Monthly Archives: January 2014

The Euro-American Revenge against International Orthodoxy

We must create a Slavic State in Central Europe on a strictly Catholic basis so that it can become a bulwark against Orthodox Russia.

Adolf Hitler

The present violent disturbances in Kiev and certain formerly Polish, Galician towns in the Ukrainian wild west come after the refusal of the Ukrainian government to cede to the wishes of the violent pro-Western minority and so make the Ukraine into the next bankrupt EU colony. It is crystal clear that the present carefully-orchestrated riots are the ethnocentric, Western revenge for the choice of freedom of the democratically-elected Ukrainian government and people.

After several carefully-timed ‘visits’ in support of the terrorists (many of them known violent criminals) since last November of various high-ranking EU commissars and US Republican politicians, like so many pagan Roman generals and senators 2,000 years ago, after threats from the US administration and from their puppet EU (the EU was ever a post-1945 US creation) to impose sanctions against the Ukrainian government and in support of the few thousand terrorists (many of them said to be Polish nationals and rumoured to be paid a small fortune (for them) of 30 euros a day by the US administration), after invasion threats to the territorial integrity of the admittedly artificial state of the Ukraine by forces in EU Poland, Hungary and Romania, it is clear that the Ukraine may not survive.

The Ukrainian government itself is desperate to keep the territorial integrity of the mere generation-old Ukraine. It has a softly-softly approach with the terrorists in Kiev and elsewhere, even though their tactics are carefully orchestrated and many of them have been professionally trained and equipped, as can be seen in their techniques of kidnapping women and children. If this were Belfast, Washington or Paris, clearly the riot police and soldiers would by now have shot dozens of them. But even with this approach, it may not be possible for the government to preserve the unity of the fledgling State. Just as other colonial states, like Iraq, Syria and virtually all of Africa, have not been able to survive civil wars ultimately caused by bureaucrats in London or Paris who drew up their straight-lined borders on backs of envelopes decades ago, so too the Ukraine, a Stalinist and Khrushchevite colonial formation, may not survive the present civil strife.

Notably, it now seems almost certain that the Russian centre, the Russian south (called ‘New Russia’), including the already autonomous Russian Crimea, and almost all the purely Russian east will no longer tolerate the activities of eastern Catholics and other schismatics from Galicia. It is quite notable that Catholic priests have been prominent in encouraging the riots in Kiev, and even the Cardinal of New York, Timothy Dolan, has been encouraging them. Many already say that ‘it is all Stalin’s fault’. He should, they say, have left the three pro-Nazi provinces in the far west, known as Galicia, to Poland, as before 1939. These people, Galicians, form the backbone of the ‘Ukrainian’ (actually Polish) emigration in the Western world and many of their descendants now advise the ethnocentric and utterly prejudiced US government. Their departure would leave the other 21 provinces of the Ukraine to freedom outside the pro-German EU – for the jealousy of freedom-loving Greeks, Cypriots, Bulgarians, Romanians, Latvians, Italians, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Britons and many others.

If the six million or so Galicians wish to leave the Ukraine for the bankrupt US-sponsored EU, then this would be much better for the rest. Then the rest of the Ukraine, 85% of it, by far the richest part, would be free to enjoy the benefits of multinational Orthodoxy and the Eurasian Union. As for the small Orthodox minority, they could simply become part of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora, either under the care of the Polish Orthodox Church or else directly under the care of Moscow. The only question would be what to do with Orthodox Transcarpathia, the south-westernmost province of the Ukraine, which has been so persecuted by Ukrainian nationalism since it was detached from Czechoslovakia in 1945, when it was still called Subcarpathian Rus.

It might wish to become an independent country, to be called Ruthenia or Carpatho-Russia, and join the Eurasian Union. It certainly needs protection from present EU and Hungarian imperialism, from which latter it suffered so bitterly before 1919. Its Church, with 600 parishes and a multitude of monasteries, quite big enough to be independent, could easily become a new Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Certainly, this would be in the Trinitarian unity in diversity model of Russian Orthodoxy which founds new Local Churches (unlike the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which has never freely allowed any Church to receive autocephaly and does not share this vision of unity in diversity, but only crushing centralism, like the EU or its predecessor the SU).

It is no coincidence that at the same time as these carefully organised events have been unfolding in limited parts of the Ukraine, persecution has been unfolding against Tartar Orthodox in Tartarstan. Churches have been burned down and the 250,000 Tartar Orthodox are being threatened by organised Islamists, trained and financed abroad, mainly financed from the Western allies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. (How well we all remember how President George Bush protected the Saudi Bin Laden family after the Saudi terrorist attacks of 9/11). Thus, both in East and West, the enemies of Christ are attempting to destroy multinational Orthodoxy (the Church of Russia has 62 different nationalities). What the enemies of Christ want to create – and have in many places already created – by their old technique of dividing and ruling, is a disunited, nationalistic Orthodox world, a series of little, balkanised, mononational churches, which would become mere toothless departments of assorted toothless EU states, for consumers of individualistic pietism and folklore, on the disincarnate, Western Protestant model.

It is clear that in 2014 we are facing a turning point on the road of world history. On the one hand, we have the four nations of the newly-formed Eurasian Union (The Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia) with its originally Orthodox Christian unity in diversity basis and ideal of symphony of Church and State, which is in the forefront of the Spiritual Resistance Movement; on the other hand, we have the anti-Christian US/EU, much imitated by the rest of the world, largely made up of former EU and present-day US colonies, although several decades behind their colonial masters. Therefore, there are today only two choices. What is uncertain is whether this is the end or just the last shock before restoration of the Orthosphere and Orthodox government which is the only thing that now stands between Christ and Antichrist, between the Orthodox Church and her faithful and the militantly atheist Western world. Time will show which way we are going to go.

See: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/01/24/347411/west-targets-russia-by-ukraine-unrest/

The Gathering of the Nations

Fear not, for I am with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west.

Isaiah 43, 5

What is astonishing to the still loyal and uncompromised Orthodox heart and mind is not that the Western world lovingly cherishes its illogical prejudice that the Russian Orthodox Church is wild, backward and lacking in culture, as it so clearly expressed in local media coverage of the 2006 Sourozh schism. What is astonishing is rather that the Western world lovingly cherishes Antichrist and unstintingly and at every turn consistently advances his cause. For his primary aim is the destruction of the integrity of the Orthodox Church, a cause already advanced by the venality of some in many smaller Local Churches outside the canonical territory of Rus, and which he is desperately trying to advance inside that territory, especially on its outer fringes, using as his tools the madcap schemes of his Western and Westernised dupes.

What the Western world does not understand here is that the downfall of Orthodoxy would lead automatically to the last stage of its own spiritual and so cultural suicide, followed by the eradication of all Christian Faith universally. This is because the Western world, like the rest of the world, is wholly dependent on the rays of light that shine, as if from the Sun, from the Orthodox Church, the One and Only Church, the One and Only Spiritual Sun.

The Western world has long been enslaved to Antichrist, worst of all, without even noticing it. This is the most perilous of states because it indicates total self-delusion. This is the self-delusion of him who says ‘the devil does not exist’, so proving not only that the devil does exist, but also that he is his main servant. The destruction of Russian Orthodoxy, attempted, but by not attained by the Western world from 1917 on, would mean that the forces engulfing it would then engulf the Western world and the rest. Russian Orthodoxy sees the fate of the Western world in its latest foolish outburst of short-sighted self-destructiveness, called consumerism, and knows that thus it dooms itself to destruction – unless it repents before the end, so redeeming itself from its repeated sinful attempts to destroy Sovereign and Imperial Rus since 1917.

If this repentance is weighty enough, then there is still even the chance before the end of gathering together the remnants of all the nations, Orthodox, heterodox and even pagan, and bringing them under the spiritual reign of a restored Sovereign and Imperial Rus. If not, then we will be forced to take refuge, fleeing ‘into the mountains’ from the floods of iniquity and the tides of destruction, our last hope remaining only in the Second Coming.

USA Creating Schism in the Serbian Orthodox Church

Although we totally disagree with Bishop Artemije’s schism in Serbia, we believe that his following letter is of great interest, since it shows just to what extent American meddling in Local Orthodox Churches in the ‘soft underbelly’ of the Orthodox world is provoking trouble. We have in mind not only Serbia and Joe Biden’s notorious ‘visits’ to Constantinople, but the notorious US ambassadorial activities in Georgia and those of Ambassador Herbst in Kiev. As regards Bishop Artemije, it is our belief that he should have faced charges about embezzlement and then retired to a monastery like the true confessor St Justin (Popovich)

http://www.eparhija-prizren.org/episkop/tekstovi/1143-bishop-artemije-comments-on-the-letter-from-patriarch-irinej.html

An End to Pan-Orthodox Assemblies: Now it is Time to Start Seriously

Post 200:

The news that the Patriarchate of Antioch has withdrawn its participation in the so-called ‘Pan-Orthodox Episcopal Assemblies’ (to be translated into our plain English as ‘Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meetings’) is not surprising. Fed up with heavy-handed Greek Imperialism, it has quit. It is ironic since certain Antiochian converts, quite unrealistically, saw them three or four years ago as panaceas (admittedly, to largely non-existent illnesses). This event was all too predictable given the way in which the Patriarchate of Constantinople took over everything in the so-called ‘assemblies’, ‘presiding’ and issuing decrees, even giving the meetings the name ‘Pan-Orthodox’ – ancient, and not so ancient, code for ‘All-Greek’. Perhaps the only surprise is that it was Antioch that went first.

The withdrawal is hardly surprising, since the other five groups – Bulgarians, Russians (both parts) and Serbs (and probably the Romanians and the Georgians) felt much the same. As one commentator in the USA put it, in its recent polite letter to the North and Central American group the Russian Church (ROCOR) took a fly swatter to the problem of Constantinople’s philetism, whereas Antioch took a hammer. Probably all (except Constantinople) are now relieved, as the abscess has been pierced. However, this does not mean that the process is over. All it means is that the primitive and crude attempt of US-backed Hellenist Imperialism to take over the Orthodox Diaspora is over. Now that that is out of the way, we can make a serious attempt to organise the Diaspora on an Orthodox, and not a papist, basis.

What have we learned? Firstly, we have learned that no Local Church should attempt to take over the Diaspora. Imperialism, however much it may be dressed up in pseudo-theological, in fact philosophical, terms is not part of the Church. That may seem obvious – but to some it appears to be an astounding revelation. Secondly, we would suggest that all Inter-Orthodox meetings be presided by a different Church in turn. Thirdly, we would suggest that the bishops and committees meet only once a year – otherwise they risk turning into mere talking shops and empty photo-opportunities.

Finally, we would suggest that the bishops should encourage the grassroots to work together; Church unity will not be founded top-down but bottom up, as the very word ‘found’ suggests. This, like the rest of what we have said, is nothing more than the obvious, obvious to even the least of our parishioners. Unfortunately, ideology never takes into account the least of our parishioners or the obvious. Therefore, we suggest that all ideologies be thrown out of the window and we start again, with Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meetings, and forget the highfalutin ‘Episcopal Assemblies’ of the past and all their philosophical jargon on ‘being and communion’ and talk instead about the life in Christ.

Retribution

But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be (Matt. 24, 37)

I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish (Lk. 13, 5)

A local politician in the UK has suggested that the current incessant heavy rain and flooding, very severe in some southern parts of England, Cornwall and Wales, is happening because of the Prime Minister’s and Parliament’s favouring of homosexual ‘marriage’.

On the one hand, such an Old Testament view of God as a punisher and avenger, especially for sexual transgressions, typical of Calvinistic Protestantism (not to mention the kindred Old Testament religions of Judaism and Islam), reminds us that many have not yet received the New Testament revelation that God is Love. On the other hand, such a view does contain truth. The fact is that we have to pay for what we do, we are responsible for our actions. Our God is Merciful, but He is also the only Just Judge. In other words, there is such a thing as retribution. If we are, as Mr Cameron and those with him appear to be, without principles, reality will one day catch up on us. God does not punish us; we punish ourselves.

If we distance ourselves from the Creator, then we distance ourselves from the grace of God and the protection of the Holy Spirit. God does not leave us, but we leave Him. To abandon God is to be like a soldier who goes into battle without any body armour; it means inviting mortal wounds. To live our lives without God in them is to subject them to the ‘elemental’ forces of the fallen Cosmos, to the ‘elemental’ forces of fallen Nature, to the ‘elemental’ forces of fallen mankind. And what are ‘elemental’ forces? They are simply demonic forces. All ‘natural’ and ‘manmade’ catastrophes, so-called ‘acts of God’ come from this. The demons want only one thing – our suffering, for they are the source of all suffering, whether through corruption, crime, war, disease, hurricane, earthquake or flooding.

Water is for baptism and blessing; but a deluge comes from unrighteousnesss. Over 150 years ago the Russian Orthodox theologian, A.S. Khomyakov, who knew England very well, warned in his poem ‘The Island’ that for considering worldly glory higher than the courts of God the day would come when in England ‘the grace of clear thought will leave your sons’.

It has now come.

A Council?

How well we recall the letter of Fr (now St) Justin (Popovich) of 7 May 1977, ‘On the Summoning of a ‘Great Council’ of the Orthodox Church’. In fact, we still have translations of it in Russian, French and English. In it he stated that there could be no Council of the Orthodox Church because most of the Orthodox Churches were not free and those that were, (he cited the Russian Church Outside Russia, the Church in America and the Japanese Orthodox Church), were not being invited. Instead, the seats were to be filled by a host of titular bishops from the Patriarch of Constantinople and KGB-vetted bishops from, as it was then called, the ‘Moscow Patriarchate’. The Saint’s plea was heard, perhaps not in the courts of men, but by the angels above, and the Council never took place. Now again, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is pushing forward for yet another ‘Pre-Conciliar Meeting’ in March this year and for the Council to take place next year.

It seems to us that although the situation of the Local Churches in Eastern Europe has radically changed since the fall of atheistic Communism, since when freedom has come to them, in other respects little has changed. The Patriarchate of Constantinople has, if anything, even more become a colony of the US Department of State. The latter has misused it ever since they installed their own US Patriarch in 1948 and exiled the legitimate Patriarch Maximos to Switzerland (who said on his ejection ‘The City is lost’) in order to undermine the Russian Orthodox Church by setting up schisms, for example, in France, Finland, Estonia, England and the Ukraine. In no way can there be a formal meeting of the Orthodox Churches, while the Patriarch of Constantinople and its allies are enslaved by the CIA (and also the Turkish government).

The US Administration appears to think that it can deal with the Orthodox Churches as it dealt with the Vatican, which accepted US Protestantisation in its Second Council fifty years ago and then saw imposed on it an anti-Communist Polish Pope for the 1980s Reaganite Crusade against Communism. Significantly, Roman Catholic sources, like the papist AsiaNews, are pushing Constantinople to arrange this so-called Council so that it will become a modernist Orthodox (therefore pseudo-Orthodox) Second Vatican Council. This would make the Orthodox Church into a mere Uniat department of the Vatican and, in that way, of the US Department of State. This is not going to happen. (In any case a meeting of bishops is not a Council; to become a Council the meeting must first be ‘received’ by clergy, monks and people; paradoxically, Church Orthodox Christians are a lot more democratic than the Non-Church Protestants and Roman Catholics, and always have been).

Thus, the attempts by Constantinople to make the recently set up Regional Inter-Orthodox (called ‘Pan-Orthodox’ by enemies of the Tradition) Assemblies of Bishops in the Diaspora into bridgeheads for their conquest of the Diaspora have failed miserably. Thus, for North and Central America, Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco has eloquently voiced the opposition of all free Orthodox to such attempts (http://www.synod.com/synod/eng2014/ 20140115_ensynodletterarchbpdemetrios.html). Indeed, in some places the Assemblies have virtually closed ‘for lack of things to talk about’. Much more than this, the agenda proposed for a future Inter-Orthodox Meeting (illogically called a ‘Council’) is looking increasingly tired, a leftover washed up from 1960s liberalism, denounced at the time, even more so now. Let us remind ourselves what the ten items on the agenda are – or were: The Orthodox diaspora; The granting of autocephaly; The granting of autonomy; The diptychs; The Church calendar; Marriage; Fasting; Relations with Heterodox; Ecumenism; Peace, Brotherhood and Freedom. (See our article of several years ago: http://orthodoxengland. org.uk/panorth.htm).

The last six questions are absurd, because the canons are clear and of course unchangeable; the tenth is in particular a piece of masonic nonsense from the 1960s. As regards the fourth issue, the diptychs, if people want to argue about what place they should have on an irrelevant, artificial and anachronistic list, then we say they should first read Mark 10, 37-45. In fact, only the first three issues are discussable – and there will be no agreement on them because they have already been discussed, and with Constantinople in the pocket of the US State Department, a former senior representative of which (Brzezinski) has already declared that the Russian Orthodox Church is its greatest enemy, what point is there in discussing them?

Thirty-three years ago a saint prophetically wrote: ‘Should this Council, God forbid, actually come to pass, only one sort of result can be expected from it: schisms, heresies and the loss of many souls. Considering the question from the point of view of the apostolic, patristic and historical experience of the Church, such a Council will, instead of healing, open only up new wounds in the body of the Church and inflict on Her new difficulties and new misfortunes’. We will not contradict the voice of a Saint.

Some Missionary Notes: How to Draw Orthodox and Non-Orthodox to Normal Orthodox Parish Life

Introduction

At the present time, in Western Europe at least, Orthodox Church life of all dioceses tends to be dominated by two sorts of church – two extremes. Fortunately, they are not always as extreme as I describe below, because there I describe stereotypes. However, just because they are stereotypes, this does not mean that the tendencies are not there.

Firstly, there can be impersonal cathedrals or other large churches in capitals and large cities. Here hundreds, even thousands, of Orthodox or curious Non-Orthodox call in on a Sunday, light candles, often mill around, do not know each other and cannot know each other, being unable to meet, and all too often do not stay and drift away. The churches which they visit give them little sense of belonging, little sense of community; this is the very opposite of what they need, given that they are homesick and uprooted from their Orthodox homes, whether from contemporary Eastern Europe or from ancient Western Europe.

Secondly, there can be introverted ghettos with narrow ideologies which it is sought to impose, sometimes located in inaccessible places or private houses. They sometimes consist of only half a dozen neophytes and one can even have the impression of ego-trips. Some of the practices in such groups, liturgical and otherwise, are unknown to the rest of the Orthodox Church and seem to have a basis in psychology, not in theology. Ordinary Orthodox naturally feel excluded from them.

Three Basic Needs

What then is required to bring scattered Orthodox and interested Non-Orthodox together? We would recommend three things. The following recommendations do not come from personal opinion, but from nearly forty years of experience and observation:

1. Premises suitable for Orthodox worship. These should be premises easily accessible to the general public and with adequate facilities (parking, children’s facilities, toilets etc), where Orthodox can feel at home, which are warm and prayerful, where there are icons and Orthodox are not distracted. This is why we always avoid using premises used and owned by heterodox, but, if we do not have money to build our own Orthodox premises, convert premises and make them our own, that is, homely for Orthodox. This is all about creating a prayerful atmosphere.

2. A choir whose members can sing and read reasonably well. This should not be in just one language, which would be exclusive and is often the sign of Anglican rigidity and false piety. A choir means that solo singing is not really acceptable to the mass of Orthodox. This in turn means that whoever is responsible for the choir needs to encourage and teach others to sing – no mean task, but a necessary one.

3. A priest who is trained, not necessarily in terms of seminary or university but, above all – and this is far more important – in terms of parish experience. He should neither be a liberal, nor a reactionary. This means that he should be strict in terms of Church teaching, but still be open in terms of understanding human weaknesses and family life. He should not be an intellectual with merely a bookish and modernistic understanding of Orthodoxy. That, as we saw in the Sourozh schism, means that he does not understand real Orthodox, but only other converts like himself. Rather he must be able to provide the liturgical cycle of every Saturday, Sunday and feast day and provide all the sacraments.

Conclusion

To people in exile – and in the 21st century we are all in exile – our duty is to provide a home. And that is what our churches should be – homes, places to which Orthodox belong and feel that they belong.