Blogging priests should use social media not to indulge their vanity, but to preach the Word of God. This was stated by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, speaking at a meeting of the clergy of the Kaliningrad Metropolia at the Orthodox Gymnasium at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Kaliningrad.
In a report published on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the Patriarch noted that the presence of clergy in the Internet space is expanding. At the same time, priests often forget that they are primarily pastors of the church. Some of them, according to the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, "buy" the number of likes, warm up their vanity and begin to shift the emphasis in their activities in order to receive as much encouragement as possible.
"Of course, personal self-expression in itself is not reprehensible. But in the value system of a clergyman, service to God and others should come first, and only then everything that concerns his own person. If self-expression becomes a priority, or even just a banal desire for popularity, then there is a risk of wasting the gifts that the Lord gives at ordination. It is very sad to see when the holy office and its external attributes become a means for a person to attract attention to himself, and not to Christ," he said.
At the same time, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church stressed that he was not against priests becoming bloggers, but the goal should not be personal popularity.
Based on the materials of the Russian Orthodox Church and TASS