Communion, Communion Spoons, and Irrational Fears

I recently came across a very insightful remark from a conservative writer (Denise McAllister) who was engaged in an online debate with someone over what the government should or should not be able to mandate. She wrote: "My freedom doesn’t end where your irrational fear begins." But of course the question of whether one's fears are rational or irrational is the question we have to consider.

There is unfortunately no risk free way for us to live in this world. If we were to avoid all risks, none of us would ever get into an automobile, but most of us do, because we consider that to be a manageable risk. If you drive while listening to the radio, or drinking a cup of coffee, you are adding to your risks... but these added risks are generally considered to be fairly minimal.

It is curious that while many local governments have closed churches, or severely restricted attendance, they have allowed marijuana shops and liquor stores to stay open. As a judge in Illinois recently pointed out, only 5 months ago, marijuana shops were not even legal, but they are now considered to be essential, but churches, which are protected by the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution are not (at least in many states). But, apparently, some risks are worth taking -- it's just a question of what you think is important. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has said that it is not yet safe for churches to give communion to their people, when asked whether people should refrain from hooking up with strangers for sex, said:

"If you're willing to take a risk—and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks—you could figure out if you want to meet somebody. And it depends on the level of the interaction that you want to have.... If you're looking for a friend, sit in a room and put a mask on, and you know, chat a bit. If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that's your choice regarding a risk" (Newsweek: "Dr. Fauci Says You Can Meet a Tinder Date 'If You're Willing to Take a Risk'" 4/16/20).

So it is all a matter of what your priorities are.

The question of how the various levels of government in the United States have handled the Coronavirus is something that we will probably be debating for years to come, but within the Orthodox Church, there is also an ongoing debate regarding how various bishops have handled this crisis. The bishops have responded to this crisis in various ways. Some only imposed restrictions on services in those places in which this was mandated by the local authorities; while others either restricted attendance or cancelled them altogether, regardless of government mandates being imposed or not. I have seen many who have argued that bishops who imposed such restrictions are outright heretics and apostates. But I have never heard such arguments when a parish has cancelled services because of severe weather. It may be, that as we reflect on this crisis, many bishops will regret that they overreacted. It could also have been that if this virus had proven to be as deadly as many were saying, that some bishops might have regretted under-reacting. So this is not a question of heresy, but a question of wisdom -- i.e., what was the reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. We might disagree with a bishop's decisions, but even if he judged wrongly, one has to assume his motivations were good, and that a desire to subvert the faith was not among those motivations. But what concerns me most at present, is where some bishops are headed with their responses to how we should go forward liturgically, in the wake of this virus.

We currently have bishops mandating the use of a different spoon for each communicate, and some who have instituted the practice of giving people communion in the hand (with a portion of the intincted Eucharist), all driven by the fear that giving people communion with a communion spoon, as the Church has been doing for nearly a thousand years now, might cause someone to get the virus. The question we should ask, however, is whether or not this fear is rational or irrational.

It has been pointed out that the practice of the Church in the first millennium was for people to receive communion much in the same way that Orthodox clergy still do: first with the Body of Christ in the hand, and then by receiving the Blood directly from the chalice. Why did the Church end that practice, and begin communing people with a spoon? Because people were carelessly dropping portions of the Eucharist, and because of some people taking the Eucharist home for superstitious purposes. There is little reason to believe that people in our time will be more pious and careful than people in the first millennium -- and there is plenty of evidence to assume just the opposite.

While many are appealing to the older practice as a basis for what they propose as a solution to concerns over this virus, none are actually suggesting we return to that practice, because obviously, if the laity were all partaking from a common chalice, this would not be an improvement over using a single spoon. In fact, while the spoon is dipped back into the chalice and washed in the Blood of Christ after each person is communed, this does not happen to the outside of the chalice.

Those advocating for the use of multiple, or even disposable spoons, appeal to precedents from the past for how those known to be sick with infectious diseases have been communed. But the key factor is that this is how people who were known to have an infectious disease were communed -- such methods were never used as a preventative measure. Also, when a priest is communing the sick, he normally does so with the reserved sacrament, and so the wine that is in the chalice is unconsecrated wine.*

The question I have asked many people who have advocated that such changes are necessary is very simple: Is there any evidence that anyone has ever gotten sick from receiving communion with a spoon?  There answer to this question is "no." But some people then retort that this is simply because no one has ever done a scientific study of the question, but this is not true. It is true that, to my knowledge at least, there have been no studies involving the use of communion spoons, but there have actually been several studies of people using a common chalice -- which would be more likely to be a means of transmitting disease than a communion spoon, for the aforementioned reason -- and so such studies are a good way to answer the question of whether we are dealing with rational or irrational fears.

John Sanidopoulos, in his article "Scientific Studies on the Transmission of Infectious Diseases Through Holy Communion" has pointed to 6 relevant studies done between 1943 and 1998. One study found that even under ideal circumstances (ideal for allowing transmission, that is), the use of a common chalice showed 0.001% of organisms being transferred, but when studying conditions that actually followed real world practice, no transmission could be detected. In another study, three groups of people were studied: those who go to Church and receive communion, those who go to Church but who do not receive communion, and those who do not go to Church at all. What they found was that even among those who received communion as often as daily, there was no increase in one's risk of infection. And so even if you do not believe in God, fears of getting sick because of getting a virus from a communion spoon are irrational -- and if you do believe in God, and actually believe what we confess before we receive the Eucharist (which is that the Eucharist is truly Christ's Body and Blood), then you should have nothing to worry about.

Fr. Alkiviadis C. Calivas, in his article "A Note on the Common Communion Spoon," says that he himself has no such fears, but expresses his concern for those who do:

"In my sixty-four years in the priesthood, I have consumed the chalice thousands of times after countless Divine Liturgies without fear or hesitation, as every priest does. I am not certain, however, that every faithful parishioner would do the same, if they were asked. My point is this. Holy Communion should be a source of joy, hope and strength for everyone and not a test or measure of one’s faith in God’s providential care (Matt. 4:5-7). St. Paul reminds us that the love of Christ requires that we care for all persons, whatever their situation and be sensitive and responsive to their just needs and concerns for the sake of the Gospel (1 Cor. 9: 19-23)."

I have not been a priest for even half as long, but my experience supports Fr. Alkiviadis' conclusion that there is nothing to fear. When I commune the faithful, the last mouth that I place the spoon into before handing it off to the deacon is my own (to ensure that there is nothing left of the Eucharist on the spoon), and I have not so much as had a fever since several years before I was ordained a priest. If a virus could be transmitted via a communion spoon, there should be widespread instances of priests with oral herpes (which can be spread by the use of eating utensils that have been used by someone with that virus), but as a matter of fact, there is no evidence that anyone has gotten such a virus in this way.

I can appreciate Fr. Alkiviadis' concern for people who have irrational fears, but why should we encourage such irrational fears to persist by acting in a way that communicates to those suffering from them that we believe those fears are well founded?

I am afraid that we as a society may be raising up a generation of germaphobes who will spend their lives paralyzed by such irrational fears, and be so concerned about dying from the many germs and viruses that abound in our world, that they are unable to actually live. But it is far more concerning to contemplate the message that the Church would be sending to the faithful, if we act as if receiving communion is a physically dangerous act. It is indeed spiritually dangerous to receive communion in an unworthy manner (1 Corinthians 11:27-29), but which of the saints ever taught or suggested that the Eucharist could be a means of transmitting a disease? None did. In fact there is a well known episode from the life of St. John of Shanghai:

"Vladyka's constant attention to self-mortification had its root in the fear of God, which he possessed in the tradition of the ancient Church and of Holy Russia. The following incident, told by O. Skopichenko and confirmed by many from Shanghai, well illustrates his daring, unshakable faith in Christ. "Mrs. Menshikova was bitten by a mad dog. The injections against rabies she either refused to take or took carelessly… And then she came down with this terrible disease. Bishop John found out about it and came to the dying woman. He gave her Holy Communion, but just then she began having one of the fits of this disease; she began to foam at the mouth, and at the same time she spit out the Holy Gifts which she had just received. The Holy Sacrament cannot be thrown out. So, Vladyka picked up and put in his mouth the Holy Gifts vomited by the sick woman. Those who were with him exclaimed: `Vladyka, what are you doing! Rabies is terribly contagious!' But Vladyka peacefully answered: `Nothing will happen; these are the Holy Gifts.' And indeed nothing did happen."

If someone does not really believe that the Eucharist is what we say it is, then indeed they should not receive communion, because "...he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body" (1 Corinthians 11:29).

Aside from all that has been said, when we speak of "risk" or "chance" as Christians, we should understand that these are simply means of referring to the many variable factors that we do not know. We, however, do not believe in a God that is a helpless observer, who fondly hopes that things will work out well for us. We believe, that if we are doing what God wants us to do, that we don't need to worry beyond that. The worst that can happen is that we will die, and go to be with Christ for all eternity. We believe that not a sparrow falls apart from the will of the Father (Matthew 10:29), and as St. Anthony of Optina said during a cholera epidemic (which killed far more people than the coronavirus is likely to):

"You should not be afraid of cholera, but of serious sins, for the scythe of death mows a person down like grass even without cholera. Therefore, place all your hope in the Lord God, without Whose will even the birds do not die, much less a person."

For more on this question, I would highly recommend the article: "A Response to "On administering Holy Communion in a Time of a Plague""

*I personally wouldn't worry about it even then, but this is perhaps why more caution is shown.

Update: You could just skip my article, and go directly to Presbytera Eugenia Constantinou's "More Dangerous than Covid-19," which says it about as well as it can be said.

Sermon: St. Maximus the Confessor and the Schism in Ukraine

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew applauding themselves for establishing a pseudo-Church in Ukraine.

Click here to listen to a sermon on the feast of St. Maximus the Confessor, which coincided with the "enthronement" of the false Metropolitan of Kiev:

http://www.saintjonah.org/podcasts/sermons/stmaximus_ukraine.mp3

You can also read about how the "enthronement" went today, here:

http://orthochristian.com/119099.html

The Living Church 2.0

Alexandr Ivanovich Vvedensky, head of  the "Living Church" 1923-1946

When St. Paul met with the presbyters in Ephesus for the last time, he left them with a warning:

"For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them" (Acts 20:29-30).

The truth of this warning has been demonstrated throughout Church history. The most devastating heresies in the history of the Church have been those which have arisen from within the Church. The reason why this is so was well summed up by Cicero:

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."

Of course the Church not only can, but always will, survive such traitors, because Christ has promised us this, but the damage done to souls by traitors from within is far greater than that done by foes from without for the reasons Cicero gives.

When the Bolsheviks were seeking to destroy the Russian Orthodox Church, they found a group of willing accomplices among its clergy, who supported communism, wanted to allow widowed priest to remarry, married priests to become bishops, the adoption of the new calendar, innovations in the services, and the acceptance of other novel teachings. This group formed the so called "Living Church." The Bolsheviks did not create the Living Church out of thin air, they simply allowed renovationists from within the Church to establish their own version of "Orthodoxy," as a means to undermine the real thing. For a time, it was even recognized as the legitimate ecclesiastical authority in Russia by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, the "Living Church" failed, because it was rejected by the faithful of the Russian Church, and when it became clear that it was no longer useful to the Soviets (since they had no real support), they were allowed to wither away, and finally disappear. But the damage done by the "Living Church" was very real and extensive.

Today, we see the beginnings of a new renovationist movement, and this group is so radical that it makes the "Living Church" look quite traditional by comparison. Among the ideas that they promote are the ordination of women as priests, ecumenism, modernism, liturgical innovations, and universalism. However, the most base part of their agenda is their promotion of relativism when it comes to Christian morality, and in particular, their promotion of the acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism.

There are three online journals now which incessantly promote their renovationist agenda. "Public Orthodoxy," "The Wheel," and "Orthodoxy in Dialogue." These journals have hardly attempted to camouflage their agenda, but they usually have tried to use enough weasel words to allow for some implausible deniability. Lately, however, they have become even more brazen.

The most recent issue of "The Wheel," a journal whose general editor is openly pro-homosexual  and has argued that homosexuals do not need to remain celibate)* featured an introduction by no less than Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware). Since there are now several very thorough refutations of what he says, I won't focus on it myself. I will only echo the disappointment expressed by many, as well as the appreciation for the many good things he has done in the past for the English speaking Orthodox world. I hope we discover that the real Metropolitan Kallistos has been kidnapped, and someone else is writing under his name, but the Metropolitan Kallistos of 10 years ago did not agree with the mealy-mouthed approach he takes now to homosexuality. The Orthodox Faith has not changed in the last 10 years, the only thing that has changed is that western culture has tipped on this question in favor of homosexuality. Whether his comments are due to the weakness of old age, or some other mitigating factor, God knows, and only God can judge his heart. However, we can and must discern whether his words are sound or not.

For the best articles answering Metropolitan Kallistos, see:

"Metropolitan Kallistos and The Wheel," Fr. Lawrence Farley

"Ambiguity Serves No One: A Review of the Foreword by Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) to the latest issue of The Wheel," by Dr. Edith M. Humphrey

"Anatomy of a Foreword: Metr. Kallistos on Sexual Morality," by Fr. John Cox.

What I would like to focus on in this article is the response of Sister Vassa to these articles, and then recent comments from Aristotle Papanikolaou of Fordham University, who has let the mask slip a bit more than most of these people have, thus far.

Sister Vassa Strikes Again

Sister Vassa herself has been the subject of controversy on the issue of homosexuality, but in a recent video, she defended at some length Metropolitan Kallistos' recent article.

She argues that he is "just asking questions." The problem is, he is just asking questions about matters that are not questionable. The Serpent just asked a question of Eve when he said: "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" (Genesis 3:1). Entertaining that question didn't work out so well.

She asks why we can't just give people like Metropolitan Kallistos the benefit of the doubt. The problem is, you can't give someone the benefit of the doubt where no doubt is left. If someone had suggested that they heard tell that Metropolitan Kallistos was arguing that a gay couple that was in a committed relationship ought to be given communion, and that their spiritual father should take a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to their relationship, I would have given His Eminence the benefit of the doubt that he actually would have said such a thing. However, I think it is rather unlikely that "The Wheel" published a forgery written under his name, and so we have to deal with what he said, and we have to judge whether what he said was right or wrong.

Sister Vassa repeatedly questioned the qualifications of those who have responded to Metropolitan Kallistos, by saying that they are "not the peers" of this great man. This of course all depends on what you mean by "peers." As a scholar, Dr. Edith Humphrey is certainly a peer. But as a bishop, the bishops of the rest of the Church are certainly his peers, and every time they have spoken on this issue, they have spoken with clarity that directly contradicts the mealy-mouthed approach taken by the article in question. But even the laity have the right and obligation to challenge a bishop who is in error. I am sure few of the faithful in Constantinople were the intellectual peers of the bishops who returned from the false council of Florence, having made a shameful and heretical union with Rome, but they felt like peers enough, as members of the Body of Christ, to not only disapprove of their union, but to greet them with a shower of debris of various sorts, in order to make their opinions unmistakably known. The people of God are the guardians of piety, as the Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs of 1848 (in reply to Pope Pius the IX) states. It is therefore not only permissible, but obligatory for all of the faithful, and even more so for the clergy, to oppose these attempts to infect our Church with the same heresies that have wreaked such havoc in mainline Protestant Churches, and are in the process of doing the same in the Roman Catholic Church.

Sister Vassa suggests that those criticizing this article are guilty of the sin of Ham. Ham's sin was to reveal his father's nakedness when he was drunk (Genesis 9:18-23). Had Noah run around naked for all to see, Ham would not have been wrong to have suggested his father ought not to have done so. The nakedness here is the error of this article. The article was not made public by those criticizing it. If anyone is guilty of the sin of Ham, it is perhaps the editors of "The Wheel" who published the article in the first place, and I am sure that all of the critics of this article would have been far happier had someone committed the article to the shred bin, and thus actually covered the nakedness of His Eminence.

And to defend the article in question, Sister Vassa had to equivocate on what is in dispute here. She said:

"Some people want to pretend that there aren't questions... we have all the answers... Is that true? Is that true, that we are finished perfect works as human beings? Or do we still need a little bit of work? Do we still need to be developed? Of course we do. We are all God's precious works in progress. And we grow in our faith. We grow not only as individuals, but hopefully as Church... right? Can we imagine that we as the Church in this world have nothing else left to learn? Can that be possible?"

The question is not whether any of us are perfect, nor is the question whether any of us as individuals have all the answers. The question here is whether the indisputably consistent teachings of the Church on this issue, found in both Scripture and Tradition, are correct or not, or whether we might today be in a position to revise such clear and consistent teachings -- teaching that even heretics have not generally disputed in Church history.

Metropolitan Kallistos suggests that somehow if a gay couple is in a committed relationship, this is a mitigating factor. However, the man in Corinth who was in a sexual relationship with his step mother was also in a committed relationship... and yet this does not seem to be a mitigating factor for St. Paul, who said that this man was to be barred from the fellowship of the Church until he repented (1 Corinthians 5-6). Likewise, Herod was in a committed relationship with Herodias, his brother Philip's ex-wife, and yet St. John the Baptists did not suggest that this was a mitigating factor in his sin either (Mark 6:14-29). And in both cases, the sin was far less of a violation of the natural order than that of homosexuality.

Aristotle Papanikolaou Let's the Mask Slip Further

For those of you who might be confused by the abbreviations and the Twitterisms here, let me put his statements into clearer English:

"One more thing: the heart of the debate is on what can be talked about in Orthodoxy.  [Public Orthodoxy, the online Journal he helps run] simply asserts that everything except the dogmas (statements of faith, not morality--contra[ry to Rod Dreher], whose 'Orthodox morality' is ironically a modern neologism) is up for discussion."

Is there any basis for separating Orthodox dogma and Christian morality? No. Let's go back to the very first Council of the Church, the Council of the Apostles in Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15. The question was to what extent ought gentiles be held to obey the Mosaic Law. On one side, there were those who argued that gentiles had to become Jews, and live according to all of the ceremonial and moral laws of Moses. However, the Apostles said that gentiles were to be held instead to the basic laws God gave to Noah for all of mankind (see Genesis 9:1-17), and to the Moral Law of God, particularly with regard to sexual morality. They wrote to the gentile converts:

"...it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things; that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well" (Acts 15:.28-29).

Some will object that Christians do not observe what the Apostles wrote with regard to eating the blood of animals, but while this is generally true of the heterodox, it is not true of the Orthodox (See "Stump the Priest: The Council of Jerusalem on the Blood of Animals").

And when the text speaks of "fornication," the word is porneia (πορνεία), which refers to any sex which is unlawful, and in the Jewish and Christian context, this means any sexual relations forbidden by the moral law of God, as expressed in the Scriptures, including homosexual sex (see The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume 6, ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 1964-1976), p. 587-595) .

So is this decree of the Apostles, that all Christians must refrain from sexual immorality, dogma? Well the Scriptures say that this is exactly what it is. The Apostles obviously did not post their epistle to their website. The way this epistle was disseminated to gentile converts was by people like St. Paul himself. We are told in the chapter immediately following the record of the Council of Jerusalem that St. Paul and his companions delivered this epistle as they went on their next missionary journey:

"And as they went through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decrees, that were ordained by the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem" (Acts 16:4).

And what is the Greek text for "the decrees"?  "τα δογματα" ta dogmata (i.e. the dogmas).

How far does Aristotle Papanikolaou think anyone would have gotten with St. Paul or any of the other apostles, if they had suggested that the dogma forbidding sexual immorality was up for debate? I would think that they would have had little patience with such an argument.

We seem to be heading into a period of Church history in which we will be increasingly confronted by renovationists of this kind. We must stand firm, and we must, as the People of God, reject what they are trying to sell.

*In the original version of this article I wrote that the general editor was a lesbian, based on things I had read from her. I have been informed that my reading was incorrect, and I apologize for making the error, and ask for her forgiveness.

See Also: 

Response to Giacomo Sanfilippo

Unitarian Morality With a Little "Theosis" Sprinkled on Top

Taking Orthodoxy As It Is

Fr. Marc Dunaway, who was one of the leaders of the Antiochian Evangelical Orthodox Mission, which 30 years ago was received into the Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Phillip. He is the rector of the Saint John the Evangelist Cathedral in Eagle River, Alaska, and he wrote an essay earlier this year in which he laid out his suggestions for how we should take Orthodoxy to America, in the light of his experience of the last three decades:

Taking Orthodoxy to America -- Thirty Years Later

Much of what he says in this essay reflects an approach to the Church that Fr. Marc might have written 30 years ago, because it has more to do with the Protestant Church growth movement's approach to giving people what they want than it does with Orthodox Tradition.

He writes:

"The worship of the Church must clearly be a common, corporate act where everyone participates according to his role, whether as priest or deacon, reader or lay person, man or woman. Practically this means we need to encourage congregational singing of the main, regular hymns in every service. This is something many Americans expect when they “go to Church.” They want to sing, and there are plenty of beautiful Orthodox hymns that will make this possible."

While the full participation of the laity in the services is certainly a good thing, one common way that the laity have participated fully in the services is by simply coming to the services, standing in prayer, and receiving the mysteries. One doesn't have to be "doing something" else in order to fully participate.

Also, while there are some traditions of congregational singing in the Orthodox Church, such as among the Carpatho-Russians, congregational singing has not been the norm for most Orthodox Christians. In Russian practice the laity are usually encourage to sing along with the Creed and the "Our Father", but generally it is the choir that sings the rest of the services. Though nothing prevents anyone from singing along with the choir if they wish to. And if they sing well, they are generally welcomed to join the choir.

"The prayers of the priest, especially those in the Divine Liturgy, need to be said aloud so that all can hear and knowledgeably give their assent with a meaningful “Amen.” Happily, this same exhortation is also put forth in the recent book, The Heavenly Banquet by Fr. Emmanuel Hatzidakis, a priest from the Greek tradition, and by many other respected liturgists and teachers as well."

I've address this issue recently in another article (See: Stump the Priest: Secret Prayers), but here again, the Tradition of the Church has been very clear on this issue, and so I would ask why exactly is it that we "need" to say these prayers aloud, and on the basis of what in the Tradition of the Church does Fr. Marc come to this conclusion?

The Kiss of Peace (whether as a hand-shake or an embrace) in the Divine Liturgy should be exchanged among the people and not just by the concelebrating clergy at the altar. This is a custom stemming from biblical times, and its falling into dis-use may have weakened the participation of the people and undermined their identity as the people of God, united to one another in Christian love. A few may frown at the bustle this causes, but for the laity it is meaningful, as long as the dialogue is kept to the liturgical greeting, “Christ is in our midst. He is and ever shall be.”

I don't think we have a clear idea of how the kiss of peace may have functioned among the laity in the early Church, but we have to assume that the Holy Spirit has guided the Church, and that there are reasons why the Tradition is the way that we have received it. I spoke some years ago to a pious Orthodox lay woman who was attending a parish in which the practice Fr. Marc describes had been imposed, and she told me that she and several other single women had to stand in the back of the Church and make themselves scarce during this demonstration, because single men always seemed to seek them out especially, and they found the attention creepy. If there was anything like this practice in the early Church, perhaps the holiness of the average layman at that time prevented such problems, but we are not in the early Church. We don't impose strict discipline to prevent wayward members from being in the Church for the Eucharist, and so we can't selectively try to emulate their practices and have them work the same way they may have worked back then.

"The language of the Liturgy has to be the language of the people. The language of modern America is not Shakespearean English, and it makes little sense to perpetuate “Thee’s” and “Thou’s” and archaic verb forms in our prayers. If we do, we may eventually end up in the same situation as the modern Russians and Greeks, who use a liturgical language that is incomprehensible to the common people."

For more details on this issue, see: King James English and Orthodox Worship, but the Tradition of the Church has never been to translate the services into the language of the street, but rather to use an elevated form of the language in question. And while there are some obscurities in texts from 400 years ago, most Orthodox texts do not use the real obscurities you find occasionally in the King James text of the Bible, and so are not at all difficult to understand.

Not long ago someone asked me about a Chinese Orthodox liturgical text that they had found, and they sent me a photo of some of the text. I asked my wife (who neither grew up in an English speaking country, nor speaking English, much less Shakespearean English) what it said, and after more than 25 years of hearing the services in Traditional Liturgical English, she e-mailed back a quick translation of several of the hymns, which she very naturally did using the King James English she had become familiar with, and she did it without any errors in the forms of the pronouns or the verbs. If someone from Guizhou, China, can understand that form of English, I think the average American who was born here can as well.

"Feast day liturgies need to be done at a time when working people can attend. This means either Vesperal-Liturgies in the early evening on the Eve of a Feast or else, on some occasions, an evening Liturgy on the Day of the Feast itself. Rigidly insisting that weekday Liturgies be done in the mid-morning while most people have to work deprives sincere Christians of an essential part the liturgical life of the Church."

For more details on the problems with this suggestion, see: Why doing Vesperal Liturgies in the place of the appointed services is a bad idea, but this approach shows a lack of understanding of what Vesperal Liturgies are for. Vesperal Liturgies that are actually called for in the Typikon are always appointed on days of fasting, and this is because on a strict fast, one would traditionally not eat or drink anything all day, until the evening, at which time they might eat some simple meal. Thus Vesperal Liturgies put off the liturgy until evening for that purpose. In the practice that Fr. Marc proposes, instead of doing the Vesperal Liturgy for a fast day, you take the Liturgy of a Feast day, and tack it onto a truncated version of the Vespers of the Feast, and cut out almost all of the actual hymnody and readings of the Feast. As such, it is an abuse, which significantly distorts the Liturgical Tradition of the Church.

"The Iconostasis of the Church needs to be open enough to give a view of the Altar and to let the people know they are co-celebrants of the Liturgy and not passive spectators to something performed for them by the clergy."

This Vatican II inspired notion that the people need to see everything actually has the opposite effect of the one suggested. Traditionally, people stand, and pray, and they mostly see Icons, which help them to pray. When everyone is seated in pews, and everything is done for their viewing, they are made into the very passive spectators that Fr. Marc hopes to prevent them from becoming.

"A super-size Icon of the Mother of God in the apse of the Church may be a beautiful liturgical statement about how she is a picture of the praying Church, but it will confuse most people in America. There are other legitimate Icons that can be put in this location, such as the Mystical Supper or the Ascension, and we would be wise to draw from these, if we do not want some people to walk into the Church and walk right out even before they hear an explanation."

This is, again, the Protestant Church growth movement way of looking at the services. Tailor the services to attract the most people, and make them "seeker sensitive". Traditionally, however, evangelism is what we do outside of the context of worship. The worship services are for the already converted believer, who (if he really has converted) will not object to the Traditional placement of iconography.

"Every parish should have a deacon or two and the vision of multiple clergy in a parish needs to become standard. This is an important way we can energize the lay people to use their own gifts and accomplish all the work of the Church that needs done. (And perhaps the emerging movement to restore deaconesses will find traction and someday be blessed as well.)"

I would agree that having a deacon on a parish level is a good thing, and it certainly makes the services flow much more smoothly. However, deacons are not laymen, and so making more deacons is not going to particularly energize the laity. And the problem with the proposals for "restoring" deaconesses is that the proposals are not that we restore deaconesses to do what they actually were in ancient times, but to make them into female deacons, which is quite a different matter. This is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to push the ordination of women priests. For more on why that is a bad idea I would recommend this discussion between Fr. Chad Hatfield and Fr. Lawrence Farley: Voices from St. Vladimir: Deaconesses.

"Converts should not be required to change their names when they are baptized, chrismated or ordained. Of course, every Orthodox Christian should have a patron saint, but here in a new, Orthodox land, we need to sanctify new names just as happened in other lands in times past. Orthodoxy is the universal Church, embracing all cultures and all people, including their names."

If someone who converts as an adult has a perfectly good Christian name, I always encourage them to keep it. But when Orthodoxy has gone to new lands it has always baptized people using Christian names, and though the people may not always have used those names in their day to day lives, they at least used them in Church. If you take St. Vladimir, for an example, we know him as "St. Vladimir" and that name is now a Christian name, but we still remember that in baptism, his name was "Basil". He did not simply have St. Basil as his patron saint, he had "Basil" as his Christian name.

"Finally, Orthodox clergy should consider whether it is wise to routinely dress in cassocks, vests and traditional hats “around town.” The ancient “Epistle to Diognetus” says early Christians were distinguished by their piety not their dress. Perhaps someday we will have an attire for American Orthodox clergy that does not stand out as strange and at the same time distinguishes us from Roman Catholic clergy."

There are some logical flaws here. The epistle to Diognetus is speaking about the average layman, and it was also written during times of the persecution of the Church. But also, Fr. Marc is not suggesting that Orthodox clergy dress like laymen, and so this hardly advances his argument. He rather is arguing that we adopt a style of clergy attire that does not seem strange, but which also distinguishes our clergy from Roman Catholic clergy. But this also presents a problem, because either the attire will be like what people are used to (and therefore similar to either Roman Catholic or Protestant clerical attire), or it will be distinguished from them, and therefore be different from what most people are used to. Furthermore, it wasn't all that long ago when Roman Catholic clergy wore cassocks that were relatively close in their appearance to the Traditional attire of Orthodox Clergy.

In the classic Bing Crosby movie, Going My Way (1944), Barry Fitzgerald played the old Irish priest Father Fitzgibbon, and he is seen wearing an old fashioned Roman Catholic cassock as well as a clerical biretta which looks no less odd than an Orthodox skufia.

Aside from that, in the 27th Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, it was decreed that:

"None who is counted with the clergy should dress inappropriately, when in the city, nor when travelling. Each should use the attire which was appointed for clergy members. If someone breaks this rule, may he be deprived of serving for one week."

And so Orthodox priests should be dressed in accordance with the Orthodox Tradition.

An Orthodox priest who is dressed in traditional clerical attire is easily identified, and that is why the practice exists. It makes it easy for people to recognize him, and so they are able to approach him for blessings and to ask for prayers, or for help with other spiritual needs. It also reminds the priest of who he is, and what he is supposed to be. I have had countless conversations with Orthodox and Non-Orthodox people alike that would not likely have happened if I was either wearing street clothes, or dressed like a Roman Catholic priest. And with the unfortunate reputation that Catholic priests have acquired in recent decades, particularly when it comes to children, I was always glad that when I was out in public with my own children that I was not assumed to be a Roman Catholic priest.

Conclusion

There are real problems in the Church that need to be addressed, and there are abuses that have become entrenched in some areas that deserve to be challenged, but a proper Orthodox approach to Orthodox Tradition is that when it comes to the authentic Traditions of the Church, we do not try to change them, but rather we strive to let them change us.

There are many things that we can learn from Protestants and Roman Catholics. Even the Church Growth movement has some things that we can actually use (for example, there are some sociological realities in terms of Church Growth that are helpful to know (see, for example some of the points made in Starting a Mission and Building a Parish). But when it comes to how we do our services, or to traditional Orthodox piety, we need to humbly follow the best examples of the Tradition that has been handed down to us from the saints that have gone before us. We need to drink from our own well, and not seek out broken cisterns (Jeremiah 2:13).

For More Information:

Renewing the Mind: Acquiring an Orthodox outlook

Unfortunate Trends in the Roman Catholic Church (where modernist liturgical reform ends up)