Category Archives: Russian Church

The Russian Orthodox Church, 31 December 2018

With 164 million faithful the Russian Orthodox Church makes up 75% of the whole Orthodox Church. All the other 12 universally-recognized Local Orthodox Churches (in order of size: Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Alexandria, Poland, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Jerusalem) are in communion with her. (Sadly, the Local Churches of Rome and Constantinople also used to be in communion with her, but have over time fallen away from the confession of the Orthodox Faith. As for the tiny North American group called the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), it has never been recognized by all) (1).

As a multinational Orthodox Church, the various parts of the Russian Orthodox Church enjoy different levels of independence from its leading bishop, the Patriarch. Thus, first comes the Ukrainian Orthodox Church which has a special status of autonomy close to autocephaly or full independence, as it can elect its own leading bishop (at present His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry), but it still commemorates the Patriarch. Next come the Japanese Orthodox Church and the Chinese Orthodox Church which are both autonomous, only their main bishop needing the approval of the Patriarch. Thirdly, there are the four Churches of Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and the New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) largely looks after Russian Orthodox in the three Metropolia-type Continents of North America, South America and Oceania. These Churches are self-governing, meaning that all their bishop-candidates require approval from the Patriarch before they are consecrated.

Fourthly, there are the three Exarchates which have a limited autonomy, though they cannot nominate their own bishops. These are the Belarusian Orthodox Exarchate (Belarus), the Western European Exarchate (Andorra, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Switzerland) and the South-East Asian Exarchate (Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand). Finally, there is the Metropolia of Kazakhstan which also has a certain independence regarding internal affairs in relation to the local laws of Kazakhstan.

The Russian Orthodox Church today has 381 bishops in 60 metropolias and 309 dioceses. These have 38,649 churches or other facilities in which the Divine Liturgy is celebrated by 34,774 priests and 4,640 deacons. In addition, there are 462 monasteries and 482 convents. Outside the former Soviet Union there are over 1,000 parishes and monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church, including the parishes and monasteries of the Russian Church Outside Russia (ROCOR).

Note

  1. It is difficult to see a future for the OCA group, founded for political reasons nearly fifty years ago at the height of the Cold War. It has in recent years been maintained as a challenge to Constantinople. Therefore, following the recent fall of Constantinople from communion, it will perhaps be dissolved. Rather like the recently-dissolved Rue Daru group in Paris, perhaps about half of it will return to the Russian Orthodox Church and the rest will join new calendarist groups.

 

 

 

The Russian Orthodox Missionary Revolution Begins

Outside the Russian Church, the twelve universally-recognized but small Local Orthodox Churches (in order of size: Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Antioch, Alexandria, Poland, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Jerusalem) look after only 25% of all Orthodox, on average 2% each. This means small territories and narrow ethnic groups. The two exceptions are the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which looks after the vast African Continent, and the Patriarchate of Antioch, which looks after the Middle Eastern Arab world outside Africa as far as the Emirates and Iraq as well as Arabs and others in the Diasporas. But what of the rest of the world which have never been Orthodox? Who cares for this? Certainly not these twelve small and generally rather nationalistic Local Churches

Neither is it the former Patriarchate of Constantinople. The collapse of that tiny Patriarchate into the papist and phyletist heresies and its resulting falling away from communion with the Russian Orthodox Church is tragic. All we can do is to wait patiently for its repentance. Just as we have been waiting for the repentance of Rome for a thousand years, so we shall wait for Constantinople’s repentance too. However, every cloud has a silver lining. Constantinople’s recent fall from the Church and so self-elimination has led very swiftly to the Russian Church’s decision to set up a mission and build a new church in long-ignored Turkey and establish two new missionary Exarchates.

One of these is for Western Europe, though at present it covers only Andorra, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Italy, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Switzerland. The second is for South-East Asia (Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand). Clearly, these are the foundations for new Local Churches. Indeed, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev) has described their long-awaited establishment as missionary.

http://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2018/12/29/nasha_zadacha_missionerskaya_prosvetitelskaya/

Thus, if we look at the world scene today, we can see that for the first time in history, most of the world is now catered for in terms of Orthodox missions. There is the tricontinental Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, based in New York, which fundamentally looks after North America, South America and Oceania. Indeed, in the last twelve years, it will have consecrated six American bishops and one Australian bishop. As for Eurasia outside the territories of the twelve Local Churches, the Russian Orthodox Church caters for the multinational Russian Federation, China (naturally, including Taiwan), Japan and now also South-East Asia and Western Europe through its two Exarchates.

This means that in reality the only territories of the world which are not catered for officially are Iran and South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka), in which countries conditions are such that missionary work is very difficult, even sometimes dangerous. However, South Asia contains one quarter of the world’s population. Perhaps one day we shall see two more Exarchates, one for Iran and one for South Asia.

We have come a long way from the anti-missionary bishops of the past who so persecuted us. We well remember Archbishop George (Wagner) of the Paris Archdiocese, who forbade the use of any language in services except Church Slavonic. Indeed, he considered that only three languages should be used liturgically – Greek, Latin and Slavonic. (He considered that the Romanian Church should return to using Church Slavonic).

He and another bishop of his background also unapologetically forbade the veneration of the local saints of Western Europe. Both bishops wrecked their dioceses, with a great many clergy and people fleeing their tyrannies, indeed as far as the USA and Canada. ‘I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord, so did we sing in those dark days of the dark past. Their dioceses have still not recovered and, it seems, probably never will. The vital missionary forces left and their dioceses were abandoned to the ghetto and spiritual death, while others looked elsewhere for spiritual life and grew strong and numerous.

With these two new Exarchates in Western Europe and South-East Asia, which will only grow, the Russian Orthodox missionary revolution of East and West has begun in earnest.

 

The Exarchate of Western Europe

The Russian Orthodox Church has just announced in Article 105 of its Winter Synod that it is forming an Exarchate of Korsun and Western Europe, centred in Paris. This includes the territories of thirteen countries: Andorra, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Portugal, France and Switzerland. The head is to be the present Bishop John of Bogorodsk, who currently looks after the Russian Orthodox parishes in Italy. Bishop John (Roshin), born in 1974, has as his patron-saint St John of Shanghai and is fluent in English, having spent several years in the United States. Also a new diocese is to be formed for Spain and Portugal, to be headed by Bishop Nestor, who is at present responsible for France, Spain and Portugal. His title will be ‘of Madrid and Lisbon’.

On the Lesson We Must Draw from the Heresy and Fall of Constantinople

For exactly 100 years the divisive heresy of phyletism (racist nationalism), introduced into the Orthodox Diaspora in 1918 by the Greek nationalist Patriarchate of Constantinople, has been a scourge of the Church. Now that same Patriarchate has spread its heresy into the Ukraine. Everywhere it is present and active, whether in the USA, France, Canada, Estonia, England and now in the Ukraine, it has spread this heresy of nationalism, whereby ‘our local customs and culture’ are put above the Body of Christ, the Universal Orthodox Church.

Sadly, the Local Churches of Antioch, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Georgia have followed this bad example, dividing the Diaspora according to nationality. All this destroyed the old unity of the Orthodox Diaspora which had been united under the Russian Orthodox Church until 1918. However, by its actions in the Ukraine the Patriarchate of Constantinople has now altogether fallen away from the Orthodox Church. All this is a self-evident truth and indeed it is now history. 1054 was followed by 2018. Old Rome was followed by New Rome.

The flag-waving heresy of phyletism, that is, putting your race above Christ, your national flag above the Church of God, is an ancient one. This sin of nationalism is that of the Jews, who preferred Caesar to Christ and called down the blood of Christ on themselves and their children. This sin of nationalism is that of the pagan Romans and the Germanic barbarians who in the 11th century invented Roman Catholicism. This sin of nationalism is that of the Germanic peoples in the 16th century, who put their national States above Christ and invented ‘National Churches’, obviously in England.

Today it is the sin of the ‘racially superior’ Greek Patriarch Bartholomew and the half-Jewish President Poroshenko-Walzman, both appointees of the US State Department. For together they have invented a State Church for Ukrainian nationalists, who worship the Ukraine first and perhaps Christ later. The only other result of the Greek-organized farce in Kiev on Saturday 15 December has been the suspension of two renegade bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitans Symeon and Alexander, who have long been thorns in the side of the Church.

The other 83 bishops of the Ukrainian Church have remained faithful, despite pressure from the dreaded CIA-trained Kiev regime Secret Police, the SBU. And so two more bishops have been nominated, bringing the total to 85 again. This faithfulness is a lesson for all Orthodox, not least for any in Moscow who put Russia above Christ. If you compromise the Faith with nationalism and its modernistic consequences, like the once venerable Patriarchate of Rome and now that of Constantinople, this is the heresy and fate that await you.

Today, the whole world, apart from parts of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa, which are the canonical territories of other Local Churches, is waiting for the Russian Orthodox Church to spread the Word of God. Mission on most of five continents, in most of Europe, most of Asia, in Oceania and in North and South America, lies before us. And this mission can only be carried out by a Church, which is uncompromised and untainted by State interference, by racist nationalism, by secularist ecumenism and modernism. Those who have ears, let them hear.

 

The End of an Era

The Rue Daru Exarchate, composed of a few largely Moldovan parishes in Paris and a few dozen tiny communities of converts by and large without their own properties scattered mainly through France, Benelux and England, has today been dissolved by the Phanar. Over ninety years of history since Rue Daru broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia have thus cruelly ended.

Founded largely by aristocratic and intellectual traitors to the Tsar from Saint Petersburg, the surprise is that this anti-Russian and anti-monastic group has survived so long. Nearly four generations on, with its last Russian bishop dying in 1981 and without monasteries, it was clear that it would come to depend on widowers and celibates from Roman Catholicism, such as its present Archbishop from Bordeaux. Rue Daru’s failure to return to the Russian Church, when freedom gradually came in the two decades after the collapse of atheist rule in the former Russian Empire in 1991 was lamentable.

However, as long ago as 1966, the then rector of the St Sergius Institute, Fr Alexey Knyazev, went to the Phanar and asked if the Patriarch was really the ‘Oecumenical’ Patriarch or ‘just a petty Balkan bishop’. Today he has received his answer. Fr Alexey and other real Orthodox, worthies like Bishop Methodius (Kulmann) and Fr Igor Vernik, had already understood in the 1960s and 1970s that the Rue Daru group could only survive spiritually if it returned to the Russian Mother Church, becoming the basis of a new Local Metropolia in Western Europe.

I understood it thirty years ago in 1988, when Rue Daru’s then ex-Catholic German Archbishop George (Wagner) categorically and suicidally rejected any plan to establish the foundation for a new Local Church of Western Europe faithful to the Russian Orthodox Tradition, and even invited the Papal Cardinal of Paris to celebrations of a millennium of Russian Orthodoxy at Rue Daru instead of Russian bishops! This was of course the last straw. As late as 2003, even the naive Archbishop Sergey (Konovalov) understood this, but it was all tragically too late.

Thus, the end had long been inevitable. For Rue Daru and its tiny group that inevitably broke away from the Russian Church in England in 2006 in the notorious Sourozh Schism, going against history and faithfulness, there is now only one choice: Die out under ‘the superior Greek race’ or else return to the Russian Tradition (which the latter has never had, despite its illusions to the contrary) and also return to the Orthodox calendar by returning to obedience to the Russian Orthodox Church. As we said 12 years ago, you cannot be of the Russian Orthodox Tradition, or even know it, even less understand it, when you refuse to be part of the Russian Orthodox Church. This is not theology, this is common sense! To think otherwise is spiritual delusion – prelest.

In Paris all now depends on whom properties belong to. Elsewhere, there is freedom to return to communion with the canonical Orthodox Church from the Phanariot schismatics, their ecumenism and phyletism and liturgical deviations.

The end of Rue Daru is a warning to all its imitators, not only in the USA, but also to those liberals in Moscow who fell to the Paris School of Philosophy (there never was any Theology here). You follow them and this is how you too will die out.

Told you so.

 

1918-2018: The Hundred-Year Nightmare Ends: As Day Breaks the Third Rome Wakes Up At Last

Introduction

Parroting the words of the Russophobic Brzezhinzki school of string-pullers in Washington, President Poroshenko has declared that with autocephaly granted to the Ukraine ‘one of the basic geopolitical problems of the world has been solved’, adding that: ‘This is the fall of the Third Rome as the concept of Moscow having world domination’ and that autocephaly is ‘part of our pro-European strategy’ and ‘the basis for the path of development of our State and our nation’. Clearly Poroshenko, a Jew by his father and who has been seen on one occasion taking communion from the Uniats, believes in the Neo-Nazi chant of his extremists, who, instead of the traditional greeting ‘Glory to Jesus Christ’ uses: ‘Glory to the Ukraine’. In other words, he lives in a world of illusions and xenophobic lies.

In reality, the Ukrainian affair was ordered by the scared US State Department, which has used its puppet fantasist Patriarch Bartholomew to carry out its plan. The latter wanted petty revenge for the failure of his Crete junket, but in fact he has had to cut off his nose to spite his face. This marks a very positive turning point. It marks an end to the dalliance of those in the Russian Church who cultivated the dangerous Phanariot illusions of apostasy, secularism, modernism, ecumenism and venality, illusions of an Orthodoxy for show. Now Moscow has to wake up from the illusions of ‘Church diplomacy’. Now at last the tiny group in Moscow concerned can stop playing with the World Council of Churches, the Vatican and the Phanar and start being the Third Rome. We have waited for so long.

Assuming the destiny of the Russian Orthodox Church, all can now tell the Truth. After all, it is not diplomacy that sets us free, but the Truth that sets us free, and the Church is the last bastion of the Truth in this world of illusions. This means that the paralysis is at last ending. Some in Moscow weakly allowed the Phanar to interfere in the Russian Diaspora in Paris, then, much more recently, in the Ukrainian Diaspora, then in Estonia, then in the Sourozh Diocese, now at last they are waking up. We who have been abandoned for so long by the Third Rome, all the while defending it, can at last be heard. The Orthodox world can now be reconfigured – providing that the Russian Church acts responsibly, in concert with the Twelve Disciples, the other Local Churches, as the Third Rome.

I can recall nearly 40 years ago how Fr Alexei Kniazev, the rector of the St Sergius Institute in Paris, told us seminarists how he went to Constantinople in 1966 and put the question directly to Patriarch Athenagoras: ‘So are you the Oecumenical Patriarch or are you just a petty Balkan bishop?’ He never received an answer, except between the lines, and so soon after tried to join the Moscow Patriarchate – which irresponsibly rejected him. So today we ask that Moscow assumes once more the role of the Third Rome. In this matter it is not the Russian Church that is the servant of the Russian State, it is the Russian State that is the servant of the Russian Church. For the Russian Church is not Russian, but God’s, as the Church does not belong to Russia, but Russia belongs to the Church.

History

Let us recall how all this came about:   

In 1948 the freemason and notorious atomic mass murderer, Truman, obsessed with the unchallenged power of having the only weapons of mass destruction in the world, decided to take over the Patriarchate of Constantinople. His gangsters removed the Patriarch Maximos V and duly installed his fellow-mason Archbishop Athenagoras as Patriarch. In the same year Truman set up the World Council of Churches as a Pan-Protestant propaganda tool. The Local Orthodox Churches in capitalist countries were humiliatingly forced to join it. In 1961 the Ukrainian tyrant and atheist Khushchov forced the Russian Church and other Local Churches in socialist countries to join it, thinking that he could both finally finish off the Churches by 1980 and at the same time undermine the Americans.

In reply, the US State Department soon organized the Second Vatican Council and successfully protestantized the Vatican’s worldwide operation, their greatest following success being to enable the CIA to have the Polish Cardinal Wojtyla elected in order to undermine the Soviet Empire. When that Empire did duly collapse and its countries became the vassals of the ‘Truman Doctrine’, Washington declared itself the victor, briefly assuming world hegemony and ‘the end of history’. Of course, such nonsense did not match reality. The attempt to secularize and so enslave the Orthodox Church could never succeed, as it had with the Protestant and Catholic denominations. The Body of Christ cannot be enslaved by the world, because the Holy Spirit inhabits Her and transfigures Her.

Of course, the devil had tried to enslave the Church. In the 1920s he used his slave, the British freemason Patriarch Meletios Metaksakis (elected with £100,000 of Anglican money channelled through the British State), to set up a ‘Pan-Orthodox Conference’. In 1923 this imposed the Western calendar on its slaves. However, this was not enough. In 1961 Patriarch Athenagoras reactivized this ‘Conciliar’ process and in 1977 Patriarch Dimitrios nearly concluded it, but was sabotaged by St Justin (Popovich). It took nearly another forty years for the next apostate puppet in the Phanar, a graduate of the Gregorian University in Rome, to set up a ‘Council’ in Crete in 2016. However, the free Orthodox world boycotted it, as just another attempt to secularize the Church, ignoring its dogmas and canons.

 Conclusion

Now that the Church is free from the apostatic deadwood of the Truman Doctrine of US world supremacy, including over the Church of God, we can at last move forward. Ignoring the arrogant ignorance of primitive Muscovite nationalists, the Russian Church and State can now assume the burden of the Third Rome, for none now can doubt that the Second Rome is well and truly fallen and that ‘a fourth Rome there will not be’. Let us forget the expensive mascarades of diplomacy, for they have utterly failed. Only the Russian Orthodox Church, supported by Russian Orthodox statesmen, can hold the world back from its end, whither it rushes like a suicidal lemming. The Third Rome, the Patriarchate of Holy Rus, stands Risen from the Crucifixion of Atheism and we await its saving words of the Resurrection.

Now we have to be an example to all those who seek salvation, but do not know how to get there. Russia was destined to be an ark of salvation for the many peoples and has no other meaning. If it does not do this beneath the standard of Christ – no other standard will do – it will disappear from the face of the earth and then the whole world will end. Noah’s Ark is here, ready for the flood of fire that hangs over the planet. We await only its captain, the coming Tsar, who will take up the mantle of the Tsar-Martyr, the great benefactor of World Orthodoxy, reformer and builder of churches from New York to Nice, Patron of all the Local Churches. Then all the apostates and traitors will have the opportunity to repent, even at this eleventh hour. We await the Council of New Jerusalem, outside Moscow, to enlighten the world according to the Light of Christ and not to the darkness of men.

 

The Onslaught on Holy Rus and Our Response

Introduction

Having destroyed the multinational Russian Empire in 1917 and then 75 years later its successor, the Soviet Union, there remained for the Western Powers only one further thing to destroy, the Russian Orthodox Church. This was openly proclaimed after 1991 by Samuel Huntingdon (‘Torn Countries: The Failure of Civilization Shifting’ in Chapter 6 of his ‘The Clash of Civilizations’) and by the Russophobe Pole, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as ‘the enemy’. In fact all hell had been let loose against us since 1917 with the illegal overthrow by treason and then martyrdom of the last Protector of Christian Civilization, Tsar Nicholas II.

The Onslaught on the One, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church

  1. Against the Unity of the Church, already before the Revolution, especially in Saint Petersburg, there were divisions caused by internal traitors (renovationists and ecumenists), many of them clerics who after 1917 defrocked themselves. Indeed, after 1917 renovationism was fed by atheist Communism and soon appeared among the schismatic Saint Petersburg emigration in Paris and elsewhere, fed by pounds and then by dollars. Both inside and outside Russia they were openly supported by the British-run, and from 1948 on, US-run, Patriarchate of Constantinople. This was also active in meddling and creating divisions in Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Americas, Western Europe and Australia.
  2. Against the Holiness of the Church there was the Soviet onslaught from 1917 on (though there were many cases of martyrdom as early as 1905), with 600 bishops, 120,000 priests, monks and nuns and countless laypeople martyred.

Since the fall of Communism especially, two new threats have appeared in force:

  1. Against the Apostolicity of the Church there have appeared schismatic groups of sectarian and pharisaical extremists, ‘zealots’, both inside and outside the Russian Lands.
  2. Against the Catholicity of the Church there have appeared nationalists, especially in the Ukraine but also elsewhere, as in Estonia, fed by dollars through Constantinople.

Our Response

  1. In order to affirm the Unity of the Church, we defeated the renovationist traitors by our firm confession of Orthodoxy and so the humanist heresy of Sophianism of the fantasist Fr Sergiy Bulgakov was universally condemned as such by the whole Russian Church. Tiny elderly groups, stuck in the past, still survive here and there, but they are dying out in irrelevance.
  2. In order to affirm the Holiness of the Church, the New Martyrs and Confessors defeated the Soviet onslaught by their holy patience.
  3. In order to affirm the Apostolicity of the Church, schismatic groups of sectarian and pharisaical extremists, both outside and inside Russia, were defeated in 2007, when both parts of the Russian Church united against the ways of the world. Tiny elderly groups still survive here and there, but they are dying out in irrelevance.
  4. In order to affirm the Catholicity of the Church, we now face Inherently anti-Christian, nationalist divisions which go against the multinational nature of the Church (Catholicity), creating nationalistic and politicized ethnic fragments in place of multinational Holy Rus. The canonical territory of the Church of Holy Rus (the ex-Soviet Union minus Georgia plus China and Japan) is over 32 million square kilometres, well over one fifth of the world’s land surface, and is united against the schismatics fed from Constantinople. Therefore, in time, there is no doubt that Patriarch Bartholomew and his Sanhedrin will be judged by a Church Council and their anti-canonical papalist heresies will be condemned.

Conclusion

In the meantime, one response for the reunited Russian Church would be to establish a Metropolia in Western Europe in order to organize missionary activity here. Constantinople miserably failed to do anything like this, when the Russian Church was paralyzed for three generations by atheistic Communism. It had its chance and failed. However, a Metropolia cannot be built on obvious injustices, the promotion of bad priests, bad candidates and bad people over good priests, good candidates and good people, the discouragement and demotion of the good, reliance on money and ornate church buildings instead of on the pastorship of human souls, who are so despised and neglected. There must be the ability to apologize for crass mistakes, made through the refusal to consult locally, and to thank those who have suffered for so long from these mistakes as a result. The reunited Russian Church now has a chance to act. Let it not be said that it too failed to seize the moment.

 

 

Why We Are Russian Orthodox Christians Although We Are Not Russian

Why Christian?

Humanity has always needed to worship something greater than itself – be it the sun, the moon, rivers, emperors, kings, heroes, ‘celebrities’ or film ‘stars’. Of all the founders of faiths, Christ alone was God and man and so defeated death. All the other founders of faiths, the pagan gods of India and Egypt, the Buddha, of Greece and Rome, of Africa and Scandinavia, and Mohammed, are dead – they were simply sinful men: Christ alone is living because He alone is beyond sin. Despite the spiritual realizations and abstract moral truths which can be found beneath the layers of spiritual impurity in other faiths, the fact that Christ is alive makes Christianity unique. If you believe in the unique and Absolute Resurrection of Christ through His victory over death, then all other faiths fade into relativity and even irrelevance. They are unable to deliver us from practical enslavement to the devil, seen in death and our captivity in hell.

Why Orthodox?

To anyone with any historical sense, it is clear that Christianity must go back to the time of Christ, 2,000 years ago. Thus, all the myriad Protestant sects pale into insignificance because they were all founded less than 500 years ago, sometimes much less, by one particular provincial culture. And indeed, as they put that local culture above the Gospel of Christ, we can see that they are aggressive manmade religions of great spiritual impurity, deformed by a fantastic greed for money, pharisaical moralism and censorious sectarianism. They persecuted Orthodox Christians, each other and arrogantly destroyed the cultures of native peoples all over the world through their ruthless exploitation and asset-stripping of natural resources. These Protestant sects were and are the foundation of modern capitalism which is polluting and destroying the whole planet and leading directly to its end, which it has now made inevitable.

Similarly, Roman Catholicism is not the original Christianity because it was founded less than 1,000 years ago by one particular provincial culture situated at the Western tip of Eurasia. It put its cultural blend of pagan Roman imperialism and crude Germanic barbarianism, above Orthodox Christianity, which it rejected and attacked, pretending to be older than it. Having transformed itself many times, from the very outset it intolerantly and aggressively persecuted and murdered those who disagreed with it in organized violence. It has used worldly politics – armies, crusades, inquisitions, invasions, imperialist colonialism, wars and unprincipled behaviour – in order to attract greater numbers and so gain power. Clearly faith here has been reduced to a mere manmade and centralized religion and has little to do with Christ. Not Christians, but Catholics, slaughtered Orthodox Christians.

History confirms that only the Orthodox Church is the Christ-founded Church, as only She goes back to the first millennium, keeping the fullness of Christianity despite the attempts of States, emperors and politicians to meddle in Her affairs and misuse Her for their own evil ends. With Her near 2,000 years of history, the Church has confessed the Faith without alteration since the start. Geography also confirms that the first Christians were Orthodox. Thus, the words of Christ Who lived in and around Jerusalem were written down in Greek and Greek Christians and all those who have lived for generations in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Asia have always all been Orthodox. For Christ was in his human nature Asian, not European. It is therefore clear that if we want to be with the Church that Christ founded, then we must be Orthodox Christians, the only true Christians, for all others are not complete Christians.

Why Russian Orthodox Christian?

The family of 14 Local Orthodox Churches together form the Orthodox Church because they all confess the identical Orthodox Christian Faith. Without the Lord’s Orthodox Faith we cannot be in the Church, the Body of Christ. The Church is made up of 13 small mononational Local Churches (far fewer than 13 even two centuries ago) and one very large international, not mononational, Church. This is the Russian Orthodox Church which for centuries has led and protected all the others at the cost of great self-sacrifice. Present on every continent, with over 70 nationalities, both inside and outside Russia, it accounts for 164 million Orthodox Christians (75% of the total). It alone is inherently multinational and tries to avoid the pitfalls of nationalism, which is only worldliness under a different name. It not only accepts and welcomes Non-Russians but has always led the field in missionary work worldwide.

Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church has remained faithful in every detail to the Orthodox Faith, despite vicious persecution and martyrdom by Western ideologies and atheism, of both the Communist and the Capitalist varieties. On the other hand, over the last hundred years some of the 13 very small and so weaker Local Churches have been forced by geopolitical pressures into some lax compromises, for example, abandoning the Orthodox Christian calendar for that of the State, altering the services, abandoning confession and fasting, failing to respect local people and their languages, imposing nationalism. It follows from all the above that if we are conscious Christians, then we should participate in the Russian Orthodox Church, defending Her from the treason, cowardice and deceit of both internal and external enemies, supporting, confessing, living and spreading her Faith, which is the Faith of Christ.

Principles of the Coming Russian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe

Introduction

We first called for a Russian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe early on thirty years ago, in April 1988, against the background of the then dying Cold War. Far more importantly, 15 years later, in April 2003, after the Cold War, but before the reunion of the two parts of the Russian Church, Patriarch Alexis of Moscow did the same. 30 years on, there is still no Metropolia, but we feel that, despite all the frustration, impediments and delays, its time is at last coming. A Metropolia, and then Church, that is Orthodox, but also Local, is inevitable in Western Europe. What principles must this Metropolia adopt?

  1. Faithful to Orthodoxy, not Heterodoxy

First of all, we say ‘Away with nationalistic Finnish, French and American ideas of ‘localism’’ (Finland / Rue Daru / OCA), which ignore the integrity of the Orthodox Faith, putting the local flag before the Cross. Instead of ideas propagated in Paris and transferred to the USA, we choose a Metropolia that is both faithful and local. This cannot be based on anti-canonical compromises, on spiritual betrayal of the Faith, in the name of State-sponsored or of self-imposed cultural conformism. We must keep the Orthodox calendar and Church canons, ignoring old-fashioned modernism and ecumenism.

  1. An End to Old-Fashioned Ecumenism

It is this latter ecumenism that has especially delayed the formation of a Metropolia, the foundation of a new Local Church. There were those who said: ‘We must not offend the Catholics/Protestants. We must not give local titles to our bishops’. Such voices were those of traitors to Orthodoxy, those who saw us and see it as a mere piece of foreign exoticism, of folklore. No Metropolia could be born until those voices had fallen silent – and they were still very strong in 1988 and in 2003. It is time to move forward to the free and independent future, to the Autocephalous Church of Western Europe.

  1. Bilingual and Missionary

Unlike the old Russian immigrants (and those of other nationalities), who were intent negatively on preserving and pickling the past, even when nobody any longer knew what it meant, and so guaranteed that they would die out – the future Metropolia will have to be bilingual. Here too we put the Cross before the flag. Only in this way will we be able to pass on the spiritual heritage and values of Russian Orthodox Civilization in a missionary fashion to both the descendants of Russian immigrants and to native Western Europeans. Only in this way can a truly Orthodox and a truly Local Church be born.

  1. Pastoral, not Bureaucratic and Racist

One of the greatest problems in Church life at all times is the tendency to put administration above pastoral care, to put marble and gold above church buildings and, above all, human souls. (We can think of the Irish and Rome). There can be no more second-class (or third-class) citizens; non-Russians must be treated as Russians. The past, all too recent past, is a very dark area indeed in this respect. In such a Metropolia, the foundation of a true Local Church, there can be no racism. The old-fashioned attitudes and mistreatment of native Orthodox is not acceptable and must be severely sanctioned.

Conclusion

Fifty years ago, with the Russian Church paralysed, there was still a hope that Constantinople would abandon its Greek imperialism and take responsibility for the Diaspora. It utterly failed to do so. Indeed, the spiritual decomposition of the Constantinople with its new lurch into Eastern Papism, means that its serious clergy and people now want to join the Russian Church (although the long-term solution would be for the Church of Greece to take over the Greek Diaspora and make it Orthodox). The recent, long-awaited appointments of new bishops in Western Europe and those to come, carried out by both parts of the Russian Orthodox Church, are all steps towards the future Metropolia.

 

 

The Third Rome or the Fourth Rome?

In an astonishing interview with the well-named Greek newspaper ‘Ethnos’, Metropolitan Emmanuel (the Greek ethnarch for France and often considered to be the successor to Patriarch Bartholomew) has just confessed a number of heresies.

Firstly, he has insisted on calling the Patriarchate of Constantinople ‘the Mother-Church’ of vast territories, which are completely canonically independent of Constantinople and have been for centuries, and that this title gives it the right to meddle in their internal affairs today.

Secondly, he has stated that Constantinople’s ‘process of granting the Ukraine autocephaly has begun’ and that this ‘is a priority’. In other words, Constantinople is going to grant the phyletist schismatics of the US-run Kiev junta (he calls them ‘the Ukrainian people’!) autocephaly, and that this is not a matter of if, but of when. (Is this revenge for the Russian Church not attending the heretical ‘Council of Crete’ in 2016, with its Obama-esque agenda?).

Thirdly, he has stated that ‘in 1054 Christianity was divided into Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism’! Yet every Orthodox schoolchild knows that in 1054 the Western European ruling elite split away from the Orthodox Church and invented Roman Catholicism!

It is clear that all of Orthodox Civilization, which has as its spiritual leader Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and All the Russias, is facing a choice. It can, like the President of Moldova, Igor Dodon, whom certain forces attempted to assassinate in Chisinau last week, choose Orthodoxy. For it is he who stated, ‘I am the President of Orthodox, not of sodomites’ and for 13 September has organized ‘The International Congress of Families’ against the anti-Christian globalization project of the New World Order of the US and its EU and NATO vassals. Or else it can prefer dollar bribes to Orthodox Christianity, so committing apostasy from the Church of God and losing salvation in eternity.

Now we see that the prophecy of St Paisius the Athonite (+ 1994), which only thirty years ago seemed impossible, is coming true. Here we refer to his prophecy that a third of Turks will be baptized. When on 15 July 2016 Washington tried to murder the Turkish President Erdogan and he was saved with only half an hour to spare by a warning from Russia, he then changed sides from Washington to Moscow. The time is coming when we will see a Turkish Orthodox Church, opened by the Russian Orthodox Church. In its phyletism Constantinople has consistently refused to do so. (In our parish we already have a modest three Turkish Orthodox parishioners and their families).

This will be the Russian reply to Constantinople’s century of divisive meddling throughout the Diaspora, in Estonia and now in the Ukraine. We Russian Orthodox of all nationalities have known for over 500 years that with two Romes fallen, the Third Rome is Moscow and that a Fourth Rome there will not be. However, first Paris, next London, then Berlin and now Washington have all tried to be a Fourth Rome. They were and are foolish.

As a huge storm gathers on the East coast of the USA, just south of Washington, it too is going to learn that you cannot play at God. Just as the French, British and German Empires all crashed out of history, so too will the American Empire and its vassal in Constantinople. A Fourth Rome there will not be. All 216 million Orthodox now have to make a choice: Moscow or Washington’s satellite, Constantinople.