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.

- Have there already been any problems with the church Internet?

- To date, there is an acute shortage of positive church journalism on the Internet, which would explain the official position of the Church in a non-official way. Once again, there was a lag in pace. People rushed to the Internet space with "their own idea", with a "crazy". They create their own active sites, climb into all forums, impose their point of view. And the voice of the stable, conservative church majority and hierarchy is almost inaudible.

First of all, there is not a single live forum in which the task of moderators would be to reflect the official church position. Information about the decisions of the Synod and the statements of the Patriarch began to appear at least promptly. But after that, there is a pause, various gossip and reinterpretations begin around this information on various forums, and it is good if somewhere it is still commented on by sensible priests, but they are not authorized to do so. The Patriarchate lacks a normal healthy polemic that defends the Church's position on those issues on which the Church is under attack.

- What should Internet resources be like so that they really work and help solve the problems that the Church faces?

- I have already said that interaction is needed, a response is needed. To do this, we need to look for people who can correctly and with serious theological baggage justify the position of our Church. Here is the question of attracting the teaching forces of our Theological Academies. There should be your own analytics. What is good about the Credo portal, the website of the Sretensky Monastery or Radonezh? The fact that it has its own author's analytics. We will not talk about its quality now, these sites have different orientations, different accents, but it is important that there are independent materials with an analysis of the press and church events. The genre of essays should be revived.