Category Archives: Constantinople

Paris – Berlin – Saint Petersburg?

War rages in Europe. Thousands are dead. Financed by Washington and supported by its zombie media, Kiev junta troops, a ragbag of Uniats, schismatics, released criminals and foreign mercenaries, that is, all who have not fled the US-run Ukraine for freedom, deserted or dodged the draft, are surrendering and handing over yet more arms to the ever stronger freedom fighters of the Ukrainian people. Having shot down a civilian Malaysian Airlines plane and murdered everyone on board, the desperate Satanists from Kiev have been using cluster bombs against the civilian population since at least October. Such are the atrocities of the CIA-installed Neo-Nazi junta against the people of the Ukraine in their bid for freedom.

Meanwhile, in Washington itself, another ridiculous political puppet, the married ‘Patriarch of Kiev’, Filaret Denisenko, awards a medal to the Christ-hating Senator McCain and begs for arms to slaughter the Ukrainian people. Denisenkos’s heart is twisted by Ukrainian nationalist hatred and jealousy at not being elected Patriarch of the Russian Church in 1990 He pleads with the State Department to get his absurd little ‘church’ recognized by the US-run Phanar bureaucrats in Istanbul. It is not going to happen, for that would destroy the last shreds of legitimacy of the Phanar, already rejected by the vast majority of Orthodox, including those who count within its own little jurisdiction, the monks of Mt Athos.

While Kerry warmongers with the CIA junta in Kiev, Merkel and Hollande rush to Moscow to sue for peace in the Ukraine. Cameron is of course absent – as another of Washington’s warmongering puppets he will be useless in any search for peace. ‘Old Europe’, to use the contemptuous American term for those whom it could not bribe or browbeat into supporting its genocide in Iraq 12 years ago, is begging Russia to save the collapsing and bankrupt provincial Ukraine. Ironically, the situation there was the creation of the absurd EU imperialistic dream of forcing all of Europe to join the EU Fourth Reich and of the US coup d’etat in Kiev a year ago, which overthrew the legitimate democratic government.

The alternative to a peace plan agreed to at the last moment by the penitent Merkel and Hollande in conjunction with Russia (80% of the inhabitants of the Ukraine are Russian-speaking and of Russian descent) is yet more US arms and yet another US-organized bloodbath and chaos. Exactly as the US have achieved everywhere else that they have invaded in the world, from Latin America to Vietnam, from Africa to the Middle East. But practically, what interest does Russia have in the Ukraine, once the breadbasket of Europe and the most prosperous republic of the Soviet Union, in what has now become the basket case and poorest country in Europe, torn apart by a civil war? Practically, what can be done?

From the beginning, it was clear that if the artificial amalgam of the recently-invented ‘Ukraine’ – originally thought up by the Austro-Hungarian bureaucrats just over a century ago in order to divide and rule that part of their Empire, and since added to by Soviet bureaucrats for the same reason – is to survive, it must become a federal State with wide autonomy for its many different peoples and territories. However, the billionaire arms dealer Poroshenko (real name, Waltzman), whom Washington’s public relations experts set up as President of the Ukraine last year, specifically rejected this common sense solution – no doubt on orders from his US paymasters, who have no idea of history or geography.

Unless Poroshenko, who made his fortune by selling off the arms of the Ukrainian armed forces to the Third World, repents, logically there is only one solution: for the Ukraine to be dismantled, just like Europe’s other artificial conglomerates, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and perhaps one day, the UK, Spain and Germany (the annexation of East Germany by the conglomerate of West Germany caused many of the contemporary problems in Europe, since it led directly to the foolishness of the euro). Very simply, the southern and eastern half of the ‘Ukraine’, together with the Crimea, can once more become a happy and autonomous republic in the Russian Federation, Novorossiya, as it was until the Communists annexed it.

As for parts of the south-west, they can return to Romania and Hungary; Carpatho-Russia (‘Transcarpathia’ to the imperialists and secret police in Kiev) can return to Slovakia or even Hungary, or else can become a separate republic within the Russian Federation; parts of the Uniat west, once denazified, can return to Poland; and the rump that is left can either return to being Malorossiya (Little Russia – its historical name) or else can retain the recently invented name of ‘the Ukraine’, remaining an independent through corrupt and bankrupt republic. In 25-50 years this could be absorbed into the German-run EU (if that still exists by then), or more realistically and quickly join the Eurasian Economic Union, on a par with Belarus.

One of the great ‘what ifs’ of history is what would have happened if the Paris-Berlin-Saint Petersburg axis had not been broken in 1914. Surely then, the nations of Europe would have resisted the masonic plot to set it at war and destroy its monarchies, which some believe to have been directed by certain forces in London. Of course, it was not to be, and Berlin, gripped by power lust, launched its Great War. Could Berlin today, run by one from East Germany where President Putin from Saint Petersburg also once lived, and supported by its French colony, not be able to act independently from Washington (which today plays the role that London played in 1914) and broker peace in the troubled Ukrainian provinces?

If Europe could act together as Europe, scrapping the imperialist US Cold War creations of the EU and NATO, it could unite in a real Community of Sovereign Nations, including the Russian Federation. A Community of Nations from the Pacific to the Atlantic, a united Eurasian Economic Union, could become reality. The Fascist bribery and euro, imposed from Brussels, could cease. The UK could be saved from its status as a neocon vassal in Europe. Many nations, from Catalonia to Wallonia and Scotland could at last be freed from centralization. However, none of this is possible if the German and French leaders continue to reject the Christian roots of Europe and wander in the lost paths of atheism, just as they did in 1914.

The Long Path to Restoration

As a result of the atheist and materialist philosophies which came out of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ (in truth, ‘Endarkenment’), most of the 20th century was wasted. The appalling human and material waste took place in huge and extremely costly genocidal wars between rival European imperialisms and then between Capitalist atheism and Communist atheism. These conflicts reached their apogee in the Second World War between neo-pagan Nazism and neo-pagan Communism, between rival imperialisms in North Africa and the Pacific with nuclear holocaust and then in the stand-off and proxy conflicts between East and West in the Cold War, with its potential to obliterate all humanity in MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

At that time the Church and the last faithful Christians, representing the only Third Way between these rival neo-paganisms, were squeezed and oppressed between Communist atheism and Capitalist atheism. The former ideology held captive the larger Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe, most notably the Patriarchate of Moscow, the latter ideology held captive the smaller Greek-speaking Orthodox Churches, most notably the tiny Patriarchate of Constantinople. Apart from the millions of martyrs of whom the world was not worthy, there were few who were free, but they included those who have come to be recognized as great saints, like St Nicholas of Zhicha, St John of Shanghai and St Justin of Chelije and St Paisius of Athos.

After the fall of Soviet atheism at the very end of 1991, Capitalist atheism stood triumphant and sought to globalize its imperialism unchallenged, seeking the world hegemony necessary to prepare for the enthronement and coming reign of Antichrist. Having defeated Communism, in its triumphalism it considered that now only the Islamic world needed to be crushed for the final victory of Zionism. However, the last faithful Christians in the various Local Orthodox Churches did not lose hope. Encouraged and inspired by the examples of the New Martyrs and Confessors throughout the Orthodox world, a turning-point came in 2007 with the long-awaited reuniting of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, the capital of the Russian Federation.

Under the influence of the Church of All the Russias, the world’s largest and most multinational Local Church, the citizens of the Russian Federation have become conscious of the situation and have in the last few years been choosing sides. Some mainly older people, with a twisted nostalgia for the mass murderers Lenin and Stalin, look for their country to become a Soviet Union 2 and so fall back into atheist persecution of the spiritual and fail once more. Others, so-called ‘liberals’, want the Russian Federation to abandon its millennial identity and become a Western vassal-state of atheist neocons and traitors and so fall into the same spiritual impurity, selfish exploitation, consumerist self-indulgence and inevitable failure as the Western world.

However, ever more citizens in the Russian Federation are looking to the Third Way, the path of repentance and return to its historic identity and destiny. This is the path of becoming once more the Third Rome, the Christian Empire, the bulwark and centre of the whole Church and all the spiritual forces in the world, the centre of Resistance to Antichrist, Who has made the West into his blinded pawn. Currently a Satanic war against the Church is being waged – and we should make no mistake – this is the Third World War. Amid the catastrophes in Syria, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova and the bloody, anti-Ukrainian NATO puppet-show in Kiev come the words of a Metropolitan of the Patriarchate of Antioch.

On 1 February, the sixth anniversary of the enthronement of His Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russias, the representative of the Patriarchate of Antioch in Russia, Metropolitan Niphon of Philippopolis, was present at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, built and then rebuilt to commemorate the victory over Western atheism. He said: ‘The meaning of today’s feast for the Orthodox world is in the care of Your Holiness for the unity of Universal Orthodoxy. Your open-ended dialogue during Your Patriarchal visits to the ancient Patriarchates emphasizes a Pan-Orthodox response to today’s challenges, in which religion is being squeezed out of human life and moral values are being subjected to radical revision’.

After the Liturgy on that day, at a meal in honour of the Patriarch at the Cathedral, surrounded by dignitaries, the Arab Orthodox Metropolitan, representing a land where people still speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ, spoke. He asserted that the Patriarch’s activities resounded throughout the world and witnessed to the fact that his visits outside Russia were deeply significant for the various Local Churches and their peoples. He added: ‘Seeing, sensing and living Your care for the strengthening of the unity of all Orthodox and Universal Orthodoxy we, the representatives of the Orthodox Churches at Your throne, are witnesses that the day of Your enthronement as Patriarch of Moscow became an epoch-making event and great feast’.

Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence (January-February 2015)

Q: Some consider that the Orthodox world was very weak in the 20th century. Would you agree?

A: 20th century Orthodoxy produced more martyrs than any other century, as well as a great many confessors, so I do not see how you can call the 20th century Orthodox world ‘weak’.

Q: But what about the betrayals of the Faith by certain bishops and even patriarchs in the 20th century?

A: This existed, but we get what we deserve. If we were real Orthodox, we would be strong and so would all our bishops be strong, but we are nominal and therefore decadent Orthodox. The whole problem is not with others, but with ourselves. The Church is us. To think otherwise is an unChristian path which leads directly to the sect. We find fault with ourselves, not with others. Hate the sin, but love the sinner. Only the Non-Orthodox-minded hate sinners and, in so doing, love the sin. We Orthodox know that all of us are sinners, even if some perhaps more than others, we know that all of us are the victims of Satan and therefore we should feel more solidarity with one another, knowing that we have only one common enemy, not each other, but Satan and Satan alone. ‘Bear one another’s burdens’, as the Apostle says.

Q: What about the historic injustices that the Orthodox world has suffered, the sack of Constantinople in 1204, the many Western invasions of Russia? Did they not weaken the Orthodox world too?

A: It is true that there have been many historic injustices and betrayals of the Church by the West which wanted to substitute itself for the Church.

Just in the second millennium, there were the invasion and occupation of England in 1066, the pillage of Constantinople in 1204 which led to its fall in 1453, the invasion of Russia by the Teutonic Knights in the 13th century, by the Poles in the 17th century and then by the Europeans under Napoleon in 1812, the 19th century imposition of German princes on Greece and Bulgaria, the Western invasion of the Crimea and the invasion and occupation of Cyprus by the British.

In the 20th century there were the invasions of Serbia and Russia by the Central Powers in 1914, the Western-organized Russian Revolution in 1917, the invasions by Germany and its allies of several parts of the Orthodox world in 1940-41, the CIA-installed, banana-republic colonels’ regime in Greece in the 1960s-70s, the Western genocide in Serbia in the 1990s, the EU colonization of Orthodox Eastern Europe and today the bloodthirsty Western puppet regime in Kiev. However, we should not make excuses out of these historic injustices that our civilization has suffered. The source of all these historical injustices is in our own decadence. If we had been faithful, these injustices would never have occurred.

Q: So much for the past and today. Do you think that the 21st century overall will be positive or negative for the Orthodox world?

A: Who am I to answer such a question? It is not yet clear which way the Christian Church, that is, the Orthodox world, is going. On the one hand, there are signs of hope, the renewal of monastic life on Mt Athos since the 1960s, the fall of atheism in Eastern Europe and Russia since 1989, the spread of Orthodoxy worldwide. On the other hand, there is much that is profoundly decadent and a cause for pessimism. The President of Estonia is an American, the new President of Romania is a German, there are American-appointed Non-Ukrainian ministers in the Ukraine, the President of Montenegro is an EU puppet etc. However, the Orthodox people can resist the EU/US imposed Establishment and choose freedom, as we have just seen in Greece, though of course the leaders who choose freedom usually get assassinated.

Q: By ‘much that is profoundly decadent’ are you also thinking of corruption? For example, the political, business, banking, police and justice systems in Romania, Greece, the Ukraine or Russia and so on are steeped in corruption and bribe-taking, even more than in countries like Italy, Spain and France. Why is there so much corruption in Orthodox countries, why are Orthodox so corrupt?

A: First of all, today there is, sadly, no such thing as ‘an Orthodox country’. There are only ex-Orthodox countries or, optimistically speaking, ‘pre-Orthodox countries’, which we hope will become Orthodox countries again. Secondly, Orthodox are not corrupt, only ex-Orthodox are corrupt. Our Orthodox Faith is everything. Destroy it and you destroy the source of all our morality and our whole political, social and economic system. We have only one ideal – Orthodoxy, the Church. Take that away from us and the corrupting passions of this world rule.

The West has never understood that. It thinks that if you destroy someone else’s civilization, then you can almost automatically make it into part of Western ‘civilization’. That is the greatest of illusions. If you destroy, you destroy. Full stop. Western ‘civilization’ does not work outside the Western world. When the West destroys someone else’s civilization in the name of ‘freedom and democracy’ by bombing it back to the Stone Age, all it produces is the Stone Age, not Western ‘civilization’.

That is why after the Western coup d’etat in 1917, the Russian Empire became a corrupt mafia regime of criminals and bandits, the Soviet Union, created by the West. We Orthodox have no other values, no other source of morality, justice and honesty than our Faith. In the Christian Church, the Orthodox world, we only have the Church. It is all or nothing for us. Thus, the corruption in Greece, when the elite bankrupted the nation and the people after the imposition of the euro, exists because the elite is not Orthodox. He who is not Orthodox in a once Orthodox country is corrupt. The same is true of Romania, Russia, Bulgaria and so on.

In the West it is different. In the West, at least in the part that has Protestant culture, there is an elaborate half-way house between the Church and corruption, a set of legalistic and humanistic balances and checks, ultimately Christian in origin, which are the substitute for the fullness of Orthodoxy. Having said that, the West is still corrupt. The EU cannot even be audited. In England your career will never go very far if you are not a mason or at least a member of some paramasonic club like the Rotarians. And as an Italian told me decades ago: ‘In England you have taxes, in Italy we have bribes. It is the same thing – payment for a protection racket; it is just that in England the protection racket is State-run, in Italy it is private’.

Q: Has the decadence in what you call ‘ex-Orthodox countries’ or ‘pre-Orthodox countries’ affected the Diaspora?

A: That decadence has affected us profoundly. Quite simply, it has made the foundation of new Local Churches in the Diaspora impossible because the necessary conditions for their establishment have not been in place in the homelands, where the leaders of the Local Churches were all politically enslaved and so spiritually compromised. No new Local Church can be built on spiritual compromise.

As regards the Diaspora itself, it has been unable to do anything alone because it lacks the spiritual level. To have a spiritual level implies having monastic foundations, which the refugees, political or economic, who formed the Diaspora have also largely lacked. In other words, even regardless of the captivity of all the Local Churches in the homelands, the Diaspora has not been spiritually mature enough to form new Local Churches.

Q: What do you mean by spiritual maturity?

A: Spiritual maturity is the spiritual growth that comes from suffering. This, incidentally, is why modern Western societies, spoilt by superficial consumerism, are so infantile, so immature. The majority in them do not know suffering.

Q: Can you give examples of this spiritual immaturity in the Church context?

A: We have the example of the OCA (Orthodox Church in America), which was granted a disputed autocephaly by the Patriarchate of Moscow at a time when it was in Soviet captivity. Nearly fifty years after the OCA received this disputed autocephaly, it is still riven by sectarian, spiritually immature, politically-minded, modernistic factions. They ignore and even despise and deny the two spiritual roots of the OCA, of American Rus in Alaska and of Carpatho-Rus in Pennsylvania, that is, of two strands of the Russian Orthodox Tradition, and want to substitute some kind of superficial, compromising, ephemeral, Protestant American cultural customs for those roots. It is like replacing the hymnography of Orthodox Christmas with ‘Jingle Bells’ (I quote from the practice of one ‘Orthodox’ parish of converts in California) or a fine French wine with Coca-Cola (I paraphrase the words of a well-known and more traditional OCA bishop from the past).

To be fair to OCA laypeople, many or most of whom reject these extremist factions and their modernism, we have to mention the problem of hundreds of former members of the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR). Also spiritually immature and politically-minded and ignorant of or rejecting the traditional practices and spiritual roots of the Church Outside Russia which were obvious before the mid-1960s, they tried to innovate and, on finally failing, abandoned ROCOR for various extra-ecclesial sects. This happened over a period of two decades between 1986 and 2007 before the reconciliation of ROCOR and the Church inside Russia. (In the same way, some renovationist intellectuals also left the Church inside Russia before its reconciliation with ROCOR, since they could not accept the reality of Church life). Extremists of any type cannot abide unity and reality and always fall for fantasies and sectarian mentalities

Q: Who were these renovationists in the Church inside Russia who left? I thought renovationism in Russia had been defeated in the 1920s and 1930s.

A: Yes, it was very much defeated, but only inside Russia. I meant the sectarian renovationism in foreign parishes in the jurisdiction of the Church inside Russia. This had been allowed to develop and was still preventing unity and reconciliation between the two parts of the Russian Church after the Jubilee Council in 2000.

Q: What conditions would you say need to be in place for any legitimate autocephaly in the Diaspora

A: There are two conditions, one concerning the Diaspora, the other concerning the Local Churches involved. 1. Freedom from spiritual compromise in the Diaspora, that is, the consciousness among a sufficient number (I mean at least 10,000s, not a few hundred) of rooted and mature Orthodox in the Diaspora that they need status as a new Local Church through autocephaly. 2. Freedom from spiritual compromise, that is, agreement among the seven Local Churches which have jurisdictions in the Diaspora on the granting of such an autocephaly.

Q: Leaving aside the first condition and agreement among the seven Churches, why can the Russian Church today not provide autocephaly for the Diaspora and found new Local Churches in, say, Western Europe, Australasia, North America and Latin America? After all, the atheist regime in Russia died a generation ago and today the Church there is politically free, free of State interference. Otherwise, there would never have been any reconciliation between it and the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR).

A: True, the Church inside Russia is politically free and the reunited Russian Church now has 342 bishops, about half the total number of Orthodox bishops worldwide, and nearly 40,000 clergymen, with 4,000 being ordained the last two years alone. However, merely being politically free is not the same as being free of ‘spiritual compromise’. There are other problems which create what I call ‘spiritual compromise’. For example, unlike in the atheist period, the masses in the Russian Lands are at least baptized, but that is not enough. You have to live the Faith to be Orthodox.

Only a minority of the people and of the elite in the Russian Lands are living Orthodoxy. Many middle-aged people in the bureaucracy still think in the old Soviet mafia ways – otherwise there would not be corruption, oligarchs and even a civil war going on for oligarch control in the Ukraine. All those phenomena are due to the atheist Soviet heritage. It is why you have so much alcoholism, abortion, corruption and divorce (ABCD). The Church inside Russia is still not spiritually strong enough. You can also see this in nationalistic tendencies in sections of the Russian population.

Q: What nationalistic tendencies?

A: In Russia today there are nationalists, that is semi-Orthodox, who still have a Soviet mentality even though they have been baptized. For instance, they can speak of such opposites as the Tsar-Martyr and Stalin as ‘Russian heroes’ in the same breath. Or they speak of ‘the Russian world’, instead of the Russian Orthodox world. Or they speak of commemorating Vladimir (Putin) by name at the liturgy.

Q: What is wrong with praying for your political leader by name?

A: Everyone agrees that Vladimir Putin is by far the best leader Russia has had since 1917, but he is not the Anointed Tsar, he is at best the politician who, God willing, is preparing the way for the restoration of a legitimate Tsar. But he is not the Tsar himself, only a forerunner. And only an Anointed Tsar is prayed for by name at the liturgy. To pray for a secular leader at the liturgy by name is a form of nationalism, however positive the underlying motivation. Worse than that, in a multinational Church, I think with 62 nationalities in all, you do not offer public prayers for the leader of only one nationality. That would be divisive. If some wish to pray for ‘Vladimir’ in their personal prayers, that is fine, but at the liturgy, in public prayer, we pray only for the authorities in general.

Q: How can such nationalism be overcome?

A: In order to overcome such nationalism we must develop the awareness of what the word ‘Rus’ means.

Q: And what does ‘Rus’ mean?

A: Our Patriarch is called Patriarch of ‘All Rus’, that is, of All the Russias. And ‘Rus’, as in ‘Holy Rus’, the phrase which expresses the Church’s ideal, means multinational, for it includes all the dozens of different races who confess the uncompromised Russian Orthodox Faith, not just Russians. The enemies of the Church, whether nominal, nationalistic Orthodox or Western heterodox – and both groups are actually enemies of the Church – are terrified of a Church which is multinational and uncompromised. Because their souls are narrow, both suffer from the same narrow, reductionist nationalism.

Q: If the Russian Church is at the moment unable to do anything in the Diaspora, then why, if the other conditions were met, could the Patriarchate of Constantinople not provide autocephaly for the Diaspora and found new Local Churches in, say, Western Europe, Australasia, North America and Latin America?

A: Now you are out of the frying pan and into the fire. First of all, unlike the Russian Church, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has never freely given any people autocephaly; Greek imperialism is a great hindrance here. Secondly, that Patriarchate is not only enslaved by US politics – since 1948 its Patriarchs have been nominated by the CIA – but it is also very nationalistic. Hellenism is stronger than Christianity. I can name three Greek priests in England who have in the last 15 months refused to baptize unbaptized English people into the Patriarchate of Constantinople for the simple reason that they ‘are not Greek’. So I baptized them in their place. Such clergy see the Church as a mere Greek club. This is characteristic in general. Whatever you say about Russians, they are not as nationalistic as this. I will always remember attending the Greek Cathedral in Paris on a Sunday, now 35 years ago; the Liturgy was stopped because the Greek ambassador entered – late. This is highly symbolic. A representative of the Greek State was considered to be more important than Christ.

Q: What is nationalism, spiritually?

A: Nationalism is a spiritual disease – a sign of a lack of spiritual experience and spiritual consciousness. It is what lies behind the absurd and violently nationalistic schisms in the Ukraine, in Macedonia, in Montenegro and in Moldova, which are so eagerly and mockingly exploited by the West as the movements of provincial bumpkins (which is what they are). Wherever you get decadence, you get nationalism, nationalistic tendencies and wherever you get nationalism, you get decadence. You can dress this up in a name like phyletism, but it is still nationalism, racism.

Q: Is nationalism only a sign of decadence among Orthodox?

A: Not in the least. In the 5th century it already lay behind the Coptic/Monophysite schism and the Nestorian schism. In the 11th century, it lay behind the Western schism, when the West wanted to replace the Church with its own ethnic identity (‘Roman’ Catholic, not Catholic) and began to deride the Church as ‘Greeks’ and ‘Byzantines’, so reducing it to an ethnic identity. In the 16th century it lay behind the Protestant Reformation, which was essentially an anti-Latin revolt of the Germanic peoples.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the invention of Anglicanism by the bloodthirsty Tudor monarchs, who, like the popes of Rome before them, supplanted Jesus Christ as heads of the Church in a purely ethnic operation. Unlike in the Orthodox Churches, however much they may suffer from nationalism, in Anglicanism the monarchs (or nowadays atheist and agnostic prime ministers) appoint the bishops and actually influence and shape Anglican doctrines and beliefs, whether it is the sacraments or a female episcopate.

Q: Why is nationalism so poisonous in Church life?

A: Simply because nationalism is another word for worldliness.

Q: If the Russian Church and the Patriarchate of Constantinople cannot act in the Diaspora, what about the Romanian Church? That is the second largest Local Church. Could it not act, if the other conditions were right?

A: No, the Romanians are also unable to do anything. Sadly, their country has now become an EU colony and so, like the Patriarchate of Constantinople, it is US-run. Apart from nationalism (fully backed by Washington, which is eager to cultivate and exploit that weakness – ‘every man has his price’ is the motto), there is a second and closely related disease in Romania, which has evolved directly from nationalism. That is ecumenism.

For instance, in Italy, where the Romanian jurisdiction is by far the largest Orthodox jurisdiction, the impression given by representatives of the Romanian Church is that ‘we are Catholics who use Romanian in our services, instead of Italian. There is no other difference between us’. (Some Romanian priests even use white wine in the Eucharist so as to be ‘like the Catholics’). Romanian Church representatives are so poor that they will compromise on almost anything with the Vatican to get the free use of redundant Catholic churches in Italy. Nationalism stands behind this ecumenism because Romanians and Italians are of the same Latin race, a racial fact which the Vatican exploits to the maximum. This is only one step away from Uniatism and the Vatican knows this and exploits this – Romanian Catholic and Roman Catholic do sound very similar.

The Romanian situation closely reminds me of the relations of the Patriarchate of Constantinople with the Anglicans when they sit the Archbishop of Canterbury on the bishop’s throne in their churches, or with the Catholics, whom they ban themselves from receiving into the Church, even though they plead to be received. (Thus if a Catholic priest wishes to be received into the Rue Daru jurisdiction (Patriarchate of Constantinople), he has to be sent to the OCA to be received, in other words, he is received through the back door).

Only recently in Germany two Romanian Orthodox priests became Catholic priests. Why not? The local Romanian bishop had been saying for years that ‘there is no difference between the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church’. His priests were just being logical. On top of that the Catholics pay better. For an Orthodox who has no dogmatic consciousness of Orthodoxy, i.e. who is an apostate, it is only logical to be Catholic.

What I am saying is that any Local Church which is reduced to nationalism is very easily exploited by the enemies of the Church, whether the enemy is Protestantism or the Vatican, or secular-Protestant Washington or its secular-Catholic EU vassal or, perhaps the worst enemy, nominal, nationalistic Orthodoxy. Nationalism is the result of decadence, a low spiritual level, which causes a weak dogmatic consciousness, in other words, which creates an attachment to this world, which is much stronger than an attachment to the Kingdom of God, the values of the Church.

Q: So if at the present time no Local Church can act in the Diaspora, what is the solution?

A: There is no solution to the Diaspora problem at the present time because the solution is much more practical than that dreamed up by a few disincarnate intellectuals in ‘theological’ institutes. It is in the Incarnation of the Faith in international life, that is, in the restoration of the legitimate multinational Christian secular authority, the restoration of the Orthodox Emperor and Empire. Once this is restored, there will be the multinational support for the Diaspora and new Local Churches there. There were no jurisdictional disputes in the Diaspora before 1917, when there was an Orthodox Emperor. Once the Orthodox Emperor is restored, there will be the necessary finance, say, 200 billion roubles (£2 billion / $3 billion) for new Local Churches, the necessary infrastructure will be created and all the jurisdictional problems will be solved worldwide, as they were before the Revolution of 1917.

Q: What is preventing this?

A: Ourselves. We Orthodox first have to want and to be worthy of a restored Emperor and Empire. In 1917 the Orthodox elite had so far lapsed from the Faith that they actually rejected a Christian Emperor and Empire. The question is when will Orthodox stop being ‘ex-Orthodox’ or optimistically speaking, ‘pre-Orthodox’, and become worthy, ready to accept an Orthodox Emperor and Empire again. Only then, with an end to decadence, with a developed Orthodox consciousness, shall we see an end to the problems of the Diaspora.

St John III the Merciful: A Model Orthodox Ruler and Saint for the Last Times

Known to the world as John III Doukas Vatatzes, St John the Merciful was Emperor of Nicea from 1221 to 1254. Born in c. 1192 contemorary Greece, he was probably the son of a general and his wife, an unnamed Imperial niece. In reward for his eminent service and promise, in 1212 when he was aged only 20, the then Emperor of Nicea, Theodore Laskaris, gave him the hand of his daughter Irine and made him his successor. In January 1222, John, aged around 30, was crowned Emperor by the Patriarch in Nicea.

Two years later the new Emperor routed attacking Catholic forces and as a result of this victory the greater part of what the heretics had captured in Asia Minor fell to his control. In 1228 the elderly Catholic John of Brienne exchanged his nominal kingdom of Jerusalem for the Latin throne of occupied New Rome (Constantinople) and in 1233 attacked the Christians. He too was routed and John extended Nicean control over much of the Aegean, freeing Rhodes, Samos, Lesbos, Chios, Cos and many other islands.

Next the Bulgarians joined John as part of an anti-Catholic alliance of Christian rulers. The allies immediately opened hostilities against the Catholic invaders and besieged occupied New Rome by land and by sea. Although the Catholics were reduced to a small strip of land around Constantinople, the siege was unsuccessful. The superiority of the Latin sailors over the Christians led to the defeat of their fleet. By land, however, John was more successful and liberated the rest of the Frankish possessions in Asia Minor. Later John was to liberate most of Macedonia and Thrace.

John’s policy of appointing non-aristocrats to administrative posts was revolutionary. In his social policy he took steps to improve the living standards of both those in the country and in the towns. He ordered a census and gave every subject of his Empire a plot of land. Towards the end of his reign he also requisitioned the property of great landowners and aristocrats. He himself led a very frugal life and took measures to end the excessive spending of private wealth. Moreover, in order to establish and affirm social justice he also took measures against the exploitation of the poor.

John oversaw the smooth functioning of Church affairs. In 1228 he issued a decree in which he forbade the interference of the authorities in matters of Church inheritance. He also made generous donations to Church institutions and saw to the rebuilding of existing churches and the building of new ones. In periods of peace John promoted the welfare of his subjects. He patronized the arts and sciences, built new roads, distributed taxes equally and was loved by all for his kindness and justice.

He was also greatly interested in the collection and copying of manuscripts. The leading representative of the educational movement of the 13th century, the scholar, writer and teacher Nicephorus Blemmydes, lived during his reign. Among Blemmydes’ students were John’s heir and son, the learned Theodore II Laskaris. Sources are full of references to the Emperor’s concern for the development of intellectual life. He promoted the creation of centres of learning, especially of secular studies, while higher educational institutions were established.

In about 1252 when a new war was threatened, John set out to defend the Christians, but fell ill in Macedonia and returned to Asia. He died after much suffering at Nymphaeum on 3 November 1254, probably aged sixty-two, ending a reign of some thirty-three years. He was buried in the Monastery of Christ the Saviour (the Monastery of Sosandra) on Mt Sipylos, near Magnesia in the area of Smyrna.

Christian historians unanimously glorify John and he is called one of the greatest Christian Roman Emperors. His son and successor, Theodore II Lascaris, wrote of him: ‘He unified the Ausonian land which had been divided into a great many parts by foreign and tyrannical rulers, Latin, Persian, Bulgarian, Scythian and others, punished thieves and protected his land…He made our country inaccessible to our enemies’. In spite of his epilepsy John provided leadership in peace and war and he is considered a talented politician and the chief restorer of the Christian Empire.

His foreign policy was focused on the recapture of New Rome and the restoration of the Christian Empire. He brought under his control so much territory that he practically restored the Empire and laid the groundwork for the later recovery of New Rome itself. He was also successful in maintaining generally peaceful relations with his most powerful neighbours, Bulgaria and the Sultanate of Rum, while his network of diplomatic relations extended to the West and the Papacy. Here John’s main diplomatic concern was an alliance with the German ruler Frederick II, as both rulers struggled against Papal aggression. Frederick supported Christian efforts to capture New Rome and in 1236 he stopped the crusade that Pope Gregory IX was organizing against John.

Domestically, John’s long reign was one of the most creditable in history, witnessing the development of a prosperous economy and encouraging justice, charity and a cultural revival. Despite expensive campaigns to restore the Empire, he lowered taxes, encouraged agriculture, built schools, libraries, churches, monasteries, hospitals and homes for the poor and elderly. The arts prospered and he took steps to ensure the harmonious co-existence of State and Church, so that Nicea became one of the wealthiest and finest cities in the thirteenth century world.

When John’s grave was opened seven years after his repose, a fragrance filled the air and his body was found to be incorrupt, an indication of holiness. His body was like that of a living person. John was so loved and revered by the people that he was commemorated as a saint under the name John the Merciful and a Life was composed. Those who went on pilgrimage to pray before the saint’s relics were granted miracles; the sick were healed and demons expelled. The clergy and people of the city of Magnesia and its surroundings, where the Emperor was buried, gathered every year on 4 November to honour his memory.

A half-century later one account mentions that when the Turks invaded Magnesia, a guard on several occasions witnessed a lighted candle circling the city walls. He sent men to investigate, but to no avail. Then the deaf and dumb brother of the guard was sent. He was given a revelation and returned completely healed. He said that where the candle had appeared, he had found a man of a grand royal stature, who loudly urged the Christians to continue their defence. Later, when visiting St John’s shrine, he recognized the icon of the man he had seen.

John’s incorrupt relics were transferred to New Rome once it had been liberated from the Franks. When Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, his relics were hidden in a catacomb. Tradition tells that ever since he has been awaiting the liberation of the City. It also says that the holy king has his sword with him in its sheath and that every year the blade of the sword emerges a few millimetres until the time comes for the whole sword to emerge completely, which will signify the time for the liberation of the City.

In our own days Elder Ephraim of Arizona has said that the sacred relics of St John the Merciful were guarded by a family of crypto-Christians who kept them secret from generation to generation. He also affirms that the Merciful King has already risen and that the sword has emerged completely from its sheath. Now St John wanders around Constantinople in the guise of a fool and directs the hosts of the saints to take their places around the City. Here indeed is a model Orthodox ruler, and intercessor and restorer for our latter times, when we need him.

Holy John the Merciful, pray to God for us!

The Falls of Romes

Historiography, that is, the writing of history, has generated literally hundreds of theories to explain the fall of Old Rome. Some blame it on political divisions, others on economic factors, others on the invasions of Germanic peoples, others on environmental factors, others on a demographic crisis, others on moral decadence etc. However, whatever the reasons for the fall of Old Rome and its provinces in the Western corner of Europe, the Roman Empire itself did not fall. Long before the fall of Old Rome to barbarian tribes in 476, the Roman Empire, which had long ago expanded eastwards, had become Christian. And therefore, its capital had moved to a more central position in the world, away from isolated Old Rome and its outlying Western provinces with their heavy pagan history in order to become a Christian city. And by becoming Christian and moving, the Roman Empire ensured its survival there for another 1,000 years, long after the fall of Old Rome.

So was founded the Second Rome, positioned between Europe and Asia, where Christ had been born. Later called Constantinople, this Second or New Rome sadly became prey to narrow Greek nationalism, losing its original multinational character. However, when it in turn fell, first to greedy and murderous Catholic looters in 1204 and finally to Muslim invaders in 1453, the Roman Empire simply moved north to Moscow and survived there. This became the Third Rome and developed the Christian Empire which came to cover one sixth of the planet. However, although it expanded to China and even across the Pacific, it too fell in 1917, during a war against invading Germanic tribes, to rapacious Westernized materialists. These were opposed to the existence of the multinational Christian Roman (Romanov) Empire, opposed to its uncompromised Faith and values, for they desired to exploit its vast territories and rich natural resources.

Whatever the many reasons for the fall of the First Rome in 476, of the Second Rome in 1453 and then of the Third Rome in 1917, one of them was undoubtedly the loss of belief in the Christian Faith and the consequent loss of the spirit of self-sacrifice which underpinned the Christian Roman Empire. Thus, by 476 few believed in Old Rome any longer and as a result it was undermined by many factors – its use of mercenaries in its army, its expenditure on bread and circuses for the masses, its demographic crisis, its reliance on slaves to do its work, the debasement of its currency, its political divisions, its continual wars, the revolt of its subject peoples, its proud over-reach. Interestingly, all these nine factors exactly parallel those in the fall of today’s Western world, the American Empire, whose Neo-Roman legions are dispatched from its Neo-pagan (‘Neo-Classical’) White House in Washington to its colonies worldwide, just like those of Old Rome.

As regards the Second Rome, its leaders also lost faith, betraying Christianity to narrow nationalistic interests, finding full support in the alien ideology of Roman Catholicism, which had recently been invented in the West and was centred in pagan Old Rome. And, similarly, the Third Rome was also betrayed by a fifth column of narrow-minded traitors, deceivers and cowards, uprooted from multinational Christian Orthodoxy. However, the fall of the First Rome and that of the Second Rome both came about because of foreign invasions and occupations, by barbarians and Muslims. Although it is true that later the Nazi barbarians tried to invade and occupy the Third Rome, which after apostasy had become the Third International, they failed miserably in this. Unlike the First and Second Romes, the fall of the Third Rome came about because of internal treachery, when a large part of the elite wanted to seize power for itself by overthrowing the anointed Christian Emperor.

Here is the vital difference. The first Two Romes were invaded and occupied by aliens, by Germanic barbarians and by Muslims, but the Third Rome was betrayed by the enemy within. And when the enemy within the Third Rome is finally defeated, then the Third Rome, unlike the first and unrestorable Two Romes, can be restored. It is this process of restoration, led by the Church which is called on to Christianize the paganized Russian State, that has been under way for many years now. If the Third Rome is finally restored, it will again be able to challenge the forces of this world. Over the centuries their Satan-led centre has moved ever westwards from the Middle East to California, manipulating governments, sowing enmity and starting wars among the peoples of the world, controlling the media and brainwashing the masses for their one end – which is to drive the world into the arms of Antichrist. The challenge of the renewed Third Rome to those forces is now our only hope.

Looking Back on Old Sourozh

These are four interview answers given to a student who is at present working on a Ph D concerning the History of the Sourozh Diocese.

Q1) The Sourozh troubles (as they have been called) are regarded as a crisis almost entirely precipitated by the arrival in the diocese of large numbers of ethnic Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. How far is this really the case or did this event merely act as catalyst to previously existing tensions in the diocese?

A1) Sourozh troubles? At the time His Holiness Patriarch Alexey II called them a ‘schism’ in public pronouncements, which I translated as the official translator. True, the crisis was precipitated by the arrival of Russian Orthodox from the ex-Soviet Union, but this was only a catalyst – its cause lay far, far deeper and had been festering for decades. The recent arrivals merely lanced the deep boil.

Essentially the whole problem was a problem of insularity, of being cut off from Russian Orthodox reality, a problem which had historical roots in the general captivity of the Church authorities in Moscow and their inability to control their own tiny Diaspora, let alone the majority of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora which belonged and belongs to a completely autonomous ROCOR. However, there was the specific case of island Britain, which was even more cut off than the rest for the usual geographical reasons, and where a personality cult had developed. So when reality struck the cloud cuckoo land of the largely exclusive, upper class Anglican-style clique/club which the rulers of the ‘Sourozh Diocese’ by the early 2000s largely were, this was a long overdue encounter with reality.

What had happened until then had resulted in the exiling (in a typically hypocritical, racist, backbiting and sending to Coventry way) of all ‘dissidents’, i. e. of all those who knew what Russian Orthodoxy was actually about and would have nothing to do with insular fantasy and the personality cult which was at the heart of the so-called Sourozh ‘Diocese’. The problem came to a head because the dissidents were no longer a small minority who could be got rid of by making them leave (and sometimes find refuge in ROCOR), but were the vast majority, composed of all the new arrivals from the ex-Soviet Union who knew what Russian Orthodoxy was actually about and rightly ‘wanted the Church back’.

In this way those who had ruled the roost in Sourozh for decades before, oppressing the faithful Russian Orthodox minority and forcing them out, suddenly themselves became the minority – and a very small one at that. Realizing that they were now cornered and had lost power, they left, as they had forced so many into doing before them. What goes round, comes round. In this way they proved the ‘big fish in a small pond syndrome’ – anyone can remain a big fish as long as they make their pond very small. And that is what they did, made a very small pond for themselves.

Of course, the trouble was that the by then free Patriarchate had allowed such a situation to develop. With many others, I too made public several articles in the early 2000s, warning and pleading with the Moscow authorities to do something about their own Church locally. They did not do anything until it was too late. I doubt whether that was deliberate policy (waiting until the troublemakers had left of their own accord), as conspiracy theorists would have it, more it was a result of inertia and above all a lack of suitable individuals in Moscow to take over (see the answer to Question 2 below). This was why the new Sourozh bishop had to be nominated by the ROCOR Archbishop Mark, who was possibly the only Russian Orthodox bishop who knew the reality of the situation.

The ultimate historical roots of the Sourozh schism lay in the Diaspora schism between the minority of Russophobic, liberal, politicized elements in the Diaspora (in Europe called Evlogians and based in Paris) and the majority of the Diaspora in ROCOR. This schism took place in London in the 1920s, as elsewhere in Europe. (Though the roots of this schism lay in turn in the liberalism, modernism and fringe Orthodoxy of pro-Revolutionary intellectuals and aristocrats in Saint Petersburg before the Revolution. It was these individuals who emigrated to Paris after 1917). After 1945 the London Evlogians returned to the Patriarchate, but mainly without enthusiasm.

The situation was then saved, from the Patriarchate’s viewpoint, by sending a young priest, precisely from Paris (the heart of the Evlogian/Saint Petersburg schism) after World War II, who would be acceptable to the London ex-Evlogians and secure the situation, so that the ex-Evlogians would not return to the Paris schism. This priest was Fr Antony Bloom, around whom, especially after his mother’s death, there grew up a unique and utterly insular personality cult. This would inevitably result in clearly predictable difficulties after his death, since the death of the subjects of personality cults always results in difficulties, as it shows that they are not immortal.

Personally, I became fully aware of this situation (I had already been disturbed by several things I had seen) only in 1976, when during a six-week study visit to Russia I saw Russian Orthodox reality. The last scales fell from my eyes and I saw how peculiar and eccentric the Sourozh Diocese was. This was reinforced after 1976 when I had contacts with ROCOR – far bigger in Britain than the Sourozh ‘Diocese’ in terms of numbers of Russians, but not in terms of English people, because Metr Antony Bloom had created a mini-diocese (‘Sourozh’) largely through some 1,000 English converts, mainly of Anglican background, to his personal and peculiar brand of Orthodoxy, and by ordaining men whom other bishops would not touch for canonical reasons – and then by living in Greece and studying at St Serge in Paris. I realized that the Russian Orthodox reality inside Russia and ROCOR were identical; it was Sourozh that was out of kilter, just like the Evlogian group based in Paris.

The last straw came in 1982 when I and my wife had personal contact with Metr Antony and we clearly realised that he was a morally compromised individual and that the whole thing was a personality cult. At the same time in 1982 the then Fr Basil Osborne, whom I had first met when he was a young deacon in 1972, told me that the clear intention of the ruling clique of liberal academics in Sourozh (mainly convert clergy) was to ‘go over to the Greeks’ as soon as Metr Antony was dead. It was at that point that I left the Sourozh diocese, as so many others before me and after me, long before 2006. It was only in 2012 that I received an apology for my treatment thirty years before from His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill in Moscow. What a disaster – the Russian Orthodox Church authorities in England had been chasing Russian Orthodox away from them!

Q2) Several priests have told me that the arrival of Metropolitan Hilarion in the diocese was the main reason that events came to a climax when they did as his short but intense sojourn in the parish polarised the debate. Is this a fair assessment?

A2) Entirely true, but again he was only a catalyst. If it had not been him, it would have been someone or something else. The polarization had always been there. And we should remember that Bp Hilarion was made bishop and sent by Moscow at the specific request of Metr Antony. However, that does not excuse Moscow. You do not send a newly-baked, very naïve, very young and very inexperienced bishop into a hornets’ nest – which is exactly what they did.

Q3) In all the documents and interviews I’ve conducted both sides accuse the other of the same methods – i. e. it is seen as a coup by small (or even miniscule, four or five people) but highly influential group who ‘masterminded’ the activities. Is this a fair assessment? It seems to me that both can’t be right?

A3) The schism was fomented by a small clique of individuals. Bp Basil as a very weak individual was as much a victim as anything else of that very small group. He had been under control for as long as his very practical wife, whom I knew well and respected, had been alive. Once widowed, he began going off the rails. Altogether 300 people left in the Sourozh schism (the other 700 or so individual whom Metr Antony had converted had very quickly lapsed, often after only a few months), but only a few, four or five, led them; most, converts and often elderly, were unconscious of the game being played with them and were deluded and therefore deserve compassion. They had been hoodwinked all along.

It is true that on the ground in London and England in general, the other side, the pro-Russian Orthodox, was also led by a very small group of individuals. However, the latter were massively supported by the whole of the Church inside Russia, all those in ROCOR in England who were conscious of the situation and above all, by the vast mass of recent arrivals from the ex-Soviet Union in England. Whether Churched or unchurched, they instinctively knew, as we had known for decades, what was right and what was wrong.

Q4) The influence from the Motherland: This spectre rides high in the belief of many of the ‘anti-Moscow’ people – e g. the Russian State (FSB) seeks to control the Russian Diaspora though the Church. It seems to me that this can’t be discounted as fantasy as the Russian State and Foreign Office does seem more interested in ‘consolidation’ of the Diaspora – and it could be argued, why shouldn’t it? Diasporas are increasingly important to every motherland these days and the Russian Diaspora punches below its weight in terms of numbers (at least in the political sphere).

A4) This is without doubt paranoid fantasy and self-justification (‘we are leaving the Russian Church because it is not politically free’). Not in the sense that there must surely be Statist/nationalist, politically-minded individuals in the Russian State/FSB/Establishment who would like to control the Russian Diaspora, but it takes two to tango. They can fantasize, but if the Diaspora does not want to play ball, their fantasies are irrelevant. And the Russian Diaspora (as is proved by the history of ROCOR both before and since 2007) does not want to be embraced by such individuals. However, as I also know from contact as an official ROCOR representative in meetings with His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill, Metr Hilarion and Archbp Innokenty (formerly in Paris) in Moscow, the Patriarchate is equally independent and utterly resistant to attempted encroachments by nationalistic individuals – it remembers the State protestantization of the Church before 1917 and does not want a repeat of that. The Church inside Russia much enjoys the freedom She has from State interference.

The people who make such fantastic statements about a Russian State ‘takeover’ are thinking in Anglican terms, in other words in terms of a State Church, founded by the State and directed by erastians. They are the ones who are not politically free and not culturally free. They are talking about themselves and indeed, such people are often Anglicans, who have little concept of how the Orthodox Church actually works. Interestingly, the Sourozh schism was taken up at the time by the British Establishment press, with newspapers like The Times and the Telegraph defending the Russophobes and making the whole story into base, simplistic tabloid-style propaganda of the cowboy sort. ‘Greek = good; Russian = bad’.

This is in tune with the whole Anglican, US and generally Western view of the Orthodox Church. In the 19th century, the Victorians already saw the Russian as bad, as propaganda for their imperialistic ‘great game’ (unheard of in Russia), of which the Western invasion of the Crimea was part. Between the 1920s and 1948 the Patriarchate of Constantinople was largely under the Anglican thumb, since 1948 and the US deposition of the legitimate Patriarch Maximos (abducted into exile in Truman’s personal presidential plane to Switzerland) and replacement by the US candidate (what better example of Western, not Orthodox, erastianism?), it has been CIA controlled. And it is to the Rue Daru branch of Constantinople that the schismatics went. The Western problem has always been that it does not control the Russian Church, hence the remarks by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Tony Blair that the Russian Church is the greatest enemy of the West. Anyone showing independence is an enemy!

Sourozh was a political plaything for the British media, just another opportunity for the British Establishment to justify its politically-motivated Russophobia. It is in the light that we should ultimately see the Sourozh schism, as playing into the hands of the Russophobic British Establishment. And it was basically carried out precisely by individuals whose sympathies were wholly with the British Establishment, including one who, to my knowledge, had worked for MI5. (I exclude the Russian paranoid fantasy that Bp Basil, as an American citizen, was a CIA agent – though you can see how some could end up thinking like that).

Titular Metropolitan to Become Uniat?

According to an interview with the Roman Catholic magazine, “Vatican Insider”, the Greek academic and titular Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) may be thinking of becoming Roman Catholic. From his words it is difficult to know if he thinks that a majority of other bishops of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will follow him or if this only concerns himself and a few others. In any case he believes that ‘communion with Catholics will soon be restored’. His very marginal ideas are sure to be controversial since the mass of faithful of that Patriarchate will certainly not follow him or other like-minded bishops.

The Metropolitan remarked that he foresaw swift progress in achieving what he called ‘full Christian unity’ (it is not clear if these words refer to our unity with God or with heretics). He foresaw unity between his Patriarchate and the Vatican because of the ‘inspiration’ of Pope Francis. In particular he noted the declaration of Pope Francis during his recent visit to the Phanar (shortly after that of the US Vice-President) that the Vatican would ‘not impose conditions apart from those concerning the general confession of the Faith’ as the price of submission to it. The Metropolitan did, however, add that he would have to find out what the term ‘the general confession of the Faith’ meant.

We can add for our part that since the doctrines of the Vatican have in no way changed and there has been no repentance or return to Orthodoxy on its part through renunciation of the filioque heresy, the heresy of the papal claims or any other of its errors, it is clear that any Orthodox who enters into communion with the Vatican will obviously have to become Roman Catholic, just like any other Uniat. Presumably the Metropolitan, who is a well-known academic and author of obscure but erudite books (unread by and incomprehensible to ordinary Orthodox), realizes this. But perhaps his remarks are merely political, not like so many others made by Phanariots over the last few centuries.

Russian Orthodox are Pro-European, Pro-Greek and Pro-American because we are Pro-Christian

Although the revolution in the values expressed and lived by the Russian Federation over the last generation is far from complete, nevertheless it is not an exaggeration to call that transformation in question a revolution. From a consistently militant atheist ideology, that which produced the horrors of the Gulag and lasted for seventy-five years, it has passed in twenty-five years to an ever more Christian stance, one which shames the modern West. Little wonder that today’s militant atheist Western governments, whether in the US, Western Europe or among their nationalist puppets in Eastern Europe and Istanbul, are annoyed. This revolution in values has taken place through mass baptism and the return of many Russian Orthodox to uncompromised Christian values, known as Russian Orthodox values.

This means that we sympathize with all who confess those values or values close to them, whatever their label. As the Western ruling class has ever more quickly abandoned those Christian values in recent decades and reverted to the pagan values of Ancient Rome, it has distanced itself and isolated itself from its own faithful people, the patriotic Christian minorities of Western Europe and North America. Moreover, at the same time that ruling class has distanced itself from the faithful in countries which are at least formally still respectful of Christianity, whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or in still free, non-EU Eastern Europe, in Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, the Ukraine and, above all, the Russian Federation, which stands apart because of its size and importance.

Here we speak not only of the apostasy of the Western ruling class by its imposition by force and intimidation of State-run abortion and euthanasia, ‘gay parades’ and ‘homosexual marriage’ or of the establishment of satanic organizations. Here we speak not only of the moral and cultural imperialism which ends the freedom of other countries to live by their traditional values. Here we speak not only of political correctness, that intolerant, neo-puritan ideology just as Spirit-less as the materialism of the old Soviet Union. We also speak of imposing sanctions on other countries for their Christian behaviour and fomenting civil wars in them, supplying arms, indebting them, supporting genocide in them and invading them either militarily or economically in order to exploit their natural resources and markets.

These Russian Orthodox, or uncompromised Christian, values tie in not only with traditional Western Christian, but also to a surprising extent with traditional Islamic, Judaic, Hindu and Buddhist values. The Russian Orthodox support for Tradition is all the more striking when we look at certain smaller Local Orthodox Churches, members of whose elites have under political pressure shown tendencies to abandon the integrity of the Faith, despite the Universal Orthodox Tradition dating back nearly 2,000 years and the views of their own faithful. Having lived and worked in Greece for one year, learned Greek, loved Greece and made pilgrimages to Mt Athos and in 1979 met there Fr Ephraim (now in the USA), I have in recent days been warmed by the support of the Greek faithful for the Tradition.

Thus, the current petition against the ‘new’ pro-Vatican ecclesiology of the Phanar (in fact an ecclesiology that was evolved in the 1920s) with its neo-imperialist, eastern papist interpretation of Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon, is spreading through Greece and Cyprus and the Greek Diaspora. Although an internal petition addressed to the Greek faithful, it has the full support of Russian Orthodox faithful and the faithful of many other Local Churches whose hierarchies are free and have not been subjected to foreign political and financial pressure. For just as the Russian faithful are pro-European inasmuch as we support the True West, the Orthodox West of the first millennium, the Russian Orthodox Church cannot be anything but pro-Greek Orthodox, for She received the faith from Greek Orthodox.

And just as the Russian faithful support True Greece, Orthodox Greece, the Athonite elders, not the fake, masonic Greece that the Western elites are trying to foist on Greeks, so also we support True America, not the warmongering, anti-Christian America that we see today. Thus, the present visit of Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) to the Russian Church is symbolic of the Russian Church’s love for all who confess Orthodoxy. After years and even decades of internal troubles, the OCA may at last be returning to the confession of Orthodoxy as her new relations with the Russian Orthodox Mother Church show. For the OCA, the time of decision is here – to reintegrate the Russian Orthodox Tradition by giving up the fantasies of the decadent past or else to remain outside the mainstream on a compromised limb.

Woe unto You

Pope Francis has visited Turkey. This is surprising; Turkey is a country where historically he has never had a flock or any jurisdiction. Since he did not go there in order to visit the handful of Catholic diplomats and foreigners who do live there, his visit was clearly politically and not spiritually motivated. Despite the pious spin put on the visit by his PR advisors and parroted by the subservient, ethnocentric Western media, we can guess what may really have been behind it.

Since the Pope’s recent visit to the Strasbourg ‘Parliament’ of the Eurokommisar puppets and his recent contacts with US politicians, we suspect that that his visit was organized by his American masters. Otherwise he would have gone to Ferguson, where there are real, resident Catholics and the services of a pastor are more urgently needed. We believe that the Papal visit to Turkey had two aims:

1. To help ensure that the Turkish government, in the past pro-EU and pro-US, does not fall to Islamism. This seems possible given its imperialistic support for anti-Syrian terrorism and now its refusal to attack Islamic State.

2. To negotiate the further Uniatization of the Greek Orthodox remnants in Istanbul for their absorption into the Vatican meat-grinder.

This second aim is indicated by last week’s visit to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul by Joe Biden, who gave his instructions for the Papal visit. For despite the canons of the Orthodox Church which forbid political appointees, since 1948 the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul has been run by Washington.

Here the world’s powerbrokers are barking up the wrong tree. Patriarch Bartholomew is not ‘the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians’, as reported by the ignorant Western media. In reality, there are 215 million Orthodox Christians, 164 million of them in the Russian Orthodox Church, and Patriarch Bartholomew is only the much-contested representative of a small minority of 3 million Greek Orthodox, essentially outside Greece and Cyprus, mainly in the USA.

Despite the fantasies of the apparently uneducated mandarins of the US State Department, who imagine Patriarch Bartholomew as a political pawn able to snatch the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the multinational Russian Church, so helping to undermine Her, the tiny Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul is largely irrelevant in today’s world and has been since 1453.

As for the first aim, the Pope’s visit has surely done more harm than good. The Pope spoke against Islamist violence (which has in part been carried out by thousands of European-born Muslims and has largely been financed by US allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We too utterly condemn all violence, including Islamist. And that is why we, unlike the Pope, also utterly condemn Western violence. Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya never invaded the West. The West invaded them and slaughtered hundreds of thousands, if not millions. In Iraq’s case, the West invaded twice and is now meddling there for the third time. This is the same hypocrisy as in the Crimea. For the West also invaded the Crimea twice, once in 1854, urged on by the then Pope, again in 1941, and then tried to meddle there in 2014, planning to set up a NATO base in Sebastopol with which to threaten Russia.

The Pope’s speech is all the stranger since he is the representative of the very organization which slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Muslims (and Orthodox Christians) in the blood-soaked Crusades. In other words, the Pope represents the grandfather of Western violence against Muslims (and also against the Orthodox Church). We can therefore think of no-one less appropriate to call on Islamists to cease their violence than this ‘ecumenical’ Pope, who during his visit honoured Kemal Ataturk – responsible in part for the deaths of some two million Greek and Armenian Christians.

Only when Western and Western-supplied bombs, shells and bullets have stopped tearing apart the bodies of innocent Muslim men, women and children all over the Middle East, will fanatical Islamists stop slaughtering Non-Islamists in revenge. ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity (Matt. 23, 27-28).

From Further Correspondence and Conversations

Following the questions and answers published on 23 November, we now publish further questions and answers resulting from them.

Q: Does anyone try and stop you from writing?

A: Oh yes, two or three anonymous individuals, probably from both extreme left and extreme right (interestingly, their views are identical – the extremes always meet) try censorship. The fact that, aggressively and dictatorially, they try to impose their censorship on free expression means that they are wrong. If they wish to read what they agree with, they can turn to any of the conformist, secularist media; why do they try and censor those who are Orthodox Christians and so think otherwise?

As they say of those on the extreme left: ‘There is no-one as intolerant as a liberal’. As regards those on the extreme right, they are by definition illiberal. I ignore extremists, especially anonymous ones, because they are motivated not by love but by hatred. Interestingly, earlier this month I met in London one who had not been anonymous and had tried to silence me some years ago. He has completely changed his life and apologized for what he had asked me to do six years ago. People change, people mature with experience. Give them time for repentance. We do not repeat their intolerance, but show patience.

Q: You said in the first questions and answers that some old calendarists are concerned by the possible 2016 All-Orthodox meeting. But when you compare the piety of old calendarists to new calendarists, can’t you support the former?

A: An example. Last month a Greek woman (dressed in jeans and of course without any head covering) came from London to visit our Church. The first question she asked me was: ‘Why aren’t there any pews?’ (!). Such is the result of decades of modernism in the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the diaspora. But why would I compare an unchurched person from a new calendar Church with an old calendarist convert? You cannot justify your schism by comparing yourself with someone who is unChurched and whose Church attendance consists of 20 minutes per year on Easter night.

I can remember in 1977 meeting an unChurched old calendarist from an old calendarist village in northern Greece. I was not impressed. Let us compare like with like. There are devout people who live on the new calendar (because they are forced to, definitely not new calendarists) and devout people who live on the old calendar (freely, but definitely not old calendarists). And there are non-devout people who live on both calendars too.

On the subject of that possible 2016 meeting, I should also have mentioned that, apart from the dispute between Constantinople with the Czechs and Slovaks, the dispute between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem may also prevent it from taking place. And not only that. This week the US politician Joe Biden, whose son Hunter son has conveniently landed a very well-paid job in the energy sector in the Ukraine, was again in Istanbul, discussing the Ukraine – with a Patriarchate which has no jurisdiction whatsoever there. All the notorious CIA mouthpieces of the Phanar were present at the meeting, ready to take their orders from an organization that has a history of mass murder.

Q: What could happen as a result?

A: If Biden bribes the Phanar into setting up a pro-CIA schism in the Ukraine, as the Phanar did in Estonia, then there will be a major schism, with the elite of Constantinople falling away from the Church altogether, maybe its Patriarch becoming the irrelevant departmental head of the Uniats in an obscure bureau in the Vatican. However, if such a schism occurred, only the elite would fall away, as at the Council of Florence, a few faithful bishops, new St Marks of Ephesus, most monks, parish clergy and people would remain in the Church, perhaps going under the Church of Greece. As the proverb says; ‘A fish rots from the head’.

Q: Is bribery a realistic option?

A: Yes. Remember that the former US ambassador in Kiev, John Herbst, already set up the Agathangel schism in Odessa. Divide and rule is Washington’s motto and even if it costs a few tens of millions of dollars, they don’t care. They just print the money off in Washington and call it ‘quantitative easing’. Remember that it cost them $5 billion, as Victoria Nuland admitted, just to set up the current lame duck regime in Kiev. With $17 trillion dollars of debt (and that is how the Soviet Union was defeated – the US could go into massive debt, but the USSR could not), that is a drop in the ocean.

Q: What could happen if Constantinople fell away?

A: In such a case the remaining faithful Local Churches could hold a real and free Council in the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. This Monastery is almost ready for this. I have been there. From there the Orthodox Truth could be proclaimed in its integrity to the whole world, which would then see the essential, underlying unity of the Church, free of CIA manipulations. In such a case we could expect the Local Churches concerned to drop their compromises, such as the new calendar, and return to the fullness of Orthodoxy. Possibly the Patriarchate of Moscow could, as three-quarters of the Orthodox Church, become the first Patriarchate in the diptychs. That would be a necessary update to the reality of the Church today. Certainly, that would completely change the state of several Local Churches from CIA control and nationalist stagnation to missionary dynamism.

Q: How will Antichrist come to power?

A: There are two techniques for establishing Antichrist’s New World Order, that is, for obtaining the Global Dictatorship of the One World Government.

First of all, you can bribe naïve leaders and organize paid mobs of the unemployed and criminals to create riots in order to overthrow the legitimate government (called a ‘regime’ by the US-run Western media which duly demonize the legitimate government). This is politely known as ‘regime-change’, which is also the aim of Western sanctions. This is what has been tried unsuccessfully in Moscow and more recently in Hong Kong, but successfully in Kiev – a technique that had been well-practised in what the CIA-paid media dubbed ‘the Arab Spring’, a series of catastrophes which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives so far.

I think Washington may soon try the same technique of ‘regime-change’ in Kishinev (where it has banned all parties except pro-EU ones – the Kiev scenario again), Belgrade, Prague and Budapest – capitals of three countries whose leaders are now valiantly resisting US and EU bribery, bullying and threats for being independent. Of course, this does not happen in Tokyo, Berlin, Paris and London, because there the regimes (often elected with less than 30% of the popular vote) are only vassals, heads of US vassal states. Where the selected elite (who call us ‘plebs’) are already in your pocket, you do not have to unseat it – you already control the country

The second technique is to use the media, including the social media, to demonize a government and then to bomb its country back to the Stone Age. This is the Iraq/Afghanistan/Libya scenario. Once you have bombed the country to smithereens and unleashed interminable tribal infighting, you are then free to plunder its natural resources, so dividing and ruling, because, again, you already control the country.

Q: In the first questions and answers you mentioned the fact that there was support in the Russian Church for Kerensky after the 1917 Revolution. How do you explain that?

A: Apart from the naïve, ignorant and deluded, there were treacherous renovationists. They had been infiltrating the Russian Church since the early 1900s. Think of the twice married Fr George Gapon who led the 1905 protest and soon after hanged himself. These people wanted a socialist Orthodoxy! The 1920s renovationist schism under heretics like the renovationist Vvedensky and the Paris schism in the emigration did not come from nowhere – the highly politicized elements responsible for these schisms had long ago infiltrated the Church. Such self-deluded individuals call the Patriarch Antichrist or Judas and still dare to take communion. Such blasphemy burns them alive, as it did the Old Ritualists. Believe me, I have seen it happen. Such individuals always end up outside the Church, embittered through their self-delusion and hatred and often commit suicide.

Q: Are there still renovationists in the Russian Church?

A: There are still a few here and there, but very, very few and they are dying out. Most have left the Church, though some have joined Constantinople.

Q: You seem to overlook the role of Catholicism. Surely it, and not Orthodoxy, could save the West?

A: The West has categorically rejected Catholicism. And here I do not only mean the Protestant West, which has directly become atheist. I also mean the once Catholic countries of Europe. In Europe Catholicism is in freefall, even in a country like Poland, where the number of those practising Catholicism has halved in the last 25 years. Why?

It is because Catholicism is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Catholicism is the father of Protestantism, which is the father of the modern atheist West. No new pope, even if he is a master of PR, is thoroughly anti-Orthodox and pro-Uniat, was voted in by Washington and has the CIA-backed Western media behind him, can change anything. It is 1,000 years too late.

Q: What do you mean by Catholicism as part of the problem?

A: Historically, the West has degenerated from Christ (Orthodoxy) to Feudalism (Catholicism), then to Democracy (Protestantism) and so to Antichrist (Post-Protestantism). We can see this in many examples. For example, feudalism appeared in England very suddenly, in 1066. It simply did not exist here before. In other words, feudalism is the socio-political and economic result of Catholicism. Or, to take another example from today, the present genocide in Catholic Mexico (100,000 dead in the last twelve months, it is said) is being caused by feudal drug-traffickers, who are holed up on their castle-ranches, and pay serfs to work for them. (Of course, the drug-traffickers only exist because a section of the US population takes drugs. Otherwise they would go out of business).

As regards Russia, serfdom, that is feudalism, was only introduced in the 18th century by Western and Westernized rulers like Peter I and Catherine II. Significantly, they are praised to the skies and called ‘the Great’ by both Western and Soviet historians. Why? Because they both represented feudal empires. The West used feudalism to maintain its colonial empires and the Soviets reintroduced feudalism to maintain their empire. For what was Stalinist collectivization if not refeudalization? Take the land from the people and slaughter those who resist, that is refeudalization.

The West hates the fact that Western-introduced serfdom was abolished only after a century and a half in Russia, whereas in the West it lasted for centuries. In Russia, Orthodoxy defeated serfdom and Russian Orthodox have always opposed and destroyed slavery, freeing slaves. However, in the West the ruling Catholic ideology was inherently feudal so it could not be defeated, it could only degenerate into Protestantism, the next step to Antichrist.

Similarly, we can see the example of Western democracy in Russia, which only lasted for seven months in 1917. Why? Because for Western democracy, as it is called, to exist, you must have a Protestant mentality. This why it never worked elsewhere and cannot be imposed elsewhere, where it is always accompanied by massive corruption, as in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Latin America, South Vietnam, Japan, Thailand – or the Ukraine. From Western democracy in Russia, it was only one step to Antichrist, that is, to Bolshevism. True, this so-called Western democracy has lasted much longer in the West, where Protestantism existed, but even here we can see that today it too is degenerating, as Protestantism has been rejected. Even in the Estonian capital they are now selling off the main Lutheran church because it has gone bankrupt.

Western democracy has outlived its purpose, which was to overthrow Christian monarchs. With that done, Antichrist has been readying himself to take over from the secular presidents, prime ministers and chancellors who replaced the Christian monarchs. We saw this with Napoleon and Hitler, who replaced Christian leaders and were both prefigurations of Antichrist and both invaded Russia, just as the US is trying to invade Russia today.

We can see this today in the replacement of democracy and its degeneration in Western countries, which are quite freely introducing ever more Fascist legislation, with selective assassinations by the secret services, censorship of the media, militarization of the police, arrest without charge, deprivation of citizens of their passports, refusing them the right to live where they want, surveillance of their every movement through camera networks and State spying on e-mails and phone calls etc.

Q: Does Orthodox Russia have friends in the West?

A: Yes. Apart from the local Russian Orthodox and Orthodox allies of other nationalities, there are still minorities in the West who have a sense of national tradition, sovereignty and identity. All of them support Russia in some way. The enemy is the cosmopolitan Brussels/Berlin bureaucrat who takes his orders from Washington and has only contempt for real Europeans and our patriotism. There is in preparation an alliance between Orthodox Russia and healthy ‘sovereignist’ forces in at present enslaved Western Europe.

Q: What chance is there of the return of an Orthodox Emperor, a Tsar, who could protect all Orthodox worldwide from Western bullying and so delay the rule of Antichrist?

A: The Church can work in any political system and survive, as history proves, but our ideal is a Christian State, which incarnates the values of the Church, creating a Christian Civilization. If that exists, Antichrist cannot come. Our situation since 1917 has been abnormal; there has been no Christian Emperor, no Tsar, and so the Local Churches have been swayed this way and that way by secular political forces, whether Communist or Capitalist, Atheist or Mammonist, however the end has not yet come. The question is whether we are to return to normality, the Christian Empire, or whether we are to continue on the path towards Antichrist.

Thus, the last nearly 100 years have been quite exceptional, all should have ended in 1917, but we have been granted further time by the mercy of God. Nevertheless, it is still a stark case of the path to the Apocalypse or the path to the Restoration. But there are reasons for thinking that Restoration is still possible because of the sacrifices of the New Martyrs and Confessors during the first generation after 1917, on which the whole rebirth of the Russian Church has been founded.

Since the long and slow process of overthrowing Antichrist in Russia, which effectively began in 1941 with the first Nazi invasion (the second Nazi invasion being in the Ukraine in 2014) and the revival of the Church inside Russia, we have begun to see the three different stages in the restoration of the Church. These are: Orthodoxy; the People; Sovereignty. They come in the opposite order to what we would expect, Orthodoxy, Sovereignty and the People, because we are putting history into reverse.

First of all, we have seen the process of restoration of Orthodoxy, with the end of outward persecution by Communism and the end of inward persecution by renovationism. This first stage in this process is ongoing, but is almost at an end now. The outward persecution by the Communists has ended. And both the renovationists who were supported by the Phanar and the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and who were still active in the Diaspora until recently, and the neo-renovationists who came to prominence inside Russia in the 1990s and 2000s (with the support of the old Diaspora renovationists), have literally been dying out. The latter were rejected outright by Patriarch Alexei II and elders like Fr John Krestyankin and have been defeated. That is why the last ones are so aggressive. The re-establishment and reassertion of Orthodoxy inside the Russian Orthodox Church is clear. Only a few treacherous individuals inside Russia and in the Diaspora are still resisting – but they are living in the past, irrelevant.

The second stage in the process is the revival of the People as a believing force. This stage is ongoing, but has very far to go. The missionary witness of the Church to the masses has scarcely begun, but at least it has begun. Only when the Church has been allowed to go out into the whole world by Divine Providence and preach the authentic Gospel, which has been so compromised by Catholicism, Protestantism and Modernism, can we move on to the third stage. Already, however, there has been the first political emigration after 1917, which brought Orthodoxy to countries which previously knew nothing of it, and since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a second economic emigration, far larger than before. All this is the Providential opportunity to witness.

Only when people have been Churched, when they are ready for the new Orthodox Emperor, the Tsar, can that restoration occur. In other words, there can be no restoration of the Sovereign Christian Empire until the baptized masses want it, until they have repented in preparation for it. Only repentance can bring restoration. And we are still far from this – though I must say we are much closer than even five years ago, let alone twenty-five years ago, when all this was still only a dream.

For Russia has now begun to play the role of the country which restrains or withholds the movement towards Antichrist. That is why the forces of this world are so aggressively attacking Russia at the moment, trying through so-called sanctions to punish Her. The most ruthlessly logical and consistently anti-Christian Western elitists like Brzezinski in the US and Bildt in Sweden have publicly declared that the West must destroy the Russian Orthodox Church (in order to hasten the arrival of Antichrist – though they are so delusional that they do not even believe in Antichrist).

Q: If that repentance or process of Churching happens, who will the new Emperor be?

A: We do not and cannot know. That is in God’s hands or rather in the hands of the Mother of God, for since the forced and forged abdication of 1917 the Empire has been in the hands of the Sovereign Mother of God. Our task is to repent, not to argue about possible candidates. God will choose the right candidate for us and it will be plain to all Churched Orthodox that this is the right choice.

Orthodox England

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