Category Archives: Orthodox Western Europe

The Western European Elite Isolated

The Western proxy war in the Ukraine continues, though it is now more or less without the US, which is tired of losing so much money in that entirely unprofitable project. Thus, it is now a Western European proxy war. It seems as though the US will next abandon the equally absurd and loss-making NATO, which Russia has all but destroyed anyway. And the Ukrainians are running out of soldiers to die. Meanwhile, Zelensky has said that he will quit, providing he gets more money. ‘Give me the money and I will go away’. This is typical of a narcissist, whose sense of entitlement is such that he can only be compared to a spoiled brat. Given the new attitude of the US, Zelensky now has to find more dupes to exploit. And the dupes are queueing up for him in Western Europe. This is especially so in the UK, where the proud Establishment is still living in the delusional fantasy of Imperial greatness, although dead long ago, and in vainglorious Napoleonic France, where this fantasy is also shared.

Why do such delusions still exist? Sadly, the greater the empires of the past – the British and the French – and the longer ago they began (in Britain in 1066, in Capetian France a century later), the greater their delusions in the present. Moreover, the British and, in theory, the French, came out as victors in 1945, though they were victors only on paper, their victory was Pyrrhic. In reality, the British had begun handing over their Empire to the US as early as 1916, according to Milner’s Round Table plan. This plan was to destroy the Tsar’s Russia and then use the US as a catspaw to prolong British Imperialism. However, all that was good in the Tsar’s Russia, State-regulated Capitalism and free healthcare and education, survived in the USSR. It proved unvanquished. We clearly see that continuity today – Russia is still the largest country in the world and the largest economy in Europe. The Tsar’s Russia, with even its flag, is rising from the dead. Nemesis is coming for those who tried to destroy it.

The Western European elite has now isolated itself from both the Russian Federation and the New USA. There is no more ‘Collective’ West, for only Zelensky and the warmongering Europeans want to continue their war. Thus, that elite has made itself even more irrelevant and laughable in the eyes of the rest of the world and of its own non-zombified peoples. The future German Chancellor Merz (whom 71.5% of German voters do not support) and the unelected ‘Brussels Empire’ bureaucrat, Empress von der Leyen, have both expressed that isolation very eloquently. As the USA prepares to lift sanctions against Russia, the self-harming and very unpopular EU and UK elites (with about 20% of support) are applying even more sanctions to further destroy their own economies. Given the hostility of the Western European elite to both its Great Power neighbours, east and west, and the complete absence of any positive foreign policies or strategies, what possible future can they have?

First of all, we have to understand why the Western European elite refuses to grasp reality, whereas the USA, under Trump, has finally grasped the reality, that it has been willingly deceived by Kiev and its own former, very corrupt elite. The reason for the obtuseness of the Western European elite is because it is profoundly stuck in that above-mentioned thousand-year-old rut. This comes from belief in its snobbish and arrogant prejudice of its own mythical superiority, that somehow, mysteriously, ‘The West is Best’, that is, ‘We are best’. Conversely, the USA has, at worst, only a 250-year-old mentality of superiority, arguably, it may only be 80 years old, going back only to 1945. After all, we should not forget that the greatest ally of the USA in the nineteenth century was Imperial Russia, indeed Russia probably saved the US Union during its Civil War. And both countries fought together against Germany in two World Wars as allies. Are we returning to that once more?

Thus, the US elite is throwing off that mentality of superiority, which it took on from Western Europe, especially from the British elite. However, in Western Europe we can see how that anti-Christian mentality of superiority was shared by its most important leaders during the 1940s. For example, Hitler hated his neighbours, the Slavs (he slaughtered 30 million of them in his holocaust) and the Jews, just as they did during the Teutonic Crusades. Churchill hated ‘blacks and browns’, Africans and Asians, his imperial neighbours. As for De Gaulle, he hated his neighbours, the Arabs, just as they did during the Crusades against the Holy Land. Typically, by the end of 1940 all the Roman Catholic countries in Europe were run by Nazis. It can be said that this Nazism, the hatred of neighbours, is the common ideology of the Western European elite. Look back to Mussolini in Italy and Ethiopia, the Belgian Leopold in the Congo, the Dutch in the ‘East Indies’, the Spanish conquistadores, or the Italian Columbus.

But what will post-Yalta Western Europe be replaced by? Surely there needs to be a New Yalta? The Old Yalta was 80 years ago and is no longer relevant. A New Yalta would be attended by the New Big Three, Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi (instead of Churchill). ‘Eastern Europe’ (in fact the eastern half of Western Europe) is already making its choice, in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, even in former East Germany, probably in freed Romania next May and, as riots take place against the EU in Sofia, probably in Bulgaria too. Others will follow them. Thus, most of ‘Eastern Europe’ is already deciding on its future – it is in free trade and shared cultural contacts with the Russian Federation. Independent of Russia, it will also be independent of the EU. Western Europe also needs to return to and reintegrate the rest of Asia or, if you prefer, Eurasia. The people want it. After all, Europe is a fake Continent, it is part of Asia and all ‘Europeans’ came to the European Peninsula from Asia.

In other words, the future of Western Europe is also to be with, though in no way under, Russia, that is with the rest of Europe, half of which is precisely inside Russian borders. Today the symbolic head of Western Europe, the elderly and ill Pope of Rome, lies close to death, like his Religion in Western Europe, as also the Protestant groups in Western Europe, which broke off from the Popes, and which are now also dying out in pedophilia. This is also deeply symbolic. Is there a viable alternative in Orthodox Christianity? True, parts of both the Russian Church have been infiltrated through hatred-preaching ‘Orthobro’ bishops and the Greek Church through bribes, but there are other Orthodox Churches, which are free, not subjugated to the USAID of Biden. The other Local Orthodox Churches can help Western Europeans return to their roots and identity. Here is the chance for Western Europeans – to return to authentic, ancestral ‘European values’, from Christ, Who also came from Asia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Publication: New Services to Saints

The first volume of New Services, mainly to Saints of Western Europe, has now been published and illustrated in a large-print, spiral-bound A4 book of 147 pages for Church use, with rubrics printed in red. The services are composed in the standard English liturgical style of the mainstream, as established by the late Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) in the translation of the Lenten Triodion made by himself and Mother Mary nearly fifty years ago. This book is available from frandrew_anglorus@yahoo.co.uk. The cost is £10 in Great Britain and $20 elsewhere. The easiest way to pay is by Paypal, using the above e-mail. Below we enclose the foreword to this book and a sample from one service.

New Services to Saints

 Most Orthodox services to the major saints of Western Europe were composed between 1980 and 2020, though a few go back even before this, mainly through the inspiration of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe (+ 1966). All these services come from the inspiration of grassroots veneration for the local saints despite virulent opposition from some, expressed by one Archbishop (now Metropolitan) in the Russian Church, even as recently as 2015.

Of the 62 services to the major saints of the British Isles and Ireland, long available on the orthodoxengland website (together with services to lesser-known saints), 50 are connected with England (though 8 of them are not English), 5 with Ireland, 4 with Wales and 3 with Scotland. 53 of these services were composed by my late friend, the prolific translator of the Church’s liturgical treasury, Monk Joseph (Isaac/Edward Lambertsen). Eternal Memory!

From 2010 on, he composed a great many of the services for local Western saints on my commission, as I knew that his health was already failing, and that he was very busy, engaged with the composition of other services to saints of all lands and ages, as well as with translations. Isaac worked quickly, sending me his services for checking, improvements and electronic publishing.

Six services on the orthodoxengland site (All the Saints of the Western Lands, All the Saints of the Isles, St Felix, St Audrey, St Alfred and St Edmund) were composed by myself to long-beloved local saints between 1998 and 2015, though in part they go back before that. Three services (St Patrick, St Brigid and St Edward) were composed by the late Valeria Hoecke and translated by Monk Joseph. One (St Botolph) was composed by monks of the Transfiguration Monastery in Boston in 1992. One (St Rumwold) was composed by Rumwold Leigh of London.

To those I composed I have added the Akathist to the Felixstowe Icon of the Mother of God. Then there is an Akathist dedicated to my inspiration from always, St Andrew the Fool for Christ, and, as an Appendix, another to the martyred Gregory the New, two saints who lived almost exactly 1,000 years apart. It should be made clear that the latter has not yet been canonised and his name is still much slandered, but we firmly believe that canonisation will come in God’s own time. All three services were composed between 2000 and 2020, when the storm clouds of persecution were gathering over us and we needed the protection of the saints. (I do not include here our translation of the Slavonic Akathist to St Gabriel (Urgebadze), nor my composition of the Slavonic Akathist to St Alexander (Vinogradov), the New Martyr (+ 10 August 1938), which will both be published here in the coming days.

For many years available in an unedited form on the orthodoxengland website, these services have long needed editing and presenting in a homogeneous form for use in the British Isles and Ireland. Time has been in short supply in a very large parish and group of parishes and it will be a labour of love over the next few years to bring the other services to the same standard, as set by the translations of the late Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware), master of liturgical Greek and liturgical English. This edition reflects that standard.

This has meant consistently standardising the use of capital letters and punctuation, as well as eliminating that curious mixture of artificially archaic English, Latinate Victorianisms and untranslated foreign literalisms, beloved by some neophytes. Our services are intended for use in the mainstream liturgical English in use in our at present more than 100 parishes in the British Isles and Ireland, with foreign and alien phraseology and sectarian idiom removed.

We humbly dedicate and offer this booklet to the Most Reverend Metropolitan Joseph of Western and Southern Europe and his Synod of Bishop Mark of France, Bishop Nectarius of Brittany, Bishop Silouan of Italy, Bishop Athanasius of Italy, Bishop Timothy of Iberia, Bishop Theophil of Spain, and to Metropolitan Seraphim of Central and Northern Europe, Bishop Sofian of Germany and Bishop Macarius of Sweden. (We knew Metr Seraphim quite well when he was a young priest in Paris in the 1980s and he came to our home in Paris several times).

Our five-million strong Metropolias, soon to have at least one new bishop, but already with 1,046 parishes and expanding rapidly, has the task of caring for the more than 1.1 million Romanian Orthodox in the British Isles and Ireland. We also have to bring together Orthodox of all nationalities who live here and strengthen our mission to the native peoples of these islands. We have to unite them all together organically in authentic and canonical mainstream Orthodoxy, outside any political and sectarian extremes. The recent consecrations of our convent on the Isle of Mull in Scotland to the Celtic Saints and the dedication of our new church in Durham to St Cuthbert and St Bede provide our local witness to this. Many Years, Vladica!

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

St John’s Orthodox Church, Colchester, England

 

Contents

All the Saints of the Western Lands (Feast falls in June or July)

All the Saints of these Isles (Feast falls in June or July)

St Felix, Apostle of East Anglia (+ 647) (8/21 March)

St Audrey of Ely (+ 679) (23 June/6 July)

St Edmund, King of East Anglia, Martyr (+ 869) (20 November/3 December)

St Alfred of England (+ 899) (26 October/9 November)

Akathist to the Felixstowe Icon of the Mother of God (8/21 September)

Akathist to St Andrew the Fool for Christ (+ 936) (2/15 October)

Appendix: Akathist to Gregory the New (+ 1916) (17/30 December)

 

Service to All the Saints of the Western Lands

On the first Sunday after the commemoration of All Saints, that is the first Sunday of the Fast of the Holy, Glorious and All-Praised Apostles, we may celebrate the memory of all the Saints who have shone forth in the Western Lands.

 At Vespers

At ‘Lord I have cried’, we sing 10 stichira, 4 of the Resurrection in Tone 1, and 6 of the Saints in Tone VIII.

For one thousand years the light of the Sun of Righteousness shone forth from the East on the lands of the West, forming a Cross over Europe, before they fell beneath the darkening shades of the Churchless night. Let us now return to the roots of our first confession of the Holy Spirit in the bright Sunrise of Orthodoxy, which is brought again from the East, and so shine forth the light of the Everlasting Christ once more.

O all the saints of the Western Lands, pray to God for our repentance and return, our restoration and resurrection. Tell the people to leave aside the things of men, the fallen fleshly mind and all its vain musings, for they are without the Saviour and the Spirit. And so, through your life in the Holy Trinity, shall we find salvation in the purity of the Orthodox Faith before the end.

Now do we sing to all the saints of the lands of the West, and at their head the apostles Peter and Paul, the true glory of Old Rome, and, like stars in the dark night sky, to the constellation of the martyrs and fathers who followed in their apostolic footsteps, leaving behind them the great treasury of holy relics. O First Rome, who art glorious in thy saints alone, do thou return to the eternal faith of Orthodoxy through the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father, as the Saviour tells us.

Thus from the fountainhead of the East through Old Rome flowed streams of the Holy Spirit to all the lands of the West, through Gaul and Spain, to the uttermost isles in the far ocean and to all the lands of the north, where darkness saw the light of Christ and all the trees of the forest bowed their heads before the Wisdom and Word of God, forsaking the superstitions and proud errors of the pagan past.

O all you holy women, martyrs, matrons and queens, from Old Rome to Sicily of the south, from Sardinia to Iberia, from Gaul to the islands of Britain, from the Celtic realms to the Germanic lands of the north, preferring the humble truth of the Galilean to the proud might of pagan lore, ye have brought the words of Christ to dumb men, raising up infants and kings to the measure of the stature of Christ, so hallowing your peoples and our souls by the light of the Holy Trinity.

In these latter times the light of the true Faith has come to us once more. Driven from the East by evil men, Divine Providence has shown us the surpassing Wisdom of the Word of God, to enlighten our hearts and our minds by the Holy Spirit in the Church. Therefore now do we praise Archbishop John, who came from the east with true teaching to renew the commemoration of the saints of old, and who prays to God for the salvation of our souls.