Tag Archives: Church Freedom

The Fall of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Rise of the Russian Orthodox Church

‘God so loved the world that He did not send a Committee’.

Foreword: The Hundred Years War Is Ending

The Hundred Years War (1914-2024) is at last ending, not in Sarajevo where the first part began in 1914, not in Warsaw, where the second part began in 1939, but in Kiev, where the third part began in 2014. The second and third parts were made inevitable by the key, first part, caused by rival Imperialisms. All three parts have pulled into Europe the USA, which had profited from them until the last part. But the seeds of US success contained the seeds of its own destruction. In order to maintain its supremacy, the US yoked itself to a delusional madman in Kiev, who has the most developed sense of entitlement of any of his people. When he does not get the means of destruction that he wants, and that is always more and more lethal, he throws a tantrum, like any spoilt actor or diva who wants adulation.

As with any spoilt child, all you have to do is call his bluff, that is, ignore him and walk away. However, he is still by far the most dangerous dictator of the many recruited and employed by the US, in any banana republic whether in Latin America, Western Europe, the Middle East or the Far East, with the possible exception of the equally genocidal maniac, Netanyahu. For Kiev wants nuclear weapons. It was inevitable. All that the US – and hysterical Western Europe – have to do is to pull the carpet from under the Kiev dictator’s feet. However, war victory in the Ukraine, or even the potential peace victory, do nothing to solve the spiritual and structural crisis in the Russian Church, whose jurisdiction used to extend to all the territories of the former USSR and beyond them to the Western world.

The Fall of the Moscow Patriarchate

The Russian Orthodox Church administration in Moscow, founded, named and centralised in Soviet times as ‘the Moscow Patriarchate’, is in great difficulty. It has once again tried to impose impossible political demands on the consciences of clergy and faithful everywhere, just as it did in the late 1920s, of which the ‘Sergianist’ mentality is currently much admired within the Patriarchate. These political demands stretch to outside the Russian Federation and Belarus – though even inside these countries it has great difficulties. There it has even ‘defrocked’ clergy for having political views on the tragic conflict in the Ukraine which are different from those of the Patriarchal authorities.

Wanting to pray not for ‘victory’, but for peace, that is, for the Victory of Christ, persecuted independent clergy have often had to flee abroad. Moscow also finds its churches boycotted by many faithful all over Russia. Surely an Orthodox is defined by his agreement with the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, not by his political views? Why this dogmatisation of political opinions and the canons, as also happened during the Soviet period? Surely the dogmatisation of non-dogmatic political views is, by definition, uncanonical? Outside those two Russian territories, where Patriarchal authority is backed up by the State, the situation of the Moscow Patriarchate is not just difficult, but catastrophic.

Inside the Former USSR

Inside the former USSR, the worst situation is in the Ukraine. Here over 12,000 churches and their clergy no longer commemorate the Russian Patriarch, since he is seen as an enemy leader. This is a pastoral disaster. How does a pastor come to be seen as the enemy of his people? He may reply that their perspective is wrong, but the fact is that that is how they perceive him. And it is too late to do anything about it. In Latvia, Russian Orthodox also no longer commemorate him, as the four besieged bishops there have had to declare independence from Moscow, despite their divided flock, who are often boycotting the Church. The situation is chaotic.

Meanwhile, in Lithuania and Estonia, the Russian Church is faced by schisms due to its disputed authority. Indeed, the Patriarch is not even allowed entry into Lithuania (nor into the UK and Canada). In Central Asia, there is dissidence and some are leaving for abroad, others declare that they are retiring. In Moldova, the only country in the former Soviet Union (apart from Georgia) where there is a canonical alternative to the Moscow jurisdiction, over a hundred more clergy have this year alone left with their parishes for the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania, tired of Russian nationalism, racism and their mistreatment as third-class citizens.

Outside the Former USSR

Outside the territories of the former USSR, the Moscow Patriarchate finds itself in schism with the imperialistic Greek Orthodox world as a result of mutual disputes regarding ‘canonical territory’. This is not because either is intent on doing missionary work among Non-Orthodox, but rather each is intent on trying to steal each other’s flocks. In North America, Metropolitan Nicholas, the leading bishop of the Anabaptist ROCOR sect, an out-of-control American Protestant-style and anti-Russian (!) schismatic group under the Moscow Patriarchate, finds that people walk out on him when he prays for the Russian Patriarch and people refuse to donate.

In Western Europe many Russian Orthodox priests refuse to commemorate the Russian Patriarch or have left him. As for the Ukrainians, they have set up 100 parishes, separate from Moscow in Western Europe. And Moldovans are doing the same. In Australia and especially in Latin America, many will have nothing to do with the Moscow Patriarchate. In general, outside the former USSR, the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate resemble ever smaller, ever more inward-looking, ever more nationalistic groups, often numbering only a dozen or two. As for native Orthodox people, everywhere they are tired of being treated as third-class citizens by Moscow and are leaving.

Babylon Versus Jerusalem

Let us be frank. The mentality that now pervades the apparently often ‘effeminate’ upper reaches of the Moscow Patriarchate is careerist, not saintly, political, not pastoral, bureaucratic, not spiritual, nationalistic, not multinational, Statist, not canonical. For that reason, they are losing their authority and people are, as the phrase goes, voting with their feet and leaving them. However, this fall of the ‘cardinals’ (be they overt or covert) of the Moscow Patriarchate and its associated Soviet-period administrative groups, like ROCOR, is leading to the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church, for the fall of Babylon always leads to the rise of Jerusalem, paradoxically the dead hand of the State brings opposition and so life.

The Rise of the Russian Orthodox Church

The fall of top-heavy, militaristic, Soviet-period superstructures like the Moscow Patriarchate or ROCOR is because the grassroots faithful want to return to the authentic Church. The great mainstream tradition of the monastics, pastors and people of the Russian Church is very much alive. Who were Sts Antony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves? They were real Churchmen, not careerist administrators with their ‘protocols’, they were enlighteners of the peoples of Rus, who brought forth a host of saints, whose holy relics lie in the Kiev Caves today and give out myrrh, calling to God.

Who was the great Russian Orthodox St Sergius of Radonezh? Why is he called the Builder of Russia? He was the heir to that multinational network of monks and saints who spread again the prayer of the heart from St Gregory Palamas and Mt Athos through the Balkans north to the Russian Lands. He and his disciples, like St Nil of Sora, set up dozens and dozens of monasteries to spread the Word of God into still pagan central Russia and this movement spread ultimately to Siberia, the Pacific Coast and even beyond, through St Herman of Alaska and his companions, who spread the Light of Christ to California.

More Recent Saints

Who was St Job of Pochaev? He was the monastic founder who turned the Western Ukraine into an advanced post of Orthodoxy, a bastion against those whose filioquism was a political instrument for the Polish oppression of Orthodox in order to gain more power and wealth. Who was St Paisy (Velichkovsky)? He was the heir to the monastic renewal, forced by persecuting German Tsarinas to take refuge from what is now the Ukraine in what is now Romania, and from there to re-enlighten the Russian Lands, liberating them from the schismatic curses caused by the purely external observances of ritualism and State nationalism.

Who was St Seraphim of Sarov? He was the old, bent-over monk digging in his vegetable-patch in Sarov, whom the rich and ignoble noble regarded as a dirty peasant, because he looked at the saint’s rags and not his praying heart of gold, and who was canonised at the insistence of the pious Tsar against the opinion of bishop-bureaucrats. Who was St John of Kronstadt? He was the righteous and fragrant pastor who prophesied all, exactly as it happened, because the idle rich parasites, who persecuted him and were jealous of him, refused to repent for their persecution of the real Church and the Tsar and enraged the oppressed who then revolted.

The Saints After 1917

Who were the New Martyrs and Confessors, from Tsar Nicholas to St Tikhon, Apostle of America, Bishop of San Francisco and American citizen, who had the services translated into English, and then became the Patriarch of Moscow, from the Martyrs of Solovki to the 20,000 Martyrs of Butovo, from the Martyrs of Kazakhstan to the Martyrs of Kolyma, from St Matrona of Moscow to St Seraphim of Vyritsa, from St Laurence of Chernigov to St Luke of Crimea? Who was the universal missionary St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, persecuted and suspended by ROCOR bishops for being a good pastor and not a right-wing ideologist, and the wise fool Mother Alypia of Kiev, who saw through sinners to their hearts?

These all were those who thought nothing of nationality and politics, but knew that if they sought the Kingdom of Heaven first, then all would be added unto them, and for this reason they became saints. And, despite the persecution of bishop-bureaucrats, effeminates in love with luxury, they were and are followed by a countless host of saints, fools-for-Christ, prophets, faithful women and children, priests and nuns, who are victorious, as they were and are not the practitioners of politicians, but, as practitioners of Christ, the victims of politicians. We know that we are on their side and are undefeatable, for we follow Christ, Who overthrew the devil and defeated our enemy, Death, restoring all to Life.

Jerusalem Conquers Babylon

Faithfulness to the thousands of years of the Saints of the Universal Church, from the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Bible, from the Mother of God to St John the Forerunner, from the Apostles to the Martyrs, from St Spyridon to St Nicholas, from St Basil to St John Chrysostom, from St Maximus the Confessor to St Paraskeva, from St Xenia to St Nectarius of Aegina, and faithfulness to the thousand years of Saints of the Russian Lands, are why the Russian Orthodox Church triumphs against the political schisms of mere Patriarchal ‘careerist administrators’ and ‘effective managers’. The Saints all show not the Primacy of ecclesiastical bureaucrats, but the Primacy of the Holy Spirit, the Victory of Christ. 

Afterword: God Gives Opportunities

The territory of the Russian Federation forms by far the largest country in the world. It is the territory of the USA and the Continent of Australia combined. Its natural resources are extraordinary. In a word, it has everything. It could easily support a population five or perhaps ten times greater than it has now. And yet this is the country that suicidally threw so much away in 1917, before which year the Russian Empire had undergone phenomenal growth for a generation, which was to continue. In 1914 its projected population by the year 2000 was some 600 million. That of the Russian Federation today is 145 million.

I remember visiting the USSR in 1973 and 1976 and saying that I would not return until the Church was free. I remember visiting the Russian Federation many times between 2007 and 2018 and always thinking the situation is on a knife-edge. Either it will go one way, towards Orthodoxy, or else to the other, to militaristic nationalism and purely outward and bureaucratic ritualism. It went this other way. However, there is still the chance to step back from suicide, to the catholicity of the Church, towards good relations with the other Local Churches, so rejoining the mainstream of Love and Truth. May it be so!

 

What is Happening in Montenegro?

I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about the current goings-on in Montenegro since the corrupt, NATO-supported mafia regime there adopted a law which aims to confiscate the property of the canonical Orthodox Church. Naturally, the law has a ridiculous Orwellian name (something like “the law on freedom of religion”), and is presented as an honest attempt on the part of the Montenegrin government to regulate State-Church relations in the country. In fact, however, the law was clearly created to confiscate the property (including churches and monasteries) belonging to the Orthodox Church in Montenegro which, unlike other major religious denominations in the country, was never invited to any kind of official discussion or dialogue with relevant government institutions etc responsible for creating this law. The most controversial part of the law states (in essence) that all property belonging to the Church since before 1918 for which there is no adequate evidence that it belonged to the Church and not the State will be confiscated by the State. The false premise here is that the State then supposedly owned all Church land, which by the way is completely false. Government functionaries have obviously denied this, but it is the logical consequence of the law. Several members of the leading party (i.e. members of the Montenegrin mafia) have made pronunciations about the Serbian Orthodox Church being a “relic of the past” which needs to “die out”, and have said that perhaps some churches could, in the future, be used for whatever the government finds useful, such as cafés, pastry shops or casinos (!).
The current president (read: dictator) of Montenegro, who has been in power for around thirty years, and who is himself unbaptized and an atheist, has recently declared that it is his intention to “recreate” the “autocephalous” (sic) “Montenegrin Orthodox Church”. This is obvious historical revisionism and political manipulation (which is I’m sure you understand very well), the same kind that we’ve already seen in the Ukraine and other places. This fake “Church” has no members (other than perhaps a handful of government bureaucrats) and is led by a former priest (defrocked and excommunicated by the Patriarch of Constantinople) named Miraš Dedeić.
Naturally, the faithful have been protesting this whole development for years (the first draft of the law was finished in 2015) and since the law was passed about a week ago there have been huge gatherings – prayer services, processions and demonstrations all across Montenegro. Over 100,000 are believed to have participated the day before yesterday alone, and more still during the previous week. Despite these massive protests (in a country, by the way, which has a population of only around 600,000) and a large gathering on December 21 in Nikšić where tens of thousands gathered despite the bad weather and the fact that the government blocked the roads to Republika Srpska and Serbia, hardly any attention has been paid to this anywhere. Obviously the media in Serbia, Montenegro and the surrounding countries have reported all this, along with some alternative media outlets, but hardly a word from foreign media. If one sixth of the population of, say, the United Kingdom, protested against something – don’t you think that might be mentioned in the news? Perhaps more than a few times even?
Today the looming war with Iran has naturally crowded out all other news, but even before that there was hardly any mention of these recent developments in Montenegro. I suppose the diabolical mainstream media only report the things that serve their agenda, and spin everything to suit their narrative.
Anyway, I just thought I’d send you this message and a few links to some relevant articles and videos. I didn’t even get into the unbelievably condescending interview given to the Serbian media outlet Kurir by Patriarch Bartholomew where he inferred that some of the Serbian bishops are “ungrateful children” whom the “Mother Church” (i.e. Constantinople) nevertheless “loves”. Can you imagine? He also went on to bash the Russian Orthodox Church for its supposedly terrible actions in the Ukraine etc. The article in Serbian is linked below, Google Translate usually does an okay job translating from Serbian to English.
In any case, what can I say? Please pray for me and for us all, for the Church and all the faithful who are suffering across the world. Times are clearly not that good right now.
And have a wonderful and peaceful Christmas!
Filip
https://orthochristian.com/126743.html – Police in Podgorica beat up a bishop and faithful protesting against the law
https://orthochristian.com/126889.html – Politicians who voted for the law are excommunicated, the faithful protest all over Montenegro
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r1PzVnqLqjc – Yesterday’s prayer and protest in Podgorica
https://mitropolija.com/2020/01/02/istinska-crna-gora-2-januara-2020-godine-uvece-video-foto/ – Images and videos from protests in cities and towns across Montenegro

Russian Orthodox Church also to Abandon Crete Meeting?

The news that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church will not be taking part in what was supposed to be a ‘Pan-Orthodox’ meeting in Crete this month, because it disagrees with the draft documents proposed (like most Orthodox everywhere), and that the Patriarchate of Antioch will probably not take part, was followed by an announcement of the Synod of the Russian Church on 3 June.

This was a call for an extraordinary ‘pre-Conciliar’ conference to take place before the 10 June in order to iron out the mass of methodological problems and problems of syncretism in the documents – if not the Russian Church will not take part. (Metr Agafangel of Odessa has already refused personally to take part in the Russian delegation because he disagrees so profoundly with the documents proposed).

However, yesterday, on 6 June, the Patriarchate of Constantinople completely rejected this proposal, thus ensuring that the Russian Church will not take part. It is clear that Constantinople’s arrogant, top-down attempt to impose on the Orthodox world and people its syncretistic and anti-Orthodox views, dictated to it by the US State Department, has failed.

On 28 May the well-known Russian Orthodox layman and prominent businessman, Konstantin Malofeev, speaking on the Tsargrad TV Channel, confirmed what we had all along suspected. This is that the venue for the Crete meeting is full of CIA and FBI agents, who have been called in ‘to ensure the security of the Orthodox bishops against terrorism’’. In fact, they are bugging the venue and in fact will control all its proceedings.

In other words, if a meeting is to take place, it must first of all take place with a list of real problems of the Church – e.g. the divisive and politically-enforced introduction among a few Orthodox of the Catholic calendar for the fixed feasts, the invasion of Russian canonical territory in Finland, Estonia and elsewhere by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and ending the jurisdictional divisions in the Diaspora caused by the Patriarchate of Constantinople after 1917.

Secondly, such a meeting must take place with Patriarchs freely chosen by the Synods of the Local Churches (and not in a back room in the US State Department) and it must take place in a free country, in the absence of spies. For nine years now we have been suggesting the now fully restored New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. Perhaps there a meeting could be held which would become a real Pan-Orthodox Council rather than a farcical and expensive junket.

Will the 2016 Inter-Orthodox Council be Cancelled?

The Inter-Orthodox Council which the Patriarchate of Constantinople has so long wanted and which has been pencilled in for 2016 has always been in doubt. Firstly, there has been the question of the agenda. What is there to talk about, when all the dogmatic issues were long ago resolved? The agenda of mainly rather secular issues proposed, seemingly a throwback to the 1960s, has never really been shared with, let alone had the support or enthusiasm of, the faithful and appears to have been externally imposed by the forces which control that Patriarchate. Secondly, there have been several jurisdictional disputes potentially preventing such a Council taking place.

For example, there has been the question of the recognition of the much-disputed autocephaly of the small group known as the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), which was founded during the first Cold War and which is on shared territory with other Orthodox, the question of a group set up by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in Estonia creating two Churches on the same territory, the question of continued politically-motivated dissidence in Russian Church life in the Diaspora with defections to Constantinople, as well as the dispute between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem regarding jurisdiction in Qatar. Now there are new issues, which also seem to be linked to political adventurism.

In recent days the US-controlled Patriarchate of Constantinople has set up an alternative ‘Synod’ in the Czech Lands and Slovakia, in effect creating a division, similar to those after the establishment of Constantinople jurisdictions in the Diaspora after 1917 and more recently in Estonia. The decision to establish the new Synod was made after a meeting of two Constantinople bishops in Vienna on 6 February. In the church in Brno in Moravia on 22 February the 89-year old Archbishop Symeon, together with the retired Bishop Tikhon, consecrated a third bishop outside the Synod of the Local Church, effectively establishing a new Synod.

Almost at the same time the US-appointed Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople received a delegation of Ukrainians from Canada. He promised to help various schismatic groups in the Ukraine, which like Estonia is also on the canonical territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, unite under his authority. This is on condition that the US-appointed President Poroshenko in Kiev asks his Patriarchate to do so. The Patriarch promised ‘flexibility’, suggesting canonical vagueness. There is a clear political influence here, as the powers that be in the Western world continue to try to divide the Orthodox Church through its weakest point, the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

This has been controlled by the US since 1948, when it deposed the legitimate Patriarch Maximos, who was exiled to Switzerland, and appointed its own controversial Greek-American candidate. These latest measures have been seen as a new part of the US-inspired war of sanctions in revenge for Russian support for the Ukrainians fighting against the US-installed junta in Kiev which appeared after the overthrow of the democratic government there. This is surely a tactical error on the part of the US. It means that the Orthodox world will be able to ignore the now isolated Patriarchate of Constantinople. Like the EU, it has become just another unfree pawn in the new Cold War which the US has begun, from North Africa to the Middle East and from Central Asia to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.

If Constantinople were politically isolated, the rest of the Orthodox Church would be able to hold a Council (just as it did in 1948 in Moscow), putting aside the modernist human rights-style agenda for the 2016 Council, dictated to the Church by external secular forces. These are the same forces as those that dictated the agenda of Vatican II, protestantizing and secularizing the Roman Catholic world fifty years ago. A future Council of free Local Orthodox Churches, perhaps to be held at the restored New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow, could have a relevant agenda to discuss. This could for example be:

1. A statement on the need for the canonical freedom of the Church from the interference of all political authorities and thus a return by all to the Orthodox calendar and typicon. 2. A call to repentance to Orthodox who have lapsed into nationalism, modernism, sectarianism and other forms of Western secularism. 3. The reassertion of the Christian values which stand at the roots of the Western world, but which after a millennial process of degeneration it has finally wholly rejected in the last 25 years. 4. A call to the rest of the Non-Orthodox world to return to traditional values from secularism and consumerist materialism for the sake of the survival of humanity. 5. A statement on the concerted need to preach the Gospel in its Orthodox context throughout the Non-Orthodox world.

This seems to be the moment of decision for nominal Orthodox. Do they believe in the Gospel commandment of Christ that we are to baptize all peoples in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, or are they mere petty nationalists? Are they on the side of the Church, or are they prepared to support the West in its Antichristic project, which involves emptying the Middle East of all its native Christians and trying to destroy the canonical Orthodox Church in the Ukraine? Are they loyal to the multinational Orthodox Christian ideal of Holy Rus/Romaiosini, or are they loyal to provincial nationalism and the powers of this world? Are they loyal to Christ and His Church, or to the Godless Western grasp for global hegemony? Answers need to be given.