Monthly Archives: April 2013

The Odour of the Apocalypse

Tsar Nicholas III, in a recent speech in St Petersburg, called for the right of all sovereign peoples to determine their own futures without outside interference…Imperial Russian Armies have now crossed the Caucasus and are heading in a two-pronged attack towards Constantinople and through Turkey and Syria towards Jerusalem.

From It’s Later than You Think, July 1991, from Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition

Introduction

Yesterday’s bombing in Boston was appalling and evil. Innocent bystanders, children included, were killed or maimed. However, there are events going on in the world today that are worse even than this. The difference is that those events are hardly reported by the Western media, which often appear to have little but contempt for those who are not included in its ethnocentric navel-gazing.

The Middle

Yesterday’s bomb in Boston is what Iraqis have had to put up with, only on a far worse scale, every few days for the last ten years. A million or more are dead, their country ravaged and in part destroyed, families maimed and killed, even water, gas and electricity in this once rich country are not available all the time. Sometimes, in this oil-rich land, no petrol can be had for cars. The result is that all who can are getting out and that half of Iraq’s almost bimillennial Christians are living in refugee camps and in exile, their lives ruined by a thoughtless and selfish invasion and occupation, which has brought little but misery.

Then there is the war in Syria, largely an invasion being waged by foreign mercenaries against the Syrian people on behalf of powers playing a great geostrategic game to divide and rule the Middle East, whose centre is in Jerusalem. Tunisia, Libya and Egypt have already been destabilised by those powers, their Christian inhabitants the first victims. The terrorists in Syria are fanatical Islamists, their ideology invented by the CIA. They are financed and armed by Afghan drug money, greatly increased since the invasion of Afghanistan, and by the despotic but oil-rich, feudal Islamist monarchies of the Gulf.

These have airlifted in thousands of tons of arms, mainly from Croatia and the Ukraine, to the terrorists who are being trained by US, UK and French Special Forces in the Jordan and Turkey. At stake are the huge untapped gasfields in the Eastern Mediterranean and pipeline routes to Europe. Turkey, for long a puppet, but once the centre of the Ottoman Empire, eyes territory and reserves. The Lebanon quakes, fearing the spillover into its territory. Israel hopes but trembles, seeing opportunities but also threats. The victims are the millions of Christians and other minorities, who mostly live in and around Damascus, Aleppo and Homs.

The West

Meanwhile, the Western world is riven by the problems which it created in 1917, when it exported an ideology of hatred to destroy the Russian Empire, the sole remaining bastion of the Orthodox Christian world, the Orthosphere. Since the fall of that Christian Empire, the world has known only instability. Over the last ninety years, the West has attempted to destroy the soft underbelly of the Orthosphere, installing its candidates as Patriarchs of Constantinople and attempting to undermine the other Greek Patriarchates in Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Local Churches in Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria.

In the last twenty years the Western world, directed from Washington or from its puppet in Brussels, has tried to further undermine those and other parts of the Orthosphere. First, it attacked Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo in a divide and rule policy, bombing Belgrade for Easter, deforming Serbian babies with ‘uranium-enriched’ warheads in Nazi atrocities. Then, having bribed Greece to join the EU, it bribed Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic States, so bankrupting them. Finally, the West set about destabilising the Ukraine, Georgia, Syria and, last year, the final bulwark, the Russian Federation.

Western people are many-layered. In order for them to rebecome Christian, they have to remove every layer of their anti-Christian culture, which they deludedly imagine to be Christian. The layer of modern secularism has to go, then that of 19th century imperialism and rationalism (in fact anti-rationalism), then the darkness of the ‘Enlightenment’, then the protest of the Reformation (as if you could understand the Scriptures without the Holy Spirit), next feudalism, scholasticism and the crusades all have to be removed. Sadly, few are able to cleanse themselves of all the delusions of these layers of proud cultural prejudice.

The East

At the other end of Asia to the physically and spiritually bankrupt ‘Judeo-Christian’ West, there is the East. Today, this means the threat from North Korea, a gigantic Stalinist concentration camp, ruled by madmen, who appear to have nuclear weapons, like India, Pakistan, Israel and perhaps Iran. Yet, it is doubtful if this North Korea could exist without Capitalist-Communist China, which is so hard-working and therefore so rich that it also owns much of the Western world. Yet, paradoxically, it may be that it is this part of Asia which may bring solutions to the current world crisis of this time before Antichrist.

Two prophecies tell us that salvation will come from the East. St John of Kronstadt (+ 1908) prophesied that the deliverance of Russia would come from the East and, ten years later, St Aristocleus (+ 1918) prophesied that the real end of Russia’s errings would come through China. And errings there are. In Russia, which stretches from the East to the West and whose canonical Church territory includes China, current dissatisfaction is real and exists because of ingrained and systemic corruption. It is this dissatisfaction, in itself justified, which is so easily exploited by the dark forces of the West which seek to destroy Russia.

If we are worthy of these prophecies, Russia will be restored and with it the rest of the Orthosphere, which for now is captive to German economic power (able even to steal from private bank accounts) and American military power (able even to steal from private computer accounts). If we are worthy of these prophecies, we may yet also be able to gather together the remnants of the peoples of the whole world into the Church before the end. If we are worthy of these prophecies, it may be that the peoples of the East and West will be reunited once more, not by Babylon, but by Jerusalem.

Conclusion

The Christian Russian Empire, heir to the Christian Roman Empire, was crucified in its Golgotha of 1917. After three ‘days’ (generations) it rose from the dead. The giant is now beginning to speak to the world, East and West alike, of the Resurrection and what it saw when it went down to hades. Will the world, seemingly unaware of this odour of the Apocalypse, listen? We can only pray.

Note:

1. In 1973 the Abbess of the Convent at Gethsemane, Mother Barbara (Tsvetkova) spoke of the prophecy of Elder (now St) Aristocleus of Athos (1838-1918), who was then living in Moscow. The Elder told the future Abbess, then a young student, that ‘regeneration in Russia will begin after a most powerful explosion on the bank of a big river’. When in 1986 the atomic catastrophe occurred at Chernobyl, this prophecy came true.

Chomsky Says Germany Wants Hold on Greece

http://eu.greekreporter.com/2013/04/10/chomsky-says-germany-wants-hold-on-greece/

MIT Professor and philosopher Noam Chomsky told an audience in Dublin on April 3 in a speech entitled Solidarity and the Responsibility to Protect that he believes Germany wants to impose its will and economic slavery on Greece.

The American linguist, philosopher, political critic and activist said: “There are people in Germany who want to obtain whatever valuable has Greece, imposing conditions of economic slavery and psychological stress to Greeks”.

Chomsky suggested the creation of a common front in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy in order for the South to put a stop to the “inhuman demands of the North,, while he underlined that now there is a chance for this front to be created, because the anti-German sentiment is high.

Germany is the biggest contributor to $325 billion in two bailouts for Greece to keep the economy from collapsing, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted on unrelenting pay cuts, tax and slashed pensions, making her an enemy to many Greeks who have been pushed into poverty as a result.

Chomsky said he believed that Alexis Tsipras, leader of Greece’s major opposition party the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) was correct in his assessment that Greece needed European assistance without harsh conditions and the same kind of help that was given to West Germany in 1953 to help its recovery.

Chomsky also criticized European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi and the austerity-only policy of the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-ECB that he said are destroying the social fabric of Greece and other hard-hit EU economies.

Christians Become Preferred Target in Syria’s Civil War

Posted GMT 4-2-2013 18:58:12

http://www.aina.org/news/20130402135812.htm

Christian Syrians have become a special target of violence and attacks in the ongoing war in Syria, according to Swedish freelance journalist and author Nuri Kino visited refugee’s in Lebanon late
December 2012. Kino filed a horrifying report of killings, kidnappings and rape of Christian Syrians, who are now forced to flee their country, even as the ongoing war in Syria affects every citizen, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

But the situation of the minorities is often neglected in media reports. Nuri Kino visited Lebanon together with Ninson Ibrahim, chair of the Swedish Syriac-Orthodox youth organization UI
(Ungdomsinitiativet). UI organized a charity concert before Christmas in Stockholm to support Christian Syrian war refugees. The purpose of the trip was to investigate the needs of the refugees
and to distribute help. Kino met with Christian refugees, priests, and smugglers.

Back in Stockholm, Kino said that Western media’s report on the war in Syria is too black and white. “Of course, there are exceptions. But one must always try to be aware of the context when there is a
news flash,” Kino said. Kino’s report tells the story of Christians being victims of attacks both from criminals and from terrorists. In some villages there are no Christians left as all have been forced to leave, like in the village of Rasel-Eyn. “I felt I had to contribute to make the voice of the Christians heard. My knowledge should be used,” Kino said, who is himself a Christian from Turkey. “I have an advantage in that I know the language and the culture. I also have a network in Syria.”

Churches and monasteries in Lebanon are trying to register the refugees as they arrive, but so far there are no reliable statistics on how many Christians have fled Syria. Hundreds of refugees seek asylum in Lebanon, some try to go to Germany or to Sweden. Many
Syrians/Assyrians live in Södertälje, a suburb south of Stockholm. Around 30 Christian refugees from Syria arrive every week in Södertälje, according to Kino. They are all Assyrians/Syriacs by ethnicity, as 20,000 inhabitants already living in Södertälje.

Nuri Kinos’ report “Between the Barbed Wire” tells about Christians being victims of harassment, theft, rape, murder and kidnappings. In the Syriac League Institute in Beirut, Nuri Kino met with a widow
who lost both her husband and her son in a murder. “They were brutally killed, both shot in the head by terrorists, Islamists”, she said. “Our only crime is our Christian faith.”

Approximately twelve per cent of the inhabitants in Syria are Christians. Many of them will try to leave the country, Kino said. The larger portion of Christian refugees go to Lebanon, but some seek asylum in Turkey. During the war in Syria, the rebels have become steadily more influenced by Islamists, says Kino, who
believes 70% of the attacks on Christians are carried out by rebel Islamists.

“The revolution started by youngsters writing graffiti. It was not an Islamist movement at all. The revolution has been kidnapped. Today, violent forces have taking over parts of the revolution and
publishes videos where people are being decapitated,” says Kino.
Kino points out that there were Christians among the rebels from the beginning: “Oh yes! And there were legitimate claims for the revolution. There was religious freedom in Syria before the war, but no political freedom. But the revolution was kidnapped by Muslim fundamentalists,” says Kino.

However, later development of the revolution has resulted in a situation where Christians are being targeted. And Kino is pessimistic about the future. “I don’t think there is still a possibility to change this revolution into something good,” he says.
In the report, many Christians voice disappointment with “the West” and the US, and with media’s reporting on the war. “You must understand that this is being done deliberately. They want to clear the country of every non-Muslim. And in the West, you are just watching it going on. It is as if the US and all other countries
have become blind or mad. Do you really want an Islamist state instead of the Assad regime? Is that better?” said a man in a café at the Assyrian/Syriac association in Beirut to Kino.

There are also claims that Saudi Arabia is involved in the conflict, sending weapons and money to the revolutionary forces. Christians inside Lebanon are trying their best to help Syrian refugees. In the
report Nuri Kino tells about a visit to a monastery. Here, there are more than hundred refugees seeking asylum, a place to live and a job. Every week new refugees arrive. One of the Church representatives in Lebanon, the Catholic Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Josef III, has earlier criticized the EU for being passive about the situation. “At the moment we have 300 families who have fled Syria. We are trying our best to help them. There are no refugee camps here. Two, three families live in a flat of two or three rooms. But there are few flats available, and we have turned a school into a refugee camp,” the Patriarch said to Kino.

Many refugees have paid substantial sums of money to smugglers to be able to leave Syria. Kino tells the story of Jacob, who ended up in a boat to Italy. He survived the trip, but many of other passengers
did not. Jacob’s story is a horrifying story about people being packed together like cattle in a small boat with no water or food supply for days. Jacob is now in Sweden, very traumatized. During the interview, Kino picks up the phone to call him to see if he has received asylum status in Sweden. “In Sweden, these refugees get a temporary asylum for three years. As Syria is in a war, there are no problems in getting asylum,” Kino said.

After the visit to Lebanon in December Kino went back to Turkey to interview other refugees about the situation for Christians in Syria. “The situation now is even worse than in December,” Kino said.
“This time I met with 21 young Syrian soldiers who fled the governmental armed forces of Syria. Their stories touched my heart. It demands a great courage to leave the army. They are just young boys, and they became tools in the war,” says Kino.

The report on the situation of the Christian minority has reached international attention. Kino hopes that it will change the view of the war and also make the world aware of the situation for non-Muslims in Syria. “Assyrians and other Christians in Syria have been part of the country for 2000 years. It would be devastating if the majority of them would be forced to leave the country such as in Iraq,” says Nuri Kino.

By Inger Alestig
http://themediaproject.org

English-Language Island Orthodoxy

Introduction

Seven of the fourteen universally recognised Local Orthodox Churches are represented in the Diaspora and therefore in the British Isles. The Local Churches present are: the Russian with two dioceses – the Sourozh Diocese, directly dependent on Moscow, and the Diocese of the self-governing Church Outside Russia, known as ROCOR; the Greek Thyateira diocese, under the Church of Constantinople; the Antiochian deanery; the Serbian; the Romanian; the Bulgarian; the Georgian. However, the last four dioceses, though witnessing to a venerable Orthodox Tradition, are not relevant to our consideration here, as we are concerned with parishes which make extensive use of English. What then is the situation of the first four groups today, with regard to their use of the English language in services?

The Sourozh Diocese

The Sourozh Diocese, founded in 1962, originally consisted of only two tiny parishes, because 90% of exiled Russians saw it as a Soviet institution and deeply mistrusted it. In order to exist as a diocese, however small, it therefore had to recruit members among Anglicans – hence its need to use English. The difficulty with this was that Sourozh, based around a personality rather than the Tradition of the Church, often failed to integrate these Anglicans into the Church, receiving them very swiftly. The result was that many of the faithful Orthodox, either Russian or else English, but Non-Anglican, left Sourozh, or rather were forced to leave it. The modernistic, new calendarist ethos being promulgated by the Anglican newcomers was alien to those who knew the Tradition.

Being based around a single divisive personality, Sourozh therefore never had a real diocesan structure and premises outside London and, just, Oxford; this today is yet another bitter fruit of its past legacy, which is not yet buried. For the same reason, once the personality had died (as all personalities do), a schism took place. For decades, the followers of the personality cult had ejected actual Russian Orthodox, because the former were a majority imposing their politically-minded Orthodoxy on the minority. However, once Russian Orthodox had become the majority through immigration, the old majority of 300 decided to leave. This was in 2006. Reality had caught up with fantasy and political Anglican-Orthodox syncretism could only continue outside the reunited and restored Russian Tradition and Church discipline.

Of course, they were free to leave. No-one would have minded that. The error of its leaders was to try and take away Church property and the Russian Orthodox name with them. For, as is clear with the example of those centred in Paris who also left the Russian Church in order to create a modernist ideology, you can only be Russian Orthodox if you are faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church. After the 300 had left, diplomacy was required. Nevertheless, even a diplomat of foreign culture with some English can misunderstand English people. Misunderstandings are inevitable. Today, the future direction of Sourozh is not clear, other than that it will, in time, merge with the ROCOR Diocese as part of the future Western European Metropolia, one of probably three in the future ROCOR.

The ROCOR Diocese

In the 1950s the ROCOR Diocese, with a bishop living in Preston and a saintly archbishop on the Continent, had been second only to the Thyateira Diocese in size. However, within a generation it had gone from big to small. Even in the early 1980s its London Cathedral was still attended by some 400 every Sunday (600 in the 1960s). But they were nearly all elderly. Insisting on Russian ethnicity and language, ROCOR lost the young and parishes closed one after the other. Within a few years ROCOR was to lose its bishop, its clergy (who went to North America or Western Europe), its Cathedral and most of its diocese. Greek old calendarism appeared with an Anglo-Catholic tint. Many in the 1990s thought that the local ROCOR Diocese would die out completely; however, in recent years there has been a revival.

Nevertheless, ROCOR’s great weakness is the lack of a resident bishop. The problem here is that the Diocese is now too small and poor to have a bishop; but this is a vicious circle; it only became small and poor because there was no bishop in good health or resident. This may be called ‘the South American syndrome’, where in a similar situation, action was also taken too late. A uniting, bilingual (and bicultural) bishop would be the solution, especially as the Sourozh Diocese is to merge into the ROCOR Diocese. Such a figure is also necessary, for if the situation in Russia were to degenerate and, for example, some pro-Western regime came to power there and began to persecute the Church, as happened in Constantinople, the self-governing Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) would have nothing to fear.

The Thyateira Diocese

Under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Thyateira Diocese has been the largest of the Local Churches present in the British Isles and Ireland ever since post-War immigration from Commonwealth Cyprus. However, its situation is now increasingly similar to that of ROCOR about forty years ago. Many of its parishes are dying, attended by the elderly. The young have been lost because of the insistence on ethnic identity and the Greek language. Thus the Anglican Diocese of London has for instance six priests of Greek background. Not speaking Greek, but only English, they felt no identity with the ‘Greek’ Church. And even educated young people, who remained faithful to Greek Orthodoxy, have left for the Greek Church in USA, where they are not reprimanded for using English.

Within this Diocese there are a small number of ex-Anglicans, who entered mainly under a previous archbishop in the 1980s. They have faced hellenisation, with their Christian names being supplanted on ordination by names such as Kallistos, Aristobulos, Athanasios, Pankratios, Palamas, Athenagoras etc. At the same time, clergy imported from Greece and Cyprus go by names such as Peter, Paul, Michael, John etc. There is also the small deanery of some 300 mainly ex-Anglicans who left the Sourozh Diocese. Supposedly following Russian Church music and its clergy in Russian dress, they are deprived of a Mother-Church, as their former head, Archbishop Gabriel, pointed out. Inevitably, they will be swallowed up into post-1948 American new calendarist Phanariotism, like the rest of what is now a de facto deanery.

The Antiochian Deanery

Of the four groups concerned here, this is the newest and also the most English-language oriented. It was founded eighteen years ago by ex-Anglican clergy and laity. Indeed, virtually all of its priests are Anglican-trained and there is some doubt as to whether Non-Anglican clergy, that is regular Orthodox, would be accepted into it. Asking to enter the Church with its own agenda, this Anglican group was rejected first by the Sourozh Diocese and then by the Thyateira Diocese – it did not ask the ROCOR Diocese. As a result, the group was received into a new and separate Deanery under the Arab-speaking Patriarchate of Antioch (Damascus). The problem here was that the group had in effect no training and no Mother-Church, being cut off by language and culture, disincarnate from the Tradition, yet actually using elements of Russian Church music and its clergy in Russian dress.

With no possibility of integrating the Mother-Church through contact with its representatives, some members of this group in fact remained Anglicans. In such cases ordinary Orthodox were alienated by it, not feeling at home in it. Charismatics continued their unOrthodox practices; those of Low Church background remained in their Puritanism; those of High Church background remained in their unCatholic Catholicism. Without integration into Orthodoxy, some continued to act and think as Anglicans, with intercommunion and new calendarism, the Divine Liturgy interrupted for ‘speaking in tongues’ and confession unknown. This was mirrored by the exclusive use of English and a phyletist insistence on a ‘British’ Orthodoxy, on Protestant-style proselytising and ‘outreach’ only to Anglicans.

This part of the Deanery was in fact in hock to the British Establishment, the inventor of Anglicanism, and so out on a limb with the rest of the Orthodox Church in this country. Hence, a refusal to concelebrate. Such an ethnic Anglican ‘Orthodoxy’ will die out, since it is of no interest to real Orthodox, even less to Non-Anglicans. However, although this above aspect exists, there are many in the Antiochian Deanery who have integrated the Orthodox Church, understanding that their survival is dependent on this. Here there is cause for optimism and good pastoral work is being done, and Romanian and other Orthodox are teaching the Deanery what Orthodoxy is and how to do the services. But in such a case will the Deanery not one day be released by Antioch and sent to join another Local Church?

Conclusion

It is clear that all English-language Orthodoxy has a Russian background; it refers to the Russian Tradition, Russian Church music and Russian practices, however simplified and ill-understood. Then why are not all united in the Russian Church? It is clear that the fault lies half with representatives of the Russian Church and half with those who have come to the Church. Neither side has always met its responsibilities, sidelining the Tradition, diverting from the mainstream, putting first not the Kingdom of Heaven, but an ethnic or political identity and a lack of cultural understanding, or a personality cult and a lack of competence. Unity is lacking because of the lack of any uniting personality in any of these groups. Despite this, we should never underestimate the grace of God to transfigure the present situation in these Isles.

Money, Money, Money

The death of Mrs Thatcher has met with mixed reactions. Probably never in recent British history has anyone inspired such deep hatred among some and yet profound admiration among others. Some will mourn, others will celebrate, her death. Whatever the attitude to this divisive personality, one thing stands out; this is her philosophy of Monetarism, called ‘Thatcherism’.

Greatly influenced by Friedrich von Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom’ and the monetarism of his Chicago School disciple Milton Friedman, Mrs Thatcher thought that an economy could only work if it appealed to a base human instinct – the profit motive. Therefore, everything in the economy and life in general had to be ‘monetarised’. This is called economic liberalism, the rule of the market, according to which the poor did not matter because wealth would ‘trickle down’ to them through ‘the invisible hand’.

This was a reaction to the economic stagnation and decadence created in the UK by the post-War Keynsian Labour Party, whose inspiration was State regulation and State intervention, central planning. This was justified by the all too woolly concept of ‘social justice’, so open to the politics of envy, personal irresponsibility, selfishness and wastefulness. It demotivated, creating injustice, laziness and a ‘the State will sort it out’ attitude, which also bankrupted Communist countries.

In practice, Mrs Thatcher’s monetarism has meant a country run by accountants. Thus today, a generation on, accountants (’managers’) walk around hospitals (‘NHS trusts’) and decide which patients (‘bed blockers’) should leave and which should stay, regardless of their health, and other accountants (’executive head teachers’) walk around schools (‘academies’) and decide which good teacher will be sacked and which good course will be discontinued, regardless of human value. The profit motive reigns supreme over compassion, learning and eternal values.

This is the same Thatcherism – its greatest advocate being Mr Blair of the Arch-Conservative (‘New Labour’) Party – which bankrupted the nation, because it believed in the law of the jungle (‘deregulation’). Thus, within a generation, Thatcherism (also called Blairism) created an out of control (‘deregulated’) banking system, bankrupted millions, indebted students and blighted the lives of future generations in this country.

In the Gospel it is written that we cannot serve God and Monetarism (Mammon). In her last years Mrs Thatcher was extremely ill. We would hope that that illness brought her repentance, for that is what we all need. In that way she would have learned about the Gospel and that it is not money, money, money that makes the world go round. It is (the God of) Love Who makes the world go round.

Orthodox Cyprus and the End of the European Union

Archbishop Chrysostom of Nova Justiniana and all Cyprus has said that his country should withdraw from the EU, as the EU would cease to exist in the future, as it is coming apart. In an interview with the Russian Channel One, he said: ‘Currently, the economies of Spain, Portugal and Italy are in danger. If the Italian economy goes down, just like our economy, the EU will not resist. The people who rule the EU, particularly, those making decisions in the so-called troika, do not understand many things; that will lead to the collapse of the EU. This is why I believe we (Cyprus) should withdraw from the Union before the collapse takes place’.