Category Archives: Orthodox Unity

Right Makes Might: On the Emerging Post-Western New World Order

Introduction: In the Ukraine

The only question here is if the Kiev regime will collapse and capitulate before 1 January 2025 or afterwards. Western media still practise ‘editorial control’ (= censorship) and distraction (= talk about something else which is petty, irrelevant and of no importance). However, they affect only the fairy-tale ‘narrative’, not the reality of, for example, 100,000 desertions from the NATO-directed, Kiev regime Army. These press-ganged soldiers are refusing to fight because they do not want to commit suicide in the utterly corrupt armed forces.

There is nothing to fight for. They want to go home to their families. Conversely, in Russia they are talking not about Western delusions, which they ignore, but about reality, for example, reparations to be paid by Kiev and war crime trials for the Nazi Kiev regime leaders, who have in fact murdered their own people. They are the true anti-Ukrainians, together with Western leaders who want to fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’. It is their version of genocide. Such Western leaders too should be tried in war crimes courts.

In the Russian Federation

As regards today’s Russia, some silly people ask if it will revert to the Imperialism of Peter I of 1721 to 1917 or to the very similar Imperialism of the Soviets 1922-1991 (the Soviets adored Peter I), as obviously Russia will not revert to the catastrophes of Western oligarchism (1991-2022).

Clearly, Russia will return to no form of Imperialism because they all by definition failed. The Western academics who propose such fantasies have no understanding. Russia is reverting to itself, which is what Tsar Nicholas II wanted, before he was removed by the Western plotters in 1917, who prevented him from doing so.

The problem is that this truth has not yet been told about the 1917 tragedy. Once the diaries of the Tsarina Alexandra, concealed for so many years, are finally published, all will know and all the Western ‘narratives’ about 1917 will then collapse.

In Europe

The EU has clearly become a vassal of the Washington neocon elite – just as the UK has long been. The EU elite, like the UK elite, is no longer pro-European, but pro-NATO, that is, pro-Washington, that is, anti-European. This is why when Germany’s Nordstream lifeline to Russian energy was blown up by the USA and its proxies and the country went into serious economic decline, the German ruling class was silent. Europe’s rulers hate their own countries and peoples, whom they ignore, even when the people vote them out, as in France. The elitists are anti-national because they are globalists.

The oligarchic nomenklatura of unelected European Union Commissioners, some of them the grandchildren of Nazi officers, are silent. In any case, the elite of the Brussels Politburo has little concept of the lives of ordinary Europeans. It is only an imitation of the unelected oligarchy who rule in Washington, and who also have no concept of the lives of ordinary Americans. They too are anti-national because they too are globalists. The solution to Europe’s self-inflicted woes is neither to be found in being pro-US, nor in being pro-Russian.

The solution is to be found in being pro-European, that is, pro-Hungarian, pro-Slovak, now pro-Georgian (after the failure there of US/’NGO’ and EU electoral fraud under its French puppet President) and, one day, perhaps even pro-French, pro-German, pro-Italian and pro-English. But that means liberation from the yoke of the globalist corporatism which rules us. This means not only liberation from their political yoke, but also from the ideological yoke of the ‘journalists’ paid by that elite, the mere propagandist-mercenaries of the oligarchs. None of them has ever heard the word ‘Truth’.

The World

The West has been defeated, not by millions of Vietnamese or Afghan peasants, but by the Russian Superpower against the (US-supplied and US-trained) largest army in NATO, that of the Kiev regime. The only way that the US could ever have won in the Ukraine is by launching a nuclear war against Russia, which would have meant the utter destruction of the USA itself, since Russia has better nuclear arms than the USA. The defeat of the Western Establishment in the Ukraine means that Might does not make Right. This is why the New World Order is about multilateralism, multipolarity, countries working together for their mutual benefit.

We are no longer talking about being dominated and exploited by one imperialist power. Imperialism, which caused World War I, World War II and nearly World War III, is being replaced by Sovereignism, the co-operation of nation-states. The multilateral or multipolar BRICS is now replacing the Western World Order and its Western-controlled UN and other puppet organisations. This is because those who join BRICS enhance their sovereignty, instead of handing it over to some new Washington or Brussels. It will be up to the West to eat humble pie and enter BRICS, as an equal among many, merely part of the World Community, for it is Right that makes Might, not the other way round. This is the millennial revelation to the Western world. The days of its Supremacy and its G7 club are over.

BRICS includes all Non-Western continents, Asia (China, India), Europe (Russia), Africa (South Africa) and South America (Brazil). Now with ten core members (true, Saudi Arabia has not yet formalised its membership as Number 10), there are twenty-five more countries which are sooner or later going to become full members or partner-states, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Syria, Turkey, Belarus and Serbia. BRICS has gone from a Non-Western Alliance to a true International Community, far more representative of the world than the US puppet, which is called the failed UN.

Conclusion: The Church

Right is Might is in fact the principle of the canon law of the Orthodox Church. And that is why all those who promote nationalist politics in Church administrations, that is, who proclaim that Might is Right against the law of the Gospel, the primacy of the Kingdom of Heaven, forfeit all spiritual and moral right to their positions.

Those who place racist politics and their nationalist ‘protocols’ above the pastoral care of souls do not qualify. They will disappear and, at best, be forgotten by history – at worst, they will die like Arius. The future is with those who clearly have a universal message, which can appeal to all. The paths of the sect lead but to inglory.

 

 

 

 

 

The Ukraine: Winning the War, Winning the Peace and Winning the Church

Introduction

The world has been contorted by the catastrophic conflict in the Ukraine, which in turn has led to the genocidal massacres around the US proxy of Israel. But what if the first conflict ended? Surely the second conflict would also end, and the third conflict, threatened by the US against China through its proxies in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, would never even begin? Ever since losing its war in Korea in 1953, when it was driven back into the south of the Korean Peninsula, and then, much more disastrously, since losing its war in Vietnam in 1975, when it was entirely ejected, the US has conducted proxy wars. In such wars, others are paid to do the dying on its behalf, just as Non-Romans were paid to die for the pagan Roman Empire on its behalf.

Proxies are convenient because they are expendable, but, as in Afghanistan, proxies can always turn and take the side of their own people against US and Western occupiers. If we may draw a parallel, in the Ukraine we are now in January 1945. Hitler has just disastrously lost his Ardennes offensive, just as Zelensky has just disastrously lost the NATO-planned Kursk offensive. The delusional Hitler, like the delusional Zelensky, is in his bunker, refusing to negotiate because of his wishful thinking. So delusional that he drew up a ‘victory plan’, which was in fact a defeat plan, since NATO countries do not want their soldiers to die for the comedian in Kiev, which is what the ‘victory plan’ entailed.

When that did not work, Zelensky decided to tell everyone that North Korean troops are fighting for Russia and so therefore NATO troops should officially fight for Kiev!  When this was laughed down, he said that he wanted a ceasefire. Of course, he does – just like Hitler’s lieutenants wanted a ceasefire when Soviet troops were at the gates of Berlin in 1945. There was no ceasefire then, and there will not be this time either. After all, last week Zelensky was talking about dropping non-existent nuclear bombs on Russia. The delusion is clear – except to the delusional. The Ukrainian Army is crumbling – few in it even want to fight, the collapse is inevitable, though many Western politicians are still, even now, in delusional denial, believing their own PR lies.

Winning the War

In the Ukraine the US has actually publicly proclaimed that it will fight ‘to the last Ukrainian’ (soldier). They are now close to achieving that catastrophic aim. This tragic conflict between fellow-Slavs was never a territorial war. When you are by far the largest country in the world and one of the least populated, as Russia is, territory is totally irrelevant to you.

This is a conflict being fought because the US and its puppets threatened the Russian population both in Russia and in the Ukraine with genocide through conventional, nuclear and biological arms. This is a conflict which is therefore all about Russian security and national identity.

The Russian Army, now greatly expanded in number through enthusiastic volunteers, has been advancing for over two years in a war of attrition and encirclement in the Ukraine. At the latest, this conflict will end in 2025, perhaps in early 2025, given the present Ukrainian situation, exactly as the then Russian Minster of Defence announced in 2023. This deeply tragic conflict in the Ukraine is now drawing to its end, with Russia militarily victorious against NATO, but with Ukrainian military manpower bled to death.

Winning the Peace

As is well-known, it is one thing to win a war, but what happens after the war is over? How do you win the peace? It is clear that the Russian Army has never wanted to invade the whole of the Ukraine or harm Ukrainian civilians. In that sense it is pro-Ukrainian – unlike the Kiev junta, which has been destroying the Ukraine and Ukrainians. The only territories of interest are the formerly Russian east and south, where a majority of the oppressed population has always considered itself to be Russian, ever since their families were forcibly transferred to the Ukraine by Bolshevik tyranny in 1922. The only enemy has been the military. What then will happen in the north and west of the old, Soviet-created, Ukraine in conditions of peace? In other words, what will happen after the Ukraine has been decommunised, returned to the pre-Communist situation?

It appears that the Russian policy here has always been to wait for a popular Ukrainian revolt, perhaps by a group of disaffected soldiers and officers, tired of being used as cannon fodder for the Neo-Nazis, and the disaffected will overthrow the murderous, US-created junta in Kiev. This would allow them to establish a popular and once more democratic government of the New Ukraine. This would in effect unite at least ten, perhaps more, provinces of the north and west of the old Soviet Ukraine into a neutral country, a southern Belarus, demilitarised and denazified, as Russia and all want. Its capital would remain in Kiev and it would have its sovereignty and defence guaranteed by Russia against NATO imperialism and its economy rebuilt by BRICS.

The old Ukraine was the most prosperous part of the USSR. It is potentially very wealthy. The New Ukraine, Ukrainian-speaking and independent, but Non-Nazi and demilitarised, would also be a country of freedom for the Church, with all the 1500 churches stolen so far by the thugs of the US-organised fake Church restored to the canonical Church. The fake Church would then collapse and disappear. Then also would come the end of absurd and illegal Western sanctions against Russia and Russians, which have effectively bankrupted not Russia, but Western Europe.

Winning the Church

All of this would do nothing to create peace inside the Orthodox Church, that is, to resolve the five-year long schism within the Confederation of the 16 Local Orthodox Churches. This is the schism between the largest and the once most prestigious Churches, between the Russian Patriarchate in Moscow and the US-controlled Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul (Constantinople), backed by its small colony in Alexandria. This situation echoes once again how the last century was, in Europe especially, the age of Imperialisms, when Europe and the Orthodox Church found themselves crushed between the Imperialisms of Nazism and Communism. Spain was the early example of a country caught between the two Imperialisms in the late 1930s, but it was Central and Eastern Europe which were affected even more profoundly.

For example, in the 1930s and 1940s Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece were in particular tragically caught up in the geopolitical bloodshed of the Nazi and Communist powerbrokers and had to switch sides very swiftly. Today, it is the Orthodox Churches precisely in Central and Eastern Europe, which find themselves caught between the nationalist power politics of Moscow and Constantinople. They are caught between Russian and Greek and their completely unspiritual battle for imperialistic territorial control. These Orthodox Churches in Central and Eastern Europe, which stand between those ecclesiastical Imperialisms, mean specifically the ten Local Churches of Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, together with (North) Macedonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Georgia, and even, screaming and kicking from Greek nationalism, those of Greece and Cyprus.

They will be joined by the many millions of the still not autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and of Orthodox in Moldova and elsewhere, who have all long been victims, third class citizens, of either Greek or else Russian imperialism, and their territorial battles and jealousies. Nobody recognises the ‘defrockings’ of clergy for purely political and schismatic reasons. Thus, wronged and ‘defrocked’ but genuine pastors from the Russian Church have had to flee sociopathic or morally corrupt bishops to the Constantinople and Romanian Churches, while others have fled the politicking of Constantinople for the Russian Church. It is an international scandal, so-called Christians practising hatred.

Conclusion

It is the above ten Local Churches, a majority, most probably supported by three Non-European Local Churches, those of Antioch, Jerusalem and America, which will be left to meet at a Council. Here they will have to call on the Churches of Moscow and Constantinople, the latter supported by the aggrieved Church of Alexandria, to resolve their differences. These differences relate directly to the imperialistic attitudes taken by the administrations of these Churches. These effeminately vengeful attitudes have caused them to dispute territorial control and leading them into schism and mutual, uncanonical and unrecognised ‘defrockings’.

These three Churches of Moscow, Constantinople and Alexandria are going to find themselves under pressure to reach canonical agreements. These would include the granting of full independence (autocephaly) to Non-Greeks and Non-Russians at present suffering inside them, who are, naturally, concerned neither by Greek, nor by Russian nationalism. Directly these would include at the very least the peoples of the New Ukraine and Moldova. However, the fates of Orthodox in the Baltic States, in Africa and the Diasporas of Western Europe, the Americas and Australia, must also be taken into account and autocephaly granted to them. Here is the opportunity for the purely political and centennial anti-canonical scandal of ‘jurisdictions’ to be overcome, caused only by those who are clinging on to power and money.

Then we shall at last begin to live in a normal Orthodox Church, which has suffered so much since 1917 from the abnormal situation in which we have been forced to live because of bishop-politicians and not bishop-pastors. The bishop-pastors, from St Nectarios of Aegina to St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, have, with their disciples, always been slandered and persecuted by the former. Enough. The careerist wolves in shepherd’s clothing, who deceive sincere but untutored neophytes are to be cast out. There are plenty there to defrock.

 

From Kabul to Kiev and the Future of the Russian Orthodox Church

After his brutal rebuff in Washington (together with Starmer), ex-President Zelensky is now desperately touring leaders of Western Europe, even seeing the Pope, in order to try and get support for his failing regime. The fact is that, regardless of whether Harris or Trump wins in the US elections in a few weeks’ time, the US has abandoned Zelensky’s Ukraine, turning its back on it and disengaging from it. The US media will just stop talking about the Western rout in the Ukraine, as they did in Afghanistan. Kabul or Kiev, it is the same thing. You have lost, sweep it under the carpet, it never happened. The US has to face Israel’s military and economic collapse and its great commercial rival, China. It has no more time for the loser in Kiev. Americans never like losers, so it is walking away from them.

The US has dumped Kiev on Europe and will, as usual, leave Europe, whose tail the US has been wagging for years, hanging out to dry. The US refused to allow Kiev to make deep strikes on Russia, it will not allow Kiev to join NATO, indeed it cancelled the Kiev-NATO Rammstein meeting of 12 October and the majority of the EU do not want Kiev to join it. (Ironically, the only country which enthusiastically supports Kiev’s EU membership is the UK, which itself left the EU!) Yes, the EU may string Kiev along, which will then string naïve Ukrainians along, but Europe has no more arms or munitions to give Kiev, and many countries, like Germany, Croatia, Italy and Slovakia, have publicly said so. Just as the British ran back to their island at Dunkirk in 1940, so the US is running back to the Big Island in 2024.

As for Zelensky, he will also try to run away to the same place. The Russian Army has all but destroyed the suicidal Ukrainian forces which crossed the border into the Kursk province of Russia. 22,000 Ukrainian troops are already dead or wounded. From Kursk Russian forces could cross into Sumy province and take Kiev. For the 7 January? Russia will get on with the reformatting, absorbing and rebuilding of the Ukraine as a New Ukraine under a new government in Kiev, effectively forming a southern Belarus. Russia will take back the Russian south and east, including Odessa and Kharkov. A small slice of the south-west corner may return to Hungary, with autonomy granted at last to Carpatho-Rus (what Kiev condescendingly called ‘Zakarpattia’), and perhaps small slices in the south will return to Romania.

By agreement with Moldova the Russian Federation could take back Transdnistria and probably, also by agreement, Gagauzia. These moves would be extremely popular, but leaving Romania to take back most of Moldova. As for the tiny Baltics, they will die out, until they reach friendship agreements with Russia, once their US elites have been removed. This Baltic situation will be repeated throughout Western Europe, as US elites in the EU and the UK are removed by popular vote – as indeed is already happening. The defeat of the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev will also bring freedom for the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and shame on the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which the US bribed to set up a fake Church for ‘the national Ukrainian religion’, to replace the Church of God.

At this, questions will arise for the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, centred in Moscow. In nearly three years of the conflict in the Ukraine, the Patriarchate has lost control (to the CIA) of its New-York based Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), whose sociopaths have been rebaptising other Orthodox. It has also lost control of the Church in the Ukraine, in Moldova and in the Baltics. In the Western world the Moscow Patriarchate has been discredited, with the Patriarch of Moscow even being banned from Canada, the UK and Lithuania and its parishes there contracting and losing virtually all Non-Russians. The racist rejection by Muscovites of Moldovans, Ukrainians and local people, many of whom had been devoted to the Russian Orthodox Church for fifty years and more, has been scandalous.

It is now difficult to see what the Church authorities in Moscow can do to recover the situation. Moscow is in schism with the Greek Churches. It has invested in Africa, officially a Greek territory. Other Local Churches distrust it. Tens of millions have been disaffected from Moscow, after it betrayed them, in one way or another, including now banned priests inside Russia, who have been forced to leave the country in order to continue. Regardless of the outcome in the Ukraine, that is, the inevitable Russian military and political victory, you cannot force people to be what they are not. You cannot force people to go to church. It may even be that the Russian government will have to intervene in Moscow Church matters in order to bring it round to abandoning its disastrous and suicidal policy of centralisation.

May God’s Will be done.

 

 

 

Our Future after the Defeat of Millennial Nazism in the Ukraine

 Introduction

The geographical fault-line between what is Western Secularist (former Catholic-Protestant) and Orthodox Christian Civilisations runs through the Austro-Polish Hapsburg far west of the Ukraine. This is precisely the origin of the present war there, for the same reason as the war in ex-Yugoslavia took place a generation ago because of the existence there of that same civilisational fault-line, only to the south-west of the Ukraine. The Secularist desire has been to conquer the Ukraine (and then ex-Yugoslavia) in order to exploit its natural resources and riches. One Imperialistic Civilisation, the Western Secularist, is trying to take over the other, the Christian. However, we are resisting and the Christian will be victorious, for: ‘We are based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values ​​are humanity, mercy and compassion’. What is the situation in the Ukraine now, after what will soon be 1,000 days of tragic conflict?

In the Ukraine Now

Last Sunday I asked one of my parishioners where her husband, who is a builder, was. She explained that, together with hundreds of other Russian-speaking builders who live all over Western Europe, he is in the Ukraine, six weeks on, six weeks off. There, just outside Kiev, he is helping to build a palace for the well-known Rinat Akhmetov, the richest oligarch in the Ukraine. She showed me a photograph of the palace under construction. It is indeed a huge Disney-like, oriental palace, of the sort that has not been built in this country for 200 years. She told me that it is being built with the finest materials, marble and gold, from all over the world. Here is the reality of the bankrupted Ukraine today, where tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are dying every month on behalf of such oligarchs, who have been fattened on billions of our dollars, euros and pounds, though our own infrastructure is collapsing.

Two and a half years ago Western leaders used to repeat the same hypnotising mantra: ‘We will support the Ukraine for as long as it takes.’ What did that mean? As long as what takes? For as long as it takes the Democrats to win (or lose?) the US elections in November 2024? Now they declare: ‘We will support the Ukraine for as long as we can’. But what does that mean? ‘For as long as we want?’. For today virtually everyone, even in the pro-Kiev Western media, has dropped the propaganda line and knows that the West has lost its proxy war in the Ukraine against Russia, wasting a million young lives and $250 billion. That is why few in the West now speak of it. That conflict used brainwashed Nazi or press-ganged Ukrainians to die on behalf of the USA, in order to attack and destroy Russia, without a single American dying. ‘The best investment ever’, according to Graham, a particularly Fascistic US Congressman.

The fact is that the Russian Federation has had to demilitarise and denazify not just the Ukraine, as it had originally and clearly announced as its aims on 24 February 2022 together with the third aim of the liberation of the Donbass, but also NATO. (By the way, NATO was established thanks to Nazi Germans like Reinhard Gehlen after 1945). The demilitarisation and denazification of NATO was never the ambition of the Russians; it was the fault of NATO, which gave all its political, financial and material support to prop up Kiev instead of supporting peace talks. Otherwise, the Ukraine would long ago have capitulated to Russia. The task of demilitarising NATO is why the conflict in the Ukraine has taken so long. The task of denazifying the Ukraine, which many thought impossible, has happened as a result of the deaths, or rather suicides, of whole Nazi regiments of the Kiev Army and of the emigration of others.

There will soon be no Nazis left in the Ukraine, or whatever will replace the Ukraine after the defeat of the Kiev regime and the rout of US/NATO. This was the inevitable result of the Western refusal to negotiate with the Russian Federation for eight years. Now even more NATO countries like Croatia and Slovenia have joined Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Turkey in rejecting the US/NATO war in the Ukraine (let alone in allowing the fantasy of letting the Ukraine join NATO). Italy, Germany and even disillusioned Poland fundamentally agree with them, and France, changeable as ever, has spoken of possible talks. Even the Pentagon in Washington now refuses to give any more support to Kiev, as US military stockpiles are so severely depleted. There remain only the puny military forces of the Russophobic UK, and the seven Nordic and minute and dying Baltic States which still support Kiev, at least in rhetoric.

Zelensky cannot talk, since the West forced Kiev to pass a law to forbid them in April 2022. For the Ukrainian surrender to take place so that there can be peace, Zelensky the US actor-stooge must be removed together with the whole Neo-Nazi cast of the show in Kiev. Perhaps they will murder one another in a violent coup in Kiev, or else they will run away to join the Ukrainian mafia in the USA. In any case, they will remove themselves. The time for peace talks and ceasefires is long over. Some suggest that Kiev can survive under NATO, if it cedes some land to Russia. But Russia, by far the biggest country in the world, does not want any land, it wants security. They could have taken place at any point between early 2014 and early 2022. They did not, because Kiev and, above all, its Western sponsors refused. The Ukraine, as it was, has no future. It will have to capitulate on Russian terms. The West forbade it to have a future.

BRICS

Ever since the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and even before that, under worldwide Western Imperialism, the Planet has faced the possibility, one day, of a One World Dictatorship. Since 1991 this potential has become closer. The identity of a possible World Dictator seems to have been a future President of the USA, governing the world through ambassadors and vassals. After the US occupation of the Ukraine in 2014 and then the challenge to its hegemony by the Russian Federation, the possibility of such a One World Dictatorship has rapidly receded. This is because of the BRICS organisation, which recognises several centres of power. Founded 15 years ago on 16 June 2009 in Ekaterinburg, the city of the martyrdom of the last Russian Tsar, BRICS, now with nine members, already has a larger economy than the G7. The Non-Western world is now interested in BRICS, which is to meet in Kazan in a few days’ time.

Indeed, over 150 countries now either want to join BRICS or else have expressed a desire to join it. It is clear that the multicontinental BRICS Alliance, initially Brazil, Russia, India, China and then South Africa, now with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the UAE, is going to replace the UN. The latter is in the US and is effectively controlled by three Western countries of the UN Security Council, the US, the UK and France. They can ignore and block any of its resolutions, like those regarding the illegal sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, Iran, China, Cuba etc, or against Israeli genocide. The teeming billions of Africa, Latin America and India have no real representation at the UN. BRICS is destined to set up a new Assembly or Parliament for the Global Majority. It is also pursuing the gradual process of dedollarisation of the world economy and will replace US-controlled organisations like the World Bank and the IMF. The future beckons.

The impetus for BRICS and its dedollarisation has been created by the US weaponisation of the dollar against the Russian Federation and other countries and the stealing of their assets and gold. Thus, trust has been broken in the SWIFT international payments system. It is not that BRICS is a bloc, it is not, it is a multilateral, multipolar, multicontinental, multicivilisational organisation. As a result, the Western world, which is also bankrupt, that is, the USA and its Anglosphere vassals like the UK, Canada and Australia, the divided Peninsular Western European EU, and other US coastal and island colonies and vassals like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the settler state of Israel, have been isolated – or rather have isolated themselves. BRICS means the disappearance of the hegemony of the USA and all its vassal organisations, not just the World Bank and the IMF, but the G7, the EU, WHO, UNESCO etc.

We can see this Western self-isolation and irrelevance in the fact that the Russian Federation, by far the largest country in Europe by population and area, is now the largest economy in Europe and growing rapidly, and yet Western European countries have cut themselves off from it and are declining. Why cut yourselves off from natural resources like oil, gas, fertiliser, minerals? Countries like Turkiye and all South-Eastern Europe, from Austria to Greece, from Serbia to Hungary, from Romania to Slovakia, from Bulgaria to Cyprus, from Czechia to Croatia, have realised that they are missing the boat. They will peel off from EU tyranny and join BRICS too. They may be joined by countries in South-Western Europe, from Spain to Italy, and eventually France, Benelux and Germany. Only English-speaking North-Western Europe will remain in the US orbit, but only until their US-appointed elites have been overthrown.

BRICS means the end of the domination of the Atlantic Powers, which has lasted for 500 years. The Pacific and Indian Powers have risen and are taking their place. The former Western colonies or countries that adopted one or other of the bipolar Western ideologies of Capitalism or Communism, from Eurasian Russia to Africa, from Asia to Latin America, are freeing themselves from Western geopolitical and financial colonialisation. BRICS countries work on behalf of their peoples, who believe in sovereignty and patriotism, but do not believe in the tyranny of transnational corporations, banks and Globalism. Centralisation, whether Capitalist or Communist, is dead. It is time in all spheres to move away from top-down centralised control and to delegate to the grassroots. It is time for the dinosaurs to remove themselves from the world stage, or else be removed by the ever-accelerating course of history.

The Sinking Millennial Titanic

Some observers say that the present rout of the West in the Ukraine, which the West tried to expand to and absorb by its habitual organised violence after February 2014, is a turning point. They say that it marks the end of 500 years of Western domination of the world and overseas expansion, expressed by the word ‘Globalism’. This began with Western voyages of conquest and settlement across the Atlantic to the Americas, Africa and Asia some 500 years ago. They are wrong. The Western world and its unique ideology of supremacy and infallibility began not 500 years ago, but 1,000 years ago. It can even be dated precisely – to 14 February 1014. Then, in Rome, the new foundational Creed of the West was consciously promulgated – previously it had only been proclaimed by illiterate provincial barbarians, who did not even understand what they were saying. From then on, the West moved south and east.

This new Creed, first proclaimed in Rome at the Coronation of the German King Henry II as the ‘Holy Roman’ Emperor (he was not Holy or Roman), claimed that the Holy Spirit, the Source of all authority and unity, proceeds from the leader of the West. Then the leader of the West was the Pope of Rome – even though the formal dogma of his infallibility was not proclaimed and formulated until 856 years later, in 1870. However, his supremacy was already clear in, for example, the Dictatus Papae of Pope Gregory VII in 1075, though nearly all of these principles had been repeated for decades. Today this supremacy and infallibility have been passed down to and inherited one after the other by the leaders of other Western countries. Now it belongs to the President of the USA. The claim to worldwide supremacy and infallibility has been the essential belief of the post-Christian, post-1014, post-Schism West.

The consequences of the 14 February 1014 Declaration of Papal, that is, Western, supremacy and infallibility can already be seen in the 1030s with the Papally-sponsored invasions of Spain and then Sicily. In 1066 it came again with the Papally-sponsored invasion and genocide of England, again using its Norman shock troops, and then to Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where the same genocide was repeated. But it is also clear in the German/Frankish/Western ‘Crusades’ in the Holy Land, in internal inquisitions and crusades (against the Cathars) in Western Europe, and in those of the Teutonic Knights in Eastern Europe. The essence of this ethnic Western ideology was what we today call Nazism. And it is precisely ethnic Western. For example, when the Soviet Union invaded Bulgaria in 1944, ordinary Bulgarians greeted the Soviet forces enthusiastically, for only the Germanic elite in Bulgaria was Nazi.

The fact is that Orthodox Church culture, even of lapsed Orthodox Russians and Bulgarians in 1944, is anti-Nazi. For example, let us take the case of the Non-Orthodox British historian, David Irving, who defends Nazi Germany. For him anti-Nazism is hypocrisy, given that Allied leaders also participated in Hitlerite crimes and racism in that conflict. True, Hitler hated the Jews and the West loved them, but only because the Western Allies were funded by Jewish financiers. However, just like Hitler, the Western leaders also hated ’subhuman’ Russians, Africans, Arabs and Asians. Irving should have been consistent and angry at all Nazism, not just British, French and American, but the German too. So the foolish Irving attacks Allied Nazism, not seeing that anyone can be a Nazi. For example, a bankrupt Israeli, Netanyahu, real name Mileikowsky, is also a genocidal Nazi, and as such is opposed by heroic Non-Zionist and anti-Nazi Jews.

Nothing can save the West from its sinking Titanic in Kiev. True, it can try and blame the senile Biden, but shifting the blame is not a solution. In reality, the West is not afraid that Russia will win against it in its proxy war, but rather it is afraid that the truth will win. This fear of the truth has now become the main concern. This fear of the truth is also why most Western people will not join the Orthodox Church – because they refuse to repent. As Western people claim: ‘I cannot join the Orthodox Church because of my culture’. They reject Christ because of their proudly unrepentant, Secularist culture. All they have to do is to refer back to their countries of birth before the millennial aberration and deviation of 1014. For example, I am English by blood, have a British passport, but I am not British, not even English. I am Old English and belong to Old England, to Orthodoxy, to Christ, not to Secularist pride.

The Future of Western Europe, Russia and the Orthodox Church

Thus, White Supremacism, Racism, Aryanism, Fascism, Nazism, Zionism, whatever you wish to call it, is deeply Western, as it justifies imperialism, colonialism and the exploitation of the whole Non-Western world. Ultimately, it goes back to the supremacy and infallibility of medieval Papism. This ideology is not of the Church. That is why certain Russians of the émigré Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) group, Romanians of the Iron Guard, and other Fascists, even though somewhat culturally Orthodox, were always tiny fringe groups, outside the mainstream, outside communion with the Church, outside Christianity. Let us recall that Christianity was born in Asia, not in the aberration of a Europe, cut off from the rest of Asia and, above all, from the Church of God. The tired old Western ideologies of Papism and Protestantism are dying. However, their substitution by Secularism is even worse, indeed, it is lethal.

Here we can speak of the Sovietisation of the West over the last 35 years of President Bush’s ‘New World Order’, already the Old World Order. Sovietisation can be seen in the Western elite/nomenklatura which governs by Uniparty and censorship (‘cancelling’) of ‘dissident’ views. Such ‘heretics’ commit ‘hate speech’ and so are persecuted. The elite has learned nothing from the fall of the USSR. Sovietisation is lethal, for it is based on death, hatred for God, persecution of the Church and its words of life, through abortion, euthanasia (‘good death’) and inevitable depopulation, as women are told to be men and men are told to be homosexuals. That is the new norm. On the other hand, Russia is returning to its roots. It is no longer Western, neither Imperial as it was from 1721-1917 with its serfdom, nor Soviet as it was from 1917 to 1991 with its Gulag, nor Oligarchic as it was from 1991 to 2016 with its Wild East Capitalism.

The 300 years or twelve generations of the three Western experiments in Russia failed, and disastrously so, and have now led Russia to begin the return to its roots. It is all that remains. These are precisely the roots to which the last Tsar, Nicholas II, wanted to return to, in governance, in social and foreign policy, in architecture, in Church painting and singing. The Tsar, who founded the Hague Peace Conventions, would have greatly approved of BRICS, of international co-operation and harmony. He was the forerunner to it. The future Ukraine will share in such co-operation. After the tragic conflict which the USA has created there, the New Ukraine will be renewed and its third world infrastructure will be brought to world class standards by BRICS, its corrupt Western oligarchs chased out by a State that protects its people, as has been happening so spectacularly in Russia over the last twenty-five years.

The transformation of the Russian Lands, the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Belarus, will mean transformation within the Orthodox Church, 75% of whose faithful live in those Lands. True, several parts of the Orthodox Church are for now under the control of elderly individuals, who are stuck in the past. Such is the situation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Istanbul, where individuals still dream of an Empire which collapsed nearly 600 years ago. In Moscow too, there are individuals who also dream of an Imperial future, patterned by rigid ritualism, ultra-nationalism and propose a militarised and uniformised ‘Church-Army’. And as a result, there are individuals in the Russian Church, who call themselves ‘princes of the Church’, who dream of imperialist power and effeminate riches, ironically sometimes sponsored by the CIA, and who undertake schism, jealousy and hatred, persecuting pastors and people alike.

The reality is quite different from those delusions of empire, for the Church does not belong to ‘princes of the Church’, but to the faithful people. For example, the population of Non-Orthodox Western Europe, inclusive of and westwards of Finland, Germany, Austria and Italy, is approximately 431 million. Almost exactly 1% of that population are Romanian Orthodox (other Orthodox, Greeks, Russians, Serbs etc, number at most only 0.2% of that 431 million). Certain elderly Greeks and Russians may dream of building ecclesiastical empires in Western Europe, but they are irrelevant to 4.3 million Non-Greeks and Non-Russians. Such too is the situation elsewhere outside Russia and Greece, in lands where Orthodox have emigrated and live. The future of the Church in the Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltic States, Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania is with the majority who live there, not with imperialistic dreamers in distant cities.

Conclusion

A fresh wind is blowing from the east and it is sweeping away the corrupted old world, the cobwebbed, antiquated and dying structures formed out of the last millennium and the domination of the planet by the anti-Christian Western world and its ideologies, whether Capitalist or Communist. The old ‘Papism’, centralised control from one centre, is dead. The unipolar and unilateral is rapidly being replaced by the multilateral and multipolar. Western Europeans, wake up! You have been fooled and betrayed for a thousand years! They have substituted the truth with a fake! Return to your spiritual roots and identity! Ignore the pathologically sick, who reject their own identity, and tell you that you are beyond salvation without their rebaptism, and come to the Church of God. Here you are welcome. Yes, indeed, our values are: ‘humanity, mercy and compassion’.  The old is going. The new is here. Welcome!

 

 

 

 

 

Towards a Council of the Orthodox Churches

Introduction

In 2006 I took part in a Local Church Council of the Russian Diaspora. A very divided part of the Russian Church debated its future, whether to enter back into canonical communion with the rest of the Russian Church or not. Suddenly, the division more or less disappeared. We visibly felt the wafting of the Holy Spirit over us. Such is the vital importance of all Church Councils, Universal, Regional or Local. This wafting is the spirit of catholicity, of conciliarity, this is the Holy Spirit, Who alone heals divisions by revealing the clear Will of God.

Universal Church Councils

Who has the authority to call a Council of all the Orthodox Churches? Purists will respond ‘the Emperor of Constantinople’. There is not one, so that is absurd. Greek nationalists will respond ‘the Patriarch of Constantinople’. This is at once divisive and also untrue. And then does a Council have to include all the Local Orthodox Churches in order to have universal authority? Clearly not, for there have been many purely Local Councils, which have with time gained universal authority, for example the ‘Palamite’ Councils of the thirteenth century.

Consultations

In any case, nobody can call a ‘Council’ of the whole Church as such. Any Consultation of bishops can only be called a Council after the event, for the decisions of a Consultation have to be ‘received’, that is, recognised by the clergy and people. Until ‘reception’ has taken place, there can only be a Consultation. This we saw quite clearly with the Consultation of some 150 Orthodox bishops from several of the Orthodox Churches in Crete in 2016, which was, absurdly, called a ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’ before it had even begun! Of course, it failed.

The Need for a Consultation

So let us therefore be realistic. Any head of any Local Church can issue invitations to a Consultation, inviting the heads and episcopal delegations of any number of other Local Churches who wish to attend. Such a Consultation is necessary because at present two of the sixteen Local Churches, Constantinople and Moscow, are in schism with one another and refuse to talk to each other, let alone concelebrate. As a result, the whole Church suffers and is even to some extent in a state of paralysis. The Church needs to hold a Consultation.

Who Could Call a Consultation?

Thus, the head of any Local Church can call a Consultation. Several enjoy prestige. For example, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who is at is the centre of the Church. Or the Patriarch of Bucharest, as his Church is the largest outside Moscow. But others enjoy respect and prestige, for instance, the Patriarchs of Sofia or Belgrade or the Archbishop of Albania. But really any of them. But what would an invitation to a Consultation mention? It should certainly not be restrictive, as that was the error of the agenda-imposed 2016 meeting in Crete.

Two Initial Stages of Consultation

Let us suppose that the head of any one of the fourteen Local Churches sent out a circular letter to the other thirteen heads and invited them, perhaps each with two other bishops, to discuss initially the intra-Church crisis. This would be Stage One of a Conciliar process composed of 42 bishops. If they met, they could talk and, if they agreed, they could go to a Second Stage, which would be for a Consultation of the nearly 500 bishops, who do not belong to the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow, which have over another 500 bishops.

The Third Stage

Observers from Constantinople and Moscow would naturally be invited to the First and Second Stages. A Third Stage would be for all Orthodox bishops, though that would mean Constantinople and Moscow ending their schism. That, at present, is not realistic, as the nature of their schism is political. And as long as both Patriarchates are engaged in politics with States, there is no hope of that. A Consultation, let alone a Council, can only be held among the politically free, which is why no Consultation ever took place during the Soviet period.

An Agenda

So a Consultation is necessary, but why? What would its non-restrictive agenda be? At present, the Church faces two sets of challenges. Firstly, there must be a dogmatic response to the doubts and denials of the contemporary world by affirming the Creed of the Seven Universal Councils. Secondly, there must be a pastoral and administrative witness to the same contemporary world. The first response affirms the Revealed Truth of God, the second affirms Love, that the teaching and witness of the Church is not political and nationalistic.

The Dogmatic Agenda

By affirming the Creed a Consultation would affirm that God is the Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible, rejecting Secularism, which proclaims that the universe is self-made through an inexplicable process of ‘evolution’. It would affirm the uniqueness of Christ, the Son of God and His Salvation, Resurrection and Return and the Procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, Who spoke through the Old Testament, and in the uniqueness of the Church and Her Baptism. All these are challenged by the contemporary world.

The Pastoral Agenda

Of a world population of over eight billion, only 200 million, two and a half per cent, are Orthodox Christians. There is little doubt that the mission of the Church has been severely limited by politics and nationalism, not least Greek and Russian. There is a need for new Local Churches to be founded, immediately in the Ukraine, where the lack of a Local Church has caused division and distress, secondly in areas where millions of Orthodox live, in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania, and thirdly in most of Non-Christian Asia and Africa.

Conclusion: The Alternative

Without a Church Council divisions will continue. This happens when one or both sides refuse to move. For example, ever since 1014, when the elite of the then small part of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe ended its communion with the Church by altering the Creed, it has refused to return to the Creed. Indeed, it has actually justified its change and so remained out of communion with the Church. Thank God, the present conflict between Constantinople and Moscow does not concern the Creed, but it does concern communion. And that is vital.

 

 

 

The Struggle for Catholicity Against Papist Centralisation and for Unity Against the New American Heresy of ‘Corrective Baptism.’

Introduction: Centralisation and Decentralisation: Unity in Diversity

The Church is an image of the Holy Trinity, a Unity of Three Persons in One Essence, of Diversity and Unity, a subtle balance between centralising and decentralising forces. If centralising forces take over, legitimate diversity in Church life can be threatened, as we see outside the Church, in Roman Catholicism. This results in the boycott of the Church, which is no longer seen as being ‘our Church’, but the ‘Church’ of an irrelevant, distant, alien and foreign clerical elite. If decentralising forces take over, Church unity can be threatened by divisions and sects, as we see in Protestantism. This results in the dissolution of the Church into secular fragments, which are irrelevant to spiritual resistance and incapable of ascetic struggle for the Truth of Christ.

The Two Struggles of My Life

Personally, my life can be divided into two halves. The first half was spent in apprehending and comprehending God’s presence in the world, in learning and in serving in the Church in Europe. The struggle then was for the teachings of the Church against ideological compromises, being forced onto the Church by the anti-Christian Western world. That US-led world was trying to impose on all others its One World Government under the name of ‘Globalism’. This meant trying to deform the integrity of the Orthodox Church by imposing syncretistic modernism and ecumenism and corrupting its clerical elite, as Globalism had already done with Protestantism and Roman Catholicism and was then trying to do with Orthodoxy too. This was an attack on the integrity of the Church.

The second half of my life is being spent in England, building towards the inevitable Local Church of Western Europe. This ongoing struggle now takes place from within the largest part of the Orthodox Church here, the millions of the Romanian Metropolias of Western and Southern, Central and Northern Europe. This struggle is for the Catholicity of the Church through the concord of fourteen of the sixteen Local Orthodox Churches. This is because the two remaining Local Churches, Moscow and Constantinople, have tragically fallen into schism with one another because of their rival nationalist centralisations. Through their Papist-style centralisation of finance, power and control they are trying and failing to divide and share out the Orthodox world between them.

The Struggle for Catholicity Against the Papism of Constantinople and Moscow

Thus, the fourteen other Churches, the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the Churches of Georgia, Cyprus, Serbia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, America, Albania and Macedonia, are fixed between the two extremes of Constantinople and Moscow. True, some are much closer to one or the other, but still they say to Constantinople: Yes, you were once the Patriarchate of the Imperial City, but that was nearly 600 years ago and even then you had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of others. And to Moscow they say: Yes, you are by far the largest in number, but you are still only one among sixteen, so do not try and tell us how we must live and think. The Soviet age is over, so stop denying the diversity and Catholicity of the Church.

The friction can most clearly be seen in the Ukraine. Thus, most, if not all, of the fourteen Local Churches know that what Constantinople did there in setting up a fake Church outside its own territory was wrong, against the canons of the Church. This is very clear, especially through the statements of the heads of the Churches of Albania, Poland and Bulgaria. As for Muscovite centralisation, so reminiscent of the Soviets, it is rejected not only by all others (though in the case of Constantinople, the rejection is clearly politically dictated by the US and so has no spiritual authority), but also in the Moscow Patriarchate, in the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Metr Onufry and wherever decentralisation and new autocephalous Churches are for pastoral reasons urgently required.

We can see all this visibly, if we simply compare photographs of bishops. The photo of the average Constantinople Metropolitan appears to show a bureaucrat with a thin black veil and a carefully trimmed beard, like that of a married priest whose wife dislikes beards. Only the metropolitans are not married, supposedly monks. The photo of the average Moscow Metropolitan appears to show a richly-decorated and rigidly-uniformed military man, at the service of a State army, not of the Word of God. Both show careerists, ‘Princes of the Church’, to use the Roman Catholic term for cardinals. My favourite photo of a metropolitan from one of the fourteen Churches shows a man in a dusty old cassock hauling a bag of cement in a wheelbarrow to build a new monastery.

The Novel and Aggressive American Heresy of Rebaptism

Orthodox Unity is now being challenged by the novel and highly aggressive American heresy of rebaptism. This sectarian heresy of rebaptising Orthodox is known as ‘corrective baptism’, a term quite unknown to the Fathers of the Church and the Saints, because it has been brought into the Church from the sectarian Lutheran world outside. Contradicting the Creed of the Church ‘I believe in one baptism…’, it means rebaptising those who have been canonically received into the Church by the established authority of its thousand canonical bishops. Although the Orthodox in question may have been receiving the sacraments of the Church for years, the schismatics are rebaptising them. This revolt against Church practice is uncanonical, heretical and sectarian.

The practice was condemned by all as long ago as 1976, when the Syshchenko scandal in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) broke in London. Then this same practice, implemented by an uncanonically ordained and very poorly-trained Ukrainian priest, was thoroughly rejected by the ever-memorable Metropolitan Philaret and the then still Orthodox ROCOR Synod as the heresy of Donatism. Sadly, this view is no longer held by some of today’s ROCOR bishops who do not know the Church Tradition. Thus, apart from ‘bishops’ in old calendarist sects, there are now those in ROCOR who have also turned aggressively schismatic, imposing their pseudo-Russian, American old calendarism, which is in fact nothing more than a sectarian Protestant revolt, a new outburst of Anabaptism, the bullying and hypocritical pharisaic rebaptism for ‘the pure’.

This is the first heresy of converts, neophytes who want to be ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. Such converts do not remain Orthodox because they have not yet cleansed themselves of the post-Schism Western mentality, they still do not know the Pre-Schism Western mentality. For them Orthodoxy is not existential, it is just a decoration added on top of what they do not want to renounce, a cherry on top of the Western cake. Their mentality therefore remains fundamentally anti-Orthodox. And they can go to one extreme or the other. Being anti-Orthodox is not only being pro-ecumenist, pro-modernist, pro-reformist, it is also to be filled with hatred for Roman Catholics and Protestants. Both extremes are equally anti-Orthodox, equally opposed to Truth and Love.

Conclusion: The Dangers of Centralisation and Sectarianism

With their natural Russian flock dying out or leaving them, these bishops are desperate to make up falling numbers by recruiting disgruntled ex-Protestants. These often psychologically unstable extremists have no spiritual roots in the Church. To my knowledge, so far two American ROCOR bishops in different continents are publicly boasting of rebaptising other Orthodox, though others may be involved. Once this news reaches the for now politically unfree Moscow and it has the time to act, there will be trouble for the ROCOR schismatics. So continues our struggle for the Catholicity of the Church against anti-missionary and secular-inspired centralisation, and for the Unity of the Church against sectarian attacks, always towards the new Local Church of Western Europe to be established through a Council.

24 August 2024: ‘Democratic’ Ukraine Bans its National Church

On 24 August the Western-backed and Western-financed ex-President Zelensky (legally he has been a dictator since May) signed a law banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. (Zelensky is by race a Jew and by faith an atheist). This is because this Church is a Non-Western Church (just as the Ukraine is a Non-Western country), only a semi-independent part of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow. This law will be enacted in 30 days’ time. What are the options?

First of all, Ukrainian Orthodox (= the vast majority of Ukrainians) will not attend any of the fake Churches, including the nationalist, pro-Nazi fake ‘Church’, invented by Washington by paying the Greek Patriarch to set it up. This is much to the present embarrassment of that Greek Patriarch, who, he now claims, naively thought that Ukrainians would attend such a Church, founded on theft and violence, encouraged by its gangster leaders, and composed of defrocked or unordained ‘clergy’.

This means that Ukrainian Orthodox will either stop going to church and wait for better times, or else they will try and go to church and get beaten up or killed or be arrested and put in prison. Christian blood on the streets is apparently what the Western Powers and the Greek Patriarch are sponsoring.

Some say that the Russian Patriarch of Moscow, Kyrill, and the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew, whose combined ages are 161, could do something else. Patriarch Bartholomew could dissolve his failed, fake Church on condition that Patriarch Kyrill officially gives the Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence, known as ‘autocephaly’. For only a Mother-Church, in this case, Moscow, can grant autocephaly. And if the Ukrainian Orthodox Church becomes autocephalous, Zelensky’s law will be meaningless.

That would be a miracle. If it happened, all the other Local Orthodox Churches, all 14 of them, would automatically recognise the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a canonical, autocephalous Church, the 17th member of the Orthodox family. And Moscow and Constantinople could enter back into communion. And this could happen even with a Council of the whole Church.

However, such happiness is highly unlikely. What is likely?

Far more likely is that within the next few months Russia will take over the whole of the Ukraine, partly militarily and partly politically. The Ukraine will either entirely disappear as a nation-state, or else will exist with about one third of the territory it previously had and be fully dependent on Moscow. In other words, it will return exactly to its situation before Communist dictators created it after 1922. 100 years of errors will be over. Then the law banning the Church will be as irrelevant as ex-President Zelensky and his whole illegal government, which will have disappeared by then.

However, in such a case, just as Constantinople failed to force people to attend its fake Church, so Moscow will not be able to force people to attend a Church still dependent on it. As the Russian proverb says: ‘You will not endear yourself by force’. Or as the English proverb says: ‘You can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink’.

In any case, the problem will remain. Either the Russian Orthodox Church is a nationalist organisation, or else it is a multinational and missionary Church. It will have to choose. Either it adapts to and adopts other cultures, or else it will remain as a mononational Church with no multinational significance, as some of its senior bishops want.

 

 

Now It Can Be Told: Reminiscences II: The ROCOR Tragedy: How It Entered into Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate and Then De Facto Left It

Introduction: The Background

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, large numbers of ex-Soviet citizens settled in the West. The Orthodox among them, then about 1% of the total, went to wherever there was a Russian-speaking church. By 1990 the parishes of the old and dying ROCOR were almost empty, as the emigres had almost totally failed to pass on the Faith to their descendants. In 1992 I even had to set up a completely new parish in Lisbon for the new ex-Soviet emigres, though still under ROCOR. By 2000 all ROCOR parishes had been revitalised, but with ex-Soviet Russians. Moreover, the ROCOR bishops at the top, now almost all of the second generation or converts, had to ordain many of the ‘Soviets’ priests – there was nobody else left to ordain.

As a result, it gradually dawned even on the strongly anti-Soviet, often rather dry and cold, ROCOR bishops that there would have to be a reconciliation with Moscow. Moscow was, after all, 99% of the whole Russian Orthodox Church, and, by then, ex-Soviet Russians already formed 90% of their tiny émigré Church. Ex-Soviet clergy and parishioners understood nothing of the hair-splitting arguments against Moscow of the old émigrés and their descendants and converts.

They simply concelebrated with Moscow whenever they wanted and the people took communion freely in Moscow churches. Clearly, ROCOR bishops were losing control. The split between Moscow and the ROCOR group had been outlived. It was totally irrelevant to the post-Soviet masses, ‘the mob’, as one aristocratic and monocled (!) ROCOR bishop insultingly called them on the Russian Church website pravoslavie.ru, to the scandal of all!

To Moscow

Thus, the bishops were gradually forced by weight of numbers to lead the few remaining children of ROCOR emigres to concelebrate with Moscow. Having usurped the very elderly Metropolitan Vitaly in New York, who for them had outlived his age and who anyway had dementia, in 2001, ambitious bishops began to move towards talks with Moscow. These talks finally resulted in the historic Patriarchal and émigré concelebration in Moscow in 2007, where I was, I believe, the only Non-Russian priest present. However, even this reconciliation did not stop the bullying and intimidation of the non-aristocratic, not to say peasant, bishop-victims inside the Synod by the ‘princes of the Church’, the political wing of the utterly divided ROCOR Synod.

Their victims ranged from the meek and saintly Slovak Metr Laurus to the equally meek and mild Ukrainian Metr Hilarion, who feared the ‘politicos’, as he openly told us, almost trembling, and to Patriarch Kyrill himself. The latter was astonished and very, very upset by the categorical refusal of the politico bishops to accept the Patriarch’s very generous, canonical and utterly logical suggestion (it was in 2012 or soon after) to restructure ROCOR into Metropolia, in the USA, in Oceania and in Western Europe.

They even rejected his generous offer for a ROCOR bishop to become Metropolitan of a united Russian Orthodox Church of Western Europe, the foundation of the future Local Church. Rarely has there been such a tragic rejection of Divine destiny towards forming new Local Churches. This rejection, some ten years ago now, was in fact the turning-point for ROCOR. From that moment on, it reverted to control by its ‘princes of the Church’ political wing, concerned only with money and property, abandoning its spiritual, ‘Johannite’ (St John of Shanghai) tradition. Their predecessors had persecuted St John, now they would continue, persecuting St John’s spiritual descendants.

Underlying Sectarianism Returns

With this tragic refusal to accept its destiny, ROCOR had preferred suicidal, elitist, exclusivist isolation to playing the leading role in forming future Local Churches in Western Europe and elsewhere. The offer had been made on a golden plate and been rejected. The offer would not be made by offended Moscow again. It was clear that others would now have to play that role. ROCOR had sidelined itself, making itself irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, due to its nationalist exclusivism and pharisaic superiority complex, much, much developed by recent and unintegrated fanatical converts of a Protestant background. Moscow was at a loss, since it simply did not have the candidates with the linguistic, administrative and moral ability to lead its Churches outside Russia.

Thus, ROCOR lost the opportunity to head the establishment of three Metropolias: one to lead to the long-overdue Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Western Europe; in North America to merge positively with the OCA; finally, to set up a new Metropolia for the Continent of Oceania. The task of establishing just a Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Western Europe now went to Moscow, eventually through the efficient Metropolitan Nestor, supported by the very small, Paris-based Archdiocese of Western Europe, led by its Metropolitan Jean (Renneteau).

In 2021, ROCOR decided to take part in the American-led schism against the Moscow Metropolitan Jean, leading the emigres to split from that part of Moscow and so even further into self-isolation. The only occasional concelebrations would now be with highly conservative Antiochian, ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’, converts. The rest of the Orthodox Church was rejected. Moscow was secretly, and increasingly openly, despised; Greeks, Romanians and Moldovans openly hated; and in 2024, when the Serbian Orthodox Church invited a delegation from New York to try and bring ROCOR back from the brink, it also failed. No Church can be founded on hatred.

Conclusion: The Future

As one Russian Orthodox Metropolitan said to me of one ROCOR hierarch in 2012: ‘His Russian is superb, better than that of Russians, his liturgical knowledge second to none, but where is his love’? Thanks to sectarianism, ROCOR is rapidly losing its jurisdiction in Western Europe, just as it lost that in Vlasovite ROCOR South America. Now that Moscow is at last starting to send out competent, non-corrupt and non-homosexual bishops to Western Europe, ROCOR is increasingly looking like a small, right-wing American sect, with little influence outside its sectarian converts and their ghettoes.

Today, with the tragic conflict in the Ukraine ongoing, Moscow is isolated by Russian nationalism, but the emigres are isolated by convert exclusivism. The pro-Zelensky attitude of ROCOR since 2022, even demanding that Russian troops stop liberating the Donbass from Kiev-led genocide (!), is not in fact pro-Ukrainian, but pro-CIA. Unsurprisingly, ROCOR is now seen as treasonous by Moscow, but with its Russian-ness it is also seen as totally unacceptable by the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Metr Onufry, just as it was by post-1945 Ukrainian (and Belarussian) emigres.

As a result, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has over the last two years opened up a hundred parishes in Western Europe, which have nothing to do with ROCOR. As for Moldovans, they have been leaving the Russian Church for the Romanian Church, offended by Russian racism, just like the Ukrainians and so nearly all other Non-Russians. It is clear that other Local Churches will have to take on the mantle of establishing a multinational Local Church of Western Europe. Tragically, the dream of the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow of forming a Local Church in Western Europe is for now dead. In the future only a radical change of policy and repentance could bring the constituent parts of the Russian Church in the Diaspora, now in schism, back to contributing to that great project, which others have now been put in charge of.

Holy Rus in High Suffolk: An Interview with a Russian Count

Over the last fourteen years I have got to know particularly well a couple who are spiritual children and whom I call the Earl and Countess of Orthodox East Anglia. Nobles of Russian extraction, they have made their home in England and chosen to live in the mystical heart of our local East Anglian Orthodox Church and Kingdom. Count (Earl in the English system) Benckendorff, a parishioner since 2010, agreed to this extensive conversation after I interviewed his wife over a month ago. With his permission we have slightly edited his words, though his English is excellent.

On the table in the oak-beamed living room, where we conduct the interview, stands a golden samovar, bought in St Audrey’s Ely, alongside a portrait of the Tsar’s Family. Nearby stands a lovely vase with a bouquet of fragrant roses, which the Countess has picked from the garden of their thatched farmhouse in High Suffolk, near the Norfolk border. The Countess has served us tea from her favourite Royal Albert service, the doors to the garden wide open before us. Such is the setting for this second conversation, the recording of which stretched on into the lengthening shadows of the English summer evening.

 

Q: Can you please tell us something about your family?

A: In 1775 the Benckendorff family was awarded an estate of 8,000 acres in Sosnovka in the Tambov province of Russia for services to the Crown. After the Revolution most branches of the family, like ours, remained inside the USSR, but we had to change our name for fear of being murdered by the Bolsheviks. Indeed, one priestly ancestor is a New Martyr. At first, we remained in Russia, but after 1945 we moved to what had by then become the eastern Ukraine, though that region is now back in Russia again after 100 years of Soviet-imposed exile.

After 1917 one branch settled in England. This was the family of Count Alexander Benckendorff, who was the last ambassador of the Tsar to Great Britain between 1903 and 1917. His family found itself stranded in the White Russian emigration, as Alexander had passed away in January 1917. Unlike his brother Paul, who was very close to Tsar Nicholas in Tsarskoe Selo, Alexander was never Orthodox. He had become a Catholic by conviction from Lutheranism and is buried in the crypt of Westminster Cathedral in London.

Q: Where did you meet the Countess?

A: In the Ukraine. There I, a Benckendorff, met and married another Benckendorff, though the Countess was previously quite unknown to me and her branch of the family had also assumed another name. Some time ago I worked out that we are eighth cousins. The way we met was quite extraordinary, neither knowing that the other was of Benckendorff descent and yet feeling that we were kindred souls. Both of us were divorced, having made bad marriages when we were far too young, like so many who were brought up in the Soviet Union. The marriages did not last very long and there were no children. Some years after we met, in 2008, we left Russia and settled in the West.

Q: Did you know about the English Benckendorffs then?

A: No, we did not know anything about the ‘English’ branch of the family until five years ago. To our surprise, we discovered that they had lived in south-east Suffolk, very close to where we first lived before we moved here. Their choice was because of the agricultural connections of the Benckendorff family. Ransomes farm machinery, made in Ipswich, was used on our estate and there were also contacts with the Suffolk Fisons fertiliser company, which later came to own a very large property called Harvest House in Felixstowe.

And so the family story turned full circle. In any case, Suffolk is where we have made our home and we in no way regret it. This is the land of St Edmund, the patron saint of Suffolk and of England, and we fly his flag here. You introduced us to him and to the other local saints. We respect the Local Church and honour the local saints. That is our Orthodox duty. We had thought of calling our Suffolk home ‘Sosnovka’ from the name of our estate, but we agreed that we must be local and so we named it ‘St Edmund’s House’.

Q: What did you study as a young man?

A: In the 90s I studied history at the University of Kiev and then some years later theology at St Tikhon’s University of the Humanities in Moscow. However, I never taught history, because in the 1990s we had to practise commerce in order to survive. We were fortunate in business because of my knowledge of English and French and my wife’s knowledge of German. We did very well. That is how I came to study as a mature student at St Tikhon’s in Moscow and then we moved to the West in 2008 and England in 2010. Nearly six years ago we bought this old farmhouse. Now I still study theology and the history of the Russian Church and I have also written a novel in Russian under a pseudonym. We also breed roses which involves travel to many places, including to Germany. Financially we have been helped by the investments we made in the past.

Q: As you know, I come from the Suffolk-Essex border where the dry and sunny climate and the soil are ideal for seed growing, which was my father’s profession. He was a sweet pea expert and even has a sweet pea named after him. How did you come to breed roses and not, for example, sweet peas?

A: Like you, Fr Andrew, we love sweet peas, also lilac and many other flowers and shrubs, but both of us have always loved roses more, already in the Ukraine, where in the east the black earth is so fertile and the climate is so good. Some twenty years ago my wife fell in love with roses in a monastery there, where she had the obedience from her spiritual father of maintaining the monastery rose garden. A huge variety of roses is available in Russia and the Ukraine with sturdier stems than in England, even though you have David Austen roses. One of our favourite roses is ‘Zephyr’ from Turchinov. We also love lilacs and again there is a Russian lilac called ‘Beauty of Moscow’. We are introducing Russian roses, lilacs and others into England. This seems to be our mission!

Strangely enough, we discovered that my great-great-grandfather’s cousin, the ambassador Alexander Konstantinovich, and his wife, Sofia Petrovna, who was a Tolstoy, also grew roses. Then their grand-daughter, Natalia Konstantinovna, who passed away only in 2018, grew them. Her husband, Thomas Humphrey Brooke, who was a friend of Sir Alfred Munnings, became an internationally acknowledged expert on roses. He was a close friend of the rosarian Peter Beales at his gardens in Attleborough in Norfolk. Humphrey cultivated over 500 varieties of rose. I know Peter Beales’ son, who has just retired. Roses must be in the Benckendorff genes.

Q: Let us turn to Church matters now. As you follow Church affairs very closely, you know much about the schism between Moscow and Constantinople on account of the Ukraine. Do you see a way out of this?

A: There is always a way out. It is called repentance, the antidote to despair, the antidote that Judas did not take. Beware, he did not take the antidote and hanged himself. What must be done to undo this schism is to work in reverse. This means going back to what caused the schism and reversing it. This means that Constantinople must abandon its pretensions to the territory of the Russian Church in the ex-Soviet Union. These pretensions were formed because the Patriarchate of Moscow refused to grant anyone outside the Russian Federation autocephaly and because Washington paid Constantinople to commit the crime of setting up a fake Church in the Ukraine. Still, if Moscow had given the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly years ago, creating a national Church there, Constantinople would never have meddled, because the Ukrainians would have been satisfied already.

Next, or preferably before that, Moscow must immediately stop its schism with Constantinople, start concelebrating and abandon its excommunications and defrockings, freeing people to act according to their conscience. The schism was quite unnecessary and just brought Moscow into exactly the same isolation and disrepute as Constantinople, losing it all sympathy. Two wrongs do not make a right. How do you say that in English, when both are equally guilty? There is an expression with six and six in it.

Q: Six of one and half a dozen of the other?

A: Yes, that’s it. Anyway, Moscow must also negotiate a canonical solution to the African problem. Either Africa belongs canonically to the Patriarchate of Alexandria or to Moscow, or else the territory must be divided and different geographical regions will belong to one or the other. For example, Egypt, or even all Muslim North Africa, could remain under Alexandria and Moscow could take Black Africa, where it has a lot of political support, though only if it is prepared to set up a real, local, independent African Orthodox Church. You cannot have overlapping jurisdictions on the same territory. We must support the canonical order of the Church internationally.

Q: Is this realistic? Look at the Diasporas, where we have had overlapping jurisdictions for over a century.

A: Things are changing. Look, the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine will be over soon. The Kiev regime is collapsing. Some even say it will all be over for the Dormition, on 28th August. Perhaps not so soon. In any case, the USA is giving up on its Fascist friends in the Ukraine, who have failed. Americans hate failure. What is the way out? One way is if Trump, who is already the real President – some even say that Biden is literally, not just metaphorically, dead – could perhaps denounce the whole Ukraine project. He could say that it was all a fantasy of Biden, ‘Genocide Joe’, as they call him.

Trump must abandon the fake OCU Church that Constantinople set up in the Ukraine with US dollars, denouncing it as created by those who deceived him in Washington in 2018. President Putin will make the freedom of the Church a condition for peace anyway. The Church must be free from the persecution of the OCU, which must return the thousands of churches it has stolen. Trump must give up the illegal sanctions against Russia, release frozen Russian assets and return the stolen interest on those assets.

In this way President Trump can get a photo opportunity of the Two Presidents. He will be shaking hands with President Putin in Moscow (Trump loves having his photo taken) as the great hero, peacemaker and dealmaker, unlike Biden the warmaker and failure. Why, Trump could get a Nobel Prize – those prizes are funded by the CIA anyway, as we saw with Solzhenitsyn. Trump and Moscow can sign an agreement, stating that Washington has no claims to the Ukraine and that Moscow has no claims to the Baltics, Finland, Poland, Romania, or anywhere else west of the Ukraine. This will be historic, but should all have been done 33 years ago in 1991.

Q: What about Moldova?

A: This agreement would include Moldova, unless some minorities who live there along the border with the New Ukraine or Russia vote by democratic referendum to transfer, for example, the Transdnistrians and the Gagauzians. Most of Moldova will eventually go back to Romania. It is historically inevitable. The Patriarchate in Moscow has lost the loyalty of most Moldovans through its centralising racism and many there are already joining the Romanian Church.

Such a deal of the Two Presidents would give both Russia and Western Europe security, making NATO entirely redundant, which is what both President Trump and President Putin want. Such a new security agreement for Europe could be presented as a triumph for Trump (the Americans are experts at PR) and Moscow will be fully satisfied. Russia will set up the third Union State in the New Ukraine, which will be a second Belarus, perhaps also landlocked, as all the south and east of the old Ukraine, which are Russian, as I know, may well rejoin Russia. The Ukraine will be demilitarised and denazified, as Moscow needs. With such a deal both sides will save money and, above all, both will save lives.

Q: Do you think the New Ukraine will retain the western borders of Stalin’s Ukraine?

A: Moscow may well give some extreme western parts of Stalin’s Ukraine, for Stalin’s borders are what Biden and the EU Commissars have been fighting for, back to Poland, Romania and especially to Hungary, our ally. This would be seen as a great victory for the USA and as a great victory for Russia, though it would not be a victory for the Western European elite. But that elite does not count for anything internationally and can be ignored. Moscow negotiates only with Trump, neither with the sick old man before Trump, nor with the Western European puppies who lie and cheat.

With peace in the Ukraine, the Patriarchate in Moscow will also have to negotiate a new relationship with the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kiev, under which I began my Orthodox life. And probably also a new relationship with other parts of the Russian Church outside the Russian Federation. Otherwise, Moscow will lose everything there too. A wave of autocephalies must follow. The age of Soviet central planning is over. It was over with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, only the Church authorities did not keep up with changing times.

Q: Why do you say that this will not be a victory for the Western European elite?

A: The Western European political elite, its ruling class, has for eighty years been living off the USA, licking its heels and barking when told to. It has become dependent on the USA, not only a drug-addict enslaved to the USA, but also a vampire that sucks its blood. As in Dostoyevsky’s parable of the Grand Inquisitor, that elite does not want freedom. But Western Europe is a very expensive slave to keep and the now bankrupt USA can no longer afford it, just as one day it will no longer be able to afford to keep its other vassals, Israel, Japan and South Korea.

The American Empire is like the Roman Empire which in the early fifth century could not afford to keep Britain and had to abandon it. Western Europe will have to find its own way, control its own destiny, defend itself. Actually, it will be able to slash its futile military spending once the new security agreement or non-aggression pact with Russia has been signed. That is also what Russia wants. It is tired of being invaded by the West.

Today the USA is letting go of Western Europe. This means the UK and the EU, minus Hungary, Slovakia, others like Serbia and maybe later many more like Romania, Greece, and perhaps even Italy. The first three have already more or less negotiated their way out of the EU into BRICS. Freedom from the USA will undermine the parasitic globalist Western European elite of puppies and puppets, banksters and gangsters, unprincipled and hypocritical pawns all of them. They backed the Kiev Nazis even to their own detriment, allowing prices for their peoples to double and letting the Americans blow up the Nordstream pipeline.

That ruling class of perverts will have to resign, if they are not first voted out, or better arrested, because they no longer have the protection of Trump’s Washington. The Western European swamp will be drained. That is why they and their globalist media propagandists like the BBC feel betrayed and hate Trump. As a result of all this, we shall at last see new Western European rulers, hopefully far more respectful of the wishes of the native peoples of Western Europe. Then can be abandoned those satanic and blasphemous pagan festivals like Eurovision and the 33rd Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, which openly mocked Christ, Who was crucified when He was 33. No wonder French cathedrals burn down. If that is Western Civilisation, then there is nothing left to defend.

All these countries can then be at peace with the eastern half of Europe, comprised of Russia, the New Ukraine and Belarus. Importantly, this eastern half stretches on into North Asia, to the Chinese border and the Pacific Ocean. Russia is the gateway to Asia, the future, where three of the world’s four largest economies thrive. We are at last seeing the Gaullist vision of a natural unity which stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Western Europe will no longer be unnaturally cut off, but will rejoin the whole of Asia, of which it is only a north-western peninsula.

All this is possible, though if and when it happens is another story. It may all take many years and I trust more in Vance than in Trump. These are just my thoughts and hopes. We shall see.

Q: Will England take part in this New Western Europe, which will at last become a real part of Eurasia, which geographically it always has been?

A: Ah, dear old England. A good question. I really hope so. If the USA rejects England, it will have to leave the USA. It will not be the fifty-first State of the USA. And with the very fragile, violent and divisive situation in the present fifty States with their 35 trillion dollars of debt, that is not an enviable position to be in. I think England should ally itself with the new, post-American, Eurasian Europe of the BRICS Alliance. Ireland, Scotland and Wales surely will. May St Edmund and the English saints guide England towards this.

But for England to become sovereign again, the oppressive British Establishment ruling class will first have to be removed, with its private elite schools, Oxbridge, Westminster, BBC, Financial Times, Economist, tabloid press like the Guardian, the Telegraph, all those other Daily State propaganda mouthpieces, and the Blairs, Camerons, Sunaks and Starmers. As you have very often written, Father, that elite is alien, not Norman by blood, but Norman by mentality, spiritually Norman, made up of spiritual invaders.

Q: We have got into political affairs. To come back to our question, what in your view was the essential error behind the Greek-Russian schism?

A: Lack of communion. It is vital to remain in communion with everyone. It is a great, great sin to break communion, because if you do this, you cause division in the Church. And the Moscow bureaucrats who surround the Patriarch committed this sin, weaponising communion. And look where they are now: isolated, feared, unloved and scandal-ridden. It is all so Soviet. They have lost all their best friends – they even lost you, Father, who spent all your life fighting for communion and the reintegration of the Russian Church.

Q: Why do bishops break communion?

A: It is always because they want more power. And what do they do once they have power? They introduce novelties in order to justify themselves. This was exactly the case of Rome in the eleventh century. All the innovations they introduced after they had broken off communion from the Church were self-justification for breaking communion. And self-justification is the opposite of repentance.

A thousand years on and the Popes of Rome and the Vatican machine have still not repented, still claiming to be rulers of the Christian world, and so they are still out of communion with us, who follow the principle of the Local, which is the principle of Catholicity. They instead imposed the Centre, that is, Rome. Can you imagine, they tried to impose their barbarous Latin on the descendants of the Civilisations of the Incas, Maya and Aztecs! No respect for the Local!

We must be very strict about keeping in communion. The way back, the return, is in respecting the canonical territories of each Local Church. That is what Rome did not do and instead tried to impose itself by the sword on Orthodox territories, with their crusades, inquisitions and so on. Now Constantinople is trying to do the same, imposing centralisation in imitation of Papism. And Moscow Church bureaucrats tried to do the same, but God has intervened, its Soviet Empire over Non-Russians is crumbling.

Q: I would like to come back to my original question, which we did not answer. Do these considerations give us a solution to the divisions in the Diasporas, where there have been several overlapping jurisdictions for over a century?

A: In the Diasporas, where there are mixed Orthodox populations, responsibility for organising new Local Churches lies with the majority ethnic group, but that majority must respect all the customs of the minorities. This is what Bishop Tikhon, the future Russian Patriarch and Saint, did when he headed the multinational Northern American Orthodox Church before the Revolution. Then Carpatho-Russians and Russian-converted Alaskans were the majority, but minorities like the Syrians, Serbs and others were together with them.

Today the Greeks are the Orthodox majority there, as also in Australia, but unity is blocked because of the political and imperialist style of the Greeks. As long as they have that Hellenist style, unity will be impossible. Only when the Greeks have a Non-Greek Patriarch, will they be taken seriously. As regards Western Europe the Romanians are the majority. Here I am hopeful, because respect is what our Romanian Metropolitan Joseph gave our Russian and Moldovan parishes with our calendar, languages and customs, when we had to flee to his canonical protection from pseudo-Russian episcopal persecution. And we in turn greatly respect and love the Romanians. I love their singing and their simplicity! Mutual respect is vital.

Q: One well-known Russian Metropolitan said that the Moscow-Constantinople schism is as big and as permanent as the 1054 Western Schism. What do you think?

A: That was nonsense. This schism is all about personalities and they are temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow, as you say in English. Neither Moscow, nor Constantinople has renounced or changed the Creed, unlike Rome in 1054. So this schism is not at all on the same level as 1054, it is not a dogmatic issue, but a vulgar issue of territory and personalities. And personalities change and are replaced. In any case, the Metropolitan-oligarch who said that, the bureaucrat was in part responsible for the whole fiasco, is now suspended and completely discredited. Nobody is listening to him any more. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Q: Can other Local Churches play a role in healing the Moscow-Constantinople schism?

A: Of course, and a vital role. The Churches of Jerusalem, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Romania, Georgia, Macedonia, Poland and perhaps others like Antioch, Czechoslovakia and America, and of course the canonical Church of Metropolitan Onufry in the Ukraine, will play a vital role. Even some bishops in Greece and Cyprus are sufficiently non-racist to understand the reality. Some Local Churches are already playing that role, stressing the Conciliar principle, the principle of Sobornost, that is, Catholicity, which, by the way, is the exact opposite of Catholicism and it is precisely the spirit of Catholicism, that is Papism, which caused the schism. Read the interview with the new Bulgarian Patriarch, who was elected after the American candidate lost and was humiliated and the Greeks had to go home like whipped dogs. His words are inspired.

Q: Do you know Metropolitan Onufry?

A: Not personally, only by sight, but I do know Metropolitan Agafangel of Odessa and Archbishop Diodor quite well and they have the same spirit. The further you are from Moscow, the more you find that spirit.

Q: You mention that the essence of the schism is the lust for power on the part of bishops and the spirit of Catholicism or Papism which lies behind it. Can you expand on this?

A: We are all waiting for the restoration of canonical order in the Russian Church, but this cannot happen until the end of what some Russians call ‘Philocatholicism’. This means the fawning admiration by some Russian bishops of the Vatican power-structure, which is the concept of a Church-State, a Church which is a State, or is even more powerful than a State, as history saw at Canossa. However, I am completely against this word because I respect ordinary Catholics, who are Catholics only because they were born in a certain country and I would never insult or disrespect them. The disease inside the Russian Church is not Philocatholicism, the disease is ‘Philopapism’. That is the real heart of the issue, And, by the way, it has nothing to do with ecumenism. Some of the worst Philopapists are anti-ecumenist.

Q: In that case, can you define ‘Philopapism’ for us?

A: Yes, but first understand that Philopapism is not just a Russian disease, it has long infected Constantinople, where it is called ‘Eastern Papism’, and before that it infected Rome, where it has always been called Papism. In Rome the problem was and is Western nationalism, in Constantinople it is Greek nationalism and in Moscow it is Russian nationalism. In Russia, it is not at all a recent Soviet disease, ‘Sergianism’, unlike as some very politicised, anti-Communist emigres used to imagine, it goes back centuries in Russia too, long before Communism.

It existed, for example, just before the Revolution in the awful persecution of the so-called ‘Name of God’ monks on Mt Athos. It was Tsar Nicholas who stopped that persecution, which had been instigated by Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky), who later became the first leader of the émigré ROCOR. The persecution was carried out by bureaucrats who were more or less atheists. The First World War followed it. And most of those very same bishops who had persecuted simple piety, then abandoned Tsar Nicholas at the Revolution and even rejoiced at his overthrow. Later they had to repent, redeeming themselves at the price of martyrdom or of exile. They had to pay the price for their earlier vile persecution.

Q: What about the Soviet form of Philopapism?

A: The post-Revolutionary bout of Philopapism goes back to Metropolitan, later Patriarch, Sergius, who wanted to ‘save the Church’, just like the Popes and the recent Patriarchs of Constantinople. How can you ‘save the Church’? Christ is the Saviour! The Church does not need saving, it is we, including bishops and patriarchs, who need saving. Who do they think they are? The problem is that the Philopapists see the Church as a purely worldly organisation, just like the Popes of Rome, who used to lead armies in order to defend their Church. In order to defeat the barbarians, they themselves became barbarians! Who then was the gentleman?! From Patriarch Sergius this infection spread down to personalities like Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), who characteristically died in the arms of the Pope. Some say that he was a secret cardinal. Maybe. That is not the point. From him the disease has contaminated further to this day.

This disease is the mentality that bishops are ‘princes of the Church’, in fact they are perverted oligarchs, just like the Borgias in Renaissance Rome. This is poisonous. It is why I refused to go to many churches when I lived in the Ukraine and Russia. They were an immoral business operation and many bishops there are immoral, chosen only because they know how to make money, not because they believe in God, pray, or are monks. I think many of these new Russian Borgias should go to prison. The current Metropolitan Hilarion affair is only the tip of the iceberg. Others must be trembling now too. The truth is coming out and judgement is coming to them all.

Q: You said that Philopapism goes back centuries in Russia. When did Philopapism begin?

A: It came in after the fall of Constantinople, the Second Rome, in 1453. So began the idea of the Third Rome. Fighting against St Nil of Sora and the hesychast Non-Possessors – St Sergius of Radonezh had been one of them earlier on – the situation came to a head at the so-called ‘Raskol’, that is, the Old Ritualist schism 200 years later. Then the administrative centre of the Russian Church in Moscow was contaminated by Philopapism, which was also encouraged by the idea of the Third Rome, which maintains that Russia has a messianic mission. Russia does have a mission, but it takes place within the multilateral Alliance of Civilisations, which is what BRICS is about.

In other words, Philopapists think that Russia is exceptional, indispensable to the world and therefore anything its rulers do is justified. The antidote to this was in the concept of Moscow as a Second Jerusalem, but that option was cruelly rejected by the Moscow bureaucrats. It is not that I am in favour of Old Ritualism, which was a form of ignorant nationalism, but I am against persecution. What difference is there between the State persecution of the Old Ritualists in the seventeenth century and the State persecution of Orthodox in the twentieth century?

The Philopapist mentality creates pharisees and ‘high priests’, as Christ called them in the Gospel, those who like ‘the first places at table’. Philopapists consider that they are the chosen people and so above the law, above the canons, ‘exceptional’. But this mentality is why the pharisees crucified Christ, Who called them to order, what we call canonical order, and told them that our Kingdom is not of this world. He overturned the tables of these new moneychangers, which is what you did, Fr Andrew, when you chased out the new pharisees who were threatening you and screaming at you in 2021 and 2022. All those who persecuted you are one by one being removed. Bishops are not above the canons.

It is the Holy Spirit Who chooses us for mission, not pharisees. Pharisees think only in worldly terms of money and power, and camouflage themselves with messianism as self-justification for their lusts. It is simply lust for money and power that contaminates these people. Once they have money, they want power. It is always the same old sordid story of corruption and perversion. That is Philopapism.

Q: But Phariseeism itself is universal, isn’t it?

A: Yes, of course. It was this same missionary, messianic mentality which inspired the atheist Jew Bronstein-Trotsky, who wanted to spread the Communism of the Third International (which replaced the Third Rome) worldwide. He also persecuted, leading the Red Army and causing the deaths of millions. But it is not only Jewish, it can be Frankish, Norman, Venetian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, German, Soviet, American, or anything else.

For instance, Soviet messianism strangely resembles American messianism. This is because the struggle between Washington and Moscow is in fact the struggle between the First Rome and the Third Rome, for the USA is the heir to the infallible Popes of the First Rome. ‘We are the exceptional people, the indispensable nation’, the infallible US have been saying of themselves ever since the collapse of the SU (Soviet Union), though its collapse had nothing to do with the Americans. (See how even the initials US and SU and their symbols, the white star and the red star, are the same, just the other way round).

Communism collapsed because it is unrealisable and went bankrupt. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union went to the heads of the US elite. They claimed absurdly: ‘This is the end of history and we have won. As the victors, we can set up a World Empire, called Globalism, we have exceptional authority, therefore no laws apply to us, we can carry out genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria, in the Donbass and Gaza, we can ignore the International Criminal Court. We can do whatever we want’. In reality, this is just the same vulgar old imperialism, absolutism, immorality, cloaked in their smug Protestant self-righteousness and infallibility. It is Philopapism.

In reality only God is exceptional. No human being or country is exceptional.

Q: What do you think of what some call the ‘liberal opposition’ in the Russian Church, clergymen like Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev and the popular pastor Fr Alexei Usminsky? They are also opposed to these Vatican-adoring, ‘money and power’ Russian bishops, the pharisaic Philopapists, as you are.

A: The dissident liberals are opposed to the Philopapists, but not for the same reasons as I am. The liberals are opposed to such bishops because the liberals are in reality rationalistic and modernistic Protestants. Like all Protestants, they are naturally anti-Catholic, anti-Papist. However, like all Protestants they are also generally pro-Western and some are traitors to Russia, just like their corrupt enemies whom they fight and are also traitors to Russia (I make exceptions for some who are just extremely naïve and not very intelligent). We disagree with the liberals because we are not Protestants and we follow the historic Orthodox Faith.

We are not traitors, we are patriots of Russia, that is, of the real Russia, of Orthodox Rus. President Putin is preparing the way for that, for the coming Emperor. He took on not just Paris and Berlin, but the whole West and won. We hope that God gives him time to help cleanse the Church next.

However, I do disagree with the appalling way that the liberals have been treated, with their so-called ‘defrockings’ by the selfsame corrupt bishops. You cannot defrock a clergyman because he has different political views from his bishop under the absurd pretext that he is being ‘disobedient’. The threat of defrocking forced them and many others, in the Netherlands, Lithuania, Spain, USA and in Russia into joining Constantinople – they had no alternative. This is yet another example of the Moscow bureaucracy weaponising a sacrament, this time not the eucharist, but the priesthood. But grace is given by the Holy Spirit, not by pieces of paper signed by jealous or wicked bishops. Thank God, Patriarch Kyrill is beginning to remove them, suspend them or retire them. He has  a lot of work to do.

Q: How is authentic Orthodox missionary work different from American missionary work?

A: If you have a missionary message to spread to others, the message of Christ, then you do not spread it by violence and threats. This is what the ‘Roman Union’ of the Vatican did. This is what the ‘Soviet Union’ did. Now this is what the ‘American Union’ (which is USA and NATO – basically the ‘European Union’) does. They have all used violence and threats. This has guaranteed the downfall of all of them. It is what is happening now.

The American Union, usually called ‘The West’, is collapsing, it too has gone bankrupt. They have done it to themselves, just like the Soviet Union. As someone from the Soviet Union, I can see very clearly how the European Union has become the same. The commissars, mentality and lies of its politicians and journalists are exactly the same. But the Godless are always defeated because they are all from Babylon. Their Tower always collapses.

Authentic Orthodox missionary work does not use violence and threats. I have recently discovered the Russian saint, German of Alaska as an example. What a great monk! And how he has been ignored by Church authorities and was resisted by Russian State authorities (long before ‘Sergianism’!). He is unknown in Russia. St German lived among the Inuit people ‘as one of them’. Not even a priest, he did not impose his language or customs by violence or threats against the people. He did not try and steal their property. He was their servant and defender, not their persecutor or a ‘prince of the Church’. He was the real Apostle of Alaska. He was able to convert people, because he was Christlike.

In this he was just like Sts Cyril and Methodius, Apostles of the Slavs, St Stephen of Perm, Apostle of the Zyrians, St Nicholas, Apostle of Japan, or St Macarius, Apostle of the Altai, he respected others. That is the problem of the Moscow Patriarchal bureaucrats today, lack of respect for others, for the Local. And that is why they are losing everything, they put politics above the Church. If I may paraphrase St Matthew’s Gospel: Seek ye first the kingdom of man, and all these things will be taken from you’. They do not deserve to keep it. God will take it away from them because they are unworthy, just as He took Constantinople away from the Greeks in 1453 because of their racism. St German of Alaska’s way is the only way that Russia could convert the world and in no other way. Any other way is Philopapist.

Q: Whenever we talk, I feel nostalgic, as though I am talking to one of the old Russian emigres I knew in the 1970s, like my godfather, Nikolai Zernov. I would sit in his apartment in Northmoor Road in Oxford and look at the huge picture, almost fresco, he had of the Kremlin ‘before the deluge’, as he called it. Then there were Princess Kutaissova, Elizabeth Lopukhina, Dimitri Obolensky, Nadezhda Gorodetskaja or Lydia Slater, Boris Pasternak’s sister. They all had the same mentality. Why is this?

A: This is because we are Russian emigres like them! But I take your remark as a compliment. All I can say is that though we lived in the Soviet Union, we always kept our family traditions from before. Above all, we never, never accepted any Sovietisation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has increased this Philopapist corruption and perversion today. This has made it and those who are too closely allied with it, like those crazy ROCOR Protestant converts in New York, into pariahs. It is so sad and so unnecessary. They have painted themselves into the corner with their notorious scandals, as you say. Now they are complaining because the rest of the Church at best ignores them and at worst openly mocks them. But how else are you going to treat psychopaths?

Q: Do you have any words of hope for our readers?

A: Yes, there is one thing. You know, I never used to like Trump. I thought he was a clown as well as a criminal and a narcissist. He was also a Russophobe and armed the Neo-Nazis against us and sanctioned us. But recently, he said something very Orthodox, no doubt for the first time in his life and without knowing it. He said: ‘Fight, fight, fight’! I even wanted to buy a picture of this moment, but my wife stopped me. She has no interest in politics and says it is all a waste of time. She prefers gardening and our two cats to politics. She says cats are far more intelligent than politicians.

She may be right, she so often is. But I still maintain that the concept of ‘Never surrender’ is Orthodox, because Christ never surrendered. If He had surrendered, there would never have been the Resurrection. So I say that Trump was saved for a purpose by the grace of God, the bullet missed him, but hit Biden instead and stopped World War III, and we should all repeat: ‘Fight, fight, fight’! Another American said something like: ‘Only those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world do change the world’. This is in fact the definition of our fools for Christ. They change the world, corrupt and perverted bishops do not. Why, they cannot even change themselves.

July 2024

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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