3.

 In another statement, the textbook observes why “liturgical changes cannot be lightly regarded.” What phrase does it use to demonstrate this fundamental principle?

            Worship is the faith in action, the textbook states. It is for this reason that liturgical changes cannot be lightly regarded.

            Typical of the Orthodox viewpoint in this matter are the words of a Russian writer of the fifteenth century. When attacking the reunion council of Florence, he did not address the matter of the Latins' errors in doctrine (although this matter is most assuredly important!), but he addressed their behavior in worship. He wrote:

What have you seen of worth among the Latins? They do not even know how to venerate the Church of God. They raise their voices as the fools, and their singing is a discordant wail. They have no idea of beauty and reverence in worship, for they strike trombones, blow horns, use organs, wave their hands, trample with the feet, and do many other irreverent and disorderly things which bring joy to the devil [As quoted from Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 272].

The author of the textbook states that he cites this passage as an example of the liturgical approach of Orthodoxy, and he goes on to state that he does not necessarily endorse the strictures on Western worship which it contains. Archpriest Alexey Young, however, a convert from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy, is not the least bit equivocal in endorsing the criticism.

            Western Christianity, Fr. Alexey observes, started becoming so imbued with the humanistic principles of the Renaissance that man has been made the measure of all things in the West, with God added as an afterthought, if added at all. This process has continued in the West through the ages, especially in the massive de-Christianization of the Latin Church's worship that was introduced by the Second Ecumenical Council. At that time, the ancient Mass of the Roman rite, much of which dates to the sixth century, was destroyed. Then, in its place, new forms of “worship” were introduced, with Catholic priests in psychedelic vestments serving in sanctuaries surrounded by kindergarten looking felt banners. The new worship was irreverent, uninspiring and banal, and it was the cause of millions of Catholics to stop attending church. The damage went much further, though, for God's name was dropped in numerous places in the “new Mass” and replaced with... “the people.” A horrified Catholic priest, Fr. James Wathen, laments:

Of its very nature, the “new Mass” liberates the “children of God” that they might make a game out of worship.... Intrinsic to the very idea of the “new Mass” is that the people are more important than Christ the Savior.... Is it not they who must be entertained, accommodated, and emoted over? In the incessantly repeated phrase the people of God, it is the people who, in Marxist fashion, are being acclaimed — not God. They have been given the place of God [Quoted in Archpriest Alexey Young, The Rush to Embrace; emphasis added].

Concerning the extremes to which Roman Catholic worship services have turned — grotesque “carnival masses,” “circus masses,” “clown masses,” and the use of drums, guitars and other instruments of secular music, one hardly needs to comment. A similar secularization has also taken place in Protestant worship. Frank Schaeffer, a convert from Protestantism, takes an analytical look at the debased spectacles now encountered in the Protestant Churches. Having embraced Orthodoxy, Mr. Schaeffer now understands that:

Most Protestants have no historical liturgical prayers. They may have fragments — echoes of the historical Christian past — but these are mere disconnected remembrances. They are flotsam and jetsam of the historical faith, washed upon the modern shore.

Many Protestants may well be deeply spiritual, but nevertheless they have been denied the tools of the faith that the historical [Orthodox] Church has at its disposal.

A study of Church history shows Protestant worship, as it is usually practiced today, bears almost no resemblance to the sacramental liturgical worship of the entire Church for the better part of two thousand years in both East and West. This is not a theological opinion, much less a moral judgment, but simply a statement of historical fact. The Church's practices are well documented.

So entertainment-oriented, even trivial, has the majority of Protestant worship become that even the fear of God, according to the teaching of the Church, the most basic prerequisite for individual repentance, seems to have been largely lost. The mystery of faith has been replaced with rationalistic theology on the one hand, and frivolous, internalized, “touchy-feely” entertainments on the other.

The Fathers of the Church warned of the consequences of desacralization long ago. Today these warnings seem to fall largely on unhearing ears. St. Evagrios the Solitary, one of the desert Fathers of the fourth century, writes:

For prayer is truly vain and useless when not performed with fear and trembling, with inner watchfulness and vigilance. When someone approaches an earthly king, he treats him with fear and trembling and attention; so much the more, then, should he stand and pray in this manner before God the; Father, the Master of all, and before Christ the King of kings [The Philokalia,, vol. 1, p. 37].

In comparison to the ancient liturgical worship of the historical Church, even the so-called liturgical Protestant denominations, like the Lutherans and Episcopalians (and tragically, many Americanized Roman Catholic parishes), have left behind their respect for Apostolic authority. Outside the more liturgically inclined Protestant denominations, in the place of the ancient Liturgies of the Church, we have seen a host of self-invented, irreverent, subjective spectacles ranging from comedy, to one-man shows, mass hysteria, political correctness, egocentric preaching, flippancy, to cultic intensity and warmed-over popular culture. These religious spectacles are led by a myriad of self-appointed personalities whose authority to teach, baptize or serve the sacraments, seems to rest not on Apostolic Succession, Holy Tradition, or even doctrine, but on their personal popularity or celebrity status [Dancing Alone: the Quest for the Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion, pp. 7-9].

In his monograph “Protestant Fundamentalistic Thought,” Fr. James Thornton, an Orthodox priest and a nationally-known political columnist and author, depicts the horrid state of affairs to which the desacralization of Western worship has led. His picture is one with which we are all too familiar:

In our own time the whole world has been scandalized by the activities of certain prominent fundamentalists, and their extravagances, their limousines and mansions, their private jets, their air-conditioned dog houses, their garish style of dress and outlandish and grotesque hairstyles, their crudities and vulgarities, their tawdry use of Holy Scripture, their clownish antics and near-blasphemous inanities, their lurid sexual escapades, their crass “P.T. Barnum” commercialism, and their cynical use of the simple people who follow them. Men who claim to be ordained ministers of the Gospel of Christ tell their gulled listeners that they must raise so many millions of dollars, or else God will strike them dead.... The use of shills, pitchmen, phony sick people who come forward to be “healed,” hidden microphones, satanic rock music, scantily-clad females, and every manner of commercial humbug known to Hollywood, is all now stock-in-trade for these people [pp. 20-21].

Archpriest Alexey Young comments that the old axiom lex orandi, lex credendi (as we worship, so we believe), certainly holds true.