Category Archives: Heresy

High Noon and the Judgement of ROCOR

In 1976 in Oxford I met Lord Michael Ramsey, the by then retired Archbishop of Canterbury (+ 1988). I was impressed by him and his sense of tradition. He had both presence and knowledge. Therefore, in conversation I asked him what he thought of the then situation of the Orthodox Church. He answered that he found the Orthodox world torn by politically-motivated tensions.

These tensions were between the extremes of liberalism and conservatism, provoking either old calendarist or else political schisms. This happened to be exactly my own view, which I had developed over the five years I had been in direct contact with the Orthodox Church at that time. What impressed me was that he, a Non-Orthodox outsider, had also understood this.

In fact, he was voicing my destiny, my ‘High Noon’, which has been to fight against those extremes. In the last century, this meant the struggle against secularism, modernism, liberalism and ecumenist syncretism and in this century the struggle against the opposite extremism of so-called ‘traditionalism’, phariseeism, judgementalism and sectarian fanaticism.

The latter is nothing but primitive pride: ‘Only I am right, everyone else is wrong, therefore I am not in communion with you’. The reason for opposing these extremes is that we are called on to love God and love our neighbour. For the first extreme does not love God but idolises man in all his sin (humanism), but the second extreme does not love man and has no sense of justice.

The voices of the prophets tell us that we must avoid idolatry, but seek righteousness in life. This twofold struggle against the left and the right had to be led by mercy and truth. This was the sense of my speech at the All-Diaspora Russian Church Council in San Francisco in 2006. Here, as one of the ten speakers, I said (http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/atcouncil.htm):

Orthodoxy without Warm-Heartedness becomes a mere rite, rite-belief, an outward show; Tradition without Humility becomes hypocrisy and phariseeism, for only living the God-inspired Tradition brings humility; Independence without Compassion becomes haughty pride, sectarian Donatism, the condemnation of our unfree brothers.

Sadly, such words were heeded for only a few years. Within ten years, with the beloved Metropolitan Hilarion of the Church Outside Russia starting to suffer from dementia, a clique formed from those from the past as well as newcomers who had not been at the Council, intent on ‘saving the Church’, pushed him aside and took over. It was the end – unless the swamp can be drained.

The latest scandal of their ‘disgraceful Synod’ is that of Sister Vassa, the daughter of my old friend, the late Fr George Larin, who was a typical old school ROCOR priest (altar boy of St John of Shanghai) who would have had nothing to do with the present Stalinist nonsense. I disagree with Sister Vassa, that is not the point. You do not use the canons to punish for having different opinions to yourself!

For only repentance can overcome the scandals that have taken hold of that invalid ghetto since and it is unrecognised by the Orthodox world. As for us and all our parishes, we remain unbowed, for we followed our conscience, keeping the spiritual purity and canonicity of Holy Orthodoxy in the fullness of the Church, as Metropolitan Lavr ordained for us, and so keeping our integrity.

It will not be long before Moscow dissolves the American Synod, known as ‘ROCOR’. It is an international embarrassment, not just that they are ill-educated, but they actually profess the heresy of rebaptising Orthodox. Moscow has had enough. Rumours from episcopal sources in Moscow indicate that it is going to absorb those in ROCOR who support it and suspend the others.

The others can start their own Russian Old Calendarist Outside Russia (ROCOR) sect. We warned Moscow that it had to drain the ROCOR swamp. For years they did not listen and now they have a scandal that is far worse than it was before. Too bad for them. Meanwhile we go on in the mainstream, with our 14 bishops of four nationalities with our Autonomous Romanian Church of Western Europe.

 

 

Chanting not Singing: Nationalist Convert Pathology versus Mainstream Orthodox Christianity

‘Faith without love is fanaticism’.

From a Russian Prayerbook

‘The Greek Patriarch is possessed by demons, as for the Romanians, I don’t like them, the Moldovans I only half like and the Russians annoy me’.

A ROCOR bishop, 2021

Speaking as a politician, yesterday President Putin made some very generous comments about the late Pope Francis of Rome. Who is shocked by that? Certainly not mainstream Orthodox with our broad acceptance of other human-beings, even if we do not agree with their views. Non-sectarian Orthodoxy is that of all who accept the Orthodox Creed. Outside sects and cults, we in the mainstream respect others with their different experiences of life. We do not practise intolerance or dogmatise personal opinions about, for example, the late Pope of Rome, who, frankly, is nothing to do with us, though he was of interest to Roman Catholics and politicians. However, the extremists, who love the sect and the cult, who ‘chant, but do not sing’, are shocked. These are the people who for all practical purposes are out of communion with the mainstream, out of communion with the Orthodox Church, who, in reality, are not practising members of the Orthodox Church.

Centred in the USA, they spread their poison to lonely young men, ‘Orthobros’ and ‘incels’, via internet podcasts of such personalities as Jordan Peterson and Jay Dyer. These are the ‘Youtube Orthodox’, the theoretical Orthodox, who have never been inside an Orthodox church, but want to ‘become Orthodox’. I am contacted by several of them every month. They never appear. I never see them, because I tell them that they first have to come to church in order to join the Orthodox Church, let alone ‘become Orthodox’. The only exception was a very strange-looking young man, with a long beard and hair, dressed in black, with prayer beads around his wrist (the usual convert uniform), who informed me that he was so Orthodox that he ate glass. Literally. Apparently, he thought this was ‘ascetic’. After I told him to stop it, he never appeared again. In any case, he did not like our church, as it is full of families and children – definitely not for incels – and they all dressed normally and the men did not have beards.

The converts persecute those whose culture does not use American English, as they live in a US sociological ghetto or greenhouse, with an intolerant sectarian ideology. They dogmatise extreme opinions to the point of bigotry and the pharisaic condemnation of others. Visitors to their tiny churches and chapels are interrogated, betraying the innate Calvinism and Lutheranism of the converts. They promote the Victorian English of Hapgood, as they are more English than the English. We are reminded that the ancestors of these people were so intolerant that they had to leave England, and, arriving in the future USA, slaughtered the natives and witch-hunted each other. We do not want them back here in Europe, thank you! US Fascist colonialism and persecution, which says that we must change our language and culture. They, people, clergy and at least one narcissistic bishop among them, are in reality white supremacists, with profound hatred for real Orthodox, Russian, Greek, Romanian or any others.

Rebaptism and Pathology

Fifty Years of Recent History

Nearly fifty years ago, in 1976, a scandal took place in the Orthodox Church in Guildford, England. A very young, poorly educated and inexperienced Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) priest, married off to the first woman come so he could be ordained at the uncanonical age of 22, rebaptised a group of recent converts. The converts had previously been received from the Church of England into the Moscow Patriarchate in the usual Orthodox way by chrismation. Here they had been receiving the sacraments for some time until they had been told by a rather fanatical priest that they needed to be rebaptised! The local Moscow Patriarchate bishop, supported by all other canonical Orthodox, complained.

His petition went to the then still Orthodox ROCOR Synod in New York. Its leader, Metropolitan Philaret, whom no-one would ever suspect of liberalism, commented that this rebaptism was a form of Neo-Donatism. The priest was rebuked – later he divorced the woman that he had been ordered to marry and left the priesthood and the Church. Sadly, the bishop who had had him ordained and had preached the ‘theology of rebaptism’ to him was not rebuked. However, some years later that bishop also ended up outside the Church and then died. An extreme right-winger, he had first created several more scandals, including consecrating as bishop a pedophile in Russia, outside his canonical territory.

Two years later, in 1978, there took place the rebaptism of the late French Catholic monk Fr Placide (Deseille) in the sea at the foot of the Athonite Monastery of Simonopetra. Fr Placide was very well-known in Roman Catholic France and had great respect as a scholar. Later I met him. However, he had already transferred to the so-called ‘Byzantine rite’, as the Roman Catholic rite had been deformed after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Fr (now St) Sophrony the Athonite, whom I knew very well, was very upset. For him this rebaptism was not only quite unnecessary, but also a provocation. He expressed the Orthodox theology of the sacraments, as practised by our 1,000 bishops.

This is that there are no sacraments outside the (Orthodox) Church, but there are sacramental forms or rites. The grace that is missing from them is made up for, completed, by contact with the Church and Her life. Thus, a rite of baptism with water (triple immersion is not compulsory – for Orthodox emergency baptisms are conducted without this) in the Name of the Holy Trinity outside the Church is acceptable as a valid sacramental form. The grace that is clearly missing from it to make it into a sacrament is communicated by reception into the Church. To repeat the sacramental baptismal rite is a type of fundamentalism, formalist literalism, which is actually typical of Protestantism.

Pathology

Today we are seeing again this same Protestant ‘Will I be saved?’ neurosis among some converts from Protestantism to the Orthodox Church. In this there is always the sectarian desire to condemn others, which is why Protestantism consists of a myriad of warring sects. This ‘OneTrueChurchism’ is a typically Protestant reflex. It is pathological because, like all pathologies, it is based not on Christian love, but on hatred for others, not on theology, but on pathology.

There are those who want to prey on the insecurity of neophytes in order to make such new converts doubt in their own Orthodoxy, using jurisdictions just as Protestants use denominations. But why do they want to prey on their insecurity? Simply because they want neophytes to become dependent on them. Creation of dependency is again typical of sectarianism, which is always associated with cults, that is, on guruism, personality cults, lust for power.

There is also a need among these cult leaders or gurus to recruit others. With very small flocks and so lacking money – given their anti-pastoral fanaticism, that is understandable – they are desperate to fill their near-empty churches. Without ethnic groups to attend their ‘temples’ (as they call churches), their only audience is naïve, young people, including the lonely, incels, closet homosexuals and others with problems. They make easy prey for the spiritual vultures.

Thus, one young Englishman I know is on his third rebaptism now. He lasted three years in a parish of 200 in the canonical Church, then went off to a tiny ROCOR community (nowadays they are always tiny) for about one year. However, that group of ten individuals was not good enough for him, so he went off to another tiny old calendarist group, which rebaptised him. He stayed with them for only about one year but they were not exclusive enough for him!

Six months ago he was rebaptised in a group, numbering six worldwide! The latest news is that he is dissastisfied with them, for they too are not strict enough for him. Here is the map of his way out of the Church, because that is how it will end – and it always does end in that way, outside the Church. This ‘anabaptism’ (Greek for rebaptism) is typical of Protestantism, whose underlying mentality and reflex is clear from the outset. It is not Orthodox, for it is not Love.

 

How ROCOR Double-Crossed the Moscow Patriarchate

Some years ago a Russian Metropolitan and personal friend told me that Patriarch Kyrill had always considered that the interest of the 2007 reconciliation between the Moscow Patriarchate (MP) and the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) was political, rather than spiritual. In order to assert that the MP is the Mother Church, émigré churches had to be reconciled, proving that the MP was no longer a Soviet organisation, thus reconciling the divide between ‘Red and White’. This was the historic, political importance of the event for the MP, which even then was a hundred times larger than ROCOR.

For us, then in the old European ROCOR, the reconciliation was also vital, not for political, but for spiritual reasons. In order to ensure that the sectarian tendencies which had been developing in American ROCOR since the 1960s and had already resulted in the schism in 1986 would not take over, ROCOR would be brought back, even in the USA, and anchored in the Russian Orthodox mainstream. If the reconciliation had not occurred, we, like many others, would at once have left for the MP, deserting ROCOR as a sect behind us. Indeed, it was the pressure from us that helped the bishops to make the right decision in 2007 and become part of the MP.

I can still remember how after the historic concelebration and reconciliation between Patriarch Alexis and Metropolitan Laurus in the Church of Christ the Saviour in Moscow in May 2007, a very senior and well-known mitred Russian archpriest from ROCOR said to me: ‘We’ve done it!’ And that is how we all felt – relief and joy. The sectarians had lost. Moscow had given victory to the Orthodox majority in ROCOR and now we could look forward to building a united Diaspora together with Russian and other Orthodox, the sectarian elements leaving for various tiny old calendarist groups, each even stranger than the other. Sadly, this was not to be.

Within ten years of that triumph, the sectarians started coming to the fore into ROCOR again, effectively double-crossing Moscow. A turning-point came in 2017 when ROCOR bishops refused the Patriarch’s request to establish three regional Metropolias within ROCOR. This would have led to metropolitanisation or decentralisation, mirroring the same processes inside the Russian Federation, as implemented by Patriarch Kyrill. After this came the americanisation of European ROCOR, persecuting and spiritually destroying, a situation reflected also in Australian ROCOR. In other words, ROCOR had fallen into centralisation and uncanonical extremism.

This refusal meant the outright rejection of our helping towards the creation of new regional Local Churches, contributing ROCOR’s legacy to them. However, the situation grew even worse. At the very end of 2020 a young and untutored American ROCOR bishop created a schism with another part of the MP on account of the canonical reception of Non-Orthodox, rejecting the age-old Russian Orthodox and European ROCOR conciliar way. In so doing he lost half his diocese, but. amazingly, received the backing of his fellow-bishops amid silence from the MP. The slippery slope was there and soon ROCOR bishops began rebaptising Orthodox.

The MP was quiet, obsessed by the politics of the 2007 ROCOR reconciliation and not by the dogmatics of baptism and pastoral practice. Then all its attention was distracted by the conflict in the Ukraine, with the resulting chaos in all its dioceses outside the Russian Federation and Belarus, not least in the Ukraine, the Baltics, Moldova and Western Europe. Essentially, this heresy of the new ROCOR is Neo-Donatist Anabaptism (the Donatists were the first rebaptisers), that is to say, repeating baptism, contrary to the Creed of the Church, ‘I believe in one baptism…’.  We can see how the new ROCOR is founded on American Protestant sectarianism.

As one American friend said to me: ‘The new ROCOR are really Orthodox Amish’. For the Amish like other sects are of course issued from Donatist Anabaptism. After 50 years inside the Russian Church and despite constantly being so often treated as third-class citizens, we are all very sad to see what ROCOR has become and how it has fallen away from the Orthodox Church. What saddens us the most is that though the old European ROCOR had nothing in common with the new ROCOR, it has now been taken over by it. The legacy of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe is being persecuted again, just as he was persecuted by US ROCOR in 1963.

The fragments of the old European ROCOR are being americanised, all who resist after lifetimes of service are expelled. And all this is encouraged in New York! Will Moscow wake up to what it has brought into the world? It thought it had gained canonical Russian Orthodox representatives in the Western world, but in fact it has been double-crossed and is represented by a sect of extremists and bullying pharisees and hypocrites, not by the Church. The new ROCOR ideology is playing no role in witness to the authentic Orthodox Faith, rather it is discouraging and delaying it.  Here is the tragedy that distracted Moscow will one day have to address.

 

 

 

The Struggle for Catholicity Against Papist Centralisation and for Unity Against the New American Heresy of ‘Corrective Baptism.’

Introduction: Centralisation and Decentralisation: Unity in Diversity

The Church is an image of the Holy Trinity, a Unity of Three Persons in One Essence, of Diversity and Unity, a subtle balance between centralising and decentralising forces. If centralising forces take over, legitimate diversity in Church life can be threatened, as we see outside the Church, in Roman Catholicism. This results in the boycott of the Church, which is no longer seen as being ‘our Church’, but the ‘Church’ of an irrelevant, distant, alien and foreign clerical elite. If decentralising forces take over, Church unity can be threatened by divisions and sects, as we see in Protestantism. This results in the dissolution of the Church into secular fragments, which are irrelevant to spiritual resistance and incapable of ascetic struggle for the Truth of Christ.

The Two Struggles of My Life

Personally, my life can be divided into two halves. The first half was spent in apprehending and comprehending God’s presence in the world, in learning and in serving in the Church in Europe. The struggle then was for the teachings of the Church against ideological compromises, being forced onto the Church by the anti-Christian Western world. That US-led world was trying to impose on all others its One World Government under the name of ‘Globalism’. This meant trying to deform the integrity of the Orthodox Church by imposing syncretistic modernism and ecumenism and corrupting its clerical elite, as Globalism had already done with Protestantism and Roman Catholicism and was then trying to do with Orthodoxy too. This was an attack on the integrity of the Church.

The second half of my life is being spent in England, building towards the inevitable Local Church of Western Europe. This ongoing struggle now takes place from within the largest part of the Orthodox Church here, the millions of the Romanian Metropolias of Western and Southern, Central and Northern Europe. This struggle is for the Catholicity of the Church through the concord of fourteen of the sixteen Local Orthodox Churches. This is because the two remaining Local Churches, Moscow and Constantinople, have tragically fallen into schism with one another because of their rival nationalist centralisations. Through their Papist-style centralisation of finance, power and control they are trying and failing to divide and share out the Orthodox world between them.

The Struggle for Catholicity Against the Papism of Constantinople and Moscow

Thus, the fourteen other Churches, the Patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the Churches of Georgia, Cyprus, Serbia, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, America, Albania and Macedonia, are fixed between the two extremes of Constantinople and Moscow. True, some are much closer to one or the other, but still they say to Constantinople: Yes, you were once the Patriarchate of the Imperial City, but that was nearly 600 years ago and even then you had no right to interfere in the internal affairs of others. And to Moscow they say: Yes, you are by far the largest in number, but you are still only one among sixteen, so do not try and tell us how we must live and think. The Soviet age is over, so stop denying the diversity and Catholicity of the Church.

The friction can most clearly be seen in the Ukraine. Thus, most, if not all, of the fourteen Local Churches know that what Constantinople did there in setting up a fake Church outside its own territory was wrong, against the canons of the Church. This is very clear, especially through the statements of the heads of the Churches of Albania, Poland and Bulgaria. As for Muscovite centralisation, so reminiscent of the Soviets, it is rejected not only by all others (though in the case of Constantinople, the rejection is clearly politically dictated by the US and so has no spiritual authority), but also in the Moscow Patriarchate, in the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Metr Onufry and wherever decentralisation and new autocephalous Churches are for pastoral reasons urgently required.

We can see all this visibly, if we simply compare photographs of bishops. The photo of the average Constantinople Metropolitan appears to show a bureaucrat with a thin black veil and a carefully trimmed beard, like that of a married priest whose wife dislikes beards. Only the metropolitans are not married, supposedly monks. The photo of the average Moscow Metropolitan appears to show a richly-decorated and rigidly-uniformed military man, at the service of a State army, not of the Word of God. Both show careerists, ‘Princes of the Church’, to use the Roman Catholic term for cardinals. My favourite photo of a metropolitan from one of the fourteen Churches shows a man in a dusty old cassock hauling a bag of cement in a wheelbarrow to build a new monastery.

The Novel and Aggressive American Heresy of Rebaptism

Orthodox Unity is now being challenged by the novel and highly aggressive American heresy of rebaptism. This sectarian heresy of rebaptising Orthodox is known as ‘corrective baptism’, a term quite unknown to the Fathers of the Church and the Saints, because it has been brought into the Church from the sectarian Lutheran world outside. Contradicting the Creed of the Church ‘I believe in one baptism…’, it means rebaptising those who have been canonically received into the Church by the established authority of its thousand canonical bishops. Although the Orthodox in question may have been receiving the sacraments of the Church for years, the schismatics are rebaptising them. This revolt against Church practice is uncanonical, heretical and sectarian.

The practice was condemned by all as long ago as 1976, when the Syshchenko scandal in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) broke in London. Then this same practice, implemented by an uncanonically ordained and very poorly-trained Ukrainian priest, was thoroughly rejected by the ever-memorable Metropolitan Philaret and the then still Orthodox ROCOR Synod as the heresy of Donatism. Sadly, this view is no longer held by some of today’s ROCOR bishops who do not know the Church Tradition. Thus, apart from ‘bishops’ in old calendarist sects, there are now those in ROCOR who have also turned aggressively schismatic, imposing their pseudo-Russian, American old calendarism, which is in fact nothing more than a sectarian Protestant revolt, a new outburst of Anabaptism, the bullying and hypocritical pharisaic rebaptism for ‘the pure’.

This is the first heresy of converts, neophytes who want to be ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. Such converts do not remain Orthodox because they have not yet cleansed themselves of the post-Schism Western mentality, they still do not know the Pre-Schism Western mentality. For them Orthodoxy is not existential, it is just a decoration added on top of what they do not want to renounce, a cherry on top of the Western cake. Their mentality therefore remains fundamentally anti-Orthodox. And they can go to one extreme or the other. Being anti-Orthodox is not only being pro-ecumenist, pro-modernist, pro-reformist, it is also to be filled with hatred for Roman Catholics and Protestants. Both extremes are equally anti-Orthodox, equally opposed to Truth and Love.

Conclusion: The Dangers of Centralisation and Sectarianism

With their natural Russian flock dying out or leaving them, these bishops are desperate to make up falling numbers by recruiting disgruntled ex-Protestants. These often psychologically unstable extremists have no spiritual roots in the Church. To my knowledge, so far two American ROCOR bishops in different continents are publicly boasting of rebaptising other Orthodox, though others may be involved. Once this news reaches the for now politically unfree Moscow and it has the time to act, there will be trouble for the ROCOR schismatics. So continues our struggle for the Catholicity of the Church against anti-missionary and secular-inspired centralisation, and for the Unity of the Church against sectarian attacks, always towards the new Local Church of Western Europe to be established through a Council.

The End of a World

Politics

Catastrophic predictions and apocalyptic undertones are here. Even the name of a place in the Holy Land, Armageddon, is on some people’s lips. The US elite is threatening to invade Chinese Taiwan ‘in order to protect it from China’. In the US-backed ‘democratic’ Ukraine, that ‘bastion of Western ‘Civilisation’’ the most corrupt country in the world, which is now banning Christianity, 20,000 untrained and poorly-equipped Ukrainian conscripts are dying every month for the sake of dependence on the US, thousands more are shot in the back by the Ukrainian secret police for retreating, or else are deserting or surrendering. The Ukrainian birthrate has plummeted to 0.7 per woman and the population is now under 20 million, whereas just over thirty years ago it was 52 million.

Then there is the Holy Land, where Israeli colonists, 100% backed by US and Western European financial, and therefore political and media elites, but not by their peoples, are planning to genocide two million native Palestinians. Men, women and children are being murdered or dismembered by US bombs, dropped by US aircraft with Israeli insignia. The whole once disunited and warring Muslim world, from Morocco to Pakistan, from Iran to Turkey, from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, from Yemen to Syria, is united against the Israeli military machine and its Western sponsors. Mass demonstrations in support of the genocided Palestinians, largely unreported by Western State media, are taking place all over the world, including in Western countries. The US is isolated, faced down by the Global Majority, from Brazil to South Africa. Heads of countries even refuse to speak to the senile President Biden. It has sent aircraft carriers, but China has sent warships, as Russia also. Iran is threatening isolated Israel and its corrupt political leaders with destruction, if Israel invades Gaza. In Syria, part of which is illegally occupied by the US Army, which is pumping out stolen oil, Russian forces, present at the invitation of the Syrian government, are threatened by the US. They will react.

The problem is ‘Gentile Zionism’. This is the Non-Jewish, Western fantasy that all political decisions taken by Western countries are infallibly correct and that the superior Western ‘liberal’ world, as ‘an exceptional civilisation’ with ‘a manifest destiny’, must rule the planet as the unique model for all. All Non-Westerners are as nothing, just folklore to look at in a Disneyland zoo. The Global Majority, seven billion out of eight billion, do not agree with this Nazism and is at this moment preparing to intervene in the Holy Land to bring about a ceasefire. There has only ever been one way out of this, ‘the two-state solution’: one homeland for Jews and one homeland for Palestinians, as was agreed by Resolution 181 of the UN in 1947, but which has ever since been vetoed by the US.

Christianity

The largest nominal religion in the world, though still covering only a minority of the world, is Christianity. Two forms of it used to predominate in the Western world. The first, Roman Catholicism, invented a thousand years ago, has been undermined by unending scandals involving papal and episcopal corruption, clerical pedophilia and crime, misogyny and racism. Few Roman Catholic laypeople actually believe in or observe its controversial ideology. The second form, Protestantism, invented 500 years ago after dissatisfaction with Roman Catholicism, has nearly completely dissolved into the anti-Christian Secularism which both spawned. Protestant leaders widely predict that their own religion will die out by 2050. Who believes in the Western form of Protestantism any more? Most Protestant churches in the Western world are empty and many have been sold or are for sale.

As for the Non-Western, Orthodox Church, some of its main leaders are only politicians and not pastors, whose only concern seems to be power and money. Thus, the Greek Patriarch, out of communion with the Russian Church, set up an uncanonical Church in the Ukraine for a $25 million bribe from the US and his Patriarchate has been undermined by incessant sexual and financial scandals. Meanwhile, the Russian Patriarch, out of communion with the Greek Patriarch, thanks St Seraphim of Sarov for nuclear weapons! (1). His once multinational and united Church, undermined by centralisation and Russian nationalism, is utterly divided. It suffers from constant moral and financial scandals with bishops, divisions or schisms everywhere outside Russia, in Estonia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova (2). Tomorrow divisions may well begin in Belarus and Kazakhstan. Moreover, the Russian Church’s small, sectarian American branch has been in schism from its even smaller French branch for nearly three years. Nothing has been done about this schism except to encourage it, despite the appeals of its clergy to its now wealthy bishops to return from schism, the consequent collapse of the American branch in one country and the open persecution of theologically-educated and conscientious Orthodox. One of the American bishops scandalously and openly rebaptises, not just Non-Orthodox, but even other Orthodox (!). This is a sect, not part of the Church. Yet, apparently, the leaders of the Russian Church find this arrogant Americanisation and ‘One True Church’ sectarianisation normal.

We have seen it all before. Those who have not seen it all before can read about it in the history books. Although all may become a lot worse, we do not believe the apocalyptic hype. In the Holy Land the Global Majority (miscalled by some the ‘Global South’), Russia, China, India, Africa, Latin America, can still make peace between the two warring sides in the Holy Land. If US dollars were to be withdrawn from troubled places, Taiwan would peacefully return to China, the Ukraine would peacefully return to Russia, and the south and west of Israel would peacefully return to Palestine. There are solutions.

As for Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, these were only ever temporary, politically-shaped Western deviations of Christianity, with some very strange traits. Having served their time, they can now disappear and be replaced, perhaps even by historic Christianity and the historic Church. Their roots from the first millennium are still present. As for the Orthodox Church, we have also seen all the polarised divisions and sectarianism before (3). Leaders come and go. The head of the Church is Christ, not men. When men refuse to deal with the problems they have created, Christ will step in. All racism, schisms and sects can be overcome and dissolved by new, Christ-appointed leaders. We do not believe that this is the end of the world. However, it is the end of a world. We are surely present at the remaking of the world, at its reconfiguration, not at its end.

 

Notes:

  1. In French: https://orthodoxie.com/le-patriarche-cyrille-les-armes-nucleaires-par-linexprimable-providence-de-dieu-ont-ete-creees-sous-la-protection-de-saint-seraphin-de-sarov/
  2. Summarised in Romanian in: https://tv8.md/2023/20/10/dornici-sa-invete-limba-romana-6500-de-persoane-s-au-inscris-la-cursurile-organizate-de-stat-din-ce-domenii-vin-participantii/242307.

The full version of the still unanswered letter from 5 September, which is in fact an urgent appeal for autocephaly, with its clear emphasis on continuing Russian racism towards Moldovans, is available in Romanian-style Russian (Metr Vladimir’s native language is Romanian) on Facebook. If the Russian Patriarch ignores the appeal, the whole Moldovan Church may well join the Romanian Church. The absurd and uncanonical ‘defrockings’ of Moldovan (and other) priests who have already joined the Romanian Church will be rescinded – as they always are when they are purely political.

  1. For example, there was the scandal of the rebaptism of Orthodox by the selfsame Americanised branch of Russian Orthodoxy of neophytes in Guildford, England in 1976. The remnants of that Guildford group of pseudo-Orthodox are still rebaptising Orthodox today. Just another story of primitive neophytism, openly encouraged by its bishops, of whom some are themselves neophytes, despite the canons against the consecration of neophyte bishops. But the heretical rebaptism of Orthodox is itself only a repeat of the age-old phariseeism of the sectarian heresy of Donatism from the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. There is nothing new under the sun. What is disgraceful that the leadership of the once theologically respectable Russian Church countenances such a heresy in its midst and the persecution and slandering of those who oppose it. Those who start receiving Non-Orthodox Christians by baptism end up receiving Orthodox by baptism too!

Heresies, Schisms, Divisions and the Consequences of the Ukrainian Tragedy

The misfortune that has befallen Russia is the direct result of grievous sins and her rebirth is only possible through cleansing from them. However, so far there has been no real repentance.

Bishop (now St) John of Shanghai

Death is the enemy of Life; and he has many friends among men, in all those authorities in whom a debased sense of Life is linked with temporary power.

Introduction: On the Misuse of the Words Heresy and Schism

The words heresy and schism have been much misused and even abused, for self-justifying nationalist and political reasons. For example, Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) (+ 1936) was accused of ‘heresy’ (heresy is a Greek word meaning a wrong choice) for stating that not only Christ’s Crucifixion, but also His Agony in Gethsemane played a part in our Redemption. Those who unreasonably accused him of ‘stavroclasm’, that he had rejected the centrality of the Cross, either misunderstood his words or else deliberately distorted his words out of personal dislike or, more often, because of differences in political views. Or there is Patriarch Sergius of Moscow (+ 1944), who was accused of the ‘heresy’ of ‘Sergianism’, a ‘heresy’ named as such by a priest who was a CIA operative and freemason! Of course, that Patriarch sinned through cowardice, abject lies, subservience to militant atheism, careerism, bureaucratic centralism and ritualism. The same misuse and abuse have happened with the word ‘schism’. (A Greek word meaning a split). This word has been misused to describe parishioners who left a (corrupt) priest for a non-corrupt priest, or who left a schismatic bishop for a non-schismatic bishop. The only schism was that of the bishop they had left! The same is true of political ‘defrockings’ (See below).

For example, over the last century the Russian emigration and the Patriarchal Church inside Russia were at each other’s throats for generations and accused each other of being ‘heretics’, ‘schismatics’, ‘without grace’ and ‘defrocked’ one another’s clergy. However, when the time came for reconciliation a few years after the fall of the USSR, they suddenly both withdrew all charges, stating that they had all been politically motivated. In other words, both sides had been lying the whole time! No wonder that there are priests who have been ‘defrocked’ by the KGB or the CIA and are considered to be confessors and not defrocked at all. Such ‘defrockings’ are of course all reversible, unlike what is stated on a Kremlin-funded, English-language ‘Orthodox’ website, which carefully censors all disagreement with itself. There is nothing new here. St John Chrysostom (+ 407) was also ‘defrocked’ for political reasons, St Nectarios of Pentapolis (+ 1920) was suspended because of jealousy, slandered, exiled and later canonised. As for St John of Shanghai (+ 1966), in the early 1960s he was suspended by his own ROCOR Synod and put on trial as a common criminal by his fellow-bishops. Later they canonised him! Nothing has changed.

Heresies

In the fourth century the Church became established, that is, it became closely linked to the State. There were many advantages to this, such as not being persecuted, being able to do missionary work freely, or receiving State financial aid to build churches. However, there were also many disadvantages, for example, officials were nominated as bishops by the State as part of an attempt at command and control, with centralisation, bureaucracy and protocols, clergy lined up in rigid ranks like soldiers, churches which were nationalist ghettos and not parish communities, and money charged for sacraments, all amid ritualism and superstition. St Basil the Great (+ 379) complained about bishops who had this mentality as not real bishops, they would side with anyone. Some of them did indeed know very little about Orthodox Christianity, some of them were probably atheists, or at least they behaved as the worst atheists. In any case, they compromised the Faith by their way of life, even though on paper they did not renounce the Creed, or Symbol of Faith, and so by inertia remained Orthodox Christians, but only nominally and formally, that is, only outwardly, and only for a time.

However, as usual, when you start living in a way that differs from the Creed, you fall into heresy. Now a heresy is a teaching that contradicts the Creed, which was drawn up at the two Universal Church Councils at Nicea in 325 and Constantinople in 381. Those who follow heresies are called heretics. The contents of the Creed, agreed on by all for all time, are dogmas of the Church. To apply the words ‘heresy’ and ‘dogma’ to anything outside the spiritually-revealed Creed is a misuse or abuse of the term. So a heresy is a separation from the Church for a dogmatic reason and leads to new dogmas and a new way of life, opposed to the Church. Many of the above nominal Orthodox Christians duly became heretics, called Gnostics, Arians, Nestorians, Sabellians, Donatists, Monophysites, Monothelites, Iconoclasts etc. Generally extremely proud and self-justifying, they all essentially denied that God is the Holy Trinity or that God had become man. All of these groups therefore denied some part of the Creed. Some of their naïve adherents, ‘heretics’, did return to the Church, but others, not naïve, did not.

The Roman Catholic Example

As an example of heresy, it was out of the situation of a State Church that in the eleventh century a new heresy (a heresy because it changed the Creed) called ‘Catholicism’ was born. This is a religion which is actually a State in itself. Its promoters who were greedy for power (unlkei its unconscious victims), wanted all the advantages of being a State Church, without the disadvantages. They did this by creating a ‘Church-State, that is, they put themselves above the State, making their institution into a Superstate. At the origin of this was their alteration to the text of the Creed, adding the word ‘filioque’, which implies that their Pope of Rome replaces Christ and the Holy Spirit. Thus, Orthodox Christians in Western Europe were forced to leave the Church by the invention of this new ‘Roman Catholic’ religion. Those who were conscious of this change were heretics, as they replaced Christ, present through the Holy Spirit, by mere men, with the title of Pope of Rome. The consequences were almost immediate.

At once bloodthirsty military campaigns were organised to obtain power, conquering lands and resources. The Popes of Rome promised the men who took part in them that whatever they did, murder, rape, theft, pillage, they would go to heaven because they were doing it in the name of the new Roman Catholic god. These expeditions were called ‘Crusades’ and started in what is now Italy, Spain and England (in 1066) and were then taken to Palestine, southern France and Eastern Europe (in the thirteenth century). These then developed into internal crusades with the bloodthirsty Inquisition and were spread in the sixteenth century to what is now Latin America. Certain Roman Catholics were still murdering and pillaging in Croatia and the western Ukraine only three generations ago and were still being promised a ticket to heaven by their Roman Catholic clergy for their Fascist deeds. This is what happens when you replace the Holy Spirit with some manmade teaching. In other words, false teaching always becomes a heresy and so leads to an evil and deformed way of life.

Schisms

A schism is a permanent separation from the Church for a non-dogmatic reason. Often these reasons are nationalist and sectarian, though there is also the risk of schisms becoming heresies. For instance, from an Orthodox Christian viewpoint, Protestantism is a schism from Roman Catholicism. Although Protestantism confessed the same heresy as the Roman Catholicism through the same filioque deviation from the Creed, it did not agree with Roman Catholicism in other respects and so split away from it. Therefore, in the sixteenth century dissident Roman Catholics separated, calling themselves Protesters. Then, as is always the case with schismatics, they disagreed with each other and have since separated into a myriad of sects. For sectarianism, usually accompanied by personality cults, is the result of schisms. Of course, apart from this classic case, there have been a multitude of other schisms. And just as heresies lead to an evil and deformed life, so schisms also result in hatred, jealousy, lies and slander.

For instance, in Russia in the seventeenth century there took place the ‘Old Ritualist’ schism. This was about minor changes in ritual, but because the changes were imposed by the State, they led to a schism, which soon became violent and split into multiple schisms, just as in the Protestant model. A more recent example is in the last century when those in Greece who did not want to accept the dating of the Western calendar for the fixed feasts, as the Greek State was insisting under pressure from Western governments, operated schisms from the Orthodox Church. They called themselves ‘old calendarists’ and they in turn also split into a multitude of sectarian groups that hated one another. As the calendar is not a dogmatic issue (the Creed never mentions it), separation on this basis is a schism, not a heresy. And finally there is the case of the nationalist and Sovietised US-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russa (ROCOR), which instituted a schism from the multinational Archdiocese of Western Europe. Although they are both groups under one and the same Moscow Church, yet they are now not in communion with one another.

Divisions

Finally, there are divisions. These are neither heresies, as Church teachings are not involved, nor schisms, as they are not permanent. These are temporary separations from the corrupted administration of a Church, usually for nationalist or political reasons. In other words, a division is due to differences of opinion between bishops or groups of bishops. Divisions have existed and exist within the Roman Catholic and Protestant worlds. For instance, Liberal Methodists separated from Tory Anglicans and so far only some have returned, and various groups of Traditionalists have separated from liberal Roman Catholics and, again, so far only some have returned. The danger here, as with all divisions, is the risk of them developing to schisms, that is, they become permanent, and so full of nastiness, hatred, jealousy, lies and slander.

In the Orthodox Church there have also been several divisions for nationalist or political reasons, especially over the last two centuries. For example, the Bulgarians separated from the Constantinople Greeks, the Macedonians from the Serbs, three different groups of Russian emigres separated from the Church inside the USSR and Serbian emigres separated from the Church inside Yugoslavia. Most of these issues were resolved, divisions overcome, even if it took decades and generations, almost a century in some cases. Despite these generally positive resolutions, today there is a new cause and outbreak of such divisions and they risk turning into schisms, that is, becoming permanent. These divisions are all centred around one single subject: the highly centralised and profoundly corrupt ex-Soviet (and not very ex-Soviet) multinational Republic of the Ukraine

The Ukraine

The first new and serious division here (there had been old divisions) took place in 2018 between the most powerful Local Orthodox Churches, the Greek (7% of the baptised, or four Local Churches) and the Russian (70% of the baptised and one Local Church). This left the vast majority of the Local Orthodox Churches (23% of baptised and ten Local Churches) in shock. When in 2018 the Greeks set up a new Church on Ukrainian territory, which has been under the Moscow Church for nearly 350 years – shocking enough – the Russians replied by refusing to concelebrate or co-operate with the Greeks – just as shocking. Then the Russians in turn set up a Church on the territory of Africa which, apart from Egypt and Libya, had been Greek Church territory for nearly 100 years – more shocking. Thus, a separation in the Ukraine had spread to Africa, a territory which the US and China with Russia are directly battling for political influence in. The consequences of this division are now escalating even further.

It seems that power does indeed corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. For of course, behind this division lies power politics, the desire for control of territory and so for money. The small Greek Churches are heavily financed and even controlled by the US, and the much larger Moscow Church is heavily financed and even controlled by the Russian State. Yet another new escalation took place one year ago in February 2022, as a result of the war that had begun between the US-controlled Ukraine and the Russian Federation in 2014. This had followed the violent US-organised coup which overthrew the democratically-elected Ukrainian government. The result was the present highly centralised, puppet regime in Kiev, financed and armed by the West, and threatening to complete its genocide of those of Russian language and culture in the east of the Ukraine. In response, in 2022 Russia sent in troops to protect those of Russian language and culture in the east of the Ukraine. A war had begun.

The Tragedy of the War

After Russia’s vastly superior forces had defeated the Kiev forces within a few weeks, the Kiev regime was about to conclude a peace agreement, but it was forced by the US to break off negotiations. Thus, in a second escalation, the US made its vassals send old, mainly Soviet, military equipment to re-equip the Kiev forces. By summer 2022 Russia had destroyed that equipment too. Then, in a third escalation, the US-led West began sending huge sums of money ($150 billion in twelve months so far), huge amounts of its own military equipment, training Kiev troops and also paying tens of thousands of mercenaries to fight on behalf of the beleaguered Kiev regime. Russia will destroy that too, but of course it will take even longer and even more will die. The proxy-war is being fought until the last Ukrainian and the last mercenary who wants to fight is dead. It is a giant war crime.

The result is that today Kiev dead number between 160,000 and 300,000 (including several thousand foreign mercenaries). Russian dead number 19,000. And this does not include the hundreds of thousands of physically wounded and psychologically wounded (traumatised). This does not include the damage to the infrastructure of what was already one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in Europe, which is still the battlefield for this proxy war between Washington and Moscow. This European war is unspeakable in its horror. Nor have we mentioned the millions of refugees who have fled to Russia and to various countries in Western Europe. Millions of lives have been disrupted and there are hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans. How could anyone possible approve of this tragedy? And yet…..

The Tragedy of the Moscow Church

The tragedy here is that the Orthodox faithful both in Russia and in the Ukraine used to belong to one united Church. The Church, centred in Moscow, used to be multinational, with faithful not only in the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, but also in Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan, and with millions of others in over sixty other countries around the world, especially in the Western world, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the countries of Western Europe, Northern America and Australia. However, almost the whole episcopate of the Moscow Church inside Russia has failed to condemn what is now a nine-year long civil war, in which nominal Orthodox are killing nominal Orthodox. The result is that the once multinational Moscow Church is rapidly becoming a national, not to say, nationalist, Russians-only, Church. Why would Non-Russians want to belong to a Russian-controlled Church, where they cannot even express their own opinions? Most don’t, not to mention many Russians themselves, for whom the Church should have nothing to do with war. The Russians will surely win the war in the Ukraine, but the far, far greater challenge was to win the peace. Sadly, that seems to have been lost already and inevitably an independent but canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will be born there.

Thus, left-wing liberals in the USA and the Roman Catholic politician Cardinal Koch have accused the Russian Patriarch of ‘heresy’ for saying that ‘the Russian World’ (wherever there are concentrations of ethnic Russians) must be united and that the Russian soldiers who die to unite Orthodox will go to heaven. (The accusation by Cardinal Koch is particularly hypocritical, since for its whole existence Roman Catholicism has claimed that those who murder others to make them Roman Catholic will go to heaven). Although clearly not heretical but just nationalistic, the Russian Patriarch’s words do invite profound disagreement, and not only among fringe liberals. Few, if any, agree with the Patriarch. These words are his personal opinion. They are especially strange, given that the leader of what used to be a multinational Church is seen to be promoting militant nationalism, just as his Greek Orthodox enemies do through their nationalist racism, which they call phyletism. Where is the difference between Greek and Russian leaders? Six of one and half a dozen of the other?

The Break-Up of the Moscow Church

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of both sides in the war and of its final outcome, the result is that everywhere, outside the tightly-controlled Russian Federation and Belarus, the faithful have been leaving the once multinational Russian Church. Either they have left for other Local Orthodox Churches or else they have declared themselves ‘fully independent’, as in the Ukraine and Latvia. Most recently there has been the case of five Orthodox priests in Lithuania, four of whom are ethnic Lithuanians. Not surprisingly, as Non-Russians, they find that they cannot agree with the Russian Patriarch and do not want to belong to the same Church as him. The result of this is that they were ‘defrocked’ (forbidden the priesthood) by the Moscow Church, even though they are not in Russia or Russians. However, they have now been allowed the priesthood by the Church of Constantinople, which had jurisdiction in Lithuania some 350 years ago. (Ironically, Constantinople, today called Istanbul, is now the largest city in Europe and with a population of Russians probably fifty times greater than its Greeks).

Apparently, these priests are not allowed the right to freedom and self-determination, they must obey what has become a foreign, since no longer multinational, Church. This situation is unthinkable in a Western country which has a culture of freedom. And of course, you cannot be defrocked for a difference of opinion about nationalism or politics! Real defrocking happens only when a priest behaves immorally, for example, he steals money or he is involved in sexual impropriety. Clearly, ‘defrockings’ like those in Lithuania are not canonical, they are purely political, and are not recognised by anyone except the present Moscow authorities. The irony is that those who defrock in such cases, though not in this one, are often guilty of real causes for defrocking! For instance, over the last fifty years in North America and Europe, only very recently in the Antioch jurisdiction, we have seen priests ‘defrocked’ for being whistleblowers because:

Their bishop was a pedophile.

Their bishop was heretical or schismatic.

Their bishop was homosexual.

Their bishop was committing fornication.

Their bishop wanted to sleep with the priest’s wife.

Their bishop was jealous of a priest’s church and tried to steal it from him.

Their bishop wanted a priest to spy for a secret service.

Their bishop was an atheist and ordained atheists.

Their bishop was a careerist and ready to commit any crime in furtherance of his career.

In each case the priest left his bishop and was duly ‘defrocked’! Of course, the ‘defrocking’ was completely ignored and the priest continued to serve, transferring to a normal bishop. As a result, the persecuted priest gained respect and his ‘defrocking’ bishop lost all respect, together with much of his flock – and also his career.

Conclusion: The Dogmatisation of Personal Opinions

As we can see, these new divisions are not at all theological, but nationalist and political. Here we are in the world of personal (political) opinions, the world of intolerance. Differences in personal opinions have nothing to do with heresies and schisms. Personal opinions are here being treated as dogmas. The Faith is the same. When Church authorities intolerantly impose nationalist and political opinions, they automatically divide their flock, as we see today in the Ukraine. Thus, the Moscow Church has lost moral authority in most of the Ukraine, not to mention in most of the rest of the world outside the Russian Federation and, one day, in Belarus too. The Moscow Church is rapidly ceasing to be the multinational Russian Orthodox Church and becoming a mononational Church. You cannot be a multinational Church and be a national (and nationalist) Church at the same time. You must decentralise yourself, as the USSR was decentralised (but astonishingly the Church was not decentralised), and grant other nationalities freedom and independence.

Only two bishops of the present Moscow Church have remained traditional, that is, multinational Russian Orthodox, by diverging in their opinions from the authorities. One of them, Metr Hilarion (Alfeev), was disgraced and exiled to a church in Budapest, the other, Metr Jean Renneteau, a French national, has courageously expressed his total disagreement (1). As far as they are concerned, through unequivocal support for the war in the Ukraine the Moscow authorities have confused the Church with politics, thus discrediting the Church which they represent, as well as themselves. These divisions are only about nationalism and politics. A dispute about territories and whether they belong to or do not belong to a Local Church has nothing to do with the creed and heresy and schism. Through their centralisation the Church authorities have dismissed the right to freedom and self-determination. And sadly, despite constant warnings, the centralisation of these Church authorities is not a case of Resovietisation, as there never was any Desovietisation.

Afterword

Reading the above there are those who will fall into despair. They are mistaken to do so, for they have forgotten Church history. Now is the Gethsemane of the Church, that is, the moment not of Her defeat, but of Her victory has begun. Christ is deserted by His disciples, who have fallen asleep, but as time and time again in Church history, when cast aside and deserted, this is the moment when Christ has overcome the world. The arrogance, narcissism and sense of impunity of the crazies who, even in complete freedom, sell their souls for a mess of Soviet pottage, accepting brainwashed ‘obedience’ for the sake of their careers, more Soviet than the Soviets, are cast down. Throughout the Russian Church, exactly as St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied, there will be a great cleansing from corruption, a generational change among the episcopate. From that will follow the repentance and restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church (which, it seems, now no longer exists) and the resurrection of the Russian Lands. But first they must go through this Great Tragedy, the Crucifixion of the Ukraine, the war that has happened on account of the apostasy of those who denied the Church of God. They reduced it to the sins of cowardice, abject lies, subservience to militant atheism, careerism, bureaucratic centralism and ritualism. Did they really think they could get away with it? We follow another way, the way of the New Martyrs and New Confessors. For the King is coming and we must be ready to meet Him.

 

Note:

  1. See: https://www.svoboda.org/a/mitropolit-dubninskiy-ioann-my-idem-po-krovi-nashih-muchenikov-/32276466.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Could There Be a Schism in the Church?

At the present time, there are those who fear a schism in the Ukraine. However, there can never be schisms in the Church, only schisms away from the Church; the Church is never divided, but groups can fall away from Her, losing Her grace. We can at once identify three schisms in history, all of which took place for nationalistic reasons.

Roman Catholicism

This was an invention of the Western European elite developed in the eleventh century, though it had already been prefigured at the very end of the eighth century under the Teutonic tyrant Charlemagne. Essentially it was an attempt by Western European barbarians to usurp the Church and replace the Mystery of Christ with provincial Roman pagan rationalism. In order to justify their schism, they invented with their rationalism a new and heretical doctrine about God. Amazingly, many fell for this myth, even to this day believing in it as part of their ‘European’ racial ‘superiority’.

Uniatism

First spread in the seventeenth century, though invented a few years earlier, this was an attempt to make out that you can still be an Orthodox Christian under the heretical Bishop of Rome. It attracted only those on the western fringes of Orthodox Civilization, who could be oppressed and bribed and who were so ignorant and superficial that they thought that Christianity is a mere ritual.

Ukrainian Nationalism

Invented for imperialistic reasons at the end of the nineteenth century by Roman Catholic Austro-Hungary, this was a purely political method of flattering an ethnic group into believing that they had their own religious identity, neither Roman Catholic nor Orthodox Christian. It was later used by Fascist Germany to massacre Jews and then by the Fascist United States, again for imperialistic reasons, to try to undermine and destroy multinational Holy Rus. This myth attracts only those for whom Christ has no importance, but their folklore does.

Every schism is tragic and only individuals return and then with difficulty. It is quite different from a division. This is temporary and occurs only for political reasons – such as the division between the Church inside Russia and the Church outside Russia between 1927 and 2007. Everything that is possible must therefore be done to avert a schism.

 

The Idolatry of Intellectualism

There is nothing wrong with the human intellect in itself. It is a wonderful tool for expressing spiritual revelation. That is how the Church Fathers used it – as a tool – and no more. However, there is a danger – when the intellect turns into an ism, intellectualism, in other words, when the intellect is used idolatrously as an end in itself, when it is no longer at the service of the expression of the heart cleansed and enlightened by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Then theology, the knowledge of God granted to the cleansed heart, is no longer expressed and, though this knowledge may still be called theology, in fact it is mere philosophy, the speculations of the intellect become an end in itself.

All heretics committed this error. It was the error of Judas, who thought that he knew better than God and, wanting to correct Him, so killed Him (which is also the error of modern Western Secularism, which so admires Judas, with its ‘God is dead’). It was the error of the Gnostic Origen, who idolatrously put intellectualism in the place of God and so is admired by modern renovationists. It was the error of Arius and Nestorius, whose little minds could not accept the mystery of Christ the God-Man and so put the personal pride of their rationalistic speculations above God. It was the error of the filioquists, who put their reason above the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

It was the error of the Western Scholastics, whose Greek heir was the heretic Barlaam, who could not personally know God because of the impurity of his heart and asserted that therefore no-one could no God, but was put in his place by the great St Gregory Palamas, who had seen the glory of God. It was the error of Paisius Ligarides, the papist sodomite intellectual who tried to betray the Russian Church in the 17th century. And it was the fantasy and error of the Parisian heretic Fr Sergius Bulgakov with his Sophiology heresy, denounced by two 20th-century saints of the Church Outside Russia, St John of Shanghai and St Seraphim of Sofia.

Such facts should be taken to heart by those still unrepentant intellectuals, conditioned by doctorates given them by the Gregorian University in Rome and Protestant Universities in Germany, who try and foist their heresies on us, most recently through their meeting in Crete. The Local Churches of Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch and Russia (the latter despite certain impure temptations among individuals in the hierarchy) have thoroughly rejected that meeting. So too have the leading lights of the episcopate in Greece and Serbia, reducing the documents issued by that meeting to shreds. There is no need for anti-ecumenist schisms, be patient, for the truth always triumphs in the end.

The Paris School and the Future

The phrase ‘Paris School’ (of Russian religious philosophy) is a vague phrase because many of its representatives ended up not living in Paris or even France and because it was such a very varied phenomenon. Thus, it included intellectuals mainly of Russian origin (but not all of them), who ended up living as far apart as the USA, England, Finland, Bulgaria (the anti-monarchist plotter, Fr George Shavelsky) and Constantinople (the philosopher Metr John Zisioulas). Some of these were close to Orthodoxy, others were in open heretical revolt against the Church and constructed anti-Church ideologies, others were simply harmless eccentrics who lived in the clouds.

A representative close to the Tradition, for example, was the academic theologian (and not philosopher!) Fr George Florovsky, who was ousted from St Vladimir’s Seminary by another much more Protestant-minded thinker of a Paris-born generation, Fr Alexander Schmemann. However, there were others like the notorious Fr Sergey Bulgakov, who founded a new heresy under the influence of the alcoholic Catholic occultist Vladimir Soloviov. The latter was the real founder of the School, who infected it with all its basic currents of Gnosticism, Origenism, liberalism and ecumenism and had a great influence on the enormous intellect of the polymath, Fr Paul Florensky.

Then in Paris there was also the esoteric philosopher Berdyayev, who was imbued with semi-Catholic mysticism and like Bulgakov never quite shook off his Marxism, but there was also the more Orthodox Fr Basil Zenkovsky who wrote a magisterial ‘History of Russian Philosophy’. Then there were Vladimir Lossky, trained in Scholasticism, but whose views were very close to the Tradition in many respects, but on the other hand, the fantasist Bishop John Kovalevsky or the recently deceased French ecumenists, the ex-pastor Elisabeth Behr-Sigel and Olivier Clement. Their views were respectively as close to Protestantism and Catholicism as is possible without lapsing.

In England there were other representatives of the Paris School. These included the late Metr Antony (Bloom), whose curious, personal views combined a theoretical conservatism with an extraordinary liberalism and influenced several convert followers, like the Jewish Fr Sergei Hackel. Then there was the late ex-Uniat Fr Lev Gillet, who appears to have died either as a Quaker or else a Buddhist (no-one is quite sure), or the Parisian artist and intellectual the late Fr Sophrony Sakharov, whose whole esoteric philosophy of Orthodoxy came to be shaped by the peasant St Silvanus whom he had met on the Holy Mountain, where he had been a librarian.

With such a variety of individuals, some much closer to Orthodox Tradition than others, some more renovationist than others, some more fantasist than others, what do they all have in common? Negatively speaking, it is how far most of them seemed to have stood from the saints of the Church in the emigration like St John of Shanghai (also who also lived for many years in Paris and often came to London) or St Seraphim of Sofia, or from the genuine Orthodox philosopher of the emigration Ivan Ilyin. These followed the wholeness of the ascetic Tradition of the Church, and not selected fragments of it, which is why the Paris School was opposed to authentic monasticism.

However, this was not the essence of the Paris School. Its essence was its intellectual pretentiousness, which contains the pride which is at the heart of all deviations from the Church, without exception. Not understanding that enlightenment comes from the grace of God that alone cleanses the repentant heart, they all mistakenly believed that enlightenment comes from the purification of the intellect and the imagination. This tragic mis-take meant that their views were intellectual, philosophical, more or less renovationist, more or less fantasist, disincarnate from reality and from ordinary Orthodox and Orthodoxy, and so ultimately they became sectarian and cultish.

The proof of this thesis is in the fact that when the time came for the gradual liberation of the Russian Church inside Russia from Sergianism and Renovationism after 1991, they refused to re-enter Her fold and glorify the New Martyrs and Confessors together with Her. They had not been longing to return all along, as had the faithful, but had instead been cultivating their own intellectualist philosophies outside the Orthodox Tradition. Thus, cultivating private, personality-driven sidelines, they failed to see the mainstream of Church catholicity and ended up isolating themselves in the worst sort of isolation – isolation from the real saints, the New Martyrs and Confessors.

This meant that they allied themselves only with the vestigial renovationist and sectarian elements on the fringes of the Russian Church inside Russia. It also meant that they sullied themselves with politics (under the pretence of being apolitical!, which is always political). Thus, they allied themselves with Russophobic elements in the Western world, for example, with the self-justifying neocon hawks and past-worshipping warmongers of NATO, who never wanted the Cold War to end and in their ethnocentricity arrogantly never understand that the vibrant values of Orthodox Christian Civilization are quite different from their dying anti-Christian Western culture.

This is why, when at the end of 2016 the time of generational change had come for renewal in Russia and then, inspired by the Russian example, for the first glimmers of freedom and the hope of repentance in the West, the Paris School and its values stuck to the dead past. These last representatives were now aged, vestigial relics, whose rebellious and often absurd ideologies had been half-baked in the spiritual desert of the 1960s, which had been passed on to a few convert intellectuals in Russia who still had not caught up with the real world. As for the Church, we look as ever towards prophetic holiness and the dynamic restoration of the Tradition in the Holy Spirit that is happening now.