Is there still a canonist somewhere out there? If one joins an Ordinariate, I presume that, like all priests of the Latin Rite, one would not be allowed, without special biritual faculties, to celebrate the Byzantine Rite. But would one be allowed to concelebrate a Melkite or Ukrainian Liturgy?
Somehow that would help me to feel a great deal closer to a very dear friend of many years ago, Christopher Commodatos, the late Bishop of Telmissos, in whose flat at the back of the former Irvingite church in the Camberwell New Road I spent more time than I probably should have done gossiping with him and his Cypriot parishioners and drinking Greek coffee. And to his monk, the little brother Lazarus, who died what I have always believed to be a martyr's death.
And, going back even further in my life, it would somehow seem a fulfilment of a large factor of my undergraduate days in the 1960s: Sunday mornings at 1, Canterbury Road, when Oxford's Orthodox used to gather in a chapel constructed out of the sitting room of the Victorian house and there seemed to be endless ancient Russian ladies in black with gigantic diamonds in their jewelry, prostrate at the Greater Entrance; and the benign figure of Nicolas Zernov presiding over everything.
Not to mention holiday Sundays in Greece; the priest helping hs wife to feed the chickens before putting on his best cassock to serve the Liturgy in a village church.
I see myself as a Latin to my fingertips and I would never wish, not for a moment, to be of the Byzantine rather than of the Roman Rite ... which, in its authentic form, I love to distraction. But there would be pleasures galore in being out of ... a rather narrow ghetto. All part, perhaps you will remind me, of being in a fuller communion with the church where the Voice of Peter is still alive.
I have been an honoured guest at Roman Catholic and Orthodox celebrations of the Mass. I know as an Anglican priest I offically cannot concelebrate at the Mass in the Catholic Church, but I can at least usually receive the Blessed Sacrament as long as I confirm with celebrant that I believe in the Real Presence. My Orthodox clergy friends have told me this is not possible in their Church, as I do not believe what they believe.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is the official position of the Autocephalous Churches, but it is my personal experience. And if Eucharistic Hospitality is out of the question, how much more so the idea of concelebration? It is part of the sorrow and scandal of schism. And an even greater reason to pray and work for unity.
Canon 701 of the Codex canonum ecclesiarum orientalium says:
ReplyDeleteA concelebration between bishops and presbyters of different Churches sui iuris for a just cause, especially that of fostering
charity, and for the sake of manifesting unity between the Churches, can be done with the permission of the eparchial bishop,
while observing all the prescriptions of the liturgical books of the principal celebrant, having removed any liturgical syncretism and wearing the appropriate vestments and insignia of his own Church sui iuris.
The CIC doesn't refer to this situation, but given that the Eastern Canons are later, it would seem that they - with regard to this canon - could apply to Latin Rite clergy too.
Such concelebrations happen frequently in Rome and elsewhere in places (such as Romania) where Latin and Greek-Rite Churches live side-by-side.
ReplyDeleteI gather that the custom in Rome is that the rite used is always that of the chief celebrant; the others follow along as best they can.
This link may be of help:
ReplyDeleteConcelebrants From Different Rites
Did no Anglicans ever adopt the Eastern Rites? I seem to recall that the Church of India at least allowed a very strange and prolix liturgy... perhaps more James than Chrysostom.
ReplyDeleteInteresting you should mention Nicholas Zernov. There is an article about him coming out next month in the journal I edit: LOGOS: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies, to which you may subscribe here: http://www.ustpaul.ca/sheptytsky/logos/logos_main.htm. It reflects on his ecumenical work at Oxford and elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteConcelebration: as the previous commentator noted with the passage from the CCEO, any Catholic priest may concelebrate in any Catholic Church, wearing the vestments of his own liturgical tradition. Thus a Latin priest at a Byzantine Divine liturgy would wear Latin, not Byz. vestments. But to be the sole celebrant in a church sui iuris not your own requires that your ordinary, and the ordinary with jurisdiction over the rite in which you wish to preside, give permission--biritual faculties. Some say granting such faculties requires you to go through the Oriental Congregation in Rome, but this is not necessarily the case as I have myself seen bi-ritual faculties obtained for a priest by 'keeping it local' between his Ukrainian Catholic bishop and the local Latin ordinary.
AD
easternchristianbooks.blogspot.com
As a case in point, I have concelebrated in S Peter's Basilica in Rome as a Latin Rite priest with a Melkite principal celebrant and another Latin Rite priest using the English translation of the Byzantine Liturgy authorised by the Melkite Patriarch. (Incidentally, the other Latin Rite priest is now an Abbot Nullius or Territorial Abbot, which is an example of a priest who is an Ordinary directly subject to the Holy See.)
ReplyDelete"Did no Anglicans ever adopt the Eastern Rites?"
ReplyDeleteActually, the Mar Thoma Church could be considered to be Anglicans of the Syrian Rite. They are in full Eucharistic communion with the Church of England and although their theology is actually very much on the low side, their liturgics is very Eastern. In India there are quite a few of them.