Author Archives: Father Andrew

A Simple Reply to Archbishop Elpidiphoros

‘When you elevate one religion above all others, it is as if you decide there is only one path leading to the top of the mountain. But the truth is you simply cannot see the myriads of paths that lead to the same destination because you are surrounded by boulders of prejudice that obscure your view’.

Archbishop Elpidiphoros, a Greek Orthodox Archbishop in North America, speaking at an American-funded Political Conference on Religion on 16 July 2021

 

We can all agree about three things:

God is at the top of the mountain.

We are all at the bottom.

There are many paths that leave from the bottom that appear to go upwards.

As the view of the speaker was surrounded by boulders of prejudice, for example, that all religions are the same or that only CIA-funded Greeks are true Orthodox, we can all ask three questions about these paths:

Do all the paths that start at the bottom lead straight up to the summit?

Do all the paths that start at the bottom actually even go as far as the summit?

Do some of the paths that start at the bottom go round and round the mountain and lead nowhere or even back down again?

Finally, we can draw one conclusion:

The only path that that starts at the bottom and leads straight up to the summit is the path of humility.

Someone has asked me: ‘How do you obtain humility’? All I can answer is that you will not find the answer to that question at CIA-funded Conferences about Religion. The answer is to be found in life and faith.

 

 

The Time of the Fulfilment of the Prophecies Has Come

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Q: When did the war in the Ukraine begin?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: You sound optimistic?

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

On the Sadness of Mammon: Whatever Happened to the Russian Orthodox Church? (1992-2022)

Thirty years have gone by since Communism fell and the Russian Orthodox Church began to revive on a mass level. But over the last three or four years, before the events in the Ukraine, more and more have become disgusted with the behaviour of some in the Russian Orthodox episcopate, both in the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), based in the former Soviet Union, and in the émigré Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), based in New York. When did this decadence among the Russian episcopate begin?

The historically-minded would go back to the Judaisers of Skhariya in fifteenth century Russia, or to the Old Ritualist schism in the seventeenth century, yet others to Peter I and the German Catherine II (both dubbed by Westernisers ‘the Great’). In any case, the decadence certainly began well before 1917 and there are probably very few nowadays who still believe the old ‘lightswitch’ myths of the children of émigrés about how everything was perfect before 1917 and suddenly everything was awful afterwards. Revolutions do not happen without a cause.

A reading of the early volumes of the works of the incredibly frank Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) (+ 1936) or of ‘The Russian Ideology’ by St Seraphim of Boguchar (Sofia) (+ 1950), describing the deviations of a State Church, is enough to see through that nonsense. As the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva used to point out to us with a shrug of his shoulders: ‘They complain about the Russian bishops inside Russia who have swish black cars. Well, before the Revolution they had swish black carriages with swish black horses’.

However, none of the above distant historical references explain, let alone justify, what is going on today, with calls to ‘cancel’ (1) scandalous Russian Orthodox bishops, both in the Moscow Patriarchate and in its ROCOR subsidiary, for whom everything is wonderful. We are talking about the here and now. As one recent correspondent has put it: ‘I really think this is the reason why Orthodoxy is in such a mess today, it comes from the top down. Nowadays bishops have no humility, they’re full of pride and have a never-ending love of luxury which is corrupting them. Bishops in the MP and ROCOR live in a far more luxurious way them the vast majority of their parishioners and the worst thing is they think it’s normal.’

We were used to the old decadence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople: its careerist bishops, usually homosexuals, ordaining their boyfriend who then turned alcoholic, occasionally pedophiles, the womanisers with their mistress(es), the amassing of money for a villa in Greece, getting their teeth whitened in Turkey so they could look even more like the Hollywood stars they adore. But then exactly the selfsame disease spread to the Russian Church. What is the difference?

We can remember Metropolitan Philaret Denysenko of Kiev who in the 1970s (!) built himself a palace with the help of his Communist friends. The fact that he was married and had two children bothered no-one: in Moscow they turned a blind eye to married bishops – there were a lot of them then (as there are today, including in Western Europe), with at least one in the then ROCOR. The only problem was that Denysenko, like all careerists, wanted to be the Patriarch and then, like so many Communists, in 1992 turned overnight into a nationalist in the hope of achieving his aim (2). So he created a schism. Understandably, Moscow turned against him then. You could turn a blind eye to his moral weakness and his pickpocketing of money from the Church till, but not to schism. He is now defrocked, a shame, but also one who makes you shudder.

I remember Dmitry, an old émigré of the second generation (those nostalgic for something they had never known were always the worst – the real emigres, adults before the Revolution, knew all about what it had really been like and all the scandals). He told me in 2005 that ROCOR could not possibly be linked to the Moscow Patriarchate because that would be like a glass of pure water being mixed with a glass of dirty water. Pure phariseeism. I mentioned the word ‘Grabbe’ to him. Not the CIA and freemason father George/Gregory or Nasty News Nastia, but the notorious womanising son (3), Antony, who in ROCOR was called ‘the six-million dollar man’. That, after all, is how much he had made by selling Russian Church property in the Holy Land to the Jews. Poor old Dmitry pretended to know nothing about it. But he did, just as he knew about the alcoholic ROCOR protodeacon, the defrocked ROCOR priest, the womanising ROCOR priest who stole tens of thousands from his church and was awarded for it all by his naïve (or not so naïve?) archbishop. No, Dmitry, there were two glasses of dirty water.

Inside Russia, some blame the 250 bishops consecrated over the last 14 years by Patriarch Kyrill, too many of whom were clearly unworthy. Yet the search for more bishops was necessary. True, too many of them were not men of prayer, just ‘effective managers’ (code for ‘fundraising bureaucrats’) and they turned out to be just homosexuals and careerists (often one and the same, as among the Greeks), on the thrones of whose vacant souls sat the mocking satan. But despite even their numbers, the Russian Church still needs to find another 1,000 bishops, build another 100,000 churches and real Christian communities (rather than trying to persecute them and close them down) and find another 100,000 priests (rather than expelling them to other Local Churches), before it can say that it has really revived. The path for them has barely begun, as I have said time and time again.

Sadly, since the fall of Communism and the USSR in December 1991, many have fallen by the wayside in Russia. First there were the liberals like Kuraev, who adored Bulgakov, Schmemann and Meyendorff etc more than the saints. Then there were the ‘Orthodox Stalinists’, yesterday’s left-wing Bolsheviks who became today’s right-wing nationalists, under the cloak of Orthodoxy (2). These extremes all lead nowhere. The liberal Kuraev is defrocked, just as the anti-Semitic, right-wing ‘worshipper of Tsar as God’ Sergei Romanov from the Urals Convent. I met them both.

But perhaps the worst cases are in the Russian emigration. How we recall a very naïve young man from the ex-USSR seeing in Europe in the 1990s an elderly emigre bishop sweeping the floor of his church. He blurted out: ‘Clearly, he is a saint’. What nonsense. All émigré bishops and priests swept (and some of us still sweep) the floors of our churches. Are we all saints then?! We well remember the old school, of all jurisdictions: Archbishop George Tarasov in Paris, the widowed World War One pilot who became a bishop and had no clothes to wear; Archbishop Seraphim (Dulgov), the ROCOR bishop who lived in poverty and was happy so; Metropolitan Benjamin (Fedchenkov), whose only food was that given to him by his few parishioners and who slept on a concrete floor because he had given his bed to a beggar. Let me assure you that all this was completely normal. We never thought of ourselves as saints. We were, and are, simply confessing Orthodox Christians. It is you who are abnormal, which is why we are calling you to shame and repentance now.

And then in recent years there have come to Europe new ‘princes of the Church’, as they call themselves. There were a young bishop whose first act was to buy himself a fancy car and another even younger one, who refused to live next to his church and instead rented a whole very expensive house miles away, near a foreign embassy, from where he took his orders as their asset, so depriving a married priest of a salary! Both then tried to grab properties and cash, bullying like racketeering Chicago gangsters. Both discredited themselves immediately among their flocks, though they were lauded by their fellow-bishops. They convinced no-one and their dioceses are visibly and actually quite rapidly contracting as a direct result. But they say that everything is wonderful. Because they cannot see the elephants in the room. Themselves.

The curse of today’s Russian Orthodoxy, MP and ROCOR, is undoubtedly love of money. And this is not because ROCOR has been corrupted by the money of the MP. The MP never gave ROCOR a penny. You could perhaps argue just the opposite: ROCOR corrupted the MP with its American love of money. Already fifty years ago, the new ROCOR celibate priests sent to Europe in the 70s and 80s were not like the old ones, the authentic poor monks and probable saints. Fr George Sheremetiev (+ 1971) warned us even then of ‘the American disease’ coming to ROCOR. The new ones all wanted to live like the wealthy Americans they already were or else wanted to be. One turned out to be a pedophile, others were long ago defrocked. On the other hand, in 2018 I met a priest in Russia, who had been through the Americanisation of Russia in the 1990s, who boasted that he had 15 kilos of gold inside the magnificent church he had built. I told him to sell it and give it to the poor. ‘In England we use gold paint. That’s good enough for us’.

We know all their stories and all their names, from the photos with the ostrich feathers down. (You know who you are). But as St Paisios the Athonite told me in 1979: ‘When you see the excrement of wild animals on a path between monasteries, you gather it together and throw it away into the bushes, so that the next passer-by does not walk in it and spread it around’. As with the excrement of wild animals, so we do with the scandals of bishops.

I remember that same old son of an émigré, Dmitry, who told me that we in ROCOR could not possibly concelebrate with the corrupt of the Moscow Patriarchate. I quietly reminded him that all the New Martyrs belonged to the Moscow Patriarchate, for there were none in ROCOR, and that we belonged to the New Martyrs. He had no answer. We Orthodox belong to the Persecuted Church, not to the Persecuting Church and we are not afraid, for as it is written:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, incontinent, fierce, haters of the good, traitors, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. From such turn away…But they will not get very far: for their folly shall be made plain to all.

Prophecies of Paul the Apostle, 2 Timothy 3, 1-5, 9

And if you are disheartened by all this, know that we are still here, despite all the mud they have slung at us and which has stuck only to them. And then read the prophecies from outside Russia and from inside Russia:

The Lord has already chosen the future Tsar. He will be a man of fiery faith, having the mind of a genius and a will of iron. First of all, he will introduce order into the Orthodox Church, removing all the untrue, heretical and lukewarm hierarchs. And many, very many – with few exceptions, all – will be deposed, and new, true, unshakeable hierarchs will take their place.

Archbishop Theophan of Poltava, in exile in France (+ 1940)

The bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church will fall away from the truth of the Orthodox Faith, they will not believe in the prophecies of the resurrection of Russia. To reprove them, St Seraphim of Sarov will be raised from the dead. He will reprove the clergy for their treachery and betrayal and will preach repentance to the whole world.

Blessed Pelagia of Ryazan (+ 1968)

Judgement Day is coming.

 

Notes:

  1. In the same way as the recent ‘cancelling’ of the scandalous Metr Joseph of the Antiochian Archdiocese in the USA has already led to his ‘retirement’.
  2. Communists who see that they have lost always then play the nationalist card, as in Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, Yugoslavia etc. And in China. The overnight techniques are the same, as are the results. The biggest Nazis in today’s Ukraine were the biggest Communists thirty years ago. Denysenko is but one example.
  3. The old ROCOR quip on father and son clerics has always been: ‘Yes, I saw the father and the son, only I didn’t see the Holy Spirit’.

 

Q and A October 2022

Q: Why do all the Local Orthodox Churches accept the baptisms of Non-Orthodox, but not give them communion?

A: Baptism is the first sacrament and the only one that can be given by laypeople, that is, by those who have been baptised by water in the Name of the Holy Trinity. All other sacraments are different, as they require a priest, such as chrismation and confession, only after which can communion be given.

As regards the form of baptism, the norm in the Church is by immersion (different from submersion!), but emergency baptisms by sprinkling are also accepted, as in countless Orthodox baptisms of new-born babies in hospitals and in homes. Here it is the intention that is important, not the ritual.

Q: Can Non-Orthodox receive a gift of the Holy Spirit?

A: Obviously, yes! Why else would people come to the Church asking to be received, when they are still outside the Church? The Holy Spirit has called them, they have had some spiritual experience. The Holy Spirit can come to us from God the Father in two different ways, through (but not from) the Son (= through the Body of Christ, in the sacraments of the Church) and directly and independently, as to the Apostle Paul on the Road to Damascus and to so many others.

Q: What do you think will happen in the Ukraine and in Church life once the war there is over?

A: Let us look at reality. Rightly or wrongly, 87.5% of the world either supports the Russian campaign or else remains neutral towards it. This shows the increasing isolation of the USA/Western elite. In Italy, Germany, France, Moldova, the Czech Lands, Romania (the former Defence Minister), Bulgaria, Serbia, even in the UK, dissident voices are protesting. For God’s sake, negotiate with Russia! The Ukraine is their business, not ours. We want gas and food! This Hell-begotten war must end. Europe needs a common economic home, from Reykjavik/Dublin/Lisbon to Vladivostok. The USE (United States of Europe, that is, the EU) has been USED. It is over.

There are very many and very unanimous Orthodox Christian prophecies on the war, like those of the very well-known and quite recent St Laurence of Chernigov, St Kuksha of Odessa, Elder Zosima of Donetsk, Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) and also Elder Jonah (Ignatenko) of Odessa (+ 2012). The latter, who said that Odessa will be liberated last, said: ‘After President Putin there will come a Tsar and there will be peace for a time’. The same prophets say that the new Tsar will then cleanse the Church of its unprincipled careerist-bishops, so disastrously corrupted by the Western money of the 1990s, exactly as St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied 200 years ago. According to him the Persecuted Church would become the Persecuting Church, the Church of Altruism would become the Church of Mammon. Exactly as it has turned out.

After this momentous Battle for the Holy Spirit, could then the whole Russian Orthodox Church be cleansed and transformed into the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus? The at present Fifteen Local Churches of today could become Twenty-Four, with new Autocephalous Churches in the New Ukraine, in the three Baltic States plus Finland, with the restitution of those unjustly defrocked in Lithuania, in Moldova, an NAOC, Northern American Orthodox Church, including all Orthodox there, excluding none, and a WEOC, Western European Orthodox Church, including all Orthodox here, excluding none, a South American Orthodox Church, a Central American Orthodox Church, and a Mexican Orthodox Church, with a Metropolia for the Caribbean, and an Oceanic Orthodox Church for Australia and the Pacific Islands.

Q: What is the significance of the Battle of Hastings in the European context?

A: The Norman Invasion and Hastings was only a detail in the whole apostasy of the Church of Rome in the eleventh century. What began with the expulsion or persecution of Orthodox from Moravia, Hungary, Mozarabic Spain, Sicily, Southern Italy and Croatia ended with the same in England, Milan (the Ambrosian rite) and later in Scotland and Wales, then spreading to Scandinavia and Ireland.

Let us take just one example, the persecution of the Church in Croatia, which happened on the very eve of Hastings. (I quote from ‘The Early Medieval Balkans’ by John Fine): ‘In the mid-eleventh century the Slavonic liturgy became an issue in Croatian Dalmatia.

Written in Glagolitic, it was widely used particularly
in northern Dalmatia, where its chief centres were on the islands
lying in the Gulf of Kvarner, formed by the Istrian peninsula. In this
regard the island of Krk was the most important. In the 1060s, when
the Pope was demanding general Church reform, many high clerics in
the old Roman towns of Dalmatia, which had always used the Latin
liturgy, wanted to prohibit Slavonic and standardise church practices.
Kresimir IV, a religious man who had founded a Benedictine monastery
at Biograd, his favorite residence, sympathized with the Latinisers.
One wonders why: perhaps he wanted papal support; perhaps he
sought support from the Latin Dalmatian cities, toward which he may
already have had ambitions; perhaps it was a result of his Venetian
upbringing. (His mother was a Venetian and he had been educated in
Venice).

In any case the reformers or Latinisers were upset by the situation
in the Croatian Church; many priests (like the Greeks) married and
wore beards. Many of them did not know Latin. A Council was held in
Split in 1060 which declared that priests must know Latin and declared
it the language of the church. The Council condemned Slavonic. It also
banned priestly beards and marriages. Some churches were closed as a
result and there seems to have been a degree of unrest. Parties developed
for and against Latin, with the high clergy and nobles tending to
support Latin. In 1063 the Pope demanded application of these decisions
and he too called Slavonic heretical.

In 1064 a rebellion for the Slavic church broke out on the isle of
Krk under a man named Vuk. He set up an autonomous church under
its own bishop and wrote to the Pope. Various misunderstandings followed
and envoys from each side were rebuffed by the other. Kresimir
then sent a naval expedition against Krk (whose church was branded
heretical by the Pope). By the end of 1064 Vuk’s rebellion was crushed
and Latin clerics were in control of the church of Krk. Thus the national
Church organisation suffered a further blow and its organisation
rapidly died out. Surely, however, in inland villages Slavonic priests
continued to function over the next several centuries, owing to the lack
of an educated clerical class there. In addition, though the established
church opposed it, Slavonic seems to have survived in places along the coast presumably because the local population wanted it. Glagolitic
manuscripts from Croatia survive from each subsequent century
throughout the Middle Ages. But as an established accepted movement
the Slavonic Church collapsed and the main reason for its collapse
was that the leading Croatian political and religious figures opposed it.
In 1074 a second Council was held in Split which reissued the edicts of
1060 against Slavonic. This second Council also re-established the bishopric
of Nin’ (Pp. 280-281).

 

 

 

 

Will the Russian Orthodox Church Be Forbidden in Western Countries?

At the Peace Forum in Rome on 23 October, President Macron of France spoke in front of an audience of many Church leaders, including Metr Antony (Sevriuk), reckoned to be the No 2 of the Moscow Patriarchate. The President stated that the Russian Orthodox Church (both the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR) is manipulated by the Russian State.

https://www.cath.ch/newsf/selon-e-macron-la-religion-orthodoxe-est-manipulee-par-la-russie/

This was said in front of many other Orthodox clergy, including our friends from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and our own Metropolitan Joseph (Pop) of the Romanian Orthodox Church, whose Autonomous Metropolia numbers 4 million Orthodox in Western Europe. (This makes him the bishop with by far the largest Orthodox flock in Western Europe, far larger than the total flock of many Local Orthodox Churches). Is the Russian Orthodox Church manipulated by the Russian State, as President Macron claimed? Whether it is true or not is irrelevant, the fact is that this is the Western Establishment perception – and has long been. For them the Russian Orthodox Church is no more independent of the Russian State than the Church of England is from the British government, whose new and entirely expected Hindu Prime Minister will nominate all its bishops.

The only exception to this possibly true claim of subservience to the Russian State is the small but much-persecuted Russian Orthodox Western European Archdiocese under Metropolitan Jean of Dubna. There clergy are allowed to commemorate or not the Russian Orthodox Patriarch. The Archdiocese is where we were not allowed to stay by Metropolitan Antony (Sevriuk). Thus, highly providentially, we were safely received into the above-mentioned Romanian Patriarchal Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe eight days before the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine began on 24 February 2022.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox Patriarch has been banned from visiting his flock in four countries through a personal ‘sanction’. These countries are the Ukraine, Canada, the UK and Lithuania. As well as this, the Russian Church has had to withdraw its bishops from Northern America (the USA and Canada) and from the UK. Bishopless churches are churches that will die out. What is to be done? You can sit it all out and wait till the war in the Ukraine is over. This appears to be the policy of many. However, that does not solve the pastoral problems in the here and now or the problems in the future, which will be even greater.

The Russian Orthodox Faith first came under persecution in the Ukraine in 2018, when the CIA with the help of Poroshenko and certain Greek Orthodox individuals who set up an uncanonical Church, so that Ukrainian Orthodox would not belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. Few fell for this trick and the new ‘Church’ failed. This year the canonical Church in the Ukraine has come under even greater persecution and was forced to declare itself ‘fully independent’ of Moscow. Of its 12,000 churches, 2,000 have been taken away from it by force and nearly all of them now stand locked and empty. The US-sponsored Ukrainian nationalist persecution resembles very closely that of the Bolsheviks.

Only recently a curious though different fate has befallen the Russian Orthodox Church in Latvia, which was declared independent by the Latvian government. It has no choice other than to accept this imposed independence. It looks as though the same is about to happen in Lithuania and Estonia. However, we note that the Russian-founded Orthodox Churches in Poland, the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and in the USA (the OCA) are not suffering from any persecution from their States because they are associated with the Russian Orthodox Church. Why? Because they are all ‘Autocephalous’, i.e. canonically fully independent.

Surely this is the way out for the whole of the Russian Church, which is not inside the Russian Federation and Belarus? In any case, the difference between Orthodoxy and Papism is surely that we do not have a Pope, that we do not claim some sort of universal jurisdiction. When a Local Church sets up a mission in another country or a country becomes politically independent from the one where the Local Church is based, and that mission is successful, inevitably, that country ends up having its own Local Church. And the new Local Church is independent of political pressure from foreign governments (and from its own government).

A Patriarch is not a Pope. We ignore any ‘Eastern Papist’ temptations or claims of any Patriarchate (e.g. the deliberate misinterpretation of Canon 28 of Chalcedon, for instance). We know that the hubris of power is always punished. We do not confess any universal jurisdiction, but missionary autocephalies, as in the Local Churches of Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae and Thessalonica. Let us be frank: There is room for very many to stand on the moral high ground in the Orthodox Church. If some want to compromise themselves politically or have little integrity or conscience and do not wish to stand there, that is not our business. We shall continue to stand there, waiting for others to join us, whatever the stones they cast at us.

 

 

The Future of the Ukraine and the Church

What is going to happen in the Ukraine? Some say that the Russian winter campaign in the Ukraine that is due to start in November will result at the very least in the provinces of Nikolaev and Odessa being taken by Russia, as foretold by Elder Jonah of Odessa (+ 2012). That might bring this nightmare conflict to a swift end. It will mean that the remaining Ukraine will become a landlocked state.

Others refer to another prophecy of Elder Jonah of Odessa that there will be a ‘bloody Easter (= 2022?), a hungry Easter (2023?) and a victorious Easter (2024?). It means that the war will continue for another eighteen months yet. Others refer to the prophecy of St Seraphim of Sarov: ‘Towards that time the bishops will become so impious that in their impiety they will surpass the Greek bishops of the time of Theodosius the Younger (401-450), so that they will no longer believe in the main dogmas of the Christian Faith’.

We should recall that all prophecies are conditional, dependent on repentance – or lack of it.

Whatever happens in the war in the Ukraine, and there are many predictions, it is clear that the canonical Church in the Ukraine will have to become autocephalous. Russia can, and we believe will, win militarily, but that does not solve the pastoral problem. No mother, father, aunt, uncle, wife, sister, brother, children of a dead Ukrainian soldier will frequent a church where the Russian Patriarch is commemorated. Many in the Russian Church are in denial about this: we are not.

At the mere mention of the name Patriarch Kyrill in churches in the Ukraine or here, people walk out. Russian Orthodox churches, Moscow or ROCOR, all over Western Europe, as in the Ukraine itself, have lost a great many of their flock. If we had been under the Russian Church (by Divine Providence we got out exactly eight days before the Special Operation began), we would certainly have lost half of our parish. At present, under the Zelensky government, any Ukrainian priest who concelebrates with the Russia Church in Western Europe (either branch) faces five years of prison on his return for ‘collaborating with the enemy’.

In the Moscow Patriarchate in Lithuania four priests have been defrocked for not commemorating Patriarch Kyrill. And yet in the Western European Archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, priests are free to commemorate the Russian Patriarch or not. Patriarch Kyrill is banned by sanction from visiting Canada, the UK, Lithuania and of course the Ukraine. He would not be welcome anywhere else in Europe outside the Russian Federation and Belarus. If he cannot visit his churches, then independence must be granted to them.

It has come to our knowledge that there are those in Russia who are praying that Metr Onufry of Kiev will become the next Patriarch of Russia. No doubt his first act will be to grant the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly. The same is surely inevitable in the Baltic States (today the Latvian Orthodox Church has officially asked Patriarch Kyrill to grant it autocephaly). We think that autocephaly, or at least autonomy, will have to be given to the Russian Orthodox churches in Moldova and also in Western Europe. As for the Moscow parishes in Northern America, they have no bishop and so no future at present. Here too a solution is required.

The situation is chaotic, Nothing, indeed, will be as it was before.

 

The Church of Scandals?

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.

Psalm 145, 3

Moscow refuses to give independence (Autocephaly) to the Churches in the Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics, Western Europe, and so its churches empty. People vote with their feet. Reality takes over. In Latvia even the State grants the Latvian Orthodox Church Autocephaly!

Some are scandalised by this. Why? Nobody should be surprised at this. In the 19th century Protestant British politicians gave the Church of Greece its Autocephaly and later the secular and nationalist Bulgarian government gave its Church Autocephaly. It took time for others to recognise it, but eventually those who objected just had to face reality and recognised it. In the last century the Churches of Poland and Czechoslovakia went through similar trials and in Brno in the Czech Lands the tribulation continues to this very day. The recent case of the Serbian Church and the Church of North Macedonia is just one more example of politicians declaring Autocephaly and a Mother-Church just having to accept a fait accompli after 60 years. Reality is always stronger than any theory or ideology, just as the pen is always mightier than the sword.

Bishops closed churches because of State orders regarding covid. Some faithful were scandalised by such bishops. Our church, like others, just went into the catacombs and we remained secretly open, faithful to Christ. ‘Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for you neither go in yourselves, neither allow them that are entering to go in’ (Matt: 23, 13).

In the USA many are scandalised today by the actions and words of Archbishop Elpidiforos. Others are scandalised in the USA by the actions and words of Metr Joseph of Antioch, by his mistresses and his money. In England a bishop stays at a hotel with his boyfriend. They spend the Saturday evening drinking beer in the bar before going up to their rooms. They did not know that the hotel manager who saw it all was Orthodox, a parishioner of the local church. The scandal was endless. Ordinary people are better than bishops. That is how it seems to so many simple believers, who are certainly not saints, but neither are they hypocritical pharisees. But we still pray for the salvation of all of them.

As one commentator put it: ‘It seems that bishops impose one set of standards and canons on clergy and laity, but they do not observe those standards and canons themselves and even cover up for each other’.

The number of well-known bishops of ALL jurisdictions whom I have known personally over the last fifty years who stole money, were freemasons, had boyfriends, had mistresses (and children), or caused schisms is almost endless. So what? Why are you scandalised? They will have to answer for their souls at the Last Judgement. As for us, we should be working on the salvation of our own souls and our answers at the Last Judgement.

For decades I have said that either bishops should be real monks, who have spent a minimum of ten years living the monastic life day in, day out, and learning how to love others through poverty, chastity and obedience, or else they should be allowed to be married, as in the first six centuries, indeed in some parts of the Orthodox world, for the first twelve centuries. You cannot have it otherwise. The Church is not a Californian cult. To paraphrase the bishop St Basil the Great: ‘O self-proclaimed Princes of the Church, your skulls pave hell’.

What can be said to the people who are scandalised by all this?

First of all, just remember that of the Twelve one was called Judas and he was a traitor. Do we celebrate him? Of course not. But we do celebrate the Eleven who remained faithful and Matthias, making again the Twelve. Stop looking at the negative. The negative you will always have with you if you keep looking at it. And look at the Positive, Christ, Who is always with us.

I will not throw away my basket of apples, just because one of them is rotten. And even though there are a thousand baskets of apples and in each basket there is one rotten apple, I will still not throw away the thousand baskets of apples because of a thousand rotten apples.

I go to church to meet Christ because He is there. I have no other reason to go to church. As for those who have other reasons to go to church, all we can do is to pray for the salvation of their souls.

The Church of Scandals? No, the Church of God.