Category Archives: Orthodox Restoration

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’.

A universal God has been declared! An examination for Orthodoxy

https://spzh.live/en/chelovek-i-cerkovy/80170-a-universal-god-has-been-declared-an-examination-for-orthodoxy

12 May 04:19

1473

A sermon on Anti-Pascha Sunday.

The time of trials is given to us to understand who we are. And not only we but also those who lead, guide and teach us how to live. This applies primarily to the Church because God will judge those on the outside (1 Corinthians 5:13).

As a priest I have experienced in my life the entire period of the recent history of the Church, starting from its revival in the territory of the former USSR and ending with what we have now. But now all Local Churches are undergoing examination, including those whom no upheavals have particularly touched until this time. The spirit of the new “wonderful” world, which is gradually beginning to enter its earthly possessions, offers each of them two options: to serve it or to be gradually destroyed.

The words of Christ that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” apply to the entire Church rather than its individual local branches. Where is the Church of St Genevieve, St Patrick of Armagh or St David of Menevia now?

Just a few decades ago, we had an unprecedented Orthodox boom. Huge editions of patristic books were published. And when the Internet entered society, hundreds of preachers began to teach people around the clock what an Orthodox Christian should be like. Teachers of faith of all kinds have been talking about Christ for almost forty years, but only a small part of them could show Him by their own example. After all, speaking and teaching about God is much easier than following Him.

Thus, we have built an Orthodoxy which externally looks fine but the strength of this structure can only be tested by an earthquake.

I remember a time when a hundred and fifty children could be baptised in a church per day. Where are these 30-40-year-old sons and daughters of God now? Are they living a spiritual life? Do they go to church or even know where it is?

The Lord has looked at us for decades and patiently awaited fruits. But now is the time for harvest. How many ascetics have grown in monasteries, righteous people in parish churches, and hierarchs in eparchial administrations during this time? I don’t know, only God knows.

Orthodox exams are taking place all over the world now. Each Local Orthodox Church is taking them. The best, privileged, one might say, position is held by those Orthodox who are openly hunted: those who are outlawed, persecuted in the media, lied against and slandered. Such a Church simply has no way out: nothing is left for it but to be crucified with Christ.

The worst position is occupied by those Local Churches that have turned from the brides of Christ into State concubines. Of course, they did not immediately decide on this adultery. It happened gradually, step by step. At first, it was necessary to make small concessions, and then to descend lower and lower.

All these processes vividly manifested themselves during the coronavirus period when, for the sake of fear, it was allowed to believe that physical death could settle in the Chalice, which is given to us as the source of eternal Life. Therefore, commune with disposable spoons, don’t trust God, trust the WHO. And do not let people go to services, close the churches for Easter and do not celebrate liturgies. And those who did not obey and did not want to violate their priestly oath received hefty fines.

All this was approved by the priesthood, which obediently adapted to the requirements of the state authority. The next step is to recognise the schismatics, then to start blessing non-traditional LGBT marriages, and so on.

There are also those who at the official level have rejected Christ and the Gospel, replacing them with national ideology and military-political doctrine. The clergy who disagree with this are banned or even imprisoned. But can all these bans be seriously considered canonically justified if they come from people who have become servants of Caesar instead of God, essentially betraying their soul to the devil?

And in recent times, among the faithful, a special type has appeared – “couch ascetics of piety”. They destroy all the “enemy filth” day and night with the machine-gun burst of their comments on the Internet. Their religion is anger. They do not understand that the only thing a person needs in this world is to learn to love the Lord and all people with all their soul.

All we need is to immerse our spirit in God and remain in Him forever. Neither in politics, nor in war, nor in Internet news, but in God. But only a few are capable of hearing this.

Judgment is approaching. Weeds have grown and multiplied all over the Earth. In the Church of Christ, there are more and more propagandists, political officers and simply opportunists. what do they direct the zeal of their flock? To hate sinners! That’s their main goal. The essence of their faith is war with global evil. But they do not see stubbornly that they are this very evil.

The Gospel calls us to be clothed in Christ, to become a renewed person. “No, this is not true,” teach modern preachers, you should kill other people “for the sake of Christ” – this is what we bless and inspire you to do. And yet the first Christians also lived in very difficult times. But for some reason, they did not care at all about the political situation of their empire; nor did they worry about either external or internal enemies.

They were worried only about one thing – whether their name was written in the Book of Life or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Situation of the Orthodox Church in Britain in 2024

Introduction: The Apostasy of Non-Orthodoxy

In the last fifty years the situation of Protestantism and Catholicism in Britain has changed radically. That transformation can be summed up by one word – apostasy. In modern Britain once predominant Protestant sects, including religious organisations like the Church of England, the Church of Scotland and the Church of Wales, the Methodist Church etc are rapidly disappearing. The covid period, when clergy voluntarily closed their churches, all too often it would seem through cowardice, was a disaster. Many people who were closed out then have not returned. Statistically those Protestant groups are predicted to disappear by 2060. As they were founded at earliest in the sixteenth century, they will have lasted at most 500 years. Their members have simply lost their faith. Why go to church, when its leaders preach the same secularism as everyone else and are afraid of covid?

For the moment, discredited Protestantism survives almost only among Pentecostal African immigrants and in faddish happy-clappy groups. Elsewhere, it would seem that, as one commentator has put it, the Gospel has been replaced by ‘The Guardian’. In other words, faith has been swept away by the tidal wave of secularism and wokeism, imposed from the USA: anything goes. Little wonder that some people look to Islam, whose Muslims actually believe in something. Meanwhile, pedophile-undermined Catholicism, led by a politician Pope who scandalises many faithful Catholics, has since the modernism of the 1960s also been fast collapsing. In Britain Catholicism is now populated essentially by Poles, Portuguese, Filippinos, Hungarians etc. Given this apostasy, where could the few native people in Britain who still actually believe in Christ-God look to go to church?

Orthodox Christianity

There remains the option of the Orthodox Church, also composed essentially of immigrants, and some of whose bishops are just as politically-minded and so just as secular as Non-Orthodox leaders. Over the last two generations since I have been active in the Orthodox Church, the situation of Orthodox Christianity in Britain has been transformed. Once consisting of a small number of elderly, highly politicised and often aristocratic White Russians, based in London, a few very closed Serbs and other Slavs exiled here after 1945, and large numbers of modest Greek Cypriots, living in north and east London or running restaurants in seaside resorts, today’s situation is very different. As the older generations of Orthodox immigrants have simply died out, leaving little trace, new waves of immigration have followed.

Over the last fifty years the population of Orthodox in Britain has gradually tripled from 220,000 to 670,000, to one in a hundred, mainly because of twenty-first century immigration. However, in large parts of the country, there is still no choice as to which Orthodox church to attend, since Orthodox churches are still few and far between. But in larger cities, above all in London, there is a choice of churches. What is the difference between them? Of Orthodox groups we do not include here the quite small groups of Serbs, Bulgarians, Georgians and Ukrainians, as these groups are almost always closed, mononational, and generally do not welcome native people as members. However, this still leaves four groups, which native British people could attend. These are:

The Greeks

A generation ago this was by far the largest Orthodox group in Britain. It is composed in fact not of Greeks, but above all of Greek-Cypriots. The clergy of this group, including bishops, was once notorious for sending away any English enquirers, often quite rudely, and telling them to ‘join the Church of England’, in a curious mixture of racism and syncretism. Only in recent years, faced with the possibility of dying out, has it changed. Now under Greek-American control, it realises that in order to survive and keep its young people or to attract others, it must use English in its services and stop pretending to be just some form of Greek nationalist Protestantism. It has also for political reasons accepted small groups of Ukrainians, a few Russians and some English people and has a large multinational convent or monastery, with largely Romanian nuns. With an excellent infrastructure of church properties, wisely and very cheaply amassed in the 1950s and 1960s, and still for the moment with more priests than any other Orthodox group, it has great opportunities.

However, many feel that the opening to English has come much, much too late. This group has already been destroyed by its Greek nationalism and racist imperialism, which revolts most Orthodox. Also the last thirty years when it should have made the transition to English have been wasted. The result: the Protestant Church of England has dozens of Non-Greek-speaking, but ethnic Greek clergy! Unable to speak Greek, these descendants of immigrants left for well-paid jobs with free housing in the Protestant Church of England, using a language which they spoke and understood. As a result, most of the Greek clergy in the Greek Church are elderly and many of its parishes are clearly dying out. In many parishes the only children are Romanian, the old people are all Greek Cypriots, who after sixty years here often still speak poor English. Their assimilated descendants have long since left the Church. Why should they attend the foreign Church of their great-grandparents, whose main article of faith appears to be waving Greek and Cypriot flags? They have learned that Christ was not Greek; apparently, most have not.

The Romanians

This is by far the largest, most welcoming and most dynamic Orthodox group in Britain today, with over 450,000 Romanians and Romanian-speaking Moldovans, average age about 35, not including children. The vast majority have arrived here in the last twenty years. However, the Romanian Church, made up almost uniquely of these recent and modest immigrants has very poor infrastructure, with only 70 parishes, not much better than that of the relatively few canonical Russians. The result is that many Romanians frequent other Orthodox churches (there is nowhere else to go in the absence of their own church – although when a Romanian church does open, they leave the church they used to attend). There are also some very overworked priests, some doing a thousand baptisms a year, up to 20 at a time and hundreds of confessions per week. However, the help of the Romanian ambassador has recently enabled us to obtain a bishop for Romanian Orthodox in this country, who is to be appointed next month.

His Cathedral in Edmonton, North London, bought last December, will be ready later this year. There is great potential here, but only if the Romanian Church can avoid the errors of the Russians, all repeated by the Greeks. Avoiding this error means keeping the masses of young people in the Church, despite the fact that they will inevitably end up speaking better English than Romanian and be assimilated. The error of flag-waving Russian and Greek nationalism and politics must not develop into flag-waving Romanian nationalism and politics. That would be just as irrelevant to the assimilated descendants of Romanian and Moldovan immigrants, as Russian and Greek nationalism was to the assimilated descendants of Russian and Greek immigrants. Waving a foreign flag is of no interest to those who feel more British than Romanian, Greek or Russian and have little interest in the old country. Christ was not Greek, but he was not Russian or Romanian either.

The (Canonical) Russians

The Moscow Russians were once well-known among Anglicans for their famous émigré bishop and missionary, Antony Bloom. He knew how to talk to Anglicans, some indeed thought him rather Anglican, and certainly his presence developed into a controversial personality cult. Son of an atheist diplomat from the Tsar’s Russia and of the sister of the composer Scriabin, he was a very talented man, who created a small, multinational, though rather elitist, diocese. However, he died twenty years ago, in the past. Most Russians here never knew him. Under the present wave of Russian nationalism, the remains of his diocese are tending to resemble a national ghetto. The present Russian diocese appears to have rejected a lot of Ukrainians and treated Moldovans badly, exactly as it has done some English people. Today, this group exists only in the embassy area of west London and in a number of chapels outside London. Outside the capital most of its clergy, who knew Metropolitan Antony Bloom, are dying out. Despite recent bright prospects, today its future is in serious doubt. But perhaps changes in Moscow will soon be under way.

(There is also a former émigré group of Russians, known as ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia). This now numbers fewer than 1,000, perhaps only 500. Having rejected its traditional Russian roots, gone into schism in 2021 and as a result lost over half of its already small diocese, this tiny Trump-voting, US-based and US-cultured cult has tried to attract others. Having seen its original Russian émigré base die out or leave it for non-schismatic churches, they have attracted mainly right-wing, sectarian-minded English people, including Anglo-Catholics of an unusual orientation. Having seen its original Russian émigré base die out, it is trying to recruit Ukrainian refugees unsuccessfully, as they reject anything that is called Russian and psychologically normal Ukrainians do not wish to frequent a sect anyway. The schismatic ROCOR appears to have no future, since it has cut itself off from the Church).

The Antiochians

Critics call the Antiochians ‘Angliochians’, as they seem to be largely composed of ex-Anglicans. Probably with fewer than 2,000 laypeople, and many of these visiting Romanians with nowhere else to go, the mainly ex-Anglican clergy under the Patriarchate of Antioch (in fact of Damascus in Syria) are few, elderly and often do not know how to celebrate the services. Some of these appear to be more anti-Anglican rather than Orthodox.

However, in defence, we must say that, apart from a few recent converts who have pathological chips on their shoulders, members of this group are sincere, well-intentioned and have made great sacrifices to enter this Arab Patriarchate. The mere fact of their existence is a witness to their faith and zeal, despite the discouragement of Greeks and Russians alike. Hence those who declare that ‘Anti-och’ is for those who are ‘anti-Russian and anti-Greek’.

Conclusion: Disenfranchising the Franks

For the few remaining Christians in Britain, Orthodox Christianity probably represents a step that culturally goes too far, it is too radical. For Orthodox Christianity is the millennial opposite of Secularism, whose ancestor is Protestantism, whose ancestor is Catholicism. All are cut from the same secular block. Catholicism is secular because it wanted to control the world, making the Pope of Rome into a Super-King, an Emperor of the world, higher than all rulers. Protestantism was secular because it subjected itself to secular rulers and so to worldliness, for example, in England it was an invention of the rulers Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.

For this reason, to join the Orthodox Church is an act that disenfranchises, that is, ‘defranks’ the Norman-imposed Frankish Establishment, depriving them of their freedom, privileges and self-appointed right to tyrannise the people. Only if you have understood this and wish to reject this inherent secularism, would you wish to belong to the Orthodox Church. It is the only logical solution, if you want something that is not inherently and institutionally compromised by Secularism. If you have not understood this, you will remain somewhere inbetween, in what is now the no-man’s land, outside Orthodoxy Christianity. However, surely a no-man’s land is not the best place to be at a time when the fiercest spiritual warfare is raging from the trenches in the anti-Christian modern world all around us?

 

 

 

The People’s Church: 2008-2024

Foreword: Our Faith

I was born in Colchester in Eastern England. We Eastern English are renowned for our independence, straightforwardness, reliability and pragmatism. We are also bluff and good-natured, but are suspicious of newcomers and always test them to see what they are made of. That is why we are often underestimated. However, we can also be lyrical and poetic beneath our great skies, among our woods and fields, and on our coasts. We have no ideology – for the Gospels are not an ideology, but life itself – and we live by the motto: ‘Tell the truth and shame the devil’. This truth-telling can be seen in the victory of our great national hero, champion and patron saint, our martyred last King, St Edmund of East Anglia (+ 869). He told the heathen the truth, even though they did not like it. He was not afraid. We do the same.

Our love of the truth is why we always resisted the secularism of the recent past. This consisted of the liberal, modernist and syncretist ideology of indifference, that there is no truth, that all faiths are the same. This relativisation was a purely political manipulation of globalists, a pan-heresy, as St Justin described it, as it maintained that truth and lies, light and darkness, are equal. This was obviously untrue and was promoted only by those whose souls had been bought and paid for by the secularist politics of this world. Equally, however, we resist the post-modernist extreme, the nonsense that only one tiny sect possesses the truth and that all others are ‘satanic’. This very primitive and narrow ideology is clearly the fruit of sad and broken individuals with psychological, not to say, pathological problems of pride and broken childhoods. In history it belongs to the heresy known as Donatism.

Thus, truth-telling makes us unpopular and controversial among the elites of all persuasions. This is because the one thing they hate is the truth, for the truth undermines their grasp on power and riches. That is why they hated Christ. That is why we have one great strength: we know that the Truth always wins, however long it takes. With Christ it took three days. Because we are sinners, it takes us much longer, but our victory through Christ, Who is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’, is still inevitable. This is our Faith.

The Beginnings

In 2008 I stood in the largest church in my native town, the future City of Colchester, and looked towards our second church, a small chapel. Both were empty, but they both now belonged to us, after eleven years of prayerful patience. Our monocled master had given his blessing for us to buy the property, but he told me I was mad. The main church, at 6,500 square feet, was ‘too big’ (much bigger than his own, which was a problem for him) and he gave us not a penny of help or any support. We just heard disheartening criticisms which came from his personal despair.

But I had a vision and said that with God’s help we shall fill this church and then need a bigger one. People mocked, especially him. But after 16 years, we have got to that point. Looking back, I can see three periods: The first period, one of foundation, went from our first service in December 2008 up to 2016. The first liturgy then was attended by only 35 people, however the number of those attending gradually increased to about 120 regular parishioners, becoming more multinational. We were becoming the local church.

Our second period, one of consolidation, went from 2015 to 2020. In that time, we doubled in size to about 250 regular parishioners and set up new parishes in Norwich and just outside Cambridge for those who were coming to us from such great distances. The third period, of protection, began in 2020 with covid, when the wolf attempted to close us for the first time. We never closed. This period, which is one of protecting the flock from the jealous wolves, even though they may mask themselves as shepherds, is far from over. Like the much-persecuted St John (+ 1966) before us, we shall always protect our flock from the wolves.

An Elitist Sect or the People’s Faith

Then we heard the young and inexperienced neophyte without seminary training, publicly in church declaring to us who were of many nationalities that the Greek Patriarch Bartholomew was ‘satanic’ and that he ‘disliked Romanians and only half-liked Moldovans’. Now we do not agree with several personal opinions and actions of Patriarch Bartholomew (like a lot of his bishops, priests and people, including the monks of Mt Athos, who are very good people who our dear friends and completely agree with us on these subjects), but we would never, never call him ‘satanic’. He may have an all too human weakness for money, like many bishops in another Local Church and we can name quite a few of them, including the one who called him ‘satanic’. The pot calling the kettle black. There are a dozen or so Greek parishes in London, all attended by 200-300 every Sunday of the year. We respect them. As for the single small church of that young convert, people flee its ‘police-state’, sectarian and schismatic nature. We know many of the refugees who have at last seen through it, as they now come to us.

His words were incredible. We were all horrified. A stunned silence fell on us as we heard his awful views. As for the racism of this Non-European newcomer, a new ‘Orthobro’, but not an Orthodox and certainly not a Christian, not just towards the many pious Greeks, who carry out dozens of baptisms and chrismations of Non-Greeks in this country every few months, but also towards the mass of very pious and honourable Romanians and Moldovans, as well as to English people who practised the Orthodox Faith before he was even born, we were absolutely appalled. And this alien individual was supported by his colleagues in distant America, where they do not understand Europe and despise us. It was clear that the young and very aggressive ideological son of NATO, who, like the rest of the American elite, claimed to be exceptional and able to impose its imperialism on us, had rejected all possibilities of helping to build the Local Church.

Helping to build a Local Church has always been the aim of our lives, as we are neither psychopathic ideologues, nor narrow racists, but shepherds, and so we welcome all the sheep without political or racial distinction to our church, as Christ commanded us to do. (Have you not read the last words of St Matthew’s Gospel? We do not send people away because they are not rich enough or are not effete enough). On the other hand, he had chosen the path of isolationism and sectarianism, cutting himself off from communion with all, even from his own Russian Church, and punishing all who disagreed with him. This was his practice of what he considered to be ‘punishing’ or, with the typically American Protestant mentality, ‘sanctioning’ us, so revealing his Lutheran/Calvinist witch-hunting mentality.  His actions said: ‘You dare disagree with me? Then I hate you and I will punish you’.

Our Struggle for Truth

In reality, he punished himself through his uncanonical and schismatic actions and destroyed his own already tiny diocese, the only remaining meaning of whose existence since 2007 had precisely been to contribute towards building Local Churches – our own aim. His act was an act of suicide. Since we left him, we have doubled our income and are now intending to buy a house for a third priest and pay him a salary. We have a candidate. At that time, we faced the choice of belonging to a weirdy-beardy sect of converts, or of belonging to a mass faith, to an elitist sectarian religious ghetto, which had usurped and replaced its legitimate head and forged his signature, or to the faith of the people. Filled with narcissism, and so jealousy, and so hatred, after forging its own head’s signature, sidelining him and creating its own Metropolitan, the group expelled all the senior clergy who know the Tradition and replaced them with itself and others who also have no heart and only an extremist ideology.

This was clearly not the way forward. They had committed spiritual and so moral suicide (loss of faith always ends in suicide) and destroyed their once immense potential. They had created an irrelevant and narrow sect, a fake Church, in full view of the broad and deep Orthodox world, to the wonder of men and angels alike. We faced the refusal, for purely political and suicidal reasons, of the canonical but once again captive (only the captors have changed from Soviet atheists to centralising State nationalists) Russian Orthodox Church (the ‘Sourozh Diocese’) to receive us on 10 May 2021. Next we faced the brute political force used to make the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Church, where we had sought refuge from persecution, abandon us, and so abandon the cause of a Local Orthodox Church of Western Europe in the Russian Church, in February 2022. Where would we go after fifty years?

As so often in history before, those who should not have been distracted by politics, did just that and so forgot about the salvation of souls. Thus, in the history of the wealthy Capital of Saint Petersburg, spiritual leadership went from the mighty bishops of this world to a widow turned tramp, St Ksenia, and to a provincial pastor, despised by his jealous bishops and hated by the aristocrats who wanted to kill him, St John of Kronstadt. Following the political captivity and so marginalisation of the now isolated two main Local Churches, who would take over the spiritual leadership of the Orthodox peoples? We would go to the centre where are the other fourteen Local Churches, to the astounding churchmen in the singing mountains of Carpatho-Russia and on the sunshone banks of the Jordan, of martyred Damascus and martyred Bachneny, of Tirana and Tbilisi, of Iasi and Warsaw, of Brno and Belgrade, of Budapest and Rila, of Kiev and Limassol, of Athos and Jerusalem. We would go to the living fountains of piety where God directed us to go.

Our Romanian Orthodox Church Home

The negotiations that took place on the very next day, 16 February 2022, with our friend Metropolitan Joseph, whom we had known for nearly 25 years, took four hours. All our churches and all our clergy (except for one new convert reader who naively fell to the sect) and literally 99% of our people transferred to the Romanian Orthodox Church, keeping everything as it was before. All this took place just eight days before the latest phase of the US proxy war against the Ukraine and Russia was triggered on 24 February 2022.

This passage to the Romanian Orthodox Church was entirely providential, as in this way we could remain outside politics, remaining multinational, keeping Moldovans, Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians and everyone else together, remaining on the old calendar, but also free to do services on the new calendar for all who wished. And what will happen if the British Establishment bans the Russian Church completely? The equally Russophobic Establishment in Latvia has already done that and it may happen in Estonia. It could happen here. Perhaps all will join the Romanian Church? Providentially we will still be here for all the Russians who are really Orthodox, who are not flag-waving nationalists or centralising ideologues. Others may not be allowed to remain here to care for them pastorally. We shall still be here.

On Palm Sunday 2024 we once more saw that our church building is too small. Nearly 100 people were standing outside, as the church can only take 500 people. Some 150 of these people were children. As for our overflow parish in Little Abington outside Cambridge, it was packed with 100 people, including more refugees from the schismatic Russians in Chiswick. Here then we face a new dilemma. With several seminary-trained laymen and excellent singers in the parish, we have to look seriously at setting up more new churches. After Norwich and Cambridge, we are now looking at Harlow and Southend. And then we still have to buy permanent premises for our growing Felixstowe Orthodox community. And permanent premises for the communities in Coventry, Wisbech and York? We have seminary-trained candidates for the priesthood. They can be ordained. After all we are the People’s Church.

The People’s Church: The Church They Tried to Close, Announced is Closed, and Which ‘is Now Empty and Where No-one Goes’!

In retrospect, we can cope with so many people because we had slowly been moving towards this point for years, ever since the repose of the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva, the successor to St John, who had established a multinational Archdiocese. However, after him, they dismantled this. I can remember exactly twenty years ago how we were told the following by those who left us in 2021:

‘We do not like other Orthodox because they have divorces, which we don’t have’. (My answer: Of course you don’t have divorces, because you have not had a single wedding for 25 years, because you are all so old, let alone have baptisms). ‘We do not like other Orthodox, they do different services in the same church at the same time. In one corner of the church one priest is doing a baptism, in another corner a second priest is doing a memorial service’. (My answer: What ignorance! This is perfectly normal. A church that is not doing this is dying out, it is underused).

‘We don’t like their church. It’s too noisy because there are too many children there’. (My answer: Yes, it can be noisy in church because there are lots of children. Children are life. It’s not like your church, where everyone is aged over 65. As a result of your dislike of children, your church is dying out’). And they even continued, quite shockingly: ‘Our church is like a glass of clean water; theirs is a glass of dirty water’. (My answer: Why are so many of your clergy being defrocked for moral reasons then? Remember your ‘Very Reverend’ Archimandrite Antony Grabbe, the protected son, who stole six million dollars and debauched nuns? Your view is in any case phariseeism). Obviously, we would never belong to this alien American sect of newcomers, when they ordered its formation and final fall in 2021.

Our Easter Message

How do we cope with so many people? For years I have been going to Kiev and bringing back what we need and reserves in heavy suitcases. We use bigger chalices (we have five of them), we have four stands for confession, use bigger and more utensils. We have the blessing from our Metropolitan for our deacons to give communion in order to cut down on the time taken by 200-400 communions. We are ready. Later this year we will have our own bishop in his new Cathedral in North London. For many years my niece used to work at St Paul’s Cathedral. I used to say that one day we would need that church, built according to the legend there where the Apostle of the Gentiles preached all those years ago, as we will be able to fill it. They laughed at me then, but that day is coming.

As for two calendars, we cope with them quite simply because we are pastors, not insecure, sectarian ‘onetruechurch’ ideologues, who tell lies about others. We do exactly like the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva of the old Russian Church did, for he was the successor of St John of Western Europe. He too was obliged to leave Kiev. He had many old calendar Russian parishes, but his biggest parish in France was the Romanian new calendar parish. (Just like the Moscow Patriarchate which has new calendar parishes in Austria and Bulgaria, for example). Our Metropolitan Joseph has the same attitude, because he too is a pastor, not an ideologist, and so accepts both calendars for the fixed feasts and concelebrates with all. We clergy all agree to look after our people. People follow the example set by the clergy and accept each other and different customs.

There are people who keep the fast as strictly as possible (they examine the ingredients of all the food they buy as closely as possible), but they hate their neighbour as much as possible. Such people are not ours. Our Easter Message is quite simple. At the Last Judgement we shall be judged only on whether we showed love for others or hatred for others through the actions of our hearts. Our friend the Romanian priest who did 800 confessions in one week, staying at church from 7 am to 7 pm every day and who washed the feet of twelve parishioners on Holy Thursday, shows the way. Christ, the Son of God become man, the only Knower of hearts, showed the greatest love of all, allowing himself to be crucified out of love, so that He could offer all victory over death and the Resurrection of salvation. We follow Him and always will do. The wolves of this world have lost. Our values ​​are humanity, mercy and compassion. Together with the thousand voices of Easter Night again we say: Christ is Risen!

Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

City of Colchester, England,

Eastertide 2024

 

 

Nine Canons For Modern Times

In the last times the followers of Antichrist will go to church, get baptised and preach the Gospel commandments. But do not believe those who have no good deeds. You can only know a real Christian by his works. True faith is in the heart, and not in the reason. He who has faith in his reason will follow Antichrist and he who has faith in his heart will perceive who he is.

St Gabriel (Urgebadze)

Canon I

Any bishop has the right to impose a schism with another canonical Orthodox Church or any Diocese of it, forbidding his clergy to concelebrate with it and excommunicating all their clergy and people, even though his own clergy and people have close relatives or lifelong friends in that Church or Diocese. This schism may be imposed for ideological or for racial reasons and this is quite acceptable. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon II

Any bishop has the right to depose clergy who refuse to hand over to him large amounts of money or property, so that he can live a luxurious lifestyle. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon III

Any bishop has the right to abduct his head bishop, whether Patriarch, Metropolitan or Archbishop, in order to ensure that he can then do whatever he wants. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking

Canon IV (The Geneva Canon)

Any bishop has the right to depose another bishop whom he dislikes in order to ensure that he can then do whatever he or his protege want in the place of the deposed bishop. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon V

Any bishop has the right to depose any clergyman who disagrees with his personal political opinions, in order to ensure that he can preach whatever he wants without opposition. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon VI

Any bishop has the right to depose any clergyman who reports to his fellow-bishops that the bishop in question is homosexual. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon VII

Any bishop has the right to be jealous of any clergyman who is more successful than him in attracting people to the church. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon VIII

Any bishop has the right to forge the signature of his head bishop, whether Patriarch, Metropolitan or Archbishop, electronically, in order to ensure that he can do whatever he wants. Any clergyman who denounces this practice will be deposed under pretext of disobedience and oath-breaking.

Canon IX

Always remember the main principle: Hate your neighbour as much as you hate yourself.