While discussion naturally covers a broad range of themes, members of the moderation team (including those participating in the thread), may occasionally gently suggest that some topics might be best taken to a separate thread; this will usually only occur when a subject is itself the subject of discussion in recurring separate NSG threads and would risk dominating this thread if discussed here (examples include, but are not limited to, abortion, homosexuality, and/or the existence of the historical Jesus).
Potentially unfinished business from the fourth version:
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Pope Joan wrote:Efraim-Judah wrote: Messiah was Jewish and lived a Jewish Lifestyle. There is NO WAY to separate Judaism from Biblical Christianity (i.e. Messianic Judaism)
What about his repeated violations of the Sabbath?
So when he says he came to fulfill the law, it must not mean any sort of legalism.
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The Third Nova Terra of Scrin wrote:Constantinopolis wrote:This is correct, although I would add that since non-Latin-Rite Catholics are such a tiny minority (and they copied their practices from the Orthodox Church or the Oriental Communion anyway), it would be mostly accurate to refer to the Latin Rite as "Catholic practice and liturgy", and to the Byzantine Rite as "Orthodox practice and liturgy". The non-Latin Catholics (and the non-Byzantine Orthodox, which also exist, but are even fewer) can be left out for the sake of a basic introduction.
That's not a good visual introduction to the Byzantine Rite, however, because the Liturgy is celebrated in a place that looks absolutely nothing like a normal Byzantine-Rite Catholic church (let alone an Orthodox one). There is no iconostasis, for one thing, so when doing the Little Entrance and the Great Entrance the clergy are pretending to pass through doors which do not exist. If this video is your introduction to the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, you may not even realize that there are supposed to be doors for the clergy to pass through.
Of course, there's nothing wrong with celebrating the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in a place that has only an altar and nothing else (technically, all you need is an antimension, a consecrated cloth issued by the bishop, which can be placed on any flat surface to make an emergency altar). But that is very much the exception, not the rule. A good introduction should show the Liturgy as it is ordinarily celebrated. And this video does not show that.
So I went on YouTube to find a better example of what the average Orthodox Liturgy (i.e. Byzantine Rite liturgy) looks like. This also means excluding all those videos that show a Patriarch or a bishop celebrating the Liturgy, because that's a special form (a "hierarchical" Divine Liturgy - i.e. one celebrated by a member of the Church hierarchy) which does not accurately reflect the common Sunday experience. Of course, those also happen to be the most beautiful and professionally-recorded videos, so if you're interested in seeing a hierarchical Divine Liturgy in all its glory, let's just go all the way and have a look at the Paschal Divine Liturgy celebrated by the Patriarch of Russia in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. That's about as extravagant as it gets.
But the common Sunday Liturgy looks like this:
Divine Liturgy (of St. John Chrysostom) in English and Arabic at St. Mary Antiochian Orthodox Church in Livonia, MI, in the United States
I appreciate a good introduction of someone who knows his Eastern Orthodox religion well on the topic. I always appreciate the aesthetics, style and manner of how Orthodox Christians do their worship and liturgy.
