Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Church consciousness

If we see a decline of piety, a failure to understand the Divine services, the reason for this lies outside the Church: it is in the decline of faith in the masses, in the decline of morality, in the loss of church consciousness.
Fr. Michael Pomazansky

8 comments:

Anastasia said...

the phrase "loss of church consciousness" reminds me of fr alexander schmemann's diary entries.

Anastasia said...

oh, and I see you added eugene onegin to your reading list! what translation are you reading ?

Anastasia said...

GASP. NABOKOV.

Jacob Aleksander said...

Interesting that you think of Fr. Alexander as this quote is from a highly critical review of his book on liturgical theology...

Well, per your advice I thought I would check out the Nabokov translation. And I figure a Russian would probably know better the feel of the original.

Anastasia said...

really? that's a rather funny coincidence. i love fr. schmemann.

and i'm so glad you're checking out the nabokov version-only be careful to get the two volume one or at least a gigantic one volume one because i made the initial mistake of just getting the translation which is technically volume one and i was missing out on all the good commentary that's in volume two (volume 2 is usually the bigger volume). you'll want to read the commentary, trust me. i mean, even if it's just for the one rant on how american students don't know anything about trees. that rant alone is probably worth the entire thing. nabokov is hilarious.

Jacob Aleksander said...

Yes, I have volume 2 - I found that it's actually a 4 volume set - with volume 4 being a photocopy of an early edition of the text.

Anastasia said...

how interesting. is it the princeton version?

Jacob Aleksander said...

I believe so, I don't have it with me right now to check, however.