Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/26

Russian Orthodox church, the Old Slavonic being the church language. Anointing with oil is a feature of the service on great feast days, as is also the distribution to non-communicants of the antidoron, or blessed bread, in memory of the agape or primitive lovefeast. For this purpose five small loaves are blessed at vespers, symbolizing the five loaves which Jesus blessed and with which he fed five thousand people. The services, when well rendered, are very beautiful and impressive. No musical instrument is permitted, but the service is entirely choral and antiphonal throughout, the people being trained to their part from earliest childhood. In some churches the whole congregation takes part in a wonderfully effective unison, in others a trained choir sings the service. The cantor, or musical director, occupies a position of considerable importance, leading the congregation’s part in the service, and also teaching the children, to whom he usually gives instruction two hours a day. A thorough musical training is included in preparation for the priesthood, and many of the clergy are accomplished musicians and actively promote the musical organizations which are so large a part of the Slav’s cultural contribution to America. The congregations are most devoted and devout. Rapidly as churches have been built, they are still always crowded, and it is no uncommon thing, even on a winter Sunday, to see kneeling on the steps of the church and there following the service, worshippers who could not get even standing room inside.

The clergy include many men of the finest calibre. In the old country they were almost the only educated class and they were the medium through whom the national tradition and ideals were passed on. Many have come to America because of political persecution, which is in itself a certificate of quality, since it is always the able man who is persecuted. In this country they are most unfortunately situated. Among their congregations of uneducated working people, they have no intellectual companionship; they are regarded with coldness, if not with actual hostility, by the Roman Catholic clergy; their acknowledgement of the Pope is a barrier between them and the Protestant communions; and they are constantly on the defensive against the active rivalry of the Russian Orthodox church. Probably no lonelier men live in America to-day than the Greek Catholic clergy.

The gulf which exists between them and the Roman Catholics has its cause in those characteristics which they have in common with Protestants and Eastern Orthodox, namely the married clergy and the use of the vernacular in the services of the church. The married priest is an offense to the Roman Catholic celibate who has no adequate explanation of this apparent lack of consistency on the part of the Holy See; the priest’s children are refused admission to Roman Catholic secondary schools, because of the occupation of their father! A priest whose portrait was published in a group with his five fine sons in Uncle Sam’s uniform, was severely censured for permitting such publicity to the fact that priests have sons.

It was decreed in 1907 that no married men should be ordained here, nor should any more come here from abroad. The success of the decree may be judged from the fact that of the present clergy list of 162, there are 111 married priests, 17 are widowers, and 33 celibates, of whom 10 are monks of the order of St. Basil. This is by no means a personal matter only with the clergy. The people are as much in favor of a married clergy as are most Protestants, and the first question of a new appointee is often “Are you married? If not, we don’t want you.” Besides, it is felt that the attempt to enforce celibacy is an encroachment upon their rights as defined in the terms of union, and that to yield anything of those rights would be to establish a dangerous precedent.

The language of the liturgy is a question not so much of the present as of the future. The terms of union permit the use of the language of the people, of which the Old Slavonic was the accepted church form among the Slavs. The Rumanian Greek Catholics use the Rumanian language in their services, the Magyars changed in 1917 to the Magyar language, and the leaders of the Greek Catholics in the United States look forward to the time when English, being the language of the congregation, will become the language of the church also. To this end prayerbooks, catechism and books of instruction in English are being prepared. At present they are usually printed with one page in English and the opposite