HaRav Shimon Schwab zt”l said “Sometimes the Modern Orthodox halachic foolishness which is flirting with the anti-Torah establishment, may border on heresy. This is all part and parcel of the spiritual confusion of the dark ages in which we happen to live”. (Mitteilungen, Bulletin of Khal Adas Yeshurun April/May 1989.)
Part of the problem with MO is that it was not created in the same way Torah movements such as Chasidus or TIDE were. There were no rabbis – great or otherwise – who articulated a philosophy that they referred to as MO. MO began as a behavior of people without any reasoning, and ex post facto became a philosophy. For example, secular studies in RIETS developed when some students went on strike because their friends were expelled from school for attending secular studies. The rabbonim in charge of RIETS at the time were against secular studies, but the board of directors and financial backers made a business decision to incorporate it into the curriculum. Later more influences came upon the scene, none of which were Torah perspectives but rather business or secular ones. Furthermore, even the ex post facto definition of MO is a hodgepodge of opinions of many different people, none of whom have more of a copyright on the term than others. I have no interest, nor is there a need, to deal with every individual opinion on the street in this matter. And almost none of the opinions address the pertinent issue anyway: What’s the point of Modern Orthodoxy? But some do. Those are the opinions that I am using here. Rav Soloveichik articulated a reasoning, namely, survival. Obviously, he was wrong. His reasoning was based on his vision of the future, his own opinion of what will be, and what needs to be done. He stated clearly that only his derech will be successful and the others will fail.