Answering questions from guests of the VIII International festival “Faith and word”, his Holiness Patriarch Kirill noted that the success of missionary priests, leading blogs, can not be determined by how close their language is preaching to the language of young people, reports the Synodal Department for Church relations with society and the media.
“If it was only a matter of language, it would be a problem. But the treatment of non-believers to God is not only a question of language. The increase in the number of young people with atheistic beliefs is in the last instance the question of language. You can refer to them in any language, but if you will tell them what is contrary to the voice of their flesh, with their understanding of what life should be, then any language you can not convince them”, — said the Patriarch.
“You can convince not language, not words, not style, and thoughts — if the person before you is thinking. And if a person lives according to the law of the animal world, it is no language will attract”, he added.
His Holiness stressed that in the eyes of thinking young people living in this linguistic paradigm in contemporary youth jargon, the attempts of the priest-blogger to speak “their language” will look like flirting.
“The priests have not so much the word, as the categories of thought to get closer to the thinking of modern youth. The very phrasing, the style is not being, but understanding where the young man thinks, in what system of values he lives — the priest must enter into the system, not dissolving yourself from the inside to help understand the absurdity of many views and misconceptions,” — said the Patriarch.
“This is a very delicate work. That’s why when the priests wish to please young and just beginning to use the youth slang, to speak the way young people talk to each other at the disco, these phrases do not cling to man — is emptiness, it’s become as sounding brass and cymbals rattle, this is a linguistic clowning”, — he explained.
“There are some young people, but I do not pose as some young kid who speaks the youth lingo, and all I understand. Similarly, many of our great actors who are idols for young people — they do not always speak this youth slang,” said Patriarch Kirill.
According to the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, the greatest credibility to the clergyman gives not the form of presentation and depth of content, based on the personal experiences of a spiritual experience.
“Every priest needs to speak the language, which for him is natural. A strong idea, a vivid comparison, a reference to the experience of God’s presence in his life, authenticity, honesty and sincerity — that will influence regardless of, in full the people speak a modern language, or not fully,” concluded Patriarch Kirill.