56 Most commonly, we see their elements inter-mixed. My presentation remains on a general level, without involving conclusions or debates. 1. Secularism and extreme subjectivism. A simply shocking statement, defi ning contemporary secularism and nearly devoid of all contact with reality, may be found in Pastores dabo vobis, where John Paul II remarks that a “religiosity without God”66 is widespread in the modern-day world. The failure to see God as an objective reality results in assigning the highest and ultimate values to personal states. A Religious that thoughtlessly adopts this way of thinking withdraws ever further into himself, isolates himself from everything that could disrupt his state of religiosity, which he believes to be life by faith. In fact, this person lives without faith and realizes his own plans. There is no room for God in his world. Instead, his personal experiences, thoughts, refl ections, ideas, plans, etc., become God. Consequently, the person can no longer be obedient and is being pushed more and more to the “sidetrack,” while he feels misunderstood, etc. What’s important here is that the only hope lies not in further multiplication of pious practices (because they will be tainted by subjectivism anyway, in which the person excels), but in proclaiming the Word of God and appealing for conversion. Help can come only and exclusively from outside, because this Religious’s internal faculties (mind, will, feelings) are ill. This Religious is quite incapable of seeing things in any way other than his own. And he sees things through the prism of his own ego (here we deal with a certain primacy of subjectivism, one’s own ego, but dressed up as the highest religious form). Only the Word of God, proclaimed and interpreted from the outside, by something other than the ailing ego, may help this Religious to break the vicious circle of his own ideas, feelings, thoughts, etc., generally speaking—to come out of one’s personal idolatry, in which one lives for the glory of one’s own idols and personal perfection, but not for the living God. The Word of God has the power to destroy this poorly woven—often through the course of many years—fabric of idolatry; or, as it comes down to, the cult of oneself, of one’s ego. 2. A false modernity, which is, in fact, consumerism. It is some kind of a factual relativism in comprehending both the Gospel and the essence of the vows, draped in the practical motivations of modernity, adaptation to modern situations, the indispensable needs of the religious life, of pastoral ministry, of a pseudo-ideology of the religious vows, etc. In fact, what is behind it is a thirst for goods, a consumerism modeled after the present-day Euro-Atlantic civilization. If there is any wisdom in it, it is the wisdom of the world, not of the Gospel. 66 PDV, 6.
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