by Andy Nowicki
The West could well be said to be experiencing its own collective "dark night of the soul" right now. The reasons for this are many, varied, and multifaceted, but at its core, the problem is a spiritual one. We have lost our moorings, and as such, have veered toward ruination. A faithless culture has no particular reason to struggle, grow, or thrive; it lacks any especial cause to value its own continuance.
This is not to say that all aspects of the West's current malaise are attributable to its current state of secularism, nor to claim that only believers can make positive contributions to the construction of a healthy and robust culture. The role of faith, however, can scarcely be ignored, as it offers a sort of transcendentally-grounded bulwark against despair, which in turn tends to arrest the advance of nihilism, thus holding decline at bay. With faith's erosion, however, this bulwark is broken, and all kinds of undesirable elements are free to surge in.
