Category Archives: Orthodox Life

Pentarchy Plus: A Generation after the Great and Holy Council of Moscow a Historian Recalls the Great Cleansing and how the ‘Ukrainian Overreach’ Became a Blessing in Disguise

Looking back twenty-five years on from 2020, it is difficult for the young to imagine the state of decadence into which the Church had fallen at the end of the last millennium and which lasted into the early 21st century. For over 100 years, between 1917 and 2018, the Church had been paralysed; for over 75 years by the captivity of the Russian Church to the Soviet and Post-Soviet State; for over 100 years by the captivity of the old Church of Constantinople to the Western Powers, since 1948 to the USA. Once the Russian Church had been freed, after a very long and painful wait at the end of the 20th century, we then had to wait for the liberation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople from the US-controlled Phanariots. This became a very frustrating wait, as there was an accumulation of nearly two centuries of problems to be resolved, notably in Eastern Europe and the Diaspora. Everything began to move only in 2016, with the generational change 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

By trying to impose its masonic policies on the Church in Crete in 2016, the Phanariot ‘Council’ there became a laughing stock. Both the Vatican and the USA realized that the Phanar had no authority in the Orthodox world, that it was not an Orthodox Vatican, as they had repeatedly been told by the Phanariots and as they had naively believed. Then, in 2018, with one last desperate throw of its dice, by threatening schism in the Ukraine the Phanariot bishops found that they could no longer concelebrate with the Russian Church. By threatening schism in the Ukraine, its assemblies of bishops in the Diaspora, already become expensive but futile talking-shops for the Phanariot fantasy of imperialism, were boycotted by the Russian Church.

The Phanar had played with fire – and was burned. One word from the then President of Turkey and the elderly Phanariot Patriarch would become a refugee. One word from the US ambassador in Athens or Ankara and he would be sacked. By the end of 2018 the position of the Phanar had become very, very fragile – its demise in the form that it had assumed since the Russian Revolution of 1917 had become inevitable. All progress has been blocked for so long, so when the Phanar, compromised by its calendar and all sorts of modernist innovations, did finally collapse like a weakened dam under the pressure of vast amounts of water, the accumulation of problems was overcome. What happened?

First of all, in 2019 the highly impoverished and corrupt Ukraine finally collapsed into its constituent parts. Most of it returned to the Russian Federation, other small parts returned to Romania and Hungary and the extreme west to Poland, only a small central-western part remaining as an independent country and returning to its historical name of Malorossiya. When this happened, and the corrupted Western world realized that it had backed a bunch of thieves and murderers all along, the structure set up by Constantinople in the Ukraine also collapsed in scandal and disgrace.

As a result, in 2020 a long-awaited Church Council was called in Moscow and the Church restructured, as of old, into Five Patriarchates, with four new Autocephalous Churches, the order of precedence of the Patriarchates reconfigured in conformity with 21st century reality. Sometimes called ‘Pentarchy Plus’, these are the same Five Patriarchates and four Churches as we have today, in 2045:

 

  1. The Patriarchate of Rus. Patriarch Tikhon II.

The canonical territory of the Patriarchate of Rus (as it was renamed, the old name of ‘Patriarchate of Moscow’ being dropped as narrow and compromised) was recognized as Eurasia, except for the territories of the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem and the Church of Europe (see below). It continued for the time being to include the autonomous Churches of Japan, China, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and the Exarchates of Belarus and Malorossiya. The Patriarchate of Rus was joined by the Church of Georgia, which had faced great difficulty and isolation and so also became another autonomous Church within the Patriarchate of Rus. The Patriarchate of Rus was given the immense task, with the closest co-operation of the other four Patriarchates, of organizing four new Autocephalous Churches, following the spiritual and moral collapse of the old heterodox institutions of Catholicism and Protestantism. These were in order of size:

  1. The Church of Europe. This included the former Autocephalous Churches of Poland and the Czech Lands and Slovakia, which were absorbed into the new Autocephalous Church of Europe. Therefore this included the territories of all the ex-Catholic/Protestant countries westwards from the borders of the Empire of Rus (as it was renamed in 2028, when the Empire was restored and Tsar Nicholas III was anointed). So it stretched from Finland and Hungary to Iceland and Portugal.
  2. The Church of Latin America. This included South and Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. It used Spanish and Portuguese, with some Dutch, French and English, especially in the Caribbean.
  3. The Church of Anglo-America. This was composed of Canada and the USA and used English, French and some Spanish.
  4. The Church of Oceania. This used English and some native languages (notably Maori).
  5. The Patriarchate of New Constantinople. Patriarch Chrysostom.

The flock-less institution of the Patriarchate of old Constantinople was moved from Istanbul and most of its bishops retired, once they had been threatened with details of their lives being revealed. A new ‘Patriarch of New Constantinople’, the first Patriarch being a Bulgarian by nationality (in recognition for the bravery of the Church of Bulgaria in refusing to attend the 2016 meeting in Crete), the Orthodox calendar returned, and so the old calendarist schisms in Greece, Cyprus, Romania and Bulgaria overcome. The canonical territory of New Constantinople (as it was now called) was defined as that of the old autocephalous Churches of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia (its nationalist schisms in Macedonia and Montenegro overcome), Albania, Cyprus and Greece (together with areas of Greece formerly under old Constantinople). With an Orthodox population of just over 40 million, the new Church of Constantinople, seven old Churches in one, decided that the nationalities of its Patriarchs and their sees would rotate. Thus, instead of absurd provincial rivalries (each nationality trying to build the tallest church in the Balkans), at last there began a period of Balkan and Cypriot Confederation, co-operation and prosperity, as Tsar Nicholas II had foreseen in 1912.

  1. The Patriarchate of Alexandria. Patriarch Moses.

The Patriarchate of Alexandria’s canonical territory remained All Africa. However, it began to be aided in its task of at last missionizing Africa by the other Patriarchates, especially the Patriarchate of Rus with its generous Imperial funds. From now on its Patriarchs became black Africans.

  1. The Patriarchate of Antioch. Patriarch John.

Centred in Russian-rebuilt Damascus after the Western war which had tried to destroy Syria through its puppets Saudi Arabia and Qatar (as they were then called), this Patriarchate was renewed. Its canonical territory was defined as the whole Arab world of the Middle East, outside Palestine (see below), together with Turkey.

  1. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Patriarch James.

This was now established again as the Patriarchate of the Holy Land and its canonical territory was defined as that of the lands of the Palestinians, Israel and the Jordan. Its old dispute with Antioch was overcome and its Patriarchs from now on were all to be Palestinians.

 

So it was after the great cleansing of the Church at the 2020 Great and Holy Council of Moscow (as it is now called) that the Church was reconfigured and the mission to the Non-Orthodox world began.

4 October 2045

Most of a Life

Foreword

I may live another twenty or thirty years, but equally my time on earth may come to an end tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time, or next year. No-one knows, but I have no illusions. Now that I am coming to an end, it is fitting to set down the three tasks of my destiny which have filled my unworthily lived days. It is my belief that others will more effectively continue these tasks after me, just as many others worked on them both before me and at the same time. And although, not always in positions of power, they worked far more efficiently and with far greater success than me, it has often felt as though I were totally abandoned in these tasks. I never chose them – they fell to my lot despite my clear manifold human weaknesses and equally clear unsuitability and unwillingness to fulfil them.

With the Saints

My first task has been the modest contribution to spreading the veneration of the Saints of Western Europe in the Church. This meant fixing them in locally-issued calendars, praying and writing their lives and compiling, collecting and celebrating their services and icons. This was a bitter battle and cost me enormously, for resistance from all sides without exception was very harsh. Isolation was my lot. There were – and are – so many who resist the saints. Altogether, above all by the reposed Monk Joseph (Lambertson) whom I much encouraged, services were compiled to nearly one hundred saints or groups of saints of Western Europe who did not yet have one. Victory came slowly and over forty years later several such saints were included in the official Russian Orthodox calendar, with more to follow.

Church Unity

My second task has been to help contribute to the restoration of the unity of the two parts of the Russian Church and to call others outside it, for example those who had fallen away in Paris, to unity with it. My part was very, very minor, of course, but it must have helped, for people told me it had. Having visited the Soviet Union twice in the 70s and seen the lamentable state of much of the Patriarchate in England and France, I could see that nothing could be done until the fall of the Soviet Union. Only that would bring the liberation of the hostage episcopate there. So it was only in 2000 that it repented for its compromises with the atheist government and so its failure to recognize the New Martyrs and Confessors earlier, as well as for its politically-motivated compromises with heterodox.

Equally, however, the Church Outside Russia would have to reject decades of the spiritual impurity of sectarian politicking with the treacherous and tragic Vlasov movement and its CIA backers, as well as its own embarrassing failure to canonize the New Martyrs until as late as 1981. Victory came only in 2007 with the Act of Canonical Communion, signed in the presence of thousands of us in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, the Russian Patriarch and President and longsuffering clergy of both parts of the Church in attendance. That Cathedral had been built to commemorate the 19th century Orthodox victory over the French atheist Napoleon and rebuilt to commemorate the 20th century Orthodox victory over the German atheist Marx. Thus, the Cathedral became the place of a threefold victory.

A Life for the Tsar

My third task has been to help contribute to the restoration, now inevitable, of the Orthodox Empire, based in Russia under the coming Tsar, just as St Seraphim of Sarov prophesied nearly 200 years ago. This has been and is, if anything, the hardest of all. This is because it involves the Incarnation, that is, the political, economic and social ramifications of our understanding of the Incarnate Christ. Resistance here is ferocious and mocking, for our struggle is with the Devil himself. Firstly, we must defend the holiness of Tsar Nicholas, both in life and in death. Secondly, we must defend all those faithful to him, many not yet canonized. Thirdly, we must promote his shining vision, which was a century ahead of its time but tragically interrupted for a blood-soaked century by ‘treason, cowardice and deceit’, as he described.

Afterword

Some might say that then all has been completed. This is not so. The task for Rus, to spread veneration for the Western saints of the first millennium Church is to develop much further. The task for Faith, to see the full unity of the Russian Orthodox Church in Western Europe in a single Metropolia, the foundation of the future new Local Church, helping build up a little part of it in my native East of England, is nearing its conclusion, but is not complete. Finally, the task for the Tsar, to explain his holiness and defend his healing vision of justice and balance after a century of global injustice and wars, which resulted directly from his overthrow by internal traitors, so-called allies, Great Britain, the USA and France, and enemies, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and to implement that vision, so long delayed, has only just begun.

 

700,000 Orthodox Now Live in the UK

The UK government has stated this week that 395,000 Bulgarians and Romanians (a good minority of the Romanians actually Moldovans – Romanian passports cost them $10) now live in the UK. This means that with some 160,000 Cypriots, about 100,000 Russians (only a few from Russia – a majority of them are economic and political refugees from the Baltic States and the Ukraine) and other Orthodox minorities (mainly Serbs), there are now some 700,000 Orthodox in the UK. This means that at least 1% of the population is Orthodox: a total transformation from ten years ago, since when at least 400,000 Orthodox have arrived here, let alone 20 years ago, when the Orthodox population was tiny.

However, the fact is that we are not at all settled evenly. Outside the London area Orthodox are still a tiny minority and the further from London, the fewer we are. Possibly 500,000 live in London and the south-eastern corner of England, with very few in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Moreover, the fact is that any parish can only count on a practice rate of 5%-10%. Even so, if there are between 35,000 and 70,000 practising Orthodox in the UK, we are faced with a challenge: to organize appropriate infrastructure, in order to keep our children in the Church.

It must be said that the past gives us no examples. Both parts of the Russian Church lost their flocks to ethnic exclusivity and the acid bath of modern Western culture. The Greek (Cypriot) immigration has done no better. And dreams of middle-class ex-Anglicans of an English Orthodox or even, absurdly, a ‘British Orthodox’, Church, made up of intellectual converts from the tiny minority of Anglicans have to be abandoned. the utter failure on the part of all Orthodox administrations to provide adequate infrastructure is scandalous.  We no longer need words – we need actions. On the other hand, never has the use of English in the services been so important. What is to be done?

Our Credo

We Orthodox Christians are chosen by God to fulfil our appointed destinies. In this age it is our destiny to defy all who deny the Holy Trinity, whether in word or thought or deed. Our God is not the god of others, including those who have for all practical purposes lapsed from the Church and Faith, despite their outward label. Our God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

We confess the Father and reject manmade nationalism and idolatrous ritualism, which place themselves above the Father from everlasting. Their victims put their tribal and racist local cultures above God, rejecting His Church.

They say, for example: ‘I cannot join the Orthodox Church because of my Western culture’. How many times we have heard the above myth. Such an attitude comes from the placing of our ethnic conditioning above Christ. They do not understand that Europe itself is an illusion: East and West were joined together in Christ’s Church. At the furthest tip off Eurasia, Europe was invented by cutting itself off from Eurasia 1,000 years ago, in order to justify its aggressive domination and annihilation of all else.

We confess the Incarnation and reject academic theories and disincarnate fantasies, which have no spiritual or moral effect in life. Their victims put their impure imaginations above God, rejecting the universal sacrifice of the God-man.

They say, for example: ‘I cannot live a Church life because of my personal views’. How many times we have heard the above selfishness. Such an attitude comes from the placing of our egoistic conditioning above Christ. They do not understand that the self is an illusion: we are all part of God’s Creation, joined together in Christ’s Church. The Western world invented such individualism, cutting itself off from solidarity with the rest of God’s Creation, man and nature, to justify its aggressive domination and annihilation of all else.

We confess the Holy Spirit and reject pharisaic bureaucracy and unprincipled careerism, which deaden and destroy Church life. Their victims put their worldly interests above the Holy Spirit, rejecting God’s Free Spirit, Who blows where He wills.

They say, for example: ‘Our rules and interests are higher than all else’. How many times we have heard the above artifice. Such an attitude comes from the placing of worldly conditioning above Christ. They do not understand that the world is an illusion: the world was overcome by Christ. Petty bureaucracy and careers will all fade away with time and death, for they were invented only in order to promote passing, manmade customs, with their attempts at the aggressive domination and annihilation of all else.

We Orthodox Christians are chosen by God to fulfil our appointed destinies. In this age it is our destiny to defy all who deny the Holy Trinity, whether in word or thought or deed. Today this destiny calls us to gather together before the end, for ours is the apostolic mission to preach to all and gather the faithful remnant out of all the nations before the Second Coming.

 

 

Our Combat

For our God is a consuming fire.

(Hebrews 12, 29)

Introduction

Seeking justification for their pagan Rome of unending greed for material riches and unquenchable thirst for global power that will end in the now foreseeable Apocalypse, some post-sectarians believe in a man called Jesus. However, we Orthodox Christians ‘worship the indivisible Holy Trinity, Who has saved us’. This Trinitarian Belief is embodied in the single phrase, Church, Empire and People, as also in the words Altar, Throne and Cottage, or Orthodoxy, Sovereignty and People.

The Kingdom of the Father

As we confess the Kingdom of the Father, so we confess the sacred Altar of the Church of Christ His Son. That is why we are opposed to Antichrist, whose prophesied reign is being prepared by Babylonian globalism, in opposition to our Jerusalem Church. For we confess the primacy of our Faith (Matt. 6, 33).

The Kingdom of the Son

As we confess the Church of the Son, so we confess His Incarnate Empire on earth. The Ruler on this Throne must oppose the Anti-Christianity of Secularism and fight for freedom, as we have just seen in Syria, for we oppose all centralized tyrannies and defend the freedom and sovereignty of the peoples.

The Kingdom of the Holy Spirit

As we confess the Holy Spirit, so we confess His potential to sanctify and save People living in the world from evil. We fight against the oppression of the Establishment elite/aristocracy/oligarchy and its bureaucrats/parliamentarians /hireling media, who deny the People Christ’s saving Truth and Justice.

Conclusion

The above explains why we fight for the Purity of Holy Orthodoxy against deviations, whether liberalist-secularist or ritualist-obscurantist. We believe in Christian Rome, the Sacred, which is why we so firmly opposed the documents of Crete, prepared by secularism and treachery. We do not confess and bless globalism through imitation of a mere human-being, we confess and bless the Kingdom of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Eternal God Who is in Three Persons.

From Recent Correspondence (October 2017)

Pastoral Questions and Current Affairs

Q: There exist authentic Orthodox spiritual fathers whose disciples group around them. How can you tell the difference between them and cults?

A: Authentic spiritual fathers and their disciples are always diverse, everyone is different and free. However, cults produce clones, the members are all the same, with the same hairstyle, the same beards, the same clothes, the same glasses, like an army. Everything down to the smallest detail is identical, for their personalities are always suppressed and repressed. The spiritual children of real spiritual fathers are always diverse, alive and lively, the clones, zombies and robots of frauds are always the same, spiritually repressed and dying. This is because where there is love, there is freedom and self-expression, but where there is no love, so there is no freedom and no self-expression.

Q: How do you see the late Fr John Romanides?

A: I only met Fr John once, in 1981, and read his translated works about the same time. I was impressed by his knowledge of Western history and original approach. To my mind he was easily the finest and most Orthodox of the academic theologians of his generation. It is significant that Roman Catholics detest him and Protestants have no understanding of his Biblical basis because they do not understand the Bible. Unlike Metr John Zisioulas, he was fiercely but understandably opposed to ecumenistic Parisian Russian intellectuals, because of his bad experiences with them in the Church in the USA in the 1950s. As a result of them, Fr John did not always appreciate the real Russian Orthodox Church.

On the downside, some have accused him of a certain racism in his black and white approach to Franks and Greeks (Romans), where to some he gives the impression that the first are always bad because of their ethnicity and the latter are always good because of their ethnicity. That is very regrettable because Fr John did not have a racist bone in his body.

Q: In order to justify making sex change legal, the atheist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said that ‘we (= Greece) belong to Europe’ and ‘nothing, no religion, can stand higher than human rights’. What does this mean, in your view?

A: It means that his religion is in fact the god of human rightism. This is a strange god because according to it unborn children have no rights and can be destroyed in the greatest holocaust of world history. This is because in this neo-pagan religion (reminiscent of the paganism of the Ancient Greeks), it is human sin that is worshipped.

Q: Roman Catholics often have a picture of the Pope in their homes and some Anglicans have a photo of Canterbury Cathedral. What do Orthodox have, as you are divided into different nationalities and have different patriarchs and styles of architecture?

A: We all have an icon corner, with an icon of Christ, and probably also icons of the Mother of God and close saints. This is because Christ, and no human being or church-building, is the Head of our Church.

Q: Is missionary work to be encouraged?

A: Only if it is Orthodox. All Orthodox parishes are missions in this sense. Sadly, all kinds of compromises get justified by the term ‘missionary work’, including the heresy of ecumenism. We have a huge amount of real missionary work to do with our own Orthodox people and those Non-Orthodox whom they choose to marry or befriend. I think it is especially pointless to talk to heterodox with the idea of converting them. Heterodox rarely convert to authentic Orthodoxy (of the few who do, most lapse or bring their heterodox baggage, including divisiveness, into the Church with them and then create problems and schisms for the rest of us). If we are to convert the world round us, it is much better to talk to the masses who have no religion at all. Heterodox form a small minority which is dying out anyway. We should leave the dead to bury the dead. We have too much else to do.

Q: St Ephraim the Syrian says that the Six Days of Creation were precisely that, six twenty-four hour periods. What do you say to that?

A: Like most Fathers of his era, he interpreted in that way, according to the scientific knowledge of the time. However, the Church does not dogmatize these views. What we should listen to is Church Councils and even then, only provided that they are real Councils, that is, inspired by the Holy Spirit. (We are against any kind of ‘Councilism’ or worship of meetings called Councils, for without the Holy Spirit any so-called ‘Council’ is only a conference, as we saw in Crete last year). And that is only revealed after the Councils have taken place and their teachings have been received by the faithful.

This is the meaning of the words ‘catholicity’ and ‘conciliarity’, groups of Church people inspired by the Holy Spirit throughout history and in all places creating spiritual consensus. I am sure you can find many personal opinions on secondary matters (= the matters that do not affect our salvation) of many Church Fathers that have been proved to be wrong. What do you not find is the dogmas of Church Councils, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that are wrong. Do not dogmatize or absolutize opinions. Only the Holy Spirit is infallible.

The History of the Western World:

Q: Is it true that there were no Jews in England until 1066? And if so, how did they get to Western Europe anyway?

A: Yes, that is so. As for your second question, the answer is that in the late eighth century, Charlemagne (c. 742 – 814), brought in Jews from Spain together with Jewish-trained advisors from Spain, including those who introduced the filioque, like the heretic Theodulf of Orleans. These Jews protected and helped develop commerce in his tiny ‘empire’. He saw the Jews as an economic asset and protected them. He realized the advantages and business abilities of the Jews and gave them complete freedom with regard to their commercial transactions.

Charlemagne was a gluttonous and superstitious illiterate, who was notorious for the murderous ruthlessness with which he treated his opponents. Moreover, his son, Louis (814–833), was faithful to the same lack of principles and also granted protection to Jews, to whom he gave special attention in their position as merchants. Spreading through the commercial centres of northern France, the Jews finally arrived in England from Rouen after the occupation under the heir to Charlemagne, William the Bastard, in 1066.

Q: What view does the Church have of feudalism?

A: Founded on the filioque, feudalism with its system of vassals is unique to the post-Schism medieval West, appearing in primitive and potential forms in the year 1000, or slightly before, and becoming full-blown after about 1050, when the Pope himself became just a feudal lord. The inward sign of feudalism is the filioque, but the outward sign of the presence of feudalism (and therefore of the absence of Orthodoxy) is in castles, what historians call ‘encastellation’. This is quite clear in Eastern Europe, where castles peter out along the Croat, Polish and Slovak borders. Orthodox do not have castles. In the Church we do not have feudalism, but independence and sovereignty, as expressed by the Greek word ‘avtokratia’, which does not at all mean ‘autocracy’. ‘Autocracy’ in English means tyranny and absolutism, which is very different from the people’s monarchy, the ‘autocracy’ of Orthodox Christianity.

Q: 100 years ago there were 100 million Orthodox, today there are just over 200 million. However, if you look at Catholics and Protestants they have probably quadrupled in numbers, if not more. Why has the Orthodox Church not grown as much?

A: Apart from the fact that Catholicism (1.3 billion) and the myriad of Protestant sects claim to have far higher numbers than they really have, I think there are several reasons:

  1. As the last representatives of the Church of Christ, Orthodox have in the last 100 years been subject to the greatest persecution known in world history. Carried out by the dual Western ideologies of Marxism and Nazism (both born in Germanic Western Europe), tens of millions died in their infernal invasions and persecutions and tens of millions more were aborted under the infernal Marxist ideology and then under the Western Capitalist ideology. If it had not been for this, the Orthodox population would easily have quadrupled in Russia alone.
  2. The vast majority of the growth of Catholicism and Protestantism has come about in former Western colonies in Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Orthodoxy does not have colonies, since they are founded on genocide.
  3. The Church is not a business with plans for expansion. Such businesses come and go, expand and contract, relying on superficial attraction. The Church is a tree and trees grow slowly, but organically.

Q: Recently a senior female cleric of the US Presbyterian Church said that God is not a Christian, meaning that anyone can be saved. What is your reaction?

A: Such Protestant clerics and laypeople do say things like this. I have also read them saying that ‘The Church needs to learn about Christianity’. It proves that words like ‘God’, ‘Christ’, ‘Church’, ‘Christian’, ‘salvation’, ‘priest’ etc have a completely different meaning for Non-Orthodox than for Orthodox. For them ‘the Church’ means ‘Protestant clergy’, many of whom are open atheists.

For Orthodox, all these words mean the same thing: God is the Holy Trinity, Christ is the Church, Christians follow the Church, salvation (from evil) is through Christ, priests belong to the Church etc. Christ is God and the Church is the Body of Christ and therefore Christians are people who try and follow Christ, belonging to Him. To say that Christ is not God or not a Christian simply makes no sense to an (Orthodox) Christian. Of course, it is true that there are plenty of people who call themselves Christians but who do not believe that Christ is the Son of God. However, they are not Orthodox Christians. Clearly, this female cleric is one of those. She condemns herself out of her own mouth.

As regards salvation, all we know is that inside the (Orthodox) Church, this is possible because billions have been saved, but that all who have been saved and will be saved have achieved this and will achieve this through the mercy of Christ, Who alone is the Just Judge.

Q: What is your view of Catalonian independence?

A: Free and unintimidated Catalans said yes to independence, the Western oligarchs said no. The Western ruling élites are heirs of the barbarians; when bandits in Kosovo proclaim independence, they call it good, but when Catalonia proclaims the same thing, they call it bad. Of course, that does not in any way mean that we support the Catalonian independence party and its leader. Like the Scottish nationalists, they are pro-EU, globalist and socialist. However, we support independence and freedom from centralist states for every viable historic people, like the Scottish and the Catalonian, who have in history been independent nations.

Russia

Q: Why did the Russian Revolution happen?

A: The Imperial Family lost their lives because the upper class elite, jealous of their power, turned against them in the 19th century and finally overthrew them in February 1917. If that had not occurred, Russia would have been victorious in the First European War. If you want to find the culprits who laid the groundwork for October and the murder of the Romanovs (recall who imprisoned the Romanovs in the first place), look among the families of the upper class.

Q: Why did former Russian Orthodox become Communists 100 years ago? Marx thought that Germans would become Communists and not Russians.

A: It all depends on the previous cultural values. As one elderly Romanian put it to me, ‘Communism is Christianity without Christ’, by which she meant that Communism has no love or freedom. It can be said that lapsed Orthodoxy = Communism, lapsed Roman Catholicism = Fascism and lapsed Protestantism = Capitalism. This is borne out by the last 100 years of history.

Q: Does Russia have a future in a globalized world?

A: Through its NATO and EU aggressiveness in Eastern Europe and especially the Ukraine, Washington and Brussels have thrown Russia into alliance with China. It has thus created the union of the most populous country in the world with the greatest manufacturing ability and the world’s highest GNP, with the largest country in the world and the centre of civilian and military technology, endowed with the greatest natural resources in the world. More than this, the Russian Federation is also the centre of the global Christian Tradition. Together, technology with the Tradition provide the alternative to the globalist ‘New World Order’ project of the Western elite. Tradition represents the opposition of all those who do not want to be enslaved to their modernist New World Order.

As the universal keeper and defender of Holy Orthodoxy, the Russia of Christ the Saviour is hated by Satan and his demons. That is why they carried out the Russian Revolution in order to efface the word Russia from the face of the earth, blew up the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, built to commemorate the defeat of the antichrist Napoleon, and were so bitterly angry at the rebuilding of that Cathedral after the fall of their Soviet Union. Russia is home to the Church, which is opposed to Trotskyite/Ukrainian Jewish, permanent chaos. This has again been implemented by the neocons as the New World Order.

How they hate us! They write to me and accuse faithful Orthodox of being ‘worse than the Nazis’!! The word ‘devil’ does after all mean ‘slanderer’ in Greek. We prevent them from doing the will of Satan, so they hate us. The place of confrontation of these two visions of globalism, the Western and the Russo-Chinese, is in, of all places, North Korea, where the Chinese and Russian borders meet. That is where we shall see the pattern of the future.

Q: There seem to be quite a number of scandals in the Russian Church inside Russia at present. Is there a serious problem?

A: I think there is – that you read the internet too much! On the internet, with its forums and blogs, you only get scandals. If you go to Russia and meet some of the bishops, follow the priests who do the baptisms, weddings and funerals, who confess and celebrate the liturgy every day, who visit the hospitals and bless the homes, meet the nearly 6,000 who are at present studying in seminaries, and if you take part in the massive Church processions and pilgrimages of the ordinary faithful, you will get a quite different impression. The Church is alive; the internet only reflects the exceptions, the bad news. All the mass of good news goes, as usual, unreported because people who have time to waste only want the scandals and sensations, as it makes them feel self-important, which they, and the devil, like. Avoid scandal-mongering, it is bad for your soul.

General

Q: Are young people less mature than they used to be? Or am I just getting old?

A: Well, of course you are getting old! We all are. I am not sure, every generation of older people for thousands of years has been complaining about young people. And then the young people get older and complain about young people in their turn. The only thing is that many young people now live in the virtual world of the internet and that does hold them back. Only reality makes mature. Smartphones do not.

Q: Would you say that night clubs are hellish?

A: I have never been to one, but I have seen photos. I would call them advertising agencies for hell.

Q: What were your best years of being an Orthodox clergyman?

A: Without the slightest doubt the last nine, of which the best was 2017: the first twenty-five before these last nine were despairingly hard.

Q: Why the change in 2017?

A: Because after 30 years we have at last gained a bishop. ROCOR lost its South American Diocese because it did not have a bishop for only 20 years, but we here survived for 30 years without a bishop. I think we hold a record, if only for stubbornness.

Q: What words would you like to have on your grave?

A: Well, that is a very surprising question! I have never thought about it. I don’t have time. A grave near my parent’s grave says: ‘I told you I was ill’. That is English humour. Many Orthodox graves have ‘Eternal Memory’ on them.

After several days’ thought about an answer to this question, I thought I would like: ‘The truth will set you free’. I have always valued the Truth and Freedom and have fought for both of them all my life. Both are hated by Satan and his servants. Over a thousand years ago the early English preacher Aelfric wrote in his Colloquy: ‘It is most disgraceful and shameful when a man does not want to be what he is and what he has to be’. At least that particular sin is not mine.

 

 

 

 

 

Two Songs of Zhanna Bichevskaya

Zhanna Bichevskaya, the well-known patriotic Russian Orthodox singer, a convert to the Faith after her fame in the Soviet period, is often accused of nationalism. Although there is truth in this as regards some of her songs, one thing that she cannot be accused of is a lack of zeal. Below we print translations into English of two of her songs (The Youtube references give the original melodies).

The first song (‘Po Doroge v Zagorsk’) is not so much a translation as a new song. The original is filled with great melancholy and regret; our version expresses the joyful transformation of a young girl into a mother. The second song (‘Russkie Idut’) in the original does express nationalism, but we have changed it into an Orthodox marching-song, which expresses the energy and vigour of our Orthodox Faith.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47XQAfq5o1Q

On the Way to the Church

On the way to the church you can’t help seeing that the new season

Has lost July’s power and daring and August’s splendour and reason,

That it grows dark at seven and the thinning trees look neglected,

That the fields are empty and life has not been as you expected,

 

That with the awaited birth of a child you felt both joy and pain

And at being a new mother there is each day wonder again,

And that takes you to your heart from where the old solitude has flown,

That love of family has taken over from when you were alone.

 

On the way to church you can’t help hearing ringing bells that entrance

And knowing that life is not a dress to alter for a dance,

That the freedom you had was loneliness and not at all rosy

And that the sadness of autumn makes your family life feel cosy.

 

And you want to shout from your loving heart for the whole world to hear

The words of fulfilment, ‘I have everything I ever wanted’.

And you want to shout from your loving heart for the whole world to hear

The words of fulfilment, ‘I have everything I ever wanted’.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbYiOiqU8IU

Orthodox March

 

Orthodox march, through the ages of pagan night,

Orthodox march, beating the foes of heaven’s home,

Orthodox march, on and on to Jerusalem light,

Orthodox march, on and on to free the Third Rome.

 

Refrain:

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, gather to march

All who survived the blood and strife.

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, staying the knife

Of all who would end Spirit-filled life.

 

Orthodox march and the lights go on once again,

Orthodox march, reminding all of who we are,

Orthodox march to stem the sins and wars of men,

Orthodox march, defending all, both near and far.
 

Refrain:

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, gather to march

All who survived the blood and strife.

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, staying the knife

Of all who would end Spirit-filled life.

 

Orthodox march and gloom and darkness flee our coasts,

Orthodox march, helped by all the heavenly hosts,

Orthodox ride ever on, feet in the stirrup,

Orthodox hold back America and Europe.

Orthodox ride ever on, feet in the stirrup,

Orthodox hold back America and Europe.
 

Refrain:

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, gather to march

All who survived the blood and strife.

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, staying the knife

Of all who would end Spirit-filled life.

 

Orthodox march to put the fear of death behind,

Orthodox march, by Christ’s great banner we are led,

Orthodox march and gather to God all mankind,

Orthodox march, Holy Mary and saints ahead.

Orthodox march and gather to God all mankind,

Orthodox march, Holy Mary and saints ahead.

 

Refrain x 2:

 

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, gather to march

All who survived the blood and strife.

March, march, march,

Orthodox march, staying the knife

Of all who would end Spirit-filled life.

 

 

 

Why I Love My Parishioners

My three parishes in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk cover an area of over 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometres). That is why we have long needed and, at last have, two assistant priests. How big is my main parish in my native town of Colchester, in the biggest Russian Orthodox church building in the British Isles and Ireland? Well, there are about 100 people I can depend on to be there almost always. Then there are about another 400 parishioners, whom I know I will see within the space of a month. So there are 500 parishioners, of 25 different nationalities, born on four continents.

However, in addition to these 500 there are about another 4,500 people, scattered all over this region and up to 60 miles (100 kilometres) outside it, occasionally attending one or other of the three parishes. I may see them only once or twice a year, and some even less often than that. Many of them only come to church for baptisms and weddings, but when they do come, they come to us. Many of them I hardly know. So, not parishioners as such, but they are still in my mind and heart. There are all sorts of reasons why I see them only rarely, and it is not just a matter of distance. But I will not go into that here.

I want to tell you about two of them. With a title like ‘Why I love my parishioners’, you may think that I want to tell you about two of the 500 regulars. Since I do not want to embarrass anyone, I do not. I want to tell you about two of the other 4,500. They are of two different nationalities.

The first one is a real Orthodox man. In his forties, he is married with two lovely children. He has a business with employees. I first met him when he was in prison. Yes, in prison. Unfortunately, he had criminal competitors who tried to attack him and were jealous of him and his family. They threatened to throw acid in his wife’s face, if he did not take the blame for a crime of fraud which they had committed. He had no doubt that their threat was real. They were capable of it and had already done it to another. So, in order to protect his beloved wife, he went straight to the police and told them a lot of lies about himself. He went on trial and was sentenced. His only ‘crime’ was to lie in court in order to protect his wife. He had to go to prison for one year, but his wife was protected. There was such happiness and rejoicing in his house when he came home.

What a man. No, he has never studied theology, he has never heard of any modern ‘theologians’ (though he does know something of the Lives of the Saints), he cannot tell you about the history and structure of the services, has never met a bishop, does not know the Bible backwards, will not give you lots of pious talk about prayer and fasting, has never heard of ‘the Council of Crete’ and knows nothing about Catholicism and Protestantism. As a real Orthodox, he does not believe in God, he knows Him. So he has humility and there is no self-loving question of proud people about ‘Why has God allowed this to happen to me?’ Just acceptance of God’s will. He has protected and defended what is most precious to him. An example. He sacrificed himself, but has one of the best families in the world. They love each other. That is God’s reward to him. A real Orthodox man.

The second one is a real Orthodox woman, a lady with dignity and self-respect, which has become so rare these days. I first met her when I was making a pastoral visit far away. She married in her early 20s and had two children. But then her husband began drinking. And beating her. She was patient. They only divorced when he began harming the children. (He has since died). So she, then aged 34, brought up two children alone, struggling to pay her bills. She has made a good job of it too. The first went to University and now has a good career. A lovely person. The second, a girl, is finishing school. She has a very noble and idealistic disposition and is not afraid to stand up for the truth. She stands out from the others of her generation. (She has had her mother’s example). A year ago this Orthodox woman, who had shed so many tears for her broken dreams and broken heart these last 25 years, quite downhearted, came to church and there she met a man. The man. Within a week they had fallen in love. It was her dream, the one which she had wanted as a romantic teenager. She had been waiting all those years and then it all came true. Out of the blue.

What a woman. No, she has never studied theology, she has never heard of any modern ‘theologians’ (though she does know something of the Lives of the Saints), she cannot tell you about the history and structure of the services, has never met a bishop, does not know the Bible backwards, will not give you lots of pious talk about prayer and fasting, has never heard of ‘the Council of Crete’ and knows nothing about Catholicism and Protestantism. As a real Orthodox, she does not believe in God, she knows Him. So she has humility and there is no self-loving question of proud people about ‘Why has God allowed this to happen to me?’ Just acceptance of God’s will. She has protected and defended what is most precious to her. An example. She sacrificed himself, but has one of the best families in the world. They love each other. Her new husband adores her – as she deserves. That is God’s reward to her. A real Orthodox woman.

Now you know why I love my parishioners.

Those Who Lapse and Those Who Last: The End of ‘Euro-Orthodoxy’ and the Beginning of Orthodoxy in Europe

For some 40 years between the 1960s and the end of the twentieth century, some two thousand Anglicans joined certain parishes of the Orthodox Churches in England – mainly those under the then Parisian ‘Sourozh Diocese’. Together with a small number of ordinary (Non-Anglican) English people, they joined the Church for many reasons. Some of us, perhaps especially the Non-Anglicans, joined because we were sincerely seeking, not being influenced by any personality, but called by Christ to help rebuild His Church in the Western desert. For us, the Orthodox Church was and is the only Church, our spiritual home, to which we had come after realizing that this is God’s Will for us and our souls will die without spiritual food, that is, outside the Church. We have lasted and not lapsed because for us, belonging to the Church has always been a matter of spiritual survival, although and because we have been voices crying in the anti-Orthodox and so secularist wilderness.

However, some did not last but lapsed, for it seems that they were not attached to the Orthodox Church and Faith. Dissatisfied with the ever-changing and ever-new fads of Anglicanism, they attached themselves only to some personality or intellectual philosophy, and not to the Church Herself. Some were perhaps received by marginal figures who, without support from Churched Orthodox, needed to build personality cults for themselves among the naïve, ill-prepared, uninstructed or deluded. In other words, attraction operated for negative reasons, by being against something else, and some never accepted the Church as She is. Deluded by anti-Incarnational fantasies, sometimes of Hindu or Buddhist origin, Russian fakirs and charlatans and secondary and superficial attractions, some remained ‘converts’, not actually becoming Orthodox because of their baggage. They joined the Church, but did not become and live as Orthodox Christians.

The fundamental error of such ‘converts’, as they often liked to call themselves, consisted in not first separating themselves from the 900 + years of the anti-Orthodox and therefore also anti-English, Norman-founded British Establishment. This included its Anglican extension under the syphilitic Tudor tyrant Henry VIII and his followers, not least his murderous ‘theologian’ daughter Elizabeth, the genocidal Cromwell and then various other mercantile Dutch, German and ‘British’ Protestant Imperialists with their ‘Rule Britannia’ jingoism that invaded and enslaved the world. In no way therefore were they able to adopt the Orthodox Faith, for they had not first cleansed their minds and souls from the Anti-Orthodoxy, which they had been conditioned and deluded into thinking of as ‘Western Christianity’. Not having first made room in their minds and souls for the Orthodox Church, the only authentic Western or any other Christianity, they could not last and so lapsed.

Unwilling and so unable to live according to the Orthodox way of life and the Orthodox view of the world and so to think naturally in an Orthodox way, many lapsed completely, some returned to Anglicanism, and others lapsed into a fringe ‘Anglican Orthodoxy’. This inability and unwillingness to integrate meant that these latter tended to form exclusive cliques and convert clubs, which made their church into a ‘Halfodox’ hobby, Anglicanism with icons. Thus, some allowed the baggage which they had brought with them into the Church to define their lives and block possible spiritual growth and understanding. This was because their Western-founded Norman Establishment has always called us, the people, ‘Anglo-Saxons’ or ‘plebs’, although we have always called ourselves simply ‘English’. Their alien Norman Establishment has always patronisingly despised us natives and all who ‘go native’, that is, all who are Orthodox Christians in mind and heart, who are foreign to them.

With this mentality of Establishment condescension and pride towards us English, they also rejected the Orthodox people, with our unintellectual and unphilosophical simplicity and uncomplicated and unmoralizing piety. Thus, some refused in their imagined racial ‘superiority’ and intellectual theorizing to ‘go native’. Between about 2000 and 2010, with Anglicanism altogether disappearing into the New Age blur, few Anglicans asked to be received into the Church, while the by then ageing converts from the last century began to isolate themselves and die out. In recent years, however, a new period has begun. Some ordinary (Non-Anglican) English people from the vast majority have begun to join the Orthodox Church. Like the few Non-Anglicans among those who had preceded them, they have had little difficulty in renouncing the Norman-founded British Establishment and its corrupted culture, because they have in any case never even belonged to it.

Thus, unlike some who had preceded them, they have never been tempted to put British Establishment culture above Christ, so betraying Christ, His Church and also His Orthodox England. For this reason they can begin to develop a real English Orthodox culture. Far more importantly, what has happened in England is only an example of the wider situation all over Western Europe. The betrayal of Western Europe by its Christophobic elite, making it into a wayward, schismatic and isolated province through heresy in 1054 and then apostasy, the betrayal of the real England, Orthodox England, finally destroyed in 1066, the repeated Western betrayals of the Christian Emperors and invasions of the multinational Christian Empire between 1204 and 1917, these are what real Orthodox in Europe reject. What we accept is the end of the old compromised ‘Euro-Orthodoxy’ of the philosophers and the beginning of the real Orthodoxy of the saints of Europe, the Restoration of Europe.

The choice for Christophobic and so Russophobic Europe today is fast becoming Apocalypse or Repentance. Europe, on its suicidal death-bed, caught between self-invented Secularism and self-imposed Islamism, has a last chance. If the peoples of Europe can yet throw off the degeneration of their millennial brainwashing, they can still learn that the truth will set them free from stepping lemming-like off the precipice into the abyss. If they can accept that their elites have deluded them into thinking that they are ‘free’, by being enslaved to the elites’ millennial secularist ideology, regardless of whether it is called Roman Catholic, Scholastic, Protestant, Anglican, Conservative, Socialist, Communist, Democratic, Liberal, Agnostic, Atheist, Post-Modernist, then suicide can be averted. If they can accept that their roots are only in the Tradition, Orthodox Christianity, the Church of God, and not in any latecomer manmade religion, then Repentance even at this late hour is still possible.