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U. S. News and World Report on a return to the old stuff

Published 18 December 2007 General , Media , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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With a tip of the hat to the good folks over at Get Religion, I give you an article in U. S. News and World Report by Jay Tolson entitled “A Return to Tradition: A new interest in old ways takes root in Catholicism and many other faiths.”

Go ahead and take a moment to read it—it won’t take long. On a personal note, not to mention in the interests of full disclosure, I’ve met Roger Finke; his daughter and son-in-law are my godchildren, and his son and daughter-in-law are also dear friends. As converts to Orthodox Christianity, they themselves are part of this “return to tradition” of which the article speaks. (EDIT: the referents of “they” are Dr. Finke’s son, daughter, and in-laws; Dr. Finke himself is LCMS, not Orthodox.)

A few broad observations: it appears to be an article of faith for the mainstream media that Pope Benedict XVI’s liberalization of the traditional rite will ultimately have little to no effect, and certainly won’t catch on terribly well—it just means that a handful of old folks can now go back to saying their rosaries on their own while the ad orientem priest mumbles in Latin and a smaller handful of young militants can pretend to insert themselves into a tradition which was never theirs in the first place. This is not, of course, what Tolson says in so many words, but it certainly seems important to him to make sure to include a quote from somebody downplaying the significance of Benedict’s move.

Along the same lines, does the “return to tradition” mean a break from the “religious service provider” mentality, according to Tolson? Of course not. Tolson provides a quote from Finke that makes it very explicit that the cafeteria is by no means closed; it’s just that perhaps some people are trying to add a sit-down restaurant option for those who want it: “It’s a structured life, but it’s a structure they are seeking and not simply submitting to authority.” An earlier quote from IUPUI sociologist Sister Patricia Wittberg underscores this: “I think the future is with a group that is interested in reviving the old stuff and traditions in a creative way.” In other words, what we’re talking about is a group of people who are interested in tradition, but on their own terms. It’s less the received tradition and more the cherry-picked tradition; tradition-as-trapping rather than Tradition-as-authority.

In the interests of fairness, there is a fundamental conundrum that, some would argue, ensures that anybody who embraces a more traditional expression of Christianity is going to be engaging in a range of cherry-picking, cafeteria-esque behavior. “There’s nothing more un-Orthodox,” I’ve heard various people claim, “then intentionally converting to Orthodoxy.” In other words, if you’re converting to a faith in which you were not raised, you’re already cherry-picking; you’re already intentionally grafting yourself onto something else rather than accepting whatever tradition you received growing up. You’re asserting yourself onto an organic entity in such a way that ensures you will never be part of it. You’ve already chosen what it is you’re willing to submit to, and since you’ve already presumably left something else at least once, you’re tacitly reserving the right to do so again. It’s healthy, so the argument goes, to acknowledge that we’re all cafeteria believers of one form or another, and that there’s no other way you can be in this country, where religion is just another part of the marketplace of ideas.

I suppose to some extent this is true; I will say that for myself and people I know who have converted to either Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism (or even people raised in either communion who have made a conscious choice to more fully “own” their faith), there is always a struggle to figure out how to live life more fully within the faith but also with an awareness of the reality of the world. That’s the struggle of any Christian at any point in history, really. As G. K. Chesterton might have put it, the struggle doesn’t invalidate the conversion any more than the rain invalidated the ark.

Finally—the following point is worth noting, as much as for how Tolson says it as what he says:

Something curious is happening in the wide world of faith, something that defies easy explanation or quantification. More substantial than a trend but less organized than a movement, it has to do more with how people practice their religion than with what they believe, though people caught up in this change often find that their beliefs are influenced, if not subtly altered, by the changes in their practice.

First of all, this assumes that there is a divide between belief and practice. This may very well be the case, but it’s a divide which would have been quite foreign to the early Christians, who were very aware that how one prayed and worshipped impacted how they believed. (Google Lex orandi, lex credendi if you don’t believe me.) As an Episcopalian praying the Rite II Eucharist Sunday in, Sunday out, in allowing myself to actually pray the liturgy, I was occasionally confronted by something in the text, and I realized that in order to keep praying it, I had to decide if I actually believed it or not. Did I actually believe the words of the Nicene Creed? Did I actually believe I was receiving the Body and Blood of Christ? Did I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church? And so on. The more I decided that yes, I actually believed what I was praying, ironically enough, the less tenable of a position it seemed to remain an Episcopalian.

Liturgical practice is at once both the expression and the teaching of the faith held by the community; someone actively engaging it and praying it will of course find what they believe being influenced by it. That is the whole point, and it is a point easily lost on people who think that worship is all about style, taste, and aesthetic preference.

Orthodox Christianity and anti-Catholicism

Published 17 December 2007 General , The Orthodox Faith 2 Comments
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stpeterwith-key.jpgiconstandrewnewbrand.jpgFirst off, a brief explanation of what this post is not: it is not an examination of the issues surrounding the lack of unity between the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Churches in communion with the See of Rome. There are plenty of other people willing to go there; I’m not, at least not today. This post will mention some of the issues which exist, but it will neither focus on nor analyze them.

It is also in no way a polemic against any particular individuals; the problem of Christian disunity is everybody’s problem, and however we may be convinced of how that came about, blame is never going to accomplish as much as charity and humility. If we are to be “little Christs” even to those with whom we cannot partake of Holy Communion, we must act in love. That said, Our Lord wasn’t one to sugarcoat. Therefore we must speak the truth, but we must do so in love or it is worthless.

And so, my point: when an Eastern Orthodox Christian frankly and openly acknowledges issues which divide East and West, this is not de facto anti-Catholicism. This is not to say that there isn’t anti-Catholicism among some Orthodox, any more than Roman Catholics can fairly say there aren’t any anti-Orthodox among their number. There are some embarrassingly hostile anti-Catholics among the Orthodox; those, for example, who see that there have been differences in practice and expression between East and West since just about day one, and subsequently conclude that the West has been in grave error from the beginning. No question about it, this exists, and as much as is possible, other Orthodox should work to counteract that.

Be that as it may, when an Orthodox Christian tells his Roman Catholic brother, “There are these stumbling blocks which exist for us in terms of papal supremacy/the Immaculate Conception/created grace/etc. which are, from our perspective, obstacles to unity,” assuming that the context is appropriate for the exchange, this is not automatically an example of Orthodox hostility towards Rome. It could very well be that the person has taken a hostile tone, but an attempt to discuss the issue and in particular, a subsequent “sticking to one’s guns” does not in and of itself indicate hostility.

It is true that such discussions are not likely to solve anything; presumably an Orthodox is convinced of the truth of the Orthodox position and a Catholic of the Catholic position. It is true that people far better educated than I ever will be have chosen to swim the Tiber rather than the Bosphorus, but it is also true that others with the same class of education, given access to the same evidence, have chosen New Rome over Old Rome. For example, I have heard some suggest that Dr. Jaroslav Pelikan’s conversion to Orthodoxy was really a product of an inherited anti-Catholicism which was ultimately too strong to overcome; I suppose it would be just as easy to suggest that Newman’s conversion to Catholicism was effectively a product of a Western enculturation which was too strong to overcome. Charity, I find, is lacking in both assertions, as well as in a parallel assertion, that if someone like Pelikan or Newman had truly considered the evidence “in faith,” they would have chosen differently.

There are real issues which divide Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, and there are practical consequences of those issues.  To acknowledge this is not to be hostile to whichever side one has not chosen; it is simply to admit reality.  I suggest, however, that for those of us who aren’t bishops, we’re better off frankly acknowledging the issues, agreeing to disagree (however sadly), but then further acknowledging that, while lacking the power to formally resolve any issues, we can work to cultivate the unity that would already have to exist before formal procedures would ever do any good (think of the Council of Florence). False ecumenism isn’t helpful; I’m not sure something as lofty-sounding as “dialogue” is really going to get laypeople anywhere, and there’s certainly nothing we can do about concelebration or communion. Conversation and cooperation, however, in the context of treating each other as brothers and sisters in Christ regardless of what issues our bishops might have with each other, might just accomplish something.

We’ve got to be able to talk openly and honestly without fear that points of disagreement and recognition of reality are going to be automatically interpreted as hostility. If we can’t do that, conversation and cooperation won’t get far. We must truly walk in love just as Christ loved us.

End-of-Finals-Week miscellany

Published 14 December 2007 Academia , College , General , The Orthodox Faith 3 Comments
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In a nutshell: Greek not so good, Syriac very good.

cursivegkms-640w.gifGreek this semester (my third) has been a war over a particular person getting to make a particular point, fought in such a way so that it is those in the classroom who have been the collateral damage, and the final was very much a final salvo. I’m being deliberately vague for a lot of reasons; suffice it to say I did the work, put in my time, and learned a lot, but it is questionable how much of a high point it will wind up being on my transcript. Oh well; it happens.curetoniansyriac-640w.gif

By contrast, I handed in my Syriac final feeling quite chipper, on the other hand, and I felt quite justified in my chipperness when I saw the posted grade this morning.

Now I get to spend the break reviewing Latin for next semester. Opto, optare, optavi, optatus. Sum, esse, fui, futurus. Femina, feminae, feminae, feminam, femina…

Dr. Liccione has an essay entitled “Freedom, evolution, and original sin” which he posted yesterday. It’s the kind of thing which, when I read it, makes me think things along the lines of, “You know, maybe things could be worked out between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy within my lifetime…” I’m not qualified to engage the post on any kind of a theological or doctrinal level, but I do want to point out a few things.

Kecharitomene is an interesting word in Greek. If my Greek teacher were to ask me to give its syntax on a test, I would say that it is a feminine singular participle, perfect tense to show completed aspect, passive voice, in the vocative case, agreeing in gender, number, and case with the unexpressed subject (being the Virgin Mary), and it is being used attributively.

What in the world does all of that mean?

A participle as a verbal adjective; in English we end participles with “-ing” and then use them in conjunction with the verb “to be” to express various tenses periphrastically. If I say, “I am walking,” “am” is the finite verb and “walking” is the participle–it’s attributing the characteristic “walking” to me rather than expressing it directly as a finite verb, whereas a single finite verb in Greek, “baino,” says all of that on its own—the “o” ending indicates that it’s first-person singular, so the subject is already implied, and it in the present tense, so it doesn’t need the helper verb “to be.” In Greek, you would use the participle perhaps to express a parallel thought to the main idea of the sentence (e.g., in “The turkey being cooked, we will now eat dinner”, “being cooked” would be expressed as a participle), often to indicate a present state before an action is taken (my Greek teacher likes to use the example that instead of “Take the money and run,” Plato would say, “Taking the money, run!”), and also to attribute verbal characteristics to people. Think of the movie “The Running Man,” and you’ve got the idea. Kecharitomene is an example of this last use—the verb is being applied to the Virgin Mary as an attribute, and therefore is singular and feminine, since in Greek adjectives must agree with what they modify in gender, number (singular/plural, as in “I/we”), and case. This is direct address, and that case is called “vocative.”

Participles, while not being finite verbs, have tenses like finite verbs; we usually think of tenses as expressing time, but Greek (at least how my teacher taught us) is a little more granular, expressing both time and aspect, aspect being the state in which the action is being performed. There is simple aspect, which means that the action is done once; progressive or repeated aspect, which means that it occurs continuously or over and over, and completed aspect, which means that the action is, well, done to completion. “I am walking” is present time, progressive or repeated aspect. “I was walking” is past time, progressive/repeated aspect. “I walked to the store” is past time, simple aspect. “I have walked home” is present time, completed aspect. And so on. Kecharitomene is in the perfect tense, which indicates present time, completed aspect. One thing about Greek, though, is that participles, if they communicate time at all (outside of the indicative mood, tenses lose connotation of absolute time and only have to do with aspect) communicate time relative to the main verb. “Chaire, Kecharitomene!” being a greeting (“Chaire” is the imperative form of the verb which means “rejoice,” used idiomatically in Greek to mean “Hello”), there’s not really a main verb, so an argument can be made that we can’t really say anything about the time in which this action was performed, only that it is done to completion.

There are two grammatical voices in English, active and passive. In the active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb; “I throw the ball.” In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb; “I am thrown the ball.” Greek has both of these as well (plus a middle voice, where the action is performed reflexively or causatively or there’s some other special meaning being communicated). Kecharitomene is passive, which means the Virgin Mary has received the action of the verb; somebody else has performed the action (presumably, God).

Having now explained the syntax, the base meaning of the verb conjugated as Kecharitomene is “endow with grace.”

Therefore, if we were to try to incorporate every last nuance of the above into a literal English translation of “Chaire, Kecharitomene”, it would come out to “Hello, woman completely endowed with grace (don’t know when that happened, it’s just the way it is)!”

Doesn’t exactly roll of the tongue, does it? Regardless, Dr. Liccione’s summary of the implications is worth a glance:

[The Virgin Mary’s state of being kecharitomene] is sola gratia: a direct product of divine power divinizing. And it is itself but the most proximate effect of…the Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection of that divine person who is Mary’s Son, a process in which we are all destined to participate, thus becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).

Amen! Others can hash it out further.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is an interesting figure, even to the Orthodox; Fr. Seraphim Rose was quite critical of him, and others (such as Fr. John Meyendorff, I believe) evidently thought he hit the nail on the head. I’ve never read any of his works myself, but I don’t claim to have any particular interest in the creation vs. evolution issue. If we are to understand time as a part of creation, and if we are to understand the Fall as having corrupted all of creation, then presumably time was part of what was corrupted, as well as how we perceive it. For all I know (and I wasn’t there), the Genesis account is exactly and literally what happened, but we’re on the wrong side of the event to be able to see empirical evidence of it. I don’t know, and it frankly is irrelevant to me, having no bearing on the personal struggle to become a partaker of the Divine Nature. Maybe that’s a shortsighted point of view, but there we are.

Moving on…

I’m still stewing deep in thought about my Greek class. I can’t really go into a lot of details because the players would easily identifiable, and I don’t want to go there. What I will say is that after the first year of Greek (assuming use of a introductory textbook like Hansen & Quinn, which appears to be the closest the Greek world has to a standard like Wheelock’s is for Latin), I can imagine a very compelling case being made for Religious Studies departments having a second-year sequence running parallel to a Classical Studies department’s sequence. For example, this semester, we spent roughly three-fourths of the term on Plato’s Ion, and the last three or four weeks on the New Testament. That’s all well and good for classicists, but let’s just say that there wasn’t a lot of love left over for anything written Anno Domini, and I believe I would have ultimately benefited more from the ratio having been reversed, particularly since the fourth semester, as taught here, is radio station WHMR, all Homer, all the time.

It also occurs to me that one thing from which my beloved Hansen & Quinn textbook could benefit, faithful and constant companion, friend, and projectile over the last year as it has been, would be something of a supporting library along the lines of what’s available for Wheelock’s. It’s also quite amusing, looking back at the sentences I slaved over for hours in September 2006; if anyone would like an exact count of how many ways Homer can send the brothers into the battle in the country on the road with books, drop me a line and I’ll see what I can do.

OK. Enough for now. Finals week is over, Deo gratias, the syntax of “deo” being that it’s an indirect object “to/for” dative, and in the singular number you decline that deus, dei, deo, deum, deo…

Christmas extended in both directions

Published 13 December 2007 General , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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nativityicxc.jpgAlden Swan, who does some interesting blogging about Christianity and culture, posted a piece called “The Joy of Christmas Insanity.” Here’s an excerpt:

I was speaking with someone a week or so ago about how fast Christmas seems to be coming; it always seems to catch me by surprise, which just adds to the stress. […] Christmas now begins in late October or early November, and by December it’s in full swing, with parties, decorations, music, movies, concerts, shopping and food. It is an all-out celebration, involving all aspects of our lives. Those who are of other religions (or no religion) have by now realized that “the train, it won’t stop going…” and they either join in ignoring the religious aspects, or live in misery.

Eating, drinking, singing, spending lots of money buying gifts, giving to charity, all can be expressions of joy, even if we don’t realize it.

For those of us who are Christians, I don’t think we need to detract at all from the secular aspects of the holiday; I think that joy, even the non-spiritual version, is something that humans need to express for their emotional health. In America, we’re a pretty joy-constipated bunch. So, let everyone celebrate. But, Christians indeed have a joy which is of a different nature than that of the world (I think it’s okay to have both), and we get to express that, too.

Think about all that for a moment. Christmas gets going in October—I was noticing a few Christmas decorations out shortly before Halloween, as I recall—and “is an all-out celebration” basically until the shopping season wears off, sometime shortly after New Year’s.

As Mr. Swan also puts it, “It seems that there are two ways to deal with the oncoming train: either we live in denial (and get creamed), or we run headlong into it.” For purposes of contrast, let me offer the following as a possible third way.

On 15 November, Orthodox Christians (those following Byzantine practice, anyway, since Western Rite does things a little differently) begin to observe the Nativity Fast, or Advent. It is a forty day period of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in preparation of the celebration of the Nativity of Christ. Much like Great Lent before Easter, ideally we abstain from animal products (although often, in practice, this fast is not as severe as the Lenten period), hopefully our parish situation is such that we are able to attend additional services throughout the week to make up for spiritually what we are denying ourselves physically, and we look for ways to be Christ to those who need it.

Some understand this period to be penitential, for the purpose of self-examination; it is also often explained as a time where the faithful prepare themselves for the coming of Christ into the world. However it is understood, on 25 December, the faithful participate liturgically in the moment where eternal reality and historical reality intersected, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observe this, as we observe all major feasts, with a Divine Liturgy; Christmas is the “Christ Mass,” after all. Just as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, so does the bread and wine become the Body and Blood and dwell within us.

Then, after all this preparation, the party starts. Remember “The Twelve Days of Christmas”? Well, that’s what we actually do. Maybe not with lords a-leaping in a pear tree, but after the forty days of fasting, we’re ready to celebrate in body and soul. Gifts and singing and dancing and rich food and sweets and so on now have a spiritual context, and we’re thankful for it. The Bridegroom is now with us, and we feast. It is truly “a joy which is of a different nature than that of the world.”

For us, feasting and fasting must be understood in terms of each other—fasting prepares for feasting, feasting has been prepared for by fasting. Great Lent and Easter are the same idea on an even bigger scale. On a smaller, day-to-day level, this plays out even in how we receive Holy Communion: if we intend to commune on a Sunday, we prepare for that feast with prayer and by fasting starting the night before.

Without intending to offer judgment, compare this to our cultural mindset where we extend Christmas in both directions, starting the party in the October and going on for two and half months or so (by which point we’ve probably gained twenty pounds).

One more wrinkle—if you’re following the Julian Calendar, you celebrate on 7 January, by which point the secular party has completely stopped and everybody has moved on. I’m told there’s a real spiritual peace in observing the Nativity at a time when the world has finally quieted down; I can only imagine.

Not that Mr. Swan has asked my opinion, but it seems to me that we need not convince ourselves that our only options are to grumpily swim against the tide or to surf the wave.

“…prepare yourself for the opportunities it presents”

Published 12 December 2007 Academia , Early Christianity , General , Media , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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Darrell Bock at Christianity Today posted an article today entitled, When the Media Became a Nuisance: How to respond to the next blockbuster book/documentary/movie that questions traditional Christianity. He makes points similar to mine about the Gospel of Judas fiasco, essentially saying that commercial media and serious scholarship don’t mix terribly well—but also saying we need to get used to it and adapt:

We need to understand that public discussion of the Christian faith has changed—permanently. So the next time you hear an earth-shattering announcement about Jesus from the media, don’t get angry. Rather, take three deep breaths, sit down with your Starbucks coffee, and watch how the announcement is treated on blogs and other media. Above all, prepare yourself for the opportunities it presents.

One of the main opportunities he posits, and I wholeheartedly agree with this, is the opportunity for Christians to really educate ourselves about our history and our origins. If someone comes up to us and starts talking about the Gospel of Judas and we’re able to tell them about how St. Ireneaus of Lyons was arguing against this document back in the late second century, and then explain who St. Ireneaus was and who the Cainites were and why we care about what St. Irenaeus had to say about them, that’s going to be a much more powerful answer to somebody than just, “Well, that’s not what my Bible says so it has to be wrong.”

And make no mistake—we’ve got to know our stuff better than the people who want their name on the next Newsweek cover story, and that’s true at every level. I have to know, for example, what Nestorius said better than somebody who would claim that Nestorius was simply persecuted by the institutional church (and I don’t—this is why I’m going to grad school). If I don’t, I’m gonna get my lunch eaten, and it’s going to be a poor witness for the faith. (Maybe not as bad as claiming that nothing predates Christianity, but still not good.) I’m sure we all know people by this point who think that the Council of Nicea decided on what counted as Scripture by taking a vote and burning everything that didn’t make the cut; we’ve got to be able to answer that, clearly, authoritatively, and lovingly, in a post-Da Vinci Code world.

Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, Marcus Borg, and John Crossan are on speed-dial for anybody in the media covering stories like this. It’s not that there aren’t necessarily good reasons for this; there is good scholarship that has come out of all of them—the problem is balance. If we can actually take advantage of the opportunity to engage people and interest them in real Christian history and not the Enquirer version, if we can get them interested in J. N. D. Kelly’s or Jaroslav Pelikan’s version rather than Dan Brown’s, then maybe eventually Susan Ashbrook Harvey or Fr. John Behr or Dn. John Chryssavgis can get on the “to call” list as well—but we have to educate ourselves. Ignorance won’t give us credibility. We have to engage from an informed stance.

“…how dare we think we can do better?”

Published 11 December 2007 General , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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I think I’ve dealt with some of my funk. I think. I’ll still feel a lot better once Friday rolls around, but I don’t feel quite so much like the world ended anymore.

Jeffrey Tucker over at The New Liturgical Movement posted a link to Google Books’ digitization of the 7th century Gelasian Sacramentary. He has some choice words for those who might find it, shall we say, not quite in the spirit of Vatican II:

Just looking through it, one is touched by how close a connection we have to history in the Roman Rite. Humbling, isn’t it? How dare we litter this pious masterpiece with our own pop music and pop theology, and how dare we think that we can do better by making up our own words and importing our own sensibility to the liturgy?

Standard disclaimers—I’m not Roman Catholic, and I am really less than qualified to deal with issues of theory and theology. (Let’s be honest; I’m really not qualified to deal with much of anything at this point, which is why I’m trying to get into grad school.) Still, even as an Eastern Orthodox Christian, the Gelasian Sacramentary is part of the spiritual patrimony of the undivided Church, and therefore as much a part of my liturgical heritage as it would be for a Roman Catholic.

With that in mind, allow me to play devil’s advocate for a moment. What do you mean, “how dare we”? They’re just words men wrote, after all, somebody had to make them up at some point, somebody had to import their own sensibility into the liturgy somewhere along the line, and surely we can make a case, even for a late antique liturgical book, that it is not much more than a product of what would have been the pop culture of its day. All worship styles were “contemporary” when they were first put into practice, right? How dare we not put these things in the language, context, and culture of our own day?

In The Mystery of Christ, Dr. Fr. John Behr speaks about the difference in how truth is thought of between the pre-modern, modern, and post-modern minds. For the pre-modern, truth is found in what something means. If we want to understand this in terms of grammar, this is the Greek present tense—present time, progressive/repeated aspect. In other words, what does it mean right now and on an ongoing basis?

For the modern, truth is found in what something meant—aorist tense, so past time, simple aspect. What did it mean at the point in the past when it was relevant, and then how do we transplant that to today?

For the post-modern, per Fr. Behr, truth is located in what something will have meant—future perfect tense; future time, completed aspect. Real meaning is somehow always something that hasn’t happened yet, but even once it does it will be something looked back upon, not something occurring on an ongoing basis.

I suggest, therefore, that part of the problem Mr. Tucker describes comes from a modern way of looking at the problem and an attempt at a post-modern solution. The “return to the sources” approach is certainly nothing new, but it seems to me that it what one finds there will depend on one’s assumptions. If you begin with the assumption that an old liturgical practice as received today is somehow beyond the comprehension of the average person in the pews (which already cuts off the possibility of talking about what it might mean here and now), then in looking at the historical context for the development of that practice, you’ll find the reasons to justify your point of view—“See? They had that, that, and that happening, and we don’t, which is why this, this, and this practiced in today’s world makes no sense.” A break from the received tradition now having been justified, something can be inserted which will hopefully take hold and become the received tradition down the road.

“Returning to the sources” doesn’t necessitate a lack of continuity, however; sometimes what it can generate is a reminder of of what something means when many people have forgotten. Many Christians in this country have no idea what an Easter basket actually means, for example, since there’s no fasting or abstention during Great Lent to put it into context.

To reclaim what something like the Gelasian Sacramentary means, however, takes effort—no doubt about that. I suspect that for many who would rather insert contemporary-sounding praise songs, it’s an effort that isn’t worth it; “It won’t reach today’s people the way our music does,” I suspect many would say. In other words, it won’t have meant what contemporary music will have, from their point of view, and I also suggest that the problem is exacerbated by the perception that people will go where they hear what they like, and if one church won’t do it, another will. (Which suggests to me that the biggest threat to cohesion among church communities is the automobile, but that’s a different topic altogether.)

What effort would it it take to reclaim what it means, present tense, here and now? Well, I’ll humbly suggest that if people would dare to think they can do better, then it’s up to those who would hold fast to the received tradition to dare to teach them why they won’t do better.

The Conception of the Virgin Mary

Published 9 December 2007 The Orthodox Faith 2 Comments
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Today is the Feast of St. Anne’s Conception of the Virgin Mary. Fr. Stephen Freeman has presented the summary of the feast from the OCA’s website as well as answered the question what “Most Holy Theotokos, save us” means, and Michael Liccione has an extended meditation on the Roman Catholic expansion of the understanding of this feast.

Regarding Rome’s dogmatization of the Immaculate Conception, Mr. Liccione writes:

Many Orthodox object that, even if such “developments” are acceptable as theological opinions, dogmatizing them imposes more of a confessional burden than the common deposit warrants. But such objections do not address the substance of the Catholic Church’s ongoing meditation on the Virgin; they merely question her authority to draw forth from the deposit of faith the treasures she claims to find there. It seems to me that the beauty radiating through the [Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception] is itself a reason to question the questioners.

As an Orthodox Christian, I suggest in all charity one possible problem—that the deposit of faith may be thought of as a Rorschach blot, in which one sees and retrieves that which one might be inclined to see. It also strikes me that Mr. Liccione appears to be saying that it’s all right to add to the faith, so long as we’re not taking anything away, and that what we’re adding is radiantly beautiful. I am, to be certain, all for maximalism, but this appears to be a point worth discussing.

Regardless, surely Fr. Stephen, Mr. Liccione, and myself may all entreat St. Anne to pray for us!

EDIT: The above should read “Dr. Liccione,” of course. Apologies.

Choir schools

Published 9 December 2007 music , The Orthodox Faith 5 Comments
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Westminster Cathedral Choir School boys in action

This is a repost from the .Mac blog. It was one of the postings which was published as a graphic rather than text, hence the reposting.

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m interested in the ability of the traditional, historical Christian faith to engage and transform the culture in which it finds itself, and looking at ways to do this. I have a concrete suggestion which relates to both music and education, and I would like to start a conversation about it with whomever will listen. I’ve tried to discuss this with people involved in PSALM, I’ve tried to discuss it with people who run some of the existing Orthodox parish schools, and either nobody gets it or nobody takes it seriously; I can’t tell which it is.

The following article was written two months ago, inspired by an article in The Word which seemed to perhaps open the door to talk about something like this. I submitted it to The Word but I don’t know if they’ll run it; wanting to do something, I present it here for the consideration of anybody who might be interested.

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They say things come in threes, and Bryan Smith’s article in the April 2007 issue of The Word, “Education in Christ: The Growth of Orthodox School,” was the third time in a week I had heard about the classical Trivium model of education being promoted within Christian circles. A traditionalist Roman Catholic friend of mine told me about a conference he had attended in Cincinnati, OH where the Trivium was being advocated for homeschoolers; I discovered that the planned Orthodox Christian Preparatory Academy in Seattle (my old stomping grounds) is forming its curriculum around this model; and finally, Mr. Smith’s excellent piece showed that this idea is gradually coming to the point of critical mass. As people who will eventually be raising children in the Orthodox Christian faith, it is heartening to my wife and me that there might very well be educational options that will be edifying to mind and soul. I encourage those involved with Orthodox schools, however, to give serious thought to a necessary segment of the curriculum which is largely absent from Mr. Smith’s discussion: music. More specifically, I exhort these people to consider the possibility of in fact establishing Orthodox choir schools.

The general benefits of music as part of a child’s education have been exhaustively covered in many other venues, so I will limit myself here towards talking about the particular characteristics of a choir school. First off—what exactly is a choir school? For many, the images conjured up by the term are of rood screens and stone chapels and malnourished-seeming boy sopranos vested in cassocks and ruffs lining up in stalls. If we are talking about eighteenth century England, this is not necessarily wrong, but neither is it exactly what I mean. Rather, in its ideal form, a choir school combines the concepts of Christian education, community and worship, and further enhances them by training students to sing the music of the Church. Music becomes an educational cornerstone; in addition to the rest of the curriculum (in the case, the Trivium), the boys and girls are taught to read music, to sing, perhaps as well to play an instrument, and then this is applied in the context of worship by having them sing services on a regular schedule. By singing services, this becomes something beyond mere musical education; it is also liturgical catechesis. In other words, not only is their education improved, but so is their liturgical life—as well as that of the parish community housing the school!

While it is true that the most well-known inheritors of this tradition are Anglicans in England, such schools exist today in the United States, such as the Choir School of the Madeleine (Roman Catholic) in Salt Lake City, UT or St. Thomas Choir School (Episcopal) in New York. Even in England, the Roman Catholic Choir School of Westminster Cathedral has been a wonderful example of such an institution. As well, the school of the Moscow Synodal Choir of the late nineteenth century provides a relatively recent Orthodox precedent. Looking at these examples, of course, it is clear that not every aspect is necessarily desirable or practical. Certainly an all-boys boarding school is not likely to be an option many are going to want to pursue; on the other hand, the Choir School of the Madeleine provides a useful model of a co-educational day school.

This is not born of any kind of desire to keep up with the ecclesiastical Joneses; rather, to refer back to Mr. Smith’s article, it is in keeping with the desire to create for Orthodox Christian students an educational environment “of Orthodox spirituality and piety to all that is true, good, and beautiful.” What better way to do this, and have the entire community benefit, than as a fundamental part of their education for them to sing daily services?

There is also the practical matter of tomorrow’s choir directors, singers and psaltoi being not likely to simply appear out of thin air. I am fortunate enough at my parish to have a good number of teenagers who are interested in singing and chanting, making it possible to have a youth choir singing a Liturgy by themselves once a month—but in general, we need to be making sure we are teaching our children how to sing the music of the Church, and developing an Orthodox choir school curriculum would be a wonderful step to take towards this goal.

Are our children capable of learning this kind of material? Of course they are! Our young people are going to have a far easier time receiving this kind of musical instruction at their current age than they will when they are older. In January of this year, John Boyer, protopsaltis of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of San Francisco and member of Cappella Romana, participated in a pilot residency at the Agia Sophia Academy in Portland, OR, teaching three classes of children from grades one through six to sing music written in Byzantine notation. Music teacher Kathleen Powell, who invited Boyer to Agia Sophia, said that his interdisciplinary approach stretched the students in a number of directions. “The children enthusiastically responded to [his] techniques,” she said, “which required them to use not only their musical skills, but also their Greek language, mathematical skills, and scientific reasoning.” (Source: Cappella Romana website) If elementary school students are able to do this after three classes, how much more will they be able to do with sustained exposure throughout their education?

Are there challenges involved in developing this as part of the curriculum for an Orthodox Christian school? Absolutely there are, and I am by no means suggesting that this is something easy to pull off. However, many of the pieces required are already described in Mr. Smith’s article—chapel services, learning the Hours, and so on. Good planning and the devotion of some resources can go a long way towards expanding that framework.

I do not pretend to have a comprehensive, detailed plan about how to accomplish this, nor is this intended to be an exhaustive treatment of the topic—although, as a topic near and dear to my own heart, I could most certainly go on for volumes if given the opportunity. Mr. Smith’s article makes clear that Orthodox Christian schools are an idea whose time has come, or at least draws nigh; I only suggest a direction some of these schools could take. Consider this an attempt to start a conversation, nothing more.

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