Category Archives: Pastoral Matters

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 11)

The Update

Finally, on 15 April 2016 we managed to buy the premises for our future church in Norwich. After a three and a half month wait to receive planning permission from Norwich City Council, we had to wait an additional six months for exactly the same organization to send our solicitor the lease. Now we can at last start building work to transform the premises into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May 2015, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May 2015 we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

On Friday 15 April 2016 we were at last able to complete the purchase of our premises and prepare to engage a builder to start work on the premises.

From Recent Correspondence (Lent 2016)

Q: Why is there so much opposition among the Orthodox faithful to the forthcoming Council in Crete?

A: Because it promises to be merely a politicized meeting of bishops. First of all, how can you say that you are having a Council when you do not know if it is a Council, because you do not know if the Holy Spirit will be present? We must understand that a meeting can only become a Council if the Holy Spirit is present. This is why meetings only become Councils on their reception by the people of God, who recognize the inspiring presence of the Holy Spirit. So far this looks like a meeting of bishops, with the US, the EU and the Vatican in the background, which is not Pan-Orthodox because it does not include all the bishops or, for the moment, even representatives of all the Local Churches. To call a meeting a Council before the event is presumptious and pretentious, even more so when you call it ‘Great and Holy’.

Secondly, how can you have a Council when only a small selected minority of Orthodox bishops have been invited? Thirdly, how can you have a Council when the most important question, the calendar issue, has been removed from the agenda? Fourthly, how can you have a Council when several Local Churches or authoritative voices in Local Churches have been raised in particular against the anti-dogmatic contradictions in the proposed important document on relations with Non-Orthodox? Finally, many have been disturbed by the date of the opening of this meeting: 16/06/16. It contains the triple six of Antichrist. How could the organizers, so blind to any transparency, also be so provocative as to start the meeting on that date, so greatly perturbing the faithful?

Q: You say that the US, the EU and the Vatican are in the background. What exactly do they want?

A: All thisworldly institutions want an aggiornamento of the Church, like that which Roman Catholicism underwent in the 1960s. They want to introduce into the Church secularism, humanism, new calendarism, homosexual marriage, banning fasting and monasticism. In other words, they want to destroy the Church, they want a modernist, spiritually toothless and spineless Church, degutted of ascetic life, spirituality and the sacred, so that they can adapt the Church to their worldly agenda, reducing it to a mere human institution, as they have done elsewhere. And who is their prince, the prince of this world? Satan.

Q: So you are against this meeting?

A: I did not say that. Let us wait and see. This meeting could produce schism, given the arrogant lack of consultation by its organizers with the monasteries, parish clergy and people, with the people of God. For example, why have they not invited a distinguished monastic elder from each Local Church to the meeting to represent the people of God? And, as I said, a meeting, however unpromising, can become a Council. All depends on the Holy Spirit. Man proposes, but God disposes. Sadly, for the moment, all we have seen is bureaucratic men proposing.

Q: You have reported elsewhere the opening of the Russian Cathedral in Paris in the autumn. What are your hopes?

A: Our hopes are that the statement of Patriarch Alexei II thirteen years ago will at last be realized. In other words, we hope that this will be the foundation stone of a Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Western Europe and that that will be the foundation of a future Local Church.

Q: So you want to see in Western Europe a kind of European OCA?

A: Before answering, I should perhaps say that what I want is not really relevant, what is important is what God wants. I will answer only because you have asked.

Not at all, we do not want another OCA. The OCA was a failure firstly because its foundation was politicized, being founded during the Cold War, secondly because it was granted autocephaly unilaterally without consultation with the other far more numerous dioceses of other Local Churches on the same territory, and thirdly because it was founded on compromises of ascetic, liturgical and canonical culture, caused by its protestantization, putting American culture above the Church. This meant that a great many English-speaking Orthodox in the USA, the ones whom it was allegedly designed for, simply ignored it. Personally, if I lived in the USA, I would not belong to the OCA. That is no judgement on the many sincere and pious people who do belong to it or the good work that parts of it do, this is merely a personal statement.

Q: So what do you want to see in Western Europe?

A: What we want to see is what we want to see everywhere, including in North America. That is, quite simply, a Local Church that is fully Orthodox, spiritually pure, politically independent and faithful to the Tradition, but which freely celebrates, whenever pastorally necessary, in the local language and venerates the local saints. What could be simpler? And yet human beings with their compromising political cults or narcissistic personality cults make it all so complicated.

Q: To come back to the OCA, what do you make of the concelebration between Patriarch Bartholomew and Metr Tikhon of the OCA?

A: There are modernist, political dissidents in the OCA who want to become a sub-department of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, in some special American Metropolia, just like the Rue Daru group of ex-Russians in Paris, the ex-Sourozhian schismatics in England, or some schismatic Diaspora Ukrainians. It seems to me that a battle is going on between the two factions there, the modernists who want to leave for Constantinople and those with at least some sense of the Tradition who want to stay as a group under the protection of the Russian Church. Personally, I have always thought that a split is inevitable, with all the parishes in Alaska and most in Canada and Pennsylvania around St Tikhon’s, returning to the Russian Church, perhaps within ROCOR, and the others, like those at St Vladimir’s, going over to the Greeks. That would be logical and at last clear up the canonical anomaly once and for all.

Q: The OCA was founded nearly two generations ago. Why has it taken so much longer to begin even thinking about a Local Church in Western Europe?

A: So much longer? We have been thinking about it for thirty years and more! On the other hand, you do not do things prematurely. In my view, the OCA was premature – it should have remained a Metropolia, English-speaking but faithful to Russian Orthodox Tradition, waiting for freedom in Russia, which came 20 years after its independence.

The main problem in Western Europe has been the delay caused by the Paris schism over eighty years ago. The divisive defection of Russophobic aristocrats and modernist intellectuals from the Russian Tradition to the Patriarchate of Constantinople and a self-invented ‘tradition’ meant that the development of an authentically Orthodox Local Church was greatly delayed because the Russian Orthodox presence was so weakened by their disaffection. For instance, although (or because) the Constantinople Parisians are bankrupt, they are still occupying the (smallish) 19th-century Russian Cathedral in Paris, and therefore a new Cathedral and seminary have had to built and equipped at vast expense and with great political complications.

Q: Does the Church Outside Russia, ROCOR, have a role in the construction of this Metropolia in Western Europe?

A: That depends on the leadership of ROCOR, not on mere parish priests like me.

Q: Does that answer mean that in Western Europe at least ROCOR will become dependent on the Church inside Russia?

A: Not necessarily. Everything is still possible. There are parishes in Western Europe dependent on the Church inside Russia and parishes dependent on the Church Outside Russia that are identical in ethos. Some, sadly, are definitely not identical in ethos because of the hangover from the Soviet past despite transfers of controversial clergy out of Europe by Moscow in the last few years. In ROCOR we patiently wait for that vestigial ethos to die out, as it is dying out. Once it has died out altogether, convergence will come.

Q: You mean that ROCOR in Western Europe will merge with the Church inside Russia or that the Church inside Russia in Western Europe will merge with ROCOR?

A: I don’t know. What I do know is that the most active and most missionary, the most spiritually alive, will dominate. Those who are spiritually asleep will be absorbed. If you do not have younger bishops, resident bishops, active bishops, missionary bishops, bishops who are interested in their flocks and local saints, you will die in your self-made ghetto. This is what happened to ROCOR in South America. This is of course true for all Local Churches and their dioceses in the Diaspora. If you do not live, you will die. Surely, that is not too complicated to understand?

For example, today, just in the eastern third of England, we need twelve priests who can speak at least some Russian and some English – if they are bilingual, that would be perfect. I could name the places where they are needed. But where are we going to find them? We have to encourage men to think about this. That requires leadership, time, effort and energy.

Q: How can you describe the ethos of ROCOR, as compared with the ethos of parishes dependent on the Church inside Russia?

A: The emphasis of ROCOR in the last 25 years especially has quite clearly been on the New Martyrs and Confessors, Anti-Sergianism and Anti-Ecumenism. Wherever within the jurisdiction of the Church inside Russia there is veneration for the New Martyrs and Confessors (and it is very extensive), wherever there is resistance to the ideas that the Church must swim with the secular tide of the State and resistance to ecumenist compromises (also extensive), there is joy in ROCOR. However, the fact is that some of the foreign parishes in the jurisdiction of the Church inside Russia, suffered in the past from modernism, ecumenism and liberalism, unlike parishes inside Russia. When the ethos becomes identical, then there will be a complete merger, though, as I say, it is not clear which part of the Church will dominate it. That will depend on the leadership of bishops.

Q: You mentioned local saints in Western Europe. Who at present venerates those local saints?

A: It mostly seems to be immigrants from Eastern Europe, who have the sense of saints and relics. Sadly, despite all our decades of efforts, there are few native Western European Orthodox.

Q: Why? I thought there were many converts?

A: That is a myth. There have never been ‘many’ converts. At most about 2,000-3,000 in the heyday and many of those soon lapsed because they were received into the Church for the wrong reasons or for ideological reasons, with certain clergy trying to build up artificial empires, which of course soon collapsed. Most of their children also lapsed. I doubt if there were ever more than 1,000 serious converts.

However, in the last ten years, I have witnessed a change. Converts started coming in numbers in the 1960s after the collapse of Anglicanism. In other words, most converts were from an Anglican background, often of a public school or wealthy background and most were at that time 30 or 40 years old. Well, that generation, what I call the ‘Kallistos generation’, is literally dying out. Some are still alive, but are in their late sixties or older. The vast majority of these are either in the Antiochian jurisdiction which at last has a new, young, local bishop, or else under the Constantinople Vicariate, which is dependent on an elderly French bishop in France, whom I knew when he was a young priest.

Together, about 600 in all, they together form a sort of Anglican Orthodoxy. For example, as far as I know, the Antiochian clergy are ex-Anglican vicars who have not received training in Orthodoxy and do not know how to do all the services; then the people do not know how to sing; the Vicariate situation is similar. I know one such Antiochian community, where the priest has banned any language other than English! This is racism, though I suspect partly it is because the priest does not understand any language other than English, let alone the Orthodox ethos.

Q: So converts are dying out?

A: Not exactly, rather their nature is changing. There are some new converts, but they do not usually have an Anglican background; after all very few English people nowadays do – even in the mid-19th century, only 50% of English people were ‘Anglican’, that is, they belonged to the Church of England. Although there are few of these new converts, at least they are converting properly and not creating a semi-Orthodoxy, an Anglican-Orthodox club.

Q: So what does that mean for these convert communities?

A: It means that many Vicariate communities number fewer than ten, usually quite elderly people, and form a kind of ex-Anglican clique, centred on the dead Metr Antony Bloom. Where they are more numerous, most of the people are Eastern Europeans. In a similar way, ageing Antiochian groups are being saved from extinction by Eastern Europeans, especially church-deprived Romanians. Most of these groups do not have their own premises and use Anglican churches.

Q: So what is the justification for using English in services, if there are fewer converts?

A: There are now three justifications. Firstly, there are still English people, converts or children and grandchildren of converts with the English husbands of Orthodox women, secondly, there are the English-speaking children of Eastern Europeans and thirdly, in mixed-nationality parishes, English is simply the common language. The future is with the second group, children of Eastern Europeans, because they are now the majority of English-speaking Orthodox.

Q: How are they to be kept in the Church?

A: That is the key question. In ROCOR, for example, the London Cathedral lost virtually everyone from its second generation, let alone from the third and fourth. And that is a typical story for all jurisdictions everywhere. Why? Because they had no identity, apart from an ethnic one, which they naturally disowned. It is vital for Orthodox children born here or going to school here to have an Orthodox identity, to know and appreciate our civilizational values, to know that we are simply Christians. The old generations generally failed to do this, their identity was purely ethnic, not spiritual.

Thus, the children went to school, lost their parents’ language and said, ‘I’m English, this is nothing to do with me, it’s only for old people’. Assimilation. For example, there are six Anglican Cypriot priests in the Diocese of London. Why? Because they did not understand Greek, so they left the Greek Orthodox Church. Of course, we can only give children this identity if parents bring their children to church regularly. Those children have to be instructed in Sunday schools and they have to have activities, which creates in them a sense of belonging to the Church. If parents do not bring up their children in the church, then they will be completely lost.

Q: Why do Protestants so value the Old Testament?

A: The Reformation was largely financed by Jews (despite Luther’s virulent anti-Jewishness) and most Protestants have always been pro-Jewish. Cromwell depended on them almost entirely. (Even today Israel depends entirely on Protestant countries, especially the USA; Catholics have always been more sceptical). Thus, the Protestants even use the Jewish Old Testament in favour of the Christian one! For Orthodox, by far the most important book of the Old Testament is the Psalter, which is why you rarely find Orthodox reading the Old Testament (other than Genesis and Exodus), but rather just the New Testament and the Psalms.

Q: Why is the USA forcing countries, like the Ukraine and also African countries, into accepting homosexual marriage? Is Obama a homosexual?

A: I have no idea what Obama is – except that he supported thuggery by toppling the democratically-elected government of the Ukraine and replacing it with a murderous Fascist junta, which has little control of the country outside Kiev. Then there are the US drones which can murder anyone anywhere. As regards his other personal inclinations, I would not rely on internet rumours.

Now for your main question, which needs a historical answer.

When, in the 11th century, Satan set about destroying Christendom, his first target was to desacralize, that is, secularize, the Church. Satan cannot stand the presence of the sacred, the sacred must be removed from the world because it prevents him from realizing his plans to take total control of the world. This he did by attacking the Church at its weakest point, that is, in the Western provinces, where all had been weakened by the barbarian invasions. In the 11th century the Western Patriarchate was converted to secularism, with what had been the Church becoming a State, becoming secular, changing the Creed, controlling murderous armies, the courts and sponsoring invasions etc. In history this is called papocaesarism.

In other words, the first step to Satanization, was to remove the Altar. The second step was to remove the Throne, that is, to remove the sacral monarchy. This act came later and was done in the 17th century in England, in the 18th century in France and in the 20th century in Russia, although it is true that the Western monarchies had been deformed before then, either by parliamentarianism, or else by absolutism, neither of which conforms to the Orthodox Christian understanding of monarchy, which is the presence of the Lord’s Anointed among the people.

Thus, having removed the spiritual content of the Faith and the Ruler, having desacralized the Faith and the King, there remained the third and final stage, to desacralize or secularize the Christian People and popular culture. This means destroying Christian cultural values (a process that was very rapid in the 20th century), destroying the family – very rapid from the 1960s on after the fall of the Second Vatican Council, when fasting was abolished and so now today we have an obesity crisis). Then they also started destroying the identity of the human person in the unisex movement that since the 1960s has resulted in only two generations in a transgender, transhuman society.

This enslavement is a form of suicide. It is why Russian Orthodox Tsardom, the Christian Empire, had to be destroyed in 1917. With its slogan of Orthodoxy, Sovereignty and the People, the Faith, Tsar and Rus, in English, Altar, Throne, Cottage, in French, Foi, Roi, Loi, its existence was the one thing that made upside down Satanism, with its aim of destroying the Church, the Ruler and the People, impossible.

Q: Can this situation of spiritual enslavement be reversed, or is an imminent end inevitable?

A: Nothing is inevitable because for human beings repentance is always possible. In Russia, the Church is slowly being restored and with Her the ideal of a Spiritual Empire, with a Christian Emperor and People. However, nothing is certain and there are reasons for both profound pessimism and profound optimism. May God’s will be done. On 18 December 1917 the Tsarina Alexandra wrote in her diary: (The Revolution in Russia) ‘is a disease, after which Russia will grow stronger. O Lord, be merciful and save Russia!’ May this hopeful prophecy be true.

Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Paris to Open in the Autumn

Alexander Orlov, the Russian ambassador to France, announced on 14 March that the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Paris will at long last be opening officially this autumn, hopefully in October. After many years of delays, the news that a Cathedral is opening in the historic centre of the Russian emigration is welcome indeed. The official opening will take place in the presence of the Russian and French Presidents and His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill.

The 4,000 square metre plot of land in prestigious central Paris near the Alma Bridge will house not only the new Cathedral with its five cupolas (the dedication has not yet been announced), but also the Russian seminary, a library, a school for 150 pupils, meeting rooms, diocesan offices and gardens. The Russian ambassador stated that the Cathedral is seen as a pilot and that other similar cathedrals could be built in other Western capitals.

The opening of the new Cathedral is a step towards realizing the vision of the saintly Metr Pitirim of Saint Petersburg (1850-1920). One hundred years ago exactly his desire was to establish in his jurisdiction a Russian Orthodox Cathedral in every Western capital and translate the service books of the Church and Patristic literature into every Western language. Having lost one hundred years, we can only hope that this event will be a step towards that goal.

We pray that the missionary efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe will turn increasingly towards establishing a united Russian Orthodox Metropolia here. This was long the vision and hope of many of us in the twentieth century and it was confirmed by Patriarch Alexey II of Moscow in 2003, who foresaw that such a Metropolia would be the foundation stone of a future Local Church in the spiritual desert of contemporary Western Europe.

A Commentary on a Universal Prayer

O Lord, forgive us for the sins of not knowing and rejecting the Church,

= Forgive us for our ignorance of the Church through the sins of distant ancestors who were forced into following the heresies and errors of the Western rulers of that age and so fell away from the Church, and for rejecting the Church by not seeking Her.

failing to keep the spiritual purity of Holy Orthodoxy and so failing to share in the missionary Cross of Holy Rus, the Christian Empire of the Third Rome,

= Forgive us for the sins of new calendarism (modernism, liberalism, ecumenism), old calendarism (phariseeism, sectarianism), phyletism (nationalism and racism), narcissism (personality cults, false eldership) and the impurity of other deviations and deformations (spiritual delusions).

and betraying the memory of the Anointed of God, not understanding and revering the holiness of the last Christian Emperor and his Family.

= Forgive us for accepting what the rulers of our countries did to betray and undermine the Christian Emperor and Empire in 1917 and for believing the lies about them that have ever since been inherent in Western culture.

On Modernism

From Recent Correspondence on Modernism

Q: What is modernism?

A: Modernism, often called renovationism in Russian, is merely secularization, that is desacralization, under the camouflage of the word ‘modern’.

Q: How did you encounter modernism in the Orthodox Church?

A: Between 1973 and 1980, I met a great many modernists: Intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals. First the Parisians living in England, then those in France itself, where Paris was the source of all the problems. In France in 1985 I also encountered freemasonry among such ‘Orthodox’ modernists. It was very widespread among them then and perhaps still is.

Q: So you met modernism very soon?

A: Yes, it was actually presented to me as the norm, as real Orthodoxy!

Q: But you rejected it?

A: I was seeking the source of the sacred, not the secular! So I instinctively and automatically felt that modernist Orthodoxy was a fake, not the real thing, but I also knew that from experience, my own and through having observed Church life, the real thing, in Russia.

Q: Which modernists did you meet?

A: The well-known names: in England, Nicholas Zernov, the then Fr Basil Osborne, Metr Antony Bloom, Fr Lev Gillet, Fr Sergei Hackel, Fr Nicholas Behr, and in France Fr Boris Bobrinsky, Fr Elie Melia, Olivier Clement, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Nikita Struve, Konstantin Andronikov, Fr Jean-Claude Roberti, Fr Jean Gueit, Fr Alexander Schmemann and many other lesser known names who simply followed the fashion that they set, including those active in Syndesmos.

I have to say that these figures are nearly all departed now, part of a generation that was deeply compromised by modernism. Indeed, I also met many who had personally known well those who had led modernism in the previous generation, for example Archbishop John (Shakhovskoy), Fr Nikolay Afanasyev, the former Marxists Fr Sergius Bulgakov and Berdyayev, Fr Paul Florensky, Yevdokimov, Fedotov, Zander, Zenkovsky, or Mother Maria Skobtsova. Many of them had relatives who disagreed with them completely.

Q: I notice that you have not mentioned two well-known members of modernist clergy in England.

A: There are two well-known exceptions because they are lesser, more subtle figures in modernism, shall we say, semi-modernist, that is, modernist under the cloak of traditional. One dead, one still alive, they belong to the ‘spiritual’ school of modernism, which is still popular and they are revered by naïve newcomers and all the Tradition-less.

It is important to distinguish between the different grades of modernism, from the primitive to the sophisticated. For example, I have seen Archbishop Basil (Krivoshein) mentioned as a modernist. I can see where that comes from (his interest in St Simeon the New Theologian and his ecumenical contacts), but he cannot be compared to the above.

Q: Why are such ‘moderate modernists’ revered?

A: As they say, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Q: Did you meet Metr John Zizioulas?

A: Not then. I only met him about eight years ago.

Q: And Fr John Meyendorff?

A: No, I never met him, but he was among the more moderate, except on fasting.

Q: What was your reaction to all these figures?

A: I instinctively knew that they were wrong but at the time I could not explain why, because I did not have the tools or arguments from experience and from theological study to answer them. For example, I understood that their philosophy was characterized by pride, they all thought that they knew better than the Church. They were above the Church. And this pride was characterized by intellectual fantasies, the result of a lack of rootedness in reality and spiritual reality, the Tradition. And the characteristic of this was their inability to provide spiritual food. They fed the brain – to the point of their books and talks giving you headaches – but they were incapable of feeding your soul, leaving you dry.

Q: Why were there, and why are there still, so many modernists in the Orthodox Diaspora?

A: There were and are so many – relatively speaking – they are in fact very few, they just make a lot of noise – in the Diaspora because these people encountered the West directly and never having had any roots in the Tradition, they wanted to mix their superficial Orthodoxy with Western culture. Uprooted from an Orthodox context and denying monastic life, they did not want the spiritual purity of Holy Orthodoxy, but compromise, they wanted to swim with the Western tide. That is why all modernists are essentially ecumenists and secularists. They try to conform the Church to the world, instead of conforming themselves (the world) to the Church.

Q: And why was Paris the centre of modernism?

A: Paris was where the French-speaking aristocrats and intellectuals from Saint Petersburg who had carried out the Revolution under Western influence and with Western backing had chosen exile. A great many of them were freemasons, some, like Yusupov, had been very interested in the occult and hypnotism. Paris was the place of their exile, where they were called to repentance. In other words, this is where the most spiritually decadent Russians, nominal Orthodox, highly protestantized, in the sense of secularized, went to live.

There were two groups. First, there were left-wingers, like Bulgakov, Berdyayev and Mother Maria, but most were right-wing constitutionalists or republicans who wanted either the British model or else the French model of political organization. None of them of course wanted Orthodoxy. All broke away from the Russian Church and her liturgical and canonical disciplines, in other words, they broke entirely away from the Tradition. This they did on the pretext of seeking ‘freedom and creativity’! The saddest thing was that they did not understand repentance.

Q: Why did they not simply become Protestants or Uniats – that would have been honest?

A: Because they were pretentious, which is a disease of intellectuals. They wanted to be different and lord it over others through their ‘exotic’ differences. If they had simply been Protestants or Uniats, no Western-Establishment figures or ecumenists would even have looked at them, they would have lost their exotic tag and been forgotten as immigrants. But by setting up a Westernized branch of Orthodoxy, they attracted attention and admiration. In other words, they, or rather their descendants, were courted by those who wanted to destroy the very Soviet Russia which they had themselves created in 1917, in order to replace it with the sort of degutted Russia they did briefly create in the 1990s until the revival in 2000. For secularist Western Establishments they were all ‘useful idiots’.

Of course, these modernists were peddling a fake Orthodoxy, but Anglicans and others knew no better and gave these semi-Orthodox a false authority by buying their books and listening to their talks. If you say modernist things with a Russian accent, you are suddenly exotic and interesting. Some of these émigrés even faked Russian accents to sound more Russian! There was a lot of acting going on in order to hoodwink simple people, even hypnotism. If you look, you will see that almost all their books were bought and read either by Non-Orthodox or else by converts who knew no better.

Q: Why do so many intellectuals fall into modernism?

A: Because they live uprooted lives in their heads, and not their hearts. So they are prey to fantasies. If you are an intellectual type, you must have a strong spiritual or ascetic life to balance it out. For example St Justin (Popovich) was an intellectual, but it did not, forgive the pun, go to his head. So anyone can become a saint, even an intellectual, but such saintliness exists despite intellectualism, not because of it.

Q: What is the antidote to modernism?

A: First of all, let me say that the antidote is not the censorious condemnation and ritualism of the pharisees. That also comes from hardness and dryness of heart, lack of compassion. It fails to take account of the need for pastoral dispensation, true ‘ikonomia’. The first victims of modernism are the modernists themselves.

The antidote to modernism can never be in another ism, but in the Church. And that antidote is in seeking spiritual food, not intellectual food, and spiritual food comes from holiness, which comes from asceticism, which is exactly what the modernists reject. That is why they dislike people going to the sources in Eastern Europe and Russia, especially Mt Athos. In true Protestant style, modernists hate anything that is beyond the rational, mysterious. What can be more ‘irrational’ and mysterious than holiness? They lack the sense of the sacred.

Holiness is one of the four characteristics of the Church, which they reject, since they reject the Church. For them the Church is not One – there are many ‘Churches’; the Church is not Holy (which is why they desacralize everything), but to be reformed; the Church is not Catholic (in the Orthodox sense of being the same everywhere and at all times), because the modernists reject everything outside their 20th century mental ghetto; and the Church is not Apostolic, because they reject the Faith of the Apostles, the inherited Tradition. The antidote to modernism is in holiness, that is, in the saints.

Q: But some of these modernists were much interested in saints?

A: You have hit the nail on the head – ‘interested’ in saints. Interested in saints – how very fashionable! They were interested in the outward events in the lives of saints, but not in becoming saints. They intellectualized or externalized everything, making it abstract, into a philosophy – they did not live the Faith. Theirs is an outward or Uniat attitude to the Faith, which is of course why many of them had sympathies with Uniatism, like Solovyov did. They loved to talk about ‘techniques’, techniques of icon-painting, techniques of Church singing, techniques of celebration etc. These techniques they analyzed constantly. They spoke about hagiography – but did not want holiness. They spoke, they wrote, but they did not do, they did not fast and pray and there is no holiness without fasting and prayer.

Q: Do you think that modernism has a future?

A: Yes and no. Most of the well-known names of modernists belong to those who have died in the last 75 years, many in the last 25 years. And modernism is strangely old-fashioned in the present post-modernist world, which is characterized by cynicism. The only answer to cynicism is faith, not half-faith and half-faith is what modernism is: Halfodoxy instead of Orthodoxy. In that sense modernism is over because it has no answer to post-modernism, which it created. And yet it is not over.

For example, I remember the words of Metr Antony Bloom, when real Orthodox started coming to his church in London around the year 2000. They were naturally, like the rest of us had been decades before, very shocked by what they saw. He said that it would take fifty years to convert these people to Orthodoxy (that is, to his Bloomism). In other words, the truth is that it will take fifty years to convert the modernists to Orthodoxy. There is still the hangover from the past and it will take time for the vestiges of modernism to die out. In that sense, modernism is not over.

Q: Some would be shocked by your listing of Mother Maria Skobtsova as a modernist. She was canonized by the Rue Daru group with the blessing of the Patriarch of Constantinople.

A: As you know, that top-down canonization was controversial and you would be hard put to find a single icon of her even in any Greek Church in the world, let alone in others. In other words, her canonization was purely local and actually very political. Veneration for her simply does not exist in most of the Orthodox world, given her very strange life and anti-Orthodox writings. Having said that, however, we must say that in her concentration camp death, she, like millions of others, must have cleansed herself.

Q: So is she a saint?

A: I would say that her destiny has not been revealed to us. Let us remain silent. We do not know. We simply do not know the measure of her repentance in Ravensbruck. It may well have been deep and complete, as surely it was for millions of others. In the hour of death, people become realistic, which is why the memory of death is ascetically so important. Here we have a vital point. There is no place for personal dislike, still less hatred, for these individuals. Like the rest of us, they made their mistakes, it may be that many of them repented before the end, though of course the damage was done by then. We should pray for all of them. Some of them had good hearts – they were poisoned by their heads.

For instance, I remember Fr Alexander Schmemann, He was a charming and interesting man – though of course we agreed on nothing. But I still pray for him. Or there was Elisabeth Behr-Sigel the feminist Protestant pastor. She said appalling things about ROCOR, which just showed how ignorant she was of Orthodoxy. But I prayed for her when she died. Even though modernists persecuted us and slandered us, it is important to pray for them, not only does it help them, but it helps us too, it stops our hearts from growing hard. We must always pray for our enemies. We are Christians.

What is disturbing is that those who canonized Mother Maria canonized her not for her sacrificial death, but for her anti-Church musings – and that is not to venerate her, but to malign her. When people die, we should try to remember only the good things about them. Personally, I think her writings should be made secret because they are shameful, the fruit of someone who had not yet been converted from being a Social Revolutionary.

Q: What form does modernism take today?

A: Modernism now tends to have a more philosophical, ‘spiritual’ form, in any possible way so as to blur the clear and dogmatic. This is very cunning, as we have seen with the new documents for the Crete meeting next June (if it takes place). For example, in Greece, you have the case of the philosopher Yannaras, in Russia you have the case of the Kochetkovite sect, in Finland you have a very active group, including clergy, though they are so extreme that they are very isolated, even having abandoned Orthodox Easter. They go back to the notorious Archbishop Herman (Aav), and that continued through Archbishop Paul, Archbishop Leo and now Metr Ambrose. But this is purely modern Lutheranism.

Q: What are the themes of these modernists?

A: On the one hand, there are still the crude renovationist practices taken from 1920s Russia, where such modernism more or less died out under Stalin. Such practices include letting laypeople do the proskomidia in the middle of the church and generally desacralizing the services, which is an abandonment of the priesthood. Remember that modernism, as I said, is essentially secularization, the opposite of sacralization. So first it had to destroy the sacral Emperor (the Tsar), then their next task was to destroy the priesthood – equally sacral. Linked with this destruction of the priesthood are the many divorced and remarried priests among the modernists, the uncanonically ordained and all the anti-liturgical practices, which include shortening the services and introducing the so-called ‘new’ or Roman Catholic calendar, which has always been the first stage in falling away from Orthodoxy.

On the other hand, today, as a result of the tide of secularization or desacralization that the modernists have never been able to resist and even welcome, the latest fad among them is pushing to introduce female priests and homosexual marriage into the Church. The latter movement is strong in some of the parishes in Finland, which are basically Lutheran with icons. Of course, whenever there are homosexual clergy, that push is even stronger because there is self-interest, self-justification.

Q: Where is modernism in general strongest today?

A: Although there are the debased remnants in Europe in the ever smaller Paris Jurisdiction (all the big intellectuals are dead), and there are still those in the USA as well as in Finland, now there is a group of people connected with Fr George Kochetkov in Russia. The disgraced Protodeacon Andrei Kurayev is among them, and the murdered Uniat Fr Alexander Men still has a few disciples. Then there is the provocateur Fr George Mitrofanov, as well as Fr Alexei Uminsky. However, I think they were all stronger in the 1990s than today. They too are figures from the past and I think they will die out, like the others. Now we are in the 21st century, it is time to grow up.

Q: Given this continued modernism, aren’t you pessimistic about the future?

A: As regards modernism, our Christian life is a combat, a struggle, it always has been and always will be. We will fight these anti-dogmatic currents, just as we combated the old modernism. Thus, we, like all Orthodox, combat and reject the absurd documents prepared for the meeting in Crete in June. However, Christians are always optimists because however grim the situation is now, Christ will triumph at the end of history.

A Parable: The Greatest River in the World

There is a great river, by far the greatest river in the world. It flows from a single Source, high, high in the snow-capped mountains, in the clouds near to heaven. No-one has ever seen this Source, but some brave souls have approached it and they all say that the water that flows from it in such incredible abundance is crystal clear, like a mirror. It is utterly pure, has a transfiguring power and a taste which they can only describe as ‘Divine’.

As this great stream descends from the mountains, it becomes ever broader, as it has many tributaries, great and small. Descending to the plain and the forests, there are many other tributaries, a few quite large, but many very small. Indeed, water seeps into the great river from all along the banks, on the left and the right. Some of this water brings mud into the river with it. Indeed, it is important not to go into the shallow water along the edges and fringes of the river, for there is much mud there. Much better is it to venture further out, into the mainstream, where the water is deep and pure and there is no sign of mud at all.

As the river is so powerful, sometimes it bursts its banks and overflows. Once it has gone down and returned to its bed, it leaves pools of water by the banks. Some of the water in these pools seeps back into the river and so into the mainstream, but some of it remains in the pools. Here it stagnates and smells, attracting mosquitoes, and eventually it becomes mud before it altogether dries up.

As for the greatest river in the world, a huge and unimaginably deep and broad stream of pure water, it ever powers on and on, majestically and irresistibly, towards its destiny, the Great Ocean, the Ocean that is called the Ocean of the Love of God. And the name of the river? It is called Holiness.

The Present Crisis

Q: What has been happening since the meeting of Orthodox Primates at Chambesy five weeks ago?

A: Exactly as Metr Onufry of Kiev predicted, the Crete meeting (‘Pan-Orthodox Council’) is proving divisive, and even before it has begun. As we said at the time, documents issued, above all the document concerning relations with the Non-Orthodox has proved to be unacceptable. The Georgian Church has rejected it and now a petition in the Bulgarian Church is objecting to it, not to mention individual hierarchs in Greece and Cyprus who are also opposed – or that matter people in the parishes like ourselves. Apart from that there is the principle itself of holding a ‘Council’ to which only a few selected bishops are invited!

Q: Would you sign a petition against it?

A: Why should I? I find that idea almost amusing when I know that my bishop thinks the same as me – or rather I think the same as my bishop and, for that matter, all the other bishops in ROCOR. In any case, if you are concerned by a problem in the Church, you do not start a petition – that is a Protestant concept. What you do is talk about it with your bishop. Indeed, that is what I did last January and that is how I know that I think the same as my bishop.

Q: How do you see this problem developing?

A: I think the most interesting thing about this whole debate is how the two extremes have met. On the one hand, the sectarian-minded – there are very few of them, but they make a lot of noise – are refusing to commemorate their bishops. On the other hand, they are being egged on and provoked by the enemies of the Church, the ecumenist liberals – also few in number but noisy – who are doing all they can to create a schism, which would be their greatest joy. Unfortunately, the sectarian-minded are a little simple and do not see the trap that they are being led into. This is so sad.

Q: Has the crisis not been deepened by Patriarch Kyrill meeting the Pope in Cuba?

A: Yes, that meeting has reinforced the crisis.

Q: So are you saying that that meeting was a mistake?

A: No, because, apart from its positive aspects, that meeting has brought everything to a head, the abscess has burst, all is now in the open.

Q: What do you mean?

A: We now see exactly who are sectarian and who are ecumenist liberals. Those on the fringes have revealed themselves. The mainstream now has the task of reassuring the masses, but also challenging the fringes, saying to them, ‘This is the Church, do you agree with Her or not’?

Q: So do you think some will fall into schism?

A: I hope not, but if so, then very few. Moreover, I think that it will be the ecumenist liberals who will leave. Those on the other side are mostly good-hearted, just misguided.

Q: What about the charge that Patriarch Kyrill’s spiritual father was a known heretic, Metr Nikodim (Rotov)?

A: This is absolutely typical of the sectarian-minded. Patriarch Kyrill was 32 years old when Metr Nikodim died. Do these people really think that a young man, now a Patriarch, has not moved on since 1978? Do they really think that people are so stupid that they do not learn from the mistakes of their youth and inexperience? The only people who can think such things must themselves be very young! Unless of course, and that is far worse, the people who think such things have no concept that people change, that they can repent.

Do they not think that the Patriarch has changed in the last 38 years – in half a lifetime? Moreover, he has in that time received grace. I am myself a witness to that – how he has changed since he has become Patriarch. When you are ordained or consecrated, you receive grace, just as you receive grace from any sacrament. Some of these sectarians seem to be deniers of grace, deniers of the action of the Holy Spirit.

Q: Surely you are being idealistic. Yes, there is grace, but there is also temptation and sin. In history there are patriarchs who have behaved as judases, usually from political pressure.

A: Of course there have been those. But they are by far not the majority. The judases were the exceptions which prove the rule. Again there is a defect in the psychology of the sectarian-minded – they are always shocked by the exceptions and make them into the rule. For example, they will say that someone, for the sake of argument, say in the Bulgarian Church, is a heretic and then they conclude that they cannot concelebrate with anyone in the Bulgarian Church, and then, even more ridiculously, they refuse to concelebrate with anyone who concelebrates with the Bulgarian Church. And that is how they end up in a sect, outside the Church.

Q: Why do their minds work like that?

A: Because they are proud puritans. The slightest ‘impurity’, and in their case that means others disagreeing with them, and they are out. They are guilty of premature judgement, they want a pure Church now, which is called Donatism. That is simply not going to happen. The wheat and the tares grow together in this world because the wheat grows stronger on account of the tares and the tares can turn into wheat through the example of the wheat. God is patient with us sinners – so we must be patient with other sinners. We must all wait until the Last Judgement – unless of course people judge themselves by leaving the Church and entering a sect.

Q; You speak of a psychological defect in the minds of the sectarian-minded, but what about the minds of the modernists, the ecumenist liberals?

A: Regardless of which of the two extremes we are talking about, we are not talking about theology, but about psychology and a spiritually unhealthy psychology. For example, the ecumenist liberals will tell you that we must do like the heterodox, introduce organs, shorten our services, reduce fasting etc etc. Why? Because these people have either lost the Tradition or else have never been in the Tradition and therefore they want to do what those outside the Tradition, the heterodox, do. They are so secular-minded that they conform themselves to secularism, to the world, rather than to the Church. Basically, their problem is that they lack the Orthodox Faith.

Q: Is this a serious crisis?

A: For the moment, no, because only a very few people are directly concerned, though all of us know about it and so are indirectly concerned.

Q: So what is the solution?

A: To communicate our concerns to our bishops and to follow the mainstream, avoiding the errors of both the sectarian-minded and the secular-minded.

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 10)

The Update

As of 1 March 2016 we are still, after over five months!, waiting for legal documents to be exchanged for the premises we are buying in Norwich. After a three and a half month wait to receive planning permission from Norwich City Council, we have now had to wait an additional five months for exactly the same organization to send our solicitor the lease. This means that the entire process has been delayed by six months. Once we have signed for the premises and bought them, we can finally start building work to transform them into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

God is Love: The Sin of Phariseeism and the Contemporary World

The Revelation of the Incarnate God and so of His Church, is that ‘God is Love’. This is why Christianity preaches love of our neighbours and forgiveness, not hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness. This is also why the Easter Resurrection lies at the heart of the Church Year because that was when Christ God, having first preached Love on earth, thanks to His death by Crucifixion went down to hades and also preached Love to the majority of humanity imprisoned there, releasing from captivity all those, from Adam and Eve on, who accepted His words. This event proved for all time that Love is stronger than death.

Love is the meaning of the word salvation. When we ask to be saved, we ask to be saved from all that is not Love – from hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness. Why? Because we must all prepare for the one thing inevitable – our meeting with God. When we meet Him, at the Last Judgement to spend eternity with Him, we will stand in front of Love. If our hearts have Love, this experience will be one of recognition of the Source of all that we have held dear, of warmth, comfort and joy, what we call heaven. If, on the other hand, our hearts are full of hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness, this experience will be one of burning fire, what we call hell.

This Revelation that God is Love is quite distinctive from the manmade religion of the pharisees, who knew only the primitive teaching ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ and which had martyred the Jewish prophets and then also the Son of God. That hatred, violence, aggression and vengefulness, the spirit of ‘God will punish you’, meaning ‘I will punish you’, but ‘I am justifying my evil with God’s name’, was also adopted by Islam, mixed together with heresies and the pagan customs of Arab nomads. As regards Hinduism, with its host of warring gods and goddesses, it lacks the revelation of monotheism, and as for God-less Buddhism, it is not a religion, but a philosophy of psychic self-improvement.

Some, perhaps especially Muslims and Jews, will object to this and say, but look at Christians who are supposed to preach Love: they invaded Iraq because ‘God told me to’ (George Bush), slaughtering a million; they dropped atomic bombs on civilians, created the holocaust of thirty million Slavs and five million Jews in the 1940s and the Pope said nothing; British ‘Christians’ invaded North America and Spanish ‘Christians’ invaded Latin America with the zealous encouragement of their religious authorities, slaughtering perhaps a hundred million between them; then there were witch hunts and before them the Inquisition, not to mention the Crusades. Christians!

Of course, all this is so, but none of this was done by Christians: it was done by people who called themselves Protestants and Catholics.

Some may be shocked by this statement, but they should reflect: real Christians do not carry out genocides and the vast majority of today’s Protestants and Catholics would agree with this. Let us recall the reactions of the Orthodox Christians of New Rome when at the end of the eleventh century they saw with shock the crusaders coming: they saw not other Christians, but evil barbarians. Ask any Ukrainian or Serb or Iraqi or Afghan what he thinks of ‘Christian’ NATO troops; consult any history of the colonization of Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the Americas, and universally the reaction of the native peoples was that they had been invaded not by men or even barbarians, but by demons.

Having admitted this, some will say: yes, but look at Orthodox Christians, go to any Orthodox country and you will find prisons with Orthodox murderers, Orthodox thieves, Orthodox rapists…Why do you consider Orthodox above others?

We do not consider ourselves above others. That was and is precisely the problem of the Pharisees (or, in today’s language, Zionists) – they did and do consider themselves above others. And this is precisely the problem of all, regardless of race and nominal religion, including therefore nominal Orthodox, who fall back into the Pharisees’ religion. And this is precisely what the Protestant-Catholic world has institutionally done – though not at all necessarily individually, for many Protestants and Catholics totally reject how their institutional religions have betrayed them and Christ, when they finally see through their brainwashing.

Those who like the Pharisees/Zionists consider themselves better than others, superior to them, are precisely those who have fallen back into the Pharisees’ Old Testament and not into the Old Testament of the Patriarchs, of Moses and Noah, of David and Solomon and of all the holy prophets, who so ardently awaited Christ. Pharisees/Zionists, of whatever race, religion and age, are possessed by the concept that they are a chosen people, superior beings, ‘an exception’, a master race, an elite, who have the right to control the world thanks to an imagined Divine sanction. This makes them totally arrogant, in the words of one such racist British ‘Zionist’, there is only ‘the West and the Rest’ and ‘West is best’ (1). He may not say it openly, but he does consider all others to be ‘Untermenschen’ – subhumans.

A temptation for all Christians has always been to fall away from the Church back into Phariseeism and so cease to be Christians. Anyone can fall individually into this temptation, the real problem comes when the temptation is instituted systematically into an ideology. Then whole nations and continents can fall and this has been the history of Western ‘Civilization’, which in order to ‘civilize’ has always exterminated, which brings democracy by bombing back into the Stone Age. As the notorious US General Curtis LeMay said fifty years ago: ‘My solution to the problem would be to tell (the North Vietnamese) frankly that they’ve got to…stop their aggression (in their own country!) or we’re going to bomb them into the Stone Age’.

The institutional and ideological attack of Phariseeism/Zionism has taken place three times in post New Testament history. It happened when nearly 1,000 years ago the Papacy claimed to be the master of humanity (2) and all who rejected it had to be killed. As Abbot Amalric, a Catholic inquisitor at the slaughter of 20,000 men, women and children in 1209 put it: ‘Kill them all, God will recognize his own’ (3). This was justified by the scholastic Aquinas and the racism of the pagan Aristotle: they are not of us, therefore they can be killed, a mentality first instituted into Britain by the Normans, whose genocidal invasion and power grab was ‘blessed’ by the Papacy.

It happened again with the racist Luther and Protestantism, which inherited the same mentality and divided humanity into ‘the saved’ (themselves) and the non-saved. The non-saved could be ‘disposed of’. As another US Nobel Peace Prize winner, ‘one of the greatest US presidents’, ‘a national hero’ and regular churchgoer, President Theodore Roosevelt, said: ‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth’ (4).

The underlying mentality, that anyone who is Western and/or has adopted the post-1054 Western mentality, has a Divine right to invade, slaughter, destroy, occupy and dominate, has not changed in nearly a 1,000 years. After all, did not the Western man Darwin proclaim that Western man (‘the fittest’) must survive, as Hitler implemented. In today’s post-Protestant totalitarian society, the Pharisees’ idol of mammon has now been openly revealed as the only form of salvation and therefore for humanity: ‘God is dead’, said the madman Nietzsche, but Gold is living.

In other words, the world is divided into two groups. There are those who consciously or unconsciously believe that God is Love and try, however weakly, to live this, which belief is the essence of the Church and Her teaching; and those who institutionally, systematically and ideologically not only do not believe this but reject this, as they are already hypocritically ‘righteous’, that is, self-righteous, as we saw with the notorious case of Blair. Here is the danger: such people with their ‘New World Order’justify everything, since for them the end justifies the means, their ideology justifies genocide for those who resist and enslavement for those who survive.

Notes:

1. See the notorious 2011 work on Western Anti-Civilization and using that title, written by the neocon ideologist Niall Ferguson.

2. See the precepts of the 11th century ‘Dictatus Pape’:
1. That the Roman church was founded by God alone.
2. That the Roman pontiff alone can with right be called universal.
3. That he alone can depose or reinstate bishops.
4. That, in a council his legate, even if a lower grade, is above all bishops, and can pass sentence of deposition against them.
5. That the pope may depose the absent.
6. That, among other things, we ought not to remain in the same house with those excommunicated by him.
7. That for him alone is it lawful, according to the needs of the time, to make new laws, to assemble together new congregations, to make an abbey of a canonry; and, on the other hand, to divide a rich bishopric and unite the poor ones.
8. That he alone may use the imperial insignia.
9. That of the pope alone all princes shall kiss the feet.
10. That his name alone shall be spoken in the churches.
11. That this title [Pope] is unique in the world.
12. That it may be permitted to him to depose emperors.
13. That he may be permitted to transfer bishops if need be.
14. That he has power to ordain a clerk of any church he may wish.
15. That he who is ordained by him may preside over another church, but may not hold a subordinate position; and that such a one may not receive a higher grade from any bishop.
16. That no synod shall be called a general one without his order.
17. That no chapter and no book shall be considered canonical without his authority.
18. That a sentence passed by him may be retracted by no one; and that he himself, alone of all, may retract it.
19. That he himself may be judged by no one.
20. That no one shall dare to condemn one who appeals to the apostolic chair.
21. That to the latter should be referred the more important cases of every church.
22. That the Roman church has never erred; nor will it err to all eternity, the Scripture bearing witness.
23. That the Roman pontiff, if he have been canonically ordained, is undoubtedly made holy by the merits of St. Peter; St. Ennodius, bishop of Pavia, bearing witness, and many holy fathers agreeing with him. As is contained in the decrees of St. Symmachus the pope.
24. That, by his command and consent, it may be lawful for subordinates to bring accusations.
25. That he may depose and reinstate bishops without assembling a synod.
26. That he who is not at peace with the Roman church shall not be considered catholic.
27. That he may absolve subjects from their fealty to wicked men.

3. The phrase has been adopted by members of the US military in various conflicts, such as the Vietnam War, and is used as an unofficial slogan by certain units. In parts of the War on Terror, the variant “Kill them all. Let Allah sort them out,” has been used. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caedite_eos._Novit_enim_Dominus_qui_sunt_eius).

4. Quoted in Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 1980, Pp. 159-164). So much for the value of the Nobel Peace prize, as we have seen with that ‘won’ by Obama. Yet another US President, Andrew Jackson, urged US troops to root out ‘Indians’ from their ‘dens’ and kill ‘Indian’ women and their ‘whelps’, as ‘true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation to make room for another’.

What is Art?

We can define art in its broadest sense by its etymology: art means something artificial, that is, manmade. However, anyone can see that there are great differences between manmade things, manmade things fit into different levels. Thus, there is a great difference between a spade and an antique vase, or a 1960s block of flats and a palace, a Picasso and a Rembrandt, or heavy rock music and a Strauss waltz. All are manmade, but the former examples reflect a lack of inspiration as compared to the latter. What then is inspiration?

Inspiration is the reflection of the soul. Hence the attraction of art made by more refined souls, who have put thought and effort, technique and skill into art. The nobler and finer the soul, the nobler and finer the art. Here then we have the fundamental difference between two different levels of art – what can be called low art and high art. Indeed, so low are mass-produced manmade items, for instance, consumer goods, that some would say that they are not worthy even of the name ‘low art’. After all, they are not manmade, but machine made. On the other hand, there is art that clearly belong to the world of ‘high art’, art that can move the soul by its beauty. However, there is also a world of art higher than ‘high art’.

Here we are talking not just about art inspired by noble and fine souls, but about art inspired by the Divine Spirit. Here we are in the world of Orthodox Christian art. What is the difference between Orthodox Christian art and all other art, low or high? We have spoken already of low and high art, for example a piece of modern art and a Rembrandt painting. But higher than this there is the icon. What is an icon? It is a painting in front of which we want to pray. I have not yet heard of anyone wanting to pray in front of a painting by Picasso, or a painting by Rembrandt, even if its subject was religious. But people want to pray in front of icons. Why?

This is because an icon represents a Divino-human reality and it is painted not just through inspiration of the soul, but through Divine inspiration acting on the spirit. The same is true of Church music, Church architecture and Church artefacts. They all inspire prayer. However beautiful or interesting high art, a piece of classical music, a palace or an antique vase, it does not make us pray. We admire it or are even moved by it, but no more. We cannot forget the stories of SS officers who listened to Mozart before they went off to slaughter some more concentration camp prisoners. Here is the difference between high art and Orthodox Christian art, much greater than the difference even between low art and high art.
We can conclude that there are three levels of art: low art, high art and Orthodox Christian art.

Low art includes everyday manmade or artificial objects, like spades, mugs, cars, flatpack furniture, blocks of flats. This art is so low that only the broadest possible sense of the word art can include them. Low art contains very little inspiration, very little ‘soul’, rather it reflects the fallenness of humanity.

High art is inspired, it is handmade, it contains thought and soul, effort and skill, it reflects the values, nobility and finesse of the soul of its author and can even move by its beauty – but no more.

Finally, there is Orthodox Christian art. This is the art that can bring us to prayer and repentance. It reflects Divine inspiration, the Spirit of God that has inspired the soul and mind and hand of man. In this respect it approaches the beauty of the Unfallen Creation, of Paradise, which can sometimes be picked up by the soul as it looks at what remains of God’s Creation in even this fallen world, the Divine Inspiration behind the forests and the oceans, the mountains and the stars, for these too can bring us to prayer and repentance.