-schism rites aren't being used if one actually desired to be Orthodox. Where else in Orthodoxy have we taken a heterodox rite, scrubbed it, and declared it a valid expression of Orthodox liturgy?
If no record of pre-schism Western rites existed, I could see the argument (though I would still disagree with it). But that isn't the case. All that is happening is ROCOR andf Antioch are permitting the use of an essentially heterodox service in order to accommodate the comfort of Anglicans purporting to be Orthodox.
Both Deacon Joseph Suaiden and Hieromonk Enoch who are under Met. John (LoBue) of New York, profess that the Western Rite Divine Liturgy (Mass) which they use is pre-schism, but is it? Since this TOC Synod uses a more devout form of English, someone has translated this Mass from the Latin into the English. However, wasn't the original Mass by St. Gregory the Dialogos standardized in Latin (or that action was attributed to him)? St. Gregory I, also known as Gregory the Great or St. Gregory the Dialogus, was Pope of Rome from September 3, 590, until his death on March 12, 604.
Whereas the Divine Liturgy has always been celebrated in the devout (liturgical) language of the people, Arabic, Greek, Slavonic, etc., the pre-schism Mass has always been in Latin since the days of St. Gregory the Great. It was only during WWII with the permission of Pope Pius XII that England, France, and Germany started using translations into English, French, and German, but there were many liturgical abuses that arose, especially by the notorious Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin. This is why Pius XII wrote Mystici Corporis, but that encyclical, while condemning liturgical abuse, also established Diocesan Liturgical Commissions, which promoted the idea of more liturgical changes and, ultimately, the Vatican II Council. Vatican II changed everything by the institution of the Novus Ordo and the horrific vernacular translations into modernist languages that further perverted the once holy Mass.
Although I attended two Masses celebrated by a priest under Met. John who was a former Jesuit priest, I prefer the Byzantine Divine Liturgy, which helps keep me more attentive due to the continual responses by the laity and choir, the presence of many icons on the walls and ceilings, the candles, the incense, the vestments, the processions, the Byzantine Chant, and the very architecture of an Orthodox Christian Temple. Everything in an Orthodox Church draws one's attention to the Lord, the Theotokos, and the multiple witnesses of saints and angels who surround us during a Divine Liturgy. St. John the Theologian says in his book of Revelation, that the Divine Liturgy is the Feast of the Lamb, and I agree. It is heavenly.