Replies

You will never have the Catholic Church as culturally unified as the Orthodox Church is, because we have all of Europe represented to at least an extent, and we grow in Vietnam, China, Africa — all places that look strange to us

Alex, I lives in Japan for six years and I can tell you that the autonomous Orthodox Church of Japan (under Moscow Patriarchate) is as Orthodox as the one in Russia. No special "rite" was required because of a culture that is for practical purposes to just foreign, but alien to Europe.

With all due respect, all this looks to me like intellectual excuses that are simply not founded in reality which I can document, as I have painfully done to make my point vis-a-vis liturgical abuses.

Nikolai-do (Nikolai's home), Holy Resurrection Cathedral, Tokyo, Japan.

Metropolitan +Daniel of Japan (middle) with a Japanese and a Russian bishop flanking

Orhtodox Church Korea (Greek Patriarchate)

It's all the same. No native dancers. Trust me.

Theophany in Tokyo

Japanese Orthodox Church Yokohama

New Deacon, South Korea

It's all one and the same Church and one and the same morality no matter where it is.

The Pat. of Alexandria inaugurating the new Greek Orthodox seminary in Ghana last June.

His Grace Bishop Jeronymos of Bukoba; Greek Orthodox Bishop of Bukoba, Tanzania, 1999-Current. Ordained Deacon, Greek Orthodox Church, July 1, 1995. Ordained Priest, Greek Orthodox Church, February 1, 1996. Vicar General of Kampala, Uganda, 1996-1997. Vicar General of Bukoba, Tanzania, 1997-1999. Bishop of Bukoba, Tanzania, Greek Orthodox Church, December 11, 1999-Current.

Orthodox clergy in Indonesia

We are just about everywhere in Africa. The only places I can think of in Asia where we are not are Burma and Laos. We are in every country, I believe, in South America. Same liturgy, same religious culture...even the same vestments, Alex.

Differing cultural backgrounds certainly do not justify liturgical abuses, and “liturgical dancing” is certainly a grave liturgical abuse. But don’t pretend that any Eastern Orthodox has the multiculturalism of the Roman Catholic Church. From what data I can find on the numbers of adherents, The Orthodox Church of Japan is the second-largest body of Orthodox worshippers outside of Europe and Western Asia, behind the United States. And it has only 25,000. The Korean Orthodox church consists entirely on ten parishes.

Liturgical dance, when it was tolerated (I am not sure of its status now), was not a special right either. It was a form of piety that Laos tou Theou in Africa felt appropriate, asked for permission and at the time it was granted.

The photograph you sent me is, by the way, clearly not of a liturgy of any kind, but of a performance — a social event.