Category Archives: Bishops

Two Sorts of Bishops

I met my first Orthodox bishop exactly fifty years ago, in 1974. Since then I have met perhaps 100 more bishops, 10% of the current total. Although in 1974 I was naïve enough to think that all bishops were Christians and did not tell lies, I soon learned otherwise. Indeed, I have learned that there are two sorts of bishops: those who tell the truth and the liars.

For example, a young and inexperienced bishop told a pack of lies about his priests for two and a quarter years. He told these lies to all the bishops in this country and in his own country and was believed even in Moscow and Antioch. People believed him because naïve people believe a bishop, imagining that he is a Christian, and think that the priest is lieing. But, as Chaucer said, the truth will out. Now he has been found out. We were telling the truth. His schism has been found out. And he has shown himself to be a liar.

Resisting Episcopal Corruption

Given the depths of decadence among certain parts of the Orthodox episcopate today, many ask the questions: What is a clergyman to do if his bishop acts immorally? Can he just leave him? And why does a bishop so rarely get punished by his fellow-bishops, if he has committed financial crimes or been sexually immoral? For example, there is the recent case of ex-Metropolitan Joseph of the Antiochian jurisdiction in the USA, who until recently had got away with long-term financial ‘extractions’ and sexual immorality, for which he would have been defrocked decades ago if he had been a priest. Why are some bishops apparently above the law and why do they appear to operate as a sort of mafia, allowing each other shameless injustice with impunity?

First of all, when talking about ‘clergymen’ in this context, we must distinguish between ‘servants of the church’ (readers and subdeacons) and ‘servants of the sacred’ (deacons and priests). The former can leave a bishop, as in this respect they are as free as laymen to go to another church. Deacons and priests are another matter, as they are bound to be obedient to the Church – which of course is not at all the same as obedience to a rogue-bishop.

In order to avoid the danger that a deacon or a priest who wishes to leave a bishop may be slandering an innocent bishop, his reception by another bishop depends on whether the immorality of the accused bishop is public knowledge, on whether other bishops know about it (they tend to know a lot about one another – it is a small world). In such a case they will therefore be quite prepared to ignore the guilty bishop’s disingenuous protests, however absurd, which will come once they have received an innocent and slandered priest without a letter of release. (This only happens after the guilty bishop has deliberately refused to issue a letter of release (wrongly called a letter of ‘canonical’ release) to the receiving bishop).

For example, a bishop may want to sodomise a priest (as happened in Moldova and Latvia a few years ago), he may want you to become a freemason (as happened in France in the 1980s), or he may want to commit adultery with your wife (as happened in England some decades ago). Or a bishop could be without a seminary education, poorly trained, ignorant of the basics of liturgics and Church history, may be trying through threats to take your money, church property, vestments and utensils from you, he may openly have a ‘boyfriend’ as his ‘wife’, whose Facebook pages are full of photos of the two lovers, or he may even be a foreign agent who works for the enemy of all Orthodox. Naturally, no accusation against such a bishop will be sufficient, if there is no proof, unless it is a matter of common knowledge among other bishops that he regularly commits such sins. This is not unreasonable. Slander must at all costs be avoided.

However, all this only hits a different level if the bishop in question is publicly (‘bareheadedly’, as the canon says) preaching heresy or has initiated a public schism with another canonical part of the Church. In other words, if he fanatically hates others to the point of heresy or schism, then any number of bishops will receive clergy without a letter of release from the guilty party. No letter of release is needed, as the bishop in question is clearly and publicly discredited and guilty of schism or heresy. In this case, there are plenty of honest and moral bishops who will receive you, even if the guilty bishop refuses to issue a letter of release (only in order then to accuse the departed clergy of ‘disobedience’!). His potential letter of release is irrelevant, as he is the guilty one and everyone knows it and mocks the guilty – even if behind his back.

Your second question concerns injustice: ‘One law for bishops, another law for others’, and ‘Do as I say, not as I do’. Such guilty bishops are not punished or defrocked simply because of politics, of the political power they and their corrupted colleagues have. For instance, the homosexual movement has brought into the Church administration pathologically ill homosexuals, and to a lesser extent bisexuals and, thank God, rarely, pedophiles. Whether repressed or not, they form gay mafias, called in the US ‘lavender mafias’, and persecute both monastics and married clergy, of whom latter they are jealous because they lead normal lives. Such individuals literally pervert the administration of the Church.

You should not be afraid of such bishops. Rather you should be afraid for them, as the guilty face terrible and inevitable judgement at the Last and Dread Judgement. As regards human judgement, even here justice will come in time, the truth will out – it always does come out. The Church is always cleansed sooner or later. The lives of St John of Kronstadt (persecuted by jealous Russian bishops) and St Nectarios of Aegina (persecuted by jealous Greek bishops) prove this. However, this is a constant in Church history: Read the lives of St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom. In the words of a very senior Constantinople cleric in a recent private conversation: ‘We just have to be patient and wait for the toilet to flush’. Or in the far more eloquent words of the Russian poet, Vladimir Dixon (1900-1929): ‘God has reserves of glory for inglorious times’.

How To Be an Anti-Pastor in Twenty Simple Rules: The Anatomy of a Classic Case

A bishop then must be blameless…of good behaviour…not greedy of filthy lucre…not covetous…Not a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil (I Tim 3).

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of good, treacherous, 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 (2 Tim, 3, 1-5).

 

  1. In general, live according to your motto: ‘Money, Property, Power and Prestige’. Remember: You are a prince, not a servant, of the Church.
  2. First of all, as you have been sent there by an Imperialist, occupying power, be as aggressive, conflictual, controlling, intimidating and insulting as possible to the local people. Do not respect them, their language, their geography, their history, their culture, their customs. After all, you are superior to them in every way, so you can force them to speak your language and ban theirs. Gag them and censor them. Impose yourself and crush them by demanding blind obedience, even in very minor matters.
  3. Cultivate your elitism, ensuring a top-down approach, putting on your show of the purely outward, even if they see through it at once, as most of them did. Have nothing to do with the ordinary people by listening to them or confessing them. Speak in monologues to them. Remember: As a true anti-Pastor you are innately superior to the people. Be as exclusive, arrogant and authoritarian as possible, threatening any contradictors with suspension. This will ensure that the Church does not expand and so becomes ever more sectarian, ensuring your total control.
  4. Be as divisive as possible. Taking a party political line will help you greatly in this. Exclude all who know more than you. Espousing extremist politics will help you alienate others. You must make sure that you are unpopular. This will help you to power, following the old adage of ‘divide and rule’. Of course you will end up in a very, very small pond, but at least this will make you a very, very big fish.
  5. Be spectacularly rude. Threaten, bully, humiliate and cultivate injustice at every opportunity, but above all accuse others of precisely your own faults, especially as you are so in love with money. Trying to make them feel guilty will help you create disunity, making you feel very good about yourself.
  6. Remember: Your aim is to alienate others, discrediting them and slandering them. You will thus isolate yourself, painting yourself into a corner. With very few friends, you will, very satisfyingly, have created a real sect and a small cult of sick and feeble-minded admirers around you who want to imitate you.
  7. Develop this personality cult, charming all with words, but not actions, manipulating the new and naïve around you. True, they will sooner or later see through you, but by then you will have found more new and naïve to replace them. Once they have seen through you, you can discard them too like old rags and replace them with new favourites. This favouritism will help greatly in discrediting you. Remember with both those above you and those below you: Manipulate, manipulate, manipulate!
  8. Make false accusations. Especially accuse people who have given all their money and lives to the Church of stealing money from the Church. This will entirely discredit you.
  9. Remember: Feelings of jealousy towards others divide. Develop these feelings in yourself, for they will destroy you, not those at whom they are directed.
  10. Never listen and never consult, especially despise age and experience. Remember: You are always right despite your youth, inexperience and lack of knowledge and training. Threaten any who challenge you with retirement, suspension or defrocking because of your personal hatred, intense jealousy and mood swings. This will ensure that you will make as many mistakes as you possibly can. Remember that when you are told that it is make or break time because of your tyrannical behaviour, you must ignore it.
  11. Reject any monastery that is offered you for free. You do not want any rivals.
  12. Refuse to open any new churches which have been bought or built and are fully equipped. The faithful must not have churches, so ignore their petitions. Remember that you must deprive the people of the opportunity to go to church. Deprive priests of myrrh and make sure they do not do too many baptisms. Therefore try and steal any church properties that exist. The devil will thank you.
  13. Doctor Diocesan Council minutes in your favour to impress your superiors. They will then offer no supervision of a chronically inexperienced individual who makes mistake after mistake. If complaints do arrive, you can then investigate yourself and report back that you are wonderful. Then you will be able to give yourself a perfect bill of health and you will be able to punish those who told the truth by warning of the coming catastrophe. This will soon turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is also important to create your own websites, writing articles about how wonderful you are, while pretending that others have written them.
  14. Lack of supervision means that you will threaten zealous clergy who justly dare to warn of the impending catastrophe with harsh and uncanonical punishments. True, you can defrock anyone you want at the drop of a hat simply because they do not agree with you. However, no laypeople, clergy or other bishops will pay the slightest attention to your hate-filled papers. Be aware of this.
  15. Surround yourself with weak, servile and fawning subordinates and use authoritarian rule, using yes-men, only marginally less ignorant than yourself. They will safely shield you from reality and all your errors for years, until what you have done blows up in your face, as it eventually will.
  16. Attempt to divide the Church and divide families, setting father against son. You must destroy happy and united families. They represent strength and opposition to you. In the same way you must also attempt with large bribes of money to set up altar against altar in the same towns.
  17. Demand money from often very poor faithful in order to fund your lavish lifestyle. This will cause great scandal among the faithful.
  18. Remember: Your principal task is to destroy, not build up.
  19. Remember your slogan: ‘Don’t save souls, invent protocols’.
  20. Remember: Quench the Spirit at all times. Be careful to crush any sort of zeal for the Faith and any talent. You must in particular destroy anyone who is more popular than yourself. This will ensure your failure.

 

All the above will be tolerated for some years by your victims, as they have already tolerated such behaviour for years before you, but as the inevitable result of all the above you will end up by creating a schism in the Church. This will be a step too far, the last straw, because it is not just against the people, but also against the Church. Your alien schismatic and sectarian mentality will cause a scandal, however much you bully the weak into supporting you. If you do all the above, you can be guaranteed that sooner or later there will be consequences, for your sins will find you out. And from that point of suffering on, you will have the God-sent opportunity to repent and so at last start becoming a Christian.