According to some indirect information (we have clear statistics in this case, I'm afraid we don't), in recent years, among secular people In Russia, adherence to Catholics has increased, as, indeed, there has been some greater outflow to the CC of those who previously considered themselves Orthodox or even practiced their Orthodoxy. Among my acquaintances who practiced the Orthodox faith, there were at least three people who clearly defined their position and left the Orthodox Church for the Catholic one.
Why this happens can be argued for a long time, and there are several different reasons for this. I want to draw attention to only one of them, which lies on the surface. The content of the Orthodox Liturgy is no poorer and no less interesting than the Catholic Mass. Rather, on the contrary, if we take the liturgy of Basil the Great, then there are wonderful and deep prayers (and once it was served not 10 times a year, as it is now, but on all Sundays and holidays). In general, there is a huge potential in Orthodoxy, which has remained hidden for centuries and is not at all realized in practice. After all, what happens is not ideal, but in fact, on the very surface, if someone comes and starts comparing, how does the average Mass compare to the Orthodox liturgy?
In the Latin rite, the altar is open. Everything that the serving priest does and says is in full view, he is not fenced off from the worshipers by a partition from the iconostasis. For many people, this is a definite plus.
During the entire mass, the people participate in the service not passively, but quite actively. There are chants that are picked up by all those who pray (in practice, in our country it is only the Symbol of Faith and the Our Father, but just according to ancient tradition, everyone reads both among Catholics, like among the Greeks). The serving priest reads all the prayers of the Eucharist loudly, clearly, understandably, because Mass is celebrated in understandable Russian! What do we have in churches? Eucharistic prayers are still usually not read by priests aloud and for everyone, but are said in an undertone or simply to themselves, "in the old fashioned way", therefore only fragmentary final and unrelated exclamations are heard, and key readings are still performed in a semi-understandable, and sometimes completely incomprehensible Church Slavonic. Those people who are looking for understanding, who are looking for conscious prayer, will find it sooner, of course, in the Catholic Mass!
In addition, we can come across disparaging reviews that the Catholics have simplified everything, abolished it, and they serve masses in 20 minutes and so on and so forth. But in fact, this is not at all the case. The Mass usually lasts from 40 minutes to an hour, and an important part of it is the sermon, and not at the end of the service, but in the middle, after the Gospel has been read. At the same time, in France I had to see how, before the start, you can take leaflets with printed hymns of the service and readings from Holy Scripture, and these leaflets are available to everyone, as they are reproduced in sufficient quantities.
And, of course, during the mass, the worshipers not only stand, as usual at the Orthodox liturgy, but there are special benches that are arranged in such a way that at certain moments, when it is supposed to, people get up, and at others they take a kneeling position, and at the same time fall kneel not just on the floor, but on the wooden planks that are installed in front of each seat. In general, there are three positions during the Catholic Mass instead of only one standing position during the Orthodox liturgy. I emphasize that I am not writing about the charter (how it is possible or how it should be in theory with them or with us, and how this is usually not implemented), but how it happens in practice!
By the way, why shouldn't Orthodox priests and bishops follow the example of Patriarch Kirill, who pronounces all liturgical prayers loudly? What is this - laziness, inertia, a habit of what is already established before us? and then we sigh, why ritualism with superstition flourishes in our Orthodox life. Yes, starting from the same - from the relationship between the law of prayer (Lex Orandi) and the law of faith (Lex Credendi)! Those who do not need any search for meaning and conscious participation in divine services are more likely to remain in Orthodox life, and they will be satisfied with the highly reduced liturgy that exists in our parish life in most cases now. Those who will seek understanding and active participation will rather go to the Catholics and Protestants.
In general, it has been noticeable in recent years that His Holiness the Patriarch is trying to take something from Catholic practice and transfer it to ours. But, unfortunately, not the best features of Catholicism are transferred, which in itself have already been overcome at the moment. Oh, if, on the contrary, our patriarch would become simpler and more accessible, as Pope Francis is showing himself now! This would also play a positive role and would stop the outflow to Catholicism in Russia, which just intensified under the current Pope Francis.
The editors received the 3rd part of the research material of Metropolitan Alexander of Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky and Vishnevsky on the language of worship - as part of the discussion that is being conducted on the Kievan Rus website.
Doubts about the legitimacy or expediency of using in Orthodox worship Ukrainian language often argued that worship in ancient languages is a common practice in the Local Orthodox Churches. However, this statement needs to be clarified.
Ancient Eastern Patriarchates. Divine service on ancient Greek(which we wrote about above in connection with the practice of the Greek Orthodox Church) is celebrated today in the Ancient Eastern Patriarchates: Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch, as well as in the Cypriot, Helladic and autonomous Sinai Churches. At the same time, in Antioch And Jerusalem In patriarchates, the majority of whose flocks are ethnic Arabs, worship is also performed on Arabic(book language, which is an analogue of book English and is understandable to modern Arabs, since in Arabic-speaking countries this language is not only the sacred language of the Koran and worship, but is also used in the media, books, school textbooks etc.).
Nurturing the Orthodox diaspora in the United States and Western Europe, the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch sanction the use of national languages in worship, first of all, English. English is also the primary liturgical language of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA, English Orthodox Church in America), which, thanks to its fidelity to the ecclesiological principles of Protopresbyters Alexander Schmemann and John Meyendorff, in many respects managed to overcome the format of the "Church of the Russian Minority" and approach the format of the "local Church" of the American continent. On Finnish And Karelian languages, divine services are celebrated in the autonomous (as part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople) Orthodox Church of Finland, leading its history from the Valaam Monastery, whose monks preached Orthodoxy to the pagan tribes of Karelia in the Middle Ages.
An interesting linguistic situation in the ancient Alexandrian Patriarchate. “By the beginning of the 20th century, the number of Orthodox here was about one hundred thousand people (63 thousand Greeks, the rest are Orthodox Arabs of Syrian and Lebanese origin)” . However, thanks to active missionary activity on the African continent in the second half of the 20th century, the situation in the Patriarchate changed radically. In 1963, the Orthodox Christians of Uganda and Kenya entered the jurisdiction of this Local Church, and new dioceses were established in other African countries. As a result, today the Patriarchate has more than a million believers and is growing rapidly. It is important to note that the missionary activity of the Patriarchate of Alexandria is facilitated by its flexible, creative policy regarding liturgical languages. Divine services are held here not only on ancient Greek And Arabic, but also on contemporarylanguages African peoples . Thus, in particular, the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom translated and published by the Alexandrian Church in 50 African languages. In addition, books containing all the liturgies of the Orthodox Church, other sacraments and services are published in these languages.
IN GruzinskOth OrthodoxOth ChurchAnd there is an ancient tradition of translating liturgical texts into the national language. The first translations of liturgical books into Georgian have been known since the 5th century. The Georgian liturgical language has come a long way of development. Its modern edition was formed in the second half of the 18th - 19th centuries. At this time, the Orthodox Church in Georgia came under strong Russian influence. An important role in this process was played by Catholicos-Patriarch Anthony I (Bagrationi, 1720-1788). He carried out the editing of Georgian liturgical books according to Church Slavonic models that were in use in the Russian Empire. In particular, he edited the Missal, the Octoechos, the Book of Hours, and the Lenten Triodion. In these books, not only the headings changed, but also the texts themselves. New chants were added that were previously absent in the Georgian tradition. Despite numerous shortcomings in the books prepared for publication by Catholicos Anthony and his collaborators, it is this edition of liturgical texts that still prevails in the Georgian Orthodox Church.
The language of the liturgical books of the Georgian Orthodox Church is qualified as dOld Georgian. But it is more understandable for modern Georgians than, for example, the Church Slavonic language is for modern Ukrainians. The fact is that in the ancient Georgian language there is, first of all, archaic vocabulary. And Church Slavonic retains grammatical and syntactic norms that are not found in the modern Ukrainian language. There are almost no initiatives to translate the service from ancient Georgian into modern Georgian, since the Church does not see a special need for this.
The language situation in Serbstoth OrthodoxOth ChurchAnd has its own specifics. Traditionally, in the Serbian lands, worship was performed in Church Slavonic. Until the 18th century, a Serbian version of this language existed here (in Serbian scientific literature, as a rule, it is called the “Serbo-Slavic language”). However, in the 18th - early 19th centuries it was supplanted by the Russian version of the Church Slavonic language (or "Russian-Slavonic language", as it is called in Serbia). This happened as a result of powerful Russian influence on the church life of the Serbs. Liturgical books published in Russia are distributed in church communities both on the territory of the Serbian state and in Austria-Hungary and Montenegro. The majority of Serbian bishops and clergy (especially in the 19th century) were educated in the theological academies of the Russian Empire. All this leads to the gradual displacement of the “Serbo-Slavonic language” from the liturgical use.
At the end of the 19th century, there were already calls for the revival of the traditional liturgical language of the Serbs (“Serbo-Slavonic”), and for the translation of liturgical texts into modern Serbian. As a result, the first Serbian translations of liturgical texts appeared in the first half of the 20th century. For example, back in the 1930s, the well-known Serbian ascetic of piety, the Monk Justin Popovich, translated the liturgy of John Chrysostom into modern Serbian. By the beginning of the 1960s, the Missal, Small and Large Trebniks, and separate parts of Oktoikh had already been translated into Serbian. In the early 1960s, part of the Serbian bishops and clergy advocated the official introduction of the modern Serbian language into worship. As a result, in 1964 the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church officially sanctioned the liturgical use of the modern Serbian language. In fact, this meant the recognition of the Serbian and Church Slavonic languages as two equal languages of worship. This approach has been repeatedly confirmed by the supreme authority of the Serbian Church. In particular, on May 23, 1986, the Council of Bishops of the Serbian Church determined that the liturgical languages in it are Church Slavonic and modern Serbian. Today, each parish of the Serbian Church is free to choose one of these languages of worship. At the same time, church authorities are taking measures to ensure that the introduction of the Serbian language into worship does not lead to the complete displacement of Church Slavonic. Yes, July 20, 2012 His Holiness Patriarch Serbian Pavel issued an order that in all parishes on the territory of the Belgrade-Karlovatsk Archdiocese, the Divine Liturgy should be served at least once a month in Church Slavonic.
Over the past decades, work has been carried out in Serbia on the translation of liturgical books. Although there is still no complete corpus of liturgical books in the Serbian language. Depending on the locality and characteristics of parish life, either Serbian or Church Slavonic may be used in worship. You can often see how both languages coexist in the same worship. Some texts are read (sung) in Serbian, while others are in Church Slavonic.
Romanian Orthodox Church. Until the 17th century, in Moldavia and Wallachia (from which the Romanian state was formed in the 19th century), Church Slavonic. The work of translating Holy Scripture and liturgical texts into Romanian began as early as the 17th century, since the local population did not understand Church Slavonic well. TO early XVIII century, thanks to the work of the outstanding hierarch, publisher and church writer, Hieromartyr Anfim of Iberia, Metropolitan of the Ugro-Walachian, the translation of the service was completed. In fact, Saint Anfim revived Christian self-consciousness in Wallachia and Moldavia. Since then and to this day, divine services in the Romanian Orthodox Church are performed on literary Romanian. Since for several centuries the Slavic language was used here as a liturgical language, there are many Slavic words in the modern Romanian church vocabulary. It should be noted that in order to replace obsolete and incomprehensible words and expressions in Romania, liturgical texts are regularly edited. This work is carried out by the Biblical Institute of the Romanian Patriarchate, which prepares liturgical texts for publication. The last edition was carried out in 2009, so that ordinary Romanians perfectly understand their liturgical language.
BulgarianIOrthodoxIChurchov. The beginning of translations of liturgical texts into modern Bulgarian and their use in worship dates back at least to the beginning of the 20th century, when Metropolitan Boris of Ohrid (Georgiev, 1875-1938) published Trebnik (1908) and the Service Book with parallel Church Slavonic and Bulgarian texts (1910). The decision on the desirability of worship in the modern Bulgarian language was taken by the IV Church and People's Council (July 2-4, 1997), which issued a resolution: "Encourage the use of modern Bulgarian in worship."
At present, in most churches of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, both Church Slavonic and Bulgarian are present in worship, and these languages are distributed, as a rule, as follows: what is read (and, above all, Holy Scripture, i.e. the Gospel, Apostle and proverbs), sounds in Bulgarian, what is sung is in Church Slavonic. This way of coexistence of the two languages is explained primarily by the fact that almost no hymnography has been translated into Bulgarian (Mineya, Oktoikh, Triod [Lenten and Colored]). As in the 18th-19th centuries, Russian editions of these liturgical books are used today in Bulgarian churches. The described state of affairs is violated in some cases: for example, in Sofia there are temples where divine services are performed exclusively in the national language; at the same time, there are parishes where the Church Slavonic language predominates (however, Scripture is read almost everywhere in Bulgarian).
feature Polish Orthodox Churches is that most of her flock are ethnic Belarusians and Ukrainians. Until the 1920s, the Orthodox population in Poland belonged to the Russian Church. Therefore, the traditional language of worship here was Church Slavonic. But in the 1920s and 30s, largely under the pressure of the state, which sought to get rid of the Russian heritage in Poland, the process of “nationalization” began. church life. Already in 1922, the Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Church in Poland decided to introduce the Polish language into the educational process in theological seminaries and to encourage preaching in Polish. Shortly after the Orthodox Church in Poland received autocephaly from the Patriarchate of Constantinople (1924), Metropolitan Dionisy (Waledinsky) of Warsaw created a commission whose duties included translating liturgical texts into Polish. However, by the mid-1930s, the activity of this commission was not particularly active.
In 1935, a new translation commission was created, which included professors from the Orthodox Theological Studio of Warsaw University, as well as representatives of the Orthodox military clergy (they were subordinate not only to the church, but also to the state authorities; the mandatory introduction of worship in Polish in military churches was a requirement of the state ). Soon the first Polish translations of liturgical texts began to appear, which were used primarily in military churches. The state, when appointing Orthodox military chaplains, paid special attention to their loyalty to the Polish state and fluency in the Polish language. Therefore, in fact, it was the Orthodox chaplains who played the main role in the introduction of the Polish language into worship in the 1930s.
It should be noted that in the 1920s and 30s, as part of the “nationalization” of church life in Volhynia, work was carried out to translate the Holy Scriptures and liturgical texts into Ukrainian as well.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Orthodox Church in Poland almost did not translate liturgical texts. Therefore, today in most parishes in Poland, the Church Slavonic language is preserved. At the same time, certain parts of the service are heard in Polish (for example, certain litanies, the Apostle, the Gospel, etc.). However, there are also communities that celebrate services entirely in Polish. For example, in Warsaw, worship in Polish is performed in the chapel of St. George (rector - priest Heinrich Paprocki). With the blessing of Metropolitan Savva of Warsaw and All Poland, this parish also conducts active translation work. Many liturgical texts in Polish are posted on the parish website.
Particular attention should be paid to the language situation in Albanian Orthodox Church. In the Middle Ages, divine services on the territory of Albania were conducted in Greek. At the same time, ethnic Albanians did not understand the Greek language well. By the beginning of the Ottoman conquest in Albania, the Holy Scriptures and worship had not been translated into the national language. As a result, the national Christian culture turned out to be pretty weak. In addition, Albania was the sphere of the traditional struggle between the See of Rome and Constantinople. The ratio between Orthodox and Catholics in Albania in the XIV-XV centuries was approximately fifty to fifty percent. The absence of a strong national church culture and the constant confrontation between Eastern and Western Christians, according to modern researchers, became the reasons for the mass Islamization of Albanians. During the Ottoman period (throughout the 16th-17th centuries), the vast majority of Albanians (unlike Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians) converted to Islam.
The first attempts to translate the Holy Scripture into Albanian date back only to the 18th-19th centuries. After the creation of an independent Albanian state (which received international recognition in 1914), a movement began among Orthodox Albanians for the autocephaly of their own Church, an integral part of which was the desire to introduce the state language into worship. In particular, in the 1920s, the well-known Albanian church and political figure, Bishop Fan (Feofan) Noli, translated liturgical and other church texts into Albanian and insisted on introducing the Albanian language into worship instead of Greek. However, from the second half of the 1940s, the communist era began in the history of Albania, distinguished by cruel persecution of the Church. At this time, the translation of the service was not carried out.
In the 1990s, the revival of the Orthodox Church in Albania began after its almost complete destruction during the communist period. Since 1992, His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios (Yanulatos) has been the Primate of the Albanian Church. Being an ethnic Greek, however, in his ministry in Albania he staked on the development of Albanian church traditions. As a result, a broad translation and publishing program was initiated. Today, in the Albanian Orthodox Church, mainly Greek and modern Albanian are used in worship. The choice of the language of worship depends on the ethnic composition of the parish. Thanks to the well-thought-out missionary concept of Archbishop Anastassy, the active development of Orthodoxy in Albania has continued over the past two decades. In fact, a new Albanian church tradition was born, an integral part of which is worship in the Albanian language.
Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Eastern Christianity was brought to the territory of modern Czech Republic and Slovakia by the holy brothers Cyril and Methodius in the 9th century. But later the Western rite won here. Therefore, Orthodox worship in the Czech Republic was almost unknown until the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, Russian Orthodox churches appeared in the Czech Republic in Prague, Karlovy Vary, Marianske Lazne and Frantiskovy Lazne. Since that time, ethnic Czechs, brought up in the Catholic tradition, began to convert to Orthodoxy. They hardly understand Church Slavonic. That is why, at the end of the 19th century, Russian priests in Prague began to make the first translations of liturgical texts into Czech.
Orthodoxy in the Czech Republic developed most actively in the 1920s and 30s. It was then that Hieromartyr Gorazd (Pavlik), Bishop of Czech and Moravian-Silesian, translated the body of the main liturgical texts into modern Czech. He also developed original chants for church voices, aimed at ethnic Czechs. This is how the modern practice of Czech Orthodox worship was born, which takes into account both the liturgical traditions of other Local Churches and the peculiarities of the Czech mentality. Today, worship in the Czech Republic can be performed both in modern Czech and in other languages. In particular, Church Slavonic is used in parishes uniting ethnic Russians. There are also Romanian-speaking parishes.
As for Slovakia, here the linguistic situation in the Orthodox Church has its own specifics. The place of compact residence of the Orthodox population is Eastern Slovakia (the so-called Pryashevshchina, bordering on Transcarpathian Ukraine). Here, Church Slavonic with a special local pronunciation is preserved in worship. The Slovak language as a liturgical language is not widely used here.
As you can see, modern languages are used in worship in almost all Local Orthodox Churches. At the same time, the nature of their use is determined both by the peculiarity of local liturgical traditions and by the specifics of the current state of affairs in each individual Church, in particular, by the missionary tasks facing it.
It should be noted that the non-recognition autocephaly The Orthodox Church in America (this autocephaly was granted by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970) by the Patriarchate of Constantinople hinders the process of consolidating Orthodoxy in America and creates certain diplomatic difficulties for the OCA, but does not violate the grace-filled life of this Church and does not interfere with its main mission: preaching Gospel and the building up of the Eucharistic life.
Alexandrian Orthodox Church // Local Orthodox Churches: Sat. - M.: Publishing House of the Sretensky Monastery, 2004. - C. 28.
Cm.: Orthodox Encyclopedia. Volume 12. - M., 2006. - S. 88-92.
- [Illustration: Ancient "Euchologion" in Arabic].
- [Illustration: December 6, 2015 in the Patriarchal Church of St. Nicholas in Cairo, the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa Theodore II performed the chitoria of Bishop Athanasius of Kisum and Western Kenya (in the world - Amos Akunda Masaba)].
- [Illustr.: Rev. Iustin Popovich, translator Divine Liturgy into modern Serbian].
- [Illustr.: Mosaic image of the Holy Martyr. Anfim of Iversky, whose labors translated liturgical texts into Romanian].
- [Illustr.: Boris (Georgiev), Metropolitan of Ohrid. Worked on compiling the synodal missal, took part in editing the synodal translation Bulgarian bible. Together with Mr. Gerasim Strumitsky translated the Bulgarian Missal (1908), compiled and published the collections “A Christian in St. Liturgy" (1935) and "Prayer Treasure" (1937)].
- [Illustr.: Holy martyr. Gorazd (Pavlik), Bishop of Czech and Moravian-Silesian, who translated the body of the main liturgical texts into modern Czech].
Russian language in additional Catholic worship: pro et contra
The public and bureaucratic debate of the mid-1860s about the replacement of the Polish language by Russian in the Catholic liturgy (not to be confused with the Latin liturgy, which was not encroached upon) is a vivid example of a discussion, the subject of which, as it unfolds, increasingly turns into an occasion for statements on other topical issues. Before, in December 1869, Alexander II finally approved the decision of a special committee allowing believers of "foreign confessions" to listen to sermons and offer prayers in Russian, the informal and official discussion of this subject passed through several phases. Considerations about the prospects of Russian-speaking Catholicism were by no means always derived from the experience of acquaintance with the religious life of local Catholics. They reflected some a priori constructions of the relationship between confession and language in the definition of Russianness or served as an allegorical conceptualization of general imperial problems. But that's what makes these debates interesting: their analysis allows us to reconstruct the various "valences" of the "Catholic" question on the western periphery of the empire, to see the various broad contexts in which it could be included.
There is no doubt that the editor-publisher of Moskovskie Vedomosti M.N. Katkov, one of the most influential nationalist journalists of that time. It was he who, with the greatest enthusiasm, developed the idea, innovative for Russia in the 1860s, that the confession of Orthodoxy is not the main and exhaustive characteristic of Russianness, that representatives of other confessions can, under certain conditions, claim the title of Russian. It seems that for the first time he spoke in full voice about the depolonization of Catholicism in August 1863, when he proposed to invite the Russian Catholic emigrant V.S. Pecherin (which, in turn, caused an angry rebuke from M.P. Pogodin, a supporter of the concept of Russian as, first of all, Orthodox). Katkov urged "not to expel Russian people who have become members of a church, although alien to us, but recognized by us." Subsequently, the topic of Russian Catholic emigration did not appear on the pages of Moskovskie Vedomosti, however, the article that mentioned the name of Pecherin already contained one of the main ideas that the Moscow publicist would later defend when discussing the depolonization of the church. This idea was that the fear of Catholic proselytism in Russian is completely groundless. First, there is no doubt that few of the Russian people would betray the Orthodox Church, even with the most complete religious freedom. There is nothing to say about the common people, if only we ourselves did not take it into our heads to give them into the wrong hands. Renegades could only find themselves in the educated classes.
Much more dangerous than Catholic proselytism, Katkov considered the spreading radical teachings - "the proselytism of unbelief and denial." (But note that, despite his willingness to recognize the emigrant Pecherin as a fellow citizen, Katkov paid tribute to the traditional idea of a convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism as a cosmopolitan aristocrat, a “renegade”.)
Secondly, the introduction of the Russian language among Catholics, even if only in the sermon and catechism (there is still no mention of worship in this article) was conceived as part of a broader program for revising confessional policy, which should also cover the Orthodox Church: “... our clergy, being placed in favorable conditions for the religious education of society, saving and protecting the religious feeling, thereby it will be more correct than any other methods to tie people to the Orthodox Church and prevent any propaganda of other faiths. Below we will see that the appearance of a renewed Catholicism—an external irritant, so to speak—was pinned on by those of the Vilnius activists who deplored the “apathy” and lack of self-activity in the Orthodox clergy.
If the state allows different religions within its borders, recognizes them, guarantees their freedom ... then, necessarily acquiring one or another alien language for them, it elevates it to the power of a political principle ... The first consequence will be that religion ... itself will become a political principle, and then ambiguous and false provisions are necessarily formed in the state. Between its citizens, equally enjoying the fullness of its rights (is it worth paying the reader's attention to Katkov's polemical exaggeration of the progressiveness of the legal regime of the Russian Empire? - M.D.), special national groups are formed, determined in their nationality by religious beliefs and prone to mutual alienation not only in church, but also in state relations ...
It is easy to see that Katkov, either in a polemical impulse or on the basis of an internal conviction, assigned the importance of the language of worship to the significance of the most important, almost self-sufficient factor in nation-building. “A Pole,” he wrote, “is not one who can or likes to speak Polish; otherwise we would have to call many Russians French because they speak more French than Russian. The essence of the question lies not in who usually speaks what language, but in what language serves as a necessary organ in the matter of religion. According to this logic, Catholic worship in Polish served to Polonize non-Poles, Lutheran in German served to Germanize non-Germans, etc. conspiracy notes) introduced into society to encourage ethnic separatism.
One of the prerequisites for such a view was the underestimation of self-reliance, characteristic of secular nationalism. speakers religious consciousness, practices of piety, religious feelings and habits. If Katkov wrote a lot and pompously about the need to make the service understandable for ordinary believers of a particular denomination, then the main goal was not to promote the assimilation of religious truths, but to develop a more conscious, civic type of loyalty and law-abiding. The editor of Moskovskie Vedomosti considered ardent piety and militant religious proselytism to be a legacy of the distant past - the era of battles for faith:
Let them not tell us about the ecclesiastical fanaticism of our Polish Catholic clergy! In general, we doubt that at the present time ecclesiastical fanaticism in itself and without any admixture could be a passion driving events; nowhere do we see its manifestations on a large and dangerous scale, while, on the contrary, national-political ideas act fanatically even in the bowels of the clergy.
At present, according to Katkov, religious "fanaticism" can only have an artificial character. The Polish movement was just for him a blatant example of the unnatural symbiosis of religion and nationalism. Resorting to overexposure and omissions, Katkov argued that the “Polish national feeling” would have survived the Commonwealth for a short time, if not for the unreasonable actions of the Russian authorities, who preserved the Polish language in Catholic worship. Church institutions, and they alone, have served - developing his metaphor of "Polish leaven" in Catholicism - as a test of Polish nationalism. Moreover, the fermentation process that took place, for the description of which Katkov did not skimp on pejorative rhetoric, had a negative impact on the Catholic religion itself:
This strength [of the "Polish feeling"] is nothing but a perverted religious feeling, like a religion that has fallen into the wrong place. If the Polish state is a chimera, then the Roman church cannot be called a chimera. This is a real power, and this power has acquired in Russia a meaning that it has nowhere else, the meaning of the Polish nationality. This is where this extravagant, ugly phenomenon, full of false mysticism, came from, which is now called the Polish nationality. This is where the pernicious charm of this feeling and the passion of its impulse come from. ... The Roman Catholic Church has always been prone to the abuse of religious feeling, but the harmful effect of Catholicism in Russia comes not so much from itself, but from the position in which it was placed by our own governmental system. ... The Roman Church of the Western Territory has turned entirely into Polish patriotism. ... From here arose the fantastic teaching of messianism, from here these revolutionary masses, from here this image of Poland, which suffered for sins human race and destined to be resurrected.
Katkov cannot be denied the sequence with which he brought his thesis to its logical conclusion. The role of Catholicism in the development of Polish nationalism, obvious to any observer, he exaggerated to the scale of a single, exceptional factor. According to Katkov, the preservation of the Polish language in Catholic worship after the divisions of the Commonwealth was not the result of the fact that the Russian authorities tacitly (and the further, the less willingly) recognized the existence of a historically established Polish and / or Polonophile ethno-cultural community, but an action that led to the artificial construction this community. Such an interpretation completely ignored the fact that the Catholic Church had already gained a noticeable influence in the Polish movement. after after how the authorities dealt a blow to his secular forces, imposed bans and restrictions on the use of the Polish language in administration, judiciary, education, etc.
The diminution of the viability and historical heritage of Polish nationalism was also manifested in the straightforwardness with which Katkov proclaimed the task of “spreading Catholicism” and almost the slogan: “A Catholic can also be Russian.” He demonstrated a positivist conviction in the possibility of separating in one fell swoop the sacred from the profane, the confessional from the national, in particular, once and for all to delimit the traditional, trustworthy "core" of confession from superficial political "impurities". “... Free the Catholic faith from false political admixture and take away false religious power from the Polish nationality,” - this is how he formulated in July 1866 the essence of the proposed reform. Three years later, on the eve of the discussion of this problem in the highest governmental circles, he again called for the distillation of some eidotic Catholicism: “It is incomparably better that Roman Catholic rites and rites strictly correspond to their general type ... rather than bearing the imprint of local features, often as many anti-canonical , how many and anti-government. Purely Roman Catholicism is incomparably better… than Polish Catholicism.”
Although some of Katkov's ill-wishers, reading these and similar declarations, were ready to suspect him of seditious predilection for "Latinism", in reality Catholicism was not a matter of concern, but one of the tools in Katkov's nation-building project. Katkov's ideal is a supra-confessional community of subjects of the strong and reformist monarchy of Alexander II, united not only by loyalty to the throne, but also by a single civil language, belonging to a single civilizational space. And it was the translation into Russian of various religious literature of non-Orthodox confessions - Catholic in the first place, but also Lutheran, Reformed, Jewish, Muslim - he considered the most important means of integrating influence on non-Russian-speaking or nominally Russian, but deprived of a clear self-identification of the population. The Russian language under the arches of non-Orthodox churches was a royal gift, standing on a par with the Great Reforms.
Of course, Katkov would not have been Katkov if he had not already tried at an early stage of his publicistic campaign to coordinate the project of de-Polonization of Catholicism with the actions and priorities of at least some of the highest dignitaries of the empire. First of all, he tried to enlist the support of the Minister of Internal Affairs P.A. Valuev - an opponent of increased repression against Catholicism; the intermediary between them was the official of the Department of Religious Affairs of Foreign Confessions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs A.M. Gezen, a Russified German, a Catholic and a Polonophobe (just the day before he received this appointment - it seems, at the suggestion of the same Katkov). In September 1865, Gezen introduced himself to Valuev and already at the first meeting had a confidential conversation with the minister, about which he hastened to inform his informal patron in Moscow:
I answered him that you (i.e. Katkov. - M.D.) find that the solution of the religious question in the Western Territory is the most important step towards the solution of the entire Polish question, and that the minister who embarks on this matter will thereby erect an indestructible monument to himself in the history of our fatherland; that you consider him the only statesman who understands and is able to understand the full importance of this matter, which even Muravyov did not understand. He really enjoyed all this...
At the same time, Gezen managed to talk in detail on the topic of Russian-speaking Catholicism with his immediate superior, the director of the DDDII E.K. Sievers. Apparently, from Gezen's epistolary report about this conversation, Katkov learned about the existence of a half-forgotten, but not officially repealed ban on the use of the Russian language in non-Orthodox denominations. If the report is to be believed, Sievers (whose "beliefs ... are in perfect agreement with ours," Gesen stated) blamed the "Polishization of all Russian Catholics" not so much on the Poles, but on the "fanatical ultra-Orthodox party" active in which Sievers' predecessor as director DDDII V.V. Skripitsyn: after “some Catholic priest in Tsarskoe Selo said… a sermon in Russian”, Skripitsyn, not limited to reprimanding the ill-fated preacher, obtained from Nicholas I the publication of the said ban. Gesen's information is accurate enough. It was about an incident in 1848: a single sermon in Russian, delivered in the Tsarskoye Selo Roman Catholic Church by its Dominican rector B. Onikhimovsky, caused a report by the Minister of the Interior, L.A. Perovsky to Nicholas I, which stated that such an "encroachment ... Onikhimovsky on the rights of the clergy of the dominant Church can have harmful consequences ...". The emperor’s resolution read: “Forbid in Russian, can preach sermons at all foreign languages". In the future, this resolution served as a precedent for solving such incidents and eventually received a broad interpretation.
I repeat that Katkov, most likely, did not know before that there was a formal basis for not allowing the Russian language in the church. The information that came in came in very handy: the skillful polemicist turned to his advantage what, it would seem, should have discouraged the supporter of the Russian-language service in the church, church, synagogue and mosque. Already after receiving a letter from Gesen, Katkov begins to interpret the predominance of the Polish language in the Catholic service in the Western Territory as a direct result of a relatively recent ban imposed on the Russian language (as if Onikhimovsky was not a rare exception, but one of the many Catholic clerics who were ready to preach and serve in Russian and who were gagged in 1848). In other words, the historically established cultural and linguistic situation in this confession was presented as an anomaly, which by the force of things would have been swept out of the way long ago, if not for the short-sighted order of the government. Thus, Katkov found a way to depict the introduction of the Russian language into the church not as an innovation imposed from above, but as a gift and beneficence - a long-awaited response to the aspirations of the mass of believers.
Katkov, as we see, launched a campaign in the press for the "deployment of Catholicism" with an eye on the mood and circulation of opinions in the highest bureaucracy. In his field of vision were both the central and regional administrations. The bureaucratic correspondence on this problem that began between Vilna and St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1865 - almost simultaneously with the first steps of Gezen in the DDDII - helped Katkov (who quickly learned about it through his own channels) to more accurately determine the group of the population that was to become the main object of the planned measure.
Initially, Katkov, it seems, still hoped that the proposal to depolonize the church would meet at least some sympathy among the Catholic nobles of the Western Territory, induce them to remember their own “Russian roots”. Thus, he set as an example for the current generation a group of Vitebsk Catholic nobles who, several decades earlier, petitioned for teaching their children in state educational institutions the law of God in Russian. However, there were no followers of these voluntary depolonizers among the gentry in the 1860s, except for uninfluential singles like the above-mentioned Despot-Zenovich, who called on the authorities to make Catholics happy by translating the liturgy from Latin into Russian. Finally, in November 1865, a local initiative to depolonize Catholicism made itself known. True, she acted from a somewhat unexpected side and offered an unorthodox recipe for replacing the Polish language, and therefore was immediately taken under suspicion by both secular and Orthodox spiritual authorities. The Vicar General of the Mogilev Roman Catholic Archdiocese, Bishop Joseph Maximilian Stanevsky, submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs a petition from the rectors of the parishes in the Vitebsk and Mogilev provinces for permission to translate into Belorussian the language of the collection of Polish sermons by M. Belobrzhesky and A. Filipetsky is the only one that, after 1863, the imperial administration allowed to use in the Western Territory. Stanevsky pointed out that "spiritual teachings in the said dialect would be more useful for the people than sermons in the Polish language, especially since in the churches of the aforementioned parishes sermons were always delivered in the Belarusian language ...". The bishop kept silent about the possibility of preaching in literary Russian. This silence could be interpreted in two ways - as a fundamental recognition of the Belarusian language as independent and separate from Russian, or, on the contrary, as a simple understatement: they say, who doesn’t know that Belarusian is just a local dialect of the single Russian language, that’s why we offer it .
P.A. Valuev informed about the content of the episcopal letter to K.P. Kaufman, and he attached serious importance to both the emphasis on the term "Belarusian language" (instead of the consistent use of the word "adverb"), and the lack of clarification of the issue of the relationship between Belarusian and Russian. How strong the impetus for Kaufman to make his own decision about the Russian language in Catholicism was Stanevsky's appeal can be seen from a comparison of his reply to Valuev dated November 27, 1865, with a somewhat earlier reply dated October 21, 1865, to Katkov's letter. Katkov sent a policy letter to the Governor-General, where, among other burningly necessary reform measures, he named the introduction of the Russian language into Catholic sermons. Then, in October, Kaufman answered Katkov at length and respectfully, but refrained from making a final conclusion on the question of depolonization of the church. The governor-general's reasoning reflected a mixture of smart managerial arrogance with traditional cultural and religious phobias: “My one order to speak sermons in Russian would be enough to completely and immediately oust the Polish language from churches. ... [However] the very direction of education of the Roman Catholic clergy is more missionary than pastoral-serving; the order to speak sermons in Russian, in the native language of the people, will it not give an instrument of the Russian word, unprecedented in the hands of the Roman Church, for the dissemination of the Latin idea ... ". But a little more than a month later, after getting acquainted with Stanevsky's message, the danger of Catholic proselytism in Russian receded in Kaufman's thoughts before the outlined threat of the elevation of the "Belarusian dialect" to an inappropriate height. “... My personal opinion tends to ensure that sermons are delivered, as well as taught ... catechetical teachings are not in Belarusian, but in Russian,” Kaufman wrote to Valuev, raising the question of the choice of language with an edge. He considered it possible to implement this measure in all the provinces of the North-Western Territory, except for Kovno: “... until the people have mastered the Russian language, it is possible to allow sermons in the Zhmud language in those places where the people do not know another language ... ". The Governor-General expressed the wish that the Holy Synod, for its part, would quickly consider the proposal for Russian-language sermons for Catholics (this subject was subject to consideration by the Synod insofar as it was considered to offend the interests of the "dominant church" - four years later this practice of the Synod intervening in the affairs of others confessions will criticize Katkov).
The Synod sent the received documents for review to the heads of the Orthodox dioceses of the Western Territory. None of the seven hierarchs who responded to the request by the summer of 1866 found any support for the idea of Belarusian sermons. In addition to references to lexical poverty, the lack of grammatical standardization, the dominance of dialects and the abundance of polonisms in the Belarusian “dialect”, suitable only for “household and agricultural use” (Metropolitan Arseniy of Kiev), the bishops also cited the reason that its cultivation could finally split off the Belarusians -Catholics, and in the worst case, Orthodox from the "great Russian family." Bishop Leonty of Podolsk and Bratslav drew the attention of the Synod to the precedent of Ukrainophilism: “[Separation of Belarusians] may be at one time or another, one way or another desirable for the enemies of Russia… [Such isolation] was expressed in the South-West until recently in the so-called Khokhlomani ideas” . At the same time, six out of seven bishops agreed in principle with the need to abandon the Polish language in Catholic sermons, offering Russian as a replacement, as Kaufman had previously done.
The only opponent of such a replacement and a supporter of maintaining the status quo in this area turned out to be the most respected and authoritative of the interrogated bishops, Metropolitan Joseph Semashko of Lithuania (which greatly upset Kaufman). Joseph believed that the risk of creating favorable conditions for “Roman propaganda” by such a reform (“... by studying the Russian religious language, [Catholics] will be able to act on all Russian Orthodox ... [They] will spread to all corners of Russia to the detriment of Orthodoxy”) does not pay off its supposed positive effect - the Russification of non-Russians or insufficiently Russians:
... the only goal for which this measure seems to have been devised, i.e., the Russification of the people professing the Roman Catholic faith, will not be achieved. Priests will preach and teach the law of God in Russian only where the people speak Russian and, consequently, do not require Russification; where this Russification would be useful, i.e. between Letts, Litvins and Zhmudins, they will teach the law of God in the local dialects of these foreigners.
Joseph, thus, defiantly did not share the view already announced by Katkov and spreading in the bureaucracy of Belarusian Catholics as a specific separate group of the population, demanding special attention due to its "destruction". From his point of view, this “people” “speaks Russian” as they breathe, only they listen to church services not in Russian. (It is no coincidence that he did not say a word about the proposal to introduce the Belarusian language into sermons, as if he saw no difference between (Great) Russian and Belarusian.) The clearly exaggerated description of the threat of Russian-speaking Catholic proselytism "in all corners of Russia" should have stopped talk of the need depolonization of Belarusian Catholics, a topic that, as Joseph could repeatedly see, easily entailed reproaches by the former Uniate clergy for condoning the Polonization of those Belarusians who nominally belonged to Orthodoxy as well. The internal contradictions of the self-identification of the former Uniate bishop, and now an Orthodox metropolitan (who until the end of his life kept apart in the Russian Orthodox clergy), undoubtedly, affected the attitude of Joseph to the initiatives of the new generation of “Russians”.
In June 1866, having studied the responses of local bishops, the Synod formulated its response to Kaufman's proposal. According to the attitude of Comrade Chief Prosecutor Yu.V. Tolstoy (the Chief Prosecutor Count Dmitry Andreevich Tolstoy himself was then absorbed in the affairs of the second department he headed shortly before - the Ministry of Public Education) Kaufman of June 16, the Synod, in the form of "greater rapprochement of the Western Territory with Russia", did not object in principle to Catholic sermons in Russian, but on condition that these same sermons are not published in Russian translation. The argument was the alleged accessibility of such publications to the "common people", vulnerable to the temptation of "Latin propaganda". In other words, the Synod took the very position that revolted Katkov so much at the similarity with the "police" defense of the truth of the Orthodox dogma.
The draft of the reciprocal attitude, which Kaufman sketched on June 29, 1866, on the margins of the document received from the Synod, would probably have satisfied Katkov if he had had the opportunity to read it. The Governor-General directly stated that Tolstoy's recall "expresses the almost complete refusal of the Holy Synod to introduce the Russian language" into the religious life of Catholics. He recalled that the collection of Polish sermons by Belobrzhesky and Filipetsky is the only legal source in the Western Territory of homiletic speeches by the Catholic clergy: to allow a priest to translate himself would mean to allow him to compose and say whatever he pleases…”. The main condition imposed by the Synod did not at all fit in with the extended version of the depolonization of the church, already put forward by the middle of 1866 in Vilna (in the Audit Commission for the Roman Catholic Clergy): , prayers, etc., that is, everything that is pronounced in churches not in Latin, but in Polish.” Now it was a question of replacing the language of additional worship as a whole, since in 1864-1865 there was already a transition to Russian in the teaching of the Catholic law of God in secondary and primary educational institutions of the region. To convince the Synod, Kaufman planned to include in his response a paragraph about this pedagogical experience: “... even on Zhmud, students in public schools, who attend schools for the second year, are taught the law of God by the Roman Catholic clergy in Russian.”
The preparation of the final text of the answer to the Synod took much more time than the preparation of the draft. This happened because it was at this time that among the members of the Audit Commission, on whose expertise Kaufman depended, disagreements sharply escalated regarding the advisability of depolonization of the church service, opponents of the introduction of the Russian language launched a counterattack (see more below). As a result, Kaufman completely removed from the text the conclusion about the need to print both sermons and hymnography in Russian, along with prayers, removed the wording about his fundamental disagreement with the Synod and limited himself to a short notice that the Audit Commission was continuing to discuss the matter and that it was timely will inform St. Petersburg of her final considerations.
Katkov, unlike Kaufman, did not so easily give in to doubts on this issue. For him, the interest of a part of the Catholic clergy in the transition from Polish to Belarusian in sermons (in Katkowski, of course, “dialect” or “jargon”) was an alarming signal, irrefutable proof that the question of the church language for the Belarusian common people catholic faith is closely connected with the problem of preserving the Great Russian-Little Russian-Belarusian trinity. Preventing the threat of a schism through mass transfers of Belarusian Catholics to Orthodoxy initially did not correspond to Katkov's ideal of a national community where different confessions coexist peacefully. And the excesses of "converting" that scandalously came out by the middle of 1866 further strengthened his commitment to the project of Russian-speaking Catholicism. Developing the previously tested method of argumentation, Katkov built arguments in favor of this project on the presumption of some kind of ideal religiosity, completely isolated from other facets of the individual's self-consciousness: “Historical vicissitudes took away these people (Belarusian Catholics) from the Orthodox Church. – M.D.); but their current generation is not guilty of apostasy: it was born in the faith of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. These people are just as alien to our church as the inhabitants of France or Italy, but nevertheless they are Russians, and, besides religion, in all other respects they differ in nothing from their brethren of the Orthodox faith, who often live peacefully with them in the same villages. In other words, Katkov, like Metropolitan Joseph (but for completely different reasons), defiantly emphasized the Russianness of Belarusians, in the light of which any local specificity looked like a variation on a common, all-Russian theme. According to Katkov, the Russian self-consciousness of the Catholic peasants in these provinces was a historical given, the irrevocable recognition of which is still hindered mainly by prayers, hymns and sermons in the supposedly incomprehensible Polish language. In one of his later articles, he put into the mouths of these people, who were mostly illiterate peasants, a passage breathing civic pathos, which a university graduate would not be ashamed of:
You wanted us to become Russian: your wish was fulfilled, at least in the sense that we do not know any other language than Russian. You wanted us to forget the Polish language, and now we have forgotten it: our children, who studied in your schools, did not hear a single Polish word there. But we confess the faith of our fathers and bring up our children in it; we cannot give up our faith, but this is not required. …At your insistence, we have forgotten the language, which until now has been the organ of our spiritual life. Give us for this the language of our fatherland; give us the right to free, determined by the general laws of the state, the use of the Russian language for the needs of our spiritual life ...
Among Vilna officials directly involved in the affairs of the Catholic Church, Katkov's ideas met with a response, but the construction of a collective figure of the "Russian Catholic" interested them much less than the specific tasks of discrediting Catholicism. One of the main enthusiasts of the translation of Catholic additional services and prayers into Russian was A.P. Vladimirov, a graduate of the Moscow Theological Academy and in 1866 only an employee of the Public Library in Vilna. The example of Vladimirov is indicative of the “anti-subordination” style of Kaufman’s relationship with his subordinates, which I have already noted more than once: the unknown librarian, who had only recently arrived for service in Vilna, was easily invited, along with persons much older than him, to evenings in the governor-general’s house, where he had the opportunity to openly express their opinion about the prospects for the Russification of the region. Subsequently, Vladimirov claimed that it was he, alone, who "created" the plan for Russian-speaking Catholicism and prompted Kaufman to include the corresponding item on the agenda of the Audit Commission. Contemporaries rightly pointed out the share of boasting in Vladimirov's stories (where, for example, Katkov's role in popularizing this idea back in 1863 is hushed up). However, the fact that Vladimirov's note dated January 25, 1866 served as a direct impetus for Kaufman's order is a fact confirmed by the clerical work of the Audit Commission.
However, in his memoirs, written fifteen years later, Vladimirov never quoted this note. It is unlikely that the only reason for this was the possible absence of at least drafts in his archive. It was difficult to reconcile a number of the final provisions of the note with the sublime self-portrait of the memoirist - a kind of knight without fear and reproach, who, at the risk of making strong opponents for himself, opposed the civilized project of depolonization of Catholicism to the campaign of "forced or deceitful" conversions to Orthodoxy. In an essay published in 1885 in Russkaya Starina, Vladimirov recalls with mirthless irony how, in 1866, when he joined a friendly circle of Vilna officials, “he found himself at a real fair, at which at that time the main product was “appeals”” , and calls himself a "resolute supporter" of "complete religious freedom in the state, excluding all means of circulation, except for internal conviction ...". In a word, the author of the memoirs allegedly already in the mid-1860s was quite familiar with the understanding of religious conversion as a voluntary spiritual experience of the individual.
What do we find in the original note submitted by Vladmirov to Kaufman in January 1866? Vladimirov's rhetoric is indeed in tune with the canons of nationalism of the middle of the 19th century, with his emphasis on the priority of language, rather than dogma, in the process of forming national consciousness: “... the Polish language for the Catholic population of the Northwestern Territory is sacred language is the language of his highest, most important departures, the language of his communication with God ... This feeling (“reverence” - M.D.) from the language should naturally be transferred to the people speaking them. If Katkov declared that the “Russian” Catholics in these provinces were people with a generally Russian self-consciousness (which he doubted internally), Vladimirov believed that the goal of the Russification of church services was not so much to consolidate the Russianness of these Catholics. how much to wrest them, still far from completely Russian, from the embrace of Polishness: “... as long as the Catholic population of the North-Western Territory will use the Polish language in their worship, until then it [the people] will have an irresistible attraction to Poland, will consider themselves Poles ... ".
However, having paid tribute to the progressive concept of the nation as an ethno-linguistic unity, Vladimirov rather sharply turns back to the usual rut of reasoning about the superiority of Orthodoxy over all other confessions. When reading the note, one gets the impression that he stumbled at the point where he had to object to “timid people” who fear Catholic proselytism in Russian:
To fear for Orthodoxy before Catholicism means not to know either Orthodoxy or Catholicism. If Catholicism took root so far in the Northwestern Territory, then the reason for this was by no means the inner strength of Catholic teaching, but simply a strike of priests and pans ... The weapon of this propaganda was not the power of free persuasion, but a whole system of the most cruel violence, oppression and seduction. If, however, recently several personalities have fallen out of the Russian Church, like Svechina and Father Pecherin, then we do not hesitate to declare them mentally mad; because only a madman can change Orthodoxy to Catholicism. However, such unfortunates from the entire Russian people can hardly be counted up to a dozen, and they all come from the upper classes of society.
We see that the persons who accepted, like V.S. Pecherin in 1840, an individual, conscious decision to convert to Catholicism, are not only insulted, but, in essence, are opposed as eccentric (at best) aristocrats to those Catholics from the common people, for whose sake the author of the note is trying to introduce Russian worship, prayers and sermons in the church. The Catholicism of the common people is seen only as a collective delusion - regrettable, but not hopeless. Thus, the traditional scheme of class-oriented thinking is reproduced. Those for whom the Russian language in the church should, in theory, be a boon, appear as a culturally isolated mass (like the peasant class being liberated from serfdom), and not as a group within the nation.
Further, as Vladimirov’s argument unfolds, it turns out that the Russification of the church is only an intermediate stage, a prelude to a change on a much larger scale: “Catholicism on the basis of the Russian language, having met face to face with Orthodoxy, will suffer a decisive defeat from it, more than any he suffered from the Reformation. ... We look at the use of the Russian language in the Catholic churches of the North-Western Territory as a step in the transition of the Catholic population of this region to Orthodoxy ... ". Vladimirov even tried to describe the cultural-psychological mechanics of this new schism in Roman Catholicism: “For the masses of the people in the matter of religion, appearance is of the greatest importance, and of this, first of all, the liturgical language. ... The introduction of a new liturgical language in Catholicism in the Northwestern Territory will undoubtedly produce a religious upheaval and wavering of minds in the entire Catholic population of this region. The leaders of Orthodoxy should take advantage of this moment…”. (In other words, if the Russian Old Believers of the 17th century decided that the Orthodox faith itself was irrevocably defiled by Nikon's reform, and switched, for example, to Catholicism, then this would be a historical precedent for what Vladimirov projected in relation to the Catholics themselves.)
The discrepancy between the Vilnius supporters of the depolonization of the church and Katkov, who tried to present the Russian-speaking Catholic commoner as a natural, full member of the future Russian nation, could also be due to personal motives. Chairman of the Audit Commission A.P. Storozhenko, who had collaborated with Osnova magazine a few years earlier, could not forgive Katkov for his attacks on Ukrainophilism and the Ukrainian-language press. He used Katkov's arguments to lead the governor-general to a conclusion that Katkov himself would hardly have been happy about. The first of his two notes on this subject, entitled "Historical view of the spread of Polonization and Latinism in the North-Western Territory", he began, like Vladimirov, with statements about the primacy of the language in the process of ethno-national assimilation. Referring to the case of the Polonization of the Ruthenian population of the Commonwealth (the Poles “would never have achieved such brilliant results if they had left the Russian language liturgical and prayerful during the introduction of ... Catholicism ...”), Storozhenko found an example of the opposite and warming the Russian soul phenomenon among other Western Slavs: “That one religion is powerless in itself to deprive a people of their nationality is evident from the fact that other Slavic peoples, such as Czechs, Moravians, Lusatians, etc., surrounded by Germans and professing the same religion with them, but speaking and professing it in native language, they did not turn to the Germans. In the second note, again similar to Vladimirov, the final goal of the reform was revealed, which is in bad agreement with the secular vision of assimilation: “... even now in many places a strong movement in favor of Orthodoxy has been noticed; the closer the churches are compared, the greater the inclination towards Orthodoxy will be revealed and the easier it will be for Catholics to convert to it; and what can bring the churches closer together than the unity of language?
It can, of course, be assumed that Storozhenko and Vladimirov started talking about the tempting prospect of mass conversions only in order to quickly persuade the governor-general to approve the project of russification of the church, while they themselves did not want such an outcome, suggesting limiting themselves to changing the liturgical language in Catholicism “for the people” . However, similar judgments about the coming triumph of Orthodoxy were expressed by other members of the Audit Commission, some of them in confidential private correspondence. So, the inspector of public schools of the Vilna educational district in the Kovno province N.N. Novikov, a figure with a wide circle of Moscow acquaintances (he also corresponded - however, sporadic - with Katkov), in May 1866, when the campaign of mass appeals in Belarusian areas reached its peak, shared his innermost hopes with a high-ranking St. Petersburg official D.A. Obolensky, close to the Slavophiles:
The movement towards Orthodoxy, thank God, is strong. Up to 20 thousand joined in the whole region; will join again. But without the Russian language in churches, or, more precisely, without the habit of peasants to sing cantychka and listen to sermons in Russian in churches, it is very wild for peasants to change their religion and, with it, the language of prayer.
In a word, the reform, in which Katkov saw a step towards creating a fundamentally new basis for Russian national unity, turned out to be necessary only insofar as it could facilitate the administration's policy in the spirit of the traditional identification of Russianness and Orthodoxy.
In the Audit Commission there were also such supporters of the Russification of the church service, who, with a claim to expert knowledge, depicted the very process of discrediting the Catholic faith in the eyes of believers, which has to come from a change in the language of worship. One of them is Ignatius Kozlovsky, in the recent past a Catholic priest who converted to Orthodoxy without retaining his rank. Kozlovsky was not a member of the Commission as a member, but, as noted above, he submitted lengthy notes there at the request of his superiors, the content of which was partly repeated in his correspondence to Katkov's publications. More frankly than other participants in the discussion, he linked the introduction of the Russian language into the church with the need to induce the local Orthodox clergy to diligent activity and care for the flock. Kozlovsky considered the fear of Russian-speaking Catholic proselytism far-fetched: from his point of view, it was a pretext that allowed Orthodox clerics who had lost their true pastoral spirit and missionary zeal to justify their inactivity and passivity in the future. Complaints about the threat of “Latin propaganda,” he wrote, are heard mainly from those who “look at their Orthodox religion through the prism of Catholic priests, that is, who confuse worldly contentment and the Indian inaction of the clergy with the essence of religion itself ... who puts the private interests of the clergy alongside with the divine interests of religion." But the admission of even just sermons in the church in Russian would entail a healing struggle for the Orthodox (“although, of course, quite a small one,” Kozlovsky hurried to reassure readers). Orthodox priests face a direct challenge, arguing in a language they understand (for polemical purposes, Kozlovsky assured that the Polish language of sermons is still incomprehensible even to the former Uniate clergy) the truth of their dogma, and “willy-nilly they will have to practice their religion more than now, preaching, confession, and your own education.” On the contrary, the rejection of such a reform in Catholicism, on the one hand, doomed the local Orthodox clergy to dependent dependence on the administrative power of the state, and on the other hand, did not allow officials involved in organizing mass conversions of Catholics to Orthodoxy to realize the insufficiency of such bureaucratic missionary work: “The success of Orthodoxy not yet such that it is possible [to] prophesy the near end of Latinism from them. ... Without constant upheavals and shocks of it (Catholicism. - M.D
Translations into Russian Read D. The dispute about Zion. Krasnodar, 1991 (abridged translation); full translations - M., 1993 (reprints: M., 1994; M., 1998; M., 2000; M., 2005);
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From the book Life and customs of tsarist Russia author Anishkin V. G. From the book Russian Australia author Kravtsov Andrey NikolaevichThis is not the first time that the issue of translating liturgical texts into everyday Russian has been raised. The reason for this, in the eyes of the supporters of such a translation, is the need to make the service more understandable. Such attempts were especially frequent immediately after the revolution, at the time of the state's efforts to subjugate the Church, which led to the emergence of various kinds of renovationist "red" and other church associations. The people then did not accept worship in Russian. Renovationist churches stood empty...
The "incomprehensibility" of worship is not only in the language. Worship is truly incomprehensible to those who do not know the basics Orthodox teaching. It is with the teachings of the Church that a person who wants to attend church should become acquainted, and the “incomprehensibility” of the language is a secondary matter. Overcoming the obstacle of comprehension of the language is not difficult (this is not the Latin language in Catholic worship).
The “incomprehensibility” of worship will only intensify if its language becomes a colloquial (ordinary, philistine) language that does not have all theological nuances in its vocabulary, devoid of traditional phraseological units. And this is when there is a close language, but with thousands of years of experience in prayer, liturgical, theological use. “Lord, have mercy” and “Lord, forgive” are different in their meaning.
So, my first objection to the translation of the liturgy into Russian is that with such a translation both the liturgy and theological thought will not become any more understandable, and the existing tradition will be interrupted. For the layman, however, the “incomprehensibility” of the divine service will in many ways become aggravated.
Someone claims: “Here I went into the church and poorly understood what was being sung and said there.” But when a person tries to understand the meaning of the service, he, perhaps for the first time, performs spiritual work. Where does the demand that the Church make concessions to the philistine come from? It is not the Church that should bow to the layman, but the layman to the Church.
Among the “auxiliary” arguments in favor of translating the service into ordinary Russian, the following is also given: “The Latin language has been abandoned in the Catholic Church.” But it is not yet possible to judge whether this has led to good results. After all, Latin played, and to some extent still plays, a significant role in Western culture, in Western education up until recently, allowing everyone (regardless of their native language) to read and understand Latin authors, remaining the language of jurisprudence and medicine, facilitating communication between scientists from Western countries, etc. d.
But in general, is the Catholic experience so important for us in addressing this issue? The translation of Catholic worship into national languages has already led to some negative results both in the church and in the secular level of education. This is noted by teachers of many higher educational institutions.
They say: "With the translation of worship into national languages, the Church will become more democratic, closer to the national culture." It may very well be, but there is a danger that it will become not only national, but also nationalist. I will not give examples: they are in plain sight. Yes, and "democracy" is not always good. Thus, the Bulgarians further separated from the Serbs. And the Serbs - from the Bulgarians as a result of the transition of their worship to the national languages.
Meanwhile, very important common prayer. common language of prayer. The unity of the language of worship united the Orthodox Slavs, just as the unity of the language of writing united them. While the service was conducted in Church Slavonic, the same books were available to the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula, and Serbs, and Ukrainians, and Belarusians, and Russians.
So, the Church Slavonic language played and plays now (albeit to a lesser extent than before) a unifying role. In Russia (and partly in other Slavic countries), the Church Slavonic language united culture not only horizontally, but also vertically: the culture of the past centuries and the culture of the new time, making clear the high spiritual values that Rus' was alive for the first seven centuries of its existence, uniting Russia , Ukraine and Belarus. This contributed to the preservation of the self-consciousness of Russians who lived on the territory of other states, and now unites the Russian Church Abroad with Motherland.
This is all the more important to note that Russia was a country of high book culture. As it is clear now, after the discovery of birch bark letters, it is a country of the widest written culture. The inscriptions had all cultural values: icons, church vessels, magnificent frescoes in churches, clothing (especially sewing, vestments, etc.). Now that we have fallen into cultural poverty, this should especially touch us, and we must definitely keep our connection with the past! We have excellent writing and literature: the works of Metropolitan Hilarion, Cyril of Turov, Serapion of Vladimir, Metropolitan Alexy, Yermolai-Erasmus, Nil of Sorsk, Maxim the Greek and hundreds of others, whose wisdom became possible thanks to the freedom of the scientific press and such collections as those published " Monuments of Literature of Ancient Russia” and the published “Library of Literature of Ancient Russia” (1st, 4th and 5th volumes have already been published). Thanks to texts published in parallel in Old Russian and modern Russian, we can appreciate the extraordinary beauty of the language of the Church, the language of spiritual culture.
If we abandon the language that Lomonosov, Derzhavin, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Tolstoy, Bunin and many others knew and introduced into their works, the loss in our understanding of Russian culture at the beginning of the century will be irreplaceable. Church Slavonic is a constant source for understanding the Russian language. Maintaining his vocabulary. Heightened comprehension of the emotional sound of the Russian word. This is the language of a noble culture: there are no dirty words in it, it is impossible to speak in a rude tone, to swear. It is a language that assumes a certain level moral culture. The Church Slavonic language, therefore, is important not only for understanding Russian spiritual culture, but also of great educational and educational value. Refusal to use it in the Church, study it at school will lead to a further decline in culture in Russia.
The Russian language is being “cleansed”, ennobled in the Church. Yes, the gospel must be preached in all languages. In publications where it is printed in parallel in Church Slavonic and Russian, the meaning of individual expressions is clarified, the meaning of each word is explained. Nobody expels the Russian language from the Church, but those who turn to God, the Mother of God, to the saints, the words should be free from everyday life, not in contact with swearing and vulgarity.
I am convinced that it is necessary to remain faithful to that combination of two languages close to each other, which historically constantly came into contact in the annals, in the messages of the Church and the patriarchs, in the adhesions to the people of the patriarchs and other hierarchs of the Church, in sermons (the number of which in the Church must constantly grow).
D.S. Likhachev. Russian language in worship and in theological thought. —"Revival", 1998
The difficulty of understanding the liturgical language at present is not only a problem of text perception, but also a problem of dialogue between the Church and society. Some statements that the service in the temple is conducted in a dead and obscure language alternate in Belarus with others that the Belarusian Orthodox Church is allegedly not national. Both statements are waiting for an adequate response from the Church. For my part, I can only welcome the draft document of the Inter-Council Presence with the wishes to quickly move from words to deeds.
First of all, I would like to touch upon the problem of the incomprehensibility of the Church Slavonic language and the possibility of translating the service into a modern, more understandable language. To illustrate the incomprehensibility of our divine services, individual phrases of some prayers are often chosen. The well-known expression from Psalm 57: “Whoever hears the voice of those who are swearing, we are swayed by wisdom” can well characterize this problem. In the synodal translation, the phrase sounds like this: “He will not hear the voice of the most skillful caster in spells” (we are talking about the deafness of human hardness of heart). The difficulty lies not only in the fact that you need to look into dictionaries to explain the word "obawati". Here Slavic translators used the word “obavati” (conjure) three times to translate two Greek words of the Septuagint (respectively, “conjure” and “enchantment”), which only obscured the meaning (“like a snake with plugged ears, the hard-hearted will not hear the spells of the wisest of sorcerers "). By the way, from this verse follows a useful moral for clarifying our question: no matter how skillfully the words of prayers are composed, they will not benefit the deaf.
However, there is little confusion. There may also be misunderstandings. At least when you hear the apostolic words, “always drive good things to one another and to everyone” (1 Thess. 5:15). And the translation here will be “always look for the good to each other and to everyone.” Indeed, many examples of this kind can be cited. Editing the text in the sense of finding more understandable Slavic words would help eliminate many of these ambiguities.
However, our contemporary will remain alien to the originality of the Church Slavonic verbal forms of the past tense (perfect, imperfect, pluperfect and aorist), case forms of participles, dual number, syntactic turnover of the dative case, etc. Despite the obvious lexical proximity of the Russian language, many Church Slavonic words and expressions will be unclear to those who are used to the vocabulary of newspapers and the Internet. Therefore, the problem of understanding the liturgy will remain even after the editing of individual texts. As an example, we can cite the experiences of godparents getting acquainted with the text of the Creed at conversations before baptism. There is no need to say how important it is to know and understand the basics Orthodox faith for all who identify themselves as members of the Orthodox Church, and especially for those who want to be baptized themselves or their children. Difficulties arise not only with individual words like “because of all the past” or “and the packs of the future” (sometimes quite adult people do not even recognize the name of Pontius Pilate!), more than once I had to witness inappropriate smiles and even laughter while reading a sample prayer our faith. The final “amen” should express the speaker’s agreement with the text, but it is unlikely that a simple translation of incomprehensible words and expressions is capable of conveying the full depth of the meaning of the words “consubstantial with the Father”, “light from light”, “incarnated” or “I believe ... in the One, Holy, Catholic And Apostolic Church”, etc. Although, it would seem, these words are understandable even without translation - without many explanations, or even several conversations, you can’t do it. And here it turns out that those who want to listen and really delve into the content of one of the most important prayers are much less willing to participate in the sacrament of Baptism. What to do? What concessions must be made here? Behind the difficulty of perceiving the Slavic text, in such cases, there is a much greater difficulty and problem: the unwillingness of the person himself to become churched. But what if suddenly there is a duty to fast, to go to the temple Sundays, confess, read the Holy Scriptures and books of the Holy Fathers? It turns out that the Church Slavonic language is a mutual barrier. On the one hand, the Church protects her values and traditional way of life, and on the other hand, in front of this barrier, the values of secular thinking are conveniently preserved, in particular, the independence of each in determining for himself the norms of religious life. Is it not in this unwillingness of our contemporaries to go to church that the reason for that very deafness is hidden, which no skillful translations are able to cure?
It is very useful to look at the experience of Western European countries. Since the beginning of the XX century. in the Roman Church, the movement for liturgical reforms intensified, and in 1948 a special commission took up their preparation. At the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965. the issue of translating the service from Latin into local languages was discussed. The two extreme points of view - for the unconditional preservation of the Latin worship and, on the contrary, for the complete rejection of it - had a minority on their side. Another principle prevailed: where possible, let the Latin language be preserved, in other cases, we will allow the translation of the service into local languages. In addition to allowing the translation of church services, the Vatican Council made other significant liturgical reforms. At first, mixed sequences were used, when that part of the prayers that was performed by the people was translated, and the prayers of the priest were pronounced only in Latin. Gradually, however, and without official abandonment of the Latin liturgy, the practice of translation began to predominate. A wave of liturgical creativity swept over the relevant controlling authorities. As a result, both those sanctioned by the highest church authority and arbitrary texts composed by individual bishops or priests began to appear in everyday life. In the Netherlands, for example, along with the official "Roman" translation of the Mass, there is also the so-called. "Dutch", containing not translated, but composed prayers. The translation of the liturgy was naturally reflected in church music. Gregorian chant began to be replaced by the performance of prayers in local languages with a new melody. The words of the new chants were adapted to the musical works of the classics, which is why the service in some cases began to resemble a real concert. Not enough of this. Services focused on a specific audience began to be composed. For young people, their own mass was composed, for lovers on Valentine's Day, to come in pairs - their own, for unbelievers and doubters - please, the mass of St. Thomas, discusses the possibility of a special service for those in mourning, etc. At the same time, there is a movement focused on the restoration of the pre-reform Tridentine mass and worship in Latin. Against the backdrop of all these liturgical reforms, the number of regularly attending Sunday services in the West is noticeably falling. For example, if in 1950 in Germany there were 50% of them, then in 1985 - 25%, in 2005 - 14%, and people who remember the masses of the pre-reform period go to services much more stable than those who know only the reformed liturgy in local languages. Speaking about the possibility of translating Church Slavonic services, one must take into account not only these foreign experiences, but also the lessons of one's own history. There have always been more than enough people in the Russian Church who were ready to go into schism for one "az".
Why is the Church Slavonic language so dear to the heart of a believer? It is the special language of theology and prayer. It is characterized by such difficult-to-translate and full of high meaning expressions as “Our Lord our Lord”, “The Bride of the Bride”, “The Chosen Governor”, and so on. Its use has been consecrated by many generations of our ancestors. It preserves not only archaism, but an extraordinary solemnity and, at the same time, the mystery of the spiritual experience of the Church. This language unites Orthodox Christians of all Slavic peoples when they gather for joint prayer. The translation of the divine service will certainly entail a change in church melodies, which are so dear to everyone who prays. The value of the Church Slavonic language lies not in its "sacred incomprehensibility", but in its difference from both the vulgar language and the secular language.
Church language needs not reform, but attention and teaching. However, liturgical books need to be edited, to correct errors, discrepancies, ambiguities, which, alas, despite modern technical development, still exist in the texts. For example, in one relatively recent edition of the Trebnik (M., 2004), in one prayer of unction it is said about Christ “bear our infirmities painfully”, and in the next prayer “bear painlessly”. The work of correcting church books has been going on in the Church since ancient times; there is nothing unusual in it. For example, the well-known petition of the Lord's Prayer ends with the words "deliver us from the evil one." However, in the oldest monument of Russian church literature, the Ostromir Gospel (1056-1057), it says “deliver us from enmity” (Matthew 6:13). To this we can add the well-known fact that in some ancient copies of the Gospel of Luke these words of the Lord's Prayer (Luke 11:4) are completely absent. To find out which reading is better, we need the opinions of competent specialists, and on their basis the corresponding synodal commission for the publication of liturgical books would make adjustments without any referenda, which unnecessarily excite the church people. The difficulty of perceiving the liturgy is not limited to the language problem, and no translation will solve it. Without familiarity with Holy Scripture and the Tradition of the Church, prayer in any language will remain a letter without a spirit. In my opinion, the barrier that the Church Slavonic language represents for those who come to the Church should not be broken open, but simply set up doors in it so that everyone who wishes can enter through it. Such doors would be intelligible reading and singing, preaching, conversation, and church education.
Another most popular question about the liturgical language is the attitude of the Orthodox Church in Belarus to the Belarusian language and the possibility of translating liturgical services into Belarusian. A positive answer to this question has been given for a long time. The Belarusian Biblical Commission for the Translation of the Holy Scriptures (founded in 1989) prepared and published the Belarusian translation of the Four Gospels and the Book of Acts, in addition, the head of the working group of this commission, Fr. Sergius Gordun translated the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, prayers with akathists to some saints, morning and evening prayers, to Holy Communion, the sacraments of the Marriage and Baptism, memorial services, etc. Regular Belarusian services are held in Minsk St. temples. There are no fundamental objections to perform this or that service in the Belarusian language at the request of the faithful.
But the hierarchy is reproached for a purely formal approach to business, a lack of sincere interest, and so on. In fact, all the accusations can be reduced to one thing, that the Orthodox Church does not pursue its language policy in a way that is desirable for the adherents of the Belarusian revival. Catholic Church in Belarus, they say, for example, they switched to the Belarusian language a long time ago both in worship and in sermons. Perhaps the latter had its own weighty “political” reasons to translate services from Latin and Polish into Belarusian, and not, say, into Russian, but one should not forget the difference that the Catholic Church did not serve in Church Slavonic. The importance of the latter for the development of the Belarusian literary language cannot be denied. But most importantly, the use of the Church Slavonic language in the Belarusian lands is consecrated by a centuries-old tradition. As a language of prayer, it is more native to the Belarusian than the “mova” that sounds from the TV screen. And the problem of churching the Belarusian language lies not so much in the rigidity of the hierarchy, but in the lack of demand for it as a church language among the flock. This attitude is largely due to the already long-established state of affairs, when the Church retains its own language, completely different from the spoken one.
Indeed, if in the XIII - XV centuries. the language of church monuments in Western Rus' and was influenced by vernacular, this was reflected mainly in the pronunciation and, accordingly, in the spelling of individual words and expressions. Only words of dedication, prefaces and rare glosses-explanations could be written in the "simple move" in church books. With the development of "secular" genres, literature is increasingly moving away from Church Slavonic models. But the tradition is preserved in liturgical and biblical books. Even the translations of Francysk Skaryna early. 16th century do not break with church tradition, Church Slavonic vocabulary still prevails in his books. Another Belarusian translator of the Holy Scriptures, Vasily Tyapinsky, does not attach independent significance to his translation of the Gospel, but attaches it to the Church Slavonic text “for the sake of a blind mind”. Famous preacher of the XVI century. John Vishensky wrote to hetman Konstantin (Vasily) Ostrozhsky: “Do not twist the Gospels and the Apostle in the church at the liturgy in plain language; according to the liturgy, for the sake of human understanding, simply interpret and lay out. Write church books and all statutes in Slovenian…” However, among the books, although read in the church, but not of a liturgical nature, there are texts in the Belarusian language, for example, “everyday confession of sins” in the “Rite of Confession” of the 16th century. or the Lives of the Saints of the 17th century, described by E.F. Karsky.
But the most decisive influence on the separation of the language of worship and the language of literature and preaching was exerted by the enthusiasm for Polish and Latin models of eloquence of the cultural classes of Western Rus'. Numerous polemical writings published in connection with the conclusion of the Union of Brest in 1596 testify to this. What artificial language the sermon was spoken at that time can be seen in the words of the Vilna archimandrite Leonty Karpovich, whose student, the famous Melety Smotrytsky, wrote his books only in Polish. One of the historians of the Belarusian language of the last century, Doctor of Philology and Professor Lev Shakun, in his article on the importance of Church Slavonic for the development of the Belarusian literary language, noted: I’m sailing on the yay of the Tsarkov-Slavic language, and the next time is closer and our hour, it’s all shyrei and shyrei, daddy to her unfailing relatives for the cost of Polish and Latsinskaya mine. In one of the monuments of Western Russian polemical literature, the so-called. “Perestroge” (1608), this process was characterized by the following words: “Like the Poles mixed Latin words in their language, which simple people they get along with the tax (out of habit), just as Rus' mixed Polish words with their language and these get along. Over time, with the dominance of Polish culture and language in teaching up to ser. 19th century on the Belarusian lands, this state of affairs has strengthened. The Uniates performed divine services in Church Slavonic, often not understanding its content at all. The Uniate priests communicated with the educated classes in Polish, and to their flock, since they did not understand Polish well, they preached in the local language, i.e. Belarusian dialect. With the reunification of the Uniates and the spread of the Russian school and education here from the middle. 19th century Russian became the common language of preaching among the Orthodox. This is how the situation we are seeing was created.
Yes, today it is rare to hear a sermon in the Belarusian language in an Orthodox church. But here the question rests not only on the preparedness of the preachers, but also on the readiness of the listeners themselves to perceive the Belarusian language. After all, the actual use of the Belarusian language in modern society is quite limited. This is shown by the results of the 2009 census. About 8 million citizens identified themselves as Belarusians, of which 4.8 million called the Belarusian language their native language, and 2.9 million - Russian. At the same time, out of the same more than 8 million, only 2 million speak Belarusian at home, and 5.5 million speak Russian. It turns out that out of 8 million Belarusians, 2 million consider Belarusian to be their native language and speak it, 2.9 million Belarusians consider Russian as their native language, and the remaining 1.6 million Belarusians who consider Belarusian as their native language speak “non-native” Russian? Can't it be seen from this that the Russian language is much more native for the majority of Belarusians than Belarusian, especially considering the last 1.6 million citizens?
It is quite justified that the Orthodox Church in Belarus does not take an active position in the cause of Belarusianization. In order not to cause discontent and grumbling among the majority of their flock, who do not speak the Belarusian language, and not to give rise to schisms on the part of the "zealots of piety", the service is performed mainly in Church Slavonic, and the sermon - in Russian, in case of a special desire believers - in Belarusian. In this situation, the preservation of the Church Slavonic language in worship, in my opinion, is the best means of maintaining unity among the church people, unity with their ancestors and unity with other Slavic Churches.
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