The Ruthenian parish in Houston. It was only built in the early 1980s and has a very imposing iconostasis. The building previously housed a Baptist community, much like the Ukrainian church in Dallas and the FSSP church in Irving. Ruthenian tones are very similar to the Ukrainian ones I knew. The congregation is diverse and has two deacons to assist the priest.
Anyone familiar with the Ruthenian Church in America will recognize these green volumes.
They are strange Divine Liturgy guides, with four tones or more available
for each chant (a dozen for the Our Father) and no indication which one might
be used on a given day. The translation is easy to read, but very strange. "Orthodox" is
translated as "true faith"—reasonable, but very strange colloquially—and "man" and
"mankind" are rendered as either "all" or "everyone." One suspects Robert Taft....
I don't understand how Taft can praise the Byzantine rite, yet deride the traditional Roman rite.
ReplyDeleteTaft has an odd way of oscillating between hitting the nail on the head and missing the mark entirely.
DeleteCheck out the question in the below article for instance: "So the reform didn't come out of nowhere?"
He points out, quite correctly the staleness of the "Pre-Vatican II Church" (to quote Rev. Cekada), but then goes on to praise the changes (especially the Pius XII Holy Week "restoration"). One sentence, you want to buy him a beer; the next, you want to smack him on the head.
http://www.uscatholic.org/church/prayer-and-sacraments/2009/11/mass-instruction-fr-robert-taft-liturgical-reform