I don't think that is the issue of concern here. It's not that there are tweaks, additions and reforms, it's that an entirely brand new liturgy has been created to replace the old.
One can probably argue at length to what degree this thing is substitution, or that thing evolution, but the complaint I hear from outside (I'm Anglican, not RC) is that Vatican II was the former.
From my Anglican perspective, I saw first-hand the substitution of the 1979 liturgy for the 1928. I didn't know it for that at the time; I accepted that they were updating the language because some folks didn't understand the "Thees and Thous" -- even though I heard my father's complaint that they were changing the theology. (The kind of statement that most PKs quickly learn not to have explained.)
And even when I saw firsthand the trouble in ECUSA and left, abandoning 1979 BCP and all, a couple decades back (and discovering the majesty of the 1928 BCP in the process), I still didn't put it all together.
The first point came with Robinson's consecration. When I looked it up I discovered that he could be consecrated per the '79 but not the '28!
There've been other points, which I have not recorded anywhere -- but I just remembered that at a former parishioner's memorial a week ago (in an ECUSA church), we recited one of the creeds that was on some point quite different from the 1928 (which hewed to its predecessors).
My experience now is that any and all changes need to be carefully evaluated, though no doubt some will be good and even needed, but a liturgy de novo should be considered extremely suspect.
Modernize the English? I'll go along (but I will complain *\;-).
Translate it into the local language? Absolutely (thereby nullifying my complaint *\;-).
Submit your theology to the culture? (In order to "survive" as the size of the church you are?) Sheer death! What would become of a church that adapted to, accomodated, even embraced the local popular culture a few decades back best known by the acronym of its predominant party affiliation: Nazi?
If the culture walks away from the church, so be it: there is much work to be done. But if the church runs after the culture seeking acceptance, we'll all know who's really in charge. Of the church.
Catholics are so ingrained with a sense they will go to hell if they leave the Church, almost as effective as Islam's hold on its adherents, that this is why we have all these Catholics wanting the church to liberalize
Interesting; I had not known this. The desire of Anglicans to remain in the worldwide Anglican Communion is, by my observation, almost (though not quite) as strong. We are not committed to hell by leaving, though it may feel that way for a while.
I can agree with everything you have said but I want to stress what you father said...they changed the theology. The maxim lex orandi, lex credendi is a maxim for a reason. For us humans, its simply true! The Liturgies and devotions of the Church are in great measure didactic, while more importantly being the source of nourishment and spiritual healing as we work out our theosis. Our Liturgies have had a certain organic developement over the centuries, even in Orthodoxy, though most of that, other than in Russia, stopped by the late 1600s. Nevertheless, when a wholesale change in the liturgy is imposed on the clergy and the laity, it is likely because whoever was in charge of those things wanted to either a)emphasize a point of theology which it was believed was being lost or, more ominously, misinterpreted or b)actually change theology, or both. Consequently, if one believes that the Litugies and devotions of the Church express its theology, one has to be particularly wary of any changes whatsoever, especially wholesale changes which almost always, some Orthodox would simply say always, means a change in theology. The very early Liturgies of The Church were changed, sometimes substantially, as conciliar dogmas were promulgated and accepted, the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed being a good example of that. Nevertheless, even small and well intentioned changes can have massive and destructive consequences. The addition of the filioque in the Creed, well intentioned as a response to Arianism, became one of the prime reasons for the Great Schism. At any rate, it seems to me incumbent upon the laity to always be vigilant concerning even small changes in the Liturgy, even to the extent of making sure that when a Liturg is translated into the vernacular, that translation is as faithful as possible to the original language of the Liturgy.