The Recovering Choir Director

Archpriest Maksim Kozlov (Максима Козлова), a Russian Orthodox theologian and commentator on Catholic-Orthodox relations, shared his thoughts on the life of the Roman Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council in this interview posted on the website of the Russian Patriarchate.  An English translation of this interview was provided by Oleg-Michael Martynov to the blog Rorate Cæli, where Carlos Antonio Palad writes:

Fr. Maksim’s ideas on the liturgical and ecclesiastical reforms in Catholicism post-Vatican II, and his view of Marcel Lefebvre are of interest in that these have now been published on the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate.

While the entire interview — and the corrections to factual errors as found in the Rorate Cæli comment box — are worth reading, Fr. Maksim’s view of the Roman Catholic Church’s reforms is reproduced below with emphases.  (Note that the emphases contained below differ from those found on Rorate Cæli.)

As something positive, I would also mention Vatican II’s new approach to liturgical worship. Before the Council, Catholic mass was celebrated in Latin, which even among the Europeans few could understand by the middle of 20th century. And after the Catholic Church’s mission to Latin America, Africa, Asia — countries with obviously no connection to Romance culture — it became clear that Latin liturgy has come into obvious conflict with the pious needs of many millions of Catholics. This [caused] switching into national languages, which, by the way, was carried out in the spirit of Eastern Christian tradition, that supposes liturgy to be celebrated in the national language of the faithful. [Years ago, I read — I don't remember where exactly — an Orthodox cleric describing the Divine Liturgy is "inherently pastoral," but not in the way the term is used (and arguably abused) in the Catholic Church. Whatever the worth of this assertion, it has remained with me, as has my first experience of Ukrainian Catholic Divine Liturgy as celebrated in American English in one of the crypt chapels of the National Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.]

But the methods by which these, reforms, per se right, were carried out, were of diverse value, and the implementation of the reforms itself can not be numbered among the Council’s positive results. [The concept is good, the implementation...uneven.]

When reforms are declared, there often appears a certain managerial ardor, and at times it’s not the most wise people who find themselves in the lead of the process. In practice, alas, it was not simply permitted to celebrate in national languages, but pre-reform Latin mass virtually prohibited [Many official diocesan examples of the inversion of the intentions of the Vatican II Constitution on the Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium regarding use of the Latin language in pages 22–23 of Sacred Music and Liturgy Reform After Vatican II (1969) [PDF].  The inversion lies in turning the permission of the use of the vernacular into a mandate. This was in many ways a precursor to the imposition and subsequent implementation of the revised Roman Missal in 1970.], for it was required to get very many permissions virtually from Vatican itself in order to celebrate it. [Fr. Maksim here clearly refers to what is now referred to as the Extraordinary Form; however, because of (among other things) the aformentioned effective ban on Latin in the Latin liturgy, celebrations of the Ordinary-Form Mass in Latin were perhaps as rare as celebrations of the Extraordinary Form — though no permission was ever required to celebrate the 1970 Missal in Latin.] People who wanted to pray in the old way, especially the clergy, appeared so disloyal and suspicious in the eyes of the predominating trend that Latin worship has virtually ceased to exist.

From the very beginning already, the Council’s reforms have invoked criticism from two directions. The ‘left’ majority were unhappy with lack of radicalism. People who lived in the Western secular society with its priority of human rights as a humanist secular value, and still identifying themselves as Catholics, wondered [and still wonder] why has not the Council permitted female priests, abolished celibacy, granted even more rights (like those enjoyed by the priests) to the laity, or allowed divorce and abortions.

The ‘right’ criticism is connected with the name of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905–1991). He and his followers criticized Vatican II in a number of aspects: for its excessive ecumenism, for the liturgical reforms that have, in their view, caused the loss of sacral language of worship as well as the secularization of liturgical awareness. Indeed, the secularized understanding of liturgy was one of the reforms’ negative consequences. This manifested in excessive emphasis on the ‘horizontal’ component, i. e., the fellowship of the faithful [arguably including "getting the people to sing," especially extraliturgical or even secular songs], to the prejudice of ‘vertical component’, which is the congregation’s aspiration for Heaven. [I am reminded of the priest's admonition, codified in the Divine Liturgy: "Wisdom! Be attentive!" Pay attention to God first.] The altars were taken out of the sanctuary into the middle of the churches, the priests were now celebrating facing the people and not what we would call the synthronon, as it was before, there were unrestrained and numerous variants of translations [often terrible ones] and ordos for celebrating mass. There was a rupture, loss of the liturgy’s identity and sameness. Before, for example, a Catholic could everywhere, from Africa to Polynesia, come to a service and realize that he was attending a mass, but this is not so now.

Lefebvre is absolutely correct in his criticism of the progress ideology, adopted by the Catholic Church, where ‘progress’ as progressive motion of the society is considered as a religious value regardless of this society’s religious status. This means that growth of material benefits, gentler morals, tolerance towards different value systems, human rights — regardless of their connection with Christianity — are taken as a positive value. The society is estimated more by the presence or growth of these categories of progress than by the grade and quality of its piety. This is something which the Orthodox Church, of course, can not agree with.

The idea of progress is associated with the notion of ‘anonymous Christianity’, developed at Vatican II. It means that not only people who visibly belong to the Church, but also those who do not openly run counter to her, to her spirit, are recognized as those not alien to her. This can perhaps be true for non-Christian countries, for communities that have not encountered the Gospel. But this is absolutely inapplicable to European and American society that is, step by step, turning away from Christianity. This is not anonymous Christianity but rather apostasy from God and the Church.

The Catholic Church’s experience after the reforms shows: in spite of the Church’s coming to meet the society trying to become more modern, intelligible, and close to this society, the society did not come to meet the Church. This is to be realized and admitted, practically, historiosophically, and eschatologically: to expect that the society in its majority will be willing to reaccept Christian values not as declarations but as norms implemented in real life means to live in an illusion.

Another important lesson that we can learn from the experience of Vatican II is how cautiously should we approach the centuries-old Church Tradition, first of all in the field of liturgy. It is important to recognize that we [in the Russian Orthodox Church] are on the same side with the Catholics, also suffering from certain impenitence among a considerable part of churchgoing folk, a view that service is something not to be understood but rather to incite a kind of pious mood. On the other hand, it is important to realize that the way to modifying the liturgy should not be through its adaptation to the society’s simplistic conceptions formed by the mass media and simply by the very low level of education in the humanities. Christianity as such is something complicated. But understanding Church Slavonic it is not the most complicated thing in Christianity. Rather we should put the question, and look for the answer, on how to bring the beauty and significance of this liturgy to the people.

Carlos Antonio Palad writes,

The final paragraph refers to the current debates in the Russian Orthodox Church on whether to allow the celebration of the liturgy (within Russia) in modern Russian instead of only in Church Slavonic. Patriarch Kirill and Archbishop Hilarion have both indicated that they are against the use of modern Russian in the liturgy.

Having worked with young, unchurched Russians and Ukrainians in a former occupation, I can understand the reticence of Patriarch Kirill and Archbishop Hilarion regarding modern Russian. The Russian language, as I have experienced it, seems to be a particularly vulgar language — in fact, compared to current English, poetically so! What kind of message would the implementation of the vernacular Russian language send to the unchurched who already think of the Russian Orthodox Church as peripherally relevant on a cultural/national level — if that?