comentary on the world we used to live in

A quote from an article titled "ASCETICISM: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MARRIAGE AND MONASTICISM IN ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY" from The Web site of the Parish of the Protection of the Holy Virgin Mary

1) First is the split between Church and culture in the West, a factor seriously underestimated by many Church leaders from the Old Country. Traditional Orthodox societies were, whatever their historical faults, basically normal and human. In traditional Christian societies, whether Semitic, Slavic, Greek or Celtic, Church and culture supported one another: priest, politician and parent all worked for the same things. Marriage and monasticism were organically united in a community whose lifeblood was the Divine Liturgy, whose lifestyle was traditional asceticism, whose ‘biorythmns’ were ordered by the cycle of Church services and whose national holidays and celebrations were the great annual Feasts of the Orthodox Church. But in contemporary Western society, American or Europeanthis organic link between Church and culture has been severed at the root.