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12 July 2006, 11:44Western world depressed by spiritual loneliness and nostalgia for Christian tradition – Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin
Moscow, July 12, Interfax – One of the principal spiritual problems experienced by the West today is its spiritual loneliness, believes Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, vice-chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations.
‘Having broken away from the Eastern Roman Empire and anathemized its spirituality and then deposed and sacked Constantinople, the West, to use the Catholic favorite metaphor, began breathing with only one lung. Simply speaking, it began to suffocate, thus weakening the organism by congestions’, Father Vsevolod writes in another part of his diaries entitled ‘Scraps’, published in the July issue of the Pravoslavnaya Moskva newspaper.
According to the priest, ‘the enlightened world, having enslaved all nations except Russia and China but taken over nothing from them... has got firmly established in its ‘self-sufficiency’ and persuaded itself that it alone is the ideal model for all’.
‘The West does not hear criticism from outside, while internal criticism becomes over more trite and blind. Its loneliness grows’, Father Vsevolod writes in his notes.
He also shares with readers the conclusion he has made from contacts with many Europeans, both believers and non-believers, saying that what is typical for them today is ‘an inner wretchedness about their own Christian tradition’.
‘On one hand, they have parted with it for good, having buried it under the ashes of revolutions and hips of advertising leaflets about church renewal. But they are still nostalgic for it. Indeed, they felt so comfortable when it was there’, Father Vsevolod notes. |
