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Questions and Answers on the Third Day of Pentecost 2023 After the Ukraine: Religion, Faith, the Orthodox Church and the Diaspora

Religion and Faith

Q: What is the point of religion?

A: Religion is pointless.

Q: What do you mean? You are a priest!

A: Religion is manmade and man-inspired. It is an invention, an institution, devised for use by States in order to manipulate their populations. This is the opposite of Faith, which is God-made and God-inspired. Unlike Religion, Faith is not devised by men, but revealed by God. The point of Faith is to know and acquire God, Who is Love. All words and phrases such as ‘salvation, going to church, praying, acquiring the Holy Spirit, repentance, redemption, overcoming sin, defeating death, venerating the saints, grace, the sacraments, understanding the Scriptures’, mean precisely this – knowing and acquiring Love.

Faith is then the opposite of religion, whose aim all too often becomes knowing and acquiring hatred. We can see this very clearly in the institutional Religion of the anti-Faith pharisees in the New Testament, who hated and then murdered Christ, the Son of God/Love – they murdered Love. And the modern pharisees, full of the same old hatred, just go on doing this today, as we have seen very recently! If Christ came back, they would most certainly crucify Him again, as the Greek author Kazantsakis wrote 75 years ago.

Q: Why then are there different faiths?

A: All faiths agree that humanity and all creation are at the bottom of the mountain and God/Love is at the top of the mountain. Faith is to help us climb the mountain, resisting all the temptations against Love. We all start at the bottom and inevitably take different paths up the mountain. At the bottom we can find many paths that lead upwards, but how far do they go and how will we best fight off the attacks from the demons who sit along those paths? What is the best and easiest path? Many paths seem to peter out quite soon or end in insurmountable heights and obstacles. And do they all lead upwards anyway? Or do they just go round and round the mountain? Do the other paths join the Orthodox Christian paths at a certain level?

Personally, I have no need to condemn others for taking other paths, as others inevitably do. All I have is my own spiritual experience, that the Orthodox saints have got to the top of the mountain on their paths, despite the enemy of humanity, the devil and his minions. Therefore, I try to follow those paths. As for those who take other paths, it is none of my business. I am not an insecure neophyte who needs to condemn others in order to justify himself.

The Ukraine

Q: Do you support the Russian side in the war in the Ukraine?

A: As a priest, I am on the side of all the suffering and on the side of peace. I cannot be anywhere else. I cannot support killing by anyone. This conflict was begun by the USA through its puppet government which it installed by violence in Kiev in 2014 with the support of its EU/NATO vassals. It is tragic and unnecessary. And sadly, as they say, those who sowed the wind are reaping the whirlwind. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have died so far, then there are the hundreds of thousands of maimed, psychologically crippled and bereaved. Let alone the millions of Ukrainian refugees (2 million in Russia) and millions of others in Europe, especially in Poland. And then there are the Russian dead (see below).

Q: Some American converts to ROCOR say that they support the Russian side against the Ukraine because that conflict is a battle for Holy Rus. What would you say?

A: The phrase ‘Holy Rus’ refers to the ancient past. After the ravages of Soviet atheism, it no longer exists – it has not been reconstituted. Today Russia still  has twice the abortion rate of the West and very high rates of divorce and alcoholism. Today, instead of ‘Holy Rus’, we use expressions like the Orthodox Christian world, Orthodox Civilisation, the Orthosphere. And if you kill others, you do not belong to the Orthodox world.

Q: What will happen to the ‘Orthodox Church in the Ukraine’, the OCU, so recently set up by Constantinople with US money?

A: It will die out and disappear because it is a temporary passing phenomenon, born out of the US State Department’s plotting imagination and the refusal by Moscow to give the Ukrainian Church autocephaly – which it almost did in the 1990s. The UOC was only ever a purely political organisation, born of the US-controlled Ukrainian State and the US-controlled Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Q: If you are neutral in this war, why are you convinced that Russia will defeat the Western-backed government in Kiev?

A: Quite simply, because I am a political realist, have sources in the Ukraine, and do not listen to tabloid/BBC/CNN type propaganda, which simply repeats the lies of the Kiev Department of Propaganda, which itself is run by American PR companies.  Look at the facts:

First of all, Russia will win, perhaps even in several months’ time, because this conflict is existential for it, but not at all for the Western elite. In other words, it is everything for Russia. It cannot lose. It has military, economic and diplomatic superiority, the backing of most of the world. It is not repeating the mistakes made by the Russian Empire in 1914, which naively thought that Britain and France were on its side, when in fact they fomented both the German attack and the overthrow of the Tsar, using internal traitors, lack of censorship and malcontents. Russia has learned from its mistakes then, it has at last lost its illusions.

Secondly, so far this is not even a war from the Russian viewpoint, let alone an ‘unprovoked full-scale invasion’, as the propagandists call it. The Russian Army has not yet even fought directly in it. The ‘Russian’ side is composed of the pro-Russian Ukrainian people’s militias from Lugansk and Donetsk (the Donbass), who are fighting for their freedom, Chechen volunteers and the 50,000-strong Wagner Company, which is composed of about 75% ex-convicts and about 25% of professional volunteers, the latter often officers recruited from the Russian Army. It is backed by vastly superior drone-guided Russian artillery, missiles and units from the Russian Air Force and the Black Sea Fleet. The always weak Kiev Navy no longer exists, its last ship was sunk last week, and the always weak Kiev Air Force has been virtually wiped out. Now, in modern warfare, the winner is always the one who has air superiority and can mount a naval blockade.

So far, since February 2022, it seems that some 20,000 pro-Russian Ukrainians and Chechens, 13,000 ex-convict volunteers and 4,000 Russian volunteers have died on the Russian side. Total casualties on the Russian side are therefore about 37,000. However, it appears that the Kiev Army has lost at least 300,000 dead, not including wounded. The ratio is 1:8 or even 1:10. Why? Because of the superiority of modern Russian technology (the Kiev forces have mainly used old Soviet arms or old NATO arms) and its vast quantity. The greatest Kiev defeat so far, greater even than Mariupol, was in Bakhmut, which fell on 20 May 2023 (this defeat was censored by the Western media, like so much else) after nine months of fighting in this horrible war of attrition. The town of Bakhmut, where some 70,000 people once lived, is in ruins. Whole blocks of flats were dynamited by the fleeing Kiev forces, just as they did in Mariupol.

The first NATO-trained Kiev Army was defeated in March 2022 and the war could have ended then. However, the second Kiev Army, rearmed with equipment from the former Soviet, now NATO, bloc in order to prolong the conflict, was defeated in the autumn of 2022. Now the third Kiev Army, armed to the teeth and trained by the US/NATO, is also being defeated. I would give it a maximum of another eleven months, simply because this is a war between Washington and Moscow, being fought on the battlefields of the Ukraine till the last Ukrainian cannon fodder is dead.

Since February 2022, the pro-Russian forces (and even Russia itself, in minor and suicidal incursions by Kiev forces, carried out for propaganda purposes) are being attacked from ever deeper inside Kiev-controlled territory. This means that pro-Russian forces, and probably eventually the million-strong Russian Army itself, will in turn be forced to penetrate ever deeper into Kiev-controlled territory and possibly (and unwillingly) even go as far as the Polish border. After it has set up a government in the New Ukraine, centred in a Kiev independent of the USA, it will withdraw.

Small parts of the old Soviet-established Ukraine (yes, the West is defending a purely Soviet creation in the Ukraine, 32 years after the disappearance of the Soviet Union) may be transferred to Poland, Hungary and Romania. There persecuted minorities have long laboured under Kiev’s dreaded secret police, the CIA-trained SBU. As for the south and east of the Ukraine, whose unhistoric borders were set by the USSR, probably including Odessa and as far as Transdnistria, they will go to Russia. An independent Ukraine, free of the US, will exist. Russia has no desire at all to occupy it, just to neutralise it as a threat to itself and free the Russian areas, part of Russia until 1954 or 1922.

Thirdly, the vast majority of the world either supports Russia (e.g. China, Iran etc) in this operation, or is neutral (e.g. India, Africa, Latin America etc) and does not support the West, which is only 12.5% of world population and whose GDP is quite outmatched by BRICS, even without the rest of the world, which is also dedollarising. Dedollarisation has been caused directly by sanctions against Russia, which have undermined all confidence in the dollar. The debt-ridden West is isolated in its G7 ghetto, its only weapons are boomeranging sanctions, which have caused huge inflation in their own countries, and plots to overthrow popular governments, as recently in the now chaotic Pakistan. The EU head of diplomacy, the unelected Josep Borrell, has admitted twice that the whole conflict in the Ukraine could end in days if the West stopped arming Kiev. By arming the Kiev forces against their own people, the West is simply prolonging the agony. Every death should be on the conscience of the Western elite.

The huge error of the Western elite in all this is its hubris in believing its own delusional propaganda. Russia is a Superpower, with advanced arms the USA simply does not have.

The West has yet to learn to respect different civilisations, which it has not been doing for exactly a millennium, when it definitively began to reconstitute the incredibly cruel pagan Roman Empire and adopted its techniques of ruthless organised violence to conquer and exploit the world (See Note 1 at the end). That organised violence began with its Crusades in the 1030s in Iberia, Sicily, England (in 1066), then in the Middle East and later in southern France, then developed into colonialism and imperialism, continuing to this day. This is clearly not Christian, but pagan.

Even today, what was once called Orthodox Christian Civilisation, however far it is from the actual practice of Orthodoxy – and it is far from it – is radically different from Western-Secularist Civilisation through its cultural values alone. And the fault-line between Orthodox Christian Civilisation and Western-Secularist Civilisation passes through the extreme west of today’s Ukraine, the part that used to belong to Catholic Poland and before that to Catholic Habsburg Austria and, frankly, it should return there.

The Future of the Russian Church

Q: So, after what you see as a Russian military and political victory, do you see the Moscow Patriarchate taking over the whole of the Church in the Ukraine?

A: No, not at all! Whatever the outcome, and regardless of whether I am right or wrong in my view that the Russian State will win against Washington’s war in the Ukraine, the great loser in this whole affair is the Moscow Patriarchate. It is a catastrophe for it, though it still does not seem to realise this.

First of all, the Russian State and the Orthodox Faith (unlike the Moscow Patriarchate) are two very different things. The Russian State wants to destroy anti-Russian Nazism in the Ukraine, so it will gain national security and US bases, biolabs and missiles aimed at Moscow will not exist on its borders. The Russian State wants a militarily and politically neutral Ukraine, like Austria and Finland used to be, before they were forced to join NATO. As regards the Orthodox Faith, it is obvious that the still largely atheist Russian State has no ability or desire to enforce churchgoing in the Ukraine in the future. People in the New Ukraine that may take shape a year from now, perhaps with a population of 10-20 million, will be free to go to any church they want. For most of them that will mean not going to any church at all (as in Russia, where also only about 2-3% go to church regularly).

However, churchgoing Ukrainians will certainly not go to Moscow Patriarchate churches after the conflict in the Ukraine is over, as they see in it an anti-Ukrainian Russian nationalist organisation. For example, just two weeks ago we were in Bari, where we concelebrated at the Liturgy for St Nicholas Day. It was interrupted by about 10 Ukrainians, including a Constantinople OCU priest, who shouted ‘Satanist’ at us. They were shouting not at us Romanians, Moldovans and English, but against the bishop who was from the Moscow Patriarchate. That is how they feel. The level of hatred is that great.

I think that Churched Ukrainians will only attend a future de facto and de jure autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metr Onufry. In other words, Moscow will have to give autocephaly. The present de facto autocephaly may even get recognised by other Local Churches before Moscow actually gives it, exactly as happened with the Polish Orthodox Church in the 1920s (2). The UOC already gets great sympathy from other Local Churches, which see the Moscow Patriarchate as enslaved to the Russian State. The same is true for Russian churches in many other countries, where the Moscow Patriarchate, as a Soviet-era institution, is still in the grip of Soviet centralisation and, as a post-Soviet institution, is in the grip of oligarchic Business. Most Russian Orthodox churches outside Russia also want freedom, autocephaly, from the now nationalist Moscow Patriarchate, not just those in the Ukraine.

All those that received autocephaly from Moscow in the last century, in Poland and in Czechoslovakia and in the OCA in North America (even if the last case is disputed), are pleased to be outside Moscow’s control. So are most Orthodox in Latvia now, even if its autocephaly was uncanonically given it by the Latvian government (again, exactly as in Poland in the 1920s (2))! In Lithuania and Estonia, Orthodox are in great difficulty, as both have schisms, and, as in the Ukraine, this is because Moscow refused to give autocephaly in time, in the 1990s. One post-Revolutionary émigré fragment of the Moscow Patriarchate, the very Moscow-critical, very independent and very Western Archdiocese of Western Europe is also in great difficulty, because it does not have autocephaly and is at present trying to get another three bishops consecrated, but it needs Moscow’s approval. It may not get it.

Another post-Revolutionary emigre fragment, ROCOR, in New York, has done exactly the opposite to the above Archdiocese group, in quite suicidal fashion. Between 1927 and 2007 it had total independence, de facto autocephaly, from Moscow and canonised the New Martyrs and New Confessors. That was an act of spiritual courage and of independence, though it was not strictly canonical, as Moscow had not granted it permission to be autocephalous and canonise saints on its territory.

However, in 2007 an act of canonical unity between Moscow and ROCOR was agreed and signed. I was there. That was good, because it legitimised ROCOR independence and its acts, which previously had been disputed. However, tragically and dramatically, instead of using that de facto and de jure independence and freedom, ROCOR renounced it and came to enslave itself to Moscow. After exactly a decade of missed golden opportunities, since precisely 2017, the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, that spiritual unity has become a purely political union with the Moscow Patriarchate, exactly as Patriarch Kyrill quite specifically described it to a Russian Metropolitan friend in 2018.

As a result of this spiritual surrender six years ago, ROCOR decided to agree to anything that Soviet Centralising Moscow and post-Soviet oligarchic Business Moscow wants. The dollar above Christ. ROCOR has been bought out by money. The more gifts that were accepted, the less freedom it had. Even more tragically, it was not forced into this sell-out by Moscow, it was its own voluntary choice after ten years. What happened? Sadly, seeing how luxuriously the bishops lived in Moscow, they wanted the same. So they sold themselves. At one time ROCOR bishops lived as poor and humble monks. They, all gone now, must be spinning in their graves. How are the once (spiritually) mighty fallen….

Thus, ROCOR has lost its heritage of spiritual freedom and independence. And therefore it will not last much longer, for God is not mocked. Its sectarian extremism and nationalism, that is, the exclusion of all other Orthodox, including Ukrainians, will not last long where it is, outside Russia, in the Diaspora. The Diaspora is unkind to inward-looking, racially exclusive and extremist ghettos. The old humble ROCOR of saintly confessors has been replaced by the ethos of a right-wing American missionary sect, remarkably similar to the Mormons. This is completely alien to others and to all normal Orthodox, Serbian, Bulgarian, Moldovan, Romanian, Greek, who simply ignore it, which is not difficult, as ROCOR is so small. Byzantine-rite Mormonism only attracts the few, the wrong sort, the right-wing sectarian, the negative, not the many, the positive, on whom you can build. Such sectarianism does not export to territories outside the USA, where ROCOR is dying out in one suicidal act after another, from France to South America, from Indonesia to England.

Q: You sacrificed fifty years of your life for the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church, so how do you feel now that you are outside it and it is falling apart?

A: Well, that is not true. I am not outside it. I am in spiritual unity with the suffering Russian Church of the Saints and the New Martyrs and Confessors. I am only outside the Soviet-style administration, which, by the way, has always admired the immensely rich Vatican, like the Statist Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, whom we remember dying in the arms of the Pope in 1978. This is because it has always admired the mentality of the State-Church or rather the Church-State. Power and riches. Such a view of the Church as a mere political administration based on power and riches does not have any canonical authority, just as forced episcopal signatures have no canonical authority.

As regards sacrificing my life, more exactly I have given fifty years of my life for the Orthodox Church in the Diaspora. In the 1970s and early 1980s I saw the Church of Constantinople reject a future for Orthodoxy by preferring nationalism and politics to transmitting the Tradition to others and to future generations. Now I have seen the Russian Church do the same, with its nationalism and politics, and so it is falling apart. If it continues, the only clergy that will be left are money-minded careerists who have little or no faith. Too bad for them. You cannot impose freedom on those who prefer tyranny, as we know from Dostoyevsky’s Legend of the Grand Inquisitor. There are those who do not want the Truth to set them free….

However, the Russian Church can fall apart positively, in the sense that it can unburden itself of its Soviet-style centralist administration and instead become a Family or Confederation of free Churches. Fortunately, there are other Orthodox, those of the spirit of the persecuted St Seraphim of Sarov, of the persecuted St Nectarios of Pentapolis, of the persecuted St John of Shanghai, of the persecuted Elder Nikolai (Guryanov), of the New Martyrs and Confessors. Long ago we committed ourselves to them and we will not renounce them and their spirit. We belong to the Persecuted Church, not to the Persecuting Church.

Q: But aren’t you frightened of what those Russians have tried to do to you?

A: St Paisios the Athonite, whom I met on Athos in 1979, said: ‘Believe in God and fear nothing’ (Πίστη στο Θεό και να μην φοβάστε τίποτα). That is what I have always done, come grasping greed, secret atheists, nationalist bureaucrats, modernists, ecumenists, freemasons, covid lockdown enforcers, perverts, spies and schismatic right-wing neophytes. We have seen all these enemies of the Church in power in Her administration from Judas until this very day, but the Church has always triumphed and will always triumph against all these extremists. Fear not!

Q: So does the Moscow Patriarchate have any future?

A: No, as such it does not. It has become a straitjacket and several conscientious priests are leaving it. As I said, the great loser in the conflict in the Ukraine is undoubtedly the Moscow Patriarchate, regardless of who wins militarily. It has lost credit and those clergy who have backed war have lost face. They are seen as militant nationalists, whose spirit is that of that very strange, nationalist, khaki-painted Cathedral of the Armed Forces of Russia, near Moscow (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/20/orthodox-cathedral-of-the-armed-force-russian-national-identity-military-disneyland).

The Moscow Patriarchate has already lost a range of territories, the Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and is now losing Moldova and its Western Diaspora, and in a few years’ time most probably Belarus and Central Asia too, all through politics. It has not followed the Gospel. If you do not follow the Gospel, you will die spiritually. That is the spiritual law. It happens to them all. I have seen it so often over the last fifty years and recently here too. It is spiritual suicide not to follow the Gospel and to attack those in the Church who have integrity.

However, here we have to distinguish carefully between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church. The former is a purely Soviet and post-Soviet institution, like the émigré fragments in Paris and in New York, whose existence was also shaped by the Soviet Union, though by reaction. It is a historical blip, a temporary administrative arrangement that began in 1925 after the death (by poisoning?) of the holy Patriarch Tikhon, whose signatures were also forced. In 50 years’ time, the Moscow Patriarchate will no longer exist. In fact, I do not think any of these three fragments will exist even in 25 years’ time. In fact, I sometimes wonder if they will still exist even in two years’ time, in 2025. On the other hand, the Russian Orthodox Church with its thousand-year history of saints most certainly does have a future. It will continue to be by far the largest of the to-be-extended family of Local Orthodox Churches, even though autocephaly must go to its parts in the Ukraine, Central Asia (based in Kazakhstan), Moldova (if it is not too late – see below) and the Baltics, at the very least. The number of Local Orthodox Churches could then hit 20.

The Diaspora

Q: If they happened, how would such a series of new autocephalies affect the Diaspora?

A: We can already see the effect. The UOC has opened over 40 parishes in Western Europe and will open more. Why? Because Ukrainian refugees refuse to attend churches where Patriarch Kyrill is commemorated. Those Ukrainians who cannot go to their church in London come to us, as we are politically independent, unlike the Moscow Patriarchate and its ROCOR branch. If the Ukraine becomes autocephalous, Orthodox from Moldova and the Baltics will surely also open their own Diaspora churches.

On the one hand, this fragmentation is negative, because it further fragments the Diaspora, destroying the once multinational but now nationalist Moscow Patriarchate Exarchate of Western Europe, based in Paris (whose members are mainly Moldovan, Baltic or Ukrainian anyway). On the other hand, once the Diaspora is cleansed of the US-driven politics of Constantinople and the politics of the old-fashioned Soviet Centralist Moscow and post-Soviet oligarchic Business Moscow, some kind of Diaspora unity can be achieved, a unity which could never have been seen before. Diaspora disunity only ever existed because of politics. Diaspora unity will only ever exist because it will be free of politics.

Both the Greek and Russian Patriarchs are elderly. We await the new generation. God willing, there will be a reversal of policies and a great cleansing from the corruption and perversions which come from power and the love of money, with that taste for luxury products and big black cars.

Q: As you have so many Moldovan parishioners and clergy, how would the existence of an autocephalous Moldovan Church outside Moldova affect you?

A: Politically, Romanian-speaking Moldovans do not want to join Romania, despite the very unpopular US puppet government there. If it joins the EU (as long as the EU still exists), it will join it as an independent country. However, I think it is much more likely that Moldova, together with Turkiye, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Albania and Montenegro, followed by Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus once freed from the EU, will join BRICS, the Planetary Alliance of Sovereign States (PASS), or whatever it will be called by then.

This would make a south-east European bloc within BRICS, reuniting that group of countries economically. This will pave the way for the other European countries to leave the doomed and collapsing EU, a temporary post-1945 organisation, and also enter BRICS. We have to go towards the future, not the past. This means economic integration and so political co-operation between Europe and Asia, Eurasia, led by Russia, China, Iran and India, which is inevitable.

However, whatever the politics, given that the Moscow Patriarchate refuses outright to give the Moldovan Church autocephaly, ever more Moldovan parishes are now leaving the Moldovan Church of the Moscow Patriarchate for the Moldovan Church of the Romanian Patriarchate. This latter group, for now called the ‘Metropolia of Bessarabia’, carefully observes all Moldovan customs and keeps the old calendar. It now has some 25% of all Moldovan Orthodox in Moldova. Its bishops are monks.

The movement to it is accelerating rapidly because of the conflict in the Ukraine, because of Moscow’s centralisation, because of corruption, and because of the mistreatment of Moldovans in the Diaspora under the ever more Russian nationalist Moscow Patriarchate. Nobody wants to be treated as a second-class citizen, neither Moldovans, nor English.

The only areas of Moldova where there is loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate is the almost wholly Soviet Transdnistria and the autonomous pro-Russian Gagauz region (the total population of both regions is about 500,000, with an area similar to a large English county). These will join the Russian Federation anyway.

What is possible is that the many Moldovan parishes and their clergy (70 in Italy alone) in Western Europe may leave the Moscow Patriarchate and open some kind of autonomous Moldovan/Bessarabian Archdiocese under the Romanian Church in the Diaspora. The Romanian Orthodox Church outside Romania is now the largest Diaspora Church, with well over five million people, nearly 1500 parishes and over 70 monasteries and convents. Whatever its weaknesses, it dwarves the Russian and the Greek Diasporas, let alone the other Diasporas, which are relatively very small. The Romanian Diaspora is not dying out like them, but is full of young people and children. If the Moldovans join this Diaspora, as an autonomous old calendar Archdiocese under the Romanian Church in the Diaspora, it will grow even bigger.

However, a word of warning. In my lifetime I have already seen two Churches die out. The first was ROCOR in England. I remember how 40 years ago its large London Cathedral (it now has a very small church instead) was full, with 400 people every Sunday; however, the average age was about 80. They have all gone. Today, apart from a few strange converts, ROCOR is populated by those from the ex-Soviet Union who have no ROCOR tradition, the old emigres have all gone. It died out because the old emigres totally failed to hand on their faith to their descendants.

Now, 40 years on, I see the same in the Greek Church. One parish in London that used to get at least 800 people every Sunday even 30 years ago is now down to 30. The average age is also 80. The same problem. Almost the only children in Greek churches in London are Romanian/Moldovan. However, what will happen in 40 years’ time to the Romanians and Moldovans? Will their children and grandchildren fill their churches or will they too be virtually empty?

The Romanian language does have two advantages:  It is a Latin language and it uses the Latin alphabet. As such it is much closer to Western languages in terms of vocabulary and alphabet than Greek and Russian. But that is not enough. The faith has to be transmitted to the next generations. I already do baptisms completely in English for the children of Romanians and Moldovans who came here as children twenty years ago. I have spoken to our bishop, Metropolitan Joseph, about this reality, but as a pastor he is already well aware. For the moment in England there are only four Non-Romanian priests, those of our group. In France and Belgium, however, he has in his Autonomous Metropolia one French bishop and 15 French priests. So there is hope.

 

Notes:

  1. Below are quotations from an account of the history of the Roman Empire some 2,000 years ago. Do they sound familiar? The contemporary oligarchic American Empire comes immediately to mind…..

Might is right and military power is the only international law. The …… had no problem demolishing whatever stood in their way.

Those who opposed ……. domination, and who tried to defend the traditional values of their own people, faced a double enemy: the one without and the one within.

Robber, slaughter and plunder they misname ‘Empire’; they make a wilderness and call it peace.

They were offered …. citizenship, so long as they had enough money and an urban residence.

The unsuspecting Non- ….. spoke of these new habits as civilisation, when in fact they were only a feature of enslavement.

In this way, the 10% of ….. who lived in the cities exploited the 90% who lived outside.

The name of …… citizens, at one time not only greatly valued but dearly bought, is now repudiated and fled from, and it is almost considered not only base but even deserving of abhorrence.

When it came to institutionalised cruelty on an industrial scale, the ……. could teach the others a thing or two.

He makes it quite clear that ………’s objective was the enslavement of the world.

The ideology of that Empire was an ideology of power and world dominance.

….. established its Empire by destroying other civilisations.

……. lived behind frontiers, and what lay beyond was dangerous. That applied as much to their mental world as to their geography.

The Empire was, by this time, an economic basket-case. The machine had to keep feeding itself with plunder.

It’s surprsing his name is not better known in the West. But then, in the West it is only the ….. version of events that counts, and that does not include successful enemies.

….. needed to build an ideology that encouraged people to see their rulers not just as overlords, but as the defenders of civilised values, and they knew a thing or two about propaganda.

…… emphasised its transcendent magisterial authority, its right to judge the living and the dead and to determine people’s fate for all eternity.

  1. https://www.rocorstudies.org/2023/05/30/autocephaly-and-principles-of-its-application-with-reference-to-the-church-of-poland/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=demo-newsletter_1

 

 

 

 

 

Q and A April 2023

Q: Why are women not allowed to become deacons or priests in the Orthodox Church?

A: Please read the Bible and do not listen to the secular world! Christ chose men as His disciples and future apostles. Since He Who overturned all the regulations of the pharisees in the greatest revolution in human history, but did not overturn the natures of man and woman, which, after all, He Himself had created, it is clear that a male priesthood is Divinely ordained. Women have another role. That role is set by the Mother of God, veneration for whom is quite absent among Protestants, from where this fantasy of a female priesthood comes. Indeed, they disrespect her and blaspheme, claiming that she had several children.

This whole story of wanting a female priesthood comes from clericalism, the false concept that somehow clergy are superior to laypeople. This is absurd for real Orthodox, though it is true among heterodox.

Q: Do you agree that the Second Vatican Council threw out the baby with the bathwater?

A: I do not agree at all. The problem of the Second Vatican Council was precisely that it threw out the baby, but kept the bathwater. It rejected the sense of the sacred under the weight of American Protestantism/secularism, but hung onto the bathwater of anti-Biblical absurdities like the filioque, papism, compulsory clerical celibacy, indulgences etc

Q:  I know an ex-Catholic who was received into the Church by chrismation three years ago, but now wants to be received by baptism. How would you answer him?

A: Firstly, he should read the Creed: ‘I believe in one baptism for the remission of sins’. Secondly, he should consider whether he is not blaspheming against the communion he has been receiving for the last three years by demanding what would in effect be rebaptism. This is because whatever was missing in the rite of baptism he underwent as a Catholic, it has been made up for by the grace of reception into the Church and holy communion. Finally, thousands of Catholics are received into the Church by chrismation every year and with the blessing of Orthodox bishops. They are quite happy with this and always have been. Why is he different? In general, I think this very insecure man who is so attached to external rites needs to see a psychologist, not a theologian. My decades of experience tell me that all such people end up outside the Church because they do not want to belong to the Church, but to a proud sect.

Q: How do you receive old calendarists into the Church?

A: In principle we have to recognise that old calendarists existed primarily because of the apostasy and compromises of ‘canonical’ bishops. They are the ones responsible for scandalising these little ones, those of simple faith. Therefore, old calendarist laypeople are received by confession and communion because they have been misled and lied to, taken into sects, hoodwinked and exploited. As regards old calendarist clergy, a bishop must decide how he will receive them. Most of the laypeople have been misled by clergy. As for clergy, there are various issues. Some are careerists and want titles, depravity or money, which they could never get in a canonical Church because there they had been seen through and could not ‘rise’ any further. Others are very proud pharisees. Others are sincere and have just been misled. Bishops will decide.

Q: There are more Russian Orthodox in England under Constantinople, Romania, the Ukrainian Church or under old calendarists than there are under the Russian Church. Why are there more Russian Orthodox in England who are not under any of the three parts of the Russian Church than are under them?

A: I am not sure about your statistics, but you may be right. Apart from the two London churches, one of which is very small, the Russian Orthodox Church is now virtually inexistent in these islands apart from the chapels in Oxford and Norwich and a few tiny communities of a dozen or so elsewhere.

The answer to your question is that people in England do not accept tyranny. Those who follow the reflexes of German-style dictatorship, Russian-style subservience or American-style sectarian intolerance (‘since I can’t have complete control as I want, I will throw everything out of my pram and destroy everything’, just like arrogant and destructive spoilt-brat GIs in Vietnam or Iraq) are alien to us. Look what happened to the Normans, Cromwell, Thatcher and Johnson. Tyrants do not prosper here. Freedom is the culture of England and we will not renounce it because of foreign tyranny.

In our own case, the few people who left us last year, most of them occasional or hobby Orthodox, all left because of their nationalism. They used to come to church to speak their own language, not for communion with Christ. Their departure amounted to a cleansing of the Church.

Q: In what cases can you leave a bishop?

A: There are three cases: Either when he openly preaches heresy, or else when he creates a schism by breaking communion and refusing to concelebrate with another canonical Church or even part of his own Church, or else when he behaves immorally (stealing money, homosexual practice or any other uncanonical activity, such as freemasonry). In any case, there is no point in the bishop being told (perhaps by a gay mafia of fellow-bishops) that he must investigate himself after such a charge has been made and allowing him to intimidate and bully everyone. Strangely enough, he will find himself perfect and that everyone is very happy with his conduct. This is why such bishops are given the title, ‘His Disgrace’.

Q: How do schismatic bishops who ‘defrock’ canonical priests of other Local Churches sleep at night?

A: Sadly, they sleep very well because they do not have a conscience. But woe betide them on that day when their conscience is awoken. Especially if that day is the Day of the Last Judgement. They will find that they have defrocked themselves, that is, deprived themselves of grace.

Q: Do you have a favourite film?

A: I think there are several films that I like. I always liked ‘The Sound of Music’, which is about a family of singers who escaped the clutches of Nazis by fleeing over the mountains. It is a bit personal, since we escaped the Nazis by escaping to the Romanian Carpathians and thus our churches were saved from closure, just as in the Ukraine today churches have to be saved from Nazis and be saved from closure.

Q: What does it mean when people are called controversial?

A: In the UK ‘controversial’ is code for ‘opposed to the Establishment’. (In the USA the Establishment is known as the ‘Deep State’). Thus, people are dubbed ‘controversial’ or TV programmes or views are called ‘controversial’. In history by far the most ‘controversial’ person is Christ, for he rejected the scribes (intellectuals) and pharisees (corrupt and hypocritical high priests), the men of law (who had no love) and the banksters (‘the moneychangers’).

Q: What is your suggestion to solve the territorial disputes between the Local Orthodox Churches?

A: The following answer is just my suggestion. Obviously, I have no influence whatsoever.

At the end of 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved into fifteen independent republics. The Moscow Patriarchate (MP) remained, however, undissolved, not just inside those different Republics, but all over the world. Over thirty years on, it is clear that such a highly centralised and therefore basically nationalistic structure, which was essentially a Soviet product, is not designed for long life. Already there are schisms from it in Estonia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and serious tensions in Latvia (where, curiously, the State has forced the Church to become ‘autocephalous’) and in Belarus. The politics of Russian and local nationalism play the major roles.

The more sinister-minded say that decentralisation has not occurred because the Centre in Moscow wanted to retain its size, power, prestige and money. Others say that it was simply because Orthodox in the countries outside Russia were not ready for independence. We consider that such polemics are not really relevant here. Let us stick to the facts. All we know is that following the parallel dissolution of the Russian Empire in 1917, almost exactly 75 years before the dissolution of the USSR, Orthodox in Poland and Czechoslovakia also eventually received autocephaly and Orthodox in Finland received a sort of autonomy. And after 1945 groups exiled from the Ukraine and Belarus uncanonically gave themselves a long-unrecognised autocephaly. All we know is that disputes about territories are unbecoming for Christians. It all seems like childish disputes about toys. We do not recall disputes between the apostles about whose church belonged to whom.

Certainly, a decentralised MP, renamed the Russian Orthodox Church, still with at least 100 million baptised faithful, half of all Orthodox Christians on the planet, would remain as the Church of the Russian Federation. But outside it, there could surely be set up fully independent (Autocephalous) Churches on territories where Orthodoxy is well-established and which are not shared with other Local Churches, and independent (Autonomous) Churches, led by a Metropolitan, on territories which are shared with other Local Churches and where the Faith is less well-established. It is our suggestion that there should be another five Autocephalous Churches, whose territories and traditions have for centuries been part of the Russian Orthodox world (approximate numbers of baptised given in brackets) and which all already have at least four bishops:

Five New Autocephalous Churches:

Ukrainian Orthodox Church (20 million?). Its exact territory is yet to be established, but it would include at the very least half of the pre-2022 Ukraine.

Belarussian Orthodox Church (6 million?)

Moldovan Orthodox Church (3.5 million?)

Central Asian Orthodox Church, covering Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (3 million?)

Baltic Orthodox Church, covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland (500,000?). All parishes in Finland which wish to celebrate Easter on the canonical Orthodox Paschalia could join this Church.

(Orthodox in the two remaining former Soviet Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan could be cared for by the Georgian Orthodox Church).

This would bring the total number of universally-recognised (if we include the Macedonian) Autocephalous Local Orthodox Churches from 15 to 20, with the approximate present size of their baptised flocks given in brackets:

Russia (100 million), Romania (18.8 million), Greece (10 million), Serbia 8 million), Bulgaria (4.5 million), Georgia (3.5 million), Constantinople (3.1 million), Antioch (3 million), Macedonia (1.3 million), Cyprus (0.65 million), Poland (0.6 million), Alexandria (0.5 million), Albania (0.2 million), Czechoslovakia (0.17 million), Jerusalem (0.13 million) and the above five.

There could also be 6 New Autonomous Churches, making 8 in all. These could be founded by the Russian Church, but their numbers would be small until they could achieve full potential growth to include Orthodox of all origins on their shared territories and have at least four bishops. Only then could they receive autocephaly, which would have to be granted in concert by all the Local Churches concerned. The figures given in brackets show only their initial potential, if they could unite all baptised Orthodox already living on the territories concerned. Their later potential is huge, but that would demand genuine missionaries, not politicians:

Eight Autonomous Churches – together with the Japanese (10,000) and Chinese (100?), which already exist:

European Orthodox Church (potentially 7 million?). This would cover 23 territories: Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy and San Marino. This could in time become the fifth largest Local Orthodox Church after the Serbian.

Northern American Orthodox Church (potentially 5 million?). This would cover USA, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda and would initially replace the present OCA, ROCOR and MP North America parishes.

Latin American Orthodox Church (potentially 2 million?). This would cover the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of the Americas and the largely Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Oceanian Orthodox Church (potentially 600,000?)

African Orthodox Church (potentially 500,000?)

South-East Asian Orthodox Church (potentially 25,000?). This would replace the present South-East Asian Exarchate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prophecies and War

The Orthodox Church

200 million people belong to the Orthodox Church. Of these 140 million, 70%, are Russian Orthodox, though since that Church is multinational, only about 100 million of them are ethnic Russians, many others live or used to live in the Ukraine.

Most practising Russian Orthodox remain outside the artificial ‘left/right’ manipulation of politics, invented to hoodwink people into thinking that they live in democracies and have choices. True, the vast majority of Orthodox are social conservatives, making us in secular eyes, right-wing (‘Fascists’), but we are also for social justice, free health and education, making us in secular eyes left-wing (‘Socialists’). Just the opposite of those who are social liberals and economic liberals, LGBT anything goes plus law of the jungle capitalism, anti-Family and anti-Nation. Orthodox support pro-Family and pro-Nation policies which unite the people.

The Orthodox Church has 1,000 bishops. 300 of these are in Russia or Belarus. However, probably the most respected Orthodox bishops are in persecuted Serbia and in the persecuted Ukraine. However, those who have authority in the Church, who have the respect and reverence of the people, are the saints and righteous and those who are considered to be saints, elders and righteous, a few of whom are bishops, most of whom are not, and some of whom have made prophecies.

On Prophecies

We must be very careful now to distinguish between prophecies and the hoaxes and frauds of attention-seekers and money-seekers. Any fraud can get up in the morning and say in a podcast: ‘I received a message about the future, I had a dream about the future, and was told so and so’. No, I am talking about words said by those who have had authority for decades and generations, who are venerated for their humble lives, about saints or elders who will be declared saints by the people, if they have not already been. In other words, we are not talking about George Bush’s ‘God told me to invade Iraq’. We are talking about the spiritual.

Here it must be added that all authentic prophecies are conditional. Prophecies are only warnings, whose timings can be postponed by hundreds and even thousands of years. People can change their ways and then the realisation of the prophecies is postponed. The prophecies remain true, but their application may be delayed, depending on human reactions to the warnings they contain. Never doubt that people can regret, turn back and change. But also never doubt that the prophecies will come true, if there is no change in behaviour once the warning has been issued.

I have no prophecies, but I do know of prophecies that are relevant today. Those for example of St Seraphim of Sarov (+ 1833), St John of Kronstadt (+ 1908), St Aristocleus the Athonite (+ 1918), Archbishop Theophan of Poltava (+ 1940), St Seraphim of Vyritsa (+ 1949), Elder Seraphim of Belgorod (+ 1982), with whose blessing I act, St Paisios the Athonite (+ 1994), whom I met, Elder Nikolai Guryanov (+ 2002), whom I venerate, and Elder Jonah of Odessa (+ 2012), on whose tomb I pray.

Prophecies

Here are some of their prophecies: St John of Kronstadt said that ‘the deliverance of Russia will come from the East’. At the end of his life St Aristocleus said that ‘the end will come through China. There will be an extraordinary outburst and a miracle will be revealed from God’. Archbishop Theophan of Poltava said that there must be a Tsar forechosen by God and that the restoration of Orthodoxy in Russia would provoke hatred in the world, which ‘will take up arms against Russia’. This was confirmed by Elder Nicholas Guryanov, who predicted that President Putin will be succeeded by a Tsar, as was predicted also by St Paisios the Athonite.

Elder Iona, beloved by Orthodox in Odessa, said: After me there will be a bloody Easter, a hungry Easter and a victorious Easter’. Of course, as with all prophecies, interpretations vary. Does a bloody Easter refer to 2022, a hungry Easter refer to 2023 and a victorious Easter refer to 2024? There are those who say that a victorious Easter may refer to 2023. If only it could be so…St Seraphim of Sarov predicted that: ‘Towards that time the bishops will become so impious that in their impiety they will surpass the Greek bishops of the time of Theodosius the Younger, so that they will no longer even believe in the chief dogma of the Christian Faith…There will begin the preaching of worldwide repentance’.

You can dismiss this if you wish. But you will still have to admit that there are some curious coincidences. We see that there are those who think only in terms of world supremacy by force. What secularists do not understand is that the long-term domination of the world does not come through secular power, which is only short-term, it comes through spiritual power, which is long-term. We are not like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate who asked Christ: ‘What is Truth?’ because he had a secular mind. There was no answer to his question because he had asked the wrong question. He was staring the answer in the face. His question should have been: ‘Who is Truth’?  And here we are, avoiding nuclear Armageddon and we shall continue to do so, however blind Pontius Pilate is.

 

2023: The Future Has Arrived: The End of 500 Years of Conquistador Civilisation

It is often said that the systemic Western European superiority complex, a disease which consists of the self-justified domination and exploitation of the surrounding world, began with the First ‘Crusade’ (1096-1099). Technically, this is true, but before it there were other events which we may call ‘Pre-Crusades’. For example, there was the massacre by the barbarian Frankish leader Charlemagne of 4,500 Saxons at Verden in 782. This bloodbath was the foundation of Frankish Europe, which still survives as the core of the lies of the EU today. After the collapse of Charlemagne’s Europe and a period of consolidation, 200 years later there came the events of the earlier eleventh century which did exactly presage the First Crusade at its end. First, there was the Frankish ‘Reconquista’ Crusade which began to accelerate in the eleventh century in Iberia. Then came the ‘Norman’ (in fact they were the collective campaigns of all the Frankish-made scum of North-Western Europe) Crusades or Conquests in Sicily, Southern Italy and in England in 1066.

Like these ‘Pre-Crusades’, the genocidal ‘conquests’ of the First Crusade essentially took place inside Europe, or else close by in the Near East. These Viking-type raiding and trading military expeditions, led on horseback and operating from castles, were expanded into Western Europe (the Celtic lands invaded from the Frankish base in England) and into Eastern Europe (the Baltics and Russia). However, the revolution came with the export of this aggressive Eurocentric mentality to distant lands through the ‘Conquistadors’ (same word) in what we now call Latin America 500 years ago. They were the fruit of Columbus’ imperialist and capitalist venture of 1492 and were followed by da Gama’s money-seeking ventures to southern Africa and India in 1497. They triggered a global revolution because they led to the worldwide genocide and plunder of other peoples and the destruction of their civilisations. Clive of India, Rhodes of Africa, Clinton of Serbia, Bush of Iraq and Obama of the Ukraine were only the conquistadors of later times. However, today we are seeing the end of their Conquistador Civilisation.

The World and the Church after 2022

Introduction: After the Military Campaign

The date of 24 February 2022 has already gone down in world history. We come to the end of a vital crossroads year and a revolution that happens only once every 500 years. With the end of Western Conquistador Civilisation, we try to peer over the horizon into 2023 and beyond. What will come after the Ukrainian war is over? Some who follow Western reporting of that conflict may be surprised by this statement. However, that reporting has been a strange mixture of delusional fantasies/wishful thinking and straightforward propaganda organised by the secret services, omitting truth, logic and reality. Journalists have been ordered to report such nonsense from on high (otherwise, they would have lost their careers and their income). Such reporting has essentially been destined to try and keep Western peoples under control in the hardships they are facing as a result of the suicidal decisions of their pro-US political elites. The US elite is making use of the meagre resources of its NATO vassals (so-called ‘allies’), using as its battlefield the Ukraine and as its cannon fodder Ukrainians and mercenaries. But Russian victory is inevitable, even if delayed because the US wants to make the Ukraine into its Second Vietnam.

The Western elite wants to fight ‘to the last Ukrainian’. (“We don’t care how many Ukrainians will die. How many women, children, civilians and military. We don’t care. Ukraine cannot take the peace decision. The peace decision can only be taken in Washington. But for now we want to continue this war, we will fight to the last Ukrainian.” Former US Senator Richard Blake). Therefore it is supplying all sorts of lethal arms for hundreds of thousands more of them to die and be wounded. Even if some in NATO dare to send more tens of thousands of their ‘willing’ to the slaughter in the Ukraine directly, and not in Ukrainian uniform, as with the tens of thousands of mainly Polish mercenaries at present, many of them already dead, that victory is still inevitable. Russia has been preparing for a full-scale Continental war ever since 2014. Even if next year the 200,000 strong Polish Army and reservists attack, armed to the teeth by the USA, Russia is ready. Although the prophecies of the saints and elders indicate May 2024 as the end of this ten-year long war (the US elite started it through their Ukrainian puppets in 2014), prophecies are always conditional on repentance and we should not try to determine exact details from them. Whatever happens, the next few years are going to see revolutionary transformations worldwide as a result of this war.

The New World Order

The most dramatic event after its defeat in the Ukraine will surely be the retreat of the USA, as it is expelled from Eurasia, a process which began in Vietnam and then continued in Iraq and Afghanistan. The nationalist Trump wanted to withdraw voluntarily, but he was not allowed to, therefore the humiliating US withdrawal will happen by force, as it did in Kabul. ‘Yanks, go home’, chants the whole world, including many in Western Europe, tired of US tyranny. In Eurasia the US now occupies only a few islands (Taiwan, Japan, Singapore), the tips of two peninsulas (Korea and Western Europe) and the seaboard edge Israel. It will have to leave all of these, except for the Non-Palestinian parts of Israel. Taiwan will naturally return to China, Japan will have to find its own way, reconciling itself to a reunited Korea and submitting itself to China economically. For Western Europe, see below.

Once home, the USA will have to lick its wounds and be deoligarchised by popular revolt. The dedollarisation of the world economy is already under way, with very serious consequences for the deindustrialised US economy. The American Empire will undergo deimperialisation, like the European Empires after 1945, and, if at all possible, have to find some sort of unity, identity and sovereignty in its highly polarised, highly indebted and highly fragilised situation. Outside the US, the world chants ‘Yanks, go home’, but inside the US, ordinary Americans chant: ‘Feds, go home’. It is the same thing. The swamp must be drained. The departure of the USA from Western Europe after its eighty-year long occupation will mean the end of the already much disarmed and futile NATO. The suicidal bankruptcy of the European countries will also lead to the end of NATO’s political and economic arm, the EU.

This will mean the reconfiguration of the tip of the European peninsula and its resovereignisation, a process which has already begun in Hungary. In the Western Balkans, Camp Bondsteel, the second largest US base in the world, will be abandoned, and Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Bosnia will rearrange themselves in the post-American world, the world of long-awaited justice. The future of Europe is not thousands of miles across the Atlantic, but eastwards, next door, in its natural sources of energy, food, fertiliser and manufactures. Europe as a separate Continent is after all a pure fiction, an artificial construct which was created from and cut off from the Eurasian landmass for purely political reasons. Europe is about to learn this, as it returns to its roots, which Russia alone has kept. A Russian-led Europe provides the prospect of a unity of sovereign but confederal Northern Eurasia ‘from sea to shining sea’, in fact, from Reykjavik to Tokyo. It is the future, in which the USA is utterly irrelevant. Its ‘lies-based order’ of genocidal chaos is over.

Inside Russia itself the transformation has already begun, with treacherous members of the ‘creative class’ gone to their spiritual home in Israel, with Pugachova and Zelensky, as well as across the borders to Georgia and Finland. This cleansing process and the ensuing Re-Russification of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus will go far. After the deviations of 200 years of Imperial Russia – and there were very serious deviations then – otherwise Tsar Nicholas II would not have wanted to return to pre-Imperial Russia, to ‘Rus’ and there would never have been 1917 – 75 years of Marxist Sovietisation and 30 corrupt years of the Americanisation and so oligarchisation, the transformation has far to go. There will be a great and radical refreshing and cleansing of national identity after this unheard-of period of decadence and corruption, which ultimately stretches back over 300 years. All Russian institutions, including the still Sovietised Church, together with its small branches founded by post-1917 emigres, will be transformed. The uncompromised Russian Church, freed from the moneychangers, will arise from the embarrassing ruins of the past. The past is over. The arrival of the future in 2022 has made it all so irrelevant.

The New Christian Order

As regards the current versions of Western Christianity, Protestantism (1517-2017) is largely a spent force within the Western world, its 500-year best before date is up. Just as it was launched by printing technology, it has been ended by internet technology. Puritanism preached ‘Hate the sin and especially hate the sinner’, now its just as aggressive descendant, Wokeism, preaches, ‘Love the sinner and especially love the sin’. In other words, all is permitted. The once full churches of Protestantism close down in their hundreds every year in the Western world. It was what it was, a moralising and White Supremacist blip in history, both for good, as in keeping promises, honesty, integrity and moral uprightness, and for bad, as in the ruthless and unsustainable exploitation of human and natural resources, including slavery, the obsession with money and saving money, as well as boring and iconoclastic philistinism caused by narrow-minded bigotry, and the tragic, rigid, literalist, moralising, unnatural and pharisaical repression of human nature, causing crass hypocrisy and misogyny, to the point of the slaughter of women as ‘witches’.

As for Roman Catholicism, throwing out the baby with the bathwater, it was taken over by the CIA in the early sixties to be used as a political battering ram against the USSR. And it too is also largely a spent force (1054-2054?) in the Western world. Covered-up pedophilia and the misogyny of compulsorily unmarried and frustrated clerics, some of them perverts, now exposed, are killing it off. Little wonder that some say that the present Pope is the last one. However, if Catholicism can be freed of American and European political stooges and cleansed of its inherent millennial secularism, it at least can return to roots (Protestantism as a schismatic, splintering protest opinion movement has in itself no roots to return to). Liberated from Rome, the people now called ‘Catholics’ can reflourish in new forms, especially in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia, providing that Catholicism goes native, yet remains traditional, and the Global South’s clergy’s almost universal, but hypocritically concealed marriages can be recognised officially. This will mean Catholicism divesting itself of the secularist and corrupt Western Middle Ages and returning to the spirit of the pre-Roman Catholic Faith of first millennium Western Europe.

As regards the Non-Western, Orthodox Church, the 200 million in the at present fifteen local branches of the Orthodox Church, the Dewesternisation revolution will be just as radical. At present there is the 7%, the 14 million of the Greek Churches of Constantinople, Greece, Cyprus, Alexandria and Jerusalem. Once the US Establishment, which stands behind them all and meddles intensively in their affairs, has retreated, freedom will come to them at last. As for the Russian Church, the 70% or 140 million, just as for the 23% or 46 million of the other Non-Greek Churches, in Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Macedonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Albania, the revolution will also necessarily be radical. They are all going to have to be freed from the Western disease of worldliness:

‘And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all those who sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said to them: It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves’.

The Future of the Russian Church outside the Western World

The whole Russian political campaign over the last twenty-two years to move towards a multipolar/polycentric world is now coming to fruition. The Big Four, Russian, China, India and Iran, are being joined by many countries from all Continents in the Global South in huge and powerful Non-Western organisations like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) and the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), to form a new G20 to replace the failed American vassal one. Now this multipolar/polycentric world, inherently anti-centralist, will be reflected in Church life. The old and failed centralisation of Constantinople and Moscow especially, which has always brought corruption in its wake, will eventually disappear in the global internet age of transparency and diversity, where people are seen for what they are. This is a warning to all tyrants and bullies. Your secrets are being found out. Your time is up.

Russian nationalists and old-fashioned centralisers believe that once Russia has taken over the Ukraine, the Church in the Ukraine will return to being part of the Russian Church. This is absurd. The Russian campaign has made most real Ukrainians into disaffected enemies of everything Russian. A military and political victory is only military and political. In the New Ukraine (or whatever it will be called), with a majority Orthodox population of between 10 and 20 million, inhabited by real Ukrainians, the people will simply refuse to attend Russian churches. There are already over thirty independent Ukrainian parishes under Metr Onufry in the Diaspora. The insistence on Soviet-style centralism that has caused the appalling mess in the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukraine, as also in Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and in the Western world, will have to be remedied. Just as new Autocephalous Churches were eventually founded (as late as the 1950 and 1970s) in Poland, Czechoslovakia and ‘America’ (as well as Autonomous Churches for the very small flocks in Japan and China), Autocephalous Churches will inevitably be founded as a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Thirty years have passed. It is high time.

The many dioceses of the Russian Church outside the Union State of the Russian Federation and Belarus have lost their multinationalism. That has finally been destroyed in the last ten months in the Ukraine. Exarchates like that already in Belarus will not be enough elsewhere, though no doubt new Exarchates will be founded in countries like Kazakhstan. The Church in Moldova, already 20% under the Romanian Patriarchate, may perhaps not even become an Exarchate, but rather an autonomous part of the Romanian Orthodox Church, using the old calendar and with its own customs, just as our own Moldovan/Russian/ Romanian group of parishes in England already does.

The Russian Church is set to become a Family of Autocephalous Churches, perhaps relatively close to the Mother-Church, like the Church of Poland, the Church of the Czechs and Slovaks and the OCA in America, but still fully independent of it. This is the best left-behind Moscow can hope for now. The process has already long been under way. Moscow will just have to recognise reality as a fait accompli. Reality will dawn. The grassroots have voted. You cannot force people to belong to an alien Church. Thus, there will be formed a new ‘Byzantine Commonwealth’, not just of the Russian, Polish and Czechoslovak Churches, but, we think, perhaps with as many as eight more new Local Churches. This could bring the total number of Local Churches, recognised by all, from fifteen to twenty-three. We suggest that new Autocephalous, not Autonomous, Churches, because the numbers are too great for that, will be founded in the Non-Western world in:

  1. The Ukraine. Nobody knows what will become of the former 25 provinces of the typically Soviet-centralised, because wholly Communist-invented, Ukraine. It seems likely that between 7 and 12 of them will return to Russia, as 5 already have by large democratic majorities, 3 may return to Poland, 1 to Romania and 1 to Hungary. (The latter could in turn become the foundation for a future Hungarian Orthodox Church). But whatever the New Ukraine will look like, it will have its own, Ukrainian-speaking, Autocephalous Church.
  2. The Baltics. Finland (that is, all the Orthodox in Finland who want to live on the Orthodox Paschalia, which is a definition of canonical Orthodoxy), Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania together have a large enough Orthodox population and enough bishops to form their own Autocephalous Church. A Church for these Four Nations will put paid to any petty, provincial nationalism.
  3. South-East Asia. The present Exarchate of South-East Asia will in time become at least one Autocephalous Church, though its territory may be defined differently from now.
  4. Africa. Whatever may be thought of the recent Russian initiative there, it is now too late for the Russian Church to give up its Exarchate of some 200 parishes and clergy in Africa – even if it wanted too. The colonial Greek Church of Alexandria has had little future for a long time. It had many missionary chances and dismissed most of them over the centuries. A nominal flock of perhaps one million out of a population of one billion Africans is not convincing as a missionary effort. The at present Russian Exarchate in Africa will relatively soon have native African bishops – candidates are already studying in Russia – and it will in time become an Autocephalous, and genuine, African Orthodox Church, albeit 1,700 years late.

The Future of the Russian Church inside the Western World

At present the CIA and its daughter-agencies manipulate much of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Western world, just as it does the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It interferes in Orthodoxy, just as it does in Catholicism, there using the Papacy as its stooge, here bishops. Divide and rule is the slogan and it has successfully done that, polarising into liberal Greeks and conservative Russians. Both groups are manipulated and infiltrated by exactly the same secularism, according to their inherent political weaknesses. It is time to solve the Diaspora problem at last. 100 years late. We suggest that new Autocephalous Churches will be founded in the Western world in:

  1. Northern America. Unlike the term ‘North America’, this geographical term means the USA and Canada, together with some northern islands like Bermuda. Here missionaries can build on the OCA, renaming it the NAOC (North American Orthodox Church). The OCA was vital and brave, yet flawed, because of the Cold War and because it despised parts of the Tradition. If co-operation between Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Serbs, Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians and others can be achieved without imperialist condescension and political and nationalist meddling from Greeks and Russians in particular, there is real hope that a new Local Church can be founded.
  2. Latin America. Stretching over a vast territory from Argentina to Mexico and including the Caribbean, here there is a great need for a new Local Church, though much input must come from the Arab Orthodox world.
  3.  Oceania. Centred in Australia, here there is a great need for a new Local Church, though much input must come from the Greek Orthodox world.
  4. Western Europe. This has far more Orthodox than any other part of the Western world. Now 80% are Romanians/Moldovans (a quarter of Romania, over 4,000,000 Orthodox, and a third of Moldova, 1,400,000 Orthodox, live in Western Europe, especially in Spain, Italy, Germany and England. There are also over 1,000,000 Greeks, Russians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Arabs, Ukrainians and others. It is really scandalous that there is not already a Local Church – the WEOC. First Greeks and then Russians have lacked the courage and will to follow the canons. The hopes we once had in them have been dashed by their nationalist politics. The great responsibility for the future now appears to lie in the hands of by far the largest and by far the most recent immigrant group, the Romanians and Moldovans.

Conclusion: Build Up the Church of God or Die in Irrelevance

New Local Churches are going to appear outside the Western world. This, outside the Western world, may be a fairly straightforward matter for the Russian Church. Inside the Western world, it is a far more complex matter because of the present multi-jurisdictional situation. It does not depend on Russians. They lost their chance. The solution will demand diplomatic talent and co-operation, between Romanian, Greek, Russian, Arab, Serbian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Georgian Orthodox. All of them have diasporas. National dioceses and deaneries can be set up within a multinational structure not dominated by any one nationality, as to a large extent Northern America lived under the future St Tikhon of Moscow some 120 years ago. So much time has been wasted through political meddling and nationalist despotism and it is still being wasted now. Russians refused to learn from the mistakes of Greeks and Greeks refused to learn from the mistakes of Russians.

Any extremists who do not want to co-operate because they are flag-waving nationalists (that is, secularists) will be left to one side. Any ecumenist modernists who do not even want to celebrate Easter on the Orthodox calendar will also be left to one side. The same goes for right-wing sectarian groups like the new ROCOR (the old ROCOR was sadly killed off in infamy by love of the dollar and greed for power) and other old calendarist groups who do not want to belong to the Church of 200 million, but only to tiny exclusivist ghettos. They too will be left to one side. The exclusivists who refuse to co-operate with other Local Churches, in the pharisees’ imagination of their proud hearts thinking themselves superior to them, have lost their purpose, their raison d’etre. As sectarians, they have made themselves irrelevant, discrediting themselves with cultish and hypocritical practices and attempts at intimidation, threats and guru-style mind control. As for us, we simply ignore them and continue to build!

 

The Latest Statistics on Religion and Language in England and Wales

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/language/bulletins/languageenglandandwales/census2021

59.6 million people, 89% of the UK population, live in England and Wales. According to the 2021 national census, 46.2% of these are nominal Christians. This is down from 59.3% just ten years ago. It comes as no surprise at all, as the various churches here have for decades been frequented almost only by old people and those churches are therefore quite unsurprisingly dying out. We would fully expect a drop of at least another 13% in ten years’ time, bringing the number of nominal Christians down to 33% and in thirty years’ time the figure for Christians could well reach 7% of the population.

The census also reveals that the second largest group in the country is those who have no religion, at 22.2 million people, or 37.2%. Their number was only 25% ten years ago. This will in ten years from now probably become the largest group.

The situation reflects that in other Western countries. Some are ahead of this (Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Czechia, Canada, Australia), others still some years behind (USA, Poland), though rapidly heading in the same direction. So this is the suicidal direction of the whole Western world, unlike in other civilisations, where traditional religious values, national identity and family life are important.

As regards the two most common languages in England and Wales apart from English and Welsh, these are Polish and Romanian. 612,000, 1.1% of the population, speak Polish, and 472,000, 0.8% of the population, speak Romanian. Ten years ago there were only 68,000 Romanian speakers in England and Wales. This means that over 400,000 Romanians and Moldovans have settled here in the last ten years, the vast majority of them Orthodox Christians. It would suggest that there are at least half a million Romanian-speaking Orthodox in the British Isles and Ireland, with perhaps 450,000 Romanians and 50,000 Moldovans.

Protestantism (which includes the so-called ‘Church of England’) is dying out, as it is a culture of the past, and Roman Catholicism has largely been destroyed by pedophilia and lack of normal priests. In the Orthodox world, Greek Orthodox churches are emptying, as the mainly Cypriot immigrants who came here largely in the 50s and 60s are dying out, their children assimilated into secularism, though they leave behind them an excellent infrastructure of churches and property which belongs to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. However, of its clergy that Archdiocese has 100 elderly clergy and only 3 candidates to ordain to replace them. Though far smaller, the Russian and Antiochian Orthodox are in the same situation, indeed there is no longer a single Russian bishop in the UK. Other Orthodox groups are far smaller still.

All this explains why there are so many Romanians in all Orthodox churches. Generally, where there are children, you know they are Romanian. For example, we usually do about 120 Romanian baptisms a year and about 40 of all other nationalities, Moldovan, Greek, Russian and English. However, in the Northampton Romanian parish they did 850 baptisms last year.

 

The Time of the Fulfilment of the Prophecies Has Come

In a recent interview, shortly to be published elsewhere, Fr Andrew expressed his views on the situation in the Ukraine, which has brought the whole world and the whole of the Orthodox Church into crisis.

 

Q: What has brought about the crisis in the Ukraine, which has affected inter-Orthodox relations so badly and led to a huge and historic schism?

A: First of all, we must know that since the fall of the USSR in December 1991, the US elite (with all its underlings) has had as its main aims firstly the destruction of the Islamic world and secondly the destruction of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the cement of the Russian-speaking world and the numerical centre of Orthodoxy. The US elite failed in the first task, though it did create chaos and death throughout the Middle East and in North Africa. In the second task it is also failing, though again it has created chaos and death, threatening nuclear war. This is Satanism. Of this there is no doubt. Only Satan loves blood and death.

This became apparent to me when the former US ambassador to Kiev, John Herbst, infiltrated the Fourth Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in San Francisco in 2006. His then comment to a future schismatic Ukrainian bishop was that, given the ROCOR decision for unity with Moscow, they (meaning the US Establishment via the CIA) would now have to infiltrate all the Local Orthodox Churches and in particular the Russian Orthodox Church from inside. This is exactly what they did. Thus, they created the scandal of persecution of the faithful from inside the Church, using its corrupted agents inside the Church.

‘Hand over the keys to your church so we can close it’, is the US chant, whether through its agents in the West or through its agents in the Ukraine. There is exactly the same attempt at the intimidation of the pious and the manipulation of the naïve everywhere. So, the technique clearly has the same origin. In the Ukraine, any priest who loses his church also loses his job and possibly his home, once the keys to his church have been stolen from him. Here it is not so bad because most priests do not depend on the church for their income or home. However, the flock will still be scattered, the work of decades in building up the Church destroyed and the people scandalised by the persecution coming from on high. This is how people, ;the little ones’ of the Gospel, lose their faith. In our own case we were saved by the personal friendship between Patriarch Kyrill and Patriarch Daniel, so we were able to remain free and open, which the people recognise and so flock to us, despite the jealousy and slanders of others. The people refuse to be intimidated by the CIA. Unlike the dreaded secret police in the totalitarian Ukraine, the ‘authorities’ are reluctant to kidnap and torture here.

In the Ukraine, the CIA have so far managed to close 2,000 churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church out of 12,000, but thousands more will be closed in the coming months. Metr Onufry is a heroic confessor and may yet be martyred by the Americans through their proxies. We are with him 100%. We are not afraid of them! We have seen their sort before and seen them off before.

Q: When did the war in the Ukraine begin?

A: In 2014, the centenary of the First World War. As I have written many times before, this is a generational process: 1914, 1939 (the Second War), 1964 (the Moral Collapse, leading to 100 million abortions, mass family breakdown and open perversion without repentance), 1989 (the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the first invasion of Iraq and the Soviet collapse) and 2014. That was the first year of World War III, of which covid was only a phase that killed nearly seven million, a War which is due to last ten years in all. This is as long as World War I and World War II added together. Thus, we have seen a world crisis every twenty-five years.

Q: You have recently helped a Ukrainian refugee-priest to try and set up a new church in London. How did that go?

A: With the blessing of our own Metr Joseph and the senior hierarchy in Kiev, who know all about how we have been persecuted and how we were received into the Romanian Church (Metr Joseph is well-known and well-respected there and has met them), we received a priest from the Ukraine who stayed with us for three weeks. However, the British Establishment told our priest in no uncertain terms that as long as he is with Metr Onufry, he will not be tolerated in this country. He could in no way obtain premises or anything. The USA will not allow it. However, he was told that if he had been in the schismatic CIA/Dumenko church or in the Greek Catholic (Uniat) church, he would have at once received everything he had ever dreamed of.

Q: Why did he come to you in the Patriarchate of Romania and not address himself to the Russian Church?

A: The Kiev regime punishment for ‘collaboration’ (= concelebration with the Russian Church) is five years imprisonment.

Today the situation in Eastern Europe is worsening rapidly. In the Ukraine you can be imprisoned for possessing Russian books. In the Baltics it is the same. The Pjukhtitsy Convent in Estonia has been ordered to join the American pawn of Constantinople. Eternal shame on the Estonian government. In Latvia doctors can now legally refuse to treat Russians who cannot speak Latvian. People will die. Such is the racism allowed by the EU. I strongly suspect that Russia will this decade be tempted to take over desperately poor Moldova and then the dying Baltic States, in order to free their persecuted minorities there.

Q: What hope do you see for the Russian Church in this crisis?

A: My personal hope is Metr Hilarion (Alfeev) of Budapest. I know him personally. From a liberal diplomat he has developed and matured over the last several years through his sufferings, and is now a hero in chains. He has always openly opposed the war in the Ukraine. He clearly sees the difference between Church and State. He speaks several languages, quite good Greek, French and excellent English. He is for autocephaly for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Even if it will only be temporary, it will still be necessary for a time.

Once the south-western province of Zakarpatie, as Kiev calls it, has become part of Hungary, as it will do, there will be a need for an Autocephalous Hungarian Orthodox Church. This could be a possible position for Metr Hilarion. But he could do more. He could take over responsibility for the Sourozh Diocese and Moscow parishes in North America. In this country he could restore the fallen Russian Church here, which is now in a disastrous state. He could at last create that long-awaited united Russian Church out of the three warring Russian jurisdictions here, one of which is allowed to refuse to be in communion with one of the others! He could take over the now moribund Western European Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Moscow and revive it, working together with other jurisdictions. Or quite simply, he could become the next Patriarch of Moscow.

Q: Is this the end of the world? The Apocalypse?

A: We are in pre-Apocalyptic times. The War against the Ukraine, Belarus and Russia will, conditionally, end on 5 May 2024. Exactly eighteen months from now. These are not my words, but the words of the prophets and holy elders. If there is repentance (all prophecies are dependent on repentance) then there will be a great cleansing of the Church and the State. All the perverts and money-minded careerists will be turned out, like the money-changers from the Temple, for that is exactly what they are. He who endures to the end will be saved. Fear not, little flock. This whole period is a time of testing.

Q: You sound optimistic?

A: In the longer term, of course I am optimistic, but not in the short term. There is much suffering to go through in the coming months and year. This is why the Lord was merciful to Queen Elizabeth II and took her – so that she would not see these horrors.

The commander of the US Strategic Command in charge of the US nuclear triad, Admiral Charles Richard, has just said that ‘the Ukraine crisis is just warming up. The big one is coming, and it won’t be long before we get tested in a way we haven’t been tested in a long time’. The US is flying nuclear weapons into its base in Spain. According to the EU Foreign Minister, Borrell, the EU alone has spent 22 billion euros on Ukraine in 2022, not counting direct military aid from individual EU members. The Ukraine is going to need billions of dollars just to stay afloat in the next few months and probably more than $100 billion to stay afloat in 2023.

This is not to mention the potential flood of refugees from the Ukraine into Europe, sparking the powderkeg of existing internal discontent in these countries. For example, here Ukrainian refuges were sponsored for six months, when they began to come here last March. Now that that period is up, many are being turned out onto the streets, where they live as beggars and tramps. Local councils will not and cannot help them. They too are bankrupt.

Now is the time of the fulfilment of the prophecies. The saints long ago foretold that at the end there will be many churches and the golden cupolas will gleam, but you will not be able to enter them. This is exactly the situation in the Ukraine today, where the churches are locked and empty. As St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied, at the end there will be bishops even worse than those in the time of Emperor Theodosius the Younger (401-450). Here begins our long, long march to freedom. We are living through the end of that old Westocentric world and seeing the return to the original multicentric world. But as St Alexander Nevsky said: ‘God is not in force, but in truth’.

 

 

 

Autocephaly, Autonomy, Exarchates and Missions

Introduction

There are surely many suggestions as to how the Orthodox Church can move forward out of its present state of crisis. We recall that this crisis is essentially one of disputed and also discredited authority, especially of the post-Cretan Patriarchate of Constantinople and of the post-Ukrainian Operation Patriarchate of Moscow. So many of their acts that have been ostensibly justified by the ‘canons’ have in fact been purely political acts and thus are anti-canonical. Therefore, this is a crisis of division. I have little confidence that the following suggestions will be heard, let alone acted on. But still I dare to make them, if only for the record, as one set of solutions among others put forward from the grassroots.

Three Recent Autocephalous Churches

The post-1917 Russian Orthodox Church gradually recognised that the fall of the Russian Empire, the consequent reconstruction of Poland and the inability to care for the pre-Revolutionary mission in North America, meant that new Autocephalous Churches would have to be established there. Thus, there came into being the Polish Orthodox Church (1924 and 1948) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) (1970). As a result of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, there also came into being the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia (1951). The first and the last of these Churches, though quite small, have undisputed territories and have been revitalised by the recent arrival of many Ukrainian refugees.

However, the vaguely-named ‘OCA’ (where is America?), founded in 1970, has had many difficulties which have undermined its authority, both moral and financial. Moreover, although it is heir to the original and undivided Church in Northern America, it exists today on a shared territory and the much larger Archdiocese of the Church of Constantinople does not recognise it. As a result, the OCA has remained smaller than the Church of Poland and the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Perhaps it could be revitalised by the Mother-Church in Moscow which could add to its Moscow’s now bishopless parishes in Northern America? And perhaps it could be renamed more accurately as the ‘Northern American Orthodox Church’ (NAOC)? (The term Northern America means the USA, Canada and Greenland and a couple of islands, so that Mexico and the Caribbean are excluded from its territory). The NAOC should move towards having Greek, Serbian and native-born bishops, who are therefore truly representative of the new Local Church. Only in this way could the flocks of other Local Orthodox Churches be drawn to take part.

Four Future Autocephalous Churches

Over thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union and its division into fifteen separate States, and following the conflict between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine and the refusal of many to commemorate the Russian Orthodox Patriarch, it is clear that a new wave of Autocephalies needs to take place. The parallel between the fall of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union should be clear to all. Ecclesiastical decentralisation must follow on from political decentralisation.

We suggest that four new Autocephalous Churches may need to be founded by the Mother-Church in countries where there are large numbers of Orthodox, but where the main language is not Russian. As all of these areas have at least four bishops (the minimum number for Autocephaly), this is quite realistic. This would bring the total number of Local Orthodox Churches, counting those of North Macedonia and the above NAOC, from sixteen to twenty. In order of size, these would be:

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church. 18 million? This would look after all Orthodox within the borders of the future Ukraine, even though the precise, permanent borders of that war-torn country are yet to be established for the moment. A genuinely Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church could at last put an end to all those nationalist Church divisions that have taken place there since 1917, including in 2018, both inside the Ukraine and in the Diaspora.

The Moldovan Orthodox Church. 4 million? This would look after all Orthodox within Moldova. An Autocephalous Church, on good terms with both the Russian and Romanian Churches, which might grant it Autocephaly together, its birth could overcome the present division there between the Russian and Romanian Patriarchates, the two largest Local Churches.

The Baltic Orthodox Church. 500,000? This would look after all Orthodox who keep the canonical date of Pascha within Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland. In Lithuania clergy, defrocked for purely political reasons to the scandal of many, will need to be reinstated. As in the Ukraine and Moldova, the Baltic countries should move towards having native-born bishops, who are therefore truly representative of the new Local Church. A genuinely Autocephalous Baltic Orthodox Church could at last put an end to all those nationalist Church divisions that have taken place in all these countries since 1917, as well as the Phanariot-provoked situations in Finland and Estonia.

The Western European Orthodox Church (WEOC). 400,000? Covering the 22 ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant countries of Western, Central, Northern and Southern Europe, which have no Local Church of their own (Andorra
Austria, Belgium, British Isles, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland). This Church is based on the present Russian Orthodox Exarchate of Western Europe, but includes Germany, Scandinavia (a bishop is required here) and Austria-Hungary. New bishops are also required for France, Benelux and the British Isles and Ireland and to resolve the pastoral problems in the latter. The Western European Archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate would surely wish to take part in such an Autocephalous Church. As in the Ukraine and Moldova, the WEOC should move towards having native-born bishops, who are therefore truly representative of the new Local Church. Only in this way could the flocks of other Local Orthodox Churches wish to take part.

Two Recent Autonomous Orthodox Churches

Rather than full independence (Autocephaly), there are smaller Churches in other countries which are dependent on their Mother-Church for their episcopate. Such Churches are known as Autonomous. The pre-Revolutionary missions in China (Autonomy granted in 1957) and Japan (Autonomy granted in 1970) are both such, although the latter hardly exists today on account of Chinese State persecution over the last 75 years.

Two Future Autonomous Orthodox Churches

The present Russian Orthodox Exarchate of South East Asia could become an Autonomous Church (SEAOC). True, for the moment it covers a huge territory. If its mission is successful, it could eventually form several Autocephalous Churches. However, before it can even become Autocephalous, it must first obtain native bishops.

The present Russian Orthodox Exarchate of Africa could become an Autonomous Church (AOC). Before it can become Autocephalous, it must obtain native bishops – and also resolve the territorial dispute with the Patriarchate of Alexandria. This could be overcome if, for example, the jurisdiction of Alexandria returned to its traditional territory of Egypt.

A Recent Exarchate

There are other regions which for various reasons do not wish or are unable to become either Autocephalous or Autonomous and may be particularly dependent on the Mother-Church. These are known as Exarchates. Thus, Belarus is established as an Exarchate within the Russian Orthodox Church.

Two Future Exarchates

There will soon need to be a Central Asian Exarchate for the ‘Five Stans’, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

There will soon need to be a Latin American Exarchate to cover South and Central America, as well as Mexico and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.

Two Future Missions

Missions and infrastructure for them need to be opened for two other areas of the world. These are:

Oceania – the whole, albeit sparsely-populated Continent of Australia and all the Pacific islands, where there is already some Orthodox presence. The opening of an Exarchate here would depend on the desire of local Orthodox to become a Local Church.

South Asia (The Indian Subcontinent and Indian Ocean islands), which has nearly a quarter of the world’s population, but hardly any Orthodox.

Conclusion

There can be no new Churches if they are not Autocephalous, that is, if they are not quite separate from and politically free of Mother-Churches. Otherwise, they are compromised and discredited. History bears this out quite clearly, both in the twentieth century and well before. Of course, all are free to take part or not in the life of new Autocephalous Churches which are located on shared territories. Some, still attached to Mother-Churches will not wish to do so. Time is all that is lacking for them. Others, with a schismatic or sectarian ‘OneTrueChurch’ Pharisee mentality, inspired by the spiritual impurity of the CIA and US-Protestant nationalist politics and not on the canons of the Orthodox Church, will not take part. But such are a tiny minority and can be ignored. The future is in new Autocephalous Churches.

 

 

‘They (The West) clearly did not expect such insubordination. They simply got used to acting according to a template, to grab whatever they please, by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convinced themselves that these methods would work forever

Extracts from the Speech by President Putin on 30 September 2022 on the arrogance of the US, UK and EU elites, with which we have become so familiar over the last four years:

…We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people. This is the great liberating mission of our nation….

…The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation.

…I want to underscore again that their insatiability and determination to preserve their unfettered dominance are the real causes of the hybrid war that the collective West is waging against Russia. They do not want us to be free; they want us to be a colony. They do not want equal cooperation; they want to loot. They do not want to see us a free society, but a mass of soulless slaves.

…I would like to remind you that in the past, ambitions of world domination have repeatedly shattered against the courage and resilience of our people. Russia will always be Russia….

Russia is a great thousand-year-old power, a whole civilisation, and it is not going to live by such makeshift, false rules.

…The West does not have any moral right to weigh in, or even utter a word about freedom of democracy. It does not and it never did.

Western elites not only deny national sovereignty and international law. Their hegemony has pronounced features of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid.

…We have never agreed to and will never agree to such political nationalism and racism. What else, if not racism, is the Russophobia being spread around the world? What, if not racism, is the West’s dogmatic conviction that its civilisation and neoliberal culture is an indisputable model for the entire world to follow? “You’re either with us or against us.”

…It is worth reminding the West that it began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, followed by the worldwide slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India and Africa, the wars of England and France against China, as a result of which it was forced to open its ports to the opium trade. What they did was get entire nations hooked on drugs and purposefully exterminated entire ethnic groups for the sake of grabbing land and resources, hunting people like animals. This is contrary to human nature, truth, freedom and justice.

…To emphasise, one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the Western elites’ unconcealed animosity toward Russia is precisely the fact that we did not allow them to rob us during the period of colonial conquests and forced the Europeans to trade with us on mutually beneficial terms. This was achieved by creating a strong centralised state in Russia, which grew and got stronger based on the great moral values of Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, as well as Russian culture and the Russian world that were open to all.

…They called us friends and partners, but they treated us like a colony, using various schemes to pump trillions of dollars out of the country. We remember. We have not forgotten anything.

Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed. The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through….

Recall that during WWII the United States and Britain reduced Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities to rubble, without the least military necessity. It was done ostentatiously and, to repeat, without any military necessity. They had only one goal, as with the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities: to intimidate our country and the rest of the world.

It actually continues to occupy Germany, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other countries, which they cynically refer to as equals and allies. Look now, what kind of alliance is that? The whole world knows that the top officials in these countries are being spied on and that their offices and homes are bugged. It is a disgrace, a disgrace for those who do this and for those who, like slaves, silently and meekly swallow this arrogant behaviour.

They call the orders and threats they make to their vassals Euro-Atlantic solidarity, and the creation of biological weapons and the use of human test subjects, including in Ukraine, noble medical research.

…In effect, the American elite is using the tragedy of these people to weaken its rivals, to destroy nation states…..

The West clearly did not expect such insubordination. They simply got used to acting according to a template, to grab whatever they please, by blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and convinced themselves that these methods would work forever, as if they had fossilised in the past.

Such self-confidence is a direct product not only of the notorious concept of exceptionalism – although it never ceases to amaze – but also of the real ”information hunger“ in the West. The truth has been drowned in an ocean of myths, illusions and fakes, using extremely aggressive propaganda, lying like Goebbels. The more unbelievable the lie, the quicker people will believe it – that is how they operate, according to this principle….

I want to make special note of the fact that there is every reason to believe that the Western elites are not going to look for constructive ways out of the global food and energy crisis that they and they alone are to blame for, as a result of their long-term policy, dating back long before our special military operation in Ukraine, in Donbass. They have no intention of solving the problems of injustice and inequality. I am afraid they would rather use other formulas they are more comfortable with….

…The current neocolonial model is ultimately doomed; this much is obvious. But I repeat that its real masters will cling to it to the end. They simply have nothing to offer the world except to maintain the same system of plundering and racketeering.

They do not give a damn about the natural right of billions of people, the majority of humanity, to freedom and justice, the right to determine their own future. They have already moved on to the radical denial of moral, religious, and family values.

Let me repeat that the dictatorship of the Western elites targets all societies, including the citizens of Western countries themselves. This is a challenge to all. This complete renunciation of what it means to be human, the overthrow of faith and traditional values, and the suppression of freedom are coming to resemble a “religion in reverse” – pure Satanism. Exposing false messiahs, Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” These poisonous fruits are already obvious to people, and not only in our country but also in all countries, including many people in the West itself….

…Today, we are fighting for a just and free path, first of all for ourselves, for Russia, in order to leave dictate and despotism in the past. I am convinced that countries and peoples understand that a policy based on the exceptionalism of whoever it may be and the suppression of other cultures and peoples is inherently criminal, and that we must close this shameful chapter. The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible. And I repeat: things will never be the same….

Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values ​​are humanity, mercy and compassion.

 

 

ROCOR in Desperate Search of an Identity

Introduction

The small émigré Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), which was formed after 1917 largely from White Russian refugees, has desperately been in search of an identity since 2007. Then, as it joined up with the rest of the much larger Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate or MP), at a ratio of 1% to 99% (300 parishes to 30,000 parishes), it gave up being a museum or heritage church. After all, the old  generation, adults before the 1917 evolution, had completely died out by then. Many of their children had abandoned Church life and it was increasingly dependent on people and clergy from the ex-USSR.

The traditional ROCOR position was to keep its pre-Revolutionary heritage, to stand with the New Martyrs and Confessors and to condemn the collaboration of bishops inside the USSR with the atheist State. However, once the USSR and the atheist State had ceased to exist in 1992, once the post-Soviet MP had begun canonising its New Martyrs and Confessors and reviving its pre-Revolutionary heritage in 2000, then ROCOR had to find a new role to justify its existence. There was nothing distinctive any more. Since 2007, there have been discussions as to what that role should be. Two schools of thought have appeared in the past fifteen years.

The First Choice

The first choice was to be absorbed by the Moscow Patriarchate and their immigrant parishioners all over the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union, clearly outnumbering the old ROCOR parishioners, who were dying out. Unfortunately, at the same time corruption from inside the oligarchic ex-USSR spread to ROCOR too. Bishops became corrupted by the temptations of money, prestige and property. Some ROCOR churches became virtual embassy churches for the Moscow Patriarchate and its nationalist policy in the Ukraine, others became nationalist nostalgia clubs, ghettos which are irrelevant to others. Others became tiny, inward-looking and sectarian and cultish groups for rather right-wing US Protestants with the OneTrueChurchism of some converts with their conspiracy theories, as also in England and Belgium, for example.

I have been to ROCOR churches in the USA four times since 1996, once as a speaker at the 2006 ROCOR Council in San Francisco under the ever-memorable Metropolitan Laurus (only six out of the nine ROCOR speakers there remain in ROCOR). No fewer than three ROCOR bishops (I know them all) told me since 2017 that their hero is Trump. I was told never to say anything against Trump or else face censorship! If ROCOR follows this political, indeed totalitarian, path, it will not only fall out of communion with the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria and the Western European Archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, as it already has, but with all the other Local Churches, as seems highly likely. In fact one of their bishops told us that this was his aim!

The Second Choice

The second choice is to insist on ROCOR autonomy and freedom, realising the full potential of ROCOR, and remain faithful to the Russian Orthodox ascetic and liturgical tradition of the old bishops, clergy and laity, whom I knew and loved so well. Completely unmercenary, they had no love of money, prestige, power, fancy apartments and cars and of what we may in general call ‘bling’. This is faithfulness to the New Martyrs and Confessors and the Three Diaspora Saints: St John of Shanghai, St Seraphim of Boguchar and St Jonah of Hankou. It would be well if ROCOR ceased commemorating Patriarch Kyrill, as they have already ceased doing in the Ukraine and Latvia. No Ukrainian refugees will ever set foot and stay in any church that commemorates him. We know: we do not commemorate him, as we are not under him, and so plenty of Ukrainian refugees from the canonical Ukrainian Church come to us.

The fact is that the only long-term purpose of any Orthodox presence and structure in Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania is to help lay the groundwork for future Local Churches in those four Continents and regions in the local languages. Witness is essential. This has been patently obvious for at least two generations. And this means inter-Orthodox, inter-calendar and multinational co-operation, being part of the mainstream, not being part of a schismatic sect or cult. Down with politics and racist ideologies! Long live Orthodox Christianity!

Conclusion

The choice for ROCOR is simple: Either to side with the Persecuting Church or else to stand with the Persecuted Church. The first way is spiritual death, as some with suicidal tendencies here have already done, the second way is spiritual life. The clash between these two visions of the Church has already taken place here. The result of this was that, because of years of persecution and being ignored, half a ROCOR diocese and most of its people left for the Patriarchate of Romania. Will this pattern be repeated elsewhere? Today we have heard that the new First Hierarch of ROCOR is Metropolitan Nicholas (Olhovsky). It was the obvious choice, since the two senior candidates had compromised themselves in politics. Metr Nicholas is a candidate of the Lukianov group, but also has many qualities, not least that he is a son from the post-1945 generation and knew Metr Laurus very well, as his cell-attendant. But some fear that this young bishop may be manipulated by others and compromise himself by obeying them again.

If Metr Nicholas wants to survive in the much contracted ROCOR (that has all but lost South America, where forty years ago it had six bishops, Indonesia and much of Western Europe), he will now have to allow parishes to cease commemorating Patriarch Kyrill, deal with the Western Rite problem, the House Springs scandal and the Belya scandal in the USA, and then all the scandals in what remains of the tiny ‘Western European Diocese’. He may be tempted to avoid many problems by doing the swap that Moscow has long wanted and exchange the ROCOR parishes in Western Europe (after, or as regards the 20 mainly small parishes of the Western European Diocese even before, Metr Mark has gone) for the bishopless MP parishes in North America. This will leave him with his American Synod in control of Russian and convert parishes in North America and Australia. Then he will have to steer ROCOR towards co-operation with the OCA. Otherwise, ROCOR will simply die out.