Category Archives: Abuse

The Soviet Union Lives On – But Must Die

The USSR had a centrally planned economy. Plans were considered to be ‘rational’, ‘scientific’ and ‘modern’, vital since anything ‘irrational’ was anti-Communist. As a result, the USSR was a top-heavy bureaucratic nightmare, where you queued for hours to get, if you were lucky, essentials for your ‘paradise’. The black market thrived. As a result what in 1914 was about to become the richest and most powerful country in the world by far, went bankrupt because it could not at all supply what the people wanted – staples such as bread and meat. Planning never takes account of what people want, only what bureaucrats and ideologues want. The USA did no better. It planned a completely unnecessary ‘Cold War’. It spent in today’s money trillions of dollars on rockets and arms which it then scrapped. It planned elaborate and costly genocidal wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq with incredible technology – all of these wars it humiliatingly lost against poorly-armed locals. This was because it relied on central planning, not on reality.

Today, all over the apparently prosperous Western world people are queuing outside shops and some shelves are even empty, just as I saw in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. People are told to stay at home, forbidden to travel, are threatened and bullied by fear-spreading State-run media and fined for going out to enjoy themselves or see family and friends. Others are denounced by mean-minded neighbours for attempting to live normal lives and are visited by the bullying police. Soldiers are seen patrolling the streets, sent there by grim-faced politicians. Airports are closed. There is a greatly increased use of food banks by the impoverished, even raids on pharmacies. For some the impression is that we are living under a Soviet dictatorship – which has also closed churches. The USSR lives on. But as May comes, let us remind ourselves of some forgotten facts.

Every year there is seasonal flu. The elderly and the vulnerable stay at home and avoid going out. Although this is now called ‘self-isolation’, there is nothing new in it. Coronavirus, which peaked in the UK over three weeks ago, has so far led to the premature deaths from various diseases of fewer than half as many deaths as were caused by swine flu. In the UK, the monthly average of some 45,000 deaths has been boosted by some 25%. 85% of these deaths occur to those over the age of 70, many of whom were already very ill and had a very low life expectancy due to poor health, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or addictions like alcoholism and smoking. The numbers of deaths decreases very rapidly with age – indeed lethality falls rapidly under the age of 70. Of 30,000 deaths, only 350 have occurred among those aged under 40. The UK has the highest statistical total in Europe, but only because other countries do not list all those whose deaths have been speeded because of  the virus, for example, only in some countries they list only those who die in hospitals. In the UK some 1% of the 400,000 elderly who live in care homes have died from the virus. And this although no precautions were taken there until two weeks ago and sick care workers, often from among the poorest in society, work for the minimum wage, unlike in the NHS, because, if they stay at home, they receive virtually no pay. Clapping does not pay for food.

Some ask if the remedy of lockdown is not worse than the illness: mass bankruptcy, mass unemployment and mass depression have been brought on by ideological politicians, who are in love with power, and by bullying and irresponsible media, the State-run mouthpieces. The media spread fear and anxiety with their fake news and intimidating propaganda, and create the temptations of crime in order to survive. They like to say that our lives have been ruined forever, that nothing will ever be the same again, that this emergency situation is permanent. These statements are of course just more lies, which we have come to expect from the media, but they are believed in by the naïve, mainly the elderly and the vulnerable. And they are depressed by them because they believe them. We await the resolution to this microbe crisis, the deSovietisation of our lives and the return to freedom, with prayer.

 

Q and A May 2019

The Corruption of the Constantinople Episcopate

Q: What do you make of the appalling allegations against certain members of the episcopate of Constantinople, which are now making their rounds on the internet? Is this fake news? Or, if is true, is it time for us to have a married episcopate?

A: When I first saw the allegations, clearly not fake news, I wondered what the fuss was all about: these stories have been well-known for decades, though, true, they have never been issued on the internet. The corruption of Orthodox bishops in the Diaspora is well-known. There was the Russian bishop in Paris, sent to Siberia, when Moscow actually got to realize it was all true, the Serbian bishop who had to ‘retire’, the episcopate of a certain group in the USA known as ‘the gay mafia’, who therefore fell under the thumb of a certain priest who had the dirt on them, the Greek and Russian bishops in Europe with their boyfriends or multiple mistresses, the one they called ‘Johnny Walker’ (we know how he died) and the chain-smoking bishops from the Middle East and the alcoholic Slavs. All this has been well-known for decades and generations. However, the latest stories with Rolex watches worth 400,000 euros and all the sordid details worthy only of British gutter tabloids, do bring it down to a different level (or depth).

Of course, the Protestant-minded immediately call for married bishops. I am completely opposed to this. First of all, it would be completely unfair on their wives. It is difficult enough for the wife of a priest to have her husband. The wife of a bishop would never see him. Then, secondly, it would introduce nasty careerism among married clergy. It is bad enough among certain hieromonks and archimandrites, without polluting the married clergy.

There is only one solution: to stop electing bishops from among candidates who are candidates simply because they are not married. Otherwise you will simply end up, at worst, with pedophiles and homosexuals who only have contempt for married priests, women and children (as among the Catholics) or, at best (?), with narcissistic professional bachelors who have no love for anyone except themselves and their favourites and operate a mafia against real pastors. We have seen enough of both sorts and suffered enough from them during 40 years. They are the only enemies of the Church and always have been. They wreck dioceses and ruin lives. There is only one solution: monastic renewal. If you are not living a monastic life in a monastery and you have no pastoral experience and love for the people, you cannot become a bishop.

As for the sort of bishops described in Constantinople, they must all be defrocked asap. We have had enough of them. All they do is bring the Church into disrepute and upset and persecute the sincere parish priests and the pious faithful. And, above all, they can be corrupted by the US State Department which has all the dirt on them all and so can blackmail them – just like the KGB did in the days of the Soviet Union, just like the CIA does in the Ukraine today.

Q: What do you think of the appointment of Metr Elpidiphoros as the new Greek Archbishop of America?

A: His name means ‘bearer of hope’. However, he is the bearer of despair. Expect schisms in the Greek Church in the USA, Australia and Great Britain. Indeed, they have already begun, with priests and parishes leaving them for canonical Orthodoxy. It is the beginning of the end for the rule of Constantinople. Sad though it is, it is inevitable and, ultimately, this will be a positive event. God is not mocked. We have to live for the future, not for the corrupt past. All will be providential. And Providence is God’s Love in history.

Russian Orthodox Church Matters

Q: I recently visited Russia and saw and heard some strange things from some people. For example, someone told me he knew an Orthodox man who was sure that Stalin will one day be canonized. An Orthodox woman I met said that she thought the Russian Church should become like the Catholic Church. Are such views widespread?

A: Today’s Russian Church is 90% a Church of converts, so inevitably you do occasionally come across extremes and marginals, or to put it very frankly, ‘weirdos’, nationalists, ecumenists and what have you. On top of this, you can also encounter among some clergy the hangover from the Soviet period – centralization and bureaucracy (though this was to some extent also present before the Revolution). I should not worry about it. This will all pass, it is all a phase of growing up. And it all only affects some; most are solid. Remember to look at the wood, not at the trees.

Q: The Russian Orthodox Church has for several months now an Exarchate in Paris. You had written a lot about this before it happened. Why does the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (including yourself) not participate in it?

A: The Russian Exarchate is for the moment very much on paper only. It is centralized, bureaucratic, missing bishops on the ground in Italy and Scandinavia, which like Germany is not included in it. The Exarchate is so far not real, not local, not skilled, not pastoral. And I know this from concrete contacts at the very highest AND the very lowest level. It is not at all ready to operate like the best of the Church Outside Russia (where it exists) and does not even want us to take part in it! Our offers of help have been rebuffed, several times, as they prefer to take orders from Moscow, where they understand nothing of the situation on the ground. It is not ready – by far!

When the Russian Exarchate is ready to be pastoral and to become a real Exarchate of (and not merely in) Western Europe, then we shall see changes. For now it clearly lacks the necessary pastoral skills and local knowledge, being a disincarnate  export from Moscow. It will need several years to grow up. The task, duty and mission of the local Church Outside Russia in Western Europe are precisely to prepare the terrain for this moment, filling the largely empty infrastructure created by Moscow, going before, like St John the Baptist.

Speaking as the only priest in the Russian Church who has ever been awarded a jewelled cross by Patriarch Kyrill (seven years ago) and a second such cross by Metropolitan Hilarion of New York (three years later), I believe that the Exarchate is not viable without ROCOR.

Pastoral Psychology

Q: What is the difference between low self-esteem and humility?

A: Low self-esteem comes from being humiliated, insulted and bullied. The victim of humiliation and bullying stops believing in themselves and doubts everyone and everything and can hate themselves and even self-mutilate. However, this is in contradiction with the last two words of the commandments, to love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. We must love ourselves. Not because we are anything other than sinners, but because God loves us. Anyone who believes or has experienced that fact that God loves them, will not fall victim to low self-esteem, but will become humble. Low self-esteem is the result of believing in the opinions and actions of nasty narcissists and sadistic bullies, whatever rank they may hold, more than in God.

Q: Is it true that there are only two choices in the Church, marriage or monasticism?

A: Only as an ideal. I would say, and I think I have said this before, that in reality there are two and a quarter choices. The quarter choice is for all those who for some reason do not fit in to either of the main choices at present. In other words, we must always be prepared for exceptions and exceptional circumstances. For example, there are, though they are very rare, celibate priests, neither married, nor monastic.

 

 

Church of England Bishop Condemns Evangelical Theology

Some have wondered in recent years what lay behind the meddling Western invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the arrogance that ‘we know best’, which resulted in the massacres and exile of millions of people both there and throughout the Middle East. The ‘theology of violence’ in fact lies in the perversions of Christianity to be found in the Protestant and post-Protestant ethos of the US and the UK. After all the Methodist President Bush did claim that ‘God had told him’ to invade Iraq’.

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-god-told-me-to-invade-iraq-6262644.html).

.The Bishop has said:

“But of course the theology that these people bring to the table very often has an element of violence and sort of nastiness in it, a kind of element of punitive behaviour. God is seen as this punitive figure who is somehow out to ‘get’ people and I suppose it does blind people to what’s going on in front of them sometimes, when there is that kind of violent basic theology.”

For the full story, see:

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/bishop.blames.violent.and.punitive.theology.for.alleged.abuse.at.christian.summer.camps/104423.htm