Definitely Looks out of Place

Another day closer to completion. ⛪️ pic.twitter.com/i1tAD9qqFV

— Christendom College (@ChristendomVA) September 18, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery Breaks Ground

Holy Cross Monastery West Virginia breaks ground on new churchhttps://t.co/xthl56Eifw

The church was designed by the renowned Orthodox architect Andrew Gould, combining traditional Orthodox styles with a local West Virginia flavor. The lower level of the church will also hav... pic.twitter.com/u6jpRWJOcX

— Orthodox Christianity (@Orthodoxy2019) November 18, 2020

Vladimir Grygorenko's Murals at St. Gregory Palamas Monastery

OAJ

St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in Perrysville, Ohio
New World Byzantine

Gaelic Psalm-Singing

I first heard the spine-tingling beauty that is the free heterophony of Gaelic psalm-singing on a battered CD borrowed from our holiday cottage near Port of Ness last summer - bringing together, as it says here, our particularity and our unity in God. Do read and listen! https://t.co/OXapgKfcJW

— Arabella Milbank (@ArabellaMilbank) August 28, 2020

'A vertical connection to God': the euphoria of Gaelic psalm singing https://t.co/h5IIDIb1lX

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) August 30, 2020

Inculturation in Taiwan

The Church of the Holy Trinity in Yanshui, Taiwan. pic.twitter.com/89aTbmvuBr

— Fʀ. A. J. Dᴀᴍᴀsᴜs Sᴄʜʀᴇɴᴋ (@frajds) August 16, 2020

I thought I had a post with thoughts on inculturating Christianity in China, referring to the Opus Dei center in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Roman Catholic seminary.

I will have to see if I can find it later.

My thoughts haven't changed; while I appreciate the efforts to depict Christ and His Mother, etc. as ethnic Chinese in order to get the message of the Incarnation across and to make Christianity more acceptable to Chinese, I think in the long run it isn't such a good idea. Depicting Christ as a Jew, as the Byzantines typically do based on one received miraculous image or another, seems to be a better idea, and there is nothing wrong with having an iconographic tradition that is set like that (to some standards of realism) while maintaining other architectural and artistic features in the cultural traditions of another group.

Russians Singing Appalachian Style "Christ is Risen"

Remote Russian Village Sings Appalachian Style "Christ is Risen" https://t.co/dgpxdVt89m pic.twitter.com/C0zptLhYUY

— Russian Faith (@Russian_Faith) May 29, 2020

What Would Endo Say Now?

Has anyone attempted to inculturate Christianity in Japan by referring to Christ as the rising sun? Would Endo's objections or doubts about Christianity be eased if he had been exposed instead to a non-Latin form of Christianity? Would a Byzantine soteriology be more amenable to the Japanese mindset, or Endo's at least?

CWR: Catholicism in the Land of the Rising Sun (and declining population) by Ray Cavanaugh
Japanese Catholics are such a small minority—less than half of 1 percent—that sustaining the faith throughout succeeding familial generations has been difficult.


Related:

Chinese Vocal Chanting?

What does it sound like in Cantonese?

Sunday Octoechos in Chinese language published in Hong Kong (via Byz, TX)
OrthoChristian

A Christian Epic Poem

Touchstone: The Anglo-Saxon Evangel

The Beowulf Poet Was a Shrewd Christian Apologist by Douglas Wilson

The Roman Rite in China

CWR: China, politics, faith, and the liturgical village: Cardinal Joseph Zen in context by Anthony E. Clark, Ph.D.

China’s Catholic culture has preserved Western devotional practices that one seldom sees in Catholic homes today in the U.S. and Europe.

Vietnamese Chant

CNA: This unique chant brings Vietnamese Catholics deeper into Christ’s Passion

Trying to Bring Anglicans Over

but false history is not the way to do it, even if it can be interpreted as an attempt at inculturation through reappropriation.

Virtue Online: ROCOR Rewrites History to Convert Anglicans (via Byz TX)

John Devanny Reviews Catholics' Lost Cause

Catholics’ Lost Cause by John Devanny

A review of Catholics’ Lost Cause: South Carolina Catholics and the American South, 1820-1861 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2018) by Adam L. Tate

A Necessary Act of Inculturation?

Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Byzantine Rite

Should the supposed feast of the patroness of the Americas (rather than just Ibero-America) be observed by the BCA? Why isn't it sufficient for the United States to observe the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (or the Feast of the Conception of St. Anna)? It is not even clear to me that the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is important to the rest of Ibero-America, rather than just to Mexico. Was the declaration of Our Lady of Guadalupe as the patroness of the Americas by Pope John Paul II, in conjunction with the earlier "synod" of bishops, motivated by political or patriarchate concerns?

Midwest Marian Pilgrimage

But are KoC really necessary for a Byzantine service?

Work the Benedict XVI Institute Should be Doing

Chant Café: California Missions Music Presentations - Santa Clara, CA

Hrm

A Better Means of Converting the United States?

Than the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches -- the Anglican Ordinarite. After all, the Ordinariate also encompasses Methodists and other English Protestant traditions that are offshoots of Anglicanism. At least the Anglican Ordinariate would respect the English heritage of the United States, and are better equipped than most ethnic jurisdictions of Orthodoxy and the neo-Yankee multicultural Roman Catholic Church to be inculturated into the Anglo-American cultures present in the United States. After all, how much inculturation would have to be done, since the Anglican Ordinariate is already Anglo-American? It is very likely that the Anglican Ordinariate respects the language, history, culture, and ethnic aspirations of the founding stock -- can the same be said of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches?

One may wonder what the appointment of a Portuguese-American Roman Catholic as the ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter portends for its future. If bishops should be familiar with the culture of their flock, then how else can one explain his appointment (besides his familiarity with the workings of the ordinariate, especially the process of creating its liturgical books) than the assumption of American cultural homogeneity (especially under the influence of civic nationalism)? (And the myth of the "melting pot" in the large cities which were occupied by members of the immigrant Church.)

One is reminded of the importing foreign priests to serve in Roman Catholic parishes by bishops to staff their undermanned dioceses. What sort of education do they have in the culture and customs of the people whom they serve? Knowledge of Church teaching is not enough; they should also know and accept the valid customs of the native peoples.

Anyway, back to the Anglican Ordinariate -- some of the converts bring with them the English choral tradition, and Anglican plainchant in English. I have not been impressed by what I have heard, at least in the form adopted by a certain Roman Catholic seminary on the east coast -- that seemed to delicate and not manly enough. Maybe there wasn't a good mix of voices of different ranges.

(How difficult would it be to adapt Anglican chant to the Byzantine rite?)

Sacred Architecture: Building for the Senses: A Resurgence of Sacred Architecture in China by Anthony E. Clark and Amanda C. Roth Clark

A Journey to Fullness

coming in October



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