A group of Orthodox priests appealed to the 2008 Council of Bishops with a request to pay attention to “renovationism”

A group of priests of the Russian Orthodox Church appealed to the 2008 Council of Bishops in connection with "attempts to revise the liturgical traditions and moral foundations of Orthodoxy, which threaten the world of the church," Portal-Credo.ru reports . The priests urge "to reveal the sources and indicate personally the leaders of this anti-church movement," by which they mean tendencies towards reforming some liturgical traditions.

Here is the text of the appeal in full:

Your Holiness!

Venerable archpastors!

We, Orthodox clergymen, are prompted to address the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Council of Bishops by the anxiety associated with attempts to revise the liturgical traditions and moral foundations of Orthodoxy, which threaten the world of the Church.

Against the background of a general secular attack on the Christian faith and the Church, in the context of heterodox and non-Orthodox expansion within Russia and within the Russian Orthodox Church itself, voices are heard more and more loudly calling for liturgical reform, for the renewal of dogmatic and moral teaching, for an arbitrary translation sacred liturgical texts into modern Russian.

This movement of intra-church "renewal", presented under the guise of "missionary projects", did not stop even after the most authoritative words of our Primate, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy, sounded six months ago at a diocesan meeting of the clergy of the city of Moscow:

“There is no “preparation for a liturgical reform in the Church” and there cannot be. Those who sometimes express private opinions that it is necessary to translate services into Russian, as the Renovationists spoke about in their time, or propose to shorten the service, forget that The Church, its statutes and rules have been worked out for thousands of years, and they must be sacredly observed. There will be no revision of the text of the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete. Our Church has withstood in difficult times of persecution and trials, preserving its tradition unshakable. This tradition must also be sacredly preserved by us. I I call on all of you to observe our Orthodox traditions and not be embarrassed by the private statements of people who are trying to return us to the times of renovationism."

As if in response to this, some priests, and even diocesan missionary departments and educational institutions, continue to insist precisely on reforming the traditional worship, on reforming the dogmatic and moral structure of the Church. Some express opinions about the unreliability of the lives of a number of saints widely revered by the Orthodox people, questioning such Christian values ​​as marriage, virginity, having many children. All this, as a rule, is done under the pretext of "missionary purposes."

The reformers, in particular, propose:

-Russification of Church Slavonic worship sanctified by the centuries-old tradition,

-revision of the traditional liturgical discipline of fasting, prayer preparation and the non-obligation of confession before Communion,

- "missionary liturgies" with numerous stops and comments, which is a profanation of worship,

• dogmatic and moral relativism,

• revision of church tradition.

It should be noted that at the beginning of the 20th century, attempts were already made to simplify the Church Slavonic texts in the direction of supposedly their greater intelligibility (the New Slavonic language of the Triodi Lenten and Colored), carried out by the Liturgical Commission. However, it must be stated that these attempts to revise the Church Slavonic texts were unsuccessful and were not accepted by the church people.

Unfortunately, the liturgical reforms fit perfectly into the global process of adjusting the Divine to the human. In the modern worldly consciousness, God and man, the first and second commandments (Matt. 22:38-39) have long changed places, and indulgence of man, the fulfillment of his real and imaginary requirements takes the place of serving Heavenly God. The postulate that everything in the Church should be subject to man, his comfort and his weaknesses is incompatible with any worship!

The few but vocal supporters of the reforms call on the Russian Orthodox Church to follow the Western Churches, which have already passed this path to the end - the path to a catastrophic loss of the weight of religion in society, to a sharp decrease in the number of parishioners and candidates for ordination. Western Christians - albeit belatedly - are already heading in the opposite direction - to the restoration of traditional Christian worship, that is, to where the Orthodox Church has always been and is. And at this moment of the reformed churches turning back to traditions, we, Orthodox Christians, are being called for liturgical reforms, which everywhere have discredited themselves and demonstrated their destructive power!

From the example of the West, one can learn that the reform movement is anti-missionary, and therefore anti-church. Random, ridiculous and blasphemous liturgical reforms, as well as flirting with mass and marginal culture, are the surest way to scare entire generations of people away from the Church.

It is even more surprising that all these neo-renovation reforms are beginning to be voiced and in some places introduced into liturgical practice after a historical event - the reunification of the two parts of the Russian Church. What is reunion with the Russian Church Abroad if not a confession of faith in the invariance of the historical path, fidelity to Scripture and Tradition! How will the unrestrained "renovation" be assessed in the Church Abroad, which is especially keenly aware of the destructiveness of the renovationist movement?

Supporters of the liturgical reform would like to be reminded that even 350 years was not enough for the Russian Church to completely heal the Old Believer schism. But the events of the middle of the 17th century unfolded precisely around disputes about the general church norm of worship and about private distortions and innovations.

Liturgical texts and rites cannot be indifferent to an Orthodox person. The ideology of the reformers is expressed in conformism with the outside world, demanding liberal reforms of worship in the spirit of political correctness and adaptation to the needs of fallen human nature.

It is difficult for us to grasp the scale of the creeping liturgical reformation in the Russian Orthodox Church, but we clearly understand that this phenomenon is historically a dead end and purely marginal in all respects, both in form and in essence.

We dare to turn to the Council of Bishops with a request: to evaluate the unannounced liturgical reformation in the Russian Orthodox Church, to indicate the scale of this modernist phenomenon and its danger to the foundations of Orthodoxy. It is necessary, I think, to reveal the sources and personally indicate the leaders of this anti-church trend.

This is urgently needed, first of all, for the development and success of a genuine Orthodox mission in Russia and abroad.

We humbly ask you, all-honourable archpastors, to call on all the children of the Russian Orthodox Church to sacredly observe the liturgical traditions of our Mother Church.

Archpriest Alexander Shargunov, Rector of St. Nicholas Church in Pyzhi

Archpriest Vladimir Chuvikin, Rector of the Perervinskaya Theological Seminary

Archpriest Nikolai Smirnov, Rector of the Church of St. mch. John the Warrior on B. Yakimanka

Archpriest Leonid Roldugin, rector of the Church of the Nativity in Izmailovo, member of the Diocesan Council of Moscow

Hegumen Feofilakt (Bezukladnikov), Dean of the All Saints District, Chairman of the Liturgical Commission at the Diocesan Council of Moscow

Archpriest Artemy Vladimirov, Rector of the Church of All Saints, Krasnoye Selo

Hegumen Peter (Afanasiev), rector of the Patriarchal Compound of churches and monasteries bb. Zaikonospassky and Nikolsky monasteries in Kitay-gorod

Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov), abbot of the Sretensky Monastery

Archpriest Sergius Pravdolyubov, Rector of the Church of St. Trinity in Trinity-Golenishchevo

Archpriest Alexander Saltykov, Rector of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, Dean of the Faculty

Hegumen John (Ermakov), Rector of the Church of John the Baptist of the Patriarchal Compound in Sokolniki

Hegumen Kirill (Sakharov), rector of the church of St. Nicholas on Bersenevka

Archpriest Vladimir Pereslegin, rector of the Church of the Savior in the village. Prokhorovo (Chekhov district, Moscow region)

Priest Igor Belov, cleric of the Valaam monastery in Moscow

Archpriest Alexander Dasaev, rector of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Sokolniki, member of the Liturgical Commission at the Diocesan Council of Moscow

Archpriest Andrey Pravdolyubov (Diocese of Ryazan)

Archpriest Oleg Stenyaev

Priest Maxim Pervozvansky, cleric of the Church of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, editor-in-chief of the Naslednik magazine, confessor of the Young Rus' Orthodox Youth Association

Priest Alexy Moroz, rector of the Assumption Church in the village of Morevo, Novgorod diocese

Sources

• DOCUMENT: Appeal of a group of influential priests of the ROC MP to the Council of Bishops in 2008 against "missionary renovationism" // Portal-Credo.ru. 2008. June 9.