And what can we say about modern morality, the foundations of which seem to have been shaken to the very last limits? After all, everything that until recently was considered indecent and inadmissible, before our eyes, literally, suddenly became quite acceptable and even fashionable for everyone, not allowing any protests and objections. Let us spare the ears of our readers and keep silent here about what is unseemly to speak and write about, and which, nevertheless, is now being done openly and unhindered everywhere.

The most cynical shamelessness has become some kind of "valor" of our "progressive" twentieth century!

And to object to this means to be known as some kind of "obscurantist", "backward person".

And with each new year, this decline in morality, this appalling shamelessness, expands and wins for itself more and more "rights of citizenship," and there are fewer and fewer objectors and protesters.

Is it possible to see "progress" in this, leading mankind to general well-being and well-being?

Does not world history, on the contrary, testify to us that the decline of morality has always entailed not prosperity, but decay and destruction? Suffice it to recall ancient Rome in the pre-Christian era. And what is being done now is almost much worse than what was then. After all, they were pagans who did not know the true God, and now all this is done by "Christians." And to whom much is given, more will be asked.

All the concepts of good and evil in our time are somehow strangely confused. Many now, without any twinge of conscience, call "black" "white", and "white" - "black". Evil has learned to cover itself with the mask of goodness with extraordinary skill, as never before.

For example! The Christian faith has always taught us that only for the sake of Christ and in the Name of Christ is good real, true good, for there is only ostentatious good, done for the sake of some benefit or gain. If it is strongly said of someone that "he does a great deal of good," this does not at all mean that he is a really good person, for, as our faith teaches us and as the very experience of life shows, it is possible to do good with an evil purpose, and this, of course, will no longer be true good, but only an outward appearance of good. And you need to run away from such "good" to save your soul.

And how much such "good" is happening now, behind which some mercenary calculation is hidden! And people do not notice this or do not want to notice it, and are even very susceptible to such "goodness": "If only they give me money, and why, for what purpose they give it, does it matter: "Money does not smell!"

True, all this happened in the old days, but never on such a huge scale and as often as now, when literally everything is bought for money.

In the past, bodily slavery was widespread, but now it has been replaced by a much worse one – spiritual slavery. And people voluntarily sell themselves into this slavery, depersonalizing themselves and renouncing all that is holy... for money or for any earthly goods in general.

There were times when people were ready to go to the most terrible torments and even death for the Name of Christ. And now, when no one persecutes, tortures, or kills them for Christ's sake, they often sell Christ themselves, having been deceived by certain earthly goods. And this imaginary good, of which there are many workers today, is often done now precisely for this purpose – to turn people away from Christ, plunging them into spiritual slavery.

With each new year, and in this regard, we see more and more "progress", and, what is especially frightening: Christ is sold not only by ordinary "Christians", but also by Christian clergymen, up to the bearers of a high hierarchical rank.

But what is most terrible of all is that with each new year, as the press and the very life around us testify, the moral sense of people becomes more and more dulled, and they begin to reconcile themselves to all the most savage and ugly phenomena of modern modernized life, from which only recently a healthy moral sense turned away with indignation and disgust and resolutely condemned them. Also "progress"!