[Agrarian]

You are exactly right that there was never any one "Liturgy of the Undivided Church," but I doubt very much that Kosta was implying that such a thing ever existed. I think that what Kosta meant to say was something to the effect of "the liturgical forms that were prevalent in the West during the time when East and West were closely knit and of one heart and mind."

When an Orthodox Christian reads the liturgies in use in the West back, say, prior to the 800's, he immediately recognizes that while it isn't the Byzantine form of worship, this is one and the same faith. When I read the writings of St. Leo or St. Gregory, Popes of Rome, I recognize instantly that this is the same faith and the same Church as that of St. John Chysostom or St. John of Damascus. I don't feel that when I read Ratzinger, though, for example. I certainly don't feel that when I am glancing through a missal in the pews of a modern Catholic church.

During the Vat II and post Vat II period, much liturgical revision took place, and much of it was supposedly based on scholarship and ancient practices. But the net effect was to make Catholic worship more like what goes on in a modern liberal Protestant church than like the worship of the Orthodox Church, which has barely changed in a very, very long time.

If the point to the liturgical revision was to return to the practices of the ancient Church, I would expect the worship and popular piety to be more familiar-feeling to me as an Orthodox Christian -- not less so, as has actually been the case.

Again, I wish to stress that what the Catholic church does is its own business, and it is not our place as Orthodox Christians to tell Catholics what to do. This thread started with the open-ended question of what the implications are for Orthodox-Catholic reunion are, based on the direction a given new Pope might take things, and it is in that context that I am writing

[Kolokotronis]

"During the Vat II and post Vat II period, much liturgical revision took place, and much of it was supposedly based on scholarship and ancient practices. But the net effect was to make Catholic worship more like what goes on in a modern liberal Protestant church than like the worship of the Orthodox Church, which has barely changed in a very, very long time.

If the point to the liturgical revision was to return to the practices of the ancient Church, I would expect the worship and popular piety to be more familiar-feeling to me as an Orthodox Christian -- not less so, as has actually been the case"

As most of you know, I had the rather unique experience, as an Orthodox kid, of being an altarboy at Tridentine Masses. They are my image of a Roman Liturgy. What I see today is, well, protestant, and not very high church at that. Of course it is none of our business as Orthodox to tell Roman Catholics what to do with their liturgy, save to observe that, as Agrarian said earlier, no reunion will ever succeed until both Romans and Orthodox are comfortable worshipping in each other's Liturgies. This is a practical consideration and unfortunately, right now I suspect virtually all of us Orthodox would be as uncomfortable in an NO parish as a member of the Catholic Workers movement would be at our Divine Liturgy.

[k omalley]

" the net effect was to make Catholic worship more like what goes on in a modern liberal Protestant church than like the worship of the Orthodox church..."

My guard goes up and I am deeply suspicious of some of the ideas behind the changes in the theology of the Eucharist. At my previous parish we were told often that the theology of the Eucharist had changed since VII. I wonder if behind all this there is the idea of "radical kenosis" which is a liberal Protestant idea and may have come from the Rhine theologians as well.
This is the idea that God poured himself out into his Son who poured himself out into humanity and then disappeared altogether. So in essence we are Eucharist only to each other. Jesus may still be in the tomb. The vertical has disappeared and only the horizontal remains. Most Catholics of course don't believe this, but this may be exactly what the Rhine theologians had in mind when they pushed for changes at VII.