Vienna, Austria - The Russian Orthodox Church's representative to the European International Institutions believes it important to preserve Christian traditions in today’s liberal world.
‘Christianity, empty inside, lacking inner power, Christianity that has renounced itself, will not be able to oppose challenges of the modern world,’ Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria said at a meeting organized by the Ecumenical Council of Churches in Austria dedicated to its 50th anniversary.
The Russian Church’s representative stressed that ‘we should be afraid of giving up spiritual and moral teaching accumulated by the Christian Church for centuries and surrender to the influence of liberal ideas and secular moral standards.’
‘When some Christian communities start revising theological or moral teaching of Christianity in order to ‘update’ it or to make it more ‘politically correct’, it is a direct way to spiritual collapse,’ the bishop added.
According to him, ‘Christians are powerful only when they follow the testament of Christ rather than when they start building their life by the rules of secular world.’