Unorthodox wordings, to say the least

August 25, 2010 By

Trust me, I know that covering religion news is complicated, especially when you are dealing with ancient religious groups in which it seems that everything is encrusted with centuries worth of doctrine, tradition, rubrics and symbolism. However, facts and facts and words matter.

How do journalists justify basic errors? They shouldn’t even try.

As you may have guessed by now, this is another picky tmatt post about Eastern Orthodoxy.

Consider, please, the top of this story (free registration required) in the Financial Times about a very symbolic and emotional event in an ancient region that is today included in Turkey.

Five hundred Greek orthodox Christians have celebrated mass in the beautiful 1,600-year-old Sumela monastery in north-eastern Turkey, ending an 88-year ban on religious services at the site.

Conducted by Greek Orthodox Patriarch Dimitri Bartholomew I, the mass attracted orthodox Christians from Greece, Russia, Georgia, the US and Turkey to the monastery that sits on a ledge high in a cliff inland from the Turkish Black Sea port of Trabzon

The mass was conducted with the blessing of Turkey’s ministry of culture, which has funded an extensive restoration of the monastery that until a decade ago was in an advanced state of dereliction. The event, which was televised live around the world, occurred in contrast to attempts made last year to hold an orthodox mass at the site that were halted by ministry officials intent on upholding a ban on religious services at the monastery.

Where to begin (other than the issue of why the Turkish government can ban services in a monastery, shut down seminaries, etc.)?

First of all, I assume that this was an event of great importance for Eastern Orthodox — with a large “O” — Christians, not just the Greeks. After all, the story says precisely that a few lines later.

With that in mind, it is also important to note that Patriarch Bartholomew I is the “ecumenical patriarch,” the first among equals, of the shepherds of all of the Eastern Orthodox churches in a global communion. He is not the Greek Orthodox patriarch, in large part because his throne is in Istanbul. He is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy.

Oh, and his name is “Dimitrios,” not “Dimitri.”

Last but not least, the proper name for this Eucharistic service in the churches of the East is “Divine Liturgy,” not the “Mass.” I know that there is a tendency among journalists — note the same mistake at the top of this Asia News report — to assume that Catholic terms are used by all liturgical churches. For example, there are high-church Anglicans who often use the word Mass to describe the Holy Eucharist, while many other Anglicans do not. That’s confusing and I understand that.

However, the vast majority of Eastern Christians observe the Divine Liturgy, including those who are in communion with the pope of Rome. That is the proper name for this service in the Byzantine tradition.

So there are corrections to be made by the FT staff. Several of them.

Please.

Photo: The location of this monastery must be seen to be believed. Click here for a larger collection from Google Images.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Godbeat, Journalism, Orthodoxy, World, Worship
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • Jerry

    I liked the AP story which had information in it about the politics Greece versus Turke), the Turkish bid to join the EU and a related decision allowing Armenians to also worship. And the story even included how the Turkish government deals with Islamic symbols such as the Hijab. Without the history in the AP story, I would not have understood the symbolism of the decision.

    The Islamic-oriented government, which is aiming to expand freedoms as part of its bid to join the European Union, has said worship can take place at the monastery once a year. Services were previously banned.

    The symbolic event was also likely to boost reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Greece, two NATO allies that came to the brink of war three times between 1974 and 1996 over the ethnically divided island of Cyprus and territorial rights in the Aegean Sea.

    Sumela, a spectacular structure cut into the side of a mountain, was abandoned around the time of Turkey’s foundation in 1923. The last Mass was held a year earlier amid conflict between Turks and Greeks.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gvHWYCs01zinJEbaT4wb-9uEQSmwD9HJU1TO0

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    Thanks, Jerry. Good additional info.

    I’ve been to Istanbul twice and both times everyone — Orthodox, Protestants, Muslims, etc. — said that the key issue that everyone continues to watch is the seminary that has been shut down for a generation or so.

    http://www.google.com/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Halki+Seminary%2C+Turkey&btnmeta%3Dsearch%3Dsearch=Search+the+Web

    No seminary, no priests with rights to serve in Turkey.

    No monastery attached to the seminary, no monks. No monks, no bishops. No bishops — no new ecumenical patriarch.

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    I agree with Jerry that the AP story is quite good–especially for its mentioning the –usually ignored–genocide of the Christian Armenians by the Turks. But I notice that it, too, called the Divine Liturgy a “Mass.” And, of course, Turkey is one of the Moslem countries that is supposed to be so good to Christians and allowing them to practice their religion. But if the details given here are correct, and this is “good” for a Moslem country–then genuine “freedom of religion” is something many Moslems clearly do not understand.

  • http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Irina

    Oh wow, I just wrote to our newspaper, which had obviously translated the same press release, to correct all their misconceptions. I got a really nice reply back, I must say, but no overt correction in the paper; I hope they get it right next time.

  • Julia

    No bishops — no new ecumenical patriarch.

    Somewhere I read that Turkey has a law that the Patriarch must be a native-born Turkish citizen – so he can’t be recruited from among the Orthodox priests, monks and bishops residing/born in other countries.

    I also read that the Divine Liturgy was only allowed to be held outside the monastery building.

    Some commentators think these two liturgies were allowed to drum up tourist business. The Sumela is being restored as a museum like the Santa Sophia. The liturgy is seen as an exotic re-enactment for nostalgic Orthodox descendants of those formerly in now-Turkey who fled to Greece and Russia. The publicity will encourage tourism.

    It must be working – my brother and his wife are going to be touring Turkey in October.

    [I would have posted links but it was last week that I read the articles referenced herein]

  • JWB

    Doesn’t that massive Seraphim Nassar service book still sometimes seen floating around tmatt’s jurisdiction use the M-word to refer to the Divine Liturgy (also I think not uncommon in English use by some of the non-Chalcedonian churches, esp. the Indian ones)? Given the delightful-if-occasionally-frustrating chaos that is Orthodoxy in English translation, I’m suspicious of any claim that there’s really only one right English word to refer to pretty much anything. And it just gets worse for proper names. Are we really supposed to only say Bartholomew rather than Bartholomeos (or Vartholomeos, which is also in actual use if you do some googling) for the hierarch in Istanbul but only say Kirill rather than Cyril for his compatriot in Moscow (but of course it’s St. John of Kronstadt rather than St. Ivan . . .), with no other variants being permissible? I mean, if a particular publication or wire service wants to ensure somewhat arbitrary internal consistency by hiring tmatt to do a style book for them, that’s fine, but I don’t know that others should be faulted for doing it differently.

  • Martha

    At least they didn’t say that the Ecumenical Patriarach was the Pope of Orthodoxy :-)

  • Jon in the Nati

    I think JWB is pretty much correct here.

    “Mass” is not technically incorrect, it is just rarely used. It reminds me somewhat of the same matter in Anglicanism, where the ‘communion service’ is called the “Holy Eucharist” by most people (esp. those not of an Anglo-Catholic bent). There is nothing really incorrect about saying “Mass”; it is just rarely done.

    Using the word “Mass” in an Orthodox context is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it lets people know what we’re talking about (even non-catholics know what the mass is, and many non-Orthodox would say “WTF is a Divine Liturgy?”), but on the other hand it conjures specific images of a catholic mass, which looks decidedly different from an Orthodox DL.

  • http://www.post-gazette.com Ann Rodgers

    The language in the story made me wince. But I can sympathize with the reporter. In my experience, Orthodox leaders rarely offer journalists helpful coaching on language, history and theology. I suspect that this unsuspecting general assignment reporter was sent to this gathering and left to fend for himself. It would have been a good idea if someone from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (which I bet had a rep there) had provided English-language journalists with a cheat sheet giving proper terminology and thumbnail definitions of key terms.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    JWB:

    I hear you on some of the proper names. In this case, all one had to do is run a single Google search to learn there are plenty of bishops named Dimitri and he is not one of them.

    I have never seen a reference in an Orthodox source of any authority to the service as the Mass. The name of the service is the Divine Liturgy. It would be accurate to say that it is a Eucharistic service, as a general type. But all of the rites include Divine Liturgy in their names.

    You will also notice that I wrote that the “vast majority of Eastern Christians” use the Divine Liturgy language. I know that there are a few exceptions and you cited some of them.

  • G Arthur George

    Re: “Unorthodox wordings” 8/25/2010.
    Some basic protocol comments and additions to this “simply fine” referenced article: Words like “encrusted?”, whoa! bad choice: The jewel still dazzles over 2,000 years: And “symbolism?”, how about “Mysteries, active, real and participatory.

    His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch is BARTHOLOMEW I (no first name). He is the spiritual eminence, First Among Equals of the Greek Orthodox or Eastern Orthodox Church as differentiated from the Western Catholic Church. The President of the United States functions likewise, co-ordinates and presides over the concerns of congress and the 50 States.

    The word “Greek” is NOT a nationality reference (it is not even a “Greek” word). It refers to the Patristics of the Christian Church: The Apostles were “Greek” speaking Jews, the New Tastament was written in “Greek”, all the early writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church wrote in “Greek” and the first (Byzantine) Christian Empire was “Greek”. The people of that Mediterranean country (Hellas) are Hellenes and are formally members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Hellas or Hellenic Orthodox Church. Just as it is formally, the Greek Orthodox Church of Russia or Russian Orthodox Church. One discovers that you don’t have to be “Roman” to be a member of the “Roman” Catholic Church, you can be Irish or Bolivian!

    You are correct, “Divine Liturgy”, there would not be a Baptist Mass, Evangelical Mass or Greek Orthodox “Mass”.

    Turkey: You’ve got to give their administration Kudos; inch by inch they’re stearing Moslem Turkey into the Humanity of the 21st Century with all its transparent instant messaging and photocopy. Let’s hope they’re honest, sincere and not intimidated with paranoaic fears of non-Moslem religious minorities; Armenians, Jews and other Christian communities.
    Remember, Anatolia (Turkey) was occupied by Christians, “Greeks” and Armenians for over a thousand years before Turkey existed!

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    G Arthur George:

    “Trust me, I know that covering religion news is complicated, especially when you are dealing with ancient religious groups in which it seems that everything is encrusted with centuries worth of doctrine, tradition, rubrics and symbolism.”

    I am referring to how journalists respond to a wide range of ancient religious groups. The lede clearly does not refer to Eastern Orthodoxy.

  • Passing By

    You folks are ruining me: a local news anchor – she’s been on the air a long time – just spoke of a series of fires in a “parish” which turned out to be a Baptist Church. I suppose “congregation” might have been used, but never a parish. Then, the on-air reporter interviewed a fellow repairing what was really minor damage, and the repoter pompously announced that despite the fires, the guy’s “faith was not shaken”. Did the reporter think someone believes God set the fires?

    Yes, you folks are definitely ruining me.
    :-)

  • JWB

    tmatt: I suppose I focused less on your “vast majority” langauge than the repeated phrase “the proper name for this [Eucharistic] service is,” which I took to be a claim that “Mass” was not just a minority usage in the Orthodox context but somehow objectively improper. I am now home and can confirm my recollection that the Nassar “Divine Prayers and Services” book (4th ed., reprinted 1993 by the authorities in Englewood and “approved and authorized for the use of all faithful Orthodox Christians” of the Antiochian archdiocese by +Philip) consistently uses “the Mass” to refer to what you and I would typically call the Divine Liturgy. I’m not sure on what basis Nassar would fail to qualify as “an Orthodox source of any authority.” Nassar certainly has other oddities, like saying “Sunday of the Ointment-Bearers” where “Myrrhbearers” is probably much more common among Anglophone Orthodox. But I wouldn’t say that a journalistic story that went with the minority usage was wrong.

    The Dimitri v. Dimitrios thing is I think obscuring a much larger weirdness in the story, which is that it seems very odd (by prefixing one or the other of those to “Bartholomew”) to refer to an Orthodox bishop both by his monastic first name and the prior and now disused given name he had “in the world.” It would be like calling the fellow in the Vatican “Joseph Benedict.”

  • Chris Jones

    The first responsibility of a journalist is to write clearly in terms that his or her readers can understand. Given how few people have ever heard the term “Divine Liturgy,” it is quite understandable that the reporter would use the term “Mass” instead, which most English speakers readily understand. If he or she had written “Divine Liturgy,” many, many readers would have no clue what was meant by that; and they would never understand that it is the Eastern Orthodox counterpart to the Catholic Mass and the Protestant Holy Communion.

    Perhaps the best of both worlds would have been to write “the Divine Liturgy (the Eastern Orthodox name for the service that is called the Eucharist or the Mass in Western Christian churches).”

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    CHRIS:

    Journalists use short explanatory phrases all the time. There is no way to do journalism on complex subjects without them.

    There is no reason to be inaccurate and not to show respect for different traditions.

    Is a Baptist minister a priest, even if the story is being written in Boston? No way.

  • http://rub-a-dub.blogspot.com MattK

    Why is it Bartholomew I? Isn’t it presumptuous to assume there will ever be a II? It should just be Bartholomew with no numbers. I’m not blaming the reporter, who is following the style of the Patriarchate.

  • G Arthur George

    Re: MaTTk says: “Isn’t it presumptuous?”
    Let me suggest to MattK that it is perhaps “presumptuous” and intrusive of him to second guess the prerogatives, dignity and practice of the Ecumenical Patriarchal Office, really an unschooled outsider (with all due respect).

    Here’s my unconfirmed explanation: Somewhere in my memory banks I am led to understand that the Roman numeral “I” indicates SECOND in genealogical order: as in George I (the First) was the second George. OR, there may be OTHER “BARTHOLOMEWS”, reposed or active Greek Orthodox hierarchs, not necesssarily an Ecumenical Patriarch, worldwide, since. OR the “original first” Bartholomew may have been the Saint himself. Whatever the reasoned practice/formula, I’ll betcha it’s legit!

    More: Though “500 celebrated” (capacity) at the Soumela Monastery near Trebizond. Other news services estimated that there were total, 15,000 pilgrims watching the Divine Liturgy on giant television screens set up at the base of the mountain and/or in the nearby town.

  • Julia

    The word “Greek” is NOT a nationality reference (it is not even a “Greek” word). . . The people of that Mediterranean country (Hellas) are Hellenes and are formally members of the Greek Orthodox Church of Hellas or Hellenic Orthodox Church. Just as it is formally, the Greek Orthodox Church of Russia or Russian Orthodox Church. One discovers that you don’t have to be “Roman” to be a member of the “Roman” Catholic Church, you can be Irish or Bolivian!

    Thank you for clarifying the non-territorial use of the term “Greek” in regards to Bartholomew I and the Orthodox world in association with him.

    Long, long ago I was taught that the early Christian world soon had two parts: Greek and Latin. After all the barbarian invasions, the West lost its previous familiarity with the Greek language and began to use the vernacular Latin. And I’m sure the untutored in the West never did read or speak Greek – the reason St Jerome was asked to write the Vulgate (mostly while living in Jerusalem).

    “Rome” is used territorially in speaking of the Church of Rome or the Church at Rome. And “Roman” describes the liturgical rite that is used by most Latin Catholics in the West – because that is where the rite originated. The Council of Trent adopted the ritual used in the city of Rome as the standard for the West, allowing only a handful of others to continue. However, the communion of churches in the West united with the Bishop of Rome is more properly known as “Latin” to distinguish it from the “Greeks” in the East.

    It was the English crown that insisted on using “Roman” to distinguish the churches united with the Pope from those Christians in England who recognized the queen/king as their head. Since the Church of England had dropped the use of Latin, it’s not clear why the government insisted on “Roman” rather than “Latin”. After all, the English Sarum rite used by Catholic recusants was in Latin.

  • Martha

    “Since the Church of England had dropped the use of Latin, it’s not clear why the government insisted on “Roman” rather than “Latin”. After all, the English Sarum rite used by Catholic recusants was in Latin.”

    Politicial propaganda, Julia. Contrasting the exactions of a foreign despot against the national rule of the native monarchy. Intimations of lack of allegiance and setting up a dicotomy between patriotism and religion (if you were loyal to the Pope, you were disloyal to the Crown) which is why in the time of Elizabeth I her ingenious spymaster, Walsingham, had recusants tried for treason not heresy and why even up to the time of the Popish Plot, St. John Kemble was executed for treason – since being ordained a Catholic priest overseas was a treasonable act.

  • http://www.post-gazette.com Ann Rodgers

    While prowling for news of the Orthodox world, I came across this address by a high-ranking priest at the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. While his topic is Orthodox unity in the U.S. he gives a very surprising history of the term “Greek” as applied generically to Eastern Christians. Believe it or not, he says that was a 19th century error, and that the historically correct term was Rum (or Roman) Orthodox.
    http://www.ocanews.org/news/ElpidophorosSVS6.16.10.html

  • Jimmy Mac

    That is definitely a vacation destination for the physically ambitious!

  • Julia

    Ann:

    What an interesting address. How do its points tie in with the claim some make that Moscow is the 3rd Rome (Rum) since the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople currently has no freedom to play his historical role?

  • G Arthur George

    Re: Ann Rogers says: 8/26/10:
    Not “very surprising” at all: “Old Rome” in the West was being ravaged by hordes from the north, it practically became a ghost town. “New Rome”, Constantinople, in the East was built at/upon Byzantium, a Hellenistic (“Greek”) colony and became quickly a Hellenic speaking and thinking Christian Empire, lasting over a thousand years! In 1453, Ottoman Turkish Sultans fashioned themselves as heirs to the Roman Ceasars and continued to use a Turkish identifier, RUM PATRIKHANESI (Roman Patriarchate), a Turkish term with no Christian import.

    Constantinople, that “Rose by any other name, is still ……….. ”

    Incidentally and FYI: The word “ISTANBUL” is “Greek” for “IN THE CITY”.