The publication lists the complaints that, in its wording, are increasingly heard against the Church: hierarchs meet with officials, priests supposedly try to penetrate schools, and the Church itself seems to keep silent about society's real problems and says one must endure. Lobbying of interests is named separately: the state returns land plots and introduces subjects about religion in schools.
Such activity, the article notes, displeases those who believe the Church should mind its own business — provide religious services to the population on demand — and not interfere in other matters. Members of the Church, the text says, apparently think otherwise.
The publication asked Andrey Desnitsky, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to answer the question of why this is so. The conversation with him formed the basis of the article.
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