Author Archives: Father Andrew

Fifty Years: Biography of Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips since 1 September 1974

After leaving Colchester Royal Grammar School in 1974, where I studied Russian, Latin, French and German, I went to study Russian Literature in Oxford. In 1977 I graduated and qualified as a teacher. Having taught in Thessaloniki for a year, in 1979 I left Greece to study at the Russian Orthodox St Sergius seminary in Paris, meeting the last Paris White Russians who had been adults before 1917. In 1980 I married and then became an Orthodox priest, also working in Paris as a lecturer in European political and cultural history. We had six children (currently with twelve grandchildren – all our children live in Suffolk, Essex or London). Apart from living in Paris, I also spent time in Lisbon from 1992 on, setting up the first Orthodox church there. I started publishing my first books on Church history and theological and pastoral themes in Paris, then in 1997 we returned to England to live in Suffolk.

Here I continued writing, publishing more books, setting up a website, teaching and taking part in broadcasts on Channel 4 and Radio 4. I gave talks at Church conferences in the USA and Australia and also spoke at conferences in Russia and Eastern Europe, notably at official events for the Russian Church reunion in Moscow and in the Kremlin in 2007. In Eastern England I have fundraised and bought church buildings, buying and setting up new Orthodox churches in Felixstowe in 1997, two churches in my native Colchester (at the old Garrison Church) in 2008, Norwich in 2016 and Cambridge in 2020. These are all international parishes, which have resisted any political manipulations, interference or extremes from Greek or Russian alike, keeping to the royal way. This is why our churches are with the Autonomous Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe of the Romanian Church, centred in Paris.

 

Q and A August 2024

Corruption Inside the Church

Q: Having seen the corruption of the new ROCOR episcopate, do you now think that those who, like Metropolitan Vitaly, warned that ROCOR would be corrupted by contact with the Moscow Patriarchate and so left it between 2001 and 2007, were right.

A: Not at all! You do not leave the Church, whose episcopate had at the time not yet been corrupted, to join a sect!

As for the corruption of ROCOR, that was the choice of those who did it to themselves, it was self-corruption. The episcopate of the Patriarchate in Moscow never imposed any corruption, just as the Russian State never imposed any political compromises on the part of the episcopate of the Russian Church. It is far worse than that – they imposed corruption on themselves by personal choice!

It is a bit like someone who goes to work in a jeweller’s shop, becomes a jewel thief and then blames the owner of the jewellery shop for his corruption. All bishops should know that there is such a thing as personal responsibility and a conscience. Clearly, they did not and I suspect that that is because they had lost their faith and become atheists, ‘princes of the Church’, as they liked to call themselves, Catholic cardinal-style. In any case, they live like atheists. As a result, we have ‘Orthodox’ killing each other in Russia and the Ukraine. This is the Judgement of God.

Q: How do you cope when you see open corruption among bishops?

A: The Church is like a mountain stream that goes down to the lowlands and becomes a fairly slow-moving river. The destiny of the water is to go to the sea, just as our destiny is to go to heaven. However, in the mountains the water gets mixed up with stones and in the lowlands the water inevitably gets mixed up with the mud. We have to live alongside the stones and the mud. It is our job not to get mixed up with either the stones or the mud, but to keep flowing (with the flow of the Holy Spirit) in the top half of the river, where the water is clean, though we do go up and down to some extent. Sadly, there are those who do get mixed up with either the stones or else the mud. Even so, as long as they don’t get caught up in the river weeds or else bogged down in the stagnant mud, they can still rise up away from the mud and get cleaned.

However, we must not fall into the sin of those who, disgusted by any possible contact with the mud, get out of the river altogether and sail down the river in small boats, some of them luxuriously fitted out, for the imaginary ‘pure’, while condemning everyone else in the river, who are in contact with the mud. These people are proud sectarians, pharisees and Donatists. They are disincarnate, that is, not part of the river, not part of the Church, cut off, judging others in their pride. As such they are actually worse than those who are in contact with the mud. At least they still have the chance of going upwards into the flow and of being cleaned by that flow. These people in their boats do not even have the chance of being cleaned by the flow of this river of eternal life, the streams of living water, but remain isolated in their self-pleasing ’comfort’ and pride.

Q: What do you do when you are slandered by a bishop? You have personal experience.

A: I pray for the four slanderers, three of whom have repeated the bishop’s slander, for the one in Colchester, the one in Ipswich, the one in Tiptree and the last in London. All their terrible personal problems to the point of alcoholism come from the fact that they tell lies and slander.

Q: Why have so many Irish-Americans joined the Orthodox Church?

A: What an interesting question. I can remember 50 years ago the then Fr Basil Osborne remark that many who had then joined the Orthodox in the USA had Irish names.

I think it is part of a general situation that those who join the Orthodox Church in Western Europe and Northern America come from oppressed minorities in their countries of origin. For example, in Germany many join from Saxony, in France from Brittany, and in England from those of peasant origin. In other words, those of the elitist Establishment background either do not join, or else, if they do, they do not stay the course, and soon abandon it, like so many Oxbridge professors and those from the London elite in England.

The Non-Orthodox World

Q: Will old calendarists go to hell?

A: This is the second time you have asked an outrageous question. I realise you are new to the Church of God, but where does this desire to condemn all others come from? Where does this hatred come from? If you are really concerned about the salvation of others, pray for them in silence. Last time, it was the same question about Protestants, from where you come. Save your own soul and leave others aside. It is none of your business. Stop meddling and heal yourself.

Q: I recently met an Orthodox woman who does not believe that bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ? Is this typical?

A: It is typical of an Orthodox who has become an atheist. I would not judge a Church of 200 million by one very lapsed example.

Q: I have started going to an Eastern Orthodox church, with the aim, hopefully, of being baptised eventually. I am contacting you because I’ve heard horror stories about people joining, then going through real turmoil in their lives. I understand that no spiritual journey or growth is painless, but I wonder to what extent is joining the Church going to destroy me. I’ve seen commentary like this online, people saying essentially that they’ve been ruined by joining the church. As a man of your station within the church, I just want to ask – is this reasonable? Or is it just hyperbole?

A: The Church ruins no-one’s life! Only sects and cults, which attract the proud, do that.

However, in the Orthodox Church we have long been besieged by psychopaths and sociopaths, misfits in society who think they can fit in to the Church and that they will find their place here. They do not. They seem to pick on the Orthodox Church, as they find us ‘exotic’. Though some of them have been thrown out of the Catholic Church or the Church of England, for obvious reasons.

I have myself received three such individuals in the last 35 years, so am also guilty. Sadly, what I did for them did not help them, as I had hoped it would. However, as they did not repent, it could not help them. They should have seen a psychiatrist first. Sadly, too, there are Orthodox clergy who receive many such people, with disastrous consequences, I mean several people every single year. The worst is, when one of these pathological individuals becomes a member of the clergy and begins to receive others like himself. And the worst is when of these individuals becomes a bishop! You can imagine how much damage that can do!

I hope you find your place in the Church. The main thing is to be sexually normal and be able to hold down a normal job. That makes a huge difference.

Q: Pope Francis has recently published a document stressing Primacy and Synodality. Could this be a positive opening acceptable to the Orthodox Church?

A: On the surface Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism have much in common: the Holy Trinity, Christ God-Man, the Mother of God, the saints, bishops, priests and therefore sacraments. Even the words Catholic and Pope are Greek!

However, the reality is radically different. The Roman Catholic understanding of the Holy Trinity is quite different because of the filioque, the understanding of Christ is full of ‘Jesusism’, that is, suffering human nature which overshadows the victorious God-Man, the Mother of God is called the Virgin, despite the fact that virginity is no guarantee of holiness and may express mere puritanism and forced clerical celibacy, the concept of the clergy is deformed through compulsory clerical celibacy and therefore the concept of the sacraments is deformed also. The same thing with those words ‘Catholic’ and ‘Pope’. The first means having the same faith as always and in all cultures, which is clearly not the case with ‘Roman Catholic’, which means imperialism, spreading the Roman mentality worldwide, and the second does not mean a distant tyrant, but a loving father!

Only if Catholicism first renounces the filioque and the Papal claims, can we sit down and talk. However, the reality is that Roman Catholicism is on the brink of splitting yet again, this time with Archbishop Vigano. This follows all its other splits, the most numerous being those in the sixteenth century, when protestors against its corruption broke away from it in large numbers.

Q: What do you make of the recent statement that the Church of England no longer has churches, but communities?

A: The word ‘church’ comes from the Greek word ‘kyriakon’, which means ‘the House of the Lord’. It can be said that parishes are church communities and monasteries monastic communities, but they are not simply ‘communities’. The renunciation of the word ‘church’ simply indicates that the ‘Church’ of England is now fully secularised and is officially a network of clubs. In fact, that is what many have long suspected, so nothing new here.

Pastoral and Liturgical Matters

Q: Did you bless people to get the covid vaccine?

A: The covid vaccine is not a dogmatic issue, but a question of personal choice. Thus, two people came to me for a blessing at that time, three years ago. This was because they both worked for the NHS and risked losing their jobs if they did not agree to it. Therefore, I blessed them to take the vaccine on condition that they make the sign of the cross over the vaccine as it was injected. They both did so and both have been fine ever since and, above all, kept their jobs.

Q: My name is Clyde and I am a Glaswegian. I want to keep my Scottish roots. If I enter Orthodoxy, what saint’s name could I take?

A: I presume you are called after the River Clyde in Glasgow. Why not take the name of another famous place in Scotland, which is at the source of Scottish Christian national identity: St Andrews? And so take the Christian name Andrew.

Q: What is the point of the liturgical fans? I have heard that they were basically introduced as fly swatters.

A: I think the fly-swatting was purely coincidental! The fans symbolise the wafting of the Holy Spirit over the Gospel and the eucharistic gifts.

Q: How do you explain the disastrous demographic situation in Western and Westernised countries?

A: For over two generations Western and Westernised women have been told that they should live, behave, think, speak and dress exactly like men. The only natural result is the demographic crisis.

Q: Why do so many British people have tattoos nowadays?

A: Because they partake of modern pagan culture. It seems that even the name ‘Britain’ comes from a word meaning ‘the tattooed’. This was recorded by the Greek explorer Pytheas in the fourth century BC. It seems to me that the Western world has rejected Christianity over the last century and more especially, each people has revived its native paganism. Thus, Hitler’s Germany was profoundly pagan, in Scandinavia they have revived Norse pagan mythology, in the Ukraine pagan symbolism is now used everywhere, in France they have returned to full hedonism etc. In Britain this has resulted in the use of tattoos, essentially war paint, which accompanies the aggressiveness of pagan life, both ancient and modern.

Q: When did the Flood occur, according to the Orthodox reckoning?

A: According to the Septuagint (the first parts of which were written down in 272 BC, which means that it is some 1,000 years older than the rabbinical/Protestant version of the Old Testament), the Flood took place in about 3,243 BC, that is about 5,267 years ago. If you follow the dating in the much later Jewish Massoretic text, with its chronology corrupted by later rabbis, the Flood occurred in about 2,348 BC – before the rule of Gilgamesh, who lived in about 2,700-2,600 BC, before the Great Pyramid was built in Egypt in 2,600 BC and before the stone circle was erected at Stonehenge in about 2,500 BC.

Q: I have read on the internet that Fr Andrew Phillips is ‘popular but controversial’. Why do some consider that you are controversial?

A: Because I tell it like it is. The truth is always controversial. There is nothing more hated than the truth. As they say: ‘If you tell the truth 99% of the time, you may survive, but if you tell the truth 100% of the time, they will certainly try and destroy you’. Look what they did to Christ. As He said, ‘The truth will set you free’. Those are the words I will have on my gravestone.

Q: Did you know Fr David (Mark) Meyrick of Walsingham?

A: Yes. I knew him quite well, having first met him in 1976. I have great admiration for him, some of his icons have been inspirational.  However, it was a pity that he did not found a permanent church, but just rented a room. This meant that after his death, it all began to fall apart. I also thought it very strange that he did not dedicate his tiny chapel to an Icon of the Mother of God, which would have been appropriate in Walsingham.

The Curses

The Western world stands on the brink of a threefold worldwide war of its own making: against Russia, against Iran and against China. It is the moment to recall the fate of those who do not live according to the Beatitudes:

Cursed are the spiritually proud, for theirs is the tyranny of hell.

Cursed are those who mock, for they shall never find comfort.

Cursed are the arrogant, for they shall be heirs to the demons.

Cursed are those who hunger and thirst for unrighteousness, for they shall never be satisfied.

Cursed are the merciless, for they shall receive no mercy.

Cursed are the soiled in heart, for they shall see satan.

Cursed are the warmakers, for they shall be called sons of the devil.

Cursed are those who persecute the righteous, for theirs is the tyranny of hell.

Cursed are you when you revile others and persecute and utter all kinds of evil against the righteous falsely on satan’s account.

 Be consumed with mourning and sorrow, for dread is your fate in hell, for so you persecuted the prophets who were before us.

The Fall of Kiev and the Fall of the American Empire

The conflict in the Ukraine exists because the US political, military and media Establishment and its vassals in Western Europe want it to exist. Virtually all Western politicians from Lindsey Graham to Kaja Kallas, from Antony Blinken to Boris Johnson, have made it crystal clear that the aim of the conflict has never been to support the Ukraine, which they despise (even if they do know where it is), but to destroy Russia, ‘until the last Ukrainian is dead’. The Ukraine is merely a useful idiot, a proxy, a battering ram aimed at Russia, no more. All this is clear from the 2019 report of the Rand Corporation, the think tank of the Pentagon, a report which is publicly available.

No ordinary people want this conflict, neither in the USA, nor in Western Europe, nor in the Ukraine, whose wretched cannon fodder people are its main victims. Popular opposition is visible in Hungary, Slovakia and Serbia. Elsewhere opposition is hidden or else labelled ‘populist’, ‘far left’ or ‘far right’ by the oligarchic elite of the Western Establishment, but it still exists among the non-brainwashed population. For the conflict exists and continues because of US megalomania and, above all, because of the ever greedier US military-industrial complex, which demands ever more profit.

These two factors, megalomania and greed, have always accompanied every empire. The Roman Empire, ruled by a clique of greedy oligarchs in Rome, the medieval Roman Catholic Empire, with its megalomaniac inquisitions and greedy indulgences, the Spanish Empire, megalomaniac to spread Catholicism and greedy for gold and silver mined by slaves, the French Empire of the megalomaniac ‘Sun-King’, which went bankrupt financing the American War of Independence, the British Empire, which died of greed and hubris, and the Soviet Empire, which wanted to dominate the world, all fell because of megalomania and greed. Every time the megalomania grew too great and every time the greed for profit grew too strong, empires fell.

If we take the case of the British Empire, we can see how, despite the sinister warnings of the humiliating Boer War with its British concentration camps and the sinking of the unsinkable Titanic in 1912, it still entered into the Great European War in 1914. It did not need to and could instead have mediated as a blessed peacemaker and brought peace. It did not do that because of its megalomania and greed. Thus, it emerged from that war in 1918 on crutches. When it emerged from the second part of that war in 1945, the inevitable result of the unjust ‘peace’ of 1918, it was not on crutches, but in a wheelchair. Its greed in countries ranging from India to Singapore and China to Kenya, had been punished. It was the result of megalomania (‘the sun never sets on our empire’) and City of London greed to strip all the countries which it invaded of their natural resources.

If we take the case of the Soviet Empire, we can see how, despite the warning of the German invasion of 1941 and the catastrophic genocide of Slavs by the Nazis, it still built itself up in Eastern and Central Europe (East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia), in Korea, Vietnam, in decolonising Africa, and finally in Afghanistan. It was this last war which finished it off. Bankruptcy was the result of its megalomaniac overreach. Its successor State, the Russian Federation, has at least learned its lesson and no longer wants to impose itself on the rest of the world and wants to prioritise itself.

Today we see the same process in the American Empire. Since 1945, when it ended up on the winning side in Europe only thanks to the sacrificial victory of the Soviet Union, it has never won a war (the US invasion of tiny Grenada was hardly a war). For example, its war in Korea ended in a stalemate, and it lost all its other wars, in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In each case it was routed. Now in the Ukraine, it faces the same rout. ‘We have won’, ‘this is the end of history’, we can do anything’, ‘we are exceptional’ are only hubristic delusions which its Establishment feeds on.

This threatened rout is why NATO has in desperation launched its last-ditch invasion of the largely deserted forests of the Kursk province in the south of Russia with all its technology. The casino-playing NATO, that is, Washington, has staked everything on this operation. Having failed by far to take the Kursk Nuclear Power Station and lost over 7,000 of its troops already, it has now been reinforced by thousands more troops. Eighty-one years ago, in 1943, Kursk was fighting against German tanks. Now German tanks are there again. As one Dutch farmer put it: ‘Russia saved us from Napoleon. Russia saved us from Hitler. Russia, please save us from Washington’.

The atheists in Kiev have forgotten that the city of Kursk is the birthplace of the prophetic St Seraphim of Sarov. The atheists in Kiev have also forgotten that, having invaded the southern tip of the province of Kursk, they then banned the Orthodox Church. The consequences of this for the Kiev atheists and their Western puppeteers are enormous. God is not mocked, as atheists will soon find out.

The fall of the American Empire will be all the greater than the fall of all those which fell before it, because America was never satisfied with just taking a portion of the Globe, like the empires before it, it greedily wanted everything, according to its megalomaniac ideology of Globalism. For Globalism is the ultimate form of megalomania and greed combined. This will become visible to all at the BRICS Alliance summit in Kazan in two months’ time, from 22 -24 October. This will be attended by a great many representatives of the Global Majority, not least the leaders of the first, third and fifth largest economies in the world: China, India and Russia. Dozens more countries want to join the 9 members of BRICS. By contrast to Washington, these members preach not Globalism, but Multilateralism – the future.

 

 

24 August 2024: ‘Democratic’ Ukraine Bans its National Church

On 24 August the Western-backed and Western-financed ex-President Zelensky (legally he has been a dictator since May) signed a law banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. (Zelensky is by race a Jew and by faith an atheist). This is because this Church is a Non-Western Church (just as the Ukraine is a Non-Western country), only a semi-independent part of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. This law will be enacted in 30 days’ time. What are the options?

First of all, Ukrainian Orthodox (= the vast majority of Ukrainians) will not attend any of the fake Churches, including the nationalist, pro-Nazi fake ‘Church’, invented by Washington by paying the Greek Patriarch to set it up. This is much to the present embarrassment of that Greek Patriarch, who, he now claims, naively thought that Ukrainians would attend such a Church, founded on theft and violence, encouraged by its gangster leaders, and composed of defrocked or unordained ‘clergy’.

This means that Ukrainian Orthodox will either stop going to church and wait for better times, or else they will try and go to church and get beaten up or killed or be arrested and put in prison. Christian blood on the streets is apparently what the Western Powers and the Greek Patriarch are sponsoring.

Some say that the Russian Patriarch of Moscow, Kyrill, and the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, whose combined ages are 161, could do something else. Patriarch Bartholomew could dissolve his failed, fake Church on condition that Patriarch Kyrill officially gives the Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence, known as ‘autocephaly’. For only a Mother-Church, in this case, Moscow, can grant autocephaly. And if the Ukrainian Orthodox Church becomes autocephalous, Zelensky’s law will be meaningless.

That would be a miracle. If it happened, all the other Local Orthodox Churches, all 14 of them, would automatically recognise the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a canonical, autocephalous Church, the 17th member of the Orthodox family. And Moscow and Constantinople could enter back into communion. And this could happen even with a Council of the whole Church.

However, such happiness is highly unlikely. What is likely?

Far more likely is that within the next few months Russia will take over the whole of the Ukraine, partly militarily and partly politically. The Ukraine will either entirely disappear as a nation-state, or else will exist with about one third of the territory it previously had and be fully dependent on Moscow. In other words, it will return exactly to its situation before Communist dictators created it after 1922. 100 years of errors will be over. Then the law banning the Church will be as irrelevant as ex-President Zelensky and his whole illegal government, which will have disappeared by then.

However, in such a case, just as Constantinople failed to force people to attend its fake Church, so Moscow will not be able to force people to attend a Church still dependent on it. As the Russian proverb says: ‘You will not endear yourself by force’. Or as the English proverb says: ‘You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink’.

In any case, the problem will remain. Either the Russian Orthodox Church is a nationalist organisation, or else it is a multinational and missionary Church. It will have to choose. Either it adapts to and adopts other cultures, or else it will remain as a mononational Church with no multinational significance, as some of its senior bishops want.

 

 

The House Springs Tragedy: The Church versus the Ambitious and Greedy Bureaucrats of the New ROCOR

The Fake Monastery in House Springs: Spiritual Abuse in ROCOR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq1mdZhUD5g

Spiritually I was brought up in the old Russian émigré Church. Regardless of its division-causing, internal squabbles, its bishops (let alone its priests) lived in poverty and modesty. Most spent their time in church services and prayer in their humble cells. Most did not have a car. Most took part in cleaning their modest church and other day-to-day activities like everyone else. When they passed away, most left nothing behind them, except for a change of clothes and some books and icons. Such was the old generation of bishops, whom we loved and respected.

Meanwhile, in post-Soviet Russia, which I first visited in 2007 officially and after that almost every year, officially and unofficially, until 2018, the Church was booming. 100 million were baptised, tens of thousands of churches and hundreds of monasteries and convents were reopened, renovated or built. And money flowed. And that is how the corruption began among the officially celibate episcopate. First came the money, then came the lust for power, then came the spiritual emptiness, then came the inevitable homosexualisation and the schisms. (See, for example, in Budapest). The result of all this? The episcopate began persecuting the Church of the parish clergy and faithful people.

Seeing this, what did the heirs to the old émigré bishops, by then passed away, do? Sad to say, instead of remaining faithful to their heritage, they wanted to copy them. From about 2016 on, the same demons of corruption entered into them. House Springs was among the firstfruits and it has been followed by a whole series of cases in the scandal-ridden ROCOR episcopal persecution of priests and people in the USA and Western Europe. They had replaced the acquisition of the Holy Spirit with the acquisition of money, property and power through attempted bureaucratic intimidation and ‘protocols’, nowhere mentioned in the Gospels. Its episcopate is no longer composed of servants of the servants of God, but of ‘princes of the Church’, to use the Papist expression for cardinals, on whom they model themselves.

By their fruits ye shall know them….

 

 

 

The End-Game for the Ukrainian State and Church?

https://savetheuoc.com/press-release-ukraines-passage-of-8371-is-a-grotesque-violation-of-religious-freedom/

Militarily, the Ukraine is collapsing. In the east Russian forces are advancing some miles almost every day, as former Kiev strongholds, undermanned and underequipped, fall. In the north, the NATO-planned operation to ‘invade’ Russia through the southern tip of the province of Kursk with up to 15,000 elite troops (2,000 of whom are Polish, American, British and French, but wearing Ukrainian uniforms) is turning into a bloodbath. Over 4,000 of those troops are already dead or seriously wounded. Many others have surrendered. That was a last act of desperation, a last chance to do something big. It too has failed, as the NATO-led Ukrainians are outmatched and outgunned in every was.

Two and a half years ago, all that Russia wanted was a neutral Ukraine and human rights for its Russian inhabitants. The USA forbade that. And slowly the USA escalated this war, arming and training Kiev troops. Even only a few weeks ago, Russia was still prepared to open peace negotiations with Kiev. Other BRICS countries were encouraging this. That is over. Now NATO, not the Ukraine, has invaded Russia. The Kursk Operation was NATO-planned, NATO-trained, NATO-equipped and NATO-financed. Here there are echoes of Napoleon’s multinational Western invasion of Russia in 1812 and Hitler’s equally multinational invasion of Russia in 1941. When will the West stop invading Russia? After each previous invasion from Western Europe, Western Europe was entirely reshaped. Here is the future for it. As for the Ukraine, it no longer has any future as such.

Meanwhile, there is also chaos in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Seeing these words, some will say: ‘No news here, it always is in chaos’. The confusion comes from the existence of so many pseudo-Orthodox Churches – here, clearly, I am not referring to the many US-founded Baptist/Pentecostalist sects in the country, which have no pretence of being Orthodox. Apart from the very few actual Roman Catholics, who are very traditional and more or less condemn the Second Vatican Council as heretical (and who have in the past contacted me), there are the not very many ‘Greek Catholics’. Neither Greek, nor Catholic (!), they are better known as Uniats, as they vaguely pretend to be Orthodox, but think like very old-fashioned, very right-wing and very anti-semitic Polish Catholics.

Then come those who call themselves ‘Ukrainian Orthodox’. There is the tiny group around the long since defrocked ‘Metropolitan’ (or is it Patriarch?) Filaret of Kiev. Nobody, not even Constantinople or his own children (both with Metr Onufry), takes this money-greedy (ex-?) Communist criminal seriously. Then comes the ‘OCU’, (‘the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine’), a group of clerically-dressed thugs and defrocked clergy who have stolen many churches from the actual Ukrainian Orthodox Church and whose favourite instruments are not liturgical, but angle-grinders and bolt-cutters. Their ideology appears to be Neo-Nazi, though they do convince a few patriotic but unchurched Ukrainians that they are actually Orthodox. After all, they were founded by the Patriarchate of Constantinople under American orders and greased with millions of US dollars, now nearly six years ago. Now using the Catholic calendar for their services, no serious Orthodox takes them seriously.

There is in reality only one real, internationally recognised and canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. 95% + of Ukrainian Orthodox belong to it, despite vicious persecution by the Neo-Nazi Ukrainian State. Its ruling hierarch is Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All the Ukraine. It is this Church which has today been banned by the Rada, or Parliament, in Kiev (269 votes for, 29 votes against). So much for American-sponsored freedom and democracy in the Ukraine. America is the new atheist Soviet Union, it seems. However, the law must be signed by the President, after which it can only be enacted after thirty days. Now things are moving quickly to stop this.

Constantinople warned the Ukrainians not to pass this law. Constantinople now knows that the OCU is fake and that the only real Church is the one Kiev wants to ban. Kiev has just disobeyed. Of course, Constantinople in itself has no power. But behind it stands the USA. The local Greek Archbishop there, Elpidiforos, who four years ago had his photograph taken with Biden, whom then he praised and told everyone to vote for, is now seen with Trump. Trump is much less keen on the Ukraine. His Catholic Vice-Presidential running-mate, Senator Vance, is a supporter of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Everybody knows that probably the next US President, if still unassassinated, will be Trump, and that he is fed up with giving money to subsidise everything in the Ukraine, which without US dollars would have gone bankrupt years ago.

Moreover, everybody knows that Patriarch Bartholomew is now aged 84. Archbishop Elpidiforos is very keen to succeed him. As also is Metropolitan Emmanuel (Adamakis). The former has taken against the Ukrainian OCU, the latter very much did the dirty work to found it. Now a delegation from there is going to Kiev, as they wanted to before. (Let us hope that the dreaded SBU Kiev Secret Police, will not assassinate them). Constantinople is very keen for it not to be seen as the instigator of a law to ban the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Given the failure of its OCU fantasy, it may at last be ready to repeal its statute (‘tomos’ in Greek) which founded the OCU and re-establish relations with Metropolitan Onufry’s canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the rest of the Orthodox world, from which it has isolated itself.

Having implemented its OCU gaffe six years ago, this would be a convenient let-out (in American English ‘off-ramp’) for Constantinople. If Constantinople states that it was lied to by the OCU, it can unrecognise it. If it were sensible it could even offer Metr Onufry autocephaly for his Church. That would put the Moscow Church, of which the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is de jure, but not de facto, a part, and to which for over thirty years it refused to grant autocephaly, in a tight corner. Of course, it may will not do this. Instead, some say that Constantinople wants to open up yet a new ecclesiastical structure in the Ukraine, an Exarchate, under the notorious and hated Archbishop Job (Getcha). That would be a great pity, because it now has an opportunity to improve relations with Moscow and embarrass it for Moscow’s uncanonical incursion into Greek-claimed Africa.

Our former friend, the former press secretary of the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II and journalist, Sergei Chapnin, who once came to our house, is heading for Constantinople now. We may hear more in the coming days. As the old Russian saying goes: ‘The circus left town, but the clowns stayed behind’.

 

 

Amsterdamned in Kiev?

Robert Amsterdam is a Canadian lawyer, who for nineteen years has been banned from Russia for his defence of an anti-Putin oligarch. The last time he was there, he was nearly arrested before being expelled as a Canadian citizen and told never to come back.

Today he is the legal representative of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, led by Metropolitan Onufry. He has been instrumental in protecting the Church from persecution by Kiev regime atheists. They have been supported by the Biden regime in the USA and its puppets in Constantinople. The latter set up a fake nationalist Church in the Ukraine, which virtually nobody attends.

According to most sources, in 2018 Constantinople was paid $25 million by the US to set up this fake Church, which is a 100% State nationalist organisation, staffed by many fake bishops and clergy, either canonically defrocked or never ordained, sometimes criminals. Their nationalism is such, for example, they have banned Russian saints like St Seraphim of Sarov and St Matrona of Moscow.  As everybody there well knows, Christ was Himself Ukrainian and hated Russians.

This fake Church organisation, supported by Neo-Nazis, is notorious for stealing churches from the canonical Church of Metropolitan Onufry, beating up its clergy and parishioners, and then locking up the churches, so that nobody can go there. Naturally, it is unrecognised anywhere in the Orthodox world, except by the paid Patriarchate of Constantinople and some dubious bishops, mainly from the Greek nationalist world, which is under Constantinople’s thumb.

The Kiev atheist regime has wanted for quite some time to outlaw the internationally recognised Church of Metr Onufry, defended by the international lawyer, Robert Amsterdam. His efforts have highlighted how ‘democratic Ukraine’ is banning the church. Senator Vance now knows about it and openly speaks about it; he does not want to give any more money to Kiev. Robert Amsterdam’s efforts have also frightened off certain members of the Rada, the Kiev Parliament, who have realised that they cannot violate human rights laws.

Nevertheless, the Kiev regime may move ahead with banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. They imagine that then its 90 or so bishops will all transfer to the fake State Church. Of course, they will not, they would rather go underground. They also imagine that Orthodox priests and people will join the fake Church. Of course, they will not. They would rather stay at home and the churches would be empty, like the 1500 stolen churches already. However, as State officials, they think that the State has power to force people to go to a particular church. This is a sort of State-enforced clericalism, because they will not.

The reason why the Kiev atheist regime wants to ban the real Church and why they set up a fake Neo-Nazi ‘Church’ is because they claim that the real Church is a tool of the enemy, Moscow. The solution is simple. The Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow holds an emergency Synod tomorrow and grants the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onufry autocephaly (it already has independence). At a stroke, the problem, including the fake Church, would go away, for the Kiev atheist regime’s argument would be like a rug taken from beneath their feet.

Realistically, the likelihood of this is zero. So, in the meantime, the only hope for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kiev is Robert Amsterdam.

 

 

 

Now It Can Be Told: Reminiscences II: The ROCOR Tragedy: How It Entered into Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate and Then De Facto Left It

Introduction: The Background

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, large numbers of ex-Soviet citizens settled in the West. The Orthodox among them, then about 1% of the total, went to wherever there was a Russian-speaking church. By 1990 the parishes of the old and dying ROCOR were almost empty, as the emigres had almost totally failed to pass on the Faith to their descendants. In 1992 I even had to set up a completely new parish in Lisbon for the new ex-Soviet emigres, though still under ROCOR. By 2000 all ROCOR parishes had been revitalised, but with ex-Soviet Russians. Moreover, the ROCOR bishops at the top, now almost all of the second generation or converts, had to ordain many of the ‘Soviets’ priests – there was nobody else left to ordain.

As a result, it gradually dawned even on the strongly anti-Soviet, often rather dry and cold, ROCOR bishops that there would have to be a reconciliation with Moscow. Moscow was, after all, 99% of the whole Russian Orthodox Church, and, by then, ex-Soviet Russians already formed 90% of their tiny émigré Church. Ex-Soviet clergy and parishioners understood nothing of the hair-splitting arguments against Moscow of the old émigrés and their descendants and converts.

They simply concelebrated with Moscow whenever they wanted and the people took communion freely in Moscow churches. Clearly, ROCOR bishops were losing control. The split between Moscow and the ROCOR group had been outlived. It was totally irrelevant to the post-Soviet masses, ‘the mob’, as one aristocratic and monocled (!) ROCOR bishop insultingly called them on the Russian Church website pravoslavie.ru, to the scandal of all!

To Moscow

Thus, the bishops were gradually forced by weight of numbers to lead the few remaining children of ROCOR emigres to concelebrate with Moscow. Having usurped the very elderly Metropolitan Vitaly in New York, who for them had outlived his age and who anyway had dementia, in 2001, ambitious bishops began to move towards talks with Moscow. These talks finally resulted in the historic Patriarchal and émigré concelebration in Moscow in 2007, where I was, I believe, the only Non-Russian priest present. However, even this reconciliation did not stop the bullying and intimidation of the non-aristocratic, not to say peasant, bishop-victims inside the Synod by the ‘princes of the Church’, the political wing of the utterly divided ROCOR Synod.

Their victims ranged from the meek and saintly Slovak Metr Laurus to the equally meek and mild Ukrainian Metr Hilarion, who feared the ‘politicos’, as he openly told us, almost trembling, and to Patriarch Kyrill himself. The latter was astonished and very, very upset by the categorical refusal of the politico bishops to accept the Patriarch’s very generous, canonical and utterly logical suggestion (it was in 2012 or soon after) to restructure ROCOR into Metropolia, in the USA, in Oceania and in Western Europe.

They even rejected his generous offer for a ROCOR bishop to become Metropolitan of a united Russian Orthodox Church of Western Europe, the foundation of the future Local Church. Rarely has there been such a tragic rejection of Divine destiny towards forming new Local Churches. This rejection, some ten years ago now, was in fact the turning-point for ROCOR. From that moment on, it reverted to control by its ‘princes of the Church’ political wing, concerned only with money and property, abandoning its spiritual, ‘Johannite’ (St John of Shanghai) tradition. Their predecessors had persecuted St John, now they would continue, persecuting St John’s spiritual descendants.

Underlying Sectarianism Returns

With this tragic refusal to accept its destiny, ROCOR had preferred suicidal, elitist, exclusivist isolation to playing the leading role in forming future Local Churches in Western Europe and elsewhere. The offer had been made on a golden plate and been rejected. The offer would not be made by offended Moscow again. It was clear that others would now have to play that role. ROCOR had sidelined itself, making itself irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, due to its nationalist exclusivism and pharisaic superiority complex, much, much developed by recent and unintegrated fanatical converts of a Protestant background. Moscow was at a loss, since it simply did not have the candidates with the linguistic, administrative and moral ability to lead its Churches outside Russia.

Thus, ROCOR lost the opportunity to head the establishment of three Metropolias: one to lead to the long-overdue Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Western Europe; in North America to merge positively with the OCA; finally, to set up a new Metropolia for the Continent of Oceania. The task of establishing just a Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Western Europe now went to Moscow, eventually through the efficient Metropolitan Nestor, supported by the very small, Paris-based Archdiocese of Western Europe, led by its Metropolitan Jean (Renneteau).

In 2021, ROCOR decided to take part in the American-led schism against the Moscow Metropolitan Jean, leading the emigres to split from that part of Moscow and so even further into self-isolation. The only occasional concelebrations would now be with highly conservative Antiochian, ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’, converts. The rest of the Orthodox Church was rejected. Moscow was secretly, and increasingly openly, despised; Greeks, Romanians and Moldovans openly hated; and in 2024, when the Serbian Orthodox Church invited a delegation from New York to try and bring ROCOR back from the brink, it also failed. No Church can be founded on hatred.

Conclusion: The Future

As one Russian Orthodox Metropolitan said to me of one ROCOR hierarch in 2012: ‘His Russian is superb, better than that of Russians, his liturgical knowledge second to none, but where is his love’? Thanks to sectarianism, ROCOR is rapidly losing its jurisdiction in Western Europe, just as it lost that in Vlasovite ROCOR South America. Now that Moscow is at last starting to send out competent, non-corrupt and non-homosexual bishops to Western Europe, ROCOR is increasingly looking like a small, right-wing American sect, with little influence outside its sectarian converts and their ghettoes.

Today, with the tragic conflict in the Ukraine ongoing, Moscow is isolated by Russian nationalism, but the emigres are isolated by convert exclusivism. The pro-Zelensky attitude of ROCOR since 2022, even demanding that Russian troops stop liberating the Donbass from Kiev-led genocide (!), is not in fact pro-Ukrainian, but pro-CIA. Unsurprisingly, ROCOR is now seen as treasonous by Moscow, but with its Russian-ness it is also seen as totally unacceptable by the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Metr Onufry, just as it was by post-1945 Ukrainian (and Belarussian) emigres.

As a result, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has over the last two years opened up a hundred parishes in Western Europe, which have nothing to do with ROCOR. As for Moldovans, they have been leaving the Russian Church for the Romanian Church, offended by Russian racism, just like the Ukrainians and so nearly all other Non-Russians. It is clear that other Local Churches will have to take on the mantle of establishing a multinational Local Church of Western Europe. Tragically, the dream of the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow of forming a Local Church in Western Europe is for now dead. In the future only a radical change of policy and repentance could bring the constituent parts of the Russian Church in the Diaspora, now in schism, back to contributing to that great project, which others have now been put in charge of.

Now It Can Be Told: Reminiscences I: The KGB, MI5, MI6, the CIA and the Russian Church

General

There is a common myth that in Soviet times the episcopate of the Russian Orthodox Church was staffed by KGB agents. It is completely untrue and indeed this disinformation myth was put about, ‘spread abroad’, by the CIA and its subsidiaries in Western Europe, like MI5, MI6, the BND and the DGSE. The truth is that the KGB invented and used code names (‘klichki’) for all sorts of personalities it had to deal with, such as President Reagan, Mrs Thatcher and, at the other end of the scale, senior Russian Orthodox bishops. Only if President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher were KGB agents, does it mean that the referenced Russian Orthodox bishops were also KGB agents!

The only case I know of a Moscow priest even being even contacted by the KGB was Fr Georg (Wagner), though that was in Berlin in about 1961 – in the hottest spot of the hottest moment of the very uncold Cold War. (And for the record, Fr Georg refused and left the Moscow Patriarchate – to his credit. Moreover, his action was approved of by the senior Moscow bishop of the time, Metr Nikolai (Yarushevich), who rightly said that ‘Fr Georg had been given no alternative but to leave’.)

In reality, the Russian Church has suffered far, far more from the CIA and from its above subsidiaries and its assets, who not only had code-names, but were actual agents. A large number of Russian emigres from the ROCOR church in London (Golitsyn) and many from the Rue Daru church in Paris (Constantin Melnik) worked for their respective Western spy services, let alone those from ROCOR churches in Washington and Ottawa). The bishops included the late Bishop Gregory (Grabbe) and a number of other well-known ROCOR bishops and senior clergy and many laymen, some still alive, some not.

Personal

Neither the KGB, nor its successor, the FSB, ever approached me. They are not so stupid. I know enough about this from taking the confessions of repentant former KGB agents, in Lisbon and Moscow. The KGB wanted only those convinced of Communism, for which, if you were a Non-Russian, you had either to be naïve or else stupid to believe in. As for the successor to the KGB, the FSB, it recruits Russian nationalists, which Non-Russians simply cannot be of they are in the slightest normal and loyal patriots of their native land.

My contact with MI5 came only once, in 1977. Word got round at University that MI5 were about to search the rooms of all those about to graduate from the Russian Faculty, as they did every year. Nothing special. I was intrigued, so decided to test them in two ways. Firstly, on leaving my room in the morning, I positioned a hair over the lock of the door. Secondly, I left a book on the Soviet Union positioned at a precise angle to the edge of the desk. When I came back to my room one afternoon, the hair had gone and the book had been moved, not by much, but by enough for me to realise they had been in. From that moment on I was convinced that they were indeed stupid, since a mere student could outwit them. Not that I was interested in them anyway.

As for MI6, it tried to recruit me quite openly twice, once in 2016, when I was on my way to Antwerp as the Russian Orthodox Missionary Representative for Western Europe, appointed by Metr Hilarion (Kapral). The second time was as recently as October 2021. That too was an offer from a ‘customs officer’ (that is what they also dress up as), when I was returning from the Ukraine. I thought that MI6 was stupid, but at least honest. I think it is the same old story. British secret agents are very badly-paid and, as they say, if you pay peanuts, you only get monkeys to work for you.  And they are now desperately short of Russian speakers. In any case MI5 and MI6 both farm out the dirty work to the SIS. They do not kill themselves.

The CIA

The CIA is very different. It has an enormous budget and it pays very well. However, the CIA can only recruit thugs to work for it, because it is so ruthless. After flattery and then bribery, next they always turn to intimidation. It really is a bunch of gangsters, as it does its own killing, as I know from some who have been threatened by it.

The latest attempt was in 2021 when a CIA agent, sent here from the US, tried to recruit me. However, we defeated the double-crosser by moving sideways. Our whole Deanery went to the Romanians. This was 8 days before Russia took on Kiev, so when Colchester police offered to station a couple of policemen outside the Church in March 2022 in case of possible bomb attacks (and after I also received all sorts of hate-mail), I turned them down and deflated the hate-mailers, by telling them the truth and explaining that we are not part of the Russian Church, but of the Romanian (which is the same, except that it has no CIA plants among its clergy). So the truth was a win-win for all of us. The truth does indeed set you free.

To help me, I had had a premonitory dream about my contact with the CIA, five years earlier. In 2016 I had a dream, or rather nightmare, about a CIA agent dressed as a churchman. In my dream he rang my doorbell. I opened it, dressed in my cassock and cross. As I opened the door, I saw a churchman, dressed in a black cassock, on my doorstep holding a revolver. Before I could react in astonishment, he had fired at me and the bullet had hit my cross and rebounded on him, killing him instantly. That is exactly what, metaphorically, later happened. As they say, forewarned is forearmed. The dream turned out to be both a warning and a consolation.