Love it, not just becasue it is full of good humour but because it shows that the clergy will not tolerate change thrust on them by "experts." It complements what I was saying about the Serbian refusal to bring in liturgical changes.
"It is inevitable, nonetheless, that “experts” are also invited to speak at these symposia, and, if one may speak candidly, the presentations of the experts sometimes provide the truly low points of the whole enterprise. On former occasions, for example, we have been obliged to bear up under onslaughts of “the renewal of feminine ministries” and to endure the ravages of rationalist biblical exegesis. This year we were, on the whole, mercifully spared such torture.
"The single exception to this mercy was a disappointing lecture on “liturgical renewal” by a professor from one of the Orthodox seminaries. The material was essentially the same shortsighted nonsense that the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans were forced to endure thirty or forty years ago.
"We clergy, three quarters of us adult converts to the Orthodox Church, sat in sackcloth and inwardly groaned like pelicans in the wilderness, while a life-long Orthodox liturgical expert explained to us at length that Orthodox worship “no longer speaks meaningfully to modern man” and suggested ways in which an established panel of his cronies and clones might bring their expertise to bear on this crushing problem of Orthodox irrelevance to American life. They would pull our worship up to date and make it more meaningful to the refined sensibilities of contemporary society.
"Growls and low rumblings were audible in the assembly. The fact that there was not a sudden, violent rush at the speaker’s podium is chiefly to the credit of Orthodox restraint and ascetical discipline."
http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-10-012-v
