Author Archives: Father Andrew

Winner Takes All: The Self-Destruction of the Church of the Russian Emigration

In the years following the so-called Russian Revolution in 1917, the Church of the resulting Russian Emigration split into three parts. A few, very few, remained under the Church centred in Moscow, which eventually became known as the Moscow Patriarchate. Most of the emigres considered that that was a ‘Soviet Church’, a Communist-controlled organisation and, since members of their families had died fighting against Communism and they had been exiled by it, they would have nothing to do with its Church. This vast majority of emigres themselves split into two, a smaller group and a larger group.

The smaller group, centred at its Cathedral on Rue Daru in Paris and existing mainly in France, was founded and led by Saint Petersburg aristocrats who had overthrown the Tsar in order to introduce a pro-Western regime, either a Constitutional Monarchy or else a masonic Republic. The larger group, called ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), centred at first in Germany and then in New York, and with parishes above all in Germany, the Americas and Australia, was founded and led by emigres who, whatever their politics, were united by a profound hatred of Communists, who had stolen their land and wealth.

Obviously, now 108 years on after 1917, both groups are dying out, even though the New York group was much reinforced by the anti-Communist Russian emigration of 1945. As a result, the last pre-Revolutionary Archbishop of the Paris group died in 1981, and the last pre-Revolutionary Metropolitan of the reinforced New York group was deposed by his fellow-bishops in 2001 and died in 2006. Since then both groups have staggered on, declining in every way.

Both groups have since then much contracted, largely having failed to pass on the Faith to the descendants of the emigres, who are now in their fifth generation. Those born in the Diaspora have overwhelmingly been assimilated and lost all their Russian heritage. All that has survived is the political liberalism of the Paris group and the political conservatism (sometimes extreme conservatism) of the New York group. In other words, despite their radical contraction and the radical changes in their composition, their political identities have survived. However, their spiritual identity has been greatly weakened.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, these political identities have largely become irrelevant, mere history. Moreover, both the ageing and ever-smaller groups were dwarfed by the post-1991 emigration of young people from the former Soviet Union, who automatically became part of the much-expanded Moscow Patriarchate. These young people found the two old émigré groups to be museum pieces and so irrelevant. As a result, both émigré groups had to join the Moscow Patriarchate, though keeping a measure of internal independence.

Today, both groups are being dismantled, or rather, are dismantling themselves, as both suffer from the same suicidal disease: a lack of bishops who know the canonical Russian Tradition and, as a result of this total lack of leadership and Christian example, a lack of money. The flock will not follow wolves. For example, after 1917 both groups built some churches, or much more often, converted buildings for Orthodox use, the majority of them very small, built for fewer than a hundred parishioners. However, they also inherited some splendid pre-Revolutionary church buildings, such as:

In Italy the two churches in Florence and San Remo, currently under ROCOR, but formerly under the Paris Archdiocese.

In Paris the Cathedral of the Paris Archdiocese.

In France the ruinous churches in Cannes, Biarritz and Pau. Although it is forbidden to enter the Cannes church, as it is too dangerous, the increasingly aggressive and increasingly small and impoverished ROCOR is paradoxically engaged in a court action against its own Mother-Church, the Moscow Patriarchate, in order to obtain property rights over this ruin.

In Switzerland the ROCOR churches in Geneva, Lausanne and Vevey.

In Germany, several ROCOR churches, such as those in Wiesbaden, Darmstadt, Baden-Baden.

The two ROCOR convents in Jerusalem.

Most of these churches suffer from dwindling congregations and so dwindling income. Some are going to fall down, if they do not soon receive tens of millions of euros for repair and restoration. Clearly, in order to avoid this, only direct transfers of the buildings to the cash-rich Moscow Patriarchate can, as happened to the two former Paris Archdiocese churches in Nice and the former ROCOR church in Bari in Italy, solve the problem. In the matter of restoring historic buildings, the Moscow Patriarchate will be much aided by the Russian State, which is keen to recover pre-Revolutionary Russian historic monuments, even if they are in a ruinous state.

In this long game of chess between the 99%, the very large Mother-Church, and the 1%, the two tiny émigré fragments, there can only be one winner, the Mother-Church, the Moscow Patriarchate. It will take it all. As we said, this has already taken place in Nice and Bari, but also in Indonesia, where in 2016 ROCOR voluntarily handed over all its sixteen mission parishes to the Moscow Patriarchate, admitting that it could not cope with them. Once one of the last old, Russian-speaking ROCOR bishops has left the stage, many of the churches in Germany will certainly transfer to the Moscow Patriarchate, as their clergy and people come almost all from the ex-Soviet Union.

As one Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan told me recently: ‘Their churches are like ripe fruit hanging from a tree which will fall into our hands’. In other words, the Patriarchate does not have to do anything, except to wait patiently for the Church of the Emigration to dismantle itself, as the Emigration self-destructs after the deaths of educated, Russian-speaking bishops, who are faithful to the Russian Orthodox Tradition, and not to weird old calendarist or new calendarist pseudo-theologies, or rather fantasies.

We have descended a long, long way from the hopes expressed by the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexei II in 2003 (yes, already nearly a generation ago!) that the Western European Metropolia of the Moscow Patriarchate would become the foundation of a future Western European Local Church. That is now a mere daydream to be forgotten in the cold light of reality, the incompetence, corruption and immorality of various bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate, the liberalism of a large minority in the Paris Archdiocese, who then left it, and the schismatic and sectarian isolation of the ROCOR bishops, who still have not left it and officially founded some weird pseudo-Russian old calendarist sect, which is what they are.

Anyone has the right to leave a Church which has broken communion with another Church. That is what was done when ROCOR broke communion with part of the Moscow Patriarchate. For anyone and everyone can leave a group which enters into schism. The floodgates are opened. Moscow went to the casino, bet all its money on the wrong number and the wheel has spun and chosen another. Russia has always been betrayed by the traitors of the fifth column. In the early 17th century, boyars betrayed it to the Poles, 1917 aristocrat-traitors destroyed the Russian Empire, in 1991 oligarch-traitors destroyed the Soviet Union, and today wealthy traitors have been allowed to undermine the Russian Church.

The results are the anti-Ukrainian, anti-Moldovan and anti-English actions of Moscow and its increasing centralisation, ritualisation, nationalisation and militarisation, as it has cut itself off from communion with other Local Churches. To return to even the situation of hope of 2003 will take decades. Just like the Patriarchate of Constantinople before it, Moscow has hit the ball into the court of others, who are busy constructing what Moscow failed to do. God gave Moscow an opportunity on a silver plate; it rejected it. Now it will have to deal with the suicidal consequences, exactly as we have been warning ever since 2003. The opportunity has been presented to others.

For the Orthodox Diaspora, does this matter? Probably not, because the policy of the Moscow Patriarchate in the Diaspora has increasingly become that of a nationalist ghetto. It lives in isolation from, and so is irrelevant to, the vast majority of Diaspora Orthodox, who are not Russian. The only hope is that the Moscow Patriarchate will cast off its present nationalist and racist isolationism, returning to communion with the rest of the Orthodox Church.

Only then will Moscow return to the glorious heritage of the two great Russian saints of the Diaspora, in the USA St Tikhon of New York and Moscow, and in Europe, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, the latter the greatest man of the Russian emigration. They did not listen to St John, they persecuted him, suspended him, put him on trial and have done exactly the same to his disciples. The price they are having to pay for that is already very heavy indeed. God is not mocked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Latest ROCOR Scandal – This Time in Australia

https://news-pravda.com/world/2025/06/29/1477487.html

It is with great sadness that we have heard from multiple sources (a google search confirms all) of the latest Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) scandal, this time in Australia. There it has made all the main newspapers and media, though of course it will probably not make the largely ROCOR-run, anti-Greek, and heavily censored ‘orthochristian’ website.

Indeed, the Australian story has done nothing for the American Synod (ROCOR), which had already been publicly shamed in a court case for its blatant lies about Fr Alexander Belya and his Vicariate, as shown by the very expensive court case which it lost, and also for its blatant lies about the ‘Colchester Diocese’ in England. Here ROCOR lost half its Western European diocese through its anti-canonical, anti-Moscow schism, racist and sectarian persecution, slander and greed.

As a result, in all the nineteen churches combined of its so-called ‘Western European Diocese’, it is doubtful if on an average Sunday there are even 1,500 people inside them, many of which it does not even own. The ROCOR scandal in Geneva, with the vicious persecution and expulsion of the most faithful of the old ROCOR, all disciples of the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva, also remains unresolved. The Old Pre-Revolutionary Tradition ROCOR has been killed off by the New Convert ROCOR. St John of Shanghai has ben put on trial and suspended by the American Synod for a second time.

Now in Australia, after the sentencing of the ROCOR pedophile priest from Bombala, publicly known about for over seven years, though in the 1990s they had wanted to make him a bishop (!), another cleric, Fr Boris Ignatievsky, has made a shocking statement typical of ROCOR clericalism: ‘The sheep must not judge the shepherds’. Several of the Russian ‘gyprocker’ clergy in Australia, have already been responsible for scandals, including alcoholism, infidelity and wife-beating. Little wonder that our dear friend in Australia, a priest of integrity, Abbot Sergei Shatrov, left monasticism and the priesthood and became a taxi-driver. (Fr Michael Boyko, another Jordanville graduate, also left the priesthood and became a miner).

It all comes after the arrest and court case involving the notorious Fr Seraphim (Scuratov) in England back in the 1980s (the one whom they also wanted to make a bishop!), and the equally disgusting sexual scandals in the USA, in Boston, Blanco, Jordanville, Platina and Virginia. In the latter case a ROCOR monk left after being approached by a pervert-monk, went to his ROCOR bishop to talk of his trouble and then got touched up by the no less pervert-bishop, who claims to be ‘canonical’. (The monk threw off his monastic garb and walked away in disgust). Is all their monasticism composed of pedophiles? The half a dozen still active bishops of ROCOR (a generation ago, there were twenty – there are several who have ‘retired’ with disgust at the manner in which the new American Synod operates) do not know what to do.

The American ROCOR Archbishop for Australia, a former traditionalist Roman Catholic, rebaptised into ROCOR, is now spreading traditionalist Roman Catholic-style anti-birth control booklets, also to the scandal of the faithful. Russians have no truck with this. The pastoral crisis is in full swing here too. The ROCOR policy of sending out convert American bishops, who have no idea of the Russian Orthodox pastoral and cultural realities outside US convert ghettos, to the ROCOR colonies overseas, has been shown to be a catastrophic mistake.

Meanwhile, at their headquarters in Moscow, certain senior metropolitans of the Russian Orthodox Church (I know two of them, who informed me so) are thinking of replacing the ROCOR bishops with their own. They wanted ROCOR to be an embassy Church for them to improve their image abroad. In reality, ROCOR has made their image worse. Moscow is just waiting for the key old one to die, for he ‘zasidelsja’, has stayed on for too long. Most of the increasingly small numbers of ROCOR laypeople who are left would follow Moscow bishops. As for many former ROCOR clergy and faithful, they are now scattered as refugees from gross injustice, in the Patriarchates of Constantinople or Romania.

Moreover, both Patriarchates are keen to take even more of those fleeing the anti-canonical and schismatic actions of the rebaptising and anti-family ROCOR Synod. Therefore, they will take them all without letters of leave, which have no value or importance, as the new ROCOR is a schismatic group, which continues to persecute, in the harshest of ways, faithful clergy and people.

Scandals always accompany the decadence that comes before the end. It is just another nail in the coffin of the corpse of what was even twenty years ago a Russian Emigration Church with a largely respected and even glorious history. Sadly, a Persecuted Church has over the last generation become a Persecuting Church. All we can say to all is: Keep well away from ROCOR, approach it at your peril, for the old ROCOR is dead, killed by crazy converts, with their sexual and financial scandals.

To repeat the words of Fr Boris Ignatievsky: ‘Condemnation is a form of pride’. But the American Synod has been condemning the good and faithful for decades. Now it condemns the parents of outraged sons, who denounce pedophile clergy. Presumably then, in their view, pedophilia is a form of humility?

One commentator has asked: How did the Bombala pedophile get away with it for so long? All I know is that he had a terrible reputation when he was in Jerusalem in the 1980s. And all I can say is that either the bishops concerned are stupid, poor judges of character, or else, less charitably, they operate just like the Roman Catholics, as a gay mafia, protecting their own. One or the other. Sad, but true. The need for an Inter-Orthodox Council becomes ever more obvious to us, though apparently not to the majority of the bishops.

 

 

On the Human Remains Found near Ekaterinburg and the Last Tsar

Introduction

On the night of 4/17 July 2018 I was fortunate enough to be able to take part in the centennial pilgrimage of 120,000 Orthodox in the Urals. For hours after the Divine liturgy, led by Patriarch Kyrill, which had ended at midnight, we marched swiftly from Ekaterinburg to Ganina Yama in honour of the martyrdom of the martyred Tsar Nicholas, His Family and their four retainers (the pilgrims also prayed to the martyred layman, Gregory Rasputin). As we arrived, day broke. But where are the relics of the Imperial Martyrs and their four retainers?

The Past

In May 1979 two amateur enthusiasts found human remains at Ganina Yama (‘Gabriel’s Pit’) near Ekaterinburg, the reputed burial place of Tsar Nicholas II, His Family and their four retainers. As the Soviet tyranny fell, in July 1991 the alleged remains of five family members (the Tsar, Tsarina and three daughters) and four retainers were exhumed. After forensic examination and positive DNA identification, the nine sets of remains were laid to rest with State honours in St Catherine’s Chapel of Sts Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. In February 1998 the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church opposed the government’s decision to bury the remains, preferring a symbolic grave until their authenticity had been confirmed. Thus, when they were interred in July 1998, they were referred to by the priest conducting the service as ‘Christian victims of the Revolution’ rather than as the Imperial Family.

In 2007 the alleged remains of Tsarevich Alexei and one of his sisters, reckoned to be Maria by Russian anthropologists, were discovered at Porosjonkov Log (‘Piglets’ Ravine’), just a few hundred metres from Ganina Yama. These were positively DNA tested. In late 2015, at the insistence of the Church, Russian investigators took samples from the alleged remains of Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra for additional DNA testing, which appeared to reconfirm that the remains were those of the couple. However, very many serious Orthodox, Elder Nicholas (Guryanov), the historian Piotr Valentinovich Multatuli (the great-grandson of one of the martyrs) and many other medical specialists believed that the remains of the Romanovs had been destroyed at Ganina Yama during a ritual murder. Therefore, the alleged remains of the martyrs, as well as the place of one of the burials at Porosyonkov Log, are ignored by the faithful.

The Present

Why is there such opposition to the sets of DNA results, which clearly suggest that these are indeed the remains of the eleven victims of that dread night 107 years ago? Why has Patriarch Kyrill ‘kicked any official decision into the long grass’, as they say, by declaring that a Council of Bishops must be summoned in order to come to a decision? This is all the more a postponed decision, as no Council of Bishops could meet during the covid crisis or can meet now during the tragic conflict in the Ukraine, as the Ukrainian bishops, almost a quarter of the whole Russian Orthodox episcopate, cannot attend? The answer is because there is no unanimity within the Church or among the bishops. For the issue of ‘the Ekaterinburg Remains’ has been completely politicised, manipulated by politicians. This all began with the Western-installed Yeltsin State of the 1990s, which clearly wanted to dispose of the matter as soon as possible.

The Yeltsin regime, like its Western sponsors, wanted the DNA tests to be positive, so they could, literally, bury this painful subject. This was especially so given the Communist drunkard Yeltsin’s direct role in demolishing the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, where the slaying of the Imperial Family had taken place. Furthermore, in the 1990s, DNA testing was relatively very primitive. Moreover, it took place in the UK and the USA, so many Russians believe this allowed a further manipulation for the Western-backed Yeltsin regime. As for today, President Putin, a political strongman whose character was forged by the Soviet State, he rather despises Tsar Nicholas II as a weak ruler. As to the Church’s bishops, there is another problem. Much of the Church hierarchy is despised by many people (and many clergy). They are seen as ‘mini-oligarchs’ (to quote Russians inside Russia), who have no love for popular piety.

The Division

Thus, a gulf of distrust exists between the centralised, bureaucratised and tightly-controlled episcopate on the one hand and, on the other hand, the people, the parish clergy and the monastics. Sadly, today’s Russian Church has returned to exactly the same clericalist problems as in the pre-Revolutionary Church, by which Tsar Nicholas II was himself embarrassed and tried so despairingly to overcome. Furthermore, problems also arise from the sharp political divide within the episcopate itself. This is again just as there were before the Revolution, say between the arch-liberal Metr Anony (Vadkovsky) of Saint Petersburg and the arch-conservative Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev. Today, this political divide is again between what in secular language is called ‘left and right’, between liberals and conservatives, or in historic Church language, between Arians and Monophysites.

Thus, the Arians emphasise the human side of Church life, sometimes in a lax and modernist way, almost to the exclusion of Christ-God, whereas the Monophysites emphasise the clerical and the ascetic, sometimes harshly and mercilessly, almost to the exclusion of the human. Thus, today, of two very well-known bishops who support the DNA results, one severely compromised himself by supporting the State persecution of the Church in Russia during the covid restrictions and the other was involved in ecumenism, liberalism and a homosexual scandal, totally discrediting himself. However, some of those who oppose the recognition of the remains as those of the martyred Imperial Family and their retainers are marked by ultra-nationalism and anti-semitism. Usually, these people appear to be Non-Churchgoers, for whom Orthodoxy is a political and racist ideology, not the living Faith. What of the Orthodox?

Conclusion

In the Tradition, saints are revealed to us not by archaeologists or DNA, but by miracles. It is our belief that only when Russians have repented for the crimes of their ancestors and for their present practical atheism and changed their way of life, will the truth be revealed. However, this repentance concerns us all, for all Orthodox need to begin to live an Orthodox way of life for the truth to be revealed. For the truth of the past is only revealed when there is righteousness in the present. Only then shall we be worthy to know the Truth of God.

 

 

Convert or Converted? The Psychodrama of the Unconverted

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not; love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up.

1 Cor 13, 1-4

Religious psychosis, my ‘magical Orthodox thinking’, inspired by my obsession with listening to pseudo-elders on the internet, destroyed my life…I was living in fantasies that allowed me to escape reality and totally neglect my real responsibilities because I was setting myself an impossibly high standard of Christian probity and constantly failing.

Letter from a convert in the USA

Foreword

The worst case of a convert I have come across was in 1997, a young woman who had spent twelve years as a nun living in a cave in a Greek Old Calendarist sect in Greece and had come to realise that she had wasted her life. The only parallel I know of is that of that scandalous convent in the Urals led by the now fortunately defrocked Sergei Romanov, and which I visited in 2018. Time and again I return to the same conclusion: Keep to the mainstream, where there are families and children and flee from those who boast that they are not in communion with others. The Orthodox Church is the Catholic Church, that is the Church of Catholicity, of Conciliarity, and not of a lack of communion and so sectarianism, where there is no Church, only psychological manipulation.

Converts and Converted

The Apostles were all converts. How Christ gathered them together is recalled in the Gospels, for example the callings of Andrew and Peter the fishermen and Matthew the tax-collector. Then in the Acts of the Apostles we read about Saul the Persecutor who became Paul the Apostle on the Road to Damascus. However, we never think of the Apostles as ‘converts.’ Why? For the simple reason that they were converted and so their status as ‘converts’ ceased – they had become Orthodox Christians, like the rest of us. Although we were all once ‘converts’, even when we were children, we were then converted. For to remain a ‘convert’ means to remain in an infantile state. Those who think of themselves as converts need to grow up, to become adults and cease the things of children.

Pathology and the Convert

And now we come to the tragedy of ‘converts’ in contemporary Orthodox Christian life, and not only in the Diaspora, understanding that there is no theology here, only psychology, and often pathology, the manipulation of the vulnerable. For many of them do not want to know about the reality of Orthodox life and the services in Orthodox parishes and Orthodox families and how we live. Having listened to various fantasists and misguided idealists on the internet, often they straightaway want to become monks, which is impossible because to be a monk, obedience is essential. But Orthodoxy as monastic life is not accessible to them. For that would be to run before learning to walk. And that means falling. We have to start at the beginning, not to start at the end.

Pride at the Root

This is pride and it is pride that always goes before the fall. The problem with such converts is that they have entirely missed the point. They may join the Church, but this is not the same as ‘becoming Orthodox’, that is, being converted. To ‘become Orthodox’ does not mean keeping certain external monastic observances, such as growing long hair and (if a man) a long beard, (if a woman, wearing floor-length skirts and covering her hair with what looks like a table-cloth), dressing in black or talking with exotic words and incessantly and very boringly about the Typicon, ritual regulations, the canons, ‘the Fathers,’ or individual clerics. All this is irrelevant and ordinary Orthodox parishioners do not do such things, it is boring. Just look at them! Love is the sign of Orthodoxy.

Love at the Root

The essence of Orthodox Christianity is to acquire love for God, for others as for oneself. All external observances and long and boring issues about clerical personalities are irrelevant. Otherwise. it is all ‘sounding brass or a clanging cymbal’, because they have no love, as the Apostle Paul wrote nearly 2,000 years ago. And tragically there are ‘converts’ who even after fifty and sixty years have remained ‘converts.’ This is because they have no love, for love is the fruit of maturity, which is what they do not have, precisely because they have remained ‘converts’, infantiles, for they have never become Orthodox Christians. As Fr Seraphim (Rose) quoted an elderly Russian woman saying about a ’convert’ some fifty years ago: ‘He is certainly Orthodox, but is he a Christian?’

Afterword

Indeed, this disease of ‘convertitis’ has nothing to do with Christianity. It is always characterised by negativity, hypercriticism and interference in the lives of others. This dissatisfaction with others (real Orthodox are dissatisfied only with themselves and are generous and indulgent towards others) always results in the abandonment of Orthodoxy and schism, even if it takes them 50 or 60 years. There have been many contemporary examples, in the Old Calendarist schisms, Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian and Russian (ROCOR). The convert disease of ‘illusionment’ always ends up in disillusionment, which, by definition, can only come from ‘illusionment’, which is called in Greek ‘plani’, in Russian ‘prelest’, in Romanian ‘inselare’, and in Latin ‘illusio’. Such a waste of life.

 

 

 

 

 

Papism and Protestantism as Infantile and Fascist Deviations from the Church

Foreword: Psychopathology and Fascism

Most Orthodox Christians love God and love their neighbour as ourselves. That is to say, we respect ourselves because we know that, despite our sins, we know that God made us. Those with low self-esteem, usually those who were abused in some way in childhood, belong to the realm of psychiatry, for they do not respect themselves. They are not necessarily humble, they are humiliated – and humble and humiliated are very different things, Interestingly, cult-leaders deliberately confuse the two and use that confusion to manipulate or ‘gaslight’ their victims. Those with high self-esteem, in everyday English, the proud, often from a wealthy background, seek power and domination over others, through politics or religion and, in terms of psychopathology, suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissists are always paranoid and Fascist, regardless of whether they are ‘Democrats’, ‘Christians’, ‘Nazis’ or ‘Communists’.

Introduction

Now, narcissism is precisely the most common Western spiritual disease today. Narcissism is an offshoot of the insecurity of infantility, but it is very common in materialistic or relatively wealthy Western societies. It is a result of a lack of physical suffering which causes immaturity, which is encouraged by the spoilt culture of social media, Instagram, Facebook, Tik-Tok etc. Narcissism is characterised by their insistence on a sort of ‘Papal’ infallibility, ‘I am always right’ and ‘I am superior’, as seen precisely in spoilt children. They insist that they are always right, as they are the centre of the world, which owes them its entire devotion, and they lie to and deal out harsh punishments to those who disagree with them. This sense of entitlement and vanity demands that the narcissist must constantly have his ego massaged. He is ‘right’ in a very authoritarian way (Trump and Blair are the most obvious examples).

The Roman Catholic Deviation of Authority

Historically, Papism has been a local disease of religious authority or rather of religious authoritarianism, which proclaims: ‘All truth comes from me, for I am the Head of the Church’. Papism, historically originating in the pagan Roman Emperors who had themselves worshipped as gods and mediators, is dogmatically closely connected with and justified by the later filioque dogma, which reinforces Papism precisely by dogmatising it. The filioque claims that the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father, does not pass through or irradiate the Son of God, but actually originates in the Son of God. Now, once the Pope of Rome claimed to replace the Son of God as ‘the Vicar of Christ’, this means that the Pope of Rome, purporting to be the source of the Holy Spirit, and so supplanted Christ, has absolute authority, infallibility. This is clearly a spiritual deviation or heresy and has absolutely no foundation in the Gospels.

However, there are Orthodox Patriarchs who also seem to claim absolute authority (they know their names, we do not need to repeat them here). They claim that they can supplant Church Councils, which are the real practical organs of authority in the Church, providing that those Councils are inspired by the Holy Spirit. We must recall that by no means all Councils are inspired, as we saw at the Robber Council in Crete in 2016. For the source of authority is the Holy Spirit, Who operates through the Church, the Body of Christ, Whose Head is Christ. The Holy Spirit wrote the Holy Scriptures and inspires Tradition, which are identical, as their origin is identical. With their filioque spirit, for instance, some Orthodox claim that if their particular Patriarch is not mentioned by name in any particular church, it is not Orthodox, but schismatic or heretical. This may not be systematic, institutionalised, dogmatised filioquism, but it is no less filioquism.

We can see this today in the Ukraine, the Baltic States and Moldova, where because of local State Russophobia and centralised Moscow’s refusal to grant autocephaly to the Local Church in those countries, the Russian Patriarch may not be mentioned by name during services. Therefore, racist fanatics in Russia reckon that those Churches are not Orthodox, but schismatic! These unloving people would deprive tens of millions of Orthodox of salvation. These are the ‘Orthodox’ Papists, who replace the Holy Spirit with a mere Patriarch. They seem to forget that in the majority of Orthodox Churches, the Russian Patriarch (or any other Patriarch) is not mentioned by name in services. Such is the racist ignorance of these nominal Orthodox, that they do not even know that there are other Local Churches, whose Patriarch is not mentioned at services or who do not even have a Patriarch to mention, but a Metropolitan or an Archbishop.

The Protestant Deviation of Salvation by Baptism

Rather like the submission to Islam, the simple confession of Protestantism is said by many to mean at once that ‘You are saved’. This over-simplicity, the idea that a few words mean salvation, is a reaction to the Papist deviation which declares that a few words of submission to Papism also mean salvation. In reality, it is not so simple, we are saved by the mercy of God, not by Papist or Protestant sets of words and formulas. However, in Protestantism, this idea of salvation leads to the Protestant obsession with baptism. Although in reality baptism is only the beginning of salvation, for the Protestant deviation baptism is salvation. This is why fundamentalists, including so-called ‘converts’ to Orthodoxy from Protestant backgrounds, are obsessed with literalism and forms of baptism. They imagine that this makes them ‘Super-Orthodox’, more Orthodox than the Orthodox! It is all a very Protestant, ‘OneTrueChurch’ reflex.

This is a very unloving and censorious viewpoint, typical of very conservative Calvinism and Lutheranism, and like all views which have no love, they soon become heretical. The heresy here is that such ‘Super Orthodox’ deny the Orthodox sacraments of those received into the Church by economy by chrismation or by simple confession, sacraments which those received may have been taking for years. Ironically, it is these ‘Super Orthodox’ who are the real Papists! Thus, such are ‘filioquists’, for they supplant the Holy Spirit with themselves. These quenchers of the Holy Spirit will deny even the validity of emergency baptism of babies in hospital. Another example: if you are dying in a desert and your companion is not baptised, you can baptise him with the liquid in your mouth. Baptism is the only sacrament that laypeople can perform, is accessible to all and with water, the most common liquid on earth.

Another example: There is a well-known story about a 19th century Russian priest who discovered to his horror that because of a snowstorm and a resulting misunderstanding when he had been about to be baptised as a baby, he had not been baptised. The case was referred to Metr (now St) Philaret of Moscow (1782-1867). He declared that all the sacraments performed by that priest were valid, for the grace of the Holy Spirit is in all the sacraments, not just in one. The priest’s status was validated by the sacraments of confession, communion, marriage and ordination which he had received. It is for this reason of a literalist and formal rite that Protestants are forever counting the number of baptised and how many people go to church each Sunday. However, we Orthodox are the baptised who go to Church because we need spiritual support. Orthodoxy is in our values and so in our way of life, not in a Sunday formality or ritual.

Conclusion

We draw the obvious conclusion that you do not have to be a Papist or a Protestant to make errors or to wish to dominate. It is just that in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, these errors of self-centred authoritarianism and the narcissistic dogmatisation of error, the lack of love, are systematised and institutionalised, because they are dogmatised. However, by no means all Roman Catholics or Protestants consciously confess these errors; most have never heard of the filioque and do not agree with the institution that they supposedly belong to. Systematised errors are called wrong choices or ‘heresies’. However, this does not excuse Orthodox, often ‘converts’, who do the same thing and indeed do worse. They should know better. Sadly, we know many an Orthodox bishop and some priests who fall into these errors of authoritarian exclusivity, which are sectarianism and cultishness – heresy.

 

 

A Suggestion for the Future: The Church of the Western Lands

Foreword: Towards the Local Church

Following a recent post, some readers have asked me how I envision the shape of a future Local Church in Western Europe in concrete terms. You may read on for this, but only as long as you understand that my view may well be completely irrelevant. God creates the Church, human-beings do not. My first suggestion for a future new Local Church was made in 1988. It was thrown into the bin of an Archbishop, who suicidally had no vision and who literally considered that the Church should only ever use Slavonic or Greek in its services. He lost all the vital forces from his Archdiocese, including the present Metr Athenagoras in Belgium and his parishes there, as well as many others. Only the freemasons stayed with him from among the younger generation.

And yet this present proposition is based on the same one made 37 years ago. However, as the old Russian emigration has since 1988 died out and there has been mass emigration from Eastern Europe, it is also different. We have always navigated between the political extremes in the Orthodox Church. Since one extreme was, and is, Greek (racist, imperialist and still CIA-controlled) and another extreme is Russian (racist, imperialist and now nationalist-controlled), it is only natural that we in Western Europe should now be with the Romanian Church. In the last eighteen years this has become easily the majority Orthodox group in Western Europe, speaking a Latin language, in communion with all, and, in the mainstream, distant from both Greek and Russian extremes.

The foundation of a new Local Church presupposes that all Local Churches which have a Diaspora on the territory concerned are able to and wish to collaborate to grant autocephaly together. Therefore, our suggestion must presume that the Churches of Moscow and Constantinople have reconciled by the time that any proposition can be discussed. It also presumes that the splinters of the Russian emigration in Western Europe (one based in Paris, the other in New York, and neither now Russian in spirit at all) will have been absorbed into the Mother Church, once they have collapsed.

As one well-known and very experienced Russian Metropolitan from Moscow confirmed to me about a month ago: ‘It is inevitable that both parts of the Russian Emigration will fall into our hands, like ripe fruit hanging from a tree’. Of course he is right, it is inevitable and always has been, ever since 2007. Therefore, unlike one German ROCOR bishop who is extremely hostile to the Mother Church in Moscow and continually expresses highly critical and sectarian attitudes towards it, we believe it would be much better to be positive and contribute the real pre-Revolutionary heritage of ROCOR towards the new Local Church, instead of rejecting all others who have different customs.

The Suggestion

This new Autocephalous Local Church would cover the territories of the 412 million people and 21 countries of Western Europe, listed below and grouped into eight regions of on average some 50 million each. (We do not include here Eastern European Hungary and the three Baltic States with Finland, which will surely have their own two Local Churches, like Poland and Czechoslovakia, long before any of the eight regions of Western Europe below).

This Local Church would be composed of the at present 2,000 or so Orthodox parishes and monasteries and the seven million or so nominal Orthodox in Western Europe. There would initially be a Synod of 40 bishops (which is about the number of Orthodox bishops present in Western Europe today), led by the ‘Archbishop of Paris and All the Western Lands’. He would be in Paris, as this has long been the centre of most of the Orthodox jurisdictions in Western Europe.

Each regional Archbishop would be chosen from the Orthodox national majority of that particular region. The terminology used here is the Greek, in which an Archbishop is higher than a Metropolitan, who is in fact a Diocesan bishop (and called a Bishop in the Russian and Serbian practice), and a Bishop is in fact an assistant or vicar to the Archbishop or Metropolitan of his nationality, if there is one on that territory, or else he is simply a Diocesan Bishop.

A Diocese would usually be defined as about 50 parishes representing 25,000 practising Orthodox, indicating about 1 million practising Orthodox. These Dioceses would not initially be geographical, but ethnic, though with time, they could gradually become geographical. The total population is given for each region.

France and Monaco (66 million)

Archbishop of Paris and All the Western Lands (Romanian)

Bishop of Southern France, French Switzerland and Monaco (Romanian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Russia in Western Europe

Bishop of Western France and Brittany (Russian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in France

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in France

Metropolitan of the Church of Antioch in Western Europe

Metropolitan of the Church of Bulgaria in Western Europe

Metropolitan of the Church of Georgia in Western Europe

Germany (84 million)

Archbishop of Berlin and All Germany (Russian)

Bishop of Western Germany (Russian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Romania in Germany

Bishop of Northern Germany (Romanian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Germany

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in Germany

The British Isles and Ireland (74 million)

Archbishop of London and All the Isles (Romanian)

Bishop of Ireland (Romanian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in the British Isles and Ireland

Bishop of Scotland and Northern England (Greek)

Bishop of the Church of Russia in the British Isles and Ireland

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in the British Isles and Ireland

Italy, San Marino and Malta (60 million)

Archbishop of Rome and All Italy, Malta and San Marino (Romanian)

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Italy

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Italy

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in Italy

Iberia: Spain, Portugal, Andorra (58 million)

Archbishop of Iberia (Romanian)

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Spain and Andorra

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Portugal

Bishop of the Church of Russia in Iberia

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Iberia

Benelux (30 million)

Archbishop of the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg (Greek)

Bishop of the Church of Romania in the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg

Bishop of the Church of Russia in the Netherlands, Flanders and Luxembourg

Scandinavia: Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland (22 million)

Archbishop of Stockholm and All Scandinavia (Serbian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Scandinavia

Bishop of the Church of Romania in Scandinavia

Bishop of the Church of Russia in Scandinavia

Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria (18 million)

Archbishop of Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria (Russian)

Metropolitan of the Church of Constantinople in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria

Bishop of the Church of Serbia in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria

Afterword: Battling Against Exclusivism

There are those in the Church who unite and there are those who divide. The dividers are always exclusivists, but there are two different ways of being exclusive – racially and doctrinally. For example, the nationalist dividers will say such things as ‘Only Greeks are really Orthodox’ or ‘Only Russians have kept Orthodoxy’. In other words, they exclude all others on racist grounds and that swells their pride, as they of course belong to the ‘right’ nationality.

However, there are also those who divide by laying claim to alone possessing ‘the True Faith’, who exclude others by laying claim to an exclusive faith. Such love to be exotic and esoteric, using words like ‘temple’, ‘omoforion’ and ‘noetic’ for their pseudo-mystical cult, to be ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. They spend their time digging trenches between themselves and other Orthodox, thus creating artificial divisions, for ever inventing new ‘teachings’ which are exclusive to them. This swells their pride, as they paint themselves even further into their ghetto corner. This has long been the temptation of some in ROCOR, especially the rebaptisers, whose hearts clearly lack love.

The uniters are those who do not pay attention to languages, for they are all only weak echoes of Divine language, or customs. We are Orthodox Christians, beyond nationalities. However, we are not abstract dreamers who promote some heady philosophy of intellectual theories and dreamy unfinished, because disincarnate, iconography. We are also down to earth, incarnate, and belong in our bodies to the places where we live and wish to have some influence to shape human reality there.

As long as credit is given to the exclusivists and they are put into power, there is little hope for a Local Church. However, today we are slowly moving towards a situation where the exclusivists are increasingly discrediting themselves. For instance, the same German bishop as mentioned above told the local Moscow Patriarchal bishop after the Russian reconciliation in 2007, who was rejoicing at unity, that, ‘No, we are not together, we are still enemies.’ Thus, we see that some of the greatest impediments to unity come from crazy converts, not only from Eastern European nationalists. And the crazy converts have merely used the canonical authority of the Russian Mother-Church in order to mask who they really are – sectarians and schismatics.

May God’s will be done.

 

The Last American Emperor?

The Russia government naively believed in the Western guarantees of the Minsk I and II Accords, which Kiev and the West never observed, and so let Kiev’s genocide of the Ukrainian Donbass continue for years. Now, on the eve of a new round of peace talks, Iran was stabbed in the back in exactly the same way, by ‘God-chosen’ Israel and the missiles of the USA. The fact that the duplicitous USA and the West lie, cheat and deceive, means that nobody will believe them again. How will any sort of trust be restored?

As for President Trump, he appears to believe in the same Hollywood scenarios that only teenagers believe in, with his insane threats against Iran, which have nothing to do with reality and suggest that he may have dementia. Hubris underestimates. And chronically so. Indeed, the Trump Presidency of the USA may be over, as he has so far shown himself to be rather the Vice-President of the genocidal US vassal Israel, from which he takes his orders. Through his lack of any basic historical, geographical and political knowledge, his bluff and bluster, his gangster-like death threats, and his extreme narcissism, he has betrayed his own pro-American MAGA base.

In this way the USA is dying at the hands of its Zionist vassal. Just as the US elite wanted to destroy Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’, as they repeated many times, so now it wants to destroy Iran ‘to the last Israeli’, egged on by the primitive theological thuggery of its Zionist Evangelicals, and in the future to destroy China ‘to the last Taiwanese’. But he promised his MAGA base that he would stop beginning new wars. It is all narcissistic hubris and fantasy. And so, as a result of chronically underestimating Iran’s might (just as they did with Russia’s might), American warships are now scurrying away from Iran and US bases in the area are being evacuated.

Just as the US made up the excuse that it could invade Iraq, as Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’, so now it makes out that Iran is ‘close to making nuclear weapons’, an imaginary mantra that it has been repeating for some thirty years and still no nuclear weapons! The US is frightened, and pessimists predict a US nuclear attack on Iran and a Third World War with nuclear weapons. There is no need for that, an exit is still possible. After foolishly sending a few missiles into the Iranian mountains, Trump only has to launch talks with Iran, perhaps with Russian and Chinese help, and then back off. Then he can announce that Iran has renounced nuclear weapons (which it has never had – but no need to add that bit), and so it all turns out to be a great Trumpian diplomatic victory over Iran.

It could still be the end of the American Emperor, who has no clothes, and so the end of the American Empire. And it is also the end of its lapdog colonies, of the humiliated Macron and Merz, kneeling like the pro-Israeli Starmer at the Empire’s feet (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/politics/government/pic-of-the-day-keir-starmer-falls-at-donald-trump-s-feet-in-embarrassing-g7-moment/ar-AA1GSZvF?ocid=BingNewsSerp). It could also be the end of Western hegemony in general. Then the peoples of the Western world will have to liberate and decolonise themselves from their barbaric and parasitic elite and their millennial ideology which proclaims that they represent God on earth.

What would this mean? In Europe, the bankrupt EU fantasy would collapse. As for the even more bankrupt US (its debt has just exceeded $37 trillion), there is a danger now that it will disintegrate, with West coast liberal California already in revolt and the Mexican South thinking of returning to Mexico. As for the Centre, or Mid-West, it wants to be American and the East coast wants to remain Anglo. If the Roman Empire is collapsing, then a New World Order will spontaneously be born out of the chaos and decadence. And the chief midwife of all this would be Russia, assisted by China.

The One True Church and the Two False Churches: The Pastors Persecuted by the Politicians

Introduction

Even though they do not wish to join the Orthodox Church, let alone actually become Orthodox, certain Non-Orthodox admirers of Orthodoxy sometimes pronounce: ‘Yes, the Orthodox Church is the Church of the Holy Spirit’. They speak with naïvety and sentimentality, which is the result of their spiritual tourism. In reality, ‘The Orthodox Church is the Church of the War for the Holy Spirit, and it is a very bitter war. We Orthodox have two great enemies, those who prefer Mammon to the Holy Spirit and those who prefer Phariseeism to the Holy Spirit. Christ suffered from both and warned about both.  And both of them crucified and continue to crucify Christ and His Church.

The Church of the War for the Holy Spirit

The Head of the Orthodox Church is neither a Pope, nor a Patriarch, nor any other worldly leader, but the Risen Christ. The Church is His Body, irradiated and governed by the Holy Spirit, as the Church is the Bearer of the Holy Spirit. Our Church is not a dead body, a corpse, but it makes Saints, who are the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Any organisation that does not make Saints is not the Church, it is a mere human business, a sect or a corporation, not the Divino-human Church. For the Saints are the sign of the Holy Spirit. Where there are Saints, there is the Holy Spirit. Where there is the Holy Spirit, there are Saints. And where the Holy Spirit is not, there are no Saints.

The Church of Mammon

Ask any Orthodox from any Orthodox country why they rarely go to church and they will usually tell you that it is because of priests who demand money from them. For alongside the real Church there exists a parasitic organisation known as the ‘Church of Mammon’. This is full of those, mainly clerics, who carve out of the business careers for themselves and high salaries, exploiting the people, charging them money for all. Some are sexual perverts and the unprincipled, they swim with the tide, according to the wishes and whims of those who pay them. For them, the Head of the Church is not Christ, but States, and the Church is not governed by the Holy Spirit, but by Mammon.

The Church of the Pharisees

Ask any Orthodox from any Orthodox country why they rarely go to church and they will tell you that it is in part because of narrow-minded bigots and fanatics. For alongside the real Church there exists a second parasitic organisation known as the ‘Church of the Pharisees’. The Pharisees are clerics and laypeople who self-righteously proclaim that they are the heads of the Church, national leaders, and hypocritically devise all manner of human rules to oppress and condemn others and to cling on to power. They are deeply involved in State politics, nationalism and even militarisation. The word ‘schismatics’ for them denotes those who are of another nationality and do not worship their ethnarchs.

Conclusion

Who will win in this War for the Holy Spirit against both the Church of Mammon and the Church of the Pharisees? On the face of it, we know that these two powerful groups of enemies of the Church of the Holy Spirit work closely together. The businessmen and the pharisees love each other, as they have the same interests and so feed off one another. It would seem that it is two against one. However, paradoxically, their persecution of the Church makes us stronger. Their Persecuting Church never wins over our Persecuted Church, for we know that the last word in history belongs to Christ, Persecuted and Crucified, but also Risen from the dead. Not Death will vanquish, but Life.

The Defeat of Europe and the Victory of Europeans

‘Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war’.

Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

A Millennium of Attempts to Expand Europe

The fanatical European ruling class still call the barbarian kinglet Charlemagne (748-814) ‘The Father of Europe’. In fact, he was the Destroyer of Europeans, murdering nearly 5,000 Saxons in 782 and trying to cut off North-Western Europe from the Church. This he did with his barbarian heresy against the Holy Spirit, which replaced God with a mere man, and with his proto-Protestant denial that the Holy Spirit can sanctify matter, a heresy known as iconoclasm. Fortunately, his little empire fell after he died and his twin heretical ideology of filioquism and iconoclasm was rejected by Rome.

Unfortunately, his whole ‘European’ construct, or ideology, was later revived. For from the first half of the eleventh century on, the same barbarian Teutons took over the Western Capital in Rome. At once they accelerated their conquest and so their invention of what they came to call Europe, expanding southwards to the Italians, Spanish and Portuguese, northwards to the English, Celts and Scandinavians, and eastwards to the Hungarians, Slavs and Balts. Expansion westwards could only come much later, after the decision to cross the Ocean in order to invade and settle what they eventually called ‘the Americas’.

Thus, by the end of that fatal eleventh century, the expansion of ‘Europe’ had been extended to West Asia and the Holy Land with massacres and genocide. Then it went to North Africa and from the fifteenth century on to the rest of Africa, as well as to East and South Asia, to what is now South and North America, and on to Australasia. Amazingly, one thousand years on, this expansion is still ongoing, in the efforts of today’s Europe to dominate and colonise the ‘borderlands’ of Europe, in the Caucasus, Moldova, Belarus, the Baltics, and above all in the Ukraine.

In the Borderlands

For the word ‘Ukraine’, used in this context first by the Hapsburgs at the end of the nineteenth century, quite literally means ‘borderlands’. It is the same logic of encircling Russia by conquering and controlling its borderlands which they use as battering rams against it. This is why they want to make both the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea into ‘NATO lakes’. These expansionary efforts are pursued through corrupt local elites, with their oligarchs and corrupted puppet politicians. Now they are also trying to surround Russia from the Republics of Central Asia, Iran and Syria, where they have started fatal wars.

Just as the West uses the Ukraine as a battering ram to regime-change Russia, so the USA uses Israel as a battering ram to regime-change Iran and the Taiwan as a battering ram to regime-change China. All these countries, the Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, have to be denazified, for their militant and racist ideology of Nazism promotes their militarisation through aggressive military groupings such as NATO. Just as the Ukraine (NATO) is being demilitarised by Russia which is destroying its arms in the Ukraine, so Iran is demilitarising Israel and China will demilitarise Taiwan. Denazification will follow only after Demilitarisation.

There are even those in that elite who want to expand their ‘Europe’ to Canada! (No surprise, for the European ruling class have already extended their demonic singing competition, ‘Eurovision’, to ‘European’ Israel and Australia! Now the free world has launched ‘Intervision’ to replace Eurovision). ‘Europe’ is nothing to do with the north-western peninsula of Asia, it is not a geographical project, but a purely political project, all about power and money, which always begins by discrediting and demonising others. If you want to understand it, then, as they say in the land of the dollar, ‘Follow the money’.

But Freedom is in the Air

However, freedom is coming. The new Superpower of East Asia and Australasia is China. The Western world has at best only second place there now. In South Asia it is India. In Africa the last colonial power, France, has been kicked out by Russia and China. Will North America free itself? Could the southern part of the United States return to Mexico and Central America? For, beyond that, South America’s greatest trading partner is already China. Now, having lost its proxy war against Russia in the Ukraine, the bipolar Emperor Trump has launched yet another proxy war, this time against Iran, through its agent, Israel.

Once more the Western world has camouflaged its evil aggression behind ‘talks’. In the Ukraine it was by ‘Minsk Agreements’, in the case of Iran, it was by equally insincere American ‘talks’. The Western regime-change operations against both Russia and Iran have failed, both based on vastly underestimating and deliberately despising Russia and Iran. The West came to believe in its own delusional propaganda myths. No-one else did. The Western world has lost. One word, BRICS, has defeated it, even though the attack against Iran was an attack against BRICS, of which Russia, China and Iran are the most important members.

The rout of the Western world is illustrated by its demented leader, Biden, and its narcissistic leader, Trump, and by the political and military pygmy leaders who hold a cocaine party on a train to Kiev, use Ukrainian male prostitutes in London and celebrate their Nazi grandfathers in Brussels. None of these European ‘leaders’ with their pro-war rhetoric has any popularity among their peoples. Having created genocide and slavery for ten long centuries in Europe and then on other continents, culminating in two ‘World Wars’, now the crazy Western elite wants a Third World War. The Western monster must die.

Afterword: Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind

Just now the USA stands on the brink of yet another war. This time it is against Israel’s infamous Pearl Harbour style unprovoked attack against Iran. Iran has no nuclear weapons, is 2-3 years away from having any, and was sitting at the negotiation table where it was already close to agreeing to never having any nuclear weapons. And then the USA, under Israeli pressure, broke off those talks and began to unfold its plan of two decades ago to destroy Iran, as it did Iraq. Libya, Syria etc. Trump’s mental instability has hit a new low, as he supports the genocide of Iranian civilians carried out by Israel with US arms.

As usual, the USA, and its Israeli vassal (though some say that the USA is the vassal of Israel) has totally underestimated the strength of Iran. It is now much more likely that it is Israel that will be regime-changed by Iran, and not Iran by Israel. For Israel is now receiving the same treatment as it has dealt out in Gaza. President Trump has utterly betrayed those who believed his lies that he would put the USA first and stop entering new wars. The only hope now is that either the ultra-erratic Trump can be persuaded to do the opposite of what he seems to want to do, or else that he be certified, removed and replaced.

 

Article 1500: Visit of Vladica Atanasie, Tonsures and Ordinations

 

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On 10, 13 and 14 June, many of us gathered to prepare our Church and Hall for Vladica’s visit. We tidied, cleaned, hoovered, mopped, polished and painted, setting everything up for the big day. On Saturday 14 Vladica Atanasie (Rusnak) and Archdeacon Paul arrived back from consecrating the church in Padua in Italy and reached the hotel we had booked for them just outside Colchester at 11.30 pm.

Vladica arrived at church at 8.45 on Sunday morning, All Saints Day. The Liturgy began at 9.30, after six men, Georgian Cosma, Nicolae Briscan, Florin Murgu, Vadim Khoruzhenko, Ilie Nuno and Antonio Brailescu, had been tonsured readers at the Third Hour and Reader Sergiu Novitchi has been ordained subdeacon at the Sixth Hour.

During the Liturgy Deacon Sergiu Smantana was ordained priest and Subdeacon Sergiu Novitchi was ordained deacon. (Unlike in the Russian Church, ordinations in the Romanian Church in Western Europe are carried out free of charge and are therefore no candidate is forced to wait years for ordination for money reasons. However, all candidates must be qualified and have studied theology and pastoral care or be in the process of so doing).

The Liturgy was concelebrated by Vladica, Archdeacon Paul, seven priests, Fathers Andrew Phillips, Ioan Iana, Leonid Tauleanu, Grigorie Mereacre, Mihai Constantinescu, Alexandru Visan, Nikolai Bulat and our two deacons. Vladica Atanasie (Rusnak) is himself Moldovan, as were four of the priests and one of the deacons who concelebrated. As usual, both choirs, the Russian-English choir and the Romanian-Moldovan choir, with Moldovans, of whom there were many in church, singing in all languages.

With about 250 people in church, communion was as usual from three chalices, with about 70 children and many of our faithful friends coming to us from the Greek monastery in Tolleshunt Knights. The Liturgy finished at 12.45 and Vladica gave Fr Andrew various awards, including a second epigonation in honour of St Athanasius, the right to wear his mitre, awarded by a now departed bishop (Eternal Memory!) in 2020 for 35 years’ service, and a third jewelled cross. (Vladica Metropolitan Joseph had already given Fr Andrew the right to celebrate the Liturgy with the holy doors open until ‘Our Father’). The Liturgy was filmed by a representative from the Romanian Patriarchal Trinitas TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT6kyDa_nho

After the Liturgy, we all ate in the Hall, which had been decorated by our Moldovan and Romanian parishioners and beneath our two marquees in the garden. Vladica spoke to Russian speakers in Russian and others in their own languages, Romanian, English and Italian. Vladica will be returning to his Colchester parish in a few months’ time and will then ordain the next batch of candidates. It was made clear that Vladica would like to gather others of Non-Romanian nationalities into our Archdiocese. He mentioned to us that he has ordained 16 men to the priesthood and the deaconate since 10 May 2025. In Italy, where he served before, he set up 31 parishes on the old calendar. Vladica is about to start a doctorate on the subject of ‘Autocephaly’, a theme that has been dear to our hearts for some 50 years.

Vladica will be returning to us next on our Christmas, 7 January 2026. Everyone is very happy!