Lietuvių Tautinės Katalikų Bažnyčios šv. Mišių liturgijos bruožai

Abstract

In 1914, Lithuanian Catholic emigrants living in Scranton (Pennsylvania, USA) established their own National Catholic Church, an independent organization not related to the Roman Catholic Church. This Christian group emphasizes national background and Catholicism, and is related to Polish National Cat­holic Church. About half of the time of its existence this group was autonomous and only later it became more closely related to Polish National Catholics. Lithuanian NCC has rapidly developed its own liturgy and this process so far has not been investigated in previous research on this particular religious commu­nity. Considering the tension between Catholicism and the national aspect, it is important to emphasize and list those specific features of liturgy that would allow us to speak of a separate Lithuanian and Polish National Catholic liturgical tradition. It is very likely that from 1914 to 1930 LNCC continued the liturgical tradition of the Roman Catholic Church and used its regulations of 1570 missal. In 1931 the LNCC missal, prepared by priest M. Valadka, was printed. It is assumed that this particular missal was used until 1972, when Lithuanian NCC became closely related to the Polish NCC. Due to the demographic changes in the community and the lack of Lithu­anian priests the community began to use English missal. The new missal of Polish NCC was published in 1990. It contained three rites of Holy Mass. The first one was traditional ; it was prepared during the first decades of the twentieth century. The second one was prepared by Bishop Francis Hodur during his min­istry years from 1907 to 1953; therefore, it is called the Hodur rite . The third one is called contemporary , it was written after 1970. The missal of 1990 is currently in use by the LNCC.