Why I became a Russian Catholic

In my early years of sojourning in the Roman Catholic Church, after I returned to Christ, at the age of 24, long ago, I noted marked differences between the ideals of that Church and their expressions in reality. While I cannot sufficiently enumerate those differences, two in particular come immediately to mind: The first is the radical differences between what was related in the Second Vatican Council and for two score years afterwards regarding liturgy, and the actual liturgical praxis in that Church for those last two score years; The second is the difference between the pivotal statement in the Vatican II Constitution on Divine Revelation, that the Holy Spirit has spoken to the Church through Scripture, Tradition, and the Teaching Authority of the Church, and the paucity of scripture, tradition and teaching authority to be found in the sermons or Divine Liturgies of most RC priests, the teachings of most RC bishops and cardinals, or the pronouncements of most RC ecclesial communities. I do not wish to cause dissention by this observation. I believe that I am simply stating the facts.

I found myself frustrated, and in fact angry, by this disparity. The anger, or frustration, was caused because I truly believed that this was the True Church, the center of Christ’s church, the Rock upon which even the gates of Hell would not prevail. And yet. . .

And yet I found no spiritual nourishment from it. After a futile year spent in the parish church of my youth, where (among many other things) the Monsignor there violated the express directive of Vatican II every liturgy by saying ‘The Lord is with you (instead of ‘The Lord be with you; turning a prayer into a prophesy, and from the extent of anger on my part which resulted from his disobedience, into a false prophesy), I chose to sing instead in a church which had a good choir, and which sang the range from Gregorian Chant to modern choral classics. It was good entertainment, and good singing, but I came to realize that what we were singing was just Sunday entertainment, not very far unlike Ralph Vaughan Williams’ starting a Sunday afternoon program of people singing and performing the choral masses of Franz Schubert at Oxford. In the main, the sermons there were of the pastor talking about his golf game. There was a crucial disjunct between prayer and performance.

Then one day, I happened to go into a bookstore, and find a cassette tape entitled ‘Russiche Kloster-Vesper”, on the label Koch-Schwann (which from my small stock of German I was able immediately to translate into “Russian Monastic Vespers”). I asked the store manager if he could play a few minutes of that tape. It was the most beautiful male a capella choral music I had ever heard. A couple of days later, I was able to raise the money necessary to buy that tape and take it home. I listened to it constantly, and began to translate the structure of the service in the liner notes from German into English. What I found could, with less difficulty, be found at this web address.

I began to realize that what was being sung was prayer, and the most beautiful prayer I had ever known. I was filled with it, and I asked God to send me to a place where I could pray like that. Within a month, I was led to St. Andrew Russian Catholic Church in El Segundo, California, in the very week that our pastor there, Fr. Alexei Smith, was being ordained for the service of the Divine Liturgy at St. Andrew’s.

I have been at St. Andrew’s ever since. There was a period of perhaps six months that I divided the time between St. Andrew’s and my old RC parish, St. Martin of Tours in Brentwood, but then came the Papal Masses of Los Angeles in 1987, and what happened there was the final straw in a long series of burdens which finally broke this camel’s back. I may recount it some day in this weblog, under the heading: “Why I am no longer a Roman Catholic”.

But I have found that it is more important to go to something that is good, rather than merely leave something because of the evils in it. I have gone to Russian Catholicism, and have remained in it for the past eighteen years, because in it, I have been nourished (through the services and the homilies of Fr. Alexei) in the saving truths and the true expressions of the Holy Spirit: Scripture, Tradition and the Councils. At the end of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, in the priest’s prayer before the Ambo, are the words: “Bless those who love the beauty of Thy house; glorify them in turn by Thy power, and forsake us not who put our trust in Thee.” In St. Andrew Church, I am greatly blessed by its beauty, glorified by God’s power, and upheld by the Lord in whom I trust.

What sparked this essay was a link from Benjamin of Occidentalis, who in turn linked to Huw Raphael of Doxos, who in turn linked to a wonderful web site of what I believe are public domain MP3s of a wide range of music, from classic gospel and bluegrass, to Persian and middle eastern music, to Western classical and romantic music, to Gregorian Chant. In that last section, in addition to recordings of monastic latin chant from the 30’s to the 50’s, there is also the great treasure of that recording which led me to the church that has fed me for the last score of years, by the Benedictine monks of the Eastern Catholic monastery of Chevetogne. Here it is. (Warning: it is a large file, of about 39 MB or so)

Enjoy.