Contrary to what occurred in the Greek and Oriental Churches, the intellectuality of the Latin Church became largely identifi ed with the philosophical mode of thought, notwithstanding the formal rejection of philosophy by St. Paul (i Cor. i. 19; 11. 5—16; iii. 18, 19, 20 and Col. ii. 8).

Westerners are moreover compelled to admit this themselves: ‘The notion of philosophy came to have a different meaning for the Eastern and Western Churches, in the sense that for the Greeks it comprised quasi organically a large proportion of religious theories (dass der Begrjff ‘Philosophie’ dort ganz wesenhaft viel religiöse Weltanschauungskunde umfasste), while for the Latins it contained, intentionally or involuntarily, the seed which ultimately led to the total separation of religion and rationalist science (der zur vollkommenen Dualisierung von Religion und Gedankenwissenschaft führen sollte).

Thus the man of the West became the slave of his speculations, whereas the Oriental spirit knew how to preserve its inward liberty and its seemingly backward superiority’ (A. M. Ammann S. J., Die Gottesschau im palamitischen Hesychasmus).

On the other hand, it is strange to note how far certain minds within the Latin Church have gone towards the acceptance not only of philosophical thought as such, but even of specifically modern thought: this attitude has led to a particularly regrettable lack of understanding of certain traditional modes of Christian thought itself, a lack of understanding which reveals itself above all in an inability to conceive of the intrinsic truth of those modes, or let us say in a fixed determination to reduce ideas to the level of historical facts.

In the case of those who are foremost in adopting what can only be described as pseudo-intellectual barbarism, anti-Catholic in its origin, their attitude of mind is accompanied by the unshakeable complacency of the ‘connoisseur’ who arrogates to himself the role of arbiter in every field, and who treats the greatest minds of the past in the spirit of a specialist in mental diseases or a collector of insects.