Daily Archives: December 30, 2018

Q and A October-December 2018

Church Matters

Q: The Church faces so many difficulties today. Why is there no new St Mark of Ephesus?

A: Because first of all we have to be worthy of having such a courageous and ascetic saint. And, it seems, we are not worthy, at least for the moment. What is required is someone who will defend the saving truth and the saving reality of the Church, by affirming Her Oneness, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity against those who have lost their faith in the Church. Their heresies will also have to be anathematized. This can only be done at a Church Council, whether Local (say, within the Russian Church), or else Inter-Orthodox.

Q: What is the difference between Church Truth and Church Diplomacy?

A: Truth always wins in the long term, because it is a revelation of the eternal, the permanent. Diplomacy, however, always loses in the long term because it is passing and temporary. The one thing that is certain is that the Truth will always be hated, which is why we are attacked personally. They do not know that we must ‘tell the truth and shame the devil’, because they, true, almost always unwittingly, belong to the devil.

Q: What characterizes Non-Orthodox as regards their understanding of sin and salvation?

A: Outside the Church there is little understanding of the Fall and sin, both ancestral sin and personal sin, and at the same time little understanding of what holiness grace can raise us up to. In other words, there is little understanding of the depths and the heights. This total lack of understanding and even denial of both ends of reality is crystallized by the secularist ideologies of equality and political correctness.

Q: What do the Christmas carol words ‘God rest you merry, gentlemen’, mean?

A: The words of the oldest Christmas carol (most of them are Victorian) go back well over 500 years, if not more, and in a modern translation, they mean: ‘May God keep you in His blessing, O gentlemen’, or, ‘May God’s blessing rest on you, O gentlemen’. In other words, there is a comma in front of gentlemen. ‘Rest’ means in modern English ‘keep’. And ‘merry’, as in Merry Christmas’ or ‘Merry England’, means in modern English ‘Blessed’.

Q: What was the relationship between St John the Theologian and Christ?

A: St John was the son of Zebedee and Salome. Salome was the daughter of Joseph, the guardian of Mary and of her son Christ. So, on paper, St John was the ‘nephew’ of Christ.

Q: Why is blessed water so silvery in colour, for example, at Theophany?

A: This is the effect of the Holy Spirit on water. What is normally transparent becomes silvery.

Q: Is there any reference, obviously indirect, to the Internet in the Scriptures?

A: I would suggest 2 Timothy 3, 7 when the Apostle Paul speaks of the last days: ‘Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth’. It describes the use and function of search engines.

Political Matters

Q: Why do American Presidents have such extraordinary lives?

A: Because they are almost all pagans and there is a very close parallel between them and the pagan Roman emperors. For instance, there were 53 pagan Roman emperors who terrorized and intimidated the Western and later Christian world in the 332 years between 27BC and 306, the arrival of Constantine the Great. In the 229 years since 1789 there have been 45 US presidents, who now rule over the worldwide, though bankrupt, American Empire from a Roman temple (‘The White House’) on the Capitol. Of these presidents many were slave-owners, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, many were crooks (the most notorious recent example being Richard Nixon), some clearly frontmen puppets of the Establishment (among the most recent George Bush II), some extreme narcissists (Clinton and Trump), and four have been assassinated.

From their Roman temple they send out their legions, and foreign legions recruited from their NATO vassals in Europe and elsewhere, to impose ‘freedom and democracy’, that is, to terrorize, intimidate and so tyrannize the rest of the world. Just like the pagan Romans, they are the barbarians and the terrorists, setting up ruthless dictatorships and criminal juntas through ‘regime-change’ from all over Latin America to the Philippines, from South Korea to Iran, from Indonesia to Germany, from Laos to France, from Vietnam to Pakistan, from Italy to Greece, from North Africa to South Africa, from Grenada to Zaire, from Australia to Haiti, from Cambodia to Angola, from Ghana to the Seychelles, from Afghanistan to the Ukraine, from Poland to Bulgaria, from Japan to Taiwan, from the CIA torture-chambers of Lithuania to those in Iraq, from Kosovo to Syria, bombing all those who oppose its tyranny ‘back to the Stone Age’.

Human Matters

Q: How do you avoid becoming bitter when faced with human injustices?

A: The important thing is to pray for those who commit the injustice. You can do this by imaging what they will have to face at the Last Judgement for unrepented for injustices. You will find yourself feeling sorry for them – there is nothing worse than dying and not repenting for the injustices that they have committed. Praying for them will help them, but also you, as it will protect you from the evil of bitterness.

Q: Is friendship between men and women possible?

A: Of course it is, providing that there is no physical attraction. This generally means that the man and woman in question are related, for example, brother and sister, or else that there is a generational age gap. For example, in my own life in Paris I was friends with the emigre poetess, Lyudmila Brizhatova, who was over 40 years older than me.

 

 

The Russian Orthodox Missionary Revolution Begins

Outside the Russian Church, the twelve universally-recognized but small Local Orthodox Churches (in order of size: Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Alexandria, Poland, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Jerusalem) look after only 25% of all Orthodox, on average 2% each. This means small territories and narrow ethnic groups. The two exceptions are the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which looks after the vast African Continent, and the Patriarchate of Antioch, which looks after the Middle Eastern Arab world outside Africa as far as the Emirates and Iraq as well as Arabs and others in the Diasporas. But what of the rest of the world which have never been Orthodox? Who cares for this? Certainly not these twelve small and generally rather nationalistic Local Churches

Neither is it the former Patriarchate of Constantinople. The collapse of that tiny Patriarchate into the papist and phyletist heresies and its resulting falling away from communion with the Russian Orthodox Church is tragic. All we can do is to wait patiently for its repentance. Just as we have been waiting for the repentance of Rome for a thousand years, so we shall wait for Constantinople’s repentance too. However, every cloud has a silver lining. Constantinople’s recent fall from the Church and so self-elimination has led very swiftly to the Russian Church’s decision to set up a mission and build a new church in long-ignored Turkey and establish two new missionary Exarchates.

One of these is for Western Europe, though at present it covers only Andorra, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Switzerland. The second is for South-East Asia (Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand). Clearly, these are the foundations for new Local Churches. Indeed, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) has described their long-awaited establishment as missionary.

http://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2018/12/29/nasha_zadacha_missionerskaya_prosvetitelskaya/

Thus, if we look at the world scene today, we can see that for the first time in history, most of the world is now catered for in terms of Orthodox missions. There is the tricontinental Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, based in New York, which fundamentally looks after North America, South America and Oceania. Indeed, in the last twelve years, it will have consecrated six American bishops and one Australian bishop. As for Eurasia outside the territories of the twelve Local Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church caters for the multinational Russian Federation, China (naturally, including Taiwan), Japan and now also South-East Asia and Western Europe through its two Exarchates.

This means that in reality the only territories of the world which are not catered for officially are Iran and South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka), in which countries conditions are such that missionary work is very difficult, even sometimes dangerous. However, South Asia contains one quarter of the world’s population. Perhaps one day we shall see two more Exarchates, one for Iran and one for South Asia.

We have come a long way from the anti-missionary bishops of the past who so persecuted us. We well remember Archbishop George (Wagner) of the Paris Archdiocese, who forbade the use of any language in services except Church Slavonic. Indeed, he considered that only three languages should be used liturgically – Greek, Latin and Slavonic. (He considered that the Romanian Church should return to using Church Slavonic).

He and another bishop of his background also unapologetically forbade the veneration of the local saints of Western Europe. Both bishops wrecked their dioceses, with a great many clergy and people fleeing their tyrannies, indeed as far as the USA and Canada. ‘I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord, so did we sing in those dark days of the dark past. Their dioceses have still not recovered and, it seems, probably never will. The vital missionary forces left and their dioceses were abandoned to the ghetto and spiritual death, while others looked elsewhere for spiritual life and grew strong and numerous.

With these two new Exarchates in Western Europe and South-East Asia, which will only grow, the Russian Orthodox missionary revolution of East and West has begun in earnest.

 

The Sexual Subversion of the Ukraine

HTTPS://WWW.STRATEGIC-CULTURE.ORG/NEWS/2018/12/29/SEXUAL-SUBVERSION-UKRAINE.HTML

 

JAMES GEORGE JATRAS | 29.12.2018 | FEATURED STORY

In the aftershock of US President Donald Trump’s bombshell decision to pull American troops out of Syria and to draw down US forces in Afghanistan, plus the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis and Brett McGurk, the Special Envoy to the anti-ISIS Coalition [sic: never mind who created ISIS in the first place … ], we are already seeing progress. The Syrian flag has been raised over Manbij as the Kurds scramble for protection from Damascus against threatening Turkish forces.

We’re not out of the woods yet though. Given the “orgy of shrieking and caterwauling,” “the horrifying collective scream” emanating from Washington, a pushback from the Deep State and the bipartisan Washington establishment is inevitable and possibly imminent. A false flag chemical attack blamed on the Syrian government but perpetrated by the jihadists (and likely cooked up with assistance from the British MI6) remains a looming danger. Also unpredictable is the next move by Israel, whose jets operating in Lebanese airspace struck targets near Damascus following Trump’s withdrawal order. In turn, Syria and Russia responded by considering extension of air protection to Lebanon and declaring that future Israeli strikes on Syria will prompt counterattacks on targets inside Israel. The danger of escalation should not be underestimated.  

But the big worry remains Ukraine. Given the more than two-year long Russiagate witch hunt, the most toxic smear against Trump’s Syria withdrawal is that it’s a big “gift” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. As shown by the unanimous western response to the November Kerch Strait incident, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko knows he can do pretty much anything and any Russian response will be blamed on Russia.

Poroshenko has a menu of options. He can go back the well at the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait, a tempting possibility if the British (who are at the root of Russiagate and are at least as desperate to prevent a Washington-Moscow détente than Poroshenko is) are dumb enough, or cynical enough (they don’t call them Perfidious Albion for nothing), to risk the lives of sailors of Her Majesty’s Navy on a confrontational stunt where Moscow has an overwhelming preponderance of power. Likewise, Poroshenko could launch an attack on the Donbas. Kiev’s forces recently occupied most of the “gray zone” separating forces at the Minsk agreement ceasefire line. There are also concerns over reports of chemicals stockpiled at Mariupol (hey, if a chemical provocation works in Syria, why not Ukraine?).

But the most likely proximate avenue for Poroshenko may be an attack on the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is an autonomous (self-governing) part of the Russian Orthodox Church. Following what some are already calling the Robber Council of Kiev on December 15, which purported to create an “autocephalous” (independent) church headed by “Metropolitan” Epiphany (Dumenko) from a merger of schismatic groups, Poroshenko and the Ukrainian parliament are moving with alacrity to strip the canonical Church of its legal status and turn its property over to Dumenko’s bogus church (which actually isn’t independent at all but is subject to the Patriarchate of Constantinople). Lists of monasteries for seizure are being prepared. Canonical clergy are investigated and harassed by the SBU, Ukraine’s successor to the old Soviet KGB. Any resistance or disorders these actions will provoke are already being blamed in advance on – you guessed it – Putin and the canonical Church.

Where is the US government, that great proponent of human rights and religious freedom? Cheering it on of course. On the day of the Robber Council, the US Embassy in Kiev tweeted out its congratulations in English and in Ukrainian (not in Russian of course, the language of Untermenschen).  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo placed a personal call to Dumenko as the “newly elected head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Metropolitan Epifaniy.” US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch extended her congratulations to Dumenko in person. When the trouble starts, there’s no mystery as to on whose side the US government, or at least the State Department, will come down.

One might well ask why? Aside from the obvious impropriety of the United States’ taking sides in a question of the Orthodox Church’s internal governance, why is the State Department so committed to promoting a transparently political power grab by Poroshenko, the schismatics, and the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople?

The short answer is that it is strictly geopolitics. From the point of view of the State Department, the Russian Orthodox Church – and hence the canonical autonomous Ukrainian Orthodox Church – is nothing more than an instrument of the Kremlin’s soft power. According to one person rather new to the relevant issues but nonetheless considered authoritative by the State Department:

‘The Church, for its part, acts as the Russian state’s soft power arm, exerting its authority in ways that assist the Kremlin in spreading Russian influence both in Russia’s immediate neighborhood as well as around the globe. The Kremlin assists the Church, as well, working to increase its reach. Vladimir Yakunin, one of Putin’s inner circle and a devout member of the ROC, facilitated in 2007 the reconciliation of the ROC with the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile (which had separated itself from the Moscow Patriarchate early in the Soviet era so as not to be co-opted by the new Bolshevik state), which reconciliation greatly increased [Patriarch of Moscow] Kirill’s influence and authority outside of Russia. Putin, praising this event, noted the interrelation of the growth of ROC authority abroad with his own international goals: “The revival of the church unity is a crucial condition for revival of lost unity of the whole ‘Russian world’, which has always had the Orthodox faith as one of its foundations.”’

Hence, weaken “Russian state’s soft power arm,” weaken the Russian state.

But unfortunately there is even more to it than that.

The authors of the current US anti-Russia, anti-Orthodox Church policy know, or at least instinctively sense, that the revival of Russia’s Church-State symphonia after a hiatus of eight decades is not just a political alliance of convenience but is the source of deep spiritual, moral, and social strength. This is reflected, for example, in Putin’s warm remarks on the dedication of a Moscow monument to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the acknowledged godfather of Russia’s restoration as a Christian country, on the centenary of the writer’s birth.

In Russia’s reborn symphonia, President and Patriarch speak as one:

‘At the height of the Cold War, it was common for American conservatives to label the officially atheist Soviet Union a “godless nation.”

‘More than two decades on, history has come full circle, as the Kremlin and its allies in the Russian Orthodox Church hurl the same allegation at the West.

‘“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a recent keynote speech. “Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.” [ . . . ]

‘Mr. Putin’s views of the West were echoed this month by Patriarch Kirill I of Moscow, the leader of the Orthodox Church, who accused Western countries of engaging in the “spiritual disarmament” of their people.

‘In particular, Patriarch Kirill criticized laws in several European countries that prevent believers from displaying religious symbols, including crosses on necklaces, at work.

‘“The general political direction of the [Western political] elite bears, without doubt, an anti-Christian and anti-religious character,” the patriarch said in comments aired on state-controlled television.

‘“We have been through an epoch of atheism, and we know what it is to live without God,” Patriarch Kirill said. “We want to shout to the whole world, ‘Stop!’”’ [“Who’s ‘godless’ now? Russia says it’s U.S.: Putin seizes on issue of traditional values,” by Marc Bennetts, The Washington Times, January 28, 2014]

Such sentiments can hardly sit well with Western elites for whom the same-sex partnerships decried by Putin (and placed by him on a moral level with belief in Satan) are esteemed as a mark of social enlightenment. That’s why an inseparable part of the “European choice” the people of Ukraine supposedly made during the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” is wholesale acceptance of “European values,” including the kind of “Pride” symbolized by LGBT marches organized over Christian objections in Orthodox cities like Athens, Belgrade, Bucharest, Kiev, Odessa, Podgorica, Sofia, and Tbilisi. (Note that after the march in Odessa in August of this year a priest of the canonical Church targeted by Poroshenko cleansed the street with Holy Water.)

It is hard to assess exactly how significant the moral/sexual component of undermining Orthodoxy in Ukraine is, but there is no denying it is a factor. There is a curious consistency between advocacy for non-traditional, post-Christian sexual morality and support for the schismatic pseudo-Church sponsored by Poroshenko and Patriarch Bartholomew.

To start with, the relevant US government officials cheering the church schismatics are also up-front and visible in Ukraine in their advocacy of the LGBT agenda. The US Embassy Kiev website displays Pompeo’s declaration on behalf of all Americans that “The United States joins people around the world in celebrating Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) Pride Month, and reaffirms its commitment to protecting and defending the human rights of all, including LGBTI persons.” As of this writing, the press release describing the Secretary’s call to “Metropolitan” Dumenko appears just below the “Pride Month” message.

Ambassador Yovanovitch has really gone the extra mile – literally. Not only did she tweet out her Pride message, she also participated in the parade (and took 60 Embassy personnel and family members with her!) proudly marching behind the American flag. Your tax dollars at work! (Must watch video posted by HromadskeUA, an “independent” Ukrainian media outlet reportedly funded by, among others, the US Embassy, the Canadian Embassy, and George Soros’s International Renaissance Foundation, though the cited HromadskeUA financial reports no longer seem to be available.) Both Yovanovitch’s remarks in the video and the posted text draw an explicit connection between the “freedom” of the 2014 regime change and the new sexual morality (Google autotranslation from Ukrainian):

‘The atmosphere is wonderful. It is important for us because we maintain equal rights. In 2014, people in Ukraine were in favor of freedom, and this is an organic continuation – US Ambassador Marie Yovanovich goes to the March of Equality Column. With her together with about 60 representatives of the American embassy.’

The locals were quick to make the same connection. “KyivPride,” a local LGBT advocacy group supported by (surprise, surprise) the US Embassy, the Canadian government, the German embassy, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Freedom House were quick to hail creation of the new pseudo-church, no doubt reflecting the deep piety of the group’s members. As posted by OrthoChristian.com, The organization posted a message on several platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, reading:

‘KyivPride congratulates all LGBTI Orthodox believers on the formation of a united and independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church and reminds everyone that love does no harm to others! Also remember that article 35 of the constitution of Ukraine states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of personal philosophy and religion. This right includes the freedom to profess or not to profess any religion.” Human rights above all!’

Last but certainly not least is the involvement of certain fringe elements in the Orthodox Church itself, plus at least one not-so-fringe element. As this analyst warned months ago the Ukrainian church crisis seemingly facilitates the anti-Christian moral agenda of certain marginal “Orthodox” voices like “Orthodoxy in Dialogue,” Fordham University’s “Orthodox Christian Studies Center,” and The Wheel.  As Anatoly Karlin points out, “many of the biggest supporters of Ukrainian autocephaly in the West are for all intents and purposes SJWs. The website Orthodoxy in Dialogue, for instance, wants Orthodoxy to get with the times and start sanctifying gay marriage:”

‘We pray for the day when we can meet our future partner in church, or bring our partner to church.

‘We pray for the day when our lifelong, monogamous commitment to our partner can be blessed and sanctified in and by the Church.

‘We pray for the day when we can explore as Church, without condemnation, how we Orthodox Christians can best live our life in Christ in the pursuit of holiness, chastity, and perfect love of God and neighbour.

‘We pray for the day when our priests no longer travel around the world to condemn us and mock us and use us as a punching bag.

‘We pray for the day when the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ ceases to be our loneliest closet.’

Sadly, Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon is anything but marginal. Considered one of the world’s most prominent Orthodox intellectuals, his titular see in Asia Minor has been devoid of Christians for many decades, a sad example of the “rotten boroughs” that make up the Patriarchate of Constantinople apart from its extravagant assertions of universal authority based on an imperial reality that died centuries ago. Metropolitan John is one of the foremost polemicists in asserting Constantinople’s fictional claims over Ukraine in the lead-up to the Robber Council.  

Not surprisingly, there is reason to suppose Metropolitan John also shares the revisionists’ views on sexual morality. As this analyst was recently informed by a knowledgeable Church source:

‘I have a friend who just came back from an academic conference in Greece. He told me about an incident at the council in Crete [i.e., presumably a reference to the abortive 2016 “Eighth Ecumenical Council”] where [Metropolitan John] Zizioulas had the doors closed and regaled the bishops about how they needed to support the LGBT agenda and gay marriage. How much is the [Ecumenical Patriarchate] pushing this agenda, albeit quietly?’

This report is not inconsistent with the Metropolitan’s public views. As one Orthodox blogger commented in 2015:

‘Another example of gravely twisting the teachings of the Holy Fathers is [Metropolitan John] Zizioulas’s view on homosexuality, quoted by an Anglican publication (the Tablet): “When I raise the question of homosexuality he claims that the Greek Church is traditionally flexible and non-Judgement on such issues (!!!), but is now becoming more puritanical – due to Western Influence”. So, after Zizioulas, the Orthodox tradition does not condemn homosexuality, but the condemnation of this sin would be a Protestant influence! What would the Ap. Paul, St. John Chrysostom and all the saints of the Orthodox Church would say about these serious and blasphemous statements?’

To sum up, we can expect the crisis in Ukraine to get worse, with malign geopolitical and moral agendas both making their mark. It is not easy to sort out which in the end may have the most deadly impact.