Therefore, addressing a priest in a secular way is an emphatic distancing and a clearly expressed reluctance to see in one's interlocutor what he himself considers the most important in his life and in his ministry.

This also explains Metropolitan Pitirim's defiantly witty response to the note "How should I address you?" which Vladyka received in 1988 at one of the first meetings of the Soviet intelligentsia with representatives of the Church (as far as I remember, it was in the Central House of Writers). After reading this note, Vladyka smiled and answered: "Call me simply: Your Eminence!"

So, if a person does not have special reasons to emphasize his non-churchliness, then it is better not to use such appeals, which for a clergyman still have a worldly, and, therefore, profane, understating connotation.

When people ask me how to address me, I answer: "Usually I am addressed by Father Andrei, more formally by Father Deacon. My patronymic name is Andrey Vyacheslavovich. You can address as it is more convenient for you." I add this last sentence to relieve some of the embarrassment of people who are much older than me. After all, here the question is not so much about respect for the individual, for the person, it is a question of attitude to the rank, to the service to which the person has devoted himself.

In general, this is a matter of etiquette, not dogma. To put it forward as a pretext for separation from the brethren and the Church means to keep only in one's mind, and not in one's heart, that strange text of the Apostle Paul, where he says something about the mutual relations between the fasting and the non-fasting††††††††††...

In addition, from a purely linguistic point of view, it is necessary to distinguish between naming and addressing; These are different classes of words.

In the Gospel we are asked not to call anyone on earth a father (and it is obvious that this does not apply to the real father), that is, not to recognize anyone's paternal rights – and these rights in the East at that time were very extensive.

Addressing with the use of so-called "kinship names" is a common thing in all languages: we simply determine both the age relationship with the interlocutor and, almost imperceptibly, our attitude towards him.

In fact, which address is more polite – "father" or "uncle"? "Mother" or "aunt"? Isn't it better to live in a society where boys are called "son" rather than "boy"?

The normal use of a normal linguistic means can in no way be blamed on the Orthodox. And the fact that we respect our priests and therefore address them accordingly is our right. The Gospel did not take it away from us.

In what way is Orthodoxy worse than Protestantism?

The paradox is that practically all the accusations that Protestants make against Orthodoxy are applicable to themselves.

Protestants accuse the Orthodox of preaching too little.

But the Protestant mission does not know successes similar to those known by the Orthodox mission.