Category Archives: Ideology

On Fr Seraphim (Rose)

We are not examining here whether the late Californian monk, Fr Seraphim (Rose), who in the 1960s joined the then Russian Orthodox Church in exile (ROCOR), was a saint or not. That is not our task and we are not qualified to do this. In the 1970s we always found his works logical and obvious, with common sense, opposed to ‘super correct’ fanaticism, but no more. I remember saying at the time that if you did not already know what he was writing, then you could not be a conscious member of one of the Orthodox Churches.

We cannot find proofs for or against his possible holiness. Perhaps God will reveal something and then all will be clear, one way or the other. Our task here is to examine why many members of the American Synod of Bishops, still called ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), despite the fact that it has been almost completely Americanised and most of its bishops cannot even speak correct Russian, want to canonise him today. There are clear reasons for this which are to do with the Synod’s historic crisis of identity.

Now, all Local Orthodox Churches in Western countries are primarily composed of immigrants or exiles from Orthodox countries, from Romania, Greece, Russia, the Ukraine, Serbia, Bulgaria, Syria etc. However, unlike all others, ROCOR, founded after the 1917 ‘Russian Revolution’, no longer has a natural constituency. Normal Orthodox Russians, not many of whom live in Western countries, do not join the New York-based ROCOR, if they can join what they prefer, their own Moscow-based Church of present-day Russians.

The latter is nearly 200 times bigger than ROCOR. Some wonder why it bothers with such a small group abroad. The reason is political, as the Russian Patriarch told a Metropolitan-friend. The Moscow Church needs to be represented in the USA, ROCOR is good for that, even though ROCOR has in the last decade become increasingly strange, even to the point of schism. For reasons of State, Moscow has chosen to overlook that. However, behind the shield of Moscow, which alone gives ROCOR official canonicity, ROCOR has an identity crisis.

Originally a part of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church, today its third, fourth, fifth and even sixth generations, few in number, hardly speak a word of Russian. Most Russians were assimilated generations ago and lost all interest in Russian Church life. This membership has been much supplemented by converts, who have no Russian origins, with the result that a once Russian Church has largely become an American Church. However, most converts join mainstream Orthodox groups. Why join a historical fragment, ROCOR?

Most American converts to Orthodoxy join their own Church, the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) or other US groups. However, ROCOR in the USA has attracted a niche group, or constituency, often called ‘crazy converts’. These are highly conservative and even pathological converts, apparently quite common in the USA and in California, though there are a few such people especially in other English-speaking countries, who are drawn to what is exclusive and anti-Protestant (ironically, most converts are Protestants).

Today, the American episcopate of ROCOR wants to canonise a convert, which is what Fr Seraphim (Rose) was. He will then be the saint of their converts, a self-justification for their schismatic behaviour and condemnation of all others, a kind of national flag, a unique and exclusive identity, which they hope will attract even more crazy converts. And they are necessary, as the old ROCOR Russian core is today growing ever smaller. However, it is pathological converts who have created the anti-woman and anti-family ethos of today’s ROCOR.

After its long-awaited submission to the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church and so the restoration of full canonicity in 2007, ROCOR had the opportunity to merge with the Moscow-based Church and also contribute positively to the other Orthodox living in Western countries from the mainstream. Tragically, by 2017 ROCOR had turned its back on this God-given opportunity and turned inwards, cutting itself off from others, refusing concelebration and communion, openly supporting Trump’s Republican Party.

In choosing the uncanonical and politically-driven path of the Protestant sect and condemning other Orthodox like pharisees, taking their clergy without letters of leave, the American Synod has isolated itself and discredited itself. Its intention to canonise an American convert, a repentant homosexual, but who did then spend many years with a pedophile, has cast further doubt on it, already compromised by its links with the CIA. In any case, as regards a possible canonisation of Fr Seraphim Rose and after the war in the Ukraine is over, Moscow will have the last word.

 

 

Filioquism, the Last Crusade and the Post-Filioque World

Foreword: Might is Not Right

Throughout history there have always been those who believe that ‘Might is Right’, either individually or collectively. Big and powerful individuals, kings or bishops, have often bullied the small and weak. Big and powerful nations have often bullied small and weak nations. There are many examples in history, from the Persians, the Chinese, the Indian kingdoms, to Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Franks, the Aztecs, the Incas and African tribes who sold each other into slavery. However, the case of the barbaric European tribes who even made their rivalries and jealousies into ‘World Wars’ is unique. This is because those rivalries were institutionalised, made systematic, made into an ideology. It is this ideology, at first racist, then of beliefs, at first confined to one individual in Rome, then spread to millions, who share the ideology.

The Suicide of Filioquism

To cut off your nose to spite your face is an expression which means to harm yourself in an attempt to harm someone else. This expression defines the attitude of the European elite towards the Ukraine. It has fully supported the Neo-Nazi regime which the US installed in Kiev in 2014 despite isolating itself from the vast majority of the world diplomatically and morally, not to mention losing cheap Russia oil and gas, without which most European industry is going bankrupt. Why this self-harming obsession? It is all about justifying the elite’s millennial ideology of superiority over others. For them that is what ‘Europe’ means. For Europe is not for them a geographical understanding, but an ideological construct. They are mentally unable to look back to the Old Europe, before the barbarian Franks and Normans introduced Filioquism. What is this?

Filioquism

Filioquism, more recently known variously as Zionism, Trotskyism, Fascism, Nazism or Globalism, is the ideology that one ‘self-appointed’ group should reign supreme above all others. It is completely secular. Believing Jews do not accept Zionism, just as believing Christians do not accept ‘Christian Zionism’ (which is a contradiction in terms). We do not seek to build a paradise on earth (which is what Karl Marx, the apostate, atheist grandson of a rabbi, wanted), nor do we seek to force Christ to return to earth by destroying the planet in Armageddon (the prideful fantasy of self-righteous ‘Christian Zionist’ prigs), we seek the Heavenly Jerusalem. What is the origin of this heresy, that an elite should seek to build a paradise for itself in the form of an anti-spiritual dictatorship, regardless of whether it is called the USSR, the USA or Israel?

The origin of Zionism as an ideology is in the ‘filioque’, a system a millennium old, which claimed that the Holy Spirit does not govern humanity, as the Holy Spirit had been replaced by a man in Rome. That is the first thing that the abandonment of the Nicene Creed by Rome in 1014 led directly to, thus reviving and justifying pagan Roman emperor-worship. By the end of the eleventh century, in 1096, exactly 930 years ago, this novel substitution of the Holy Spirit by a supposedly Divinely-sanctioned earthly authority, known as ‘the filioque’, had spread to all that man’s followers. They launched ‘the Crusades’, acts of organised imperialist violence against ‘inferior’ neighbours. All who accepted this ideology were in fact ‘filioquised’, as they exalted themselves above all others, making themselves superior to all others.

The first ‘inferior’ neighbours of Western Europe to suffer were Jews, then Muslims and Orthodox Christians. These ‘Crusades’ slaughtered their way through Europe into West Asia, lasting almost 200 years, from 1096 until 1291, in the Holy Land and the surrounding lands. However, they had begun with other ‘Crusades’ which had slaughtered Muslims and Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, murdered Orthodox in southern Italy and launched the bloody invasion of England in 1066. After the ‘Crusades’ had begun, there were ‘Teutonic Crusades’, invading northern Russia. Although the crusades in Iberia and England were successful, the eastward crusading movements against the Holy Land and Russia failed. Thus, with the movements eastwards resisted by Islam and Orthodox Christianity, the failed West looked further westwards.

Specifically, the Frankish Spanish who had been successful in what is now Spain and Portugal, looked south-westwards, helped by a greedy and fanatical Italian merchant-explorer called Columbus. Having failed to liberate the earthly Jerusalem in the Holy Land, these self-appointed ‘infallible beings’ decided to create their own New Jerusalem in the New World. They created what is now Latin America, genociding, both consciously and unconsciously, its native peoples. As for the Norman elite, who had been successful in England, it looked north-westwards and the Anglo-Normans created what is now the USA and Canada, genociding, both consciously and unconsciously, its native peoples. Here is the origin of ‘Judeo-Christian Civilisation’, a phrase invented only in the last century to describe the Western mentality, which is Filioquism.

The Last Crusade

The Last Crusade of the ‘Judeo-Christians’ is that of the last Crusader State of Israel, founded by the Anglo-Norman elite. It succeeded the Crusader settler State established in the twelfth century. This State is now genociding native Palestinians, just as the first Crusaders genocided the local Muslims, the Spanish and Portuguese genocided the native peoples of Latin America, and the British, French and other Filioquist Europeans genocided the native peoples of Northern America. The settler State of Tel Aviv exists only through the finance and arms donated by the USA. It uses them to attempt to genocide Gaza, the West Bank, the Lebanon and Iran. But today the USA has been defeated in its war against Iran and has seen nearly all its bases in the Persian Gulf destroyed. It is in full retreat from West Asia, once called the Middle East.

Afterword: The Post-Filioque World

Today, the USA is not only in full retreat from West Asia, but also from Western Europe, from where it is withdrawing thousands of its troops, and from East Asia, which it has lost to the economic influence of China, as well as from Africa, which rejects European colonialism, from Latin America and even English-speaking Oceania. Russia, Iran and China are together freeing Eurasia, by defeating the US rogue state in the Ukraine, Iran and the Pacific rim, where US hegemony had since 1991 been unchallenged. India, and many others, will follow. Here is the New, Non-Zionist World, the Post-Filioque world, which says that it is the Holy Spirit that governs us, not those who falsely claim Divinely-sanctioned supremacy. Meanwhile, the filioquised Western media only deals in wishful thinking, not reporting the facts of this Post-Filioque New World.