Author Archives: Father Andrew

Clericalisation Comes From Corruption

Photographs of many Orthodox services from around the world more and more show pictures of services at which virtually only clergy are present. This clericalisation was not the case previously. Although it is more obvious among minor groups in the Diaspora, especially among those who have difficulty in recruiting members because of their schismatic rather than unitive ethos, such photographs can be seen in very many places. Since such clericalisation is clearly an effect, not the cause, where has it all come from? Let us first look at Roman Catholic clericalisation.

The Case of Roman Catholicism

In the case of Roman Catholicism, the clear cause of its clericalisation was institutionalised obligatory clerical celibacy, which is another way of saying corruption. Introduced by force and even violence from the second half of the eleventh century on, obligatory clerical celibacy was inherently divisive and created a class or caste of woman-hating men who were different from and, as they imagined, superior to ‘the people’. Clericalisation, that is, the claim that the clergy are ’the Church’, which is a widespread peculiarity of the Western world, had the counter-effect of creating anti-clericalism and anti-episcopalianism. This in turn gave rise to congregationalism and eventually to Protestantism. In reality, the Church is the whole body of the faithful, clergy and people together and not apart.

However, even worse, obligatory clerical celibacy also gave rise among Roman Catholic (and Anglican) clergy to widespread bisexuality, homosexuality and pedophilia. I remember being advised by an old Russian priest in France some 35 years ago that if ever I had to meet a Roman Catholic priest, I should first ask him outright, though discreetly, if he was married or not. In France, at least, nearly all the best Catholic priests are married – about 20% of them. They have to keep it secret, of course, but, frankly, as Roman Catholicism is dying out in France for lack of priests, even if their bishops found out that they were married, they would probably turn a blind eye, as they have long done in Southern Europe, Latin America and Africa.

With Anglican clergy one must also be very careful. As we know, the British Establishment (not just the Anglican Church) has been full of pedophiles ever since William Rufus, and the Anglican Establishment full of them, like the notorious Bishop Ball and all the other criminals who have been protected by Anglican bishops, as did the scandalous former Archbishop of Canterbury. As regards Anglican clergy, even the married ones can be bisexual, especially in the so-called ‘High Church’. The Church has to be very careful about receiving Anglican clerics. Having said that, many are fine, some are admirable, but you have to check very carefully for misogyny etc.

The Orthodox Church

Wherever clericalisation is found in the Orthodox world, the cause is always the same: the lack of monastic and pastoral life, which is also another way of saying corruption. I have always thought that no man should be considered for the Orthodox episcopate until he had spent at least five years living under obedience in a monastery and/or five years living as a parish priest. This would be a ten-year long apprenticeship for the episcopate. Instead of contact with monastic and pastoral reality, what do we inevitably get? We get the same phenomena as in Roman Catholicism:

Firstly, there is homosexualisation (thank God, pedophilia is very rare among the Orthodox episcopate – I only know of two cases). Here are the bishops of many nationalities who like to visit with their ‘subdeacon’, as one senior cleric told me. He could supply a full list of names. Secondly, I have noticed that closet homosexuality also tends to go hand in hand with alcohol abuse. Thirdly, alongside the homosexual bishops are the overdressed, lickspittle careerists, who love bureaucracy and protocols. Petty bureaucracy makes them feel good, as it gives them power, the ability to humiliate others, who are often far senior to them. These careerists love centralisation and encourage it, because that gives them even more power and, above all, even more money.

All know about the Greek metropolitan who had to move from one city to another because of his notorious frequentation of gay bars (this was back in the 1970s). All know about the ultra-conservative and schismatic CIA ROCOR bishop and his sex-obsessed and money-obsessed son, ‘the six million-dollar man’, as he was called in the 1990s. All know about the recent Antiochian Archbishop of America. He is one of many – and far from the worst. The scandal is that he was defrocked, not because of his mistresses or because he was extremely rich (how?), but only because he took his own Church to court about money. All know about that Metropolitan-oligarch, who was so keenly and publicly denounced by Metr Antony of Sourozh already twenty years ago. But they are merely the tip of the iceberg, there are many others, whom we have seen, both fifty years ago and recently. But they are all absolutely alien, indeed absolutely unthinkable to real Orthodox.

We are the generation of the New Martyrs and Confessors, ready to die for the Church of God. Now instead of arkhimandrity, as they say in Russian, we have arkhibandity. In the old Soviet times, the Church was infiltrated by the Party with its atheist ideology. Now it is worse. The Party is still there, but it does not come from outside, the new Party and the new ideology, born in the 1990s, are inside the Church and they are called ‘Business’. Christ called it Mammon (money) and yet those ‘churchmen’ who are involved are told specifically by Christ that they cannot serve two masters. Sadly, the clergy involved are soldiers who owe utter obedience to corruption, for part of the episcopate has been militarised. And yet the Church is not an army, but a voluntary organisation. Here is what happens with clericalisation – militarisation of the clergy.

As one Russian told me, ‘I need no managers between me and God’, thinking of the old Protestant slogan, ‘I need no mediators between me and God’. Sadly, there is now a collective narcissistic mafia, as nobody is allowed to reveal the truth about this pharisee class of ‘effective managers’. We believe with the prophets and fool for Christ that Orthodox Russia may yet become the last bastion of Orthodoxy against Antichrist. However, this is clearly not the case now, for Orthodox Russia does not exist. What exists now is Nationalist Russia. For now the last bastion of Orthodoxy is the hearts of all the faithful, who resist Antichrist, who wants to come here and be enthroned. He will not be in our hearts.

Some who reject the new Party and its ideology make the great mistake of giving up the fight against clericalisation and corruption by joining the enemy and appearing on CIA-financed radio and television to scandalise and criticise, painting the whole Russian Church black. This is quite untrue and it is also either naïve or else foolish. These critics are playing into the hands of the CIA-financed politics of those who persecute the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and discredit their cause and themselves, for they have chosen an episcopate no less corrupt than the one they left and one no less political than the one they left.

They too, consciously or, as I would like to think, unconsciously, become traitors to Orthodoxy. This is not the way. You cannot defeat politics with politics. We have to be aware of politics, but we do not get involved in political intrigues. Just as we are aware of the demons, but we do not get involved in demonic intrigues. Just wait, those who have compromised themselves morally and financially in military-style clericalisation and corruption, whether inspired by the ‘Church as a Business’ ideology or by CIA money, are coming to their end. Desperation and panic are their sign. Their time is clearly up.

Fourth Edition of Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition Now Online

Fifty years since the first of the essays in Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition was written and nearly thirty years since the first edition was published, we have been asked to reissue the anthology, as the third edition has sold out. We have now reissued this work as an e-book under Resources on the Orthodox England website.

Between Greeks and Russians and Towards Christ: Towards an Inter-Orthodox Church Council

Foreword: Memories

In 1981 we were a young Orthodox couple living in a small town in Cambridgeshire, struggling financially with a baby daughter and expecting a second. We were so naïve that we actually thought that all Orthodox bishops were Christians. That’s how naïve we were. But let us go back long before that, to a day in 1917, when my future grandparents with a baby daughter and expecting a second were travelling down the Colne Valley Railway and then for several miles on foot. They were going from south-west Suffolk to north-east Essex, in search of work amid the crisis of the Great War. At the same time as these minor family matters, events a hundred million times greater and more tragic were happening internationally.

Introduction: The Past

In three fateful months at the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917 the British elite through its ambassador Buchanan and his spies in Saint Petersburg orchestrated the overthrow of the Orthodox Tsar by atheist Russian aristocrats, generals, bankers, lawyers and journalists. Since then the Church, that is, the whole Confederation of the Orthodox Church, has descended into chaos, struggling under persecution from ‘East and West’, that is, from Communists and freemasons. Moreover, since the fall of Communism in 1991, this strife has not ceased and we are still dealing with the consequences of that twentieth-century struggle.

Indeed, instead of overcoming the old Cold War divisions, the divisions between the extremes of once Communist, now nationalist Moscow, and once masonic, now globalist Constantinople, have continued. These have paralysed the Church, thwarting all solutions to the clear canonical irregularities which we all suffer from, especially in the Diaspora. This situation has left all who are between the Russian and Greek extremes thwarted.

Perhaps, one day, there will be a Patriarch Tikhon II of Moscow and of All Russia (by then of All Russia, but no longer of All the Russias). Perhaps one day there will be a Patriarch Maximos VI of Constantinople (by then residing in Thessaloniki and not in Istanbul). Each could take up the unfinished tasks that were so tragically interrupted, one by British-orchestrated Russian aristocrats in 1917, the other (so very soon afterwards because without a Tsar they could do such things) by the masonically-orchestrated Patriarch Meletios (Metaxakis) in 1921 and later by the CIA-installed Patriarch Athenagoras (Spyrou) in 1948.

However, even before any such possible future, a new generation of Patriarchs has by the hand of God appeared and are forming a new Centre, outside the paralysing extremes of Russians and Greeks. Those extremes have caused the Church to stagnate in the distant past. In today’s global world, when Orthodox live all over the planet and use the internet, it is time to overcome these absurd anachronisms. There are over 50 Orthodox bishops in the USA and over 25 in Western Europe, but no Local Churches, and yet there are tiny Autocephalous Churches in Eastern Europe with only a handful of bishops.

What if the heads of the ten Non-Greek and Non-Russian Local Churches, Patriarch Daniel of Bucharest, Patriarch Daniel of Sofia, Patriarch Porphyry of Belgrade, Archbishop Anastasius of Albania, supported by the Patriarchs of Georgia, Antioch and Jerusalem and the Metropolitans of the Polish, Czechoslovak and Macedonian Churches, a majority of the whole Church, were to call an Inter-Orthodox Conference, perhaps at the National Cathedral in Bucharest? What could the agenda be for such an Inter-Orthodox Conference, which could, if blessed by the Holy Spirit, become a Church Council?

An Agenda of Autocephaly and Autonomy

Even if Russians and Greeks did not have new leadership and/or continued to block canonical resolutions to their problems, Constantinople, Moscow and Alexandria could be called on by the Non-Greeks and Non-Russians at such an Inter-Orthodox Conference to make peace as Christians. They could come to compromises and put forward concrete proposals. For example:

Constantinople could be called on to give up all of Moscow’s territory in the former USSR, including in the Ukraine and Estonia. But Moscow in turn could be called on to cancel and apologise for its uncanonical ‘defrockings’ and ‘suspensions’ of clergy who were obliged to join Constantinople and all those clergy could return to Moscow, if they wished. However, concessions to Moscow would depend on concessions it made to others (see below). As for the canonical dispute between Moscow and Alexandria regarding the territory of Africa, we suggest a compromise solution, which is explained below.

In return for this concession by Constantinople, it would receive several benefits. Firstly, the Church of Greece could be called on to reintegrate the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople, provided that the centre of this Patriarchate were transferred to Thessaloniki, near Mt Athos, which is already in the Constantinople jurisdiction (and not to the political capital of Athens).

This would end the political pressures on Constantinople of the Neo-Ottoman Sultanate, the Vatican and the CIA, after a disastrous period of such political pressures and centuries of bribes and corruption. The Greek Orthodox would at last have their own canonical Patriarch for Greece and for all Greek speakers in the Diaspora. To those who object to this, there is no reason why a title has to be geographically accurate. For example, for generations, the Patriarchate of Antioch (now a town in Turkiye) has been in Damascus. There would then be thirteen, universally recognised Local Churches. Other benefits could follow – see below.

Together, the first act of these thirteen Churches could be to confirm the autocephaly (full independence) of the (North) Macedonian Orthodox Church, but allowing the Greek Churches to call it by another name among themselves, if they preferred, for example, The Autocephalous Church of Ochrid. Canonical autocephaly was already granted it by the Serbian Orthodox Church, on whose canonical territory Macedonia is situated. This would make fourteen, universally recognised Local Churches.

Together, the first act of these fourteen Churches could be to confirm the creation of a united Autonomous Moldovan Orthodox Church, established jointly by the Russian and Romanian Churches. This would come under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Orthodox Church, with guarantees for all Russians and Russian customs on the autonomous (and politically independent) territory and for guaranteed pastoral care for the Moldovan Diaspora under the Romanian Orthodox Church. The Russian Church would also cancel all its political ‘defrockings’ of clergy, who were formerly under the Russian Church and who have joined the Romanian Church.

Together, in return, the second act of the fourteen Churches could be to confirm the two other Autonomous Orthodox Churches, the Japanese and Chinese, established by and under the pastoral care of Moscow. For the Patriarchate of Constantinople (now centred in Thessaloniki), there would be compensation in the form of Russian concessions to Constantinople on the territory of the former USSR, Northern America, Latin America, Western Europe and Oceania (see below).

From Fourteen to Eighteen and to Twenty-Four Local Churches

Together, the fourteen Local Churches could confirm the autocephaly of four new Local Churches, established by Moscow and Constantinople and confirmed by the other Local Churches. This would see the Church of Moscow becoming less populous, reducing it to a membership of about 100 million, half of the present total of the whole Orthodox Church. These four new Local Churches would be on the territory of the former Russian Empire/Soviet Union: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church; the Belarusian Orthodox Church; the Central Asian Orthodox Church (centred in Kazakhstan, but covering all five former Soviet ‘stans’); and the Baltic Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland.

Together, these eighteen Local Churches could confirm the autocephaly of another six new Local Churches, to be established by all the Local Churches which have Diasporas. These would be multinational Churches, with several dioceses for each nationality, separate but together, models of unity in diversity. These new Churches would at last neutralise the vain, century-long battle for influence between Moscow and Constantinople in the Diasporas through the mediation of all the Local Churches concerned. These new Local Churches could be:

The Western European Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox residing in the at present twenty nations of Western Europe: Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, Malta, France, Monaco, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Ireland, United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden. Although a clear majority of Orthodox living here are Romanian, all would be represented freely and fairly in this new Church.

The Austro-Hungarian Orthodox Church, centred in Uzhhorod and with dioceses on the territory of Carpatho-Rus, but with two more dioceses, one centred in Budapest and the other in Vienna. Carpatho-Rus was formerly under Austro-Hungarian control, but later called Subcarpathian Rus under Czechoslovakia and then miscalled ‘Transcarpathia’ by Ukrainian chauvinists. These Orthodox were formerly persecuted by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then came under the canonical protection of Serbian Church before coming under the Russian Church. However, these people are neither Ukrainian, nor Russian, but Rusyn. Taking over Orthodox leadership of the territories of Hungary and Austria, Rusyns would guarantee that Orthodox of other nationalities, such as Serbs, Greeks and Russians, would be represented freely and fairly in the Church administration.

The Northern American Orthodox Church, replacing the OCA, whose autocephaly on a shared territory was never accepted by the vast majority, and including all Orthodox residing in largely English-speaking Northern America, that is, in the USA, Canada, Greenland and associated islands. This move could be agreeable to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, since Greeks make up the largest ethnic group in Northern America. Although a clear majority of Orthodox living here are Greek, all would be represented freely and fairly in this new Church. As the first Orthodox here were Alaskans, it would be fitting if an Alaskan could be found and appointed Metropolitan.

The Latin American Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox residing in the Latin-speaking countries of South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. The Patriarchate of Antioch, which has many faithful here, could play an important role in appointing a Metropolitan.

The Oceanian Orthodox Church, covering all Orthodox residing in the Continent of Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Ocean. Although a clear majority of Orthodox living here are Greek, all would be represented freely and fairly in this new Church, but perhaps a suitable Greek Metropolitan could be found to lead this Church.

The African Orthodox Church, to be established by the Patriarchates of Alexandria and Moscow, though possibly leaving Egypt within the jurisdiction of Alexandria. All political ‘defrockings’ made by Alexandria are to be cancelled. This compromise between the two Patriarchates would free African Orthodox from both Greek and Russian national, almost colonial, politics and give them autocephaly and appoint an African Metropolitan.

Conclusion: The Affirmation of the Church

Although administrative and not at all dogmatic in nature, the above propositions, if made and if accepted by Moscow and Constantinople in humility, which is the only way to overcome national pride, would establish twenty-four Local Orthodox Churches. This would reconfirm the nature of the Church of the Seven Universal Councils – that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. This means that:

The Unity of the Church would be affirmed by an Inter-Orthodox Conference/Council, bringing full communion and agreement between all the Local Churches. Perhaps this could lead to an agreement to fix a Yearly Paschal Conference of the Heads of the twenty-four Local Churches. Such a Conference could be held under the rotating chairmanship of different Local Churches.

The Holiness of the Church would be affirmed by the common canonisation of saints of many nationalities at such an Inter-Orthodox Conference/Council. These saints might include Romanian, Russian, Serbian and Greek New Martyrs, for example, or the common celebration of still little-known local saints, models of piety for our times, such as St Olga of Alaska, introducing them into the mainstream.

The Catholicity of the Church would be affirmed by the Conciliarity of such a Conference/Council, which works against divisive nationalism, which is the enemy of our Catholicity. Perhaps this could lead to an agreement to fix a Five-Yearly Conference of five bishops from each Local Church, of 120 bishops in all. Such a Conference could be held under the rotating chairmanship of different Local Churches.

The Apostolicity of the Church would be affirmed by the missionary nature of the establishment of ten new Local Churches in territories where there have not been any Local Churches before. These are the vast Continents of Africa, Northern America, Latin America, Oceania and the half-continent of Western Europe, with their teeming billions. This would leave the existing Local Churches to establish in due course new missions and then Local Churches in the rest of Asia outside China and Japan, though there too much missionary work has still to be done, for example, in South and South-East Asia.

May God’s Will be done!

On the Present Divisions in the Russian Orthodox Church on Account of the Ukraine

Foreword

We have never had the slightest doubt that the Russian Federation, one of the World’s four Superpowers and the fourth largest economy in the world, would emerge militarily victorious in the conflict in the Ukraine. It is common sense, its military-industrial base is far greater than that of the Collective West and its military technology is far ahead of the Western, which is stuck at least one generation behind in the 1990s, as shown by its burning backward tanks in Russia and the Ukraine. On top of that, it is supported by the whole Non-Western world, including China, India, Africa and Latin America, all who have been and are victims of Western colonialism and exploitation – nearly 90% of the planet. The West has isolated itself through its crimes. The Western defeat in the Ukraine, which is rapidly on its way, is Divine chastisement for its hubris and all its crimes over the centuries, not least its recent genocides in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the Ukraine.

However, this common sense does not mean that we rejoice in any of this profound tragedy or Russia winning the war. Will Russia win the peace? At least a million men are dead or maimed in the Ukraine. All are victims of international politics, above all the victims are the poor Ukrainians, whom the racist Americans and the Western European elite want to see killed ‘until the last Ukrainian’. Now they want to murder even those Ukrainians between the ages of 18 and 25. However, as we have said from the outset, another great loser will be the once multinational Russian Orthodox Church, which has lost its Ukrainian flock and others by descending into Russian nationalist politics and cutting itself off from communion with the corrupt hierarchy of the Church of Constantinople. All seem to have forgotten that we are pastors, not politicians and we have no interest in power and money. Their punishment is coming. As the proverb says: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Introduction: The Conflict in the Ukraine

The very tragic conflict in the Ukraine has especially since 2022 caused divisions in the Russian Church outside the Ukraine. (I do not speak of the divisions that it has caused inside the Ukraine – they are all too obvious).

For: Patriots?

On the one hand, there are the Conservatives (for want of a better word), who fully support the armed conflict, which has already created over a million victims, killed and wounded. Many of these, on both sides, are formally baptised, in the same Russian Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, the views of the Conservatives, shared, it seems, by all the bishops and most of the priests inside Russia, though not by all of them in Western Europe and the USA, are that this is an operation to defend the Russian Federation and Russians in the east and south of the Ukraine from American-led NATO and Neo-Nazi Ukrainian aggression from the Kiev puppet government. Therefore, Russian actions are justified. Indeed, they claim that Russian actions are simply defending threefold Orthodox East Slavdom, Holy Rus (the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Belarus), from Western evils like atheism and transgenderism, like that of the 1916 murderer and traitor Yusupov.

Those who support the Conservatives proclaim that the latter are sincere Christians and good pastors, who are just defending Russia against its God-less Western enemies. Those against the Conservatives consider them to be cruel, heartless, anti-Christian, divisive and politically-motivated. How can they, especially as clergy, be in favour of destruction, war and death? What about: ‘Thou shalt not kill’? They consider that the supporters of the Russian forces are mercenary and murderous hirelings of an aggressive Russian government, and that they will do whatever the Russian State wants, that they have no Christian conscience. Their argument is supported by the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is, or rather, used to be, the Church of all Russian Orthodox and all canonical Ukrainian Orthodox, that it used to be multinational. Therefore, to support one national side against another is to divide the flock of the Church, introducing a civil war into the Church. Is that Christian?

Against: Traitors?

On the other hand, there are the Liberals (for want of a better word), who are opposed to the conflict and demand the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Ukraine. These include the clergy of the former Russian parish in Amsterdam and in Madrid (all of them linked to the late liberal Metr Antony (Bloom)), and a well-known archpriest and protodeacon from Moscow, now in exile in Western Europe. They, and several others, have all been ‘defrocked’ by the Moscow Patriarchate for disagreeing with the ‘Party line’ (See Note 1) and so joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople – Moscow’s US-financed rival. But they had nowhere else to go. Others, bishops of the Russian-American Synod in New York have also called on Russia to withdraw its troops. The anti-Russian attitudes of such bishops, who are American citizens, are not surprising. In the past, they had at least one CIA-agent bishop and until 1991 subsidies from the CIA. Why should they not accept subsidies again?

Those who are against the conflict are said to be sincere Christians and good pastors. Those who support the conflict consider those against to be political traitors. In effect, those against the conflict are supporting Russia’s enemies, the Western Powers, led by the USA. They tell those who are against the conflict to visit the Avenue of the Angels monument in Donetsk, where 400 children murdered by Ukrainian/US shells between 2014 and 2022 are buried, together with nearly 14,000 adult civilian victims. Also, they point out that most of the ‘Russian’ troops fighting in the Ukraine are Ukrainians anyway – Russian-speaking inhabitants of the eastern and southern Ukraine, who are fighting for their right to speak their native language and attend their Orthodox Church, which is sorely persecuted by Kiev. Since they are Ukrainians, how can they withdraw from their own country? Here is the essence of the tragedy – this is the worst sort of war – a civil war.

The Third Way

Those who are for the conflict seem to support Russian nationalism and militarism, those who are against the conflict seem to support US globalism and secularism. It is clear that neither of these extremes can be supported. We support the Third Way. This says that the Church should not take sides in a conflict between secular States, the Russian Federation and the USA, both of which have, for example, very high rates of abortion and divorce, suffer from weak family life and have very low levels of Church attendance. We should act as pastors, not politicians, as Christians, not as secularists. Our secular passport may say Russian or Ukrainian, but our spiritual passport says Orthodox Christian. This is our heavenly nationality, over all that is earthly. We should pray not for ‘victory’, but for ‘peace’. It seems to us that the Russian Orthodox hierarchy in Moscow should grant the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence.

If independence, or autocephaly, is what the canonical Ukrainian Church needs in order to stop persecution, even if only temporarily, let it have it. The Church does not put power above peace and money above love. Sadly, we must admit that the conflict in the Ukraine has highlighted that many, on both sides, have done the opposite, playing politics. For them there is only power and money, not peace and love. The example of St Nicholas of Japan (+ 1912) should be followed. During the Japano-Russian War of 1904-05, as the Russian bishop of Japan and founder of the Japanese Orthodox Church, he lived as a recluse in prayer, telling his Japanese flock to pray for the Japanese authorities, as the Apostle Paul instructs us. And then he fell silent for the duration. Why do the Church authorities in Moscow not do the same today? We also have the example of St Silvanus the Athonite (+ 1938), who during the First World War simply prayed that the least evil side win.

Conclusion: Towards Healing

Here are the examples that we may follow, praying that the present grave divisions inside the Russian Church and those between it and other Local Orthodox Churches may be overcome.

Note:

‘Defrocking’ for political reasons is utterly uncanonical and is ignored by all sixteen Local Orthodox Churches, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Church of Constantinople and the Russian Church. Thus, one part of the Russian Church freely receives ‘defrocked’ clerics from the Church of Constantinople, as well as, in the past, many from the Patriarchate of Moscow. Constantinople received hundreds of ‘defrocked’ Ukrainian clerics in the 1990s and has received others more recently. The Romanian Church has received over 200 ‘defrocked’ clerics in Moldova and in England from the Russian Church, who had been ‘defrocked’ because they had been persecuted by their bishops. As one Russian Moscow bishop told me about another bishop who had carried out such actions: ‘Send for the psychiatric ambulance to pick him up’! What always happens after such ‘defrockings’ is always ‘refrockings’, when meaningless pieces of paper, written against the Holy Spirit, often still in their unopened envelopes, are simply cancelled.

The End of the Second Western Empire and the Road from Damascus: The Just Shall Live by His Faith and the Prophecies of Habbakuk

The First Western Empire lasted just over 500 years, from 27 BC in Rome to 476 AD in Rome (there was no year zero). Its successor, the Second Western Empire, lasted twice as long, 1,000 years, from 1014 with the proclamation of the filioque in Rome to 2014 with, in effect, the proclamation of the filioque in Kiev. This Second and Last Empire was much weakened by tribal rivalries between the nine phases of the Western Empire in Europe. These were between the ‘Holy Roman’, Northern Italian (Venice, Genoa, Florence), Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, British, German and Soviet phases. Their rival jostling for leadership of the Empire led to two suicidal European (World) Wars and to the final and tenth phase of the Western Empire, its American phase.

The First Western Empire fell and now the Second is falling. The parallels are obvious. The First Empire fell to ‘barbarians’, but who were less barbarian than Rome. The First Western Empire fell because the Romans who lived on its periphery sided with the converted ‘barbarians’, realising that Rome was the barbarian. Today the Second Western Empire is falling to Non-Westerners, not least of whom are the Russians, who today are converted, more European than the Europeans. The Non-Westerners, ‘the Rest’, form the Sovereign World, whose struggle for multipolarity is the struggle for justice and prosperity. The Western Empire can only respond by convincing countries to commit suicide, as in the Ukraine, Georgia and all of the EU, starting with Nordstream Germany.

The upshot of the First European War was the British-operated regime change in the Russian empire at the end of 1916, which backfired disastrously into the Soviet quagmire. The result of the Second European War was American intervention (it had already taken place in the First European War, as soon as the British had overthrown their Russian rivals) and American leadership of the Western Empire from 1945 on. Now the Americans always promoted gangsters and terrorists to head their imperial client-states. Thus, after reaching an apogee at the turn of the millennium, they declined rapidly. This always happens, as the method used contains the seeds of its own destruction (1). ‘Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind’. So now all is backfiring into the Syrian quagmire of beheadings.

The artificial, post-Ottoman countries of West Asia, designed by the divide and rule British (and French) after the First World War and held together by brutal dictators (only such could hold artificial countries together), are crumbling. Iraq, Libya and Syria. Who is next? The Jordan? Lebanon? Egypt? Syria is a trap for the Western Empire. It was only a pawn between the West and the Rest. Far more important pieces on the Western side of the chessboard can now be taken by the Rest. The Western Empire is today like a cornered, wounded and snarling beast. Cornered because it has painted itself into a corner; wounded because it has lost all its wars, from Korea to the Ukraine; snarling because it has humiliated itself in defeats and because liberation from the West for all Afro-Eurasia is here.

Thus, the Second Western Empire started collapsing immediately after reaching its apogee, the criminal ascent to which contained the seeds of its own destruction. This destruction is the result of unscrupulous imperial overreach, just like that in the First Western Empire 1600 years before. This most recent stage in the collapse began with the fall of the Soviet phase of the Empire at the end of 1991, exactly three generations after the end of the Russian Imperial phase in 1916. That Soviet phase was only the short-lived, dissident last European phase of the Western Empire, patterned by successive phases. Everything is now in motion, the outposts of the Western Empire are falling one by one. We are now on the Road from Damascus – the Road towards Jerusalem.

Despite its dissidence which came from its Western Marxist ideology, the Soviet phase of the Western Empire still shared in the same basic immoral materialistic ideology as all the others. This explains why the fall of the Soviet empire was not the end of a process, as some deluded people like Fukuyama thought, but the beginning of a process, that of the final phase and fall of the Western Empire. The fall of the Soviet empire merely presaged the fall of the American empire a generation later. (Both the Soviet Union and America were former European colonies which overtook the eight heartland phases of the Western Empire). Now we are at ‘the end of history’, that is, at the end of Western history, the result of the imperial overreach in the regime change operation in Kiev in 2014.

And so world history is beginning again after its millennial Western Imperial interruption. Each country of the world, big or small, is now reclaiming and returning to its roots, restoring its sovereignty, identity, nationhood and traditions. The future is not Imperial, but Multipolar, which means it is composed of the co-operation of many centres and of the collaboration of the Nations. From Russia to China, from India to Iran, from Africa to Latin America, from Vietnam to Polynesia, we no longer see the attempt by one Nation to subjugate others to its imperial supremacy and domination, so forming an Empire, instead we see anti-imperial Sovereignties. We have come to the time of the prophecies of Habbakuk (Avvakum), beginning in Chapter 1, Verse 5:

Chapter 1, 2 O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save!

3 Why dost thou show me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention.

4 Therefore the law is slacked, and judgement never goes forth: for the wicked compasses about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceeds.

5 Behold among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which you will not believe, though it be told to you.

6 For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling places that are not theirs.

7 They are terrible and dreadful: their judgment and their dignity shall proceed of themselves.

8 Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are fiercer than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle that hastens to eat.

9 They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity as the sand.

10 And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every stronghold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.

12 Art thou not from everlasting, O LORD my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction.

Chapter 2, 2 And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he that reads it may run.

3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

4 Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.

8 Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee; because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

10 Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul.

12 Woe to him that builds a town with blood, and establishes a city by iniquity!

14 For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

17 For the violence of Lebanon shall cover thee, and the spoil of beasts, which made them afraid, because of men’s blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein.

Chapter 3, 2 O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.

4 And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power.

5 Before him went the pestilence, and burning coals went forth at his feet.

6 He stood, and measured the earth: he beheld, and drove asunder the nations; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow: his ways are everlasting.

12 Thou didst march through the land in indignation, thou didst thresh the heathen in anger.

13 Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine anointed; thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck.

15 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.

16 When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he comes up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops.

Note:

This ‘bully, sanction and bomb’ policy is the case even of an American bishop sent abroad to assemble all the worst elements in his tiny church, fanatics and careerists, in order to seize power, ‘bullying, sanctioning and bombing’ and so expelling all the honest when challenged. This is exactly the same American technique containing exactly the same seeds of destruction.

Breaking through the Glass Ceiling of the Empires: Why Autocephalies are Now Inevitable

The most intensely centralised, that is, imperialistic, Christian establishment that ever existed was – and is – Papal Rome. Opposition to it began immediately after it had been institutionalised by its schism in the eleventh century (See The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 by R.I. Moore). There followed violent Papally-sponsored military genocides – the so-called ‘crusades’ – massacres, inquisitions, invasions and hatreds all over Europe. In the sixteenth century the previously outwardly imperialist edifice of Rome came tumbling down in appalling wars and violence against those who protested against it, who were aptly called Protestants.

The second imitation of this centralised establishment came in the ‘Second Rome’, which meant Greek Orthodox in Constantinople. Through their imperialist centralisation, they had encouraged the splits from the Church of the Copts, Syrians and Armenians. Its centralised control intensified in the second millennium, in Russia and then the Balkans, notably in Bulgaria, and continues today in its attempts at centralisation in Czechoslovakia, Macedonia and, above all, in the Ukraine, with wild threats to take away independence from all others. Its imperialistic actions have now created a foolish and unnecessary schism with those far bigger than themselves, those who claim to be the ‘Third Rome’.

This ‘Third Rome’ is Moscow, Russia, where Imperialist centralisation created the ‘Old Ritualist’ schism in the seventeenth century and continues, though they were obliged in the last century to concede autocephaly (independence) to the Orthodox Churches in Poland, Czechoslovakia and a group in North America. Now, as a result of its almost control freak insistence on centralisation, it is going to be obliged to decentralise more seriously, firstly to the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Carpatho-Russia (with Austria-Hungary), the Baltics, Central Asia, and then to Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania, although here this will be in collaboration with other Local Orthodox Churches.

Thus, this process of decentralisation or autocephalisation was made inevitable by the imperialist centralisation of each centre, which all claimed to be a ‘Rome’. None of them, strangely enough, claimed to be a ‘Second Jerusalem’, which is the centre of the Christian Faith, whereas Rome was always the enemy of the Faith. The fact is that the treatment by all three Romes of others of a different ethnicity as second-class citizens (or third-class citizens in many cases) has inevitably led to the desire for independence. The First Rome created the desire for independence among the Germanic peoples, the Second Rome among Non-Greeks, and the Third Rome among Non-Russians. There are no surprises here.

Church life has for 2,000 years been characterised by centralising forces and decentralising forces. Thus, the first Orthodox Christians lived scattered, decentralised, living in what was in fact autocephaly, in Ephesus, Corinth, Colossae, Galatia, Philippi, Thessaloniki, Rome etc. Then in the fourth century came the imperial period and there emerged the centralising forces of the five Patriarchates, the ‘Pentarchy’ of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. In the last two centuries, the last four very depopulated centres have been falling apart. In the last 150 years, we have with the fall of empires seen the number of Autocephalous Churches double, going from eight to sixteen.

These new Churches are in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, America, Albania and Macedonia. With the geographical spread of the Orthodox Church, the foundation of even more Local Churches is going to become inevitable. As a result of the centralising forces, the decentralising forces have taken over. People feel oppressed by the centralisation of the old centres, which still cling on to power. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is Newton’s Third Law. Romanising/Papalising centralisation has lost. We no longer live in the Imperial period, initiated by Constantine. Since 1917 we have been living in the post-Constantinian period. The glass ceiling is breaking.

For centralisation, the limiting of control to small cliques, entails corruption. These cliques are formed by love of money and power. In the case of the First Rome, this was corruption and domination by pedophiles and other perverts (any visitor to the Vatican can see the pedophilia from the frescoes), and financial corruption. In the case of the Second and Third Romes, firstly backstabbing homosexuality leads to blackmail, and secondly the love of luxury leads to bribery. All this creates a glass ceiling which ensures that spirituality, pastorship and competence are excluded and are replaced by bureaucracy, careerism and narcissism. And rule without the Holy Spirit is no rule at all.

Orthodox England

How did we come to the name of our website and blog, to ‘Orthodox England’?

We are Orthodox, because we are ‘rightly’ Christian, which is all that the adjective ‘Orthodox’ means, and not something exotic or esoteric. In other words, we veer neither to the left, nor to the right, we are neither modernist and liberal, nor sectarian and schismatic, neither new calendarist, nor old calendarist. At all times, all deviations, all that is ‘wrongly’ Christian, can be avoided by adhering to the living inspiration of the Holy Spirit and so to the roots of Orthodoxy, to the words and deeds of Christ in the Gospels and the Apostles in the Epistles, to the lives of the Saints and the Fathers. All this is summarised in the simple fact that Orthodoxy is Christianity, no more and no less.

We are England, because that is where we were born and live by God’s Will, and we do not belong to any political construct, neither to the UK, nor to the EU, neither to the present US, nor to the post-USSR, neither to the white star, nor to the red star, but to the Cross of Christ. At all times, all deviations can be avoided by adhering to the living inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the roots of England. All this is summarised in the words and deeds of the saints of England for over 450 years until 1066 and the words and deeds of its best representatives for the 1,000 years since. We look to the time when we shall have restored our own Local Church, part of a wider Anglo-Celtic Local Church of Four Nations.

And the way to this is through a recovered Western European Orthodox Church.

The Curse of the Ukraine and Western Desperation

If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.

Sun Tzu

If you elect a clown, you get a circus.

President Biden, or rather, the narcissists who pull the strings of that senile and corrupt old man have just six weeks left until the next President. How can the series of disastrous US defeats and chaos they have created worldwide in recent years be remedied in that time? Or else how can they transfer the blame for the defeats and chaos they have created on the incoming President?

The Western Empire went from Rome to Venice, from Genoa to Portugal, from Spain to the Netherlands, from France to Britain and then to the USA. Like the Western Roman Empire long ago, the Western Empire is now crumbling all along its peripheries, in Israel, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the UK, the EU, Canada and the Ukraine. The USA itself is divided and being shaken from inside, with two attempts already on the life of the future President.

The collapse of the now bankrupt Globalist project is here. The ‘rules-based’ international disorder created to try and ensure US, and not local, control of the countries of the world has become out of control worldwide chaos. Panic in the West has now set in before the face of one humiliating rout after another for it.

In the Ukraine, the ‘narrative’ (= the pack of lies) has changed from ‘the Ukraine is winning’ (when it was obviously losing) to ‘the Ukraine is in a stalemate’ (when it was obviously losing), to ‘we need EU and UK intervention in the Ukraine’. But this is only in order to get the USA involved, because the European elite knows that the Obama-Biden puppet regime in Kiev has lost, that its own European forces will be killed and very quickly, and that it is three years too late for any meaningful peace talks. The essence of the West’s plan was to destroy the Ukraine and to cripple Russia. Although it is succeeding in the former, it has utterly failed in the latter.

The curse of the Ukraine is rippling outwards from the Ukraine worldwide, like a stone thrown into the centre of the Kiev pond. And so one piece of bad news comes after another for the US elite, intent on world domination, whether directly, or indirectly, through its Ukrainian or other proxies, and always using the same CIA playbook, so well-rehearsed over generations, in Latin America, Asia and southern Europe:

Russia has defeated the huge, NATO-trained and NATO-equipped army in the Ukraine, which means it has defeated the whole of NATO.

In Moldova only massive electoral fraud gave victory to the EU/US candidate by the narrowest of margins. The West has proved to Moldovans that, whatever its words and theories, it does not practise democracy. Why then should Moldova join the EU?

In Romania the anti-EU candidate, the son of a priest, came first in the elections, the US ambassador’s EU candidate came third. So the Americans had the election cancelled exactly one hour after a plane from Florida landed in Bucharest. As the anti-EU candidate was promised 70% of the vote according to polls and only US/EU puppets have the right to win, he was cancelled. Revolt is in the air in Romania, as Romanians now know that they are not allowed to have the government that they want by the US/EU.

In now bankrupt Germany the very unpopular government collapsed after the US destroyed its cheap energy supplies from Russia, destroying its industrial base and prosperity, and remaining German money and arms were sent to the Ukraine. Like all the other EU bureaucrats, Chancellor Scholz has just been to Kiev with his silver suitcase to pick up his dollar pay-off for his pension, so now the elections which he will lose will take place in February.

In France the government has also collapsed. France is ‘ungovernable’, according to its arrogant President, though that only means that he is incompetent to govern it. The EU candidate for President, the Macron, a Napoleon without an Empire, lost the elections this year. He gained only 20% of support and his anti-democratic government has now collapsed. At the same time, the former French colonies in Africa has thrown France out, preferring non-colonial China and Russia. Macron’s policy in the Ukraine is one of ‘strategic ambiguity’, which is a very French way of saying that he has no idea what to do. Some predict the collapse of the ‘Fifth Republic’ regime, founded in 1958. Others say that the hated dictator Macron will have to be removed by force from his Palace in Paris. ‘Guillotine’, they shout.

In the bankrupt UK, which has no more money for its small and feeble armed forces, Starmer, the Biden candidate, and his Establishment regime, elected by only 20% of the electorate, are among the most unpopular ever. Many think that Starmer will only last for a few more months.

In the south of the Lebanon the Israeli Army was routed and had to agree a ceasefire and retreat with heavy losses of men and equipment, having failed to take even a single village. And in Gaza, because of the Israeli genocide, both Israel and its American sponsor, are isolated and discredited.

In Georgia the pro-EU government headed by a Frenchwoman, sponsored by the French secret service, lost the elections and has to leave. Anti-democratic, US-organised street demonstrations, as in Kiev in 2014, have failed.

In corrupt Syria the Qatari-financed, US-UK-Israeli-Turkish-sponsored and trained HTS Islamist fanatics, advised by Ukrainian terrorists, are victorious. Only the Mediterranean west coast of Syria remains. The family of Assad has already taken refuge in Russia and Assad has disappeared. This is the first anti-BRICS war of the US and in Syria, where the conflict had been ‘frozen’. But frozen conflicts always thaw out and continue. The US, still stealing Syrian oil and cereals, is desperately trying to take over Syria, and then the Lebanon as a strategic base. This is all to protect Israel, using as its ally the terrorist HTS, the descendant of the CIA-organised ISIS and Al-Qaida, so as to build the projected pipeline from Qatar to Europe. The Sunni Ottoman Erdogan wants to control the north of Syria, the Israelis the south-west. Will China intervene from the Euphrates, where the remnants of the Syrian Army have taken refuge in Iraq, as the prophecies say? Destabilised Syria will probably descend into chaos, like a second Libya, creating chaos all around it. The US seems to have the Midas touch in reverse.

In colonial South Korea, which is run from the US base outside Seoul, the US-sponsored military coup by the unpopular and corrupt President against the Parliament has failed. The US organised the coup in order to force South Korea, the only source of US arms, as all other sources have been severely depleted, to send its arms to Kiev. The South Korean Parliament and people do not want to, as they know that their President is a Biden stooge, who has never acted in South Korean interests. The government there is in chaos

The world is being transformed. To those who despair, remember that the world is ruled not by men, but by Christ.

The Civilising Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Western World

I would long ago have gone mad in the face of human injustice, if I had not known that Christ will have the last word in history.

St Paisios the Athonite

Decadence has always existed. It is a result of the Fall. However, it is one thing for decadence to exist, quite another for decadence to be institutionalised. Some people like to imagine that the decadence of the West was institutionalised only recently, in, say, 1997, or the 1960s. Others, more radically, suggest that it was at the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Renaissance or even in 1274 and with the invention of Nominalism. In fact, the rot set in well before that. The rot began before with Charlemagne, but ‘set in’, or rather, was institutionalised in the eleventh century and the date of 1054, in the middle of the century, symbolises the institutionalisation of the rot.

The West is civilised? The Papally-sponsored massacres of hundreds of thousands in Spain, Italy and, then in 1066, in England? The massacres of the Jews in the Rhineland on the way to the genocidal Crusades in the Holy Land, the sacking of the Christian capital in 1204, the genocide of the Cathars in France, and then that by the Teutonic Knights? The Inquisition? The Black Death? The Conquistadors? The witch-hunts? The ‘Wars of Religion’? The genocide in the New World, South and North America?

The colonialisation of India? The ‘opium wars’ with China? The genocide of the Tasmanians and the Maori? The European scramble for Africa? That of Leopold in the Congo? Two suicidal European Wars, become World Wars? The Germans in Namibia? The British in Kenya? The French in Algeria? The Western invasions of and genocides in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine? And all these tens or hundreds of millions of dead Non-Europeans are enshrined in 1,000 years of ‘heroic’ pro-Western ‘narratives’? Western Civilisation?

We have had a thousand years of Western Anti-Civilisation. But who can recivilise the Western world and return it to the first millennium? Or is it finally going to destroy itself? Clearly, extremists will not help save it, neither those who accept and want to ape the West in everything, nor those who reject and want to denigrate everything in the West. It is all more subtle than that. Thus, religions like Islam and Hinduism will not work in the West, for they are too closely connected with the alien Arab and Indian worlds. As for the Buddhist or Confucian philosophies, they are only for intellectuals.

What remains and can attract and answer the West’s spiritual needs, bringing it back to the Age of the Saints, the time before decadence became institutionalised? We can answer the question negatively:

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something corrupted, sexually depraved, financially depraved or depraved by jealousy for us.

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something sectarian that condemns other Christians as Non-Christians.

What remains and can attract and answer those needs CANNOT be something that belongs exclusively to another race and condemns all other races.

I have been telling the world for fifty years what can attract and answer the spiritual needs of Western people who have such needs. However, I have all this time been persecuted by the extremists, by the corrupt and depraved in the Russian Church inside Russia, by the sectarian in the Russian Church outside Russia, and by the racist everywhere, not least in Constantinople.

He who has ears, let him hear.

On Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

Q: You are one of the few people who knew well both Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov). What do you think of them and their disputes?

A: I am not sure that I am one of the few, but I did know them both well.

The future Metr Antony was born on the same day as my grandfather, though twenty years after him. He was a typical Franco-Russian intellectual. He was very gifted, very open, to the point of liberalism, and very sincere. His father, Boris, was an Imperial diplomat who was interested in the occult and had the gift of hypnotism. His mother was the sister of the ‘mystical’, but very unOrthodox Russian composer Scriabin.

Andrei Bloom (as he then was) came to the faith in his teens and lived it in his own way. He did not study at seminary. He was completely unmercenary and lived very modestly. His interests were intellectual and in people and was very popular, especially among women. He was widely read in Western literature, but not so much in the Church Fathers or the literature of piety and the Lives of the Saints. He was really quite emotional and you can hear this in his sermons. His approach to the Faith was emotional, even sentimental, and cultural. That approach is very important to some.

Fr Sophrony was eighteen years older than Metr Antony and came from a well-off Russian family in Moscow, emigrated to France after the Revolution and was a huge intellectual, philosopher and artist who had belonged in his youth to the Art Nouveau Movement. He came to England in 1959, when a large property was given him by the Church of England in an ecumenical spirit. At that time he was still living in France, where for some 14 years he had been under the Patriarchate of Moscow after he had been expelled from Mt Athos. He had lived there for twenty years and was expelled by the Greek authorities for political reasons, together with two other Russian monks.

In 1965 he left the jurisdiction of Metr Antony of Moscow after twenty years and returned to the jurisdiction of Greek Constantinople. This happened after he had fallen out with Metr Antony, who wanted to close his monastery and ordain his priests, so he could expand his tiny diocese. Fr Sophrony (as we always called him – never starets) is now a local saint, canonised by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and venerated in the monastery, or convent, which he founded just outside a village in the east of Essex.

So we can see that Metr Antony had an emotional approach to the Faith and is very attractive to the emotional and even sentimental, especially to women, and brought tens of thousands of Russians and others to Orthodoxy. On the other hand, Fr Sophrony had an intellectual and philosophical approach to the Faith and he is attractive to highly educated people of many nationalities, many of whom have doctorates, like his monks.

Thus, they were very different people. But both played a positive role. The point is that everyone is different and there is no reason to reject or condemn either of them, as some do. Having said that, neither was my ‘cup of tea’ personally. But so what? There is room in the Church for many different sorts of people and many sorts of people are needed. Let us not be narrow! Tastes vary.

We can see this in the views of other Orthodox. For example, the then Fr Vitaly (Ustinov), later Metropolitan of ROCOR, called, I think in 1948, the then Fr Antony (Bloom) ‘a priest of Satan’, simply because he belonged to the Patriarchate of Moscow, which had been revived by Stalin. However, we know that Metr Vitaly ended his life outside the Church in a sect. Metr Antony (Bloom) did not.

Another critic, and of both the ‘Western’ Metr Antony and of the ‘delusional’ Fr Sophrony (according to Professor Osipov), is the Russian academic, Professor A. I. Osipov. His lectures are interesting for beginners in Orthodox life and he was very popular, especially in the 1990s when 100 million Russians were baptised, virtually without instruction. Once more, he is just another personality, with his own approach, a third approach, that of the academic.

All three approaches are interesting, but I don’t see why they should be mutually exclusive. However, once more he is not my personal cup of tea. But he is the cup of tea of many others. People are different! Accept that everyone is different and stop falling into that trap of sectarian narrowness and condemnation that some Russians can be inclined to, with their cries of ‘That’s uncanonical’, ‘you’re a schismatic’, ‘that’s heretical’ etc. None of that is Christian. Moreover, it is this Russian intolerance that has caused the schism between Russians and Greeks today, all the purely political divisions in the Russian emigration (meaning that today ROCOR is out of communion with the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Church), and all the divisions inside Russia from the seventeenth century until today, Sad.