Category Archives: Orthodox Life

Reflections on the Pastoral Crisis: Seven Days and One Thousand Miles in the Life of a Diaspora Priest

Introduction

Last week was particularly busy. Why? Because we are so desperately short of churches and priests in England. The situation in London is one of pastoral abandonment for many. There is now no Russian bishop in the Patriarchal Church. One of the rumours has it that the Russian bishop cannot return from Moscow because of threats to his life in the present Russophobic UK. Is that true? There are other rumours which say quite the opposite. Now there are threats to send any Russian priests who do not have British nationality back to Russia. Who will listen to confessions in Russian? Already the Russian Patriarchal Church has more or less done like the Greek Church, which does no confessions at all because of the shortage of priests (or worse because of an anti-Orthodox ideology), whereas the Russian Patriarchal Church uses the (uncanonical) ‘general confession’. In any case both generally refuse to listen to confessions.

All I know is that in 1985 some had to agree to become freemasons before they could be ordained to the priesthood. (I was one of them and refused, so remained a deacon for seven years). Now in 2022, it seems that you have to agree to do even worse and compromise yourself with the powers that be.

Monday: 100 miles

I travel locally to see several parishioners.

The main topic is the new Ukrainians. Thirty years ago there were 50 million Ukrainians in the Ukraine. Today there are 30 million. Who wants to have and bring up children in a wretchedly poor country without a future? I have been to the Ukraine many times and noticed the absence of children – one-child families are very common. On top of the low birth-rate and the high death-rate (high because who wants to live in a wretchedly poor country without a future?), there are the refugees.

According to UN statistics 10,000,000 Ukrainians fled the Ukraine between February and July 2022, but 4,000,000 returned, making 6,000,000 refugees. 2,000,000 have taken refuge from Ukrainian bombardments in Russia since the war began in 2014. That still leaves 4,000,000, who are now in EU Europe and the UK, half of them in Poland. Quite a few appear to be from the far west of the Ukraine (where, ironically there is no war), so they are Catholics, that is, Uniats, or belong to one of the other schismatic nationalist groups, which worship not God, but the Ukraine. Nobody knows what proportion are canonical Orthodox and what proportion of those are churchgoers, but it must be at least 1% of 4,000,000, or 40,000. Thus, of the 104,000 new Ukrainians in the UK, there may be over 1,000 who are churchgoing, canonical Orthodox.

If these refugees are concentrated in a particular city, for example, in London, they will inevitably set up their own church, as has already been done in Brussels and elsewhere, under Metr Onufry. The Russian Church will not help them, but we in the Romanian Church can help, as we are politically neutral, outside both Russian and Greek political scandals. (This includes the latest scandal in the Russian Church, the highly divisive meeting between the Pope and Patriarch Kyrill, planned to take place in Kazakhstan next month during what is an existential war). Just in our part of the Romanian Church, we have four Russian-speaking priests. (Russian is the main language of the Ukraine. Just as Welsh is the second language of Wales, Ukrainian is the second language in the Ukraine).

From Amsterdam I hear of the pastoral disaster there. The clergy and many laypeople of the large Russian church, which I know very well, has joined the Greek Church, thus splitting the people into two groups Those who did not want to change now celebrate with their (Belarussian) priest in the Armenian church building. I feel sorry for the traitors and narcissists, victims and perpetrators alike. (Yes, even most victims have their responsibility, as it is often cowardice that brought them there, not truth). However, to be overwhelmed by sadness or disgust is not an option for an Orthodox Christian. Some there are already regretting the move, in view of the scandal in the Greek Orthodox Church in North America. Our own Greek parishioners in Colchester know all about this: we live in the internet age, you cannot hide.

Next I receive a phone call from York. I have been going there for years. The community needs its own church. And for that we need money. One couple I knew well actually returned to the Crimea in despair at the situation. I will have to return to York soon to continue missionary work there.

Tuesday: 150 miles

Today is a prison day. I have been a prison chaplain for 10 years now in four different prisons. I do not really have time to do it, but there is nobody to replace me. Of Orthodox prisoners a majority are Romanian. This is normal, given that some two-thirds of the 670,000 Orthodox in the UK are Romanian. Indeed, our Autonomous Romanian Metropolia in Western Europe has six bishops and nearly 700 parishes, which makes it bigger than some Local Churches.

Perhaps all Orthodox in Western Europe should be under the Romanian Church, as it is by far the biggest? It is in fact multinational and allows both calendars. Many of our clergy speak Russian and there are many Russian and Romanian-speaking Moldovans here (20% of churches in Moldova itself are under the Patriarchate of Romania). Sadly, most Moldovans in England and France have been forced to leave the Patriarchate of Moscow, for complex and very dark reasons internal to that Patriarchate.

If there were one united, multinational, bicalendar Western European Orthodox Church, there would be a flock of perhaps 5,000,000, at least 2,000 parishes, many monasteries and over 25 bishops. This is bigger than any of the Four Ancient Patriarchates or the Georgian Church. We should have had such a Local Church years ago. Instead, we get political and divisive ideologies from Russians and Greeks, sometimes even sectarian and schismatic tendencies, which split the Orthodox presence and destroy all hope of a Local Church. This is abnormal. I want my children and grandchildren to be part of a Local Church.

In reality, of course, by far the largest jurisdiction of Orthodox is that of Orthodox who do not go to church anywhere. And in part this is because they have been so disgusted by Orthodox bishops and priests who want only money or power that they do not go to church. As one taxi-driver parishioner from Colchester said to me last year in all too fluent English: ‘In my country the priests are all (expletive deleted) thieves’. Why indeed should people go to church in those conditions?

At the end of the day, I have a house blessing for a Ukrainian parishioner. Although she has been here for 15 years, now all her family are refugees in London.

Next, I receive news from the Western Rite parish. Here too is another pastoral catastrophe: they are being abolished. I know little about the ‘Western rite’. I have only ever been Orthodox, I know only one rite, the Orthodox Christian rite, which for me is universal, Eastern and Western, Northern and Southern. But the situation shows there is still a real pastoral need for an all-English parish in London. We have been waiting for one for 50 years. Much has been prevented by the vanity of individual bishops. It is the big fish in the little pond syndrome.  Vanity, already pernicious, develops into egomania and narcissism when it is given power, hence the big fish, so all except cowards and yes-men inevitably leave, hence the little pond.

A married man has problems developing into a narcissist, just as a monastic bishop. Both are restrained. However, a non-monastic bishop has no restraints. And then the usual disasters follow. I have seen it all so often before. There is indeed nothing new under the sun.

Wednesday: 150 miles

Today is a day of house blessings and visits up the east coast to Lowestoft. Although we have our parish we set up in Norwich, Norfolk needs parishes elsewhere. Our community in Yarmouth is very small, but we do have others in west Norfolk, where people feel abandoned. The obvious place to set up a church there is Kings Lynn, where I have been twice recently. Here I feel really concerned. If I had the money, I would definitely start something here. We should dedicate a new parish to the Tsar-Martyr, as he visited the town in summer 1894. This would bring in Orthodox from south Lincolnshire. Could the Romanian priest in Boston help us?

One of our parishioners phones to tell me about how in Belarus, where her very ill grandmother lives, it costs 100 euros to get a priest to cross the road (the church is opposite the grandmother’s  flat) and give her communion. That is a week’s salary in Belarus! If it were 100 euros here, it would be scandalous, but there, it is ten times more scandalous. Sadly, it is similar in some parts of the Russian Church, where some bishops demand money and threaten their faithful clergy if they do not get it. St John gave his shoes away to the barefoot, others buy themselves £400 shoes….what a difference….

Thursday: 150 miles

Today I go to south Essex for the funeral of a baby. It is very sad. The local priest told the mother that God had taken the life of her baby as a punishment for her not being married. It is hard to believe that someone as heartless as that could be ordained. I would like to know the name of the bishop who ordained him.

There follows the wake and the blessings of two houses. Here too, in this large city, we have parishioners and we have long needed to set up a church. I know where we can get a priest, but how can we buy a building?

Later I return to Colchester to tidy the church for the Liturgy on Saturday. In the early evening I meet one of our Ukrainian parishioners who has brought us a large parcel with icons and rosaries we ordered last January. This has been brought by courier from the Ukraine (he travels by van every week and he often brings us things we have ordered).

The main very large icon is wonderful. We ordered it in January and would have had it months ago but for the war. The iconographer, who lives in a house outside Kiev which is used by our church, fled when she saw a missile flying overhead last March. We had hoped to receive this icon of the 1962 prophecy of St John of Shanghai for our patronal feast on 2 July. Then he entrusted our Church to St Alban. The icon illustrates this. It has come now, by Divine Providence. This is our parish icon of St John and St Alban.

Friday: 120 miles

Today is another prison day, though I am giving communion in an old people’s home first. Here there lives an elderly woman who remembers Fr Ambrose Pogodin from the old Emperor’s Gate church in London. Fr Ambrose, a real scholar who knew the Latin Fathers, was of the old generation of ROCOR. Archbishop Seraphim of Brussels reminded me a lot of him. Both were completely unmercenary, lived in poverty, and dressed and celebrated in whatever they had. No bling for them. They were the real thing.

Saturday: 170 miles

Fr Ioan serves the Liturgy in Colchester. But this morning I have a child baptism in the hospital in Cambridge. Our priest in our new Moldovan parish there speaks only Romanian and Russian. Here we need English. Though the boy is a Russian Muslim, he speaks very little Russian. We need bilingual clergy who speak a language like Romanian, Greek or Russian, but also English. This need has been urgent for 50 years. English is essential to communicate with the children. They were born in England and speak English far better than their parents’ native language. They go to English schools.

It is always a shock to me that I have hardly ever seen children in Greek churches, except for Romanian children. It is much the same story in Russian churches here (though not in Russia). This was how the old pre-Revolutionary Russians died out. I can remember how in the 1970s Russian churches typically did 12 funerals a month and 1 baptism every two years. Now we do 12 baptisms a month and one funeral every two years.

In the afternoon I have three Russian baptisms. They have no church where they live, so they have come here. In the evening I have a memorial, the Vigil service and confessions.

Sunday: 60 miles

Confessions. Liturgy.

Conclusion

In the last 30 months I have covered 70,000 miles in my car doing pastoral work.

I feel as though I am the only Russian-speaking Orthodox missionary in the country, or at least in the Eastern quarter of the country. In the last year, apart from Essex and Suffolk which effectively form our parish, I have been to see Russian and English-speaking Orthodox in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, Kent and Sussex, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, over twelve counties – exactly one quarter of the country.

I have spent nearly fifty years, thirty-eight of them as a clergyman, working towards the creation of a Local Church both here and in Western Europe. Neither the Greek and Russian Churches seems to be serious about setting up a Local Church here. Despite their mountains of fine words over the decades, there are no actions, promises are broken and indeed there is only negativity towards others and narrow ideologies. Can the Romanian Church help? Someone has to lead the way, to be a pioneer, especially if others are only interested in futile politics, divisions, arguments and intrigues. A Local Western European Orthodox Church remains our long-needed ideal.

This Sunday evening I had just written these words, almost in despair at the pastoral crisis, when within five minutes, I have received messages from two Ukrainian priests who wish to come here. Since we are in the Romanian Church, they are particularly interested. Godsends, literally. Tomorrow I start the search for paperwork.

7 August 2022

A Parable

There was once a priest who was visited by satan. Satan promised the priest fame and glory, great riches and power. The only thing was that in return satan wanted the priest’s eyesight, so that the priest would then be blind. Nevertheless, the priest was tempted, thinking of all that fame, all the awards he would get, those riches and that power.

As he was not sure what to do, he decided to go to his bishop and ask him what to do. Arriving at his bishop’s residence, which he noticed was in a very rich place, he was met by a servant of the bishop. When the priest told the servant that he wanted to see the bishop, the servant answered him: ‘You can talk to the bishop, but he can’t see you, he is blind’.

The Parish Problem

Christianity has always been spread by monastics and monasteries. This is universal. In normal conditions, what happens is that after their mission has been completed, monastics (some of whom are bishops – real bishops are always monastics) delegate the everyday running of churches to married clergy. These either run the local parishes founded from monasteries or else, in the absence of any support from monasteries or bishops, found parishes themselves.

For centuries and centuries this is how it worked, whether with St Nina in Georgia, St Martin of Tours in Gaul, St Patrick in Ireland, St Augustine in England, St Boniface in the German Lands, St Cyril and Methodius in Moravia, St Stefan of Perm, St Job of Pochaev in what is now the western Ukraine, St Cosmas of Aitolia in Greece or St Herman and St Innocent in Alaska. Today, this age-old system is in crisis everywhere, perhaps especially in the Russian Orthodox Church.

There are not only the massive dysfunctions of episcopal, monastic and parish life, mainly caused by 75 years of vicious Soviet persecution inside the ex-Soviet Union. Outside the ex-Soviet Union the situation is not much better in many places. The decadence in parts of the Russian Church before the Revolution, the chaos of emigration, the scattering of the flock, and the catastrophic lack of finance and infrastructure, have caused enormous problems. Thus, I can remember over 40 years ago the then rector of the Rue Daru Cathedral in Paris, where thousands would gather at Easter, telling me that they had only 25 registered parishioners. The number of people who took communion on Easter Night was similar – 25.

Many, though not all, Russian churches inside Russia and in capital cities outside Russia resemble little more than railway stations. Orthodox Russians call the passers-by who you may never see again ‘prokhozhane’ (as opposed to ‘prikhozhane’, the word for parishioners). Then there are the people who call in from time to time – ‘zakhozhane’. These people you may see only half a dozen times a year. An example: as a parish we have some 4,000 people who are attached to us, but our list of parishioners is just under than 600 and that includes children. And yet all 4,000 would claim to be parishioners!

Another problem, worse in some countries than others, but still common in Russia and the Ukraine, despite recent welcome changes, is the massive imbalance in age and gender. For every 100 women standing in church, there may only be 15 men (at most) and two children. I can remember at the old ROCOR Cathedral in London 40 years ago, there would perhaps be 400 people (average age 75) at the Sunday Liturgy, out of whom three-quarters were elderly women and the only children our own. Where are the men? Where are the young people? Why have the grandparents not passed on the Faith to their children and grandchildren? The situation of the Greek Church in this country today is very similar and very critical. Expect many of their churches to close over the next 20 years.

In the old ROCOR of the time, I can remember one elderly and prominent woman parishioner boasting that the children in their church never made a noise. I politely pointed out that there were no children in her church (and also no baptisms). She then boasted that they never had any divorces in her church. Again I politely pointed out there were no weddings either (the last had been thirty years ago) and that the average age of the parishioners was about 75. She then boasted that they had never had any problem with their clergy. Once more I politely pointed out that that must be because they had no clergy….The last one had died a decade or so before.

As one relatively young archbishop said to me in the 1980s: the fewer parishes we have, the better it is, because the fewer the parishes, the fewer the problems. He died soon afterwards.

Why is it that there are still  many churches (especially in Russia and Eastern Europe) which it is impossible to enter with a pram or a pushchair (let alone a wheelchair)? Is it because children (and young people in general) are not welcome and not wanted? (As also in so many churches outside Russia?).

Why are there no contemporary toilets (for children) and no changing facilities, attached to the majority of churches?

Why are there so few meeting places for parishioners to get to know each other and support each other, where children can play together and make friends, and where young people can meet (and perhaps marry)? Or do you want to die out?

Children are our future. That statement is neither new nor original, but blatantly obvious, and yet many people still do not understand it.

A parish is not a cow to be milked for money. A parish is a local community to which people have a sense of belonging, to which they want to belong, so important for a flock which is scattered.

A parish is a community (not a racist ghetto, as in the old emigration), where all are welcome and a community which will stand up to the frequent injustices, persecution, meddling and bullying from outside, and support its clergy both morally and financially. Where does that exist?

Until we have many more parishes, we will not make progress.

Together in Life, Together in Heaven: Ten Questions and Answers on Martyrdom of the Russian Imperial Family

  1. Who ordered the murder of the Russian Imperial Family in 1918?

The seven members of the Imperial Family and their four faithful servants were shot and bayoneted to death in the very early morning, probably just before 1 a.m., of 17 July 1918. This took place in the requisitioned house of a military engineer called Nikolai N. Ipatiev in the city of Ekaterinburg in the Urals on the very limits of Europe and Asia. This house had been built on the site of the Church of the Ascension, which had stood there in the eighteenth century.

From studies in post-Soviet Russia, for example those by the senior official investigator,  V. N. Soloviov, it seems that the murder of the Imperial Family was carried out only on the initiative of the local Urals Regional Soviet. The Bolsheviks in the industrial city of ‘Red Ekaterinburg’ were particularly militant, hateful and also powerful, showing great independence from Moscow. In any case, no proof has been found of co-ordination between the local Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg and Lenin in Moscow or anyone else.

However, it is clear that Lenin would have had the Imperial Family murdered in any case and with the backing of his financial and political sponsors abroad, for example in New York. However, Lenin had wanted some sort of show trial first. It is also clear that the Soviet leaders and ordinary Bolsheviks who did not actually order the murder were not upset when it did occur. Thus, although they did not order it, they were quite capable of doing so and would have done it anyway in time. Probably they even felt relief that others had done the dirty work for them so soon.

  1. Were their murderers Jews?

Although the top Bolshevik elite in 1917 was 90% Jewish by race (but militant atheists by religion and mocking their ancestral religion and mercilessly slaughtering Non-Bolshevik Jews), ordinary Bolsheviks were overwhelmingly Russian. As the Old Bolsheviks, largely Jewish, died (Lenin was only a quarter Jewish) or were murdered (like Trotsky), they were replaced by Russians or those of other nationalities, like the Georgians Stalin and Beria, or later the Ukrainian Khushchov. Of the ten murderers (not ‘executioners’, as the secular West calls them) of the Imperial Family, eight were Russian, one was, probably, Latvian and only one was Jewish, although he was in charge of the other killers. However, this latter, Yankel Yurovsky, was a Jew who had long before been baptised a Protestant and had nothing to do with his Jewish family or religion. Therefore, he was Jewish only by race.

Indeed, several foreign soldiers, perhaps Latvians or Austro-Hungarians, had categorically refused to pull the trigger and murder the Family, especially the children. The fact – however terrible – is that the ten murderers were all baptised Christians, eight of them Russians. Their names were: Yurovsky, Kabanov, M. Medvedev, P. Medvedev, Netrebin, Nikulin, Strekotin, Tselms (probably, and probably Latvian), Vaganov and Yermakov. This fact that they were all officially Christians should be reflected on.

This is also why the Church Outside Russia canonised the Imperial Family and their servants as martyrs, whereas in 2000 the Church inside Russia canonised only the Family as Passion-Bearers. The difference here is only that the term ‘Passion-Bearer’ is used only when the murderers are nominal Christians and not pagans. However, in reality the terms are largely interchangeable.

  1. Was their murder a ritual murder?

There is no such thing as a ’ritual murder’. This whole Non-Orthodox myth was invented in the Roman Catholic Middle Ages. It began in Norman England, with the notorious case of the murder of ‘William of Norwich’ in 1144, the first such case. The myth, based largely on jealousy of the wealth of certain elite-connected Jews, finally spread from Catholic Poland into the western Ukraine only in the late nineteenth century. Anyone who reads about the chaos of the murders at the Ipatiev House, carried out by militant atheists and Non-Jews, can see that there was no system (rituals are by definition always systematic) and had no connection with any religion whatsoever. The myth of ‘ritual murders’ is pure anti-Semitism, as is the myth of ‘kabbalistic’ signs on an inside wall of the Ipatiev House. They were simple scribbles.

  1. Why did many not believe that the remains of the nine victims, found in 1979, and those of the two victims, Alexei and Maria, found in 2007, were those of the Imperial Family and their servants?

The second early investigator of the murder, N. A. Sokolov, (well before him the first investigator, I. A. Sergiev, had done nearly all the work) was appointed by the White Army in 1919. He could not find the remains of the Imperial Family and therefore concluded that the victims’ bodies had been consumed by fire, petroleum and sulphuric acid. In reality, only the martyrs’ clothing and shoes had been burned on bonfires. His ‘conclusion’ – although in fairness it was only a preliminary conclusion because he had not had time to finish his investigation – came about simply because he could not find the remains, even though he had passed by their site. Many, if not all, at the time and for long afterwards, believed in his conclusions/suppositions for lack of any other information, and a few still do believe in him today.

Sokolov was not a chemist or a forensic scientist, just a legal man – and also a convinced anti-Semite – and did not realise that you need very high temperatures – about 1,000 C – and huge amounts of sulphuric acid in order to destroy eleven human bodies. These had not been available. Others blindly repeated his suppositions, even adding the speculation that the bodies had been burned to cinders and their heads had been sent to Moscow. This latter wild and proofless speculation was made only because the investigators had found no teeth – by far the most difficult part of a human body to destroy. In reality, there were no teeth, simply because the bodies with their heads and therefore teeth had not been found. However, there are still a few who believe these suppositions, even today, though probably for ideological (anti-Semitic) reasons or out of personal vanity and wish for publicity.

  1. How can we be sure that ‘the Ekaterinburg Remains’ are indeed the relics of the Imperial Family?

We are 99.999999% sure of this just from the two sets of extremely thorough genetic studies on the unique remains, conducted internationally. If you add to this the locations and the number of bodies (eleven), the post-Revolutionary period when they were killed, their ages, the way they were killed, the type of bullets and other fragments found with them, as well as the dental records showing very clearly that the victims’ teeth had been treated by world-class dentists, I can see no rational way in which there can be any doubt about their identity.

  1. In that case, why have the Church authorities been so slow in recognising the remains as the Imperial Family’s relics?

The first genetic tests were carried out in the 1990s under the Yeltsin government, which of course no-one trusted, as it was notorious for its lies, just as all the Communist governments before it had been notorious for their lies. After all, Yeltsin himself had ordered the destruction of the Ipatiev House less than twenty years earlier, in September 1977, for the sixtieth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Since the remains could eventually be venerated as holy relics, the Church authorities, also distrusting Yeltsin, had to be absolutely certain of their identity. You cannot make a mistake if you are going to present remains as relics. This is why a second batch of genetic tests were made on the basis of even more advanced DNA science, their results being released on the centenary of the martyrdom in 2018. The findings coincided with the first ones.

Secondly, perhaps more importantly still, the Church authorities have had to face the opposition of sectarian elements inside Russia, who are largely anti-Semitic. Only now are the Church authorities dealing with them. The bishops have always feared a schism, however small, on the subject of the identification of the remains.

Thirdly, the Church authorities know that in post-Soviet Russia there are those of the other extreme, opposed to the far right anti-Semites. These are the liberal and atheist elements opposed to the enshrinement of the relics, just as they were – and are – opposed to the very canonisation of the Imperial Martyrs. Indeed, inside Russia itself, the Church authorities have still not canonised three of the four servants of the Seven Imperial Martyrs (see below).

Outside Russia we should not be surprised at this or, even worse, feel smug. Even the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), supposedly free, only made up its mind about canonising the Imperial Martyrs and four of their servants in 1981, 63 years late! This is scandalous. And even here there were some members of the Church Outside Russia who opposed the canonisation, as I well remember. Anyone who remembers the very hostile reactions to the 1981 canonisation outside ROCOR, on the part of the liberal Paris Russian Jurisdiction (founded by the very Saint Petersburg aristocrats who had overthrown the Tsar) and the Parisian-influenced OCA, let alone the mocking reactions of the secular media, will recall just how virulent the opposition to the canonisation was.

  1. Why are there no miracles from the relics, which do not give out myrrh or perfume?

I think there are many miracles from them. The fall of the Soviet Union was only the first one.

As regards the actual relics, not all relics give off fragrance or myrrh. In any case, relics need faith to work miracles. This we can see time and again from Christ’s words in the Gospels – ‘according to your faith be it unto you’ (Matt. 9, 29). Christ Himself could not work miracles in Nazareth, where he had spent most of his life, precisely because of the faithlessness of the inhabitants (Matt 13, 58 and Mark 6, 5-6). In the Gospels Christ says time and again: ‘Thy faith has healed thee’. In other words, there is no healing without faith. At this moment, nine sets of relics, which lie in the St Catherine’s chapel in the Church of St Peter and Paul in its Fortress in Saint Petersburg, are closed off and cannot be venerated by the faithful. Disgracefully, the relics of St Alexei and St Maria are not even enshrined in the church. We cannot even venerate these relics physically.

  1. In Moscow the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate has not canonised three of the servants of the Family, though it did recently canonise one of them, Dr Eugene Botkin. Many say that it cannot canonise all of them in any case, since one was a Roman Catholic and another was a Protestant.

These four servants were all canonised by the Church Outside Russia in 1981 together with the Imperial Family. I questioned the very conservative Archbishop Antony of Los Angeles about this matter, when I accompanied him to visit Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich in Paris in autumn 1991. He explained to me that this issue had been discussed by the ROCOR Synod in New York well before the 1981 canonisation. The Synod had accepted the age-old practice of the Church that anyone who was martyred for the Faith, even though unbaptised, was considered to have been baptised in their blood.

There are many such examples of baptism in blood in Church history. The fact that of two Orthodox martyrs, one was a Roman Catholic and another was a Protestant, should surely be considered as Providential: this is a call to the Non-Orthodox world to follow in the footsteps of the Imperial servants, as indeed is the canonisation of the converted Tsarina Alexandra herself, though she had been chrismated into the Orthodox Faith before her wedding in 1894. We are all called to be Imperial servants, servants of the Christian Empire, the Empire of Christ.

  1. If the remains are eventually accepted by the whole Church as holy relics, should the relics be enshrined at Porosionkov Log, where they were found?

The area a few miles to the north of Ekaterinburg where the relics were found in 1979 and, 67 metres away, in 2007, was renamed Porosionkov Log (‘Piglet’s Ravine’) only in the nineteenth century, as a result of the amount of mud there which attracted pigs. Originally there had been a large lake here, but when the railway was built across this area, the land around the large pond became very boggy with no drainage. It would not be possible to build a large stone church here, but only a small wooden church on piles. This is the case four and a half miles away at Ganina Yama (‘Gabriel’s Pit’), where the murderers burned the victims’ clothes and belongings and first and unsuccessfully tried to dispose of the relics in the early morning of 17 July 1918. Here there now stand wooden churches dedicated to each of the Imperial Martyrs.

  1. In your view what should happen to the relics now?

Tsar Nicholas II repeatedly said that he wanted to be buried in Saint Petersburg. He spent most of his life as Tsar at Tsarskoe Selo (‘The Tsar’s Village’), just outside Saint Petersburg. Here the whole family was happy, rather than among the mean-minded gossip, criminal slander and treasonous intrigues of jealous aristocrats in Saint Petersburg. Surely, it is here in the spacious grounds of Tsarskoe Selo, where the Family spent so many happy times together, that a huge Cathedral dedicated to the Imperial Martyrs could be raised up, with the relics of all of them at last reunited and enshrined inside. This would become a pilgrimage centre for Orthodox the world over. The Imperial Family: Together in life, together in heaven. From here tiny splinters of relics could be sent out all over the world, so that their veneration could be confirmed as worldwide, as indeed it already is, and for the repentance of all. Then clearly visible miracles would begin, including the transfiguration of Post-Soviet Russia into Orthodox Russia and the beginning of the realisation in Western countries that they cannot continue as they are now, in their state of apostasy from Christ.

Holy Imperial Martyrs, Pray to God for us!

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

St John of Shanghai Church, Colchester, England

 

Blessed Xenia of Saint Petersburg

24 January/6 February 2021

 

A Life in the Day of an Orthodox Priest

7.10 am. Leave for the church in Essex where at 8.00 I have to meet an engineer about a fault in the sound system in the church. I get there early and he too. We shall need one new microphone and two extra speakers.

8.30 am. I have time to tidy the church and then see a Bulgarian woman who has problems with her son who is studying medicine.

10.00 In September a drunken man crashed into the perimeter wall of the church at 3.20 in the morning. He managed to get out of his car unharmed though the car was a write-off. Having found out the car registration from the police, now I have an appointment with a builder who is to give a quote to our insurance company to repair the wall. It will cost them several thousand pounds. For some reason he wants to see me and not the caretaker. He turns out to be an Irishman who wants to talk to a priest.

10.25 Get the church caretaker to be present for the fitting of a new smart meter for the electricity in the church.

10.40 I call on two parishioners in Colchester, originally from Saint Petersburg, a mother and daughter. The mother, born during the German siege in the War, has dementia.

11.30 Visit a parishioner in Colchester whose husband is Turkish and hesitating about being baptised. We already have three Turkish parishioners and I want him and his wife to come tomorrow where I will be baptising another Turkish man. Once he has accepted baptism, I will be able to marry him and his civil wife.

12.15 Visit the graves of my parents and my brother fifteen minutes away. Tidy them

12.40 Phone call from a parishioner in Thetford in Norfolk whose friend’s mother has just died. I will serve a panikhida tomorrow, St Dimitri’s Saturday. O Lord, give rest to Thy servant Larisa who has fallen asleep.

2.00 pm. Despite the covid lockdown, I have to go to one of the prisons in west Suffolk, about an hour away, where I am the Orthodox chaplain for an emergency, to see a Russian man on suicide watch. He is clearly suffering from severe depression. I manage to listen to his first ever confession and give him communion. He says he feels better.

4.00 Call in on a parishioner about forty minutes from the prison. She obtained British nationality two years ago, but her foreign-born daughter still does not have it. She is panicking and tells me that her daughter may be deported. I reassured her and telephoned an advice centre, who inform me that there is no hurry and that the daughter will obtain a British passport within six months, after payment of just over £1,000. The problem is only financial, not worse. We read the akathist to St Nicholas together in her icon-corner.

6.00 Get home which is thirty minutes away. Answer two letters and pick up messages from parishioners left on the landline.

7.30 E-mail the lists of parishioners with a circular about arrangements for confession and communion during the forthcoming new closure of churches. A rush of phone calls on my mobile starts.

8.00 Tell the cleaner that she need not come in next week because of covid-19.

8.05 Phone the second and third priests about the new arrangements.

8.15 Phone-call with the future deacon about service-books.

8.20 Phone call from a couple whose marriage at crisis point.

8.40 Order a mantle for the Bishop from the Ukraine.

9.00 Phone call from a Moldovan woman in East London: Please pray for my uncle and aunt, Sergei and Elena. They were climbing in the Himalayas when they fell into a crevasse on a glacier. Their bodies cannot be retrieved for burial, at least not for some centuries. She is in tears.

9.10 Answer e-mails, including an e-mail from a family who have had to move to a place on the other side of the country where there is no church. I tell them that if they can find other Orthodox there and premises, we can ask the Bishop about the possibility of starting a mission. But we are so short of priests; we need at least three more just in our area.

How Will the Church in the Diaspora Survive Covid?

Introduction: The Orthodox Diaspora

Although the Orthodox Diaspora in Western Europe, the Americas and Australia has existed for well over a century, it represented little more than embassy churches until 1917. Then, after the overthrow of the Russian Empire by Westernised aristocratic atheists and then Westernised middle-class atheists, it grew enormously. Without the Russian Empire to protect them, there followed the political and economic collapse of Greece, Cyprus, Orthodox communities under the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem and more immigration, especially after 1945.

More recently the Diaspora greatly expanded after the fall of  the post-1945 Stalinist Empire all over Eastern Europe and, in 1991, the Soviet Union. This collapse has especially affected now EU countries, with Orthodox populations, like Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltics. But what spiritual, and therefore real, identity and significance does the Diaspora have? Does it have any long-term future or will it inevitably disappear into the Western atheist melting-pot of assimilation? What identity can the Orthodox Diaspora have in a spiritually alien and hostile environment?

Two Negative Identities

On the one hand, some look on the Diaspora as merely nationalistic entities. They see it as a mere conduit for cultural nostalgia for a distant and long-abandoned ‘old country’, for flag-waving. But those who hold processions headed by flags, and not by the Cross, are doomed to die out. It comes as no surprise that, generally, the more nationalistic the community, the more its churches closed during covid. After all, one can wave flags at home; why take risks by going to church? Only those who live by faith do not fear death and take communion. The rest, who live by nationalism, disappeared ‘for fear of the Jews’. Moreover, many of them may never return.

On the other hand, some look on the Diaspora as a set of groups which will be assimilated – inevitably. Diaspora-born children and succeeding generations lose their parents’ language and culture; what possible interest can they have in the cultures of countries which they do not know and whose languages they can barely speak? Either the children and grandchildren have adopted another language and another flag, or else they are indifferent to any language except the one they use at school and to all flags. Covid will hardly bring them back to church. If they have been given no spiritual identity, they assimilate.

Conclusion: A Positive Identity

The Church in the Diaspora can only survive, especially after covid, if it is a Local Church. This means a Church which brings together all the Orthodox of whatever nationality and language in the local area and gives them the Orthodox Christian spiritual  and therefore cultural – not nationalistic – identity. Moreover, such ‘local’ Orthodox can only be brought together on the basis of real Faith, on the basis of uncompromised Orthodoxy, and not on the basis of the lowest common denominators of a hotchpotch of folklore. That only produces the escapism of fakery, the irrelevant fairy-tale pretence of being something you are not.

If any jurisdiction is to survive in the post-covid Diaspora (and many are already dying out or have died out), it will be the one which by origin is multinational and also uses the local language – though not exclusively. Such a jurisdiction will give a spiritual identity to its people as the exclusive bearers of local and universal real Christianity, not of folklore or a foreign language – though many may speak one – but of the unique Christian Civilisation, of the unique Christian values which only Orthodox who go to Church hold and live by. Our Orthodox Christianity is a way of life, not an exotic hobby.

 

 

 

From Recent Correspondence (September 2020)

Q: Very recently you returned to Mt Athos for the first time in many years. What changes have you noticed since you last went?

A: I went to Athos twice in 1979 and spent time there. Now again I have been there. There have been enormous changes.

I think it was better before because it was poor then and there were virtually no roads, no vehicles, no electricity, no telephones and of course no internet. Today there is all this. There are roads everywhere, new road-building is very noisy and disturbs both the holy silence and unspoilt nature, and there must be hundreds of vehicles on the mountain now. All of this has been done with EU money. Each monastery, much refurnished and repainted, now has a shop and, ominously, a museum (always a sign of the end, because it shows that it is dead, not living). It is clear that the Greek government, whose flag flies everywhere on the mountain, even on monasteries (you will not find a single Russian flag at St Panteleimon’s) is preparing to open the mountain up to mass tourism some time in the future. Greek nationalism and money are killing the mountain. Instead of being a multinational Orthodox centre, it is slowly becoming a department of the atheistic Greek State.

Q: Is it likely that one day there will be new monasteries on Mt Athos for, say, English, French, German, Italian etc monks?

A: As long as Greek nationalism rules on Mt Athos, that is unthinkable. Out of some 2,000 monks today, 1800 are Greek. It is forbidden by the nationalists to have more than 20 monasteries, which is why the Romanians, say, only have a skete, though with more monks than a couple of the smaller Greek monasteries, why the Georgians lost Iviron to the Greeks and the Russians lost the huge so-called sketes of the Prophet Elijah and St Andrew to the Greeks. Then, there is also the fact that anyone who becomes a monk on Mt Athos must become a Greek citizen! For the moment Mt Athos is a fragment, albeit with some holy people, of the Second Rome, it still has to enter post-1453 reality.

Although I have met, seen or heard of two English monks, two French monks, two Finnish monks and two black African monks on Mt Athos, two is hardly enough to open a monastery. In any case, what we first need to do is to have authentic monasteries in Western countries, using the native language. So far this exists only in France and the USA. The number of vocations is tiny at present.

Q: Should people not leave the Patriarchate of Constantinople because their Patriarch acts heretically?

A: I think it is far more likely that the very elderly Patriarch Bartholomew will die. So he will be leaving, not his three million-strong flock.

Q: Recently the Greek Archbishop of America, Elpidiforos, stated to Roman Catholics that the unity of Orthodox and Roman Catholics is not a question of if, but when. What do you answer?

A: He was talking only about himself.

Q: Is the Russian Church the centre of the Orthodox world?

A: Like it or not, Russia is the centre of Orthodox Civilisation, even secular historians like Toynbee and Huntington recognised it. How blindly nationalistic do you have to be not to see this? On the other hand, the Russian Church must behave responsibly. It has often failed to do, treating Non-Russians as second-class citizens. Leadership simply because you are nearly ten times bigger than any other Local Church is not automatic, you have to earn leadership and deserve it. As I said – like it or not. The Russian Church still has to overcome suicidal Soviet tendencies and become the Third Rome again. The dead hand of the Soviet Union with its bureaucracy and centralisation is still too close. Christ is the only centre of the Orthodox world.

Q: Is it true that the Russian Orthodox Church is heretical because it blesses icons and even crosses with holy water?

A: This is an old chestnut that comes up every decade, usually written by a literalist convert or a polemical Greek, together with the accusation that the Russian Church is heretical because we bless icons and crosses!

Of course, it is not heretical. But of course it is not strictly necessary to bless icons and crosses, we do it out of piety. We do all sorts of things that are not strictly necessary – for example drinking a little wine after communion in the Russian Church, blessing kolyva at memorials, especially in the Greek Church, and kneeling on Sundays, especially in the Romanian Church. Such an accusation of heresy because of piety is all on the same level as the ‘no kneeling on Sundays’ convert pride syndrome. We are not supposed to do it, but we do it for piety’s sake. Let the semi-intellectuals, aggressive fault-finders and proud self-justifiers fall silent, also for piety’s sake!

Q: What is needed for unity in the Diaspora?

A: Trust in one bishop by members of every jurisdiction. At present the bishops of most jurisdictions are not even trusted by their own members, let alone by members of other jurisdictions. Trust will bring the leadership and authority essential for unity. A bishop who is subject to some nationalistic group, financial interest or political party earns no trust. Ultimately trust means holiness.

Q: What are the origins of the Greek priest’s chimney pot hat, the Greek monk’s headware and the Russian skufia?

A: The Balkan chimney pot hat for priests is simply the old Turkish top hat but black, the low cylindrical hat worn by Balkan monks is simply the Turkish fez but black, and the Russian skoufia is simply to keep you warm in the Russian winter.

Q: Where does the Roman Catholic anti-woman spirit come from?

A: It comes right from the beginning, in the second half of the 11th century, when the German Popes forbade married priests. Married men are not anti-woman; bachelors often are. This same innovation introduced institutional clericalism and also, incidentally, led to the disappearance of monks who were not priests and also of deacons; everyone had to be a priest – ‘a mini-pope’.

 

 

 

Samaritans, Scribes, Pharisees, Saducees and Prophets

The coronavirus epidemic has, officially, infected 0.02 % of the world population, 5% of whom, officially, have died from it. It has now taken as many victims as swine flu did in 2009-10. According to UK government statistics, 85% of victims are aged over 70, the average age of victims in the UK is 84, the over 90s have an 85% chance of recovery and 96% of victims had serious underlying health problems. The lives of most of these victims have been shortened by several weeks and even months.

However, the virus has also revealed that there are those who are called Christians, including certain clergy, who are actually afraid of death. The scandal among the faithful is naturally enormous. Clearly, there are those who claim to be Christians who do not seem to be in reality. All has been revealed.

What can we say of these false or weak Christians? As I have grown older, I have realised that there is indeed nothing new under the Sun. Human nature and the results of spiritual impurity do not change and we can categorise those who call themselves Christians into exactly the same categories as those whom Christ encountered when He lived on earth. Namely:

The Samaritans

These are the nominal masses who identify the faith with a particular place, like the Samaritans who would only worship on Mt Gerizim. Their faith decides events because, with their mood swinging one way or the other depending on the elite, it affects the whole of history, as we saw in Russia in 1917. The battle is to Church them –our Faith does not depend on a place or a nationality. We have to bring them onto the side of Christ, telling them that ‘God is a spirit and that they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth’ (Jn. 4, 24).

The Scribes

These are the modern intellectuals and dreamers, who make the faith into some sort of Protestant personal opinion in a completely disincarnate way. They will refuse to baptise babies until their parents and godparents have been made into intellectuals like themselves. They love to read and write books, whose titles are barely comprehensible. However, they despise others and consider themselves to be ‘very spiritual’, far above the common masses, who for them are just peasants not clever enough to understand them. In fact, the Scribes are not spiritual at all, because they live in their brains and imaginations. They do not supply spiritual food, but only wordy, academic food, nourishment for the brain in clubs for intellectuals. Woe unto them.

The Pharisees

These make the spiritually living faith into a mere institutional religion, the manipulating arm of the State. In history the Pharisees, rich men who lived luxuriously next to the Temple in Jerusalem, operated a money racket. Why else did Christ overturn the tables of the moneychangers in His Temple? (Matt. 21, 12). The Pharisees co-operated closely with the Roman oppressors, shouting ‘We have no king but Caesar’ (Jn. 19, 15), since their interest was to be next to money and power wherever it was. Today, the Pharisees represent the episcopal tyranny of the ‘princes of the Church’, clericalism, and love being close to the State, to orders, protocols and driving fancy cars. They have no love for the people, for the faithful parish priests whom they persecute and for the monks. They hate confessing and mixing with the flock. They seek the support of the nominal masses by asserting only their ethnic, that is, worldly, identity. Woe unto them.

The Saducees

The Saducees rejected the Resurrection, for it was a miracle too far for their narrow and unbelieving minds. These are the liberals, modernists and ecumenists who follow the secular tide, whatever it is and wherever it goes. They are ‘woke’, supporters of LGBT, they are the politically correct who follow health and safety rules and the recommendations on coronavirus to the letter, making them into legally binding laws, which they are not, masking themselves and masking others, preventing them from worshipping Christ. They can have no principles because they have no beliefs. Conformists to the core, they will obey whatever the spiritually impure tell them to do.

The Prophets

These are the faithful, the Orthodox, who venerate the persecuted Saints of God. They may not be Prophets as such, but they are infused with the spirit of prophecy, the Holy Spirit. These are the spiritually living, the real Orthodox, the pillars of the Church, who live the faith despite the oppression of bishops and false pastors, who are Scribes, Pharisees and Saducees. The Prophets spend their time fighting for and maintaining the Faith and Churching the Samaritan masses. We are responsible and do not seek death, but we certainly do not fear it, for Christ long ago defeated it and all the machinations of the Scribes, the Pharisees and the Saducees.

 

 

1 JULY: THE NEW CONSTITUTION FOR THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

It may seem unusual for us to speak here of an internal change to the Russian Constitution, rather than to laws in, say, England, but the new Constitution does affect us here for the following reasons:

The proposed changes to the Russian Constitution, subject to referendum on 1 July, offer the possibility of moving away at last from the old post-Soviet constitution of 1993, largely dictated by the American elite in the 1990s. In other words, they mean moving away from colonial Western liberalism to sovereign, Christian, Russian Orthodox values. Christian Civilisation is being raised up to defend us from US, Euroatlantic, Secularism. (Symbolised by the US Embassy in Moscow, which flies the LGBT flag). This change has been slow, but has come at last. What does it mean?

Firstly, if passed, this will be a Constitution voted for by the people, and not imposed by American bureaucrats and Soviet oligarchs under an alcoholic President. Secondly, it will put Russian Orthodox law above International Secularist law, imposed by the West. Thirdly, it will confirm the territorial integrity and Russian language of the Russian Federation and forbid senior figures from having dual nationality and foreign bank accounts. Fourthly, it will call on the New Russia to keep the heritage of Imperial Russia (inherited by the Soviet Union) in the form of social justice, free education and health care, which was all but abandoned by the post-Soviet American Russia. Fifthly, it will at last strengthen the responsibilities of the Federation to come to the aid of Russians abroad. Sixthly, it affirms the role of the State Council, a kind of Nationwide Senate outside Party politics.

However, even more than this, the Constitution affirms the existence of God, making it quite distinct from Western Secularist countries. Unlike apostate nations, it also affirms marriage as the union of a man and a woman and affirms the family and children as a priority of Russian government policy. God, Marriage and the Family are the three main elements here. For us who live in the Anti-Christian West, this is invaluable support. Today, Western Europe faces the choice between the arrogance of ‘one-size fits all’, Secularist American Imperialism, ‘we know best and you must obey us’, or the support of Imperial Russia and her Church with its Exarchates and missions outside the Russian Federation. It is clear which we shall choose and all other Orthodox will do the same, if they are really Orthodox and overcome their racial prejudices and phyletism.

At last, post-Soviet Russia, with its putrid corpse of Lenin and statues and places named after Bolshevik monsters, is dying out. After thirty years we are moving ahead away from the old and dying Cold War foundations towards the literal Re-Constitution of Imperial, Christian Russia and support for the authentic Orthodox Christian heritage of the Western world. The writing is on the wall: let those who are able read it. The Future is arriving and it is Orthodox Christian.

 

All Around Treason and Cowardice and Deceit

Introduction

The above are the words spoken by the future martyr Emperor Nicholas II, after he had been treacherously stabbed in the back by almost all of the intelligentsia. That word defined the then deChristianised upper and middle class of Russia, made up of generals, aristocrats, including Romanovs, politicians, industrialists, lawyers, teachers and, sadly, many clergy.

As a result of the betrayal of the Christian Russian Empire by its internal enemies, keenly supported by its external enemies, the British, German, French and American elites, the Empire fell to the most vicious genocide known to human history. ‘Holding victory in his hands, he fell to the earth alive’, as Winston Churchill wrote of his betrayal in his work ‘The World Crisis’ (Vol I, p. 476). This betrayal was the Emperor’s Gethesemane, when he prayed for the cup to pass, but also ‘but may Thy will be done’. So his crown was removed and he went up to his Cross willingly, saying: ‘If Russia needs a sacrifice for its salvation, I will be that sacrifice’.

Those who still today, incredibly, write that the Tsar and his Family and friends were weak-willed, inept, debauched or stupid are still stabbing him in the back in the same way. And so they are still preventing the Church from implementing Her Providential and Apostolic mission and destiny of Christianising and reChristianising the world. But the Tsar forgives them: they know not what they do. Worse still, however, they do not want to know what they do. Only God can forgive that, if they repent. So much for them, but whose side are we on? There are some, hopefully very few, among the international clergy of the Church, who number nearly one hundred thousand, who also still behave as traitors, cowards and deceivers to the Church, who are the enemies of the Church. Among them we can discern three types, often mixed together:

  1. Treason: The unprincipled careerist and the faithless bureaucrat.

These will do anything to further their passion of ambition, their careers, their lust for wealth and power. They may be political appointees or secular failures, who have been found jobs through influential relatives and demonstrate great nationalism. They will steal Church money, buy property for themselves, tyrannize others with absurd paperwork (‘control and command’), and threaten, bully and transfer them, if possible. They generally make themselves disliked and even feared by alienated clergy and people who instinctively distrust them as thieves. The people see through the amoral and immoral attitudes in their souls and vote with their feet whenever they turn up. We knew one bishop in England years ago who spent Church money on equipping his mistress, other clergymen are homosexuals or moral degenerates. Such characters are very divisive and are soon forgotten when they die, but first cause great damage.

  1. Cowardice: The cowardly diplomat and the dreaming academic

Conformists to the core, these suffer from weak faith and will always swim with the tide, failing to stand up for the Truth and defend the faithful. Often they cannot make any decision or give any concrete answer to anything, let alone do anything, as they are lost in long-winded conversations and writing long documents. Words not actions. In fact, they persecute zeal and want the Church to wither. One bishop we knew in France, where such are called ‘library bishops’, said that it was better to have fewer parishes because then there were fewer problems. A truly apostolic attitude! If they are vicar bishops they are fairly innocuous and can be left to their books and theories, even if they are homosexual. However, if given power as diocesan bishops or deans, disasters ensue. One we know had to be defrocked: the wrong man in the wrong place. That was a personal tragedy for him; not a bad man, just incompetent and ineffectual.

  1. Deceit: The fraudulent charlatan and the self-admiring narcissist

In some respects the charlatans are the worst of all. Claiming to be ‘spiritual’, which they most certainly are not, as is apparent to anyone with Church experience, they persuade the lonely, spinsters, widows and bachelors, that they have some sort of ‘charisma’. These self-appointed ‘spiritual fathers’ are generally narcissists with a personality cult and so are manipulators, preying on and abusing the young, especially students, the naïve and the weak, making them feel guilty, taking their goodwill and money through l manipulations. Some of them are sexual predators, whether heterosexual or homosexual. Worst of all are the pedophiles. We have seen several of these charlatans in various countries: they are more common than is thought. As narcissists, they are always right, never listen to advice, never consult (though they may pretend to do so) and, if bishops, ordain disastrously because they do not ordain pastors but yes-men.

Conclusion

It is clear that creating a clergyman just because he is unmarried will lead to disasters, more precisely, to treason, cowardice and deceit. Only real monks should be consecrated to the episcopate or ordained, not single men who become monks formally merely so that they can be consecrated or ordained, but those who live monasticism, like the Russian bishops of the past.

Given the present condition of the worldwide Orthodox episcopate, with the chronic shortage of candidates for the episcopate, what can be done? The ideal solution is more monasticism. But that cannot be created artificially, only organically. You cannot somehow manufacture ‘monasticism’. And then not all good monks make good bishops, though all good bishops are good monks. And candidates for monasticism generally only appear out of parishes where zeal is encouraged. And candidates for monasticism generally come out of families who live an Orthodox life. This solution to the problem can only come in the long term. What can be done now?

The alternative proposed by some is to return to having married bishops, with tiny dioceses of ten to twenty parishes, as in ancient times. However, such a radical change, which could only be decided by a Church Council, is highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, with few bishops, there is a realistic and canonical compromise solution. This is for the bishops who do exist to delegate whatever they can to trustworthy deans. Though not without risks, deans could consult and request bishops to ordain as needed by the grassroots. Treason and cowardice and deceit must be overcome by all clergy. We all need to say: ‘If Russia needs a sacrifice for its salvation, we will be that sacrifice’. Otherwise we too will prevent the Church from implementing Her Providential and Apostolic mission and destiny to Christianise and reChristianise the world.