Foreword
We have never had the slightest doubt that the Russian Federation, one of the World’s four Superpowers and the fourth largest economy in the world, would emerge militarily victorious in the conflict in the Ukraine. It is common sense, its military-industrial base is far greater than that of the Collective West and its military technology is far ahead of the Western, which is stuck at least one generation behind in the 1990s, as shown by its burning backward tanks in Russia and the Ukraine. On top of that, it is supported by the whole Non-Western world, including China, India, Africa and Latin America, all who have been and are victims of Western colonialism and exploitation – nearly 90% of the planet. The West has isolated itself through its crimes. The Western defeat in the Ukraine, which is rapidly on its way, is Divine chastisement for its hubris and all its crimes over the centuries, not least its recent genocides in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the Ukraine.
However, this common sense does not mean that we rejoice in any of this profound tragedy or Russia winning the war. Will Russia win the peace? At least a million men are dead or maimed in the Ukraine. All are victims of international politics, above all the victims are the poor Ukrainians, whom the racist Americans and the Western European elite want to see killed ‘until the last Ukrainian’. Now they want to murder even those Ukrainians between the ages of 18 and 25. However, as we have said from the outset, another great loser will be the once multinational Russian Orthodox Church, which has lost its Ukrainian flock and others by descending into Russian nationalist politics and cutting itself off from communion with the corrupt hierarchy of the Church of Constantinople. All seem to have forgotten that we are pastors, not politicians and we have no interest in power and money. Their punishment is coming. As the proverb says: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
Introduction: The Conflict in the Ukraine
The very tragic conflict in the Ukraine has especially since 2022 caused divisions in the Russian Church outside the Ukraine. (I do not speak of the divisions that it has caused inside the Ukraine – they are all too obvious).
For: Patriots?
On the one hand, there are the Conservatives (for want of a better word), who fully support the armed conflict, which has already created over a million victims, killed and wounded. Many of these, on both sides, are formally baptised, in the same Russian Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, the views of the Conservatives, shared, it seems, by all the bishops and most of the priests inside Russia, though not by all of them in Western Europe and the USA, are that this is an operation to defend the Russian Federation and Russians in the east and south of the Ukraine from American-led NATO and Neo-Nazi Ukrainian aggression from the Kiev puppet government. Therefore, Russian actions are justified. Indeed, they claim that Russian actions are simply defending threefold Orthodox East Slavdom, Holy Rus (the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Belarus), from Western evils like atheism and transgenderism, like that of the 1916 murderer and traitor Yusupov.
Those who support the Conservatives proclaim that the latter are sincere Christians and good pastors, who are just defending Russia against its God-less Western enemies. Those against the Conservatives consider them to be cruel, heartless, anti-Christian, divisive and politically-motivated. How can they, especially as clergy, be in favour of destruction, war and death? What about: ‘Thou shalt not kill’? They consider that the supporters of the Russian forces are mercenary and murderous hirelings of an aggressive Russian government, and that they will do whatever the Russian State wants, that they have no Christian conscience. Their argument is supported by the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is, or rather, used to be, the Church of all Russian Orthodox and all canonical Ukrainian Orthodox, that it used to be multinational. Therefore, to support one national side against another is to divide the flock of the Church, introducing a civil war into the Church. Is that Christian?
Against: Traitors?
On the other hand, there are the Liberals (for want of a better word), who are opposed to the conflict and demand the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Ukraine. These include the clergy of the former Russian parish in Amsterdam and in Madrid (all of them linked to the late liberal Metr Antony (Bloom)), and a well-known archpriest and protodeacon from Moscow, now in exile in Western Europe. They, and several others, have all been ‘defrocked’ by the Moscow Patriarchate for disagreeing with the ‘Party line’ (See Note 1) and so joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople – Moscow’s US-financed rival. But they had nowhere else to go. Others, bishops of the Russian-American Synod in New York have also called on Russia to withdraw its troops. The anti-Russian attitudes of such bishops, who are American citizens, are not surprising. In the past, they had at least one CIA-agent bishop and until 1991 subsidies from the CIA. Why should they not accept subsidies again?
Those who are against the conflict are said to be sincere Christians and good pastors. Those who support the conflict consider those against to be political traitors. In effect, those against the conflict are supporting Russia’s enemies, the Western Powers, led by the USA. They tell those who are against the conflict to visit the Avenue of the Angels monument in Donetsk, where 400 children murdered by Ukrainian/US shells between 2014 and 2022 are buried, together with nearly 14,000 adult civilian victims. Also, they point out that most of the ‘Russian’ troops fighting in the Ukraine are Ukrainians anyway – Russian-speaking inhabitants of the eastern and southern Ukraine, who are fighting for their right to speak their native language and attend their Orthodox Church, which is sorely persecuted by Kiev. Since they are Ukrainians, how can they withdraw from their own country? Here is the essence of the tragedy – this is the worst sort of war – a civil war.
The Third Way
Those who are for the conflict seem to support Russian nationalism and militarism, those who are against the conflict seem to support US globalism and secularism. It is clear that neither of these extremes can be supported. We support the Third Way. This says that the Church should not take sides in a conflict between secular States, the Russian Federation and the USA, both of which have, for example, very high rates of abortion and divorce, suffer from weak family life and have very low levels of Church attendance. We should act as pastors, not politicians, as Christians, not as secularists. Our secular passport may say Russian or Ukrainian, but our spiritual passport says Orthodox Christian. This is our heavenly nationality, over all that is earthly. We should pray not for ‘victory’, but for ‘peace’. It seems to us that the Russian Orthodox hierarchy in Moscow should grant the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence.
If independence, or autocephaly, is what the canonical Ukrainian Church needs in order to stop persecution, even if only temporarily, let it have it. The Church does not put power above peace and money above love. Sadly, we must admit that the conflict in the Ukraine has highlighted that many, on both sides, have done the opposite, playing politics. For them there is only power and money, not peace and love. The example of St Nicholas of Japan (+ 1912) should be followed. During the Japano-Russian War of 1904-05, as the Russian bishop of Japan and founder of the Japanese Orthodox Church, he lived as a recluse in prayer, telling his Japanese flock to pray for the Japanese authorities, as the Apostle Paul instructs us. And then he fell silent for the duration. Why do the Church authorities in Moscow not do the same today? We also have the example of St Silvanus the Athonite (+ 1938), who during the First World War simply prayed that the least evil side win.
Conclusion: Towards Healing
Here are the examples that we may follow, praying that the present grave divisions inside the Russian Church and those between it and other Local Orthodox Churches may be overcome.
Note:
- ‘Defrocking’ for political reasons is utterly uncanonical and is ignored by all sixteen Local Orthodox Churches, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Church of Constantinople and the Russian Church. Thus, one part of the Russian Church freely receives ‘defrocked’ clerics from the Church of Constantinople, as well as, in the past, many from the Patriarchate of Moscow. Constantinople received hundreds of ‘defrocked’ Ukrainian clerics in the 1990s and has received others more recently. The Romanian Church has received over 200 ‘defrocked’ clerics in Moldova and in England from the Russian Church, who had been ‘defrocked’ because they had been persecuted by their bishops. As one Russian Moscow bishop told me about another bishop who had carried out such actions: ‘Send for the psychiatric ambulance to pick him up’! What always happens after such ‘defrockings’ is always ‘refrockings’, when meaningless pieces of paper, written against the Holy Spirit, often still in their unopened envelopes, are simply cancelled.