Author Archives: Father Andrew

Mathilde

He who loves the Tsar and Russia, loves God. If you do not love the Tsar and Russia, you will never sincerely love God.

Elder Nikolai Guryanov (+ 2002)

We all knew that between the hundredth anniversary of the overthrow by Western-backed traitors of the legitimate government of the Russian Empire (February 2017) and the hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of the Imperial Family (July 2018), significant events would occur in Russia. The Satanic power would not rest idle, but would continue to attempt to destroy the present timid restoration of the Church, of Russian Orthodox consciousness and so of the multinational Orthodox Empire. Western-minded atheist liberals – 7% of the population of the Russian Federation – but who control most of the media and many ministries and departments of State – have therefore made an anti-Orthodox film, a piece of sick, atheist porno-propaganda which they promote as ‘art’.

The film concerns the 1892 romance between the then youthful but future Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II and a Polish ballet-dancer called Mathilde Kshessinska. Naturally, the Satanic director has, with the help of a German porn-actor as the unmarried future Tsar, fictionalized and sexualized a romance, so creating blasphemy. With the launch of the film naturally scheduled for late October, the hundredth anniversary of the bloody Bolshevik overthrow of the upper-class revolutionaries of February 1917, intentions are clear. Everything that was good about pre-Revolutionary Russia and about today’s Russia must be discredited. Clearly, Western backing is behind thus, just as it was behind the 2012 pornographic ‘Pussy Riot’ blasphemy (the English name of sex and violence shows clearly who was behind that), or for that matter the 1917 ‘Revolution’ itself.

Western liberalism, with its systematic intolerance of all spiritual values, has unchained Satan, giving him the freedom to destroy all spiritual and moral content that remains in the world. This is the mystical meaning of all world events over the last 100 years. This process began in February 1917, when the pro-Zionist British government of the time overthrew the Christian Empire in Russia and opened the way to the Satanic twentieth century with its Great War (which Russia would have ended in 1917, had the Tsar not been betrayed and overthrown) become a World War. There followed artificial famines, massacres and a Second World War with concentration camps, Atomic Bombs and ever since worldwide misery. Since the British began to lose everything after 1917 and gradually transferred power to the American Empire, it has been the latter that strives to dismantle today’s Russian Federation, planting its puppet terrorist-states on its borders.

For the Federation is the heir to the Russian Empire, and it is the apostate rival American Empire that stands behind the pornography of Pussy Riot and Mathilde. In the meantime the Russian Orthodox patriot, heroine of the Crimea and State Deputy, Natasha Poklonskaya, has been trying to have the film banned. A major Russian cinema chain has done so, frightened of violence from the outraged. However, violence has already taken place, though it remains unclear whether this was not in fact violence organized by the Western-backed film-makers and sponsors in order to try and discredit the legitimate, responsible and non-violent Orthodox opposition. The real significance of the film is to show us how far contemporary Russia still has to go in order to free itself from Western liberal delusions.

The mere fact that the film has been made and may be shown proves the power of the Sodomite Western lobby inside the Russian Federation. All this comes at a time when certain elements have infiltrated the fringes of the Russian Orthodox Church and are trying to influence Her. These elements, Western-educated and Western-influenced, usually academics and often young homosexuals, think that they can betray the Church to Western influences, both Vatican and secularist, firstly by watering down the Faith with intellectual platitudes, secondly by old-fashioned ecumenist overtures to the West. These shallow-faithed and marginal victims of Westernization will not survive. There are far too many faithful clergy and people who oppose them inside Russia, as well as in the Church Outside Russia in the Western world.

These upstarts who think they know better, know nothing compared to the village greybeards. Above all, however, they cannot even begin to take on all our saints, among them the New Martyrs and Confessors, more of whom are yet to be canonized. The Western liberals can preach their ideology of death as much as they like: but the Royal Martyrs are far, far stronger than their pathetic moanings. God, not man, is in charge of history. The Cross is triumphant. Let any hothead, who thinks that he is higher than the Church of God and is tempted into schism in opposition to the liberal clique and their pensioner backers, whom he mistakenly associates with the Church of God, think again. As the impious Emperor Julian the Apostate said: Thou hast conquered, O Galilean!

Love, Infatuation, Marriage, Sexual Relations, Contraception and Divorce

These are all topics that are essential, and yet few seem to write about them. These brief notes are presented in the above order because if they were presented in any other order, it would mean that there are problems. This is the logical order.

Love

What is love? What is falling in love? And what is falling out of love?

The human heart can be compared to a radio station. Each radio station works on a certain frequency and is picked up only by a radio that works on the same frequency. With human-beings there are millions of frequencies. Falling in love simply means being on the same frequency. What then is falling out of love? It happens when one or the other of the couple changes frequencies. And that happens when we are first immature and then become mature. Hence the importance of marrying when we are mature. And maturity is often, but not always, a question of age. Some people are mature at 16, others still not mature at 50. Yes, there is such a thing as ‘love at first sight’. But be careful because there is also such a thing as ‘infatuation at first sight’.

Infatuation

Infatuation, ‘having a crush on someone’ in American, is to confuse love with mere feelings, emotions, sentimentalism, what is called ‘puppy love’. Thus, the teenage boy says after five minutes of meeting her: ‘I love her’. But a week later he feels the same about another girl. How do you know the difference? Love lasts and is prepared to make real and long-term sacrifices. At the end of romantic films, they put the words ‘The End’. They should not. They should put the words: ‘The Beginning’.

How do you know the difference between love and infatuation? Two things: Firstly, love is happy to sacrifice. Secondly, love loves even the faults of the other. If you cannot stand the faults of the other, do not marry them. And if you do not know that the other has faults, it is time to get real. As another old proverb says: ‘Love is blind, but marriage is sighted’. Solution: Get sight before you get married.

Marriage

There is another English proverb which says that ‘Marriage is made in heaven’. True, but ‘Marriage is built on earth’. It is amazing how many couples do not discuss essentials before they get married. In any marriage, someone must provide money, buy furniture, do the shopping, cook, clean, spend spare time etc. This must be discussed before you get married. Moreover, in most marriages, there will sooner or later be children. Who is going to pay for them, look after them, feed them, bring them up, take them to school? This must be discussed before ever you get married. This way you will soon find out if you love each other or are merely infatuated with each other.

Marriage is made of compromises. In English this is called ‘give and take’. The French have an even better expression: ‘give and give’. That is how marriage works. Selfish people MUST not get married. They are unfit for marriage and even more unfit to have children. Some people ask who is the boss in a married couple? The answer is in yet another old proverb: ‘The husband is the head, but the wife is the neck’. And that is how it works. Anything else does not work! I can assure you.

Sexual Relations

If you love each other, you will desire each other physically. Now, the sex drive of most men is much higher than in most women (though there are exceptions). Here there is danger. It is one of the oldest stories in the world for a man to lie and say ‘I love you’, when all he wants is sex. Having got her pregnant, he then disappears. Of course, there are also young women who get pregnant, thinking that they have trapped a man. They also end up as single mothers. To be a single mother is no joke. It generally means to be poor. Be warned.

The old way was to catch your man first and then get pregnant. It makes sense because a child (and that is sooner or later the result of sex) needs two parents, male and female, as everybody used to know before common sense was abandoned. Not just for male and female role models, but because money is needed for children and someone must be a provider and someone must be a carer. Whatever the situation, there will be a period, however short, when a mother cannot work and get income because the baby needs intense care.

Some young couples ask: How often can we have sexual relations? The answer is always different. Some new young couples initially have and want relations several times a day. That soon changes into several times a week, then it becomes several times a month and, with age, that can change into several times a year. This is a matter for the couple. But the wife should know that her husband generally needs relations more often than her and it is her duty to provide them. A wife who refuses her husband constantly can lose him. There are always other women out there. But the husband must also know that sometimes his wife cannot have or else does not want relations. He must be reasonable. Biological need should never decide the frequency of relations. It is love that should decide that.

Contraception

The ideal of the Church is that we do not use contraception. The ideal of the Church is that we abstain from marital relations on fast days (Wednesdays, Fridays, during the four fasts and on the eve of communion, for example, on a Saturday evening, if we are taking communion on a Sunday morning). However, in reality, apart from the abstention from relations before communion which is absolute, it does not work like that.

The fact is that 99.9% of Orthodox couples do use some form of non-abortive contraception (abortion is an absolute no) at some point in their marriage. And the Church turns a blind eye to this use of contraception because we know that this is a lesser evil. A lesser evil? Yes, because most couples cannot have and bring up 20 children in modern conditions. And some women will die if they have more than a certain number of children. And some men will abandon their wives and some women will abandon their children, if they have more children than can cope with. We have seen it. It is a reality. Contraception nowadays is a lesser evil. Not the ideal, but real. It is generally not so hard to have children, but to bring them up….

As regards marital abstention during the fasts, this is such a delicate matter that it can even become dangerous. Younger coupled should not try it. In any case, as the Apostle Paul says, it is always a voluntary matter and by mutual consent. We know one case of a woman who imposed it on her husband. The result was that she destroyed her marriage. If in doubt, the couple should speak to their priest.

Divorce

Church divorce, or rather annulment, exists. And it happens. There are men who turn to drink. There are men who are violent and beat their wives or else are abusive. There are men and women who are unfaithful to each other. Every case is different. The fact is that there are cases where it is better for a couple to divorce than to continue in a relationship than brings more bad than good. If only for the children’s sake.

President of European Commission Proclaims the Fourth Reich

In a historic speech on 13 September, the last day of the Church’s Old Year, the President of the European Commission, the Luxemburger Jean-Claude Juncker, declared in Brussels his vision of a future European Superstate, in effect, a Fourth Reich. As one German MEP, Beatrix von Storch, put it: ‘I think his whole speech was a historic one. He was going against all the good guys and he was declaring the United States of Europe. It was frightening what he came out with today’.

Von Storch added: ’The European Union which has been presented to us today is not the one we want to be members of. But I think it will be difficult to set it up that way because imagine the Eastern European States and I think they will be the next to follow the Brits out of the European Union’. ‘You could see him as a person today acting like a dying man with the last vision of something which is about to explode. I think it was to some extent tragic’. Asked how long the EU could survive in its current form, she said: ‘It has to be reformed immediately. They will change the European Union into the United States of Europe without treaty change. Without the change of the treaties. This is incredible what we have heard today’.

Juncker’s ‘vision’ of a European Superstate is considered by most to be a Federalist fantasy and in Britain most people are today greatly relieved to be leaving an EU which could well turn into the tyranny of such a Federalist Dictatorship. Now it remains for England, Scotland, Wales and perhaps Ireland, later perhaps together with countries like Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Lands, Poland and others, to free themselves. Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania have been ravaged by the EU, their young forced to emigrate, Lithuania has lost two-thirds of its population and Latvia is little better off. If England can free itself of Britain, that is, the alien British Establishment and its corrupt bureaucrats, it may yet show the path to freedom for others.

However, for this to happen, all must give up swimming with the tide for selfish advantage for the maintenance of the ruling class, and stand up for principles and the Truth. This means giving up the hypocrisy of double standards on which the British Establishment (just like the Brussels ‘elite’ and the Washington ‘Deep State’) has been built. As for us, we stand for Another England and Another Europe and Another America. We choose Freedom, not Tyranny.

Why the Western Elite Loves Lenin and Trotsky

Before the birth of Antichrist there is to be called an Eighth Universal Council of all the Churches under the One Head, Christ, and the one Protecting Veil of the Mother of God (according to St. Nilus the Myrrh-Giver: ‘A last and Eighth Universal Council to deal with the disputes of heretics and separate the wheat from the chaff’). Its aim will be to unite and reunite all the holy Churches of Christ against increasing anti-Christian ways, under the single Head, Christ the Life-Giver, and the single Protecting Veil of His Most Pure Mother, and to deliver the final anathema against the whole of masonry and all the groups like it (by whatever name they call themselves), the leaders of whom have one common aim: on the pretext of complete egalitarian earthly prosperity, and with the aid of people who have been made fanatical by them, to create anarchy in all states and destroy Christianity throughout the world, and, finally, by the power of gold concentrated in their hands, to subjugate the whole world to anti-Christianity in the person of a single, tyrannical Ruler, who fights against God – one Ruler over the whole world.

Prophecy of St Seraphim of Sarov

One of the mysteries of the Western elite is whereas it hates the Georgian Stalin and Stalinism (that such a murderous monster is hated is not surprising), it adores Lenin and Trotsky. After all, Lenin and Trotsky both lived for years in England, Switzerland and the US under government protection and patronage and the then governments of Germany and Canada respectively made sure that Lenin and Trotsky returned safely to Russia in 1917. Given that both of them in their very short reigns were far more murderous proportionately than Stalin, why this love for them?

First of all, we should understand something vital: neither Lenin nor Trotsky was Russian. The well-off father of Lenin (real name Ulyanov), was an Asian-Russian (as his facial features suggest) and his mother was German-Swedish and Jewish. An intellectual snob, the Bolshevik leader believed that other European countries, especially Germany, were culturally superior to Russia. From his youth he had wanted Russia to become more culturally Western. On the other hand, the family of Trotsky (real name Bronstein), came from a non-practising family of wealthy Jewish farmers in the Ukraine. He had no Russian blood at all and was a Russophobe just like Lenin, whereas the Georgian Stalin declared himself to be ‘Russian of Georgian origin’.

In other words, both Lenin and Stalin were Anti-Russian Zionists. Not Zionists in the Jewish sense, of course (Lenin probably never even knew that he was a quarter Jewish and Trotsky probably never even set foot in a synagogue), but in the modern sense of the word that they were globalists. Now we know why the Western elite loves these criminal monsters who killed millions in just a few short years: unlike Stalin, they were not nationalistic ‘Socialism in one country’ followers, but globalists, the modern code-word for Zionists. What difference between them and the Russophobic Western neocon elite, which like them also creates anarchy and bloodshed wherever it can?

The Betrayal of England

I can remember about fifteen years ago meeting a very posh lady who belonged to the Liberal Democrat Party, as she never tired of telling us, who had ‘come to the Orthodox Church through her practice of Buddhism and her villa on Patmos’. Explaining how important she was and how many important people she knew, she asked me, ‘And what do you do?’ Answering in my best Essex accent (which is not difficult), I replied, ‘I’m a Saxon peasant’. She swiftly turned from me in horror that someone so unEstablishment had been allowed to frequent Her Pompousness.

Meeting such individuals was not unusual then. However, the same lady, like others of her ilk, soon left the Orthodox Church and returned to her Buddhism, whatever that was. (I rather doubt that it resembled at all the real Buddhism of, say, today’s Myanmar. It was rather a patchwork of intellectual exoticism that made her feel virtuous, justifying her very condescending psychology). This hatred of the people, ‘plebs’, is characteristic of the Establishment, of which she was so obviously a part. This patronizing attitude, which underpins for example, the upper middle-class, chattering class ethos of the BBC or MI5, goes back a very long way.

Certainly, it was present among the alien governing class in Romano-British times, renewed by the British-loving Normans and their Francophile mythology. It was renewed in the eighteenth century, when the cruel and racist anthem ‘Rule Britannia’ was written to justify the enslavement of Africans and anyone who got in the way of the rich becoming richer, it was celebrated in the Victorian hypocrisy of the British penny coin with its image of Britannia, while contemporary politicians like Blair and Brown have tried to enforce the selfsame Establishment mythology of ‘Britishness’, even trying to teach it as a brainwashing ideology in State schools.

Essentially, this ‘Britishness’ is the betrayal of England – and also of Wales, Scotland and Ireland and all our peoples. This is because the Establishment, the parasitical elite, which promotes this ideology is alien to us, the peoples of these isles. The antidote to it is to be faithful to ourselves, to our Anglo-Celtic roots. The word ‘Britain’ and ‘British’ are abhorred by the Irish: it should not surprise us, given the history of genocidal massacres there under the ‘British’ Elizabeth I, Cromwell, then the Potato Famine and the 20th century. It is time to drop the words Britain, British and Britishness from our language. But it is even more time to drop the practices that lie behind such words.

The Vatican in Crisis is Desperate for Russian Orthodox Support

Protestantized and liberalized, ever more under its present head, Roman Catholicism is in crisis. The recent visit of the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, to Russia on 21-24 August ‘to build bridges and increase mutual understanding and dialogue’ illustrates the crisis. Alarmed at the virtual Fascism being preached by Ukrainian Uniats (just as in the 1940s) and, on the other hand, its virtual Protestantization in the Western world, the Vatican is seeking a way out of its self-imposed crisis.

With regard to the visit, the Vatican stated that: ‘It is now a question of walking together in the Gospel footsteps, multiplying opportunities for fraternal encounter, exchange of views and experiences, proclamation of the Gospel, and co-operation in service to human society’. Clearly, this is Diplomatspeak for: ‘We are in a mess, our churches are empty, in Europe we are finished, help us’. Since his appointment as Secretary of State in 2013, Cardinal Parolin has also visited Belarus, the Caucasus, the Baltics and the Ukraine.

The Battle Against Intellectualism

I can still remember the 1970s when I bought icons (without haloes) from Jordanville, portraying St Elizabeth the New Martyr and St John of Shanghai. They hang in the altar of the Church where I serve to this day. Equally I can remember the abuse hurled at the Church Outside Russia at the long-awaited canonization of the New Martyrs and Confessors in November 1981. Those who hurled the abuse went strangely quiet when what had had to be begun in New York, given the politically enforced paralysis of the Church in Moscow, was confirmed in Moscow in 2000. This merely confirmed the hypocrisy and political prejudice of those who had attacked us.

Thus, I can recall the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva who faced down the proud doubters in the holiness of the Royal Martyrs, including a Roman Catholic baptised in his own blood, among his own ROCOR flock in Brussels and Paris, telling them that they need not venerate the icons of the Royal Martyrs, confident that they would come round in time, as spiritual experience persuaded them that they had been wrong. The same patience was shown in London by Bishop Constantine, a man of holiness himself, towards doubting members of the ROCOR Cathedral there. And in the USA, even the well-known iconographer, Fr Kiprian (Pyzhov) had been opposed to the canonization of the Royal Martyrs, but through prayer, he too came round to the Orthodox view.

Indeed, I can remember one man, now, ironically, a hieromonk ordained by a ROCOR bishop, who on the day of the canonization of the New Martyrs in 1981, vehemently informed me that the Grand Duchess Anastasia had not been martyred because she was identical to a woman known as Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Grand Duchess. Despite witnesses like the ever-memorable Fr Nicholas Gibbes (The Grand Duchess’ tutor), who had immediately seen that she was a fraud, that man insisted on his opinion. Of course, he came to eat humble pie when DNA tests later proved what the faithful had known all along, that Anna Anderson had indeed been a fraud.

Far more disturbing than the fact that such people attacked us, motivated by secular politics, is the fact that they were attacking the saints. Here great caution is needed. When righteous men and women are venerated among the faithful, when their lives are examined closely and found to contain miracles of healing and prophecies, all of which came true, we should pay attention. Sometimes, their relics are not available because they have been destroyed by infidel liberals like Kerensky or else by Bolsheviks. Such righteous, despite slanders, eventually come to be venerated by many because of the spiritual experience that people have of them in their prayers. Then the hierarchy of the Church investigates and canonizes, always cautiously, always slowly, but the right decision is reached, even though, as in the case of the Royal Martyrs, certain bishops were originally strongly opposed.

The fact that intellectuals do not like the saints is because they do not like holiness, which is what the saints are made of. Why this reaction to the saints? Quite simply because holiness is outside their control, outside the sphere of their purely rationalistic, non-spiritual experience and so they despise it. Such intellectuals study what is called in Russian ‘teologija’ (scientific theology’), not ‘Bogoslovie’ (‘the Word of God’) and come from secular universities and secular-minded institutes, not from monasteries, which are Orthodox universities. It was ever thus. Such was the fate of the Gnostic heretic Origen, so beloved of the Paris-Crestwood School, of the intellectuals Arius, Nestorius and Barlaam, the latter of whom opposed his Western scholasticism to the spiritual experience of St Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica.

This is not to say at all that the use of the intellect (the reason) is bad in itself. Of course not, it is necessary. In the Church we have three great saints who bear the title ‘the Theologian’ – St John, St Gregory and St Symeon. Three – and no more. St Gregory, in particular, was very well educated in the intellect achievements of the day, like indeed, many, many other Church Fathers. Their triumph, however, was not in their use of their intellect, but in the fact of their spiritual experience (holiness), which they expressed with the use of their secularly trained intellect. Intellect is one thing, intellectualism, such as denying the miracle in the life of St John of Damascus and the Three-handed Icon of the Mother of God, is another.

In other words, the Church Fathers did not confuse the means (the intellect, the reason) with the end (holiness), which confusion is called not the use of the intellect, but ‘intellectualism’. Intellectualism is the spiritual disease which makes the reason (rationalism) the be all and the end all. It is not. The Church is not rationalist, which ism is tainted by fallen human pride and arrogance, but neither is She irrationalist. Irrationalism is obscurantist and narrow, the domain of phariseeism and spiritual impurity, just as much as rationalism. The Church is ‘meta-rational’, beyond reason, i.e, She follows the path of Holy Wisdom, ‘Sofia’ in Greek, ‘Premudrost’ in Slavonic.

The Christian goal was very well expressed by St Seraphim of Sarov in the century before last. He defined the aim of our lives, not as the collecting of secular knowledge, idle facts, but as the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. We can see this very clearly in the lives of three saints of the last century, St Silvanus the Athonite, a semi-literate Russian peasant, St Nicholas of Ochrid and St Justin of Chelije, the latter two of whom were very well-educated in Western Universities. The latter two used the intellectual formation which they had received in the West in order to express their spiritual experience, that of St Silvanus. No amount of doctorates, imitations and studies of abstract theories will, however, provide such spiritual experience.

In the Russian Church today, no longer persecuted, we are faced by the challenge of secular-minded intellectuals on the fringes of Church life, often with doctorates and degrees, who call themselves ‘theologians’, but who are not, because they do not have the spiritual experience that comes from suffering. Thus, their writings are superficial and do not provide spiritual food for the Orthodox faithful, but simply act as sleeping pills. The antidote to intellectualism is the living experience of the saints, especially, in the Russian Church, the feats of the New Martyrs and Confessors, who preferred the ‘meta-rational’, Risen Kingdom of God to the rationalist and irrationalist fallen republic of man.

North Korea or the USA?

A country whose head is seen by others as unstable.
A country run by a man who has the full support of patriotic and nationalist voters.
A country with a military-style police force.
A country with media dictatorially controlled by a very small number of people.
A country whose administration is said to be very corrupt.
A country which has a huge number of troops who are armed to the teeth.
A country with nuclear weapons.
A country which is paranoid about being attacked by its enemies, one with reason, the other without reason.
A country which is seen as a threat to others.
A country where a significant minority of people are locked up in prisons, some without trial.
A country with tens of millions of people who are considered to be poor.
A country whose southern border is strictly controlled by armed guards.

North Korea or the USA? Certain differences make it clear which the above is:

A country which is the only one in the world that has ever used A-bombs in order to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
A country which is notorious for invading other countries and carrying out blood-soaked regime-change all round the world, all so that it can exploit the natural resources and use the gold reserves of those countries.
A country that has well over 130 foreign military bases and 450,000 troops abroad.
A country that has threatened to ‘annihilate’ North Korea.
A country with $20 trillion dollars of debt that will never be paid off.
A country which has murdered 51 million of its ‘beautiful children’ through abortion since the 1970s. (In North Korea abortion is illegal).
A country where between 1968 and 2011 1.4 million people died from gun crime.
A country undermined by drug gangs and drug-taking.
A country notorious for its racism and social inequality.
A country where sexual perversion is not only legal but encouraged.
A country which is now threatened by yet another powerful hurricane.

The only question is: Who will defend sanity?

Ten Points for the Agenda of a 21st Century Church Council

In the light of events in the Church over the last 100 years, it is clear that a Council of all the approximately 800 Orthodox bishops of the Church worldwide will need to meet in order to reverse the spiritual decadence of the period since the overthrow of the Orthodox Emperor in 1917. The approximately 80,000 Orthodox priests and the near 220 million flock of the Orthodox Church worldwide need light and direction from their bishops in order to counter contemporary militant secularism. Notably, ecclesiological and canonical errors have to be rejected, systemic administrative disorder overcome and Church life renewed. Below are ten points under these three headings, which we suggest might appear on the agenda of such a future Council.

Dogmatic and Canonical Measures

1. The whole Church hierarchy is to affirm the foundation stone of the dogmatic definitions of the Seven Universal Councils, as expressed in the Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed, anathematizing especially anti-Incarnational trends which contradict it. This will obviously mean clearly condemning the incredibly old-fashioned, 1960s-style ecumenistic ‘branch-theory’ heresy implicit (when not explicit) in documents released for example by the 2016 meeting of a few Orthodox bishops in Crete and voted for by approximately 1.1% of Orthodox bishops. Those who signed those documents, which contradict the clear dogmatic teachings of Church Tradition and Teaching in general and notably the dogmatic ecclesiological definitions of St Justin of Chelije and other 20th century saints, should either take back their signatures or else face trial by Church courts.

2. The deposition of all ‘Orthodox’ patriarchs and bishops appointed by the US State Department. (In accordance with Canon XXX of the Apostolic Canons, Canon II of the Fourth Universal Council, Canons III and V of the Seventh Universal Council and Canon XIII of Laodicea). Similarly the deposition of all simoniacs. (Canon XXIX of the Apostolic Canons and subsequent anti-simoniac Canons).

3. The canonization of the last canonical Patriarch of Constantinople, Maximos V (+ 1972), unlawfully deposed by the CIA in 1948, who cried ‘The City is lost’, as he was taken at gunpoint to the airliner of the mass-murdering, atomic bomb president to be flown into exile.

Administrative Measures

4. The transfer of the title ‘Ecumenical’ (meaning of course, ‘of the Imperial Capital’, and neither ‘Universal’, nor ‘Ecumenist’!) from the Patriarchs of Constantinople to the Patriarchs of Moscow. This is already 564 years overdue at the time of writing.

5. The title ‘Patriarch of Constantinople’ to be transferred from Turkish citizens in Istanbul to Archbishops of Athens, who are the real Greek ethnarchs.

6. Admit the failure of the ‘Pan-Orthodox Assemblies’ in the Diaspora. The Orthodox presence outside Orthodox canonical territories, in the Americas, Western Europe, Southern Asia and Australasia, needs to be reorganized under the leadership and delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is the only multinational Local Church. In other words, the uncanonical ‘jurisdictions’ invented since 1917 by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and imitated by five other Local Churches, need to be abolished, so that we can return to our previous administrative unity, though retaining full ethnic and linguistic diversity within emryonic new Local Churches, which unity was lost to divisive, Balkan-style phyletism introduced after 1917.

Pastoral Measures

7. All Orthodox are to return to observing the Orthodox calendar, abandoning the heterodox calendar which, incredibly, is still observed by some spiritually weak minorities.

8. Consequent to this return, to renew liturgical life, including restoring the integrity of the Divine Liturgy and services such as Vespers and Matins, virtually unknown in the parishes of some Local Churches.

9. Consequent to this renewal, renew sacramental life, especially the sacraments of confession and unction, which are virtually unknown in the parishes of some Local Churches.

10. Consequent to this renewal, renew the consciousness of the importance of ascetic and monastic life, prayer, fasting, the reading of the Holy Scriptures and missionary work to the Non-Orthodox world, which have been nearly abandoned by the parishes and dioceses of some Local Churches.

More Historic Developments in the ROCOR Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland

At the Clergy Meeting and first ever meeting of the Diocesan Council of the ROCOR Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland, presided over by the Diocesan Administrator, Bishop Irenei, on Saturday 2 September, it was resolved to hold a pilgrimage to the Shrine of St Alban every year. Also, in another historic event, all parishes were blessed by Vladyka to keep the third Sunday after Pentecost as the Sunday of All Saints of the British Isles and Ireland, using the service composed by Archpriest Andrew Phillips fifteen years ago.

It was notable that the Clergy Meeting was for the first time ever attended by representatives from Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as well as from England. Both meetings were informed that the finally magnificently frescoed London church (with images of the local saints) will be consecrated on Friday 21st September 2018 and that the church in Colchester will at last be consecrated, probably in 2019, on its eleventh anniversary. There were also lengthy discussions about new missions, among several other places, including in Kent and Cambridgeshire, the need to found a monastery, about publications, websites and the involvement of the young people of the Diocese and the need to nurture their faith, as with the new Searchlight youth magazine.

The Diocese now has thirteen priests, a number never exceeded even in the 1950s. Moreover, they are multinational in background and ROCOR seems to becoming the only multi-ethnic Orthodox Diocese in these lands. Bishop Irenei’s visit to the reborn Diocese is the fourth episcopal visit this year, and not the last. Other candidates for ordination are coming forward, encouraged by Bishop Irenei who will not reject worthy candidates. One parish which had only had two episcopal visits in nineteen years has now had four episcopal visits in eight months.

It is remarkable what an episcopal presence can do, just as we had always thought, and all look forward to Bishop Irenei’s permanent return to this country in the near future. All are grateful to him and especially to the Most Reverened Metropolitan Hilarion and the Very Reverend Archbishop Kyrill of San Francisco, without whom none of this would ever have been possible. It has taken a great deal of effort over the last nine years to arrange all this after a long and dark period in our 300-year history.