Rejection of Christianity will lead the West to “war of all against all” - Moscow Patriarchate

The Russian Orthodox Church predicts, in case the West finally refuses its Christian heritage, it will face "war of all against all."

"When the West tries to expel, to erase every reminder of Christ from public space, it's pathology of fighting against their own conscience, their own tradition. It won't surprise me, if the West loses itself entirely in this fight," Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin said on Saturday in the Orthodox Encyclopedia TV program on TV Center.

According to the priest, the West "still lives on the reserve of moral durability created in the Middle Ages. Take this reserve away and the West will again start the war against all, not in form of wars between Belgium and France, Germany and England, but rather between economic and political subjects, who have probably led us to economic crisis."

The Church official noted that oppression of Christians is a very serious problem, while no one even mentioned it five years ago.

"There always have been people who hate the Church," the priest believes. "Reasons can be different, but the most important is that a person living in sin is afraid that the Church may awaken his conscience."

According to Fr. Vsevolod, Christians should struggle against it not by force, but by common prayer and civil action based on this prayer that is "stronger than everything."

"We shouldn't try to wipe out our persecutors by response oppressions - we should try to change these people. Two-thousand-year experience of the Church proves it is possible to change even most terrific persecutor of the Church, if we show him that hating the Church, he is not happy, not free, and not cool in his sin - he is subjected to evil forces who twist his life as they wish," the priest said.

Source: Interfax religion