Category Archives: Council

Two More Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence on the Orthodox Church

Why in your view has the January preparatory meeting for the so-called Council not talked in depth about and resolved the really important issues, like the Diaspora, Autocephaly, the Calendar and even the Diptychs or heresies like Ecumenism, Sophianism and Darwinism?

V. M., Paris

Since the draft documents from the preparatory meeting were published in Russian on Thursday (all thanks to the Russian Church for such openness), more and more people have contacted me. Discussions are now going to enter into parish life as people (and bishops as well!) discover what has been going on behind the scenes for over fifty years. As translations come out in other languages, we can expect stormy debate. That is good, perfectly natural, because the faithful love the Church and care about Her.

On this subject one Romanian monk in Romania wrote to me with an amusing question: ‘Is this a private Council or can any Orthodox take part?’ I thought that very apt in summing up the secrecy of the agenda, let alone the negotiations. As Fr Theodoe Zisis put it at the anti-Council meeting in Moldova: ‘Is this a Church Council or a Masonic lodge?’ It is very strange that not all bishops can take part, so that of the 354 bishops of the Russian Church, only 24 can take part and, overall, of the 750 or so Orthodox bishops worldwide, scarcely 200 will take part. (If my figures are wrong, will a reader please let me know and I will correct them).

A pious Ukrainian lady from the Ukraine wrote to me with the very relevant question: ‘What do we need a Council for? Everything of importance was long ago decided at the Seven Councils.’ You cannot help agreeing with her. The draft documents published by the preparatory meeting are largely pastoral and could have been written by any parish priest or any educated layperson. They did not need scores of bishops to meet on five different occasions. We do not need a Council to tell us that fasting is important! Where are the theological, moral and dogmatic issues? I cannot see them.

Christological heresies like Sophianism were analyzed and condemned by saints like St John of Shanghai and the future St Seraphim of Sofia, as well as Local Councils of both parts of the Russian Church in the 1930s. St Justin (Popovich) and the ROCOR Council of Bishops of 1983 have expressed the Orthodox thinking on the heresy of Ecumenism. And as for Darwinism, nobody accepts it, all reject it. It contradicts the whole of Scripture and the Fathers. All three are heresies and were (indirectly) dealt with by the Seven Councils under the name of Arianism.

I think that the question of the Diptychs will be resolved in time quite naturally. The present order of the Local Churches dates back to the fourth century. It is absurd that tiny ancient groups in the Middle East should take precedence over the Russian and Romanian churches, which are far bigger. A lot of this goes back to the fall of the Russian Church in 1917; before that it took de facto precedence, as it is coming to do now again and all the Local Churches, except for politicized Constantinople, now tend to look to the Russian Church as their natural leader. It is all a question of size – and that has changed since the fourth century. Of course if one of the ancient Patriarchates like Alexandria, numbering one million today, on a canonical territory numbering one billion (!), were to start consequent missionary work as the future St Nectarios had wanted to do over a century ago, it could become the largest Patriarchate and so take de facto precedence. (The present de jure precedence makes a laughing stock of its claimants).

Again the question of the calendar will also be resolved only by time. The few Orthodox who have fallen away from the Orthodox calendar under political pressure will eventually return. Everyone admits that it was a mistake. We must be patient and wait for the repentance of their leaders. That is why the issue has had to be removed at the insistence of Patriarch Kyrill, who clearly saw that the new calendarist leaders are not only not ready to repent, but are still actually justifying their error! (This is also why the document on relations with heterodox is written in such a bureaucratic language of compromise and not dogmatic clarity – we have had to be patient with the ecumenists, awaiting their repentance).

The problem of the Diaspora (and the questions of autocephaly and to some extent autonomy are connected with this) is also one that can only be resolved with time. The Local Church that, if God wills, sets up autonomous and then autocephalous new Local Churches in the Diaspora, and so gives it canonical order, will be the Church that does the most missionary work in the Diaspora. All the other Diaspora groups are destined to die out. That is a fact.

For example, in the 1930s the Rue Daru jurisdiction had some seventy parishes and communities (admittedly, many very small) in the Paris Region. Today it has about six small parishes in that Region. Why? Simply because most of their parishes have died out. They were for Russians only. The children and the grandchildren of those Russians became French and decided that ‘the Church is only for old people’. Logically. The same thing is now happening to the Greek Cypriot parishes in England. Issued largely from immigration from Cyprus in the 1950s, they too are now dying out, their descendants, some of whom I meet every month, understand nothing, are often unable even to make the sign of the cross.

I do not think that there will be any solution to the Diaspora problem until the vast majority in the Diaspora – therefore tens and hundreds of thousands – are local faithful or think of themselves as local faithful, whatever their origin – and need their own Autocephalous Local Church. (And by faithful, I mean faithful to the Tradition, not to some half-hearted, semi-Protestant, secularist compromise). Then remaining foreign-language parishes can be absorbed into it in separate deaneries or even dioceses, but underneath a central Local Church structure.

You may think that I am advocating the OCA solution. That is not the case, since the OCA solution was a failure. Why? Firstly, because it contained only a very small number of the total Diaspora in North America and secondly because it based itself on a modernist ideology, not on the Tradition. Its autocephaly was a political operation of the Cold War. You cannot build a new Local Church when the majority are not with you and when you base yourself on an incredibly old-fashioned 1960s type modernist fad, instead of on the eternal Tradition of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, I can see no hope for settling the issue of the Diaspora until such a time comes, a time when the majority follow the Tradition and need (not want) their own Local Church. Anything imposed from above will simply be divisive.

Why are modernists who are opposed to the Church so full specifically of fantasy and spite?

J.L, London

I think you are being a bit uncharitable! Most of them are simply naïve and still have to make their way in the Church from the fringes inwards. Eventually all the sincere people will integrate. The repentant Fr Theodore Zisis is a very good example. Be patient. The Church is a journey, a pilgrimage, people make their way at their own speed. You cannot rush spiritual development and depth.

However, you do have a point, that the most few aggressive modernists do suffer from both fantasy and spite. Why specifically these ills?

Fantasy comes from the fact that modernists are always intellectuals and not rooted in life. Were they parish priests, prison chaplains or responsible for running monasteries or, for that matter, families, they would not suffer from fantasy. (This is a very good reason for opposing the alien institution of non-diocesan or titular bishops: their grasp of reality is often very limited).

Spite comes from the fact that until the 1980s/1990s the modernists thought that their victory over the Church was imminent. We who followed the Tradition appeared to be an oppressed minority, the little flock, crushed by them into a dying ghetto. They were wrong, as I wrote at the time. And they were wrong because they failed to recognize that the Church belongs to Christ, not to them or to us who strive, however weakly, to follow the Tradition. It was a classic case of ‘man proposes, but God disposes’.

What makes them bitter, and therefore spiteful, is the fact that the Russian Church has not only survived atheist oppression, but is beginning to revive (which is why they attack the Russian Church with an immense and self-justifying hatred). And this is true of the smaller Local Churches, some of which are also beginning to revive in the wake of the Russian Church’s beginning revival. Their great project, a modernizing ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’ in imitation of the Second Vatican Council, which they have actively been plugging for over fifty years, is coming to naught.

They are bitter at that and lash out at anyone who attempts to follow the Tradition. They thought, ‘We have won’, dismissing popular piety (what the aristocratic Fr Alexander Schmemann patronizingly called ‘liturgical piety’) in their haughty way, as dying out. ‘So near and yet so far’, is their frustrated cry. In humility they should instead admit that they were wrong and simply repent. They are welcome to return to the fold, as Fr Theodore Zisis. We all make mistakes when we are young. We should make their repentance easy for them.

January Preparatory Talks for Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meeting End

Eleven of the fourteen leaders of the Local Orthodox Churches have now concluded their meeting outside Geneva in preparation for a major meeting, which may be Pan-Orthodox, that is, may include all of the fourteen leaders. This will now be held from 16 to 27 June 2016 at the Orthodox Academy in Khania in Crete.

Of the original ten items on the agenda for the future meeting, there has been agreement on only five. These, the draft texts of which are to be published shortly, are: The Mission of the Orthodox Church in the Contemporary World; Autonomy and the Way in which it is Proclaimed; The Importance of Fasting and its Observance Today; The Relations of the Orthodox Church with the rest of the Christian World; The Orthodox Diaspora. There was no agreement on the draft text for the sixth item, ‘The Sacrament of Marriage and Impediments to it’, which was rejected by the Georgian and Antiochian Churches. As regards the other four items, on the proclamation of autocephaly, the diptychs, the calendar and ecumenism, these seem to have been abandoned for lack of agreement.

Having seen the Russian draft texts for the first four of the approved items of the agenda, we believe that where they are not controversial, they are at best expressions of the obvious, at worst spiritually flat and mostly expressed in the secular language of administrators and bureaucrats, and not in the theological language of the Holy Fathers and of the dogmas of the Seven Universal Councils. Where, however, they are controversial, especially the draft text on ‘The Relations of the Orthodox Church with the rest of the Christian World’, they will cause disturbing division. This will lead even more in the Orthodox world which believes in the Church of the Seven Councils, which defined the Faith for all time and made any ‘Eighth Council’ completely unnecessary, to call for this June meeting to be cancelled before it causes open schism.

We fear that this January meeting has opened up a dangerous path. Surely, amid all today’s secular isms, including Darwinism, the foundation stone of Communism and Nazism and their ‘survival of the fittest’ genocides, the Orthodox people need to hear of the dogma of salvation in the Church (instead of ‘ecumenism’), of the teaching on the Fall of Adam and how sin has polluted human consciousness and the consequent need for repentance, of the need for strict fasting in a world suffering from obesity and chemically-polluted food, and of the Church’s teachings on the Last Times. Instead, we are hearing the trite, secular and humanistic language of diplomats and compromisers about ‘human dignity’, discrimination’ and ‘ecology’.

Let any future bishops’ meeting first confirm the decisions of the Local Council of 879 against the filioque heresy and the Local Council of 1351 against those who opposed the teachings on the Holy Spirit of St Gregory Palamas and the Local Council of 1948 (held in Moscow) against ecumenism. Quite rightly, no ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’ was held when the hierarchy of the Russian Church, and others, was enslaved by an atheist government. And in the same way, you cannot hold a free Council, when its chairman was installed by the government of a country which preaches ‘globalism’, that is, secularist control over the whole world, which is profoundly and actively hostile to the Church and Her Civilization, is responsible for evil genocides around the world, including among Orthodox in Syria and the Ukraine, and promotes worldwide perversion. How long before some decide to hold an ‘Alternative Council?’ Here is the risk.

Apostasy

HTTP://WWW.RUSFRONT.RU/10527-KONSTANTINOPOLSKIY-PATRIARH-TREBUET-NAKAZAT-PROTIVODEYSTVUYUSCHIH-SOBORU-I-PRIGLASIT-NA-NEGO-KATOLIKOV.HTML

Source: ИА “Информ-религия”

According to a report from a Russian website, translating from a Romanian website, on the first day of the preparatory meeting for the Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meeting (the so-called ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’) Patriarch Bartholomew called for all those opposed to the ‘decisions of the Council’ to be punished and for Roman Catholics to be allowed to attend. He also wanted the Council to last for two weeks and for it to be called ‘Ecumenical’, even if not all the heads of Local Churches attend. References are above.

If this is true, and not merely old calendarist misinformation and propaganda, it raises grave concerns. For example, how can the US-installed Turkish-Greek Patriarch punish St Kuksha of Odessa and other holy elders? If untrue, then surely this is yet another sign that the secrecy (‘ineffective methodology’ in the diplomatic code of Patriarch Kyrill) with which the preparations are being conducted proves our point, expressed on this site over many years, that such secrecy only breeds paranoia and that those responsible for that secrecy are also responsible for that paranoia and therefore for any future schism.

However, of far more concern are the words of Patriarch Bartholomew, reported to us by the same reader as above, uttered in the USA nearly 20 years ago. Talk of mere ‘memories’ of ‘a faith tradition’, ‘whatever they may be’, and the general relativism, syncretism, acceptance of modernism and ‘works in the world’ would indicate apostasy. Let the reader decide:

“If the diverse peoples of a culture look to the memories of their faith traditions, whatever they may be, they will be sustained, they will be fed the food of God’s spiritual knowledge. Nourished in this way, persons may properly apply the tools created by their culture in the service of God.

Orthodox Christian and modernist, Protestant and modernist, Jew and modernist, Catholic and modernist, however we worship, as long as we abide in our faith and unite it to our works in the world, we bring the living and always timely message of Divine Wisdom into the modern world’.

Reference:

https://www.patriarchate.org/-/remarks-as-prepared-for-delivery-address-of-his-all-holiness-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-at-emory-university-in-atlanta-georgia-at-the-presidenti?inheritRedirect=true&redirect=%2Fpatriarchal-documents%3Fp_p_id%3D101_INSTANCE_2lzbCNORLysD%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-1%26p_p_col_pos%3D1%26p_p_col_count%3D2%26_101_INSTANCE_2lzbCNORLysD_delta%3D15%26_101_INSTANCE_2lzbCNORLysD_keywords%3D%26_101_INSTANCE_2lzbCNORLysD_advancedSearch%3Dfalse%26_101_INSTANCE_2lzbCNORLysD_andOperator%3Dtrue%26p_r_p_564233524_resetCur%3Dfalse%26_101_INSTANCE_2lzbCNORLysD_cur%3D63

Apostasy Made Public

A great many both in the Churches of the Ukraine and Moldova are now publicly calling for a boycott of the Phanar’s ‘Council’. The refusal to hold the Inter-Orthodox bishops’ meeting on Mt Athos and the following words, insulting those who defend Orthodoxy, about adapting ‘our Tradition to the contemporary world’, about ‘an ecumenical event’ and quoting the uncanonically US-installed, 33 degree freemason Patriarch Athenagoras and the notorious Olivier Clement, who took communion from the Roman Catholics, signify that the meeting will now almost certainly be rejected as irrelevant, compromised and anti-Orthodox by the faithful of the Church. This may be the best thing that can have happened, as now there can be no more illusions. This may be the last nail in the coffin. Churches around the world will soon be displaying posters that they proudly reject the ‘Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016’. It can surely only be a question of time before the Orthodox Emperor comes and cleanses the Church of unfaithful bishops, as is prophesied.

Homily of Patriarch Bartholomew During the Divine Liturgy at the Church of St. Paul (Chambésy, 24 January 24, 2016)

https://www.patriarchate.org/-/homily-by-his-all-holiness-ecumenical-patriarch-bartholomew-during-the-divine-liturgy-at-the-church-of-st-paul-chambesy-geneva-january-24-2016-?inheritRedirect=true&redirect=%2Fhome

After much Diplomatspeak, Patriarch Bartholomew stated:

We acknowledge that the only way to exit from confessional isolationistic temptations passes through dialogue in constant exchange with the “other,” whether our neighbour, Christian or not, or whether society in general, whether other religions or the entire creation, in order to invalidate the irreversible clash of civilisations which tempts the most worried of our coreligionists…..

Nevertheless, in order to give consistence to the life and ministry of our Church, we must promote open and honest dialogue, without any compromise with what we are and with the hope that is within us, but also without any compromise with the compassion and love that we owe to the world…

This was indeed the prophetic intuition of our predecessor, the late Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, who confided to Olivier Clément: “The Great Council that we are preparing will enable the people of our Church to live their faith in a better way. It will try not only to adapt our Tradition to the contemporary world, but will replenish it with the power of inspiration and renewal. Thus, it will be an ecumenical event. Renewal cannot be separated from sharing and from unity.”

An Inffective Methodology for a Pan-Orthodox Council

On 22 January at the Centre of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Chambesy started the meeting of the Primates of the Local Orthodox Churches. A speech was addressed by His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kyrill to the participants, reports Patriarkhia.ru.

At the beginning of his speech, His Holiness the Patriarch noted that each meeting of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches has a special significance. “This is an opportunity to exchange views and discuss issues of concern to us, to take concerted decisions on Pan-Orthodox values. But first of all – it is an opportunity to once again feel our unity, especially when we jointly partake of the one Chalice, knowing that we all form one Body in Christ, “- said His Holiness, also expressing his gratitude to His Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who initiated and organized the meeting.

Later in the speech His Holiness addressed various aspects of the preparations for the Pan-Orthodox Council.

“Gathering together, we clearly understand that our Church is One and Catholic, that to preserve and strengthen Her unity is the primary concern, which is the basis of all of our service. The Holy and Great Council is intended to be visible, clear, convincing evidence of the unity of the Orthodox Church and we all understand that the Council will be able to become one only if it reflects the genuine shared vision of the Local Orthodox Churches. In order to achieve this unanimity we all have to work hard in the pre-conciliar period,” said the Primate of the Russian Church.

In this context, His Holiness noted with satisfaction that “concern about the lack common Orthodox recognition of Metropolitan Rostislav, the Primate of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, which has been repeatedly expressed both by the Moscow Patriarchate and other Church was heard, and His Beatitude today is present among us, as He has now received due recognition of all the Local Churches. ”

Speaking about the problems preventing full unanimity among the Local Orthodox Churches, Patriarch Kirill expressed regret over the breaking of communion between the Antiochian and Jerusalem Patriarchates. Its recovery, in the opinion of His Holiness, is an urgent task these days, when the whole world is following with concern developments in the Middle East, because “it is from the religious communities in this region that people first await an example of cohesion, readiness to overcome differences.”

During his speech, His Holiness elaborated on the Church situation in the Ukraine. “Now have been forcibly seized more than 30 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, at least another 10 are under threat of attack from schismatics and nationalists, happening for alleged voluntary movements of believers to the so-called Kiev Patriarchate – said His Holiness. – In fact, these are real gangster raids: to hold meetings of persons not related to the community, and then with the help of the statutory authorities falsify documents seized by the militant nationalists, and the community together with the priest of the temple are thrown into the street! ”

The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church expressed deep concern about the actions of some bishops of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, who, visiting the Ukraine, have expressed their support for dissenters ostensibly on behalf of His Holiness the Patriarch of Constantinople, and thereby sow temptations among Ukrainian believers and clergy.

It is inconceivable, said Patriarch Kyrill, that in Switzerland, Greece or another European country in the Orthodox church could come representatives of other faiths to “take a decision” that now this church is theirs. “In the Ukraine it is now a reality. Expelled from the churches of the community of the canonical Church wins all lawsuits, but the dissenters and their bandit militias ignore court decisions “, – said in pain His Holiness Patriarch.

As an example of blatant hatred of nationalists for the faithful of the canonical Church in the Ukraine, Patriarch Kirill noted the situation in the village of Ptichya in the Rivne region, stressing that the followers split “sow evil, deliberately provoke sectarian conflicts, splitting Ukrainian society.”

“Recently one of their supporters publicly stated that if Metropolitan Onuphry still belongs to the canonical Church, it is only because there was no suitable instruments of torture – a soldering iron, or iron. It is terrible to imagine what would have happened if these bandits got canonical legalization and joined in our midst! “- Said His Holiness.

His Holiness expressed his gratitude to the fraternal Local Churches – particularly Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Serbian, Bulgarian and Polish – for the prayers and support for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. “His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Irenaeus wrote to me quite right about the Ukrainian schismatics: These people belong to Orthodoxy only in name, and” their contempt for the rules of Christian morality, readiness to hate, lie and shed blood are living proof of that, “- said the Primate of the Russian Church. – For such people, there is only one way into the Church – through repentance. We were asked why we do not want to be with them, they require us to start a dialogue on a nearly equal footing. But how can there be harmony between Christ and Belial? ”

“The Orthodox people of the Ukraine continue to support the canonical Church – His Holiness Patriarch testified, describing the gathering of tens of thousands of worshippers in procession in Kiev to celebrate the memory of St. Vladimir. I believe in the future of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: Its believers are united in their condemnation of the sschism, and violence and evil only strengthens them in the heroism of love and faith. ”

Later in his speech, Patriarch Kyrill noted that the process of preparing the Pan-Orthodox Council has recently noticeably intensified. His Holiness has focused on the reasons for failure of a number of previous Primates Meeting in the framework of the Special Committee and the Fifth Inter-Orthodox Pre-Council Conference and, in particular, noted the importance of taking into account the positions of all the Local Churches, carrying out their missions in different conditions. In this regard, some have mentioned so far that they have not heard suggestions that the last two years have been made on the topics of the agenda-Orthodox Cathedral near the local Churches, including Antioch, Russian, Georgian, Serbian, Bulgarian.

The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church expressed his conviction of the need to revise the draft document “the calendar issue”, noting that the theme of “to more accurately determine the date of Easter” is absolutely irrelevant to the Orthodox Church and can only sow discord among many believers.

Of equal concern, in the words of His Holiness, is a draft document “Obstacles to marriage”, which contains a dry list of canonical obstacles and does not affect the position of the Church regarding the institution of the family in the modern world.

As one of the very important activities of the Russian Orthodox Church has called the theme “Autocephaly and Method of proclamation,” proposing to adopt at the Council already reached at the meetings of the Inter-Orthodox Preparatory Commission agreed in principle to the effect that the establishment of new Autocephalous Churches to be an act of general Orthodox scale requiring reaching a consensus of all the Local Orthodox Churches in each case.

It was also stressed the need for a preliminary study of the draft conciliar document on “The Orthodox Diaspora”.

The subject of detailed discussion in the speech of His Holiness and became the venue of the Council, previously rising in circulation of His Holiness Patriarch Irinej of Serbia.

“As we can see, many of the issues we still have to work together to solve, in order to allow the convening of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church. I’m sure the real reason that many of the documents are still inconsistent – not because of conflicting opinions from different Churches, but in an ineffective methodology for the preparation of the Council, “- said His Holiness. In this regard, His Holiness shared his experience of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church in an open discussion format, which allows any interested member of the Church to express their position.

“I think that it is so open, should continue to undergo preparation for the Council, if we are really interested in its success”, – said the Primate of the Russian Church, stressing the importance of publishing draft conciliar documents and overcome the shortage of reliable information, which raises the suspicions of many believers.

“I am convinced that the long-awaited publication of draft conciliar documents and the ability to free them of discussion not only hinders the carrying out of the Council, but also show us and the world the truly Catholic character of our Church, helping to strengthen Pan-Orthodox unity”, said Patriarch Kyrill, urging all gathered together to pray to the Lord for help in a collaborative effort for the good of the Church, to overcome the difficulties encountered on the way to conducting a Pan-Orthodox Council.

The Project to Destroy the Russian Orthodox Church

The Project

If Antichrist is to come, first historical Russia and her independent Christian civilization and values must be destroyed, since they cannot be combined with the globalist project of those who want to destroy all sovereign nation-states and authentic faith (as opposed to mere thisworldly, rationalistic ‘religion’ with its tame, dependent State-manipulated institutions). For authentic faith means faithfulness to the other world and so opposition to this world – which Antichrist cannot tolerate. This was the meaning of the genocidal events of 1917 in the Christian Russian Empire, organized, financed and unanimously welcomed with glee by the warring, internationalist Western Powers, and the massacre and martyrdom of millions after it, which were either praised or else ignored by the West. Now all civilizations are dependent on a spiritual source, And the civilization of historical Russia, which is miraculously being resurrected by the New Martyrs and Confessors after the murderous Bolshevik obscenities, can only be destroyed if its spiritual source, the Russian Orthodox Church, can be destroyed, as the neocon ideologue Brzezinski has clearly stated. But how can Russia and the Russian Church be destroyed?

Certainly not with nuclear weapons because Russia can defend herself against them. Such destruction can therefore only be carried out by ‘soft power’, that is, by Western propaganda. The BBC ideology, with its systematic repetition of racist propaganda myths (e,g. Russians are ‘Asiatics’ (how charming for real ‘Asiatics’, like the 100 million massacred Native Americans), Ivan ‘the Terrible’, who, they say, killed about 3,000 and was far worse than Henry VIII (Defender of the Faith’?) or Elizabeth I who killed 150,000 between them, or Cromwell who killed well over a million, the myth that the architect of the so-called ‘St Basil’s Cathedral’ on Red Square was blinded by the Tsar after building it, the myth that Saint Petersburg was built on the bodies of over 100,000 ‘serfs’, non-existent Potiomkin villages etc), its denigration of the Romanovs, praise for the 1917 obscenity and the evil and stupid Khrushchov and Gorbachov and insistence that today’s Church is merely a tool of the Russian State (just as the Church of England is a tool of the British Establishment), is a good example, but not the only one, for all the Western media obey the same Satanic master. For the project means Westernizing enough ‘useful idiots’ of the Gorbachov-Yeltsin type, so that Western liberals and atheists can then take over in Moscow, forming a puppet government, exactly as happened in Saint Petersburg in February 1917 and in Kiev in February 2014. But how can the Church be undermined?

Remove the Patriarch

The history of Western terrorism around the world has always followed the same pattern. Its strategy is always to discredit and then remove the enemy leaders, whether political or spiritual, hoping that the masses will fall for the myth and lie of ‘democracy’, created by Western PR companies. This is exactly what they did in Kiev in 2014. In the case of the Russian Church, this means discrediting the Patriarch. Now His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill was elected after the repose of Patriarch Alexei II six years ago. The dream of Western liberals was that he would prove to be a liberal, since he is a highly-educated man with a profound knowledge and understanding of the Western world and great diplomatic skills. He greatly disappointed them. In 2012 Western embassies orchestrated an attack on the Russian State and Church, including subsidized street demonstrations with tens of thousands out of the 15 million population of Moscow. And so at the same time US-controlled media invented several stories (mainly financial) against the Patriarch personally and there took place the Western-orchestrated Pussy Riot protest, whose obscene name is so deeply symbolic of the Western sex and violence ideology.

The results were catastrophic for the West; there would be no coloured revolution in Russia, as in 1917. The street protests petered out as Hillary Clinton turned off US taxpayer subsidies to the mob; the Pussy Riot demonstrators, adored by the BBC and other Western media and the inveterate Russophobe Senator McCain, were proved to be blasphemous degenerates or mentally ill. As for His Holiness, he proved that he was much more than a diplomat as he turned for support to the masses of devout Orthodox who long ago saw through liberalism, modernism and ecumenism. Indeed, His Holiness spoke then of ‘traitors in cassocks’, when referring to lapsed individuals who had been ‘turned’ by Western spies. Just as the 2006 Sourozh schism, plugged by the BBC, The Times and The Daily Telegraph in the UK, turned out to be the end for the fifty years of aggressive renovationist modernism in the Moscow Patriarchate Diocese in the UK and so at last allied it with the traditional ROCOR, so also the 2012 attack on the Patriarch only consolidated the Church in Russia. Similarly, the 2014 attack on the Ukraine only consolidated Russian relations with China, which had once been sabotaged by Khrushchev.

The Failure

Now, as 2015 turns into 2016, the project has been relaunched. Having failed to steal the Crimea to set up NATO bases there, having failed to create full-scale civil war in the Ukraine and spread it to Russia, Western command and control has sent out the message that the Russian Patriarch must be removed ‘by 2017’. This at least is the message from the dismissed political commentator Fr Vsevolod Chaplin who, like the embittered marginal liberals Protodeacon Andrei Kurayev and Sergei Chapnin, has shown extraordinary disrespect for His Holiness and also for the ordinary clergy and people of the Church. The powers which are conspiring against the Church desire to usurp the all too solid and intelligent Patriarch, replacing him with a naïve, if possible English-speaking, liberal. At the same time, they wish to provoke the Churched masses with a ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’, which appears to have a US-imposed secularist agenda, and so create a schism in the Ukraine. However, the conspirators cannot succeed, whatever the views of a few, off-centre individuals who are in love with the liberal media; the Orthodox Church is the Body of Christ, not some secular Western organization, which can simply be beheaded.

First of all, the Patriarch of Moscow is elected for life (unlike, for instance, Pope Benedict of Rome) and the people can see through naïve and manipulated liberals. As for the bishops’ meeting (‘Council’) which may or may not take place this year in some still undisclosed location, it may come to nothing and, indeed, it will certainly come to nothing, if the people do not receive its decisions. The Orthodox Church is not the Vatican, where whatever a Western-installed Pope of Rome says can be applied. Saints like St Justin of Chelije and St Kuksha of Odessa have already said that any novelty at a ‘Council’ will be dismissed. As for schism in the Ukraine, it is not going to happen – the Church there is faithful to the multinational, Imperial Church, centred in Moscow. Neither the Russophobes in the West and their provincial nationalist puppets in Kiev, nor narrow secular-minded nationalists and liberals in Moscow, will succeed. The mainstream, the monasteries, the ordinary parish clergy and faithful, will conquer, for our Faith is founded on Christ, His Mother, the Saints and the New Martyrs and Confessors. Like Julian the Apostate and all the others, the Western tyrants will also one day confess: ‘Thou hast conquered, O Galilean’.

What Went Wrong With the West?

Introduction

For 45 years it has been clear to me that the end of the world, preceded by the coming of Antichrist, will come about through Western ‘know-how’. To many who were born and lived before me, this was of course clear long before this. With my own realization came the desire to help gather together those whom Providence brought me into contact with into the Church before the end.

In the Western context into which I was born this has meant in particular being able to explain how the Western world came to give rise to its civilization of Armageddon and the Apocalypse. After all, in the first century the first Christians in the Western world, in Rome, were largely Greek-speaking of Jewish origin, no different from those in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria or elsewhere in the Orthodox Christian world. And yet it was so-called Western Christianity that gave rise to the apostasy of today.

Now although the Western ideological world covers only a small part of the Earth’s surface, Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and US colonies and protectorates in Latin America, Japan, Israel, South Korea and Saudi Arabia, these countries are the most wealthy and powerful. Moreover, they are influential all over the world through their cultural imperialism (‘soft power’) in a gradual process once called Westernization, then Americanization, and now known by the code-name of globalization.

The First Millennium

It is clear that the apostasy did not begin with the Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians in Rome, nor with the Latin-speaking Orthodox Christians whom they evolved into from the end of the second century on, whether in Rome or in the other Western provinces of the Roman Empire at that time. The first signs that all might not be well appear to have come after the fall to the barbarians of those Western provinces of the by then Christianizing Roman Empire. This was in the fifth century.

At that time those who were closer to the pagan culture of the old pre-Christian Roman Empire than to the Christian culture of the new Christian Roman Empire began to yearn nostalgically for that past with the absolute power of Old Rome. For example, some senior clergy from upper-class families would shave their Christian beards, just like the old pagan Roman leaders. They read pagan Latin literature and, remarkably, passed their nostalgia for pagan Rome on to the Frankish barbarian invaders.

In their turn, these provincials also began to covet the same absolute power as the pagan Romans, ignoring the existence of the new Christian Roman Emperor and Empire, founded by St Constantine in the early fourth century in Christian New Rome, the replacement of pagan Old Rome. As a result, real difficulties began to emerge at the end of the eighth century after the Germanic Merovingian dynasty had been usurped by the Carolingian dynasty in what is now Western Germany. Ambitious, violent, aggressive and led by their ruthless heretical king-iconoclast, Karl the Tall (Charlemagne), these barbarian Franks began to unite parts of Western Europe by fire and sword into what they pretentiously called the ‘First Reich’ or ‘First Empire’.

His courtiers, largely educated by Jewish intellectuals in Spain who had deformed the Christian teaching of the Holy Trinity, revealed in the New Testament and to the saints, reduced the Christian God into a kind of unity as in Jewish monotheism, which led to what in the 20th century was called ‘Judeo-Christianity’. Although the little ‘Empire’ of Karl soon collapsed, its inspiration did not and its ideology continued more or less underground until the 11th century, when it finally emerged and was adopted in Rome itself. Thus was created a new religion called ‘Roman Catholicism’, a substitute for Christianity.

The Second Millennium

By making themselves substitutes (‘vicars’) for Christ (before this they had always been known as ‘the vicars of St Peter’) and accepting Karl’s novel filioque fantasy which implied all power and authority came from themselves as substitutes for Christ, the leaders of the Western provinces, calling themselves Popes of Rome, made a power grab for the Church. This was a dismal failure, as many, even in the Western provinces, let alone in the Christian Roman Capital and in the heartlands of the Church in Jerusalem, Antioch, Jerusalem and elsewhere, rejected this crude pseudo-theological primitivism.

The Popes were therefore obliged to use force to impose their control, inventing the full-blooded ‘feudal’ system for dominance. Thus, their shock troops invaded the Iberian Peninsula, southern Italy, England (under ‘the Conqueror’ in 1066, 950 years ago this year) and the Holy Land in the so-called ‘First Crusade’. The semi-barbarian ‘Frankish’ soldiery sent by the Popes, causing mayhem and committing genocide as they went, filling Jerusalem with blood, were the only way in which the Popes could achieve any measure of control.

It was from this point on that the Western lands began their continuous millennial attempt to conquer the world, leaving hundreds of millions of native peoples dead in their wake. As the new 11th century religion degenerated further into ever less Christian isms, like Scholasticism, Protestantism and its myriad of sects, and so into modern secularism, the Western world expanded. Eventually it tried to attain full control over the whole world, even creating ‘World Wars’ and the ability to destroy the world several times over with thermonuclear and bacteriological devices, inspired by Satan.

Notably it tried to destroy any rival civilization, whether in the Americas (through conquistadors and cowboys), in Africa (through slavery and enslavement, as in the Congo), in Asia (especially in India, in China through the opium trade, and in Japan), and in Australasia (through the massacre of aboriginal inhabitants), as well as in Christian Europe. Western aggression in the sole part of Europe that was still free, free also of Ottoman Muslim occupation and oppression, is of particular interest. For that part of Europe was the Russian Lands.

The Assault on the Third Rome

Bloodthirsty attacks on the Russian Lands go back to the 13th century ‘crusades’ by the Teutonic Knights (a stab in the back while the Russian Lands were fighting off the Mongol-Tartar yoke), to the Swedes, Poles and Lithuanians in the 17th century, to the British-organized assassination of the Emperor Paul, to the united European invasion under Napoleon in 1812, to the Anglo-Franco-Muslim invasion of 1854, to the Austro-German invasion of 1914, to the British-organized coup d’etat and the German despatch of the murderous Lenin (Blank) Bolshevik bacterium in 1917 in order to eradicate all Russian Christians, to the united European invasion under Hitler in 1941.

The Western world was silent about the genocide committed by Lenin and Stalin (until 1945), both of whom it supported. It sponsored the evil Ukrainian peasant Khrushchov, the traitor Gorbachov and the drunkard clown Yeltsin in extraordinary and continual aggression. This continued right up to the massacre in Kiev in 2014, when NATO-trained snipers fired at the forces of law and order from the US embassy. In all this the West always imposed its elitist system of greedy and selfish oligarchy against Christian sovereignty (which it contemptuously called ‘autocracy’). Oligarchy means the dictatorial rule of the rich few of the elite over the masses, hoodwinked by the myth of ‘democracy’.

Indeed, it is reckoned that in reality the whole Western and Westernized world is ruled over by a few hundred individuals, who continually exchange places with one another and install their compliant puppets through ‘coloured’ revolutions in provincial positions from Saigon to Santiago, from Kabul to Kiev. This was the system that they have tried to spread to Eastern Europe. In Protestant and modernist Catholic (= Protestantized) countries, this was easy, though there is opposition from traditional Catholics, who have at heart never accepted the Protestantizing Second Vatican Council.

In Orthodox countries which had been protected from the 1960s, ironically, by Communism, it was much more difficult. So they sent thousands of Protestant ‘missionaries’ (mainly Americans and many linked with the CIA) to soften Christian resistance. They met with more or less total failure, indeed the non-mercenary, sincere missionaries were converted from their Protestant errors and fables to the real Christianity of the Orthodox Church. As for the bandit-oligarchs, mainly Non-Russians, they had to flee the anger of the people, whose assets they had stripped, and went into hiding in London, New York, Tel Aviv and on the French Riviera. Here they were sheltered by Western bandit governments, their fellow-oligarchs.

Analysis

What went wrong with the West? To go from a Christ-loving to a Christ-hating elite, it had to deceive itself with its own lies through a thousand year-long process of self-flattery, self-justification and intolerance, camouflaged by words like ‘progressive’, ‘liberal’, ‘democratic’ and ‘modern’. Substituting its own manmade words for the God-given words of the Gospel of Christ, it invented a new religion which is essentially based on the concept that the Western world is the only world and that all others must fall under its destructive hegemony, at best to be preserved as folklore for Western tourists, at worst to be annihilated.

The last 1,000 years are the history of the destruction of all Non-Western civilizations, the pre-eleventh-century Christian Western, the ‘Byzantine’, the Inca, the Aztec, the Maya, the Native American, the African, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Muslim and the pillaging of their artefacts which today fill the museums of the Western world. Today the only civilization that remains to contest the anti-Christian pretensions of the West is that of the Church, Orthodox Civilization.

Though cruelly ravaged by Western materialism, Orthodox Civilization can today be seen in the resurgent, multinational Russian Orthodox Church, ‘the greatest enemy of the West’ according to the American ideologue Brezinski. The faithful of this Church are at this moment fighting for freedom in two wars. Firstly, in the Ukraine, fighting against the Western-financed Godless Galician Uniats and their brutal mercenary allies, sent by the genocidal puppet junta in Kiev. Secondly, in Syria, fighting against the brutal atheist guerrillas of US-invented Islamism, financed by the Western protectorates of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

By 2016 the attempt to destroy the Church of God, which is centred in Moscow, had caused chaos in Eastern Europe, throughout the Middle East as far as the Himalayas, throughout North Africa as far west as Morocco and as far south as Kenya, creating risks of war with Iran and China, and throughout the mainland of Western Europe, with the invasion of millions of wretched Muslim immigrants, especially to Germany, Scandinavia, France and Italy. Having destroyed the Middle East, the anti-Christian elite is set on destroying Europe.

Conclusion

In this vital opening year of 2016 we pray that we shall see a turning-point in the affairs of men, both in the Ukraine and Syria, against the forces of Satan. The Resurrection of the Church, after Her 20th century Golgotha, has begun. It is our earnest hope and ardent prayer that, through the Russian Orthodox Church, the partially compromised, Western-controlled Local Churches will yet turn back to the Faith. Repentance is always possible, all the more so as a result of a genuine Church Council.

A true Church Council can reiterate every article of the Creed, affirming the Persons of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and all the eternal truths of the Seven Universal Councils, rejecting pseudo-Orthodoxy and anathematizing all the false teachings that faithless people have devised. Gathering around the Russian Orthodox Church and the to-be-restored, multinational, sacral, sovereign Christian Empire, centred in a Moscow purified like the rest of the Empire of Bolshevik and other impurities, it may be that God in His mercy will yet give us more time before the end to cleanse ourselves.

A new Christian Emperor can help gather together all men and women of goodwill everywhere into the Church of God, through cleansing and a huge programme of church-building worldwide. This is to prepare us before the end, when Christ will return in glory and His enemies will be laid low in Gehenna, but the repentant will find salvation. For before Antichrist comes we have to prepare, so that we shall not be compromised and weakened by the worldly ways of the guileful, so that we shall bow down before the Son of God Alone.

On the So-Called Council

In a few days time there will be a meeting in a modernist concrete building in Calvinist Geneva (instead of at the historic Russian Orthodox Cathedral) to discuss the possible forthcoming meeting of Orthodox bishops (Where? When?), which the US State Department has pretentiously billed as a ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’. In the Ukraine, from where I have just returned (graffiti like ‘Down with Poroshenko’s Party of Thieves and Murderers’ are now even more common), I found two attitudes to this ‘Council’. One was pure ignorance (‘never heard of it’), the other attitude was fear and rejection (‘whatever they decide, we shall ignore them’). If this meeting, against the background of civil wars in the Ukraine and Syria, happens, it does indeed seem to be a most inopportune time.

Popular attitudes like those in the Ukraine are to be expected when there has been no consultation with monastics, parish clergy and people about this ‘Council’, let alone about its virtually unknown and meaningless agenda (try googling for it), and when all preparatory meetings are conducted behind closed doors and no reports on those meetings are issued. As the much-respected Metr Hierotheos of the Church of Greece has written, this ‘Council’ should be stopped, for its agenda contains not a single theological issue (unlike real Councils). And yet the ailing and elderly Patriarch of Constantinople is desperate to see the ‘Council’ take place before he dies, even reconciling himself with Metr Rostislav of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Going from negative to positive, what are the possible outcomes?

1. The meeting (‘Council’) will not take place. With the difficulty between the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch, between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Church of Greece, with the political impasse between Russian and Turkey (and the representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople are all Turkish citizens), with calls from senior churchmen in the Ukraine and Greece for the meeting not to be held at all, with its secular agenda on which there is no agreement, this outcome seems quite possible. A non-event.

2. The meeting takes place somewhere and some time in 2016, but it will issue some vague and meaningless statement full of secularspeak, ensuring unanimity but also meaning that the meeting is still a non-event.

3. The meeting takes place but begins and ends in disagreement. Faithful monasteries and parish churches declare that they belong to ‘the Church of the Seven Councils’; schismatic and modernist ones declare that they belong to ‘the Church of the Eight Councils’. Although this may seem the most negative outcome of all, perhaps it is time for there to be a cleansing and that the small minority of Halfodox at last leave the Church, taking their heresies with them, in their apostasy becoming Uniats or forming some new ‘Protestant with icons’ sect, whatever they want. Let the dead bury the dead.

4. The meeting takes place and a miracle happens. It obtains an eternal meaning, becoming a Council. Once hesitant Local Churches affirm Orthodoxy and reject spiritual death; the minority of Orthodox who have compromised return to the Orthodox calendar, refusing to die out in the worship of the past as a 1453 nationalistic irrelevance in a global world, rejecting ecumenism and modernism, adopting the global missionary responsibilities of the Church, launching worldwide mission. In this way this Council confirms, seals and extends the Seven Universal Councils of the Church and the Creed and refuses to act as a secular organization like the Vatican or CIA-run Protestant sects, confirming Christ and rejecting Antichrist.

Leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Asks for Boycott of All-Orthodox ‘Council’

Speaking at the Diocesan Meeting in Kiev on 28 December, Metropolitan Onuphry, the ascetic and leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (representing some 30,000,000 souls in the Church of Rus’ (75% of the whole Orthodox Church) to abstain from the forthcoming All-Orthodox Bishops’ Council. He revealed that this is currently pencilled in to take place (in a still undisclosed location) next June.

The Metropolitan noted that there had been no agreement at pre-Council meetings on issues such as the order of seniority of the Local Churches, the granting of autocephaly, the calendar and the possibility of allowing a second marriage for clergy. He said that if there is no agreement on such issues, then they should be removed from the agenda. (We should note that only certain bishops have even been consulted on the need for such a meeting, let alone on the agenda, and that many in the parishes have never even heard of this forthcoming ‘Council’; an excellent recipe for its non-reception and/or schisms). Metropolitan Onuphry stated that only where there is full agreement, that is, consensus, can such issues remain on the agenda. Otherwise there would be schisms and public disagreements at the meeting. He also mentioned the possibility of trickery, that propositions that had already been rejected would be resubmitted for signature, but in Greek, before there was time for correct translations to be made. He was also concerned that issues which had not been discussed before the meeting could be added to the agenda at the last minute, resulting in what he called ‘farce’.

He declared that the Council of Bishops of the Church would therefore discuss refusing to take part in the ‘Council’ at all. He asserted that participation could become a greater evil than refusing to participate. If a Local Church refused to take part, then such a meeting could not be considered to represent all Orthodox. Calling the so-called ‘Council’ (organized by the elderly and ill Patriarch of Constantinople, who represents only a few million Orthodox) a ‘temptation’, the Metropolitan called on us to pray to God that this temptation be removed from the Church. He added that there was no need to ‘seek a new faith, but to seek the renewal of the human-being, for our faith is holy’. Mentioning the number of saints, he said that they prove that ours is ‘a saving faith’, that we ‘do not need to seek a faith more attuned to our passions’. ‘We do not need to break our faith because of our weakness and pride, but to break ourselves by adapting ourselves to the faith’. He added: ‘God has given us the faith, let us keep it and if someone else makes another faith, then that is his problem, he will have to answer to God’.

Source:

http://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2016/13/20160104/nado_vozderzhatsya_ot_uchastiya_v_etom_sobore/