Orthodox Christianity Before and After the Western Schism

Q: Was England Orthodox before 1066?

A: I think the question is misleading. Firstly, how can a country be Orthodox? Only people can be Orthodox. Secondly, what do you mean by Orthodox? Jewish? If you mean Orthodox Christian, then it is true that before 1066 English people could and did make pilgrimages to Jerusalem and New Rome (Constantinople) and elsewhere in the Orthodox Christian Roman Empire, of which they were by faith a part, and Greek clergy are recorded living in England at the same time. English people could and did take communion anywhere there, their priests concelebrating.

This concerned not least the exiled refugees from England who went to live there permanently after 1066. This was because all held the same Orthodox Christian Faith, East and West, despite different rituals and customs. Of course this was true not only of the faithful in England, but more or less true of the faithful anywhere in Western Europe, even after the Year 1000. In other words, Roman Catholicism did not exist as such at that time, though its origins can be traced back to about the Year 1000 and even some aspects of it right back to the end of the eighth century under ‘Charlemagne’, who wanted to revive pagan Rome. In fact, that was exactly what his spiritual descendants did so successfully.

Q: Which Local Church will take the leadership of the Orthodox Diaspora in Western Europe?

A: I don’t know. The Greeks rejected their golden chance to prove that they really are ‘Oecumenical’ during the very long years of the Soviet captivity between 1917 and 1992. Instead, they showed that they were only ‘Ecumenical’ and so compromised and discredited themselves. Next, between 2007 and 2020, the Russians were given the same golden chance to assume the leadership of the Diaspora. And they threw their golden chance away too, into the selfsame dustbin of nationalism. It was offered to them on a plate and they rejected it, just like the Greeks before them. To quote the suicidal words of the time pronounced by a very young and spiritually untried bishop from Moscow, which he said against those who belong to other Local Churches, but which in fact he said to his own loss: ‘Too bad for their souls’. So the ship of the Church locally for now continues to be rudderless.

Apologetics

Q: Why do we pray for the monarch or government and armed forces? They are generally a bunch of crooks.

A: You forget that we are Christians and so pray for our enemies! For example, the early Orthodox prayed for suchlike as the Emperor Nero. We must pray for our persecutors. I always do it. We are Christians. We always pray for the powers that be, including the armed forces, as the Apostle Paul instructs us (‘Honour the King’), and this is so that they do not do evil.

Q: How has the word Christian become so discredited?

A: The word Christian is generally used to express Roman Catholic or Protestant, only very rarely Orthodox Christian. Instead of that term they use ‘Eastern Orthodox’, as though Christ (the Head of our Church) were some exotic oriental guru. In other words, the word ‘Christian’ has been instrumentalised and even weaponised by the powers of this world.

For example, I am (Orthodox) Christian because I reject feudalism with its serfs, massacres and inquisitions (so cannot be Roman Catholic); I reject Imperialism with its slavery and exploitation (so cannot be Protestant); I reject Capitalism with its paid serfs, kept quiet with the bread, sugar and salt of supermarkets and circuses of TV and the internet (so cannot be Secularist). So are you a Christian?

However, there are also bad clergy in every part of the supposedly Christian world. They discredit the word ‘Christian’. For example, there is in Colchester a Polish taxi-driver. He had the same job when he lived in the Church city of Krakow in Poland. His job was to transport Catholic clergy and seminarians to prostitutes. This industry was well developed there. On the other hand, we have here a very nice Roman Catholic lady from eastern Poland near the border of Belarus, whose husband is Orthodox. He refuses to go to church because the priest in his Orthodox village is a drunkard, who steals money from the church and lives a dissolute life. That this exists is nothing new; Russia had many such priests before the Revolution and there are many in the Ukraine today. The only question is why such men are ordained by bishops and then NOT defrocked. It suggests that the bishops themselves are corrupt. And I certainly know cases of this. It is all about money.

Q: What do you think of Jordan Peterson as an Orthodox missionary and ‘the surge’ towards Orthodoxy?

A: This Non-Orthodox gentleman does not lead a Church life. He preaches an ideology. However interesting it may be and however sincere it may be and however close some of it may be to Orthodox views, it is not Orthodox Christianity because it is not living Orthodoxy. Thus, over the last years or so, I have been contacted as a priest by many young men (not a single woman), between the age of 16 and 40, who claim, under the influence of Jordan Peterson, they want ‘to become Orthodox’. When I have told them that they have to attend Church services for this to happen, they immediately lose all interest. In other words, they are in love with a podcast theory, ‘internet Orthodoxy’, not the Church. This is totally different from practice and reality.

There has been no surge towards Orthodoxy at all. I must add that some of those young men were very strange individuals, narcissistic, misogynistic, family-hating, sometimes, I suspect, repressed homosexuals and sometimes downright weird. I think they live in a virtual world of the fantasy, not the real one. It appears to be a generational problem, a result of the internet, a lack of contact with reality. Podcasts are not a Christian way of life. By their fruits, ye shall judge them.

Q: Why does the Bible not mention dinosaurs?

A: For the same reason that the Bible does not mention locomotives. Both words were invented about the same time in the 19^th century. The books of the Old Testament were written down over 3,000 years before that. However, the Book of Job (40, 15-24) does mention a ‘behemoth’, with an exact description of a very large dinosaur (most dinosaurs were very small according to the fossil record). Elsewhere the Bible often mentions dragons and, in all the cultures and folk-memories of the world, dragons are the old name for dinosaurs.

Q: Was the Flood local or universal?

A: This is not a dogma of the Faith, so believe as you will. Personally, I think it was universal, because every culture in the world has a flood story and because how else can you account for worldwide fossils, 95% of which are sea creatures (for example, fossils of sea creatures found on high mountains), stratification of rock, plate tectonics, or the Ice Age? And then, if it had been global, why did Noah not simply move away from the area and why did he bother to preserve the animals anyway? Personally, I cannot imagine how a geologist cannot be a Christian.

Q: When was the Earth created and how long did it take?

A: Nobody knows. The traditional Orthodox date is 7,532 years ago. You can interpret that literally or figuratively. How long did it take? Six days or six ages. No such speculations, or even certain knowledge, helps us to salvation. Do not waste your time!

The Russian Church

Q: Why does the agony of the Russian Church continue even 33 years after the fall of Communism?

A: This is because of the lack or repentance of the Russian Orthodox masses, who are baptised but untaught. Thus, in the centre of Moscow the corpse of Lenin, that forerunner of Antichrist, continues to rot in public in its ziggurat. Everywhere statues of monsters like him and the names of the murderers are recalled in metro stations, streets and whole regions. Meanwhile the relics of the Imperial Martyrs are held, the faithful barred off, in Saint Petersburg and it is impossible for the faithful to venerate them. This is spiritual captivity. Relics make miracles only when they are venerated.

Q: Why was Gregory Rasputin hated by most of the Russian emigration?

A: This was because most of the Russian emigration hated the Tsar and the Tsarina. They blamed their loss of money, position and property on the Imperial Family and all who had supported them. In the words of St John of Shanghai (and also in my experience) only about 10% of the Russian emigration were for the Tsar or went to church, and probably far fewer than 10% of the aristocracy, who had lost the most through the Revolution. Although all the emigres have died out, this attitude continues among their descendants of the second, third and fourth generations, to whom they passed on their old prejudices.

Q: Why does the West hate Russia?

A: Simply because Russia has refused to be colonised by the West. True, it has not remained entirely independent. The Russian Empire (1721-1917), the Soviet Empire (1922-1991) and Russian Capitalism (1992-2022) were all the results of Russian aping of various Western ideologies of materialism. However, this 300-year period is now over. Russia has now reverted to being a National Russia.

Q: Did you ever meet Metr Antony of Sourozh? What would he think of the present situation in the Russian Church?

A: I not only often met him quite often, but he tonsured me reader over 42 years ago, in January 1981. As regards the present, all I can say is that he must be spinning in his grave at the sight of how Sergianist politicians who think like the State have taken over the Russian Church and principles thrown out of the window. The New Martyrs and the New Confessors have been betrayed by those who prefer money and luxury and the corruption that follows from those passions.

Q: Is the schismatic American ROCOR still in communion with any other Orthodox?

A: As far as I can see, this tiny US-based group of 300 churches and small communities is now openly preaching that you must be nasty in order to be nice! This is of course psychopathic, which is what we have come to expect of the new American ROCOR. It has lost so many normal Russian Orthodox that it now consorts occasionally only with certain politically very conservative, usually ex-Protestant, members of the Antiochian Jurisdiction (200 rather wealthy churches and communities in the USA). Both have stronger links to the USA than to Europe and West Asia and actual Orthodox Tradition. Both appear to be out of communion with the huge Russian, Romanian and Greek Churches. Birds of a feather flock together.

The Non-Orthodox World

Q: How did you use to receive converts when you served as a priest in ROCOR?

A: The same as now! I have always obeyed the ROCOR archbishop who ordained me to the priesthood, Archbishop Antony of Geneva. He himself simply followed the pre-Revolutionary tradition which he had learned from Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) in his youth in Serbia, which is the universal tradition of the Russian Church. So I received Catholics by confession and communion and Protestants by chrismation. This is what is done today inside Russia, for example in Lithuania and Belarus, where there are many Catholics. Those who create schisms because of this are schismatics and there is no need to follow them. To obey schism is a sin because you are cutting yourself off from the Church, which is the source of grace, the bearer of the Holy Spirit.

Q: Why was the Catholic Easter so early this year, five weeks before the Orthodox Easter?

A: This is because the Vatican (and all Protestants follow the Vatican to the letter) no longer obeys the Tradition, as expressed in the canons, that Easter must follow the Jewish Passover. (If you remember in the year of the Crucifixion of Christ, the Jewish Passover fell on the Sabbath/Saturday between His Crucifixion and the Resurrection). In 2024 the Passover begins before sunset on Monday 22 April and ends at sunset on 30 April (it lasts eight days). Therefore, the correct Easter falls on 5 May. The Vatican’s early date is nonsense.

Q: Did the Jews kill Christ?

A: No. Firstly, the Romans killed Christ, though it is true that some Jews urged the Romans to do this. Secondly, Christ Himself was a Jew in His human nature, as was His mother, the Apostles and most of the thousands of first Christians. They did not kill Christ. Those Jews who had a part of responsibility in the death of Christ in His human nature were a small minority of the Jews and they died nearly 2,000 years ago, as also their children’s children 1900 years ago. To suggest that Jews who are alive today are responsible for killing Christ is racist nonsense and also very dangerous racist nonsense.

Q: When Non-Orthodox come and want to join the Church, how do you react as a priest?

A: There are two sorts of such people: Those who want to live a Christian life and the pathological cases. The first want to attend Church services and to love their own families and their neighbour more. The second have little interest in Church services and Christian life and just want to hate others, using the Church as an excuse for their pathology. These are ‘Orthodox’ Amish. I do not receive them into the Church and never have done.

Q: What are the signs of a psychopath?

A: According to the internet, which confirms our experience, the signs are:

Lack of empathy, arrogance, excessive vanity, lack of guilt, difficulty processing other people’s facial expressions, goal-oriented behaviour and insensitivity to punishment.

To this we would add jealousy because that is what lies behind their hatred. Hatred is why it is impossible for them to be Christians, whatever they may call themselves, bishops or whatever.

Russia

Q: Why have so many people stopped attending Russian churches in recent years? In Russia, the Ukraine and Latvia, between one-quarter and three-quarters of churchgoers have disappeared from most of the churches.

A: There were two stages in this disastrous process: Covid and then the Ukraine.

In the first stage, people saw fear of illness (not fear of God) and conformism to State propaganda on the part of clergy who closed (!) their churches. In the second stage, they saw clergy not preaching the Gospel, but justifying death and destruction. Instead of pastors (the pastors were and are being ‘defrocked’!), they found State war propagandists. As a result, they concluded that if the clergy behave like this, what is the point of going to church? It is understandable.

Q: Why are there Orthodox in Russia who praise Stalin? I have even heard that some want him to be canonised?

A: All of this is pure nationalism. It is rather like elderly British people who, brainwashed by the media, consider that Churchill was some kind of saint. Yet he gassed Kurds, he was responsible for several million dead in the Bengal famine and helped to murder 500,000 German civilians. Nationalist people like him because he was the wartime leader and Britain happened to be on the winning side. So it is with Stalin. It has nothing to do with Faith, just nationalism to do with being on the winning side.

Q: What are we to think of the ‘Russian world’ ‘doctrine that is now being promulgated by certain hierarchs of the Russian Church?

A: The liberals of ‘Public Orthodoxy’ condemn this. The conservatives approve of it. Why? Because the liberals are cosmopolitans and view everything Russian, including the Russian Orthodox Tradition, as narrow, provincial and racist. They want to modernise everything and be like Protestants. The conservatives are narrow moralisers, inclined towards phariseeism, who see the identity of the Church as ethnic, look at the past and care little for pastoral matters. Few on either side mention the Gospels, the Fathers, the Saints and the New Martyrs. This is because the interest of them all is not spiritual, but secular. All of them are simply hiding behind the Church, using it as camouflage to try and justify their secular views. The key criterion is how people view the New Martyrs of Russia. You will see that the liberals have no time for the martyrs, unless they expressed liberal views before being martyred and the conservatives have no time for them, unless they expressed conservative views before being martyred.

The sad thing about all this is that certain hierarchs have not only dug themselves a hole, but they are now continuing to dig. Stop digging!

Covid

Q: Looking back, what do you think covid was really about? And the lockdowns and the vaccines?

A: First of all, covid was a real virus. People did die from it. Of course, far fewer than they said. Most, though not all, who ‘died of covid’ were already very ill or very old and covid was simply the last straw. They just lost a few days, weeks or months from the end of their lives. In Romania hospitals were paid by the EU to put ‘coronavirus’ on death certificates and any relatives who complained were paid to accept it. Of course, the lockdowns were excessive and absurd. There was no need for them, just reasonable precautions would have been enough. So many businesses and shops closed down for ever and large numbers of people lost large amounts of money. All so unnecessary and tyrannical.

The most shameful thing was that State Churches, like the Church of England – as well as many others, including Orthodox – obeyed the lockdowns! Little wonder that so many people have stopped going to such churches. It was the last nail in the coffin for hundreds of Church of England churches. As for the vaccines, at best, they seemed to have no effect and if they did, it was admitted officially that the effect only lasted a few weeks! Such a waste of money. Many of us had to accept the vaccine, for example, all who worked for the health service and in care homes (like many of our parishioners). I advised everyone to make the sign of the cross if they had to be vaccinated and had no other choice. They had to keep their jobs. They suffered no ill effects then.

As for the origin, who knows? It may have been natural and happened through lack of hygiene. However, there are some very strange coincidences. The City of Wuhan, where it all began, has a huge laboratory investigating viruses. It accepts contracts from all over the world, including from the USA. And the main US aim is to destroy China. That would explain the incredibly stern measures and lockdowns taken by the Chinese government after the leak – if it was a lab leak. If so, the whole thing backfired and spread to the West. After all, like Hitler’s scientists, the Fascist South African government of that time tried to develop vaccines to kill black people, so it would not have been the first time they tried to kill or reduce a race. But perhaps we shall never know.

I say this, not because I am a conspiracy theorist, but because I am convinced of human stupidity. In other words, the causes of covid, either a lack of hygiene or an accidental leak, have the same cause: human stupidity.

Q: Is the funeral of Metr Kallistos significant? What about the fact that it is taking place in a Catholic church?

A: I think it is significant. It is perhaps the last Pan-Orthodox event to take place in this country. We are turning a page. The old generation, for good and ill, is all but gone. The Orthodox world is now divided and chaotic and will remain so until there is a genuine and free Church Council, unmotivated by geopolitics and manipulations, whether Greek or Russian.

Some more rigid people will say that of course it is taking place in a Roman Catholic church because Metr Kallistos was an ecumenist. However, that for me is not the point. The point is that neither of the little Orthodox chapels in Oxford, neither the Russian, nor the Greek, is anywhere big enough to accommodate even a mere hundred people. Now that is really sad. When will the missionary work start in Oxford, a city of 1,000-2,000 cradle Orthodox and another 100,000 to become Orthodox? There are those in Oxford who think about books, but what we want is churches, basic infrastructure. Are the Orthodox incapable? Do they believe in anything at all, except in tiny ghettos?

Q: Why do Churches die out?

A: Churches die out when they no longer have any spiritual significance. This is clear from the many current examples and it concerns Protestant, Catholic and also Orthodox churches. To have no spiritual significance happens when you swim with the secular tide. Quickly your services become empty ritualism or nationalism (for example, Uniatism) and your teaching becomes moralism (for example, Puritanism). These together create Phariseeism, as with the Old Testament Jews, who were ritualistic, nationalistic (they hated the Samaritans and the Saducees) and moralistic – and who crucified Christ. This decadence of ritualism, nationalism and moralism always precedes the physical closure of church buildings. This is the spiritual law. There are no exceptions. If you become spiritually irrelevant, you will die and enter the dustbin of history, churches, bishops, priests, people.

Q: What is Uniatism?

A: It is Roman Catholicism which attempts, and by definition fails, to imitate the Orthodox Faith. Technically, it may reach a high level of imitation, but it has no spiritual or creative content, only intellectual or emotional content. It has no spontaneity or creative force.

Q: What is the greatest change you have seen in Orthodox practice over the last fifty years?

A: Undoubtedly, it is frequent communion. In the 1970s you were told on no account to take communion more than once a month, at best. A great many at that time still took communion, at most, once a year. Of course, it was this decadence of practice that had created the Russian Revolution and the spread of atheism everywhere. It was precisely the decadence of rare communion that was countered by both St John of Kronstadt and St John of Shanghai, who were in turn both opposed by the formalistic hypocrites, scribes and pharisees of the hierarchy.

Q: I have seen a video of a Russian priest blessing shells and kalashnikovs. Is this real?

A: I have seen the same video. I think it is a fake. However, I have also seen a video of a Ukrainian bishop blessing guns of the Kiev Army. I think that that one too is a fake. However, there is a slight chance it is all true. After all, everything is possible when you commit the idolatry of putting nationalism of any sort above Christ.

Q: Do you think the Russian African Exarchate will be successful?

A: I do not know. The Russian Church now has three Exarchates – in Western Europe, South-East Asia and the new one in Africa. The sign of success will be native European, Asian and African bishops, priests and autonomy. We appear to be very far from that at present. If ‘nativisation’, that is incarnation, does not happen, all these Exarchates will die out as some sort of exotica imposed or allowed for temporary ideological reasons. This was the case in this country, where the Patriarchal presence is now dying out.

At present a lot of African priests have joined the Russian Exarchate there simply because their bishops were absentee landlords. They lived in their villas in Athens and visited their wretched poor flocks once a year, arriving in limousines, like the Greek bishop in the Congo. On the other hand, where there was a good Greek bishop, nobody has left. It is always the same. In Western Europe where the bishop only persecutes his clergy, dreams about pumping money out of poor parishes, buying £400 shoes and bling, people will leave him for a genuine Orthodox bishop.

It is not a question of jurisdiction or nationality, it is simply a matter of whether the bishop behaves as a Christian or as a monster! Of course the Africans left for the Russians in the above cases. If the Russians opened in Israel, the same would happen there and the people would leave the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem for a new Exarchate. On the other hand, there are plenty of Russians who would leave their corrupt Russian bishop if they were sent a genuinely Orthodox Greek bishop.

Q: Do you think the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR will ever recover from the PR disaster of their attitude to the military operation in the Ukraine?

A: Who knows? For the moment it seems highly unlikely. Certainly, the multinational and missionary aspect of the Russian Church has gone out of the window. Many Non-Russians and Russians too have left both the Patriarchal and the ROCOR jurisdictions, at least, in Western Europe. Half the ROCOR Diocese in England ended up under the Romanian Church and has attracted many Ukrainians and Russians, precisely those who reject politics and nationalism and just want to be Orthodox. English people don’t want to attend Russian churches, MP or ROCOR. If I were a Ukrainian, would I want to attend them?

Thank God we, who were granted canonical letters of leave from the Moscow Patriarchate exactly eight days before the events on 24 February 2022 and found a safe refuge in the Romanian Church, are outside all that. It has always been the duty of us pastors (even more it should be of archpastors) to lead the way out of politics and scandals like the Miami one in ROCOR, steering the ship of the church away from all that worldliness to protect the people. Those who do not protect the people will be – and already are – condemned by history.

Q: Do bishops of all Local Churches try and steal property?

A: Absolutely. There were many cases in the USA in the old Russian Metropolia (now the OCA).  Then remember the Greek bishop in Italy who demanded the keys to the Russian churches in Florence and San Remo in 2019 – immediately they left him and he lost everything. The same thing happened in France when the Greek bishop tried to take over the Rue Daru Cathedral. There have also been several cases in Moldova over the last twenty years, which led priests and parishes to join the Romanian Church. There have been Russian cases in the USA elsewhere over the years, where the Russians then lost many valuable properties through their crass mishandling of the situation, as in Amsterdam this year, as with the Brookwood case in England in 2007.

In England alone they lost at least £7.5 million of assets between 2007 and 2022, about 75% of their total assets, to other jurisdictions. If they had only behaved as Christians and not as property-grabbers, all would have been well. Such mismanagement and incompetence are punished by immediate sackings in the corporate world, but not, it seems, in the Church. It is always the same old story, priests are free to do whatever they want if they have no property, but if they have property, then there is greed and they are attacked and slandered on the internet. And this happens throughout the Orthodox world. Fortunately, the guilty are a minority of bishops.

Q: Where can I find the liturgical texts to locally-venerated Western Saints?

A: The complete set of liturgical services for the Western Saints have been in the public domain on the Romanian Orthodox website ‘Orthodoxengland’ website for some 15 years.