The Liturgical Tradition of the Eastern Catholics: A Concealed Talent?
Description
The conference will focus on the liturgical experience of the Eastern Catholic Churches, primarily within the context of the Byzantine tradition. It will examine how these Churches lived in prolonged interaction with the Latin tradition, how they responded to Latin influences in their own worship, and how they later sought to reflect on or reconsider these influences.
The first section of the conference will be devoted to Latinization and de-Latinization: how the very concept of “Latinization” emerged, how the Eastern Catholic Churches understood it, and how the return to their own liturgical sources has taken place.
The discussion will then turn to the question of whether the experience of Eastern Catholics should be described only as a history of losses and borrowings, or also as an experience of preservation, renewal, and a more precise understanding of their own tradition. In this context, participants will discuss what authentic elements Greek Catholics have preserved in their worship and what they can share with the Orthodox side.
The final section of the conference will address liturgical renewal: whether a return to the sources is a way of living development within tradition, or whether it can become merely a reproduction of the past. For the Eastern Catholic Churches, this question is especially important, since the emphasis on authenticity and purification from foreign accretions helps them better understand their own heritage, while at the same time it may narrow the space for development. In this context, the conference will also consider how contemporary Orthodox Churches explain their own liturgical reforms.