A Dignified and Proper Language?
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I’m happy to see that The Christian Activist has returned to cyberspace. Just as cool, I found an interesting feature article by Vladyka, his emminence Dmitri, Archbishop of Dallas and the South — i.e., our bishop. He discusses the state of English translations of the Byzantine rite and why they are in such a state of disrepair, plus some of the implications and results of that disrepair for the faithful.
As I am still reading this article, I have very little in the way of comment, except that I take great exception to the assumed equivalence of “archaic language” with language that is “traditional, dignified, artistic or poetic, reserved for and appropriate to worship, in other words, a religious language.” It is a gratuitous assumption, and it undermines the serious question at hand. Indeed, in the battle over language, I do not believe that anyone doubts that we should have a proper, dignified, elevated, poetic language for our services. The question is, “What exactly counts for such language?”