Category Archives: Catholicism

Senator J D Vance: A Question to the Russian Orthodox Church

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), between 1974 and 1977 I studied in Oxford under the ever-memorable Metr Kallistos (Ware), then taught in Greece and went on to study at the St Sergius Institute of Theology in Paris. In January 1981 I was tonsured reader by the Most Reverend Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh (ROC) at the Dormition Cathedral in London. In December 1991, after a decade in which I discovered bishops with mistresses and bishop-freemasons, I was ordained priest by a bishop of integrity. This was the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), the successor of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe. This ordination followed seven years of service as a deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church. I served faithfully and without recompense as a priest for thirty years, in France, in Portugal, setting up the first ever Russian parish there, and in England.

In May 2012 I was awarded my first jewelled cross in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow by His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill. This was for my efforts in helping to bring the very small, New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) back into communion with the ROC Mother Church and fighting against the American sectarianism which had infected it in the USA. I believe that this was very much in accord with what would have been the wishes of St John and Archbishop Antony. In July 2018 I had the privilege of being in Ekaterinburg on the night of the 100th anniversary of the martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas II, his August Family and faithful servants, together with the Russian Patriarch and a host of other clergy. Then at midnight I walked the 13 miles together with 120,000 other Russian Orthodox faithful to Ganina Yama, the place where the atheists had first tried to bury the Imperial Martyrs and their servants.

On 10 April 2021, a new and highly controversial ROCOR bishop in London, a young American neophyte who had not long been a clergyman of ROCOR, was not educated in a seminary and was pastorally very inexperienced, publicly declared his intention to break communion with other Orthodox Churches. This included with the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) – the ROC is over 130 times larger than ROCOR. His unilateral decision came because he no longer accepted the age-old practice of the ROC of not receiving Catholic priests and people into the Church by rebaptism, but by confession and communion. He also told his laypeople that they could no longer take communion in that part of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), where we have had close family members and friends since the 1970s, because they had followed the traditional ROC practice. Thus, ROCOR created a schism with the Mother-Church.

For us this was the imposition of Lutheran-style sectarianism and an attack on canonicity, experience and practice. Excommunication, dividing faithful Russian Orthodox into two separate groups, was unacceptable to us who had strived so long for unity. We are Orthodox Christians, not Donatist schismatics. As we had no desire to belong to a right-wing American sect which is what ROCOR had become, we carefully discussed what our canonical path would be and made discreet enquiries. Finally, after disappointment with the response of the ROC, on 16 February 2022, after four hours of negotiations with the Romanian Orthodox Church involving the chief canonical adviser of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel, our deanery of twelve clergy, six parishes and church buildings, some 5,000 people, 99.5% of those who had sought canonical refuge, were received into the local Romanian Metropolia, which is three times larger than the whole of ROCOR.

Our theological conscience was unable to agree to being part of a schism. Thus, we entered with joy into the four-million strong Synod of eight bishops under Metropolitan Joseph (Pop) of Western and Southern Europe of the Patriarchate of Romania. It seems then that the ROC wishes to abandon its centuries-old practice of receiving Non-Orthodox by chrismation, or confession and communion, that is, by economy. This was the case of the future martyrs, Tsarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Elizabeth, received by the future St John of Kronstadt by chrismation. More recently, in the 1970s both Metr Antony of Sourozh (ROC) and the now St Sophrony the Athonite (Patriarchate of Constantinople), both of whom I knew well, publicly rejected the reception of Non-Orthodox into the Orthodox Church by rebaptism. It seems to us that the denial of this issue of principle preceded the catastrophe of the ROC that befell it eight days later.

For within eight days of our transfer to the Romanian Orthodox Church, the ROC fell into the pastoral disaster of multiple divisions in countries outside the Russian Federation, as the conflict in the Ukraine began. At a time when the probably future President of the USA has chosen a conscious Catholic, Senator J D Vance, a man close to the Orthodox Faith, as his running mate, therefore the probable future Vice-President and possibly the succeeding President of the USA in 2028, this is serious. Senator Vance is a friend of the ROC and has openly stated that the Ukraine must make peace with Russia, returning Russian territory to the Russian Federation. This Catholic Senator has denounced the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onufry by the Kiev regime and also appears to support the dissolution of NATO. Does the Russian Orthodox Church want Senator Vance to believe that it considers that Catholics are unbaptised?

 

 

How Papal Infallibility Became Protestant Infallibility

Papal infallibility was only dogmatised in 1870. However, it had existed for over 800 years before that. Probably in 1075 Pope Hildebrand, Gregory VII, dictated his beliefs about the Papacy, in which he claimed for example that:

The Roman Church was founded solely by God.

Only the Pope can with right be called ‘Universal’.

All princes shall kiss the feet of the Pope alone.

His name alone shall be spoken in the churches.

His title is unique in the world.

It may be permitted to him to depose emperors.

No Council shall be called a Universal Council without his order.

He himself may be judged by no one.

The Roman Church has never erred. Nor will it err, to all eternity – Scripture being witness.

He may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a Council.

He who is not at peace with the Roman Church shall not be considered ‘Catholic’.

 

These claims all goes further back, not just to the ‘Reform’ of the 1050s, but, arguably, to the revival of the (pagan) Roman Empire in 800 and that in turn goes back to the absolute power of the pagan Emperor in that Roman Empire. After the pagan emperors in Rome had fallen, the Papacy inherited their infallible authority.

But what happened to all this at the Protestant Reformation?

The Protestants claimed that only the Scriptures are infallible. This, naturally, led to infinite arguments about interpretations, just as in Scholastic Europe. ‘My interpretation is right, yours is wrong’. And so begin new infallibilities. One Protestant disagrees with another and their absolutism leads to a multitude of new ‘churches’ and so to new hatreds in a chain of ‘logic’:

You don’t agree with me. Therefore, I hate you. Therefore, I am going to set up my own Church, where you cannot go because I will not allow you to come in. My moralising is correct because I am superior to you. I will not concelebrate with you because you do not agree with me. Such people with their petty hatreds soon find themselves outside the Church. They claim: ‘He who is against me is an enemy of the Church’. This is because they claim that ‘I am the Church’. It is certainly not Christian, rather a curious mixture of Papism and Stalinism.

 

The Western God is Dead and Buried, but the True And Living God is Returning

Our God is a consuming fire

Heb 12, 29

I worship and adore the true and living God who created all things.

St Alban of Verulamium

Introduction: The Western God’s Funeral is Over

The thousand year-long funeral of the Western god is over. This much is clear to everyone. True, very small groups of the elderly still huddle in surviving churches, true, other buildings are packed with swaying crowds of happy-clappers – only in reality they are not attending churches, but feel-good American entertainment shows. Thus, former church-buildings have become fitness clubs, restaurants and shopping centres for the cult of the body and ‘wellness’. People are told to ‘spoil and pamper themselves’, because ‘you’re worth it’, with personal trainers, life coaches, leisure centres, spas, hot tubs, jacuzzis, beauty salons, massage parlours, cosmetic surgery, gourmet restaurants managed by ‘celebrity chefs’ and gastropubs with ‘fine wine’. Physical impurity of all sorts must be purged – go vegan and gluten-free; as for spiritual impurity, it has never been heard of. However, all manner of utterly irrational superstitions are available for mental wellness; mindfulness, gurus, astrology, magic crystals, feng-shui, tree-hugging – anything goes, providing it is fashionable. So all Westerners have become ‘fashion victims’. But how did the Western (and Westernized) world reach this point of killing its own god?

Some History

After the Western world had denied and then lost the knowledge of the real God a thousand years ago, it substituted its own rationalist and scholastic god for Him. This substitute god, represented by a Western man called ‘the Vicar of Christ’, from whom, they claimed, flowed all authority, was idolized for hundreds of years. This idolatry came because he justified all manner of Western aggression, from massacres in Western Europe (southern Italy, England, Iberia, Wales, southern France, Ireland) to ‘Crusades’, from Inquisitions to the ruthless genocides of Western ‘explorers’ (=murderous pirates and thieves) like Columbus, Da Gama and Cortez. After a few centuries the self-invented Western god’s authority was extended to others, ‘democratized’, and this justified the plundering and looting of the whole planet outside Western Europe with colonial empires, violent Revolutions in England, France and Russia (including the ‘Industrial Revolution’), World Wars, the Holocaust of the Slavs (30 million dead), the Atomic bomb and the invasion of and genocide in Iraq (which the Western god ‘told’ George Bush to do).

The Nature of Western Civilization

Thus, it can be said that the essence of Western Civilization is self-worship, the worship of Western man, which it calls humanism. After the Reformation this worship was, as we have said, gradually extended down the centuries in the name of ‘equality’, from one Western man to all rich Western men, then later from rich Western men to poor Western men, from Western men to Western women and, much more recently, from Western men to anyone of any colour, race, religion and ‘sexual orientation’, as long as they accept the Secularism inherent in Western ‘Civilization’. Therefore, today, the Western world no longer needs a god to justify itself; it is its own god. This was already recognized quite clearly by nineteenth-century intellectuals like Darwin and then Nietzsche, who openly proclaimed that the Western god ‘is dead’. Today this is repeated by spiritually empty intellectuals like Dawkins, who constantly proclaims that God is a myth. And he is right: the Western god, first proclaimed 1,000 years ago, is indeed a myth, but that god is in no way related to the True and Living God, as proclaimed by the Western Orthodox St Alban, who was martyred by Western pagans for proclaiming this well over 1700 years ago.

Dawkins’ arrogant and preening proclamation is true, but it is also suicidal. This is because, since the Western god, angry, vengeful, racially prejudiced, favouritist, puritanical, persecuting, spiteful, punishing, militaristic and just plain evil as he enjoys seeing the victims of death, is dead, this means that his own Western Civilization is dead, fit only for the museum. For it was this nasty-minded god who lay at the root of post-Christian Western Civilization after 1054. For with his so-called ‘atheism’, Dawkins condemns himself and everything he stands for. His ‘Western values’ are merely the ultimate and most logical development of Western Civilization’s own, self-invented god. This atheism, belief in self, has not brought progress, but simply a return to the old paganism, as among the globalist Romans, who believed in any gods, except in the True and Living God. The new gods of today are simply the old pagan gods revived. Western values mean believing in Anything. Christian values proclaim faith in Something, the Living God. However, only a few Western people have been able to step outside the ‘delusion’ (Dawkin’s word) of the self-justifying bubble of their Western ‘Civilization’ to understand this and accept Christ.

Why? Because repentance is far too hard for them; self-justification is far more attractive. Thus, only a few Western people (though it is quite obvious to those outside ethnocentric Western Civilization) have so far realized that the Western world has not buried the real God, just its own thousand year-old Western false god, its idol. Western people, who, amazingly, call themselves ‘atheists’ (which only means that they no longer believe in the Western myth of god) need to be warned: The real God is not dead and buried, but alive and acting and He is coming back. His return is coming from the Holy Spirit, Who ‘blows where He wishes’ and Who has reconnected the inspired in the West with Orthodox Civilization. This Civilization is quite different from Secularist Western Civilization because this is Christian, whereas Western Civilization has not been really Christian for a thousand years. To find a Western Civilization that was Christian, you have to go back a thousand years, in other words, go back to a time when there was no such thing as ‘Western Civilization’, when Western Europe was simply a small, provincial and little developed part of Orthodox Christendom, whose centre was and is in the East, close to Christ.

The Attempt to Destroy Orthodox Civilization

The essence of Orthodox Civilization is the True and Living God and its direction is heaven, and not some Western self-idolatry, whose direction is hell. For the last hundred years in particular (though it had been patently obvious since 1054 or 1204), we have seen how Western Civilization has tried to destroy Orthodox Civilization, betraying and usurping the most Christian Emperor when he was on the brink of victory in the Western-initiated Great War in 1917 and soon afterwards bribing the Patriarchate of Constantinople into enslavement. It even forced that enfeebled Patriarchate, and any others who were so weak that they would follow it, to abandon the Christian calendar! Thus, the schismatic events in the Ukraine of the last few weeks, actively and openly supported by the US and British ambassadors in Kiev and Athens, are only the latest results of the thousand-year attempt of Western Civilization to divide and rule, and eventually, as they hope, destroy and conquer, Christian Civilization. The centre of this Christian Civilization has for centuries, and at no time more than now, been the Russian Orthodox Church. It is why we belong to Her, defending Her against all and confessing Her faith without hesitation.

Conclusion: The Future

Today, the Russian Orthodox Church is as ever supported by all other faithful Orthodox, especially those in the Patriarchate of Antioch and the Serbian, Georgian, Bulgarian, Polish, Czechoslovak Orthodox Churches, by monastics everywhere and many others. The battle today is between two diametrically opposed Civilizations. On the one hand, there is Western Civilization, which is in fact not a Civilization at all because, unlike all other Civilizations in world history, it is not based on faith in God and the spiritual inspiration behind all culture. Its aim has always been the conquest of the planet (‘globalism’), justified by its imagined superiority, which is leading directly to the destruction of the planet – hell on earth. On the other hand, there is Christian Civilization, whose centre is without doubt the martyred Russian Orthodox Church, supported by all other faithful Orthodox. Our aim is heaven on earth. It is clear that although those on the fringes of the Orthodox Church may be falling away, as they have been for the last four generations, that the chaff is being sifted from the wheat (and so much the better), the Church will be victorious in the end. This is because the Church is not ours, but Christ’s and He is invincible.

 

Catalonia: The Coming End of the EU Empire

By 1940, the whole of Roman Catholic Europe, from Slovakia to Italy, including France and ‘neutral’ countries like fiercely Papist Ireland, Spain and Portugal, were living under Fascist dictatorships. This was only natural. Under the centralizing lapsed Roman Catholic Hitler (like the centralizing lapsed Roman Catholic Napoleon, who in effect was also a Fascist), a centralized Fascist European Superstate had come into being. He was greeted as a hero in Fascist Croatia and the Fascist western tip of the Ukraine. This was only natural, for Roman Catholic Europe was only following in the footsteps of the centralized Pagan Roman Empire (also in effect a ‘Fascist’ Superstate) and of the centralized Carolingian Empire (also in effect a ‘Fascist’ Superstate).

Today we see the same in Catalonia. The Spanish State, firmly backed from central headquarters in Brussels, is suppressing the Catalan movement for freedom. This is quite different from the independence movement in Scotland, which Brussels actively supports, since Scotland is anti-Brexit and therefore worth disrupting Britain for. However, it is quite similar to the Ukraine, where the bloody war against a free Ukraine by the centralizing EU-supported Fascist junta in Kiev, rages on. It is also quite similar to the recent Kurdish referendum, where the near hundred-year battle for Kurdistan rages on against centralizing Baghdad. Self-determination turns out to be highly selective. It means self-determination only for those whom the Western elite supports.

As the centralized Spanish government and brutal police terrorize the Catalans, we see that not much has changed in Europe. The fight for freedom goes on. In Europe artificial conglomerates have everywhere fallen, from ex-Yugoslavia to Czechoslovakia. In the Ukraine, a country cobbled together out of Russia, Poland, Romania and Hungary by Communist dictators, the same is happening, as freedom is being won despite US and EU support for the Fascist junta in Kiev. Now, in all the artificial Western European conglomerates, the UK, Italy, Germany, Belgium, France and Spain, the same is happening. Freedom is in the air despite Fascism. All empires built on injustice end. Take note, Brussels and Madrid tyrants.

The Orthodox: The Ultimate Recusants

In British history recusants were Roman Catholics who in Elizabethan England and afterwards remained loyal to ‘the Old Faith’, refusing to attend the ‘modernist’ Anglican Church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recusancy). For them the head of the Church could never be the King or Queen of England, but only the Pope of Rome, whatever illusory external trappings of Catholicism the Church of England may have retained.

From an Orthodox viewpoint we may have some sympathy for recusants in their battle against anti-sacral, boring, reductionist Protestantism, but the fact is that they remained loyal not to Orthodoxy, but to an already corrupted form of Orthodoxy, to medieval Catholicism. Although faithfulness is a virtue, we always have to ask ‘faithfulness to what? This is also true of ‘contemporary Catholic recusants’.

By these I mean those traditionalist Catholics who reject the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s and its protestantizing tenets. We may have some sympathy for them, but to what do they remain faithful? To the anti-Orthodox tenets of pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism? And all too often, let it be said, to a very right-wing form of politics that can have sinister echoes in 20th century Western European history.

The fact is that Orthodox in the West are the ultimate recusants. We are faithful to the genuine ‘Old Faith’, that which predates eleventh-century invented Roman Catholicism, we are faithful to the Church of God. We are faithful to God and not to man and his essentially filioquist and so secularist desire to replace the Divine, paradisiac and sinless Holy Spirit with the human, fallen and sinful unholy spirit.

Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence (October 2015)

Q: What is happening in the Serbian Orthodox Church at present?

A: As far as I can see, the Western neocon elite, which has been trying to manipulate the Serbian government ever since it bombed Serbia, is continuing the same old Communist policy of divide and rule. Just as the Communists separated Macedonia and set up an ‘Orthodox’ nationalist sect there in the 1960s, so Washington and its allies have since separated Montenegro and Kosovo from Serbia and are trying to set up nationalist sects there through their local puppets. Opposition is coming from the people. In Montenegro the people do not want to become another NATO base and in Macedonia they do not want to become another Muslim republic like Kosovo. This political opposition creates opposition to the nationalist and schismatic sects, as people realize that is what they are.

This is the very policy that the US is trying to implement in the Ukraine also. There, three different small, foreign, politically-concocted sects, one of which has a very aggressive leader, Denisenko, who has visited the State Department in Washington as an honoured guest, are trying to undermine the vast majority. They belong to the only Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which is led by Metropolitan Onuphry.

Q: Isn’t it strange that the Yugoslav Communists fifty years ago under the Croat Tito and today’s neocons follow the same policy?

A: Not at all. The Yugoslav Communists were put into place by the Western Powers during World War II, with Churchill switching sides to them from the Orthodox Serbs and supporting them. The Communists and the neocons share the same basic materialistic ideology. The only difference is that the Communists promoted the materialistic concept of amassing State wealth, the neocons of amassing personal wealth. State Capitalism or individualist Capitalism, Mammon is the same everywhere.

Q: What can be done?

A: I am an outsider, so it is difficult for me to say anything about the Serbian Church. That is an internal matter. However, it does seem vital to me that in general all of us, whatever Local Church we belong to, must keep to Orthodox canonical principles and resist US/EU, or any other, political interference and, at the same time, we must advance non-nationalist, confederal structures. This is what the Russian Church did over 20 years ago, granting extensive autonomy to its local parts, for example to the Ukrainian Church, the Moldovan Church, the Latvian Church and the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). If this is not done, there will be new schisms or else old schisms will continue.

Q: On the subject of schisms, who were the small groups of dissidents who went into schism from the two parts of the Russian Church at their reconciliation in 2007?

A: As I have said before, there were two groups. The first left English and French communities officially dependent on the Church inside Russia. Their leaders (and their naïve followers who knew no better) were renovationists, who had been poisoning Church life in the Diaspora for decades, in obedience to their by then mainly dead Paris-School ideologues. They left for the US-controlled Patriarchate of Constantinople, where freemasons, semi-Uniats and anti-Russian political or nationalist dissidents seem to be made welcome. The second group left ROCOR and were a strange mixture of operatives of the CIA and other Western spy services, right-wingers of the Peronista type in South America and ideologically-minded old calendarist converts who did not love the Russian Church and persecuted those of us who do.

Q: Looking back on your own life in the Church, do you regret the things that happened to you in the 70s and 80s?

A: If the things that happened to me had not happened, I would not know now what I have learned from bitter experience, however painful. So, in a sense how can I regret anything? Everything was necessary to learn a little wisdom and see through the myths of the ‘Orthodox’ Establishment. However, if we are to daydream (!) and I had known then what I know now, I would in 1971 have joined the London ROCOR parish. Then, having finished studies at University in London in 1977, I would have asked to go to Jordanville in 1977.

I greatly regret not only that in those pre-internet days I was given no facts, no guidance, but instead was given active misinformation and misdirection. Such was the spiritual corruption and prejudice against the Russian Church at that time. The scribes and pharisees of the Establishment did not want a Church outside its control, a free, uncompromised and spiritually independent Russian Orthodox Church, free of both left-wing renovationism and right-wing politicking. They wanted an impure, spiritually degutted and compromised Establishment organization. This is why they did their best to undermine us from both outside and, through their agents of both left and right, from inside.

Q: How do you see the future for the Russian Church in the East of England?

A: In recent years we have encouraged the establishment of both what became the little rural mission with Fr Anthony in Mettingham in Suffolk and of St Panteleimon’s skete outside Clacton in Essex. This latter is under Fr Sergei, whose simplicity is an example to us all. Now, with God’s help and that of many kind and generous benefactors, we are buying property for a church in the city of Norwich and hope to have a man ordained for the new parish in God’s good time. Perhaps this is all we can do; certainly we need more clergy in order to expand. One or two candidates now seem to be appearing at last, but we need more.

We can dream of parishes in the county centres elsewhere in the east: a church building for Suffolk in the county centre of Bury St Edmunds, a church dedicated to Sts Peter and Paul in Peterborough for Cambridgeshire, a church of the Resurrection in Bedford for Bedfordshire, a church dedicated to St Alban in St Albans for Hertfordshire, a church dedicated to St Nicholas in east London, a church dedicated to Sts Constantine and Helen in York for Yorkshire and a church dedicated to All the Saints in Canterbury as the centre for Kent. However, realistically, if that is not God’s will, none of this will happen.

Q: Why is it important to have property in central and populated places?

A: Because if we do not, the communities will die out as property promotes continuity. This is a law. When you have your own property, then you also have spiritual freedom. I have seen dozens of parishes closing in England and France over the last forty years. Why? Because they had no property. It is just a fact of life. And communities must always be in centres, in cities and large towns, where the people are. You do not open a church where no-one lives. Church buildings follow the people, for they are the Church. It is not the other way round. That is common sense.

Q: Some people fear the coming Pan-Orthodox Council in 2016, calling it the ‘Eighth Oecumenical Council’ that was denounced in the prophecies. What would you say?

A: There is a certain hysteria and paranoia among some who seem to know very little of Church history with respect to this meeting, which is most certainly not the ‘Eighth Oecumenical Council’. It is pure fantasy to call it that. The Inter-Orthodox meeting next year is not a Council, but a meeting of a minority of Orthodox bishops, about 25% of the total. It will discuss administrative and canonical issues; all the dogmatic issues have already been decided for all time by the Seven Universal (‘Oecumenical’ is a misleading translation) Councils.

No meeting can become a Council if its resolutions are not received by the faithful, but sadly we the faithful have never been consulted about the discussions leading to this present meeting. The whole thing is happening behind closed doors in Calvinist Geneva (of all places), a situation unheard of in Orthodox practice, and I think this is why a certain hysteria and paranoia is growing up in some circles. They are inevitable, given the near-total lack of transparency.

The faithful are the guardians of the Faith, which is why a meeting can only become a Council if its decisions are received by the faithful. If a meeting is a Council, then it means that the Holy Spirit is present there, as He is among the faithful. At present it seems that some of the 1960s-style liberal Protestant agenda being promoted by the Phanariots and which frightened us in the 1970s, has already had to be dropped at the preparatory meetings. That is good. We do not need any more old-fashioned modernism. However, there is no agreement among representatives of the Local Churches who are preparing this meeting on several important issues. Moreover, with the latest condemnation by Constantinople of Metr Rostislav of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, this meeting may never even take place, for it cannot if one of the fourteen Local Churches is absent. So Greek nationalism may yet put an end to the meeting altogether.

More generally, the situation is so highly politicized that one wonders if anything meaningful can take place even if these bishops do meet. Let us recall that no fewer than three patriarchs of Local Churches are now US appointees (against the canons of the Church) and they repeat the policies of the State Department, that is, of Obama, who may be an atheist or may be a Muslim (no-one is sure), of the abortionist Biden and of the warmonger Kerry. Parts of the Church are simply not free to meet. Just as St Justin of Chelije called for a boycott of any such Inter-Orthodox meeting in the 1970s because so many Local Churches, notably the Russian, were then enslaved by the atheist SU, so today other Local Churches are enslaved by the atheist US.

Q: So can any meaningful meeting take place?

A: I think that in the longer term it may be irrelevant whether a meeting takes place or not. I see a different outcome. As the number of bishops in the Russian Church climbs inexorably to 400 and more, and the total will soon exceed 50% of the total number of Orthodox bishops, the meeting in Constantinople is becoming irrelevant. It may be that the Russian Orthodox Church, as the one and only obvious Centre of Orthodox Civilization, may soon hold an episcopal meeting together with the other free Local Churches, Antioch, Georgia, Poland, Czechoslovakia etc.

Such a meeting of over 500 bishops would be far more representative that that the Geneva-prepared one in the Phanar, and would be more likely to become a Council. It could take place at the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow, which is now nearly fully restored. This is what the Russian Church intended the Monastery for in the seventeenth century, as a centre of World Orthodoxy, but was prevented from becoming by the interference of the Russian State both then and since. Such a Council could speak freely, without reserve ‘for fear of the Jews’, that is, unintimidated by the Soviet-style censorship of political correctness.

Such a situation would reflect the reality of the Church today, not the situation of a thousand years ago when Greek ruled the roost. It is time to catch up with reality. The Greek-ruled Churches, mostly with flocks of scarcely a million and nationalist outlooks, are simply unable to cope with the reality of today’s global world. In order to respond, the Church today must also be global. Only the Russian Church is that.

Q: Some would call that ‘Russian Imperialism’.

A: Imperialism of any sort is to be condemned because it is nationalism. What we are talking about is an Imperial Church, the Church of the Christian Empire. Imperial means multinational unity in diversity, with new autocephalous Local Churches being born through missionary activity, whereas Imperialism means nationalism, central control and the ‘one size fits all’ mentality of the papist model, which, sadly, now exists in Istanbul.

Q: What is the situation after the latest round of episcopal consecrations announced by the Russian Church on 23 October?

A: The news that Fr Tikhon (Shevkunov) is now a bishop is most welcome, and the news that Italy now has for the first time ever a resident Russian Orthodox bishop in Bishop Antony (Sevryuk) is historic. It seems that we are at last seeing the appearance of a young generation of bishops, all at least trilingual (the local language, English and Russian), resident in the country, with an understanding of the local culture and politically free. We also noted that Fr Gennady Andreyev of the Sourozh Diocese in Manchester has been nominated bishop.

But there are other welcome events. Despite vigorous French political opposition which much delayed the project, the cupolas are now on the new Russian Cathedral in Paris and all should be finished within twelve months. We are moving ahead at last.

And as regards the veneration of the local Western saints, 60 years after St John, we are now moving forward to their inclusion in the Russian calendar inside Russia and perhaps even elsewhere. It is not just a case of better late than never, this represents real repentance on the part of those who resisted, reproached and actively persecuted us for venerating them for over 40 years. It is sad that several of the persecutors are now dead and therefore cannot repent, so we will have to pray for them, for Christ calls us to pray for our enemies, regardless of whether they are dead or alive. It is the same situation as with those who refused to venerate the New Martyrs and Confessors and put icons of them in their churches. They have all been proved wrong as well.

Q: Many people are very pessimistic about the situation in Russia and criticize it. What would you answer them?

A: There is a huge amount to criticize in post-Soviet Russia, the old classic of ABC – Alcoholism (nearly as high as in Finland), ‘Bortion (abortion) (near Asian levels) and Corruption (about the same as in Italy), to which could be added D for both Divorce (nearly as high as in the USA) and Drug-taking (not yet at the levels of Western Europe). However, the Russophobes and their propaganda deliberately omit the vital fact: the direction Russia is going in is right, whereas the direction that the West is going in is wrong. It is a huge historical irony that in proportion as Russia is deSovietized (a process well under way despite the propaganda, opposition and fear of the West), the West is being Sovietized.

Q: Who are these Russophobes who criticize?

A: There are two groups. Firstly, there are the neo-colonial Western ideologues who, still living in the imperialist arrogance of the nineteenth century, are convinced that ‘West is best’ and as for ‘the rest’, they can go to hell. These people are in reality mere primitive racists and extremists, like the Russophobe Senator John McCain who has now been photographed at a meeting with Islamic State, so anxious is he to be anti-Russian! (Here is the proof that the Westernists are at one with Islamists, whose movement they founded in Afghanistan in the 1980s and who have always supported the murderous regime in Saudi Arabia with its beheadings, crucifixions and massive bombings, with US warplanes and British bombs, of civilians in the Yemen. The extremes always meet, in the same way that the British imperialist and Jewish convert Disraeli backed the Ottoman massacres of Bulgarian Christians in the 19th century).

Secondly, there are the Russian Westernizers, many of them oligarchs, Jews or homosexuals. They are often to be seen at the US embassy in Moscow. They represent the same aristocratic, military and industrialist class (senior Romanovs among them), and also renovationist career clergy in the Church, that betrayed Russia in 1917 (when they were to be seen at the British Embassy in Saint Petersburg), overthrowing the Tsar because they wanted power (and even more money) for themselves.

They have their exact parallel in the Ukraine today, where the legitimate and democratically elected Yanukovich government (whatever its many shortcomings) was overthrown by the nationalist Galician Uniat minority, led by oligarchs like the Jewish Poroshenko and other billionaire industrialists who sold their souls to the CIA in exchange for its backing. Elected by 25% of the people, and that was only achieved with harsh Secret Police repression and US PR propaganda, these people are ruthless because they are completely without principle. That is why they hate the Ukrainian people and Orthodoxy. Unlike them, we Christians have principles.

In fact, it would be more exact to call such individuals Orthodoxophobes than Russophobes and Ukrainophobes, because that is the essence of their hatred, hatred for Christ, however deludedly they may claim that they are for Christ. As with the Bolsheviks in Alexander Blok’s revolutionary poem, ‘The Twelve’, they think that they are following Christ, but in reality they are following Antichrist. And he will lead them to the perdition of their souls in Gehenna. That is how serious their situation is.

Q: What is happening to the ‘British Orthodox Church’?

A: The so-called ‘British Orthodox Church’, in fact neither British, nor Orthodox, was a tiny group of vagantes and other eccentric Anglo-Catholics, whose leader used to call himself ‘the Patriarch of Glastonbury’(!). However, they were received and ordained by the Coptic Church some 20 years ago. In 1999 they had one bishop, 18 vicars (clergy) and 72 faithful! In early October this year they left the Miaphysite Church and, apparently, have now gone back to being vagantes. The problem was that the ex-Anglicans in question could not accept the inherent anti-Chalcedonianism which is now once more coming to the fore among the Copts in what I think is an outburst of nationalism. (Anti-Chalcedonianism goes hand in hand with local nationalism, which to a great extent caused it).

I am told that the group now has one bishop, 2 priests and about 100 faithful, mainly Establishment ex-Anglicans, mainly, I am told, elderly, though I am not sure if that is true. What the group will do now is unclear. Sadly, I doubt that they will wish to join the Orthodox Church because that would mean accepting catechism and being received as laypeople. I very much hope that I am wrong in this pessimistic view of their clericalism. There is one ex-Anglican group which they might join; it ordains ex-Anglican vicars almost immediately and virtually without training. Who knows? I think it will make little difference because it is such a tiny group, not even one normal parish.

Q: Given its critical situation, it has been suggested that the Rue Daru jurisdiction be directly governed by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and join the local Constantinople dioceses, like that of Metropolitan Emmanuel in Paris. What do you think of that?

A: I agree. I think that this is so logical that it is inevitable. Once all those who love the Russian Tradition have left Rue Daru, as they have been doing over the last thirty and more years since the repose of the saintly Archbishop George (Tarasov) and the fall into decadence after him, what will be left? Freemasons and naïve converts, new calendarist modernists and ecumenists. Obviously, they should all be together in Constantinople’s local diocesan structures and lodges. On the other hand, they should first have the honesty to hand back Russian Church property, which they are effectively occupying.

Q: What do you make of the recent Roman Catholic Synod in Rome?

A: Catholicism is now at a turning point. Will it keep the remnants of Catholicism (which date back in one form or another to Orthodoxy), or will it become completely Protestantized, a process that was initiated by wealthy US, German and other liberal cardinals over fifty years ago at the Second Vatican Council. With the present Jesuit Pope, for whom the means seem to justify the ends and who seems to agree with everyone and no-one, it is impossible to say what will happen, but that is what is at stake. This is important because Roman Catholicism is the very last Western European institution with an Orthodox past to survive. However, today Roman Catholicism, Uniatism included, looks so weak, so Americanized, that is, so Protestantized, that there seems little hope for it. I have always believed that only Orthodoxy can fill the spiritual abyss left by it.

Its situation is symbolic of Western Europe in general, whose cities now seem to be on the verge of disappearing beneath the tidal wave of the Muslim invasion. This was brought about by Western interference in the Middle East and North Africa, the notorious CIA-orchestrated ‘Arab spring’, which has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands. Will Western Europe survive at all? That is now the question. However, I would like to disagree with the Western xenophobes, who blame ‘Arabs’ or ‘Muslims’. These wretched people are not the cause of the problem. The cause of the problem is Western apostasy, the fact that Western people have abandoned Christ. As nature abhors a vacuum, so it is being filled – and by Islam. If Western people had not abandoned Christ and Christian culture, there would be no spiritual vacuum and no Muslims here to fill it.

Q: How should we look at the situation in Syria?

A: We live in times when the prophecies are being accomplished before our very eyes – in Iraq, in Syria and in Turkey. The present catastrophe began in 1991 with the beginning of the fall of Babylon (Iraq) in the first Gulf War. This was accomplished in 2003. In 2000 Iraq had nearly 2,000,000 Christians, now there are fewer than 200,000. Even someone as obtuse and deluded as Blair is just now beginning to admit that he is partly responsible. As for Syria, it is next to Armageddon. The third player is Turkey, whose fall is also prophesied. Then will come the drying up of the Euphrates. Before that I think we shall also see changes in the Ukraine next year.

Following Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya have all called for Russian help. It is difficult to know whether Russia will be able to put out all the conflagrations started by incredible Western hubris, but we shall see. It is not easy to be the world’s fireman when you face American arsonists.

Q: What lies behind this hubris which is inherent in the West?

A: Historically, it is a mixture of the imperialist superiority of the pagan Romans mixed with the ruthless plundering of the barbarian Germanic peoples being harnessed by Satanic powers. Thus, what is at the origin of the British Establishment? It is the Norman mentality, in other words, the mentality of a Viking warband, which is what the Normans were. When they came to England in 1066, having already destroyed the older Christian traditions of pre-Norman Normandy, they came to plunder the gold and riches of a Christian kingdom and destroy its half-millennial Church.

The gleam in Norman eyes then was the same as that in the eyes of the gold-hungry Spanish conquistadors five centuries later, and the same as that in the eyes of Texan oilmen when they got their greedy hands on Iraqi oil five centuries after that. Even modern Western science fiction talks of asset-stripping and strip-mining other planets in exactly the same way. Exploit the mineral resources of a country until they are exhausted and then move on to the next country, or planet, and strip it bare too, plunder and pillage ruthlessly – all under the pretext of freedom and democracy. As the imperialist British Prime Minister Palmerston said 150 years ago, Britain has ‘no friends and no enemies, only interests’. In other words, the Western Establishment is nothing but a Viking warband intent on plunder and pillage, intent on its own interests, and without any principles whatsoever.

Q: What would you say of the general situation? Doesn’t it make you despair?

A: No. The world, as ever, is divided into three groups: God’s, Satan’s and the undecided. This means: the real Orthodox (those who are willing to die for Orthodoxy); Satan’s people (including so-called ‘Orthodox’ apostates); and the rest, including many nominal Orthodox, who have not made up their mind whose they are. Some among the rest are two-faced and agree with everyone, but among the rest there are also those who one day will be willing to die for Orthodoxy. It is in the hope of the repentance of all that the world continues through the mercy of God.

I think in dealing with the things of the world (political events etc), we have to be in the know, but not despair. Be as gentle as doves and wise as serpents, says Christ. We must always remember that though man proposes, God disposes. Satan’s forces do what they want, but it does not mean that they will win. They will not. We know that for a fact. The scheme of the prince of this world and his over-educated minions is obvious – their great plan is to restore the Temple in Jerusalem so that they can enthrone Antichrist there. But it may be hundreds of years till they achieve that, even though there are days when it seems that it is going to happen within just a few years.

God, not man, disposes. Do not despair. We have already seen one miracle – the fall of militant atheism in the old Soviet Unionand the beginning of the restoration of the Christian Empire there. Other miracles are possible. Never underestimate either the wisdom of God or the foolishness of man. Never doubt God’s power.

Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence (September 2015)

Q: Are you surprised by the election of the new leader of the Labour Party?

A: Frankly, no. For 35 years neocons have in effect been in power in the UK, ever since the old Tories lost power to Thatcherite monetarists, the ancestors of the neocons, and the Labour Party has essentially been run by neocon Tories. The election of a primitive, old-fashioned socialist as leader of the Labour Party is a reaction to all this. The Labour Party leadership has now returned to its grassroots membership, whom it had betrayed by becoming Washington’s poodles. The Labour Party now has a leader who actually believes in something, other than himself and his own bank account, unlike its previous leaders. The only surprise is that the reaction has taken so long. Extremes breed extremes – the neocons have produced old-fashioned, atheist socialism – that was quite predictable.

This is all part of the process of the election of socialists elsewhere in the EU, for example in Greece and Spain. However, it is difficult to see what will come of it. The new Labour leader seems to have very little understanding of reality and it is difficult to see him lasting very long. Others, nationalists and sovereignists, have also been elected throughout the EU, for example, UKIP in the UK and the National Front in France. All these movements, whether of left or of right, are reactions to the rule over the EU of the neocons in Washington. That is why in the UK the Establishment-run BBC and Press character-assassinate them all. Whether they are the UKIP leader or the new Labour leader, they are both anti-Establishment, driven by sincerely-held beliefs rather than by their own careers and bank accounts. Mammon that rules the modern world dislikes such people because they put their values, whatever we may think of them, right or wrong, above money.

Q: How do you see the consequences of the present chaos caused by mass Muslim immigration into Western Europe?

A: First of all, mass immigration has been rejected by Central and Eastern Europe, not just by Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Lands, but also by the Baltics, Slovenia and Poland, which has had to face mass emigration from Ukrainians fleeing the US and EU-instigated war in the Ukraine. EU-Croatia does not want the refugees either, it is simply allowing them to pass through, not to stay. As for Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, none of the refugees wants to settle in these countries that are poverty-stricken by the EU, let alone in Non-EU Macedonia, which is already being torn apart by the Muslim invasion from Albania, and NATO-bombed Serbia with all its Serbian refugees from Croatia and Kosovo.

All these former Communist-bloc countries are quite right to hand on the refugees – their countries have not been responsible for this new Muslim invasion – Western Europe has been responsible. Who is paying for the billions of dollars of arms with which the war in Syria is being fought? Who is paying for this murderous conflict that is being played out on the borders of Armageddon? Who is making and supplying the arms for these fanatics to murder with? Who bombed Yugoslavia? Who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq? Who bombed Libya? It is not Eastern and Central Europe, it is the Western world that is responsible. At this moment US aircraft and British bombs are slaughtering the people of Yemen. The West always has money for bombs to destroy, but not to feed poor refugees from Western-instigated wars.

Now Germany has to pay the price for its co-destruction of Yugoslavia and the foundation of Muslim states there. If Yugoslavia still existed, the refugees would not be able to pass through its former territory and head for Germany. War in Yugoslavia happened twenty years ago – but the consequences are now. Sooner or later you have to pay for your errors – the chickens always come home to roost. It is called responsibility, responsibility for the injustices that you have committed in the past.

Mass immigration is causing division in the EU – already the Schengen agreement is in tatters. This could be the moment when parts of Eastern Europe, especially Hungary and Slovakia, finally turn their backs on the disastrous EU and join the EEU, the Eurasian Economic Union, together with Serbia, Montenegro and Moldova – if those countries can find the courage to overturn their home-grown traitors who are willing to hand over their countries to NATO tyranny. Thanks to Communism, ironically, these countries had kept their national identity and sovereignty; under EU tyranny they have to lose them. The time for them to choose is coming – to surrender your national identity to so-called ‘multiculturalism’, as have Western European countries, or to keep it by turning to the protection of Sovereign Russia.

The Western part of the EU now has a choice: to accept mass Islamization and so complete the renunciation of its Christian history, as its atheists have already mentally done, or to bring back peace to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and resettle the Muslim millions back in their homes, which is what they want. But this would be to admit that the West caused the problems in those countries in the first place. This would be a noble act of repentance, but the Western elite is too proud to carry it out. The Western elite is always capable of making war – but quite unable to make peace. This is because of its essentially anti-Christian, aggressive and destructive nature. Only a rising of ordinary Western people, crushed for so long by its elite, and aided from outside, can make a difference now.

Q: After the September Local Synod in Istanbul, Patriarch Bartholomew denounced the co-operation of Church and State in Russia, though without mentioning the word ‘Russia’ by name. What do you make of this?

A: Patriarch Bartholomew is merely a US-installed mouthpiece of the State Department, so he is irrelevant to the real Orthodox world, just as KGB-installed Russian bishops were irrelevant to the real Orthodox world in their time. For example he has just granted the highest award of his Patriarchate to the abortionist Joe Biden. In other words, nobody is listening to him because his words of propaganda are dictated to him by neocon politicians, not by the Holy Spirit.

What is the reality of the situation in Russia, beyond such neocon propaganda? It is that the Russian Church is trying to reChristianize the Russian State. The attempt to Christianize the State is very frightening for the neocons. This is the Incarnational role of the Church, they hate that because for them religion must only be a private matter, which should have no practical consequences and social ramifications. To renounce this role is to renounce Orthodoxy – which is what the anti-Christian US State Department does every single day of its existence. It is interesting for me to see in the words of Patriarch Bartholomew exactly the same editorial policy as that of the BBC, where I took part in two radio programmes a couple of years ago. It was clear then and it is clear now that the powers that be long ago sent out a message to all their vassal Western media – to try and discredit the Russian Orthodox Church by making out that it is a puppet of the Russian State.

In transmitting this message in the UK they are utterly hypocritical – it is the Church of England that is a puppet of the British State – all the C of E bishops are nominated by an agnostic/atheist Prime Minister, most are freemasons. This is quite different from the situation in Russia where the Church is separated from the State and independent of it. Whenever the Russian State agrees with the Church, it is a triumph of reChristianization for the Church, it is not that the State has conquered the Church, but just the opposite. Soviet times are over. The Western elite and its arms merchants want them to return – by creating another Cold War.

Q: If, as you say, Constantinople is a puppet of US neocons, what hope is there for the Orthodox ‘Council’, to be held in the Phanar next year?

A: That Conference, which is what it is at the moment, may well turn out to be a mere meeting with a final statement couched in meaningless ‘Chancellery-speak’. If so, it will be forgotten very quickly, as were many politically-organized ‘councils’ under heretical emperors of Constantinople. However, a destiny much more interesting than the dustbin of history is possible.

If the Phanar is tempted to take the thirty pieces of silver offered it by Washington and the Vatican and so completely discredit itself in the eyes of the Orthodox world and openly fall away from it, the Conference will become a Council, for it will at last be free to speak the Orthodox Truth. Then will follow the official transfer of the Centre of the Orthodox Church to Moscow, where in reality it has already been for centuries. This will be the end of the 562-year old myth of the Phanar (and the other fallen fragments of the Greek Empire) as the centre of Orthodoxy, a myth that US propagandists have assiduously used since 1948 to flatter Constantinople’s inherent ethnophyletist vanity.

Q: But would you not agree that there are still many problems within the Russian Orthodox Church?

A: Yes, of course there are indeed many problems. These are the result of the Soviet-period ‘legacy’. Only when the Church has been purified from this legacy will complete unity and so full strength come. Beware of the word ‘legacy’, when it is used by pseudo-Russian Orthodox, what they mean by it is apostasy.

Q: What in concrete terms do the words ‘Soviet-period legacy’ mean?

A: I mean all the political and spiritual compromises that ‘representatives’ of the Russian Church made through human weakness during the Soviet period, both inside Russia and outside Russia – ritualism, phariseeism, careerism, corruption, lying, renovationism. We were victims of that awful corruption outside Russia, so we know clearly and exactly what we are talking about.

Q: What can be done to destroy that legacy?

A: Re-Churching. And today Russia is being re-Churched. True, the Soviet diseases of alcoholism, abortion and corruption are still rife in the Russian Federation, but they are nonetheless declining because of this re-Churching. It is a privilege to take part in this process of re-Churching, even outside Russia, alongside tens of thousands of others who work in this field, but the process is only just beginning. We have very far to go. The ‘legacy’ must be destroyed, so that it can be replaced by the Tradition, so that human failings can be transfigured by the Holy Spirit, so that multinational Russian Orthodoxy can be rebuilt.

Q: If the ‘Conference’, as you call it, does turn into a Council and the Church is at last cleansed of the spiritually compromised representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople who have lapsed from Orthodoxy, where would they go?

A: They could go wherever they want, to whomever would take them. I think, for example, that its lapsed representatives would be welcome in the Vatican or in the post-Protestant US, whose mouthpieces they are; as for all those in the Patriarchate of Constantinople who are faithful Orthodox, the many on Mt Athos and in the parishes, they could join the Church of Greece, whose Archbishop could take the title of Patriarch of Constantinople. At the same time Orthodox-leaning Catholics in today’s Muslim and atheist-dominated Europe, who have been rejected by the present Patriarchate of Constantinople because of its apostasy and ecumenist agreement with the Vatican not to accept them, could freely join the Russian Orthodox Church. Turkey would then become a missionary territory for the Russian Church; there are tens of thousands of Russians living there already. There will be much to do; the Greek prophecies say that a third of Turks will be baptized as Orthodox.

This process of Russian missionary work is already happening outside Europe. Just recently hundreds of Filipinos have chosen to join the Russian Orthodox Church. They chose true Christianity, that is, Russian Orthodoxy, to the alternatives to IS or Maoist terrorism on the one hand and to Western secularist atheism (economic terrorism) on the other hand. This is the same situation as before the Revolution, when Tsar Nicholas II provided the sole alternative to rival secularist and imperialist Western ideologies, the Anglo-French and the Austro-German. He alone provided uncompromised Orthodoxy, the Christian Empire, Christian values. That of course is why the West crucified him and his family, like St Job.

Q: What is the role of the Russian Orthodox Church in this missionary light?

A: Rather than role I would say responsibility. As the heir to the Christian Empire, of St Constantine, the responsibility of what remains of Holy Russia and the Russian Empire is to be the last bastion of Christianity in the world. Today, after the failed imposition of the destructive Western ideology of Communism by the Western Powers against the will of the people through financing the 1905 and 1917 revolutions and through it the slaughter of the last Christian Emperor, Nicholas II (the order for whose martyrdom went out from New York, as the historian Petr V. Multatuli has made clear in recent years), the Christian Empire is beginning to revive and the Russian Church is playing the essential role in this process. Some prophesy the full restoration of the Empire and an Emperor Nicholas III, the final rampart of Christianity against Eurosodom and Gommorhica, which is what the Western elite wants to create against the will of the Western peoples (See what we have said above about the need for the people to rise against this imposition). This is why the West hates Russia – Russia is the only rival to its decadence. Only Russia contradicts it. Only anti-Christians can be against the restoration of the Christian Empire, whatever they may call themselves and however pharisaically they may conduct themselves. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, friends of the pagan Romans, of both yesterday’s and today’s enemies of Christ.

Very sadly, the September communication of Patriarch Bartholomew seems to show that he has accepted the anti-Incarnational secularist ideology of the Vatican and of Washington, the rejection of the role of the Incarnation in the life of the State. Why? Because only the restoration of the Orthodox State, the Christian Empire, can restrain the growth of so-called ‘globalization’, which the US masters of the Phanar are entirely in charge of. Even the remnants of the Third Rome, the Christian Empire, stand as a living witness to the fall, decadence and perjury of both the First Rome and of the Second Rome – that is why their masters deny it, envy it, fear it and fight against it. Their greatest enemy is the Russian Orthodox Church, the last bastion of Christ, which is why they work together against us.

Q: But is there not a danger of Russian nationalism in trying to Christianize the Russian State?

A: Yes, of course there is. In history the word ‘nationalism’ was not used because it is simply a modern word for ‘worldliness’. Nationalism destroyed the first two Romes: Pagan Roman nationalism destroyed the First Rome when it was adopted and made into an ideology by the Germanic peoples; Greek nationalism destroyed New Rome and the Third Rome was for three generations brought down by the nationalism of the anti-Russian aristocracy who wanted power for themselves against the Tsar and against the people.

Thus the first two Romes fell hundreds of years ago on account of worldliness and there is no chance that they will ever be restored. However, this is not the case with the Third and last Rome, Moscow. True, it was brought down in 1917 and suffered immensely for many years, but since the Western invasion of the former Russian Empire in 1941 restoration by the blood and tears of the New Martyrs and Confessors has been under way. This has happened amidst the hatred and envy of the Western world, which is why it is ringing Russia with NATO bases, trying to take over the Ukraine and developing plans for the dismemberment of the Russian Federation and of the Russian Orthodox Church, primarily through US-encouraged schisms in the Ukraine and Moldova.

Q: If the Western world is successful in dismembering the Russian Federation and the Russian Orthodox Church, is that the end?

A: Yes, that is the end – of the world, since salvation will become impossible so the world will no longer have any reason to exist.

Q: Do you think that nationalist temptations can be overcome so that the Christian Empire will be restored in Russia and in the rest of the Orthodox world together with it?

A: Yes, they can, though ‘can’ does not mean ‘will be’. Nevertheless, today there is reason for hope because there is a difference with the past. Before the Russian Revolution nationalism was alive, as was witnessed to by the worldly nationalism in the Russian emigration which stopped Church life from being as missionary as it should have been, persecuted missionaries like St John of Shanghai and rejected its messianic mission to preach Orthodoxy to the world, to make the world part of Holy Russia and so save it. Many emigres, especially among the intellectuals and aristocrats, were selfish and inward-looking, turning away the people whom God sent them. That was to be expected because they had already betrayed the Tsar.

The difference with the past is that Russia is now an international country. Today’s real International Community, led by Russia, includes much of Eastern Europe, Asia (including China and India, the Middle East and Iran), Africa and Latin America. The Western world is a small minority, fewer than a billion people, including only North America (except for Mexico), Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and perhaps South Korea and Taiwan. Six-sevenths of the world stands against Western exploitation. As such the West is isolated.

Look at the great military victory parade in Beijing that took place two weeks ago in front of the Chinese and Russian leaders in celebration of the liberation of China from the Japanese by the Soviet Army. That parade was totally ignored and despised by the Western media, as China and Russia sealed their bonds. A new bloc has been formed. The West did not want to know because it is in denial that it has once again created its own enemies. Today there is a consciousness of Russia’s spiritual importance internationally. Before the Revolution only Tsar Nicholas and a very few in the elite had that consciousness; today many share in it.

Q: What practically does this consciousness mean to you?

A: For instance, every year I travel 17,000 miles around Eastern England visiting Orthodox. As I travel, I am conscious that I am perhaps the first Russian Orthodox priest to be on a given road and in a given place, the first to bless a place with icons, the first to bless a particular house. In doing this, I am therefore in fact travelling around a new province of Holy Russia.

However, I need help. We are together in the Church. The Church is not about individuals. I need at least one Russian-speaking priest here to help. We must encourage young people to take up the priesthood. When I was young, I was strongly discouraged from becoming a priest, not by this world, but by so-called ‘Orthodox’ priests and bishops – those of ‘the legacy’. I was incredibly badly advised and indeed deliberately. This was scandalously sad. Zeal was crushed quite ruthlessly and cruelly by the unworthy then in power. This must not happen to the young generation now, they must not be discouraged as I was.

We are building a new Holy Rus. The Church urgently needs a new generation of priests who are not afraid to use the Word of Christ to fight against aggressive Western secularism (including when so-called Orthodox confess it) on the one hand and Islamic terrorism on the other. We are Christ’s Army. For that we have the example of St Alexander Nevsky who resisted the traitors and the extremes of east and west, soaring above them on the wings of the double-headed Orthodox eagle.

To young people, I say: Do not be afraid! The reviving Christian Empire needs you to restore and rebuild! Join and be active in the Russian Orthodox Church! Belong to Christ, not to Antichrist!

Afterword: The Euro-Orthodox Alternative to an Orthodox Europe

Following the recent trilogy of articles on gathering together Russian Orthodox of all nationalities and languages in Western Europe into a Metropolia, the first of which was posted on 25 July and the last, the article ’The Path to Unity’, on 5 August, a member of the Paris Exarchate (Patriarchate of Constantinople) has written to reject this vision for an Orthodox Europe, or a ‘Russian Europe’ as he strangely calls it. Since he is not Russian Orthodox and, according to his very undiplomatic words, never will be, his rejection of something which does not concern him seems not relevant. However, if he is interested in one day seeing a Local Church of Europe, we must recall that the only Local Church which is proposing an Orthodox Metropolia in Europe, precisely the basis for a future Local Church of Europe, is the Russian Orthodox Church. In other words, the offer by Patriarch Alexis II over ten years ago is the only offer on the table.

The only purely theoretical alternative consists of a now very old-fashioned, autocephalist, that is, nationalist, ideology. This was once again put forward by the Greek Orthodox ‘Fraternite Orthodoxe in Western Europe’ at its Fifteenth Congress in Bordeaux in Spring 2015. With absolutely no offer of autocephaly (canonical independence) made at any point over the fifty years of its existence to this small, mainly French group by the US-run Patriarchate of Constantinople (to which virtually all its members belong), doubts were long ago raised about its practicality. No autocephaly can ever be given to this small group because it is on a shared canonical territory.

No-one would want to repeat the error that the Soviet-epoch Patriarchate of Moscow made in the USA nearly fifty years ago, giving a canonically disputed autocephaly to a small and rather nationalistic American group, led by Parisian intellectuals, now called the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). One does have the impression of leaders blinded by their autocephalist ideology misleading sincere and idealistic but also blind converts, who have no concept of the practical problems and realities of the Local Orthodox Churches and Diasporas outside their own narrow, intellectual horizons.

A French TV film of their recent Congress shows members of the Paris-based Brotherhood singing in French at a meeting or service (it was unclear what it was) in a modern conference hall in Bordeaux. There were virtually no icons, no iconostasis, no candles and no-one at the meeting or service, standing in lines in front of rows of chairs, appeared to make the sign of the cross. The atmosphere presented was that of a ‘charismatic’ event, common to Catholic modernism (or Protestant modernism – it is the same thing). Present were two Greek bishops, one of them the controversial leader of the schismatic ‘Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church’, and a Catholic bishop. The impression was that many of those present were either Catholics or else ex-Catholics. The meeting was certainly highly ecumenical and also political.

The atmosphere of exaltation, of a lack of sobriety and prayer, and the absence of any Orthodox dress code indeed gave the impression of a political meeting, rather than of a Church service. Most of those shown in the film looked to be middle class people, mostly of the same older generation, aged between 60 and 75. Could this be because they joined the Fraternite in its heyday in the late 60s, 70s and 80s, after the French social revolt of 1968? Enclosed and isolated in the same intellectual ghetto for so many years, without exposure to the realities of the contemporary Diasporas of the Local Orthodox Churches in Europe or in their homelands, members have had no opportunity to evolve. In this way they have not adapted to reality and the generation which has grown up in the Orthodox Churches since the fall of Communism and the liberation of the Local Churches in former Communist countries. Could this be why ‘passeiste’ (living in the past) members still insist that ‘nothing has changed’ in Russia and Eastern Europe and still appear to be living in the Cold War?

Of course, a film can give a false impression. Unfortunately, it is exactly the same impression that was given to us by Fraternite members in the 70s and 80s and also that given to Orthodox from other Local Churches who have visited their Congresses in recent years. They have all said the same thing: that this is a divisive group driven not by spiritual concerns but by political concerns. Its spirit, different and alien to that in the vast majority of Orthodox monasteries and parish churches in Western Europe, gives the impression of a New Age cult or sect. There is a ‘pick and mix’ mentality, for example, you fast and confess only if you really want to, taking communion freely, as in modern Catholicism. It takes what it likes from the Russian Church and the Greek Church, but rejects the disciplines of both the Russian Church, both inside Russia and outside Russia, and of the Greek Church in Greece. (It should be noted that this group is quite outside the discipline of the diocesan jurisdictions of Greek bishops in Europe).

A great many contemporary Protestants will tell you that the empty moralism of their ahistorical and now dying denominations has been suicidal for them. A great many contemporary Catholics will tell you that they do not believe in the Pope and think that compulsory clerical celibacy is wrong. In other words they agree with us. And some look to the Orthodox Church for sustenance. The one thing that the Orthodox Church can offer those who live in the contemporary spiritual desert of the desacralized Western world, whether of Catholic or Protestant origin, is spiritual food. This is the food of faithfulness to the discipline of the Church Tradition that alone unlocks the door to the Holy Spirit, that alone gives spiritual beauty, spiritual nobility and spiritual elegance, the food that feeds the soul. This means not transmitting our little selves, but transmitting that which is far greater than ourselves, that which is both collective (cat-holic) and eternal. This is that which only the Church can give and provide the sense of the sacred, a sacralized faith that brings heaven down to earth and so makes the earthly spiritual.

The impression given, and not only by this film, is the opposite. What appears to be on offer here is a desacralized cult, worship made comfortable for the Western consumer, a castrated and rationalized piece of theatre that makes the spiritual earthly. Nowhere was there any mention of the glorious European heritage of the saints, those who had been earthly but became spiritual, neither of the ancient saints of Europe, like St Irinaeus of Lyon, St Hilary of Poitiers, St Martin of Tours, St John Cassian and others who combated heresies and died for the Faith, or of the new saints of Europe, like the Russian New Martyrs, St Nicholas of Zhicha, St Justin of Chelije and St Paisius the Athonite. This is the result of doing away with the ‘sanctoral’ and applying the other decrees of the Second Vatican Council to the Orthodox Church, as was the heartfelt desire of Fraternite lovers like Fr Elie Melia, the teacher of Pastoral Theology at the St Sergius Institute of Theology in Paris in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The overall impression of the Fraternite is of a disincarnate form of faith invented in the past, of a rather late and old-fashioned monogenerational offshoot of the ‘charismatic movement’ of the late twentieth century, unknown to the Orthodox Church. Theirs appears to be a phyletistic or nationalistic ideology, a Euro-Orthodoxy, that puts modern Europe first and Orthodoxy second, exactly the opposite to what the Russian Orthodox Church is proposing in its forward-looking vision of an ‘Orthodox Europe’. New Local Churches have always been built on strict adherence to the Church Tradition and had a heavily ascetic, monastic and episcopal foundation, for example among all the Slavs, the Alaskans and the Japanese. Unlike their examples, the intellectuals of the Fraternite, stuck in the 1960s, seem to be proposing building a Church on the basis of an ideology that is anti-ascetic, anti-monastic, anti-episcopal, anti-Tradition and therefore in effect anti-Orthodox. Needless to say, this cannot succeed.

Crisis in Greek Orthodoxy: Crisis in Greece

The Argentinian Bishop of Rome has suggested that that his organization and the Orthodox Church ‘reform’ the date of Easter and select a fixed date for the feast of feasts, presumably some time in April. For 40 years and more travel agents and other business interests have been asking for precisely this. In Istanbul the nominally Orthodox Phanar has answered the Pope’s demand, declaring that, ‘in recent years, especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain, unfortunately, certain forces in certain national Churches have spoken against the idea of a reform’. This of course is simply code for Russophobia, as written in Washington, but it also says that the apostasy of the Phanariot bureaucrats is now complete. Only the Orthodox are preventing from abandoning the Faith altogether.

It is amazing that within a hundred years the Phanar has gone from Orthodoxy to utter spiritual irrelevance. It seems only honest now that the few dozen bureaucrats with their token beards who run the Phanar on money provided by the US State Department should join Roman Catholicism with a special Uniat status. That would leave the Orthodox clergy and people of the Patriarchate of Constantinople free to practise their Faith without having to blush. To continue in any other form is simply breathtakingly dishonest. Ever since the Anglicans paid £100,000 (worth tens of millions in today’s money) for Metr Meletios (Metaksakis) to become Patriarch of Constantinople ninety years ago, we have grown used to such apostasy in the Phanar, with certain pauses, such as that under Patriarch Maximos (deposed by the CIA in 1948). But this statement plumbs new depths.

All of this happens against the background of the US-fomented rebellion in EEU (Eurasian Economic Union) Armenia (their next target after Syria, Libya, the Ukraine and the Yemen) and the crisis in Greece. Greece, a country which was a British puppet until 1948 and then an American one, with the CIA installing the banana republic Fascist colonels’ regime until 1974, and then handing it over to the present EU colonial regime under Berlin, is facing a choice between the EU under US-controlled and CIA-hacked Berlin and the EEU under Moscow. In a word, it faces continued slavery or freedom.

The EU is highly annoyed. Having imposed the euro almost without any democratic referenda anywhere (especially not in Germany, where a vast majority would have rejected it), the new Greek government, unlike the EU-imposed bandits who ran the country before, is now giving its people a choice. The choice between continuing to be a holiday resort for swaggering German and drunken British tourists and becoming a free country with dignity, seems obvious. However, the latter choice will mean less wealth. It is, in other words, a spiritual question:

Do you want to sell your soul for a mess of pottage, or do you want to be a humble part of the resurrected multinational Christian Orthodox Empire with an Emperor in Moscow, a spiritual leader for the other EU-enslaved Balkan countries?

Do you wish to be proud and enslaved flag-waving nationalists, flattered for this by the hypocritical USA which in fact despises your culture as mere folklore, continuing to be humiliated and intimidated as a vassal state of the successors of the Nazi Party in Berlin, or do you wish to become free men and women again?

Do you wish to continue to be part of the feudal empire of the unHoly unRoman Emperor in the White House in Washington, or do you wish to get your souls back from the devil you sold them to all those years ago?

It is your choice.