Why doesn't the Church change?translated

This is one of the most frequent reproaches towards the Church - they say, progress is taking place by leaps and bounds, digitalization, artificial intelligence, and only the Orthodox Church is stuck somewhere in the Middle Ages.

We live in an amazing era when the world around us is changing rapidly: technologies, habits, ways of communication. Until recently, a push-button mobile phone was a miracle, but now a smartphone can already replace a computer. But when we come to church, we are faced with something completely different: services, prayers, traditions, it seems, have not changed for centuries and seem archaic to many

From here you can often hear: the Church must change something in order to become closer, more understandable, more modern. And this expectation, by the way, in itself, is not bad. But the question is what exactly can be changed and what cannot be changed, and how to do it without risking destroying the Church itself.

What can change and what can't

To understand, it is necessary to distinguish between four aspects of church life, which have varying degrees of change.

Actually, the Orthodox dogma itself is dogmas formulated at the Ecumenical Councils and set forth in the Creed. The dogmas of the Church are unchanged.

Divine service - rites, rules, language,...