Category Archives: Pastoral Matters

On Local Episcopal Assemblies, A Fixed Common Easter, Churchgoing in the Russian Church and Orthodox Magazines

Q: Do you think that the local Episcopal committees under the chairmanship of the local Constantinople bishop that began around the world a few years ago will lead to the birth of new Local Churches?

J.T., Chicago

A: There is a big difference between an episcopal committee or assembly and a Local Church. As the old saying goes: God so loved the world that He did not send a committee. In other words, the danger has always been of the committees developing into mere talking shops. Some of these committees meet regularly, especially in the USA, others infrequently. That in the British Isles and Ireland seems to have been suspended for the moment because ‘there is nothing more to talk about’.

While the Russian Church was captive in the Soviet Union (and other Eastern European Local Churches captive to atheist regimes as well), the hierarchy in Constantinople had a wonderful opportunity to begin to set up Local Churches in the Diaspora and carry out missionary activity. Sadly, enslaved to phyletism (the word for Greek racism), it utterly failed to do this and instead engaged in aggressive and appalling hellenization and unprincipled modernism and ecumenism at the behest of those who were paying it in dollars. This politicized lack of faithfulness to the Tradition put most Orthodox off Constantinople for good. Since the Russian Church and others have been free, it has become ever clearer that Constantinople missed the boat, throwing away the opportunity given it.

In reality, virtually all missionary activity in the Diaspora has not been carried out by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, or the Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Georgian Churches (which are the only Local Churches with diasporas), but either by one part or another of the Russian Church or else by the Antiochian Church. The former has not always been up to the task by any means, but on the other hand, it has generally, though with some hugely lamentable exceptions, adhered more to the Tradition and the canonical and liturgical Tradition and disciplines of the Church. On the other hand, the latter has displayed an admirable openness and missionary ‘outreach’ (to use a Protestant term), but on the other hand it has been prone to modernism and a disastrous lack of canonical discipline. As one of our parishioners said to me, ‘they have the right spirit and are completely sincere, but unfortunately they know nothing, so tend to make it up as they go along’.

Of course these are generalizations, and I am sure that you can think of exceptions. There are in the Patriarchate of Constantinople as in the Patriarchate of Antioch, as in both parts of the Russian Church, some excellent pastors and missionaries as well as lamentable and scandalous failures. As they say, there are good and bad everywhere.

When will there be new Local Churches? When it is God’s will. And that means when we are worthy of them and when there are enough Orthodox in the Diaspora who think of themselves as indigenous and not attached to a Church based elsewhere, and so want new Local Churches. Very simply, as long as the overwhelming majority of Orthodox in the Diaspora do not want new Local Churches, we will not have them.

Q: What do you think of the Archbishops of Canterbury’s idea of a fixed common Easter?

C.W. London

A: Perhaps I am getting old, but this really is ‘an old chestnut’. I can remember exactly the same proposal in 1975 (or 76) and it was dismissed then by Patriarch Dimitrios as the wishful thinking of travel agents. This time too it is merely the private fantasy of the latest secular-minded Archbishop of Canterbury.

In the Orthodox Church we cannot go against the decisions of the Universal Councils: Easter falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox, and if that should fall at the same time as or within the days of the Jewish Passover period, then Easter will follow on the next Sunday. And by the way, the Spring equinox is a date fixed not by astronomers (we are not pagans who worship the sun and the moon – the sun and the moon worship the Creator), but by the Church, and that currently falls 13 days after the astronomical Spring equinox.

If secular-minded Protestants (and the Roman Catholics with them) want to alter the date of their Easter yet again, then let them, we Orthodox shall carry on in obedience to God and His Church.

Similarly, if secular states want to abolish Easter and create some sort of ‘Spring Feast’ for the chocolate, greetings card, stuffed toy and travel industries, then that is their affair too. In France in the 1970s the masonic government of Giscard D’Estaing abolished Easter holidays in schools and established fixed ‘Spring holidays’. The same can be done by secularists here. It makes little difference to Orthodox.

Q: In the secular West very few people go to Church, less than 5% in most countries. But it is the same in Russia. So why should the Russian Church be listened to?

M. S., London

A: What you say is factually true and the revival in the Russian Church has very, very far to go. However, all this needs to be put into context.

In the West churches are closing down very rapidly, being turned into shops, clubs, stores, halls – just like they did with churches in the Soviet Union in the 20s and 30s. And this in churches where services are short, where you sit down for them and practices like confession, preparation before communion and fasting are virtually unknown. Most churchgoers in the West are aged 70 and over. Very serious voices are suggesting that the Church of England, for example, will have disappeared by 2050. Finally, Western culture is no longer being influenced by the Church and Christian values. In fact, quite the opposite and very rapidly.

In the jurisdiction of the Russian Church 30,000 churches have been built or restored in the last 25 years and the number of clergy ahs increased eightfold. Moreover, this process is continuing. Over the last 25 years well over 120 million people have been baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church. In Russia most churchgoers are under 50 – it is the old people who do not go to church. Very serious people are suggesting that the number of churches could easily double again in the next 25 years. Finally, Russian and East Slav culture is more and more being influenced by the Church and Christian values as Christianity is incarnated into life.

In other words, what you have to look at is not the numbers who go to church in the West and in the Russian Lands today, but the direction that the West and the Russian Lands are travelling in: they are diametrically opposed. We are express trains travelling in opposite directions. And that is why you should listen to the Russian Church.

Q: What advice would you give someone who wanted to launch an Orthodox magazine?

L.O., Manchester

A: Firstly, some practical advice:

The best bit of advice I was given exactly 20 years ago was to have ready enough material for the first ten issues. If you do not, you will simply run out of impetus and you will close down after two or three years. It has happened.

Next: in the last ten to fifteen years the Internet has killed off small-circulation postal subscription magazines. Do not dwell in the past, what was true thirty or forty years ago is no longer true. You should think about going electronic. On line you can have colour pictures for nothing and any format, font and size of font that you want. It is what we did nine years ago.

Next: do not include news in your magazine because inevitably it will be out of date. You can go online and read news immediately, nobody wants old news.

Next: think about how often you would produce such a magazine. As a result of the internet, postal charges (especially going abroad) have quadrupled in about ten years. Three or four times a year could be ideal. But again, you should think about going electronic from the start: no postal charges.

Secondly, some advice on content:

Aim at producing something to be kept and to be referred to, not to be thrown away twenty minutes after it has been opened. Aim therefore at producing quality, something unique, something which teaches and is edifying. Nobody wants to read something that they already know or brings no spiritual benefit. That, sadly, already exists.

Next: avoid a sectarian new/old calendarist spirit. It is not edifying and at once you will lose most of your readership. And if you are not on-line, your readership numbers are important because you will start losing money. That has happened too.

Next: avoid stories of only local interest. You are not producing a parish bulletin. Details of local, insular news are not of interest to others. We belong to something greater, not to something insular. Look at the big picture, the wider church in space and time and beyond space and time. Give people something to think about.

Next: avoid an unhealthy and superficial fascination with ‘Byzantinism’, ‘personalities’ and recipes, beloved of the narrow interests of Anglican converts. Remember that most Orthodox are not Anglican converts and have a completely different perspective!
Finally, as far as possible, avoid factual inaccuracies, something that all journalists must struggle against.

The Anti-Christian Empire and the Resistance Movement

Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

(Matt 10.16)

Introduction: The Case of Britain

After the Norman invasion of 1066 and the ensuing genocide (150,000 dead) and national degeneration into Roman Catholicism, there took place the further degeneration into Protestantism under the tyrants Henry VIII and Elizabeth I (150,000 dead). Then, almost 400 years ago, there took place in these Isles the genocide of Cromwell. Jewish-financed, this left nearly 900,000, mainly Roman Catholic, dead. From then on and until some fifty years ago, the lands of the UK further degenerated into Judeo-Protestantism (so-called ‘Judeo-Christian’, but in fact Judeo-Protestant, culture).

Today, as a result of the centuries of Judeo-Protestant degeneration in its inherent, ever-deepening worship of Mammon in a worldwide commercial empire, the UK has become an anti-Christian country. This cannot even be blamed on the EU, where Mr Cameron has recently been making some window dressing rearrangements – rather like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The fact is that, regardless of the EU Atheist Union, the UK has plenty of its own atheism to go around and it is doubtful whether leaving the EU alone (presuming that the electorate will be far-sighted enough to do that) can save us.

The Worldwide Empire

The British Establishment elite freely takes part in the once secret, millennial worldwide anti-Christian project, now openly called ‘The New World Order’. This anti-Christian project involves not only the UK and all former Judeo-Protestant countries in the Anglosphere, Scandinavia and elsewhere. Ever since the latest chapter in the apostasy of Roman Catholicism at the Second Vatican Council, it has also involved former Roman Catholic countries. In other words, it is irrelevant whether the previous culture was Judeo-Protestant or Judeo-Catholic, the whole Western elite has come to form an Anti-Christian Empire.

Today headquartered in the USA, its elite, now called neocons, has been trying for generations to control Europe and through it the whole world. It has done this by destroying European nation-states, deforming them into artificial international unifications like the UK, France, Germany, Italy, which inevitably led to Europe-wide wars become World Wars, and then to the EU. So it has built its Anti-Christian Empire on the ruins of the nations. The messianic ideology of this Anti-Christian Empire is today called globalism, which it has been spreading around the world especially over the last two generations.

After the dissolution of its main opponent, the Soviet Empire, a generation ago, the Anti-Christian Empire immediately destroyed the surviving Soviet-style remnant in little Serbia and began to destroy its other opponent –the Islamic world. Here the Anti-Christian Empire has over the last generation caused chaos and ruin, as we can see today from the Himalayas to Nigeria, passing through Syria, so dividing and ruling over most of the Islamic world. In this way, having created artificially chaos and war, it hopes to create a popular demand for One World Government to bring order and peace.

The Resistance of Rus

Having killed millions, made millions of others into refugees and created chaos and destruction in a multitude of Islamic countries, though still not having conquered them, the Anti-Christian Empire now faces unexpected resistance. This resistance comes from what is organically reviving in the place of the old Soviet Empire – the Sacral Christian Empire of Rus. The Secularist Anti-Christian Empire fears this Christian Empire most of all. One of its main ideologues, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has even called its ‘greatest enemy’ the Russian Orthodox Church, which is at the heart of this reviving Christian Empire.

The Anti-Christian Empire greatly fears even the present modest revival of the Christian Empire. So much so that its propaganda outlets (‘media’) actually try to make out that the Church is not in fact reviving there or that it is only a tool of the political leaders of Russia, who, they say, shape it as they wish. Of course, in reality, the exact opposite is the case: it is not these political leaders who shape the Church, it is the Church that shapes them, through its age-old culture. Like the pagan Romans of old, the Anti-Christian Empire is happy for there to be any false religions, and therefore not Christianity.

This is because Christianity alone can shape political leaders who can challenge the Anti-Christian Empire. For only Christianity is Incarnational, that is, not some mere private practice, but a teaching that transfigures social, political and economic life also. The Anti-Christian Empire’s fear the revival of this Christian Empire, both inside and outside the ancient bounds of ‘Rus’, for Secularists fear nothing more than the Sacral. It also fears that it may find allies, in the traditional Muslim world, for example in Iran, or in China and India, and also among Roman Catholics who are still free of the Judeo-Catholic degeneration of recent times.

Allies of Rus and Temptations

Here the Christian Empire finds allies in Latin America, Africa and the Philippines. In Eastern Europe it finds allies among traditional Roman Catholics in the Vyshegrad group of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. In Western Europe it finds allies among sovereignist, national resistance movements of both left and right. Promoting either the social justice of the left or the traditional values of the right, these national movements are active in France, Germany, the UK, Denmark, Italy, Spain, Austria, Greece and elsewhere. They all oppose the dictatorship of the Anti-Christian Empire.

Having destroyed the Soviet Empire and then weakened the Islamic world, in the early 2000s the Anti-Christian Empire saw itself on the verge of triumph, a triumph that was suddenly snatched from it, to its fury. For ever since the failed invasion of Russia from Georgia in 2008, the reviving Christian Empire has begun to resist, frustrating the Anti-Christians. For as long as there is a Christian Empire, even embryonic, the anti-Christians cannot enthrone their Emperor in Jerusalem. The Christian Empire is the last barrier to their triumph.

This is why they are intent on slandering it and destroying it, for its Sacral Tradition is death to it. Hence the attack on the Ukraine, toppling its legitimate government for a genocidal junta and creating chaos. Slandering and even destruction can come in two other ways also. The first is by infiltrating the renascent Christian Empire with modernism, which is what individuals have been trying to do in recent years and especially now with the divisive draft documents for the Crete meeting of selected Orthodox bishops next June. The second way is protesting against those unacceptable documents in a divisive and even schismatic way, exactly as Metr Onufry of Kiev and others predicted.

Conclusion: On Not Falling into the Trap of the Anti-Christian Empire

Such protests have already begun with several perhaps hot-headed priests in Moldova no longer commemorating their bishops. Other individuals are following. We suggest that this is an error. Two wrongs do not make a right. However understandable, the far better method of protest is, as we have suggested, for monasteries and parishes simply to petition their diocesan bishops stating that we do not accept the draft documents and that if they are accepted in Crete, we will tear them up, refusing to receive them. In any case, we should also know that several bishops in Greece and Cyprus, as well as the whole Georgian Church have already refused to accept these draft documents.

It is our belief that to fall into the temptation of non-commemoration is a simplistic error of schismatic proportions. This is the error of those who cannot see the wood for the trees, who lose the big picture because they are so intent on the details. The Anti-Christian Empire wants us of the renascent Christian Empire to be divided in reaction to the modernist expressions that it has infiltrated into the draft documents: non-commemorators have thus actually fallen into the trap set by the Anti-Christian Empire. Our opposition must take an organic form which respects the episcopal institution. Our canonical fightback against modernist infiltration has only just begun.

About Still Being Here: On Converts

The psychology of neophytes (recent or old) is universal because human nature is universal. To quote some real life examples, regardless of whether we are talking about a Protestant who has become a Roman Catholic, a Roman Catholic who has become a Protestant, a Frenchman who has become a Buddhist, an Englishman who has become a Muslim, or a German who has joined the Orthodox Church, neophyte idealism remains the same.

Yes, idealism, and often the bookish sort, because that is what we are dealing with when we deal with neophytes. Neophytes always want to live the ideal, the convert to Roman Catholicism wants to become a Papist now, the convert to Protestantism wants to know the whole Bible by heart by this evening, the convert to Buddhism wants nirvana straightaway, the convert to Islam wants to become a Sufi mystic today, the convert to Orthodoxy reads the Philokalia and wants to become a hesychast just like that.

But it does not work like that. The error of all neophytes is that they want to run before they can walk. By definition that means that they fall over. And when you fall over, you hurt yourself. And when you hurt yourself, you can do one of two things: you can pick yourself up and tell yourself, ‘I have been humbled, now I will listen to voices of experience and like everyone else will first learn to walk before I try to run, all the more so as no-one ever asked me to run, I imposed it on myself’; or you can pick yourself up and walk away in the bitter depression and despair born of pride, giving up the struggle for self-improvement.

This is called lapsing and that is extremely common among neophytes and is always caused by pride, lack of faith. I remember an elderly nun who had been in her convent for fifty years who would say: ‘I may not be a very good nun and certainly I am no saint, but I have seen them all come and go, one after the other, but at least I am still here’. And ‘still being here’ is what salvation is in part about because we cannot be saved without perseverance, which is faith, hope in God’s Providence.

To change deep down takes years. We cannot become saints just like that, as some converts think when they take some out-of-context quotes from the Church Fathers and contemporary saints to justify their pride. That is why God gives us a lifetime to live and we are to make use of every moment in that lifetime, for we do not know how soon that lifetime will end. However, we have to be realistic, we do not impose impossible burdens on ourselves of our own proud will, but measuring ourselves and ask the experienced first before taking on anything. We take on ourselves what God gives us and no more. To be idealistic in everything means to suffer from the pride of illusions and he who suffers from illusions always suffers from disillusions – that is from depression. In other words, depression comes from pride.

Over the decades we have seen many cases. The first error of the neophyte is to confuse the outward with the inward. For example, we have seen the neophyte join the Church and, though he or she is married, they have started dressing like monks or nuns. Such individuals, sometimes with anger and aggression, then despair because reality does not conform to their high ideals. Such rarely remain in the Church for long, either they lapse or else they end up in sects, which are only the exit-doors from the Church. When neophytes do remain, they start dressing normally like everyone else.

Another example is with birth control. Realizing that the ideal of the Church is no birth control, we have seen intellectual and idealistic neophytes have large numbers of children – whom they do not know how to bring up and as a result fall into depression. Common sense (though not idealism) tells us there are cases where we have to choose the lesser evil. There are non-abortive methods of contraception, compromises with the ideal, but they do allow us to bring up some children properly, children who then stay in the Church.

Some would say that they will live without contraception, and so they simply do not have sexual relations. However, we have also seen the result of such decisions in the wrecks of two marriages, where one woman sought comfort with another man because her husband refused her the affection that she so desperately craved, and where one man went off with his secretary. Contraception: we do not bless it, but we allow it as the lesser evil.

In the average parish let us first have the humility to follow average Orthodox. We certainly venerate the saints, but we are not saints and we have no pretensions that we are or will become saints. Yes, we are climbing a ladder to heaven, but we are only on the first rung and at the end of our lives we may only get to the second rung. We do not imagine anything else.

Yes, we are not good Orthodox, but what we do know is that we are doing our best. That is not very much, but our hope is anyway not in our own feeble efforts, but in the mercy of God, which alone can save us. Average people are the people to imitate first. Let us recall the words of the Gospel: ‘In your patience you possess your souls’.

Comments from a Correspondent in Wales

‘And the Ukraine, then and now? Who will answer for the murders of laypeople and priests? Who set up the violent demonstrations on Maidan Square in Kiev? Was it not the Uniat clergy? And the Pope? Of course, he is completely innocent. He only cares about Christians in the Middle East, but he could not care a less about the Orthodox Slavs, he has more important things to do like not upsetting the gays and flattering the Jews, ‘his elder brothers in the faith’. Even infants know that all the recent popes have been puppets of those who hold global power behind the scenes. Their task is to level Orthodoxy down because it is the only power in the world that can stop Antichrist’.

Priest Savva Mikhalevich

http://ruskline.ru/special_opinion/2016/fevral/katolicheskaya_cerkov_i_genocid_serbov_vo_vtoroj_mirovoj_vojne_i_posle/

Below we quote comments from a letter from a correspondent in Wales. We quote from it because it raises some very relevant questions, to which we give answers, which may be of interest to all our readers.

Comment: First, on occasions you have written apologies/explanations of your positions which, whilst providing new looks at the development of these thoughts/positions, are not really required: it is clear to any neutral or good-willed reader that you are a Truth seeker and that you are a servant of the Church. Those readers that don’t belong to these groups – we can only pray for.

Answer: You would be surprised how many people there are who are neither neutral, nor of good will, but, very sadly, are full of fantasy and spite.

Comment: On the ‘historical’ meeting of Patriarch Kyrill and Pope Francisco: I think I can see where your position comes from….There are two ways of looking at it, a diplomatic-humanitarian way and an Orthodox way.

Answer: That is why, as I said, a diplomatic or political agreement is binding only on the signatory and no-one else. It is a personal opinion and no more. What you call a diplomatic-humanitarian way’ says ‘we love the sinner’, but there is also a need for what you call ‘an Orthodox way’, that is, a dogmatic statement, which says ‘we hate the sin’.

This situation reminds me of the publication of the heretical ‘Thyateira Confession’ forty years ago by Archbishop Athenagoras of Thyateira. I remember a young convert at the time who told a pious Greek granny that her Archbishop had said that all religions were the same and therefore he was a heretic. She simply replied: ‘If that is so, I will go to church and light a candle for him’. The convert, who came from a Protestant background, was not satisfied. Why? Because those of a Protestant and literalist background do not have the concept of hierarchy, of the episcopate. When they disagree with their ‘church’, they simply go off and start a new ‘church’.

This is why old calendarist sects have not had much ‘luck’ in developing in Orthodox countries, but much more in Protestant countries or in ex-Protestant Africa. This Protestant mentality is alien to the Church. Just because we disagree, we do not leave the Church. Did St Gregory of Nyssa leave the Church? Did St Maximus the Confessor leave the Church? Did St Mark of Ephesus leave the Church? Of course not, they stayed and defended the Church and became saints of the Church, they did not go off and start new ‘churches’. The spirit of sectarianism, phariseeism, intolerance and the ghetto is not part of the Church. We stand and fight as soldiers of Christ inside the Church. All that is permitted is to change dioceses.

In other words, the personal opinions of individual members of the clergy as such do not concern us. We do not have a clericalist view of the Church like the heterodox. The Church is not the clergy, let alone the bishops. The Church is everyone. On the other hand, it is true that if a priest or a bishop or a Patriarch says that he believes AS A DOGMA that all religions are the same and that we do not need the Church for salvation, then of course he is a heretic.

This is why we need not worry about diplomatic and political PR documents signed by clergy, but we do have to worry about the draft document on heterodoxy that is being proposed for the Crete meeting next June, because that claims not to be a diplomatic or a political document, but a document expressing the Orthodox Faith. It is completely unacceptable as it stands because it claims in its first words that there is only One Church, the Orthodox Church and then goes on to contradict that statement in a haze of vagueness.

But even here we should be reassured. More and more simple parish clergy, people and monastics are speaking out against this draft document, let alone bishops like Metr Vladimir of Kishinev or Metr Athanasius of Limassol. One thing we have to understand is that the teachings of the Church are always set out very clearly, without any diplomatic fudging, which is the problem of the draft documents for the June meeting. They are written in Chancelleryspeak, they have no dogmatic clarity and are therefore not Church documents.
I think that the June meeting, if it happens, could be very useful, however. This is because all meetings can be useful, though not always in the way intended. Let us take the so-called ‘Council’ of Florence as an example. What was the use of that? First of all, it revealed the traitors who publicly shamed themselves. All became clear who they were. But above all the ‘Council’ of Florence was useful because it revealed St Mark of Ephesus and he revealed God’s Will. What do we remember about the ‘Council’ of Florence? Only St Mark of Ephesus, who defined the Truth. God can always make good out of bad.

Let us look concretely at what good can come of this June meeting and how even it could become by the grace of God a real ‘Council’ by ‘dogmatizing’, clarifying and defining the Truth.

First of all, it is clear that everything that needs to be said has already been said at the Seven Universal Councils. (We do not talk about ‘Ecumenical’ Councils because that word has been corrupted in modern English. Therefore we speak of ‘Universal Councils’). Roman Catholics like to attack us, saying ‘the Orthodox Church is dead, they have not had a Council since the eighth century – the proof that they need the Pope to give them life’.

Of course, this is nonsense. We have not needed to have a Universal Council because the truths of the Faith have been expressed for all time by the Seven Councils. There will never be an ‘Eighth Universal Council’. On the contrary, Roman Catholics constantly need new councils because they are always changing, ‘updating’, their beliefs, reinventing themselves – because they lost their apostolicity when they invented themselves in the eleventh century and consciously rejected the integrity of the Church heritage of the first millennium.

The Seven Councils dealt with the truths of the Faith for all time. They began by defining the first articles of the Creed, that is, by defining the Holy Trinity and then went on to the Person of Christ and His two natures and then to the Holy Spirit. Yes, it is true that there was the anti-filioque Council of Constantinople in 879, agreed on by all the Patriarchs, including the Pope of Rome, and the so-called ‘Palamite’ Council of 1351, which some pious Greeks unofficially call the ‘Eighth and Ninth Universal Councils’. However, in fact, these simply elaborated on earlier Councils, defining in detail the relations between the Persons of the Trinity, especially the Son and the Holy Spirit, and then in 1351 the nature of the Holy Spirit.

Thus, in the Orthodox Church we have local councils, at which only some bishops are present, that can elaborate on, explain and affirm aspects of the Faith expressed by the Seven Councils. In other words, these councils elaborate on the words of the Creed. And this is what needs to be done today, only not as regards the beginning and middle of the Creed (that has already been elaborated on), but as regards the end of the Creed. There will never be any ‘Eighth Universal Council’, but there could be a ‘Council of Crete’. But what will it be about?

We do not need meetings of hundreds of bishops to tell us that fasting is important or to administrate the granting of autonomy etc. What we need today is a Council to elaborate on one of the last articles in the Creed, concerning the Church. ‘I believe…in One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’. This article is what is misunderstood today. In technical terms, what we need is a statement on Ecclesiology. For we believe in ONE Church; there are no Churches, not two or three Churches, only ONE. To say otherwise and talk as the heretics do of ‘the two lungs of the Church’ or ‘the Invisible Church’ or ‘the division of the Churches’ is to reject the Creed. It is as simple as that.

If the present anti-dogmatic diplomatic language and vagueness continues at Chambesy or elsewhere, I can foresee a time when a petition is going to circulate around the 80,000 or so Orthodox parishes of the world, saying: ‘There is only One Church, the Orthodox Church and we do not recognize any statements to the contrary’, and it will be signed by all and then presented at Crete. This is what the present vagueness and haziness could easily lead to. There is only one ‘Undivided Church’ – the Orthodox Church, which lives today because it is the Church of Christ, there is no other, there are merely fragments that have broken away from Her. I hope our bishops are listening.

I have no time to draw up such a petition. I am too busy doing Orthodoxy, looking after grandchildren, doing the washing up, baptizing, visiting the sick, blessing homes, celebrating services and visiting and confessing those in prisons throughout the 5,000 square miles of my three counties of parish. I have covered 300 miles in the last three days alone. But there are those who have more free time than I.

Comment: Metr. Nikodim’s end, at the feet of the Pope, is symbolic…’

Answer: I totally agree. But Metr Nikodim is dead and actually largely forgotten. Personally, I do not even know anyone who prays for him – perhaps they do that in the Vatican. But the real meaning of the Cuba meeting was not about old-fashioned ecumenism. It was firstly to ward off a World War in Syria, secondly to defeat Uniatism in the Ukraine, thirdly to prepare the world to see the leader of the Orthodox Church as the Russian Orthodox Church before the meeting in Crete, and finally it was part of a very successful pastoral visit by Patriarch Kyrill to the Russian Orthodox flock in Latin America, including meeting three local Presidents (completely unreported by the secular media).

And I think that was successful. Syria is all the talk and the Saudis and Turks have been warned off invading Syria to the fury of the neocons, the Uniats are also furious, as are the American diplomats who stand behind the scenes at the Phanar, whereas the Orthodox flock in Latin America is delighted. I think we may now at last see great Orthodox missionary developments in this very, very neglected part of the Orthodox world.

Comment: Do we really believe that the Vatican and the (Jesuit) Pope, those examples of strict hierarchical organisation based on careful cultivation of all levers of power and manipulation, have no influence on the Ukro-Nazi Uniats who are burning and stealing Orthodox Churches? Or on the Ustashoid Catholic church in Croatia?.…Some complaints or discontent of the faithful papist flock after the Cuban meeting should be interpreted cautiously; most likely they are simply down to the effectiveness of Jesuit tactics…

Answer: I think the Uniats really are very disillusioned. Of course, apart from them, we can ignore the sincerity or insincerity of expressions of discontent elsewhere. They are not our problem.

Two More Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence on the Orthodox Church

Why in your view has the January preparatory meeting for the so-called Council not talked in depth about and resolved the really important issues, like the Diaspora, Autocephaly, the Calendar and even the Diptychs or heresies like Ecumenism, Sophianism and Darwinism?

V. M., Paris

Since the draft documents from the preparatory meeting were published in Russian on Thursday (all thanks to the Russian Church for such openness), more and more people have contacted me. Discussions are now going to enter into parish life as people (and bishops as well!) discover what has been going on behind the scenes for over fifty years. As translations come out in other languages, we can expect stormy debate. That is good, perfectly natural, because the faithful love the Church and care about Her.

On this subject one Romanian monk in Romania wrote to me with an amusing question: ‘Is this a private Council or can any Orthodox take part?’ I thought that very apt in summing up the secrecy of the agenda, let alone the negotiations. As Fr Theodoe Zisis put it at the anti-Council meeting in Moldova: ‘Is this a Church Council or a Masonic lodge?’ It is very strange that not all bishops can take part, so that of the 354 bishops of the Russian Church, only 24 can take part and, overall, of the 750 or so Orthodox bishops worldwide, scarcely 200 will take part. (If my figures are wrong, will a reader please let me know and I will correct them).

A pious Ukrainian lady from the Ukraine wrote to me with the very relevant question: ‘What do we need a Council for? Everything of importance was long ago decided at the Seven Councils.’ You cannot help agreeing with her. The draft documents published by the preparatory meeting are largely pastoral and could have been written by any parish priest or any educated layperson. They did not need scores of bishops to meet on five different occasions. We do not need a Council to tell us that fasting is important! Where are the theological, moral and dogmatic issues? I cannot see them.

Christological heresies like Sophianism were analyzed and condemned by saints like St John of Shanghai and the future St Seraphim of Sofia, as well as Local Councils of both parts of the Russian Church in the 1930s. St Justin (Popovich) and the ROCOR Council of Bishops of 1983 have expressed the Orthodox thinking on the heresy of Ecumenism. And as for Darwinism, nobody accepts it, all reject it. It contradicts the whole of Scripture and the Fathers. All three are heresies and were (indirectly) dealt with by the Seven Councils under the name of Arianism.

I think that the question of the Diptychs will be resolved in time quite naturally. The present order of the Local Churches dates back to the fourth century. It is absurd that tiny ancient groups in the Middle East should take precedence over the Russian and Romanian churches, which are far bigger. A lot of this goes back to the fall of the Russian Church in 1917; before that it took de facto precedence, as it is coming to do now again and all the Local Churches, except for politicized Constantinople, now tend to look to the Russian Church as their natural leader. It is all a question of size – and that has changed since the fourth century. Of course if one of the ancient Patriarchates like Alexandria, numbering one million today, on a canonical territory numbering one billion (!), were to start consequent missionary work as the future St Nectarios had wanted to do over a century ago, it could become the largest Patriarchate and so take de facto precedence. (The present de jure precedence makes a laughing stock of its claimants).

Again the question of the calendar will also be resolved only by time. The few Orthodox who have fallen away from the Orthodox calendar under political pressure will eventually return. Everyone admits that it was a mistake. We must be patient and wait for the repentance of their leaders. That is why the issue has had to be removed at the insistence of Patriarch Kyrill, who clearly saw that the new calendarist leaders are not only not ready to repent, but are still actually justifying their error! (This is also why the document on relations with heterodox is written in such a bureaucratic language of compromise and not dogmatic clarity – we have had to be patient with the ecumenists, awaiting their repentance).

The problem of the Diaspora (and the questions of autocephaly and to some extent autonomy are connected with this) is also one that can only be resolved with time. The Local Church that, if God wills, sets up autonomous and then autocephalous new Local Churches in the Diaspora, and so gives it canonical order, will be the Church that does the most missionary work in the Diaspora. All the other Diaspora groups are destined to die out. That is a fact.

For example, in the 1930s the Rue Daru jurisdiction had some seventy parishes and communities (admittedly, many very small) in the Paris Region. Today it has about six small parishes in that Region. Why? Simply because most of their parishes have died out. They were for Russians only. The children and the grandchildren of those Russians became French and decided that ‘the Church is only for old people’. Logically. The same thing is now happening to the Greek Cypriot parishes in England. Issued largely from immigration from Cyprus in the 1950s, they too are now dying out, their descendants, some of whom I meet every month, understand nothing, are often unable even to make the sign of the cross.

I do not think that there will be any solution to the Diaspora problem until the vast majority in the Diaspora – therefore tens and hundreds of thousands – are local faithful or think of themselves as local faithful, whatever their origin – and need their own Autocephalous Local Church. (And by faithful, I mean faithful to the Tradition, not to some half-hearted, semi-Protestant, secularist compromise). Then remaining foreign-language parishes can be absorbed into it in separate deaneries or even dioceses, but underneath a central Local Church structure.

You may think that I am advocating the OCA solution. That is not the case, since the OCA solution was a failure. Why? Firstly, because it contained only a very small number of the total Diaspora in North America and secondly because it based itself on a modernist ideology, not on the Tradition. Its autocephaly was a political operation of the Cold War. You cannot build a new Local Church when the majority are not with you and when you base yourself on an incredibly old-fashioned 1960s type modernist fad, instead of on the eternal Tradition of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, I can see no hope for settling the issue of the Diaspora until such a time comes, a time when the majority follow the Tradition and need (not want) their own Local Church. Anything imposed from above will simply be divisive.

Why are modernists who are opposed to the Church so full specifically of fantasy and spite?

J.L, London

I think you are being a bit uncharitable! Most of them are simply naïve and still have to make their way in the Church from the fringes inwards. Eventually all the sincere people will integrate. The repentant Fr Theodore Zisis is a very good example. Be patient. The Church is a journey, a pilgrimage, people make their way at their own speed. You cannot rush spiritual development and depth.

However, you do have a point, that the most few aggressive modernists do suffer from both fantasy and spite. Why specifically these ills?

Fantasy comes from the fact that modernists are always intellectuals and not rooted in life. Were they parish priests, prison chaplains or responsible for running monasteries or, for that matter, families, they would not suffer from fantasy. (This is a very good reason for opposing the alien institution of non-diocesan or titular bishops: their grasp of reality is often very limited).

Spite comes from the fact that until the 1980s/1990s the modernists thought that their victory over the Church was imminent. We who followed the Tradition appeared to be an oppressed minority, the little flock, crushed by them into a dying ghetto. They were wrong, as I wrote at the time. And they were wrong because they failed to recognize that the Church belongs to Christ, not to them or to us who strive, however weakly, to follow the Tradition. It was a classic case of ‘man proposes, but God disposes’.

What makes them bitter, and therefore spiteful, is the fact that the Russian Church has not only survived atheist oppression, but is beginning to revive (which is why they attack the Russian Church with an immense and self-justifying hatred). And this is true of the smaller Local Churches, some of which are also beginning to revive in the wake of the Russian Church’s beginning revival. Their great project, a modernizing ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’ in imitation of the Second Vatican Council, which they have actively been plugging for over fifty years, is coming to naught.

They are bitter at that and lash out at anyone who attempts to follow the Tradition. They thought, ‘We have won’, dismissing popular piety (what the aristocratic Fr Alexander Schmemann patronizingly called ‘liturgical piety’) in their haughty way, as dying out. ‘So near and yet so far’, is their frustrated cry. In humility they should instead admit that they were wrong and simply repent. They are welcome to return to the fold, as Fr Theodore Zisis. We all make mistakes when we are young. We should make their repentance easy for them.

Two Questions and Answers from Recent Correspondence on the Orthodox Church

An American Orthodox friend of mine has recently returned from a parish in Moscow. She was quite disappointed. She described the parish as filled with young, narrow-minded literalists and fundamentalists, worried about ritual, the letter of the word, narrow interpretations and food regulations. Is this the case?

A.J., San Francisco

A church of 164 million contains many different sorts of people. I would not judge it by a few recent English-speaking converts in a parish in Moscow. You will find everything in the Russian Church, from literalists to liberals. We are not a monolithic Church and people are at different stages of integration or ‘Churching’. You do not judge a Church by the unChurched. I think that it is a pity that your friend did not meet in Moscow Churched people who are far deeper, who long ago got over both literalism and liberalism and are reaching towards and living for the Source of the Tradition, the Holy Spirit. I do feel that your friend was judging from her own American criteria and that her criticisms have more to do with her own psychology and understanding than objective reality.

I live in the US and Orthodoxy here is a mess of infighting, jurisdictional competitions and loveless converts who are focused on the outward dress of Orthodoxy, apparently immune to any concept of fraternal charity….Your Orthodox Patriarchs have embraced the Vatican II spirit with its false ecumenism, synagogue-visiting photo-ops, Muslim-hugging and WCC hypocrisy. (Your own Patriarch in Moscow was at the Canberra WCC convocations in the early 90’s… have you seen the video-taped documentation of those blasphemous events?)

T., New York

I have extracted this from your letter, which explains that you are a recent convert from a very varied but traditionalist and rather sectarian background, including over two decades as a Protestant and then some thirty years as a traditionalist Catholic, and that you are not yet settled in the Church. I noted also that your letter was anonymous. Usually, I do not reply to anonymous letters and delete them automatically, but I think yours raises some very good points of interest to others, which I would like to answer.

First of all, I think you look outside in. Viewed from the outside, the Orthodox Church is indeed an untidy mess (just like that described in the epistles of the Apostle Paul), but that is not very important. We are concerned with saving our souls. Yes, you can find loveless converts, but you can also find the opposite. You can find St John of Shanghai and St Nicholas of Zhicha, you can find Jordanville, Wayne and the monasteries of Fr Ephraim. It does seem to me that you have been mixing with the wrong crowd! Orthodoxy is what you make it – a series of empty and pointless arguments about details, infighting and immature convert triumphalism, or else the source of your salvation. The main problem of converts is precisely that they focus on externals, outside in, whereas grounded Orthodox look from the inside. Do not be superficial. Integrate into the Church. Seek the salvation of your soul, not its destruction. Love God and love your neighbour.

Your second point again raises the problem of superficiality. Who cares about the individual opinions of Patriarchs? We are not papists. Patriarchs are here today and gone tomorrow. Yes, several of them have been forced into political correctness by currents from the US and the EU over the last seventy years (just like the Popes of Rome). However, to say that all the Patriarchs have embraced the Vatican II spirit is untrue. Life in the parishes and monasteries goes on in the same way as before. We ignore such human foibles, being too busy living to worry about them.

As regards the events in Canberra 25 years ago, which the now Patriarch Kyrill took some part in and were raised at the Fourth All-Diaspora Council in 2006, we knew all about them at the time, when you were still a traditionalist Catholic. Of course, we shook our heads in disbelief when we saw it, prayed for him and got on with our lives. And we are still here. And look at Patriarch Kyrill now. The defender of Tradition! Why not admit the power of repentance? We all made mistakes in our youth, but we have moved on. Learn about repentance and forgiveness and you will find peace, instead of the continual rage which consumes you. Your job is to save your soul, not the Church, Christ does that because the Church belongs to Him, not to us.

On the So-Called Council

In a few days time there will be a meeting in a modernist concrete building in Calvinist Geneva (instead of at the historic Russian Orthodox Cathedral) to discuss the possible forthcoming meeting of Orthodox bishops (Where? When?), which the US State Department has pretentiously billed as a ‘Pan-Orthodox Council’. In the Ukraine, from where I have just returned (graffiti like ‘Down with Poroshenko’s Party of Thieves and Murderers’ are now even more common), I found two attitudes to this ‘Council’. One was pure ignorance (‘never heard of it’), the other attitude was fear and rejection (‘whatever they decide, we shall ignore them’). If this meeting, against the background of civil wars in the Ukraine and Syria, happens, it does indeed seem to be a most inopportune time.

Popular attitudes like those in the Ukraine are to be expected when there has been no consultation with monastics, parish clergy and people about this ‘Council’, let alone about its virtually unknown and meaningless agenda (try googling for it), and when all preparatory meetings are conducted behind closed doors and no reports on those meetings are issued. As the much-respected Metr Hierotheos of the Church of Greece has written, this ‘Council’ should be stopped, for its agenda contains not a single theological issue (unlike real Councils). And yet the ailing and elderly Patriarch of Constantinople is desperate to see the ‘Council’ take place before he dies, even reconciling himself with Metr Rostislav of the Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia. Going from negative to positive, what are the possible outcomes?

1. The meeting (‘Council’) will not take place. With the difficulty between the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch, between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Church of Greece, with the political impasse between Russian and Turkey (and the representatives of the Patriarchate of Constantinople are all Turkish citizens), with calls from senior churchmen in the Ukraine and Greece for the meeting not to be held at all, with its secular agenda on which there is no agreement, this outcome seems quite possible. A non-event.

2. The meeting takes place somewhere and some time in 2016, but it will issue some vague and meaningless statement full of secularspeak, ensuring unanimity but also meaning that the meeting is still a non-event.

3. The meeting takes place but begins and ends in disagreement. Faithful monasteries and parish churches declare that they belong to ‘the Church of the Seven Councils’; schismatic and modernist ones declare that they belong to ‘the Church of the Eight Councils’. Although this may seem the most negative outcome of all, perhaps it is time for there to be a cleansing and that the small minority of Halfodox at last leave the Church, taking their heresies with them, in their apostasy becoming Uniats or forming some new ‘Protestant with icons’ sect, whatever they want. Let the dead bury the dead.

4. The meeting takes place and a miracle happens. It obtains an eternal meaning, becoming a Council. Once hesitant Local Churches affirm Orthodoxy and reject spiritual death; the minority of Orthodox who have compromised return to the Orthodox calendar, refusing to die out in the worship of the past as a 1453 nationalistic irrelevance in a global world, rejecting ecumenism and modernism, adopting the global missionary responsibilities of the Church, launching worldwide mission. In this way this Council confirms, seals and extends the Seven Universal Councils of the Church and the Creed and refuses to act as a secular organization like the Vatican or CIA-run Protestant sects, confirming Christ and rejecting Antichrist.

On the Financing of the Church

Recently someone complained to me that the price of the large candles that we sell in our church, 30 pence, would be multiplied by six or seven times in churches in London, even though the cost price is much less than 30 pence. He asked why. I told him that it is because in London the priest receives his salary from those who buy candles. They are not buying a candle, they are paying the priest. This fact raises the whole question of how we should pay for our churches and our priests. What are the options?

One option is the Greek-Romanian one: the State pays the clergy so that in fact the priests are civil servants. In our view this is a very bad option. First of all, the State is a notoriously bad payer. For example, Romanian priests receive a miserable 200 euros a month, on which they cannot live. However, far, far worse than this, it means that Romanian clergy, from the Patriarch down, are all servants of the State. Sometimes there are the most unfortunate consequences of such a loss of freedom. There is a parallel here with the slavish Church of England, which for the most part follows the policies of whatever atheist Prime Minister is in power. He, after all, appoints all the bishops of the Church of England, making it even more into a bastion of the Establishment. For instance, as one Anglican put it recently, 100 years ago the Church of England was against sodomy, but in favour of fox-hunting, whereas today it is in favour of sodomy, but against fox-hunting. So flows the Establishment tide; the Gospel can easily become irrelevant.

Another option is the ‘candle one’. Not just candles, however. You can charge a great deal for icons, books, crosses, holy water and you can charge, according to a fixed tariff, for baptisms, weddings, memorials, services of intercession etc. The problem with this is that people may well complain about how expensive it is. How can an hour’s work on the part of the priest be priced at £100 and more? (I am told that in the Church of England a wedding costs £400!). How can a 1,000% profit on a candle or an icon or a book be justified? Naturally, people will then, inevitably, start looking at the priest’s car, his wife’s clothes, his house etc. And that is how nasty rumours start and even people stop coming to church. And this, even though the priest’s possessions and his family may all be modest. This is because most of the money raised does not in any case go to the priest at all, but towards the costs of running the church, paying for repairs, maintenance, insurance, heating, electricity, water, the choir etc.

For me there is only one way of financing a church. This is that people become parishioners and begin giving a proportion of their income to the church, paying it directly from their bank accounts to the parish bank account. One question remains. How much should they give? Certainly not a tithe, as in the Jewish Old Testament. We would suggest 2%, of which 1% should go to the priest and 1% should go for the upkeep and adornment of the church. This would mean that for every 100 wage-earners there would be a priest who earns exactly the average wage of his parishioners, and there would be a parish church. On the basis of the ability of a priest to confess 100-200 adult parishioners (of whom 100 are wage-earners) and look after their children, as well as deal with another 100-200 or more irregular visitors, this proposition would surely seem reasonable.

Our Hope for a Russian Orthodox Church in Norwich (Update 9)

The Update

As of 1 January 2016 we are still waiting for legal documents to be exchanged for the premises we are buying in Norwich. After a three and a half month wait to receive planning permission from Norwich City Council, we have now had to wait an additional three and a half months for exactly the same organization to send our solicitor the lease. This means that the entire process has been delayed by over three months. Once we have signed for the premises and bought them, we can finally start building work to transform them into an Orthodox church. At last a permanent home for Russian Orthodoxy in Norwich after over thirty years of struggles. Thank you!

History

In the East of England there is at present only one multinational and multilingual church faithful to Russian Orthodoxy with its own urban premises. This is St John’s Church in Colchester. God willing and with your support, we have now been able to buy a second one, in Norwich, exactly 60 miles, 100 kilometres, to the north of Colchester.

Why Norwich? For the last four years I have been visiting Norwich and some of the 200 Russian Orthodox there, mainly recent immigrants from the Baltic States, especially from Estonia. I have baptized several in their homes, married couples in Colchester, buried, blessed houses, listened to confessions, visiting every few weeks, sometimes twice a month and am Orthodox chaplain at Norwich Prison.

We thought of dedicating our community to St Alexander Nevsky. We attempted to begin liturgies using the Greek Orthodox church building in Norwich, but were impeded. How are our people and English people and others interested in the witness of the Russian Orthodox Church, to be cared for pastorally? Only from a church building. And such life is required not only by Russian speakers, but also by Romanian, Bulgarian and English Orthodox. Most of our regular parishioners, only one of whom has a car, live within easy walking distance of this building.

On Friday 8 May, Fr Andrew saw a leasehold property for sale on the rightmove website for £50,000 at 134, Oak Street, Norwich. It measures 88 square metres externally and is at present used as offices and rooms for a cultural centre. It has electricity, heating and water and is in very good condition. It is so cheap because it is leasehold, in other words, you have to pay £100 rent per month for the ground it is built on. This amount is fixed until 2032. The lease itself is even longer – it lasts until 2047.

On Wednesday 13 May we organized a visit to these premises, attended by 9 local Russian Orthodox.

By Friday 15 May, Orthodox in Norwich had generously promised to donate £5,250.

On Monday 18 May Fr Andrew received Archbishop Mark’s blessing to buy the building if possible, meaning we could start obtaining pledges to donate.

On Thursday 21 May we heard from the surveyor that it would cost £3,000-£5,000 to knock down the internal walls and make good the floor and ceiling, so we could use this building as a church. This was lower than Fr Andrew had estimated.

On Wednesday 27 May we heard that our offer of £42,500 had been accepted. However, since conversion and furnishing costs will come to £12,500, this meant that we would need £55,000 in all.

On Friday 29 May we submitted the planning application for change of use from offices to a place of worship. This, we were told then, would take at least 6-8 weeks but should result in a positive answer.

On Wednesday 3 June we launched an internet appeal for £55,000 in order to set up our own church in Norwich.

By Wednesday 29 July, eight weeks after the appeal launch, total gifts and pledges had reached £55,000.

On Tuesday 29 September, after over three and a half months!, we finally received planning permission to convert the building into an Orthodox church.

Five Digits

In recent years scientists have come up with remarkable discoveries concerning the human body; for example, that over 99% of human DNA is identical to that in chimpanzees. Though this should be put into perspective by the fact that, apparently, some 50% of human DNA is identical to that in bananas! All this merely confirms that all Creation does indeed have the same Creator. In any case, from the first verses of Genesis it is clear that it is not human and animal bodies that are particularly different, for animal bodies and human bodies are all made of the same chemical elements that can be found in ‘the dust of the earth’. The only vital difference between the animal world and the human world is simply that human-beings have an immortal soul, the breath of God (Genesis 2, 7).

This is why the concept of the descendance of the human-being (body and soul) from the monkey (‘animal primates’) is absurd. If it were so, then monkeys would also have immortal souls, which they do not. For the sign of the soul is the presence of the Word, intelligent and sophisticated human speech, far above the instinctive or imitative grunts of the animal world. Of course, there is also another argument against the above absurd argument. If human-beings were descended from monkeys, why do monkeys still exist? Surely they should all have become human-beings by now!

However, there is another and far more interesting question. Why do human-beings (and most jawed vertebrate animals) have five digits? Scientists suggest that the more primitive animals had six to eight digits, so that five digits would be a sign of advance and intelligence. However, this would not explain why many primitive animal species have two, three or four digits. So why do human-beings specifically have five digits? We would suggest that human-beings, who alone among created beings are endowed with souls, have five digits so that they can make the sign of the Cross, thus recognising the Trinitarian God-Creator (‘Let us make man in Our image and after Our likeness’ – Genesis 1, 26) and the two natures of the God-Man Christ. It is as simple as that.