In the fallacious attempts to make sense of this war, even if this war has no meaning, Vladimir Putin evokes, obviously to stigmatize it and take it as a target not only cultural but military, the “collective West”, to which he attributes neo-colonial tendencies towards the rest of the world and in particular Eastern Europe. The accusation is certainly not recent, so much so that we find it in a sort of catechism, structured in questions and answers, compiled by the philoputinian journalist Vitalij Tretyakov and published under the title ‘Brief catechesis of the Russian man’ in n. 12/2017 of ‘Trimarium. Between Russia and Germany ‘, taken up by’ Limes’ in December of the same year.
The author defined the formula thus: «For us in Russia the concept of ‘West’ includes first of all the United States and then, but only secondarily, Western Europe or the European Union. For the same reason, we often use the term ‘collective West’ to indicate the United States, Western European countries (including southern Europe) and northern Europe, ie the Scandinavian countries ».
The geopolitical order drawn here is not indifferent, as the Russophile side believes that the US is the engine of this Western collectivity. In this perspective, the war conflict shifts from the military and political level to the level of the cultural and spiritual identity of the contenders. Patriarch Kirill had spoken of “metaphysical warfare”.
And precisely to support this interpretation Putin and Kirill need each other, both believing (the second more than the first) that the so-called collective Western civilization is now irremediably corrupt and devoid of values. In short, the West would not have a soul. This representation also makes its way into our environments and we found it in an editorial in the newspaper ‘la Repubblica’ (25 July 2022), in which Ezio Mauro writes: “Two universals, therefore, challenge each other today, one democratic and rational [= l’Occidente collettivo]the other missionary and spiritual [= la madre Russia]and they are too many for the world shrunk by globalization ».
It is impossible to resign ourselves to this reconstruction which tends to deprive our context of a soul and a spirituality. And it is certainly not a question of that ‘spirit of the world’ that Hegel thought he saw in the emperor Napoleon, who passed on horseback under his window in Jena (1806), while the philosopher was completing his ‘Phenomenology of the Spirit’, believing that Bonaparte embodied the ideal of freedom proper to the revolution, which he had applauded. Of course he had to change his mind.
Nor can the soul of a civilization be identified with a character who holds the power. Just as we cannot preclude spirituality and missionary spirit from rationality and democracy and vice versa, as they are not two opposing absolutes, one of which should also be eliminated by force. The spirituality called to animate the West cannot be devoid of rationality, nor of democracy, which, according to a well-known aphorism by Winston Churchill, would be the worst form of government except for all the others experienced so far.
And this is because religiosity cannot ignore logos-reason, nor logosparola-dialogue, as Benedict XVI masterfully taught in his Regensburg speech, as famous as it is misunderstood: “Violence is in contrast with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. ‘God is not pleased with blood – he [l’imperatore Manuele II Paleologo] he says -, not acting according to reason is contrary to the nature of God. Faith is the fruit of the soul, not of the body. Therefore, whoever wants to lead someone to the faith needs the ability to speak well and reason correctly, not instead of violence and threats … To convince a reasonable soul, it is not necessary to have one’s arm, or tools to strike or of any other means by which a person can be threatened with death ‘”. And this is because in our DNA as Christians (even Russian Orthodox) there should be the awareness of the fact that our worship is rational, as Paul writes to the Romans, logikè latreia (Rom 12: 1).
The investigation into Western spirituality, which is generated and should be nourished by its own, essential Jewish-Christian roots, however secularized and impoverished of their horizon of transcendence, would require in-depth and documented research. But precisely in these days we can show an inconvenient and certainly not triumphal outcome in the penitential journey that Pope Francis has just made to Canada. In the belief that the school is a propitious and delicate terrain in which a civilization transmits its values to the younger generations, while on the one hand we detect and denounce the operation, this so colonialist, of Putin-Kirill, of which Marta Ottaviani spoke on pages of this newspaper last July 23, we strongly emphasize the distance and the request for forgiveness for the brutal behavior of Catholics towards indigenous populations, so that a fruitful ‘purification of memory’ can be activated and not just proclaimed , but live the ‘never again!’ towards such behaviors.
A figure of Western spirituality is that of knowing how to activate non-formal moments of self-criticism, in order to continually question oneself starting from the Gospel message. Without an authentic democratic spirit in civil and synodal society in the Christian community, one easily falls into colonialism and proselytism, often the subject of denunciation by the Pope.
A message that speaks volumes about the meaning of the authenticity of the Christian faith, which the West is called to safeguard: “When it comes to vocations, many things come to mind, many things to say, that can be thought or done, apostolic plans or proposals… But first of all I would like to clarify one thing: that work for vocations, with vocations, must not be, it is not proselytism. It’s not ‘looking for new members for this club’. No. It must move along the line of growth that Benedict XVI so clearly told us: the growth of the Church is by attraction, not by proselytism. So. He said it to us too [ Vescovi Latinoamericani] in Aparecida ”(speech of June 6, 2019). And what is said about vocations can well be applied to the school environment and in general to the mission of the Christian community in the world.
East and West. But the spirit of the West is also rationality and democracy