Category Archives: Orthodox Restoration

What Does it Need to Found a Local Church in the Diaspora?

The Orthodox Diasporas in the Western world have so far given birth to only one new, albeit compromised, Local Church. This is the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), founded over 50 years ago. Much disputed by others, it has unfortunately been a failure – the vast majority of Orthodox who live in Northern America have not joined it and do not wish to. It has not united Orthodox. However, it must be said, it has been a bold failure and its failure is hardly a matter for rejoicing. It was bold because elsewhere founding a new Local Church has not even been tried. We should learn from the OCA’s strengths as well as from its weaknesses.

True, in England, there was in the 1970s an attempt not to build a multinational Local Church, but a multinational or, at that time, trinational, chapel. This was in Oxford and involved émigré Russian (and English) academics, Greeks and Serbs. It was never going to work. The Serbs never took part, apart from a certain rather effeminate bishop who was then ‘disappeared’. It was set up in a tiny, octagonal, Methodist-looking chapel, not at all traditional on the outside. Then the ‘Russians’ left it through ejection and miraculously managed to set up their own English-language chapel elsewhere.

It left Greeks and a tiny number of ex-Anglican, pseudo-Russian Bloomite elitists in their Methodist-looking chapel. Now that large numbers of new Romanian immigrants have set up their own church in Oxford, the whole experiment is best forgotten. The Oxford chapel represents not even 10% of local Orthodox, rather like the OCA representation in Northern America. Why these failures? It is always ideologies that destroy the unity required for a Local Church, because ideologies are always by definition exclusive.

For example, new calendarism (one of the great failings of the OCA) and old calendarism (one of the great failings of the new 2020s ROCOR sect) are ideological enemies, as are political and nationalist ideologies, like those of the Greek nationalist Second Rome and the Russian nationalist Third Rome. Neither of them ever learned from the failure of the First Rome with its equally nationalist ‘Roman Catholicism’ (a contradiction in terms). All of these isms operate against and are destructive of any multinational Church, for any Diaspora Church must by definition be multinational, not nationalist. Only the concept of a Second Jerusalem can be successful. This, for example, was where the Russian Church failed, and three times over. Thus:

In Russian émigré Paris, French liberal intellectualism, imported back from Saint Petersburg, did nothing for the Paris Russians and as a result their jurisdiction became very small because exclusive. But at least, small, they were not corrupted by money, like the other two.

In the émigré ‘Russian Orthodox’ Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), the substitution of the subtle moderation of Russian émigré Orthodoxy for the very unsubtle extremism of US convert Orthodoxy. Well-financed Lutheran fanaticism was substituted for real Christianity. That is spiritual suicide, for no-one apart from crazy and uncharitable converts is interested.

The Moscow Patriarchate itself has been badly served both by Soviet nationalism and the corrupting riches of the post-Soviet episcopate together with their sexual perversions, as we can see at this very moment. But what has been rumoured for years in Moscow and elsewhere, is only the tip of the iceberg. The MP and ROCOR have to be cleansed. An antique-filled seaside cottage (cottage, not the antique-filled Victorian house, that is another story) on the south coast of England (in the nineteenth century gay Anglican bishops would also ‘resort’ to south-coast Brighton) is not the solution.

In England, we Orthodox will be neither pro-Soviet, nor pro-American, but faithful to local realities. You can only build a Local Church, if you want it and believe in it.

 

First Orthodox Monastery in Scotland for 1,000 Years

First Orthodox monastery on Scottish Islands in 1,000 years consecrated on the Isle of Mull

Amid the latest terrible scandal surrounding a certain Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, which broke last weekend, and which follows the same scandal with a still unpunished and protected ROCOR bishop, God sends us consolation. The long-overdue Great Cleansing will follow and all will be revealed. Woe unto you, scribes, pharisees and hypocrites! Repentance begins in Scotland.

The Bulgarians Rout the ‘Phanar Lobby’: Next in Line – the ‘Lavender Lobby’

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2024/07/03/bolgary_razgromili_fanarskoe_lobbi

 

The following article is a translation of the above Russian article, published in Moscow on 4 July by the well-known Church journalist Anatoly Stepanov. It clearly outlines how by choosing a new Patriarch, the Bulgarian Church has come to support the canonical Church in the Ukraine under Metropolitan Onufry. Thus, it has for the moment defeated the pro-Phanariot lobby and its fake and schismatic ‘Church in the Ukraine’ (OCU), whose main sponsor is the atheistic US State Department. However, it also shows that the US-controlled liberal/ecumenist/pro-Catholic/pseudo-intellectual/celibate lobby which is trying to split the Church is also profoundly homosexual. This is not news for some of us, but it will be to many.

Moreover, this split is not a Greek-Russian split, for apart from the very well-known homosexual metropolitans, archbishops and clerics within the Patriarchate of Constantinople, there are also many others of other nationalities, such as Bulgarians and Russians. Such are also part of this homosexual (‘lavender’) lobby, for instance the notorious but only recently defrocked Moscow Abbot Peter Yeremeev. He was allowed for years and years to continue his activities quite openly in Moscow to the scandal of the faithful. As the article hints, but does not dare say openly, he and others were and are protected by powerful clerical friends of the same narcissistic ‘variety’, who, moreover, as we well know, are also very active outside Russia in corrupting Church life with their boyfriends and persecuting the faithful. Here is a translation of the article:

 

On Sunday June 30, the election of the Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) was held. This attracted the close attention of Orthodox observers and the public not only in Bulgaria. And no wonder, because the fate of not only the future of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but also the future of all world Orthodoxy was being decided.

On the eve of the elections, we witnessed open interference in the internal affairs of the BOC by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. On May 19 an extraordinary event took place: a group of Bulgarian hierarchs headed by the most influential in Bulgaria, Metropolitan Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Plovdiv, visited the Patriarchate of Constantinople and openly concelebrated with representatives of the schismatic Orthodox Church in the Ukraine (OCU).

This was not only a challenge to the Bulgarian Church, which, as you know, does not recognise the legitimacy of the OCU, but is also a revelation of the future course of the BOC. And then Patriarch Bartholomew was invited (it is not clear on whose behalf, since there was no decision of the Synod) to take part in the ceremony of the election of His Holiness the Patriarch of Bulgaria and his enthronement.

It was a public act of interference. And how many behind-the-scenes attempts to exert influence, which, for sure, took place both on the part of the American embassy and on the part of ‘our overseas partners’, as the Russian Department of External Church Relations (DECR) has long called Constantinople, which has long been under the control of the United States.

Therefore, many anxiously awaited the decision of the Council of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which was supposed to elect its Primate. On the eve of the final voting, as is known, the Synod of the BOC elected three bishops as candidates for the post of Primate of the Church – Metropolitan Grigory (Tsvetkov) of Vrachansky, who acted as Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Gabriel (Dinev) of Lovech and Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin.

According to all forecasts, experts gave preference to Metropolitan Gregory, who was considered as a kind of compromise figure, albeit a conditional compromise, since his sympathies for the Phanar were well-known. However, unexpectedly, in the second round of the final voting, Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin won, for whom 69 members of the Council voted, Metropolitan Gregory received 66 votes in his support. In the first round, Metropolitan Gregory received 64 votes, Metropolitan Daniel – 51 votes, and Metropolitan Gabriel – 19 votes (several ballots were declared invalid).

The decision of the Council became a sensation for many, a joyful sensation. It testifies to the fact that the supporters of canonical Orthodoxy, and it was from these positions that Metropolitan Daniel always spoke, turned out to be in the majority in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and preferred to have as their Patriarch a person who, on the eve of the elections, again clearly and unequivocally outlined his position on the rejection of the Ukrainian schismatics. Moreover, he was the only candidate for Patriarch who spoke directly on this key question

Of course, the results of the vote testify to the shaky balance of power in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church: 69 votes against 66 is the clearest evidence of this.Nevertheless, the decision of the Council is final, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has a Primate who will defend canonical rules and norms and will not allow the Phanar to establish control over the BOC and deepen the schism in world Orthodoxy.

However, it is clear to everyone that the new Patriarch Daniel is receiving a very difficult inheritance, and his unequivocal rejection of the schismatic actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will not go unanswered. And we are already seeing the latter answers in the form of dirty tricks. Patriarch Bartholomew, apparently dissatisfied with the results of the choice of the Bulgarian Orthodox, refused to serve the first Divine Liturgy with his newly elected brother, went home, demonstratively leaving his representative, an archimandrite, to concelebrate.

Moreover, he is one who has a very dubious reputation – Archimandrite Kharalampy (Nichev), who was once a cleric of the BOC, but was expelled after a scandal, but was accepted in his present rank in Constantinople. At the same time, this same Archimandrite Kharalampy has a reputation as a person who belongs to the ‘lavender lobby’. Moreover, during the first Divine Liturgy of Patriarch Daniel, Archimandrite Kharalampy, being the senior priest by consecration, led the service as a representative of the clergy.

There will certainly be many more such dirty tricks on the part of the Phanar. But they do not pose a danger, but an attempt to provoke a schism in the BOC from among the bishops and priests dissatisfied with the election of Patriarch Daniel is a more terrible danger. And given the results of the vote, almost half were dissatisfied. It is clear that there is a long distance from discontent to a change of jurisdiction and an attempt to split, but the problem is serious. His Holiness Patriarch Daniel will obviously have to exert a great deal of effort to prevent a split in the BOC. Therefore, it is very likely that he will take some conciliatory actions and steps first of all.

It is very likely that the opposition to the new Patriarch will be led by the already mentioned and very influential Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv, who has extensive connections in political circles (there are rumours that his father served in the security service of the Communist leader of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov, i.e. he was not the least person at that time). Metropolitan Nicholas has recently become a leader of the pro-Phanar policy in the BOC.

Metropolitan Nicholas is a visible embodiment of the failures of the policy ‘of an Orthodox direction’ of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, which for a long time banked on him. And it seems that there were reasons for this, in addition to the family ties of the Metropolitan of Plovdiv. He was educated at the Moscow Theological Academy and for a long time demonstratively supported pro-Russian positions in the Bulgarian episcopate. In addition to the DECR, as far as we know, our Embassy also banked on him. So this is proof of the failure of all Russian diplomacy, not only ecclesiastical. As a result, we have now received a deafening slap in the face since Metropolitan Nicholas has become the main propagandist of the Phanar in the BOC, and the DECR and the Russian embassy seem to have got it all wrong.

Moreover, Metropolitan Nicholas not only changed his political orientation, but also committed openly offensive actions against His Holiness Patriarch Kirill. We are talking about his arbitrary restoration to the ecclesiastical dignity of the former hegumen Peter Yeremeev, who was banned in the Russian Church, who has recently been seen several times at the Divine services of Metropolitan Nicholas. And this is not just an insult to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill personally, who approved the decision to defrock the former hegumen Peter, but also in fact the creation of a serious problem in relations between the Bulgarian and Russian Orthodox Churches…..

Hegumen Pyotr Eremeev is a notorious personality. In addition to the fact that he held high positions in the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church, being the abbot of the historic Vysokopetrovsky Monastery in the centre of the capital and the rector of the Russian Orthodox University, he is widely known in narrow circles as one of the most prominent faces of the so-called ‘lavender lobby’ in the Russian Orthodox Church. Believers whispered about this and spoke with sorrow. And his ban from serving was perceived with great satisfaction by many Orthodox believers as a sure sign of the cleansing of the Church from the ‘lavender filth’.

Therefore, the story of the former abbot Peter testifies to the fact that the new Bulgarian Patriarch, in addition to the ‘Phanar lobby’, has another dangerous and influential opponent – the ‘lavender lobby’. It is no coincidence that in Bulgaria they whisper about the non-traditional sexual orientation of Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv. It is also surprising and sad that Russian Church diplomats considered him to be the main supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bulgaria.

By the way, as informed people say, the strange inclinations of the former hegumen Peter began to manifest themselves after his studies in Bulgaria, where he met and became friends with the then vicar of the Bulgarian Patriarch, Bishop Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Znepol. These unhealthy inclinations led Pyotr Yeremeev into a scandal with students of the Moscow Academy, which was the reason for his exile from Moscow to Khabarovsk in the Far East. But then he returned to the capital, supposedly cured of the sodomite disease, a story which turned out to be untrue.

Of course, we rejoice at the election of the new Bulgarian Patriarch, especially realising that we are witnessing the manifestation of the action of Divine Providence in history, which inspires us with hope in these desperate times. But let us be aware that Patriarch Daniel faces the most difficult trials ahead. Therefore, it would be right for all of us to at least sigh before God for Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria, who is embarking on the difficult path of struggle for the Church of Christ and for the unity of world Orthodoxy.

 

An Interview: Day of the Holy Spirit 2024

1) How did you come to Orthodoxy, Fr Andrew?

In childhood I did not know anything about churches. But I lived in the country, in God’s Cathedral. So although I knew nothing from men, I knew God from His Creation, I knew His presence from the tall trees and the green meadows, the singing birds and the broad skies above me. I knew that God lived just beyond the sky, sometimes I felt I could see Him. I did not believe in God, I knew God.

And around me I also found the living proof of others who had known him. These were the old saints: St Cedd (by the way, his name is correctly pronounced Ched), Apostle of Essex, St Osyth of a village nearby, St Audrey of Ely, St Botolph and St Albright who were recalled locally, and St Edmund, our family saint. They had all lived within a few dozen miles of me. The only problem was that when I asked adults about them, they could not tell me anything at all. Just that they had all lived a long, long time ago and must have been important because they were remembered in local place names. In those days there was no internet to ask further and anyway I was only a child. But I felt their presence. They were like my closest friends.

Later, when I was 12 years old, I saw an American film, which was loosely based on the Russian novel, Dr Zhivago. Although it was full of Hollywood nonsense and Cold War propaganda, it sparked something underlying inside me. For the opening scene showed a funeral and an Orthodox priest. As a result of this film, I bought myself a book and began teaching myself Russian. At the same time, because of the scene with the priest – I had never met any sort of priest before – I opened and read the New Testament. It changed my life, but also confirmed all my childhood experience. When people ask me what I recommend as the best Orthodox book to read, I always answer the New Testament.

At the same time, I also visited some churches. But they felt cold and empty. I could not find anything there. As I had read the New Testament, I knew there must be a real church somewhere. Where was the continuity of the Acts of the Apostles and the letters written to the Local Churches by the Apostle Paul? What had happened next? What happened after the New Testament? Where was the Newest Testament? That is what I wanted to know. When I was 14, I read about the Orthodox Church and I thought: ‘This is what I have always thought and believed’. Finally, when I was 16, I managed to find and visit a Russian emigre church – one which, sadly, no longer exists, as those people are all dead. As soon as I entered that church, I was at home. At once I knew my whole future, all was before me, all was inevitable, I saw my destiny, God’s Will for me. I had found my home at last, or rather, my home had found me. When I was 17, I won a competition and won a prize to visit the then Soviet Russia. That was in 1973.

2) What inspired you to start Orthodox England? What is the history behind the journal?

Since 1974 I had been reading history in order to try and understand Western history and how the break with Orthodoxy had happened and what its consequences were, in other words, I wanted to know why Western people had lost their saints. I was especially interested in the first millennium after Orthodoxy arrived in Rome in about 50 AD up until the mid-eleventh century in Western Europe. In 1976 I had asked someone why there were no books about this. He said that if I read enough, I should write them, filling the gap, because there were no such books. So, from 1989 on, I began writing books about this Age of the Saints, especially in England, which I knew best. Nobody else was doing anything like this. Though I had few qualities, I had no choice. I had to do it. There was no-one else to do it.

In 1997 we moved back to England from France. Having lived for sixteen years in Russia, Norway, Greece, France and Portugal, I had a new understanding of reality. I knew that the real England was not British, just as the real Russia was not Soviet. I wished to publish this knowledge. Someone had advised me that before you start a quarterly journal, you should always have at least the first year ready beforehand. I had a mass of material with the first three years ready. So began 20 years and 80 issues of the Orthodox England journal.

3) A lot of people feel as though converts to Orthodoxy must forfeit their own culture in the process. Where do you feel a healthy balance exists between submitting to Eastern rite, representation, ethnic expression, and ethnic idolatry?

Here you need discernment to distinguish between the primary and the secondary. The secondary is ethnic expression, either of your own culture and language or that of others. Thus, we should not call ourselves Orthodox in front of those on the outside, but Orthodox Christian. The word Orthodox is only an adjective and it has ethnic connotations. Orthodox Christianity is much more than a culture, it is simple Christianity, the following of Christ. Those who are not Orthodox Christians are not fully Christian, though they don’t know that. This is why they call themselves only Catholic or Protestant, they do not know the word Christian in our sense.

You ask about ‘submitting to the Eastern rite’. Forgive me, but this is a very strange phrase for me. I have never ‘submitted to the Eastern rite’. I submitted to Christ. If wanting to join one of the Local Orthodox Churches does not mean you submitting to Christ, then forget it, you are not ready for the Church. You are blocked by your cultural prejudices and have not seen past the folklore and externals. Those who think they have to ape others, including their folklore, suffer from ethnic idolatry. Here we come once more to that old piece of advice: If there is a difference for you between ‘joining the Orthodox Church’ and ‘becoming Orthodox’, then you are not ready for the Church. Becoming Orthodox must mean remaining Orthodox.

There are those who say that they want to join the Orthodox Church, but are not prepared to shed their cultural baggage. If such people are received into the Church, they will always fall away. They were not ready. I remember talking to a priest a few years ago. He told me that he had received some Anglicans into the Church. He told me that for a couple of years, all was OK, but then they wanted to change and ‘reform the Church’ (!), everything they did not like. They walked away, some of them slamming the door, finally understanding that the Church would not change for them. The ones who had to change for the Church were themselves, but they were too proud to do that.

In this matter much depends on what your previous religious culture was. Those of no background, like myself, have nothing to change, nothing to lose. If you come to the Church without cultural baggage and such prejudices, then all is easy. If you have cultural baggage, you are not ready. You have to fast from that baggage. You have to unpack first.

4) What crucial parts of Orthodox history do you feel are overlooked or lost?

There are two areas in particular:

The first area is the first millennium of Western history. We know that the first Christians in Rome were Greek-speaking. We know that in the second century St Irenei and St Justin Martyr wrote in Greek. We also know that from the second century on, local Latin-speaking Romans, like St Tatiana, from the noble Tatian family, were entering into the family of saints. We know that the Church Father, St Ambrose of Milan, conveyed Orthodoxy to the Latin-speaking world. Then came the importance of the Egyptian desert, which influenced St John Cassian and St Martin of Tours and from there came the whole blossoming of Irish holiness, which then spread to Scotland and northern England. (By the way, St Patrick was not Irish but came from Britain. Even the name Patrick is Roman, not Celtic). We know that in the fifth century St Simeon the Stylite and St Genevieve of Paris corresponded.

We know that there are dozens of Irish manuscripts, written in Latin, in the library of St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. We know that the last Greek Pope of Rome was St Zacharias (+ 752). We know that Rome conserved its Orthodoxy right up to the first years of the eleventh century. So what happened? What went wrong? How did we end up with the invention of Roman Catholicism? This latter did not exist in the Year 1000, when the anti-Papist Emperor Otto III reigned in the West, yet it clearly did in the Year 1100.

The second area is the ignorance of pre-Revolutionary Russia. I was extremely fortunate to have met Russians who had been adults before the Revolution. They knew what it had been like, the good and the bad. Remember that only 10% of them ever set foot in church. Most were atheists or indifferent to the Church. St John of Shanghai mentioned this fact in the 1930s in Belgrade. I knew them.

Those who had been adults before were not the children of Russian emigres, born in the West, or Non-Russian converts, who all idealised the past as part of a nostalgic ideology. They never wondered, if everything had been so wonderful before the Revolution, why the Revolution had happened. Above all, the children of Russian emigres never read Russian history. All they had to do was to read the accounts of the incredible decadence of Russian Church life before the Revolution, for example, those written by Metr Antony of Kiev, the founder of ROCOR.

That knowledge would have dissolved their nostalgia and idealistic converts could not have been hoodwinked by those who have Russian names or pretend to have them, but know nothing, who cannot read or write Russian, who know only kitchen Russian, because they are second or third generation, or not Russian at all. They should stop playing gurus, putting on false Russian accents. We can see through them. They are charlatans.

5) Do you feel that it is difficult at times to discern the boundaries we hold as Orthodox Christians after the schism, i.e. the tombs of our saints, our ancient churches undergoing reconstruction under Catholic occupation etc?

Yes, absolutely, it is difficult. You must be very clear here, otherwise there will be spiritual confusion. What remains from the pre-Schism West is very fragmentary in material terms, for example, in terms of architecture. Indeed, archaeology can tell you the most because most of the material history of the saints is buried underground, conveniently hidden.

I remember talking to an Orthodox who went on pilgrimage to Rome. Every time he had wanted to see Orthodoxy, he had to go downstairs, to basements and catacombs. On top there was just medieval and Renaissance decoration. To venerate relics, you had to write a letter to the Roman Catholic authorities three weeks in advance! All was buried, hidden away. This symbolises it all. The heritage of the Western saints is above all spiritual. The best way of feeling it and recreating it is by our prayers to these Saints of the glorious past. They are believed missing for many, but we know them as immortal.

Here we must understand that 1054 marks not the beginning, but the end, of the first part of the process of Schism, which had started three centuries before. The second millennium is the second part of that process. This is the story of degradation. The latest Papal blessing for homosexual couples is simply the latest and completely inevitable stage of that same apostasy of the process of Schism. Make no mistake, the Western Schism is a process, and an ongoing process.

6) What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your ministry?

In May 1980 I met Fr Alexander Schmemann in Paris. He wanted me to come over to the US to finish off my studies there and then I think, in time, to teach at St Vladimir’s. I did not wish to. The saints interested me more. During our conversation I asked him for his impressions of the Church in the then Soviet Russia. He answered me that the episcopate could be divided into two halves. One half were saints, the other half were among the biggest rogues you could find anywhere, the dregs of humanity. There was nothing inbetween. His story simply confirmed my earlier impressions of the Orthodox episcopate I had met in the Western world.

I had already twice met Metr Pitirim (Nechayev) of Volokolamsk, the mentor of my friend, the present Metr Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Crimea. Metr Pitirim was a real gentleman, who had retained the old-world nobility of the best of pre-Revolutionary figures. And yet in 1986 he was put on Soviet television to tell lies. This was the time of Chernobyl and Ukrainians knew that chernobyl is the name of a plant, which we call ‘wormwood’ in English. But some of the pious ones had read the Scriptures. Why did he lie, saying that waters tasting of ‘wormwood’ was not among the prophecies of the Book of Revelation? He could have called all to repentance, but he, like the others, were all hostages. He told lies because he was protecting others. If he had not told lies, he would not have suffered, but dozens of parishes would have been closed, or parish priests and their wives and children left destitute. It was all very well for those who lived outside the system to judge, but I think we had and have absolutely no right to judge. God is our Judge, of us all.

But there is something far worse than all this. Metr Pitirim was on the saintly side. There are those who are not. There are those who tell lies voluntarily, when they live in freedom, when they have no guns in their backs or when those who depend on them have no guns in their backs. They still tell lies. Why? Because they reap some material benefit from their psychopathic lies, money or power for themselves. They are on Fr Alexander’s other list.

You may ask why I have not answered your question about challenges. Well, I have done. The biggest challenges I have faced over the last forty years of service at the altar are bishops who do not preach Christ, but who preach hateful and extremist ideologies, which involve them in slandering, bullying and betraying those under them and taking pleasure in trying to close their churches. They are used by the devil to try and destroy the Church on earth, blaspheming the Holy Spirit and so committing personal spiritual suicide.

Another instance. We have a very good friend in Moldova. Fr Gregory is a priest with a long black beard and he looks like an icon. Though he is married and has five children. He has built a huge, stone church there and is now building a convent. Five years ago he too was forced to move from the Moscow Patriarchate to the Romanian Patriarchate. Why? Because the Moscow bishop was intent on stealing the newly-built church, to which he had not given a penny, from Fr Gregory. Just another case, the same thing again.

Another case. In our parish we have a former priest’s wife from Kazakhstan. Her husband was a violent drunkard, but as he paid his bishop a lot of money for various honours and awards, mitres and what have you, that was fine. As she says, the local bishop was just ‘a mini-oligarch’. Of course, he was. Corruption is everywhere.  Nowadays the main qualification to be a bishop is to act as an ‘effective manager’. That is the current jargon, all Western words. But the old White Russian bishops, who died out in the last century, God rest them, told me that the Revolution happened because the bishops then were only ‘good administrators’ (another Western word). That was their only qualification. Nothing new under the sun…

Then, only a few years ago, one of these ‘effective managers’ was living in his Cathedral in Paris, with his wife and child. That was not so bad. But on top of that he was a drunkard. Or in London, the ROCOR priest who was a sex pest, but who also loved money. He could not stop molesting women parishioners. Why did they ordain such a notorious man, against all advice, including our own? Well, you can guess: because he was ‘an effective manager’ and, at the start at least, he brought in lots of money, until all the younger women had fled. Of course, it all ended in tears. It always does.

I have only met four Patriarchs. Two of them were saintly, two of them are not. Awful things are being done in certain Patriarchates today. The Church canons are being used for politics. There are bishops who are schismatics, spies or who are depraved. What should we do?

First of all, it has all been seen before. For example, read Russian medieval literature. My professors in Oxford were experts on it and wrote a book about it in 1974. Only the inexperienced and ignorant are scandalised when they discover that some Russian bishops of that time were sodomites.

Please do not be scandalised. Remember that Judas was one of the Twelve. Just because there are a few rotten apples in the basket of lovely, sweet, rosy-red apples, you do not throw them all away.

I could tell you far worse than any of these stories. But why? Let me tell you the words of St Paisios, which he told a good friend of mine from Switzerland in the 1980s. My friend asked him precisely how to react to such scandals. Fr Paisios answered: ‘When you are walking along a path to the skete or kellia, you may come across excrement left there by a wild animal. Well, when you who live in the world find the excrement of other wild animals, do what I do: Kick it aside and wipe your shoes on the grass, so that the person who comes after you does not walk in it and you keep your own shoes clean’.

7) What are some of the best moments of your ministry, or memorable events?

The best moments are always when the repentant come home. This includes especially ex-criminals and ex-prostitutes, the prodigal sons and the prodigal daughters. Afterwards they make the best Orthodox. Think of the thief on the cross, read the life of St Barbarus, or of the ex-prostitutes, St Mary of Egypt, St Taisia, St Pelagia. As a prison chaplain, I see it especially often. Salvation comes through the depth of our repentance and that becomes visible by how our way of life has changed. The deeper the repentance, the greater the salvation. That is the key.

Then there is missionary work. This is among Orthodox who have been abandoned by their own Patriarchates. This work has taken place in several countries in Europe, but especially in Portugal, from north to south, and in England. In the latter case, I have been active throughout the eastern half of England, from the north-east near the Scottish border, down through the East Midlands and my native East Anglia, right down to the coasts of Kent and Sussex. Half the country. Although I was later briefly forbidden to do missionary work, including baptising children in kitchens, confessing people in their living rooms, serving memorials in the open air, preaching Christ to those who wanted to know, the efforts to stop me were in vain, for then the people came to me! The bad bishops hate missionary work. This is because they have renounced the Holy Spirit and do not love Christ.

Next there is Providence. Providence is God’s Love for us, as He provides what we need, even if we do not expect it and even if at first, this seems hard to us. Providence is God sharing our burdens, making our yoke light, our burden easy. Since the war broke out in the Ukraine in 2014, they have tried to force the whole world to take sides, one ghetto against another ghetto. I don’t want to sound over-dramatic, but although we were followed by an embassy spy in London in 2021 and were approached by certain politically-minded people, we remained outside politics, outside the ethnic and political ghettos.

We were not forced to take sides, as God had provided for us an intermediate space, in the Patriarchate of Bucharest. Here we were able to steer the ship of the Church so that we are able to welcome both Russians and Ukrainians to all our churches, as well as many other nationalities, Romanian, Moldovan, Greek, English. This ability to stand outside ethnic ghettoisation and politicisation was sent to us by God. This was a miracle of His loving Providence. None of us has the slightest doubt about this.

Finally, there are the miracles. We Orthodox experience many miracles around us, because we confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds directly from the Father. At the liturgy on Ascension Day 2022, we had the phenomenon of a wonderful fragrance being given out from the large icon of St John of Kronstadt. This was a great comfort, as St John was a model pastor, who accepted all nationalities. He was not made the rector of the huge church he had until after 40 years of priesthood. This was because his bishop was jealous of him and of his popularity. It mirrors the experience of so many. If you are sincere, you involuntarily show up the compromised. They will hate you for that and slander you and try to destroy you. I am reminded of the words attributed to St Basil the Great: Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.

  1. What friends do you have in the Local Churches in Western Europe?

 You must have friends in many Local Churches. They will protect you from the sharks, so you can outmanoeuvre them. Thus, I have known Metr Seraphim (Joanta), the bishop of the Romanian Church for Central and Northern Europe, since 1986 and our own Metr Joseph (Pop) of Western and Southern Europe, whom we got to know over 20 years ago whom we got to know years ago through my sister-in-law, Princess Laskin-Rostovsky, in Paris.

Since 2004 we have been able to build up an inter-jurisdictional network of clergy throughout Europe, especially when I was appointed missionary representative for Western Europe by the late and greatly missed Metr Hilarion (Kapral). He was the last. This network goes from Belarus to Italy, from Czechia to Bulgaria, from Greece to Germany, from Moldova to Finland, from France to Norway, from Romania to Belgium, from Portugal to Slovakia, from Latvia to Scotland, from the Ukraine to Switzerland, from the Netherlands to Russia. This European network supports all of us in our struggle to build up the Local Church of Western Europe, which has been the purpose of my life, the law of my being, these past forty years as a cleric. I will tell you know – we are not the last of the Mohicans – we are the first of the Mohicans!

9) Who is the saint you have the closest relationship with in the West? In the East?

A saint in the West? There are so many of them! But it must be St Edmund, because he is our local family saint. Six generations of my direct forebears were named after him, all Edmunds, who lived from 1590 to 1768. One of my first memories from childhood, was going to the ruins of St Edmund’s monastery with a great-uncle in 1959. He looked at the ruins and took his cap off with great sadness and respect. I saw it in his eyes. Our last martyred King is in my blood, in my genes. That is how I composed the service to him nearly twenty-five years ago now.

A saint in the East? Even more difficult!  Well, I love St John Chrysostom, have all his works in ten volumes, and also St Andrew the Fool, my patron saint in New Rome in the tenth century, who saw the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God. St Andrew always told the truth. A few years ago, I was able to compose an akathist to him.

More recently, there is St Nectarios, who has a wonderful Life and now there is an excellent film about him. All the slandered must pray to him. Then there is the greatest Ukrainian saint of the last century – St John of Shanghai and Western Europe.  (We call him like that because he spent thirteen years in Western Europe, but only three in San Francisco, and there they killed him). St John was a pastor and for that he was slandered, put on trial and suspended by his fellow-bishops in the ROCOR Synod. He was not the first and not the last.

But there are also those who have not yet been canonised as saints, the priests and elders, who have also inspired me very greatly.

In 1974 I met Fr Alexander Nelidov in Paris. He warned me: ‘They will be out to get you. Satan is inside the Church’. These were terrible words, but he was a prophet. Then, in 1976 there was Elder Seraphim Tapochkin near Belgorod in Russia. He gave me his blessing and encouragement. They want to canonise him now. Quite rightly. In 1979 I met Fr Paisios at Stavronikita. We knew he was a saint even then. He was the real thing. Now he is St Paisios. He appreciated greatly our Archbishop Antony of Geneva, who later ordained me priest.

Then there was the Romanian Elder Cleopa. I never met him in person, but I saw in him how Carpathian spirituality was the same as that on Athos, as in Diveevo in Russia, and as the ancient Irish had. He is a saint, we know and he will be canonised soon. Then in 1979 I met Fr Ephraim at Philotheou. He devoted some time to me. I can show you exactly where we met at Philotheou on Athos. I still remember his words, even though my Greek was not very good. He foresaw. He has always been with me. He too was clearly the real thing, though then there was, as far as I know, no question of the USA and Arizona.

Finally, I must mention Elder Nikolai Guryanov (+ 2002). He had understood everything. Confined to a tiny island near Estonia, he saw beyond. He was mystical. His prophecies are still coming true. You will see! And do not be surprised when you see his words coming true and all the present nonsense being swept away like the chaff from the winnowing floor. ‘His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire’ (Matt 3, 12). You will be astounded by the miracles and transformations that are going to happen in the coming years. You will be breathless and say: This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes. And again: Who is so great a God as our God. Thou art the God Who workest miracles. I sing these words in my heart every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Interview with a Russian Countess

Countess Benckendorff, a parishioner since 2010, has kindly agreed to be interviewed about the contemporary situation in Russia. We have recorded her answers, slightly edited, below.

 

Q: Can you tell us something about the Benckendorff family? I presume it is a German name.

A: The Benckendorffs were Saxons, not Germans. The Germans persecuted us. We were first recorded in 1240 in the village of Benckendorff in Saxony in eastern Germany, from where we became known as von Benckendorff. 300 years later some of our family settled further east in the Baltics, at first in Riga, then near Tallinn. After the Baltics had been absorbed into the Russian Empire, many of the family settled in the Morshansk area of the Tambov province, where in 1775 we were awarded the Sosnovka estate of 8,000 acres. In the early 19th century we were made counts in gratitude for service to the Tsar.

After 1917, part of the family, including a cousin Alexander, who was the last ambassador of the Tsar to Great Britain, emigrated. He passed away in 1917, but belonged to the Germanised Lutheran-Catholic side of the family and did not even speak Russian very well. He was allowed to write his reports as ambassador in French, which everyone in Saint Petersburg spoke fluently at that time. However, his family, who were Orthodox, came to live in Suffolk because of the agricultural connections of the Benckendorff family. Suffolk farm machinery was used in Sosnovka.

Thus, our branch of the family had been Russianised in the late eighteenth century and became Orthodox. After 1917 we remained in Russia, still living in Morshansk in the Tambov province. Obviously, we lost everything and we had to hide our identity, changing our surname in the 1920s, but we always remained faithful to the Orthodox Faith, the Tsar and Rus, to all our traditions. We were always different from others and members of our branch of the family never became members of the Party. We did not want to be Sovietised.

Q: What happened to your family inside the Soviet Union?

A: Our family suffered. In 1937 one of our family, who had been sent to the camps, was shot for being an Orthodox priest and is venerated as a New Martyr.  We have his icon. He is our family saint.

We lived all over the European part of the USSR and there are still Benckendorffs in the Ukraine (including a famous film-maker), Belarus and the Baltics, as well as Russia. Since the fall of the USSR, as you say in English, we have been scattered to the four winds. Some of us now live in England, Denmark and the USA. In England we attend the Romanian church, in the USA the OCA. We are the new White emigration, though we still use our 1920s name. It is just too complicated to change our name back for the moment. But that will come. I and my husband are talking about doing this at this very moment.

Q: You mention the Ukraine. What is your view of the conflict there today?

A: The Ukraine? First of all, people must understand that the war there is nothing to do with the Ukraine. It is between Western imperialism with its wealthy oligarchs who control the USA, and the rest of humanity with its poor people who are represented by Russia. The war is between the globalist rich like Soros and Schwab against humanity, between the elite minority with its media dictatorship, arms merchants, global warming, artificial covid and transgenderism, and the vast majority of the world with its ordinary people who just love their homelands and their families. The naïve Ukrainians are being used as paid mercenaries by the rich West as cannon fodder. As the Western elite said, they will fight till the last Ukrainian. They will not die themselves because they do not believe in anything, except in themselves. They are all narcissists, so others die in their name.

The origin of the Ukrainian tragedy is in the overthrow of the Tsar in 1917. He was the one person who linked us all together, the central point. After he was overthrown, what could you expect? There was no unity left, nothing to fight for. Through weakness and lack of principle, willingness to sell themselves for money, first the western Ukrainians allowed themselves to be conquered by the Nazis and then by the Americans. They always go wherever they imagine they have an advantage. Nazis and Americans are the same thing, those so-called Ukrainians are Nazis.

Until all the peoples of the former USSR have truly repented for their ancestors’ sin in 1917, there will be conflict among its former peoples. I just hope that the conflict in the Ukraine is the last post-Soviet conflict, with the other conflicts of the traitors in the Caucasus, in Georgia and Armenia, and elsewhere. Then there can at last be the restoration of the real Rus and all the other countries will be free.

Q: What do you think of the old White Russian emigration?

A: They had to emigrate. It was that or be killed by the Bolsheviks. But most of them were also against the Tsar, they overthrew him, they were just right-wing atheists like the Bolsheviks, who were left-wing atheists. Many of the so-called Whites entirely lacked patriotism. Some of them supported Hitler invade Russia during the war and today their descendants support the Americans, which is the same thing. Nazism is an inherently Western colonial ideology, German or American, French or British, Belgian or Italian, Spanish or Portuguese, Austrian or Dutch. It was all about killing and exploiting others who are considered to be inferior subhumans, Untermenschen, as the Germans called them. What is this forced imposition of transgenderism, if not Nazism? The name NATO, which was staffed by German Nazis from the outset, even sounds like the word Nazi.

Q: Should all Russian Orthodox be under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate?

A: How is that possible? That is absurd! The Moscow Patriarchate is a house divided because it still has to be cleansed of Sovietism and post-Sovietism. It is very, very corrupt and many of the bishops are just capitalist oligarchs, interested only in money and luxury and they defrock good priests for disagreeing with their Sovietism and denouncing them for their corruption and immorality. The fools-for-Christ tell the truth, not the bishops. If the bishops told the truth, we would not need fools-for-Christ. Some of the bishops are atheists or moral perverts, just as they were in the Soviet period. Look at Filaret with his palace in Kiev. It is shameful.

Most of the Russian bishops should be sent to monasteries to repent for the rest of their lives. Only, if they were sent there, you would see that most of them would run away and defrock themselves. Anything except repent! Like that awful Bishop Maxim in London, who ran away because he was running a drugs factory in Saint Petersburg with his boyfriend. That is the level of so many Russian bishops today, here or in Russia. They are on the same level as the Greeks from Istanbul. There is no difference between them.

True, after 1991 the Patriarchate made the first leap – from the theory of Soviet ideology. But it failed to make the second leap – from the practice of Soviet corruption. Nowadays you can be an atheist in the Church, all you need to do is decide which Church group you as an atheist want to join.

Here in England, for example, I have been horrified by ROCOR. It is full of American agents, it is an anti-Russian organisation, just a Fascistic branch of the CIA, right-wing atheists. Little wonder so many in ROCOR sided with the Nazis against Russia then. Now they are doing it again. ROCOR refuses to be nice or negotiate and thinks that by being nasty and punishing, it wins. In fact, it punishes itself and loses, just like the US government in its dealings with other countries. Treachery is everywhere. As someone said, the persecuted Church has become the persecuting Church. The greatness of the Russian Church is when it is persecuted. It is not in its bishops, with rare exceptions. And certainly not in today’s bishops.

Q: How do you see Western Europe?

A: It is so sad. Old Europe is dying. I think present Europe, which has already become very decadent, will have to hit rock bottom before it can be reformed. Only then will the various nations of Europe be able to negotiate with Russia and return individually to having normal relations with Russia, the wider world and with each other. Probably Europe is not far off rock-bottom now. My husband fears the situation in France especially. He says there could be a revolution there, if a military coup does not take place first.

Q: You have lived in England for 14 years and speak English fluently now. How do you see England?

A: When we first came here, we knew nothing. I had studied German at school and my husband French. We just came to work, to survive, like everyone else. But now we have come to appreciate and love Old England, the countryside, the thatched cottages, the traditions. For example, we go regularly to Ely to venerate St Audrey, whose hand is still venerated there, still making the sign of the cross over the city through all these centuries. Her presence is there. But we also see how Americanised modern England has become, like the rest of Western Europe in general, even the Catholic countries in the south.

For example, a few days ago when I had a day off, we were sitting in the lovely Abbey Gardens in Bury St Edmunds, another city of a saint. Two schoolgirls, aged perhaps 9 or 10, walked by in their lovely uniforms. So sweet and innocent. And we thought this is the real England. And then a very badly-dressed young man, his face covered in tattoos and pieces of metal, walked by, wearing a ragged T-shirt with the logo of an American baseball team. My husband said that he must have many psychological problems to do that to himself. I mean you can remove psychological complexes, but how can you remove tattoos on your face? He had come from another planet, as far as I am concerned. Two different worlds.

Of the real England, there are still some beautiful fragments left. We have recently been on holiday in Shropshire. How lovely it is there. But I fear that England has fallen too far and cannot now be restored. Though there are still many English people who are very kind. As for the government and British politicians, I have no time for any of them. They are all liars and have made the lives of ordinary English people much worse. Nowadays you cannot find a dentist in England. Why? Because the politicians gave all our money to that atheist and murderer Zelensky.

Q: What do you think of the Royal Family?

A: There is not one any more. Queen Elizabeth was the last who still had something. We watched her funeral on television. That was the funeral of Old England. When England is free again, you will need to find an English noble family to replace all those ‘royals’. You need a new Royal Family for England. You need an Alfred II, a Patriot-King, not a false one paid by those behind the government to do and say whatever they order him to do.

Q: You have had British citizenship for four years now. Will you vote in the elections in the UK?

Only for a party that promises to stop arming the Kiev regime and help end the war there. Is there such a party? All over Western Europe the US-chosen elites are just hanging on to power, but they will be swept away by their peoples. They are war criminals, responsible for the deaths of all those poor Ukrainians, who would have been happy to live in peace with Russia years ago, if the elite had not wanted them to make war against Russia.

Q: Do you think you will return to Russia one day?

A: We have friends who have already returned, but we are attached to East Anglia. Tsar Nicholas came here, to Sandringham and Kings Lynn. We would like to open a memorial church in Kings Lynn, dedicated to the Imperial Martyrs. As regards returning to Russia, we both prefer to wait until the new Tsar. We want to be in Russia for his enthronement. Then we shall see.

Q: The new Tsar?

A: Yes. After President Putin, who does not yet love Tsar Nicholas, there will be a Tsar.

Q: Are you sure?

A: Of course, the saints and elders have said so. See how already the best of the Tsar’s Russia is being restored and reconstituted even now. Everything that was good about the Tsar’s Russia – policies like free medicine and education, including higher education for women, were kept by the USSR – is being restored. Look at how North Korea is now allied with Russia, as it was until 1904 when the Japanese treacherously attacked Russia and went on to destroy Korea.

Recently Russia became the fourth largest economy in the world, as it was in 1914. It will overtake the USA eventually. And then see how Russia is forming a mighty coalition with countries which wanted to be with Russia or were supported by Russia before 1917, with India, South Africa, Iran, Ethiopia, Thailand and many other countries like Vietnam and Algeria, Afghanistan and Cuba, Indonesia and Turkey. The whole of Eurasia and Africa are allying.

Q: But who will the candidate for the new Tsar be? A Romanov from the emigration?

A: The Romanovs were nearly all traitors to the Tsar, even before the Revolution. The émigré Romanovs definitely cannot provide any serious candidate. That is laughable. Most of them cannot even speak Russian and many are not Orthodox! The new Tsar must come from inside Rus, as his ancestors went through the Soviet period. Only such a man can understand the peoples of Rus today. Once you emigrate forever, you become irrelevant to the Motherland. We live in the present, emigres live in the past. I do not know who the next Tsar will be, but there are many people of Romanov descent inside Rus. The prophecies say that the future Tsar’s mother will be a Romanov. God will provide. You will see.

Q: Thank you. Is there anything you would like to say to our readers in conclusion?

A: Yes, those same words again: God will provide. He always does. Do not be afraid. Everything will fall back into place.

Russian Nationalism Loses Control of the Russian Church

After the 1917 Revolution and the dissolution of the Russian Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church, formerly the Church of the Russian Empire, was forced to decentralise and give up various territories like eastern Poland and Finland, and the churches in them. Thus, the new country of Poland (and also Czechoslovakia) came to form its own independent (autocephalous) Local Orthodox Church. As for Russian Orthodox in Finland, like the emigres centred in Paris, and later Ukrainian emigres, they joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

However, the bulk of the Russian emigration, then in China (from here many later moved to Australia) as well as in Western Europe (from here many later rejoined others already in North America), became independent of Moscow. Eventually the descendants of this emigration became known as ROCOR or the New York Synod. Despite the fact that in 2006 several parishes in England and France had left the jurisdiction of Moscow itself to join Constantinople, in 2007 most of this New York Synod formally returned to Moscow, though a minority went to various old calendarist sects. In 2019 many of the descendants of the Paris emigres also rejoined Moscow, though a very large minority remained with Constantinople.

Despite reunification as recent as 2019, five years on, the 2024 situation mirrors the post-1917 chaos, when parts of the Russian Church refused to be subject to the politically-driven Russian Church administration.

Firstly, the Church in the Ukraine declared itself fully independent of Moscow. So much so that it set up nearly 100 parishes for its emigration in Western Europe, quite independently of Moscow. As for the Russian Orthodox Church in Latvia, it did much the same inside Latvia. In Moldova many parishes also left politically-coloured Moscow for the Romanian Church. Abroad many Moldovans went to Romanian churches, where they are not abused by Russian racism.

There is also dissidence in Lithuania and Estonia and even in Russia itself, where some Russian Orthodox also joined Constantinople. As regards the Russian Orthodox centred in Paris, now under Moscow, most there do not commemorate (or respect) their own Russian Orthodox Patriarch, whom they see as a politician, not as a churchman. More radically, the bulk of the old Russian emigration, now centred in New York and highly Americanised (they openly advise people to vote for Trump and support other post-Protestant phenomena), are also protesting. Some of its bishops openly called on the Russian Federation to withdraw its troops from the Ukraine!

Many suspect that several bishops and senior priests of this New York group has yet again been infiltrated, just as it was between the 60s and 80s, by the CIA. In any case its American or American-linked bishops parrot anti-Russian CIA propaganda, despite the fact that they call their fragment of the Church ‘Russian’! As a result, many Russian Orthodox patriots have been obliged to leave the New York Synod for other Local Churches, since the Moscow-centred Church, suicidally, refused to accept these patriots!

Thus, scandalous corruption in the New York Synod forced quite a number of patriotic Russian Orthodox in the USA, who also objected to the CIA hold over the group and yet were abandoned by politically-driven Moscow, to join the Church of Constantinople. In England, scandalous persecution from New York forced patriots in half the local diocese, abandoned by Moscow, to leave for the canonicity of the Romanian Church, thus skilfully avoiding politically-driven Constantinople. Here they continue to live exactly as before, as Russian Orthodox using the old calendar, but in exile as Russian Orthodox, as Moscow abandoned them. They are much supported by Moldovans, who are tired of being mistreated by Russians.

Ukrainians and Moldovans alike, tired of Russian racism, have been leaving, the Ukrainians setting up their own churches, the Moldovans, as we said, going to the Romanians. Making Non-Russian Orthodox feel like second-class citizens, usually deliberately, is suicidal for the Russian Church. The Russian Church is not only becoming a National Church, but rather a Nationalist Church. Suicidal politically-motivated and nationalistically-motivated actions by individuals in, or sent from, Moscow means that it has lost the loyalty of literally tens of millions of former Russian Orthodox.

At the present time, it is difficult to see how Moscow can ever get these tens of millions back. All this seems particularly strange when the Russian Church is supposed to be the Church of the multinational Russian Federation, part of the multipolar BRICS Alliance! And yet the Russian Church appears to be unipolar and uninational! Surely a Federation would be better represented by a multinational, and not nationalist, Church? Perhaps, once the conflict with the USA and its vassals in the Ukraine is over, the Russian Church, just like the Russian military with its four corrupt and now arrested generals, will also be cleansed of treacherous corruption, CIA bishops and all the rest?

 

 

What Will Happen to the Orthodox Church After the Fall of Washington?

The powers of this world have throughout history tried to abuse religious belief by making it into their own nationalist and ritualist institutions. This has been to camouflage and justify their nationalism, that is, their attachment to this world, their worldliness. Chinese, Indians, Jews, Greeks, Japanese, Copts, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs, Latins, Germans, Greeks, Spanish, Russians, French, British, Americans, they have all done it. These are just facts from Church history. How do Christians remain outside and resist an ideology which puts national and worldly issues above Christ, all for the sake of amassing more power and money? There are only two ways of resisting:

Either you are a Confessor, or else you are a Martyr. Thus, St Stephen the First Martyr was stoned to death by the Jews because he upset their nationalism. He was only following the prophets and St John the Baptist, who had told the nationalist King Herod the truth, and Christ Himself, Whom they crucified. Then came such Confessors as St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom. And in the twentieth-century there were the hundreds of thousands of Martyrs all over Eastern Europe, as well as Confessors like St Nectarios of Aegina, St Luke of the Crimea, St John of Shanghai or St Paisios the Athonite. There is nothing new under the sun. The saints are always the best witnesses.

In recent centuries the Church in the Middle East and the Balkans was oppressed by Ottomans, Poles and Austro-Hungarians. Meanwhile the Russian Church was oppressed by Westernising rulers, even more so after 1917. In the nineteenth century and even before, the main Patriarchate outside Russia, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, was used as a plaything by the British and French ambassadors. The Western Powers also appointed German kinglets to rule the newly-liberated Balkan countries in their name.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has in the same way become the plaything of US ambassadors there. Meanwhile the Patriarchate of Moscow was being used as a plaything by the Soviet State. Neither the US State of the Soviet State was Christian. Both were, whatever the theory, in practice atheist. This situation has continued by centuries of inertia even after the end of the first so-called Cold War in 1991, but in ways even more terrible than before.

Thus, in Moscow, Stalinist centralisation has continued, repelling all Non-Russians from the Church, as Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova openly described in his recent letter to Patriarch Kyrill. For fifty years we too were treated as second-class citizens by the same Russian Church. None of this is because this mentality has been forced on the Church by the State, but because it has become a bad reflex inside the Church. It is nothing to do with the State. For example, a fragment of Moscow, the New York ROCOR has done this too, completely discrediting itself, mistreating Non-Russians. (As one of its bishops said to me recently, ROCOR is ‘a train wreck’).  The mentality to repel all, including many Russians, has been imposed internally. The only real slavery comes from ourselves, not from others.

We can see the same mentality also in the uncanonical, US-orchestrated actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Ukraine and elsewhere since 2018. Sadly, Constantinople fell to Greek racist hatred and jealousy of Russians.  It could simply have refused to do any of its horrors. But the $25 million bribe was irresistible to the weak. Since then a second Cold War has begun, with US proxy forces trying to weaken and destroy Russia from the Ukraine. It means that the heavy burden of steering the ship of the Church has fallen to those less politicised, more free, to the now 14 other Local Churches. Their role has been dependent on the political freedom which they have.

Thus, under Communism in Eastern Europe and under the US control of the Greek Churches, the Serbian Church stood out as a beacon of relative freedom and theology. Today, in this respect the Albanian Church seems to have taken the lead as the voice of freedom, though the long-overdue visit of Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America to the persecuted Ukrainian Church is also a miracle. The remaining 14 Local Churches are not all united because they do not enjoy the same measure of freedom. They are only relatively free compared to Constantinople and Moscow. For instance, the actions of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople have brought some of the other Local Churches into a state of internal schism.

Specifically, the Cypriot and Bulgarian Churches are now in a state of internal schism as a direct result of the US interference in Constantinople, both direct and indirect. Equally, the US-controlled Patriarchate of Alexandria and Moscow are in schism because of the latter’s interference in Africa. Other Local Churches, like the Romanian and the Georgian, which have a strong national identity, take an independent line, ignoring uncanonical Greek and uncanonical Russian alike. This is despite the attempts by the local US ambassadors, who behave like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, to interfere in the choice of Patriarchs and policies. This independence is the only way to go. It is freedom.

However, our question is what will happen after the US stops interfering in internal Church affairs. It is our hope that, once political pressure eases, the Greek Churches in particular can take the lead and get out of political distortions and contortions, abandoning imperialist fantasies, recognising new autocephalies, notably that of the Macedonian Orthodox Church and its Diaspora. However, the Russian Church also has to give up its Soviet-style centralisation, which is its imperialist fantasy. It has to grant autocephaly to parts of the Church in now independent countries.

The shadow of the old Imperialism, Russian or Soviet, just like Greek and Latin imperialism, has cast a long shadow on Church life. Its time is up. For the Church does not consist of one Local Church ruling imperially over all the others, but of their entirety, their catholicity – all the Local Churches together. Once political meddling is over, all the Local Churches must hold a Council together. A free and canonically ordered Council, not the 2016 robber-Council farce in Crete. Then the very many long-outstanding issues between the Local Churches can at last be resolved. In freedom. May God’s Will be done!

 

 

A Russian Tragedy of Errors

 

Introduction: Three Fragments of the Church

After the overthrow of the Tsar by traitors in the so-called ‘Revolution’ of 1917, and the ensuing substitution of the Russian Empire for the Soviet Union, parts of the Russian Orthodox Church broke away from it. Although divisions of tiny, temporary ‘catacomb’ church communities formed inside the USSR, divisions were nowhere so obvious as outside the USSR, where there was the political freedom to choose which part of the Church to belong to.

The anti-Soviet Russian emigration split into two warring groups, one quite independent of the rest of the Orthodox Church, the other under the British-controlled and, after British bankruptcy from 1948 on the US-controlled, Patriarchate of Constantinople (1). In any case, both groups were independent of the vast majority of the Russian Church, which was under the enslaved and enhostaged administration of the 99% of the Church inside the Soviet Union. Why did these divisions develop?

  1. The Moscow Patriarchate: Bride of Christ or Concubine of the State?

Like all other Churches the Russian Orthodox Church has had a long history of both dependence on and independence from the State. In this respect, people may think of the independence from the State of St Nil of Sora (1508) and the Transvolgan Non-Possessors (1), of Metropolitan Philip of Moscow (murdered in 1569 on the orders of the centralising Tsar Ivan IV) and of the Old Ritualist schism of the 1660s, which was largely created by reaction to the persecution of the centralising State, which demanded absurd ritual conformity. By 1917 some 10% of the Russian population were declaring that they were Old Ritualists, thus showing the strength of opposition to the centralist State. All the above showed independence from the nationalist State, and many showed faithfulness to Orthodox Tradition, placing the Holy Spirit above corruption.

Under the imperialist Emperor Peter I (‘the Great’) (+ 1725), the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate was abolished and replaced by a Protestant-style Minister of Religion. Soon after this there began the persecution of monastic life, when some two-thirds of monasteries were closed by the German Empress Catherine I (‘the Great’) (+ 1796). Nevertheless, the Church continued to live, under the great St Paisius (Velichkovsky), forced into exile in Romania, and in the Russian Lands, in Sarov and Optina, where new saints appeared, and in Kronstadt, where there began the eucharistic revival, and elsewhere. The grace of the Holy Spirit was active and the deadly bureaucrats of the State apparatus did not manage to quench it, despite their best efforts. They were opposed by Tsar Nicholas II, who, despised and mocked by the bureaucrats in cassocks, had such great saints as Seraphim of Sarov canonised.

However, during this Imperial period most Russian Orthodox omitted to take communion more than once a year and lead an active life of prayer and fasting. Church life became largely an empty ritual, an exercise in ritualism. Here is why the Soviet atheists (most of them, like Stalin, were also ritually Orthodox) came to power: there was no Orthodox conscience and so spiritual resistance to the myths and practices of atheism. Under the Soviet regime, which unsurprisingly admired the imperialist Peter I as their centralising model, the Church was run by the Secret Police. Therefore, the enslaved Church hierarchy of the time adopted a subservient pro-State policy called ‘Sergianism’, in order to ensure its survival. Sergianism was massively rejected by the politically free emigration: hence the divisions. Meanwhile, inside the Soviet Union, ordinary bishops, priests, monastics and faithful people were martyred in their hundreds of thousands.

The remnants of these State-subservient attitudes are still very present in the Russian Church today. For instance, churches in towns and cities usually have professional choirs (if parishioners want to sing, they are forbidden, as in the Russian church in Chiswick, a suburb of London, for example), which reduces the church to a ritualist theatre with a choir to listen to. For example, many ordinary Orthodox in Russia today reproach the Church which appears to be run like a business, the main interest seeming to be profit. Also the centralised hierarchy in Moscow actively opposes clergy who have dissident political opinions from the State about the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine. This only creates more scandals.

This centralisation has led to those parts of the Church in independent countries outside the Russian Federation wanting to break away from the centralised control of Moscow. This is for national reasons, for example, there is resistance to the Moscow centralisation on the part of Non-Russians in the Ukraine, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and elsewhere. They all seek Church independence and devolution. However, there are also cases of sectarian and schismatic groups which break away from central authority for purely political, right-wing reasons, both inside the Russian Federation, but also outside it, above all in the highly Americanised ROCOR (see below).

  1. ROCOR: Orthodox or Right-Wing?

In 2007 we all at last managed to get the New York-based ROCOR (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia) to rejoin the post-Soviet Moscow Patriarchate. Otherwise, it would have become a schismatic sect, out of communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church. When it reunited with Moscow, it lost some 5% of its 300 parishes. These 5% were extremists who really wanted to be in schism, out of communion with everyone, claiming like pharisees to be ‘True Russian Orthodox Churches’. There were then, and perhaps still are, about four of these tiny squabbling sects, formed in 2007, all cursing each other.

After the wonderful God-sent opportunity of reunion with the bulk of the reviving Russian Orthodox Church and life-giving canonical communion with it for a decade between 2007 and 2017, very sadly, the ROCOR authorities gradually lapsed back into their sectarian temptations from before 2007. Step by step these sectarians took control of ROCOR’s New York Synod in an internal coup d’etat, effectively isolating its ill but charismatic Metropolitan, rejecting all his decisions and using his electronic signature to justify their very strange and deeply uncanonical decisions.

Very sadly, the extremists had learned nothing from being in communion with the Mother-Church for ten years. They had simply camouflaged and justified their pharisaical, schismatic and sectarian tendencies behind their alleged unity with the Moscow Patriarchate. Today ROCOR is out of full communion with Moscow, and so its second state is worse than its first. Instead of Orthodoxy, it has espoused the sectarian American right-wingery of woman-despising ‘Orthobros’ and Trumpism, totally confusing Divine Orthodoxy with mere human conservatism and its lust for money and power.

This pharisaical state of schism and fanatical sectarianism was encouraged by deluded Non-Russian neophytes, who want to be more royalist than the King, more Russian Orthodox than real Russian Orthodox. In reality, these Lutheran and Calvinist sectarians have ended up outside full communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, the King they betrayed. They have painted themselves into their own corner, apparently feeling very comfortable in their isolation. Thus, they have renounced their own saints, who were internationally-minded, not isolated, and concelebrated with and gathered together all Orthodox. These include St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, whom the US right-wingers so cruelly suspended and persecuted, leading to his premature death in 1966.

Some suspect that the new ROCOR division has been encouraged by the CIA, of whose largesse ROCOR was a well-known recipient for a generation between 1966 and 1991, when the Soviet Union finally collapsed. As participants in the San Francisco ROCOR Council in 2006 we all know that the CIA virulently opposed the ROCOR reunion with Moscow in 2007 and from 2017 on tried to censor and then close this anti-CIA (and anti-FSB and anti-MI5) Orthodox England site through an amateur agent. For a few months he succeeded, causing an international scandal and making ROCOR a laughing-stock among the other Local Churches. Perhaps money exchanged hands here too.

  1. Paris: Orthodox or Left-Wing?

The second part of the Russian emigration which split away from the enslaved Church authorities in Soviet Moscow was the group founded by Saint Petersburg aristocrats and intellectuals and centred in Paris. (Some of them spoke better French than Russian; all spoke fluent French). Originally less than a third of the size of the now US-centred ROCOR, today it is called the Archdiocese of Western Europe of the Russian Tradition. In reality it is very small outside France, as it is practically forbidden to expand elsewhere, and now has only some sixty parishes.

In 2019 it too at last rejoined the post-Soviet Moscow Patriarchate, leaving behind in Constantinople, to our open relief, its masonic and modernist wing with its uncanonical practices, losing not 5% of its parishes, clergy and people, as with ROCOR, but over 40% of its parishes, clergy and people. If ROCOR had lost 40% of its body, then it would have remained in full communion with the Moscow Patriarchate after 2017. Too much of the pharisaical, ‘onetruechurchist’, sectarian and schismatic had remained in ROCOR, thus poisoning its potential. Conversely, the much smaller Paris Archdiocese not only remained in communion, but also, to its credit and unlike ROCOR, remained politically free of Moscow centralisation.

Conclusion: Disloyalty to the Testament of the Tsar

In the history of the last generation of pre-Revolutionary Russia under the last Emperor, it is clear that right-wing extremists played as negative a role as left-wing extremists. For example, plotting together, they murdered the Tsar’s adviser, Gregory Rasputin, who was helping him bring the Old Ritualists back into the Church. But this treacherous extremism can above all be seen in the ensuing history of the tragic Civil War between ‘Reds’ and ‘Whites’. Then both sides committed awful atrocities, as described in any history of that dreadful war, where brother killed brother.

Sadly, just like the Reds, most of the Whites did not support the Tsar: it is reckoned that only 10% of them did so. They were the only real Whites. Most simply wanted their land, property and wealth back from the Marxists. Many ‘Whites’ were quite as openly atheistic as the Reds. As a Russian patriot and real Orthodox, the Sovereign Tsar stood above both Reds and Whites, above and outside the vulgar extremes of both left and right, above and outside their centralisation and nationalism. This is his Testament. This is our heritage. Under him there would have been no tragic war between Russian and American-proxy Ukrainians today.

Notes:

  1. https://orthodoxwiki.org/Maximus_V_of_Constantinople
  2. It is interesting that the enemies of the Non-Possessors accused them of stealing money! Nothing has changed. We know of a very greedy bishop in England today who accused a Non-Possessor priest, who subsidised his parish from his own money, of exactly the same thing! Of course, the bishop never apologised.

 

The Tsar is Alive! Eternal Rus

 In this (the defence of defenceless civilians by President Putin after the illegal NATO bombing of Libya in 2011) we see continuity with the foreign policy of Emperor Nicholas II. Today, in our fearful and unpredictable century, when Russia stands on the threshold of menacing trials, let us hope that, according to the testament of Nicholas II, ‘with deep faith in the rightness of our cause and humble hope in All-Powerful Providence’ we will be able to overcome and once more find our country strong in God and Truth.

Petr V. Multatuli, The Foreign Policy of Emperor Nicholas II, p.786, (Moscow 2012)

 

In the 1970s and 1980s I was able to meet many White Russian emigres who had been adults before the Russian Revolution. They knew exactly what the real old Russia had been like, both the good and the bad – unlike the second generation who often nostalgically idealised what they had not known. Their version was a fairy tale, a Disneyland Old Russia. It was a fantasy born from their politically hostile attitude to the Soviet regime, which was the reality then, and from the defensive inferiority complex of the children of immigrants. In reality, when we look at and compare Imperial Russia, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, one thing clearly stands out: Continuity.

Today President Putin is undeniably very popular, to an extent that Western politicians can only dream of. At least 80% of the Russian population approve of him and those who disagree with him will still tell you that there is no alternative – all the others are worse. In this way he is quite unlike those Soviet and post-Soviet leaders who were disliked or even detested. It can be said that the present Russian President is a Tsar without the title – indeed, even the Russian emblem is the double-headed eagle and the flag is that of the Tsars.

It is a Western propaganda narrative, invented for self-justification and to raise money for its aggressive forever wars, that President Putin wants to restore the Soviet Union. The President has more than once made it crystal clear that: ‘He who does not regret the Soviet Union has no heart, but he who wants to restore it has no brain’. What is his aim then? He knows with all rational Russians that both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Empire are lost to the history books and will not be restored. Nevertheless, the threefold East Slav lands – the Russian Federation, the Ukraine (whatever its future borders and name) and Belarus, which are being united as a ’Union State’, will still form by far the largest country on earth, with nearly 12% of the world’s land area. President Putin’s aim in other words is national, to unite Eastern Slavdom.

The Russian Federation by itself has the largest economy in Europe and is set to become the fourth largest economy in the world, although with less than 2.5% of the world population. This is neither the Russian Empire, nor the Soviet Empire, but it is the ‘Empire of Rus’. Rus is what would probably have been formed under Tsar Nicholas, who, if he had not been murdered in 1918, would perhaps have died naturally in the 1940s, when he would have been in his 70s. (Without his murder in 1918, there would not have been a Second World War). With Poland, Finland, Bessarabia, the Baltics, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the five Central Asian stans given independence if they wished, probably the Russian Empire of 1917 would have turned into the Empire of Rus by 1945, as it has done now.

Just as Russia was ruled by Tsar Nicholas, but with an advisory ‘Council of Ministers’, so today Russia is ruled by one man, but with a ‘Security Council’. Just as Tsar Nicholas was a great reformer, promoting eleven reforms – the sale of alcohol, monetary affairs, education, the peasantry, the legal system, the government, religious tolerance, civil freedom, agrarian affairs, the military and healthcare, promoting free medicine and social justice, so beloved by Tsarevich Alexei, President Putin has also been a great reformer. Tsar Nicholas successfully fought off the Western invasion until 1917, when he was betrayed to the West by unpatriotic and disloyal generals, politicians and aristocrats.

Here President Putin learned from history. Tsar Nicholas was brought down by the parasitic class, called aristocrats, who under their Western sponsors meddled and betrayed the Tsar. President Putin has been able to stop the parasitic class, now called oligarchs, from meddling in Western-sponsored politics and treachery. As a result, Russia is today successfully fighting off the current Western invasion. With the disloyal and unpatriotic in exile, President Putin no longer needs aggressive but degenerate Western Europe. Today Russia does not need the decadent West with its LGBT, for Russia is itself the repository of traditional Western values, as the new Orthodox Minister of Defence, Andrei Belousov, has declared.

Just as over four generations ago Tsar Nicholas tried to help the former Ottoman Balkans unite, forming a ‘Balkan Union’ against local chauvinism, and help the Austro-Hungarian Empire decentralise, there is now hope that Russia through BRICS can help South-Eastern Europe, the now independent lands of the former Ottoman and Habsburg Empires. However, perhaps the greatest resemblance between Tsar Nicholas and President Putin is in the Window to Asia, the ‘Great Asian Programme’, which Tsar Nicholas opened. The Tsar began with the Trans-Siberian Railway and the President has successfully begun again, building the Russian alliance with the new Imperial China of ‘Emperor’ Xi.

The first Window was closed by the British, which armed and financed the Western vassal Japan to the teeth, so that it would treacherously attack Russia without warning in 1904. Now the Window is open once more. For the painstaking construction of BRICS, to a great extent the work of Russia, resurrects the whole foreign policy of Tsar Nicholas, whose aim was co-operation, not confrontation. It was the ‘White Tsar’, anti-colonialist to the core, who opposed the British in their horrifying genocide in the Boer War in South Africa, who defended Ethiopia, Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Armenia, Persia, Afghanistan, Tibet (forcing the British invaders to leave), Thailand, and above all China, and would have helped India, had it been possible, to resist Western colonialism.

And now many of those countries have joined or wish to join BRICS. From the martyred Tsar Nicholas II to President Putin, this is Eternal Rus. It fights not only for its own re-creation, but also for the freedom of the whole world from the West, the ideology that the West calls ‘Globalism’. It fights for peace, stability and balance against Western conquest, occupation, plunder, pillaging and dismemberment for the purposes of divide and rule. Today Russia fights for this through the New World Order of Sovereignty and Patriotism. Tsar Nicholas is alive and President Putin is completing the work which he began, but which was interrupted by internal treachery, sponsored by external enemies.

Resisting Episcopal Corruption

Given the depths of decadence among certain parts of the Orthodox episcopate today, many ask the questions: What is a clergyman to do if his bishop acts immorally? Can he just leave him? And why does a bishop so rarely get punished by his fellow-bishops, if he has committed financial crimes or been sexually immoral? For example, there is the recent case of ex-Metropolitan Joseph of the Antiochian jurisdiction in the USA, who until recently had got away with long-term financial ‘extractions’ and sexual immorality, for which he would have been defrocked decades ago if he had been a priest. Why are some bishops apparently above the law and why do they appear to operate as a sort of mafia, allowing each other shameless injustice with impunity?

First of all, when talking about ‘clergymen’ in this context, we must distinguish between ‘servants of the church’ (readers and subdeacons) and ‘servants of the sacred’ (deacons and priests). The former can leave a bishop, as in this respect they are as free as laymen to go to another church. Deacons and priests are another matter, as they are bound to be obedient to the Church – which of course is not at all the same as obedience to a rogue-bishop.

In order to avoid the danger that a deacon or a priest who wishes to leave a bishop may be slandering an innocent bishop, his reception by another bishop depends on whether the immorality of the accused bishop is public knowledge, on whether other bishops know about it (they tend to know a lot about one another – it is a small world). In such a case they will therefore be quite prepared to ignore the guilty bishop’s disingenuous protests, however absurd, which will come once they have received an innocent and slandered priest without a letter of release. (This only happens after the guilty bishop has deliberately refused to issue a letter of release (wrongly called a letter of ‘canonical’ release) to the receiving bishop).

For example, a bishop may want to sodomise a priest (as happened in Moldova and Latvia a few years ago), he may want you to become a freemason (as happened in France in the 1980s), or he may want to commit adultery with your wife (as happened in England some decades ago). Or a bishop could be without a seminary education, poorly trained, ignorant of the basics of liturgics and Church history, may be trying through threats to take your money, church property, vestments and utensils from you, he may openly have a ‘boyfriend’ as his ‘wife’, whose Facebook pages are full of photos of the two lovers, or he may even be a foreign agent who works for the enemy of all Orthodox. Naturally, no accusation against such a bishop will be sufficient, if there is no proof, unless it is a matter of common knowledge among other bishops that he regularly commits such sins. This is not unreasonable. Slander must at all costs be avoided.

However, all this only hits a different level if the bishop in question is publicly (‘bareheadedly’, as the canon says) preaching heresy or has initiated a public schism with another canonical part of the Church. In other words, if he fanatically hates others to the point of heresy or schism, then any number of bishops will receive clergy without a letter of release from the guilty party. No letter of release is needed, as the bishop in question is clearly and publicly discredited and guilty of schism or heresy. In this case, there are plenty of honest and moral bishops who will receive you, even if the guilty bishop refuses to issue a letter of release (only in order then to accuse the departed clergy of ‘disobedience’!). His potential letter of release is irrelevant, as he is the guilty one and everyone knows it and mocks the guilty – even if behind his back.

Your second question concerns injustice: ‘One law for bishops, another law for others’, and ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. Such guilty bishops are not punished or defrocked simply because of politics, of the political power they and their corrupted colleagues have. For instance, the homosexual movement has brought into the Church administration pathologically ill homosexuals, and to a lesser extent bisexuals and, thank God, rarely, pedophiles. Whether repressed or not, they form gay mafias, called in the US ‘lavender mafias’, and persecute both monastics and married clergy, of whom latter they are jealous because they lead normal lives. Such individuals literally pervert the administration of the Church.

You should not be afraid of such bishops. Rather you should be afraid for them, as the guilty face terrible and inevitable judgement at the Last and Dread Judgement. As regards human judgement, even here justice will come in time, the truth will out – it always does come out. The Church is always cleansed sooner or later. The lives of St John of Kronstadt (persecuted by jealous Russian bishops) and St Nectarios of Aegina (persecuted by jealous Greek bishops) prove this. However, this is a constant in Church history: Read the lives of St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom. In the words of a very senior Constantinople cleric in a recent private conversation: ‘We just have to be patient and wait for the toilet to flush’. Or in the far more eloquent words of the Russian poet, Vladimir Dixon (1900-1929): ‘God has reserves of glory for inglorious times’.