Monthly Archives: July 2024

Quo Vadis UK?

The UK general election results have brought no surprises or change, except for a change of puppets. Most of the electorate, 40% of whom did not bother to vote in an extremely low turnout, simply voted against, not for anyone, thus punishing the Conservative Party for its continual lies. Thus, in the anti-democratic electoral system in the UK, a minority share of the popular vote has given the Labour Party a huge parliamentary majority. The result is, as usual, another minority government, elected by only 35% of those who bothered to vote, fewer than the number who voted for Labour in 2017 and 2019, when they lost. This is not at all a landslide in terms of the popular vote.  In reality, Labour is declining – it is a hollow victory.

This was from an electorate so disgusted and disillusioned by politicians’ lies and incompetence, with three Prime Ministers in five years, two of them unelected, that many did not vote. In other words, the vast Labour parliamentary majority was achieved with the votes of little more than 20% of the electorate. This is hardly democracy, though it is better than the dictatorship in the Ukraine, where a President has become a dictator, other political parties have been banned, opposition journalists like Gonzalo Lira have found themselves in the lethal torture chambers of the Nazi Secret Police and any man can be dragged off the streets to become cannon fodder for the ongoing US arms industry’s war.

By far the largest ‘Party’ is that of those who did not vote. Little wonder, politicians have broken their every promise to the electorate. Brexit (not done), the Covid scandemic (£250 billion wasted), the climate change hoax and support of Fascist Ukraine (causing bankrupting energy and other costs for the economy, people and the armed forces) provides the background. Many people are eating from food banks, amid a collapsing health and educational system, an increasingly third world transport and road system, bankrupt councils and utilities, demoralised police and armed forces and public services become public disservices, even imprisoning honest postmasters. Here are the results of chronic incompetence.

Starmer-led Labour, with policies identical to the Conservatives or perhaps even to the right of them, won the anti-Conservative protest vote. It was a negative vote and very few like the charisma-starved Starmer. The wealthy also protested, by voting as usual for their elitist anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats, who gained relatively few votes but many seats. Whereas the new Reform Party which came third got more votes than the Liberal Democrats, but few seats of the nearly 100 it should have had proportionately. So unfair is the system. Meanwhile, protesting Scots voted against the Fascistic, ultra-woke Scottish Nationalists. Power has passed from one anti-patriotic globalist to another. The same lies will continue. The Uniparty rules.

The new millionaire Labour leader, replacing the millionaire Conservative leader, rules over a bankrupt country, whose debt has accelerated by 150% since 2008. At one time it used to be said that the UK was in managed decline. Today it is clearly in mismanaged decline. Will Starmer, the choice of the banking, business and Israel elite, as he stabbed the former Labour leader the socialist Corbyn in the back, even remain in power for five years? All this is in a world riven by very dangerous wars and everywhere the UK Establishment is on the losing side. The consolation is that all the UK’s allies in the dementia-led Western world of the US and the EU, are in exactly the same mess, with the globalists being rejected by the patriots.

In reality, the UK election results are just another detail in the now rapidly falling Western world, which has been destroyed by its own breath-taking hubris. The UK is now the ninth largest economy in the world, far behind China at No 1, the declining US for the moment at No 2, India at No 3, Russia catching up with India at No 4, and then Japan, Germany, Indonesia, Brazil, and the UK only marginally ahead of France. Turkey and Vietnam will very soon take even their places. The only future in the new equitable multipolar world reality will be for the UK to join BRICS together with many other countries. The days of the globalist dinosaurs, in the UK, France, Germany, Belgium or elsewhere, who advocate the unipolar Western domination of the world are over.

 

The Bulgarians Rout the ‘Phanar Lobby’: Next in Line – the ‘Lavender Lobby’

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2024/07/03/bolgary_razgromili_fanarskoe_lobbi

 

The following article is a translation of the above Russian article, published in Moscow on 4 July by the well-known Church journalist Anatoly Stepanov. It clearly outlines how by choosing a new Patriarch, the Bulgarian Church has come to support the canonical Church in the Ukraine under Metropolitan Onufry. Thus, it has for the moment defeated the pro-Phanariot lobby and its fake and schismatic ‘Church in the Ukraine’ (OCU), whose main sponsor is the atheistic US State Department. However, it also shows that the US-controlled liberal/ecumenist/pro-Catholic/pseudo-intellectual/celibate lobby which is trying to split the Church is also profoundly homosexual. This is not news for some of us, but it will be to many.

Moreover, this split is not a Greek-Russian split, for apart from the very well-known homosexual metropolitans, archbishops and clerics within the Patriarchate of Constantinople, there are also many others of other nationalities, such as Bulgarians and Russians. Such are also part of this homosexual (‘lavender’) lobby, for instance the notorious but only recently defrocked Moscow Abbot Peter Yeremeev. He was allowed for years and years to continue his activities quite openly in Moscow to the scandal of the faithful. As the article hints, but does not dare say openly, he and others were and are protected by powerful clerical friends of the same narcissistic ‘variety’, who, moreover, as we well know, are also very active outside Russia in corrupting Church life with their boyfriends and persecuting the faithful. Here is a translation of the article:

 

On Sunday June 30, the election of the Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) was held. This attracted the close attention of Orthodox observers and the public not only in Bulgaria. And no wonder, because the fate of not only the future of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but also the future of all world Orthodoxy was being decided.

On the eve of the elections, we witnessed open interference in the internal affairs of the BOC by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. On May 19 an extraordinary event took place: a group of Bulgarian hierarchs headed by the most influential in Bulgaria, Metropolitan Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Plovdiv, visited the Patriarchate of Constantinople and openly concelebrated with representatives of the schismatic Orthodox Church in the Ukraine (OCU).

This was not only a challenge to the Bulgarian Church, which, as you know, does not recognise the legitimacy of the OCU, but is also a revelation of the future course of the BOC. And then Patriarch Bartholomew was invited (it is not clear on whose behalf, since there was no decision of the Synod) to take part in the ceremony of the election of His Holiness the Patriarch of Bulgaria and his enthronement.

It was a public act of interference. And how many behind-the-scenes attempts to exert influence, which, for sure, took place both on the part of the American embassy and on the part of ‘our overseas partners’, as the Russian Department of External Church Relations (DECR) has long called Constantinople, which has long been under the control of the United States.

Therefore, many anxiously awaited the decision of the Council of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which was supposed to elect its Primate. On the eve of the final voting, as is known, the Synod of the BOC elected three bishops as candidates for the post of Primate of the Church – Metropolitan Grigory (Tsvetkov) of Vrachansky, who acted as Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Gabriel (Dinev) of Lovech and Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin.

According to all forecasts, experts gave preference to Metropolitan Gregory, who was considered as a kind of compromise figure, albeit a conditional compromise, since his sympathies for the Phanar were well-known. However, unexpectedly, in the second round of the final voting, Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin won, for whom 69 members of the Council voted, Metropolitan Gregory received 66 votes in his support. In the first round, Metropolitan Gregory received 64 votes, Metropolitan Daniel – 51 votes, and Metropolitan Gabriel – 19 votes (several ballots were declared invalid).

The decision of the Council became a sensation for many, a joyful sensation. It testifies to the fact that the supporters of canonical Orthodoxy, and it was from these positions that Metropolitan Daniel always spoke, turned out to be in the majority in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and preferred to have as their Patriarch a person who, on the eve of the elections, again clearly and unequivocally outlined his position on the rejection of the Ukrainian schismatics. Moreover, he was the only candidate for Patriarch who spoke directly on this key question

Of course, the results of the vote testify to the shaky balance of power in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church: 69 votes against 66 is the clearest evidence of this.Nevertheless, the decision of the Council is final, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has a Primate who will defend canonical rules and norms and will not allow the Phanar to establish control over the BOC and deepen the schism in world Orthodoxy.

However, it is clear to everyone that the new Patriarch Daniel is receiving a very difficult inheritance, and his unequivocal rejection of the schismatic actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will not go unanswered. And we are already seeing the latter answers in the form of dirty tricks. Patriarch Bartholomew, apparently dissatisfied with the results of the choice of the Bulgarian Orthodox, refused to serve the first Divine Liturgy with his newly elected brother, went home, demonstratively leaving his representative, an archimandrite, to concelebrate.

Moreover, he is one who has a very dubious reputation – Archimandrite Kharalampy (Nichev), who was once a cleric of the BOC, but was expelled after a scandal, but was accepted in his present rank in Constantinople. At the same time, this same Archimandrite Kharalampy has a reputation as a person who belongs to the ‘lavender lobby’. Moreover, during the first Divine Liturgy of Patriarch Daniel, Archimandrite Kharalampy, being the senior priest by consecration, led the service as a representative of the clergy.

There will certainly be many more such dirty tricks on the part of the Phanar. But they do not pose a danger, but an attempt to provoke a schism in the BOC from among the bishops and priests dissatisfied with the election of Patriarch Daniel is a more terrible danger. And given the results of the vote, almost half were dissatisfied. It is clear that there is a long distance from discontent to a change of jurisdiction and an attempt to split, but the problem is serious. His Holiness Patriarch Daniel will obviously have to exert a great deal of effort to prevent a split in the BOC. Therefore, it is very likely that he will take some conciliatory actions and steps first of all.

It is very likely that the opposition to the new Patriarch will be led by the already mentioned and very influential Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv, who has extensive connections in political circles (there are rumours that his father served in the security service of the Communist leader of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov, i.e. he was not the least person at that time). Metropolitan Nicholas has recently become a leader of the pro-Phanar policy in the BOC.

Metropolitan Nicholas is a visible embodiment of the failures of the policy ‘of an Orthodox direction’ of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, which for a long time banked on him. And it seems that there were reasons for this, in addition to the family ties of the Metropolitan of Plovdiv. He was educated at the Moscow Theological Academy and for a long time demonstratively supported pro-Russian positions in the Bulgarian episcopate. In addition to the DECR, as far as we know, our Embassy also banked on him. So this is proof of the failure of all Russian diplomacy, not only ecclesiastical. As a result, we have now received a deafening slap in the face since Metropolitan Nicholas has become the main propagandist of the Phanar in the BOC, and the DECR and the Russian embassy seem to have got it all wrong.

Moreover, Metropolitan Nicholas not only changed his political orientation, but also committed openly offensive actions against His Holiness Patriarch Kirill. We are talking about his arbitrary restoration to the ecclesiastical dignity of the former hegumen Peter Yeremeev, who was banned in the Russian Church, who has recently been seen several times at the Divine services of Metropolitan Nicholas. And this is not just an insult to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill personally, who approved the decision to defrock the former hegumen Peter, but also in fact the creation of a serious problem in relations between the Bulgarian and Russian Orthodox Churches…..

Hegumen Pyotr Eremeev is a notorious personality. In addition to the fact that he held high positions in the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church, being the abbot of the historic Vysokopetrovsky Monastery in the centre of the capital and the rector of the Russian Orthodox University, he is widely known in narrow circles as one of the most prominent faces of the so-called ‘lavender lobby’ in the Russian Orthodox Church. Believers whispered about this and spoke with sorrow. And his ban from serving was perceived with great satisfaction by many Orthodox believers as a sure sign of the cleansing of the Church from the ‘lavender filth’.

Therefore, the story of the former abbot Peter testifies to the fact that the new Bulgarian Patriarch, in addition to the ‘Phanar lobby’, has another dangerous and influential opponent – the ‘lavender lobby’. It is no coincidence that in Bulgaria they whisper about the non-traditional sexual orientation of Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv. It is also surprising and sad that Russian Church diplomats considered him to be the main supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bulgaria.

By the way, as informed people say, the strange inclinations of the former hegumen Peter began to manifest themselves after his studies in Bulgaria, where he met and became friends with the then vicar of the Bulgarian Patriarch, Bishop Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Znepol. These unhealthy inclinations led Pyotr Yeremeev into a scandal with students of the Moscow Academy, which was the reason for his exile from Moscow to Khabarovsk in the Far East. But then he returned to the capital, supposedly cured of the sodomite disease, a story which turned out to be untrue.

Of course, we rejoice at the election of the new Bulgarian Patriarch, especially realising that we are witnessing the manifestation of the action of Divine Providence in history, which inspires us with hope in these desperate times. But let us be aware that Patriarch Daniel faces the most difficult trials ahead. Therefore, it would be right for all of us to at least sigh before God for Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria, who is embarking on the difficult path of struggle for the Church of Christ and for the unity of world Orthodoxy.

 

Collapse and Victory

Now in July, the Ukrainian front lines are collapsing under the far superior, Russian-led military forces. The poor Ukrainians have virtually no air power, weak artillery, relatively few drones and often poorly trained and press-ganged troops, thousands of them fresh out of prison, so short is manpower. Some 14,000 of them are being killed or wounded every week. Little wonder that many are surrendering or else running away.

It is a guessing game as to how long the stumbling and unconstitutional Kiev dictatorship can continue. No-one thinks that the tragedy can continue beyond the end of this year, some say it will end before the US elections in early November, some say it will end by the end of the summer. But God knows.

Such is the situation in the Russian-led Eastern half of Europe. And what of the situation in the US-led Western half of Europe, notably among the Big Three, France, UK and Germany, each governed by a political pygmy?

In France the narcissistic ‘Jupiter’, Macron, is being deposed, even though he had imagined that French people would massively vote for him as he thought he was a genius. In reality, one of the most detested French leaders ever, who thoroughly despised the French people, he only ever loved one person, himself, and nobody ever thought he was a genius.

In the UK, formally EU-free despite the equally narcissistic Cameron who had imagined that all would support him, a Second Reformation, the first for 500 years, is under way. This Reformation sets out to defeat the corrupt Establishment and its unelected technocrats like Sunak and Starmer. Freedom and Fairness, the highest English values, are being promoted by the opposition to the Establishment, what in the USA is called ‘the Deep State’. If this protest movement in the UK eventually succeeds and if in the USA Trump defeats the present senile ‘leader of the Western world’, the dysfunctional US ‘President’, and then removes the puppeteering clique behind him, there will be a new honeymoon between the US and the UK, a real special relationship.

In bankrupted and deindustrialising Germany, the highly unpopular Scholz puppet-coalition is tottering. Its arrogant and insulting attitude towards China is catastrophic, fatal for German industry. It is doubtful if the minority Scholz regime will outlast the coming Russian victory in the Ukraine, which Scholz has got all wrong.

So much for the Big Three of Western Europe.  As for the rest, Prime Minister Orban is launching a new Sovereign Alliance of European Patriots – in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria (the Freedom Party), Germany (AdF), Czechia, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Romania, and soon France (The National Rally) and the UK. The rest will follow. Freedom is in the air.

Meanwhile, we in White Russian East Anglia live under the protection of our unconquerable saints in our holy places, in Bury St Edmunds, Hoxne, Ely, Walsingham, Sheringham and Wroxham, from the Tsar’s Kings Lynn to the Orthodox Colchester of Constantine and Helen. With our cottage culture of Suffolk farmhouses, Alfred Munnings, sweet peas, rose gardens and Royal Albert, we shall not only resist, we shall also be victorious.

What Went Wrong with the Russian Church?

After fifty years of faithfulness to the Russian Church, that Church literally abandoned us, just as in the last three years it has abandoned so many tens of millions of other Orthodox, who were also once part of its jurisdiction. Thus, today we live in the very kind, generous and homely Romanian Church, awaiting the day of the restoration of freedom in the Russian Church. Then it can come out of its self-imposed isolation and take part in the fullness of catholic life and the concert of all the Local Orthodox Churches once more. Why did it abandon us?

The short answer is that in the thirty years after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 the Russian Church turned from a persecuted Church into a persecuting Church. It is the same old sordid story from Church history (read for example the life of St John Chrysostom or of St Martin of Tours, who lived at the same time), the story of how persecution and poverty were supplanted by power and money. This meant the same old inevitable financial and moral corruption, that is, the theft of the people’s assets and homosexualisation. And all this is displayed in a sheer lack of love, which is a scandal in the Church. It means that millions of Russian Orthodox are now boycotting their Church administration, whom they rightly see as politicians and not pastors, wolves in shepherds’ clothing.

Although, I had been well aware of many stories from the Church inside Russia from the early 2000s onwards, I first saw it there with my own eyes quite obviously in 2012. (Several times over the following years I was to see exactly the same thing in the Ukraine and again in Russia in 2018). For example, as one of many experiences I could quote, as part of an official delegation we visited a bishop’s palace (yes, palace) in provincial Russia. It was like a five-star hotel and the tables were groaning with luxurious food. There were about 20 of us. There was enough food for 200. What sort of monasticism was this? Why was the food not given to the poor? In general, the whole trip, including a flight on a private jet from Moscow to Saint Petersburg and gifts of an expensive Swiss watch to everyone, was an experience of luxury that you only usually see in films.

I was astonished and also very disappointed. Holy Rus? There had been far more Holy Rus in the poverty and persecution of the very modest émigré Church. I have always belonged to the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors, of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, where he spent 13 years before being sent to the USA for the last three years of his life, where his fellow-bishops suspended him, put him on trial and basically martyred him. St John’s is the only Russian Church we will ever know. We are Non-Possessors, not effeminate and wealthy semi-Catholics who make of the Church just another State bureaucracy and lord it over clergy and people alike.

But there was far worse than that. The delegation I was part of was composed, except for me, of American-Russians and the Americanised who were impressed (!) by the decadence of bishops, who were in fact mini-oligarchs. I did not at first realise to what extent they were impressed. I could not have believed that they would actually want to imitate their decadence! But gradually between 2012 and 2020 I saw it with my own eyes, as this decadence spread to the Church outside Russia. However, those outside Russia were not corrupted by Moscow, instead they corrupted themselves, quite freely and voluntarily.

Instead of siding with the faithful poor of Russia, clergy and people alike, who sided with the Martyrs and Confessors and those who followed in the footsteps of St John of Shanghai, they freely chose to side with the corrupted and homosexualised in Moscow and their imperialist cruelty. We remained the same; they did not, and from the Church of St John, whom they had crucified, they turned into the Nasty Church. This is composed of those who hate everyone else outside their sad and ever smaller nationalist and schismatic ghetto. How sorrowful. They betrayed St John and all the Saints.

But there was far worse even than that. With this decadence in the leadership of the Church inside Russia, with power and money gone to the heads of certain leaders, inevitably an explosion took place: a terrible civil war which divided the Church and the people of Rus’. For when there is no repentance, there always follows a crisis, the Greek word for judgement. God is not mocked. 600,000 Ukrainian soldiers are dead, 60,000 dead among Russians and allies, militias from the Donbass, Chechens, Uzbeks and others. Millions have been wounded, either physically or else mentally. The majority are nominally Orthodox. This dreadful war is the chastisement and retribution for a nominal Church. It has been judged and it has been found wanting.

The reform of the governance of the Russian Church is now inevitable, as that governance, fallen into politics and militaristic nationalism, has shown itself incapable of being multinational. It is inadequate for the multinational Russian Federation, which is also the leading nation in the multinational BRICS. Regardless of the imminent Russian victory against the USA and its NATO vassals and their decadent and corrupted Constantinople thugs in the Ukraine, the cleansing of the Russian Church from corruption is to follow. Just as President Putin, strengthened by a new and highly popular mandate, is cleansing the Russian Army with the arrest of four generals for corruption, attention will turn to the corruption in the Church.

From there the decentralisation of the Russian Church for Russian Orthodox who live in fully independent countries (just as previously those in Poland and the USA had received decentralisation) is now also inevitable. This will lead to the birth of many new Autocephalous and Autonomous Churches, in the Ukraine and elsewhere. Moreover, this movement is largely supported by other Local Churches, who have sided neither with the imperialist corruption of Russian leaders, nor with the imperialist corruption of Greek leaders. The latter belonged to WEF-style anti-nation and anti-family globalist religious sect of modernism, syncretism, sexual perversion, covid propaganda and the green agenda, just like that of the Vatican and that of Soros and Schwab.

However, the Churches of Romania, Albania, Poland, Serbia, Macedonia, America, Jerusalem and now the Church of Bulgaria too are on our side, following the golden mean, ignoring the imperialist, Roman Catholic style, thisworldly pretensions of the Second and Third Romes. Freedom is in the air, as the Holy Spirit wafts over the Church of God.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, 2 July 2024