Category Archives: Europe

Orthodoxy and the Future of the Western World

Never has the power of sin dominated humanity as it does today…And we know that if sin is victorious over all humanity, then Antichrist will appear.

His Holiness, Patriarch Kyrill, 1 February 2011, (http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/print/1398799.html)

Today we recall the prophetic words of St John of Kronstadt on the birthday of Tsar Nicholas II in 1907:

‘The Empire of Russia wavers, shakes, is close to falling…Hold firm to your Faith and the Church and Orthodox Tsar…If you fall away from your faith…then there will be no Russia or Holy Rus, but a collection of all sorts of people of other faiths, trying to destroy one another…’.

We can understand this prophecy in the light of later history, as recalled by ROCOR faithful:

In Paris the White Russian General P.N. Krasnov related how during the First World War Kaiser Wilhelm once asked a thousand Russian Muslim prisoners of war, for whom he had built a mosque, to ‘sing your prayer’. To a man they sang, ‘God, save the Tsar!’

The overthrow and the arrest of Emperor Nicholas II caused great sorrow to many of the Protestant Baltic Germans in the Imperial Army, such as Count General Keller and General von Rennenkampf, or the Muslim General, Ali-Hussein Khan Nachichevansky, who remained faithful to the Tsar, unlike so many other generals.

In Tobolsk, where the Imperial Family had been exiled, the local Tartars prayed with their mullah for the well-being of the captives in front of the house where they were under arrest.

In 1939, that faithful and most active layman of ROCOR in Western Europe, P.S. Lopukhin, wrote:

‘In this essence of Orthodoxy and Orthodox people lies the foundation of Russian expansion and the ability to join peoples to them, without crippling them. Foreigners perhaps sometimes even more than Russians have loved their ideals, for example, the idea of the White Tsar. This is of course a purely Holy Russian idea. ‘Don’t think’, said one Palestinian, ‘that the Russian Tsar was only Russian. No, he was also Arab. The Tsar is the all-powerful protector and defender of the Orthodox East. While he lived, millions of Arabs lived in peace and security’. Another man said: ‘When the news that they had killed the Tsar reached the Middle East, then in three countries (Syria, the Lebanon and Palestine) there was a wave of mass suicides. Already at that time Arabs felt that with the death of Tsar Nicholas human history was over and that life on earth had lost all its meaning’. A Russian Orthodox man recalled how when the news of the murder of Emperor Nicholas II first reached Kazan, a Tartar said in despair: ‘Russia is dead. We are all dead’.

Today, in many parts of the world, for example in Syria, we see the results.

Why do we recall these words today? Let us look at Western Europe today, first recalling events which took place in Portugal in 1917 – 96 years ago:

‘We will not dispute the miraculous nature of the original appearance of the Mother of God (in Fatima)…like other similar appearances. All these signs had one general task: to warn faithful Catholics of coming misfortunes and to call them to repentance, to change their lives and draw near to God – in order to avoid these misfortunes. To the unprejudiced consciousness, all these appearances, especially the miracle at Fatima, contain what is applicable to Russia, clearly and beyond argument’.

Fr Konstantin Zaytsev, Pastoral Theology, Vol II, P. 41, Jordanville 1961

And what has happened 52 years on since these words were written? Has there been repentance? Let us look at four items, taken from the news this very day, 7 February 2013:

It has been announced in Germany that the Catholic Archdiocese of Berlin is to reduce the number of churches it has from 105 to 30 in the next seven years.

Meanwhile a similar situation has developed in Brussels, (which within a generation will, it is said, have a majority Muslim population, where scores of its 108 churches are to be closed, including the central St Catherine’s church, which is to be turned by the Archdiocese into ‘a vegetable market’.

After being deluged with complaints from outraged religious groups, Obama’s health department has dug in its heels, saying its decision to force employers to provide abortifacient birth control drugs will continue as planned – although faith-based groups will be given a year reprieve. In response, U.S. Catholic bishops have not minced words, vowing to fight the order as ‘literally unconscionable’.

It has been announced that the government of the Russian Federation will review its policy of allowing Russian orphans to be adopted in countries like France and Great Britain, since legislation is being passed there to allow single sex ‘marriage’.

What is the purpose of Orthodoxy?

That I may not be accused of speaking from myself, I will quote again from that renowned Orthodox thinker and writer, Fr Konstantin Zaytsev, from page 136 of the very same book as above:

‘The world has previously been on the threshold of its end. Even now the end can be postponed. What is necessary for this? The Restoration of the Russian Orthodox Empire. The Restoration of Age-Old Church Consciousness’.

He continues on page 138:

‘As regards the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia…inasmuch as it remains by succession a surviving part of the Russian Orthodox Church, it thereby remains faithful to the idea of the Russian Orthodox Empire…’.

The West has westernised Russia. All aspects of modern, everyday life, from blast furnaces to railways, from electricity supply to television, from cars to smartphones, have been shaped by technology born in the West. However, all this belongs to the realm of the natural. But there is that which belongs to the realm of the supernatural, the miraculous: This is the bringing of the West to Christ and only a fully restored Orthodox World can do this.

Il barlume di luce sulla strada davanti a noi: sullo Tsar Nicola II e la restaurazione dell’Impero cristiano

Qui di seguito sono riportate le risposte a vari commenti e domande in recenti e-mail provenienti da Russia, Olanda, Gran Bretagna, Francia e Stati Uniti

D: Perché ci sono così tante incomprensioni su Nicola II e tante critiche stridenti nei suoi confronti?

R: Per comprendere lo Tsar Nicola II, devi essere ortodosso. Non serve essere laico o nominalmente ortodosso, semi-ortodosso, ‘ortodosso per hobby’, e mantenere il tuo bagaglio culturale non convertito, sia sovietico che occidentale – che è essenzialmente la stessa cosa. Devi essere coerentemente ortodosso, consapevolmente ortodosso, ortodosso nell’essenza, nella cultura e nella visione del mondo.

In altre parole, è necessario avere integrità spirituale – esattamente come l’aveva lo Tsar, al fine di capirlo. Lo Tsar Nicola era profondamente e sistematicamente ortodosso nella sua prospettiva spirituale, morale, politica, economica e sociale. La sua anima ortodossa guardava il mondo attraverso occhi ortodossi ed ha agito in modo ortodosso, con riflessi ortodossi. Così anche noi dobbiamo essere ortodossi dall’interno per capirlo.

D: È per questo che gli accademici sono così negativi su di lui?

R: Gli accademici occidentali, come gli accademici sovietici, sono negativi su di lui, perché sono laicisti. Ad esempio, di recente ho letto ‘Crimea’, il libro dello storico britannico della Russia, Orlando Figes. Si tratta di un interessante libro sulla guerra di Crimea, con molti dettagli e fatti ben documentati, scritti come dovrebbero scrivere i professori universitari esperti. Tuttavia, l’autore parte da criteri non espliciti, puramente laici e occidentali, che dicono che dato che lo Tsar dell’epoca, Nicola I, non era un laicista occidentale, doveva essere un fanatico religioso, e che la sua intenzione era di conquistare l’Impero Ottomano. Attraverso il suo amore per i dettagli, Figes trascura il punto principale – ciò che fu in realtà la guerra di Crimea da parte russa. Tutto quello che riesce a vedere sono obiettivi imperialisti in stile occidentale, che egli attribuisce poi alla Russia. Questa attribuzione è una proiezione della sua visione occidentale.

Ciò che Figes fraintende è che le parti dell’Impero Ottomano alle quali era interessato Nicola I erano quelle in cui una popolazione cristiana ortodossa aveva sofferto per secoli sotto il giogo musulmano. La guerra di Crimea non era una guerra coloniale, imperialista russa per espandersi nell’Impero Ottomano e sfruttarlo, così come le guerre condotte da potenze occidentali per espandersi in Africa e in Asia e per sfruttarle. Era una lotta per la liberazione dall’oppressione – in realtà una guerra anti-coloniale, anti-imperialista. L’obiettivo era quello di liberare terre e popoli ortodossi dall’oppressione, non di conquistare l’impero di qualcun altro. Per quanto riguarda Nicola I come fanatico religioso, agli occhi di tutti i laicisti i sinceri cristiani devono essere “fanatici religiosi”. Questo perché i laicisti non hanno una dimensione spirituale. Sono sempre unidimensionali, incapaci di vedere oltre il proprio condizionamento culturale secolare, di ‘pensare fuori dagli schemi’.

D: Questa prospettiva laica occidentale è il motivo per cui gli storici accusano lo Tsar Nicola II di essere stato debole e inetto?

R: Sì. Questa è propaganda politica occidentale, inventata al momento e ancora oggi ripetuta a pappagallo. Gli storici occidentali sono istruiti e pagati da istituzioni occidentali e non possono vedere al di fuori di quella scatola. I seri storici post-sovietici hanno smentito queste accuse, inventate da occidentali e da occidentalizzati, ripetute volentieri dai comunisti sovietici, come giustificazione per lo smantellamento dell’impero dello Tsar. L’unica giustificazione per l’accusa che lo Tsarevich era ‘inetto’ è il fatto che egli era in un primo momento impreparato a essere Tsar perché suo padre, Alessandro III, morì improvvisamente e in giovane età. Ma presto imparò e divenne ‘adatto’.

Un’altra falsa accusa preferita è che lo Tsar diede inizio a guerre, vale a dire la guerra nipponico-russa, chiamata guerra russo-giapponese, e la guerra del Kaiser, chiamata prima guerra mondiale. Questo non è vero. Fu l’unico leader mondiale a volere il disarmo, a essere anti-militarista. Per quanto riguarda la guerra contro l’aggressione giapponese, i giapponesi, finanziati, armati e incoraggiati dagli Stati Uniti e dalla Gran Bretagna, hanno iniziato la guerra nipponico-russa. Hanno attaccato la flotta russa senza preavviso a Port Arthur – un nome che fa quasi rima con Pearl Harbour. E, come sappiamo, sono stati gli austro-ungarici, spinti dal Kaiser, che era alla disperata ricerca di una scusa per iniziare una guerra, a far scoppiare la prima guerra mondiale.

Ricordiamo che è stato lo Tsar Nicola che per la prima volta nella storia del mondo ha chiesto il disarmo a L’Aia nel 1899, perché poteva vedere che l’Europa occidentale era una polveriera, in attesa di esplodere. Era un leader morale e spirituale, l’unico leader mondiale di allora che non aveva ristretti interessi nazionali a cuore e non spingeva al riarmo a costo enorme. Invece, come Unto di Dio, aveva a cuore gli interessi universali di tutta la cristianità ortodossa, per portare a Cristo tutta l’umanità creata da Dio. Perché altrimenti fare dei sacrifici per la Serbia? Per sopravvivere, deve essere stato incredibilmente volitivo, come osservava, tra gli altri, il presidente francese Émile Loubet. Tutte le potenze infernali scatenate contro lo Tsar non sarebbero mai state scatenate per rimuoverlo se fosse stato un debole. Solo i forti devono essere distrutti, come confermato da coloro che lo hanno conosciuto a quel tempo.

D: Ha detto che era profondamente ortodosso, ma è vero che aveva ben poco sangue russo, non è vero?

R: Mi scusi, ma questa affermazione contiene una presunzione razzista, che si debba avere ‘sangue russo’ per essere ortodosso, un cristiano universale. Lo Tsar aveva, credo, un 128° di sangue russo. E con ciò? La sorella dello Tsar ha risposto a questa stessa sfida molto adeguatamente più di cinquant’anni fa. Intervistata dal giornalista greco, Ian Vorres, nel 1960, sua sorella la granduchessa Olga ha spiegato: ‘Forse gli inglesi chiamavano Giorgio VI tedesco? Non aveva una sola goccia di sangue inglese… Il sangue non è tutto. C’è la terra da cui sorgi, la fede in cui sei cresciuto, la lingua che parli e in cui pensi’.

D: Ci sono alcuni russi che oggi descrivono lo Tsar Nicola come un ‘Redentore’. Crede a questo?

R: Certo che no! C’è un solo Redentore, il Salvatore Gesù Cristo. Ciò che si può comunque affermare è che il suo sacrificio, e quindi quello della sua famiglia, dei suoi servitori e delle decine di milioni di altri che sono stati assassinati dai regimi sovietici e fascisti che seguirono, ha avuto un valore di redenzione. La Rus’ è stata crocifissa per i peccati del mondo. In effetti, le sofferenze dei russi ortodossi sono state redentrici nel loro sangue e nelle loro lacrime. Tuttavia, è vero che tutti i cristiani sono chiamati a riscattare se stessi vivendo in Cristo IL Redentore. È interessante notare che i russi pii ma non colti, che chiamano lo Tsar un ‘Redentore’ chiamano anche Rasputin un santo.

D: Parlando di questo, cosa dovremmo pensare di Rasputin?

R: Centinaia di libri sono stati scritti su Rasputin – quasi tutti da persone che non lo hanno mai conosciuto. Vorrei solo ripetere le parole dello stesso Tsar, ‘È un russo semplice, buono, religioso’, e le parole della sorella dello Tsar, granduchessa Olga,’ Non era né un santo né un diavolo… era un contadino con una profonda fede in Dio e un dono di guarigione’. Il fatto che Rasputin fu poi atrocemente calunniato, e, infine, nel dicembre del 1916 torturato da aristocratici russi – un segno di quanto era malata la classe superiore – e assassinato da spie britanniche, non fa che aiutarlo per l’eternità. Tuttavia, Dio non ha rivelato il suo destino dopo questo mondo. Noi non anticipiamo il giudizio di Dio. Quando quel giudizio sarà rivelato a tutti noi, allora saremo in grado di dire di più. Allo stato attuale, a mio avviso, è meglio tacere. Rasputin è ancora una figura misteriosa – lo lasciamo al giudizio di Dio.

D: Ma che dire di tutte le accuse che egli era un ubriacone, un ladro e un libertino?

R: Gli scrittori di romanzi sovietici e hollywoodiani, come il romanziere sovietico Radzinsky, amano questa immagine di Rasputin. Gli storici contemporanei all’interno della Russia de-sovietizzata hanno dimostrato che quasi tutte, forse tutte, queste accuse sono state calunnie, finzioni. Inoltre, non furono composti per screditare Rasputin – era solo una pedina nelle mani dei calunniatori – ma per screditare la Famiglia imperiale.

La loro logica era che se l’amico della famiglia regnante poteva essere presentato come un ladro, ubriacone e dissoluto, anche la famiglia doveva essere così, e quindi erano indegni, e i calunniatori avrebbero dovuto avere il potere. Tale calunnia era molto semplice e molto primitiva. I decadenti privi di alcuna profondità spirituale ci credevano perché volevano crederci, perché questi tipi preferiscono sempre calunnie, scandali e pettegolezzi alla Verità di Cristo.

D: Lei dice che dobbiamo lasciare Rasputin al giudizio di Dio. Vuole paragonare coloro che chiamano Rasputin un santo a coloro che chiamano Ivan IV e Stalin santi?

R: No. Chiamare quei personaggi santi, in particolare Stalin, è ignoranza e bestemmia. Questo è causato da un desiderio a sfondo politico di poche persone di fondere la vecchia mentalità atea sovietica con quella nuova ortodossa. Questo è impossibile, una totale confusione spirituale, analfabetismo teologico. D’altra parte, la questione di Rasputin è piuttosto un caso di alcuni individui con zelo ma poca conoscenza.

D: Se possiamo tornare al nostro punto principale, qual è l’importanza dello Tsar Nicola II, oggi? I cristiani ortodossi sono una piccola minoranza fra tutti i cristiani. Anche se egli fosse importante per tutti gli ortodossi, sarebbe ancora un interesse minoritario fra i cristiani.

R: Certo, noi cristiani siamo una minoranza. Secondo le statistiche, di sette miliardi di esseri umani sul pianeta, il numero di cristiani è di 2,2 miliardi – il 32%. E i cristiani ortodossi sono solo il 10% di tutti i cristiani, cioè solo il 3,2% della popolazione mondiale, circa uno su 33.

Tuttavia, se guardiamo teologicamente a queste statistiche, che cosa vediamo? Per i cristiani ortodossi, tutti i non-ortodossi sono ortodossi decaduti, che sono stati portati involontariamente dai loro capi, per tutta una serie di ragioni politiche, ragioni mondane di convenienza, a diventare non-ortodossi. Per noi, i cattolici possono essere definiti come ortodossi cattolicizzati e i protestanti come cattolici protestantizzati. Noi ortodossi indegni siamo il lievito che fa fermentare la pasta.

Senza la Chiesa, non c’è luce e calore dello Spirito Santo da irradiare al di fuori nel resto del mondo. Così come, anche se si è al di fuori del sole, si può ancora sentire la luce e il calore del sole, così anche il 90% dei cristiani che si trovano fuori della Chiesa sono ancora consapevoli degli effetti della Chiesa. Per esempio, la maggior parte di loro confessa la Santa Trinità e Cristo come il Figlio di Dio. Perché? A causa della Chiesa, che ha istituito tali insegnamenti molto tempo fa. Tale è la grazia della Chiesa, che risplende al di fuori di lei. Ora, se si capisce questo, inizieremo a capire l’importanza del leader del cristianesimo ortodosso, l’ultimo successore dell’imperatore Costantino, lo Tsar Nicola II. La sua deposizione ha cambiato tutta la storia della Chiesa, come anche il suo Golgota e la sua glorificazione di oggi.

D: Se questo è il caso, perché allora lo Tsar è stato deposto e poi ucciso?

R: I cristiani sono sempre perseguitati in tutto il mondo, come il nostro Signore ha detto ai suoi discepoli.

La Russia pre-rivoluzionaria correva sulla fede ortodossa. Questo era l’olio che faceva andare avanti il motore. Tuttavia, quella fede è stata respinta dalla massa della classe dirigente occidentalizzata, dall’aristocrazia, e da molti altri nella classe media in crescita. La rivoluzione è stata causata da una semplice perdita di fede, il motore si è fermato ed è esploso per mancanza d’olio.

Per la maggior parte le classi superiori russe volevano il potere per se stesse, così come i mercanti ricchi e le classi medie volevano il potere per se stessi e avevano così causato la rivoluzione francese. Dopo aver ottenuto la ricchezza, volevano salire il gradino successivo nella gerarchia dei valori – il gradino del potere. Nel contesto russo questa sete di potere, che era venuta dall’Occidente, è quindi basata, per definizione, su una cieca ammirazione dell’Occidente e sull’odio per la Russia. Questo si può vedere sin dall’inizio con figure come Kurbskij, Pietro I, Caterina II e occidentalizzatori come Chaadaev.

Questa mancanza di fede è stato anche ciò che ha avvelenato il movimento bianco, che è stato disunito dalla sua mancanza di una fede comune e vincolante nell’impero ortodosso. In generale, l’autocoscienza ortodossa era assente nel direttivo dell’élite russa, che vi ha sostituito surrogati vari, miscele stravaganti di misticismo, occultismo, massoneria, socialismo e ricerca di ‘verità’ nelle religioni esoteriche. Tra l’altro, questi surrogati sono sopravvissuti nell’emigrazione a Parigi, dove varie figure si sono distinte nella teosofia, nell’antroposofia, nel sofianismo, nel culto del nome e altre fantasie molto eccentriche, ma anche spiritualmente pericolose.

Questi avevano così poco amore per la Russia, che in realtà sono andati in scisma, rompendo con la Chiesa russa e trovando giustificazioni per farlo! Il poeta Bekhteev scrisse molto bruscamente di questo nella sua poesia del 1922, ‘Tornate ai vostri sensi, classi superiori!’, Paragonando la situazione privilegiata a Parigi a quella del popolo della Rus’ crocifissa in patria:

E ancora una volta i loro cuori sono pieni di intrighi,

E ancora una volta il tradimento e la menzogna sono sulle loro labbra,

E la vita scrive nel capitolo dell’ultimo libro

Il vile tradimento dei grandi che sapevano tutto.

Questi membri delle classi superiori (e non tutti erano traditori) sono stati sponsorizzati per principio dall’Occidente. L’Occidente riteneva che una volta che i suoi valori di democrazia parlamentare, repubblica o monarchia costituzionale fossero stati introdotti in Russia, questa sarebbe diventata solo un altro paese borghese occidentale. Per lo stesso motivo, la Chiesa russa ha dovuto essere protestantizzata, vale a dire spiritualmente neutralizzata, o meglio castrata, come l’Occidente ha cercato di fare con il Patriarcato di Costantinopoli e altre Chiese locali cadute sotto il suo potere dal 1917, non appena il patrocinio russo è stato rimosso. Questi atteggiamenti sono stati causati dalla presunzione arrogante che in qualche modo il modello occidentale possa essere universale. Per inciso, questa è la presunzione arrogante delle élite occidentali fino a oggi, mentre cercano di imporre i loro modelli in tutto il mondo, presentandoli come ‘Nuovo Ordine Mondiale’.

Lo Tsar, l’unto del Signore che rappresenta l’ultimo baluardo del cristianesimo della Chiesa nel mondo, doveva essere rimosso, perché stava bloccando la presa di potere del mondo occidentale e occidentalizzato. Tuttavia, nella loro incompetenza, i rivoluzionari aristocratici del febbraio 1917 persero subito il controllo della situazione e in pochi mesi il potere scese da loro al più basso del basso, ai criminali bolscevichi. Questi intrapresero un corso di massacro e genocidio, di ‘terrore rosso’ – così come in Francia cinque generazioni prima, solo che ora lo facevano con la tecnologia molto più micidiale del ventesimo secolo.

È stato in questo modo che il motto dell’impero ortodosso si è deformato. Vi ricordo che si tratta di ‘Ortodossia, Sovranità e Popolo’. Questo è stato deformato dai russi occidentalizzati e dai laici occidentali, sia allora che oggi, in: ‘oscurantismo, tirannia e nazionalismo’. I comunisti atei lo hanno deformato ancora di più in ‘comunismo centralizzato, dittatura totalitaria e bolscevismo nazionale’. Che cosa voleva dire, infatti, questo motto? Voleva semplicemente dire: ‘(pienamente incarnato) autentico cristianesimo, indipendenza spirituale (dai poteri di questo mondo) e amore per il popolo di Dio. Come ho detto sopra, questo motto è il programma spirituale, morale, politico, economico e sociale dell’Ortodossia.

D: Un programma sociale? Ma sicuramente la rivoluzione è nata perché c’erano tanti poveri e tanto sfruttamento tanto dei poveri da parte dei super-ricchi aristocratici, e lo Tsar era a capo di quella aristocrazia?

R: No, è proprio l’aristocrazia che si opponeva allo Tsar e al popolo. Lo Tsar ha donato gran parte della sua ricchezza personale e ha tassato i ricchi fino in fondo sotto il suo brillante primo ministro Stolypin, che tanto ha fatto per la riforma agraria. Purtroppo, il programma di giustizia sociale dello Tsar è stato uno dei motivi per cui molti aristocratici odiavano lo Tsar. Lo Tsar e il popolo erano uno. Entrambi sono stati traditi dall’élite occidentalizzata. Ciò risulta evidente dall’assassinio di Rasputin, che è stata la preparazione per la rivoluzione. In esso i contadini avevano intuito il tradimento del popolo da parte delle classi superiori.

D: Qual è stato il ruolo degli ebrei in questo?

A: C’è una teoria della cospirazione anti-semita, che dice che i soli ebrei erano – e sono – responsabili di tutto il male in Russia (e ovunque). Questo contraddice le parole di Cristo. Prima di tutto, gli ebrei che sono stati coinvolti nella rivoluzione russa – ed è vero che la maggior parte dei bolscevichi erano ebrei – erano apostati, atei, come Marx, e non veri ebrei praticanti. Tuttavia, quegli ebrei che sono stati coinvolti hanno lavorato fianco a fianco con non-ebrei atei, come il banchiere americano Morgan, o con russi e molti altri e dipendevano da loro.

Così, sappiamo bene che la Gran Bretagna ha organizzato la rivoluzione del febbraio 1917, applaudita dalla Francia e finanziata dagli Stati Uniti, che Lenin è stato trasportato in Russia dal Kaiser e finanziato da lui, e che le masse che hanno combattuto nell’Armata Rossa erano russe. Nessuno di questi era ebreo. Alcuni, prigionieri di miti razzisti, semplicemente si rifiutano di vedere la verità – che la rivoluzione era satanica e che Satana può usare qualsiasi nazionalità, chiunque di noi, per le sue opere velenose, ebrei, russi e non russi. Satana non favorisce alcuna cittadinanza, ma si avvale di tutti quelli che gli sottomettono la loro libera volontà per il suo ‘Nuovo Ordine Mondiale’, in cui egli sarà il Sovrano Universale del mondo caduto.

D: Ci sono russofobi che dicono che c’è continuità tra la Russia dello Tsar e l’Unione Sovietica comunista. È così?

R: Vi è certamente una continuità nella russofobia occidentale! Leggete le copie del quotidiano The Times del 1862 e del 2012, per esempio. Vedrete 150 anni di xenofobia. Sì, è vero che molti in Occidente erano russofobi molto tempo prima che nascesse l’Unione Sovietica. Ci sono tra tutti i popoli individui di mente gretta che sono semplicemente razzisti. Ogni nazionalità diversa dalla propria deve essere demonizzata, qualunque sia il loro sistema politico e comunque tale sistema possa cambiare. Lo abbiamo visto nella recente guerra in Irak. Possiamo vederlo ora negli articoli dei tabloid sulla Siria, l’Iran o la Corea del Nord, che cercano di demonizzare i popoli di questi paesi. Noi non prendiamo quelle menti ristrette sul serio.

Ora, passiamo alla questione della continuità. Dopo la generazione di oscenità dopo il 1917, una continuità è riemersa davvero. Questo è stato dopo che la Germania aveva di nuovo invaso la Russia in occasione della festa di Tutti i Santi glorificati nelle terre russe, nel giugno del 1941. Stalin si rese conto che poteva vincere la guerra solo con la benedizione della Chiesa, ricordando le vittorie dei russi ortodossi del passato, come quelle di Sant’Aleksander Nevskij e Dmitrij Donskoj, che ogni vittoria doveva essere la vittoria dei suoi ‘fratelli e sorelle’, del popolo, non dei suoi “compagni” e della sua idiota ideologia comunista. La geografia non cambia, quindi c’è continuità nella storia russa.

È solo che il periodo sovietico è stato un’aberrazione da quella storia, una caduta dal destino nazionale, in particolare nella sua prima generazione violenta. Ciò che è importante è che il modo in cui l’Unione Sovietica ha agito è stato tanto perverso, non necessariamente quello che ha fatto, ma come lo ha fatto. Sono rimasto colpito dalle parole della sorella dello Tsar, la granduchessa Olga, che nella sua biografia del 1960 ha dichiarato: ‘Ho sempre seguito la politica estera sovietica con grande interesse. Quasi nulla è diverso dal corso adottato da mio padre e da Nicky’ (da Alessandro III e Nicola II). La differenza è che la politica sovietica ha lavorato con la violenza e le menzogne, le politiche dello Tsar lavoravano attraverso la pace e la sincerità.

D: Ci può fare un esempio di questo?

R: Che cosa sarebbe successo se la rivoluzione non avesse avuto luogo? Sappiamo (e Churchill lo ha espresso molto bene nel suo libro, ‘The World Crisis 1916-1918′) che la Russia era sull’orlo della vittoria nel 1917. È per questo che i rivoluzionari sono intervenuti a quel tempo. Avevano una finestra di tempo molto stretta in cui operare prima che avesse inizio la grande offensiva della primavera del 1917.

Se non ci fosse stata la rivoluzione, la Russia avrebbe sconfitto gli austro-ungarici, il cui esercito multinazionale e soprattutto slavo era comunque sul punto dell’ammutinamento e del collasso. Poi la Russia avrebbe respinto i tedeschi, o meglio i loro signori della guerra prussiani, a Berlino. In altre parole, la situazione sarebbe probabilmente stata simile a quella nel 1945 – con una sola eccezione vitale. Vale a dire che gli eserciti dello Tsar avrebbero liberato l’Europa centrale e orientale nel 1917-18, non invadendola, come nel 1944-45. E così avrebbero liberato Berlino come avevano liberato Parigi nel 1814, in modo pacifico e rispettoso, senza gli errori e le ubriachezze commessi dall’Armata Rossa.

D: Che cosa avrebbe potuto succedere, allora?

R: La liberazione di Berlino, e quindi della Germania, dal militarismo prussiano avrebbe sicuramente portato alla smilitarizzazione e alla regionalizzazione della Germania, al ripristino di qualcosa della Germania pre-1871, la Germania di cultura, musica, poesia e tradizione. Questa sarebbe stata la fine del Secondo Reich di Bismarck, che a sua volta era un revival del Primo Reich dell’eretico militarista Carlo Magno e che ha portato a sua volta direttamente al Terzo Reich di Hitler.

Se la Russia fosse stata vittoriosa, ci sarebbe stata un’umiliazione del governo tedesco / prussiano, il Kaiser sarebbe stato inviato in esilio, forse in qualche isola remota come avvenne per Napoleone. Ma non ci sarebbe stata alcuna umiliazione dei popoli tedeschi, il risultato del terribile trattato di Versailles, che ha portato direttamente agli orrori del fascismo e della seconda guerra mondiale. E che, tra l’altro, ha portato direttamente al Quarto Reich dell’Unione europea di oggi.

D: La Francia, la Gran Bretagna e gli Stati Uniti non si sarebbero opposti ai rapporti della Russia vittoriosa con Berlino?

R: Francia e Gran Bretagna, impantanate nelle loro sanguinose trincee o forse ormai raggiunti i confini francese e belga con la Germania, non avrebbero potuto obiettare, perché la vittoria sulla Germania del Kaiser sarebbe stata soprattutto una vittoria russa. Per quanto riguarda gli Stati Uniti, non sarebbero mai entrati in guerra, se la Russia non fosse stata prima messa fuori combattimento – in parte per il finanziamento degli Stati Uniti ai rivoluzionari, questo va detto. E questo di per sé è il motivo per cui gli Alleati hanno fatto del loro meglio per eliminare la Russia dalla guerra, perché non volevano una vittoria russa. Tutto quello che volevano dalla Russia era carne da cannone per esaurire la Germania, al fine di prepararla per la sconfitta da parte degli Alleati, in modo da poter finire la Germania e prenderne il controllo.

D: Gli eserciti russi si sarebbero ritirati da Berlino e dall’Europa orientale poco dopo il 1918?

R: Sì, certo. Ecco un’altra differenza con Stalin, per il quale la ‘Sovranità’, il secondo elemento nel motto dell’Impero ortodosso, era stata deformata in totalitarismo che significava l’occupazione, l’oppressione e lo sfruttamento per mezzo del terrore. Dopo la caduta degli Imperi tedesco e austro-ungarico, ci sarebbe stata una libertà per l’Europa orientale con trasferimenti di popolazione nelle aree di frontiera e la creazione di nuovi paesi senza minoranze, come una nuova Polonia riunita, Cechia, Slovacchia, Slovenia, Croazia, Russia carpatica, Romania, Ungheria e così via. Ciò avrebbe creato una zona demilitarizzata in tutta l’Europa centrale e orientale.

Questa sarebbe stata un Europa orientale con frontiere razionali e protetto, evitando così gli errori degli Stati conglomerati come le future, e ora passate, Cecoslovacchia e Jugoslavia. Per quanto riguarda la Jugoslavia, nel 1912 lo Tsar Nicola aveva già istituito un’Unione dei Balcani, al fine di evitare ulteriori guerre balcaniche. È vero, questo non era riuscito a causa degli intrighi del principino tedesco Ferdinand in Bulgaria e gli intrighi nazionalisti in Serbia e Montenegro. Possiamo immaginare che, dopo una prima guerra mondiale, in cui la Russia era stata vittoriosa, una tale unione doganale, istituita con frontiere eque, avrebbe potuto diventare permanente. Coinvolgendo Grecia e Romania, avrebbe potuto finalmente stabilire la pace nei Balcani, dalla libertà garantita sotto il protettorato russo.

D: Quale sarebbe stato il destino dell’impero ottomano?

R: Gli Alleati avevano già concordato nel 1916 che alla Russia sarebbe stato permesso di liberare Costantinopoli e controllare il Mar Nero. Questo è solo ciò che la Russia avrebbe potuto ottenere sessant’anni prima, evitando i massacri turchi in Bulgaria e in Asia Minore, se non fosse stato per l’invasione della Russia in Crimea da parte di Francia e Gran Bretagna. (Ricordiamo come lo Tsar Nicola I fu sepolto con una croce d’argento raffigurante Aghia Sophia, la Chiesa della Sapienza di Dio, ‘in modo che in cielo non si dimenticasse di pregare per i suoi fratelli d’Oriente’). L’Europa cristiana sarebbe stata finalmente liberata dall’oppressione ottomana.

Gli armeni e i greci dell’Asia Minore sarebbero anche stati protetti e i curdi avrebbero avuto un proprio Stato. Ma più di questo, gli ortodossi della Palestina e gran parte della futura Siria e Giordania sarebbero giunti sotto la protezione russa. Non ci sarebbe stata nessuna delle guerre permanenti che vediamo nel Medio Oriente di oggi. Forse le situazioni dell’Irak e dell’Iran di oggi avrebbero potuto essere evitate. Le implicazioni di tutto ciò sono enormi. Possiamo immaginare una Gerusalemme controllata dai russi? Anche Napoleone ha riconosciuto che ‘colui che controlla la Palestina, controlla il mondo intero’. Questo è noto oggi in Israele e negli Stati Uniti.

D: Quali sarebbero state le implicazioni in Asia?

A: Pietro I aveva aperto una finestra sull’Europa. Era il destino di Nicola II di aprire una finestra sull’Asia. Nonostante la sua generosa costruzione di chiese in Europa occidentale e in America, aveva solo un interesse limitato nell’Ovest cattolico / protestante e nelle sue estensioni nelle Americhe e in Australia, perché questo aveva e ha solo un interesse limitato per la Chiesa. In Occidente, c’è stato e c’è relativamente poco potenziale di crescita per il cristianesimo ortodosso. Infatti, oggi, solo una piccola percentuale della popolazione mondiale vive nel mondo occidentale, anche se questo copre un vasto territorio.

L’obiettivo dello Tsar Nicola di servire Cristo era quindi più interessato all’Asia, in particolare all’Asia buddista. Aveva cittadini ex-buddisti nell’impero russo che si erano convertiti a Cristo, e sapeva che il buddismo, come il confucianesimo, non è una religione, ma una filosofia. I buddisti lo chiamavano ‘Il Tara (Re) bianco’. Così ha lavorato con il Tibet, dove è stato chiamato ‘Chakravartin’ (‘Il Re della Pace’), Mongolia, Cina, Manciuria, Corea e Giappone, paesi dal grande potenziale. Era anche preoccupato dell’Afghanistan, dell’India e del Siam (Thailandia). Il re del Siam, Rama V, aveva visitato la Russia nel 1897 e lo Tsar aveva impedito al Siam di diventare una colonia francese. Questa era un’influenza che si sarebbe diffusa in Laos, Vietnam e Indonesia. In termini di popolazione di questi paesi hanno quasi la metà del mondo di oggi.

In Africa, con un settimo della popolazione mondiale di oggi, lo Tsar aveva relazioni diplomatiche con l’Etiopia e la proteggeva con successo dal colonialismo italiano, intervenendo anche a nome del Marocco e anche dei boeri in Sudafrica. Il suo odio di quello che gli inglesi avevano fatto ai boeri, uccidendoli nei campi di concentramento, è ben noto. Possiamo pensare che deve aver pensato la stessa cosa del colonialismo francese e belga in Africa. Era anche rispettato dai musulmani, che lo chiamava ‘Al-Padishah’, ‘Il Gran Re’. In generale, le sacrali civiltà orientali avevano molto più rispetto per ‘lo Tsar bianco’ che per l’Occidente borghese.

È significativo che in seguito anche l’Unione Sovietica si oppose alle crudeltà del colonialismo occidentale in Africa. Anche qui c’è continuità. Oggi ci sono missioni ortodosse russe in Thailandia, Laos, Indonesia, India e Pakistan, così come chiese in Africa. Penso che il gruppo contemporaneo BRICS, Brasile, Russia, India, Cina e Sud Africa, sia anche molto rappresentativo di ciò che la Russia avrebbe potuto raggiungere 90 anni fa, come membro di un gruppo di paesi indipendenti. In effetti, l’ultimo Maharaja dell’Impero Sikh, Duleep (Dalip) Singh (+ 1893), aveva chiesto allo Tsar Alessandro III di liberare l’India dallo sfruttamento e dall’oppressione britannica.

D: Così l’Asia avrebbe potuto essere colonizzata dalla Russia?

R: No, sicuramente non colonizzata. La Russia imperiale era anti-coloniale e anti-imperialista. Dobbiamo solo confrontare l’espansione russa in Siberia, che fu fondamentalmente tranquilla, con l’espansione europea nelle Americhe, che fu fondamentalmente genocida. Gli stessi popoli – i nativi americani sono fondamentalmente siberiani – sono stati trattati in modi totalmente diversi. Naturalmente, ci sono stati in Siberia e nell’America russa (Alaska) sfruttamenti di mercanti russi e di cacciatori di pellicce ubriaconi che si comportavano come cowboy nei confronti della popolazione locale. Questo lo sappiamo dalla vita di Sant’Herman d’Alaska e dai missionari in Russia orientale e in Siberia, come Santo Stefano di Perm e San Macario dell’Altai, ma questo non era la regola e non ci fu alcun genocidio.

D: Tutto questo è molto bello, ma non è molto rilevante parlare di ciò che avrebbe potuto essere. È tutto ipotetico.

R: Sì, è ipotetico, ma l’ipotesi ci può dare una visione per il futuro. Potremmo visualizzare tutti gli ultimi 95 anni di storia del mondo come una pausa, un’aberrazione catastrofica di grandezza tragica che ha ucciso centinaia di milioni di persone. Questo perché il mondo è diventato sbilanciato dopo la caduta del baluardo della Russia cristiana, la cui caduta è stata attuata dal capitale transnazionale, al fine di creare un ‘mondo unipolare’. E questo è solo il codice per il Nuovo Ordine Mondiale di un governo mondiale, cioè un’universale tirannia anti-cristiana.

Solo se si capisce questo, si può avere una visione per il futuro. Questa visione è quella di supporre che dopo il luglio 2018, possiamo ancora essere in grado di riprendere da dove avevamo lasciato nel luglio 1918, e raccogliere insieme i frammenti e le oasi di civiltà ortodossa in tutto il mondo, prima della fine. Per terribile che sia la situazione attuale, c’è sempre la speranza che nasce dal pentimento. Il pentimento significa tornare indietro, e questo è ciò di cui abbiamo parlato, riprendere dal punto in cui il mondo ha deviato in quella terribile notte epocale a Ekaterinburg nel luglio 1918.

D: Quale sarebbe il frutto di tale pentimento?

R: Un nuovo impero ortodosso, centrato in Russia, con Ekaterinburg, il centro del pentimento, come capitale spirituale, e quindi la possibilità di riequilibrare tutta questo tragico mondo squilibrato.

D: Potrebbe essere accusato di essere troppo ottimista?

R: Sì, questo è molto ottimista. Ma guardi quanto è successo nell’ultima generazione, dal momento della celebrazione del millennio del Battesimo della Rus’ nel 1988. La situazione del mondo è stata trasformata, anzi trasfigurata, con il pentimento di abbastanza persone della vecchia Unione Sovietica da cambiare tutto il mondo. Gli ultimi 25 anni hanno visto una rivoluzione, l’unica vera rivoluzione, una rivoluzione spirituale, il ritorno alla Chiesa. Supponiamo che la prossima generazione continui in quel pentimento rivoluzionario? Dato il miracolo storico che abbiamo già visto, che sembrava un sogno ridicolo per noi che sono nati durante i timori nucleari della guerra fredda e possiamo ricordare gli anni ’50, ’60, ’70 e ’80 spiritualmente cupi, perché non dovremmo prevedere almeno alcune delle possibilità sopra citate?

Nel 1914 il mondo è entrato in un tunnel. Durante la Guerra Fredda abbiamo vissuto in quel tunnel e non abbiamo potuto vedere luce né dietro di noi, né di fronte a noi. Oggi siamo ancora nel tunnel, ma ora possiamo effettivamente vedere un barlume di luce davanti a noi sulla strada. Certamente questa è la luce alla fine del tunnel? Ricordiamo le parole del Vangelo: ‘Con Dio tutto è possibile’. Sì, umanamente, tutto quanto sopra è molto ottimista e non vi è alcuna garanzia di nulla. Tuttavia, l’alternativa a quanto sopra non è solo pessimista, è apocalittico. Il fatto che il tempo è breve è la nostra principale ansia. Ci affrettiamo in una battaglia contro il tempo. E questo deve essere un monito e una chiamata per tutti noi.

The Glimmer of Light on the Road Ahead: On Tsar Nicholas II and the Restoration of the Christian Imperium

The following contains replies to various comments and questions in recent e-mails from Russia, Holland, Great Britain, France and the USA

Q: Why are there so many misunderstandings about Nicholas II and so many strident criticisms of him?

A: In order to understand Tsar Nicholas II, you have to be Orthodox. It is no good being secular or nominally Orthodox, semi-Orthodox, ‘hobby Orthodox’ and retaining your unconverted cultural baggage, whether Soviet or Western – which is essentially the same thing. You have to be consistently Orthodox, consciously Orthodox, Orthodox in your essence, culture and world view.

In other words, you have to have spiritual integrity – exactly as the Tsar had, in order to understand him. Tsar Nicholas was profoundly and systematically Orthodox in his spiritual, moral, political, economic and social outlook. His Orthodox soul looked out on the world through Orthodox eyes and acted in an Orthodox way, with Orthodox reflexes. So we too have to be Orthodox from inside in order to understand him.

Q: Is that why academics are so negative about him?

A: Western academics, like Soviet academics, are negative about him because they are secularists. For example, I recently read the book ‘Crimea’ by the British historian of Russia, Orlando Figes. This is an interesting book on the Crimean War, with many well-researched details and facts, written as senior academics should write. However, the author starts out from unspoken, purely Western secularist criteria, that since the Tsar of the age, Nicholas I, was not a Western secularist, he must have been a religious fanatic, and that his intention was to conquer the Ottoman Empire. Through his love of detail, Figes overlooks the main point – what the Crimean War was actually about from the Russian side. All he can see is Western-style imperialist aims, which he then attributes to Russia. This attribution is a projection of his Western self.

What Figes misunderstands is that the parts of the Ottoman Empire which Nicholas I was interested in were those where an Orthodox Christian population had for centuries suffered under the Muslim Yoke. The Crimean War was not a colonial, imperialist Russian war to expand into the Ottoman Empire and exploit it, like those conducted by Western Powers to expand into Africa and Asia and exploit them. It was a struggle to liberate from oppression – in fact an anti-colonial, anti-imperialist war. The aim was to free Orthodox lands and peoples from oppression, not to conquer someone else’s empire. As for Nicholas I being a religious fanatic, in the eyes of secularists all sincere Christians must be ‘religious fanatics’. This is because secularists do not have a spiritual dimension. They are always one-dimensional, unable to see beyond their own secular cultural conditioning, ‘to think outside the box’.

Q: Is this secular outlook why Western historians charge Tsar Nicholas II with being weak and unfitted?

A: Yes. This is Western political propaganda, invented at the time and still parroted today. Western historians are educated and paid by Western Establishments and cannot see outside that box. Serious post-Soviet historians have disproved these charges, invented by the Western and the Westernised, gladly repeated by Soviet Communists, as their justification for the dismantlement of the Tsar’s Empire. The only justification for the charge that the Tsarevich was ‘unfitted’ is the fact that he was at first unprepared to be Tsar because his father, Alexander III, died suddenly and at a young age. But he soon learned and became ‘fitted’.

Another favourite false accusation is that the Tsar started wars, namely the Japano-Russian War, called the Russo-Japanese War, and the Kaiser’s War, called the First World War. This is untrue. He was the only world leader who wanted to disarm, he was anti-militaristic. As regards the war against Japanese aggression, the Japanese, financed, armed and encouraged by the USA and Britain, started the Japano-Russian War. It attacked the Russian Fleet without warning in Port Arthur – a name that almost rhymes with Pearl Harbour. And, as we know, it was the Austro-Hungarians, urged on by the Kaiser who was desperate for any excuse to start a War, who triggered the First World War.

Let us recall that it was Tsar Nicholas who for the first time in world history had urged disarmament at The Hague in 1899, because he could see that Western Europe was a powder keg, waiting to explode. He was a moral and spiritual leader, the only world leader then who did not have narrow, national interests at heart and was not rearming at huge cost. Instead, as the Anointed of God, he had at heart the universal interests of all Orthodox Christendom, to bring to Christ all God-created mankind. Why else make sacrifices for Serbia? To have survived, he must have been incredibly strong-willed, as, among others, the French President Émile Loubet remarked. All the powers of hell unleashed against the Tsar would never have been unleashed to remove him if he had been weak. Only the strong have to be destroyed, as is confirmed by those who knew him at the time.

Q: You say that he was profoundly Orthodox, but it is true that he had very little Russian blood, isn’t it?

A: Forgive me, but that statement contains a racist presumption, that you have to have ‘Russian blood’ to be Orthodox, a universal Christian. The Tsar was, I believe, one 128th Russian by blood. And so what? The Tsar’s sister answered this very challenge very adequately over fifty years ago. Interviewed by the Greek journalist, Ian Vorres, in 1960, his sister, the Grand Duchess Olga explained: ‘Did the British call George VI a German? He had not a drop of English blood in him…Blood is not everything. It is the soil you spring from, the faith you are brought up in, the language you speak and think in’.

Q: There are some Russians today who describe Tsar Nicholas as a ‘Redeemer’. Do you believe that?

A: Certainly not! There is only one Redeemer, the Saviour Jesus Christ. What can however be argued is that his sacrifice, and therefore that of his Family, of his servants and of the tens of millions of others who were murdered by the Soviet and Fascist regimes that followed, was redemptive. Rus was crucified for the sins of the world. Indeed, the sufferings of Russian Orthodox have been redemptive in their blood and in their tears. However, it is true that all Christians are called on to redeem themselves through living in Christ THE Redeemer. Interestingly, the pious but not well-educated Russians who call the Tsar a ‘Redeemer’ also call Rasputin a saint.

Q: Speaking of this, what should we think of Rasputin?

A: Hundreds of books have been written about Rasputin – nearly all of them by people who never knew him. I would only repeat the words of the Tsar himself, ‘He is a simple, good, religious Russian’, and the words of the Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Olga, ‘He was neither saint nor devil…he was a peasant with a profound faith in God and a gift of healing’. The fact that Rasputin was later atrociously slandered, and finally in December 1916 tortured by Russian aristocrats – a sign of just how sick the upper class was – and assassinated by British spies, only helps him in eternity. However, God has not revealed his destiny after this world. We do not pre-empt the Judgement of God. When that Judgement has been revealed to us all, then we will be able to say more. At present it is, I think, best to keep silence. Rasputin is still a mysterious figure – we leave him to the Judgement of God

Q: But what about all the charges that he was a drunkard, a thief and a debauchee?

A: Soviet and Hollywood fiction writers, like the Soviet novelist Radzinsky, love this image of Rasputin. Contemporary historians inside deSovietising Russia have proved that virtually all, perhaps all, of these charges were slanders, fiction. Moreover, they were made up not to discredit Rasputin – he was only a pawn in the hands of the slanderers – but to discredit the Imperial Family.

Their logic was that if the Friend of the ruling family could be presented as a thief, drunkard and debauchee, therefore the Family must also be like that, and that therefore they were unworthy, and that they the slanderers should have power. Such slander was very simple and very primitive. People, decadent and without any spiritual depth, believed in it because they wanted to believe in it, because such always prefer slander, scandal and gossip to the Truth of Christ.

Q: You say that we should leave Rasputin to God’s Judgement. Would you compare those who call Rasputin a saint to those who call Ivan IV and Stalin saints?

A: No. To call those figures saints, especially Stalin, is ignorance and blasphemy. This is caused by a politically-motivated desire among a few to merge the old atheist Soviet mentality with the new Orthodox one. That is impossible, total spiritual confusion, theological illiteracy. On the other hand, the Rasputin question is rather a case of a few individuals with zeal but little knowledge.

Q: If we can come back to our main point, what is the relevance of Tsar Nicholas II today? Orthodox Christians are a small minority among all Christians. Even if he were important to all Orthodox, he would still be a minority interest among Christians.

A: Of course, we Christians are a minority. According to the statistics, of seven billion human beings on the planet, Christians number 2.2 billion – 32%. And Orthodox Christians are only 10% of all Christians, so only 3.2% of the world population, about one in thirty-three.

However, if we look at these statistics theologically, what do we see? For Orthodox Christians, all Non-Orthodox are lapsed Orthodox, who were brought involuntarily by their leaders, for all sorts of political reasons, worldly reasons of convenience, to become Non-Orthodox. For us, Catholics can be defined as Catholicised Orthodox and Protestants as Protestantised Catholics. We unworthy Orthodox are the leaven that leavens the lump.

Without the Church, there is no light and warmth of the Holy Spirit to radiate out into the rest of the world. Just as, even though you are outside the Sun, you can still feel the Sun’s light and warmth, so too the 90% of Christians who are outside the Church are still aware of the effects of the Church. For example, most of them confess the Holy Trinity and Christ as the Son of God. Why? Because of the Church which established such teachings long ago. Such is the grace of the Church that shines out of Her. Now, if we understand this, we will begin to understand the importance of the leader of Orthodox Christianity, the last successor of the Emperor Constantine, Tsar Nicholas II. His deposition changed the whole history of the Church, as also his Golgotha and his glorification today.

Q: If this is the case, why then was the Tsar deposed and then murdered?

A: Christians are always persecuted in the world, as our Lord told His disciples.

Pre-Revolutionary Russia ran on the Orthodox Faith. This was the oil that made the whole engine run. However, that Faith was rejected by the mass of the Westernised ruling elite, the aristocracy, and many others in the growing middle class. The Revolution was caused by a simple loss of faith, the engine ground to a halt and exploded for lack of oil.

Most of the Russian upper classes wanted power for themselves, in the same way that wealthy merchants and middle classes wanted power for themselves and so caused the French Revolution. Having obtained wealth, they wanted to mount the next rung in the hierarchy of values – the rung of power. In the Russian context this lust for power, which had come from the West, was therefore based by definition on a blind admiration of the West and a hatred of Russia. This we can see from the very beginning with figures like Kurbsky, Peter I, Catherine II and Westernisers like Chaadayev.

This lack of faith was also what poisoned the White Movement, which was disunited by its lack of a common and binding faith in Orthodox Tsardom. In general, Orthodox self-consciousness was absent in the Russian governing élite, which substituted various surrogates for it, whimsical mixtures of mysticism, occultism, freemasonry, socialism and a search for ‘truth’ in esoteric religions. Incidentally, these surrogates lived on in the Paris emigration, where various figures distinguished themselves in theosophy, anthroposophy, sophianism, name-worship and other very eccentric, but also spiritually dangerous fantasies.

These had so little love for Russia that they actually went into schism, breaking away from the Russian Church and justifying themselves for so doing! The poet Bekhteev wrote very sharply of this in his 1922 poem, ‘Come to your senses, upper classes!’, comparing the privileged situation in Paris to that of the people of crucified Rus in the homeland:

And once more their hearts are full of intrigue,

And once more treachery and lies are on their lips,

And life writes into the chapter of the last book

The vile treason of the grandees who knew it all.

These members of the upper classes (and not all were traitors) were sponsored from the beginning by the West. The West considered that once its values of parliamentary democracy, republicanism or constitutional monarchy were introduced into Russia, it would become just another bourgeois Western country. For the same reason, the Russian Church had to be Protestantised, that is spiritually neutralised, or rather neutered, as the West has tried to do with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and other Local Churches fallen under its power since 1917, as soon as Russian patronage was removed. These attitudes were caused by the arrogant presumption that somehow the Western model could be universal. Incidentally, this is the arrogant presumption of the Western elites to this day, as they try to impose their model worldwide, presenting it as the ‘New World Order’.

The Tsar, the Lord’s Anointed representing the last bulwark of Church Christianity in the world, had to be removed, as he was blocking the power grab of the Western and Westernised world. However, in their incompetence, the aristocratic revolutionaries of February 1917 soon lost control of the situation and within a few months power had descended from them to the lowest of the low, to the criminal Bolsheviks. These set out on a course of massacre and genocide, of ‘red terror’ – just as in France five generations before, only now with far more murderous, twentieth-century, technology.

It was in this way that the motto of the Orthodox Empire was deformed. I remind you that this is ‘Orthodoxy, Sovereignty and People’. This was deformed by Westernised Russians and Western secularists, both then and now, into: ‘Obscurantism, Tyranny and Nationalism’. Atheist Communists deformed it even further into ‘Centralised Communism, Totalitarian Dictatorship and National Bolshevism’. What did this motto in fact mean? It simply meant: ‘(Full-bodied, incarnate) Authentic Christianity, Spiritual Independence (from the powers of this world) and Love for God’s People. As I have said above, this motto is the spiritual, moral, political, economic and social programme of Orthodoxy.

Q: A social programme? But surely the Revolution came about because there were so many poor people and so much exploitation of the poor by the super-rich aristocrats, and the Tsar was at the head of that aristocracy?

A: No, it was precisely the aristocracy that was opposed to the Tsar and the people. The Tsar gave away much of his personal wealth and taxed the rich to the hilt under his brilliant Prime Minister Stolypin, who did so much for land reform. Sadly, the Tsar’s programme of social justice was one of the reasons why many aristocrats hated the Tsar. The Tsar and the people were one. They were both betrayed by the Westernised elite. This is clear from the assassination of Rasputin, which was the preparation for the Revolution. In it the peasants rightly saw the betrayal of the people by the upper classes.

Q: What was the role of the Jews in this?

A: There is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that only Jews were – and are – responsible for everything bad in Russia (and everywhere else). This contradicts the words of Christ. First of all, the Jews who were involved in the Russian Revolution – and it is true that most of the Bolsheviks were Jews – were apostates, atheists, like Marx, and not real, practising Jews. However, those Jews who were involved worked hand in hand with Non-Jewish atheists, like the American banker Morgan, or with Russians and many others and depended on them.

Thus, we know full well that Britain organised the Revolution of February 1917, applauded by France and financed by the USA, that Lenin was transported to Russia by the Kaiser and financed by him, and that the masses who fought in the Red Army were Russian. None of these were Jews. Some people, captives of racist myths, simply refuse to see the truth – that the Revolution was Satanic and that Satan can use any nationality, any of us, for his poisonous works, Jews, Russians and Non-Russians. Satan favours no nationality, but makes use of any who surrender their free will to him for his ‘New World Order’, in which he will be the Universal Ruler of the fallen world.

Q: There are Russophobes who say that there continuity between the Tsar’s Russia and Communist Soviet Union. Is that so?

A: There is certainly continuity of Western Russophobia! Read copies of The Times newspaper from 1862 and 2012 for example. You will see 150 years of xenophobia. Yes, it is true that many in the West were Russophobic long before the Soviet Union came into being. There are the narrow-minded among all peoples who are simply racist. Any nationality other than their own must be demonised, whatever their particular political system and however that system may change. We saw that in the recent Iraq War. We can see it now in the tabloid reports on Syria, Iran or North Korea, which try to demonise the peoples of those countries. We do not take those narrow minds seriously.

Now, let us turn to the question of continuity. Following the generation of obscenities after 1917, continuity did re-emerge. This was after Germany had again invaded Russia on the Feast of All the Saints who have shone forth in the Russian Lands in June 1941. Stalin realised that he could only win the war with the blessing of the Church, by recalling the victories of Orthodox Russians in the past, like those of St Alexander Nevsky and Dmitry Donskoy, that any victory would have to be the victory of his ‘brothers and sisters’, the people, not of his ‘comrades’ and his idiotic Communist ideology. Geography does not change, so there is continuity in Russian history.

It is just that the Soviet period was an aberration from that history, a falling away from national destiny, especially in its violent first generation. What is important is the way that the Soviet Union acted that was so perverse, not necessarily what it did, but how it did it. I was struck by the words of the Tsar’s sister, the Grand Duchess Olga, who in her 1960 biography stated: ‘I have always followed Soviet foreign policy with great interest. Hardly anything in it is different from the course adopted by my father and by Nicky’ (by Alexander III and Nicholas II). The difference is that Soviet policy worked through violence and lies, the Tsar’s policies worked through peace and sincerity.

Q: Can you give an example of this?

A: What would have happened if the Revolution had not taken place? We know (and Churchill expressed it very well in his book, ‘The World Crisis 1916-1918’) that Russia was on the verge of victory in 1917. This is why the revolutionaries took action then. They had a very narrow window in which to operate before the great spring offensive of 1917 began.

Had there been no Revolution, Russia would have defeated the Austro-Hungarians, whose multinational and mainly Slav army was on the point of mutiny and collapse anyway. Then Russia would have pushed back the Germans, or rather their Prussian warlords, to Berlin. In other words, the situation would quite possibly have been similar to that in 1945 – with one vital exception. That is that the Armies of the Tsar would have liberated Central and Eastern Europe in 1917-18, not invading it, as in 1944-45. And so they would have liberated Berlin as they liberated Paris in 1814, peacefully and respectfully, without the errors and drunkenness committed by the Red Army.

Q: What could have happened then?

A: The liberation of Berlin, and so of Germany, from Prussian militarism would surely have led to the demilitarisation and regionalisation of Germany, restoring something of pre-1871 Germany, the Germany of culture, music, poetry and tradition. This would have been the end of the Second Reich of Bismarck, which itself was a revival of the First Reich of the militaristic heretic Charlemagne and which led directly in its turn to the Third Reich of Hitler.

If Russia had been victorious, there would have been a humiliation of the German / Prussian government, the Kaiser being sent perhaps into exile to some remote island as was Napoleon. But there would have been no humiliation of the German peoples, the result of the terrible Treaty of Versailles, which led directly to the horrors of Fascism and the Second World War. And that, by the way, has led directly to the Fourth Reich of today’s European Union.

Q: Would France, Britain and the USA not have objected to victorious Russia’s dealings with Berlin?

A: France and Britain, bogged down in their blood-soaked trenches or perhaps by then reached the French and Belgian borders with Germany, could not have objected to this, because the victory over the Kaiser’s Germany would above all have been a Russian victory. As for the USA, it would never have entered the War, if Russia had not first been knocked out of it – partly by the US financing of revolutionaries, it must be said. And that in itself is why the Allies did their best to eliminate Russia from the War, because they did not want a Russian victory. All they wanted from Russia was cannon fodder to exhaust Germany, in order to prepare it for defeat by the Allies, so that they could finish Germany off and take it over.

Q: Would the Russian Armies have retreated from Berlin and Eastern Europe soon after 1918?

A: Yes, of course. Here is another difference with Stalin, for whom ‘Sovereignty’, the second element in the motto of the Orthodox Empire, had been deformed into Totalitarianism and that meant occupation, oppression and exploitation by terror. After the fall of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, there would have been freedom for Eastern Europe with population transfers in border areas and the establishment of new countries without minorities, like a newly-reunited Poland and Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Carpatho-Russia, Romania, Hungary and so on. This would have created a demilitarised zone throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

This would have been an Eastern Europe with rational and protected frontiers, so avoiding the errors of conglomerate States like the future, and now past, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. As regards Yugoslavia, in 1912 Tsar Nicholas had already set up a Balkan Union in order to avoid further Balkan Wars. True, this failed because of the intrigues of the German princeling Ferdinand in Bulgaria and nationalist intrigues in Serbia and Montenegro. We can imagine that after a First World War in which Russia had been victorious, such a Customs Union, established with fair borders, could have become permanent. Involving Greece and Romania, it could at last have established peace in the Balkans, its freedom guaranteed as a Russian Protectorate.

Q: What would have been the fate of the Ottoman Empire?

A: The Allies had already agreed in 1916 that Russia would be allowed to free Constantinople and control the Black Sea. This was only what Russia could have attained sixty years before, preventing Turkish massacres in Bulgaria and Asia Minor, had it not been for the Crimean Invasion of Russia by France and Great Britain. (We recall how Tsar Nicholas I was buried then with a silver cross depicting Aghia Sophia, the Church of the Wisdom of God, ‘so that in heaven he would not forget to pray for his brothers in the East’). Christian Europe would at last have been freed of Ottoman oppression.

The Armenians and the Greeks of Asia Minor would also have been protected and the Kurds would have had their own State. But more than that, Orthodox Palestine and much of the future Syria and the Jordan would have come under Russian protection. There would have been none of the permanent war that we see in the Middle East today. Perhaps the situations of today’s Iraq and Iran could have been avoided. The implications of this are huge. Can we imagine a Russian-controlled Jerusalem? Even Napoleon recognised that, ‘he who controls Palestine, controls the whole world’. This is known today to Israel and the USA.

Q: What would the implications have been in Asia?

A: Peter I opened a window on Europe. It was the destiny of Nicholas II to open a window on Asia. Despite his generous Church-building in Western Europe and the Americas, he had only a limited interest in the Catholic/Protestant West and its extensions in the Americas and Australia, because it had and has only a limited interest in the Church. In the West, there was and is relatively little potential growth for Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, today, only a small proportion of the world population lives in the Western world, even though it covers a huge territory.

Tsar Nicholas’ aim to serve Christ was therefore more concerned with Asia, especially with Buddhist Asia. He had former Buddhist citizens in the Russian Empire who had converted to Christ, and he knew that Buddhism, like Confucianism, is not a religion, but a philosophy. The Buddhists called him ‘The White Tara’ (King’). So he worked with Tibet, where he was called ‘Chakravartin’ (The King of Peace’), Mongolia, China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan, countries of potential. He was also concerned with Afghanistan, India and Siam (Thailand). The King of Siam, Rama V, visited Russia in 1897 and the Tsar prevented Siam from becoming a French colony. This was an influence that would have spread to Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia. In population terms these countries have nearly half of today’s world.

In Africa, with a seventh of today’s world population, the Tsar had diplomatic relations with Ethiopia and successfully protected it from Italian colonialism, also intervening on behalf of Morocco and also the Boers in South Africa. His detestation of what the British did to the Boers, killing them in concentration camps, is well known. We can think that he must have thought the same about French and Belgian colonialism in Africa. He was also respected by the Muslims, who called him ‘Al-Padishah’, ‘The Great King’. In general, sacral, Eastern civilisations had far more respect for ‘the White Tsar’ than the bourgeois West.

It is significant that later the Soviet Union also opposed the cruelties of Western colonialism in Africa. Here there is also continuity. Today there are Russian Orthodox missions in Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, as well as churches in Africa. I think that the contemporary BRICS group, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is also very representative of what Russia could have achieved 90 years ago, as a member of a group of independent countries. Indeed, the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Duleep (Dalip) Singh (+ 1893), had asked Tsar Alexander III to free India from British exploitation and oppression.

Q: So Asia could have been colonised by Russia?

A: No, definitely not colonised. Imperial Russia was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist. We only have to compare Russian expansion into Siberia, which was basically peaceful, with European expansion into the Americas, which was basically genocidal. The same people –native Americans are basically Siberians – were treated in totally different ways. Of course, there were in Siberia and in Russian America (Alaska) exploitative Russian merchants and drunkard fur trappers who behaved like cowboys towards the local population. This we know from the life of St Herman of Alaska and missionaries in eastern Russia and Siberia, like St Stephen of Perm and St Macarius of the Altai, but this was not the rule and there was no genocide.

Q: All of this is very well, but it is not very relevant to talk about what might have been. It is all hypothetical.

A: Yes, it is hypothetical, but hypotheses can give us a vision for the future. We could view the whole of the last 95 years of world history as a hiatus, a catastrophic aberration of tragic magnitude that has killed hundreds of millions. This is because the world became unbalanced after the fall of the bulwark of Christian Russia, whose fall was implemented by transnational capital in order to create a ‘unipolar world’. And that is simply code for the New World Order of a One World Government, that is, a Universal, anti-Christian Tyranny.

Only if we understand this, can we have a vision for the future. This vision is to suppose that after July 2018, we may still be able to resume where we left off in July 1918, and gather the fragments and oases of Orthodox civilisation worldwide together, before the end. However terrible the present situation is, there is always the hope that is born of repentance. Repentance means going back, and that is what we have been talking about, resuming from where the world left off on that terrible, world-changing night in Ekaterinburg in July 1918.

Q: What would the fruit of such repentance be?

A: A new Orthodox Empire, centred in Russia, with Ekaterinburg, the centre of repentance, as its spiritual capital, and so the chance to rebalance this whole tragic, unbalanced world.

Q: You could be accused of being far too optimistic?

A: Yes, this is very optimistic. But look at what has happened over the last generation, since the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus in 1988. The situation of the world has been transformed, or rather transfigured, by repentance among enough of the people of the old Soviet Union for the whole world to change. The last 25 years have seen a revolution, the only true revolution, a spiritual revolution, the return to the Church. Suppose the next generation continues in that revolutionary repentance? Given the historic miracle that we have already seen, which seemed like a ridiculous dream for us who were born during the nuclear fears of the Cold War and can remember the spiritually grim 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, why should we not envisage at least some of the possibilities outlined above?

In 1914 the world entered a tunnel. During the Cold War we lived in that tunnel and we could see neither light behind us, nor in front of us. Today we are still in the tunnel, but we can now actually see a glimmer of light on the road ahead. Surely this is the light at the end of the tunnel? Let us recall the words of the Gospel: ‘With God all things are possible’. Yes, humanly, all the above is highly optimistic and there is no guarantee of anything. However, the alternative to the above is not just pessimistic, it is apocalyptic. That time is short is our chief anxiety. We hurry in a battle against time. And that must be a warning and a call to us all.

The Road from Damascus: From Recent Correspondence

Below we present points from correspondence of the last two months, anonymously and arranged thematically as questions and answers.

Q: What are your thoughts as we enter 2013?

A: My thoughts turn both ahead and also back to 2014, the centenary of the great European suicide. This was the disaster of 1914, from which Europe has not only not recovered, but from which it has fallen and falls ever further. The consequences of that War and its disastrous Treaty of Versailles were numerous, not least the guarantee of a Second War, but also:

If in the First World War Russia had defeated Germany and Austro-Hungary, as it was about to in 1917, the whole of world history would have been different. The Jews, who had already suffered terrible pogroms in Vienna and Berlin before that War (much worse than those in Poland, the western Ukraine and Bessarabia), would have been protected. In turn, there would have been no holocaust and no reason to establish Israel. The whole Middle East quagmire that exists today and the results of the manipulative Western divisions of the Ottoman Empire would not have come into existence.

There would have been the promised independence for Poland, Finland and the Baltic States, but with protection for their Orthodox minorities, autonomy for the Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and other peoples. There would never have been the disastrous centralism of the Soviet period. There would have been freedom at last for Carpatho-Russia, protection for the Orthodox Balkans, freedom for Constantinople and liturgies in the Church of the Holy Wisdom, and protection for Orthodox Asia Minor. Both the Armenians and Greeks in what later became Turkey would have been protected from genocide. No masonic Greeks and Romanians would have catholicised the Church calendar and split the Diaspora. There would have been no Turkish invasion and occupation of Cyprus and the Orthodox of the former Ottoman Empire, as in Syria, would have been protected.

Q: That brings us to today’s situation in the Middle East?

A: Precisely. After the recent wars lost in Iraq and Afghanistan and staring bankruptcy in the face, the West now faces the disastrous consequences of its meddling in Yugoslavia, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and perhaps in Bahrain. The ‘blowback’ is enormous, as we see in Mali. Now come the consequences of meddling in the rest of the Ottoman Empire – in Turkey and Syria, not forgetting the Kurds, so mistreated by European colonialism in the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War.

It is said that members of the French and British special services have already been killed in Syria, though this has been hushed up by the governments involved. There are 1500 members of US Sp3ecial Forces in the Jordan alone. Who knows? The 65,000 terrorist mercenaries in Syria belong to 29 different nationalities, according to the UN. Recently many Tunisians, another 5,000, have been flown into Syria and armed by the CIA, financed by the oil monarchies, especially by anti-Iranian Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has made space in some of its prisons and sent criminals to fight in Syria. It is curious that the only well-known European politician who has spoken out against the allying of the West with Muslim terrorists in Syria is the French Marine Le Pen. She has had the courage to say that the Western-encouraged ‘Arab spring has been followed by the Islamist winter’. Interestingly also, no-one in the West has dared to speak against support for the Syrian people by China, only for the support offered by Russia.

Q: Why has the West spoken against Russian support and not against Chinese support?

A: China is due to become the world’s greatest economic power within the next ten years. It may also by then have become the world’s largest Christian country. The anti-Christian West is frightened of this. It is less frightened of Russia, which it still associates with the decadence of the 1990s. This is a mistake. Today’s Russia has been rising since 2000. In 2000 Russia had its revelation, since when it has been on the road from Damascus; the West is still on the road to Damascus, it has still not had its revelation, which it is purposely avoiding. Russia and the West have already passed each other by on that road, heading in opposite directions, Russia heading towards Jerusalem, the West heading towards Babylon.

Q: From a spiritual viewpoint, why are the events in Syria so important?

A: Because Syria is very close to Jerusalem and, spiritually, Jerusalem is the centre of the world, the beginning – and the end.

Q: If we can come back to what you said originally about Russia’s potential victory in the First World War, why did it not win?

A: The Western aims in that War were twofold – the defeat of Germany and then of Russia. The Western elites knew perfectly well that Russia, unimpeded, would become the World’s greatest power by 1950 and its Orthodox Christian culture would then stand at the centre of Europe and of the world. The Russian Empire was already in advance of much of the West by 1914, and not only in terms of agricultural and industrial production. For example, 85% of its inhabitants were literate by 1917, thanks largely to the stupendous achievements of the last Tsar.

But Russia had to be destroyed before it destroyed Germany and then freed the Slav peoples from Austro-Hungarian oppression and the Orthodox peoples of the Near and Middle East from Ottoman oppression. So Rasputin, the symbol of the Russian Orthodox people, was murdered by the British (as we now know from Andrew Cook’s book, ‘To Kill Rasputin’) and the Revolution was organised by the British ambassador to St Petersburg, Sir George Buchanan, with the open support of Lord Milner, Balfour and Lloyd George. Russia could be brought down, because it was no longer necessary to the Allies – they knew that the USA would enter the War on their side, as soon as Russia was destroyed.

Q: Is there any chance that today’s Russian Federation could re-establish a sort of Orthodox Empire, as it could have done, had it been victorious in 1917?

A: Every Empire has problems. European models of Empire were too centralised, which provoked rejection on their fringes. In turn, the Soviet Union was a far more extreme and oppressive form of European Empire. In the territories of the pre-1917 Russian Empire, we should be hoping to see the emergence of a looser and voluntary Eurasian Confederation, not a Union or an Empire. However, at present only Belarus and Kazakhstan are taking part in this organisation. There is far to go.

Q: Eastern Europeans – though not necessarily their governments – have become disenchanted with the EU and have been rejecting the European Union since the Euro disaster. There is even talk of the UK leaving the European Union. Do you think any of these countries would want to join a Eurasian Confederation?

A: EU Eastern Europe is more or less bankrupt. Estonia will soon have no money to pay for any services, because so many of its tax-paying younger people have had to emigrate, mainly to Finland and Sweden. Half of Latvia and Lithuania seem to be in the UK or Germany. Whole villages and towns in the Baltic States are now populated almost entirely by pensioners and almost worthless blocks of flats are locked up, their owners abroad. There is no work.

Even ethnic Estonians and Latvians are cursing Gorbachov and would like the Soviet Union back. Then they had an excellent education system and free, quality health care – far better than the rationed, emergency only health system in the UK today. Eastern European politicians, as in Poland, say that their unemployment is relatively low, but that is only because millions of their young people have emigrated. The situation is similar in Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, where real youth unemployment is over 50%. However, at present there is no real alternative to the EU for EU Eastern Europe. That is the challenge facing the Russian Federation, to set up a viable alternative to the EU.

And I think that this also concerns the UK. The internal realignment necessary for the UK elite to follow the people and quit the EU is unlikely at present, but perhaps largely because there is no realistic alternative. To go from being a US / German colony, as is clear from recently-expressed negative US and German attitudes to UK desires for freedom from the EU straitjacket, to being an independent country in association with a loose Eurasian Confederation is a very big step. But who knows?

Q: What are your thoughts regarding President Putin?

A: He is a phenomenon of the post-Soviet period, so inevitably there is light and also some dark with him. However, he does have one great leading idea, that of rebuilding national unity, retaining the best of the old Soviet Union and restoring the best from the old Imperial Russia. This is why he had the remains of the great Russian Orthodox philosopher Ivan Ilyin and also White émigré leaders brought back to Russia. Now he is restoring pre-Revolutionary regiments and honouring the Russian victims of the First World War. This is the future, not the Communist past.

Currently, for example, the Russian Communist Party asserts that it made only one mistake during its tyranny – the persecution of the Church under Stalin. This is an outrageous lie. Its evils began in 1917 under the mass murderer, Lenin. There was civil war and artificial famine, causing cannibalism. Communist persecution continued right up until the 1980s. Stalinism continued long after Stalin; the Khrushchov period was especially awful. It is a lie to call the genocide of tens of millions a ‘mistake’. That genocide also includes Stalin’s crass mismanagement of the Soviet armed forces before and after the German invasion. Millions of Russians and others died then because of his incompetence. The Soviet period was quite possibly the worst crime in world history – not a mere ‘mistake’.

Q: What will happen after Putin?

A: Who knows? He could be succeeded by another politician, with or without Soviet tendencies, more or less positive. That is not what we want. What we want is the restoration of the Orthodox Monarchy. However, it is unclear whether Russia will be ready, spiritually mature, for that by the time that Putin has disappeared from the scene.

Q: Patriarch Kyrill has been criticised by some in the Diaspora as a liberal. What would you answer?

A: I can remember that the then Metropolitan Kyrill was criticised publicly at the 2006 All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco for his ecumenistic and liberal reputation. At that time no-one challenged that thought – we all felt much the same. However, people change – that is the nature of the Church, at the centre of which stands repentance, though the modernists will not admit that, because in their pride they do not have the repentant spirit, thinking like Protestants that they are ‘already saved’.

Today we are looking at Patriarch Kyrill. Given the overview of the international Russian Orthodox Church that only a Patriarch can have and the responsibilities that he bears, he has changed. I think the concerted series of attacks on the Russian Church of 2012, orchestrated by the pro-Western media inside and outside Russia, and not without foreign finance, have changed him even more. He now knows exactly where his friends are and where his enemies are.

The ecumenists and renovationists, left-overs from the Soviet period inside and outside Russia, have lost the remaining support they had. It is now clearly understood that these are only the frontmen of Western Protestantism, ultimately Eastern-rite Protestants, Neo-Uniats, financed or at least encouraged by the Western Secret Services and the Western media which those Secret Services control. In April 2012 Patriarch Kyrill publicly condemned this ‘fifth column’ of ‘traitors in cassocks’.

Their only purpose is to divide the Church, as they have done especially in the Ukraine, where they have been financed by dollars. All divisions of the Church merely play into the hands of anti-Orthodox and weaken the Church. Hitler knew this and so do the CIA and its embassies in Kiev and Moscow. Some of those who have taken part in these divisions are ambitious and unscrupulous careerists. Tragically, some of those who have followed them in their divisions are truly pious but very naïve, not seeing that the cause that the support is gravely spiritually tarnished.

Q: Many of us have been disturbed by some events inside Russia, for example the continued activities of Fr George Kochetkov’s neo-renovationist group, or the strange opinions of Deacon Andrei Kuryayev. What do you say?

A: These are all adolescent distractions inside Russia, examples of spiritual immaturity. For instance, Fr George Kochetkov’s group is tiny. All these problems concern a small minority who were baptised and ordained in the 1990s and never fully integrated the Church. For example, the concept of merging Christmas and the New Year is fantasy and betrays the still Soviet mentality of its author. This shows ignorance of the age-old liturgical cycles of the Church. But nobody takes such fantasies seriously and they will die out. They are convert froth. Our interest is in the vast and immortal ocean of Orthodoxy, not in the passing froth on the seashore, which is here today, gone tomorrow.

Q: There has been controversy recently as to whether Tsar Nicholas is not a martyr, but a passion-bearer. Do you have any views?

A: Technically speaking, a martyr is one who had been killed for the Faith by Non-Orthodox; a passion-bearer is one who has been killed for the Faith by lapsed Orthodox in a state of apostasy. However, in reality, the word ‘martyr’ is used for all those killed for the Faith, which is why we talk about the ‘New Martyrs and Confessors’, not the ‘New Passion-Bearers and Confessors’.

In the Soviet context, we know that many of the Red murderers, Stalin for instance, were baptised Orthodox. Most of these were Slavs, but among the murderers there were also Latvians, Hungarians, Jews and others who were not Orthodox. So technically speaking, many of the ‘New Martyrs’ were at the same time ‘New Passion-Bearers’. And, in this sense, the Tsar was both a martyr and a passion-bearer. In general, none of the Soviet obscenities could have occurred without the co-operation of lapsed Orthodox, without apostasy. On the other hand, the whole Soviet ideology came, like the Revolution itself, from the West, which organised and financed it.

But what a pedantic question this is! All the more so when we know that only the Russian Church makes such a distinction. The Greek Church calls them all martyrs, that is, ‘witnesses’ for the Faith. In England St Edward the Martyr will always be called so and not a ‘passion-bearer’, which technically he was. In everyday life the Tsar Martyr will always be called universally, both inside and outside Russia, the ‘Tsar-Martyr’. This is an argument about words.

Q: Do you think that the little dissident groups, all split among themselves, who did not accept the reuniting of the Russian Orthodox Church six years ago, will ever return to unity?

A: I do not know. I would answer them with the prophetic words of Metropolitan Philaret on 10/23 September, 1974 in his Reply to Alexander Solzhenitsyn:

‘If the liberation of Russia were to take place and unity with a restored Orthodoxy and canonical hierarchy were to take place, then we would consider ourselves part of the Russian hierarchy’.

I would add that, historically speaking, such dissidence is in any case increasingly irrelevant when we put it into the context of the spiritual meaning of the huge new emigration from Russia and Eastern Europe, which has transformed our situation in the Diaspora over the last six years.

Q: What do you mean by ‘the spiritual meaning of the new emigration’?

A: The first emigration of post-1917 numbered between one and two million. It was very mixed. Some in it were Church-minded, but a large part of it and of the White Movement in general was not Church-minded, only politically-minded. Let us be clear: among the ‘Whites’ were those very people who had brought about the collapse of the Monarchy. They were not ‘White’ at all. This is absolutely clear from documents and Church Councils of the time, from politically-coloured splits of the period in France and the North America and the famous report of St John of Shanghai on the spiritual state of the Russian immigration at the Second All-Diaspora Council. Some of these people I met in their old age. I repeat: They were not White at all.

Today’s post-Soviet economic emigration is far greater than the post-1917 one. It has a huge task of witnessing to Orthodoxy before an atheistic Western world, of saving what is best in dying Western culture. Russians and Eastern European Orthodox have seen atheism, they have lived through it – they already know that the naïve West, with its persecution of Christianity, political correctness, abortion holocaust, single-sex marriage and pedophilia, has set out on a false path. We have advance knowledge of the folly that the West is creating for itself. This means that we could still save the West from itself. That is what our whole task and calling is, and has been, for the last forty and more years. This is our spiritual meaning, the spiritual meaning of ROCOR, as we set out the uncompromised, but also multinational and multilingual, Orthodox Tradition before the Western world and its aberrations.

Q: What were the results last October of the London Conference of all the Russian Orthodox bishops in the Diaspora?

A: Just as there were deviations in the old emigration, so there are also deviations in the new emigration. Some of its elements manifest a certain nationalism, often, strangely enough, a Soviet one, a sympathy with atheism! Such nationalism will only turn into a ghetto and die out. Other elements, like a few individuals at the new seminary in Paris or among some older elements, manifest a pro-ecumenical attitude, again a hangover from the Soviet period.

Clearly, these extremes have to be ironed out before the parishes which are still for the moment under the Patriarchate of Moscow, even though they are outside Russia, can join ROCOR. Their existence is canonical disorder and it is preparatory work towards their merging with ROCOR that was the real purpose of the October Conference. Through it, the vestiges of the Soviet period, when the Centre in Moscow was paralysed by persecution, are being transformed.

Fortunately, most in the new emigration share in neither of the above extremes and certainly such extremes are unknown in the best of ROCOR. We understand that Russian Orthodox means not only those who are by blood Russian and Orthodox, but all those who in spirit, world view, culture and state of soul, confess Russian Orthodoxy. There have been many examples of this in Russian history – Pushkin, who was part Ethiopian, Barclay de Tolly and Lermontov, who were Scottish, General Bagration, who was Georgian, or Levitan the painter. Yet they were all Orthodox in their cultural reflexes.

Q: What is happening with the new Russian Cathedral in Paris?

A: There has been a planning dispute about the appearance of the new Cathedral, aspects of whose design displeased some, including in ROCOR. This problem should be sorted out fairly quickly. Our prayer is that the new Cathedral will be dedicated to Tsar Nicholas and all the New Martyrs and Confessors and that it will become the centre of the future Western European Metropolia. That would be justice and an act of repentance before and by the whole Orthodox Diaspora. May God grant this and may our prayers be heard.

Q: Could a Western European Metropolia be constructed by another of the Local Orthodox Churches, and not the Russian?

A: Let us be realistic. Apart from the Russian Church, the other Local Churches are too small and simply cannot provide the necessary infrastructure, finance and know-how. But size is not the only important thing. Apart from quantity, there is also quality. Such a Metropolia will be constructed on the Tradition, not on decadence of practice, not on communion without confession, not on an abbreviated Liturgy, not on the Catholic calendar, not on intercommunion etc.

In other words, a Metropolia will be built neither on the conservative extreme of ethnic exclusivism, nor on the liberal extreme of compromises with the heterodox world. It will be built on the maximum, not on the minimum. This house will be built on rock, not on sand. Such a Metropolia must have in part a monastic background, not a background of compromises with the Orthodox Tradition – and there is only One Orthodox Tradition above all nationalities. We have seen the failure of the OCA experiment, which was built on an ‘All-American’ phyletism, on an imitation of the heterodox world and renovationist compromise. Such a minimalist ‘sand’ experiment does not work – and it will not work in Western Europe either.

Q: And do you think that this Metropolia will actually come into being in the near future?

A: I think it is highly likely. It is Patriarch Kyrill’s desire.

Q: How do you know that?

A: Apart from others who have told me, he told us that, face to face, in Moscow, last May.

Q: And what about a ‘Western Orthodox Church? Will that ever exist?

A: This seems to me to be less likely – and for lack of time. Western Europe has recently become the scene of persecution of the Faith. The Depardieu incident, when the French actor was given Russian nationality as a result of the persecution of all initiative, may be the start of something much bigger. It may be that many other Western cultural workers of talent may yet flee to Russia because of the persecution of Christian-based Western culture by political correctness. This was after all prophesied by St Seraphim of Vyritsa. The best of European culture may yet be saved by Russia, an Empire of the Spirit.

Sadly, this Western persecution of Christianity is not a matter of if, rather of when. So there simply may not be time to see a Local Church evolve in Western Europe. Let us be honest, the number of native Western Orthodox is tiny; we are far outnumbered by Eastern European Orthodox. Why? Because only very few Western people are interested in Christ and His Church. I am constantly contacted by Russians who want to know about Western saints and Western traditions and who want services for these saints, but, sadly, not by Western people. This is a sobering fact and all should know it. The Church is always built on the sober truth, not on fantasies.

1/14 January 2013

One Thousand Words of a Lament for Europe

Though blind the seed and dull the earth,
Yet sweet shall be the flower.

John Masefield, The Box of Delights

Seventeen hundred years ago the Roman world, and so Europe, accepted the Edict of Milan, meaning that it accepted Orthodox Christianity as the Faith in the Incarnation of God. So Orthodox Christianity left the catacombs and became the faith incarnate in the Roman Empire. Having given up on ever Christianising pagan Rome, the Emperor Constantine moved his Capital from the spiritually provincial West, eastwards to Jerusalem, to the heart of things. Here, uniting Asia and Europe, he founded New Rome, the Centre of the Christian Roman Empire, its symbol the double-headed eagle, looking east and west. And so the Dark Ages became the Age of Light, the Age of the Saints. Although this Age of Light was to darken in the eleventh century at the Western end of Europe, it has continued in the Centre and all around it, spreading far to the north and east, despite all the assaults from left and right.

It was much later, at the dawn of the thirteenth century, that in a rage of jealousy the barbarian forces of Old Rome bloodily looted the Capital of the Christian Roman Empire. Thus, they set themselves against Orthodox Christianity, ever since attempting to desecrate her, most notably invading her new northern Centre in 1612, 1812, 1854, 1914 and 1941. Today the new Roman Empire is based in the former European colony in Washington, but its local representative is the EU. Using the global media as its paid subservient tool, it sets about demonising its enemies, that is, those who have natural resources which it covets, and then attacks them with its legions, both electronic and physical. After Russia 95 years ago, today Syria is the latest victim of the Empire’s intolerance, according to which everyone must be the same – an imitation of it. A new, debaptised Soviet Union reigns in the West, its obsessing and possessing demons in charge.

Over the last century, we have seen the old demons of Europe resurfacing from beneath its smooth, polite, but superficial facade, as can be seen in its Hollywood reflections. We feel as if the wheel of history is drawing ever nearer to its full revolution – and the end. Old Europe is starting to die, the best of the European culture, which we have tried to save, sung out in a fado, a nostalgic lament, crossways, from Tromso to Valetta, from Dublin to Warsaw, from Reykjavik to Zagreb, from Lisbon to Tallinn. As Old Europe gradually throws off the last vestiges of its Christian culture and New Europe rises from its ancient murky depths where we thought we had buried it for ever, it returns to the pride of Roman pagan times. With the speed of thought, it returns to its self-justified and legitimised depravity and permanent war, sending out its legions to destroy peace-loving peoples all over the world, returning to Sodom and Gomorrah.

The old watchwords are forgot, as step by step new ones take over human minds, their hearts emptied so that there can be no resistance. Within our lifetimes we have seen the Americanisation of Monetarisation, which first appeared in Europe in its United Kingdom colony in 1979. This movement of greed, the idolatry of Mammon, spread throughout Europe and came to rule the world until its bubble crashed five years ago. Now it is too late to go back, human relations are ever more governed by money and debt. Plutocrats and banksters handed out money that did not exist, indebted deluded Europeans and now nobody can pay back even the interest on that non-existent money. So Europe is enshackled in its self-made chains. Europe is seeing its Thirdworldisation through its enslavement to debt. There is a sort of retribution in this. As you do unto others (as Europe did to the Third World), so has it been done unto Europe itself.

In its financial and human aspect, 2012 was a hard year in Europe, especially in the south, in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and in the east, in EU-captive Eastern Europe, in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Baltics, but increasingly everywhere else in the EU. Some Europeans go hungry, but its elite seems to grow fat. And 2013 looks no better, indeed even harder. Having abandoned the thoughts of the heart, the new Europe retains only the thoughts of its wayward reason. Impoverishment is the future, but here too there is a sort of retribution. Just as Europe once impoverished the Third World, so now it is impoverished by itself, caught in the trap of its own making. The problem is that humanity could deal with the Old Magic, but the New Magic, the high-tech sort, is different. Only Divine Intervention can now deal with this Brave New Europe, which is controlled and manipulated by a net which extends all around the planet.

Unfortunately, spoilt European humanity resists that very Divine intervention, like a very sick patient who rejects his medicine. Indeed, he does not even admit that he is sick, but in his delusion protests his good health. Only if this blind and dull Europe digs down deep, finding the way into what was, will it know what is and what will be. So it will postpone its apocalypse, which it is now creating for itself by its ‘crusading’ and meddling in the Middle East, where it is preparing the coming of him who will be. But Europe could still find its sweet flower once more. For if the West does dig down, there, underneath all its delusions it will find the very beautiful and wise people of the Age of the Saints, whom it long ago drove out from itself in its intolerance. Always in hope, we await that time, for then Wisdom will replace wayward Western reason, Goodness its evil, Beauty its ugliness, Mercy its greed, and Joy its pain.

1 January 2013

Monk Moses the Athonite: ‘Europe is Committing Suicide’

12/12/2012

Monk Moses the Athonite has been an ascetic on the Holy Mountain for thirty-five years. He is an icon-painter, poet, critic and writer. He has published 52 books and written over 1,000 articles. His works have been translated and published in many countries around the world. He is the senior secretary of the Sacred Community of the Holy Mountain. For some twenty-five years he has been the Elder of the hermitage of St John Chrysostom and of the hermitage of the holy great-martyr Panteleimon attached to Koutloumousiou Monastery.

monk moses

We are publishing a few extracts from an article by Fr Moses, in which he analyses the contemporary situation in Europe and Greece.

‘Greece has long been in a state of reanimation. The Greek language is being murdered every day. All around reigns the darkness of disintegration and a gloomy and violent national nihilism.

The desire to make money quickly and easily has led many into making tragic mistakes. Impatience and lack of seriousness are costing us dear. The thirst for riches has taken Europeans to extremes. Contemporary Europe is totally deChristianised.

The Vatican is reaping the fruits of deforming Christian teachings. The most horrific cases of child rape are taking place. Western people are running from ‘God is dead’ to Eastern gurus, desperately hoping to find at least some semblance of spiritual life. Some 2,000 branches of Protestantism are competing for a flock. The deChristianisation of Europe is on a very large scale and will lead to even more catastrophic consequences.

Europe has forgotten Christ and is embracing Islam. It seems as if it wants to commit suicide. Mosques are rising up in place of churches.

We are not against other religions, but we do want to defend Orthodoxy. Or do they now want to take away from us even this last right?

We look to the resistance of people who cannot be bought off. There are quite a few of them. It is time to stop being quiet. Our country needs spiritual regeneration.’

Source: http://www.agioritikovima.gr

2013: Challenges before the Church

As 2012 draws to a close and we enter 2013, we both look forwards and look backwards. 2013 is the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Milan and the 400th anniversary of the House of Romanov. This will be followed by other years commemorating momentous centenaries: 2014, the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War; 2017, that of the Revolution, the immediate entry into that War of the USA, the British agreement to found the State of Israel and the Armenian genocide – all within a few months of each other; 2018, that of the martyrdom of the Russian Imperial Family and the end of the First World War; 2019, the Treaty of Versailles, whose injustices made the next German War inevitable.

We recall how with every generation, every 25 years since 1914, history has been patterned by momentous events. 1914, the First War and the European suicide; 1939, the second part of that suicide and the Western Slav and Jewish holocaust; 1964, the social revolution and the Western abortion holocaust; 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire, leaving only one Superpower, and all the consequences of this, good and bad, for Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, Iraq, South Africa, Northern Ireland, the EU, China and the Muslim world. We wonder what the year 2014 may bring.

For the Russian Orthodox Church, the past 25 years have brought freedom, renaissance and unity. Over 80% of the multinational population of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan is Orthodox. 164 million people confess the Russian Orthodox Faith, 75% of the total.

Although concentrated in one seventh of the world, the Russian Orthodox Faith is confessed by sixty-two nationalities, in Japan and China, in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, in Central Asia, and, via the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, throughout the whole world. This has meant that the thirteen other far smaller Local Orthodox Churches, many of which have suffered spiritually bruising and compromising Westernisation, are now inevitably looking to the Russian Orthodox Church for global Orthodox leadership in the globalised world.

However, there are also great problems.

Inside Russia, the Church has been subject to a year of persecution by renovationism. This renovationism has often been supported ideologically by the writings of various, at present fashionable, schismatic Russians from the emigration in France and the USA, who refused to remain faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church Tradition. However, that renovationism is only a front and has a much deeper political aspect.

Openly supported by the Western Powers, their intelligence agencies and their so-called ‘NGOs’, remaining Soviet-style atheists have wanted to destroy the Church, exploiting both vestiges of hopelessly old-fashioned Soviet ideology and fashionable anti-Christian Russophobic Western ideology, exploiting the naïve and the satanic. Steeped in the ideology of Russia’s anti-Russian wreckers, Gorbachov and Yeltsin, they are anxious that the Church is beginning to influence the Russian State for good, bringing it back to Christian values. Ths, they have wanted to slander the Patriarch, the clergy and Church teachings. Their devilish intentions have not succeeded.

The demographic problem also remains profound in all Orthodox countries, regardless of whether they are in the EU or outside it. Until the States concerned can provide decent and affordable conditions in which mothers can give birth to and bring up children, supported by responsible fathers and husbands, this demographic problem will deepen. ABC, Alcoholism, Abortion and Corruption, continue to ravage all the Orthodox countries: Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Romania, the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and the Russian Federation itself.

Internationally, there is the threat from the Muslim world. The Western-exploited political protests in Bosnia, Kosovo, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and especially the war in Syria could easily spill over. Syria is virtually a neighbour of Russia. The situation in the nearby Caucasus remains fragile. Central Asia, bordering Afghanistan, could easily be affected. Here the West is playing with fire, risking ‘blowback’ from its meddling.

Then there is the missionary challenge. China, soon to become the world’s greatest economic power, is on its way to becoming the largest Christian nation on earth. It must become Orthodox, overcoming the facile errors of the widespread semi-Christian Western schisms, which are all but dead in the spiritually bankrupt Western world itself. Since the apostatic West has little interest in the real words of Christ and His Orthodox Church, let the East take up the yoke that is light.

The solution to economic and demographic problems and missionary challenges is to restore the Orthodox Christian Commonwealth, Romaiosini, Holy Rus. The embryonic Eurasian Union, set to overtake by far the stagnant and bankrupt EU, is the starting point for this. We would expect Orthodox countries, which have fallen into the EU temptation, partly because of the Russophobic reaction to the oppression of the old Soviet Empire, to withdraw from the German-run EU Europe or be ejected from it in the coming years.

A new generation of unprejudiced politicians in those countries will judge if today’s Russian Federation is deSovietised and can therefore be trusted. Their countries will need the support of the new Eurasian Union – the Russian Federation, Kazkhstan and Belarus. This Union could spread its protective influence into Eastern Europe (to the Ukraine, the Baltic States, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Bosnia in particular) and the Middle East, where Orthodox minorities live.

There are many temptations, many failings, many weaknesses and many attacks on the Church to come. The Orthodox Faith has to be preached worldwide before the end – and we have only just started. All the great days and the great challenges are before us. We are only setting out on a long and huge road. The real revolution, the spiritual one, is yet to come. May the grace of God guide us.

30 November /12 December 2012
Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called

On the Second Vatican Council

Introduction: ‘We Have Lost Western Europe’

‘We have lost Western Europe’. These were the words that a senior Catholic layman said to me last week as we discussed organising the arrival in England of the Czestochowa Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God and its visit to the London Cathedral of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. His words are not exact, for Catholicism has lost not only Western Europe, but also North America and Australia.

The fact is that Catholicism in Africa, Asia, Latin America, let alone in Catholic Eastern Europe, is a very different sort of Catholicism from elsewhere. It is a sacral Christianity that values and respects the sense of the sacred – a Catholicism in other words far closer to the Christianity of the Orthodox Church than any other type of Catholicism. I know this as a Russian Orthodox priest, for on a weekly basis I meet Catholic Poles, Italians and Lithuanians who come to me and tell me that they want to come to our Church, because ‘Catholic churches in England are no good. They are Protestants’. Not my words, but theirs.

A Sad Fiftieth Anniversary

Most Catholics in Western Europe today are lapsed. It is an extreme rarity to find any Catholics, including practising ones, who agree with the official policies of their Church. There is no doubt that the Second Vatican Council that opened fifty years ago in Rome is in part responsible. Perhaps in great part. Certainly it led to the protestantisation of the vestiges of the Orthodox Christian Tradition of the first millennium, still kept by the then Catholic world, by introducing the desacralising rationalism and humanism of the Northern Protestant world.

Twenty years ago in France, where I then lived, a senior Catholic priest spoke to me of the effects of that Council, saying: ‘We created all the sects’. He was referring to the explosion of exotic sects in France since the 1960s. He blamed his own Church for this; the fact that the new Catholicism had removed all sense of mystery and the sacred from its services, demystifying the Church and no longer satisfying the spiritual needs of the people, was for him responsible for the disaffection of the masses and their absorption into all manners of sects, often founded by dangerous charlatans.

The Errors of the Council

We can see this clearly if we look at areas of change and unchangingness as a result of the Second Vatican Council. As regards change, the great change was in ‘the Mass’. Latin was replaced by local languages. This seems good in principle, but when we look in reality, we see that it was a disaster. You do not exchange something for something worse, but for something better. In other words, the vernacular translations were often vapid, spiritually uninspired. And once Latin was replaced, so a whole liturgical, cultural and musical tradition was also jettisoned – and not replaced. The whole feeling of the Mass changed, illustrated, for example, by the fact that Catholic priests no longer faced God, but turned to face the people, as though worshipping them and not Him.

For many, clergy included, the Catholic Eucharist became, as in Protestantism, a mere commemoration of bread and wine – or rather of biscuit-like hosts. Received in the hand, distributed by laypeople, crumbs swept away into bins, without any meaningful fast beforehand, without confession (now called ‘reconciliation’) beforehand, the Eucharist lost any remaining sacral reality. The same attitude was taken towards the Virgin Mary, relics, the priesthood and a multitude of practices of Catholic piety. Though most of these relatively recent practices were alien to ancient Orthodoxy, they at least represented popular piety – and they were not replaced. They were lost.

What Should Have Changed – and Did Not

As regards unchangingness, the first error was surely keeping Papal centralisation and infallibility – despite all the verbiage about promoting Local Churches. As regards birth control, there was another tactical error. To keep the ideal of no artificial contraception is good, but why make this into what many outside Catholicism now view as its central tenet? And what of pastoral economy or dispensation? The rigid dogmatism of this policy lost Catholicism hundreds of millions and made at a stroke almost all its married couples into hypocrites. Worse still. This policy was to be implemented by a priesthood on whom celibacy was enforced. Tens of thousands gave up the priesthood as a result and at the same time feminist revolt was ensured.

This also guaranteed that a large number of homosexuals and pedophiles were drawn into the Catholic priesthood – in Ireland the figure in a much depleted priesthood is said to be 25%. This was already hypocrisy, since for centuries Catholicism had allowed a married priesthood for its Uniats and today allows a married priesthood for its ex-Anglican Ordinariate. It was even more hypocrisy in Africa and Latin America (not to mention France, Italy, Spain and Portugal), where many priests are in reality married and have families – and always have been. But the main result of compulsory celibacy for the Catholic priesthood is simply a chronic lack of priests and hosts distributed by laypeople.

Conclusion: The Baby and the Bathwater

By the early 1960s a Roman Catholic Council was needed – if only to attempt to shake off the vestiges of Fascism, with which Catholicism had so cruelly compromised itself during and after the Second World War – not least in Croatia. However, it has often been said by Catholics themselves that the Second Vatican Council threw out the baby (the essentials) with the bathwater (the non-esssentials). But not even this is not true. The Second Council threw out the baby BUT KEPT the bathwater. More exactly, the Second Vatican Council threw out the remaining traditions of the Orthodox Christian First Millennium and kept the inessentials of its semi-secular Second Millennium.

The present ‘celebrations’ of the Council in the Vatican by a Pope who supported the changes then but regrets them now, are highly symbolic. Many have called for a Third Vatican Council. However, this means two different things. Some want a Third Council that will sweep away any heritage that remains and fully desacralise, rationalise and humanise Catholicism. Others want to restore the old-fashioned Catholicism and its Latin Mass, taking it back to the past before the Council. Neither is the solution. Let him who has ears hear.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips,
London

4/17 October 2012

Orthodox England

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