Moscow, May 24, Interfax – Head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion tells about critical attitude of former Pope of Rome Benedict XVI to some new trends in Catholicism as the former pontiff wrote about it in his book Theology of the Liturgy.

“Joseph Ratzinger opposes surface “creativity”, emasculation of true content and goal of the liturgy as live connection with God and His creation: such trends sometimes appear in modern Western Christianity,” Metropolitan Hilarion said at a presentation of the Russian edition in Moscow.

According to the hierarch, some questions touched upon in the book (novelties in rites and such liturgical experiments as services without priests) refer to the sphere of exceptionally Catholic problems.

“However, it is important that Russian readers who have heard a lot about modernist trends in contemporary Catholicism would get acquainted with critical view of the prominent theologian on post-council development (it refers to the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965 – IF), on painful gaps from tradition and difficulties of renovation,” the hierarch believes.

Metropolitan Hilarion confessed that it was interesting for him as a church composer to read the final part of the book dedicated to the theology of church music, where the author gives profound theological analysis of liturgical music and precisely evaluates modern successful and unsuccessful search in this field.

The Russian edition was published by St. Gregory Foundation in 2017 and was timed for Benedict’s XVI 90-th birthday.