- And what is the attitude of the Patriarchate to the Internet and to the development of information technology in general?

- Well, the attitude is very peculiar... The fact is that when the Internet entered our lives – about eight years ago – this word was a dirty word in the church environment. And even in some near-Orthodox newspapers there appeared articles with titles like "Inter-teneta".

On the one hand, it was some quite reasonable caution in the face of everything new, and on the other hand, it was a reaction to the fact that the Internet has suffered the fate of any novelty: usually, various nimble businessmen and swindlers penetrate into all new cracks faster... And it is the fruits of their activities that you most quickly encounter on the Internet. At the first attempt to access the Internet, a beginner got to the most advertised, promoted, intrusive sites, that is, to pages. Then he would tell his classmates or fellow students about it; in the end, the information reached the parishes – and there was the impression that the Internet was just a dump in which there could be nothing but garbage.

The Internet is a world gossip. But in the end, there was always gossip. The Internet is good because it records and stores them. The other day I found gossip about me from Israel:

"As you know, EBN (Yeltsin) recently visited us here, in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. This shot was repeated several times on TV. EBN puts a candle in the church, his wife is next to him, and behind his back looms a certain clergyman, portly as it should be. When the candle was not placed at the EBN in any way, this very face leaned forward, pushed Naina aside, took the candle from the EBN and helped to adjust it so that it would hold. Well, the face and the face, slipped and disappeared, and only after 3-4 repetitions, (and this was repeated both in Israel and in Russia several times, after all, he was not in the church for long, and there was not much filming at all on this visit) I finally understood what kind of person was there behind the back of the EBN who took care of him on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church. DEACON KURAEV. Don't be remembered by night. If I'm not mistaken, of course. Gentlemen, does this name mean anything to you? Well, Ray Bradbury had firefighters like that. In the old days, firefighters extinguished it, and these ones set fire to it and inflated it. So the Christian Kuraev is like that. His website, they say, has a password, for his own people, much cooler than RNE. After the fire, don't forget it, Russians! And on TV, it's a sign and a message, just like Machiavelli's book, no doubt. Rhetorical questions. Who put him in the delegation and slipped him under the camera? And who is this message for? Whether the grandfather knew (the question is unimportant). Do the dear gentlemen know that this deacon is rumored to be Zyuganov's paid consultant? And how to understand that Abramovich and BAB (Berezovsky) on the day of the Duma alliance hugged and voted for the Alyanets? And BAB was noticed long ago in shuttle contacts with Zyu? What happens - BAB, Abramovich, Zyuganov, Putin, Yeltsin, Kuraev, eh? BAB and KURAEV printed side by side look especially good, you don't think, aesthetically very fresh! Let's extend the chain a little more, BAB - Barkashov, even more piquant! Help yourself!" 281.

Steeply! I was not in Israel on the day of the arrival of the retired Yeltsin there. I have never met with Zyuganov and have not consulted the Communist Party, I do not maintain any secret website... But this is all prose. And why should it destroy such a wondrous flight of fantasizing gossip? This is how the Jews frighten themselves and each other with the global threats that they picture in their heads and then demand that they be treated as if they were really persecuted...

So the initial negative reaction of church people to the Internet is understandable. Something else is inexplicable. After all, the clergy themselves are not homogeneous – there are people of different styles of thought and life: there are people who are more traditionalist, conservative, and there are priests who declare openness to the modern world, who are committed to reforms and rapprochement with the Western world. And under these conditions, it seemed completely natural that these priests (let's put it this way, the heirs of Father Alexander Men) would not be allergic to the Internet, and therefore on the Internet Orthodoxy would be represented by the sites of such preachers, and not by preachers of the conservative camp.

So, the paradox is that everything happened exactly opposite to expectations. Over the past two years, it has become clear that the most professionally created and most visited religious sites on the Russian-language Internet are those of conservative theologians, conservative church institutions and monasteries. But the sites that were created by priests of the "non-dogmatic" direction appeared later, and turned out to be smaller in number and, in addition, they are extremely closed in on themselves, on their internal problems: who wrote what about these circles, what they called, how they criticized and "how we responded to this." And at the same time, the absence of exactly what the Internet is alive with, that is, "forum".

And this is the paradox: those who have declared their commitment to democracy have chosen the most conservative form of presence on the Internet, which does not allow dialogue. On the contrary, those theologians, preachers, priests who declare their adherence to tradition, and often simply monarchical views, they just turned out to be able to create sites on which any people can be present (except for Satanists – we have such a rule: we immediately "freeze" Satanists :-) – and conduct a discussion, disagree, defend any non-Orthodox position – from atheism to new sects such as Mormons or Theosophists. In this I see some paradox in the relationship between the Church and the Internet.

As for the attitude of church leadership, here our Church is lucky. In the autumn of 1999, at a missionary conference, a very important judgment was made by Patriarch Alexy: "We must more actively explore the missionary space of the Internet." About a month after that, I was in Bulgaria. And there I was talking with one of the priests working in the Bulgarian Patriarchate, telling about the news from Russia, and, in particular, about the missionary conference and about the words of the Patriarch. And this priest, with whom I was talking, suddenly changes in his face: "Father Andrei, I beg you, when you meet with our Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim, you will definitely tell him this, because every time we approach our Patriarch with this, he answers us: "All this is useless, it is not necessary, it is all not clear where it comes from and why, we can do without it." But for him, of course, Russia is a great authority and he respects Patriarch Alexy very much. And therefore, be sure to tell our Patriarch Maxim in passing that Patriarch Alexy calls on church people to enter the Internet." And the Bulgarian Church at that time did not have a single Internet page: neither the Patriarchate, nor any of the parishes, nor any of the monasteries.

- Are there many conservative Orthodox sites on the Internet now?

- Yes, a lot. Of those on which there are forums – I look there more often – about ten. And those on which information is simply posted are an order of magnitude more.