A Response to “On administering Holy Communion in a Time of a Plague”
This was sent to me and deserves a read. You can read the Calivas article here . We can all agree that we are living in unusual times. However, the nature and extent of the illness that we face, and the proper response of the Church, is a matter of much disagreement. We have seen various responses to the COVID-19 epidemic: calls to close our Churches as infectious vectors, and demands to open them as places of spiritual healing. Directives a) ordering the cessation of sacramental life as part of an effort to “flatten the curve,” and cries for access to the divine grace that flows forth from those very mysteries; b) calling for the restriction of “at-risk persons,” and serious questions about the validity of such controls, c) instructions to liturgists to wear personal protective equipment during the celebration of the divine services and the distribution of the holy Mysteries, and uncertainty about the fitness of such practices. Who has been championing what and on behalf of whom? The ...
Father, what do you know about these Old Ritualists? Their website indicates they are within the Moscow Patriarchate, but they serve the same Liturgy as the Old Believers?
ReplyDeleteThere are many groups of Old Believers/Ritualists in Russia and around the world, some in communion with the rest of Orthodoxy and some not (though I do not know anything about the sizes of each camp). From what I can gather, the English/Russian terms for each group are Old Believers (Starovery) and Old Ritualists (Staroobriadtsy), and only the latter are referred to as Edinoverie (Единоверие) and are in communion with Moscow. Among Orthodox in the West at least, "Old Ritualist" seems to have become the more polite usage for all the above since the differences are no longer seen to be 'schismatic' - I would assume that is not the opinion of those Old Believers not in communion with Moscow and the rest of Orthodoxy.
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