​TRANSNISTRIAN PRIESTS CONCERNED ABOUT CHILDREN’S UNCONTROLLED ACCESS TO INTERNET

The Diocese of Tiraspol and Dubasari, which is a part of Moldovan Metropolitan Church, issued an address to parishioners, expressing concern about the uncontrolled access of children to Internet.

“We, the clergy, address to you, being sure that we have a similar understanding of the situation in the field of children and teenagers’ upbringing. In recent years we have many times witnessed that computer technologies can be used both for the benefit of the people and in their detriment. The Internet presents a lot of opportunities for the Christian mission. In good and experienced hands it can be efficiently used for propagating Christianity, faith and love”, priests say.

At the same time, they conclude that more and more often namely the Internet becomes a real way to hell.

“The Internet can provide not only positive, useful information, important for education, but also cruel information, which is destroying young people. The World Wide Web is drawing in the spiritually immature personality and the person gets addicted to computer as a form of escaping from the real life. It is very difficult to stop, sober up, come to one’s senses. Victims of computer technologies are gradually losing the Evangelical love, which is being substituted in their lives with the addiction, which means that the person loses self-control, sober thinking and is succumbing to evil forces even without realizing this”, the address says.

Its authors stressed that if Internet can exert such a pernicious influence on adults, it is affecting children and teenagers much more destructively. With all this, according to the document, 85% of adults do not restrict the time the child is playing at the computer, 74% allow their children watching violent films and play games the child wants.

“We must not allow that the main influence on young souls to be exerted by the Internet, but not you and us. If we keep postponing the resolving of existing problems, our society risks to remain without future”, stresses the address, elaborated at the meeting of the Diocesan Council, chaired by Archbishop Savva of Tiraspol and Dubasari.