April 10, 2009

Orthodox Night Clubs?



April 10, 2009
Interfax

The Moscow Patriarchate contemplates the opening of Orthodox night clubs for intellectual young believers.

"May be it is possible for us to open a night club where young people could watch a good movie and discuss it through three or four in the morning. We can support such things," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department for Relation between the Church and Society, said at his meeting with the students of High School of State Management at Moscow State University.

He mentioned that Catholics have established such club in Moscow - the Spiritual Library at Pokrovka - where the visitors can discuss films and read books."

Such a club can be opened even late at night. The Orthodox environment does not need another club with vodka and adult entertainment," Chaplin said.

According to him, working with young people will be the priority of the Orthodox Church's social work. The Church promotes different forms of such work."

Today's young people eliminate moral duality of the Soviet period, when the people had to worship the ideology they had never shared. Young people today have a lot of prospects, and the goal of the elder generations and the state is not to prevent them to design their lives," Fr. Vsevolod said.

He stated that the young Russians "have a good chance to set up a country without any inhibitions, without trying to clear itself before the West or the East, and always looking back at the stereotypes of social life which have been developed by not the best people in not the best time for our country."