Category Archives: Church Unity

On the Importance of Sobriety

Questions and answers compiled from recent conversations and correspondence

Q: In an article in ‘Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition’ entitled ‘The Present Situation of the Orthodox Church’ and written nearly 25 years ago in July 1989, you wrote about the two extremes to be found on the fringes of the Orthodox world, new calendarism and old calendarism, and the pressures they exerted on the free voice of the Church, the voice of the New Martyrs. You said that these New Martyrs would be canonised inside Russia, providing that the Church could free itself from the Communist government. This happened. So my question is if these two isms or extremes, which were then a considerable problem, are still a problem despite that canonisation?

A: Yes, they are definitely still present, though they are not as influential as they were. This is because the Centre of the Church, that which is outside the extremes, has been much strengthened through the prayers of the now universally canonised New Martyrs.

Q: But why do these isms still exist?

A: Both extremist isms still exist for historical reasons, appearing after the Centre fell, that is, after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Centre ‘did not hold’, ‘things fell apart’, that is, there was a polarisation. This became clearly and immediately visible in Russia in the 1920s with the renovationist new calendarism – although the renovationist temptation had existed for several years before the Revolution, certainly since Gapon in 1905. (Incidentally, Patriarch Kyrill’s grandfather, Fr Vasily Gundyaev, suffered much from that renovationism). And of course there were individuals who then went to the opposite extreme of renovationism, falling into a sort of old calendarist sectarianism.

At the same time Renovationism also became visible outside Russia in Constantinople, which had long been under British masonic influence. Thus, the renovationist Constantinople hierarchy actually recognised the renovationists in Russia, rejecting the saintly Patriarch Tikhon and the legitimate Church. Then, together with the Church of Greece, it introduced the secular (so-called ‘new’) calendar for the fixed feasts. Here a lot of Anglican money, £100,000 of that time, changed hands. Immediately, there was a reaction to all this and old calendarism began.

Q: What has your position been towards these two extremes?

A: It has always been to stand in the middle and support the Centre, even though it fell in 1917. My position has been a consistent straight line, from which I have never wavered, and this as early as 1973 in a booklet which I wrote then and which was published a few years ago in ‘Orthodox England’. My support has always been for a free Russian Orthodoxy, uncompromised by either extreme.

Q: Are you not criticised for this unwavering line?

A: Of course. But, in fact, pressure from the extremist margins only strengthens us. As an example of this, I would like to mention a fellow priest in Bulgaria who wrote to me a little while ago. He has one of the Church calendar parishes in Bulgaria which is under the new calendar Church. Thus he remains faithful to the Tradition, but does not participate in schism. And he receives as much criticism from new calendarism as from old calendarism. This is exactly our situation here, where both fringes criticise us. Interestingly, the fringes often work together and are friends. As they say, ‘extremes meet’. And when we are criticised by both extremes, it is a sure sign that we are doing something right, standing in the middle. Remember that the middle is where Christ was crucified, between the two thieves.

Q: You mentioned how it all began in 1917 with the fall of the Centre in Moscow. But did the extremist pressures get worse?

A: Yes, they did. The Cold War after 1945 definitely made it all worse. For example, in 1948 the USA installed a new Patriarch of Constantinople called Athenagoras. He was flown in by the CIA on Truman’s personal plane from America. When the legitimate Patriarch, Maximos, was deposed and exiled by the CIA, he was heard to say, ‘The City is lost’. This is a close parallel to the situation in the first millennium when a number of heretical patriarchs of Constantinople were installed by heretical emperors. Interestingly, the legitimate Patriarch Maximos V, supposedly ‘ill’, died three decades later in 1972, the same year as the illegitimate Patriarch. Since 1948 Constantinople, co-opted into the anti-Soviet and then anti-Russian war of the USA, has been the plaything of the ‘iconoclastic’ US State Department. The City is lost indeed – but the Church lives on outside the City. Fortunately, the Church does not depend on a geographical location – otherwise there would still be nothing outside Jerusalem.

The situation was no better in the Local Churches that survived under Communism during the Cold War. As regards the Russian Church, the situation worsened greatly under Khrushchev, a virulent and primitive atheist, not just because he persecuted the Church physically, but also because he and the Soviet Communist Party imposed ecumenism on the Church as a political tool in the early 1960s. The other Communist Parties in Eastern Europe did the same to their Local Churches. The idea was to make ecumenism and ecumenical organisations into tools for Soviet propaganda.

Q: What happened when the Cold War ended?

A: Just because the Cold War officially ended, that does not mean that persecution is over. Today the militant atheism of the Soviet Union is gone, but now we have the militant atheism of the European Union. The EU ideology is trying to destroy not only the Local Churches of EU member countries in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Cyprus, but also the Churches of countries which the EU one day hopes to colonise: Serbia, Moldova, Georgia, even the Ukraine. The victims of such political pressures, some senior bishops, are hostages to this, so we do not listen to the things that their political masters force them to say, especially in Serbia.

Q: Do others listen to these bishop-hostages?

A: You should not listen to hostages. Unfortunately, old calendarists do listen to these bishop-hostages and, in search of self-justification for their schisms, quote them. Thus, they deliberately ignore the 99.999% of the Local Church which is solidly Orthodox and with whom they put themselves out of communion. They want black and white situations, everyone else must be black and therefore only they can be white. This is pride and it is also to fall into the divide and rule game of the powers of this world, which want to divide the Church in order to rule it. It is like refusing to be baptized by the disciples because Judas had been a disciple. And so you remain unbaptized, outside the Church, all because of someone else who put himself outside the Church. This is to cut off your nose to spite your face, to deprive yourself because another has deprived himself.

I would add that old calendarism itself is no better in terms of political dependence. I will always remember one of their bishops writing to me six year ago and complaining that I did not support the CIA. He actually said with great pride that some of his best parishioners in the USA work for the CIA! We also recall how the US ambassador in Kiev actually plotted a schism in the Ukraine. This we know because we stood in front of him as he plotted it with a bishop at the Russian Church’s San Francisco Council of 2006. And that is exactly what that bishop then did and he is now in communion with the CIA-supporting old calendarist bishop. It is a small world!

Q: Obviously, the liberal and modernist threat to the Church, with ecumenism, liturgical modernism, intercommunion and so on, is well-known. But is it still a reality?

A: It is a reality, but mainly for old people. Today, for instance, ecumenism is largely dead. This is why old calendarists are always quoting events from the 60s, 70s and 80s. They look to the past when ecumenism was active. Thus, a favourite hate figure of theirs is Patriarch Sergius – but he died in 1944! The dead present no threat. And most of the modernists I can think of are either dead or else in their 70s and 80s. They are very old-fashioned. All we can do is pray for them that they might repent before their end. But even if we see them as our enemies, the Gospel tells us to love our enemies. Here we see that old calendarism lacks love.

Q: Do the old calendarist fractions have points in common with the new calendarist fractions?

A: Yes, they do, and several things. For example, both are old-fashioned, many of their people are elderly. Both are extremely Russophobic. And both the new calendarist and old calendarist movements are utterly split. This is because they are concerned not with the unity of the Church, which comes from following Christ, but with following personal opinions, which are always divisive, precisely because they are personal. They do not understand the importance of the conciliar mind of the Church, which is above opinions, because it follows the Holy Spirit.

Old calendarism in particular wants dogmatic precision in every detail from every individual. This is not how the Church works, the Church is not a totalitarian monolith. For instance, I have been told that there are now 14 old calendarist synods in Greece, all, it seems, hating each other. Often when one of their metropolitans dies, they split again. Many of these synods only have a few dozen communities under them and often the communities themselves are tiny, at most a few dozen. The synods are often dominated by clericalism. And here we should remember the ordinary people who are hoodwinked into following them. These synods have a large turnover of sincere, but naïve neophytes. I am sometimes contacted by such people from this country. They want to leave the sects where they are and come to the Orthodox Church, which they have just discovered. Such ordinary people are not guilty. This is why they are received into the Church by confession and communion.

Q: Why are both new calendarism and old calendarism Russophobic?

A: Out of self-justification. Both denigrate the Russian Church especially because She is old calendar and therefore from their viewpoint a competitor. They need to justify their isolation from Her and desperately want to see scandals and corruption. Thus, they will repeat anti-Church Cold War propaganda against the Russian Church, whatever the origin, atheist or other. Thus, they seize on the most minor scandal, blow it up out of all proportion and generalise it, rather like the anti-clerical media. One priest is bad, therefore all are bad, therefore they cannot be in communion with a whole Local Church. This is self-justification and also Donatism, as the righteous Metr Philaret of New York described old calendarism.

However, the main impression is not so much of Russophobia, nor even of the rejection of episcopal authority, but of the rejection of the people of the Church, the unChurched but recently baptised masses both of the Russian Church and other Local Churches, who are not good enough for them. This is the contempt of the elder brother who rejected the Prodigal Son. It is the refusal to recognise repentance that is characteristic of old calendarism and also new calendarism. That is another thing they have in common – their elitist, esoteric disdain for the masses. It is just another sign of the pride that infects all schism.

Q: To what extent was the Church inside Russia affected by new calendarism, what Russians call renovationism?

A: There was a serious battle against renovationism inside Russia, but it was over by the 1930s. Renovationism simply died out there for lack of support. People knew that it was a Communist trick. However, it did survive far longer in the foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia and in the Paris Jurisdiction, where many of the renovationists went, so intense was their hatred of the Russian Church. Many of the old emigres brought this renovationism, in fact a sort of ‘art nouveau’ pre-Revolutionary decadence, into the emigration with them and preserved it abroad, long after it was dead inside the Soviet Union. So it survived as a curiosity. However, most of its last elderly supporters have died in the last twenty years.

Q: Wasn’t ROCOR, on the other hand, affected by the opposite extreme, old calendarism or traditionalism?

A: Yes. Communism inside Russia created renovationism which the Church there had to defeat. However, during the Cold War Capitalism created anti-Communism. In ROCOR in the USA this took the form of a nationalist right-wing movement. The supporters of this movement were the very ones who put St John on trial in San Francisco fifty years ago. In the 1960s they accepted a Greek old calendarist monastery into the Church. To their horror the old calendarists turned against the hand that had fed them and tried to take over ROCOR.

Realising that they had failed in their takeover bid, in 1986 many of the old calendarists left ROCOR, but their influence lingered on and the 1990s were a battle ground between that influence and the original ROCOR Tradition. The battle was between the Tradition, such as we knew it in the Western European Diocese of ROCOR, the Tradition which had come out of pre-Revolutionary Russia, and that new and alien old calendarist influence. As you know, in the end, the old ROCOR was triumphant. The alien influence reality affected very few, about 5% of the whole, but led them to leaving the Church in the early 2000s, which was tragic for them, but at the same time allowed the restoration of ROCOR’s old spiritual independence and integrity.

Q: How do you try and remain faithful in the middle?

A: Sobriety is the key to this. The left, or new calendarism, and the right, old calendarism, are equally self-exalted. The Centre is not self-exalted at all and remains sober. Both new calendarism (renovationism) and old calendarism (traditionalism) must be avoided because both equally lead to schism. Schism is always caused by a lack of sobriety. We steer our course by the star of Christ, the star of Bethlehem, in other words, by grace.

I remember in 2007, just after the concelebration between Patriarch Alexis and Metropolitan Laurus in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, in which we had all participated with great joy at our unity, two senior ROCOR priests were speaking. One said: ‘Well, we’ve done it’. The other answered, ‘No, father, the grace of God has done it’. And this is exactly the case. The grace of God brings unity in truth (and that is the only real unity, the only unity that exists); the devil brings disunity and untruth.

Q: How do such new calendarist and old calendarist schisms arise from inside the Church?

A: The leaders of the small groups that leave the Church for either extreme are people who have been in difficulty in Church life for decades. But they are tolerated because God tolerates them. Eventually, such people are either healed by the patience shown to them, or else they leave the Church of their own accord.

Q: What lies behind schisms? Why are theological and historical arguments not successful with those who leave? Why can’t the leaders of schism see their error?

A: It is not theology or history that lies behind most schisms, but psychology, that is, personality conflicts. And that is always irrational. Irrational psychology cuts off its nose to spite its face, it resists grace and grace is always rational. For example, seven years ago I predicted that few would return from the Sourozh schism in England, though we would remain open to their return. And, just as predicted, few did come back. Why? Why do tiny minorities, which will clearly die out, prefer occasional services in ‘voluntary catacombs’, in back rooms and sheds, temporary rented premises, to regular services in normal churches? It is because they do not want the Church, they want the inward-looking, sectarian atmosphere of cliques and clubs, of small ponds, where they can be ‘big fish’.

Q: What is the psychology of traditionalist and modernist schisms?

A: I will take one example which I know well – the Sourozh new calendarist schism. This came about from the convert desire to merge Orthodoxy with Anglicanism (the Establishment). This is why the schism was supported at the time by the Establishment Church of England, albeit discreetly, but quite openly by newspapers like The Times and The Daily Telegraph, which support the British Establishment and whose journalists are fed by MI5 and the CIA, just like BBC journalists. However, to wish to merge Orthodoxy with Anglicanism is in fact to state that you remain unconverted to Orthodoxy, under the cloak of culture, hiding behind cultural excuses.

To take a minor detail as an example, they said: ‘Orthodoxy will have to adapt to us because we are English and so, for example, we have milk in our tea even on fast days’. Although this is a very minor detail, it is symptomatic of a far more serious spiritual illness – cultural arrogance, worldliness and nationalism. Thus, I remember that I was contacted at the time by one who complained that I had written that her group practised intercommunion and that was quite untrue. However, I pointed out to her that I had only been quoting from her group’s website which openly boasted that it allowed intercommunion!

As regards traditionalist or old calendarist schisms, they come from convert insecurity, the neophyte’s need to be against other Christians (especially against other Orthodox), rather than for Christ. It is interesting that such groups pride themselves on being ‘converts’. It is strange because we stop being converts once we are integrated, which should happen, at most, within a few years of reception into the Church. For example, the apostles do not speak of themselves as converts. That is unthinkable because they are part of the Church. And this was the same throughout history. Those who are part of the Church are not converts.

Q: Why are so many Anglican converts involved in schisms and hardly any Russians, at least in England?

A: Interestingly, a few Russians are involved, but they are always highly anglicised and want to become part of the Establishment despite their origins. Anglicans are Protestants and they have a very weak sense of the Incarnation. Therefore, for them the Church is just an individual choice, a personal matter, a private opinion, without any collective or social repercussions and so the Church is just a club. In Protestantism individualism is so highly developed that if you do not like the Church where you are, you simply go off and start another one. There is an inability to get on with others, to adapt, to accept and tolerate other opinions in community. That is why there are thousands of Protestant denominations, which to us Orthodox all look the same and indeed are essentially the same.

So the collective, the community, the Church, suffers at the hands of individualism, sectarianism. That is why in England, for example, there are five different small groups of ex-Anglicans who have joined the local dioceses of Orthodox Churches, but they are all split up. They cannot get on with each other or with other Orthodox. The only ex-Anglicans who do get on with each other are those who get on with other Orthodox of other nationalities, who are already integrated into Local Churches and multinational parishes and have forgotten that they were once Anglicans. They are Orthodox.

Q: When will old calendarist and new calendarist schisms end?

A: Only when the Centre has been fully re-established, when we reverse all the decadence of the past 96 years, when we go back to the pre-1917 situation. Thus, old calendarist schisms will exist for as long as the Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian Churches remain officially on the secular calendar for the fixed feasts. Once those Churches have returned to the Church calendar, and they would never have dared leave it before 1917 because the Russian Church would not have allowed it, those schisms will fall apart, only clerical careerists or the ill will be left. As regards new calendarist schisms, they will last for as long as the Centre is not strong enough to quell them, as long as there are conformists whose faith is weak, who swim with the Western tide, who are too weak to stand up to the passing fashions of this world.

Q: If we can slightly move away from this theme, what can we say about the future of diaspora unity between the parishes of the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and the foreign parishes of the Church inside Russian, outside Russia but still not under ROCOR, as they logically and canonically should be?

A: As you say, logic and the canons say they should be, but there is such a thing as economy – a temporary dispensation for pastoral reasons, for the greater benefit. Much patience is needed to implement the 2007 agreement between the two parts of the Russian Church. We knew this at the time. As you know that agreement involved the Church Outside Russia giving up its representations inside Russia and the Church inside Russia giving up its representations outside Russia. However, as the Church Outside Russia had very few and only very recent representations inside Russia, it was easy to give them up. On the other hand, the Church inside Russia had a lot of longstanding representations and property outside Russia – as a result of the Cold War.

Wisely, no timetable was agreed on the issue of transfer of parishes to ROCOR because this is a pastoral issue. This should all happen calmly, as has happened in Australia, without anyone’s feelings being hurt. So what has been happening since the 2007 agreement is that the foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia are being readied for their transfer to the Church Outside Russia – but I would say that this process will take a generation. We are only at the beginning.

Q: How can such a transfer work in terms of practices? For example, ROCOR practises reception of heterodox by baptism, foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia practise reception of heterodox by chrismation?

A: That is untrue. Practices vary in both ROCOR and in the Church inside Russia. For example, in the Western European Diocese of ROCOR, we generally received by chrismation, as was the universal tradition of ROCOR until the 1970s. The priest would offer reception by baptism or chrismation, explaining why the choice was available. We always found that most chose to be received by chrismation. Practices in the Church inside Russia also vary. I think that once all the 825 or so parishes outside Russia are united under ROCOR, this mixed practice will continue according to the pastoral conscience of each priest. This is not a dogmatic issue, but a pastoral one. We all agree that there are no sacraments outside the Church, but approaches vary as regards the sacramental forms that have survived outside the Church and how we deal with them.

Q: You described how foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia were much affected by the renovationism or new calendarism that was brought out of Russia by certain emigres. Is this still a problem?

A: Much less of a problem every year. For instance, I remember someone telling me how when Bishop Elisey, the new Sourozh bishop appointed after the schism there in 2006, first came to England, he visited one of his communities in the provinces. The priest was an ex-Anglican and when Bishop Elisey got up on Sunday morning to serve the liturgy, he was asked by the priest’s wife whether he wanted a cooked breakfast, like her husband, or not. This came as a shock to him, but not to us, who knew exactly what had been going on in Sourozh for decades.

This was typical of the old Sourozh under Metr Antony Bloom and Bp Basil Osborne, where ‘English culture’ was more important than Church culture, where in fact phyletism reigned. They received Anglicans into the Church very quickly, never taught them much about Orthodoxy, ordained them and then never visited them or checked up on them. Cooked breakfasts before communion, just as in the Church of England, were the result. However, now that the Sourozh Diocese has been brought back to the normal practices of the Russian Church, such peculiar situations belong to the past.

Q: What is the main problem of doing missionary work in the West?

A: Most of our work is with immigrant Orthodox from Eastern Europe and it is a matter of Churching people who were baptised in the last few years. So our problems here are exactly the same as elsewhere in the post-Communist Orthodox world.

However, there is a second layer of work, which is with the mass of Western people who have no concept of what the Orthodox Church is. I would say that here our work is in overcoming a barrier of prejudices, what I call the ‘Dawkins Delusion’, which is the modern Western delusion. This is the problem of very primitive Neo-Darwinianism. This is actually irrelevant to those who have never held Protestant fundamentalist beliefs, like the Orthodox. So first of all you have to explain to these people that the Church has never held weird Protestant beliefs, which they are in revolt against, and then you have to explain that this is why we have no need to revolt against beliefs which we have never had anyway. This makes their Neo-Darwinianism irrelevant. In Catholic countries it is much the same story, but there they are in revolt against Papism. So the problem comes in explaining that we are not anti-Papist like them because we have never been Papist. It is irrelevant to us

Q: Do you not work to convert Anglicans, Protestants and Catholics?

A: First of all, in today’s West there are very few of those and they are mainly very elderly. We do not proselytise among them. We tend to find that those who have actually believed in Protestantism or Catholicism all their lives never become Orthodox. They are unable to learn to think and act as Orthodox. Of course, if they come to us, having understood the errors of what they have been taught, that is a different matter. But we do not proselytise. We wait for the grace of God to touch them. We do not work by human artifice. They must become natural, integrated Orthodox.

On Being in Communion and Ecumenism

Question:

Thank you dear father for the quick response.

What do you think, is it time to leave communion with Constantinople because of the heresy of ecumenism? This is my personal opinion, but I admit I may be wrong… I am looking for answers to my questions about the consequences of communion with bishops who consider ecumenism as a path to the union of all Non-Orthodox with Orthodox.
Look at Patriarch Bartholomew’s meeting with a New York rabbi:

http://www.patriarchate.org/documents/2009-parkeastsynagogue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN5TFb9fzvo (Preview)

…But the Jews still do not confess Christ!

I have also been a little bit confused when I saw a video with the then Metropolitan Kyrill in Canberra at the WCC in 1991:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTq7u0CEj6U (Preview)

“The World Council of Churches is the cradle of the One Church of the future… it is our common home”, he said, “and we bear a special responsibility for its destiny.”

Could you help me to understand these things?

X

Answer:

Dear X,

I now understand your confusion. There are two points to make here:

1. We do not leave a whole Patriarchate just because a few individuals in it speak heresy. Can you imagine falling out of communion with the fathers of Mt Athos and the many excellent and faithful laypeople and clergy in Constantinople just because of a few heretical, politically-appointed individuals? Fr Paisios on Mt Athos stayed in communion with that Patriarchate. So should we too.

Forgive me, here I think you do not understand what the phrase ‘to be in communion with’ means. What does it mean to be in communion? For example, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is in communion with ROCOR, but I have never celebrated on the new calendar and no heretic has ever celebrated in my Church. This is because when new calendar priests come to our churches to concelebrate, they immediately have to change to the old calendar (though the new calendar is not a heresy, just a mistake) and if ever a heretic came to our church, I would not invite him to celebrate. This is something I practise, since we know a nearby priest who is a heretic, giving communion to heterodox. (Of course he is not part of the Russian Church (or of Constantinople) and is totally isolated from all other Orthodox – basically because he has excommunicated himself). To be in communion does not mean that we concelebrate with heretics and they concelebrate with us. To be in communion means that we are in communion with other Orthodox, who can be found in abundance in every Local Church, and that they are in communion with us. In any case, heretical individuals do not come to our churches and we do not go to their churches to concelebrate and they do not invite us. So in fact those individuals have already cut themselves off from communion with us and the rest of the Church. They have already excommunicated themselves.

2. 22 years ago, in 1991, the hierarchy of the Patriarchal part of the Russian Church was still under the control of the Communist Party which had imposed ecumenism on it in the 1960s. Its hierarchy was therefore not in communion with the free ROCOR. It is true that the then Metr Kyrill did make this statement about the WCC in Canberra. Since then, however, he has become free and he has renounced this heretical teaching several times, for example, in 2000 when he accepted the statement called the Social Concept of the Church at the first free Council of the Patriarchal Church, again in, I think, 2004, when the Patriarchal hierarchy repented publicly before ROCOR for falling under the influence of Communism and making invalid political statements, and again in 2008 when Metr Kyrill openly called Non-Orthodox ‘heretics’ at a speech at the Trinity St Sergius Lavra. The Patriarchal administration today publicly rejects all prayers with heretics, in tune with the masses of bishops, priests and people, and Patriarch Kyrill today is a free man who is openly Orthodox, without any of the old compromises of the past.

In other words, we must allow for repentance. Since God allows for repentance, so must we, especially since we too are imperfect sinners, needing repentance ourselves. It is no good quoting statements from 22 years ago made by people who were then slaves of an atheist State, in order to try and incriminate them, if they have repented since then. And this is exactly the case. We do not live in the past, but in the present and we look forward to the future.

Similarly, it is useless quoting Patriarch Bartholomew, since he is the slave of the Turkish State (an American puppet) and of the American State Department. This took over the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1948, deposing the last legitimate Patriarch, Patr Maximos, flying in their American puppet on the US Presidential jet to replace him, and funding it ever since. Simply, Patr Bartholomew is not free, so of course he makes heretical statements as a political appointee. What he actually believes we do not know, he is not free – and that is why we pray for him, just as we pray for all, including all our enemies. Indeed, this is how we recognise sects – they refuse to pray for the people they see as their enemies, which is against the Gospel. After all we all pray for the government authorities which rule the country where we live, whether we agree with them or not, for they may be atheist, homosexual or Muslim. This is because we want God to influence them so that they avoid making mistakes and acting against the Faith.

May God keep you in His Church!

Fr Andrew

Syria: A Watershed

It is now clear that the brutal war in Syria has become a watershed in twenty-first century history. 2013 is becoming an acid test, just like the events of 1913 in twentieth-century history. Thus, the elites of some countries have adopted a most hostile view towards the Syrian government and supported the terrorists; others, however, have supported the government and denied the terrorists. The same is true of all countries and institutions, from South Africa to the Vatican, from China to NATO, from Sweden to the Establishment BBC. More relevantly to us, the leaderships of various Local Orthodox Churches have also had to define their attitudes towards Syria and the merciless war there.

For example, the Arab-speaking Antiochian Orthodox Church is now drawing ever closer to the Russian Orthodox Church as a result of the Syrian crisis. On the other hand, there is the deafening silence of the US-backed Patriarchate of Constantinople – like the city of Antioch, the Patriarchate of Constantinople is in Turkey, the last remnant of the Ottoman Empire, and so is not free. Even more shocking are the anti-Christian and Russophobic criticisms of Russia by members of the immature OCA group is North America. However, unlike these, most Local Orthodox Churches are now realising that they have only one true friend – the Russian Church. They are leaning towards us and away from their pro-Western regimes.

As for the two parts of the Russian Church, the small Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and the enormous Church Inside Russia (which we may here call ROCIR) are also drawing together. We have come a long way from our reconciliation of 2007. Since 2007 ROCOR has drawn closer to the Church Inside Russia, losing its politicised, Russophobic elements, whereas ROCIR in turn has been losing its old Soviet tinges. The two parts have been coming together, recognising how much we have in common. The same is true of individuals. Thus, one notable personality inside Russia, previously a pro-Western critic of the Tradition of his Church, has intelligently made a 180 degree turn and now fully supports his own Church.

It is indeed time to come together. A great question is now facing all the Local Orthodox Churches and, for that matter, all conscious Orthodox: whose side are we on? Previously, it was possible to dither and hesitate, to put off. Previously, it was possible to ‘be open’ and not take sides. But the opportunity for indecision is now rapidly coming to an end. The fact is that all who have not yet decided will have to make a decision – and soon. The Western elites have opted for the suicidal devaluation of marriage and at the same time support for Islamic terrorism. What do we do? Are we on the side of the Russian Church and Jerusalem – or are we on the side of the Western elites and Sodom?

Orthodox Unity and the March of Western Decivilisation

Western Civilisation? An excellent idea.

Gandhi

Today in Russia, tomorrow in America.

Hieromonk Seraphim Rose

Introduction

At the Fourth All-Diaspora Russian Orthodox Council in San Francisco in 2006 the Church Outside Russia took the near-unanimous decision to enter into canonical communion with the Church inside Russia. Thus would be ended some eighty years of parallel existence for the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, which had been separated by the interfering atheist persecution by the Soviet State of the Church inside Russia. The reason for the decision was the long-prayed for liberation of the Church inside Russia from atheism, as began to be manifested at the miraculous Jubilee Council in 2000. Since 2006, both parts of the Church have co-operated together as a common bastion against the forces of this world. And since 2006 the need for this bastion has become ever more obvious and important, as we can see from the example below.

Decivilisation

Even as recently as 2006 no-one foresaw that the Western world would in 2013 be legitimising homosexual ‘marriage’. Countries that only a few years ago decriminalised homosexuality now proclaim that marriage, a Latin word which means ‘taking a husband’, is possible between two men or two women, between people of the same sex. Not only have fourteen countries now instituted same-sex ‘marriage’, so redefining marriage, but they are also bullying other countries into doing the same. Insulting intolerance and arrogance is such that Western secularism is attempting to blackmail, intimidate and humiliate other cultures, especially those of the Russian Federation, Eastern Europe and Africa, into accepting its policies. These in fact censor free speech and decivilise spiritually superior civilisations, cultures with more Christian content than secularist Western culture.

The Orthodox attitude to homosexuality is defined, like everything else, by the words of the Gospel: ‘For there are some eunuchs, who were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, who were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’ (Matt. 19, 12). In other words there are those very few who through genetic accident are (homosexual and so) called to be celibate, those who through psychological conditioning by others or by Western social conditioning and fashion since the 1960s are (homosexual and so) called to be celibate, and those who through monastic vocation are celibate. It is clear that homosexuality is an illness or handicap that deserves compassion, not propaganda. Here the popular law of the Russian Federation against propaganda in favour of homosexuality among minors merely reflects the Gospel.

Homosexuals who seek salvation and so strive to be celibate against all temptations are welcomed in the Church, just as heterosexuals who also seek salvation and so strive to be celibate against all temptations. Knowing the power of human sexual energy and its potential destructiveness, the Church has from the beginning been constructive and tried to channel heterosexuality into family life, thus creating marriage, and tried to channel homosexuality into friendship, thus creating community. It is most significant that ever since the 1960s, collapsing Western societies have denigrated and destroyed both family life and friendship, suicidally creating broken homes and enmity. Until that period, 99.9% of people lived without homosexual temptations and with friendship. The collapse of family life, marriage, friendship and community are the consequences of Western Decivilisation.

The root of the problem is in the abnormal and deChristianising social changes accepted by Western societies over the last fifty years. Today countries that were protected from that period’s suicidal follies do not suffer as collapsing Western societies do. The Western world is now trying to spread the self-justifying propaganda that results from its illness and infect others with it, forcing spiritually healthier cultures to accept its contaminating disease. This is like the decivilising Western disease of drug-taking or abortion (3,000 killed per day in the USA, 500 killed per day in the UK), which also began in the same period. Today’s phase of aggressive Decivilisation was unforeseen even in 2006, in the same way as no-one foresaw then that the Western world was about to support Islamist terrorists and destabilise Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, the Lebanon and Egypt, with millions of victims.

Conclusion

In 2006 no-one foresaw that Western secularism would embark on a campaign of further destabilisation of marriage, spreading aggressive propaganda in favour of homosexuality. If we had foreseen this, the urge for Russian Orthodox unity would have been even stronger then. Given the increasing tempo of Western Decivilisation, it is now clear that if Orthodox Christians are to keep their integrity in the Western world, and that world now includes weaker Orthodox countries like Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria bribed into joining the homosexualised EU, as well as the long ago Westernised Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch, we Orthodox of all nationalities, not just Russian, Serbian and Georgian, have to work together with the moral, political and spiritual protection offered by the Russian Federation and its Orthodox Civilisation in order to counter Western Decivilisation.

To Be or Not To Be: The English Disease

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.

The well-known soliloquy from Shakespeare’s longest play and most famous tragedy, Hamlet, beginning, ‘To be or not to be…’ is much more than the meanderings of a suicidal mind, an individualist opposed to society, who wonders about whether life is worth the living. These words appeared on the cusp of a new century, in about 1600. This was the time when England was turning its back on its rural, sacramental, collective, Catholic past and looking towards an urban, vacuous, individualistic, Puritanical future, which would bring bloody civil war, regicide, foreign invasion and ultimately an industrial future. In Hamlet’s words, all England was wondering about being and not being.

This national trauma, inaugurated by the blood-soaked Tudors and their land grab from the monasteries and their care for the poor, has marked England ever since. Shakespeare’s eloquent words have immortalised the dilemma, the quandary of not being sure what to do, of which path to take, of pure indecisiveness. Hamlet questions the meaning of life and whether or not it is worthwhile to live when life contains so many hardships. He comes to the conclusion that the main reason people stay alive is due to a fear of death and uncertainty at what lies beyond life. Here we see the lack of faith which came about as a result of the Reformation which had shaken fundamental beliefs.

Thus, there is no uncertainty about what lies beyond death for the believer. Above all, however, there is the falsity of the question. Life or death, to be or not to be, is not a choice. There can be no choice here, no doubt. Unfortunately, this false choice, between right and wrong, reality and illusion, heaven and hell, is the one that has haunted English history since Shakespeare’s time. Thus, a whole British Empire was built on compromises between right and wrong. A whole foreign policy and a whole home policy were built on the unprincipled hypocrisy of compromise. There are even those who cannot decide between the ‘choice’ of the integral Church of God and some false ‘Christianity’…..

The Next Pope: An Orthodox Perspective

Presumably, the next Pope will be elected from among the 115 cardinals now in conclave in Rome. Of course, it is also possible that they could break with some 750 years of custom and elect one who is outside their college. That would be acceptable, although highly surprising. As regards who will be elected, nobody knows and it is a waste of time speculating. Obviously, Orthodox will not be consulted about the election, but we might think what general type of man we would like to be elected.

Firstly, we would like to see a man of faith, and not some swim-with-the-secular-tide conformist. This might suggest an African, or at least someone who is not from Europe. Normally, a man of faith would automatically have some sort of charisma, or presence, which he could express and communicate – that is essential. Thus, the future Pope should not look like an elderly and dreary Vatican bureaucrat, as so many cardinals appear to.

Secondly, it is clear that Roman Catholicism needs to be managed, which rather excludes the ivory tower intellectual, academic, teacher type, represented by the last Pope. However, a manager does not at all mean that the next Pope should be an accountant/administrator with an MBA. That would be a disaster. What is needed is someone who knows how to delegate the necessary management to the right people, so that he is left to perform his main task – praying.

Thirdly, Roman Catholicism surely needs someone who can distinguish between the ‘primaries’ of the Faith and the ‘secondaries’. The primaries are the Church Tradition, teachings established in the First Millennium, the secondaries are those inessential customs that replaced primaries, or else were added on to it, in the Second Millennium. The primaries include all the dogmas and teachings of the fourth century Creed, purified from the filioque deformation first confessed in Rome in 1014, nearly 1,000 years ago. They also include a sacramental attitude to the world, a male priesthood and the Biblical, Apostolic and Patristic attitude to homosexuality.

The secondaries include the introduction of such temporary and pernicious customs as priestly celibacy, which has helped to lead to sexual perversion, or the dogmatic attitude to contraception that makes almost all married Catholics into hypocrites. This also means putting back what has been taken away in the Second Millennium, restoring the original understanding of the Holy Spirit, the Mother of God, the Saints, holiness, the Church as the image of the Holy Trinity, unity in diversity, the role of the Local Church and the episcopate, the sense of the mystical and the sacred.

The above three qualities, a prayerful faith communicated through charisma, the ability to delegate management to the right people, and the ability to return to the essentials of the Christian Faith, rid of the deformations of the Second Millennium, may not be found in any of the 115 cardinals. In that case, it would be time to look outside their college. The right choice is vital – because Roman Catholicism now faces a test of survival. Either it can go the whole way and become fully secularised like most of the Protestant world, as it threatens to do, or else it can return through repentance to the Church and Orthodoxy, which it so short-sightedly abandoned a whole millennium ago. It is make or break time. May God’s will be done.

The Three Temptations of the Russian Church Diaspora

Introduction

The emigration of Russian Orthodox, for political or for economic reasons, has brought temptations, not of theology, but of psychology. All these temptations are sectarian in nature because they result from a separation from the Centre. Therefore, all these temptations test spiritual maturity. Although these temptations, three in number, tend to come in generational order, this is not always the case. They can come in any order, or even all together, and a generation in this context may not represent 25 years, but just a few years or on the other hand very many years. Moreover, whether the temptations come from the left side or from the right side, they still lead to the same negative spiritual consequences if they are not resisted, which they can of course be.

Temptation One

The first temptation, found particularly among the first generation of emigration, is to retreat into a self-created ghetto and narrow nationalism, for example never learning the local language and entirely rejecting the local culture. This is a self-defence reflex, a reaction to an indifferent or even hostile environment. Unable or unwilling to adapt, there is no ability or desire to understand the foreign culture, let alone to accept the best of it, let alone to shine the light of Orthodoxy before it in a way that makes it accessible to it.

However, in a ghetto, it is all too easy to lose the big picture, to lose all sense of catholicity. Narrow nationalism, inward-looking provincialism and self-destructive parochialism may take over from the right side. However, the left side can lead to the creation of communities which sideline themselves into personality cults and the stagnant and obscure meanders of personal agendas and complexes, equally far from the mainstream. This introversion is equally self-destructive. The result from either side is the same, for ghettos always die out.

Temptation Two

The second temptation, found particularly among the second generation of emigration, is to conform to Non-Orthodox life, for example submitting to local politics or values, whether of left or right. This is a result of the instinct for survival. Out of an inferiority complex, and also as a reaction to the closed communities of the parental first generation, the second generation may, artificially, become ‘more local than the local’. This can even mean a readiness to enter into treacherous combat against their own parents’ country of origin.

An example from the right side is Russian emigres who during the Cold War joined Western Secret services, MI6 or the CIA, and then from Sovietophobia fell into Russophobia, naively swallowing the Western democracy and freedom myth. An example from the left side is that of emigres who protestantise Orthodoxy when they live in a Protestant culture, like the USA or the UK, and Catholicise (Uniatise) Orthodoxy when they live in a Catholic culture, like France or Italy.

Temptation Three

The third temptation, found particularly among the third generation of emigration, is self-justification, for example falling into a superiority complex with regard to the country of origin of the grandparents. This is a result of isolationism and ignorance of the present conditions in the country of origin and a conformist dependence on the country of residence. Out of pride, often linked to worldly success and self-satisfaction in the country adopted, comes an illusion of complacent superiority and self-righteousness.

The pride of self-justification leads to phariseeism of both the left and the right sides. On the left side, we find the aloofness of those who put themselves above both the local culture and the culture of origin and who stand in judgment above them both; know-it-alls, who have ‘nothing to learn’, wanting to teach all and despising all. On the right side, we find the pride of those who see themselves as pure, ‘we have done nothing wrong’, ‘we do not have anything to repent for’, ‘we will not pollute ourselves by mixing with others’.

Conclusion

The spiritual results of all three temptations are always negative and restricting. Pride always leads to self-justification, the illusion that there is nothing to repent for. And when there is nothing to repent for, there is nothing to hope for, hence negativity and restriction, whether the pride comes from the left side or the right side. It is possible to avoid all three layers of spiritual impurity – to fall into temptation is not inevitable. They can all be resisted and indeed often have been. All three temptations and the spiritual impurity that causes them can be overcome by showing patience and waiting for the Mother-Church to become free and then returning to it. Fortunately, the majority of the Russian Church Diaspora witnesses to this, overcoming these temptations through spiritual maturity and balance.