The Moscow Patriarchate: Church is still too often placed in informational ghetto

16 January 2008, 12:54


Moscow, January 16, Interfax – Mass media intentionally ignores the Russian Orthodox Church’s opinion on acute problems of modern society, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations' communication service Fr. Mikhail Prokopenko thinks.

‘The Church speaks up (on various social problems – IF) and it has done it already for a long time, but unfortunately, informational ghetto of the Soviet times and years of early democracy, has not been universally eliminated’, Fr. Mikhail stated on air of the Echo of Moscow radio station.

According to him, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia more than once commented on the Chechen war and ‘always called the war evil, while he accepted the necessity to stop bandit outrage and murder of peaceful citizens’. The recent acute problem of monetized privileges was also assessed by the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the priest noted.

‘However, so happened that his (the patriarch’s – IF) voice was simply ignored by the majority including mass media’, Fr. Mikhail stated.

When commenting on clergy’s participation in the work of a public council on morality at the TV, initiated recently by Orthodox journalists, Fr. Mikhail stressed that the Church ‘does not pretend to play the role of a censor’ that ‘journalists often imposed on it’.

‘The Church does not incline to lead prohibitive work, to bond and not let go. However, the Church reserves the right to express its opinion publicly on the processes that are taking place in the society, especially in the sphere of public morality. And no one can make the Church become silent’, the Moscow Patriarchate’s representative noted.

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