Daily Archives: December 31, 2018

The Russian Orthodox Church, 31 December 2018

With 164 million faithful the Russian Orthodox Church makes up 75% of the whole Orthodox Church. All the other 12 universally-recognized Local Orthodox Churches (in order of size: Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Alexandria, Poland, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Jerusalem) are in communion with her. (Sadly, the Local Churches of Rome and Constantinople also used to be in communion with her, but have over time fallen away from the confession of the Orthodox Faith. As for the tiny North American group called the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), it has never been recognized by all) (1).

As a multinational Orthodox Church, the various parts of the Russian Orthodox Church enjoy different levels of independence from its leading bishop, the Patriarch. Thus, first comes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which has a special status of autonomy close to autocephaly or full independence, as it can elect its own leading bishop (at present His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry), but it still commemorates the Patriarch. Next come the Japanese Orthodox Church and the Chinese Orthodox Church which are both autonomous, only their main bishop needing the approval of the Patriarch. Thirdly, there are the four Churches of Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) largely looks after Russian Orthodox in the three Metropolia-type Continents of North America, South America and Oceania. These Churches are self-governing, meaning that all their bishop-candidates require approval from the Patriarch before they are consecrated.

Fourthly, there are the three Exarchates which have a limited autonomy, though they cannot nominate their own bishops. These are the Belarusian Orthodox Exarchate (Belarus), the Western European Exarchate (Andorra, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Switzerland) and the South-East Asian Exarchate (Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand). Finally, there is the Metropolia of Kazakhstan which also has a certain independence regarding internal affairs in relation to the local laws of Kazakhstan.

The Russian Orthodox Church today has 381 bishops in 60 metropolias and 309 dioceses. These have 38,649 churches or other facilities in which the Divine Liturgy is celebrated by 34,774 priests and 4,640 deacons. In addition, there are 462 monasteries and 482 convents. Outside the former Soviet Union there are over 1,000 parishes and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the parishes and monasteries of the Russian Church Outside Russia (ROCOR).

Note

  1. It is difficult to see a future for the OCA group, founded for political reasons nearly fifty years ago at the height of the Cold War. It has in recent years been maintained as a challenge to Constantinople. Therefore, following the recent fall of Constantinople from communion, it will perhaps be dissolved. Rather like the recently-dissolved Rue Daru group in Paris, perhaps about half of it will return to the Russian Orthodox Church and the rest will join new calendarist groups.

 

 

 

Saved by Russia in 1941 – and in 2019?

After the defeat of France, the humiliating rout of the British Army and its flight at Dunkirk in May-June 1940, Britain found itself in a desperate situation. 68,000 British soldiers had been killed, wounded or captured in just six weeks between 10 May and 22 June.  Abandoned in France were some 440 tanks, 2,472 guns, 20,000 motorcycles, almost 65,000 other vehicles, 377,000 tons of stores, 147,000 tons of fuel and over 68,000 tons of ammunition. Six British and three French destroyers had been sunk, along with nine other major vessels, and the RAF had lost 145 of its all too few aircraft.

Thus, the tiny British Army had lost much of its inferior equipment. The USA refused to help, as one of its aims was to end all its rival European colonial empires, including the British. Hitler’s sympathizers among the British aristocracy like Lord Halifax and other unprincipled appeasers who cared only for their money wanted to negotiate. For a whole year Britain stood alone against Nazi Europe. Apart from ‘neutral’ Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland, which in fact fully co-operated with Hitler, only the Soviet Union stood in Hitler’s way in Continental Northern Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

On Sunday 22 June 1941, the Feast of All the Saints Who Have Shone Forth in the Russian Lands, a multinational force of three million Germans and nearly one million of their many European Fascist Allies invaded the Russian Lands yet again, just like Napoleon and so many others before them. This was how Britain was rescued from the Third Reich and many at that time, Churchill among them, had been expecting it and relying on it. There is little doubt that Britain would have been crushed or starved into surrender, had Hitler set his mind to it and had not invaded the Russian Lands, but Britain instead.

In 1942 Britain was occupied by the first of two million US troops. It had lost its independence, it was no longer a Great Power. True, it was to emerge from the Second World War on the victorious side. But it was a paper, Pyrrhic victory. Britain was in ruins and bankrupt, forever in debt to banks in the USA, and by 1948 it had abandoned the Indian subcontinent, British-mandated Palestine, Greece and soon its other imperial interests. Today, Europe is still German-dominated, though only economically, for Germany itself is an occupied American vassal, its Chancellor having to swear allegiance to the occupier.

However, in 2019 Britain faces a new Dunkirk, a new flight from Europe, called Brexit. Like Lord Halifax, EU sympathizers among the upper middle-class appeasers, who care only for their money, want to capitulate in view of the EU’s refusal to negotiate. They forget that in 1940 Britain did not negotiate and still won. They also forget that a mafia-led puppet country called the Ukraine, created by the USA and the EU only in order to undermine Russia, is about to collapse. And after its collapse will follow the collapse of the EU and then of the USA. In 2019 everything, good and bad, will be possible.