Any clergyman who participates in discussions on Facebook, Twitter, LiveJournal and other online communities must constantly remember the responsibility that is imposed on him by speaking in a public space. People look at you primarily as priests. The careless and sometimes outrageous statements of individual clergy cast a shadow on the entire Church of God, causing waves of reciprocal discussions in the blogosphere, in which the subject of attacks becomes not so much the author of the lines him-self as the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole. Nobody forbids you to participate in the life of Internet communities and leave your comments in the topics, but it is necessary to act with judgment and discretion.

It’s very often that we don’t understand that God is extremely open to us all the time. Although, we can’t reach him, we can’t break free from our armor. Openness can be met only by openness, but as long as we meet it with stereotypes in mind, armor doesn’t let us even reach out a hand.

It is important to remember that they judge the whole Church by each priest, and “thanks” to the media, any unpleasant incident causes a wide resonance. It is also important to remember that there are pastoral questions, and there are questions associated with church-social or church-state relations.

A statement that there’s no criticism nowadays is a lecturers’ catchphrase to take the fancy of the audience. They start to argue, like: “How? Why is there no criticism? What does it mean? Is there a hope, things will improve?”. Criticism is alive. The quality is doubtable but that’s a different story.

For two decades of unrestrained existence of our Church press, the issue of the quality of journalistic personnel in the Orthodox media has remained invariably relevant. I remember how, when I was the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, in a fit of temper one day, I rebuked my employee responsible for media: “Can we still not find anyone to work with us who is both religious and good at writing?”

A movie by Lars von Trier that he didn’t want to watch to the end, postmodern that hasn’t come to an end, an un-Soviet film The Red Snowball Tree by Vasily Shukshin, The Sin by Andrei Konchalovsky, a glimpse of the expert cinema community and trite cliches. These and many other topics covered in a talk of Vladimir Legoyda with cinema critic Lev Karakhan in the Parsuna show.

If we formulate the main task of the Orthodox media and, even broader, of the entire Orthodox Church in the face of a modern secular society – which are in many ways conflicting, and feeding on the ideals of mass culture and stereotypes that do not correspond to the moral nature and traditions of the people - in the face of these challenges, the task of the Church is to proclaim what the main purpose is in a person’s life.

A person can come to salvation only freely. No one can force another to be saved. And that doesn't mean not being there for him, not trying. I understand that I shouldn't leave him, I should be close to him, but this is his way. It's very strange. I didn't really manage to form this idea: to love the path of another, even if it leads to the destruction of oneself.

Today we are witnessing powerful anti-Church rhetoric, which, unfortunately, coincides with Lent. We hear many attacks on the Church, starting with the notorious incident in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior (the so-called “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior on February 21, 2012 - ed.). This was followed by the horrific desecration of three temples, all concentrated in time, over a week to ten days. After that, as you know, my modest person was also subjected to the spread of false information. Therefore, we are dealing with some kind of information strategy directed against the Church.

Any circumstance in itself is not negative, not positive. It is an opportunity today to see exactly the meaning of life. And therefore, these circumstances, which are destroying the Europe that we knew, allow us to actually return to the origins of faith. New circumstances put us in front of a challenge to understand in general what our faith consists of.

What do we mean by the word “publicity”? If publicity is aimed at achieving material, political goals and personal gain, which, unfortunately, is often seen in the activities of individual hierarchs and priests, this causes rejection among people. They say: “he is taking advantage of publicity.” This, of course, should never be in the Church. Therefore, a clergyman or bishop should always remember that the goals of his public appearances should be closely linked only with his direct ministry, with the main goal of his life - the preaching of Christ.

This new Parsuna episode is about a Catholic’s view of the Orthodox Religion. Having come from Belgium, Jean-François Thiry has been living in Russia since 1991. What keeps him here and what is the hardest thing for him to endure in Russia? Does he have a favorite Russian saint? What does he feel about Martin Luther? And why did he take a vow of celibacy but not become a monk?