Category Archives: Schism

On the Third Anniversary of our Freedom from Persecution 2022-2025: The Thirteen Reasons Why We Took Canonical Refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church after Nearly Fifty Years of Faithfulness to the Russian Orthodox Church

Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake (Matthew 5,11) 

Foreword

Although the statement below concerns the 5,000 of us directly, it could also be used as part of a more general study in order to understand the process of how a Persecuted Church became a Persecuting Church, how an organism for Love became a narrow and judgemental sect which professed Hatred which enjoys trying to close churches. It is a psychiatric tragedy.

Some Recent History

https://roarch.org.uk/parishes-england/

The Romanian Orthodox Church is not much bothered by PR and websites. It updates its website once every ten years. For some reason, this cyberworld information is highly important to newcomers, whereas the well-circulated photographs of our letter of acceptance of 16 February 2022, issued by the Chancellery of our Metropolia on 18 February 2022, and of our antimension, signed by Metropolitan Joseph and issued to our parish on 27 February 2022, and our belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church, witnessed to by the multinational crowds following the litanies and the Great Entrance at every Divine Liturgy, are not adequate evidence of which Local Church we belong to!

The fact that a certain bishop broke his promise to a Metropolitan that he would issue letters of release and then told people publicly that we had not been received into the Romanian Orthodox Church, when we clearly had been, despite that bishop’s clerical maladministration, is on his conscience, not on ours. Similarly, the mistake of those who believed that ‘error’, without checking to find out the truth, and then supported and repeated that ‘error’, is also on their conscience, not on ours. Shall we be kind and just say that they had been misinformed? This is why we have had so many instances of myrrh-giving icons in our main church since the Feast of the Ascension in 2022, as has been recorded in our monthly newsletters. Our God is the God of Mercy and Justice.

Thus, at one fell swoop, a newcomer to ROCOR hounded out of it one of its largest families, 28 people of four generations, who had devoted their lives to ROCOR. The scandal became international, discrediting ROCOR. Among those expelled was one of the ten speakers of the 2006 Fourth All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco, whose speech had been so warmly greeted then and who had belonged to the Church before that newcomer was even born. However, since the newcomer had not belonged to ROCOR in 2006, but instead was then actively supporting a move by the Russian Church to join Constantinople, he would not know that.

None of this should be a surprise, since the New ROCOR had already excommunicated another of the ten speakers and yet another had left to join the Moscow Patriarchate. Seven to go. Who is next? How many more of the remaining faithful will be expelled by the New ROCOR for the ‘crime’ (that is what they called it) of remaining faithful to the Old ROCOR? They persecuted St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, suspended him and put him on trial. Why not do the same to his spiritual grandchildren as well?

It seems as though the New ROCOR is reneging on our long and hard-fought fight to enter back into canonical communion with the rest of the Russian Church, which culminated in our victory of 2007. With its history of support for Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, support for the Vlasovtsy, those Russians who fought with Hitler against Russia, with its CIA bishops and priests, and now with their support for the CIA-orchestrated Kiev regime, which so persecutes Metr Onufry, should we be surprised? I am sometimes asked if I support Moscow or Kiev in the conflict in the Ukraine. I always answer the same thing: I support Metr Onufry and the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and always have done.

The Thirteen Reasons

  1. The principal reason why we were forced to leave and take refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church, is simply so that we would no longer be in an unthinkable schism from the Russian Church, specifically from the Archdiocese of Western Europe of the Russian Tradition, in which we have had so many close family and friends in Paris for many decades. (It is also true that in the Romanian Church, we are no longer in schism with the Greek Churches either. We shall probably never recover from the shock of that bishop’s accusation that Patriarch Bartholomew is ‘possessed by demons’ Was he talking about himself?). His schism from the Russian Church, is exactly what we wanted to escape by taking canonical refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church.

For nearly fifty years we had fought for the unity of the Russian Church, very actively and very successfully and were thanked personally by the Russian Patriarch for doing so. And then we saw it all destroyed by a very young and inexperienced convert newcomer from far away, who, a creator of schism, accused us of being schismatic and then of being senile! We have once more been able to live canonically, following the theological royal way and the canonical golden mean, away from all extremes.

For three years we have been in communion with and concelebrated with all Orthodox, including with the Russian Church, except for the tiny ROCOR, now reduced to a handful of miniscule communities here. Communion is the sign and guarantee that we are inside the Church and not outside the Church, inside some pathological, Protestant-style, convert sect and cult. For some reason this sect has been protected by ‘misinformed’, but still unrepentant and unapologetic individuals above it. That too is on their conscience, not on ours.

  1. In the Romanian Orthodox Church we do not rebaptise other Orthodox, which is a heresy.
  2. The Romanian Orthodox Church does not ‘defrock’ the clergy of other Local Churches.
  3. In the Romanian Orthodox Church we can love everyone, specifically we do not have to hate Greeks, refusing to recognise their saints because they are in ‘the wrong jurisdiction’!, ‘hate’ Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians and ‘half-hate’ Moldovans, as we were strongly recommended, but categorically refused, to do, for we strive to obey the Gospel commandments of Christ and not obey a schismatic.
  4. In the Romanian Orthodox Church over the last three years we have been able to keep all our churches open and serve our multinational parishioners in our missions at our own cost, just as we had done for decades before.
  5. For the last three years we have been allowed to speak and use in services our own childhood English language and do not have to pretend to be Americans in our speech, as we were bullied and pressured, but categorically refused, to do.
  6. For the last three years our websites have no longer been subject to rigid, word-for-word censorship and micromanagement, as we have had the wonderful basic human right to free speech, of which we had been punitively deprived for four months under a Calvinistically jealous dictatorship.
  7. For the last three years we have not had to participate in slandering faithful clergy and laypeople of other Local Churches, which we categorically refused to do.
  8. We have no longer had to deal with one who suffered in his spoilt child syndrome from violent bouts of temper and jealousy and wanted to divide and destroy solid families, setting generation against generation and hating women and children, upsetting many women with his ugly remarks.
  9. We have no longer had to pay 10% of our income and be subjected to fits of rage, shouting that we must pay even more and also hear slanders that we are thieves, all so that someone could live like a mini-oligarch. Membership of our self-governing Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe and its local Archdiocese is free.
  10. We have no longer belonged to a small, out-of-control group, which is faced with having to pay millions of dollars in court cases which it is losing to individuals whom it has slandered, and which is also sundered by multiple scandals concerning rebaptism of other Orthodox, ‘defrocking’ clergy of other Local Churches, lack of financial transparency, the use of electronic signatures without authorisation, alcoholism and homosexuality.
  11. We have no longer had to live under an oppressive system where priestly awards are deliberately withheld from the most senior clergy for many, many years, for reasons of sadistic hatred and bullying jealousy, as though we were donkeys who wanted to follow decorative carrots.
  12. We have been allowed to be Christians, free to keep our integrity and obey our conscience. We have been able to act according to our Orthodox Christian principles, as for nearly fifty years before, in the old and noble Western European ROCOR Tradition of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, which they have all but destroyed, except inside the Romanian Orthodox Church, where we faithfully conserve it. This freedom comes from the fact that our Romanian bishops are, like us, also Christians, and do not punish or persecute us.

Why to the Romanian Orthodox Church?

Some people ask us, all the 15 clergy and 5,000 people in our six parishes who left ROCOR because it refused to listen to us about its schism, punished us for telling them the truth about it, and refused to listen to us who endured this shameful betrayal of the best friends that the Russian Church has ever had, why we joined the Romanian Church specifically. The answer to this is simple:

The Greek Church of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was for us not an option, despite some wonderful clergy and people there, not least on Mt Athos, as certain members of its episcopate had compromised themselves through their uncanonical actions in the Ukraine and through their ecumenism. Joining the Greek Church would therefore have been very divisive among our flock. As for the Serbian Church, we greatly respect it, as we do all other Local Churches, but we did not think of joining any of them, as we could have done, because we do not have any direct connections with their bishops, only with their priests.

There was only one obvious solution, the Romanian Church. We have always valued our contacts with the Romanian Tradition of Life via Fr Raphael Noica and others. Since 2001 we have had Romanian parishioners and these have increased in number since. As a result, we had a Romanian parishioner ordained priest and a Moldovan parishioner ordained deacon some years ago. We are pastors, not nationalists, and are here to serve the Orthodox people, whatever their nationality, English, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, Romanian or other.

We do not conduct passport checks at the door. Perhaps that is why the number of our parishioners of all nationalities has doubled in the last three years since we left ROCOR. Nor are we capitalists, who sell vastly overpriced candles, icons, prayer books and other Church items to their own, often poor, people. We run the cheapest Church shop in the country. It is a service, not a source of excessive profit. We do not exploit the Orthodox people.

In the last 12 years 1 million Romanians have come to live in this country. Today at least 70% of all Orthodox in this country are Romanians. Go to any church in this country and the children are almost certain to be Romanian. Children are our future. And young priests have been temporarily loaned by the Romanian Church to the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch, which are both desperately short of young clergy.

Moreover, the Romanian bishops have a clear pastoral sense of how important it is to keep the children in the Church and are very happy to use the local languages to do so. All our bishops speak Western European languages fluently – unlike most Russian bishops. Clearly, if we believe in a future Local Church, as we always have done, it makes sense to be part of by far the largest group of Orthodox, as long as it is politically free, which was the case of very few Local Churches 35 years ago, but which is no longer the case today, except for two of them.

It also makes sense to belong to a Local Church which allows us to conserve the Tradition and calendar of the Old Western European ROCOR, as we are able. The view of the late Metr Kallistos (Ware) ten years ago was quite rightly that ROCOR’s ascetic and liturgical heritage should be valued. Sadly, it has been ignored by them and taken over by ritualism and the pharisaical condemnation of others, turning this heritage into an opportunity for even further spiritual pride and censoriousness. As for us, we keep to the saints of the Old ROCOR of the Confessors, like St John of Shanghai, whom they now condemn, as he did not dress in expensive clothing and footwear and did not live in an elite apartment.

In 2022 we left the Russian Church to its nationalism, where the earthly kingdom is higher than the heavenly kingdom and Caesar’s is tragically confused with God’s. It has indeed renounced the multinational ethos which it had in the past. Too bad for it. We pray that Moscow, like Constantinople, will recover. Providentially we were integrated into the Romanian Orthodox Church exactly eight days before the longstanding Ukrainian-Russian conflict reached a new level of militancy on 24 February 2022. Thus, we avoided the Russian-Ukrainian division and so were able to answer all the threats of violence and hatred that were sent to us after that date, as well as the unnecessary offer of police protection, as well as invitations to support the Nazis in Kiev, by simply answering that we in the Romanian Orthodox Church have nothing to do with internal conflicts and politics inside the Russian Church.

With the result that our many Russian and Ukrainian parishioners can and do pray for one another side by side. Precisely from within the Romanian Orthodox Church, the second largest Local Church and which speaks a Latin language and uses the Latin alphabet, we can perhaps play a role in healing the schism between Russians and Greeks, which stems from the fact that neither is politically free. We are neutral. For we are pastors, not politicians.

We recall how the Greeks started the schism in the Ukraine by opening churches on Russian canonical territory. Then the Russians made it worse, firstly by cutting off communion, a very radical act which made the Russian Church look schismatic, then by poaching churches, priests and people from the Greek jurisdiction without letters of release, and then, in revenge, by opening churches on Greek canonical territory in Africa. This is like two little boys fighting. When will this end?

Afterword

Can we, in concert with the other politically free Local Churches, be intermediaries and help to bring sense and peace, in the spirit of the catholicity of the whole Orthodox Church? We pray so, through the prayers of all the New Martyrs and Confessors, of the Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian and Greek Lands and of all the Lands of the Earth.

16 February 2025

Fourteen into Twenty-Four: The Patriarchs and First Hierarchs of the Fourteen Local Churches Meet on Mt Athos, 8 February 2026

On 6, 7 and 8 February 2026 the Patriarchs of Constantinople, New Jerusalem, Bucharest, Belgrade, Sofia, Tbilisi, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, and the First Hierarchs of the five other Local Churches, of Skopje, Warsaw, Nicosia, Prague and Tirana, together with Metropolitan Tikhon of the OCA, the Metropolitans of Kiev, Minsk, Riga, Uzhhorod and Kampala, the Metropolitans of the two Metropolias in Moldova, and senior hierarchs from the Diaspora, together with their delegations, met in the Skete of St Andrew. This church, built by the Russian Tsar Alexander II, is the largest church on the multinational Holy Mountain, which is under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

They were at last able to meet in freedom to resolve the only two issues which have troubled and divided the Church for generations. Firstly, they met to put an end to the schisms between the Patriarchates of New Jerusalem, Constantinople and Alexandria. Secondly, they met to grant canonical status to the many millions of Orthodox living in, and to Orthodox who for generations have been born in, Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania, entrusting their destiny in each case to organisation by the Patriarchate with the most Orthodox living on those territories, with the guidance of the Mother-Churches of the minorities.

By repentance for past errors, including allowing the CIA to penetrate the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria and New Jerusalem, directly through allowing its agents to be planted inside them, and indirectly through adopting its oligarchic mentality, and by the prayers of those present and of the monastics of the Holy Mountain of Athos, they reached the following resolutions:

New Jerusalem

As many will know, before this meeting the Patriarchate of Moscow and All Rus had been renamed the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus and its headquarters had been moved to the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. It also refrocked all Russian Orthodox clergy who had been defrocked for political reasons since 24 February 2022 in Russia, Lithuania, Western Europe and elsewhere.

In accord with the Church of Constantinople, the newly-appointed Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod granted autocephaly to three new Local Churches, whose faithful had for centuries lived on its canonical territory. These are:

The Kievan Rus Orthodox Church (Kievan Rus is the new country established last year, whose territory corresponds to most of the western and central parts of the old Soviet Ukraine), headed by Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev. All Orthodox in Kievan Rus are called on to join this new Church, as the Patriarchate of Constantinople has now given up its jurisdiction there.

The Belarussian Orthodox Church, headed by the Metropolitan of Minsk.

The Baltic Orthodox Church (covering the territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland), headed by the new Metropolitan of Riga. All Orthodox in Finland, Estonia and Lithuania are called on to join these new Churches, as the Patriarchate of Constantinople has now given up its jurisdiction there.

Additionally, in accord with the other Patriarchs present, the new Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod granted autocephaly to a fourth new Local Church, the Carpatho-Rus and Hungarian Orthodox Church, whose territory covers the Zakarpattia province of the old Soviet Ukraine and Hungary. It is headed by the Metropolitan of Uzhhorod and Budapest, but has deaneries for Greeks, Serbs and other Orthodox nationalities present in Hungary under the new Church.

Constantinople

As many will know, before this meeting the new Patriarch of Constantinople, previously the Archbishop of Athens, and his Synod had moved the headquarters of the Patriarchate from Istanbul in Turkiye to Thessaloniki in Greece, with the absorption of the Greek Orthodox Church. This move was financed by a very generous donation made by the government of the Russian Federation for its infrastructure costs. However, Turkiye, together with Greece, remain the canonical territories of the now Greece-based Patriarchate of Constantinople and a bishop remains in Istanbul.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised the (North) Macedonian Orthodox Church as an autocephalous Local Church.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised the autocephaly granted by the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem to the four new Churches on the territories of Kievan Rus, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, Carpatho-Rus and Hungary, and will recognise any autocephaly granted in the future, if necessary, to Orthodox in Central Asia, Japan, China and Korea by the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus. All Non-Russian Orthodox on those territories must already join the local jurisdictions of the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem there in their own deaneries.

It recognised that the Patriarchate of Bucharest has sole authority to establish a Western European Orthodox Church for Orthodox living in its at present 21 countries of Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Monaco, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, Malta, since Bucharest has by far the largest number of Orthodox on those territories. It will be headed by the Romanian Metropolitan of Paris and Western Europe, but will have dioceses and deaneries for Greeks, Russians of all three Russian groups, Kievan Russians, Moldovans, Serbs, Bulgarians, Georgians and other Orthodox nationalities in Western Europe.

In return, all Local Orthodox Churches recognised that the Patriarchate of Constantinople has sole authority to establish a new Northern America Orthodox Church (USA, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda and St Pierre et Miquelon) and a new Local Oceanian Orthodox Church, in concert with all the Local Churches represented on those territories, since it has by far the largest flock there. Notably the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem cedes jurisdiction of its own parishes, withdraws the Tomos of Autocephaly of the OCA, and cedes jurisdiction of the churches of the OCA and ROCOR in Northern America, including the abolition of the OCA Synod in Washington and the ROCOR Synod in New York, to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, the first First Hierarch of the Northern American Orthodox Church will be Metr Tikhon, formerly of the OCA. Orthodox of Non-Greek nationality both in Northern America and Oceania, under the Metropolitan of Sydney and All Oceania, will be cared for in their own dioceses and deaneries under the new Local Church.

Alexandria

The new Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and his Synod ceded jurisdiction of all African countries, except for Egypt, to the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem, thus returning to its Patriarchal territory of 100 years ago. All clergy defrocked by the Patriarchate of Alexandra for political reasons since 2019 were refrocked. In return, the government of the Russian Federation made a very generous donation to the Patriarchate of Alexandria and to St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai to continue Church life in Egypt and Sinai.

In accord with the other Patriarchs present, the Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod jointly granted autocephaly to all Orthodox on the territory of Africa, outside Egypt, founding the African Orthodox Church, headed by the Metropolitan of Kampala and his Synod of African bishops.

Antioch

The Patriarch of Antioch and his Synod was granted sole authority to establish a Latin America and Caribbean Orthodox Church, as it has by far the largest flock there. Orthodox of Non-Arab nationality in Latin America and the Caribbean will be cared for in their own dioceses and deaneries under the new Local Church.

Bucharest

The Patriarch of Bucharest and his Synod and the Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod jointly granted autocephaly to all Orthodox on the territory of Moldova, forming the Moldovan Orthodox Church. The Patriarchate of New Jerusalem refrocked all Orthodox clergy, who had been defrocked for political reasons for joining the former Metropolia of Bessarabia.

As mentioned above, the Patriarch of Bucharest and his Synod was granted sole authority to establish a new Local Church of the 21 countries of Western Europe (see above). Orthodox of Non-Romanian nationality will be cared for by self-governing dioceses and deaneries of their respective Local Churches, but under the new Western European Orthodox Church.

In this way, the number of Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, now standing at 20 after the absorption of the Greek Orthodox Church into the Patriarchate of Constantinople and of the OCA into the Northern American Orthodox Church, and the foundation of the six new Autocephalous Churches, will be brought to 24 Local Churches, once the four new Diaspora Churches have been established within the next twelve months.

The ending of the schism between New Jerusalem, Constantinople and Alexandria was confirmed in the church of St Andrew by the concelebration of all those present on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 8 February 2026. This meeting is already being called ‘The First Athonite Council’ and ‘The Bread and Water Council’, since that was the only food and drink provided during the three days for the participants in the Council.

 

 

 

 

From Recent Correspondence: The Secret is Out!

Dear Father Andrew,

It’s been a long time since we last spoke or saw each other. I was engrossed in my own journey that requires a face-to-face meeting to share.

In these strange and challenging times, I currently work between Moscow, X, and (to a lesser extent) London. I planned to reach out to you when I am next in the UK.

Throughout this time, the memories of our few meetings and your work in the Orthodox Church have remained cherished treasures in my heart. I often revisit your Orthodox England website, sharing the link with those I believe might be interested.

Yesterday, I intended to browse through your ‘Orthodox England’ book online. On searching for you on Google, I came across the news three years ago of your departure from the “jurisdiction.” This development didn’t come as a surprise, given the current state of affairs within the Church and the world…..

 

Dear Z,

We are all very well.

Our Orthodox England site is very active and still very popular. The book, The Orthodox Faith and the English Tradition, is now fully online, under Resources on the website: http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/oe4/e-books/. Our story is quite simple, though quite shocking, as it concerns corruption in high places inside the Russian Church.

In 2017, exactly ten years after the now American, but once Russian émigré, group entered into canonical communion with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007, it was infiltrated by the CIA. This was not surprising to me, as it had already been infiltrated by the CIA as far back as the 1960s, under the then Fr George (later Bp Gregory) Grabbe. However, after the fall of the USSR in 1991, the CIA abandoned it, as it had no more interest in it, and the CIA stopped giving money to it. ‘Mission accomplished’ for them, as they said at that time. However, by 2017 the time to infiltrate again had begun.

When I spoke at the émigré Church Council in San Francisco in May 2006, it was attended by the former US ambassador to Kiev, the notorious neocon John Herbst, who lost his job in Kiev on 26 May 2006. I overheard him saying to one bishop in Russian (he thought I could not understand him), that ‘they would have to do something about the ROCOR decision to rejoin Moscow’, taken at the 2006 Council. The CIA duly subsidised a crazy man who lives in Odessa and calls himself Metropolitan Agafangel (not the canonical and real Metr Agafangel). But that was only the start.

It all went much further than that. In 2017 the CIA infiltrated the now American group in the hope of destroying it and so harming the whole Russian Church. So, in 2017 they tasked someone with destroying the Church here. He did this by creating a schism with Moscow.

Now we had been working successfully for Russian Church unity for nearly 50 years, so his schism went against the work of a lifetime, so they had to persecute us and try and close all our churches. So we went to try and join the local Moscow bishop. To our astonishment, he refused to take any of us, 15 clergy, 6 parishes and 5,000 people. Now he is a nice man and he let us know that his refusal was on orders from Moscow.  So we think that the Church in Moscow itself has been infiltrated by the CIA. After all, there are people there who will do anything for money. The recent scandal with that Metropolitan proves it.

Today the now American group is beset by scandals which it created, not only here, but also in the USA. Worse still, under CIA pressure, after 2022 it openly took the Western side in the US-Russia proxy war in the so deeply tragic Ukraine. In that way it lost a lot of its Russian base. Russians were understandably scandalised by the new anti-Russian, pro-American standpoint, and without attracting any Ukrainians, who go to their own churches and do not want anything to do with Russians. As the American group is dying out as a consequence of its not merging into the structures of the Russian Church, it is now desperately trying to recruit converts. However, as it is a schismatic and sectarian group, it has problems attracting normal people, but quite often extremists or fanatics with pathological problems, for instance, unstable young men who dislike women or homosexuals.

In any case, three years ago, before the SMO, we joined the Romanian Orthodox Church, who have been wonderful to us. Here we continue exactly as before, only without corruption, without schism and without the CIA. We are getting to the point here, where there are more Russian Orthodox outside the Russian Church than inside it, because of the corruption inside it.

On Whistle-Blowing: For the Freedom of the Church, We are Fearless Against the American Schism

If we live a life for Christ, we strive to do what He would have done.

Thus, when an MI5 spotter showed interest in me in Oxford in 1977, I replied by blowing the whistle.

Thus, when homosexual bureaucrat-bishops representing the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the sort who, once bribed, recently founded a fake church of atheist thugs in the Ukraine (the OCU), showed interest in me, I replied by blowing the whistle.

Thus, when Moscow bureaucrat-bishops, homosexuals, secretly married, alcoholics, sectarians who rebaptise one another, and, worst of all, politicians who manifestly profess atheist values, tried to recruit me, I replied by blowing the whistle.

In my lifetime, I have seen the Greeks lose it and then the Russians. The Greeks were only interested in Hellenism. The Russians, at that time, were only interested in Soviet politics. Russia, as I continually repeated ever since my return there after de-Sovietisation, in 2007, could go one way or the other, towards the whole Church or towards racial and nationalist introversion, it was on a knife-edge. Sadly, it went the other way, towards nationalist schism, and cut off from communion and concelebration with the mainstream. We can only pray and hope that that tragedy will be overcome. At present the Russian Church is out of communion even with itself in Western Europe. As for the Church in the Ukraine, it must receive independence, or else it will be boycotted. The people will not go to churches under Moscow, just as they do not go to fake churches.

The mantle has passed on our long and thorny path of building our new Local Church of Western Europe. I have no interest in those who have no openness and want to form nationalist ghettoes. There is no future with them, as they are absorbed by internal, racial questions which are spiritually irrelevant. As a result, they disobey the canons and use canonical discipline to apply purely political decisions. Those who live according to nationalistic criteria have no interest in Local Churches. Therefore, they have committed suicide in Western Europe.

When the bureaucrats obeyed the State and tried to close down our churches because of ‘covid’, I replied by blowing the whistle.

We are not afraid of death because God protects. When sociopaths become psychopaths, they turn violent. So what? Salvation lies in the path of Confession or Martyrdom.

If you have a conscience, honour and integrity, you must act against schism, whoever is creating it. At such moments you are not concerned by slanders and personal attacks, because you are taken up by the protective grace of God and you must follow that grace. Grace is irresistible. You must resist schism, because it always turns into heresy, as our Metropolitan Joseph very precisely predicted in February 2022.

Thus, the refusal to concelebrate with another part of the Church, because it receives Orthodox in the customary way of the Church, indeed soon turned into heresy. This heresy is that of the rebaptism of Orthodox who have long been receiving the sacraments of the Church. The rejection of the sacraments of the Church by such typically Protestant, anti-sacramental schismatics is a heresy. Like the proselytising pharisees, recruiting and rebaptising Christians in the freezing cold sea is not a solution to increasing the tiny numbers in your tiny schismatic and sectarian communities.

Two liturgies and five baptisms this weekend and, much as usual, some 200 communions from three chalices. And a certain ‘bishop’ wanted to close our church and even told people that we are ‘closed’! He is ignored. As with the fake Church in the Ukraine, it is the same persecution here. But here the law and the canons are on our side. Western Europe is different from the USA. Europe belongs to Europeans, not to Americans. We are not bossed about and do not speak American. We have our own culture.

 

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.

A Russian Tragedy of Errors

 

Introduction: Three Fragments of the Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  1. ROCOR: Orthodox or Right-Wing?

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

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

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

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

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

  1. Paris: Orthodox or Left-Wing?

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

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

Conclusion: Disloyalty to the Testament of the Tsar

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

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

Notes:

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

 

Five Years of Schisms: The Church Torn by Needless Divisions

2024 opens in sadness for all the Local Orthodox Churches.

In 2021 well over half the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) Diocese in England left that New York-based branch of the Moscow Patriarchate. This was because of the new ROCOR schism against the Western European Archdiocese (WEA) branch of the same Moscow Patriarchate. The Archdiocese had accepted a Roman Catholic priest into its clergy in the normal Russian Orthodox way, by confession and concelebration. However, for that reason the new American ROCOR, strongly old calendarist and imposing a quite outrageous and very aggressive policy of Americanisation, to the point of imposing the American language (!), had broken off communion with the WEA. This was unthinkable under the old Russian European ROCOR. This schism then spread Europewide under another ex-Lutheran ROCOR bishop. And then the whole ROCOR Synod backed up its young, inexperienced and non-seminary trained American bishop, ‘converted’ from Lutheranism, who had instigated the schism.

In the meantime, the Moscow Mother-Church, of both ROCOR and the Western European Archdiocese, remained silent, for unexplained reasons known only to itself. Church discipline appeared and appears to be breaking down. However, any number of Orthodox bishops fell over themselves, and are still falling over themselves (too late), to receive the group of six parishes, including with by far the largest church, the senior priest of the Diocese (with nearly forty years of conscientious service), several other clergy and 5,000 people who left ROCOR on account of the American schism. This group are now thriving in the canonical Patriarchate of Romania, despite the absurd ‘suspensions’ and ‘defrockings’, with which they were punished by ROCOR after being received into the Romanian Church. Their position was all about standing up for the Orthodox Truth, canonical Church practice and generations of faithfulness to Russian Orthodoxy.

This is perhaps the fifth time (or is it more?) that ROCOR has faced schisms on account of its adoption of and (too late) abandonment of old calendarist positions on the reception of Non-Orthodox by rebaptism. All these occasions go back to its contamination by the fanatical Greek old calendarist ideology, with its easily identifiable convert language movement (‘Pascha’ for Easter, ‘Nativity’ for Christmas, ‘hierarch’ for bishop, ‘temple’ for church, ‘chant’ for sing etc), in the 1960s. The best-known occasions were perhaps the Guildford (England) schism of 1976, the Boston schism of 1986 and then the multiple schisms of 2007, including that of the Brookwood monastic community and London convent in England at that time.

In any case, the 2021 scandal in England spread back to North America. It turns out that there at least one ROCOR bishop there had actually been receiving unrebaptised Orthodox converts from Non-Orthodoxy by rebaptism, even though these converts (surely, by now former converts?) had been inside the Orthodox Church and receiving communion for years! This is despite the Nicene Creed, which states: ‘I believe in one Baptism for the remission of sins’. The ROCOR Synod appears to be in chaos, split down the middle. Not only does it face responsibilities for its uncanonical actions in England, but also in North America.

Here the recent concelebration of Fr Alexander Belya, (now again bishop-elect) with the Romanian Orthodox Church also has to be faced by the split ROCOR Synod. Fr Alexander, a former ROCOR priest chosen by the ROCOR Synod to be bishop and then suddenly dropped and ‘defrocked’ (!), was persecuted by the ROCOR Synod for still unknown reasons (the court case for libel is ongoing). Before being ‘defrocked’, he had already joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople with a large group of similarly appalled ex-ROCOR clergy and some 20 parishes. His concelebration with the Romanian Church means that, yet again, the Romanian Church does not recognise the actions of ROCOR. The latter is proving to be yet another (irrelevant) irritant to the Romanian Patriarch, who ignores all the increasingly strange letters from the New York group. The Moscow Mother-Church can be none too happy with its New York representatives who are discrediting themselves and the whole Russian Church through their eccentric, indeed scandalous, conduct and persecution of the faithful.

The latest twist to this sorry rebaptism saga is the case of at least one priest of the Antiochian Diocese in England, a certain Fr Matei. Having freely joined the Antiochian Diocese relatively recently, he decided that his bishop (and presumably therefore all Antiochian bishops) are heretical and stopped commemorating him. This was because this bishop follows the Orthodox practice of receiving Protestants who have been baptised by water in the Name of the Holy Trinity, by chrismation. (This is the normal practice of 1,000 Orthodox bishops – the opposite of the abnormal and new ROCOR practice). On top of this, this Fr Matei objects to the old Antiochian practice of giving Non-Chalcedonians communion, which is also a practice of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Although all the Local Churches receive Protestant converts by chrismation, they do not give communion to Non-Chalcedonians. However, they do accept that Antioch and Constantinople do this as their local practice, and that is no reason to break off communion with them. What is very strange is that Fr Matei objects to these practices, as he must surely have known that these are old-established Antiochian practices from long before he so recently joined the Antiochian Diocese. (Here we see the other side of the coin to the ROCOR rebaptism schism, which is a recent innovation and quite unheard of in the old ROCOR in Western Europe). Nevertheless, in the USA, there are now other Antiochians who have suddenly woken up to the reality of long-held Antiochian practices and object to them. Where they have been all these decades remains a mystery.

All of this comes against the background of the 2018 schism between the Russian Church and various Greek Churches, such as the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria, as well as with individuals in the Greek and Cypriot Orthodox Churches, who supported setting up a fake Church on age-old Russian Orthodox canonical territory. As one correspondent has put it: ‘This is worse than Protestant dissension’.

Clearly, the solution to reverse this chaos is for all to return to canonical practices, namely of:

  1. Not setting up ‘Churches’ on the canonical territory of other Local Churches.
  2. Not refusing to concelebrate with and not breaking off communion with others because of their different practices regarding the reception of Non-Orthodox.
  3. Refusing to rebaptise those who have already been received by another Local Orthodox Church and who have taken communion in it.
  4. Suspending and defrocking only priests who have committed criminal acts (usually, the theft of money or property, or else who work as spies for the CIA or other spy agencies), or who have committed immoral acts (heterosexual, homosexual, or even pedophile), and not because priests refuse not to concelebrate with canonical Orthodox, or because they profess political opinions and vote for political parties, different from those of their bishop. (This, apparently, is considered to be disobedience and is therefore ‘uncanonical’!!).
  5. Suspending and defrocking bishops for criminal or immoral acts, instead of protecting them (for example the late Archbishop Nathanael of Vienna, (ROCOR)), Metropolitan Joseph of the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America. Apart from them, there are other immoral, homosexual and even pedophile bishops of all nationalities, who (out of jealousy?) persecute heterosexual priests and laymen who have normal family lives.

But will any of this return to canonical practices take place?

What Went Wrong With ROCOR?

In 1974 I asked the then Fr Kallistos (Ware) what the situation in ROCOR was. He told me that he had met the future St John of Shanghai (+ 1966) in the 1950s and had seriously thought about transferring to ROCOR in the 1960s. However, the well-respected priest at the ROCOR Cathedral in London, Fr George Sheremetiev (+ 1971), who had been the confessor of the Tsar’s sister, Xenia Aleksandrovna (+ 20 April 1960), had dissuaded him.

Fr George had told him that the new censoriousness coming from the then CIA-financed ROCOR in the USA was poisoning ROCOR in England and he had better not join it. As an elderly priest, he would stay, for him the old ROCOR was still alive, but it was not a jurisdiction for the young. Consequently, Fr Kallistos remained a priest of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, though also remained priest and confessor at the ROCOR Convent in London until 1976, when the poison from the USA reached a new crescendo. In any case, Fr Kallistos’ witness dissuaded me from joining ROCOR in 1974.

Leaving England for Paris in 1979, there I encountered the old ROCOR, still uncontaminated by the US ROCOR, unlike in England. The ROCOR Western European Diocese, living in the spirit of its former Archbishop, St John of Shanghai, had as its ruling hierarch St John’s successor, Archbishop Antony of Geneva. The Dean for France was Archpriest Alexander Trubnikov, who was priest at the parish of the Resurrection in Meudon in the Paris suburbs. He had a great influence on me, an inspiration, and I knew his matushka and children very well.

Fr Alexander had been born in 1908 in Tsarskoe Selo, where the Tsar and his Family and servants lived, into the noble family of a hereditary Russian imperial officer. During World War I, his father was posted as a military attaché to France. After graduating from a French high school, the future Fr. Alexander had to take on various jobs to make ends meet. At the same time he completed military classes organised by White Russian émigrés in France.

The majority of White Russians went indiscriminately to any Russian church. St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, his vicar Bishop Nathaniel of Brussels, Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and all of us considered that both those in the Paris Jurisdiction, then under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and ROCOR were our common flock in France and Benelux and ignored the minority of freemasons in the Paris Jurisdiction. Thus, we freely concelebrated with it. Fr Alexander was the rector of the Parish of the Resurrection in Meudon from 1954 until 1984, where he inspired several young men to become priests and rebuilt the Meudon chapel, courageously mortgaging his own home to do so. Besides his role as rector, Fr. Alexander served as chaplain to the Russian scouting organisation, the Vitiazi, which educated children from all jurisdictions.

Fr Alexander was also actively involved in inter-Orthodox and inter-Christian relations for many years, publishing books and a newsletter in French that shared news of the Orthodox world. This publishing activity brought Fr. Alexander to participate in the Second Vatican Council in Rome, where he met the then Pope. He wrote books, published his newsletter and attended the Vatican Council, hoping to represent the point of view of the free Russian Orthodox Church to all who would listen, not least to the Roman Catholics who were, and still are, undergoing a crisis, as they threw out the baby, but kept the bathwater. A priest and a diplomat, Fr Alexander reposed 35 years ago in November 1988. Eternal Memory!

After the repose of Archbishop Antony of Geneva five years later, in 1993, the last barrier fell. Thus, the censoriousness began to appear in the Western European Diocese from the USA, but now via Germany. All the clergy at the funeral were profoundly shocked when we found ourselves forbidden from celebrating. Thus, the new order of categorical phariseeism and judgementalism was already remarked at Archbishop Antony’s funeral. We patiently withstood it to defeat it in 2007, at last bringing ROCOR into canonical communion with Moscow. However, a decade later the censoriousness returned and took revenge; communion with Moscow had for them just been a delaying tactic to give their schismatic spirit outward legitimacy.

The new order of the new pharisees was founded on cupidity, jealousy, narcissistic egoism and the love of power of those who manipulate and use others as instruments for their own benefit, before discarding them. Those of the new order corrupted and destroyed everything they touched. Therefore, we did not allow them to touch, out of respect for St John of Shanghai, Archbishop Antony of Geneva, Fr George Sheremetiev, Fr Alexander Trubnikov and all those of the old and traditional ROCOR. You could accept their sectarian and schismatic censoriousness or else resist it. It all depended on whether you were a careerist or someone of principle and integrity. One day it will all be over. Our victory is inevitable because those who occupy the spiritual and moral high ground always win, even though patience will be required in waiting for Moscow to reject the Americanised and schismatic CIA-shaped ROCOR sect.

American ROCOR took over fifty years to spread its tentacles and take over completely. Once the American proxy war in the Ukraine is over, the unprincipled American ROCOR, which has lost so much by sitting on the fence in that conflict, will divide into two camps. On the one hand, there will be the pro-Russian non-schismatics and, on the other hand, the anti-Russian schismatics, the right-wing crazies and persecutors, penetrated by the CIA, heirs to the pro-Hitler Russians of the 1930s and 1940s. This will be the end of ROCOR, as the healthy part will be absorbed into the Moscow Patriarchate or into other Local Churches who obey the canons.

When it is all over, all of us together, from all the Local Churches, will at last be able to build the new Local Church of Western Europe in a US-free Europe, a Sovereign and Confederal Europe, co-operating with all the Local Churches, including a decentralised Moscow, and stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Only then will Europeans be able to recover their lost Motherland of the Church and their lost fatherlands of their own freed countries. At last, with a mother and a father, they will be able to become true brothers and sisters, fleeing the towering pride that created sectarianism and schism, which is what went wrong with ROCOR.

America, the Ukraine, Russia, the Church: Temptation, Tragedy, Challenge and Opportunity

Foreword

The world is now becoming a post-globalist world. The Globalists (Americans) have been defeated by the Sovereignists. Despite the attempts by the US elite, the power behind the throne, to keep the embarrassingly senile Biden in power until after the next elections, the Ukraine is collapsing (and Gaza genocided by American bombs) and so Biden too will Biden. First in Russia, then in Hungary, then in Slovakia, now in the Netherlands, the Sovereignists are in power. They are increasingly strong in Germany, Italy and France. Union is off the cards. Confederation is the order of the day, as the real New World Order. Sovereignty is beyond the artificial and absurd divisions of left and right, inventions of the Western oligarchies (the mythical ‘democracies’) in order to divide and rule. Sovereignty is what both Russia and China have, though the Globalists falsely call them ‘autocracies’. The Western world has yet to recover its sovereignty. It still can, if it takes the opportunity to return to the Holy Trinity, the model of unity in diversity, what politicians today call multipolarity.

The American Temptation

The American temptation was Empire building, not just in one region, but universally or ‘globally’, as it proclaimed. Let us leave the north to the ice and build ‘from sea to shining sea’, they said. So they stole half a Continent from the natives, whom they slaughtered, bought from a desperate Napoleon, grasped the south from Mexico, began a Civil War with 600,000 dead and invaded small islands in the Caribbean and the Pacific. This culminated in a four-year war and dropping its atom bombs on the big island of Japan in 1945 in order to dominate the Pacific. At the same time, they conquered and occupied the peninsula of Western Europe in 1944-5, which victory followed its expeditionary experiment of 1917-18. The 1945 double victory meant its victory over half the world. The USA was a Superpower. It still had to conquer the heartland of Eurasia, which it thought it had done in 1991, becoming the only Superpower. This was a delusion and it duly proclaimed it as ‘the end of history’. This proud triumphalism, a Non-Jewish Zionism, was failure, for the fall always follows pride – delusions are always countered by reality.

The American Empire depended on using expendable proxies, puppets whom it flattered and told that they were superior to their neighbours. These puppets were hired do the dirty work for the US. Through them it could divide and rule, sowing chaos and destruction, whether in Latin America, East Asia, West Asia or in ex-Soviet Eastern Europe. However, its agents, from Marcos to Somoza, from Hussein to Bin Laden, from Bolsinaro to Zelensky, would go off script, falling into delusion. The USA has always suffered from a ‘spoilt child syndrome’. The spoilt child always shouts: ‘If I cannot have it, then no-one will have it’. And so they destroy their once much-coveted puppets and toys. This I know from experience with an American. Internationally, it can be seen in Latin America, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Israel, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Ukraine, Western and Eastern Europe – now isolated from Russia. However, this spoilt-child syndrome only works in a unipolar world of exclusivism, not in a multipolar world. In the latter there is choice and people can escape US despotism, whose policy of containment fails.

The Ukrainian Tragedy

Now desperate the Kiev government wants to mobilise all Ukrainians between the ages of 17 and 70, Berlin-style, and, barbarically, women. The latter are already being killed on the front, where poorly trained and poorly equipped troops without air support, average age 43, are being forced to commit suicide against vastly superior Russian forces. Kiev dead already number between 500,000 and 600,000 and more and more are deserting. The needless death of these troops is a war crime. President Zelensky, like Hitler suicidally forbidding retreat despite military advice, is also isolated and unhinged in his bunker, having banned elections, delusional with his Messiah complex. His PR advisors have told the Western media that Russians have tried to assassinate him five times. Of course, this is nonsense. Zelensky, the brilliant and well-paid actor but utterly incompetent politician, is the greatest asset of the Russians. He may well be assassinated, only by US-backed Ukrainians, which assassination can then be blamed on Russia. The Ukraine has now lost 20%, of its territory, taken back by Russian forces after being ruled by the Ukraine for up to 100 years. But since Kiev refuses to negotiate, it will lose even more.

If the Ukrainians manage to continue losing, they could lose up to 50% of their territory or even more. Russian forces are waiting to fill the vacuum once the Kiev forces collapse and move forward to the River Dnieper and, if necessary, cross it. Whatever happens, Kiev will be forced to surrender unconditionally. There will be no negotiated settlement, as Kiev refused this constantly for eight years. The new, post-Zelensky government in the Ukraine will have to agree to and sign the Russian conditions. It is indeed time to end ‘the magical thinking about Russia’s defeat,’ by which headlines the Wall Street Journal means ending its own delusions and fantasies and those of the whole Collective West and their carefully censored media since 2014. As we have been predicting in over 116 published articles between March 2022 and October 2023, the West is being routed in the Ukraine. Kiev is the second Kabul and even worse in humiliation. As a result, the failed elites in the US and in Europe will fall. NATO and the EU are therefore finished; they were only ever post-1945 relics. Their time is up. Europe’s future is Eurasian and Confederal.

Indeed, the reign of the official Western media like the BBC, used by Western Establishments as propaganda mouthpieces, weapons of mass deception, are over. People are seeing through their lies. The US and the EU made a fatal mistake in forcing Russia into a close alliance with China through their aggression. It was delusional Western hubris that called Russia ‘a gas station with nukes’. Its booming economy has now overtaken the depressed German economy, cut off from cheap energy by US sabotage. As a result of the rout of the Collective West in the Ukraine, worldwide all recognise that there are three Superpowers: China, Russia and USA – and in that order. It is two against one. Queueing up not far behind them are India, the Muslim World, Africa and Latin America, with largely unpopulated Australia left as the natural resource reserve for the great East Asian Superpower – China. Europe discounted itself by allying itself with the US as vassals and client states. Now US failure and humiliation are shared by its lapdogs, Germany, France and especially the UK. France and the UK are to lose their places on the UN Security Council.

The Russian Challenge

Militarily, economically and diplomatically, this is a triumph for the Russian Federation, a Superpower and not ‘a regional power’, as the US President Obama contemptuously called it only a decade ago. Russia is in fact the leader of what used to be called ‘The Global South’, the 90% of the new multipolar world which is Non-Western. Through Russian-founded BRICS +, Russia is the toast of Asia, Africa and Latin America. They too want independence from the neo-colonial West, now that Russia has shown the way through its superiority. It is Russia, backed by China, which with BRICS troops will make peace in West Asia between Palestine and Israel and at last, inevitably, give the Palestinians justice and a homeland. The US is isolated at the UN and has failed because it was one-sided and supported the injustice of Israeli genocide. The US has failed both to divide Europe from Russia and failed to divide and colonise Russia, which was its aim in using Ukrainian soldiers as pawns to attack Russia and die for Washington. However, winning the war in the Ukraine and defeating American Europe is one thing. Russia must also win the peace.

In the Ukraine, this means no occupation of the real Ukraine, where real Ukrainians live, in the north-west and centre-west. It also means that all the Non-Ukrainian parts of the pre-2014 Ukraine, created by brutal Soviet dictators and whose brutality the Collective West has so fervently supported, where Russians, Poles, Romanians and Hungarians live, will at last be able to return to their homelands. They will leave the real Ukraine, about half the Soviet Ukraine. As post-Soviet Russia learned its lesson not to oppress Non-Russian peoples and has never had the slightest intention of occupying the real Ukraine, let alone other Eastern European countries (Zelensky’s Ukraine was in no way defending the West ‘against the Asiatic Muscovite hordes’; that was pure racist propaganda), the peoples of Europe are going to see the real Russia, instead of seeing it through the eyes of their US-selected elite of nonentities, who constantly lied to them. With people’s governments in Europe, a new agreement could be reached, with the abandonment of NATO and mutually beneficial security guarantees.

This means the repeal of the illegal anti-Russian sanctions and respect for the human rights of Russian minorities in all European countries, especially in the Ukraine, where the Orthodox Church has been banned. Tragedy remains. Apart from the unnecessary sacrifice of a whole generation of well over a million Ukrainian men, killed or crippled, Ukraine will need rebuilding – and repopulating. Eight million and more fled Zelensky’s tyranny and his hated SBU secret police and many were needlessly made to fear Russia because of Western propaganda. They emigrated, first to Russia, then to Poland, Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe. The death toll for Russia could well reach 40,000 dead. There were also the 14,000 Russian-speaking civilians massacred by the US-installed Kiev regime in the Donbass since 2014. Apart from this, there is the whole question of the once multinational Russian Church. In February 2022 its leadership took a Russian nationalist stance. This meant that Non-Russians and those Russians who did not agree with the Russian Military Operation in the Ukraine left that politicised Church, some with bitterness.

The Orthodox Christian Opportunity

Clergy and people outside Russia, in the Ukraine, in the Baltics, in Moldova, in Western Europe and one day in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Central Asia, will not return to the Russian Orthodox Church. The Russian Church will have to decentralise and form a family of new and autocephalous (independent) Local Churches for these peoples. This is the challenge and the only way forward. The Russian temptation was to try and dominate the rest of the Orthodox Church because their Church is by far the biggest and so the most powerful, three-quarters of the whole. God has humbled them and they will be reduced to half of the Orthodox world. Russians will have to return to their saints, to Sts Antony and Theodosius of Kiev, St Sergius of Radonezh, St Nil of Sora, St Paisy (Velichkovsky), St Seraphim of Sarov, the Saints of Optina, St John of Kronstadt, the New Martyrs and Confessors, St John of Shanghai. These are the actual spiritual and moral leaders of the Russian Church. Today the Russian Church is at last heading towards becoming a post-post-Soviet Church, that is, to a Church free of centralisation, nationalism, politics, sect and schism.

However, there was also the Greek nationalist temptation, no less historic in its catastrophic proportions. This temptation, which began as long ago as 1917, was to go the way of the world, that is of the USA. Now God has humbled the Greeks too, making them powerless in worldly terms, for they placed their hope ‘in princes and the sons of men’. Their only greatness is in the saints whom they themselves persecuted, St Nectarios, St Paisios and St Porphyrios, to name but a few. The situation reminds us of the following. Some forty years ago St Paisios the Athonite told a then young man, whom I know well, the following. The young man had been scandalised by the conduct of certain bishops. Fr Paisios told him: ‘When you walk along a path on Athos and come across animal excrement, what do you do? You kick it aside into the bushes so that other passers-by will not tread in it and then you wipe your shoes’. This is what we do today. We shall defeat both sectarianism and modernism, for they all end up in the same way, in the bushes, in sect and schism.

The End of a World

Politics

Catastrophic predictions and apocalyptic undertones are here. Even the name of a place in the Holy Land, Armageddon, is on some people’s lips. The US elite is threatening to invade Chinese Taiwan ‘in order to protect it from China’. In the US-backed ‘democratic’ Ukraine, that ‘bastion of Western ‘Civilisation’’ the most corrupt country in the world, which is now banning Christianity, 20,000 untrained and poorly-equipped Ukrainian conscripts are dying every month for the sake of dependence on the US, thousands more are shot in the back by the Ukrainian secret police for retreating, or else are deserting or surrendering. The Ukrainian birthrate has plummeted to 0.7 per woman and the population is now under 20 million, whereas just over thirty years ago it was 52 million.

Then there is the Holy Land, where Israeli colonists, 100% backed by US and Western European financial, and therefore political and media elites, but not by their peoples, are planning to genocide two million native Palestinians. Men, women and children are being murdered or dismembered by US bombs, dropped by US aircraft with Israeli insignia. The whole once disunited and warring Muslim world, from Morocco to Pakistan, from Iran to Turkey, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, from Yemen to Syria, is united against the Israeli military machine and its Western sponsors. Mass demonstrations in support of the genocided Palestinians, largely unreported by Western State media, are taking place all over the world, including in Western countries. The US is isolated, faced down by the Global Majority, from Brazil to South Africa. Heads of countries even refuse to speak to the senile President Biden. It has sent aircraft carriers, but China has sent warships, as Russia also. Iran is threatening isolated Israel and its corrupt political leaders with destruction, if Israel invades Gaza. In Syria, part of which is illegally occupied by the US Army, which is pumping out stolen oil, Russian forces, present at the invitation of the Syrian government, are threatened by the US. They will react.

The problem is ‘Gentile Zionism’. This is the Non-Jewish, Western fantasy that all political decisions taken by Western countries are infallibly correct and that the superior Western ‘liberal’ world, as ‘an exceptional civilisation’ with ‘a manifest destiny’, must rule the planet as the unique model for all. All Non-Westerners are as nothing, just folklore to look at in a Disneyland zoo. The Global Majority, seven billion out of eight billion, do not agree with this Nazism and is at this moment preparing to intervene in the Holy Land to bring about a ceasefire. There has only ever been one way out of this, ‘the two-state solution’: one homeland for Jews and one homeland for Palestinians, as was agreed by Resolution 181 of the UN in 1947, but which has ever since been vetoed by the US.

Christianity

The largest nominal religion in the world, though still covering only a minority of the world, is Christianity. Two forms of it used to predominate in the Western world. The first, Roman Catholicism, invented a thousand years ago, has been undermined by unending scandals involving papal and episcopal corruption, clerical pedophilia and crime, misogyny and racism. Few Roman Catholic laypeople actually believe in or observe its controversial ideology. The second form, Protestantism, invented 500 years ago after dissatisfaction with Roman Catholicism, has nearly completely dissolved into the anti-Christian Secularism which both spawned. Protestant leaders widely predict that their own religion will die out by 2050. Who believes in the Western form of Protestantism any more? Most Protestant churches in the Western world are empty and many have been sold or are for sale.

As for the Non-Western, Orthodox Church, some of its main leaders are only politicians and not pastors, whose only concern seems to be power and money. Thus, the Greek Patriarch, out of communion with the Russian Church, set up an uncanonical Church in the Ukraine for a $25 million bribe from the US and his Patriarchate has been undermined by incessant sexual and financial scandals. Meanwhile, the Russian Patriarch, out of communion with the Greek Patriarch, thanks St Seraphim of Sarov for nuclear weapons! (1). His once multinational and united Church, undermined by centralisation and Russian nationalism, is utterly divided. It suffers from constant moral and financial scandals with bishops, divisions or schisms everywhere outside Russia, in Estonia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova (2). Tomorrow divisions may well begin in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Moreover, the Russian Church’s small, sectarian American branch has been in schism from its even smaller French branch for nearly three years. Nothing has been done about this schism except to encourage it, despite the appeals of its clergy to its now wealthy bishops to return from schism, the consequent collapse of the American branch in one country and the open persecution of theologically-educated and conscientious Orthodox. One of the American bishops scandalously and openly rebaptises, not just Non-Orthodox, but even other Orthodox (!). This is a sect, not part of the Church. Yet, apparently, the leaders of the Russian Church find this arrogant Americanisation and ‘One True Church’ sectarianisation normal.

We have seen it all before. Those who have not seen it all before can read about it in the history books. Although all may become a lot worse, we do not believe the apocalyptic hype. In the Holy Land the Global Majority (miscalled by some the ‘Global South’), Russia, China, India, Africa, Latin America, can still make peace between the two warring sides in the Holy Land. If US dollars were to be withdrawn from troubled places, Taiwan would peacefully return to China, the Ukraine would peacefully return to Russia, and the south and west of Israel would peacefully return to Palestine. There are solutions.

As for Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, these were only ever temporary, politically-shaped Western deviations of Christianity, with some very strange traits. Having served their time, they can now disappear and be replaced, perhaps even by historic Christianity and the historic Church. Their roots from the first millennium are still present. As for the Orthodox Church, we have also seen all the polarised divisions and sectarianism before (3). Leaders come and go. The head of the Church is Christ, not men. When men refuse to deal with the problems they have created, Christ will step in. All racism, schisms and sects can be overcome and dissolved by new, Christ-appointed leaders. We do not believe that this is the end of the world. However, it is the end of a world. We are surely present at the remaking of the world, at its reconfiguration, not at its end.

 

Notes:

  1. In French: https://orthodoxie.com/le-patriarche-cyrille-les-armes-nucleaires-par-linexprimable-providence-de-dieu-ont-ete-creees-sous-la-protection-de-saint-seraphin-de-sarov/
  2. Summarised in Romanian in: https://tv8.md/2023/20/10/dornici-sa-invete-limba-romana-6500-de-persoane-s-au-inscris-la-cursurile-organizate-de-stat-din-ce-domenii-vin-participantii/242307.

The full version of the still unanswered letter from 5 September, which is in fact an urgent appeal for autocephaly, with its clear emphasis on continuing Russian racism towards Moldovans, is available in Romanian-style Russian (Metr Vladimir’s native language is Romanian) on Facebook. If the Russian Patriarch ignores the appeal, the whole Moldovan Church may well join the Romanian Church. The absurd and uncanonical ‘defrockings’ of Moldovan (and other) priests who have already joined the Romanian Church will be rescinded – as they always are when they are purely political.

  1. For example, there was the scandal of the rebaptism of Orthodox by the selfsame Americanised branch of Russian Orthodoxy of neophytes in Guildford, England in 1976. The remnants of that Guildford group of pseudo-Orthodox are still rebaptising Orthodox today. Just another story of primitive neophytism, openly encouraged by its bishops, of whom some are themselves neophytes, despite the canons against the consecration of neophyte bishops. But the heretical rebaptism of Orthodox is itself only a repeat of the age-old phariseeism of the sectarian heresy of Donatism from the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. There is nothing new under the sun. What is disgraceful that the leadership of the once theologically respectable Russian Church countenances such a heresy in its midst and the persecution and slandering of those who oppose it. Those who start receiving Non-Orthodox Christians by baptism end up receiving Orthodox by baptism too!