Russian Orthodox Website Criticises "Modernist" Vatican II

The official website of the Russian Orthodox Church, "patriarchia.ru", has run an article by Alexander Vladimirovich Shchipkov, Rector of the Russian Orthodox University of St. John the Theologian: www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/6050809.html

In the article, Alexander Vladimirovich decries the "modernist" Second Vatican Council and claims the Catholic Church is selling its soul away to secular progressivism. A large part of the article is a response to an article written by the Orthodox priest Fr Anthony Borisov, in which Fr Borisov praises Vatican II. Shchipkov seems to start from the basis that the Catholic Church before Vatican II was great, and that since then it has down downhill. Interestingly, in the 1950s, the Russian Orthodox Church positioned itself as a champion of progressivism on the world stage when our own Catholic Church was the bulwark of conservatism. 

The willingness of the Russian Church to publish such an article on the front page of its official website is rather telling. Of course, I disagree with much of the article, but it is interesting to see how the high-ups at the Moscow Patriarchate are assessing the current state of our Church.

Some interesting quotes from Shchipkov's article:


"In itself, the crisis of the Catholic Church is obvious: how else to explain the sale of churches for cafes and cinemas, the abolition of the Latin mass, hints at the upcoming approval of same-sex unions. But this crisis is not theological, but institutional and political. It is caused by pressure on the Catholic community of secular political elites, which are oriented towards the modernist church camp. To paraphrase a little the well-known Nietzschean expression, it is more likely that “theologizing with a hammer” takes place here, namely, by political and ideological methods, which the “new theology” supports in theological forms."

"Priest Anthony Borisov claims that the Second Vatican Council overcame many outdated judgments of Catholic theology and thereby brought it closer to Orthodoxy. Perhaps we are talking about a departure from some definitions of papal authority. But what is essential here is that the author, willingly or unwillingly, creates an attractive image of the Second Vatican in the eyes of the Orthodox audience. For what? To convince her to embark on the path of modernism and the secular Reformation? I hope I'm wrong. In any case, the call to follow in the footsteps of the Vatican is disastrously reminiscent of the concept of catching up development, transferred from the political and economic sphere to the religious, interfaith and suggesting that society should have “good theology and a Church appropriate to its time”[4, 92]."


"A church person, after reading an article by Priest Anthony Borisov, will inevitably ask himself the question: “Do we need some kind of analogue of the Second Vatican Council?” We see what the consequences are. The Catholic priesthood has not preserved the purity of Christian thought, it is moving towards the legitimization of LGBT unions, the female priesthood, and the sacralization of politics. In other words, we see a deviation of the Catholic mission, in essence, decatechesis. And there can be only one conclusion here: if the path of the Roman Catholic Church serves us as some kind of example, then only an example of how not to do it."

homeschooldad ,

I absolutely agree with the author about the calamity that is the open discussion of women's ordination and the blessing of gay unions. He is absolutely right. It makes our Church look stupid even though in reality it's just a couple of loud rebellious dioceses in Germany actually doing it. 

My view of Vatican II is that the documents themselves are orthodox, but that the way Vatican II and the liturgical reform was implemented was nothing short of disastrous in much of the Church.

What is interesting is that the ROC was very open to Vatican II in the 1960s and sent observers to participate. Patriarch Kirill's mentor, the late Metropolitan Nikodim (1929-1978), was a strong proponent of Vatican II, supported Catholic - Orthodox reciprocal communion, and received last rites from Pope John Paul I when he died suddenly at the Apostolic Palace on a trip to Rome. It is often said though that the ROC's ecumenical activity in the 1960s and 1970s was a result of pressure from the Soviet government who wanted to use the Russian Orthodox Church to influence other Churches in favour of the USSR. 

For instance, in 1961, a Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church voted on admitting the ROC into the World Council of Churches. However, the bishops gathered at Zagorsk for the Council did not even know there would be a council until the morning it took place. They each thought the Patriarch wanted to see them and concelebrate the liturgy with them for St Sergius' Feast Day, and were shocked when upon arrival virtually every bishop in the USSR was there. The Patriarch of Moscow read a speech - with the Soviet Government's religious affairs minister sitting next to him putting a metaphorical pistol to the Patriarch's head basically saying that the Council of Religious Affairs, on Khrushchev's orders, had prepared a list of things to vote on, and intimated to his concelebrants that voting in favour of them was a condition of the ROC's continued institutional existence. This was at the height of the Khrushchevian persecution, where 18,000 churches were closed. 

The bishops all voted in favour of them - 1) Admitting the ROC to the World Council of Churches; 2) Signing over control of every parish in the USSR to the local Soviet.

The latter was the worst - it involved officially delegating the priestly ministry merely to one involving celebrating the liturgy and hearing confessions. The Patriarch and the bishops had just signed away every other aspect of the priestly ministry to the local Communist Party Soviets who would appoint a "Council of Twenty" - a group of lay people - to administer the parish, fire the priest, decide on every aspect of Church finance, etc.

After the bishops had voted, most of them purportedly whispered amongst themselves "the unlawful has been made lawful" whilst weeping for the fact that they had just given up most of their authority over their own dioceses to "delay the inevitable destruction of the Church" - in Patriarch Alexy I's words. Luckily that never happened because Brezhnev took over and stopped the policy of church closures.

This "modernist" method of Church control - where lay communists would control the parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church with the Patriarch's approval - as well as the entry of the Russian Church into the ecumenical movement, were all part of the Soviet government's using of the ROC for their own purposes.

Since the fall of the USSR, the Russian Church has continued to remain part of the ecumenical groups it joined to appease the Soviet government, but has completely changed its ecumenical policy such as to make its participation in these bodies pointless. Don't forget the Russian Patriarch refused to even meet the Pope on neutral ground until 2016, when virtually every other Orthodox Patriarch had already met the Pope at the Vatican or in their own country.