Introduction: The Continents
The world is divided into ‘continents’, a word which means ‘continuous land’. This is because the different continents are separated from each other by water. Thus, there is Africa, North and South America (some see these as one continent), Antarctica, Australia/Oceania, and Asia. By far the largest continent is this Asia, which has over 36% of the world’s land surface and nearly 70% of the world’s population, together with tiny ‘Europe’. This ‘Europe’ is an artificial continent, part of Asia. In reality, ‘Europe’, which is not separated from ‘Asia’ by water, is at most only a subcontinent, like the Indian subcontinent.
Asia
Asia is the source of all civilisations, as is recorded in the Bible, a book written in Asia, which some Europeans claim to be the most important book in the world, though it is in fact a series of books (the meaning of the word ‘Bible’ in Greek), and which they claim to have read. In any case, Asia is the source of all the world’s oldest religions and civilisations, for example, in India and China. Until the eighteenth century, when looting began, these were the foremost and richest civilisations in the world and now, in the twenty-first century, are becoming so again, with China for some years now the world’s richest country.
Asia is so vast that it can be divided into four parts: North, which has long been dominated by Eurasia/Russia; East, which has long been dominated by China; South, which has long been dominated by India; and West, which is on the point of being dominated again, as for millennia before, by the ancient historic civilisation of Iran. The recent change here has come from the fact that West Asia was in recent times dominated by its neighbour ‘Europe’, which actually used to call West Asia by the ethnocentric name of ‘the Middle East’! Only now have Europe and its US offshoot stopped dominating West Asia.
Asia and Europe
The boundaries of this construct of ‘Europe’, in reality the north-western peninsula of Asia, have changed throughout history, sometimes the artificial border has been the Vistula, the Dnieper, the Volga, or the Ural hills. It is still not clear where the geographical boundary between ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ is for those who insist that ‘Europe’ is not part of ‘Asia’. Indeed, tiny ‘Europe’ is at this moment fighting another futile war of expansion to the Ukraine, which it claims as ‘Europe’, and where racist fanatics claim that everything to the east of the Ukraine is ‘Asiatic’ and so ‘inferior’ to ‘Europe’.
This is all the more curious, inasmuch as the ancestors of the peoples of ‘Europe’ all emigrated westwards out of Asia in previous millennia, as can be seen by the arrival of Celts and Greeks and more recently of Finns, Hungarians and recently Roma. Thus, all Europeans are by origin Asians (we do not use the racist term ‘Asiatics’). Moreover, most ‘Europeans’ speak an ‘Indo-European’ language, that is to say, an Indian language descended from Sanskrit. That is an ancient language which was once spoken to the north of India. Thus, all European languages, like all Europeans, are in fact Asians, and not ‘Europeans’.
The True Europe
I am a European, that is, I was born in, as were my ancestors for at least the past two thousand years, and perhaps much longer ago than that, and I live in, the north-western peninsula of Asia. This area calls itself ‘Europe’, which in the ancient Semitic language means ‘the West’ (‘Asia’ in Semitic means ‘the East’). In fact, ‘Europe’ is merely the western part of North Asia, which, because it spreads very far to the west, is also called ‘Eurasia’, literally meaning ‘West-East’. The vast majority of Eurasia has for centuries been occupied by the East Slavs of the Russian Lands, mostly now known as the Russian Federation.
The emblem of Russia has long been the double-headed eagle, which looks east and west. This is because the destiny of the Russian Federation is to unite east and west, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, from a united Korea and the offshore archipelago of Japan to Western Europe and the offshore islands of the North Atlantic, the British Isles, Ireland and Iceland. This destiny does not mean at all that Russia is destined to unite North Asia by force – it has never tried to, unlike Europe which has constantly tried to. Russian destiny means to unite all in co-operation and harmony, spreading peace and prosperity.
The False Europe
I am European only geographically, not ‘European’ in the deformed meaning of the word. That is, I have nothing to do with the ‘European’ ideology of secularist atheism, which was invented in recent centuries. This ideology has in fact slowly evolved over the last thousand years in the north-west peninsula of Asia. It is most clearly expressed by today’s artificial political organisation or construct, which calls itself ‘the European Union’ (EU). This ideology claims to express ‘European values’. These are opposed to the Church of God, which was founded in Asia. The EU claims that its ideology is superior to those of others.
Clearly, no Christian can accept the ‘values’ of the enslaving ideology of secularist ideology, of what the unelected and autocratic EU leaders call ‘freedom and democracy’. That ideology rejects Christ, because He was an Asian and believed in God. ‘European values’ reject Christ as an inferior ‘Asiatic’, Who sacrificed Himself and allowed Himself to be murdered for the sake of the salvation of the world from evil. No Christian can accept this Nazi ‘civilisation’ that rejects the humble Christ and arrogantly thinks Itself superior to all others, claiming that ‘the West is best’ and all others are inferior.
Europe and the US
This ideology is the source of Russophobia among the delusional neo-feudal elite of Western Europe, which Russia refused to submit to. Having begun arrogating power and wealth to itself a thousand years ago and proclaimed its leader in Rome to be the replacement of God on earth, the Western elite and its fawning followers declared themselves to be superior to all others and so entitled to conquer and exploit them. Today’s ‘infallible’ leader of the West, ‘God on earth’, is in the ultimate Western extension of Europe, the USA. The game is up for the elite: either return to North Asia or else commit suicide.
Today France is facing that suicide, with the riots in France against the corrupt and bankrupt State, which has sent tens of billions of French euros to the Ukraine, with even threats to guillotine President Macron. Implosion is also on the streets of other failed States, Portugal, Albania, Italy, Belgium and elsewhere, with protests for resovereignisation from EU and NATO dictatorships, in the UK (where the elite wants the young to die for its ideology), Romania and Germany. Europe has to choose between what was imposed by USA or the alternative – to reintegrate North Asia through Russia.
Conclusion: The Future of Europe as Part of Eurasia
The only future for Europe is to abandon the false construct of Europe as ‘superior’ and become again the true Europe, thus returning to its roots in Asia. It can only do this by reintegrating North Asia, ‘Eurasia’, which, as we have said, is dominated by the Russian Federation. For nearly a millennium the construct of Europe has claimed that its neighbours in ‘the Middle East’ and what is now the Russian Federation, and then in the rest of the world, should submit to it, subjugating itself to ‘Europe’. This is the exact opposite of what is necessary. Integration with its neighbours, not isolation, is the way forward.
The actor Zelensky, who has loyally played his role and read his Hollywood scripts as an illegal President for over two years, has stated that 43,000 Russians are being killed and injured in the CIA-organised war in the Ukraine every month. This figure is exact, but it is for the number of Ukrainian troops being killed and injured every month. In other words, Zelensky has projected the Ukrainian figure onto the Russians. As far as we know, there have so far been at least 2.4 million (some say far more) Ukrainian casualties and about 200,000 Russian casualties (Western source: BBC Mediazona), a ratio of 12 to 1. The proportions of dead to injured are unknown to us.
The reason for this ratio is not because of a lack of Ukrainian heroism, or effort, or the huge quantities of NATO equipment supplied to the Ukraine, but because of the massive superiority of Russian tactics and firepower, artillery, drones, missiles and planes, over the obsolete NATO weapons which the Ukrainians have to fight with. The figures are confirmed by the regular exchanges of bodies (ratio: 36:1), the numbers of huge new Ukrainian cemeteries, the numbers of missing and surrendered, the declarations of Ukrainian officials like Budanov and Mendel, who demand 30,000 new replacement troops per month, as well as by the official Russian figures.
However, this figure does include mercenary casualties, hundreds of French, British, Germans, Americans, Georgians, Latvians and others, thousands of Colombians and 10,000 dead Polish soldiers, who changed from Polish uniforms into Ukrainian ones in order to receive generous pay in dollars and die. The Western media account for the missing with all the usual obituary tropes for NATO officers: ‘He suffered a heart attack while climbing’ (a la Robin Cook); ‘he committed suicide’ (a la David Kelly); ‘he died unexpectedly in his sleep’ etc. However, the Ukrainian war is only one element in the vast international and interlinked chaos of today’s world.
There is the Israeli-US war against Iran, the long-running war between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, in which the Saudis genocided the Yemenis, the war in Syria, in which the CIA runs and supports the terrorist beheaders of ISIS, the countless anti-colonial wars in Africa etc. Conspiracy theorists like to blame some particular group for all these wars and catastrophes at this present turning-point in world history. Thus, some accuse ‘Bilderberg’, others the ‘Trilateral’, some the ‘Americans’, others the ‘British’, some the ‘CIA’, others the ‘Zionists’, some the ‘Freemasons’, others the ‘City of London’, some the ‘Jews’, others the ‘EU’, some the ‘Rothschilds’, others ‘Soros’ and so on.
All these groups and individuals belonging to them may to some degree be responsible for the chaos, but all of them and others too have one thing in common: these new Globalist aristocrats, whoever they may be, and they are all only pawns in the game, are defined by their lust for money, or to give it its Biblical name, their idolatry of Mammon. ‘Follow the money’. And ‘you cannot serve God and Mammon’, for ‘either you will hate the one and love the other, or else you will hold to the one and despise the other’. As a result of the present world disorder caused by Mammonism, many recently-constructed, artificial and even parasitic countries will disappear.
In their present form these include: Saudi Arabia, its genocidal leader and friend of Epstein, already on the run and hiding in bunkers, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrein, Dubai, Oman, Qatar, Jordan, Syria, the Lebanon, Kosovo, Bosnia, the Ukraine…As a result of foreign interference, crowds from Pakistan to Romania are protesting for the release of their for now imprisoned or arrested leaders whom the people voted for, and not the puppets imposed by US or EU diktat. Civil unrest, often very violent, is under way in France, in the Unionist UK (threatened by break-up into its component parts), in the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Catalonia, Albania, Canada….
It is all the fault of the centralisation of power, whether on the part of the USA, the EU, the UK, or of some other centralised, ‘United’, State. Centralised authorities have, ironically in the name of ‘Democracy’, imposed the myths of wokeness, LGBT, the climate change ideology, covid, and Russian aggression against the Ukraine. All in the name of the clinging on to power and money of the neo-feudal Western aristocracy. They cannot live without an enemy, as a pretext to start the distraction of a World War III, in which tens of millions of the non-elite ‘plebs’ would die in order for the elite, who are only satan’s pawns, to become even stronger and richer and more evil.
These centralised states or Unions (European, American, British etc) are reproducing the disorder that occurred after the break-up of the Yugoslav Union and, above all, of the Soviet Union, in the 90s. After the dissolution of the USSR, millions, not least Russians, died prematurely in the anarchy that followed, from hunger, despair, oligarchic mafia crime (‘privatisation’), alcoholism, drug addiction and the futility of life, which had been built on the illusory ideology of Marxism. With the failure of Marxist ideology, which had justified everything, there was no longer any justification for anything. As a result, lawlessness and death by mafia prevailed.
Here it is worth stopping to consider why the Soviet Union fell. There is a myth that it was defeated by the West, the Western consumerist capitalist system, or ‘superior Western technology’. This ‘End of History’, ‘West is Best’, thesis is of course complete nonsense. The Soviet Union fell because of its Trotskyist universalism – ‘we are universal’. This is exactly why the ‘American Union’ is falling – because it too claims to be universal, under the influence of the Trotskyist neocons. (Let us recall that Trotsky, real name Bronstein, came from a wealthy family in the eastern Ukraine – only fifty miles from the birthplace of his co-religionist, a Jewish atheist, Zelensky).
The problem of Union is now affecting France. Having entered monetary union through the euro, which put the French economy into a straitjacket, depriving it of its economic sovereignty, France is now suffering. France cannot be an economic Germany, the homeland of the euro. The only way monetary union can work is if there is first political union, in other words if all countries are ruled by the Brussels Politburo. France is now repeating the path of Greece, and the problems are spreading to Belgium and Italy. The French problem will either destroy the euro or destroy the EU. The tragic fall of the European Union will resemble that of the Soviet Union.
The fall of the Soviet Union continues in the main successor State to the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation. Even currently, it is said that up to twenty generals and the former Defence Minister of the Russian Federation are being detained for corruption – after several other generals and the criminal oligarch Prigozhin had previously been arrested. My knowledge of the profound, systemic and ingrained oligarchal corruption in the Russian Church confirms this. Again, this corruption, even 35 years after the fall of the USSR, comes from Soviet centralisation, precisely from ‘Unionism’, which has contributed to the tragedy of the persecutedUkrainian Church.
1956 to 1974: The Last of Old England
I was born into the rolling countryside of the Essex-Suffolk border, amid the green fields, whispering woods, gentle hills, cold springs and clear streams of water. And then it still was the country, still England, far from the smoke of alien British London, with its tiring bustle and very sinister finance. I grew up with people born in the nineteenth century, or at least those born before 1914 and saw the last horses and milkmaids. I was brought up with the clear knowledge that there had once long before been saints here, where I lived. This was Paradise, the summer sunshine of my life, but it was also the end of Paradise.
1974 to 1997: The End of an Era
In this world of England, we had met a Russian exile family, the Benkendorffs, who lived outside Ipswich. Both my father, for his roses and sweet peas, and my aunt, for her ladies’ clothes, had dealings with them. I learned this in the revelation of 2019, a few days before my aunt passed. Everything made sense at last. Great-great uncle Pavel Benkendorff had been faithful to the Tsar and we are proud of him. His book about the Last Days is a favourite. Like them, the last living Russian emigres who had been adults before the Revolution, were by now all aged over 70. Now, in this ending era, I met a whole gallery of such as they.
Like the Benkendorffs, they too came from the old aristocratic families, representatives of the Golitsyns, the Obolenskys, the Lopukhins, the Kutaisovs, the Zernovs, the Gorodetskys, the Dolgorukys, the Rehbinders, the Bobrinskys, the Tiesenhausens, the Ossorgins, the Shidlovskys, the Breverns, and of very many other distinguished families from Russian history. Most such emigres were constitutional monarchists. In the UK they voted Conservative, in the US Republican and in France for the conservative RPR. They were not Republicans, but neither were they for the Tsar, whom they blamed for their loss and exile.
That they were not at all mystically-minded was the result of their spiritual impurity. And after the 1990s young Orthodox, newly arrived out of the hellfires of the Soviet collapse, among them cousins of the Benkendorffs and venerating the Tsar, were shocked by the compromised, Westernised and sometimes downright treasonous values of the old aristocrats. The newly come were true nobles and mystics. We were on the same wavelength. No surprise here. We had long thought exactly the same as them. So all turned full circle. From Benkendorff to Benkendorff. Providence always gives poetic justice.
1997 to 2022: The Inbetween Time – Caught Between Too Late and Too Early
By 1997 it was too late to build the Local Church with the Russian emigres, as the last of those who had been adults before 1917 were buried – as a priest in Paris I had helped bury them. In Europe they had transmitted the Faith to only a handful of their children and grandchildren because they had wanted not to transmit the Faith, but a political and nationalist ideology. That was meaningless to those born in the Western world. In 2007 I helped create unity between the remaining not yet Americanised emigres and Moscow – the last chance for the Russian Church in the emigration, if were not to collapse into sectarianism.
It was the last drop of our blood to be sacrificed, for a few years later we were to be met with bullying and betrayal for helping to create that unity. True, we had only put off the schism of the now decadent émigré Church for a decade, for in 2016 persecution by the new schismatics began. This was pathological and political and we realised that there was no future in the face of this spiritual disease. That spiritual disease could only attract the pathological, who, ex-Protestant by mentality, wanted self-justification, ‘justification’ being the Protestant sickness. The Russian Church of the emigration was going nowhere.
It had been taken over. The schismatics and sectarians were turning it into a ghetto of decadence. Already in 2016 the dry as dust, bad-tempered, pharisaical, ritualistic ‘Feraponts’ of Unholy Protocol were taking over the Russian Church in the emigration from the fresh, loving, spiritual, charismatic ‘Zosimas’ of Holy Optina. These two trends had already been portrayed penetratingly in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. So the Russian Church in the emigration made itself spiritually irrelevant to the great task of converting to real Orthodox Christianity those of goodwill in Europe, who sincerely sought for Christ.
Shamefully, they had deserted the reality of the mission of St John of Shanghai in favour of sectarian ideology, of might and mammon. In early February 2022 a Metropolitan of the Russian Church whom we had known for 43 years, advised us, with regret, but also with envy, to turn to the Romanian Church for the future, after our 47 years of faithfulness to the Russian Church. Facing the betrayal by internal enemies we had met with, it was the only logical, though radical, thing to do. It was the turning point in the history of the Russian Diaspora and mission. A plague on both your houses of nationalist politics, of Russians and Greeks alike.
But this period was also too early to build the Local Church, as Western people were still not ready to receive the Light from the East, brought back to us from Russia, and so to return to their roots. Our words fell on deaf ears amid the deafening roar of the secularist, manipulating propaganda of the media of the Western elite, which stridently proclaimed atheism instead of Christ. Having sacrificed tens of millions of ordinary people in their absurd European Wars, which they even made into ‘World Wars’, they wanted blood as tribute to the satan they idolised, for satan hates Christ and slanders Him, ‘diabolising’ Him.
As for pathological Westerners, who sought self-justification in the Church of God, they were certainly not able to hear those words either, as pathology is by definition deaf to reality. The new world was not yet ready to be born. As the Italian philosopher Gramsci famously wrote in his Prison Notebooks: ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters’. This was indeed the inbetween time and the time of egomaniac monsters, who still clung to the dead conservative past and refused the Holy Spirit, Who in streams of living water was leading us into the Kingdom to come.
2022 to R.O.M.E., the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Europe
Providentially, eight days before the NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine, initiated in 2014, turned even more violent on 24 February 2022, with NATO plans for a full-scale genocide of eastern Ukrainians and the resulting Russian pre-emptive incursion, twelve of us clergy transferred to the Romanian Church. For over two-thirds of our thousands of parishioners were by then Romanians and Moldovans and one of them had already become a deacon and another a priest. The Romanian Orthodox Church provided the essential balance between the purely political and nationalist narratives of both Greeks and Russians.
We rejected their absurd and quite unChristian politics, masquerading as Orthodoxy beneath the camouflage of their mutual nationalist ideologies, called ‘Hellenism’ and ‘the Russian World’. We were merely the first of many to go to the Romanian Church and for the same reasons. After persecution from the schismatics and after the slander from those newcomers who were contorted by jealousy and who did not want to be set free by the Truth of Christ, but wanted convert ideology, we stood on the moral high ground. For as Orthodox Christians, we confess the Four Signs of the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic:
One: We confess what the Church is. The Church is One, living in spiritual unity in Heaven and on Earth, in Oneness, not in nationalism, not in political and racial arguments, in proud schisms and cultish sects, which refuse to tolerate others with generosity of heart and concelebration in love.
Holy: We confess where the Oneness comes from. It comes from the Saints, from Holiness, from the ever-fresh breathing of the Holy Spirit, Who is now so very close in these pre-apocalyptic times, and not from some ‘jurisdictional’ protocols and bureaucratic legalism, which will cause them to lose their souls.
Catholic: We confess how this Oneness is expressed. Oneness is expressed in Councils, for the Church is Conciliar/Catholic, expressing its Oneness in all places and at all times. Individuals may express these truths, but they must be confirmed by the common mind of the Church, inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Apostolic: We confess when the Church is. It is in the ‘Tradition’, that is, the continuous succession and legacy of identity, from the times of the apostles until our very own apostolic days, as we too await the Coming of Christ. For the Tradition contains the whole inspiration of the Holy Spirit to all humanity.
Glory to God for all things!
800 Metropolia Delegates in Rome
From 7 to 10 October 2026 we took part in the biennial Congress of our Metropolia. This year the Congress took place in Rome, though only 800 of the 3,000 clerical and lay delegates could attend. Previous Congresses took place in Rome in 2012, Lisbon in 2014, Rome in 2016, Paris in 2018, (covid restrictions forbade the Congress in 2020), Madrid in 2022 and Dublin in 2024. In 2028 the Congress will be taking place in England and there are hopes to hold an even bigger Congress. This will be in venues with large hotels with at least 250 rooms, meeting halls and restaurants, catering for between 1,000 and 3,000.
All eight bishops of our Metropolia participated in the Congress and the theme was Faith, Communion and Mission, with a strong emphasis on family life. Metropolitan Joseph told us of the foundation of the Metropolia by the Patriarchate of Romania in 2001. At that time there were only seven parishes in Italy (today there are over 400) and how he used to stay at parishioners’ homes, as he could not afford a hotel and scarcely had enough money for petrol. Today the Italian Diocese is about to obtain official recognition from the Italian government,
The participants were mainly aged between 20 and 45, with only a few older. I was the third oldest present and I am considerably older than any of the bishops. On the evening of Thursday 8, the priests organised a football tournament between Spain, Italy and England (France were not able to organise a team), refereed by Archdeacon Paul. England won and Archbishop Atanasie declared England the champions! The Congress was notable for the presence of many women (sometimes priests’ wives), babies and small children.
Married clergy all have short hair and trimmed beards, as they are expected to have. Only monastics have long hair and beards. This is quite unlike the anti-woman attitudes at Russian Church Conferences and Councils, many of which I have attended since 1981, with their rigid, parade-ground, even militaristic spirit. There everyone has to stand to attention in full dress uniform and nobody is allowed to express themselves freely because of ‘protocols’. Otherwise, they will be shouted at and intimidated, as they are supposed to be monks and to dress as monks. Those who do not pretend to be monks are treated as second-class citizens.
On Friday 9, an episcopal liturgy was celebrated in Romanian, Slavonic, English, Italian, French, German and Spanish. Bishop Nectary of Dublin presided. This tied in with the presentation to all the bishops of our multilingual booklet, also in seven languages, of the Akathist to All the Saints of the Western Lands and copies of the Icon ‘Saints of the Western Lands’. The original Icon, which is unique, is venerated in Colchester, as a result of our association with St John, who as Archbishop of Western Europe revived the veneration of these saints in the 1950s.
Some Statistics: Towards ROME – the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia in Europe
There are about 5,000,000 Romanians (including some 1,000,000 children born in Western Europe) and 1,000,000 Moldovans and their locally-born children, all with Romanian passports in Western Europe. Romanian Orthodox far outnumber the Orthodox of other nationalities in our countries. In the UK there are 1,500,000 Romanian nationals according to official statistics and Romanian has overtaken Polish as the second language in the UK.
The wave of emigration has now stabilised, though Romanians are still coming to the UK from Germany, Italy, France and Spain, where the economies are in recession because, ironically, of anti-Russian sanctions. These have rebounded on Western countries which enforced them, thus they shot themselves in the foot. In other words, over 80% of all Orthodox in the UK belong to the Romanian Archdiocese and the proportion is similar in other Western European countries.
Romanian Orthodox are divided into two Autonomous Metropolias, one for Central and Northern Europe (three bishops and some 220 parishes for Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Scandinavia), the other for Western and Southern Europe (eight bishops and over 1,060 parishes and 24 monasteries for Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, Malta, France, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland and Iceland). It is clear that eight Archdioceses are beginning to take shape, two for the German lands (Germany and Switzerland-Austria), one for Scandinavia, one for the UK and Ireland, one for Italy, one for France, one for Iberia and one for Benelux.
Conversations with Romanians living outside Romania were interesting. As we know, Romanians help to staff the UK Antiochian and Greek dioceses, which are very short of clergy. Indeed, the Greek Archbishop Nikitas in London has publicly said that he is very grateful to Romanians who fill some of his emptying and elderly parishes. In the same way, Romanian-speaking Moldovans make up the vast bulk of the clergy and people who are under Moscow in the Diaspora.
However, the same thing is also happening in Greece and Cyprus. Thus, a Romanian lady who has lived in Cyprus for 20 years told me at the Congress how there are now no fewer than 17 Romanian priests in the Diocese of Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol. A few years back Metr Athanasios was chosen by the Cypriot people to be the Archbishop of Cyprus, but the US Embassy intervened to stop him and appointed their pro-schismatic Ukrainian candidate instead. As a result, there is more or less a schism in the Church of Cyprus between the Orthodox and the pro-Constantinople CIA appointees.
Introduction: Truth and Mercy
I have been asked if I am neutral in my impressions (impressions, as I do not have opinions). Of course, I am not neutral. Neutrality implies a half-way point between Good and Evil and so is of no interest. What is of interest is Truth and Mercy, for Truth and Mercy belong to the Good God. I believe that all spiritual, moral, cultural, political, economic and social aspects of human life turn around Truth and Mercy, in other words, they turn around Christ.
The European-Instigated ‘World’ Wars
The greedy desire of rival European empires to asset-strip the natural resources belonging to others – mainly colonies in Africa and Asia, but for the Germans also the lands that became the Ukraine – lay behind World War I. The same motivation also lay behind World War II. Once more the ‘superior’ German Fascists wanted to expand for ‘Lebensraum’ and all that went with it, oil, gas, grain etc – to be taken from any Non-Germans, but especially from ‘inferior’, ‘Asiatic’ and ‘barbarian’ Slavs. To asset-strip is better known by the word to ‘loot’, itself a Hindu word which described British activities in occupied India. Here ‘looting’, that is to say, theft by systematic plunder and pillage, was the main British activity which reduced the advanced economy of the Indian subcontinent from riches to rags.
The Scramble for Russia
This greedy desire to loot Russia, as they did in India and Africa, was already clear from the Collective Western invasion of Russia under Napoleon in 1812, in that under the euphemism of the ‘Crimean’ War in 1854-56, in the unprovoked, full-scale proxy war of Western-armed Japan against Russia in 1904, in the temporary Western occupation of Russia after the Western-orchestrated 1917 ‘Revolution’, in the Collective Western invasion of Russia under Hitler in 1941, and in what greedy Western oligarchs did in Russia in the 1990s. The same also lies behind the present NATO proxy war in the Ukraine: the publicly stated aim of the NATO war machine and Washington warmongers has always been to destroy and dismantle Russia. And this in order to own, exploit and extract its vast natural resources.
2026: The World in Flames
In 1922 half of the Soviet Ukraine was stolen from Russia by the anti-Russian German envoy Lenin and the anti-Russian British envoy, a local man from what became the Soviet Ukraine, Bronstein (Trotsky), and given to the anti-Russian Marxist bandits. In 1934 half of Yemen was stolen from the present Yemen by British imperialists and given to the nomadic Saudi bandits. In 1961 Kuwait was stolen from Iraq by British imperialists and given to corrupt local puppets. In 1967 all of Palestine was stolen from Palestine by the Western-backed Israelis and given to the Zionist bandits. Today all the oppressed are claiming back what was stolen from them and rightfully belongs to them after so many generations and indeed, in the case of the English, centuries, of injustice and ‘looting’. This is, as they say, ‘karma’.
Will the Russian Church in the Diaspora Be Banned?
As the West loses its war against Russia in the Ukraine, its Nazi Kiev puppet regime collapses and the Gauleiter Merz rants like his Nazi grandfather, Western Europe wants revenge on Russia. The EU could steal the huge Russian assets, illegally frozen in Brussels, but that would lead to the financial collapse of the EU. Another way would be to ban the Russian Church in Western Europe, as in the Ukraine and Latvia. With ROCOR already infiltrated and neutralised as a CIA tool, there would remain an attack on the Moscow Patriarchate directly. Undermined by politics and defenceless, ghettoised Moscow parishes would be forced to turn to other Patriarchates. They would refuse to go under the Constantinople, which would leave Romania, as has already happened in France and in England.
Conclusion: Freedom for England
NATO is now divided and dying in its obvious defeat in the Ukraine and the NATO-dependent EU will die with the defeat of NATO. As for us, outside the EU, we too wish to claim back what belongs to us. Even if it was very, very long ago, nearly a millennium ago, ours is the England which was betrayed by internal enemies in high places. And then it was stolen by the Zionist-financed Normans and their equally genocidal Establishment descendants.
https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2026/10/05/bananovaya_respublika_evropa
Without justice, what else is a State but a great band of robbers?
Blessed Augustine, The City of God, Book IV
Introduction: The CIA Playbook: How to Seize Power
The CIA playbook has been built up over nearly eighty years of more than sixty subversion operations (including in the Vatican and Operation Gladio), sanctions, economic wars, coups d’etat, regime-changes (as with De Gaulle in 1968), colour revolutions and proxy wars. These started in Latin America (even before the CIA as such existed, in the original banana republic of Guatemala), then spreading to Asia (Iran in 1953, Vietnam, the Philippines (Marcos)), Africa (the murders of Hammarskjold and Lumumba), Western Europe and the Ukraine.
Stage One: Leader Substitution.
One of the best ways of achieving regime-change is to corrupt the present leaders, finding dirt on them and then to threaten them: Resign or we will release the dirt we have on you. In their place the CIA appoints its Globalist puppets, elected or unelected, gangsters (in Central America, Kosovo, the Ukraine), terrorists (Saddam Hussein, Bin Laden), actors (Wojtyla, Reagan, Zelensky), oligarchs (Berezovsky etc) financiers (Merz), bankers (Sunak, Macron) and other failures and inadequates (Johnson, Starmer, Burnham etc) and anti-patriotic Zionists who cannot even speak the local language correctly (in the Baltics and in the Ukraine). The CIA also has dirt on these puppets to an even greater extent, including cocaine-taking and pedophilia.
Leader substitution is supported by the subservient Western European media (controlled by six US corporations), US-funded think tanks, ‘NGOs’, rent-a-mob crowds and imported snipers (as in Kiev in 2014). They all cry ‘freedom and democracy’ to get their way. We can see this process of leader substitution in recent decades, very clearly in the UK (very easy, ever since the half-American Churchill), the EU (through its Balticisation), in France and Germany (which a long time ago resisted the US invasion of Iraq), the Baltics, Norway, Poland, the Ukraine (beginning with the CIA success of 2014), Belarus (failed), Georgia (failed), Armenia, Finland and Sweden (two long-term projects that began with the assassination of Olof Palme in 1986 and have ended with the great CIA success of the NATOisation of both countries).
Stage Two
Use your total control of the media to create war hysteria, making all Western European countries into anti-Russia (and also anti-Iran, anti-China and pro-Israel) proxies, just as they did in the tragic Ukraine, from where millions have taken refuge in Russia, millions have self-exiled to Western Europe, and millions more hoodwinked Ukrainians have died fighting for the CIA, imagining that they were fighting for the Ukraine. The paid Western media are told to tell the zombified people that you must die for us, as in the Ukraine. This propaganda messaging is centralised and co-ordinated, as ‘defence’ spending is increased, destroying Western European social infrastructure and creating debt enslavement, as more and more people fall into poverty. Such outsourcing saves the US money, all the more so as the pathetically small Western European arms industries and armed services have to buy from the US.
Part of this anti-Russian hysteria includes infiltrating the Orthodox Churches to make them anti-Russian. The Greek Churches were a walkover – that aim was achieved in 1948 by substituting a Greek-American ecumenist puppet for the canonical Patriarch Maximos V, Archbishop Athenagoras. CIA control of ROCOR has been a long-term, on-off project with assets used as sleeper-traitors, to be activated whenever necessary, as has now happened. Sadly, Moscow has been naïve enough to play along with CIA infiltration of ROCOR through the Neo-Vlasovtsy, often sons and grandsons of the Hitlerite Vlasovtsy, and Moscow ignored the warnings we sent them by hand in 2021. Today ROCOR has been neutralised in this respect. For CIA agents try to silence critics, as the CIA agent tried with us. The ultimate goal is to close down all Russian churches in the Western world. Patriarch Kyrill was long ago sanctioned and banned from visiting them. The closedown of Russian churches here is now ever closer.
Stage Three
This consists of subverting and stealing any useful remnants of the old European empires, for example, carving out sovereign bases in Europe, for example in Fairford, Lakenheath and Mildenhall in the UK, Wiesbaden and Ramstein in West Germany, Aviano and Naples in Italy, the ‘British’ Akrotiri base in Cyprus, the Chagos Islands, the base here being Diego Garcia, Greenland (now de facto taken over by the US with the EU betrayal and humiliation of Denmark), and, if useful, the Falklands and Iceland will be taken too.
Conclusion: Man Proposes, But God Disposes
Such is what is proposed. Of course, people do not have to accept it, if we are free. After all, the people’s pockets are not being filled with money, unlike those of Western European/Ukrainian oligarchs, so why not exercise freedom? Perhaps, given the seriousness of the situation with the Ukrainianisation of Western Europe and the first fuel and food rationing now happening, the people will speak out at last and revolt and their CIA-appointed ‘leaders’ will be swept away. The only questions are when and where does such a real popular movement start? In Germany with the AfD? On the streets of Paris? Or somewhere else? The grace of God is unknowable. Lord, have mercy on us all.
The Holy Spirit
Q: I am a Catholic and as I understand it, the Orthodox Churches have no Pope, because Orthodox consider that their Churches are governed by the Holy Spirit. If that is so, why are there conflicts between those Churches?
A: A good question! As Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev put it 125 years ago: ‘The Holy Spirit rules the Church, but bishops get in the way’. In other words, all the problems in all the Local Churches are due to ‘Pneumatoclasm’, the struggle against the Holy Spirit, ‘quenching the Spirit’, in the language of the Scriptures. There are bishops who do not want the Holy Spirit, they want only to be ‘princes of the Church’, that is, to possess power and riches and they persecute the faithful to get this. Such are politicians and not pastors. However, whenever you reject the Holy Spirit, you end up being exactly like the worst of Roman Catholicism (not your sort), whatever the rite you use, for example like ‘Greek Catholic’ Uniatism, which uses a similar rite to Orthodox, but is not Orthodox in spirit, only in outward imitation.
Thus, medieval Roman Catholic cardinals, political powerbrokers, become the model for such ‘princes of the Church’. One Russian metropolitan in the 1970s even died in the arms of a Pope and several Greek metropolitans, usually issued with a doctorate from the Gregorian University in Rome, whatever their abilities, seem to spend more time in Rome than in their diocese – if they have one. In other words, the worst of Roman Catholicism is the default position for Orthodox who reject the Holy Spirit. That is why we do not confess Roman Catholicism.
However, do not be offended. As I said, this comparison applies to the worst of Roman Catholicism, and we know that there is also the best of Roman Catholicism. The Vatican machine is inherently secular because of its filioque theology, in which the Pope replaces Christ, Who for them is the source of the Holy Spirit. And that is exactly what such Orthodox confess, Orthodoxy without the Holy Spirit, that is, a mere rite.
The Orthodox Churches and the Diaspora
Q: Is there a limit to the number of Local Orthodox Churches?
A: No, of course not. For example, some six generations ago there were only 8 Local Churches, whereas today there are 16. This was because conglomerate empires broke up and new countries formed. In years to come there could be a maximum of 27 Local Churches. That number would depend on many things, for example, on the first if – if the Russian Church granted autocephaly, or else just autonomy with the right not to commemorate the Patriarch, to the Orthodox in other countries who are still dependent on its jurisdiction. And it would also depend on the willingness of all the Local Churches concerned to give autocephaly to their restless Diasporas.
Thus, the figure of 27 Local Churches would only be reached if the Church of Greece returned to Constantinople (they were quite uncanonically forced to separate by the British and the Bavarians in 1833), making 15 Local Churches, and if the Church in Moscow granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Churches on its canonical territory, in the Post-Ukraine (whatever its new name and borders will be), in Belarus, Carpatho-Rus and All Hungary, the Baltics (Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Japan, China (vital if ever the mission is to take off there, as China will not allow foreign-based organisations, just like the Baltic States) and in Central Asia (= the five stans), making 22 Local Churches, and if all the Local Churches concerned could organise themselves and collectively grant autocephaly to Moldova (this would need the co-operation of Moscow and Bucharest), Western Europe, Latin America, Mexico-Central America-the Caribbean, and Oceania, making 27 in all. A lot of ifs.
Indeed, there are even more ifs, because for such a missionary movement to take place, first the Soviet-founded Moscow Patriarchate, would have to give up its centralised Soviet organisation, perhaps renaming itself ‘the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem’, the Soviet-founded OCA would have to become genuinely inter-Orthodox, perhaps its territory being clearly defined and being renamed the Northern American Orthodox Church (NAOC), and the Greek Churches would have to give up their no less imperialistic attitudes, creating a real Patriarchate for Africans with African bishops with the symbolic title of Alexandria, returning the Patriarchate of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, recognising the Macedonian Orthodox Church, and appointing new, CIA-free First Hierarchs in Greece and Cyprus. Even more ifs.
Q: How could Russians and Greeks get back into communion?
A: Why could the Russians not restore communion with the Greeks everywhere, except in Estonia and the Ukraine, where the Greeks have behaved like schismatics? Here is the beginning of a solution to your question. The rest would be up to the Greeks, who began all this mess.
Q: How can the various parts of the Diaspora be joined together, especially in view of the current enmity between Greeks and Russians?
A: Clearly, men do not want unity, they prefer disunity because they are absorbed not by Christ, but by nationalist politics, which are always divisive. I suppose the only answer to this question is to say, ‘Unity is only possible by the grace of God’.
As regards Orthodoxy in Great Britain, there are some glimmers of hope after first the Greeks messed up through their nationalism in the last quarter of the last century and then the Russians messed up through their nationalism in the first quarter of this century. Take, for example, the parish of Durham. It went through the Greeks, then the Russians, and nothing worked. Today it thrives under the Romanians. The same is true of all the parishes that left the American ROCOR schism in 2022 to join the Romanian Patriarchate, having received canonical letters of leave from the Moscow Patriarchate to do so.
Take monasticism. Over the last fifty years there have been countless, divisive, eccentric priests of all jurisdictions who have tried to set up monasteries without first having been a novice and monk in someone else’s monastery! They all failed, closed down and sold up, and ended up as lonely old men living alone. True, Tolleshunt Knights has prospered, but since the repose of St Sophrony it has greatly changed. ROCOR used to have a small monastery in Brookwood and a convent in London, but, like so many other unconverted converts in ROCOR, they both ended up in an old calendarist sect and the convent died out.
Only the Romanians have a monastery and a convent, all in English, separately in Mull and Iona, under Archimandrite Seraphim Aldea. The Church moves forward! I cannot help feeling that our Romanian Church can provide the glue here to bring all the divided Orthodox together. For 47 years we laboured in the missionary field in the highly politicised Russian Church. We received mainly discouragement, persecution, humiliation, bullying, betrayal, isolation, jealousy, hatred, pathological sectarian nastiness and never received a single apology! In the Romanian Church we have only ever received positivity, encouragement and thankful appreciation. What a difference! Night and day.
Q: Why are we Orthodox not in communion with Catholics and Protestants?
A: You mean, why are Catholics and Protestants not in communion with the Orthodox Churches, that is, with the members of the Orthodox Churches? Put simply, it is because those people fell away from the Orthodox Christian Faith, by changing the Creed and so falling out of communion with the Orthodox Churches, the Churches of the Councils and the Fathers.
By abandoning the Faith, they became Catholics and some of those later became Protestants. Put very crudely, Catholicism replaced the Holy Spirit with the Bishop of Rome, the Patriarch of the West. And Protestantism replaced the Pope with everyone. Everyone is a Pope for them. If Protestants do not like one of the tens of thousands of Protestant denominations, all they have to do is to start their own, becoming its Pope.
Of course, this does not mean that we cannot be good neighbours with the mass of Catholics and Protestants, whose leaders took them away from the Orthodox Faith. Like their ancestors, they themselves are quite unconscious of this. We judge no-one. We have to save ourselves first of all, God will look after others. We do not interfere, bully and busybody in the lives of others.
Q: Can you have Non-Orthodox godparents at an Orthodox baptism? I have been searching for a church that allows this and cannot find one.
A: I was brought up in the old Russian ROCOR. And our universal practice was to insist that the godmother of a girl be Orthodox and the godfather of a boy be Orthodox. This means that the godfather of a girl and the godmother of a boy do not absolutely have to be Orthodox, providing that they have been baptised by water in the Name of the Holy Trinity, for example, if they are Roman Catholics or Anglicans.
Of course, the new fanatical convert ROCOR has abandoned this Tradition, which is that of the Tsar’s Orthodox Church, which we belong to. Its abandonment of the Tradition is the new ROCOR’s problem.
Convertitis
Q: Why have there been problems with converts?
A: There are two types of converts. The first type is converted converts. These are called ‘Orthodox’. The second type, a very small but noisy minority, consists of unconverted converts. And there are problems with them, especially if they have been made priests and, far worse, bishops, because they are pathological, not theological. They bring impurity, known as sectarianism, either of the left or of the right, into the Church.
Q: What is Protestant Orthodoxy?
A: This concerns Diaspora unconverted converts with a Protestant/sectarian mentality. They may be in any jurisdiction, though the two jurisdictions that have mostly lost their connections with their homelands are far more concerned than others. Protestant Orthodoxy attracts pathological case extremists, who think they are being ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. Unfortunately, some of these Protestant Orthodox, without experience or seminary training, have been made priests and even, one or two, bishops. There they form sects within the Church because they do not want to belong to the Church and live a Christian life. They want to belong to a sect and curse others, feeling self-justified, their hearts swelling with priggish self-admiration.
I remember one such small group in Paris in the early 80s. They all dressed in black and when they visited a normal Russian ROCOR parish, the Russians called them ‘the crows’. They left into schism in 1987.
Protestant Orthodox, ‘Orthobros’, are characterised by long beards and long hair, extreme fasting, personality cults, fanaticism towards Non-Orthodox, and sectarian jealousy and hatred towards normal Orthodox. Whatever their jurisdiction, such unconverted converts also believe in rebaptism. This is most insulting to others and to the Holy Spirit. He gathers all who wish into the Church, including those who have already been baptised by water in the Name of the Holy Trinity.
These people do not want to belong to the Church, they want to belong to a sect. They just use the Church as an excuse to shield and justify their sectarian pride. It is all pathology instead of theology. If it is a permanent pathology, then such people will remain for decades, though always in sectarian groups on the fringes of the Church. If it is a temporary spiritual affliction, then such people will soon burn out, like flames which flare up as they burn paper and burn out when the fuel has been consumed, leaving only ashes.
Q: What do you think of the convert movement in the West today?
A: The present convert movement began with the pandemic. For me it is all a repeat of the convert movement of the 1970s. I have seen it all before, the same problems, the same questions, the same anxieties, the same insecurities and the same lapses. For example, at that time in this country, in 1976, there was the scandal of the Guildford rebaptisms, when Russian Orthodox were rebaptised by a newly Americanised ROCOR (the US-trained Ukrainian priest responsible was soon after defrocked); that has now been repeated. The same old absurd controversies and doubts, ridiculous at the time, are now being repeated, with ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant converts being nasty to Catholics and Protestants. It is all very tiresome and lacks love. Some people never learn.
Q: How did the ROCOR, which during the period of the persecution of the Faith in the USSR was so widely respected for its confession of the Faith against the inability of Moscow to canonise the New Martyrs and Confessors and rejected canonical compromises, fall away from the Orthodox Church?
A: The downfall of ROCOR came after the move of its Synod from Europe to the USA and then its CIA infiltration, ensuing politically-motivated convert pride and greed for dollars. It was tragic, because as the late lamented Metr Kallistos (Ware) truly observed, ROCOR’s task was to keep and spread the liturgical and ascetic heritage of the Tsar’s Church, taking a lead in uniting the future new Local Churches in the Diaspora through that heritage. But instead of uniting, the new ROCOR divided, disobeying God’s Will.
They lost their organic roots in the Russian Church. They were absolutely sure of themselves because they cut themselves off from the sources of the Faith, from the traditional clergy and people. Even when what they were doing was so obviously wrong to all, they did not heed the views of their clergy or of others, for as ‘princes of the Church’ they considered that they had a sort of feudal power by Divine right and could trample on everyone, pumping out as much money as they wanted from the parishes, charging 10 euros per person per month or establishing Televangelist-style, Old Testament tithing! Thus, ROCOR the Persecuted Church became ROCOR the Persecuting Church, the Church of the Confessors and Martyrs became the Church that creates Confessors and Martyrs.
And so after the official reconciliation with the Mother-Church in 2007, key CIA elements in American ROCOR double-crossed Moscow (how naïve they are in Moscow, just like President Putin used to be), there gradually appeared a schismatic Russian-American sect. By 2021 there had appeared a ghetto, out of communion with all, which rebaptises other Orthodox against the words of the Creed. It also takes Moscow to court over the possession of its church property in France and like a spoilt child with a tantrum threatens to leave communion with Moscow if the latter opposes it!!
One of the guilty actually publicly proclaimed that Patriarch Bartholomew is ‘possessed’, and that this ROCOR recent convert ‘doesn’t like Romanians and only half-likes Moldovans’. And so they broke communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. So declared in public one responsible for Inter-Orthodox relations…
He surrounded himself with a few jealous yesmen, who had not achieved anything as missionaries and did not even speak Russian, who only added to his spiritual blindness. Just wanting to take over the property belonging to others, described by a solicitor as ‘a property grab’, he made false accusations, even trying to force others to Americanise their speech, because he did not know any other languages. Russians had to depend on the corrupt Moldovans, whom no-one else wanted for obvious reasons.
He received multiple clergy from other Patriarchates without canonical releases, but then ‘defrocked’ the clergy of another Patriarchate which had received clergy with canonical releases issued by the Moscow Patriarchate! That was an uncanonical act of gratuitous nastiness, not worthy of a Christian. His ‘defrockings’ were of course done by autopen, just like Biden!
The ever smaller ROCOR has made itself spiritually and administratively irrelevant. How are the once mighty fallen! All we can hope and pray is that the still traditional Orthodox elements in ROCOR, and there are still some there, though only just hanging on, will ‘walk it back’, repenting and returning to canonicity and the Russian Orthodox Faith and Church, overcoming their schisms.
I think also ROCOR will have to review its practice of ordaining neophytes (recent converts) priests and consecrating them bishops, which is against the canons. It should also give up stealing clergy from other Local Churches without letters of canonical leave. It just does not work, as can be seen from the present disasters, when it is out of communion with the Russian Church, the Romanian Church and the Greek Churches. This puts it outside communion with 99% + of the Orthodox Church.
Thus, from being an irrelevant marginal sect of ‘Protestant Orthodox’ extremists, aggressive and arrogant ‘Orthobros’, out of communion with all, some could return to communion with the Orthodox Churches and so become spiritually relevant again. For now, it has painted itself into a corner and ignores the goodwill of others, just like Trump!
Q: Why are some converts so moralising?
A: The disease of moralism always comes when there is no spirituality. Spiritual people always have compassion. Like St Silouan, but all real Orthodox. Those who are not compassionate are called pharisees. They love condemning others, because that gives them a feeling of self-justification, self-righteousness and leads directly to sectarianism.
I saw it widely among French converts around the late Fr Placide Deseille in the Greek Church in France thirty-five years ago, saw it again among some French converts on Mt Athos recently (clearly the Greek monks did not know what to do with them) and here in the last twenty years in the Antochian and Greek Churches and ROCOR, though only among converts from Protestantism. Those who are infected are all fairly recent converts and have no spiritual experience, just book knowledge. Fifty years ago the disease was modernism and ecumenism among the episcopate. Now it is this very ugly and anti-spiritual phariseeism. The other extreme.
Such people love long beards and dressing up in big cassocks, in which they go shopping. It gives them the imagined feeling of superiority to others. In reality all it leads to is others either mocking them or else insulting them as ‘weirdos’ and ‘beardy weirdies’. It certainly attracts nobody at all to the Church. This disease is delusional and stems from convert pride. Such people accuse others of their own sins in self-justifying hatefulness. They do not confess Orthodoxy, but ‘Orthodoxism’.
These people have nothing to do with Christianity and spend their time in tiny, incestuous (usually, all-male) ghettoes on the internet and in zooms. They want to be isolated in irrelevant little fringe groups of ‘holy huddlers’. They do not live with ordinary Orthodox or anyone, cutting themselves off, and even do not dress like us. They want their own uniform, their own strange universe. They do not want to come to the Liturgy, but only to ‘coffee hour’. It is a repeat of what went on in California in the 1970s. It all ended up badly. You know them by their fruits.
Q: Would you ever take part in an anti-abortion march?
A: I do not personally take part in political demonstrations, but if laypeople wish to take part in such an event, I would not withhold my blessing. However, I am personally concerned by the middle-class phariseeism and priggish self-righteous moralism that sometimes accompanies that movement. For example, the only ‘practising’ Orthodox I have met in Western Europe who carried out an abortion were two very respected Russian lay members of ROCOR. If a girl is pregnant, help her financially, take her into your home so she can have her baby. Stop condemning others in self-righteous pride. The other problem is that Roman Catholics who dominate such marches are against any form of contraception, in obedience to their Pope. Orthodox have different views.
The Orthodox anti-abortion movement consists of giving practical help to pregnant women who are tempted to have an abortion for financial reasons. No condemnation, no judgement, just show them love. Put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, it is all too easy. This is what the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva said and did, saving a child from abortion by adopting her.
Q: What is the origin of long beards for clergy?
A: Christ was bearded, so clergy are bearded. However, if you look at icons of Christ, He did not have a long beard. Look at icons of St John Chrysostom or St Ambrose of Milan, they had short beards too, again in honour of Christ. Long beards, and also long hair, came in with hermits from the Egyptian desert. Monks had long beards and long hair, because they had no way of shaving or even trimming them, so these were signs of unworldliness.
In the Russian Church, which was created by Greek and Bulgarian monks, monastic influence was so strong that not only monks, but also married priests and even laymen usually had long beards and sometimes long hair. However, in other Local Churches, where there is a parish tradition as well as a monastic tradition, it has always been common for married clergy to have short or trimmed beards, indeed laymen almost always shave. Their wives do not want husbands with beards, especially long ones. We should not confuse monasticism with Orthodoxy in the world. Two different things, but newcomers to the Church often confuse them.
The Scriptures
Q: What is the difference between history and prehistory, from an Orthodox perspective? What do we make of what is left from prehistory, for example fossils? The archaeologist Graham Hancock also claims that the remains of prehistoric civilisations exist, for example, beneath the sea. What do you think?
A: Prehistory is the history of the Pre-Flood world, the world before the Flood of Noah. This is recorded in Chapters 3-6 of Genesis, between the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden and the Flood, which was followed by the Ice Age. The Flood happened in 3,252 BC, according to traditional Orthodox dating, in other words, nearly 5,300 years ago. Whatever date you prefer for the Flood, traditional or non-traditional, history is what happened after the Flood and we are all descended from the eight people who were on the Ark. As regards prehistory, fossils record its existence. There have been no fossils in history.
Is there anything human left from prehistory? Apart from the accounts of civilisation, agriculture, building and metalworking recorded in chapters 3-6 of Genesis between the Fall of Adam and the Flood of Noah, I don’t know. Hancock makes lots of claims, but there is no scientific proof that what he found as an amateur archaeologist is actually prehistoric. It all seems to be much more recent, or else natural, like the straight splitting of basalt, which is natural, not human. His dating appears to be wildly inaccurate, even if you do not accept traditional Orthodox dating.
I think in theory something may remain from prehistoric human civilisation, but so far there is no proof of it. The Flood was such a cataclysm that probably all human constructions that came before it was destroyed, or else was buried hundreds or thousands of feet beneath the present surface of the Earth.
Q: Did St Paul write the Epistle to the Hebrews?
A: No, the Holy Spirit wrote it, as He wrote all Scripture, that is why Scripture is called Holy. Those who read the Bible without the Holy Spirit commit idolatry. In the case of this Epistle and others, the Holy Spirit wrote through the heart, mind, will and hand of the Apostle Paul.
I know some German Protestants think otherwise, and that he was not the author, but their views relate to ideas thought up as recently as the sixteenth century. The Church goes back long before this, to Pentecost, the coming down of the Holy Spirit. Once again, their theory proves that you cannot understand Scripture without the Holy Spirit Who wrote it.
The West
Q: Are the barbarians at the gates of the West?
A: The barbarians are not at the gates of the West, the barbarians have been in control for a millennium, which is why ‘the West’ is a fake West – the True West came before them. The proof of this is in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in ‘Wars of Religion’, in the massacres by Europeans in the New Worlds, accusing the ones they massacred of being ‘savages’, in two so-called ‘World’ Wars and in the Third One in the Ukraine today. We reject the barbarians and praise the saints instead. We will say that it is the saints who are at the gates, trying to bring the Barbarian West who sit in the seats of Western authority to repentance.
Personal
Q: What is your favourite Orthodox book?
A: The New Testament.
Q: What do you do if you are insulted as a priest?
A: You pray for those who insult you and walk away because they are sick in mind. The only time you stand up to them is if they insult the Church, and not yourself, by preaching heresy or schism, for example by refusing communion with the Church or practising rebaptism. Then you must defend the Orthodox Faith. We defend others, not ourselves.
Q: Who influenced you?
A: In all twelve Christian people have influenced me. In order these have been:
Joan Phillips, Harry Norman, Maud Saunders, Fr Raphael Noica (the only one who is still alive), an unknown priest and old lady in Krasnodar in 1976, who both shone with the Divine Light, Fr Lev Lebedev, Elder Seraphim of Belgorod, Elder Ephraim of Arizona (1979), Fr Alexei Knyazev, Archbishop George Tarasov, Archbishop Antony Bartoshevich, Fr Alexander Trubnikov (who mortgaged his own home in order to build a church), and Elder Nikolai Guryanov.
