Daily Archives: March 2, 2016

The Present Crisis

Q: What has been happening since the meeting of Orthodox Primates at Chambesy five weeks ago?

A: Exactly as Metr Onufry of Kiev predicted, the Crete meeting (‘Pan-Orthodox Council’) is proving divisive, and even before it has begun. As we said at the time, documents issued, above all the document concerning relations with the Non-Orthodox has proved to be unacceptable. The Georgian Church has rejected it and now a petition in the Bulgarian Church is objecting to it, not to mention individual hierarchs in Greece and Cyprus who are also opposed – or that matter people in the parishes like ourselves. Apart from that there is the principle itself of holding a ‘Council’ to which only a few selected bishops are invited!

Q: Would you sign a petition against it?

A: Why should I? I find that idea almost amusing when I know that my bishop thinks the same as me – or rather I think the same as my bishop and, for that matter, all the other bishops in ROCOR. In any case, if you are concerned by a problem in the Church, you do not start a petition – that is a Protestant concept. What you do is talk about it with your bishop. Indeed, that is what I did last January and that is how I know that I think the same as my bishop.

Q: How do you see this problem developing?

A: I think the most interesting thing about this whole debate is how the two extremes have met. On the one hand, the sectarian-minded – there are very few of them, but they make a lot of noise – are refusing to commemorate their bishops. On the other hand, they are being egged on and provoked by the enemies of the Church, the ecumenist liberals – also few in number but noisy – who are doing all they can to create a schism, which would be their greatest joy. Unfortunately, the sectarian-minded are a little simple and do not see the trap that they are being led into. This is so sad.

Q: Has the crisis not been deepened by Patriarch Kyrill meeting the Pope in Cuba?

A: Yes, that meeting has reinforced the crisis.

Q: So are you saying that that meeting was a mistake?

A: No, because, apart from its positive aspects, that meeting has brought everything to a head, the abscess has burst, all is now in the open.

Q: What do you mean?

A: We now see exactly who are sectarian and who are ecumenist liberals. Those on the fringes have revealed themselves. The mainstream now has the task of reassuring the masses, but also challenging the fringes, saying to them, ‘This is the Church, do you agree with Her or not’?

Q: So do you think some will fall into schism?

A: I hope not, but if so, then very few. Moreover, I think that it will be the ecumenist liberals who will leave. Those on the other side are mostly good-hearted, just misguided.

Q: What about the charge that Patriarch Kyrill’s spiritual father was a known heretic, Metr Nikodim (Rotov)?

A: This is absolutely typical of the sectarian-minded. Patriarch Kyrill was 32 years old when Metr Nikodim died. Do these people really think that a young man, now a Patriarch, has not moved on since 1978? Do they really think that people are so stupid that they do not learn from the mistakes of their youth and inexperience? The only people who can think such things must themselves be very young! Unless of course, and that is far worse, the people who think such things have no concept that people change, that they can repent.

Do they not think that the Patriarch has changed in the last 38 years – in half a lifetime? Moreover, he has in that time received grace. I am myself a witness to that – how he has changed since he has become Patriarch. When you are ordained or consecrated, you receive grace, just as you receive grace from any sacrament. Some of these sectarians seem to be deniers of grace, deniers of the action of the Holy Spirit.

Q: Surely you are being idealistic. Yes, there is grace, but there is also temptation and sin. In history there are patriarchs who have behaved as judases, usually from political pressure.

A: Of course there have been those. But they are by far not the majority. The judases were the exceptions which prove the rule. Again there is a defect in the psychology of the sectarian-minded – they are always shocked by the exceptions and make them into the rule. For example, they will say that someone, for the sake of argument, say in the Bulgarian Church, is a heretic and then they conclude that they cannot concelebrate with anyone in the Bulgarian Church, and then, even more ridiculously, they refuse to concelebrate with anyone who concelebrates with the Bulgarian Church. And that is how they end up in a sect, outside the Church.

Q: Why do their minds work like that?

A: Because they are proud puritans. The slightest ‘impurity’, and in their case that means others disagreeing with them, and they are out. They are guilty of premature judgement, they want a pure Church now, which is called Donatism. That is simply not going to happen. The wheat and the tares grow together in this world because the wheat grows stronger on account of the tares and the tares can turn into wheat through the example of the wheat. God is patient with us sinners – so we must be patient with other sinners. We must all wait until the Last Judgement – unless of course people judge themselves by leaving the Church and entering a sect.

Q; You speak of a psychological defect in the minds of the sectarian-minded, but what about the minds of the modernists, the ecumenist liberals?

A: Regardless of which of the two extremes we are talking about, we are not talking about theology, but about psychology and a spiritually unhealthy psychology. For example, the ecumenist liberals will tell you that we must do like the heterodox, introduce organs, shorten our services, reduce fasting etc etc. Why? Because these people have either lost the Tradition or else have never been in the Tradition and therefore they want to do what those outside the Tradition, the heterodox, do. They are so secular-minded that they conform themselves to secularism, to the world, rather than to the Church. Basically, their problem is that they lack the Orthodox Faith.

Q: Is this a serious crisis?

A: For the moment, no, because only a very few people are directly concerned, though all of us know about it and so are indirectly concerned.

Q: So what is the solution?

A: To communicate our concerns to our bishops and to follow the mainstream, avoiding the errors of both the sectarian-minded and the secular-minded.

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 10)

The Update

As of 1 March 2016 we are still, after over five months!, waiting for legal documents to be exchanged for the premises we are buying in Norwich. After a three and a half month wait to receive planning permission from Norwich City Council, we have now had to wait an additional five months for exactly the same organization to send our solicitor the lease. This means that the entire process has been delayed by six months. Once we have signed for the premises and bought them, we can finally start building work to transform them into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

God is Love: The Sin of Phariseeism and the Contemporary World

The Revelation of the Incarnate God and so of His Church, is that ‘God is Love’. This is why Christianity preaches love of our neighbours and forgiveness, not hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness. This is also why the Easter Resurrection lies at the heart of the Church Year because that was when Christ God, having first preached Love on earth, thanks to His death by Crucifixion went down to hades and also preached Love to the majority of humanity imprisoned there, releasing from captivity all those, from Adam and Eve on, who accepted His words. This event proved for all time that Love is stronger than death.

Love is the meaning of the word salvation. When we ask to be saved, we ask to be saved from all that is not Love – from hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness. Why? Because we must all prepare for the one thing inevitable – our meeting with God. When we meet Him, at the Last Judgement to spend eternity with Him, we will stand in front of Love. If our hearts have Love, this experience will be one of recognition of the Source of all that we have held dear, of warmth, comfort and joy, what we call heaven. If, on the other hand, our hearts are full of hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness, this experience will be one of burning fire, what we call hell.

This Revelation that God is Love is quite distinctive from the manmade religion of the pharisees, who knew only the primitive teaching ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ and which had martyred the Jewish prophets and then also the Son of God. That hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness, the spirit of ‘God will punish you’, meaning ‘I will punish you’, but ‘I am justifying my evil with God’s name’, was also adopted by Islam, mixed together with heresies and the pagan customs of Arab nomads. As regards Hinduism, with its host of warring gods and goddesses, it lacks the revelation of monotheism, and as for God-less Buddhism, it is not a religion, but a philosophy of psychic self-improvement.

Some, perhaps especially Muslims and Jews, will object to this and say, but look at Christians who are supposed to preach Love: they invaded Iraq because ‘God told me to’ (George Bush), slaughtering a million; they dropped atomic bombs on civilians, created the holocaust of thirty million Slavs and five million Jews in the 1940s and the Pope said nothing; British ‘Christians’ invaded North America and Spanish ‘Christians’ invaded Latin America with the zealous encouragement of their religious authorities, slaughtering perhaps a hundred million between them; then there were witch hunts and before them the Inquisition, not to mention the Crusades. Christians!

Of course, all this is so, but none of this was done by Christians: it was done by people who called themselves Protestants and Catholics.

Some may be shocked by this statement, but they should reflect: real Christians do not carry out genocides and the vast majority of today’s Protestants and Catholics would agree with this. Let us recall the reactions of the Orthodox Christians of New Rome when at the end of the eleventh century they saw with shock the crusaders coming: they saw not other Christians, but evil barbarians. Ask any Ukrainian or Serb or Iraqi or Afghan what he thinks of ‘Christian’ NATO troops; consult any history of the colonization of Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, and universally the reaction of the native peoples was that they had been invaded not by men or even barbarians, but by demons.

Having admitted this, some will say: yes, but look at Orthodox Christians, go to any Orthodox country and you will find prisons with Orthodox murderers, Orthodox thieves, Orthodox rapists…Why do you consider Orthodox above others?

We do not consider ourselves above others. That was and is precisely the problem of the Pharisees (or, in today’s language, Zionists) – they did and do consider themselves above others. And this is precisely the problem of all, regardless of race and nominal religion, including therefore nominal Orthodox, who fall back into the Pharisees’ religion. And this is precisely what the Protestant-Catholic world has institutionally done – though not at all necessarily individually, for many Protestants and Catholics totally reject how their institutional religions have betrayed them and Christ, when they finally see through their brainwashing.

Those who like the Pharisees/Zionists consider themselves better than others, superior to them, are precisely those who have fallen back into the Pharisees’ Old Testament and not into the Old Testament of the Patriarchs, of Moses and Noah, of David and Solomon and of all the holy prophets, who so ardently awaited Christ. Pharisees/Zionists, of whatever race, religion and age, are possessed by the concept that they are a chosen people, superior beings, ‘an exception’, a master race, an elite, who have the right to control the world thanks to an imagined Divine sanction. This makes them totally arrogant, in the words of one such racist British ‘Zionist’, there is only ‘the West and the Rest’ and ‘West is best’ (1). He may not say it openly, but he does consider all others to be ‘Untermenschen’ – subhumans.

A temptation for all Christians has always been to fall away from the Church back into Phariseeism and so cease to be Christians. Anyone can fall individually into this temptation, the real problem comes when the temptation is instituted systematically into an ideology. Then whole nations and continents can fall and this has been the history of Western ‘Civilization’, which in order to ‘civilize’ has always exterminated, which brings democracy by bombing back into the Stone Age. As the notorious US General Curtis LeMay said fifty years ago: ‘My solution to the problem would be to tell (the North Vietnamese) frankly that they’ve got to…stop their aggression (in their own country!) or we’re going to bomb them into the Stone Age’.

The institutional and ideological attack of Phariseeism/Zionism has taken place three times in post New Testament history. It happened when nearly 1,000 years ago the Papacy claimed to be the master of humanity (2) and all who rejected it had to be killed. As Abbot Amalric, a Catholic inquisitor at the slaughter of 20,000 men, women and children in 1209 put it: ‘Kill them all, God will recognize his own’ (3). This was justified by the scholastic Aquinas and the racism of the pagan Aristotle: they are not of us, therefore they can be killed, a mentality first instituted into Britain by the Normans, whose genocidal invasion and power grab was ‘blessed’ by the Papacy.

It happened again with the racist Luther and Protestantism, which inherited the same mentality and divided humanity into ‘the saved’ (themselves) and the non-saved. The non-saved could be ‘disposed of’. As another US Nobel Peace Prize winner, ‘one of the greatest US presidents’, ‘a national hero’ and regular churchgoer, President Theodore Roosevelt, said: ‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth’ (4).

The underlying mentality, that anyone who is Western and/or has adopted the post-1054 Western mentality, has a Divine right to invade, slaughter, destroy, occupy and dominate, has not changed in nearly a 1,000 years. After all, did not the Western man Darwin proclaim that Western man (‘the fittest’) must survive, as Hitler implemented. In today’s post-Protestant totalitarian society, the Pharisees’ idol of mammon has now been openly revealed as the only form of salvation and therefore for humanity: ‘God is dead’, said the madman Nietzsche, but Gold is living.

In other words, the world is divided into two groups. There are those who consciously or unconsciously believe that God is Love and try, however weakly, to live this, which belief is the essence of the Church and Her teaching; and those who institutionally, systematically and ideologically not only do not believe this but reject this, as they are already hypocritically ‘righteous’, that is, self-righteous, as we saw with the notorious case of Blair. Here is the danger: such people with their ‘New World Order’justify everything, since for them the end justifies the means, their ideology justifies genocide for those who resist and enslavement for those who survive.

Notes:

1. See the notorious 2011 work on Western Anti-Civilization and using that title, written by the neocon ideologist Niall Ferguson.

2. See the precepts of the 11th century ‘Dictatus Pape’:
1. That the Roman church was founded by God alone.
2. That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal.
3. That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops.
4. That, in a council his legate, even if a lower grade, is above all bishops, and can pass sentence of deposition against them.
5. That the pope may depose the absent.
6. That, among other things, we ought not to remain in the same house with those excommunicated by him.
7. That for him alone is it lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws, to assemble together new congregations, to make an abbey of a canonry; and, on the other hand, to divide a rich bishopric and unite the poor ones.
8. That he alone may use the imperial insignia.
9. That of the pope alone all princes shall kiss the feet.
10. That his name alone shall be spoken in the churches.
11. That this title [Pope] is unique in the world.
12. That it may be permitted to him to depose emperors.
13. That he may be permitted to transfer bishops if need be.
14. That he has power to ordain a clerk of any church he may wish.
15. That he who is ordained by him may preside over another church, but may not hold a subordinate position; and that such a one may not receive a higher grade from any bishop.
16. That no synod shall be called a general one without his order.
17. That no chapter and no book shall be considered canonical without his authority.
18. That a sentence passed by him may be retracted by no one; and that he himself, alone of all, may retract it.
19. That he himself may be judged by no one.
20. That no one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the apostolic chair.
21. That to the latter should be referred the more important cases of every church.
22. That the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.
23. That the Roman pontiff, if he have been canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made holy by the merits of St. Peter; St. Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, bearing witness, and many holy fathers agreeing with him. As is contained in the decrees of St. Symmachus the pope.
24. That, by his command and consent, it may be lawful for subordinates to bring accusations.
25. That he may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a synod.
26. That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic.
27. That he may absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.

3. The phrase has been adopted by members of the US military in various conflicts, such as the Vietnam War, and is used as an unofficial slogan by certain units. In parts of the War on Terror, the variant “Kill them all. Let Allah sort them out,” has been used. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius).

4. Quoted in Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 1980, Pp. 159-164). So much for the value of the Nobel Peace prize, as we have seen with that ‘won’ by Obama. Yet another US President, Andrew Jackson, urged US troops to root out ‘Indians’ from their ‘dens’ and kill ‘Indian’ women and their ‘whelps’, as ‘true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another’.