Beautiful 1961 Documentary on Eastern Orthodox Holy Week

[The Liturgist]

As today is Great and Holy Friday on the Julian Calendar, I thought it meet and right to share this 1961 American documentary covering Antiochian Orthodox Holy Week Services, led by Metropolitan Anthony Bashir (Memory eternal, reposed in 1966) the predecessor of Metropolitan Philip Saliba (Metropolitan eternal, reposed in 2014, both bishops serving until death as is the custom in the Eastern churches).

Amazingly this was produced for CBS, despite being something today only a state run broadcaster or something like our American PBS system would produce.

 

[The Liturgist]

Actually to my surprise CBS did it again, albeit as part of 60 Minutes, which one associates more with the darker side of life, but still, interesting, and worth watching for the chandeliers alone. Every church needs chandeliers like that.

 

[Pavel Mosko]

Amazingly this was produced for CBS, despite being something today only a state run broadcaster or something like our American PBS system would produce.

I would normally think that too, but it was a different time back then at that time Cardinal Fulton Sheen still had a prime time hit show going all the way till around 1971.

I think it kind of was a way to throw a bone to some of the ethnic communities of the big cities to try to get/retain their viewership, kind of like how politicians try to get voting blocks for their coalitions.

 

[The Liturgist]

I would normally think that too, but it was a different time back then at that time Cardinal Fulton Sheen still had a prime time hit show going all the way till around 1971.

I think it kind of was a way to throw a bone to some of the ethnic communities of the big cities to try to get/retain their viewership, kind of like how politicians try to get voting blocks for their coalitions.

I think thats an element, but the lengthier 1961 program is also contemporaneous with the era of Leave it to Beaver and related programs with strong moral fiber, because with the exception of segregation and racialist discrimination in certain regions of the US, not everywhere, but in too many places, I would argue it was a more moral era. Indeed the Roaring Twenties had a very dark aspect to it which had been largely expurgated by the horrors of the Depression, WWII, the Cold War and Korea. The morality of society ebbs and flows as people sin, calamities ensue, they temporarily repent, and then sin again, as the Old Testament illustrates.

The glory of the passion of Christ on the Cross is that through His very death and resurrection, God has given new life to us, now and in the world to come. Let us fall down and worship Christ our God!