Category Archives: Pastoral Matters

Corruption and Construction

Introduction: Corruption

The cynical say that ‘every man has his price’, that it is possible to corrupt anyone. Indeed, it is said that secret services and police forces use human weaknesses to corrupt any as they wish. Thus, one person’s weakness is money, another’s fame, a third’s alcohol and so on; thus all can be corrupted. Famously, when the powers of this world encountered St Basil the Great in the fourth century and met with his refusal to compromise, those powers said that no-one had ever spoken to them in that way before. To this St Basil replied, ‘Perhaps you have never yet had to deal with a bishop’.

Behind human cynicism and hatred for humanity there stands the devil; he always attacks by the weakest points. This technique is used by the devil not only against individuals, but also against nations and institutions. Thus, Roman Catholicism has been attacked by its weakest points, desire for power, attachment to Non-Christian culture, and recently homosexual and pedophile clergy, to which it exposes itself by its insistence on clerical celibacy. And Protestantism has been attacked by its weakest points, attachment to Non-Christian culture and secularism, to which it stands very close because it gave birth to it.

Nationalism/Worldliness

As for the Orthodox Church, it is also attacked by the attachment to this world, in the form of nationalism. Thus, nationalism has infected every ancient Orthodox Patriarchate, including the Georgian, and every Balkan Church, in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and especially in Serbia, which faces Communist-inspired schism in Macedonia and EU-inspired schism in Montenegro. Of all the Local Orthodox Churches only the Russian Orthodox Church remains in principle (though there are always bad examples here too) multinational and faithful, present by its missions in 62 nations, translating the services into a host of languages.

However, it is now the turn of Russian Orthodox to face US- and EU-inspired nationalism in the Ukraine, in an attempt to divide and rule there, just as Nazi Germany had tried before. But how can the Church resist nationalism? It is only by putting the Kingdom of Heaven above all national affairs, only by not becoming institutionalized, reduced to a mere national institution, by not becoming a mere religion – by remaining a Faith. For religions are for those who have only some vague belief in some unknown force, who do not know God, whereas Faith is for those who have real spiritual experience and know God.

Spiritual Decay

The decline from Life to Death, Faith to Religion, from the Holy Spirit to Institutionalization, from seeing God (possible only for the pure in heart, according to the Gospels) to spiritual blindness, passes through two phases. The first is spiritual decay and the second is moral decay. Spiritual decay begins by the loss of Faith. This means the loss of spiritual life and so spiritual awareness. It is the loss of spiritual awareness that leads to spiritual decay and decadence. This in turn leads to any number of isms which, like all isms, reflect conformism to this world, that is, secularism.

Such secularism degenerates by historical phase into Catholicism (secularist because it wishes to have control over the world), Protestantism (secularist because it rejects the Incarnation and hands over public life to secular authorities), liberalism, modernism, syncretism, ecumenism (all secularist because they conform to the world, that is, they swim with the secular tide) and, in its final stage, atheism, the Religion of Godlessness, which is the ultimate form of lack of spiritual awareness, indeed spiritual blindness, since atheism denotes the refusal to know God, which is spiritual Death.

Moral

Since moral life is entirely dependent on spiritual life, spiritual decay leads directly to moral decay or decadence. In Church life moral decay firstly means simony. For centuries simony was common, almost the norm, in Local Churches under the Turkish Yoke. Today, in one Balkan Church, it is still particularly common, although cases can be found in every Local Church without exception. The other stage of moral decay is homosexualisation of the episcopate and indeed the two often go together (1). Homosexualisation comes about when bishops are no longer chosen for their monastic virtues, but for career reasons.

Sadly, such cases can even be identified by appearance. Unfortunately, such individuals tend to ordain homosexuals as priests or at least give those with that weakness positions of responsibility. This vice is often accompanied by a dislike for normal married clergy, who suffer much from such bishops, as also a dislike for women and children. We have known over a dozen examples of this in the Diaspora, where monastic life is weak or non-existent, in France, England and especially the USA, where the new calendar Churches suffer in particular. It is a form of corruption which rots Church life.

Conclusion: Construction

In such a frank essay, we would like to conclude by emphasizing that we must keep all this in proportion. Firstly, we are talking about a minority of exceptional cases overall (even though there can be pockets, where this does not seem to be the case, as in the USA). Secondly, there are solutions. The first solution is that there must be normal monasteries (not ‘sketes’), where numbers of monks live in coenobia, according to the Typicon. The second solution is that future bishops must be taken from those with experience of monastic life, including if they are widowed priests.

The time of career clergy, young, with degrees and doctorates from Protestant and more often Catholic educational institutions, is over. It is time to escape the decadence of the past fifty years especially and time to return to the healthy monastic traditions of the Church. Those who ignore monastic tradition, or worse still, despise it, as is so common in certain anti-traditional parts of the Russian Greek Diasporas, do so at their peril. Healthy life will be restored throughout the Church only when monastic life, which puts the Kingdom of Heaven first, is restored.

Note:

1. Cases of pedophilia, very common in Catholicism, are far rarer in the Local Churches; we have only known three such cases, one in Soviet Russia, one in the Ukraine and one in France, though we have heard of several other cases in old calendarist sects.

Can the Church Survive in the USA?

Introduction: DeChristianization

My fourth visit to the United States only confirms what I knew already – that the American people are an extraordinarily generous, open and friendly people; however, they are also a people whose goodwill and often naivety are much abused by Europe and successive US governments. The ruling American elite with its global machinations, arrogance, bankruptcy and taxes is one thing; ordinary Americans are quite another. What has struck me on this visit is the retreat and defeat of what I would call Traditional America. A great country is now ruled by a New America, which is increasingly and systematically anti-Christian: this is the America of abortion, corruption, drugs, churches for sale, Atheist-TV and bullying support for anti-Christianity imposed by its elite on its people and on the rest of the world. New America is choosing not a ‘wonderful life’, but the nightmarish alternative proposed in that classic film.

In other words, the fragments of America’s Christian Tradition are disappearing very rapidly and I can say – with enormous sadness – that much that I still saw here on my last visit in 2008 has already been lost. A country that until recently was famed for its Church-going and Christian values is becoming like even sad, decadent, transvestite Europe – and perhaps even worse, because in Europe there are at least the reminders of historic, physical, architectural remnants of the old Christian culture. There now seems to be little to choose between America and Europe. The admirable America of deep, homespun Bible tradition and wisdom and anti-federal libertarianism is dying – and it is tragic. In this context we can see the two great challenges, if Christianity, especially in its integral Orthodox Church form, is to survive in the USA. These challenges are the two struggles against Conformism and Consumerism.

Conformism

American history has been marked by intolerance, which clearly has its origin in Puritanism. All must swim with the tide; otherwise you are ‘un-American’. All have heard of the Salem witch-trials. All have heard of slavery, racism, civil war and blind Puritan phariseeism. But what happens to Puritanism in a post-Puritan and atheist society? The intolerant reflex does not disappear – it becomes the witch-hunt of those who consider, for example, that homosexual marriage or abortion are sins, that LGBT is an illness, or indeed, that any sin is sin and vice is vice. It becomes the witch-hunt of those who consider that drugs are just a new form of slavery and destroy the freedom of the individual. The New America says: Anything goes – if it ‘feels good’ and is ‘fun’, then ‘let it all hang out’. In other words, Puritanism has, by reaction to the restrictive rigidity and frigidity of the past, been turned upside down; now all is permitted, except the denial that all should be permitted.

Intolerance abounds in New America against whatever is deemed to be against the peculiar fashion of political correctness, a set of moral prejudices which is quite striking in its utter inanity and illogic. Anti-Christian political correctness is the new Puritanism, the new intolerance. The conformism and intolerance of a rapidly developing post-Protestant and militantly atheist society are frightening. The first temptation for Orthodoxy in such a society is then the temptation to conform, to cease being itself for fear of being different, to demote itself. For decades now, we have seen how many Orthodox here, ‘for fear of the Jews’, have wanted to give up their identity and become clean-cut ‘All-Americans’. Thus, the first things to be jettisoned (if they still exist) are monasticism and the Orthodox calendar – in favour of the Catholic/Protestant/secularist calendar. But that is only the start.

Thus, they say, make the priests shave their beards, cut their hair short and put on clerical collars; let there be pews and organs and robed choirs in the churches; let candles no longer be used and icons be taken out; let the churches resemble Methodist and Baptist tabernacles; let fasting be abolished and confession be reduced to a yearly comfort-talk by a psychologist (‘you must not feel guilty about anything you may have done wrong; it is not your fault’); let communion be compulsory; let churches be made into social clubs as with the Episcopalians, Presbyterians and all the others, where (paid) entertainment, ‘show-time’, is provided, business can be conducted and the main thing is how many ‘activities’ you have. Repentance, prayer, liturgical life and asceticism as the reasons for the existence the Church are forgotten. Conformity to civil society, and not to the Law of God, is the norm.

As regards liturgical language, there are two tendencies. The first is compulsory all English by intolerant order and any mention of Russian, Greek etc must be forbidden. In the OCA ’Russian’ was physically removed from signboards, utterly failing to understand that ‘Russian’ does not mean ethnic Russian. Often English is accompanied by Protestantization and Church life becomes salt that has lost its savour. Alternatively, you can use your language to reinforce the community as a Russian, Greek, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian etc ethnic club with food and folklore. That is quite acceptable – just so long as it is not a Church, that it has no spiritual identity or life, but only a cultural and sociological one – just like Protestant churches or, for that matter, Polish/Hispanic/German Catholic ones. Here the deciding factor is class, and in the USA class is decided by how much money you ‘make’.

Consumerism

The USA is the land of the dollar, of materialism, of mammon. The lower class here is the poor, the upper class is the rich. Nothing is defined, as in Europe, by your name, family, good taste, manners or culture. The new ‘nobility’ is defined by money, in other words, by how you consume and how much you consume – and the corresponding clothes, body shape (created in the clinic or the gym) and cult of youth. Unfortunately, this also conditions Christianity. Christianity here is generally a cafeteria Christianity, a ‘pick and mix’, ‘go as you please’, selective Christianity. You don’t like the priest because he tells you to stand at church and fast and does not look like an ‘American’? He’s not ‘fun’, not ‘cool’ – sack him – that’s what consumer shareholders do to those who are not fun and not cool. Otherwise, go to another store – denomination or jurisdiction – and change brands – that is, ‘change churches’.

Consumerism is born not of hierarchy, but of ‘democracy’, of the rule of the crowd, and so is always defined by the lowest common denominator. In other words, it is reductionist. And this means, for example, that Orthodox churches become Sunday only churches and services become very short – they are reduced both in quantity and quality. Forget vigil services; think of bingo. The danger here is that Orthodoxy – and there is in fact only one sort of Orthodoxy, albeit in different languages – begins to develop into a novel and secondary form of Orthodoxy. Instead of the Orthodox Tradition, there has developed in the USA a liberal Orthodoxy, a ‘new Orthodoxy’, an ‘American’ Orthodoxy, an anti-ascetic Orthodoxy, a comfort religion, one that is fit not for those who want to pray, but for those who want to pay, for ‘consumers’. To combine God and Mammon is what they want.

Those who have ‘invested’ in inventing such an Orthodoxy are not interested in quality, but rather in quantity. How many are there here? The numbers game is what it is all about. ‘Reach out and get the customers through the doors’. Thus, ‘outreach’ televangelism is crowd-pleasing marketing. Churchgoers are customers, with credit cards in their pockets, and can be pulled in especially by personalities. In this way Christ is forgotten and replaced by personality cults. Brought out of Russia by secular-minded intellectuals, personality cults have spread through the European and American diasporas, merely reflecting the secular cult of celebrities. Secular society lives, as in ancient times, on bread and circuses, on fast food and fun, on MacDonalds and Disney. The same crowd-pleasing tendencies are present outside the Church but also in some Orthodox churches in the diaspora.

The consumerist cult of fun is particularly visible in secular American society and from there it is spreading around the world, including into Church life. Now, ‘fun’ is a euphemism for the pleasing of everything that is not the soul. Its sign is infantilism and infantilism is the main characteristic of modern Protestant and Catholic ‘worship’. The crowd or audience, because that is what the people are, are treated as children, with guitar music, clapping, dancing, sentimentalism and manipulation. Such ‘churches’ and ‘services’ in no way resemble anything known to Christian history. The saints, who replace celebrities in the Church, did not know of ‘fun’ and were not infantile. Infantilism and fun are manipulative novelties invented for an anti-ascetic, post-Christian and indeed anti-Christian world to make Church services into entertainment shows. ‘Fun’ kills the sacred.

Conclusion: The Tradition

What is the solution? Clearly conformism, which is only the sociological, not the theological, must be avoided. Orthodox have a clear-cut identity, we are very different from Protestants – as well as from Catholics in America, who are almost entirely Protestantized. We have a different faith and worship the unfilioquized God. True, there is only one God, but not all worship God, many worship manmade substitutes. True, there is the other extreme to conformism, which is usually expressed by Protestant-minded converts, who want to be different just for the sake of being different. They cultivate the exotic, the foreign, the ethnic, old calendarism, and any extreme of dress or outward practice. Here there is only the psychological, not the theological. But we follow neither the sociological nor the psychological, we follow the spiritual, expressed in the Tradition of the Holy Spirit.

In so doing we do not cultivate differences just for the sake of them. Our differences are primarily internal, not primarily external. Thus, when we need to begin the inevitable transition to English – and to proper, grammatical, liturgical English, not to street Immigrantese, for we do not repeat the errors of Catholicism 50 years ago – we just do it. Thus, we do not lose the sense of the sacred, the atmosphere of prayer, respect and devotion which characterize Orthodoxy. Languages are only vowels and consonants in different orders: a change of language is not the problem, a loss of authentic piety is the problem. In all things our task is neither to seek to conform, nor to be different for the sake of it, but simply to be faithful to the Tradition of the Holy Spirit, which is above liberalism and conservatism. The Church does not conform to the world – the world conforms to the Church.

The Mid-West, May 2014

On the Failure of Anglican Converts to Produce an Orthodox Culture

Introduction

It is now fifty years since Anglicans began to convert to the Orthodox Church in this country. In that time most have failed to incarnate themselves into Orthodox culture and then transmit that culture to succeeding generations, children and grandchildren, instead forming only small, short-term, ex-Anglican ghettos. Now hybrid Anglican Orthodoxy is dying out and disappearing. What went wrong? We believe that we can see four reasons for this failure, two of which are sociological, two of which are theological. What are they?

a) Sociological Reasons

1. Numbers

First of all, it must be said that only a relatively small number of Anglicans have entered the Orthodox Church in the last fifty years. I remember that at the Effingham Conference in 1975 I was told by one in authority at Ennismore Gardens (the jurisdiction of the late Metr Antony Bloom, who formed a self-justifying ‘mini-diocese’ out of ex-Anglicans) that 1,000 English people had been received by that date, the vast majority from an educated Anglican background. Since then, in the 1980s, a number of Anglicans were received by a dissident archbishop into the local diocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and, in the 1990s, some 300 were received into the Western European diocese of the Patriarchate of Antioch. But even so, it is unlikely that numbers of converts ever reached even 3,000, probably fewer at any one time. And this figure does not take into account numbers lapsing through being received prematurely, back into Anglicanism, into nothing, or else into Greek sects, or else dying of old age.

There have been several reasons for these small numbers. First, there has been the problem of language – most Orthodox use their native languages (i.e. not English) in Church services. This tends to create immigrant ghettos and does not reach down into English society, attracting only the well-educated and well-travelled. For example, some Greek parish priests, and in fairness representatives of all jurisdictions have done this, have shown hostility and sometimes downright rudeness to English people interested in the Orthodox Faith. Unedifying anecdotes abound. There is also the fact that after over some 900 years of being cast out of this country, the Orthodox Church has had to start here again from scratch as a poor immigrant Church, without funding, without church buildings, without infrastructure. This lack of infrastructure has discouraged many Anglicans because of the mentality described below

2. The Establishment Mentality

Anglicans generally suffer from an Establishment mentality. As an inherent and wealthy part of the Establishment, they usually expect everything to be done for them by their State authorities. As a State Church, they often suffer from the syndrome that expects everything to be provided. The problem of Anglican and Anglo-Catholic clericalism (‘the clergy will do it’) only makes the problem worse. This is utterly different from the Orthodox Church, where the impoverished faithful (priests and laity) have to do everything for themselves and can expect no financial or practical support from their impoverished bishops. This Anglican Establishment mentality, often public school and very patronising to ‘poor Eastern European peasants’, also leads to a class-based exclusiveness. This is basically racist and hypocritically but deliberately snubs those who do not belong to it, not only Non-English people, but also English people but who are not of Anglican and Establishment background.

b) Theological Reasons

1. A Weak Dogmatic Consciousness

One of the main characteristics of Protestantism (and clearly this includes Anglicanism despite its outward pretence of catholicity, as invented in the 19th century) is its weak dogmatic consciousness – in other words, its lack of faith and so lack of spiritual depth. Thus, it has a concept of God, but only the dimmest concept of the Holy Trinity and is not even aware that it confesses the papal filioque (as well as the papal calendar). Thus, it has a concept of ‘Jesus’ (the human nature of Christ), but not of the Son of God, not of the God-man, and therefore not of the Incarnation. In addition it utterly confuses the Holy Spirit with psychic self-exaltation (a confusion that underpins the ‘charismatic’ movement). Indeed, it is difficult to know if modern Protestantism, dependent on Western States and secular cultures, without the dogmas contained in the sign of the cross, believes in anything.

Thus, it is said that 40% of Anglican clergy do not believe in God, let alone in the Holy Trinity, the Divinity of Christ, the Holy Spirit, Providence, the Resurrection, the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, the Saints, the Sacraments and prayer-deepening fasting. Certainly, especially at Easter time, we are accustomed to State-appointed Anglican bishops, let alone the laity, regularly saying that they do not believe in the Resurrection. Thus, for many Anglicans and sadly, ex-Anglicans, the Orthodox Faith appears only to be an intellectual hobby, a piece of snobbish exotica for outward mimicking and ritualism, an upper middle-class debating issue, at best a personal and private theory, at worst pure fantasy. And this problem of a lack of commitment has only been reinforced by another difficulty.

2. Personality Cults

Sadly, the Orthodox Diaspora has been dominated and divided by a series of mainly Russian personality cults. Alpha egos, all claiming some unique revelation or access to Divinity, shrouded in absurd foreign jargon, have split relatively small groups of immigrants and even smaller groups of converts. Each personality, preaching some pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-mystical and pseudo-esoteric cult and claiming holiness, has attracted the inexperienced and, frankly, the ignorant. With most of the real Orthodox world inaccessible because of Communist persecution and most of the Church paralysed because of Communist captivity, and so no checks and balances, such personalities were able to dominate small groups of naïve and inexperienced converts and even hoodwink them, almost hypnotically. This was especially the case in insular Britain, geographically cut off from a sense of catholicity, the wider Orthodox Church world and an overview of the civilizational and cultural reality of the Orthosphere.

Conclusion

Although the above description of the past is pessimistic, we are optimistic about the future. In recent decades atheist regimes collapsed and Churches were freed from their feudal shackles; the old personality cultists with their absurd claims are dead and their books gather dust; masses of immigrants from Orthodox Europe have renewed Church life and the Faith; finally, today’s converts are coming from the vast mass of English people who are not Anglican. They have no cultural prejudices, no baggage, and are therefore receptive to and can commit to genuine Orthodox culture, without simply mimicking it, just as Anglo-Catholics have always mimicked Catholicism. Today, with the services translated and more churches, the Orthodox Church can reach further into English society, far beyond the spiritually superficial and elitist Anglican Establishment, than ever before. In this way, and in this way alone, can an authentic local Orthodox culture be produced in this country, by becoming incarnate in the roots of the land. Reality is taking over from fantasy.

Towards New Local Churches in the Diaspora

Introduction: God’s Will

There will never be any new Local Churches in the Diaspora, if it is not God’s will. What is manmade, therefore in some way essentially denying God and replacing Him with a human institution, crumbles and becomes a Church in name only, calling itself after some human-being or nationality, for example: Papism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Wesleyanism etc. Man proposes, but God disposes. Therefore the questions that must be answered are what we can avoid from the past and how we can prepare for God’s will to be done amongst us in the future?

Anti-Missionary Principles

The development of new Local Churches in the Diaspora has been prevented in the past by nationalism and its squabbles – by anti-missionary principles. This can be seen particularly clearly in North America, where, until soon after the Russian Revolution, all Orthodox were in one Church. This Church was the Russian Church which contained autonomous ethnic dioceses and deaneries under a Russian-appointed Bishop. Why under the Russian Church? Because it was the first present there, the biggest, had the best infrastructure and the most multinational mentality. However, it is true that since 1917 this has by no means always been the case. Today’s Russian Church, suffering in both its parts from the consequences of the Western-planned and provoked 1917 Revolution, still, even 25 years after the collapse of the direct results of that Revolution, often has infrastructure and a multinational mentality which are severely compromised.

Deviations from the Past

There have been other anti-missionary principles at work in the past of the Diaspora. Firstly, there has been the problem of simony. Certain bishops of certain nationalities have been willing to ordain unworthy candidates for money – in 1991, for example, $20,000 was the going rate in one ancient Patriarchate to become a bishop. Secondly, there has been the problem of ego trips – front room Orthodoxy, garden folly Orthodox, the one man show, the big fish in the little pond – the individual who gets himself ordained by one means or another not in order to serve other Orthodox, but to serve himself. Thirdly, there has been the problem of convert ghetto Orthodoxy, in this country ex-Anglican ghettos, ‘Anglican vicar beard competition Orthodoxy’, often with as few as 5-10 individuals with a private club mentality or in inaccessible premises. None of these deviations from the past, examples of which are scattered throughout the Western world, have been of any help to genuine Orthodox missionary work and service to the Orthodox people.

Missionary Principles

Any new Local Church to be built in the Diaspora must be built on the fullness of the Tradition, on the maximum. Nothing can be built on compromises. New Local Churches are built on monastic life and holy life – examples are Sts Cyril and Methodius, St Herman of Alaska and St Nicholas of Tokyo. Any new Local Church in the Diaspora must therefore be built on the Orthodox (and not Papal/Protestant) calendar, on vigil services, in a word on the Tradition, and not on compromises. It must be clearly understood that there are not two traditions in the Orthodox Church – there is only the One Universal Orthodox Tradition. Anything else, with modernistic practices of doing away with confession before communion, the Orthodox calendar, the iconostasis, correct priestly dress, traditional liturgical language etc, is not at all part of the Tradition, of Orthodoxy, but merely part of decadence and compromise, of Halfodoxy.

Directions for the Future

To expand Church presence, we need to observe some basic Orthodox principles. Firstly, any new church must be based on the Gospel ‘where two or three are gathered together in My Name…’. In other words, there must be no ego trips and moreover at least one of these two or three must be able to sing prayerfully and form a choir – again in order to avoid ego-tripping. Premises used must be public access and located in a central city or town so that the church there can become a Regional or at least County Church centre. Premises must also be such that they can be converted for Orthodox use, so that an Orthodox atmosphere can be established in them. Little missions should not be set up from them for many, many years, otherwise this will merely disperses efforts and energies. One should be able to process around these premises, which should have facilities, toilets, and ideally a children’s room with baby changing, parking, a hall and a kitchen. These premises (owned or, if need be initially, rented) must be one’s own – they must not be shared with, for example, an Anglican church.

Conclusion: What is a Local Church?

An ethnic church is one that aims to gather together only one nationality and in a racist way has no time for those of other nationalities – a situation that is clearly against the spirit of the Gospels. An ideological church is one that aims to gather together only in the name of a narrow ideology, often personality cultish or sectarian, and not in the name of Christ – a situation that is clearly against the spirit of the Gospels. An authentic Local Church, however, is one that is made up of many local churches that gather together all local Orthodox, regardless of nationality and background, on the basis of the uncompromised Tradition, on the basis of Orthodoxy, not on the basis of Halfodoxy.

An End to Pan-Orthodox Assemblies: Now it is Time to Start Seriously

Post 200:

The news that the Patriarchate of Antioch has withdrawn its participation in the so-called ‘Pan-Orthodox Episcopal Assemblies’ (to be translated into our plain English as ‘Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meetings’) is not surprising. Fed up with heavy-handed Greek Imperialism, it has quit. It is ironic since certain Antiochian converts, quite unrealistically, saw them three or four years ago as panaceas (admittedly, to largely non-existent illnesses). This event was all too predictable given the way in which the Patriarchate of Constantinople took over everything in the so-called ‘assemblies’, ‘presiding’ and issuing decrees, even giving the meetings the name ‘Pan-Orthodox’ – ancient, and not so ancient, code for ‘All-Greek’. Perhaps the only surprise is that it was Antioch that went first.

The withdrawal is hardly surprising, since the other five groups – Bulgarians, Russians (both parts) and Serbs (and probably the Romanians and the Georgians) felt much the same. As one commentator in the USA put it, in its recent polite letter to the North and Central American group the Russian Church (ROCOR) took a fly swatter to the problem of Constantinople’s philetism, whereas Antioch took a hammer. Probably all (except Constantinople) are now relieved, as the abscess has been pierced. However, this does not mean that the process is over. All it means is that the primitive and crude attempt of US-backed Hellenist Imperialism to take over the Orthodox Diaspora is over. Now that that is out of the way, we can make a serious attempt to organise the Diaspora on an Orthodox, and not a papist, basis.

What have we learned? Firstly, we have learned that no Local Church should attempt to take over the Diaspora. Imperialism, however much it may be dressed up in pseudo-theological, in fact philosophical, terms is not part of the Church. That may seem obvious – but to some it appears to be an astounding revelation. Secondly, we would suggest that all Inter-Orthodox meetings be presided by a different Church in turn. Thirdly, we would suggest that the bishops and committees meet only once a year – otherwise they risk turning into mere talking shops and empty photo-opportunities.

Finally, we would suggest that the bishops should encourage the grassroots to work together; Church unity will not be founded top-down but bottom up, as the very word ‘found’ suggests. This, like the rest of what we have said, is nothing more than the obvious, obvious to even the least of our parishioners. Unfortunately, ideology never takes into account the least of our parishioners or the obvious. Therefore, we suggest that all ideologies be thrown out of the window and we start again, with Inter-Orthodox Bishops’ Meetings, and forget the highfalutin ‘Episcopal Assemblies’ of the past and all their philosophical jargon on ‘being and communion’ and talk instead about the life in Christ.

Some Missionary Notes: How to Draw Orthodox and Non-Orthodox to Normal Orthodox Parish Life

Introduction

At the present time, in Western Europe at least, Orthodox Church life of all dioceses tends to be dominated by two sorts of church – two extremes. Fortunately, they are not always as extreme as I describe below, because there I describe stereotypes. However, just because they are stereotypes, this does not mean that the tendencies are not there.

Firstly, there can be impersonal cathedrals or other large churches in capitals and large cities. Here hundreds, even thousands, of Orthodox or curious Non-Orthodox call in on a Sunday, light candles, often mill around, do not know each other and cannot know each other, being unable to meet, and all too often do not stay and drift away. The churches which they visit give them little sense of belonging, little sense of community; this is the very opposite of what they need, given that they are homesick and uprooted from their Orthodox homes, whether from contemporary Eastern Europe or from ancient Western Europe.

Secondly, there can be introverted ghettos with narrow ideologies which it is sought to impose, sometimes located in inaccessible places or private houses. They sometimes consist of only half a dozen neophytes and one can even have the impression of ego-trips. Some of the practices in such groups, liturgical and otherwise, are unknown to the rest of the Orthodox Church and seem to have a basis in psychology, not in theology. Ordinary Orthodox naturally feel excluded from them.

Three Basic Needs

What then is required to bring scattered Orthodox and interested Non-Orthodox together? We would recommend three things. The following recommendations do not come from personal opinion, but from nearly forty years of experience and observation:

1. Premises suitable for Orthodox worship. These should be premises easily accessible to the general public and with adequate facilities (parking, children’s facilities, toilets etc), where Orthodox can feel at home, which are warm and prayerful, where there are icons and Orthodox are not distracted. This is why we always avoid using premises used and owned by heterodox, but, if we do not have money to build our own Orthodox premises, convert premises and make them our own, that is, homely for Orthodox. This is all about creating a prayerful atmosphere.

2. A choir whose members can sing and read reasonably well. This should not be in just one language, which would be exclusive and is often the sign of Anglican rigidity and false piety. A choir means that solo singing is not really acceptable to the mass of Orthodox. This in turn means that whoever is responsible for the choir needs to encourage and teach others to sing – no mean task, but a necessary one.

3. A priest who is trained, not necessarily in terms of seminary or university but, above all – and this is far more important – in terms of parish experience. He should neither be a liberal, nor a reactionary. This means that he should be strict in terms of Church teaching, but still be open in terms of understanding human weaknesses and family life. He should not be an intellectual with merely a bookish and modernistic understanding of Orthodoxy. That, as we saw in the Sourozh schism, means that he does not understand real Orthodox, but only other converts like himself. Rather he must be able to provide the liturgical cycle of every Saturday, Sunday and feast day and provide all the sacraments.

Conclusion

To people in exile – and in the 21st century we are all in exile – our duty is to provide a home. And that is what our churches should be – homes, places to which Orthodox belong and feel that they belong.

On Overcoming the Paris Captivity

On Friday 6 December, the Interfax News Agency reported that Fr Vsevolod Chaplin has called on certain Russians to overcome ‘the Paris Captivity’ of academic theology and to give priority instead to the legacy of the New Martyrs. Fr Vsevolod, the Social Affairs spokesman for the Church, is seen by many as the right-hand man of Patriarch Kyrill.

Fr Vsevolod called on certain Russian Orthodox to pay more attention to our own theological tradition instead of to that of the Paris Jurisdiction and its branches, which reject the millennial, monastic-based Russian Orthodox Tradition and prefer Protestant-based philosophies and speculations. He said that if ‘even Muslims and Protestants wonder what to do when there are contradictions between Russian and foreign traditions, and usually choose the Russian’, then it was for Russians themselves to opt for their ‘millennial tradition of Orthodox thought, learning and piety, for the Tradition’.

Like the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, he too inside Russia is convinced that it is time to overcome ‘the Paris Captivity’ of Russian theology and return to ‘the tradition of Orthodox countries in periods of freedom’ and do not have ‘to adapt to domineering Western surroundings, nor to totalitarian atheist regimes’. He recommended all to look at Russian Orthodoxy just before the Revolution (Metr Antony Khrapovitsky and his Patristically-minded followers) and Serbian Orthodoxy (Sts Nicholas of Zhicha and St Justin of Chelije), but above all to devote particular attention to the legacy of the New Martyrs, which ‘provides answers to many present-day issues’. He added that ‘by definition’ the Paris School was ‘marginal in the context of free Orthodox peoples’. (http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=53710)

Living outside Russia, we can confirm the truth of Fr Vsevolod’s words and the consequences of such Protestant and Catholic-based ‘theology’ on a practical day to day basis. Thus, one parish of the Paris Jurisdiction in England is losing its premises and so public mission for lack of parishioners, and yet in the same city, there are dozens of Russian Orthodox who regularly travel over a hundred miles at weekends so that they can get to the nearest Russian Orthodox liturgy. They are in fact boycotting an ex-Anglican group of four (with two priests!) who refuse to put up an iconostasis, to confess before communion and celebrate on the Orthodox calendar. They prefer to travel great distances to a busy priest so that they can receive pastoral care as Orthodox, and not as Protestants or Catholics.

Another Paris Jurisdiction parish in France is boycotted by local Russian Orthodox because it also refuses to celebrate on the Orthodox calendar and have an iconostasis, and there communion without confession is obligatory for all (those who do not commune every Sunday are humiliated and made to feel guilty) and little girls are forced into being acolytes. In a monastic group of the same Paris Jurisdiction in France, a woman with a grave sin on her conscience was refused confession last weekend and told: ‘As long as you have not killed anyone, you do not need confession’. This glaring lack of pastoral care and understanding of Orthodoxy in many – though not all – parishes of the Paris Jurisdiction has set it on a course of Uniatisation. This is why Russian Orthodox have been leaving it for decades.

Sadly, such ‘theology’, in fact merely a lack of faith that weakly swims with the heterodox tide, has also spread to convert parts of the Antiochian Jurisdiction in this country, where, in addition to the above practices, there are pleas to celebrate Easter on the Roman Catholic dating and intercommunion is openly practised. Such practices attract only a few unChurched and lapsed Orthodox, who do not know their own Tradition and already take communion in Anglican and Roman Catholic churches.

On the Importance of Sobriety

Questions and answers compiled from recent conversations and correspondence

Q: In an article in ‘Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition’ entitled ‘The Present Situation of the Orthodox Church’ and written nearly 25 years ago in July 1989, you wrote about the two extremes to be found on the fringes of the Orthodox world, new calendarism and old calendarism, and the pressures they exerted on the free voice of the Church, the voice of the New Martyrs. You said that these New Martyrs would be canonised inside Russia, providing that the Church could free itself from the Communist government. This happened. So my question is if these two isms or extremes, which were then a considerable problem, are still a problem despite that canonisation?

A: Yes, they are definitely still present, though they are not as influential as they were. This is because the Centre of the Church, that which is outside the extremes, has been much strengthened through the prayers of the now universally canonised New Martyrs.

Q: But why do these isms still exist?

A: Both extremist isms still exist for historical reasons, appearing after the Centre fell, that is, after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Centre ‘did not hold’, ‘things fell apart’, that is, there was a polarisation. This became clearly and immediately visible in Russia in the 1920s with the renovationist new calendarism – although the renovationist temptation had existed for several years before the Revolution, certainly since Gapon in 1905. (Incidentally, Patriarch Kyrill’s grandfather, Fr Vasily Gundyaev, suffered much from that renovationism). And of course there were individuals who then went to the opposite extreme of renovationism, falling into a sort of old calendarist sectarianism.

At the same time Renovationism also became visible outside Russia in Constantinople, which had long been under British masonic influence. Thus, the renovationist Constantinople hierarchy actually recognised the renovationists in Russia, rejecting the saintly Patriarch Tikhon and the legitimate Church. Then, together with the Church of Greece, it introduced the secular (so-called ‘new’) calendar for the fixed feasts. Here a lot of Anglican money, £100,000 of that time, changed hands. Immediately, there was a reaction to all this and old calendarism began.

Q: What has your position been towards these two extremes?

A: It has always been to stand in the middle and support the Centre, even though it fell in 1917. My position has been a consistent straight line, from which I have never wavered, and this as early as 1973 in a booklet which I wrote then and which was published a few years ago in ‘Orthodox England’. My support has always been for a free Russian Orthodoxy, uncompromised by either extreme.

Q: Are you not criticised for this unwavering line?

A: Of course. But, in fact, pressure from the extremist margins only strengthens us. As an example of this, I would like to mention a fellow priest in Bulgaria who wrote to me a little while ago. He has one of the Church calendar parishes in Bulgaria which is under the new calendar Church. Thus he remains faithful to the Tradition, but does not participate in schism. And he receives as much criticism from new calendarism as from old calendarism. This is exactly our situation here, where both fringes criticise us. Interestingly, the fringes often work together and are friends. As they say, ‘extremes meet’. And when we are criticised by both extremes, it is a sure sign that we are doing something right, standing in the middle. Remember that the middle is where Christ was crucified, between the two thieves.

Q: You mentioned how it all began in 1917 with the fall of the Centre in Moscow. But did the extremist pressures get worse?

A: Yes, they did. The Cold War after 1945 definitely made it all worse. For example, in 1948 the USA installed a new Patriarch of Constantinople called Athenagoras. He was flown in by the CIA on Truman’s personal plane from America. When the legitimate Patriarch, Maximos, was deposed and exiled by the CIA, he was heard to say, ‘The City is lost’. This is a close parallel to the situation in the first millennium when a number of heretical patriarchs of Constantinople were installed by heretical emperors. Interestingly, the legitimate Patriarch Maximos V, supposedly ‘ill’, died three decades later in 1972, the same year as the illegitimate Patriarch. Since 1948 Constantinople, co-opted into the anti-Soviet and then anti-Russian war of the USA, has been the plaything of the ‘iconoclastic’ US State Department. The City is lost indeed – but the Church lives on outside the City. Fortunately, the Church does not depend on a geographical location – otherwise there would still be nothing outside Jerusalem.

The situation was no better in the Local Churches that survived under Communism during the Cold War. As regards the Russian Church, the situation worsened greatly under Khrushchev, a virulent and primitive atheist, not just because he persecuted the Church physically, but also because he and the Soviet Communist Party imposed ecumenism on the Church as a political tool in the early 1960s. The other Communist Parties in Eastern Europe did the same to their Local Churches. The idea was to make ecumenism and ecumenical organisations into tools for Soviet propaganda.

Q: What happened when the Cold War ended?

A: Just because the Cold War officially ended, that does not mean that persecution is over. Today the militant atheism of the Soviet Union is gone, but now we have the militant atheism of the European Union. The EU ideology is trying to destroy not only the Local Churches of EU member countries in Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Cyprus, but also the Churches of countries which the EU one day hopes to colonise: Serbia, Moldova, Georgia, even the Ukraine. The victims of such political pressures, some senior bishops, are hostages to this, so we do not listen to the things that their political masters force them to say, especially in Serbia.

Q: Do others listen to these bishop-hostages?

A: You should not listen to hostages. Unfortunately, old calendarists do listen to these bishop-hostages and, in search of self-justification for their schisms, quote them. Thus, they deliberately ignore the 99.999% of the Local Church which is solidly Orthodox and with whom they put themselves out of communion. They want black and white situations, everyone else must be black and therefore only they can be white. This is pride and it is also to fall into the divide and rule game of the powers of this world, which want to divide the Church in order to rule it. It is like refusing to be baptized by the disciples because Judas had been a disciple. And so you remain unbaptized, outside the Church, all because of someone else who put himself outside the Church. This is to cut off your nose to spite your face, to deprive yourself because another has deprived himself.

I would add that old calendarism itself is no better in terms of political dependence. I will always remember one of their bishops writing to me six year ago and complaining that I did not support the CIA. He actually said with great pride that some of his best parishioners in the USA work for the CIA! We also recall how the US ambassador in Kiev actually plotted a schism in the Ukraine. This we know because we stood in front of him as he plotted it with a bishop at the Russian Church’s San Francisco Council of 2006. And that is exactly what that bishop then did and he is now in communion with the CIA-supporting old calendarist bishop. It is a small world!

Q: Obviously, the liberal and modernist threat to the Church, with ecumenism, liturgical modernism, intercommunion and so on, is well-known. But is it still a reality?

A: It is a reality, but mainly for old people. Today, for instance, ecumenism is largely dead. This is why old calendarists are always quoting events from the 60s, 70s and 80s. They look to the past when ecumenism was active. Thus, a favourite hate figure of theirs is Patriarch Sergius – but he died in 1944! The dead present no threat. And most of the modernists I can think of are either dead or else in their 70s and 80s. They are very old-fashioned. All we can do is pray for them that they might repent before their end. But even if we see them as our enemies, the Gospel tells us to love our enemies. Here we see that old calendarism lacks love.

Q: Do the old calendarist fractions have points in common with the new calendarist fractions?

A: Yes, they do, and several things. For example, both are old-fashioned, many of their people are elderly. Both are extremely Russophobic. And both the new calendarist and old calendarist movements are utterly split. This is because they are concerned not with the unity of the Church, which comes from following Christ, but with following personal opinions, which are always divisive, precisely because they are personal. They do not understand the importance of the conciliar mind of the Church, which is above opinions, because it follows the Holy Spirit.

Old calendarism in particular wants dogmatic precision in every detail from every individual. This is not how the Church works, the Church is not a totalitarian monolith. For instance, I have been told that there are now 14 old calendarist synods in Greece, all, it seems, hating each other. Often when one of their metropolitans dies, they split again. Many of these synods only have a few dozen communities under them and often the communities themselves are tiny, at most a few dozen. The synods are often dominated by clericalism. And here we should remember the ordinary people who are hoodwinked into following them. These synods have a large turnover of sincere, but naïve neophytes. I am sometimes contacted by such people from this country. They want to leave the sects where they are and come to the Orthodox Church, which they have just discovered. Such ordinary people are not guilty. This is why they are received into the Church by confession and communion.

Q: Why are both new calendarism and old calendarism Russophobic?

A: Out of self-justification. Both denigrate the Russian Church especially because She is old calendar and therefore from their viewpoint a competitor. They need to justify their isolation from Her and desperately want to see scandals and corruption. Thus, they will repeat anti-Church Cold War propaganda against the Russian Church, whatever the origin, atheist or other. Thus, they seize on the most minor scandal, blow it up out of all proportion and generalise it, rather like the anti-clerical media. One priest is bad, therefore all are bad, therefore they cannot be in communion with a whole Local Church. This is self-justification and also Donatism, as the righteous Metr Philaret of New York described old calendarism.

However, the main impression is not so much of Russophobia, nor even of the rejection of episcopal authority, but of the rejection of the people of the Church, the unChurched but recently baptised masses both of the Russian Church and other Local Churches, who are not good enough for them. This is the contempt of the elder brother who rejected the Prodigal Son. It is the refusal to recognise repentance that is characteristic of old calendarism and also new calendarism. That is another thing they have in common – their elitist, esoteric disdain for the masses. It is just another sign of the pride that infects all schism.

Q: To what extent was the Church inside Russia affected by new calendarism, what Russians call renovationism?

A: There was a serious battle against renovationism inside Russia, but it was over by the 1930s. Renovationism simply died out there for lack of support. People knew that it was a Communist trick. However, it did survive far longer in the foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia and in the Paris Jurisdiction, where many of the renovationists went, so intense was their hatred of the Russian Church. Many of the old emigres brought this renovationism, in fact a sort of ‘art nouveau’ pre-Revolutionary decadence, into the emigration with them and preserved it abroad, long after it was dead inside the Soviet Union. So it survived as a curiosity. However, most of its last elderly supporters have died in the last twenty years.

Q: Wasn’t ROCOR, on the other hand, affected by the opposite extreme, old calendarism or traditionalism?

A: Yes. Communism inside Russia created renovationism which the Church there had to defeat. However, during the Cold War Capitalism created anti-Communism. In ROCOR in the USA this took the form of a nationalist right-wing movement. The supporters of this movement were the very ones who put St John on trial in San Francisco fifty years ago. In the 1960s they accepted a Greek old calendarist monastery into the Church. To their horror the old calendarists turned against the hand that had fed them and tried to take over ROCOR.

Realising that they had failed in their takeover bid, in 1986 many of the old calendarists left ROCOR, but their influence lingered on and the 1990s were a battle ground between that influence and the original ROCOR Tradition. The battle was between the Tradition, such as we knew it in the Western European Diocese of ROCOR, the Tradition which had come out of pre-Revolutionary Russia, and that new and alien old calendarist influence. As you know, in the end, the old ROCOR was triumphant. The alien influence reality affected very few, about 5% of the whole, but led them to leaving the Church in the early 2000s, which was tragic for them, but at the same time allowed the restoration of ROCOR’s old spiritual independence and integrity.

Q: How do you try and remain faithful in the middle?

A: Sobriety is the key to this. The left, or new calendarism, and the right, old calendarism, are equally self-exalted. The Centre is not self-exalted at all and remains sober. Both new calendarism (renovationism) and old calendarism (traditionalism) must be avoided because both equally lead to schism. Schism is always caused by a lack of sobriety. We steer our course by the star of Christ, the star of Bethlehem, in other words, by grace.

I remember in 2007, just after the concelebration between Patriarch Alexis and Metropolitan Laurus in Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, in which we had all participated with great joy at our unity, two senior ROCOR priests were speaking. One said: ‘Well, we’ve done it’. The other answered, ‘No, father, the grace of God has done it’. And this is exactly the case. The grace of God brings unity in truth (and that is the only real unity, the only unity that exists); the devil brings disunity and untruth.

Q: How do such new calendarist and old calendarist schisms arise from inside the Church?

A: The leaders of the small groups that leave the Church for either extreme are people who have been in difficulty in Church life for decades. But they are tolerated because God tolerates them. Eventually, such people are either healed by the patience shown to them, or else they leave the Church of their own accord.

Q: What lies behind schisms? Why are theological and historical arguments not successful with those who leave? Why can’t the leaders of schism see their error?

A: It is not theology or history that lies behind most schisms, but psychology, that is, personality conflicts. And that is always irrational. Irrational psychology cuts off its nose to spite its face, it resists grace and grace is always rational. For example, seven years ago I predicted that few would return from the Sourozh schism in England, though we would remain open to their return. And, just as predicted, few did come back. Why? Why do tiny minorities, which will clearly die out, prefer occasional services in ‘voluntary catacombs’, in back rooms and sheds, temporary rented premises, to regular services in normal churches? It is because they do not want the Church, they want the inward-looking, sectarian atmosphere of cliques and clubs, of small ponds, where they can be ‘big fish’.

Q: What is the psychology of traditionalist and modernist schisms?

A: I will take one example which I know well – the Sourozh new calendarist schism. This came about from the convert desire to merge Orthodoxy with Anglicanism (the Establishment). This is why the schism was supported at the time by the Establishment Church of England, albeit discreetly, but quite openly by newspapers like The Times and The Daily Telegraph, which support the British Establishment and whose journalists are fed by MI5 and the CIA, just like BBC journalists. However, to wish to merge Orthodoxy with Anglicanism is in fact to state that you remain unconverted to Orthodoxy, under the cloak of culture, hiding behind cultural excuses.

To take a minor detail as an example, they said: ‘Orthodoxy will have to adapt to us because we are English and so, for example, we have milk in our tea even on fast days’. Although this is a very minor detail, it is symptomatic of a far more serious spiritual illness – cultural arrogance, worldliness and nationalism. Thus, I remember that I was contacted at the time by one who complained that I had written that her group practised intercommunion and that was quite untrue. However, I pointed out to her that I had only been quoting from her group’s website which openly boasted that it allowed intercommunion!

As regards traditionalist or old calendarist schisms, they come from convert insecurity, the neophyte’s need to be against other Christians (especially against other Orthodox), rather than for Christ. It is interesting that such groups pride themselves on being ‘converts’. It is strange because we stop being converts once we are integrated, which should happen, at most, within a few years of reception into the Church. For example, the apostles do not speak of themselves as converts. That is unthinkable because they are part of the Church. And this was the same throughout history. Those who are part of the Church are not converts.

Q: Why are so many Anglican converts involved in schisms and hardly any Russians, at least in England?

A: Interestingly, a few Russians are involved, but they are always highly anglicised and want to become part of the Establishment despite their origins. Anglicans are Protestants and they have a very weak sense of the Incarnation. Therefore, for them the Church is just an individual choice, a personal matter, a private opinion, without any collective or social repercussions and so the Church is just a club. In Protestantism individualism is so highly developed that if you do not like the Church where you are, you simply go off and start another one. There is an inability to get on with others, to adapt, to accept and tolerate other opinions in community. That is why there are thousands of Protestant denominations, which to us Orthodox all look the same and indeed are essentially the same.

So the collective, the community, the Church, suffers at the hands of individualism, sectarianism. That is why in England, for example, there are five different small groups of ex-Anglicans who have joined the local dioceses of Orthodox Churches, but they are all split up. They cannot get on with each other or with other Orthodox. The only ex-Anglicans who do get on with each other are those who get on with other Orthodox of other nationalities, who are already integrated into Local Churches and multinational parishes and have forgotten that they were once Anglicans. They are Orthodox.

Q: When will old calendarist and new calendarist schisms end?

A: Only when the Centre has been fully re-established, when we reverse all the decadence of the past 96 years, when we go back to the pre-1917 situation. Thus, old calendarist schisms will exist for as long as the Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian Churches remain officially on the secular calendar for the fixed feasts. Once those Churches have returned to the Church calendar, and they would never have dared leave it before 1917 because the Russian Church would not have allowed it, those schisms will fall apart, only clerical careerists or the ill will be left. As regards new calendarist schisms, they will last for as long as the Centre is not strong enough to quell them, as long as there are conformists whose faith is weak, who swim with the Western tide, who are too weak to stand up to the passing fashions of this world.

Q: If we can slightly move away from this theme, what can we say about the future of diaspora unity between the parishes of the Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and the foreign parishes of the Church inside Russian, outside Russia but still not under ROCOR, as they logically and canonically should be?

A: As you say, logic and the canons say they should be, but there is such a thing as economy – a temporary dispensation for pastoral reasons, for the greater benefit. Much patience is needed to implement the 2007 agreement between the two parts of the Russian Church. We knew this at the time. As you know that agreement involved the Church Outside Russia giving up its representations inside Russia and the Church inside Russia giving up its representations outside Russia. However, as the Church Outside Russia had very few and only very recent representations inside Russia, it was easy to give them up. On the other hand, the Church inside Russia had a lot of longstanding representations and property outside Russia – as a result of the Cold War.

Wisely, no timetable was agreed on the issue of transfer of parishes to ROCOR because this is a pastoral issue. This should all happen calmly, as has happened in Australia, without anyone’s feelings being hurt. So what has been happening since the 2007 agreement is that the foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia are being readied for their transfer to the Church Outside Russia – but I would say that this process will take a generation. We are only at the beginning.

Q: How can such a transfer work in terms of practices? For example, ROCOR practises reception of heterodox by baptism, foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia practise reception of heterodox by chrismation?

A: That is untrue. Practices vary in both ROCOR and in the Church inside Russia. For example, in the Western European Diocese of ROCOR, we generally received by chrismation, as was the universal tradition of ROCOR until the 1970s. The priest would offer reception by baptism or chrismation, explaining why the choice was available. We always found that most chose to be received by chrismation. Practices in the Church inside Russia also vary. I think that once all the 825 or so parishes outside Russia are united under ROCOR, this mixed practice will continue according to the pastoral conscience of each priest. This is not a dogmatic issue, but a pastoral one. We all agree that there are no sacraments outside the Church, but approaches vary as regards the sacramental forms that have survived outside the Church and how we deal with them.

Q: You described how foreign parishes of the Church inside Russia were much affected by the renovationism or new calendarism that was brought out of Russia by certain emigres. Is this still a problem?

A: Much less of a problem every year. For instance, I remember someone telling me how when Bishop Elisey, the new Sourozh bishop appointed after the schism there in 2006, first came to England, he visited one of his communities in the provinces. The priest was an ex-Anglican and when Bishop Elisey got up on Sunday morning to serve the liturgy, he was asked by the priest’s wife whether he wanted a cooked breakfast, like her husband, or not. This came as a shock to him, but not to us, who knew exactly what had been going on in Sourozh for decades.

This was typical of the old Sourozh under Metr Antony Bloom and Bp Basil Osborne, where ‘English culture’ was more important than Church culture, where in fact phyletism reigned. They received Anglicans into the Church very quickly, never taught them much about Orthodoxy, ordained them and then never visited them or checked up on them. Cooked breakfasts before communion, just as in the Church of England, were the result. However, now that the Sourozh Diocese has been brought back to the normal practices of the Russian Church, such peculiar situations belong to the past.

Q: What is the main problem of doing missionary work in the West?

A: Most of our work is with immigrant Orthodox from Eastern Europe and it is a matter of Churching people who were baptised in the last few years. So our problems here are exactly the same as elsewhere in the post-Communist Orthodox world.

However, there is a second layer of work, which is with the mass of Western people who have no concept of what the Orthodox Church is. I would say that here our work is in overcoming a barrier of prejudices, what I call the ‘Dawkins Delusion’, which is the modern Western delusion. This is the problem of very primitive Neo-Darwinianism. This is actually irrelevant to those who have never held Protestant fundamentalist beliefs, like the Orthodox. So first of all you have to explain to these people that the Church has never held weird Protestant beliefs, which they are in revolt against, and then you have to explain that this is why we have no need to revolt against beliefs which we have never had anyway. This makes their Neo-Darwinianism irrelevant. In Catholic countries it is much the same story, but there they are in revolt against Papism. So the problem comes in explaining that we are not anti-Papist like them because we have never been Papist. It is irrelevant to us

Q: Do you not work to convert Anglicans, Protestants and Catholics?

A: First of all, in today’s West there are very few of those and they are mainly very elderly. We do not proselytise among them. We tend to find that those who have actually believed in Protestantism or Catholicism all their lives never become Orthodox. They are unable to learn to think and act as Orthodox. Of course, if they come to us, having understood the errors of what they have been taught, that is a different matter. But we do not proselytise. We wait for the grace of God to touch them. We do not work by human artifice. They must become natural, integrated Orthodox.

Local and Faithful, or Westernised and Hellenised

Since the Russian Revolution the Patriarchate of Constantinople has taken into its jurisdiction a variety of Russophobic dissidents. Their schisms have come about because the dissidents have been too spiritually weak to remain faithful to the Russian Tradition and so have been dragged down into party politics or personality cults. Thus, they have either been virulent nationalists or else anti-Tradition liberals and freemasons, cultivating political and theological schisms caused by that Revolution. Having lost sight of the big picture of Orthodox civilisational values, the Orthodox world-view, they have been brought down into petty, provincial concerns.

Some of the dissidents have been Slavs – Russians, Ukrainians or ex-Catholic Carpatho-Russians – others have been Western converts – Finnish, American, French, Estonian or ex-Anglican. Here we look at the dissidents, originally Russophobic, pro-Kerensky aristocrats from Saint Petersburg, who, leaving Russia, then the Church outside Russia and then the Church inside Russia for Constantinople, over 80 years ago formed the Rue Daru jurisdiction in Paris. After nearly a year without a leader, they are now hoping to elect a new archbishop in November 2013.

Although issued from the Russian Tradition and even claiming to belong to it, since they left the Mother-Church these dissidents have gradually become more and more Westernised and absorbed into the US and Turkish-controlled Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul. This can clearly be seen in their forsaking of the Orthodox liturgical calendar and Orthodox liturgical, dogmatic and pastoral practices for modernist, Western, secular practices. This simultaneous Westernisation and Hellenisation is inevitable and can only be avoided by their leaving schism and taking the path back to the Mother-Church.

If, after the election of a new archbishop, they cannot return to the Mother-Church, they will consign themselves to remaining a small archdiocese of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, perhaps 5,000 in number in all, most of their parishes set up in temporary or rented premises and less than 25 strong. Their ethos will continue to be intellectual, not spiritual, philosophical, not theological, disincarnate, not incarnate, with mainly untrained clergy, without a living Tradition and without a Mother-Church, yet dependent on the Russian Church for vestments, literature, musical culture and people to fill its small parishes. Clearly, eventually, they will disappear, absorbed into Greek Church structures and practices.

However, if, after the election of a new archbishop, they can return to the Mother-Church, they will be able to rejoin the multinational and multilingual free Russian Orthodox Church, fifty times bigger than the tiny and captive Patriarchate of Constantinople. They will be able to take part in the construction of the Metropolia of Western Europe, with its hundreds and hundreds of real parishes and historic churches all over Western Europe, the stepping-stone to a future new Local Church and yet at the same time authentically faithful to the Russian Orthodox Tradition and Church in all ways. Local and Faithful, or Westernised and Hellenised: this is the choice that they face.

How to Be an Orthodox Christian

To be an Orthodox Christian, two things are necessary:

1. To be in communion with the Orthodox Church, for ‘there is no Christianity without the Church’ (St Hilarion of Verey).

Unfortunately, the word ‘Orthodox’ is much misused and abused, in similar ways to words like ‘Apostolic’ or ‘Catholic’. Thus, although there are those who describe themselves as ‘Orthodox’, if they are not in fact members of one of the canonical Orthodox Churches and in communion with them, they are not Orthodox, not part of the Orthodox family. In reality, in the narrower context of life in Western Europe, to call oneself Orthodox actually means to belong to one of only seven Local Orthodox Churches: either to the Russian, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian or Georgian Orthodox Churches, or else to the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople or the Arab Patriarchate of Antioch.

In concrete terms, if those in Western Europe who claim to be Orthodox do not belong to one of these seven Local Orthodox Churches, they do not belong to the Orthodox Church. What are they then? In reality, they may be Copts (Miaphysites), who reject the Universal Councils of the Orthodox Church, or they may belong to some tiny, perhaps nationalistic, uncanonical grouping which may have Orthodox rites and icons but which is not in communion with the Orthodox Church, or they may simply be fantasist vagantes. And in this country these individuals may in fact be former or retired Anglicans, who have found an exotic hobby, an unusual past-time, which they have shaped in their own image.

2. To think and live as an Orthodox Christian

It is one thing to be a nominal member of the Orthodox Church, but it is another thing actually to be an Orthodox Christian. Since Faith is at the root of civilisation and culture, it is clear that if we are Orthodox Christians, then we think in terms of Orthodox Christian civilisation and culture. And quite simply, Orthodox Christianity is a different civilisation and culture from other civilisations and cultures because the Orthodox Christian Faith is different from other Faiths. If people do not think as Orthodox Christians, have Orthodox civilisational values, then they will only be semi-Orthodox, watered down Orthodox, nominally Orthodox, outwardly Orthodox, compromised Orthodox, westernised Orthodox.

It is in fact only when people inwardly think as Orthodox Christians, instead of as Anglicans, Protestants, Roman Catholics or something else, that they speak and act as Orthodox Christians. And it is vital to understand this, for Orthodox Christianity is not an ideology, philosophy or personality cult, but a life based on an integrated view of the world, a conscious set of values made incarnate, a life imbued by a conscious mindset and mentality, in other words, a way of life with all its ramifications. If we live as Orthodox Christians, these ramifications mean consistently striving to obey in full the two simple commandments, to love God and to love our neighbours as ourselves.